there were only saloons and whorehouses. The Barbary Coast Café was the last place on the street. It stood right up against the mudflat that bordered the depleted river. This time of year the Rio wasn’t very grand. In spring the mudflats would be covered with water. But now there was mostly mud, with just enough water running down the center to remind us it was a river.
The Barbary Coast was where it belonged. It was a two-story building made of whatever they had available, some warped lumber that hadn’t cured when they put it up and was now warped and split from the drying process. Some of the roof was tin, some was Mexican tile. Most of the windows had no glass and were covered with something that might have been flour sacks. The front door, which stood open and looked like it wouldn’t close, appeared to have been rendered from a wagon gate.
I went in. It was dark and smelled of coal oil and smoke, full spittoons and sweat, cigar smoke and booze. It wasn’t crowded. There were men lining the bar, which was two planks on a couple of fifty-gallon kegs. There were some cards being played by candlelight at a few unmatched tables around the room. Half the tables were empty. And along the wall past the bar was a small flock of desperate-looking whores. The pickings looked slim. But repulsive. I pulled my hat down over my eyes and went to the bar, squeezed in among the other men, for concealment, and ordered a beer.
“No beer,” the barman said.
“Gimme what you got,” I said.
The barman poured something from a jug into a dirty glass. I sniffed it and put it down.
“Frenchie around?” I said.
“Her?” the barman said.
“Her,” I said.
The barman shrugged.
“Over there with the rest of ’em,” he said. “Pink dress.”
I looked at the whores. It was hard in the dim light, and I almost missed her. The pink dress was dirty. Her hair was ratty. She was a lot thinner than she had been, and the body that had once so proudly pushed at the confines of her dress now seemed shrunken inside her clothes. I studied her over the right shoulder of the fat man next to me. A lot less than she had been, but it was Allie. I watched her for a moment as she scanned the room, looking for prospects. Then I put a dime down beside my drink and moved away from the bar, not looking at Allie. The barman picked up my dime and then carefully poured the undrunk whiskey back into the jug.
I went back into the despondent street feeling tired and tight across my shoulders. So we’d found her. I didn’t want Virgil to see her in this setting. But it wasn’t for me to decide. It was the only setting she was in, and we’d spent a year looking for her. I started back up the street toward Los Lobos. For maybe the first time since I’d known Virgil, I didn’t know what he would do.
5
VIRGIL DIDN’T SAY A WORD from the time I told him we’d found Allie to the moment we stopped outside the rat hole where she worked. I had the eight-gauge with me, simply because I was more comfortable with it than without it, especially when I had no idea of what was going to happen.
Virgil studied the Barbary Coast Café.
“In there,” he said.
“Yes.”
Virgil looked at it some more. Then he nodded once and started forward, and we walked in through the front door. Virgil stopped inside to let his eyes adjust.
“Where is she?” Virgil said.
She was right where she had been. I nodded toward her. Virgil looked at her for a considerable time. Then he nodded again and walked over to her and stood in front of her. She looked up at him, forcing her customer’s smile, started to speak, and stopped. The smile remained in place on her immobilized face. Virgil waited. She stared.
Then she said, “Virgil?”
Virgil nodded.
She said, “Virgil.”
Virgil nodded.
She said, “Oh, sweet Jesus, Virgil, get me out of here.”
“Yes,” he said.
He took her arm and they started toward the door.
“Hey,” the barman said. “Stairs in the back.”
Virgil showed no sign that he’d heard.
“Whores ain’t allowed to leave the premises,” the barman said.
A fat man with a droopy mustache and long, greasy hair came from across the room and stood in the doorway.
“You planning on taking that whore somewhere?” he said.
There was a scar at one corner of his mouth, as if someone had cut him with a knife. He was wearing suspenders and no belt, and he had a Colt stuck in the right-hand pocket of his pants. With fluid economy, Virgil pulled his gun and slammed it against the fat man’s head. The fat man went down. Virgil guided Allie around him and out the front door.
The bartender said, “Hey.”
I looked at him and shook my head. Then, with the eight-gauge leveled at the room, I backed out the front door and started up the street behind Virgil and Allie, keeping an eye over my shoulder at the Barbary Coast Café. Nobody came out.
Off the lobby of the Grande Palace Hotel there was a one-chair barbershop, and in the back of it was a small room, run by two fat old Mexican women, where you could get a bath. Virgil took Allie in there.
“Scrub her,” he said to the two women. “And wash her clothes.”
Allie stood motionless and silent.
“What she wear after?” one of the women said.
“We’ll worry about that,” Virgil said, “when she’s clean.”
6
ALLIE LOOKED LIKE A KID. Her hair was clean and straight. She wore no makeup, and she sat barefoot and cross-legged on the bed, wearing one of my clean shirts, like a dress, with the sleeves rolled.
“I could step out for a while,” I said. “Get me a drink. Let you folks talk.”
Virgil shook his head. So I sat on a chair in the corner of the room and was quiet.
“You run off,” Virgil said to Allie.
“I was ashamed,” she said.
“You sick at all?”
“No, honest to God, Virgil,” she said. “I haven’t got nothing.”
“All this time you been whoring?” Virgil said.
“I know, but I been lucky. I haven’t caught nothing.”
Virgil nodded.
“You been whoring since you left.”
Allie nodded slowly.
“Mostly,” she said. “I had to live, Virgil.”
Virgil nodded.
“You did,” he said.
