Besides these books, his only other possessions were a bottle of Old Spice aftershave someone in his family—probably Loretta—had given to him last Christmas, a spiral note-book, three new Bic pens, and the original cassette recording of the Jimi Hendrix Experience that he had bought on his first leave from Fort Bliss over twenty years ago. All these things he had with him, so Pedro knew that el Franky had moved in.

“Out,” is all Francisco el Penitente responded.

Great! Pedro thought to himself, although he did not reveal his joy, while thinking that just maybe Francisco was going to get himself a life! Then his wife said aloud (because you get to know a person after living with them for the better part of three decades and what one thinks the other will usually say), “Great. Maybe Franky’s gonna get himself a life.”

But how could Loretta know or even tío Pedro, who believed he had some understanding of Francisco’s ways, but who ultimately would not win any prizes for being a good judge of character, that this was not the beginning of a life but the beginning of the end of one?

That night, Francisco went to Caridad’s to keep vigil outside and was unsettled when he saw that her truck was gone. He waited behind the usual shrubbery, his own truck parked down the road and out of sight, until she finally came home, which was just about dawn. This upset him more than sleeping on the cold ground and waking up with more of God’s creatures creeping all over him than he cared to shake off as he stumbled down the road back to his troquita.

The next afternoon when he was vigilant at his post nearby Caridad’s trailer, he did not leave at sunset but instead stayed on until, as he suspected, she came out and jumped into her truck.

He ran to his pickup and caught up with her as she made her way through the South Valley and finally parked her truck right across the road from a little stucco house, but did not get out. There were people in the house, he knew that by the lights and the truck and VW Bug parked in the driveway. But you couldn’t see in, at least not from where he was parked, which was a ways down so that Caridad wouldn’t see him. But nobody came out and she did not ever get out of her truck.

The next night was the same thing. And the night after that and so on. Except on weekends. Everybody seemed to take the weekends off from their sleuthish behavior, or so he concluded because Caridad did not leave her trailer all weekend. So just for the heck of it, he went by the little stucco house and one of the vehicles was gone all weekend and the driveway light stayed on during the day which pretty much proved to him that the tenants were away.