“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.”
We stared at each other, perplexed. “They only mentioned student visas,” I admitted. “But gracious, Jason, there are Mexican workers all over the city who probably don’t have green cards. They cross the river with something called a mica. It’s a visitor’s permit that allows them to stay for seventy-two hours. Then they work instead of going shopping or visiting relatives. Surely someone would like to hire a nice Russian girl as a—I don’t know—nanny or something. Maybe one of the maquiladoras needs a Russian translator. Anyway, I’ll go see the music chairman tomorrow. What’s he like?”
“Temperamental,” said my husband. “Volatile.”
“Well, that sounds like fun.” I sighed and brought in some vanilla ice cream on which I’d splashed a Mexican coffee liqueur and scattered chopped pecans.
“And Carolyn, much as I appreciate this dinner, I rather suspect that you took those two girls out to lunch to see if they could figure out who killed Vladik and then softened me up so you could bring up what we should do about them.”
There are drawbacks to marrying an intelligent man. Such men tend to see through one’s little attempts at manipulation.
“By the way, I have to fly to Austin tomorrow for a few days. I’ll call you tomorrow night when I get a place to stay, and you can tell me how Dr. Tigranian reacted to the news about his Russian students.”
Green Enchiladas a la Hacienda
• Discard the skin from a roasted chicken from the supermarket, pull the meat from the bones, and shred it, using two forks.
• In the open flame of a gas burner or under a preheated broiler, roast 9 long green chiles, turning them, until they are lightly but evenly charred. Steam the chiles in a paper bag, or in a bowl, covered with a plate, until cool. Rub away the burned peel. Stem and seed the chiles and cut them into ¼-inch wide strips. Or if you live in the Southwest and your supermarket has rotating, charring ovens to roast chiles after the chile harvest, you can peel those as above, freeze them, and use them all winter and for this dish.
• Position a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat to 375°F.
• In a medium saucepan over low heat, warm 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add ½ cup from 1¼ cups finely chopped onion, 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced, and ½ teaspoon dried, crumbled oregano. Cook, covered, stirring once or twice, for 10 minutes. Stir in 1½ cups canned chicken broth and 1¼ cups canned crushed tomatoes with added puree. Chop enough chile strips to equal ½ cup. Add both chopped and whole chiles to the saucepan, stir in 1 teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil. Lower heat, partially cover, and simmer, stirring once or twice, for 10 minutes. Adjust the seasoning.
• In a deep skillet, warm about ½ inch corn oil (1½ cups) over medium heat. Using tongs, immerse 12 6-inch corn tortillas one at a time in the oil; turn them, then transfer them to absorbent paper. The tortillas should be in the oil no more than a few seconds, and the oil should be hot enough to soften the tortillas but not so hot that the edges begin to crisp.
• Spread about ¾ cup of the sauce in the bottom of a large, shallow baking dish (big enough to comfortably hold 12 rolled and filled enchiladas. Or use 4 individual heatproof serving dishes.)
• Using tongs, dip a tortilla into the hot sauce; then lay the tortilla on a plate. Spread about cup of shredded chicken across the lower third of the tortilla. Season meat lightly with salt, sprinkle it with about 1 tablespoon of remaining onions, and top it with about 2½ tablespoons grated cheese (from 3 cups, about 12 oz. grated Monterey Jack cheese or medium-sharp cheddar or combination of both). Roll the enchilada and lay it, seam-side down, in the baking dish. Repeat with the remaining tortillas, chicken, onions, and cheese, leaving about ¾ cup grated cheese. Drizzle the remaining sauce evenly over the enchiladas and sprinkle them with the remaining cheese.
• Bake 12 minutes or until the enchiladas are heated through, the cheese is melted, and the sauce is bubbling. With a wide spatula, transfer the enchiladas from the large baking dish to heated plates, or the oven-plates from the oven, garnish them with 2 cups shredded romaine, and serve immediately.
Serves 4.
Permission to reprint this recipe was given by W. Park Kerr and Norma Kerr, authors of the El Paso Chile Co
mpany’s Texas Border Cookbook, which I recommend highly to lovers of Mexican food, or even to those who’ve never had it but want to experiment.
