YOU'RE AFRAID OF HIM?" JOSe ASKED.
Mandy pressed her lips together and let the spoon clatter into the bottom of the empty egg pan. She turned toward the kitchen and Jose followed.
Mandy laid the pan into the sink, untied her apron, and hung it on a nail.
"I'm all finished, Frank," she said to the wrinkled cook. "I'll see you next week."
From the front pocket of her jeans she removed a folded check that she stuffed into the pocket of Frank's apron.
The old man smiled at her, touched his cap, and said, "You're awful good to these folks, Miss Mandy."
"I'm happy to help, Frank," she said, and turned away.
With her hand on the back door, Mandy turned to Jose and said, "I'll talk to you, but not here. You go out the front. I've seen them out here before, watching. Is there a place we can meet that has two entrances?"
"There's a place up on Lamar near Grand," Jose said. "Pilar's Kitchen. I'll go in through the kitchen and meet you at a back table."
Mandy started to open the door. Jose grabbed her arm and said, "This isn't some little trick, right?"
"If I wanted you gone," she said, yanking her arm free, "all I'd have to do is say abracadabra. I have some things to pick up, but I'll meet you there in half an hour."
Jose watched her go, then turned and melted in with the steady flow of sated homeless out the front door. After a careful look around, he circled the block for his car. He took a couple of side streets, signaling one way, turning another, and checking his rearview mirror. By the time he reached Pilar's he was convinced that no one had followed him.
He took a deep breath and tried to make it past the overflowing garbage cans in the alley, nearly denying himself a mouthful of the ripe stink. The back screen door opened with a screech and several of the help glanced up from their handiwork of pans and dishes, but none spoke. The cook, dressed in a dirty white T-shirt and a paper hat, removed his cigarette, but only gave Jose a nod before turning back to his pan. Pilar nearly knocked Jose down as she banged her big hips through the double doors with a tray overloaded with more dirty dishes bleeding egg yolk and dripping with refried beans.
Pilar's scowl turned into a grin when she realized it was Jose who'd bumped her. When he told her to keep her eyes open for a blonde coming in through the front and asked Pilar to send her into the back room, the big cook waggled her eyebrows.
"Just business, Pilar," he said, pecking her cheek and slipping past. "Let me know if any gringos come in the front, too."
"Gringos like you?" she asked, catching the door with her foot.
"They'll be lighter-skinned than me," he said.
Jose sat at a corner table. Pilar reappeared in a colorful flow of silk that only heightened her immense bulk, slapped a cup of coffee on the table in front of Jose, and disappeared into the front room of the restaurant.
It wasn't more than ten minutes before Pilar returned in a flourish of silk, waving Mandy to the seat opposite him and plunking down another mug of coffee. As the big cook sashayed away, Mandy leaned around the corner to follow Pilar with her eyes.
"Flamboyant," Jose said, "but solid."
"Yes."
"Your husband have you followed regularly?"
"From time to time," Mandy said, blowing steam across the rim of her mug before sipping.
"You acted pretty indignant when I hinted about you and Ellie."
"Ellie was a good husband, Mr. O'Brien," she said. "A good man."
"What are you?" he asked.
She leaned forward, looking hard at him with those big eyes.
"People disappear," she said in a low whisper. "Mexican people."
"The Triangle?" Jose said, clenching his coffee mug and narrowing his eyes.
"You know?"
"I've heard things about folks down in that corner of the county for a couple of years now. We're a superstitious people, though, us Latinos."
"People always come and go at the ranch," she said, "fundraisers, advisers, lobbyists. There's one I see more than others, Monte Street, pinstriped suits with pink shirts and red ties, that type. My husband calls him 'Money,' Money Street. I heard them one night out in the gazebo, smoking cigars and talking about people the way you talk about livestock. Dollars per head."
She looked up to see that Jose understood.
"There's an abandoned quarry, up Blindsay Road not far from the ranch," she said. "I heard them talking about it and the next night I went out there to see. There was a tractor trailer full of people and a handful of men with guns."
"Your husband, importing illegals?" Jose said.
Mandy shook her head. "I don't know. I couldn't believe that was it, the way he goes on about immigration. I got close enough to hear, but they spoke Spanish, and I don't.
"I knew Ellie from the dove shoots. The one hunt wives do. I liked Ellie. There was something about him. He gave you a good feeling. Honest. Strong. I asked him to help and he did. We went out there a couple times and didn't see anything and I think he started to think I was crazy, so I went myself for a while. I think they only use the quarry once every few weeks. Anyway, I went and got Ellie and we got close and he heard some things that scared the hell out of him. He wouldn't talk about it, just kept shaking his head. So I wasn't paying attention when I pulled out of the side entrance to the quarry, and I almost ran Chief Gage off the road. I pulled out on the road right in front of him. He must have seen me with Ellie."
"Something any good Texan will kill for," Jose said. He studied Mandy's face, the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth tugging her into middle age.
"My husband and I have done our own things for a long time," she said. "Everyone knows about his strippers and little coke whores. I stayed for my kids, but it wasn't a nunnery."
"He didn't care?"
She shook her head. "He doesn't give a damn about me. It's for whatever they do at that quarry. That's why he killed Ellie, and to let me know I better stay out of it."
"Ellie didn't tell you anything?"
"The only thing he said was that those trucks weren't bringing people into the country."
"What were they doing?"
"Taking them back. To Mexico."
"Your husband is shipping illegals out of the country?" Jose said, wrinkling his brow. "Like some vigilante deporting them?"
Mandy swigged her coffee and swallowed. "No. They take them back there for something else."
"Ellie didn't say what?"
Mandy shook her head. "He said people had been going missing for some time. Some people thought it was just a superstition. Whatever he heard, he didn't want to talk about it. I don't think he heard enough to know anything for certain and he wasn't the type to speculate. All I know is that from the look on his face, it wasn't anything good."