by Blake Banner
The Verdugo dawn.
Six
I slept till early afternoon, then spent an hour training in my room. I had a light, late lunch and as the heat began to fade in the evening, I went for a run in the desert, finishing up with a swim in the pool and a long, cold shower. I didn’t think. There was a kind of stillness in my mind that was like silence, as though all the chatter and noise, and all the questions, had been locked away in a soundproofed room. They were not gone, they were there, but they could not be heard.
At 7:40 PM, I got in my car and made my way through the closing darkness, with blood and fire spilling across the horizon, to Casa Castaneda. By the time I got there, it was five to eight. The diner was all closed and the windows were dark. The only light came from the tall lamps that stood around the lot, spilling dull yellow light on the dust. The place was empty, but she was sitting on the steps that rose to the porch. She watched me pull in and park. I sat for a long moment, looking at her through the dark glass, while she sat with her chin in her hands, looking back at my black windshield, waiting for me to emerge.
I opened the door and climbed out. Her voice came disembodied through the deepening dusk.
“What is that? You get it customized in hell?”
There was humor in her voice. I smiled and spoke without thinking. “In Texas.”
She was quiet a moment, without moving, her chin still in her hands. “You remember that?”
I leaned against the hood. A chill desert breeze touched my face and moved her hair.
“It just came to me.”
“Who in Texas?”
I thought for a second and there was a bitter twist to my voice when I said, “Bloodshed Motors.”
There was more regret than bitterness in hers when she said, “Sure, where else?”
“You hungry?”
“Yeah. You got anywhere in mind?”
“No. I don’t remember.”
“You like a good T-bone steak.”
I smiled at her dark form, at the expression I imagined on her face, obscured by the encroaching night. “I’m pretty sure I do.”
“We don’t have fancy restaurants here, with linen napkins and wine waiters.” I didn’t answer and she added, “This ain’t New York or Boston.”
“Should it be?”
She stood, taking shape, but still featureless. “Come on, let’s go eat.” She pointed at a dusty red Toyota truck. “We can take my truck or we can walk.”
“Where?”
She pointed south. “Three hundred yards down the road at the gas station.”
I didn’t move. “I want to know what you know about me. But I don’t want to find out over hot dogs at a gas station diner.”
She came down two steps onto the cold dust and paused. “This isn’t a date…”
“You said something about a T-bone steak.”
“La Rosa. It’s a restaurant on the same lot as the gas station. Let’s walk.”
We walked slowly, under a moonless sky that was rich in stars, across the cooling dust of the empty lot. Three hundred yards away was the eerie, luminous pool of red, green and yellow light where the gas station and the restaurant stood like a stage set in a bizarre science fiction play. It was a five-minute walk, but for the first minute, we didn’t say anything. We just strolled in silence. It struck me that it felt familiar.
Eventually, I said, “Do I get to know your name? I don’t think I ever invited a woman to dinner before who refused to tell me her name.”
She frowned up at me, but there was humor in her frown. “That should be a relief, I guess. But on the other hand, you can’t know that, can you? It might have happened to you on many occasions.”
I nodded, then shrugged. “I guess so, but it doesn’t answer my question. Do I get to learn your name?”
“I don’t know.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to find out. It would just be nice if you told me.”
We had stepped out of the empty lot and onto the concrete forecourt of the gas station. She thrust her hands into her pockets and walked for a bit, looking down at the toes of her tan cowboy boots, where they protruded from her jeans.
“You know what would be even nicer?” She glanced at me. “If you remembered.”
“So we do know each other.”
“That might be overstating it. But it must have been pretty obvious to you by now that we’ve met. Otherwise, what are we doing here?”
“Where did we meet?”
She didn’t answer until she’d pushed through the door and into the restaurant ahead of me. A pretty blonde fresh out of high school smiled at us like she’d been waiting all her life just for us to arrive, and showed us to a table. It was a large, open room with lots of wood and lights that were a bit too bright. There were no tablecloths, the napkins were paper and each table was set with its own cruet set. It made me smile.
The pretty blonde gave a little bob. “Can I get you a drink while you look at the menu?”
The woman whose name I still did not know said, “Beer.”
I narrowed my eyes. It was like my mouth wanted to speak on its own. I said, “I’ll have a martini, dry, but put a dash of Beefeater gin in it, some ice and a slice of lemon. And, drop an olive in it, will you?”
She smiled at me like her CPU had crashed, then bobbed again and said, “Sure! I’ll do that for you!”
The dark Latina sitting opposite me gave her head a few small shakes. “What are you, James Bond?”
I thought about it. “His was the Bradford martini, and he had it shaken, not stirred.”
“Really?” It came out flat, without curiosity.
I said, “Where did we meet?”
“Mexico.”
“You’re Mexican?”
“You really are James Bond.”
