Holy Guacamole!

by Nancy Fairbanks

  “It’s a terrible thing—Vladik being murdered,” I said in introduction to my questions. “Being fellow country-women, did you know the names of his friends or, perhaps more important, the names of his enemies?”

  “Murdered?” cried Polya.

  “He is getting sick and dying,” Irina chimed in. “Who would be murdering Vladik?”

  “Someone who didn’t like him, I suppose,” I replied, astonished that they didn’t know what had happened to their mentor, or at least what Lieutenant Vallejo thought had happened to him. Didn’t they read the newspaper? Perhaps it was something else that wasn’t part of their lives since they had moved to this country. “Considering how he treated you girls, he doesn’t seem to have been a very nice person. Probably lots of people hated him.”

  “No one hate Vladik,” said Polya solemnly. “For us, he is our only friend in U.S. Is being wonderful opera producer. He is writing the trio for us. Maybe Verdi could writing that, and Vladik, but nobody else. Who would be not liking Vladik?” She was astonished. “Maybe we should now going to trailer. Having homework before go to work, and must finding boy to push car so can be driving to trailer. Many thanks for wonderful lunch and so pretty gifts. Can you taking us back to university? We are not having money for bus.”

  “Of course,” I replied. “And I’ll give you a push. Obviously your battery needs to be recharged or replaced.” I know about such things because when Jason and I got married, we had a car like that. Our first apartment, when Jason became an assistant professor, had to be on a hill so that he could push the car while I sat inside and popped the clutch, a responsibility that made me very nervous, especially with a baby in the back seat. Then I’d drop Jason off and pray that the car would make it home. A colleague drove him home, so I never knew when he’d be arriving. After I became pregnant with Gwen, Jason ran to school and got a ride home. Adventuresome days.

  I did manage to get the girls, in their dreadful, rusted-out car, started. Obviously it had begun life somewhere other than El Paso, where nothing rusts, because rust requires moisture. And thinking about how frightened I’d been, driving home with the baby as a young woman, I offered to follow them to be sure they actually got all the way to their trailer. This offer wasn’t completely altruistic. I’d learned hardly anything from them and hoped to give it one last try at the trailer park. They seemed grateful for the offer, rather than suspicious of my motives, so perhaps they weren’t hiding anything. How they could not hate their late mentor I couldn’t imagine, but they didn’t seem to. Polya had cried quietly all the way to the university, murmuring his name from time to time, while Irina, in the back seat, patted her on the shoulder and said occasionally, “Maybe Boris Ignatenko just forget to give us money. We asking tonight.”

  “Then maybe we having no job either.”

  “What good is job with no food or gas?” Irina retorted, and Polya began to cry again.

  As I followed them to the trailer park, which was on the Westside but not in any area I’d visited, I wondered what they were saying to each other in the privacy of their rattletrap vehicle. Probably deciding how to get rid of me as quickly as possible.

  Imagine my surprise when we arrived. They invited me in for tea. Their trailer was as rusty as their car, with a dripping evaporative cooler sagging from a window outside and shabby Salvation Army-genre furniture inside. However, it was clean. It looked dreadful but rigorously scrubbed. The tea, served in jelly glasses, was hot and very, very strong, but I managed to sip it, no small triumph when the glass was blistering my fingers and the liquid my tongue.

  On further questioning, both girls insisted that Vladik had no enemies. As for friends, they suggested that he must have been friendly with his fellow professors, and each girl named several with whom she had classes. Then Irina had an inspiration. “Boris Stepanovich lgnatenko. He and Vladik knowing each other in Russia before, always talking and drinking vodka when Vladik coming to club.”

  “They are being business partners of Brazen Babes,” Polya added. “Boris Stepanovich is knowing if Vladik having other friends. You asking Boris Stepanovich. He not knowing Vladik maybe be murder. Maybe you telling him, not us? Is bad we must telling him we need money for eating and gasses. He seeming happy to have our dancing money. Maybe not liking give some back.”

  “How much do you make?” I asked.

  Both girls shrugged. “Money for dancing,” said Irina.

  “Money men is tucking in our strings,” said Polya. “Is much money, I think. What is called tips. Pretty soon maybe we have paying back and keeping it.”

  I really didn’t want to go to a place called Brazen Babes to talk to Mr. Boris Stepanovich Ignatenko. My only contact with exotic dancing had been with a tassel twirler in New Orleans, who sat down at a table full of chemists (and me) and chatted while she drank hot buttered rum at our expense. The rum was my suggestion, and I believe she was reprimanded for not ordering champagne.

  Having extracted all the information I could, I thanked the girls for their hospitality, they thanked me for “food and fishes,” and I left.

  I didn’t do too well getting back into familiar territory, but once I did, I decided to make a last stop in the day’s investigation. I needed to check out the alibi of Professor Brandon Collins at Jerk’s, not a very prepossessing name, but he had felt that it matched his status at the time he went there.

  Jerk’s seemed a presentable enough place if you like neon beer signs and flocks of TVs turned to sports channels. There were few customers that time of afternoon, and it was hard to imagine it full of reeling drunks, which was how the geology professor had described himself. I did note that the customers at the bar were students, or so I assumed. If that was so at night as well, Professor Collins had set a very bad example for young men of college age. I went to the cash register and asked the waitress manning it if she had been here on Saturday night around midnight. She hadn’t, but said the boss would have been. He was always around.

  She summoned him, and perhaps taking me for someone who wanted to give a party for a son, he told me that he had a back room for private functions, keg parties and the like. I had to disappoint him in that respect, but he took it well and did, in fact, remember Brandon Collins.

  “Big guy. Looked like someone who might be in from working on an oil rig, except that we don’t have oil rigs around here. Wanted to arm wrestle all the kids—for money, no less. He was winning too. He had real impressive arm muscles on him. Course, I had to stop the gambling,” said the manager virtuously. “I imagine there’s some betting going on on the games, but I keep my eyes open. No gambling in Texas, except the little slots and bingo games. Gotta go to Sunland Park across the line in New Mexico for that, horses and a casino at their track. Or over to Juarez. They got the dog races and off-track betting. Used to have gambling at the Tigua casino here in El Paso, but Austin shut them down.

  “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 intereste
d 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

  Jason 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 lik
e 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.”