Chapter 3

"They's another thing," I said, taking a drink of the vanilla Coke that sat in front of me. When I'd gotten it out of the refrigerator I'd seen that it was time for another run down to the Singing Arrow neighborhood. There's a Phillips station there that's the only place in town I know of where I can find it every time I go in. It's a buck fifty a bottle, but at least it's vanilla Coke. "You're a woman. Now you know that don't bother me none, but in the porn business women have one purpose, an' bein' in charge ain't it."

"The people we will speak with, if I take your meaning correctly, have made it a point to objectify women."

"Exactly. To them, a woman's either got the looks and the minimal acting ability to fake it on camera, or she ain't nothin'. Now you're gonna be with me, an' we're gonna get what we can together, but there might be a time when I'll have to talk to someone alone, just so they'll talk."

Cecelia took a drink of her coffee. "How does Kim Il-chae manage in this business?"

"Mostly by bein' the toughest PI in town – an' it don't hurt that she's so cute. A lot of men will talk to her just 'cause of the way she looks, not realizing she's got a brain in her skull."

"I am nowhere near as cute as she is."

"No, but you're a lot more beautiful. An' she may be the toughest PI in town, but you're the toughest person, man or woman, it don't matter."

"Will that evaluation sway the people we're going to talk with?"

"Yeah, about like a broom has an effect on the incoming tide."

She nodded. "I may have embarked upon a more difficult course than I at first understood."

"Just be glad you ain't settin' out to be a cop, C. Even if you weren't too old, and probably you are, you wouldn't have the advantages you got bein' my trainee. You get outta the academy, and you've got to pull full shifts on patrol just like everyone else. They don't shove you out on the street by yourself right off, but it's still full immersion. With me, you only work when I work, or when I give you an assignment."

"And with your habits, Darvin, that will mean that we might not have any further cases this year."

I grinned at her. "You learnin', girl."

Cecelia smiled at me. "Darvin, I learn so much faster, and so much better, than you do that it is certain that I shall be training you within a year's time."

Sara and her husband Rudy came over in time for lunch. Just as Sara is Cecelia's best friend, so Rudy is mine, and their daughter Gacela is Darlia's. The two girls took their lunch – Cecelia had made BLTs, with the thick slices of her homemade bread fried in the bacon grease – into Darlia's bedroom where they'd eat on the table there. It wasn't the same table she'd had just a few years ago, since she keeps on growing.

We adults sat in the dining room, Cecelia and I in our usual spots, Sara in Darlia's chair, and Rudy next to his wife. "This new case I've got," I said to him between bites, "is sort of kind of along your line."

"A missing person?" Rudy's an officer with APD, and works in Missing Persons.

"I don't know for sure, though it's possible. She's a kid, and a porn photographer – of all people – wants us to find her and get her out."

"I can see if she's on file," he said.

"Yeah, I know." I grinned at him. Sara grinned too, and gave him a nudge with her elbow. "Cecelia'll be by Monday afternoon with info."

Rudy rattled something off in Spanish at Cecelia. It's his first language, and Sara's too, but Cecelia's become fluent after I taught her the rudiments of it. The rudiments is about all I know to this day.

"Sí," said Cecelia, and that was the last word I understood for a bit.

I held up my hands in the standard "time out" signal. "In case y'all have forgotten, I'm the huero here." That's the slang word, at least in New Mexico, for Anglo. "I don't understand all that jabberin'."

"For terming such a beautiful and expressive language 'jabbering, ' you must endure some excruciating punishment. I would offer you the choice of suffering, but I am afraid that you would choose something mild, such as burning at the stake, or having me insert bamboo splinters under your nails." Cecelia was grinning, for my mangled English is an old joke with us.

"It ain't that I can't talk good," I said, "but that I won't. If I wanted to, I could talk near as good as you."

Cecelia looked at Rudy and Sara. "Could I interest you in a pain in the neck, slightly used and thoroughly irritating?"

"Es mi amigo, Cecelia," Rudy said, giving her name the soft and beautiful Spanish pronunciation.

"Y mio también," Sara said, "aunque es muy irritante." The last word I had to make out by the context, which wasn't as hard as it might have been since it was similar to what had to be the English equivalent.