When Nancy came into the shed, Majestyk was opening the cartons that were stitched with bullet holes and stained where juice from the melons had seeped out. She looked at the open cartons scattered about the floor, at the chunks of melon, yellow fragments, on the conveyor line.
"If he can't have you, he'll take your melons," the girl said. "How does it look?"
"Some are all right."
He walked past her, out to the loading dock, and stared at his empty fields and the pale morning sky. Some were all right. Spend a half day to sort them, maybe have one load to deliver to the broker. Most of the crop was still on the vines. If he could get it in he would at least break even and be able to try it again next year. If he could get the crop in. If he could get a crew. And if Renda would forget the whole thing and leave him alone.
But that was not going to happen, so he'd sit here and wait and watch the crop rot in the field.
Unless you could finish it somehow, Majestyk thought, and had a strange feeling as he thought it. Instead of waiting, what if there was something he could do to get it over with?
When he saw the figure walking in from the highway he knew it was Larry Mendoza-the slow, easy way he moved-and went down to the road to meet him. As Mendoza approached he held up his hand, as if to hold Majestyk off, knowing what was in his mind.
"Don't say nothing, Vincent. I live here, I work here. I took my wife and kids to her mother's, so they'd be out of the way. Now, what are we doing?"
"They hurt you," Majestyk said, staring at Mendoza's bruised, swollen mouth. "I'm sorry, Larry. I should have been here."
"No." Mendoza shook his head. "Getting that beer was the best thing you ever did."
"They asked you where I was and you wouldn't tell them," Majestyk said. "So they roughed you up."
"Not much. I only got hit once. Nobody else was hurt."
"You don't know if Frank Renda was one of them?"
"No, I never seen him, picture or nothing."
"Did you talk to the police?"
"Sure, a cop stop me in town, take me in. They ask some questions, but what do I tell them? Some men come, I don't even know who they are. I don't even see them. They tell us leave or get our heads busted. That's all. Come on, Vincent, we got some work, let's do it."
"If you'll do one thing for me, Larry," Majestyk said. "I think we got enough good melons for a load. Take the trailer into the warehouse and leave it there. You can come back later sometime, and get your personal things, your clothes and stuff."
Mendoza frowned. "What the hell are you talking about? I'll bring the trailer back, we'll pick melons and load it again. You retiring already, or what?"
"I can't ask you to stay here," Majestyk said.
"Then don't ask. I'll get the trailer."
As he started away Majestyk said to him, "Larry… it's good to see you."
When he returned to the packing shed Nancy had already begun the sorting, separating the undamaged melons and placing them in fresh cartons. She looked up as he came in.
"Lots of them are still good, Vincent. More than I thought."
"Larry's going to take a load in," Majestyk said. "He'll drop you off in town."
"What am I going to town for?"
He realized, by her expression, he was taking her by surprise. "To get a bus," Majestyk said. God, he sounded cold and impersonal, but went on with it. "There's no reason now for you to stay. I'll pay you, give you money for the others in case you run into them." She came to her feet slowly, as he spoke.
"Last night you want to hold me," Nancy said, "see how close we can get. Today you want me to leave."
"Last night-that seems like a long time ago." He still didn't like his tone, but didn't know what to do about it. "I must've been nuts, or dreaming," he said, "believe the man'd sit and wait for me to get my crop in."
"All right, if you feel he's going to come back," the girl said, "then why don't we both leave?"
"Run and hide somewhere? He'd find me, sooner or later."
"So face it and get it over with, huh?" There was a sound of weariness in her tone. "Big brave man, has to stand alone and fight, no matter what. Where'd you learn to think like that?"
"You're not going to be here, so don't worry about it."
"Now you're mad."
"I don't have time to worry about it."
She said then, "I'll tell you something, Vincent. I've been in a car that was shot at and the man sitting next to me killed. Another time, a truck chased a bunch of us down a road, trying to run us over. And once I was in a union hall when they threw in a fire bomb and shot the place up. I don't need anybody looking out for me. But if you want me to leave, if you don't want me here, that's something else."
He had to say it right away, without hesitating. "All right, I don't want you here."
