Free skeletons by Glendon Swarthout Page B

smoke. “It was a bad thing, though—four men executed for a crime the jury had found them innocent of. La Mierda de Dios.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The Shit of God.”
    I was running out of rope. Somewhere, counterpoint to our conversation, was the monotone of a radio dispatcher’s voice moving prowl cars around the county. “Is there much friction here between Chicanos and Anglos?” I asked.
    “Not now. There was in the old days. I was born north of the railroad tracks. We call that place ‘Sal Si Puedes.’ ‘Get Out If You Can.’”
    “And you did.”
    “Over twenty years ago. I was first elected sheriff in 1956, but I was a deputy long before that. The first Mex on this force. Times had changed by then.”
    I stirred. “Well, this has really been a wild-goose chase. It all started when I went out to Kennedy with Tyler to sign for the body.”
    “We shipped it. That is, my department called our mortuary here. They did what they could to make him presentable, then hearsed him to American Airlines in El Paso. Standard procedure.”
    “I don’t know what to tell her—she thinks old Max was murdered.”
    He smiled again. “If a woman wishes to believe something, permit her. She will be contented, and better in bed.”
    That depends, Pingo, I thought, recalling the last night in my apartment, the second sexual round when I had tried to play the man to Tyler’s insatiable girl and completely pooped myself in the process. “Did you know Tyler Vaught?”
    “No. I saw her once—she was very young and came here for the funeral of her grandfather, the old Judge Vaught. She was very beautiful.”
    “She still is. She warned me about you, by the way. She says you’re dangerous.”
    “I am. You can tell.”
    “She claims that if anyone knocked Max off, it really was you.”
    He sobered. “Do you believe it?”
    “Hell no.”
    “Gracias.”
    It was time to go. He rose with me, walked me to the door. I caught a slight limp.
    “You return to New York City now? In that splendid car?”
    “Home sweet home.”
    “My sympathies to your chief of police.”
    “Oh, I forgot. Her other grandfather, the gunslinger— after the 1916 trial he turned up missing, too. Like the Villistas. And the transcripts. Any idea of whatever happened to him?”
    “No. But he lives.”
    “Lives?”
    This time his smile was ironic. “Once a year, on Gold Street. Buell Wood Day.” We shook hands. “Buenos tardes, Mr. Butters.”
    “Tally-ho, Sheriff.”
    “Go back and write your books.”
    “Earn a living.”
    “Make the children happy.”
Tyler:
Why estranged from parents?
Why not tell me mother’s condition?
How came by Buell Wood’s gun?
What’s she got against Pingo?
Judge:
Why not tell me wife in funny farm?
Ditto transcripts gone. He knew.
Why his father’s quote about justice?
Helene:
Why tell elopement tale?
Why evasive about trials?
What put her in funny farm?
Pingo:
Why did Doc Shelley phone him?
Why have me tailed?
Why stick me same room Ramada as Sansom?
Telling me something?
What?
Transcripts:
Why missing?
Any connection Sansom’s death?
Butters:
Why in hell not on way to NYC?
    Because I was dumb, that was why. Because I was about to do the dumbest thing I had ever done in my life or ever would. And because, though I was packed and had credit-carded my bill at the Ramada and could have been en route to El Paso and points east, I sat that night in 112—Sansom’s room—making a damned list of questions that bugged me because I had no answers and letting that damned small, incessant WIND bug me even more. And I was homesick. For the flags on Fifth Avenue and the look of the Algonquin lobby and the X-movie posters on Forty-second and the stink of subway platforms and even the cacophony of garbage cans. For my apartment and typewriter and desk and roomfuls of imaginary kids to read to. And for Frisby, my famous Fly, whom I’d left in midparagraph about to take off for Africa.
    And of course for Tyler. I