Chapter 5

About seven I knocked on Cinda's door and told her that she shouldn't hesitate to call me, or whoever was outside, during the night if she needed something. "The guy who's gonna relieve me is Straight – that's all the name he goes by. He's a big guy, taller than me, and broader, with something of a gut – but strong. You probably won't see him, since he comes on at one in the morning. And then at nine a cop I know, Rudy Delgado, will come on, and be here for eight hours."

"And will you be back tomorrow evening?"

"Maybe. I wanna round up one more body so that our shifts rotate, but I don't absolutely have to do that within the next couple of days. If I'm not gonna be here, I'll call and let you know, or have Rudy let you know."

"Okay ... and thank you for doing this. Maybe Jake won't do anything, but I've been so scared..."

"Nothing wrong with being scared, Ms. Barelas. You're about an average size woman, and if he's an average man he's bigger and stronger than you. That's just how the human race divides up – on average men are bigger and stronger than women, and usually men know more about fighting too. If you weren't scared, it'd surprise me."

"I know that, but it doesn't help."

I nodded. "No, intellectual knowledge never does change emotions. But it can help us deal with the emotions, and you've done well, actually. Instead of sitting here working yourself into a panic, you got someone to help. It's no shame, Ms. Barelas – I sometimes need help with things, and the people who help me need help, and so on. I bet I couldn't do your job if I had to."

She smiled at me. "You don't even know what my job is."

"Nope – I haven't needed to ask, since Bestwick hasn't been hanging around there ... which by the way, if you ever see him hanging around somewhere besides here, let me know – immediately. You've got my card, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, lemme put my cell phone number on it."

"Sure ... come on in."

I followed her into her living room, where she took my card from the top of the TV. I wrote my cell phone number on it – usually I don't give that out to clients, but I'm not always at the office and I never give out my home phone number to clients. "Here," I said as I handed the card back, "now you can get me whenever you need to. And if he looks like he's an immediate threat, don't sit around trying to think it out – just call 911, and we can figure out later whether it was an overreaction. I'd rather you had to explain things to a cop than have to pick up the pieces afterward."

"Okay. And thank you, again."

"Not a problem." And I got back out into the Blazer, where I ran the engine for a bit to get some heat into the vehicle. They don't insulate cars very well.

Straight showed up a few minutes before the time, driving his beat up Volkswagen bus. He looks a bit like an unreconstructed hippy, with his long graying hair and ratty jeans and, very frequently, tie-dyed t-shirts, but he is in fact a small-time hoodlum and genuinely tough guy. I don't know everything he's done or everything he does, and I've made it a point not to know. And he's made it a point not to get in my way. We're friends – an odd friendship, considering that he's a crook and I'm a Christian and a PI, but it works. And whenever I need serious muscle, he's the one I call, though my standards about the cases I take mean that I don't often need serious muscle.

I took him around the building, and the area across the parking lot, briefing him on the situation. The idea was not necessarily for him – for any of us – to be in front of Cinda's door every minute, but to be in the area, available. If we could spot Bestwick before he got within the 100 foot limit, and turn him back, that would be better than grabbing him on the sidewalk in front of the door. I gave Straight the photo that Cinda'd given me, and passed on her description. And I told him, "This is guarding, that's all. We turn him around and send him away. I don't think he's going to push toward violence, and I don't want any."

"Sure, dude, I dig it." And I knew he did. Straight might be perfectly willing to take a baseball bat to someone's ankles – as I'd heard once that he'd done to someone who'd crossed him – but he knew when to be cool ... which was the way he would put it. I smiled to myself. I've got a few 60s idioms in my speech, though I wasn't born until 65, but Straight sometimes sounds like he stepped right out of the Summer of Love.

I looked up at the sky, but in Albuquerque you can't see many stars. I couldn't even make out the Big Dipper, much less the fainter stars of the Little Dipper. I got in the Blazer and cranked it up. When I got to the gate I used the code Cinda had given me to open it, and I drove out onto Dorado, and headed right to get to Central, and found my way back home.

It wasn't quite two when I got home, and I'd been up for about 19 hours. I can still do it when I have to, but I don't like doing it anymore. Cecelia has domesticated me in some ways – among them she's gotten me to realize that life is a lot more pleasant on sufficient sleep. And just now I was ready to agree with her, no quibbles at all.

The house was dark from the outside, but when I got in the front door I saw that Cecelia had left the light on over the stove. It's our version of a front-of-the-house nightlight – because the dining room and living room are open to the kitchen that one light makes maneuvering through half the house easier. I left the stove light on, and turned on the hall light. With that on I went back and turned off the stove light, and used the hall light to get into our bedroom. There's another switch right by our door, and I used that to turn off the hall light. I can get around our room in the dark with little trouble – 11 years of doing it has taught me where what is, and since neither Cecelia nor I move furniture much, things are almost exactly where they were the day I moved in.