“I do sell lottery tickets. Be a lot more profitable if Texas would bring in Powerball or one a them big jackpot outfits. You ever seen the lines over in New Mexico when there’s a big jackpot? Half El Paso’s over there, spending their money.”
To avoid being a complete nonparticipant in the conversation, I said, “I remember reading about crowds of New Yorkers going to Greenwich, Connecticut, for lottery tickets. Evidently the Greenwich residents didn’t think lottery-ticket lines fit their upper-class image.”
“Get you a beer, ma’am?” he asked.
“No, thank you. I just drank some very strong Russian tea, so I don’t think I’ll be drinking any more liquid for a while. I did want to ask you if the gentleman we were discussing got very drunk and had to be ejected around midnight.”
“Say, he’s not your husband, is he?”
I laughed. “No, I’m trying to establish an—ah—alibi for him.”
“You’re a private eye, aren’t you? Well, I’ll be damned. Yeah, he was stumbling drunk. Don’t know how that got past me. The kid who was serving him must have been more interested in the football game than his customers. But I wouldn’t say I
ejected
the guy. We try to keep it friendly here. I offered to get him a cab, but he had his mind set on walking. I couldn’t talk him out of it, but at least, he didn’t drive away. His car was still in the lot when we closed, so if he’s up for hurting someone on DWI, well, it wasn’t ’cause I let him drive. Say, he didn’t stumble into traffic and get killed or anything, did he? He said he was going to Kern Place, which meant he’d have to cross North Mesa. I didn’t think that was a good idea, but you can’t stop a guy from walking. No walking-while-intoxicated law that I know about.”
“He’s fine,” I assured the manager. “He walked to a friend’s house and stayed the night. Thank you so much for the information. I hope that I haven’t kept you from your work.”
“Not like we’re doin’ a land-office business right now, ma’am, but things’ll pick up around five, five-thirty.”
In that case, I decided to leave immediately. Not that I said as much to the man. He’d been quite friendly and helpful.
15
On Consulting with an Irritable Spouse
Carolyn
J
ason was not
home when I arrived, but had left an answering-machine message saying he’d return around seven. He sounded rather grumpy. Obviously, he hadn’t really meant for me to visit Professor Collins and had heard that I’d done so today. Well, I’d placate him by cooking something nice for dinner, and in the meantime, maybe I could get hold of the other geologist, Jeremy Totten. Fishing the university phone book out a kitchen drawer, I sat down to look for his numbers. First, the university number.
Happily, he was there, and when I introduced myself, he said, “Right, you’re the lady who thinks Collins killed the opera guy. Well, I can vouch for him from around midnight, well maybe a half hour after that, until we left Monday morning to pick his car up at Jerk’s and head for the department. Frankly, I think he’d have been too drunk to kill anyone before he got to my place, but at least, he’s a responsible kind of guy. He didn’t try to drive. I suppose if your victim was killed early enough and lives around here, Brandon might have staggered to the scene of the crime, finished him off doublequick, and then staggered over to my house. But there was no blood on Brandon. How was the victim killed?”
“Well, several things killed him, Professor Totten, neither of which produced blood. And I do thank you for your input.”
Of course, he could be lying through his teeth, covering up for his colleague, but I hated to think that an academic would do that. As I could come up with no way to check the veracity of Jeremy Totten, I plucked Park Kerr’s
El Paso Chile Company’s Texas Border Cookbook
off the shelf and paged through, looking for something Jason might like. Ha! Green enchiladas. I read through the recipe and discovered that I had many of the ingredients, but not the roasted chicken (the supermarket had that), the canned crushed tomatoes with added paste (Progresso made those—I used the product occasionally in soup), corn tortillas (those had to be reasonably fresh but were available at the market), and lots of cheese.
Making a quick list, I rushed off to the grocery store, bought the extra ingredients, and rushed home. I estimated that I’d be able to produce the enchiladas by the time Jason arrived, not that I’d ever made enchiladas before. Wouldn’t he be surprised! And I certainly hoped that he’d appreciate all the effort. At least I didn’t have to make the tortillas myself—by grinding the corn on a metate, mixing the result with a little water and patting out a round corn cake, then cooking it on a heated stone as Indian women had done for centuries. A Spaniard named de Aguilar, captured by a Mayan chief and rescued by Cortez, told of eating tortillas in 1591. Most Mexican food traces back to Aztec, Mayan, or Pueblo cooking, and flat breads like tortillas have been made for at least five thousand years. There were hundreds of maize varieties under cultivation by the time the Spaniards arrived in the New World.