Carolyn Blue, “Have Fork, Will Travel,”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
16
Approaching Brazen Babes
Carolyn
Jason packed his suitcase and then went to bed immediately after dinner, leaving me with a huge mess in the kitchen. No wonder I don’t like to cook anymore. The next morning, after he had left, I called Dr. Armen Tigranian at the Music Department. I should have simply barged in. By asking for an appointment, I was put off until three that afternoon, although talking to him was an assignment I had wanted to get out of the way as soon as I could. What had Jason meant by volatile? I don’t care much for volatile people. You never know what they’re going to do.
To take my mind off what might turn out to be a confrontation with Dr. Tigranian, rather than a quiet discussion of what could be done for his ill-used Russian music students, I thought about their place of work and the man they worked for. If I wanted to find out anything about Vladik’s associates, Boris Stepanovich Ignatenko seemed to be my only hope. But was it safe or suitable for me to go there? Unescorted women probably didn’t. I don’t think there were any lone women watching the tassel-twirler in New Orleans. Obviously, I needed advice.
One might think of the police in such a situation, but Art Guevara was not the sort of person I wanted to talk to. Nor was he interested in anything I had to say except whether my canapés had induced sickness in the victim. None of the opera ladies or faculty wives would know any more about places such as Brazen Babes than I did. It was obviously a den of prostitution as well as a performance arena for exotic dancers. I remembered a terrible situation in which I’d found myself in Barcelona. I was actually offered money for my “favors.” Not a situation I cared to have repeated; yet going to Brazen Babes on my own might lead to just such a contretemps, should there be any patrons with a fetish for forty-something matrons.
So who did I know that would be knowledgeable about vice in El Paso? I sighed. Luz Vallejo. She had been a Vice lieutenant and could advise me about how and where to approach Boris Stepanovich Ignatenko. She would also be sarcastic about it. Still, better to endure a bit of embarrassment than to put myself in danger. I called her to ask if I could come by that morning. She swore at me. What an ill-tempered woman! Still, when I gave her a hint of my problem, she agreed to see me. She was probably laughing her head off.
Luz Vallejo
When the proper Mrs. Blue called, my first impulse was to tell her to go stuff it. Then she mentioned Brazen Babes. The two of them in the same context caught my interest. The wonder was that she had ever heard of the place. And my knee was aching like a son of a bitch. A little diversion couldn’t hurt. I spend too much time around the house feeling sorry for myself, so I told her to come ahead, and she was on my doorstep in ten minutes.
“This is very considerate of you, Lieutenant Vallejo,” she said as soon as I opened the door. “I learned some particularly upsetting things yesterday while I was pursuing information on who might have been Vladislav Gubenko’s friends and enemies.”
She walked right into my living room, with me limping behind, and flopped down on my couch, the picture of perplexity, dismay, and surprised pain. My couch is a rustic Spanish number that doesn’t lend itself to flopping, or comfort, or visitors who want to stay very long, which is just why I bought it.
“I took the two opera students he brought over from Russia to lunch yesterday. Poor things, they ate everything I agreed to buy them and still looked hungry, and they cried when I gave them some inexpensive little thank-you presents. During lunch they told me that as soon as they got here, Vladik moved them into a disgusting trailer park, gave them a car that rarely runs, enrolled them at the university, and then put them to work nights at a place called, as I mentioned, Brazen Babes.
“They have to dance partially unclothed on the stage and tabletops, and naked, for all I know, and he wanted them to have sexual relations with customers—all so that he could take their wages and tips in return for his help in getting them to this country.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “l never knew old Boris was into white slavery. Naked girls and pimping, sure. He gets arrested. The girls get arrested. Then they all go to court and swear nothing bad was going on, just artistic dancing. What a crock.”
“Then you know him?” she asked eagerly. “He’s the only person I’ve found who seems to have been friends with Vladik—they were business partners according to the girls—and who might know anything about Vladik’s death.”
“Hell, Boris might have killed Gubenko himself,” I said. Now this was really interesting. “Did the girls put out?” Mrs. Blue seemed at a loss for an answer. “Did they have sex with the customers?” I added in case she didn’t know what put out meant or was too embarrassed to answer.
