"I'm honored."
"I'm making them for some of my most special friends to… to remember me by. When I'm gone."
"Ysabel," Ray said firmly. "You're not going anywhere."
"Oh, I am, too. Look at me. Don't worry. I'm a little sad about it, because I'll miss all of you. But I'm not scared."
"And anyway," Ray went on, "do you really think anyone who has ever known you could possibly forget you?"
Ysabel laughed and squeezed his hand. Her hand felt as light as a bird's wing. "You're a charmer, aren't you? If I didn't have Keith…" She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. "You could be my boyfriend."
"I'd like that," Ray said. He held up the basket she had given him, admiring the workmanship. It was naturally colored, the tan of the main material, which Ray knew was some kind of desert plant, with darker browns and blacks from other local plants, all in a precise pattern of jagged lines and occasional swooping arcs. "It's beautiful. Like its maker. "
"Speaking of beauty. Ray…"
"Yes?"
"Tonight Keith and I are going on one of those dinner cruises, out on Lake Mead. That's one of my favorite places, and I want to feel all that water under me one more time, and look out at the dry desert hills in the setting sun. Will you come with us, Ray?"
"I would be delighted to."
She clapped her hands together, almost childlike in her glee. "Oh, goody!'
"If I can," Ray added. "I'm working today, and it has already been a very long day. But if I can get there in time, I'll meet you at the dock."
"You'll try?"
"I'll try. I promise."
"That's the best you can do. Thank you, Ray. And thank you for accepting the basket. I hope you like it."
"Better than that," he said. "I absolutely love it."
Aguirre drove Brass to Grey Rock Tobacco, the reservation's original smoke shop. It was off Interstate 15, visible from the freeway, and Brass knew from experience that there had been billboards along the side of the road for ages promoting it. He had never bothered to stop, but he knew the appeal was that, as a sovereign nation, the reservation didn't have to charge the same state excise taxes that off-reservation stores did. As a result, they could undercut the prices people paid in Las Vegas, and they had always done a brisk business.
On the way, Aguirre's police radio crackled with new information, none of it good. Shots had been fired at a recreation center. Someone at a public swimming pool had been stabbed three times. Two store windows had been shattered by flung bricks. Fights were breaking out across the reservation, it seemed, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother in some cases. Police and emergency services were being stretched thin.
"Can you afford the time to keep looking with me?" Brass asked.
"I can't afford not to. We need to find a way to bring a peaceful end to all this."
"It's not always this way, is it?"
"What, you think we're living in the Wild West?" Aguirre said with a not-so-nice laugh. "'Course not. It's all about Domingo. Like him or not, he was a stabilizing influence, because he held the power, and everybody knew it. With him out of the way, people are drawing up new sides or cementing their old ones. Add to that the shooting of Meoqui and his friends, and… well, there's a lot of tension around here today. What was it that guy in L.A. said? 'Can't we all just get along?' Something like that."
"Rodney King," Brass said, remembering the African-American motorist pulled over and beaten by white highway patrol officers in Los Angeles. The acquittal of the officers in that case had touched off citywide riots in which fifty-one people died. Brass hoped the current situation didn't get anywhere near that bad. "Guy might have had a point."
"Ruben Solis and Shep Moran hang out here a lot of the time," Aguirre said as they approached the smoke shop. "Domingo always had a soft spot for this place, even after the bigger, more profitable businesses got up and running. He had kind of a clubhouse in back, lots of his guys would come around, smoking and telling lies, you know."
"You think Solis is there now?"
"I don't know," Aguirre replied. "He doesn't have Domingo to follow around anymore, but my guess is that the people who were close to him are going to want to be together today. This is one of the places they might be."
The smoke shop had been built in the early 1960s but remodeled in the late 1970s. It was an adobe structure, a single story on the wings but a big A-shaped peak in the middle that must have soared two stories higher. The A was all windows, offering clear views of the sales area inside, its shelves stacked high with cigarette cartons. The adobe section to the left of the A had four vertical window slits, while the walls of the section to the right were smooth and solid.
Brass and Aguirre got out of the Jeep and walked casually to the front door, just two guys getting out of an official tribal police vehicle and going in for some butts. Inside, pink neon script identified a cigar room off to the left. On the right, the door into the solid section on the other side was unmarked.
When Aguirre pushed the front door open, an electronic tone sounded. A Native American woman tossed them a friendly look from behind the sales counter. She wore a black Western-style shirt with embroidered cigarettes on it, smoke wafting up her shoulders in ornate curlicues. "Hi there, welcome to Grey Rock Tobacco," she said. "If there's anything I can help you find, just let me know."
Aguirre snatched his straw cowboy hat off and tilted his head toward the unmarked door. "We'll be in there," he said.
The woman's welcoming expression vanished. "I'm sorry, that's -"
Aguirre tapped the badge on his chest and made for the door. As he reached it, a buzzing noise sounded, the young lady at the desk passing them through without further argument. Aguirre yanked the door open, and a cloud of smoke welled out. Brass quickly sucked in a deep breath of clean air and waded into the miasma.
He had entered a stockroom, lined with steel shelving units holding cardboard cartons of tobacco products. Most of them had familiar printed logos, but there were also brand names Brass didn't know and others that weren't identified at all.
In the middle of the room were a table and chairs and beyond them a separate seating area with a plush sofa and a couple more chairs, arranged around a low table. Ashtrays were everywhere, most of them full to overflowing.
Half a dozen Native American men glared at the doorway as the two cops entered. They were older than the men Brass had seen at Torres's house, strands of silver icing their black hair in places, lined faces frowning. Brass noticed a lot of jewelry, most of it silver and turquoise but some also featuring accents of red coral, bone, and other materials.
"This is a private area, Richie," one of them said. Deep furrows ran from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth, as if sliced there by a carving knife. "You know that. You have a warrant?"
"We're looking for Ruben Solis and Shep Moran," Aguirre said. "Trying to help them dodge some trouble. Don't need a warrant for that."
The man shrugged. "You see 'em here?"
Aguirre made a show of looking around. "No, I sure don't. So maybe you can tell me where they are."
"I run into 'em, I'll tell them you're looking. Maybe they'll give you a call."
"That would be good," Aguirre said. "There's a lot of bad stuff going down around here, Russell. You know I don't have to tell you."
"I know a great man was killed," Russell said. The other men murmured agreement. Most of them didn't look directly at Brass, but he knew he was being sized up just the same.