"I don't believe you."
She was holding him with her eyes, trying to make him tell what he felt.
"I said Larry'll drop you off. Get your bag and be ready when he leaves." He stared at her, fought her eyes, until finally she walked past him, out of the shed.
They were lifting the battered portable toilet onto a flatbed truck with a hoist when Lieutenant McAllen arrived. He had them set the toilet back on the ground and looked at it, not touching it or saying anything until he turned to Harold Ritchie.
"How's it written up? Hit and run?"
"That's about all we can call it for the time being," Ritchie said.
McAllen nodded. "What're they going to do with it?"
"Scrap it, I guess. 'Less the road people want to bump it out."
"You think maybe it ought to be dusted first?"
"Well, we could. But there's people been handling it."
"I'm interested in the door," McAllen said. "Like maybe someone pulled it open, at the time I mean, to see if the man was alive or dead. There could be some prints along the inside edge."
"I guess there could be at that," Ritchie said.
"Let's bring it in and do it at home," McAllen said. "I think that'd be better than having a lot of people hanging around here, don't you?"
Ritchie was looking past McAllen, squinting a little in the glare. "Here comes his truck." As McAllen turned, Ritchie raised his binoculars. "Pulling a trailerload of melons. Going to market, like he didn't have a goddamn trouble in the world. No, it ain't him," Ritchie said then, as the truck reached the highway. "It's his hired man, Larry Mendoza, and looks like… some Mexican broad."
Mendoza paid attention to his driving, concentrating on it, and would keep busy looking at the trailerload of melons through the rearview mirror, because he didn't know what to say. The girl, Nancy, didn't say anything either-staring out the side window, her suitcase on the seat between them-but he was aware of her, could feel her there, and wished she would start talking about something.
He tried a couple of times to get it going, asking her if she thought she would run into her friends. She said probably, sooner or later. He asked her if she thought all the migrant farm workers would ever be organized and paid a living wage. She said again probably, someday.
It was too hard to make up something, to avoid thinking about Vincent and what was going on. So Mendoza didn't say any more until they crossed the state road intersection and he pulled to a stop opposite the cafe-bar.
He said then, "You don't mind waiting?"
"No, it's all right. I can get something to eat," she said, opening the door and putting a hand on her suitcase.
"Sure, get a beer, something to eat. The bus always stops there, so don't worry about missing it."
She said, "Thanks, Larry, and good luck."
"Good luck to you, too."
She closed the door and walked around the front of the truck. As she started across the highway, Mendoza said, "Nancy-"
She paused to look back at him.
"If he didn't have this trouble going on-"
"I know," she said.
"Come back and see us, all right?"
She nodded this time-maybe it was a nod, Mendoza wasn't sure. He watched her reach the sidewalk and go in the cafe-bar.
He drove on, into Edna, thinking about the girl and Vincent, the kind of girl Vincent ought to have. Especially Vincent. He didn't refer to Chicanos as Latins or look down at them in any way. It was easy to tell when someone looked down, even when he pretended to be sincere and friendly. Mendoza didn't busy himself with the trailerload of melons now, looking through the rearview mirror. He thought about Vincent and the trouble he was in, wondering what was going to happen. He didn't notice the Oldsmobile 98 following him.
Just past the water tower that said EDNA, HOME OF THE BRONCOS, Mendoza turned off the highway, crossed the railroad tracks, and drove along the line of produce warehouses and packing sheds. At a loading dock, where a man was sitting eating a sandwich, his lunch pail next to him, Mendoza came to a stop and said out the side window, "Where's your boss? Man, I got a load of top-grade melons."
The man on the loading dock wasn't in any hurry. He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed it before saying, "He's out to lunch. You'll have to wait till he gets back."
"What if I unload while I'm waiting?"
"You know he's got to check them first," the man on the dock said. "Go sit down somewhere, take it easy."
Well, if he had to. But he wasn't going to wait in the hot sun, or in the pickup that would get like an oven. And he wasn't going to sit with the guy on the dock and have to talk to him-he could tell the guy had it against Chicanos. So Mendoza got out of the truck and walked around the corner of the warehouse where there was a strip of shade about five feet wide along the wall.