People who have lived in El Paso a good deal longer than I speak with wistful nostalgia of the enchiladas verde at the Hacienda Restaurant in “the old days.” The restaurant still exists but changed hands several times before my husband and I moved here, so I didn’t expect to sample these warmly remembered delights. Then I found the recipe in the Texas Border Cookbook, a gem available for those who want to cook border cuisine at home. Viva la Tex-Mex! It’s a delicious dish.
As for the restaurant, I’ve been there and found it most interesting. It was originally the adobe “mansion” of the Anglo pioneer and Mexican War veteran Simeon Hart. He married Jesusita Siqueiros, after she nursed him back to health from his war wounds, and founded the first flour mill (1849) on the north side of the river where there was a waterfall. No doubt he had some help from her wealthy father in Mexico, who owned a flour mill himself, not to mention a number of other things. Hart’s adobe house was built several years after the mill and was much admired by visitors. It even had a library. In a family picture from 1873, I count 7 children and Simeon; Jesusita had died in 1870. Juan, the second eldest of the four sons, founded the El Paso Times. His father made a lot of money selling flour to the army, beginning in 1850, and died in 1874.
The restaurant today has long, narrow rooms on the east and south sides that may have been verandas at some time and many smaller rooms inside. In 1880 the government bought Hart’s mill and established Fort Bliss there. The water was muddy and caused dysentery, and the soldiers described the place as, “Dismal, dirty, hot, crowded, and full of rattlesnakes.” The old officers quarters are now tenements and line the road to the restaurant, which is tucked down below the highway and has a long stretch of wild grass leading to the border. The Hacienda breathes history and is a delight to visit.
Carolyn Blue, “Have Fork, Will Travel,” Denver Times.
I slaved for several hours, listening to the news, as I prepared the green chicken enchiladas. My husband arrived just as I was drawing the baking dish from the oven. “I can’t believe it,” he said, nose raised appreciatively in the air. “You’ve been cooking.”
Not only that, but I was still wearing my going-out-to-lunch clothes protected by a ruffled apron. I transferred the enchiladas to heated plates, garnished them with shredded romaine, and carried them into the dining room. Then I took a dish of canned, refried beans from the microwave. Pace may be the big salsa provider from San Antonio, but El Paso has its own factories. From the 1940s Mountain Pass and Old El Paso brands produced canned pinto beans and other Mexican food favorites to comfort El Pasoans both locally and those away from home. After growing into the biggest Tex-Mex cannery in the country, the brands were sold to Pet.
With the enchiladas and beans on the table and margaritas from the refrigerator, we were ready to eat. “What’s the occasion?” Jason asked, eyeing my culinary efforts.
“I’m trying out a new cookbook,” I replied. I couldn’t very well say,
I’m buttering you up so that I can ask your advice on what should be done about the Russian girls.
That would come after the first margarita and first helping of enchiladas, which Jason, thank goodness, thought were very good. In the meantime, I told him that I’d been reading El Paso history and mentioned the powder worn by the ladies of the haciendas at fiestas during the Spanish colonial period. “Their faces were described as glowing lavender white in the candlelight, and their face powder was called ‘Mexican white lead’ or something like that. Of course, I immediately thought of you, lead being toxic. Do you think face powder could lead to lead poisoning?” I asked.
Jason was intrigued and discussed the subject at length. I’m not sure what he decided because I was nervously anticipating the subject I planned to bring up after a few more conversational diversions.
“Oh, I read a delicious UTEP story,” I said, once he’d wound down about toxic face powder. “You know the statue on Mount Cristo Rey? It was done in 1938 by a Spanish sculptor named Urbici Soler. He taught at the university for several years after he finished his statue of Christ, but it seems that he had his classes doing nudes, and the president didn’t like it.
