Chapter 23

We ate at the Subway, foot long sandwiches, and walked home along Wyoming. It's amazing to me that we can live just a block away from this major thoroughfare, and yet our street is so peaceful and calm. When I first came to Albuquerque at least the traffic was light on the weekends, but these days Sunday is as bad as any other day of the week, and Wyoming is one of the streets where the traffic is thick.

We got home in time to relax a bit at the counter, where we ate some of Cecelia's fruit salad for dessert. We didn't say much, but just sat next to each other, occasionally bumping shoulders or touching hands, and looking at each other now and then.

After a bit Cecelia left to pick Darlia up, and since I was already dressed I decided to go for a short walk. I left Cecelia a note on the refrigerator, and set out without any sort of a plan. Sometimes I'll go out the door intending to follow such-and-such a street, turn at such-and-such a corner, and so on, though my plans seldom last more than an hour or so. This time, though, I went out the door not even sure which direction I wanted to go, and found myself checking the non-existent traffic and crossing Wisconsin, and then walking across the grass of Inez Park. I have no idea who they named the park after, though Inez is a woman's name – not a common one, however.

On the other side of the park I got on Cutler Avenue and followed it catty-corner up toward the intersection of Pennsylvania and Menaul. Cutler doesn't actually reach that intersection, but it heads that way. It dead ends at Cutler Park, which I crossed and thus got to Pennsylvania. I walked on from there, not paying a lot of mind to which streets I was on, just wandering along enjoying the waning afternoon and thinking that so far I'd not had a lot of success with the case.

I had kept Bestwick from getting too close to Cinda, but it was costing me three people's wages and putting her inside an armed circle. Security precautions keep bad guys out, but they also keep the good guys in. So far we'd not had to be very restrictive, but if Bestwick pushed hard enough we would, and she wouldn't like that. I wouldn't, for that matter, if I found myself inside a security cordon. If I can't just get up and walk whenever I feel like it I'll go nuts. I smiled to myself, for that was exactly what I had done – got up and walked, that is.

I'd done my best to persuade Bestwick. I'd tried legal persuasion and moral persuasion. Neither had worked. Maybe Straight was right – maybe it would take physical force, or at least the threat of it, to keep Bestwick off. I didn't like that idea. I'm in a line of work where violence is always a potential. Most cops never draw their guns in the line of duty, and most who do draw their guns never fire them – but every cop knows that the next time he responds to a domestic disturbance he might have to shoot. I haven't been a cop in nearly 20 years, but I've been working in law enforcement since 1986, and the only time I ever fired my weapon in the line of duty was after I'd left the police department. I rarely put my gun on – and after all hadn't needed to last night – but I know that every time I go out to talk to lowlifes who hate cops I might find myself in danger. Probably I won't, and thus far it's been almost never, but it can happen.

Yet I hate violence and danger. I would rather talk a guy out of shooting me than shoot him. I will shoot if I have to, but I really don't want to have to. I would much rather persuade him to put down his gun before things get worse.

And so I didn't want to bring up the threat of physical force in dealing with Jacob Bestwick. I would rather persuade him. Yet he seemed thoroughly unpersuadable. I didn't like the idea, but I was beginning to think Straight was more right on this than I was.

If I did threaten Bestwick, it would be me, and not Straight. I'm not nearly as mean, and therefore not nearly as convincing – or terrifying – as he is, but I knew that if I delivered the threat it would be only a threat until and unless I had to make it good. If I sent Straight, he might decide that Bestwick needed a demonstration of just how bad it could get. There are drawbacks to working with a thug.

I realized that it was beginning to grow dark, and took stock of my surroundings. I knew that if there'd been anything I needed to see I'd have come completely alert in an instant, but since there'd been no such thing I had to look around and see where I was. Somewhere in my walk I'd wound up doing something of a circle, and now I was on Pennsylvania between Embudo Arroyo and Inez Elementary School. I was actually pretty close to home – depending on how fast I walked and how long I had to wait on traffic to get across Indian School, I could be home in a few minutes.

I'd come to a sort of conclusion, and it was getting dark and chilly, and I wanted to see my daughter – and my wife, for that matter, though we'd been together much of the day. I stepped up my pace, and moved on up Pennsylvania toward Hoffmantown and home.

The next day was Thursday. I decided that since I had no other option but to lean on Bestwick, I'd best do it early and get it over with. Knowing where he lived, and where he worked, and where he parked, when he got to work, I knew that I would indeed need to be early. The problem was that I couldn't get to sleep early. I tried, but it didn't work, so I went back out in the living room and read. I finished The Stolen Blue and started on a mystery by Connie Shelton called Balloons Can Be Murder. It had to do with events surrounding the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. When I lived up on Montgomery I got used to being able to see balloons all around me during the Fiesta, but down in Hoffmantown they're not so common, since they usually float southwest from Balloon Fiesta Park and we're southeast. And though it sometimes seems impossible, there are people in Albuquerque who've never actually visited the Balloon Fiesta, but there are – I know, for I'm one of 'em.

The book was good, which wasn't necessarily an unblemished blessing. It kept my attention, which meant that I didn't get sleepy. On the other hand if I'd read something soporific I'd have quit reading it after about two pages. I read for fun – even when I'm reading theology, I enjoy it – and if a book doesn't entertain me I can't see wasting my time on it.

Eventually, though, I got to where I'd be able to at least doze off, so I closed the book – I was halfway through it already – and went to bed. I saw that it was just after 11 – and I'd set the clock for five in the morning. I hate mornings, but not as much as I used to, because Cecelia's trained me to get enough sleep. But tomorrow morning was going to be bad.

And it was. The alarm went off and my initial reaction was to slap the thing across the room. I didn't, though. I crawled out of bed and shut it off and stomped into the bathroom, closing the door so I wouldn't disturb Cecelia. I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, and scowled at the mirror. Even after the toothpaste my mouth tasted foul.

I got dressed in the dark, picking a shirt as I always do – I grabbed the first one in line. My socks were in the drawer, and I grabbed the first pair my hand landed on. There are advantages to dressing for comfort rather than appearance. It's not just women who spend forever deciding what to wear; I've seen men whose outfits must have required half an hour or more to choose, there's so much coordination. And then putting everything on has to be time-consuming – making sure the pants bag sufficiently, getting the belt to reach far enough around back, getting the shoes just right so that your feet look about 12 times larger than they are, making sure the hat's at exactly the right angle to look positively silly. I didn't do it that morning, but I can roll out of bed, get dressed, and be out the door in 15 minutes. If it was an emergency, I probably could do it in 10 minutes.

I padded out to the living room, where I put on the overhead light and pulled on my socks and boots. I noted absently that this pair needed new heels. I could take 'em to the repair place in Hoffmantown Shopping Center, just up the road. That is one of the nicest things about Cecelia's house – she bought it in a place that's within easy walking distance of everything but a grocery store. There's even a church that meets just a few minutes' walk from the house, though it's not our style and we've only visited it a couple of times.

I pulled out my second pair of everyday boots from their spot behind the TV so that I'd remember to fix the ones I had on. I grabbed a Coke from the fridge and gulped from the bottle. I put my heavy denim jacket on, the one with the sheepskin lining, and jammed my hat on my head, and got my gloves from on top of the TV. I was dressed for a hard day's work punching cows in the desert, and in fact I have done exactly that, though it was a long time ago.