excerpt
The knot in his narrow tie was at half mast, his cable-knit sweater
vest buttoned askew, his sparse gray hair a tangle. His eyes were
rimmed with red.
“It’s high time something was done about these bums,” he said
in a quaver just below the threshold of yelling. “The town will be
overrun with them before you know it.”
Spear interrupted. “Give your name, please, sir.”
“My name’s Reinhardt. Everybody knows that. I’ve lived here
for forty years. Disgraceful, that’s what it is, disgraceful. Keep
them out. Make a law. Throw them in jail, every last one of them.
They’re all over the place.”
He gazed into the distance and fell silent.
“Anything else?” Spear asked after a moment.
“What? Anything else? Disgraceful. That’s what I meant to
say.”
“Thank you, Mr. Reinhardt.”
Reinhardt seemed to notice Spear for the first time.
“All right, then. Sure.”
Gritzinger moved aside to let the old man past.
“I’m Ralph Gritzinger. I run a grocery store out north on the
avenue. My experience is much like Mrs. Thompson’s. We’re the
closest market to a place where hobos camp. Over the years I’ve
sold a lot of cans of beans to those men, and to a couple of women
who stayed in the jungle. I’ve given food away and traded some for
work and I’ve gotten to know the regulars. In twenty-odd years,
I’ve only had to run one of them out of the store for stealing, and
that’s a darn sight better record than the general public’s. These
hobos, if that’s what you want to call them, are an interesting
bunch of folks, and a good bunch, in my opinion. ‘Course, you
have to take the trouble to know them.”
Gritzinger backed away from the lectern. “That’s all I was going
to say, but things have changed, haven’t they, Mr. Stout?”
Stout’s eyes widened as Gritzinger walked over to him.
“The witness will stay at the stand,” Spear said, and rapped his
gavel.
Libros Libertad 