“You going to cut the sarcasm any time soon?”
She gave her head a single shake. “Not any time soon, no.”
“You could as easily be from just about anywhere in the United States. It would be stupid to assume you were Mexican just because your parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents were Latin-American. Can we move on now?”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to apologize.”
“I have a feeling that is something I will never come to expect. What was I doing in Mexico?”
The pretty blonde brought our drinks. I told her we wanted two T-bones, she bobbed and left. I sipped and repeated, as I set down my glass, “What was I doing in Mexico?”
She didn’t pour her beer, she took a swig from the bottle and then examined the label, like she wanted to make sure it was the right beer for that taste.
“I don’t know why you were there. You were there with another guy. You were leaving. You stayed with me for a while. I think you were there to kill somebody.” She glanced at me, registered the lack of emotion and sighed. “That doesn’t surprise you, right?”
I shook my head. “No. Who paid me?”
She made a face and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
She raised her eyes to mine and they were bright with anger.
I said, “I’m sorry, but you’re either not telling the truth, or you are being economical with it.”
She drew breath, like she was going to give me a mouthful, then closed it again and sagged back into her chair.
“I don’t know if you were paid, but I don’t think so.”
“Why? What makes you think I wasn’t?”
“When I met you, that didn’t seem to be your motivation. You also seemed to have a lot of money.”
I shrugged, shaking my head a couple of times. “Hit men, some mercenaries, they make a lot of money. It’s a high-risk job.”
“Yeah, maybe. Anyway, that was the impression I got.”
“What about my motivation?”
She looked around the room, first right, then left, like she was trying to find my motivation and have a look at it. “It sounds lame, but you seemed to be lookin
g for justice.”
“Me? Looking for justice?”
My expression made her laugh, but then she nodded. “Yeah, in your own special way.”
“Justice… Revenge?”
“I don’t know.”
“But I was working for somebody?”
“I think so.”
I was quiet for a while, thinking. Then, “The Casa Castaneda…?”
She took a deep breath and held it before answering. “You bought my house in Mexico at a stupid price. I was real mad at you. I told you I didn’t need charity. But you’re obstinate to the point of pigheadedness. The price you paid for my house was enough for me to come here, buy this place and send my kids to a good school.”
“You have kids.” It was more of a statement than a question and she watched me, like she was waiting to see what I would say next. “Where’s their dad?”
She looked away and seemed to address the room as a whole, only her voice was quiet. “That’s a long story, and I’d like to tell you it’s none of your business. But I’m not sure I can do that.”
“I knew their father?”
She nodded, still looking out at the large, half-empty room.
“Were you and I lovers?”
She shifted her eyes so she was looking at me now. Her expression was hard to read. Anger, but there was something else there I couldn’t make out.
I said, “I seem to remember…”
“Stop right there. If you remember, you remember. If you don’t, it makes no difference. Either way, buying my house at four times the market price gives you no rights to any kind of intimacy with me. Are we clear?”
I shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. You’re clear, I’m not.”
“Well, be clear about this, buster. That subject is closed, and will remain closed.”
“Is that my name, Buster?”
I smiled and after a moment, she smiled back, but without much humor. “My husband is dead. He was a close friend of yours.”
“I’m sorry.”
She took some time to study the label on her beer bottle again. “We hadn’t been together for a few years. He wanted me to move to the States. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t afford it and I refused to take money from him.” She raised her eyes to study my face again. “You really don’t remember him?”
I shook my head.
She took a slug from the bottle. “He loved you.”
That surprised me and I let my face show it. “He loved me?”
Suddenly, she was laughing. It was a beautiful sound, and it transformed her face. She threw her head back and laughed without inhibition or embarrassment. A few people turned and smiled. After a while, she stopped, but the laughter left traces of a smile on her mouth and in her eyes.
“Not like that. He was older than you, maybe twenty-five or thirty years older, though he was still vigorous and strong. He didn’t look his age. He was a brilliant man, but wild and uncontrollable.”
“You loved him.”
“I was crazy about him. It’s not the same.”
“Oh, it isn’t?”
“No. To love somebody, you need to be sane. If you’re crazy about them, you need them, you don’t love them.”
“Oh, I’ll try to remember that. So you were crazy about him, but you didn’t love him.”
She didn’t answer for a bit, then she said, without much conviction, “Something like that. In the end, there were five of us in the relationship.”
“Five?”
“Me, the two kids, him and his ego.”
“And this guy loved me? I don’t get it.”
“He loved you like a son. Of course, he would never admit anything like that. He told me once that the most loving thing a father could do for a son was teach him how to be independent. He had no real bond with our son, or our daughter.”
I made a face and gave my head a small twitch. “Maybe there’s something in that—teaching your kids independence.”
“Well, he sure gave his real son plenty of independence.”