He sat down with his back to it, tilted his straw hat down over his eyes and settled into a reasonably comfortable position. He pictured himself there as someone might come along and see him. Goddamn Mexican sleeping in the shade. Make him wait and then call him a lazy Mex something or other. He yawned. He was tired because he had gotten only about four hours sleep last night at Helen's mother's house, all of them crowded in there, two of the kids in bed with them. He wouldn't mind taking a nap for about a half hour, till the broker got back from his lunch.
His eyes were closed. Maybe he had been asleep, he wasn't sure. But when he opened his eyes he saw the front end of the Olds 98 rolling toward him-creeping, like it was sneaking up on him-from about thirty feet away.
Mendoza got up so fast his hat fell off. What the hell was going on? The whole wall empty and a car coming directly at where he was standing. Like some kind of joke. Somebody trying to scare him.
But he knew it wasn't a joke when he saw Bobby Kopas, the skinny, hunch-shouldered hotshot guy, coming along the wall toward him. He knew there would be another guy coming from the other side. Mendoza turned enough to look over his shoulder and there he was. It was too late to run. The car kept coming and didn't stop until it was only about three feet from him. Kopas and the guy on the other side came up to stand by the front fenders. He could smell the engine in the afternoon heat.
Kopas said, "Larry, I believe you were told to shag ass and don't come back. Ain't that right?"
"I was just helping out my friend a little bit, deliver some melons," Mendoza said.
"We give you a chance to run, you don't even take it."
"No, listen. I'm just doing this as a favor. I get rid of the load I'm gone, you never see me again."
"Larry," Kopas said, "don't bullshit me, okay?"
"Honest to God, I'm going to drop the melons and keep going."
"In the Polack's truck?"
"No, I told him I leave it here, so he can pick it up."
"Is that a fact? When's he coming?"
"I don't know. Sometime. Maybe tomorrow."
"How's he supposed to get here?"
"Hitchhike, I guess. He don't worry about that."
"Larry, you're shittin' me, aren't you?"
"Honest to God, ask the man in the warehouse, around on the dock. Come on, let's ask him. He'll tell you."
"You aren't going nowhere," Kopas said. "You had your chance, Larry, you blew it."
The man behind the wheel of the Olds 98 hit the accelerator a couple of times, revving the engine. Mendoza looked at the car and at Kopas again quickly.
"Listen-what did I do to you? I worked for the guy that's all."
He saw Kopas step away and knew the car was coming as he stood with his back against the wall and no room, no direction, in which to run. He had to do something and jumped up, trying to raise his legs, but the car lunged into him, the bumper catching his legs and flattening him against the wall, holding him against it as he screamed and fell against the hood and then to the ground as the car went abruptly into reverse. He remembered thinking-the last thing as he tensed, squeezing his eyes closed-now the wheels were going to get him.
The hospital in Edna had an emergency room and eighteen beds, but it was more an outpatient clinic than a hospital and looked even more like a contemporary yellow-brick grade school.
For almost a year Majestyk had thought it was a school. He had never been in the hospital before today-before the squad car picked him up and delivered him, blue lights flashing, to the emergency entrance where an ambulance and another squad car were waiting. Inside, the first person he saw was Harold Ritchie, the deputy coming toward him from the desk where a nurse's aide sat typing.
"Where's Larry?"
"Round the corner. I'll show you."
"What'd they do to him?"
"Guy at the warehouse-there was only one guy anywhere near where it happened-didn't see a thing. Not even the car."
"What'd they do to him?"
"Broke his legs," Ritchie said.
He was lying on a stretcher bed covered with a sheet, his wife with him, a curtain drawn, separating them from the next bed where a little boy was crying. A nurse, with a tray of test tubes and syringes, was drawing a blood sample from Mendoza's arm. Majestyk waited. Helen saw him then and came over and he put his arms around her.
"Helen… how is he?"
He could feel her head nod against his chest. Her voice, muffled, said, "The doctor say he's going to be all right. Vincent, you know what they did?"
