Aztec Sun

by Judith Arnold

  Diego had spent those hours outside in the parking lot, handling the press with his usual skill, managing to field their questions without saying a thing. Diego excelled at the art of mouthing platitudes, making empty assertions. Thank God for that; Rafael couldn’t have faced the media in his current mood.

  He wondered whether Sandra Garcia was in the parking lot with the other reporters, shouting questions at Diego. Perhaps she had tried to telephone Rafael personally, but had been shunted aside by Carlotta. He hoped...

  He hoped she wouldn’t call. He hoped she would. He hoped she would call not as a journalist but as a human being, someone who had known Melanie, however briefly, and who shared his sorrow at the young actress’s death. But he had no reason to assume Sandra saw Melanie as anything other than a headline story for her newspaper.

  He needed to talk to John Rhee, his casting director and his accountants, to discuss the feasibility of replacing Melanie in White Angel and starting over. But right now John was being interviewed by a policeman in the conference room down the hall. And when Rafael thought about starting over, he thought not about a single movie but about his career, his studio, his entire life.

  Rafael could start over with the movie if his insurance company and investors stuck by him—and that was a big if. It was just as likely this episode would leave them viewing him as a beaner, a wetback who either didn’t know or didn’t care what was going on at his studio. They could be making snap judgments about his venality, his ineptitude, all the bigoted presumptions they could come up with when it came to Hispanics and criminal activity. God knew, someone might at that very minute be figuring out that Rafael’s own brother was a convicted drug dealer. If they dug that deep, they’d unearth Rafael’s own past, his sins, the marks on his soul. They would never trust him again.

  The hell with it. He didn’t want to think about trust, or movies, or all those fucking vultures downstairs feasting on the flesh of Aztec Sun. All Rafael wanted to think about was that a young woman was dead.

  Carlotta had closed the blinds in his office to protect him—”The reporters have got telephoto lenses on their cameras, and they’ll shoot your picture if they see you”—but he was able to flex the slats and peek out at the parking lot. A few journalists lingered, but Diego was no longer posted by Building A behind a bank of microphones and a stack of press releases. It was nearly three o’clock. No doubt the media flock had migrated to the more fertile pastures of the hospital. Rafael could count only a few reporters still milling below his window. None of them had long black hair and a determined chin, slim legs and eyes that could snare a man’s heart.

  Where was she? If she’d been among the journalists hounding Diego, why hadn’t she made an attempt to talk to Rafael? Carlotta had been under orders to keep the crowds away—but she knew Sandra had been a presence at the studio over the past couple of days. Surely she would have let Rafael know if Sandra had tried to see him.

  This was what she was after, wasn’t it? Breaking news. A major story. Not the PR crap Diego pushed on her, but the real thing. She’d been investigating, probing, snooping—just as Rafael had feared. That morning she’d been sniffing around the subject of Ricardo. Rafael didn’t kid himself into thinking his lies would discourage her from uncovering the facts. She was as much a vulture as the rest of them, as eager for a page-one story.

  If only he’d kissed her when she’d been in his office, maybe everything else would have gone differently. She would have kissed him back with a passion to match his. She would have remained all morning in his office, in his arms, and her curiosity about his brother would have gone forgotten. The earth would have spun at a different tempo, and Melanie wouldn’t have died, and a boy would have leaped from the cliffs and flown with the condors.

  The absurdity of that fantasy forced a bitter laugh from him. What gave him the audacity to think he could change the world with a kiss?

  Restless and uneasy, he let the blinds fall back into alignment. His intercom buzzed, and he crossed back to his desk. “Rafael?” Carlotta’s voice emerged through the speaker, hoarse with fatigue. “Detective Rooney wants to talk to you. He says you don’t have to go to the conference room; your office is fine.”

  “Okay.” Rafael understood that Rooney was offering him a courtesy by not demanding that he troop down the hall to the conference room like his employees.

  Not that such a small courtesy softened Rafael toward the cop. He’d spent a lifetime distrusting the city’s finest, a lifetime knowing that the police were never around when he needed them but always around at the worst times.

