Rosa came out, wearing orange polyester pants and a yellow print blouse and carrying a large black leather purse. I stood up and started to say, “Where would you like to go? Is there someplace close?” but I only got it half out.

“The Eldorado Cafe,” she said and started out the door, moving pretty fast for somebody three hundred years old and three hundred pounds.

“I don’t know where the Eldorado Cafe is,” I said, unlocking the car door for her. “You’ll have to tell me where it is.”

“Turn right,” she said. “They have good cinnamon rolls.”

I wondered if it was the offer of the food or just the chance to go someplace that had made her consent to the interview. Whichever, I might as well get it over with. “So Coronado was your great-grandfather?” I said.

She looked at me as if I were out of my mind. “No. Who told you that?”

Jake, I thought, who I plan to tear limb from limb when I get back to the Record. “You aren’t Coronado’s great-granddaughter?”

She folded her arms over her stomach. “I am the descendant of El Turco.”

El Turco. It sounded like something out of Zorro. “So it’s this El Turco who’s your great-grandfather?”

“Great-great. El Turco was Pawnee. Coronado captured him at Cicuye and put a collar around his neck so he could not run away. Turn right.”

We were already halfway through the intersection. I jerked the steering wheel to the right and nearly skidded into a pickup.

Rosa seemed unperturbed. “Coronado wanted El Turco to guide him to Cibola,” she said.

I wanted to ask if he had, but I didn’t want to prevent Rosa from giving me directions. I drove slowly through the next intersection, alert to sudden instructions, but there weren’t any. I drove on down the block.

“And did El Turco guide Coronado to Cibola?”

“Sure. You should have turned left back there,” she said.