Free Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) by Suzy McKee Charnas Page B

would come back here and try to get a bike-ride out of the day anyhow. It wouldn’t trigger an episode, not a little thing like that, just riding around.
    She heard men talking as she neared Fourth. The orange cones had been lined up across the end of Pinto Street and backed up with sawhorses. A car that said “Sheriff” on the side was parked there, and Eddie the cop was leaning against the car and talking with the young men. Blanca moved into the shadow of the Roybals’ twisted salt cedar and listened.
    “I’m telling you,” Eddie was saying patiently, “you can’t do it. Look, the street belongs to the city. You aren’t allowed to just block off a street like that. What if there was a fire or something, and a fire truck needed to get in or the Emergency Rescue people?”
    “We got no fires today and no emergencies except what we’re trying to handle ourselves here,” Jake Maestas said. He had a fierce black mustache and a bandana tied, cholo-style, around his head. “It’s our street. We’re closing it to outsiders today.”
    Eddie, who was short and stocky and crew-cut, pushed his cap back on his head and looked past the young men. “What is it, you having a block-party or something? All you do is, you call the city people and let them know, and everything is okay.”
    Jake said, “But everything is not okay. That’s the point.”
    Ramon Romero said to Martín in a tough voice, “What’s this guy got to do with this anyhow? He’s with the Sheriff, right? I thought we were in the city here, not the county.”
    Ramon was a newcomer, sent down from the mountain village of Truchas to live with his aunt and uncle for a while. He didn’t know Eddie, who so often came by here to drop off Great-Uncle Tilo when he’d found him wandering drunk on Fourth Street.
    Eddie answered for himself. “I know folks on this street and I see these barriers up and I stop, that’s all. I don’t think you want city cops swarming all over the place, do you? Not if you don’t have to. Let’s just talk about this, okay?”
    “That’s what we’re going to do,” Jake said. “I just called the tv news from Mrs. Roybal’s. They said they’ll come up here. We figure if the guys that are after our homes here won’t come to us, we’ll go to them via the media, and we’ll tell them our message: lay off our homes, lay off our street, quit trying to rip us off.”
    “Lay off what?” Eddie said. “What’s going on?”
    “Some kind of scam,” Jake said. “Some guy has been coming around here daytimes, you know, when there’s not too many men around, and hassling people in their homes. I mean telling them, hey lady, I am a city inspector for the zoning up here, and the zone rules are changed because of that new YMCA building going up across the street, so I got to inspect your place and see if it conforms. And then they come back and they go, Hey, your wiring’s no good, or your plumbing’s not up to code, or this or that, so we’re going to have to condemn it. Only this guy is saying he’s got a buyer, somebody who wants to buy your place and put the money in it to bring it up to code. This buyer would buy cheap, but it would still be a better price than the city will give you if they condemn the place, this guy says. And then he goes, don’t tell your neighbors or it’s no deal, my buyer can’t have everybody trying to get him to buy their place at a better price than the city would give. How does all that sound to you, Eddie?”
    Blanca hugged the knobby trunk of the cedar. She liked the way Jake talked, quiet like his brother, but hard, too; no crap.
    Eddie scratched the back of his neck. “Sounds like you got some kind of real problem.”
    Great-Uncle Tilo spoiled it all by moving forward and saying humbly, “We just want to make our statement, Eddie. You can see no harm is being done.”
    “The harm, the only harm,” Jake said, “is being done to us, man. That’s why we’re taking this