Chapter 2

The building where I have my office has one virtue – it provides a magnificent view of the Sandia Mountains. And it has one major flaw – it takes an act of Congress to get anywhere from there. It's on the northbound frontage road along I-25 between Bogan and McLeod, and since frontage roads are one way, and the only access is the frontage road, you have to want to get there in order to arrive there.

But I pay a hefty rent just so I can look out the window at the mountains, and put up with the inconvenience. I guess that view is another luxury – which makes three I've got.

I went down in the elevator and out through the lobby into the parking lot. I unlocked my Blazer – which I haven't washed once since I bought it in September of 2006 – and stuck the gun in the clip I've installed under the seat. I climbed in and started the engine, and put it in first, and drove away. The first thing I did after buying the Blazer was to have my mechanic do some serious work. I'd had him put in a four-speed stick shift, and rearrange some of the elements of the dash so I could reach them without stretching when sitting comfortably, and I'd had him relocate the dimmer switch from the steering column to the floor. Not only did I grow up with the dimmer on the floor, and not only did I never own a vehicle with it on the column until I bought the Blazer, but I find it's easier and more comfortable to just reach out the toe of my boot and tap when I want to switch to or from the brights.

Of course all that work cost money, but that's one thing I've got. I'd saved money when I was a cop, and though I couldn't save much when I went out as a private detective – a small town in Oklahoma wasn't the best place to start out in that business – when my aunt and uncle who'd raised me died they left me some money, and with it I was able to start investing here and there in a small way. By the time I met Cecelia in 1994 I owned pieces of half a dozen small businesses in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, and even had managed to make a bit of money in the stock market. At that the market, at least the way I approached it, wasn't all that difficult – instead of worrying about all the finicky details the professionals follow, I used small amounts of money, and bought low and sold high, or at least higher.

Then I married Cecelia, and with a pretty hefty sigh of relief turned my finances over to her. It was, after all, how she was making her living at the time, and I've got more money now than I know what to do with, never mind the money that's in her name and the money that's ours jointly. So I could afford to pay cash for a 2003 Blazer, and cash for serious mechanic work, and cash for a dozen red roses, which it occurred to me, as I turned south off of McLeod onto Montgomery, Cecelia just might like. She's a flower person, where I can barely tell one from another and like it that way. But I know what roses are.

There's a little florist place I know which mostly does wreaths and whatnot for seminars and conferences and assorted other meetings, but has a small retail sideline. I pulled in there, and had the lady behind the counter put me together the necessary flowers. I was careful with the roses as I went back out to the Blazer. Compared to a cholla spine a rose's thorn isn't all that bad, but I don't like pain – it makes me hurt.

Home is a house on Wisconsin Street in the Hoffmantown neighborhood. It's actually in Cecelia's name – she bought it in 1991, a year before I moved to Albuquerque, and though I helped her pay it off after we got married neither one of us bothered to care about putting my name on the title. It's her house, and my Blazer, and we've got friends and money in the categories of mine, hers, and ours. It works because never mind the legalese, what's mine is Cecelia's, and what's hers is mine. It's not that New Mexico is a community property state, though it is, but that when you've given yourself to someone, the material things that surround you are no big deal.

I pulled up in front, where I've been parking since our first date, and climbed out of the Blazer. I needed at least one hand free, so I clipped my gun onto my belt and grabbed the roses, and after locking the Blazer walked up the front walk. I fished my keys out of my pocket – even though Hoffmantown is a quiet neighborhood nowhere in Albuquerque is truly safe, given how mobile the gangs are – and unlocked the door. It was nearly five, now, and Cecelia was in the kitchen ahead of me stirring something on the stove. It smelled like spaghetti sauce – her personal recipe, heavy on the garlic and onions.

I walked into the kitchen, which only a counter separates from the dining room – which in turn differs from the living room only in that it's got a wood floor instead of carpet, and the bay window where Darlia keeps a collection of dolls. I looked over her shoulder, my right hand behind my back, and saw that it was indeed spaghetti sauce. "Good stuff, Maynard," I said.

"I have never been precisely sure which Maynard you're referring to with that phrase, but I assure I am not him. I am, rather, the mistress of this kitchen, and I demand that you do not drip into my sauce."

"An' what would I drip?"

She turned her head and smiled at me, and I heard ships launching in faraway countries. "With you, Darvin, imagination is insufficient to catalog the possibilities. Nor do I particularly care to know what you might drip into my cooking."

"Well, shoot, in that case I'll take these back." And I brought my right hand out from behind me, holding the roses toward Cecelia.

"If you do that," she said, "I shall remove whatever you use in place of brains, and turn your skull into a vase for these flowers." That far she managed to keep her face straight, but then she outright grinned and said, "But in the meantime, I am very grateful for these beautiful blooms. And I am even more grateful for the man who, whatever his faults, has brought them to me."

"C," I told her, "I know I got faults comin' out my ears, but I love you more than I can say, and givin' you a few roses now and then is a lot of fun."