Steven Havill: Scavengers

The dusty margins of the lane opened a bit so that Torrez didn’t need to drive all the way to the church’s parking lot to turn around. He swung the truck in a U-turn, idling back the way they’d come. Torrez pulled to a stop where a curb would be if Maria had sidewalks, just beyond view of the little café’s front window. As they stopped, they saw Tomás Naranjo drive by on the state highway.

“I’ll check the station,” she said. Torrez sat with his chin resting in his left hand, gazing at the front door of Lucy Madrid’s restaurant. Estelle climbed down out of the unmarked Expedition and strolled past the café, her hands in her trouser pockets. She continued up the lane to the service station. She rounded the corner in time to see the driver of the RV peering through the front door, his hand up to shade the glass.

“Don’t guess they’re open,” he said when he saw Estelle. A smile split his round face. “You from these parts, señorita ? ” His voice carried the twang of west Texas. His eyes ran appreciatively up and down Estelle’s trim figure.

“Yes, sir,” Estelle said. “But they don’t sell diesel here, anyway.”

“They’re missin’ a good bet,” he said. Estelle smiled pleasantly. The Texan was right, of course. But it was just one of many good bets that Wally Madrid had passed on over the years. “Probably should have filled up in Columbus, then,” the man said. “What’s the closest westbound, you happen to know?”

“Posadas is sixteen miles,” Estelle said. “There’ll be a big station on your left, just after you go under the interstate. They’ll fix you up.” She glanced toward the RV and saw a white-haired, plump woman peering out the door. The man appeared to be in no hurry to break off his conversation, perhaps happy to have found a native who spoke English in complete sentences. “You folks have a good day,” Estelle said even as his mouth opened to say something else.

He nodded. “You too, young lady.”

Estelle walked past him, glancing inside the front window as she did so. Wally Madrid’s cluttered desk was visible in the far corner. If each piece of litter that constituted the landfill of his desk represented a successful business deal, Wally Madrid would have been a millionaire. The single overhead light was off.

She glanced down the street and saw that Naranjo had turned around and stopped at the curb fifty yards away. He lifted a finger off the steering wheel in salute, but stayed in the vehicle. Unlike Estelle and Torrez, Naranjo was in uniform.

The station, one room with a bathroom off the side, had been built onto the original adobe house nearly half a century before. Estelle walked around the side of the station, pausing at the door of the restroom. The door was ajar, and she pushed it open with her toe. The door cleared the commode with an inch to spare, revealing a dark, dank interior where the white porcelain of the sink and toilet had long ago stained to match the adobe walls. The fragrance was deep and pungent, and Estelle couldn’t imagine stepping into the tiny room and actually closing the door on the flow of fresh air from outside.

She continued toward what appeared to be the front door of Wally Madrid’s home. Two cinderblocks served as a front step, both loose in the dirt and waiting to tip should an unwary foot be planted wrong. She knocked on the door and waited, then knocked again. The blue porcelain doorknob included no provision for a lock. She turned it and pushed. The door opened effortlessly. The air inside was cool, and she could see an old sofa with an afghan on the back, a television with the round-cornered screen of the ‘sixties black-and-whites, and a coffee table piled high with magazines.

“Mr. Madrid?” she called. The house was silent. From where she was standing, she could see the rump of the owner’s red International Carry-All parked beside the house. She called his name again, a bit louder. With no response, she stepped inside and quickly walked through the house, taking no more than thirty seconds to tour all five rooms.

By the time she walked back outside, glanced inside the Carry-All and then rounded the front of the station, the huge Texas RV had trundled back out onto the highway, a plume of diesel hanging behind. She glanced back at Naranjo and shook her head, then walked back the way she had come, ignoring the restaurant.

“What did you find?” Torrez asked when she returned to the Expedition.

“Nothing. The station’s closed and locked, his house is wide open. The coffeemaker’s on in the kitchen. His truck is parked outside. Engine’s cold.”

“So. Maybe he’s in his wife’s café, having breakfast.”

“He hasn’t talked to Lucy in a dozen years. I don’t think so.”

“Want to go ask?”

“I certainly do.”

Torrez opened the door, then hesitated. “Where’s Naranjo?”

“Parked just down the street.”

“You didn’t see anyone else?”

“Not a soul, other than the Texan tourists.”

“I was hoping that we’d see a big yellow Ford station wagon parked in the shade somewhere,” Torrez said.

“They’re not going to be that stupid, Bobby.”

He shrugged. “And why not? Why change what works?” He stepped out of the vehicle, and then he and Estelle walked to the front door of Lucy Madrid’s café like two curious tourists. Lucy’s was open for business, the fluorescent bulbs in the single ceiling unit providing just enough light for customers to be able to find the saucer with their cup.

The first person Estelle saw was Wally Madrid, sitting at the same table she and Francis had used earlier in the week.

Wally Madrid sat by himself, turned sideways so that he could see the door. His dark, long face struck Estelle as singularly melancholy, as if he were sitting there waiting for the end of the world. The sports section of the Albuquerque Journal rested on the checkered plastic tablecloth. Other than that, the table was bare. No food, no coffee, no utensils.

Wally was not alone in the café. Across the room, another much younger man sat at the far end of the short counter. Smoke from a cigarette in his right hand curled upward, untouched by anything so sophisticated as the downwash from a ceiling fan. The man turned and stared at Estelle when she entered. The light was behind her, and Estelle’s eyes flicked a quick inventory of the room and its occupants. She didn’t recognize the man at the counter, but his expression wasn’t the idle curiosity of a man whose quiet coffee and doughnut break had been interrupted.

From behind, Bob Torrez put a hand on Estelle’s shoulder and said, “Go ahead and find a table. I need to use the restroom.” He made no effort to whisper, and what he said would have been clearly heard by Wally Madrid and the man at the counter. Torrez sounded like any other good tourist, too long on the road, rest stops dictated by the bladder. His grip on Estelle’s shoulder was firm and directed her off to the right.

As watchful as he was, it nevertheless took the young man at the counter another couple of heartbeats before he recognized the possible danger, before he realized that the giant figure walking quickly across the small café toward him wasn’t just a tourist who had brought his wife in for a midmorning snack.

Robert Torrez ducked to one side so that his head didn’t brush the fluorescent lighting fixture in the center of the room. Benny hesitated for another instant, saw that Torrez’s impassive gaze was locked on him rather than the small sign on the open door behind him that announced CABALLEROS.

From across the room, Estelle saw the man’s left shoulder hunch upward. By the time a large revolver appeared in his left hand, sweeping upward to avoid the edge of the counter, Estelle’s own Beretta had cleared her belt and jacket. But Robert Torrez was on the offensive.