The Tortilla Curtain

English, but there was no mistaking the meaning: ***
    BEANERS DIE

The Tortilla Curtain

5
    DELANEY COULDN'T FEEL BAD FOR LONG, NOT UP here where the night hung close round him and the crickets thundered and the air off the Pacific crept up the hills to drive back the lingering heat of the day. There were even stars, a cluster here and there fighting through the wash of light pollution that turned the eastern and southern borders of the night yellow, as if a whole part of the world had gone rancid. To the north and east lay the San Fernando Valley, a single endless plane of parallel boulevards, houses, mini-malls and streetlights, and to the south lay the rest of Los Angeles, ad infinitum. There were no streetlights in Arroyo Blanco--that was one of the attractions, the rural feel, the sense that you were somehow separated from the city and wedded to the mountains--and Delaney never felt the lack of them. He didn't carry a flashlight either. He enjoyed making his way through the dark streets, his eyes adjusting to the shapes and shadows of the world as it really was, reveling in the way the night defined itself in the absence of artificial light and the ubiquitous blast of urban noise.
    Though the walk had calmed him, he couldn't suppress a sudden pounding in his chest as he passed the Dagolian place--heedless people, slobs--and turned up Piñon Drive, conscious once again of the burden in the pocket of his windbreaker. His house sat at the end of Piñon, in a cul-de-sac that marked the last frontier of urban development, and the chirring of the crickets seemed louder here, the darkness more complete. As if to prove the point, a great horned owl began to hoot softly from the trees behind him. Someone's sprinklers went on with a hiss. High overhead, a jet climbing out of LAX cut a tear in the sky. Delaney had just begun to relax again when a car suddenly turned into the street from Robles Drive, high beams obliterating the night. He glanced over his shoulder, squinted into the light and kept on walking.
    The car was moving, but barely. Its exhaust rumbled menacingly, all that horsepower held in check, and from behind the rolled-up windows came the bottom-heavy thump of rap music--no words, no instrument, no melody discernible, just a thump. Delaney kept walking, annoyed all over again. Why couldn't they pass by already and let the night close back over him? Why couldn't he have a minute's peace even in his own neighborhood?
    The car pulled slowly alongside him, and he could see that it was some sort of American car, older, a big boat of a thing with mag wheels and an elaborate metal-flake paint job. The windows were smoked and he couldn't see inside. What did they want--directions? No face was visible. No one asked. He cursed under his breath, then picked up his pace, but the car seemed to hover there beside him, the speakers sucking up all available sound and then pumping it back out again, _ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump.__ The car stayed even with him for what seemed an eternity, then it gradually accelerated, made the end of the street, wheeled round and rolled slowly back down the block again--_ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump--__and this time the lights, still on bright, glared directly into Delaney's eyes. He kept going and the car crept past him again and finally faded to a pair of taillights swinging back onto Robles. It wasn't till Delaney was inside, and the door locked behind him, that he thought to be afraid.
    Who would be up here at this hour in a car like that? He thought of the solemn fat man at the meeting and his litany of woes, the bringer of bad tidings, the Cassandra of Arroyo Blanco. Was it burglars, then? Muggers? Gangbangers? Is that what they were? As he crossed the kitchen and surreptitiously slipped Sacheverell's foreleg into the freezer beneath a bag of frozen peas--he'd bury it tomorrow, after Kyra went off to work--he couldn't help thinking about the gate. If there was a gate that car wouldn't have been there, and who knew what he'd just escaped--a beating, robbery, murder? He poured himself a glass of orange juice, took a bite of the macaroni and cheese Jordan had left on his plate at dinner. And then he saw the light in the bedroom: Kyra was waiting up for him.
    He felt a stirring in his groin. It was nearly eleven, and normally she was in bed by nine-thirty. That meant one thing: she was propped up against the pillows in one of the sheer silk teddies he'd bought her at Christmas for just