Throughout the book, Brew's obedience, almost subservience, to Ginny is emphasized. I kind of see it as a mark of his lack of self-esteem that he's often willing to defer to her, as a way of avoiding responsibility by letting her take charge. But he can be independent, especially when it's night, and he wants to deal with the Hispanic side of the city. Intuition, night, and subcultures are his realm.I'd spent the whole day doing what Ginny wanted me to do. Now I wanted to check out an idea of my own. Manolo was the man who could help me.
Anyway, he finds Manolo by stopping a kid running errands for a numbers racket, and after (in a funny scene) doling out some kind of corny advice
he gets the boy, Pablo to tell him where Manolo is. This exchange with Pablo gets us back in the semi-heroic mode of speech Donaldson uses for his Hispanic characters...for whom honor is not an abstract principle. I think some of the odd syntax ("But a clever boy like Pablo has surely taken some thought on the matter") is a function of illustrating that Brew is not a fluent speaker, but it's not done in such a way to just sound like broken Spanish, and the native-speaking characters have the same patterns of speech.("A man does not run to do the bidding of those who are themselves not men enough to do their own running." Stern Uncle Axbrewder. If Ginny heard me, she would've had real trouble keeping a straight face.)
Brew finds Manolo, and there's some nice imagery. His moustache is like a walrus', and
Old Manolo is like an oracle--there are ceremonies you have to perform if you want answers from him.... Speaking Spanish with him was part of the ritual, like knowing his proper name.
Brew has to be careful not to offend, but he also has to decline to drink with Manolo, which is somewhat humiliating because he has to admit a weakness, but Manolo agrees to speak. Brew tells the story of the disappeared girls, and in return, Manolo tells Brew that the girl, Teresa, he saved from the would-be rapist was Manolo's son's wife's father's sister's daughter (follow all that?). Anyway, the upshot is Manolo owes him (again, the Hispanic concept of honor and debt), but he cannot help Brew; he doesn't know about the missing girls or about the heroin. All he can say is
Even Anglo girls, Manolo insists, would not be "corrupted" by el Senor. Manolo suggests Brew speak with el Senor, and gives Brew the "passowrd," el Senor's full name, but Brew feels this is a dead-end ("that sounded like a polite way of telling me to go to hell"). So, feeling rotten, Brew heads home.There are many drugs, and much passing among hands. But in the matter of heroin, all passing begins and ends in the hands of el Senor. That is his pride, and the source of his great wealth. I do not speak to mislead you. El Senor is a man of honor, placing great value upon his family and his children, and the purity of his daughters. Such corrupting of young girls is a terrible evil, and he would in no way permit it.
He makes it to his apartment's parking lot sober, though, for Alathea's sake, but is met by Acton and some plainclothes cops who rough him up and force him to hand over the girls' letters, which he had still been carrying around. Acton gets in some insults, calls him "Mick" several times (he was friends with Rick, he says), and warns Brew to stay off his case. Despondent, Brew calls Ginny, and she explains Acton learned Brew had the notes in the first place from Stretto. The news doesn't faze Ginny, as she has finished checking with the schools, and found that every girl disappeared at a time when she was scheduled to be alone, and she is now convinced that it was kidnapping, and that the information needed to carry out the abductions had to have come from the school board's files.Now the only things left was to be Ginny's errand boy while she tried to crack this case her own way.... The whole comunity seemed to know that I hadn't been able to get what I needed out of Manolo. When you're in that kind of mood, it's hard to stay away from the stuff. Alcohol is the only magic in the world.
At last kidnapping is thoroughly accepted (it took from Tuesday night to Thursday night, which actually isn't very long, but it felt like forever
), and there is a new avenue of investigation, the school board.
)