Privileged to Kill Read Free Page B

“You bought that guy dinner?”
    “Yes,” I whispered back.
    “Jesus Christ. Saint Gastner to the rescue. And cigarettes, too?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll bet you ten bucks that’s the last you’ll ever see of that money.”
    “It wasn’t a loan, Marty.”
    Holman shook his head and looked out the window. Crocker’s bike was on the opposite side of the building, or the sheriff would have been watching his every move.
    “I wonder where a guy like that goes. I mean, where he’s going. And why. Why the hell doesn’t he just get a job somewhere? He reminds me of all those bums you see on the street corners in the city—like up in Albuquerque. ‘Will work for food.’ And you know they probably never intend to do an honest day’s work in their lives.”
    “Probably not.”
    “And you’re not curious about where he’s headed? Who he is? Why he’s just tramping around?”
    “No. It’s his life. There’s no law that says he has to stay in one spot and build a nest.”
    “Build a nest, shit.” Holman looked across what little we could see of the dining room from the alcove. “Maybe I should just go out and ask him.”
    “Spare the man, Martin. He can’t vote in this county anyway.”
    Holman knew I was joking but he still managed to look hurt.
    “You’ll probably never hear from him again,” he said. “And you’ll never know. I still say he’s probably pushing around eighty pounds of heroin.”
    I saw Shari Chino come around the corner. “No doubt he sells a little now and then to finance new bicycle tires. Hell, why not.” I grinned as Shari set a platter down in front of me. “As long as the chili is hot, that’s all that matters. Thanks, sweetheart.”
    As the aroma rose to clear out my sinuses, all thoughts of Wesley Crocker vanished from my mind. Martin Holman poked tentatively at his dark, generic fried chicken, then looked wistfully across the table at my masterpiece. “Maybe I should have had that,” he said, always willing to admit his shortcomings.
    “Yes, you should have,” I said around a mouthful of green chili enchilada.
    “The heartburn would keep me awake all night,” the sheriff said, and he started to pick some of the hard, grease-embalmed skin from a chicken wing.
    “It’s worth it.” I knew insomnia would keep me awake most of the night anyway. And that was why, eight hours later when the telephone rang at two in the morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table of my old adobe house on the south side of Posadas, burping the aftertaste of my rich chili dinner and drinking coffee. I picked up the receiver, expecting to hear the voice of the sheriff’s department night dispatcher.
    “Sheriff, now I hope you believe me when I tell you I wouldn’t be calling at an hour like this if it wasn’t important.”
    I recognized Wesley Crocker’s quiet, polite voice.

3
    I glanced at the clock over the stove and jotted down the time on the telephone pad just as he added, “This here is Wesley Crocker. You might remember that you gave me a lift into town earlier.”
    At that hour, there was no point in chitchat. He wasn’t calling to thank me again for dinner.
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Crocker?”
    “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
    I briefly wondered why people who called in the middle of the night bothered to say that. “What can I do for you?”
    “Well…” And he stopped talking. I could hear a voice in the background, and then Crocker said, “Yes, sir,” obviously not to me. I waited. The unmistakable crackle of a two-way radio came next, and I knew where Crocker was before he spoke.
    “Sir,” he said, “I’m in kind of some trouble here. I didn’t know who else to call.” He murmured something apologetic that I didn’t catch, then added, “I still have your card, thank the Lord.”
    “Where are you, Mr. Crocker?”
    “I’m…I’m down at the village lockup.” Again I heard a voice in the background and Crocker said to someone else, “Yes, sir.