His
name was Wiggins. He asked Soler if the nudes couldn’t be, at the least, half covered, and the sculptor asked, ‘Which half?’ ”
Jason chuckled, so I told him another story. “Did you know that there was an opera house here from 1887 to 1905, when it burned down? The Myar Opera House. Quite impressive looking—Renaissance in style, and inside it had a chandelier, a blue dome, paintings, frescoes, and tapestries. There’s a newspaper article praising the opera house, especially their policy of confining prostitutes to the balcony.”
Jason asked what operas they’d put on, but I couldn’t give him any examples because none were mentioned. The only performance I knew about was a Dumas play,
Monte Cristo
, with which they opened. I did mention a concert by John McCormack in the ’30s. He’d gone to Juarez and come back so drunk or hungover, I wasn’t sure which, that he had to lean on the piano to keep himself upright. “Oh, and Arturo Rubenstein came here in that period too,” I added, “but the sirens of fire engines and a noisy initiation ceremony in the basement at Liberty Hall drowned him out, and he never came back.”
“And now all visiting artists have to contend with,” said my husband, “are cell phones, people who come in late, and an audience that always claps in the wrong places.”
We both laughed companionably, and I helped him to two more enchiladas and another margarita, thinking,
Well, get on with it, Carolyn
.
“I took the two Russian girls to lunch today. You remember the singers in the witches’ trio? Poor things. I thought they would be feeling very lonely and sad over the death of their sponsor.”
“That was a nice thing to do,” my husband replied, scooping up a long green chile dripping with cheese. “How are they doing?”
“Well, I made some very disturbing discoveries about Vladik and those girls. I know something has to be done, but I have no idea what. Maybe you can suggest something.”
“Oh God, don’t tell me he’s gotten one of them pregnant. I could have kicked him while he was talking about the breasts of the witches. By the end of the evening everyone at the party had been told what he said and complained to me or to Howard or both of us.”
“There’s worse,” I assured him. “It seems that when he brought Polya and Irina over here to study, he told them they’d have to take jobs to pay him back for—I don’t know—their transportation or something.”
Jason shrugged. “Most of our students have jobs.”
“Not in strip clubs with their salary and tips going into a professor’s pocket. He evidently provided them with a trailer to live in, a car that barely runs, some second-hand clothes, and money for gas and food. He kept everything else they made. Now they’re terrified. The partner in the club has said that they now owe him the money, but he’s not giving them living expenses.”
Jason was staring at me, aghast.
“They’re little better than slaves, Jason, and they had no idea what they were getting into when they came here. Now they’re trapped.”
Jason put down his fork. “That bastard.”
“Jason, your language,” I protested.
“Right.” He picked up his fork and began to eat. And think. I can always tell when Jason is thinking. He has a certain expression. He finished off his enchilada and drained his margarita. I put more food on his plate and filled his glass. Thank goodness, I had more left in the pitcher. “I really like these chicken enchiladas,” he mumbled. “When did you decide to try cooking Mexican food?”
“I’m going to do some columns on Tex-Mex cuisine.”
“Good idea.” He sipped his margarita. “This mess with the Russian girls is going to blow up in our faces, you know. It’s bound to come out.”
I nodded.
“So the best thing is to take care of it before the scandal hits.”
“How?” I asked.
Jason groaned. “I really hate to get mixed up in this.”
“Maybe I can take care of it. If you tell me what to do.”
“Maybe you could,” he replied thoughtfully. “I think—” He paused and organized his thoughts. “Since you found out about this, you could go to the chairman of the Music Department and explain the whole thing to him. Then while he’s reeling from the implications and the probable scandal, you can suggest that, to avoid trouble for the university, he should provide the girls with scholarships to finish out the year. They’ve got good voices, after all. He or his dean ought to be able to scrape up the money.”
“They’ll need jobs too,” I said, “unless the scholarships are awfully generous. And considering the budget shortfalls this year—”
“Right. Money is tight everywhere. Okay, there may be some jobs open on campus, but I doubt it. Maybe we can talk some members of Opera at the Pass into giving the girls jobs. Without explaining where they’ve been working up to now. But, damn it, they probably don’t have work visas.”