“One did. Once,” she mumbled. “Then they refused. They’ve decided they’re lesbians. Small wonder. I gather that her father sexually abused the other one. They also refused to have sex with Vladik. I never realized what a detestable man he was, not that I saw much of him, but I don’t think Jason knew either. But then it’s not the kind of thing you discuss while waiting for an academic committee meeting to begin.”
“How old are they? Are they minors?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered. “They’ve been at the university for several years, and they have lovely soprano voices. Vladik evidently promised to make them opera stars here in the United States.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what we’ve got here,” I said, feeling invigorated, “aside from the possibility of murder: pimping and prostitution on the local level, and the feds could build cases for hiring illegal workers, who worked without work visas, failing to pay minimum wage or any wages, probably nonpayment of social security taxes and worker’s comp, nonpayment of income taxes. Too bad the girls aren’t minors. That’s a good bust. Statutory rape—probably—”
“But I don’t want you to have the girls arrested,” my visitor exclaimed. “They’re victims. We’ve got to get them out of there and into decent jobs so they can eat and live someplace while they’re going to school.”
“What’s this we business?” I asked.
“Well, of course I meant I’ve got to try to do that. I’m going to see the chairman of the Music Department this afternoon, and I’ll try to get some Opera at the Pass members to find them jobs, but there’s Mr. Ignatenko. He may hold the key to Vladik’s murder, or at least have relevant information and—and—” Her face turned pink. “And I don’t know how to approach him. I mean can I go into his club, or do I have to have an escort? Where is it? I’ve never even heard of it. And if I did go in, would it be dangerous?”
“In other words, you want to talk to the smut-bag Russian, but you’re scared,” I retorted.
“Of course, I am. That’s why I came to you for advice. You were a Vice lieutenant. Who else am I going to ask about such things?”
I stared at her, thinking, while she squirmed on my uncomfortable sofa. You couldn’t pay me to sit on it. Then it occurred to me that I was actually having fun. How long since that had happened? And I hadn’t noticed my knee since she turned up at my front door.
“Okay,” I said. “If you really want to talk to him without getting kicked out on your ass, or at least having it pinched, be here at, say, ten tonight. You’ll have to drive.”
“You’re going to go with me?” she asked, looking pathetically grateful.
“Yeah, if your husband will let you out of the house. Maybe he’ll want to come along.”
“He’s in Austin,” she replied, and gave me a big smile. “It might even be fun,” she added. “Going to Brazen Babes. Isn’t that a tacky name? What should I wear?”
Jesus Christ, I thought. I was chaperoning Mrs. Brady Bunch to a strip club, and she was right: It might even be fun. But not, I hoped, for Ignatenk
o. He probably didn’t see many prissy faculty wives in his line of work.
17
The Good Works of Opera Lovers
Carolyn
Having lost my own brief and ill-considered optimism with regard to our proposed visit to Brazen Babes, I left Luz Vallejo’s house, puzzled at her sudden good humor. In her place, I certainly wouldn’t be looking forward to that undertaking. I wasn’t looking forward to it, although having someone to go with was a great relief. I might well have given up the idea if she hadn’t offered.
And now it was only mid-morning with no appointment on my schedule until three o’clock. The question was: Should I try to solicit help from the opera ladies before I saw Dr. Tigranian, or hope that he could solve the whole problem? Given the financial straits at the university—all over Texas, for that matter—he probably couldn’t give my new protégés enough help. Remission of tuition, that sort of thing, maybe, but jobs, loans? I wasn’t even sure whether student loans ever went to foreign students. If I waited too long, Polya and Irina might be reduced to prostitution. I decided to call the other five women, those who had met at the Magic Pan to plot against Sergeant Guevara, and invite them to a charitable luncheon.
Once home, my first call was to Vivian Brockman, the leader of our ad hoc committee. “Vivian,” I said, “we have a problem. I think we need to get together with the others. Shall we say Desert Pearl at noon?” I didn’t tell her the nature of the problem but let her jump to the conclusion that Sergeant Guevara was coming after us again.
Holy Guacamole! Page 10