Percival Everett - Assumption

Ogden put down the phone. “They’re on their way.”

“She’s breathing fine.”

The girl came back with the water and a damp rag. Fragua took the rag and pressed it to the woman’s face.

Ogden looked at the room. Clean, tidy, ordered. On the far wall was a crucifix with a bare-chested Jesus wrapped in a skirt. He looked at the fainted woman again. She was slowly coming around. The daughter stood by with the glass of water. Ogden stepped close to the girl and asked if she was all right.

She nodded.

“I’m Ogden. What’s your name?”

“Rosa.”

“Everything’s going to be fine, Rosa.”

Fragua had the woman sitting up now. He took the glass from Rosa and helped the woman take a sip.

“Rosa, will you show me José’s room?” Ogden asked.

She nodded and led him down the hall. She stopped at a door with a paper keep-out sign taped to it.

“You’d better go back out there to your mother,” Ogden said. He entered and took a slow turn around the room. He thumbed through a stack of car and motorcycle magazines on the dresser, then sat down on the unmade bed and stared at the top of the nightstand. He was about to open the drawer when Fragua stepped in.

“She okay?” Ogden asked.

“I think so.”

“They’re Penitentes, you know.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yep,” Ogden said.

They searched the room. Ogden found nothing of interest in the nightstand and moved to the tall dresser. He started in the bottom drawer, peeling past the boy’s trousers, shirts, and sweaters.

Ogden went to the closet and pulled a shoebox down from the top shelf. He took off the lid. “Howdy, howdy.” He tilted the box so that Fragua could see the stack of bills.

Ogden closed the box. They could hear the paramedics entering the house.

Fragua looked at his watch. “I’m glad nobody was dying.”

“Do we take this with us?” Ogden asked about the cash. “I mean these people could really use this money.”

“Yeah, I know,” Fragua said.

Ogden put the box back on the shelf.

“I guess that’s your answer,” Fragua said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ogden said.

On the way out, Ogden said good-bye to Rosa. He asked, “Can you tell me if there was anything weird or different going on with José?”

Rosa shook her head.

Fragua talked to Mrs. Marotta.

“Who were his friends?” Ogden asked. “Did he hang out with anybody?”

“Just Emilio,” the girl said.

“Emilio Vilas?”

Rosa shrugged.

The deputies left.

Fragua got out at the station and took his rig to find Mr. Marotta. A call to Fonda gave Ogden Emilio Vilas’s address.

Ogden drove to the little duplex on Carson Road. He knocked, but there was no answer. He then knocked on the door of the attached unit. A robed, middle-aged woman with bright red hair came to the door. She was annoyed.

“I’m looking for Emilio Vilas,” Ogden said.

“He doesn’t live here, ” she said.

“Sorry to disturb you. Do you know Emilio?”

“Lives next door, but I don’t know him. I’ve got enough trouble.”

“He’s trouble?”

She looked at Ogden as if he were stupid. “Men in general are trouble.”

“So, you wouldn’t have any idea where he is?”

“No. Try a bar. He’s a damn alcoholic.” She closed the door.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Ogden said to the wood.

Ogden decided to check the nearby taverns. He entered three, glanced about, got stared at, got nowhere. In the fourth bar, a man spotted Ogden, made eye contact, looked away, and started for the back door. Ogden chased him, leaped over a chair, squeezed between stacked crates in front of the rear exit, and ran out into the alley. Emilio hit a patch of ice and slid into some garbage cans. He looked back at the deputy, but didn’t get up. Emilio held his leg.

“Broken?” Ogden asked.

“Fuck you. What you want with me?”

Ogden sat, straddling an upset garbage can. “Emilio Vilas.”

“You know who the fuck I am.”

“You hear about José?”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“You two were pals,” Ogden said.

Emilio rubbed his leg.

A rat bolted from the garbage and Ogden let out a short scream. So much for the macho front. “I’m interested in José’s body.”

“What?”

“Somebody stole his body,” Ogden said.

“Yeah, so?”

“They stole him from your place of employment.”

“Sure, man, but I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“So, you know about it.”

Emilio sat up. “So, I heard about it.” He looked up and down the alley.

“Looking for somebody?” Ogden asked. “Do you have any idea how they got into Fonda’s?”

Emilio shook his head.

“Can you walk?”

Emilio pulled himself up and tested his leg.

“Why’d you run?” Ogden asked.

“Not sure.”

“Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

“I gotta go,” Emilio said.

“No, I really want to buy you some coffee.” Ogden looked at his eyes. “It’s the least I can do. Come on.”

Emilio snatched his arm free of the deputy’s help. Ogden walked him back into the tavern where they sat in a booth.

“Anything to do with drugs?”

“What?” Emilio asked.

“You and José into drugs? Pot? Meth?”

“No, man.”

“Did José ever tell you what he was into? Did he tell you he was in trouble?”

“No.”

The bartender brought two cups of coffee over and gave Emilio a hard stare.

“What’s your problem?” Emilio said to the man as he walked away.

“Cops are bad for business,” Ogden said. He blew on his coffee. “You were about to tell me about José. You two were running buddies, right? What kind of deal did he have?”

“José didn’t have a deal.”

“Emilio, José had a shoe box full of money tucked away in his closet,” Ogden said.

“News to me. Maybe it was from his paper route.” Emilio shook his head. “We were friends. We went out and scored some dope together once in a while, but that’s all I know. Honest. I really didn’t see him that much lately.”

Ogden nodded. He was starting to believe him. “What do you think of your boss?”

“Fonda’s weird as shit, but he’s okay.”

“Weird?”

“He’s an undertaker, man.”

“You gonna drink your coffee?”

“Don’t need it.”

Ogden looked at the front door. It was a bar in the morning; who would be coming in? “You know Emma Bickers?”

Emilio shook his head. “Never heard of her.”

“What was José doing up on Plata Ridge?”

“I don’t know? Ain’t nothing up there but sage.”

“Okay,” Ogden leaned back in his seat. He looked at Emilio over the rim of his mug as he drank. “My name is Walker. If you think of anything, call me. You’ll do that?”

Emilio nodded.

Ogden walked out into the daylight and the biting wind. He got into his car and wrapped his ungloved fingers around the ice-cold steering wheel. He was tired and his back hurt. He needed to go fishing.

Mrs. Bickers’s funeral was a quiet affair. Ogden looked at Jenny Bickers, at his mother, at ice-block Fonda, and at young Emilio who stood several yards away, sweating in the winter air, leaning against the body of a small tractor a shovel handle resting against his chest. There were no other faces. Not even the town woman who showed up at all funerals to just cry. A couple of magpies perched on a fence. Fonda said some words, being ordained in some way, and then the tearless eyes went about their business. Emilio moved toward the grave as Ogden, Jenny, and Eva Walker moved away.