He held her gently, patting her shoulder. "I know." He held her patiently because she needed his comfort, letting her relax and feel him close to her and know she was not alone. He heard Mendoza say, "Vincent?" and went over to the bed.
"Larry-God, I'm sorry."
"Vincent, I left the melons there."
"Don't worry about the melons."
"That's what I was going to say to you. Staying alive is more important than melons. Did you know that?" He seemed half asleep, his eyes closing and opening slowly.
Majestyk leaned in close to him. "Larry, who were they? You know them?"
"I think the same car as last night, the same people. And your friend, Bobby Kopas, he was there. Vincent, they not kidding. They do this to me, they going to kill you." Mendoza's face tightened as he held his breath, then let it out slowly before relaxing again. "Jesus, the pain when it comes-I never felt nothing like it."
"You want the nurse?"
"No, they already gave me something. They getting ready, going to set my legs."
"Larry, you're going to be all right. The doctor said so."
"I believe him."
"You go to sleep and wake up, it's done. You'll feel better."
Mendoza kept his eyes open, staring at Majestyk. He said, "You want me to feel better, Vincent? Tell me you'll go away. Hide somewhere. There's nothing wrong doing that. Or, sure as hell, you going to be dead."
Harold Ritchie was in the waiting room, arms folded, leaning against the wall. He came alive when he saw Majestyk going past, heading for the door.
"Hey, what'd he say? He tell you anything?"
Majestyk kept going, pushing through the door.
Outside, he saw Lieutenant McAllen getting out of a squad car. He heard McAllen say, "Wait a minute!" And heard himself say, "Bullshit," not looking at the man or slowing down until McAllen said, "If you will, please. Just for a minute."
He waited for McAllen to come to him.
"Where you going?"
"Pick up my equipment."
"We'll drive you."
"I can walk."
McAllen paused. "I'm sorry about your hired man."
"He wasn't my hired man. He was my friend."
"All right, he was your friend." McAllen's tone changed as he said it, became dry, official. "I believe you know a deputy was killed last night, run over or beaten to death possibly, about the same time your migrants left. We'd like to locate them, talk to them."
"Why don't you talk to Frank Renda instead?"
"Because if we brought him in for questioning he'd be out in an hour, and we wouldn't be any farther ahead."
"Where does he live? I'll talk to him."
"You would, wouldn't you?"
"Right now. Soon as I get a gun."
"We'll handle that," McAllen said. "The Phoenix police are watching both of his places, his house, his apartment. So far he hasn't been to either."
Majestyk stared at him. "You mean you don't know where he is? Christ, I was sitting with him last night. So were two of your deputies."
"They had to stay with you," McAllen said. "They radioed the post, but by the time a car got there Renda was gone. We know somebody's given him a place to stay. Probably in the mountains. But who, or where the place is, we don't know that yet."
"You don't know much of anything, do you?"
"I know I have a warrant with your name on it, and I can put you back in jail if you're tired of this."
"Or I can sit home and go broke," Majestyk said. "Why don't you just keep the hell out of the way for a while?"
"We pull out, you know what'll happen."
Majestyk nodded, as though he was thinking about it. "Well, let's see now. So far he's run off my crew, shot up a week's crop of melons and broke my friend's legs. So please don't give me any shit about police protection. Keep your hotshots and their flashing lights away from my property and maybe we can get this thing done and I can go back to work."
McAllen paused, studying Majestyk, as if trying to see into his mind, to understand him. He said, "Still worried about your melons. You're not going to get them picked if you're dead."
"And if I'm dead it won't matter, will it?"
"You want to bet your life against a melon crop-" McAllen paused again. "All right, you're on your own."
"I have been," Majestyk said, "from the beginning."
McAllen watched him walk off, down the drive toward the main street. He was thinking. The man seems simple, but he's not. He's easy to misjudge. He knows what he wants. He's willing to take risks. And he could already be planning something you haven't thought of yet. Mr. Majestyk, he was thinking, I'd like to know you better.
Ritchie had been waiting a few yards off to the side. He walked over now.
"We pulling out?"
"Let's let him think so," McAllen said, "and see what happens."