Blanche tore into a loaf of garlic bread at Valpolicella, chewing and thinking. Haasi dug into a plate of meatballs and spaghetti. The wine was a good pinot noir, but Blanche preferred Mexico’s excellent beer and every kind of fruit juice imaginable. She swirled the wine and frowned.
“Don’t like it?” Haasi sipped at her red.
“I don’t like that Cardenal hasn’t called.”
“Well, let your meatballs settle. You’re going to need your strength. When he does call, I’m sure he’ll have news.”
“Even if he doesn’t show right away, I know Blussberg and company think they’ve gotten rid of us, and I don’t like that. At all. They’re awfully cagey.”
“I’ll say,” said Haasi. “You can bet Cardenal will turn up. At the Palacio and at our hotel to buy us shots of Centenario. Wasn’t he the jolly one.”
Blanche sat back hard in the booth, a quizzical look on her face. “Yeah, I gotta say. I like him, and I’m not sorry we met him. I just hope he gets on the case soon.”
“Better him than us.”
“You know, that argument I overheard at the Palacio. Those voices. Lots of hoarse, low whispering back and forth.” Blanche was half-musing, mostly murmuring to herself. “I’m sure it was Blussberg and López. And I’m sure they were talking about our mummy.”
“Our mummy? She’s not a member of the family.” Haasi waved a meatball at the end of her fork.
“Well, practically. I should mention that little conversation to Cardenal soon.”
“Mention it! He should know.”
“You’re right.”
A disco romp pumped out of the speakers, throngs of mostly young people sat outside at picnic tables and at the booths inside. The 70s were back, and it was hot in there.
Haasi’s fingers danced on the tabletop.
Blanche laughed. “Disco fever? Wanna go to the club tonight? I’ll get you one of those mirror balls for your birthday.”
Haasi’s expression was intense. “No mirror ball. My crystal ball says let’s get our work done and get back to the island.”
“You homesick?”
“Not really, Bang. Are you?”
“Always. I miss Santa Maria. But I can’t seem to get this bad business out of my head. And we still have work to do for the newspaper.”
“How do you want to handle that detective?”
“When I talk to him, I’ll be cool. Or try to be. I think I can do that.” But her eyes were full of mischief. “What do you want to do now?”
“Order more garlic bread?” First things first. Haasi was on a second round of meatballs. “I don’t know, Blanche.”
“They took our mummy away, and now they act like the situation is normal.”
“Right. Guess we’ll see how that plays out.”
Blanche raised the last of her wine and clinked with sister-cousin.
u
The next day Cardenal was still not in touch. Blanche wanted to return to the Palacio. “I’m up for snooping.”
“When are you not, Bang?” Haasi sighed. They were finishing a breakfast of coffee and buns on the patio. It was a bright, cool morning with the hum of birds and traffic in the background.
“I’d really like to see if something new has turned up over there,” said Blanche.
“What? More mummy woman? Or something else?”
“I love a surprise.”
“Blanche, let’s give it a rest. We’ve got ruins to climb, and I’m sure there’s stuff I haven’t eaten yet.”
“I can’t imagine what.”
They’d get to Cardenal and the Palacio later, but first they headed to the ruins of the Aztec Templo Mayor off the Zocalo, an open-air site of ancient steps and statues of gods and goddesses. It was the seat of the Aztec city center of Tenochtitlan, founded in the fourteenth century. They stood on the edge of the volcanic rock softened from age and erosion. Grass grew in narrow pathways among the stones and steps that ran up to altars. Blanche imagined the thousands who had come here, and the thousands who had died grisly deaths of sacrifice. It was hard to believe they were standing in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. A bustling, sprawling megalopolis of almost twenty million people spread out over four hundred colonias, or neighborhoods.
Blanche glanced in the direction of the Palacio across the plaza at the cathedral and the arcades and shops. Streams of workers and visitors rushed out across the center of the busy modern city and ancient ruins.
They climbed the steps in the Templo among stone snakes and dragons. “They don’t look so fierce with a little weather on them,” Haasi said. “Wonder if this is where Coatlicue did her deeds.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Blanche. She held the guidebook open. “Says here this was the seat of death where they sacrificed thousands at a time to that bloodthirsty god of war, Huitzilopochtli. Wasn’t he the four-hundred-and-first baby?” They looked up at the rows of stone skulls leering at them from the wall of the temple.
