The Man Who Killed His Brother Chapter 5

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W.B.
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The Man Who Killed His Brother Chapter 5

Post by W.B. »

Hmm, seems I can post as a sticky. I'll try that.

...but Brew doesn't go drinking. In chapter 5 we see him do some detecting. He visits Manolo, a kind of later-day oracle who soaks up rumors and information and secrets, and
if you asked him the right questions--or asked them the right way, or maybe if he trusted you for some reason--he'd tell you one or two of them.
The question he has "is the kind of question you had to ask at night," since
"people like Manolo don't exist during the day. When the sun comes up, they evaporate, and all you can find of them is what they leave behind--a rank, sodden body snoring away like a ruin on a pallet full of fleas somewhere, as empty of answers as an old can of beer.
The Chicano "old city" world is portrayed quite differently from the daylit Anglo city. In a fantasy novel it might be some scary forest where the hero has to go to get knowledge; as it is, it's a differnt culture, which Brew has an "in" with because of his knowledge of it, and the hub of Puerta del Sol's criminal underworld. (We also get a brief passing mention of El Senor.)

Before we get any farther in the plot, we have Brew's first real mention of his intuition (though I found the idea of not,/i] thinking to compare the watermarks is a bit much).
I'm not like Ginny--I'm not a puzzle solver. For instance, it might never have occurred to me to compare the watermarks on those two notes. My brain doesn't work that way. I get where I'm going--wherever that is--by intuition and information.


While I'm at it, I may as well mention (though it may be pretty well-known) that puerta del sol means "door to the sun." Appropriate for such a bright place, and ironically, Brew, who functions poorly in the daytime and does better by night, does his thinking in bright flashes of insight. So if there is any coherent imagery throughout, I'd vote for dark/light.

Anyway, after a page of build-up, Brew doesn't make it to Manolo's. Brew hears a scream and heads towards it, neglecting to pull out his gun.
("When I'm as big as I am, you get in the habit of thinking you don't need a weapon." Anyway, I had good reason not to trust the way I handle a gun"--again, hitting himself over his head with guilt)
Brew finds a man trying to rape a woman. The ensuing fight is cathartic for him, which shows his trademark tendency to bull-rush into things.
Frustration and dread and all the long pain of trying to fight my way off the stuff came to a head in a second, and I went happily crazy.


The man is knocked out, Brew sees the woman's a Chicano (again, a kind of mythic quality to Chicanos: "when they stop being kids the loo too old for their years, and later on they look too young"), speaks to her in Spanish, gets her name (Teresa), and she replies in English with spunk that Brew likes. Turns out the man's a tourist who followed her, Brew drags him up and they find a phone in a bar (Brew doesn't like being that close to so many bottles) and call the police. The police, though, aren't eager to arrest the man, but Brew won't back off.

At the police building (which is just as bad at night as day) the tourist is taken away by paramedics, since he's hurt rather badly, and the police question Brew and Teresa, giving them every opportunity, as Brew notes, to drop the charge. Teresa emerges from a questioning by a Captain Carson looking shellshocked. Brew promises her he'll to see the man in jail as she is led away. Carson begins questioning Brew. Brew believes Carson said that he, Brew, wouldn't testify for Teresa, but Carson rejoins, saying Brew won't be able to testify anyway, as he's a known alcoholic who was outside a bar at the time. Brew, though, calls his bluff--Carson hasn't given him a blood alcohol test. A very uncordial conversation follows.

The tourist is from Cleveland--this has got to be a Cleveland joke--his kidney may be ruptured, and Carson tells the kind of story Encino would expect--Teresa was "just another Mex chippy who tried to back out when she didn't get enough money," and Brew threatens to go to the symathetic D.A. if the case isn't acted on ("But even if she is 'just another Mex chippy' it doesn't make any difference. She was being raped!").

Not unlike Covenant's sympathy for "broken things," Brew is instinctively and immediately protective of anything in need of help, and he's furious at Carson. But, the moral of the chapter is that it's good to help others, because before he can storm out of the building, Brew is stopped by another officer who tells him that Encino wants to see him (Encino is working very long hours, incidentially, it's after dark and he's been there since the morning, I belive). On the way to Encino's office, Brew finds a thank-you note in his jacket from Teresa.

That made a differnce somehow. All of a sudden, Carson didn't seem to be worth the emotion I was spending on him.


Encino knows what Brew did, and asks him what he told Carson. Brew makes Encino's day by telling him that he told Carson to "blow it out his ass," and Encino apologizes for being unjust, addressing him as "Senor Axbrewder" (there's a kind of courtly aspect to the dialogue SRD gives to Hispanic characters). He had been thinking about a connection between Carol and Alathea's cases and the ol' "I can't let you read these old cases, but I can leave you alone with them" trick is played. A nice little moment:
"I must leave the office for a short time. How can I know what goes on behind my back? Please, use my desk."


