“I want to ask you something.”
“Speak up, then.”
“Do you know a chap called El Bizco?”
“No, sir.”
Ortiz then asked the youth a number of other questions; he must have been convinced that the boy did not know El Bizco, for he muttered:
“Nobody knows where he is.”
They went into one tavern after the other. As they were walking through the Calle del Amparo, Ortiz made up his mind to search a lodging house that had a red lantern hanging from one of its balconies.
They went in and climbed a plank stairway with wobbly steps, lit by a lantern embedded in a wall. On the first floor were rooms for assignations; on the second was the public dormitory. Ortiz pulled the bell wire and a repulsive hag answered the summons with a candle in her hand, a white kerchief on her head and in battered shoes; this was the woman in charge.
“We belong to the police and we want to look this place over. With your kind permission, we’ll step in.”
The woman shrugged her shoulders and made way for them to enter.