Blanche shuddered to think as she walked in the graveyard of one civilization and thought of the mummified corpses at the Palacio; suspicion swept through her. López and Blussberg hadn’t mitigated any of it by trying to shove them out of the exhibit. And the weird chatter she’d overheard outside the restroom pushed her to dig further.
She looked all around at the result of digging. Nobody would have known the extent of these ruins if the Mexicans hadn’t started a construction project at the Zocalo in 1978. What they uncovered was a vast network of steps and altars and artifacts that boggled the mind and gave graphic history to a brilliant and intricate puzzle of a civilization that had burst into flame, and then died with the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century.
“I can’t wait to write about this place,” Blanche said. Haasi snapped a picture of a stone snake-beast undulating across the ruins.
“Can you believe where we’re walking?” Haasi’s forehead glistened. Blanche rarely saw her so animated. She climbed a step and kneeled with her camera for a low shot of an Aztec deity. With her Florida roots, and Miccosukee heritage, Haasi maintained a level of comfort in the heat and an appreciation and reverence for history. She seemed at home exploring the ruins. Blanche was amazed, but she was an observer and visitor, a pale foreigner from cold, green Ireland. Oddly enough, Blanche’s temper boiled up easily while Haasi had a cool head. Yet, as cousins, with the same great-grandmother, they were kin, and they could read each other, bound together in a world of mutual understanding.
Blanche stood on one of the steps at the base of an altar, her head full of images from Rivera’s murals. “Hey, Haas, do you hear that?”
“The subway, Blanche.” Reality dashed her imagination. They looked down into a hollow of stones and smooth carvings, stretching for most of a city block.
“I guess,” said Blanche. The rumbling under the plaza stopped, the traffic screeched and honked. “It must have been magnificent.”
“It still is.”
They leaned on a wall, staring down into the maze, then pushed off and started out across the square. The people hurried past, others sought shade and rest under the trees near the cathedral. Blanche and Haasi weren’t far from the Palacio. They could see the two leaving the building and walking toward a waiting car: López and Blussberg. They were hard to mistake, an unlikely pair, the pretentious blond director and the vampirish staffer. They climbed into the back seat of an enormous black ride. An Escalade? The rims gleamed, the car polished to a black-diamond gloss. A woman sat in the driver’s seat. Even from where Blanche stood, she could see glitz, the shining dark hair and huge sunglasses. A gold bracelet rested on the steering wheel and caught the sun.
“What do you suppose they’re up to?” Blanche’s question was rhetorical. The car and riders stuck out, rolling around the plaza, past the cathedral.
“Probably not any good, whatever it is,” said Haasi. “An odd bunch, if you ask me.”
“I really have to talk to Cardenal.”
>
u
Blanche and Haasi sat in the small garden at the hotel, a poinsettia tree sprawling above their heads, a bird chirping happy sounds. Haasi set her Modelo on the wrought iron tabletop. “Maybe this business will get resolved, and we can get on with this little trip in peace.”
Blanche’s expression said no such thing. “Ha! Sure. There’s just one problem: I’m dying to know what Blussberg and López were up to.”
“A date with the nice señorita?”
“Nothing nice about any of them.”
Haasi pursed her lips. “We have to get back to normal, B.”
“Right. Normal.” Horns blasted in the street outside the walls of the patio, visitors circled in and out of the lobby through the glass doors. Blanche watched them checking in, arriving from every corner of the world. She’d called the detective, but couldn’t get through. She was itching to talk to him and get back in the mix. “I’d really like to talk to Cardenal. Now.”
“I know, but I wouldn’t hurry. We’ll see him.”
“Yeah, but, when? Remember what he said? There’s all that stealing going on. And a corpse thrown on top of it? I want to tell him what I heard in that hallway. And now this. Could be legit, but I don’t know. Creeping off like that in the Batmobile seems suspicious.”
“I think the Batmobile is a convertible.”