Suddenly, I didn’t want to get bogged down in an emotional quagmire. I sat forward, with hands flat on the table on either side of my drink, and asked her, “So how did I know him? Did we work together or what?”
“From what…” She stopped.
“What?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“What?”
She glanced around the restaurant. A couple of the patrons had looked over. She spoke quietly. “From what I gathered, he admired your work and tried to persuade you to work with him, but he was only partly successful.”
I frowned so hard it turned into a scowl. “But what are we talking about? Freelance? Departments? Military…?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you. He didn’t talk to me about his work. You...” She gestured at me with her open palm and shrugged. “However ironic it may seem, you know more about him and his work than I do.”
I sighed. The pretty blonde waitress showed up with our steaks, set them down with difficulty and smiled. “Y’all enjoy, now.”
As she walked away on pert legs, I said absently, “I thought that was just Texas.”
“Y’all?” The sarcasm was back. “There’s a law. You can’t say y’all once you cross the state line, but it’s hard to enforce.”
I sighed again. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s honest. Brutal, but honest.”
She picked up her knife and fork, then laid them down again. “No, it’s not honest. I…” A deep breath, a long pause, then, “I do like you. But you both hurt me. And I don’t want to get hurt again. So I am aggressive and sarcastic, and I lash out at you.”
I nodded. “That is honest.”
She cut into her steak, like she hadn’t heard me. So we ate in silence for a while. Finally, I laid down my knife and fork and said, “How long are we going to remain without names?”
“I don’t know.”
“You feel safer if I don’t know your name?”
“Maybe.”
“What about your husband…?”
“My ex-husband. We were divorced before he died.”
“My friend? Mentor?”
“I don’t know what he was to you. When we…” She stopped, looking into my face. Her breathing had grown heavy, so I could see her chest rising and falling in her red and blue plaid shirt.
“What? When we what?”
“When we spent that time together, in Mexico, in my house, you seemed ambivalent about him.”
I frowned, leaning forward. “Wait, slow down. This is a lot to take in. We spent time together. You said we weren’t…”
“I know what I said. They left…”
“Who? Who left?”
“My ex-husband, and your friend.”
“My friend?”
“He is also dead now. They all died, everyone…”
“Except me.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “They left, in a plane. You stayed behind. We had a…” She shook her head and shrugged, searching for words. “We had a connection. It was nice. You cared. You showed you cared. Or you seemed to care, I don’t know. I’d never had that before. Then you bought the house. You said you had to go away and do a job, but you’d be in touch, and return. And I never heard from you again.” She shrugged. “So I came here and started my own business.”
“I’m sorry.”
If she heard, she didn’t show it. “Eventually, I received a letter.”
“What kind of letter?”
“From a senator, or one of her secretaries, saying that the senator wanted to talk to me.”
I was frowning. I shook my head, showing I didn’t understand.
She ignored me and went on. “She showed up late one afternoon. I closed up and we sat here and had coffee. She told me… She told me he was dead, that he had been murdered. She couldn’t give me the details because he worked for a special department of the government.” She paused
, shook her head and gave a dry laugh. “I didn’t even know he who he worked for. She said several other people had been killed at the same time. It had been a massacre. The entire department had been wiped out.”
“Department?”
“Obviously, that was all beyond top secret. She told me because he was my husband, and I was left several things, property, money.” She shrugged. “That sort of thing. But she made me sign a document, swearing me to secrecy.”
“What was his name? What is my name? What is the senator’s name? Tell me who these people are, and who I am.”
“I can’t,” she said simply. “I can’t tell you.”
Seven
“My name is Sole.”
I sat and looked at her face. There was no anger there now, only sadness, mellowed by the ghost of a smile.
“Sole…”
“It’s short for Soledad, which means loneliness.”
“Oh.”
She took a deep breath and the ghost of a smile became the memory of one. “I can’t tell you my husband’s name. He had a boy, well, a young man, who always worked with him. I guess he was about your age, but he looked and acted younger.” She stopped. “Don’t get me wrong, but you have this kind of ancient look about you, like maybe you’re five hundred years old or something. But this guy…” She began to laugh, slouching and hanging her arms by her sides, bouncing slightly. “He was a dude, always with scruffy clothes, baggy shirts and stupid hats, always with a funny look in his eyes. Like you, he was a killer, but he was funny and strangely human. He loved my husband like a father, and he loved you like a brother.”
“What was his name, Sole?”
“Don’t ask me. I can’t tell you. It’s classified information at the highest level.”
“And they are both dead?”
She nodded. “I miss them. And I thought you were dead, too.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Nobody knew.”
“Who is nobody?”
She gave me a sad, ironic smile. “That is some question. We getting into deep philosophy now? I mean that the senator didn’t know what had happened to you. She, her people, her investigators, the department you were all attached to, they all assumed you had died too.”