Pale Kings and Princes

The woman across the table was not very old, twenty-six maybe, twenty-seven. She was Hispanic with prominent cheekbones and dark oval eyes. Her black eyebrows were thick and she wore no makeup. Her long black hair was pulled back and clubbed behind with a tortoiseshell clasp. She wore a white shirt with a button-down collar and mannish-looking khaki slacks and brown leather gum-soled shoes. Around her throat where the shirt gapped open she wore some kind of Indian-looking choker of blue and white beads. She had a silver ring with a big turquoise oblong set in it on the forefinger of her right hand.

She picked up the Perrier glass with the same hand that held her cigarette and gestured at me.

“Salud,” she said.

I nodded and poured some beer into my glass and made a slight gesture with it and we each took a sip. Someday I’d have to find out how all this glass-touching stuff began. People were obsessive about it. She hadn’t drunk till I’d poured the beer and responded.

We put our glasses down and looked at each other. I laced my fingers together and rested my chin on them and waited.

“My name is Juanita Olmo,” she said.

“You know mine?” I said.

“Spenser,” she said.

I nodded.

“Why did you ask if I wanted a drink?” she said.

“Saw you following me. Saw you at the hospital. Watched you park here after the cops left.”

She nodded.

“I suppose you are wondering why I’ve been following you.”

“I assumed it was my virile kisser and manly carriage,” I said.

She didn’t smile. “I am not interested in you as a person,” she said.

“There is no other way to be interested,” I said.

She tipped her head to the side and forward in a cranial gesture of apology.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “I’m a social worker. I share your respect for the value of the individual.”

“Dynamite,” I said. “I knew we’d get along. You want my room key?”

“Please, Mr. Spenser. I’m a serious person and I am concerned about serious things. I don’t want to joke.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You are here looking into the death of Eric Valdez,” Juanita said.

I nodded, seriously.

“I knew Eric,” she said.

“Un huh.”

“I thought I could help.”

“So how come you’ve been following me around.”

“I wanted to get you when the police weren’t there,” she said. “And I... I wanted to get an idea of you. I wanted to look at you and see what you were like.”

“From two cars back?”

“I was going to get closer, but then you stopped me here in the lobby and I knew you had seen me.”

“So you want to sit and look at me for a while before you say anything?”

“No,” she said. “And I do not want you to patronize me either. I’m not a fool.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

She smiled faintly. “I appreciate honesty,” she said.

I waited.

She drank some Perrier. “Do you have any suspects in Eric’s death,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Eric was down here looking into the cocaine trade in Wheaton and a logical assumption is that he was killed because of that.”

“By the savage Colombians.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“It’s not a logical assumption,” Juanita said. “It’s a racist assumption.”

“One doesn’t exclude the other,” I said.

“Racism is not logical,” she said.

“And logic isn’t racist,” I said. “I’m not pointing at the coke trade because it’s Colombian. I’m pointing because that’s what Eric was involved in and it is a hugely profitable illegal money machine.”

“And you’re so sure that cocaine means Colombia.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure of that.”

“I’m Colombian,” she said. She straightened as she said it and leveled her black eyes at me.

“Got any on you?” I said.

Her face colored. She said, “That’s precisely my point.”

“I know,” I said. “Mine too. I tend to tease more than I ought to, and sometimes I’m funny at the wrong time.”

“I don’t think you’re funny,” she said.

“Why should you be different,” I said. “Do you have a theory on Eric’s death?”

“I think the police killed him,” she said.

“Why would they do that?” I said.

“The chief is a bully and a bigot,” she said. “Eric was Hispanic.”

“That’s it?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You think the chief just up and shot him one day because he was Hispanic?”

“I do not know. Eric uncovered things the chief wanted secret.”

“You think the chief has secrets?” I said.

“He is an evil man,” she said. “He is a cruel man. That I know.”

“Tell me about the coke trade around here,” I said.

“There is some, and Colombians are involved. That is true. For us coca is simply part of life. It was part of life before Columbus.”

“Coca’s not cocaine,” I said.

“It is where cocaine begins,” she said. “Cocaine is a Colombian heritage. Like corn for many native American tribes.”

“Corn’s better for you,” I said.

“Not when it is made into whiskey.”

“Probably not,” I said. “Who runs the cocaine business here?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t know or you won’t say?”

She shook her head again.

“Cops know about it?”

“Of course,” she said.

“And take money to let it alone.”

“Of course,” she said again.

“All of them?”

She shrugged.

“So just what kind of help do you want to give me?” I said.