The Maricopa County jail was out on the edge of Phoenix, with the administrative offices in the newer section, built forty years ago. The jail structure itself was largely unchanged from when it was constructed in the 1860s. Dirt floors and stone walls, with wooden bunks. The bunks were a newer addition.

The desk sergeant looked at Josh's badge and the paperwork for Mendez and his eyes lit up a little. He was short, and thin, and ruddy, with a slightly upturned round little nose. The top of that nose was in a perpetual state of peel from the sun which did not agree with him. His eye were beady and red, with a bright blue iris that fairly glowed around the bloodshot edges.

"I was wondering when you men would show up for the little greaser. The hold order didn't make much sense, what with the charges being a bit of bunko fluff. She another bank robber or something?"

"Nah, Bill, she is what is known as a person of interest," replied Josh.

For Yanaha, the week had been a challenging one. Sleeping on a wooden bench that held a decades worth of bad memories was a bad proposition for her. She had dreamed of murders, rapes, robberies, frame ups, beatings at the hands of police, tear stained regrets, suicide attempts, thousands of drunken vomitings. She had read and reread letters from mothers explaining that money would not be coming, that sisters had died in childbirth, that dust had taken the farm. She had dreamed the Spanish flu in Spanish, a fever dream within a dream. She would attempt to go to sleep with her hands locked between her knees, but eventually, fitfully, out they came, and to rest they came on the bench, the wall, the dirt floor. When they did, the memories crawled up her arms like a swarm of earwigs, terrible, inescapable, filling her head with an assortment of memories and experiences all uniformly unpleasant and many distinctly horrible.

Ms. Mendez was greasy haired, bleary eyed, and trapped in a small cell with nothing to touch, nothing to read, nothing to do. Not so much as a deck of cards was at her disposal. Given the way the last week had gone, it was much to her liking. She sat huddled in a corner, watching the door open and close. Food had come and gone. When she had to eat, she ate with her hands. A stereotypical Mexican, on a downhill slide.

"Here I thought this would be better than the trailer," she laughed inwardly, the bitter echoes filling her mind. "So much for that idea. Rather be shacking up with that fat gringo Sheriff."

The small, sliding metal plate in door that covered the cell's only window to the world opened up. Through the slit gazed a pair of eyes that did not belong to the sheriff or the desk sergeant. After a few moments the eyes looked away, and voice clearly attached to the eyes said, "Bill, bring her the clothes that she was wearing when she was picked up. Once she has had a chance to change, no peeking there, I want you to bring her out."

Carefully, as one would handle a crate of nitroglycerin, she took the clothes. She prepared to throw them back in the desk sergeant's face if they revealed anything other the folding and stowing. Yanaha waited until the sergeant left before she changed. When she was done, she tapped lightly at the bottom of the door with her foot. "I touch anything else in here and I'll be ready for the asylum," she thought.

Clothed once again in her own garments, eyes blinking from unaccustomed brightness, Yanaha was led into the jail's central room. Standing in middle of the room was a tall man, wearing a suit, cowboy hat and boots. With a pleasant baritone and a southern drawl, the man said, "Hello, Miss Mendez or Madame Nascha if you prefer. In town there is a little place called Maria's Cafe that serves right-good food. How does steak and eggs sound to you?"

"Nascha's..." she stopped, surprised that her voice sounded as raw and raspy as if she'd just smoked a full pack of unfiltered Camels. She coughed a little and wet her throat, then continued. "Nascha's for the marks," she said, watching him with fathomless dark eyes. She might be considered pretty if she got cleaned up enough. High, broad cheekbones, a strong nose and a full set of lips melded together in some inexplicable way to make her two heritages more appealing. "And goin' to the cafe depends on who you are, what you want in return and whether I get my bag of other stuff, first," she said.

With her eyes more accustomed to the light, Yanaha could see that her visitor was a white man in his mid-thirties with face tanned from much time spent in the sun. The man might be have been viewed as attractive if things like dark wavy hair, a strong clefted chin and smiling eyes appealed to the viewer.

Her dark gaze locked with his and her jaw firmed into a stubborn line. "There are things in there I need," she said after a long pause. Something about him told her that whoever this guy was, he was a decent man, so she gave him a little more explanation than she normally would.

Turning his head towards the desk sergeant, the man asked, "Bill, is there anything in this bag that I should be worried about?"

Turning back to Yanaha, the man said, "My name is Josh Reid, and I work for the FBI. I'm sure that we can work something out concerning your bag."

"As for what I want from you in exchange for your meal," Josh Reid of the FBI went on, "is that you listen to what I have to say while you eat it."

"Now I could give you my little talk right here, but I have found that it is hard for people to keep an open mind in a place that is that is so closed up," with that statement Josh Reid's eyes darted surreptitious at Desk Sergeant Bill as if to give an example of his point.

She opened her generous mouth to say something, then closed it. Again those dark eyes seemed to stare right through him. It may have been something she picked up as a carny affectation for Madame Nascha, or maybe she really could see deeper than other people. She shrugged nonchalantly and nodded. "All right, Agent Reid," she said. "I'll play the tip, and we'll see how good a Talker you are. Let's go."

Being unfamiliar with carny slang, Agent Reid raised his eyebrow at Yanaha's use of the word tip but didn't request an explanation. It took minutes for Desk Sergeant Bill to bring Mendez's bag, but still, fifteen minutes later Josh Reid and Yanaha Mendez were at Maria's Cafe getting ready to order their food.

