Nothing in her way by Charles Williams

Author:Charles Williams [Charles Williams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Policier
ISBN: 9781596541719
Published: 2005-03-15T07:00:00+00:00

I got up early the next morning and made a trip down to the Skid Row south of Market. To put on this act of ours we had to have the help of one other person—just a brief appearance in the early stages—and he had to speak Spanish. She even had that all figured out. It had to be somebody with enough intelligence to swing his part and still not a wise guy who’d ask too many questions or want to muscle in himself.

And we had to be sure he’d disappear when his job was done. There was an answer to that, which I thought of almost as soon as she did: a wetback.

I took the cable car down to the foot of Powell and walked on over to Howard. It was another beautiful morning, even here among the flophouses and cheap taverns and hole-in-the-wall cafes smelling of grease and chile. A wino slept with his head against a fire hydrant with an empty bottle in the gutter beside him, and somebody had stolen his shoes. There were half a dozen employment agencies along here with big blackboards on the walls and men standing around listlessly as if they had even forgotten what they were waiting for. I tried the first one and didn’t see anyone who looked promising. In the next one my luck was better. He was a young Mexican in clean khakis and a leather coat.

I went over to him. “Good morning. Looking for a job?”

He nodded, a little warily. The jobs came off the board he was watching, not from strangers wandering in off the street.

“You speak English?” I asked.

He nodded again. “I was born in San Antonio. I speak much English.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I was in San Antonio myself, during the war. Stationed at Fort Lewis. You know where that is?”

“Oh, sure. I live near to it. I worked there.”

He looked pretty good and as if he might do. He was a good liar, and a wetback, and that’s what we wanted. “It’s all right,” I said in Spanish, and grinned at him. “I don’t care what part of Mexico you’re from. I’m not an Immigration man.” He was fast on the uptake, all right, for it took him only a second to see he’d gone into the bucket on that Fort Lewis thing. Lewis is in Washington.

“How are you called?” I asked.

“Juan Benavides.”

He probably wasn’t, but it didn’t make any difference. “I’m glad to know you, Juan,” I said. “My name’s Rogers. Let’s go get a cup of coffee. Perhaps I have a job for you.”

We went over to Mission and found a restaurant a little cleaner than most. He was broke, so I ordered him some ham and eggs while I got coffee. While he was eating, I gave him the proposition.

“I’ll give you an outfit of clothes, two hundred dollars American money, and a bus ticket to anywhere you want to go. The job won’t take more than a half hour,

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