Stuart fell back in his chair. “Well, I don’t have a story to tell now, do I? I have been trumped.”
“Oh, there’s more to say.”
“Well, that was the punch line.”
“Don’t pout.”
“You have been Madame Ennui all night, and then, when I have a good story to tell, you go and give him the punch line!”
“It’s late,” Atticus said. “I oughta be going.”
Stuart held his wristwatch close to his face. “Ten o’clock is not late.”
And so they retired to a green library for Kahlua and coffee, but the partying had gone out of them—Stuart was fighting off sleep and Renata’s conversation seemed practiced, as though she were rising
to an occasion; she finally walked over to a high bookcase and pulled down whatever came to hand, bleakly reading a paragraph or two before shelving the book again. Stuart politely asked Atticus dispirited questions about petroleum refineries and cattle ranching, frequently peeking at Renata as he lifted his fragile coffee cup until Atticus frankly looked at his own wristwatch and told Stuart what a good dinner it was and got up.
Renata laid her book aside. “Shall I drive you?”
“Don’t bother yourself. I like to take a constitutional after dinner. Habit I picked up from Harry Truman.”
Renata stared at him with fresh interest.
Stuart offered his hand but failed to rise from his chair. “I really must say, I am so glad you’re feeling better.”
“Thanks,” he said, and took his hat from Renata, and went out through the front door.
“Vaya con Dios,” he heard Stuart call.
Wind was herding a fold of clouds in from the Caribbean and was so cooling the night that he felt good about his suit jacket. His right stocking was wedging down in the heel of his boot as he walked up Avenida del Mar, so he hunkered on a bench in front of The Scorpion in order to tug the stocking high on his calf. And then he heard a radio being tuned and found a green and white taxi sitting among the hundred cars in The Scorpion’s asphalt lot. And he gave in to his first impulse, standing up and hailing it with the shrill whistle with which he used to call Frank and Scotty into the house, and he got into the taxi even before it fully stopped. “We meet again,” he said.
Panchito frowned into his rearview mirror. “¿Cómo?”
Atticus took off his Stetson. “Señor Cody,” he said.
To his surprise, Panchito seemed to have trouble placing him, as if he were just another gringo, but he grinned and said, “Ay, sí! Hello, my fren!”
“Are you the only taxi driver in Resurrección?”
Panchito laughed as though he understood, and then asked, “¿Adónde?”
“Boystown.”
Panchito peeled around toward El Camino Real while he found a Mexico City station on his radio. A female voice was softly singing, “Solo tu sombra fatal, sombra de mal, me sigue por dondequiera con ostinación.” Looking over his shoulder, Panchito asked worriedly, “Quiere una prostituta, señor?”
Atticus shook his head.
Warning him, Panchito waggled his finger and grinned. “Es peligroso.”
“Everything’s dangerous,” Atticus said and fixed his gaze out the passenger window. The huge voice of the disk jockey seemed to be booming from inside a shower stall as he announced that the singer was Linda Ronstadt and the song was “Tú, Sólo Tú.” You, only you. Within a few minutes they were far from the centro and heading toward fifty or more flashing neon signs of a kind of fourth-rate Reno. “Por favor, pare en la proxima parada,” Atticus said, and put far too much money in Panchito’s hand.
Surprised, he asked, “¿Quiere que espere?” You want I wait?
“I’ll be all right,” Atticus said, but he wasn’t sure. Hundreds of shamed and sullen men lurked outside the hotels and taverns, often withdrawing inside as if hauled in by a leash, or they tilted along the filthy street facing nothing but their own faces in the barred and blurry storefront windows. Every other building seemed to hold a cantina. La Cigarra. El Salón Carmelita. Texas. El Farolito. Waiting inside were forlorn young women sitting on bar stools and facing the front door, in fluffed and tinted hair and fancy polyester dresses that seemed fresh from some prom.
Houses had strings of drying garlic nailed up on them like holiday wreaths. Little children with gray, shaved heads and the red scars of body lice and razor nicks walked along with Atticus, talking beseechingly as they yanked at his clothing and lifted dirty, brown hands up for coins. Unhealthy, furious dogs were plunging along the flat building rooftops and raging down at the walkers. Woodsmoke and pork and kitchen odors were a taint in the air. Deep in a one-lane alley he saw a teenaged girl get out of her panties and hike up her skirt so a fat man still in his hotel clothes could heft her up by the thighs and force himself into her.
Atticus stepped around a girl kneeling on the sidewalk with a wooden platter of pork ribs and chili sauce and a scatter of flies like black peppers. An American man of his age passed by him in khakis and a plaid short-sleeved shirt, with the upright, serious, tottering stride of drunks who think they’re handling drunkenness well. A fat young prostitute in skin-tight jeans sang a question to Atticus as she sashayed past. Halfway down the block a man in a powder blue suit petted his tie beneath the green neon sign for the El Marinero hotel. And in front of it was his son’s old red Volkswagen. Renata walked from the hotel in a harried way and talked to the man in the powder blue suit. He shrugged in the full Latin manner, tilting his head and giving up his hands. And Renata was getting into the Volkswagen when Atticus heard high voices in a yell. And then a gunshot.