“I’m okay,” she said, shrugging us off angrily. Smoothing her dress, as if we’d messed it. “Got a little low blood sugar, that’s all, no big deal, I just got to eat. I brought food from home, but in the bus station someone stole my Tupperware.” The black eyes lifted to Milo. “I want to eat something.”
We drove her to a coffee shop on Santa Monica near La Brea. Dulled gold booths, streaked windows, fried-bacon air, the clash and clatter of silverware scooped into gray plastic tubs by sleepy busboys who looked underage. Milo chose the usual cop’s vantage point at the back of the restaurant. The nearest patrons were a pair of CalTrans workers inhaling the daily steak-and-eggs special heralded by a front-door banner. Loss leader; the price belonged to the fifties. Unlikely to cover the cost of slaughter.
Guillerma Mate ordered a double cheeseburger, fries and a Diet Dr Pepper. Milo told the waitress, “Ham on rye, potato salad, coffee.”
The ambience was doing nothing for my appetite, but I’d put nothing in my stomach since the morning coffee and I asked for a roast-beef dip on French roll, wondering if the meat had Been carved from the budget cows.
The food came quickly. My beef dip was lukewarm and rubbery, and from the way Milo picked, his order was no better. Guillerma Mate ate lustily while trying to maintain dignity, cutting her burger up into small pieces and forking morsels into her mouth with an assembly-line pace. Finishing the sandwich, she forked french fries one at a time, consuming every greasy stick.
She wiped her mouth. Sipped Dr Pepper through two straws. “I feel better. Thanks.”
“Pleasure, ma’am.”
“So who killed Eldon?” she said.
“I wish I knew. This pension—”
“He had two, but I only get one—the five hundred from the reserves. The big one for a couple thousand from the Public Health Service he kept for himself. I don’t think I coulda gotten more out of him. We weren’t even divorced and he was giving me money.” She edged closer across the table. “Did he make more?”
“Ma’am?”
“You know, from all the killing he did?”
“What do you think of all the killing he did?”
“What do I think? Disgusting. Mortal sin—that’s why I don’t go by his name. Had everything changed back to Salcido—he wasn’t even a doctor when we were married. Went to medical school after he walked out. Went down in Mexico, because he was too old for anyplace else. I have friends up in Oakland who know we were married. At my church. But I keep it quiet. It’s embarrassing. Some of them used to tell me to go get a lawyer, Eldon’s rich now, I could get more out of him. I told them it would be sin money. They said I should take it anyway, give it to the church. I don’t know about that—did he leave a will?”
“We haven’t found one yet.”
“So that means I have to go through that thing— probate.”
Milo didn’t answer.
“Actually,” she said, “we did talk in the beginning, Eldon and me. Right after he walked out. But just a few times. Donny and me were in San Diego, and Eldon wasn’t that far, down in Mexico. Then, after he became a doctor, he went up to Oakland to work in a hospital and I did a real stupid thing: I took Donny and we went there, too. I don’t know what I coulda been thinking, maybe now that he was a doctor—it was stupid, but there I was with a boy who didn’t even know his father.”
“Oakland didn’t work out?” I said.
“Oakland worked out, I’m still there. But Eldon didn’t work out. He wouldn’t talk to Donny, wouldn’t even pick him up, look at him. I remember it like yesterday, Eldon in his white coat—that scared Donny and he started screaming, Eldon got mad and yelled at me to get the brat out of there—the whole thing just fell apart.”
She picked at a scrap of lettuce. “I called him a couple more times after that. He wasn’t interested. Refused to visit. Donny’s being born just turned him off like a faucet. So I moved across the bridge to San Francisco, got a job. Funny thing is, a few years later I was back to Oakland ’cause the rent was cheaper, but by that time Eldon was gone and the checks were coming from Arizona, he had some kind of government job doing I don’t know what. Back then’s when I thought of getting a lawyer.”