English-the Procuraduria de Justicia -”
“It’s like the state attorney general,” Annie contributed, and to Gideon: “The police here report to them.”
“Yes, attorney general,” said Sandoval. I am to meet with Sergeant Nava. I remember him from before, from the little girl. Not such an easy man to get along with.” He turned a pleading, apologetic look on Gideon. “I was wondering if… I was wondering…” He paused encouragingly, as if wanting Gideon to finish the sentence for him. “Wondering if…”
“Yes?” Gideon was at a total loss. “Wondering if?”
“Wondering if…”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Annie burst out, “he’s wondering if you would go with him.”
“To talk to the police?”
“Yes.” Sandoval launched into an excited flood of words: “I’m afraid if he asks me things, how will I answer? I know about traffic accidents, about people who drink too much mezcal and get in fights. What do I know of bones, of wounds? What if they want to know more? What if they want to know how-”
“Sure,” Gideon said, “I’ll go with you.”
“ Thank you!” Sandoval, practically going limp with relief, sagged into the chair that Carl had pulled out for him.
“Have yourself a michelada, Chief,” Annie said. “You look like you could use one. Stay for dinner, why don’t you?”
“But already I come here three times this week. I don’t like-”
“Oh, break a rule for once, it’ll do you good. Come on, we’d like to have you.”
Sandoval grinned and relaxed a little more. “Well, okay, maybe this one time.” After a swallow, he looked curiously at Julie and wagged his finger at her. “Hey, wait a minute, I know you. Didn’t I used to see you…”
Julie smiled. “You have a good memory, Chief. You used to see me right here. I was Julie Tendler then, Carl’s niece, just a teenager helping out for the summer.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember.” He smiled fondly at her. “And I was Memo Sandoval, Dorotea’s dumb big brother, still thinking I had to be a weaver, only I stunk at it.”
“Well, I’m sure you’re a good police chief.”
“From what I’ve seen, he is,” said Gideon gallantly.
Sandoval responded with a modest shrug and changed the subject. On his way in, he had passed the women’s group on the terrace. “You know, maybe it would be better for me to join your guests outside?”
“Well, now, I don’t know that I’d-” began Carl.
But Sandoval was already heading for the terrace. “Tonio, he likes that I do this. The ladies especially, always they are impressed to know the chief of police. To meet me,” he said complacently, “makes them feel protected. I answer the questions.”
“You wouldn’t think so to look at him,” Annie said, watching him go, “but our timid little chief has quite an eye for the ladies. He does seem to get along with them too.”
“I don’t know about these particular ladies, though,” Julie said, seeing the women turn as one toward the lone, innocently approaching male. “Hm, I wonder why the phrase ‘lamb to the lions’ leaps to mind.”
Gideon concurred. “They’ll eat him alive.”
Twenty minutes later, as they were starting on their dinners, the chief was back, shell-shocked and staring.
“Madre de Dios,” he mumbled as he sat down with his tray. “Those ladies.”
Mercifully, the others refrained from pursuing the subject.
EIGHT
The offices of the Procuraduria General de Justicia were located well south of downtown Oaxaca, out near the airport, in a once-palatial nineteenth-century building that had gone sadly to seed. There were still touches of elegance to be seen on the outside-ornate grillwork on the upper-story windows, the remnants of fine stucco-work here and there, panels of veined marble, a pair of fountains flanking the grand stone entrance stairway, a row of elaborately wrought metal benches-but all was run-down and tatty. The stucco was flaking, the rusted fountains no longer flowed, and the benches had been painted so many times, and were so in need of yet another coat, that they were a mottled black and white, impossible to tell whether the black had chipped away to reveal the white or vice- versa. In some places-the arms, or the ornamental rosette that topped their backs, the successive layers of paint were worn all the way down to bare, gray metal. On one rosette Gideon was able to make out a single brave word in bold relief: Libertad.
The building itself, coated in two equally repellent shades of green, was also seriously in need of a new paint job (in different colors, one would hope). Only the neat line of flowering shrubs along the foundation showed signs of loving, or at least painstaking, care.
All this Gideon had to take in on the fly as he and the heavily perspiring Sandoval walked rapidly-trotted, in the smaller Sandoval’s case-over the brick-paved front plaza and up the two flights of wide, curving stone steps to the entrance. From Sandoval’s point of view, the day had gotten off to a disastrous start. He had allowed what he thought was more than ample time for the drive from Teotitlan, but he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had had a terrible time finding the place. Thus, instead of being fifteen minutes early for his two o’clock appointment, they were ten minutes late. They would have been only five minutes late had matters not been made worse when, having no convincing credentials to produce, he had been denied entrance to the official-business parking lot and had had to park on a side street two blocks away. As a result, Chief Sandoval, who had been a nervous wreck to begin with, was practically a moving puddle by the time they got there.
Once through the entrance they found themselves in a plain lobby that smelled of disinfectant, unadorned except for much-thumbed sheaves of official-looking documents hanging on cords from the walls. People moved in and out of corridors radiating from the lobby, the bureaucrats and civil servants (confident, decisive, focused) easily distinguishable from the ordinary citizens (apprehensive, uncertain, demoralized).
On one wall was a building directory, from which Gideon read aloud: “ ‘Director de la Policia Ministerial, planta sotano.’ Basement.”
“Dungeon,” Sandoval amended in a strained voice.
At the bottom of the stairwell they were blocked by a hulking giant with an imposing black mustache. He was at least a couple of inches taller than Gideon’s six-two, and a whole lot wider, dressed in black military fatigues and combat boots, with the blunt, squarish black handle of what appeared to be a 9-mm Beretta sticking out of his belt.
He looked them offensively up and down. “You’re in the wrong place,” he said dismissively in Spanish. “This is police headquarters.” With a jerk of his chin he gestured for them to get the hell back upstairs.
Sandoval instantly began babbling away with a stammering, apologetic explanation for their presence that got nowhere until Gideon interrupted.
“We have an appointment with Sergeant Nava,” he said in Spanish.
Until now, the cop had fixed his attention mostly on Sandoval. Now he turned it on Gideon and came a step closer; two steps. Whatever he’d had for breakfast, it had been heavily doused with cumin and garlic. “You’re not Mexican.”
“No. American.”
“American.” Disdainful, skeptical. “What’s your business here in Oaxaca?”
Gideon was quickly learning why the Oaxaca police, and to a lesser extent the police of Mexico, had the reputation they did. And it wasn’t simply the man’s size and attitude that intimidated, it was that gun stuffed so thuggishly into his belt. Was that meant to be intimidating (which it was)? What, could they not afford holsters?
“I’ve already told you why we’re here,” he said sharply, answering discourtesy with discourtesy. “Now where can we find Sergeant Nava, please?”
The cop narrowed his eyes, glared at him and opened his mouth to speak, at which point Sandoval started in
