“No. Ortiz told me yesterday that I’d have to go along with him this afternoon; I told them so at the printery and they fired me on the spot.”
La Salvadora smiled with sarcastic incredulousness, and Manuel felt his cheeks turning red.
“You needn’t believe it if you don’t want to, but that’s the truth.”
“I haven’t said a word, have I, man?” retorted La Salvadora, mockingly.
“I know you didn’t, but you were laughing at me.”
Manuel left La Fea’s in a huff, sought out Ortiz, and together they made their way to Las Injurias.
It was a mild afternoon and the sun was glorious. They took chairs just outside La Blasa’s tavern. In a lane opposite to them the men were sprawling in the doorways of their houses; the women, with their ragged skirts gathered about them, were skipping from one side to the other, their feet splashing in the stinking sewage that ran like a black stream through the middle of the street. Here and there a woman had a cigarette in her mouth. Big grey rats darted about over the mud, pursued by a number of gamins with sticks and stones.
Ortiz exchanged a few words with the proprietress of the resort and shortly afterward the sereno of the Cambroneras district appeared. He saluted Ortiz, they drained a few glasses, and then the sereno said:
“I had a talk with Paco el Cañí. He knows El Bizco. He says the fellow’s not hereabouts. He believes he must be in La Manigua, or California, or some place of the sort.”