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CHAPTER 12

      MOUNTAIN VIEW Drive was on high ground facing the Rio Grande.

      Its elegant old houses looked out on Anapra, near where the U.S. states of Texas and New Mexico, met Mexico's Chihuahua on a steep mountainside. Along the road edging the United States' side of the river, the ASARCO smelter was set amid a strip of barren slag-filled land. Beyond it, in Mexico, were squatters' houses built of unplastered adobe, tar-paper, and scraps of sheet metal.

      Victor Soames' house was a sprawling two-story built at the turn of the century of stone and timbers, with barred windows to protect it from thieves who might come from across the river. To make sure that visitors knew how to announce themselves, somebody had scrawled the words "Pull the bell" in both English and Spanish on the wall alongside a rope that dangled from a hole in the stonework. Rand pulled it and could hear a bell jangle inside.

      It took almost four minutes for the door to open. A gray-haired Mexican woman inquired in Spanish who he was and what he wanted. Rand gave his name and said he wanted to see Mr. Soames about a personal matter.

      A thick voice came from some distance behind her. "I can tell from here he's a cop. Let him in."

      The front door opened on a flagstone atrium surrounded by branching rooms. Bougainvillaea spread over the walls and slender elms planted between the stones reached for the light. On the second floor, a balcony extended around a walkway that circled doors leading into more rooms. A steel staircase with tile steps led from one floor to the other. A thick veneer of dust lay over everything. The iron chairs and tables in the atrium were rusty.

      Soames waddled into the atrium from one of the rooms. He was enormously fat, with thin gray hair plastered across a head that was set on his neck the way a bullet sits on a cartridge case. Rand could smell him from 15 feet away, a mix on old sweat, booze, chile, and garlic.

      Soames' small bright eyes studied Rand carefully. "I didn't think Navarette would send anybody down here," he said. "I told him everything I know about Hood when I called him. Gimme some identification, Bub."

      Rand flashed his deputy badge, hoping he wouldn't look too closely, but Soames barely glanced at it. He led Rand into a room furnished as an office with a large mahogany desk and a couple of chairs. The heat, and the smell of the old house were oppressive. A child, maybe two years old and wearing a wet diaper, sat on the carpet playing with alphabet blocks.

      Soames sank into a reinforced swivel chair behind the desk and belched. He held up a bottle of Straight American Kentucky Bourbon, (made in Juarez ever since the plant was moved to Mexico during prohibition) and said "Want to join me?"

      "Why not," Rand said.

      Soames banged the bottle down on the table and yelled, "Aurora, un vaso," and almost instantly a slender woman with a prominent nose brought in a drinking glass, glanced at Rand curiously, scooped up the baby and left. Rand wondered if she was the baby's mother - perhaps Soames' wife. Soames filled the glass with about four ounces, and handed it to Rand before filling his own to the same level. Then he held it up and said, "Here's to curiosity and honest inquiry!"

      Rand sipped the whiskey. "Why was Nicholas Hood coming to see you?"

      "Like I said when I called your boss. It was supposed to be a business matter. Mr. Hood told me I'd understand when I saw him, but since I didn't see him, ipso facto, I don't know why he wanted to see me."

      "Why'd he choose you for this business matter instead of somebody else?"

      Soames shrugged. "People know me. I'm a man who'll take a gamble. I'm a businessman, a merchant. I buy low, sell high. I own a lot of stuff. I'm a person of substance. Why shouldn't he want to apprise me of some business deal?"

      "Why did you call Sheriff Navarette?"

      "Don't you people ever talk to one another? I'm a good citizen. I read about Mr. Hood's demise in the El Paso Times and immediately telephoned the authorities because I thought it might help them solve the crime. He leaned forward. "I'll give you a hint. I think he was bringing me something to see!"

      "Any idea what?"

      "Nada. But he said it was valuable. Very valuable. He wanted me to buy it. Could have been a two-headed calf. Could of been an antique chair. Could have been a picture of the Mona Lisa pickin' her nose." He tilted his head and looked directly into Rand's eyes, and said very slowly. "I told you already, I do not know what he wanted to sell me. I did not know the man. I never met him."

