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as he levered himself out of the car. “Me too,” he added with a grunt. He reached the front gate and stopped. “If he’s not here, maybe you can come back tomorrow.”
    “That’s a possibility,” I said. “Bob Torrez will probably swing down this way.”
    “Oh, yes.” He stopped with one hand on the first gate picket, remembering something. Maybe it was a moment of parental concern, perhaps felt more strongly when he was sober. But he shrugged off whatever the thought was and headed for the house. He walked like a man of eighty-five, even though I knew he was younger than me.
    Across the street, two dogs had waited long enough. Convinced that we were now headed in the opposite direction and were no longer a threat, the mutts set up a rhythmic yapping.
    The Bacas’ front door wasn’t locked, and even in the harsh-shadowed light of the headlights I could see its delightful rhomboid shape. It was the sort of authentic Z-braced territorial door that would fetch a mint in an Albuquerque antiques shop, the nailheads square and rough, drizzling little tongues of rusty stain down the gray wood.
    The lintel was low, no more than an inch over my head, and I stood five feet ten only if I straightened my sore back and threw my shoulders out of joint. If Bob Torrez came charging through that door without paying attention, the rough wood would catch him right in the chin.
    “There’s a light here somewhere,” Sosimo muttered, as if the furnishings of the front room hadn’t been rooted in the same spots for the past forty years. He found the switch, and as the sixty-watt power flooded the room in pale yellow, I saw that it wasn’t just pillows that contoured the old sofa along the south wall.
    Matt Baca lay stretched out facedown, his head buried in an old comforter. One hand was curled down beside him in one of those postures only possible when deeply asleep.
    “Well, he’s here,” Sosimo said, and paused, uncertain of what to do next.
    Since young Matt was half a century or so younger than I was, and in far better shape even when drunk, I thought it prudent to take advantages as they presented themselves.
    “Don’t bother to wake him,” I said as Sosimo took a hesitant step forward.
    “Oh, no,” he said, as if the idea had never crossed his mind. “You two go ahead and talk all you want,” and he turned toward the door to the left of the sofa, just beyond his son’s feet.
    I reached around under my jacket and slipped the handcuffs off my belt. The curled right arm I didn’t worry about, since the weight of Matt’s body would keep it pinned until I was ready for it. I stepped across to the sofa, reached down and took his left wrist and pulled it around behind his back, slapping the cuffs on as I did so. He managed a disoriented “Whuh?” as I snicked the cuffs on his right wrist.
    “Now you didn’t say…” Sosimo started, but let it trail off.
    Matt startled fully awake, twisting so violently that he pitched himself onto the floor, landing hard on his left shoulder. With the resiliency of youth, the maneuver didn’t prompt so much as a grunt.
    “Just take it easy, Matthew,” I said. Earlier, by the time he found his way home and passed out on the sofa, he’d hiked a good deal of the liquor out of his blood…enough that he’d remembered to kick off his Nikes. I toed them toward him. “Put on your shoes.”
    He muttered an expletive and pushed himself up until he could sit on the sofa, eyes locked on me.
    “You’ve had quite a night,” I said. He didn’t make a move, so I indicated the shoes. “Put ’em on.”
    “How the fuck am I supposed to do that?” he said, and the venom was pretty good for the hour and the circumstances.
    “Don’t care.” I shrugged. “If you can’t manage, then Robert can carry you out.”
    Matt’s eyebrows darted together and he glanced at the open door. He could see the headlights of my car, and little else. But his expression made it clear that Matthew Baca