The Deputy - Edge Series 2 (27 page)

Straker and Torrejon calmed the situation to a point where the Bishopsburg sheriff was able to take the place of the Federale on the table. Where he made a speech of his own to the discontented audience: went into detail concerning the rape and murder of Molly Crowell and then pleaded for whatever help could be given to assist in seeing that justice was done.

The response drawn by Torrejon’s translation was similar to that given to what the Federale had said, except that a handful of the poorly dressed, undernourished and largely uneducated citizens of San Luis now gave the impression that they were genuinely sorry they could not help.

The disillusioned Straker curtly told Torrejon to dismiss the gathering and the irritable Alvarez and his equally unhappy men returned to the solace offered by tequila: 153

Ricardo Zamorra apparently hell-bent on making up the ground he had lost while he was at the Federale post.

It was Edge who suggested they might get more positive results if they questioned people individually, but neither Alvarez nor any of his men wanted any part of this. Torrejon, too, was against it, especially after it was explained that Edge would go his own way in San Luis while Straker, with the Federale to act as interpreter, went theirs. At midday, after a wearisomely fruitless series of repetitive exchanges with up to a score of San Luis citizens, Edge decided he was wasting his time: and guessed Straker and Torrejon were likewise banging their heads against a brick wall of prejudice compounded by fear.

Questioned in isolation – and without coercion – the sullen Mexicans were as unswerving in their answers as they had been when they were part of a group. They had seen nothing, heard nothing and so could say nothing.

Back in the cantina, where Alvarez, Zamorra, Diego and Sanchez were sprawled across two adjacent tables, each of them in a drunken stupor, Edge ordered enchiladas and beer from the obese, wall eyed Alfredo Herrero. And expected the food to be served by the equally fat, similarly fifty years old woman who had emerged from the church with the cantina owner earlier.

Instead of which the plate was carried to his table by the slim, almost attractive woman of thirty or so he had glimpsed receiving the horses at the livery. Unbecomingly dressed in an oversized shirt and baggy pants she would have been pretty, perhaps even beautiful, were it not for the many deep pits of a childhood disease that scarred the skin of her angular features.

Her dark eyes were large and expressive but Edge thought he was probably wrong in his assumption that they signalled she was willing to provide him with something more than greasy enchiladas and bitter coffee if he so wanted.

When he was through eating and she returned for his empty plate and cup, there was no opportunity to double check if there really was any subtle message in her big eyes. For Straker and Torrejon entered the cantina and distracted his attention as she swung around and moved away from the table.

He judged that the two men showed more weariness than they would have had they been successful.

‘
Amigo,
I think that like us you discovered nothing of any value?’ the uniformed man suggested morosely to Edge as he crossed to the bar counter and nodded a tacit request to Herrero and was given a bottle and a shot glass.

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Edge continued to roll a cigarette as he replied evenly: ‘There are a lot more than three wise monkeys in San Luis, ain’t that right, feller?’

Straker dropped heavily into the chair across the table from Edge and grimaced as he growled dejectedly: ‘No disrespect intended to Mexicans, but looking for just one in a town full of them is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.’

Edge showed a glinting eyed, thin lip smile. ‘From what I know of Jose Martinez, that ought to make it a lot easier.’

‘How do you figure that, mister?’ the puzzled Straker asked.

‘You just keep hunting until you get a little prick.’

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CHAPTER • 17

_________________________________________________________________

WHEN EDGE woke in the cooling early evening from a sleep he had taken on four
chairs aligned against a wall inside the cantina he was greeted with a malevolent glower by the fat owner of the place who stood behind the counter. But he paid Alfredo Herrero no heed, figuring the man was simply showing more animosity than most of the local population toward the unwelcome visitors to San Luis. And toward him in particular because he had chosen not to pay for a bed in one of the squalid and cramped rooms in back of the cantina.

Earlier, during an ill-tempered afternoon discussion, every member of the posse had agreed they had reached a dead end in pursuit of their quarry. For whether some people or every citizen of this village were lying or not, it made no difference to the motley bunch of lawmen from Bishopsburg.

And Straker allowed that Edge and Alvarez and his men were free to do as they pleased. There was nothing the new sheriff could do except return across the border and distribute wanted flyers on Jose Martinez and the two men and the woman who had taken the prisoner from the jail then killed George North. For their trail was too cold to be picked up from San Luis: the whole sprawl of Mexico in one direction and the entire, much larger land mass of the United States in the other.

But first they should rest up – some needed to sober up – and Herrero eagerly offered accommodation at reasonable rates to any man who wanted to stay at his place: which all except for Edge accepted readily. And, out of paid work again, he elected to sleep for nothing on the makeshift bed of chairs, with his hat for a pillow, within the silent, malodorous and deserted barroom

‘Nothing’s changed as far as you know, feller?’ he asked as he rose from the uncomfortable chairs and flexed his muscles to ease the aches from them then approached the counter.

Herrero answered gloomily: ‘I tell you something that I know for true,
hombre.
The last time anything changed in San Luis there was an eclipse of the sun and it was dark at noon. That was more than fifty years ago and we are told it will be another fifty years before it may happen again. What can I get you?’

‘What you got to eat?’

‘Same as you had before. Enchiladas.’