      "Ever met Mrs. Hood?"

      "No sir."

      "A lawyer named Len Pritchard?"

      "No sir."

      "A rancher named Brennan, or a cowboy named Petrie?"

      "No sir. Are you done?"

      "Yes sir," Rand said.

      Soames smiled at him. "Well then, let us have one more of these excellent drinks together, and you shall bid me adieu."

      After Rand left Soames, he drove to his bungalow in Kern Place, on the other side of the College of Mines, to water the lawn and make a phone call. When he got there, he set up the sprinkler and went inside and switched on the cooler. Petrie had said the killer was average size. If he was telling the truth, there was no chance that Soames killed Hood. But Rand still wondered about him. He sat down at his desk in the second bedroom and called Monty George, his best contact at the El Paso Police Department, and asked him if he had anything on Soames.

      "I'll check, but if you're going to have any dealings with him, watch your gold fillings," George said.

      "I want to know the kinds of business he's involved in, and if he has a rap sheet."

      George said he'd pull his file and call Rand back in fifteen minutes.

      Rand was making himself a sardine sandwich in the kitchen when Hannah came in, damp with sweat from the walk up from the bus stop. She said, "The water was running into the street, so I moved the hose. Are you back for good?"

      "No, I came down to check on a guy," Rand said. "What's the matter with you? Feeling sick? You didn't start off cursing me or threatening to take the whole damned house."

      She grinned. "You're a perceptive one today. Well, it so happens I was hoping you'd be here. I came by yesterday but you weren't. I straightened up the place a little, did you notice?"

      "Yeah, it looks good," he said, although he hadn't noticed. He compared her to Noreen Hood, and Noreen lost by a mile.

      "Actually I'm not getting along so hot," Hannah said. "Ma's getting under my skin. My boss decided yesterday morning that I was cuter'n his wife, and he made a pass at me. I remembered what you told me, so I kicked him in the nuts, and then a punched him in the throat and ran. So now he's not my boss anymore. It was a lousy job anyway."

      "You did that!" Rand stood there with the opened can of sardines in his hand, staring at her.

      "Oh sure. Like you told me."

      "You could have really hurt him."

      "I certainly did. He was crying when I left." She seemed pleased with herself. "Only thing is, now I need some money."

      Rand pulled out his wallet and gave her twenty dollars.

      She put the money in her purse. "Must be a good job?"

      "Good enough."

      "I don't want to clean you out."

      "I have more. So what are you going to do?"

      She stared at him wide-eyed. "I was thinking about coming back, John."

      It was a sneak punch, getting him when he wasn't expecting it. He said slowly, "You know, I haven't changed any in three weeks. I still don't put my clothes in the hamper or pick up my dirty socks. When I'm working, I sometimes have to stay out all night. I still drink, and I smoke, and my friends are boors just like me."

      She smiled at him. "I still stink up the house with nail polish, and I take too long in the bathroom. I haven't learned to cook."

      "Come back, then," he said. "I miss the hell out of you."

      In the movies there would have been a clinch, and couple of kisses, then he'd swoop her off her feet and carry her into the bedroom . . . fadeout. In real life the phone rang. Rand answered it.

      Monty George said, "Your Mr. Soames owns a sweat shop through an intermediary in Juarez. It makes cheap jewelry. He owns a lot of shitty housing in the barrio. He has a used car lot that sells mostly to Mexicans, and he owns about thirty rental units around town, all of them slummy. Makes lots of money. He can squeeze a nickel so hard the buffalo bleeds. And he's got a rap sheet.

      "What's it for?"

      "Assault. He sat on a man who was late paying him rent. No kiddin', sat on him! Broke the poor bastard's rib, and the guy called the cops. Soames was found guilty and had to pay the hospital bill, but his lawyer got him probation, which has long since passed."

      "So he's really pretty clean."

      George laughed. "In a dirty sort of way."

      Rand told him he owed him one, and hung up. Hannah was taking her dress off. "Turn on the cooler, I'm so hot I could melt. By the way, thanks for fixing it." She sounded like Mae West.

      Remembering how it was done in the movies, Rand picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. He was glad he hadn't eaten any of the sardines. No fishbreath.

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