While waiting for the their food to arrive. Agent Reid made small talk about good places to visit in Phoenix and the Four Corner area. Only after their food arrived and Yanaha had a chance to take a few bites out of her meal did the FBI agent start to talk about the matter at hand.

He found the woman either reluctant to engage in or unfamiliar with his version of small talk. She raked everyone in the diner with her gaze as they walked in, probably sizing them up as marks of some kind. She answered only a few of his most basic questions but mostly turned the conversation back to him when she could.

Before the meal arrived, she removed a set of flatware from her bag. It had obviously seen some long use but the fact that they were hers was what mattered. She ignored the insulted look the waitress gave her and used the utensils exclusively.

"Six months ago in Chicago, you met a man named Ryan Winchell," the g-man began. "I don't know if you remember him, but he certainly remembers you. You see, Ryan works for the Bureau but in his spare time he likes expose fake spiritualist. Now Ryan said that at first he thought you were as fake as a three dollar bill, and that you used every hokey spiritualist trick in the book. He was just about to expose you, to pull away the table cloth and show all the wires, when you asked for something from his dead mother. He had planted lots of false information about his mom during the session, but once you got ahold of her handkerchief you ignored all the false stuff and told him things about his mom that there was no way in his mind that you could have known or even guessed."

"I don't remember the names of the marks," she shrugged, drinking her coffee. Fortunately, the cup was fairly new and hadn't had a chance to be imprinted by a regular, yet. "Chicago was a different sort of scene for me. I usually don't go all out like that. Just usually read the cards, listen and watch 'em so I can look into the crystal ball. Every once in a while I ask for somethin' personal. Keep up the word spreadin', but keeps movin' 'em in and out of the tent so I can make my livin'."

Reid paused to take a few bites out of his steak and let what he had said so far sink in before continuing. "The story doesn't stop there, though. Agent Winchell was so impressed by you that he came back a few days later. This time he came back with a cigarette lighter. The lighter had been found at the site of a murder and was believed to have been dropped by the killer. Unfortunately, it was outdoor killing and it had been raining, so their weren't any fingerprints on the lighter. You told Agent Winchell that the lighter belonged to tall, blond man with a lisp. Now, they had interviewed a man meeting that description but they hadn't considered him a real suspect. Based on your description they went back and interviewed the man more forcefully. He confessed to the murder."

Her eyes got wider at that. "I remember the lighter. Damned gringo nearly shoved it at me and into my hands. Came in after the show and caught me without the Nascha get-up on, too."

Once again Josh Reid paused to eat a few more bites of his food and let his story sink in some more. Then clearing his throat, he said, "Well, what I have getting to with all this is that the Bureau would like to offer you a job."

"A job doin' what? Bein' an experiment? Or just handlin' stuff all day to solve crimes?" she asked, a sneer on the edge of her words. "I'd probably go completely batty in just a day, doin' that. I'd be pretty useless, then." Again, their eyes met and she heard her grandmother again, a few years ago.

"Yeah, I'd probably go around the bend if I was stuck in an office all day too," replied the lawman agreeably.

"Not everyone is the same, Yanaha," she'd said calmly and patiently as she worked at the loom. "There are good people and bad people. Sometimes good people have to do bad things and sometimes bad people find themselves doing good. Learn to read them, Yanaha. Trust your instincts and your gifts, and you'll find the good ones, even among the white men."

Those words came back to her and something in Agent Reid's expression and his eyes told her he'd not have her performing like a trained monkey. "So what is the job, Agent Reid?" she asked after a moment, without the heat or the sneer. "What would I be doing for the Feds?"

"You would be investigating stuff out in the field," the agent answered. "Some things have happened hereabouts that have the boys in Washington scratching their heads, so they decided to put together a team to look into it. You would be on that team."

"The pay would be pretty decent, and any legal difficulties you might have, not just this latest one but any others also, would be made to go away," Reid informed her as he polished off his food. "And the best part, if things don't work out you can always quit. As long as you stayed on the team long enough to show good faith on your part, no one will hold it against you."

"The g-men in Washington seem more trusting than I'd give 'em credit for," she said with a snerk. "Or is it that your call?" The young woman finished her meal, mulling over the offer. "I'd need to get back to pick up my stuff. Or... will I be stickin' with the show and just be contacted when needed?"

"So, does that mean that the answer is yes?" he asked with a smile.

The dark eyes set their gaze out the window, searching for something known only to her as she worked the last bit out in her mind. "Yeah, what the hell?" she shrugged. "I was thinkin' it was time to see some different sights, anyway. Might as well make some decent dough at the same time."

"Good, but that gives us a lot to do," Agent Reid said as he gestured the waitress to bring the check. "We'll need go back to the jail so I sign some things and give them some papers. Then we will to stop "the show" as you call it so that you can get your stuff. Then we will need to find you a place to stay, someplace nice but that won't put too big a strain on your budget if you decide to stay there longterm."

"Works for me, G-man," she said with the barest hint of a smile. "This might not be so bad, after all," she thought. While he took care of the check, she wiped down her utensils and wrapped them up for washing, later.

They made a rather odd looking couple as they walked back down the street toward the jail.

OOC: I do believe this looks like it's done?

OOC: Done works for me.

OOC: That was just great, you two!