Martin Smith - Stallion Gate

"A bourbon," Joe said, since he was there.

"That's against the law." A gnome in a white suit hopped onto the stool next to Joe. Hilario "Happy" Reyes waved a Havana panatella as if in the comfort of his living room—which, in many ways, the bar of the La Fonda was. "Tsk, tsk, serving liquor to an Indian? I suppose we can make an exception for the Chief."

"And you," Joe said.

Hilario was lieutenant governor of the State of New Mexico. More, he was legend. He was from Santiago Pueblo, and Joe had seen old pictures of him dancing in white buckskin leggings at the Omaha world's fair of 1898. But when statehood came in 1912, Hilario had become "Happy" Reyes, a Spanish politician, and had since served in every state administration, only once falling as low as judge. Since Roosevelt's second term, he'd become a Democrat. He was ancient and vigorous, as powerful as a joker in the deck, a worn but still potent magician, an evil Jiminy Cricket.

"To the home of the brave." Joe picked up his drink.

"I want you to fight, Joe. I have a boy from Texas. Natural southpaw. Fast. Knocks them out with either hand. Hasn't had a fight that's gone four rounds. Works up on the Hill with you."

"You're setting up fights again?"

"Joe, it's the spirit of the times. Entertainment. Baseball hasn't stopped. There's a one-armed outfielder playing for the St. Louis Browns right now. Hasn't stopped baseball." After years of wearing his white planter's hat, like a girl holding a parasol against the sun, Hilario's brown skin had become bleached to a pallor that made his eyes, which were black as tar, all the more piercing. "Joe, when you're as old as I am, you find out that people lead very short lives."

"I noticed that on Bataan."

"Then the experience wasn't wasted. Now it's time again for fun. I want you to meet a fan of yours."

"Harry Gold." Hilario's friend popped out from behind the stool. Gold was short, swarthy and so fat that he looked inflated inside his double-breasted suit. He wobbled on new boots and removed a new Stetson to shake Joe's hand. His hair was dark and wavy.

"Harry's a New York Jew," Hilario said.

"I saw you play with Charlie Parker on 52nd Street," Gold told Joe. "And a couple of weeks ago, at the Casa Mariana. I always wondered what happened to you."

"Joe used to be the Indian Joe Louis until that nigger music got to him. Joe, you're still popular. The boy has beaten everyone in the state. You're the only action left."

"I haven't fought for two years, Hilario."

"That's not so dangerous for a fighter of your quality. Anyway, you're like a thoroughbred coming down in class."

"The comeback of Chief Joe Pena?"

"Don't laugh. I can set it up in two days and guarantee you $2,000 just for showing up and laying down."

"I'm looking for investment opportunities in New Mexico," Gold said to Joe.

"Why don't you just put your money directly into Hilario's pocket?"

"That's your problem, Joe," Hilario said. "You don't know how to boost your own home state. Word is, some black marketeer is dealing high explosives to Indians. There are legitimate businessmen who can't get explosives during wartime, contractors and developers, men with money. I want to give you this opportunity, Joe, because that Texas boy is going to beat the shit out of you."

As Joe worked his way back across the lobby, the special agents were re-reading their sports pages. The headline folded over was "B-29s Pound Nips". A circle of ladies in crocheted dresses were retreating from an Indian selling necklaces. His hair was tied back in a single grey braid, his dirty shirt buttoned at the neck. He offered them one arm draped with turquoise strands and then the other. Together, ladies and Indian moved past the poster of a flamenco dancer and through the double glass doors that led to the dining room.

Joe meant only to glance in. There were about twenty tables, enough to assemble a miniature, artificial Santa Fe: society Spanish in heirloom mantillas, artists who had fled New York, cultists who had fled California, lawyers not sharp enough to practice law anywhere else, all sitting in the glow of stamped tin chandeliers. The ladies found a table. The Indian stood at it, holding out silver rings and pins in his hand, and still hadn't seen Joe. From the table nearest the kitchen Harvey waved a clarinet. With him were Klaus Fuchs and the woman from the car, Anna Weiss. They were having after-dinner coffee.

"Back in business." Harvey held the instrument out for Joe's inspection. It was a used Pan American with a chrome-edged bell, the basic high school model. "Picked it up in the pawn shop."

"This ought to strike terror in the Emperor's heart," Joe said and handed the clarinet back. "Feeling okay?"

"We had a premature detonation on the test range this afternoon," Harvey explained to Anna. He looked up at Joe. "Just the bloody nose. I'm fine. Sit down."

"The sergeant has other duties, I'm sure," Fuchs said.

Anna Weiss said, "Sit, please."

She wasn't a rosy English fair. Not pallid, either. More of a smooth china paleness, made all the more startling by her hair, black as an Indian's but finer, and rakishly set off by a red lacquer comb. She wore a Hawaiian shirt with red palm trees. The ensemble had a go-to-hell quality that would test the nerve of any escort, let alone a stuffed shirt like Fuchs. At least her accent was softer than his.

"Through his clear thinking and quick actions, Dr Pillsbury saved the lives of a great many men this afternoon," Joe said as he sat. He laid his newspaper on the table.

"You didn't tell us, Harvey," Anna said.

"Tell them, Harvey," Joe said. "How you doused the cordite."

"No, no." Harvey had been drinking. A blush rose from his neck up. "Joe's the real war hero."

"I saw him in action this morning," she said. "He defeated a car."

"It's unbelievable they let him in." Fuchs had yet to address Joe directly, and now he stared at a new irritation.

The old Indian Tenorio stood at the table and displayed his arms laden with necklaces, nodules of blue and green turquoise on knotted string. Cleto was a Santa Domingo man, and the Domingos sold jewellery up and down the Rio and even into Navajo country in Utah. His eyelids were low and his shirt was stained with trails of brown chilli sauce, but the ribbons in his hair were bright and La Fonda not only suffered, it prompted Cleto to approach guests as long as he did so with the minimum of contempt.

"How much?" Joe asked.

"Two dollar." Cleto laid the necklaces on the table.

"Ridiculous." Fuchs picked up a string and held it close to the candlelight. He scratched a stone with his fingernail. "You know what turquoise is?" he asked Cleto.

"Turquoise."

"Turquoise is, in fact, a phosphate of copper and aluminium."

"One dollar." Cleto shrugged.

"See, you didn't even know what you were selling. I just told you, you should pay me. I've seen these stones. They change colour, they fade, they're hardly diamonds. They're stones off the ground."

"Not off the ground." Joe lifted a necklace. "They have to mine them. The old way is to build a fire against the rock, then throw water on the rock. The rock shatters and you see a seam of fresh turquoise like a blue stream of water. It would be easier to use explosives, but they're impossible to get now." He put two dollars on the table and gave the necklace to Anna Weiss. "For you."

"You're a gentleman, Sergeant. Thank you."

She slipped the turquoise string over her head and inside the collar of her shirt. The stones were mixed: evening blue, blue-weed blue, mountain lake blue, corn green. With the shirt and comb, she looked like a ragpicker of all nations. A beautiful rag picker though.

Cleto quickly gathered the necklaces and money from the table and moved away.