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‘I see what you mean about nothing around here changing.’

‘I don’t tell lies,
hombre.
You want the same as you had before?’

‘A man has got to eat.’

The morose fat man turned just his head to direct his raised voice in derisively toned Spanish toward a bead curtained arch in the far corner of the cantina: ‘Carmen! Bring a dish of enchiladas for one of our honoured guest from across the border. If they are as bad as they were before, the
gringo
will not complain. And if you spit on them he will not – ‘

Edge interrupted in the same language: ‘If you had paid more attention to what’s happening around you, feller, you would’ve figured that maybe I’m a half Mexican. Which is what I am. And I can speak the language of my father as well as I speak English. So it’s best you tell Carmen that, uh?’

Herrero found his beady eyes trapped by the dangerously glinting gaze of Edge. He swallowed hard, nodded several times while he sought to rescue his voice from out of the depths of fear and yelled in a tone he managed to control to just slightly higher than normal: ‘That was only a joke, Carmen! You make sure the food you serve to our valued customer is the best you can do. Even though it will be on the house!’

Edge placed on the counter top the same amount of money he was charged for the same meal earlier and said as he went to sit at a table: ‘I like to pay my own way, feller. Doing that I don’t ever owe any favours to anyone – or to a nobody,
entender?’

‘Si, senor. Si,
I understand what you say. I apologise for my bad joke.’

‘No sweat. I never apologise for any of mine.’

Carmen was not the woman who served him the first time. She was the overweight, much older one who had come from the church to the cantina with Herrero. And the look of mutual scorn they exchanged when she delivered the food, after she had forced a brief smile for Edge, was of a kind only a long-married couple can give and take: spoke a thousand barbed words.

After she returned to the kitchen she was as quiet as before. And Herrero was also reluctant to end the silence that was broken only by the subdued sounds of Edge eating. Until the meal was done, when he asked: ‘It was okay,
senor?’

‘I was hungry. It was fine.’

‘You will perhaps accept a drink from me - on the house?’

‘What I’m gonna do now is take a stroll. Maybe later I’ll be back for a drink. And I’ll pay for that, too.’

Herrero sighed, looked mournful and said as Edge went toward the doorway. ‘I try to do my best do I not?’

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‘If you keep trying, then maybe one day you’ll get someplace close to it.’

He stood outside in the cool air of fast falling evening for a minute while he rolled and lit a cigarette. Then crossed the deserted plaza to the livery stable beside the church, planning to check that his gelding and the other horses were being well tended in this village where few people seemed to take very much care of themselves or their possessions.

‘Buenos tardes, senor.
Is there something I can do for you?’

It was the flawed beauty who had been waiting tables in the cantina at noon who asked the question, her eyes downcast and her mouth formed into the line of a shy smile as he neared the livery. She still wore the same loose fitting, shapeless, off-white clothing that touched her body here and there closely enough to reveal she was certainly not a boyishly skinny woman. Her lank black hair that reached halfway down her back looked to be still uncombed since she had gotten out of bed this morning. Taking more notice of her disease pitted features than he did before, Edge decided that in competition with other women of similar age and build, he would likely have placed her low down in order of carnal attractiveness.

But recalling how he had been stirred by her earlier and feeling a similar sense of arousal now – and knowing that in San Luis availability was of greater importance than desirability – he was not about to discourage any advance she may make toward him. He consciously checked an impulse to find an innuendo in her opening, though: tipped his hat and responded to her smile with a less than shy grin of his own that some women had sometimes found appealing in the long ago past.

‘Is the liveryman about,
senorita?’

‘The liveryman
is Antonio Jurez,
senor.
He is my father and he is very sick with a fever. I am Rosita, his only child and I have charge of the livery whenever he is not available to work.’

‘When you’re not working at the cantina?’

She shrugged and frowned. ‘Alfred Herrero is perhaps the laziest man in San Luis or even the whole of Mexico. And his wife is certainly the laziest woman I have ever known. For a few peso they sometimes employ me to help them. It is not hard work, now and again, in a town such as this.’

She looked around the plaza in the fast falling dusk and her expressive eyes showed disdain for what she saw. And for a moment it even looked like she might spit.

‘I’m here to make sure the horses are okay?’ Edge said.

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‘I can assure you they are fine,
senor.
But I will understand if you wish to see this for yourself. Cooking, cleaning the house and giving pleasure to men . . . Women are supposed to be of little use for anything else.’ She wasn’t taking issue with this: merely stating her opinion of what men thought of women in this village.

‘I’d have wanted to see any livery I hadn’t used before,
senorita.’

She shrugged, turned and invited: ‘You will follow me,
por favor.’

Edge recognised from the exaggerated way in which she swung her narrow hips that he was again being extended an invitation – maybe.

She pulled open one of the stable doors just enough so they could enter, she ahead of him. Inside she lit a lamp and gestured toward the rows of stalls at either side.

‘Most of these animals belong to you and your
amigos, senor.’

Edge went into the stall where his rented horse stood: unsaddled, curried and with a well stocked feed box. He checked a couple of other stalls and found that conditions were the same. The he looked across at the doorway where the woman stood, her back pressed against the frame. By design rather than accident it seemed the coarse fabric of the shapeless shirt now closely contoured her lithe upper body.