Joseph and Mary Rivas might have been in trouble but for the fact that the Los Angeles Police Department was in worse trouble. They could not bring him to book. How would it look if the newspapers got hold of the story that the Plaza was the source of supply? that the product had been planted and nurtured by a city employee, freshened with city water, and fed with city manure?

Joseph and Mary was given a floater so strongly worded that it singed his eyelashes. The police even bought him a bus ticket as far as San Luis Obispo.

Doc chuckled. “You know, Mack,” he said, “you’re almost building a case for honesty.”

“I always put in a good word for it,” said Mack.

“How did he get in the wetback

“Well, he was casing the field for a career,” said Mack, “and wetbacks looked like a gold-brick cinch. Joseph and Mary figured the angles and the percentage. You look at it and you see it couldn’t flop.” He put up his fingers to count facts, then took a quick drink to tide him over the period when his hands would be tied up.

Mack touched the little finger of his left hand with his right forefinger. “Number one,” he said. “J and M talks Mexican because his old man and his old lady was Mexican before they come to L.A.” He touched his third finger. “Number two, the wetbacks come in by theirself. Nobody makes them come. There’s a steady supply. Number three, they can’t talk English and they don’t know a cop from a bucket. They need somebody like Joseph and Mary to take care of them and get them jobs and take their pay. If one of them gets mean, all J and M got to do is call the federal men, and they deport him without no trouble to J and M. That’s what he was always looking for—a racket with the percentage stacked for the house. He figures he’s got three or four crews working in fruit and vegetables and he can kind of lay back and rest, the way he always wanted. That’s why he bought out Lee Chong. He figured to make the grocery a kind of labor center, where he could rest up his men and sell them stuff at the same time. And what he’s doing ain’t very much against the law.”