Chapter 12

I found my way to an old stucco building with the words South Valley Fellowship in fading paint over the double doors. As an elder I'd gotten to know a lot of the churches and pastors in town, and as it turned out the pastor there had once been part of MJT. In fact, Tyrone had helped rescue his marriage back in 1998, when I'd been in Albuquerque for just six years and married to Cecelia for only three. I knew no one would mind me parking there, and it was within walking distance of the intersection that gave Dog's gang its name. In fact, the intersection was in rock-throwing distance.

Cecelia and I walked hand in hand, her right in my left. Most of the people weren't, of course, part of any gang, but many of them dressed like it, and if I asked everyone who looked like a gangster sooner or later I'd come across one who was. So I asked people. We wandered around, enjoying the walk and seeing things that neither of us was real familiar with. I've been all over town, from the big money of Four Hills and the Far Heights to tough neighborhoods like Barelas and the area around Trumbull Park. But no one is equally at home in every part of a city – even in small towns most people are most comfortable in the area closest to where they live.

And so it is with me, and with Cecelia, who in the course of her various activities probably gets around as much as I do – and perhaps into as many bad areas as I do too, for among the things I know about is her work at a downtown rescue mission, a ministry to the homeless that another church runs and ours supports financially, and carrying groceries to poor families in various places around town. I don't know all that she does, and I'm not certain she herself knows it all – she makes very sure that her left hand doesn't know what her right hand's doing.

So it was interesting seeing side streets that we weren't familiar with. I had occasion to make use of Cecelia's fluent Spanish – this was a Hispanic area and while I can puzzle out written Spanish more easily than I can when I hear it, I still needed translations. And many of the people I talked to either didn't speak sufficient English to talk to me in that language, or pretended they didn't – it wasn't always possible to tell. Of course any illegals would be reluctant to talk to an Anglo no matter how much Spanish he spoke, being fearful of la migra, Spanish slang for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. And there are a few people who are born in this country who still speak little English, or at least don't speak English as well as they do Spanish.

It was when Cecelia and I stopped at a ramshackle paletería – an ice cream shop is I guess the best English translation, though such places sell more than just ice cream – that we hit pay dirt. We spoke with the clerk who rang up our Popsicles, fruit combinations that you'll never find in a sober Anglo establishment but which were refreshing and very delicious after the hot sun, and he looked us over and said he knew Dog.

He was more comfortable in Spanish, so I spoke to him through Cecelia. "Could you please tell him I need to talk to him? I'm not a cop, I'm not out to bust him, I just need to talk to him."

"I'll tell him," came back the clerk's words in Cecelia's low-pitched voice. "I don't know what he'll do, though."

"That's all right. I just need to get the message to him. Be sure he understands I'm not the law – not APD, not BCSO, not Immigration, not any sort of cop." Everyone in town understands the acronyms for the Albuquerque Police Department and the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office.

"Sure, I'll tell him. If he wants to talk to you, he'll find you."

"Cool, that's all I want. Thanks."

He nodded, said something extra in Spanish to Cecelia, and turned to another customer.

Outside, I asked my wife, "What was that last bit?"

"Nothing important – just that if my accent weren't so American, he'd think I was Cuban or Dominican."

I grinned. "Yeah, there aren't too many black New Mexican Chicanos."

"True – they have better tans than you do, but not nearly as deep as mine." And she held out her arm to admire her "tan." She was wearing a pink cowboy shirt with the cuffs turned up a couple of times, showing in the bright light the clear definition of muscles in her forearm. She had on a pair of faded jeans, over her most rundown cowboy boots, a pair that usually she only wears in the desert. She looked as elegant as ever, but without having to think about it or ask my advice she'd picked clothes that fit better in the area than what she normally wears. There was money down there, mostly from drugs, but it wasn't obvious – most people didn't dress rich, and neither had she.

I took my eyes off her clothes and looked back at her extended arm, and then at her face. "You're pretty proud of that tan, aren't you?"