“Good. Keep me posted.”
Chavez said he would and clicked off.
“Elmo,” he said then, “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this. Seemed like a good idea when I left the agency, but now you’re stuck with me. Might be a while before either of us gets home again.”
Elmo didn’t seem to mind. He stretched up and licked the back of Chavez’s neck.
* * *
Most investigators hated stakeouts, the waiting, the downtime, but Alex Chavez wasn’t one of them. Elena claimed it was because he was basically lazy and would rather sit on his fat culo than do anything else. But she was only teasing him. She knew he had more energy than most men his age, knew it better than anybody because of how often he demonstrated it to her in bed. Besides, his culo wasn’t fat.
The reason stakeouts didn’t bother him was because he liked to listen to the radio. The Dodge had a brand-new battery, so he didn’t have to worry about running down the juice by playing the radio with the engine off. It wasn’t music he listened to, not that he didn’t like music. Elena was a big fan of traditional Latin ballads, the kids were into salsa and hip-hop and Hannah Montana; his preference was Garth Brooks. A shame to his heritage, Elena said—more of her teasing. But even a steady diet of Brooks made Chavez yawn and put him to sleep.
No, what he listened to was right-wing hate radio.
That was the correct term. Limbaugh, Beck, the rest of them—a pack of greed-driven racist hatemongers hiding behind the cloak of patriotism. He’d been assaulted by that kind of crap all his life, on and off the radio and television. Down in El Centro when he was growing up and before and after he joined the county sheriff’s department, even up here in liberal San Francisco. Wetback, spic, greaser—he’d heard all the epithets dozens of times and been called worse to his face. Heard “close the borders,” “go back to Mexico where you belong,” “keep America safe for Americans.” Well, the Chavezes were as American as Limbaugh and Beck, every one of them born and raised in this country.
Elena, the rest of his family, didn’t understand why he listened to the trash that came spewing over the airwaves. Wallowed in it, they said. But he didn’t look at it as wallowing. Know your enemy, that was one reason he did it—what they’re saying, doing, thinking. Made it easier to deal with the results of their rhetoric when he was confronted with it, easier to keep his anger in check, easier to do his job.
The other reason was because it gave him a benign feeling of superiority. Alex Chavez and the Chavez family were good, God-fearing people who worked hard for what they had, whose hearts were full of love, not hate. They were better Christians, better role models, more honest believers in family values. Better Americans because they didn’t try to tell anybody else what to think and how to live their lives. Better human beings. Knowing that, having it verified every time he tuned in to one of the wing nut broadcasts, helped him maintain his equilibrium and his essentially cheerful outlook. Ironic, when you looked at it that way. A kind of justice in it, too. The more the haters ranted and raved and spewed their venom against minorities, the happier and prouder he was that he’d been born one himself.
Limbaugh’s diatribe today had to do with President Obama’s foreign-policy decisions and how the health-care reform law was destroying the country. The usual garbage, regurgitated. After a while Chavez only half-listened, because he’d heard it so many times before he could have recited most of it himself, word for word.
Across the street Carson appeared one last time, carrying a couple of what looked to be Tiffany table lamps, found space for them inside, then closed the Explorer’s hatch and disappeared into the house again. Otherwise nothing much happened for close to an hour. At the forty-minute mark Elmo gave out with his I Have to Go whine. Well, that figured. World’s smallest dog bladder. Chavez slid out on the passenger side, let the terrier out, kept one eye on him while he sprayed the trunk of a sidewalk tree and the other on the house. One thing you could say for Elmo: he never dallied when he was doing his business, like some dogs did. Do it and get on with the important things, like munching a Milk-Bone and then curling up and going to sleep on the backseat.
Chavez was scanning through the radio dial, looking for one or another of Limbaugh’s fellow garbagemen, when the wait came to a worthwhile end. The two women walked out of the house together, the Rottweiler with them on a leash. Not hurrying but not taking their time, either. Carson went down to open the gate while McManus prodded Thor in on the driver’s side of the SUV. While she drove out to the street, Chavez fired up the Dodge. Carson closed the gate and hopped in on the passenger side; then the Explorer rolled out of the driveway.