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“Was he that way often?”
She lifted her glass. “Maybe just around me.”
“And why’s that?”
She finished her orange juice before saying, “I hate this.”
“Hate what?”
She put her hands flat on the kitchen countertop and paused as if rehearsing what she was about to say. But the front door opened and a high male voice called, “¡Hola!” Renata informed Atticus secretly, as if cheating, “Stuart,” and then called back, “In the kitchen!”
Stuart Chandler was a tall, fashionable Englishman of Atticus’s age, with a full head of white hair he’d sleeked back with gel, skin that was a mahogany brown, and shrewd, impatient, hazel green eyes. Dressed in a fine black blazer but pleated white trousers and white docksiders, he seemed a yachtsman, and he sauntered into the kitchen as if he wanted to talk to the chef, first smiling at Renata, then firmly shaking Atticus’s hand and offering his name in the way of a famous man often introduced. Stuart said, “I only wish we could be meeting in happier circumstances, Mr. Cody. I have three grown sons of my own, so I think I can fathom the feelings you must have now. You do have my deepest sympathy.”
“Appreciate it,” he said.
“Are you coping?”
“Oh yeah.” Atticus filled his cup. “How about some coffee?”
“No, thank you. Cigarettes are my only poison.” He looked affectionately at Renata. “And how are you, darling?”
Renata said she was fine. She put her orange-juice glass in the sink.
Atticus paused and said, “Renata was telling me last night you could help get my boy’s body out of Mexico.”
“Yes,” Stuart said, “but there’s a ludicrous bureaucracy to battle first. We’ll have to bury Scott today and hope for intercession from the United States Embassy in Mexico City. I have position but no power, alas. And we need permission to have him exhumed. I heard from … Frank?”
“Frank,” he said.
“We talked about it just this morning. Our thinking is harmonious. You can go home to Colorado tonight, and I’ll be pleased to assume the burden of having him shipped up to Antelope.”
“I’ll do it. You don’t have to pop for me to ship my own boy.”
Stuart turned to Renata. “Oh, was that patronizing?”
“Stuart meant—”
“Forget it,” Atticus said.
Stuart held his gaze on him. “We are expected at the funeral parlor,” he said. And with the frankness of someone used to having his orders obeyed, Stuart added, “Hadn’t you better go get changed?”
And he was sitting on the right of an air-conditioned Dodge station wagon as Stuart Chandler gingerly urged it along a street that was rough as an alley. Atticus had gotten into a white shirt that was as hard as cardboard, a gray silk tie, a fancy black cashmere suit that would be too hot by noontime, and his highly polished lizard-skin boots. Stuart had rolled down his side window four inches so he could hold his Salem cigarette far from offense, and he faced away from Atticus when he exhaled. Atticus had run out of things to say. He held his gray cowboy hat in one hand and flattened his hair and the gray wings of his mustache as he looked out at the centro.
Green and pink buildings were high above them on both sides and hot sunlight glared like snow off the walls. Dark old women were sitting in the shade of doorways and saying things to famished children. Skinny dogs were running at the station wagon’s tires and jumping up at the side windows as Atticus scowled down.
“Atticus,” Stuart said. “Wasn’t that the name—”
“Yes.”
“Of the father in—”
“To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“You’ve had this conversation before.”
“Up until the sixties I had the name to myself.”
“I shall bathe you in silence,” Stuart said. He turned the car onto El Camino Real and was forced to stop for a friendly man pushing a frijoles cart. Stuart let the Salem fall from his hand into the street. He drove forward. “I have been a citizen of the United States since 1962,” he said. “I first went there to be the pre-Columbian art specialist at Sotheby’s. Have you heard of Sotheby’s, Mr. Cody?”
