Pale Kings and Princes

“Good morning.”

“I wonder if I might take a few moments of your time,” I said, and closed the door and sat down in the client chair next to her desk. There was no one else in the office and no room for anyone else.

“Looks like a one-person department,” I said.

“Full-time, yes,” she said. “We do have some people help us on a consulting basis.”

“Did you hear that Chief Rogers was killed last evening?”

“Yes,” she said. “I will not be a hypocrite. I won’t say I am sorry.”

“Always good to encounter standards,” I said. “You have any thoughts on who might have done it?”

“I? Why should I have such thoughts?” she said.

“You told me he was a bully, an evil man, and you suggested he might have killed Valdez.”

“I told you the truth.”

“Any possibility that the Valdez killing and the Rogers killing are connected,” I said.

“I don’t see why,” she said. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Feel free,” I said. Juanita took a cigarette from the pack on her desk and lit it with a disposable lighter. She took in some smoke and let it out and looked at me through the haze of it. She raised her eyebrows. “Do you?”

“Do I see why there should be a connection? Sure. Town like this has two murders in a month. They are probably connected.”

“They don’t have to be.”

“No, they don’t,” I said. “But assuming that gets me nowhere. Assuming the greater likelihood, that the same people clipped Valdez and Rogers, gives me places to go, people to see.”

“Like me?”

“Like you.”

“I have no idea of who killed Chief Rogers,” Juanita said.

“How about Felipe Esteva?” I said.

“No!” she said.

“No?”

“No. Of course you’ll try to say he did it. He’s a successful Hispanic and you’d love to bring him low. But he’s too... too much man for any of you.”

“Successful at what?” I said.

“At business, that’s why you hate him. He’s beaten you at your own capitalist game.”

“My game? Capitalism? You overestimate me, I think.”

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“None of this means he couldn’t have shot Rogers for getting too close to things that Esteva wants concealed.”

“Guilty until proven innocent?” Juanita said, and took in most of the rest of her cigarette in a long angry drag.

“If you run a legitimate produce business,” I said, “you don’t employ guys like Cesar to walk around with you.”

“I don’t know any Cesar,” she said.

“Why’d you tell me about Valdez and Esteva’s wife?” I said.

“You tricked me,” she said.

“I’m a tricky devil,” I said. “What kind of woman is Mrs. Esteva?”

“She is his weakness,” Juanita said. She took a short puff on the cigarette and exhaled and took another. She held the cigarette with the first two fingers of her right hand, between the tips and the first joint. I nodded encouragingly.

“She is a slut and he won’t throw her out,” Juanita said.

“She sleeps with a lot of people?”

“Yes.” The word came out of Juanita in a hissing intense whisper. The cigarette went briefly to her lips.

“Who besides Valdez?”

Juanita shook her head.

“You don’t know any besides Valdez?”

She shook her head again.

“If you don’t know any but Valdez how do you know she sleeps around?”

“I know,” Juanita hissed.

“How?” I said.

“I know,” she hissed again.

“You ever sleep with Valdez?” I said.

Her face changed. Her eyes widened, her mouth went into a humorless lopsided smile. “I don’t want to talk with you anymore,” she said brightly.

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “But there’s dead people involved. There’s somebody killing people around here. I need to find out who it is.”

The smile got brighter and more lopsided. Her voice had a chirpy quality.

“You get out of here right now,” she said gaily, “or I’ll call hospital security.”

“My God,” I said.

“I mean it,” she said. “You get out of here this minute.”

I wanted to stay. She was like a cable stretched too tight and beginning to fray. I wanted to stick around and see what unraveled.

“Emmy was sleeping with your boyfriend?” I said.

Juanita’s grin got more lopsided. The whites of her widened eyes gleamed. She stood up from her desk and walked stiffly around and past me and out the door. I stood and went after her. She went fifty feet down the corridor and into the ladies’ room. I stopped in the corridor outside. A nurse came down the corridor from the other direction and went in the ladies’ room too. I hesitated and then turned away. Some taboos are unbreakable.

16

I was having a cup of coffee at the counter in Wally’s Lunch when Lundquist came in, the winter sun glinting off the polished leather of his holster as he opened the door. He sat down beside me.

“Cup of tea, please,” he said to Wally. Wally scowled. Lundquist smiled at him. “I know it’s more trouble than coffee,” he said, “but I just like it better. Little lemon too, please.”

Wally got to work on the tea.

“Rogers was shot twice in the head from behind with a forty-one-caliber firearm,” he said. “We assume it was a revolver because we didn’t find any brass, though the perpetrator could have cleaned up afterwards.”

“Forty-one caliber?” I said.

“Yeah, an oddball,” Lundquist said.

“How many of those are registered?” I said.