The woman let out a weird sound, like a long low howl, and dropped the phone. In the background Bobby could hear a TV and some kids yelling. Mrs. Pérez came back. “Señor Mead!” she cried. “I tell you what’s wrong with him! Pache! Pache! Pache!”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Pache, Pache, Pache...”
“He hate Ramón Pache, Señor Mead!”’
“I know he hate Ramón Pache,” Bobby said. “Why he hate him so much?”
“La Estrella bomb!”
“What?”
“La Estrella bomb!”
“La Estrella bomb?”
Mrs. Pérez was crying. “Sí, La Estrella bomb!”
“You mean the restaurant on Flagler Street that got bombed a few weeks ago?”
“Sí, La Estrella bomb! La Estrella owner Juan y Ricardo Azuela. Juan y Ricardo Azuela my Oscar best friend since long time. Since Cuba time. Since Havana time. Then La Estrella bomb. Ricardo die. Juan no legs no more, no eyes no more. Oscar know Ramón Pache done it, want to tell everybody Ramón Pache done it—”
How he know Ramón Pache done it?” Bobby said.
“Ah, Señor Mead, he know, he know! And now he don’t feel good no more. He’s problem come back. No sleep no more, no eat no more. Same 1968. Chicago. Dr. Martinez give him pills. No good. Still no eat no more, no sleep no more. One year with pills no good. St. Louis hospital one year. Then feel good. No pills. Work Pepsi, Texaco, Sears, feel good. Then he’s problem come back again. Get fire. Go to work Kentucky Fry Chicken. Get fire. Hospital one year more. Come to Miami. Feel good. Work Walgreen, Suave Shoe, Firestone, Dixie Ford. Work you. Feel good. No pills. Work hard. Make money.Then La Estrella bomb! He’s problem come back! Make trouble you! Make trouble Dixie Ford! No sleep! No eat! Talk, talk, talk! Pache, Pache, Pache! I think Dixie Ford gonna fire him! You gonna fire him?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “Maybe.”
“Señor Mead, no fire him!” Mrs. Pérez wailed. “Please no fire him!”
“I don’t need this,” Bobby said. “Entiende? I don’t need no more trouble than I already got. Entiende?”
“Please no fire my Oscar, Señor Mead!”
Bobby listened to her sobbing for a minute. “Okay, okay, I no fire him,” he said.
In the office there was a cluttered desk, a swivel chair behind the desk, file cabinets, miscellaneous junk everywhere, four armchairs, all different, two straight-backed chairs, a battered sofa. In one corner there was a small black-and-white TV with the sound off but on the screen a game show. The walls were covered with old calendars, framed city, county and state licenses and permits and a big photomural of the “Grand Opening” of the lot seven years ago. Tacked to the wall behind the swivel chair was a front page of the Miami Herald with a big color picture of a young girl, tanned almost black, barefoot, with dark blond hair hanging down to her hips, wearing cutoff Levi’s shorts, a white T-shirt that was much too small for her and showed off her perfect braless breasts and her flat tanned belly. She stood on the narrow median in the midst of six lanes of traffic on the Dixie Highway, smiling, in the classic flower-girl’s pose, her legs wide apart, one hand on her hip, the other holding a bunch of carnations high over her head.
Bobby sat at his desk, gazing through the open doors at the lot. After a while he took a bottle of Bacardi out of the bottom drawer of the desk and went out and got a Coke from the machine and made himself a rum and Coke. Then he picked up the phone and dialed a number. The number rang ten times before a guy answered it.
“Is Sara Mead around?” Bobby asked.
“No, she ain’t here,” the guy said.
“Do you know where she is?” Bobby said.
The guy made him repeat the question twice. There was a lot of music in the background.
“Do you know where she is?”
“No, I don’t know where she is.”
“Can you tell me when you saw her last?”
“Saw her last? I don’t remember.”
“Listen, this is important,” Bobby said. “I’ve got to get in touch with her. Do you have any idea where I could reach her?”
“Hey!” the guy yelled furiously. “Get the fuck out of my life, will you? Asking me all these fucking questions! Am I asking you all these fucking questions? I don’t even know who the fuck you are? So fuck off!”
Oscar came to work at a quarter of six. He came into the office and said hello to Bobby, but in a voice so low Bobby could barely hear him, and his face didn’t look brown now but gray, and under the eyes it looked bruised and his eyes were misty. After he said hello he went back out and sat on some concrete blocks that had been piled up against the wall near the door of the garage and he seemed to have shrunk up like a wet dog inside his crisp khakis. Bobby stood in the doorway of the office and looked at Oscar. Jerry and Daryle came out of the garage, where they had been washing up and putting on their street clothes preparatory to going home. They both said hello to Oscar, and he nodded but didn’t look at them. They came over to Bobby and Jerry gestured with his head back toward Oscar.
“He looks like he don’t feel good, Bobby,” he said.
“Yeah, I saw him,” Bobby said.
Jerry and Daryle got into their cars and left, and Bobby went over to Oscar.
“Qué tal, chico?” he said.
Oscar shrugged.
“Are you okay?” Bobby said.
“Yeah, I’m okay, Bobby,” Oscar said.
Bobby didn’t know what to do, so he went back in the office and had another rum and Coke. Then a divorced guy who had been sent by a mutual friend arrived and Bobby spent over an hour trying to work out a deal for him. The guy had lost his job and his car and everything else because of the divorce and now his credit was so bad he couldn’t even get financing for a junker. So Bobby sat there with him, smoking, talking to the guy, squinting in the glare of the overhead light, manipulating the figures over and over again, backwards and forwards, and always coming up with the same answer, no way, and with his stomach killing him because he knew that the net result of all this would probably be that one way or another it was going to cost him money, which was almost always the way it turned out when his friends sent him business, which was why he wished to Christ they wouldn’t send him business.
He finally got rid of the guy by telling him that he would call a private party in the morning who might make him a loan on a car if he, Bobby, would guarantee it, which he said he would do as a favor to the mutual friend, so the guy went away, more or less happy, leaving Bobby with the pain in his stomach, thinking about Oscar again.
He went outside and looked around for Oscar, and saw him now over on the far side of the lot leaning against the front fender of Today’s Special. It was dark now and the wind had shifted around to the northeast and it was turning cold after all.
Oscar had turned on the lights, and the bare white bulbs that hung from the wires crisscrossing the lot danced in the wind. This was always a favorite time of day for Bobby. Everything always looked so much better in the evening under the lights. The cars glistened. You couldn’t see so clearly now all the dings and the scratches and the wrinkles and the rust and the peeling chrome and the recapped tires and the cheap paint jobs, and even the interiors of the cars looked plush and sexy the way they had looked when the cars had been new. Even the junkers improved — they looked devil-may-care, and the big striped umbrella in the middle of the front line of cars didn’t show all the ripped seams and frayed edges in this light, and it wasn’t so obvious that the two buildings on the lot, the office and the garage, were about ready for condemnation.