  Still, this had to be done, for Melanie’s sake. He sat at his desk and waited for the cop to enter.

  A stone-faced man of middle age, Rooney was the head of the investigation into Melanie’s death. Rafael had already met him earlier in the day. Now he welcomed him into the office with a quiet nod.

  Rooney took a chair across the desk from Rafael and scrutinized him with a look he probably intended to be intimidating. Rafael was too sad and bitter to be intimidated. He scrutinized the cop right back.

  “First,” Rooney said, clicking a pen and flipping open a notebook, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Ms. Greer’s contract. When did she start working for you?”

  Rafael glanced at the calendar on his desk. “We signed her in late July. She started rehearsing two weeks ago. She first showed up on the studio grounds last week. The details, the specific dates—you’ll have to talk to the contracts department and Melanie’s agent.”

  “Were you ever aware of her using drugs?” Rooney asked.

  Rafael put a clamp on his emotions, letting the cop see nothing but steely self-control. “I do not tolerate drug use at my studio,” he said. “Melanie knew that. What she might have done behind my back I can’t say—because, obviously, it was done behind my back.”

  “But everyone knows drugs are rampant in Hollywood.”

  “This isn’t Hollywood,” Rafael said dryly. “It’s East L.A.”

  “Where drugs are even more rampant, Mr. Perez. Where gangs rule the streets and sell crack in the playgrounds. Surely you know that as well as I do.”

  Rafael understood what Rooney was really saying: I know your brother. I know why he was sent up. You’re on my list, too, Perez.

  It was one thing to deny the truth to Sandra Garcia and another to deny it to a cop, who had access to computers and files and knew damned well who the Perezes were and what they had done, both good and bad. Rafael saw no reason to waste time playing games. “My brother is in jail because of drugs, Detective Rooney,” he said quietly. “His wife is without a husband and his children are without a father because of drugs. I have a good reason to hate drugs.”

  “This movie Miss Greer was working on—it was capitalized much higher than your previous movies, wasn’t it?”

  He could guess where Rooney was heading. To evade the detective’s questions would only feed his suspicion. “Yes,” Rafael said.

  “Did you have any trouble raising the money to make this picture?”

  “No.”

  “Just the usual channels?”

  “If you wish to talk to my accountant, feel free.”

  “Was anyone on the set having an affair with Miss Greer?”

  Rafael sighed, remembering his concern that Diego was fooling around with her. Was it only that morning that Diego’s sex life had been his greatest worry? “I don’t know.”

  “How about you?”

  Again he kept his cool. “No.”

  “She was very pretty.”

  “She was beautiful and talented. I was very much aware of her charms, Detective Rooney. But I wasn’t her lover.”

  “Her drug use turned you off, huh.”

  “I didn’t know she was using drugs.”

  Rooney eyed him skeptically, but he didn’t push further. “If it’s an overdose, so be it,” he said. “But we owe it to her to find out what kind of junk she took, how much, where she got it. Th
ere could be a murder charge in all this, Mr. Perez.”

  Rafael said nothing.

  Rooney flipped a page in his notepad and wedged his pen into the pocket of his shirt. Heading for the door, he said. “You know the saying, Perez: Don’t leave town.”

  Rafael had no intention of leaving town, but he sure as hell couldn’t bear to stay in the office building any longer. He counted to twenty, giving Rooney plenty of time to clear out of his way. Then he rose, turned off his desk lamp, and headed for the door.

  In the outer office Carlotta looked faded, her usually impeccable hair in disarray, her lipstick chewed off. “Go home,” he told her.

  “The phone’s still ringing, Rafael. I can’t—”

  “Go home.” For once he was pulling rank, bossing her around.

  She must have seen in his eyes that he meant business. Their congenial working relationship would not allow her the upper hand today. The argument died on her lips; she turned her back on the flashing lights of her telephone console and pushed away from her desk. “Should I call you later?”