“Well, then, Dracula’s hearse. Can’t be up to any good, that bunch …”
“You don’t know if there’s any connection. Whatsoever.” Haasi’s expression was blasé. She put a bare foot on the chair next to her at the small square table. It was cool in the shade, and the two had the small patio to themselves.
Blanche took a swig that drained the bottle. She was deep in thought.
Neither one noticed the small woman in the hotel lobby, looking around, talking to the receptionist. The woman hurried through the glass doors. Blanche looked up. The visitor wore long loose pants, a bandanna on her head, and atop that a small straw hat. Her eyes were steely and kind. A Mexican stare. True and piercing.
Blanche was on her feet.
“Señoritas? You saved my Eddie,” the old woman said. “I am here to thank you.” She stood there quietly, hands folded loosely at her chest.
Haasi leaned forward. “Eddie?” She looked at Blanche.
“Pillow Man.”
Chapter Nine
THE RIDE OUT
Blanche moved across the patio. Her eyes met Carmen’s, and they drew toward each other in a hug. It was Pillow Man’s sister, María Carmen, who’d arrived at the scene of the accident and driven away with Eddie in the ambulance. Blanche was surprised, and glad, to see her; she was eager for news.
“I can’t believe it,” said Haasi. “How are you and Eddie?”
Carmen smiled. “Estamos bien, bien. Thanks to you,” she said. “Come with me.” She extended a hand from under her purple shawl. “Por favor. Come, see Eddie. He is grateful.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Haasi. She looked at Blanche and then Carmen, and her expression softened. “Has Eddie recovered?”
“You will see.”
Blanche had the gleam in her eye. Adventure Time. “How far, Carmen?”
“It is close. I will bring you back. Detective Cardenal, he knows I come to you.”
“Detective Cardenal?”
“Yes, I know the detective; he knows of the accident. That you saved Eddie. Mexico City is big, but the story of the two beautiful señoritas from North America who care for a Mexican man in the hot street. The story goes like the wind.”
Cardenal knows?
u
They climbed into the front seat of the white pickup truck. There was no seat belt, and Blanche thought of the possibility of being thrown out and into a dusty cactus. Not only that, but Carmen didn’t look big enough to drive a tricycle.
Tentatively, Blanche gestured to Carmen. “Seat belt?”
Carmen sighed and clambered down out of the truck. She groped around on the floor behind the front seat for the safety belt until she brought the buckle up through the hole. Blanche caught the belt and buckled it around herself and Haasi. They looked at each other. Haasi shrugged.
Carmen did not talk much, and for this Blanche was grateful. Carmen’s face barely cleared the steering wheel as the semis whizzed past their pickup on Highway 57 out of downtown. They rumbled away, six eyes riveted on the road: the old Mexican and the young “angels” from Florida.
Blanche was amazed at the quick change in the landscape, only a few miles out of the city. They’d hardly been on the road fifteen minutes or so. Through a bug-splattered windshield, the semi-desert stretched across a land dotted with nopal cactus and dusty mesquite—trees that reminded Blanche of thin women with short feathery hair. The stubby growth sprouted here and there among small, chipped houses interspersed with taco stands and neat piles of old tires in every configuration. Blanche imagined people living quietly inside those small houses of cinder block and corrugated roofs, managing year after year, a hundred years at a time with hardly a change; there was something soothing in it. Lasting and solid. Cut off from distraction and noise of the city, from cable and internet, tourists and traffic. And murder. But who could escape the city? Many of them traveled into the markets, or to work in the kiosks and stalls, to sew, clean, or cook, and then go back to the country. Like Carmen and Eddie. Blanche had scrounged books on Mexico, in the library and bookshops, mostly travel guides and histories, but she and Haasi hadn’t planned on getting out into the country. Not until Pillow Man. She relaxed. She welcomed the adventure, especially now, to see him. The mummy and that drama could wait. It was a relief to get some distance from it.
Pillow Man sat under a shiny blue canvas cover propped up with poles. He was peeling the thorns off flat paddles of nopal cactus with a paring knife. When he saw the truck rattle to a stop on the scrabble of a front yard and Blanche emerge first, his eyes lit up. He dropped the knife and rose slowly. He limped toward her, arms outstretched: “Mi ángel.”