Brew reads the seven files left to him.
By the time I finished, I was dripping sweat on his blotter. My shirt was soaked and sticking to my back, along with most of my jacket. I didn't ask Encino's permission to use his phone--I just grabbed it and dialed as well as I could with my hands shaking like cowards.


Brew tells Ginny that there were seven other missing girls, that Carol Christie didn't drown, but OD'd on heroine, and can't bring himself to say anything else. Ginny is on her way to the station.

Okay...that was long and a ton of summary, but the chapter seems basically concerned with advancing the plot. ...aside from further expanding on the way SRD describes Chicanos. We also get a chance to see Brew acting on his own without Ginny, see his sense of moral outrage at work, and his generally good relationship with Chicanos is shown more.
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Re: The Man Who Killed His Brother Chapter 5

Post by Dragonlily »

W.B. wrote:Hmm, seems I can post as a sticky. I'll try that.
We're putting the three most recent chapters as stickies. :)

W.B., I can't read these through yet because I have to get to work, but I wanted to say thanks. More later. 8)
"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." -- Roger Penrose
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Post by Dragonlily »

I have to quote this paragraph again, because the imagery is so perfect:
Brew wrote:People like old Manolo don’t exist during the day. When the sun comes up, they evaporate, and all you can find of them is what they leave behind – a rank, sodden body snoring away like a ruin on a pallet full of fleas somewhere, as empty of answers as an old beer can.
Here is Brew's determination -- and SRD's determination -- to bring down the rapist:
Brew wrote:As long as Teresa had her chin up, I didn’t intend to let anything get in my way. I knew it could turn out to be messy, but I didn’t care.
I have to say, this is a rather cavalier brush-by of how extremely messy it could get for for Teresa. Like shattering her life, maybe? Brew is just a casual observer by comparison to what a court fight would do to Teresa. It's only surprising we don't see more signs of her wavering.
W.B. wrote:(Encino is working very long hours, incidentially, it's after dark and he's been there since the morning, I belive).
In this case SRD has given us the times of day. At the beginning of Ch4, Brew says it is after 4 PM by the time they get back to Lona's to get her note from Alathea. From there they go to Missing Persons and meet Encino for the first time. So I think we can safely say Encino is working the late shift.

Ch5 ends with a cliffhanger that would do justice to an old-time radio show:
Brew wrote:I brushed past [Ginny's] anxiety. “I’m at Missing Persons. You’ve got to get down here.”
It continues building in a very fast crescendo. By the time I reached this paragraph I was nearly shaking:
Brew wrote:I pushed the phone against the side of my head as hard as I could, trying to make that damn inanimate plastic steady me. I wanted to howl, but I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.
Waiting for Ginny, Brew is left with nothing between himself and visions of Alathea's probable fate.
"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." -- Roger Penrose
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Post by W.B. »

I have to say, this is a rather cavalier brush-by of how extremely messy it could get for for Teresa. Like shattering her life, maybe? Brew is just a casual observer by comparison to what a court fight would do to Teresa. It's only surprising we don't see more signs of her wavering.
Agreed. I am also still not sure what to make of SRD's reliance on rape, or the suggestion of it, as a plot element.
In this case SRD has given us the times of day. At the beginning of Ch4, Brew says it is after 4 PM
Ah-ha, thanks!
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Post by kastenessen »

Again, :D W.B.

[b]W.B. wrote:[/b]
[quote]...Puerta del Sol means "door to the sun". Appropriate for such a bright place, and ironocally, Brew who functions poorly in the daytime and does better by night, does his thinking in bright flashes of insight. So if there is any coherent imagery throughout, I'd vote for dark/light.[/quote]

Very good observations about the "flashes of insight" and "dark/light". Never made that connection...and then it becomes interesting to know that the original title of this book was "City of day/City of Night.

[quote]I was ecstatic with rage-the pressure inside me was exploding. Frustration and dread and all the long pain of trying to fight my way off the stuff came to a head in a second, and I went happily crazy.[/quote]

White Gold?! :D

And Captain Cason, here we meet him for the first time, must be one of the worst cops ever portrayed. What an ugly character.

Story picking up speed now...

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Post by W.B. »

the original title of this book was "City of day/City of Night.
Interesting! And good point about the "white gold" moment. Heck, it's hard to find stuff that doesn't relate to TCTC.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Stephen R. Donaldson Ate My Dictionary
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