  “No. Just go.” He helped her out of her chair and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “We’ll be able to think straighter in the morning.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  He laughed bleakly. “I’ll be fine,” he said, wishing he could convince himself, knowing he couldn’t.

  He left Carlotta’s office. At the end of the hall, the conference room door was ajar. He could hear the murmur of voices from inside as the police investigators continued to depose everyone who had seen Melanie that morning.

  Outside the room, Luis Rodriguez slouched against the wall, polishing off a candy bar. Spotting Rafael, he straightened up and loped down the hall, his pony tail bouncing against his neck. “Hey, man,” he said softly.

  Rafael shook his hand. “How’s it going?”

  “They’re just finishing up with John. They already grilled me. I think they only have Larry Seldes left.” At Rafael’s nod, he added, “When they’re done we’re all heading down to Cesar’s.” His voice rose at the end, as if he were asking rather than stating it.

  Was he worried that the boss would object to their leaving the studio early today? “That sounds like a good idea,” said Rafael.

  “Maybe...I mean, if you want to join us...”

  Rafael smiled and shook his head. “I think I’ll be staying here a while longer.”

  “Yeah.” Luis toed the carpet and sighed. “She was so nice.”

  “She’ll be missed.”

  Luis lifted his gaze to Rafael. The young man’s eyes glistened with tears. Rafael patted his shoulder, then turned and strode down the hall, sparing Luis the humiliation of weeping in front of a witness.

  He rode the elevator downstairs and emerged to discover the reception desk vacant. Not that it mattered. No one was going to get a polite reception at Aztec Sun that afternoon.

  Peering through the glass doors of the main entrance, he spotted a few reporters lurking on the sidewalk. They saw him through the glass and started toward him. He stepped outside before they could invade the building lobby. “No comment,” he muttered, waving them off.

  Undissuaded, they peppered him with questions. “Mr. Perez, did you know she was using...?”

  “Mr. Perez, do you have any idea where she got...?

  “Do you plan to go forward with this movie?”

  “Did you know Melanie Greer had drug problems before you hired her?”

  “No comment,” he repeated, stalking past them.

  Diego’s Mercedes was gone from the lot, and he saw no sign of Sandra’s sedan. Melanie’s car, an olive-drab Range Rover, was parked by her trailer. What was the protocol? he wondered, staring past the car at the yards of yellow tape that had been strung around the trailer to mark it as a police investigation site. Was he supposed to have her car towed off the premises? Or should he leave it there until the police were done scouring her trailer? It was now part of Melanie’s estate.

  Christ. Thinking of Melanie in terms of her estate was jolting. He couldn’t put her and death together. It defied rationality that some one so lively could be dead.

  Yellow police tape surrounded Building B, as well. He crossed the parking lot, ignoring the distant, wind-distorted voices of the reporters chasing him, and stepped over the ribbon. A policeman stopped him at the door.

  “I’m Rafael Perez,” he said, staring down the policeman, who was several inches shorter than him, with a rounded gut and a layer of fat padding his chin. He looked wimpy, and Rafael decided to intimidate him. “I own this place. I need to go inside.”

  “Well...” Evidently Rafael’s gruff tone and harsh glower worked. “Just don’t touch anything, okay?”

  “Sure.” Hearing the reporters closing in on him, he swept inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Entering the sound stage, he realized that he truly did need to be here. He needed to see the tenement-flat set, the scaffolding, the booms and coils of cable, the lamps, deflectors and cameras. The film John Rhee had shot that morning had been voluntarily turned over to the police. Despite the clutter, despite the utility lights shedding illumination from various points in the ceiling grid, the room looked dark and empty, like death itself.

  Rafael walked over to the set. The kitchen looked the same as it had yesterday—a chair knocked over, the table slightly to the left of its marks, the curtains framing the window above the sink, the flooring artfully scuffed. Just beyond the fake walls stood work counters stacked high with paper and props. A headset was hooked over the rung of a stepladder. Paper cups still holding the morning’s coffee, and ashtrays holding the morning’s cigarettes, were scattered about, as if time had stopped at the same instant as Melanie’s life.