Blanche smiled. She was hardly an angel. All she did was put a bit of shredded pillow under his head while he lay in the street and hold his hand until the ambulance came, then she didn’t let go of his fingers until Carmen arrived and they drove him off to the emergency room. It was a harrowing experience, but he was alive, and he was smiling. For this, Blanche was grateful. It had only been a few days since the accident, but he looked remarkably fit. His face, though lined and weathered, had a healthy glow.
“¡Mejorando?” Blanche held him by his thin shoulders. Was he getting better? He straightened up. She could hear his old bones practically rasping against each other. He had to be eighty. He was wearing the same faded shirt he’d worn at the accident, clean and pressed, the collar and sleeves buttoned up even in this heat. His white hair, thick as pillow fluff, was plastered down on his head.
“Mejorando. I am better now,” he said. His eyes filled, which brought Blanche right back to the day of the accident. He kissed her cheek.
“Come. Leave her.” Carmen fussed, holding onto Haasi’s arm as they walked around the truck. Impatiently, she clucked: “Vamos. Time to eat.”
The cottage was a rough structure of cinder blocks set on a patch of dirt. One window by the door had no glass, only a gauzy white shawl of a curtain waving in and out in welcome. A mannequin dressed in a green shirt was stuck in the dirt near a rutty road, and in the middle of it, a lonely cow stood, lowing and mooing sadly. Beyond the cow, a small pond with scum the color of the mannequin’s shirt lay flat and still. Not a sound for miles. Blanche looked out across the country at vast expanses of tan and green, bumps of cactus, the low black hills far in the distance, beckoning, suggesting cooler places. A mysterious beauty that rolled away under a startlingly blue sky tinged pink and orange in the early evening.
It was dim inside the cottage, but her eyes adjusted to the light. Strings of bright cut-paper flags fluttered from wall to wall overhead. Something delicious was simmering in a pot and send
ing up a meaty aroma. Blanche hoped it was one of her most favorite things, chamorro, the slow-cooked, spicy leg of the pig. Blanche and Haasi had discovered it, wandering through the market one day. They’d ordered two tacos of chamorro and orange Victorias to drink and sat on stools, watching the cook stir a vat of meat the size of her whole stove back home.
Young women stood over a comal, all of them speaking Spanish at once. A girl flipped tortillas into baskets lined with napkins. Candles flickered on the deep-set windowsills next to tangles of red and white geraniums, and a boy in the corner bent over a guitar. The happy sounds and smells carried them into another world after the lonely dusty desert.
Then, an explosion of laughter outside. Several young men banged through the cross-hatched wooden door. They wore T-shirts and jeans. They stopped, shyly, when they saw Blanche and Haasi and the other girls, then they scattered along a far wall, carrying beaten-up guitars, a small drum, and a flute-like reed instrument.
Pillow Man did not look at the newcomers who guffawed and slapped each other on the back. Eddie shuffled in a straight line, nodding once at the young women in the kitchen. He held on to Blanche’s arm and walked over to the boy in the corner. The boy stopped tuning the guitar and unfolded himself from the stool. He was tall, compared to everyone else in the room. He was not a boy, but a man. A crooked smile cut his jaw at a sharp angle and the flash of that smile made him even more handsome.
“Angelita, meet Emilio Sierra Del Real,” said the Pillow Man whose full name, they’d learned from Carmen, was Virgilio Eduardo Fabian Gustavo, or Eddie. Blanche loved the sound of all the long, musical names.
Eddie took their hands and brought them together. Emilio and Blanche smiled, a spark passing between them, the guitars quiet, the room filled with the warm scent of cooking. Blanche would always remember that moment like she wasn’t even in it, like it was a painting of a fiesta that hung in her mind.
“So, you are the angel,” said the guitar player. His hair was spiky like the feathers of a blackbird, his nose was aquiline like an Aztec chief. He had powerful upper arms that stuck out of the T-shirt tucked halfway into a pair of tight jeans. He wore scuffed boots. His hand wrapped around the neck of the guitar like he was grasping something easy and familiar to him—kindling for burning, a bunch of flowers, a loaf of bread. With the other hand, he reached for Blanche and kissed her on the cheek, and then the other. A light gesture that hit her soundly.
Trouble Down Mexico Way Page 5