The Devil’s Redhead

man responsible for bringing tequila to the States.”

“Bing Crosby and Phil Harris,” Koch, the other stringer, corrected. “And it was agave tequila. Like Herradura and Sauza. Not the stuff they put in these.”

Smathers shrugged. “So spank me.”

“I’d rather spank the little princess down there.”

“That little princess,” Holleran, the man from Sacramento, said, “will be wearing that same dress a year from now. Except the fit’ll be a bit more snug.”

“You mean she’ll be at the altar,” Eloise Beaulieu said.

“Barefoot,” Smathers said.

“The other half of barefoot.”

The men laughed, the women didn’t. Above them, the blades of a brass fan rotated drowsily. The bartender freshened their glasses. Waxman cleared his throat. Eloise was the first to recognize him.

“Berty, my God. What are you doing here?”

Smathers, hearing Waxman’s name, snapped to. “Bert Waxman. You did that piece on the hit out near Antioch today.” Waxman guardedly detected intimations of praise in this remark. Then Smathers added: “Man has to fall down drunk in just the right doorway to get a story like that to trip over him.”

Waxman asked, “You folks cover Moreira’s speech?”

“Whoa, Berty, whoa,” Eloise said. “My question came first. You working the same story that appeared this morning?”

“You’ll read all about it,” Waxman replied. “I was wondering, the speech, was there a release given out?”

“Here,” Holleran said, removing from his pocket a press release folded into sections. “Take mine.”

“No,” Eloise said, snatching it from his hand. “First, I want to know, Berty. Why. Are. You. Here.”

“I’m going downstairs,” Holleran announced, sliding from his stool. “Fetch me some vittles.”

“No spanking,” Smathers said.

“It’s a birthday!”

“Only Daddy gets to spank.”

“Well, damn.”

Holleran exited waving absently to one and all, even Abatangelo, whom he spotted on his way out. Waxman made one halfhearted grab for the press release but Eloise snatched it away.

“Is this Moreira guy implicated in the stuff I read today?” Eloise asked.

Smathers and Koch were interested, too, now. They studied Waxman with waggling eyebrows and out-with-it smiles.

Waxman said, “There were some squatters on the property around the time of the killings. They got scared off by the police and, rumor has it, they fled up here. I lost their trail. I thought Senor Moreira, or somebody who works for him, might be able to help.”

Abatangelo, sitting with his coffee, listened in. Figuring Waxman had invented this account on the spot, he thought: Not bad.

“So you came up to ask him on the night of his daughter’s quince,” Gayle, the short-haired woman, said. At the sound of her voice, Waxman recalled her last name: Fruth. She rolled her eyes. “Impeccable timing.”

“It’s bullshit,” Smathers said. He was still smiling.

“I was not aware,” Waxman said, “there was a party planned here for this evening.”

Eloise Beaulieu made a face. Gayle Fruth groaned. Koch said, “Hell’s bells, give him the damn release,” and pushed his empty glass across the bar, calling out to the bartender, “Un otro, amigo.” After suffering a prodding elbow from Gayle Fruth, he added, “Por favor.”

Eloise relented with a dispirited sigh and handed the release to Waxman. He unfolded it and read.

“He’s opening some youth center for gang members, about which he said just about what you’d expect,” Gayle Fruth said. “You know, education, family, free enterprise.”

“Tradition is a buttress for the soul,” Smathers intoned, quoting.

“Fortune favors the brave,” said Koch. He was still waiting for his margarita, hands playing bongo on the bar. “But no spanking.”

“It was preachy,” Eloise agreed. “But, per usual, they ate it up.”

“They,” Koch said, accepting his refreshened margarita from the bartender with glowing eyes. “Who were ‘they,’ exactly?”

“I think it’s a good deal,” Gayle Fruth interjected. “I think he has the best interest of those kids at heart. Convinced me, anyway. He wants them off the street, give them work. Taggers, gangbangers. Nuestra Familia, I mean, that’s the alternative, right? Money’s out of his own pocket, so what’s to bitch about? Not like we’re going to get taxed for it.”

“To Bing,” Smathers said, lifting his glass.

“Bing and Phil,” Koch corrected.

Waxman put the release away. From a different pocket he removed one of the clippings he’d brought along from the accordion file Aleris had brought him from the refugee center. One of the ones with a picture of Victor Facio. He showed it to Eloise, knowing the others would crane to look.

“See him anywhere? At the speech?” he asked.

The bartender, cleaning glasses, looked up from his work. He glanced at the picture and then up at Waxman. Their eyes met.

“His name is Victor Facio,” Waxman said.

The bartender looked away.

“Pretty dapper dude for a squatter,” Smathers remarked.

“I don’t remember him,” Eloise said, studying the snapshot. “I mean, there was a real crowd. Not like here, but big.” She shrugged. “So who knows? Could be.”

Waxman said, “Thank you,” and put the clipping away.

“My point,” Smathers said, “is that this story you’ve handed us about chasing down some squatters doesn’t jive with that picture. Am I right?”

The bartender picked up a hand towel, ambled toward the storage room in the rear and disappeared.

“Thanks. See you around,” Waxman said to Eloise, then nodded to the others to include them in his farewell.

“Why do I get the distinct impression I’ve just been fucked with?” Smathers said.

“Come on,” Koch responded, sliding off his stool and slapping his companion on the shoulder. “Ground floor, tapas galore.”

Waxman returned to the booth and sat across from Abatangelo again. Shortly the other reporters trailed out on their way to the food, making halfhearted gestures of farewell. Eloise in particular. At the doorway, she called back, “I’ll call you tomorrow, Berty. We’ll chat.”

Once they were gone, Waxman leaned across the table toward Abatangelo and whispered, “He’s here. The bartender, the way he reacted when I said Facio’s name- like a switch went off.” He leaned back again, gazed into the distance and sipped his coffee. “I feel confident now.”

“You don’t look confident,” Abatangelo said, smiling. “You look like you just swallowed your wallet.”

The bartender returned from the storeroom and resumed humming to himself as he wiped down the bar. A moment later, a large man in a gray polyester suit appeared from the hallway and sidled up beside Abatangelo’s and Waxman’s table. He loomed over them, rabbit-eyed, his face slack and square. His hands were misshapen, as though from numerous bone breaks. “Vengan conmigo,” he said, gesturing for them to follow.

The man wasn’t one of the bodyguards who’d accompanied Rolando Moreira into the hotel. Moving with a hulking swagger that reminded Abatangelo of prison, he led them to the elevator, which was waiting. Inside, he turned a key in the control panel and punched seven. Together, the three of them stared up silently as the numbers overhead lit and faded one by one, marking their passage floor to floor. The elevator shuddered to a whispered halt and the heavy doors slid open.

The hallway receded in both directions. Brass sconces lined the wall above gilded wainscoting and sedge carpet. The smell of a recent vacuuming still hung in the air, a prickle of dust. Waxman and Abatangelo followed the lumbering man in the gray suit to the end of the hall, where he rapped three times on a large white door. A slight