  Where had she fallen? he wondered. At what precise spot had she collapsed? Where had John been standing at that moment, and Antonio Torres, and Jenny, and Bob, and all the others? Had she screamed, or just slumped to the floor? Had she spoken any last words? Had she known, in the moments before her heart had stopped beating, that she was going to die?

  He tried to remember his own brush with death. But unlike Melanie, he’d returned from unconsciousness. He’d raced to the edge of the cliff, but Diego had dragged him back before he could leap into the air and spread his wings. When he’d opened his eyes, when he’d felt the pain like a fire raging through his chest, he’d seen the grimy, graffiti-covered walls of an alley and then Diego, coming in and out of focus as he lurked above Rafael. He’d seen blood on Diego’s shirt, on his hands. Rafael’s own blood.

  “You’re gonna make it, compadre,” Diego had said to him. “Looks like you got lucky.”

  Coming back from the brink of death had been a long, torturous journey. But he’d done it because dying would have meant giving up. For all Rafael’s sins, for all his flaws, he wasn’t a quitter.

  He lowered himself onto a folding chair facing the set. The silence closed around him, the air resting against his skin, the darkness settling like dust. He stared at the set, trying to imagine Melanie still alive, skipping and tripping and laughing at her clumsiness.

  Laughing because she’d been stoned, Rafael acknowledged with a bitter sigh.

  Diego had promised him, he’d sworn he would keep her clean. He’d assured Rafael again and again. How had this happened? How had she sneaked the poison past Diego? Hadn’t he been in her trailer that morning, checking on her, making sure she was straight?

  A shudder wrenched him. He lowered his elbows to his knees, his face to his hands. Melanie was dead. For no good reason a woman had died, and the weight of it threatened to crush him.

  Somewhere, through the density of his grief, he heard footsteps and a whisper, a woman’s voice. Maybe she had come back to life. Maybe it had all been a bad dream.

  He sat up and opened his eyes. As they adjusted to the gloom he saw the set again, barren and drowning in shadow, and the cameras, the dollies, the scaffolding, the detritus of the morning’s aborted shoot. An
d then, materializing in the gloom, the silhouette of a woman.

  His heart quickened. It wasn’t Melanie, but it was a woman he had to see, a woman he’d been aching for. At last she had found him. He neither knew nor cared whether she’d come to give him strength or to tear him to ribbons. All that mattered was that she was here.

  ***

  “RAFAEL?” SANDRA CALLED through the dark.

  She saw him hunched over in a chair that seemed too small to contain his long, lanky body. His head was cradled in his hands, his eyes closed. She almost turned and left.

  But then he lifted his face and gazed at her, his eyes dark and frightening in their intensity.

  During her drive back to Los Angeles from Chino, Flannagan had called her on the car phone and ordered her to go straight to the hospital. She’d arrived there to discover a press conference in progress, with Russo dutifully taking notes. She’d stayed long enough to hear that Melanie had apparently died from cardiac arrest attributable to the ingestion of a large quantity of cocaine, although the doctors would not be absolutely certain of this until they completed an autopsy. The police were currently attempting to discover the source of the drug. Murder charges were likely.

  It was the kind of story reporters dreamed of. Stuck at the rear of the room, Sandra had watched Russo scribbling away, shouting questions, acting as if he were the only reporter in the room.

  She couldn’t let him steal the story from her. Flannagan favored him with all the best assignments on the crime beat. This story, a throw-away piece about a Chicano, was supposed to belong to Sandra.

  Well, she had access Russo could never hope to have. She was on an air-kiss basis with Diego Salazar...and a real kiss basis with Rafael. Russo could be Flannagan’s most beloved reporter in all the world, but he would never be able to connect with Rafael the way Sandra could.

  As she inched closer to the sound stage, she wondered whether she would be able to connect with Rafael at all—whether she would even want to. He looked unapproachable. Dangerous. In such obvious agony she wanted to turn and run.