Aztec Sun

by Judith Arnold

  “Yes, but—”

  “I see something like that bag in my office and it makes me sick. So I get rid of it.”

  “Tell it to the judge,” she muttered. She made a few more notes on her pad, then leaned back in her chair. “All right. Do you want the bad news first, or the bad news?”

  He smiled grimly. “Go ahead—start with the bad news.”

  “They’ve scheduled your arraignment for tomorrow morning, which means you’ve got to spend the night here.”

  He cursed.

  “My sentiments exactly. They’re still trying to figure out what they’re going to charge you with. Right now, all they’ve got worked out are some drug counts. But they’re trying to put together a homicide case.”

  Hearing her mention homicide caused something to twist in his stomach, making him want to gag.

  “Your arraignment’s at nine a.m. tomorrow,” she continued. “Mike and I will be there to argue bail. Are you willing to put your house up as collateral?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s a chance the judge will deny bail. I don’t know how much the D.A.’s going to make use of your juvenile charges. Those old raps should have been sealed once you proved yourself to be a fine upstanding citizen. And let’s face it, they’re nothing to land you a starring role on America’s Most Wanted. What were they—public nuisance, vandalism, disorderly conduct, right?”

  He nodded.

  “God knows what the D.A.’s planning to do. He’s been running at the mouth about what a saint Melanie was. The angel of White Angel and all that. Which means that, by default, the man responsible for her death must be Satan himself.”

  “I’m not responsible for her death,” Rafael said quietly.

  “You know that and I know that. If the gods are with us, we’ll be able to prove it before this thing goes to trial.” She scribbled something on the pad.

  “What’s the other bad news?”

  “Your mother’s outside in the lobby.”

  “My mother?”

  “Right after they took you away, Carlotta called her. She brought some food for you. She said you were looking thin.” Tracy tilted her head and appraised him. “I’ve got to say I agree with her.”

  “Great.”

  “Whatever she’s carrying on that foil-covered plate, it’s got to be better than the swill they serve here. Enjoy a home-cooked meal.”

  Like a condemned man the night before his execution, Rafael thought.

  “One more thing,” Tracy said, staring at him across the table, assessing him. “If that cocaine didn’t belong to you—”

  “It didn’t,” he said fiercely. If his own attorney didn’t believe him...

  She held her hands up in a placating manner. “The thing is, Rafael, someone else must have put it there. Someone set you up.”

  He ground his teeth together, sending more pain down into his neck, his back, his entire body. Yes, of course, someone set him up. Someone who wanted a big scoop. Someone who loved to see her name in print.

  “Do you have any idea who it could have been?”

  He opened his mouth and then shut it. As much as he despised Sandra, as much as he wanted to see her pay for having done this to him, he couldn’t speak her name. He swore to himself it was only because he wasn’t exactly positive, or because unlike her he wasn’t given to betraying people. But he knew there was another reason.

  In his gut, in his soul, he couldn’t believe she could be that evil. His mind told him no one else could have done it. But his heart told him Sandra could not have done it, either.

  He remembered how her eyes had been bright with anger and with anguish during those few furious minutes in his office that morning, how they’d reflected agony and resentment and supplication and a million other emotions...but not guilt. Not the faintest hint of it.

  In those minutes—and in the long, dreadful hours since—doubt gnawed at him. Doubt and, stupid though it was, hope. He wanted to believe she was every good thing he’d believed last night, when she had enveloped him in her healing love.

  Unless it hadn’t been love at all. Unless it had been only a journalist’s strategy for getting closer to her subject, for infiltrating his office so she could figure out where to plant evidence. That second bag of cocaine had been secreted inside the Aztec Sun sculpture. Who else would have come up with such an idea?

  But...Sandra. He remembered her kisses, her sighs, the way she’d clung to him, taken and given, given so much, the way she’d made him feel whole and strong, powerful.

  “I don’t know,” he told Tracy.

  “Think about it,” she urged him. “Search your memory. Anyone who might be nursing a grudge, anyone who might have wanted to do Melanie a favor...anyone, Rafael. If we can hand somebody else over to the judge, you’ll be out of here.”

  “Great,” he muttered. He didn’t like the idea that the only way he could clear his name was to turn in someone else. Some might consider revenge sweet, but to Rafael the only sweetness would be to go back in time, to have Melanie alive, starring in his movie, and Sandra—a thorn in his side—starring in his fantasies.

  Fantasies were useless. The reality was that once Tracy had left the small room, once he’d visited for a few minutes with his mother and eaten the food she’d brought, he would be sent back to the holding cell, back to the unyielding bench and the cold steel bars and the knowledge that he might be spending the rest of his life in just such a place, staring at cold steel bars.

  It was a wretched thought, one that sliced down his back, scraped across his nerves, sent chills through his flesh.

  Yet he couldn’t bring himself to speak Sandra’s name.

  ***

  LATE AT NIGHT, she still wasn’t asleep.

  She prowled her apartment, possessed by her thoughts, her questions, her misgivings. Nothing was right.

  The air was too cold. Too hot. The blanket smothered, yet when she threw it off she shivered. After abandoning her bed, she paced up and down the hall, in shapeless circuits around her living room, to the door, to the kitchen, to the window overlooking the night lights of the city. When a car honked its horn, seemingly miles away, she flinched.

  Something was terribly wrong. More wrong than her having fallen in love with Rafael Perez. More wrong than her having discovered the drugs in his office.

  She marched into the kitchen, scanned her telephone’s contact list and punched the button for Russo’s home number. The phone rang three times, and then his voice came on the line, thick and groggy: “What?”

  “Russo? It’s Sandra Garcia. I need my memory chip back.”

  “Huh?”

  “The memory chip I gave you. The interviews I recorded for the story on Rafael Perez. I need to check something.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  She squinted at the glowing digits on her microwave. “One-fifteen.”

  “Very good, Sandra. You can read a clock. Can’t this wait until morning?”

  It couldn’t, but she opted for discretion. “Can you get into the news room by eight? I’ve got to listen to the interviews.”

  “No promises, sweetheart. I could have gotten in by eight, but it seems like I’m not going to have an uninterrupted night’s rest. I might sleep through my alarm clock.”

  “Please, Russo. I gave you a terrific story. Cut me some slack, okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Eight o’clock. Maybe.” She heard a click as he hung up.

  She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a pitcher of orange juice and poured herself a glass. She carried it into the living room and lowered herself onto one of the huge embroidered pillows on the floor, next to a passion plant in an earthenware pot. Moonlight silvered the violet fuzz adorning the leaves and danced across her bare feet.

  She sipped her juice and meditated. Twenty four hours ago she’d been in Rafael’s arms, learning his body, glimpsing his soul. Falling in love with the man, even though he was too quick to think the worst of her. Eve
n though he obviously detested her. Even though the last time she’d seen him he’d looked ready to strangle her, and the last time she’d spoken his name it had been to a desk sergeant at the police station when she’d called to report that the man she was in love with had illegal drugs in his office. Behind his hatred, behind his fury, she knew Rafael needed her as much tonight as he’d needed her last night. And she needed him just as much.

  Yet instead of answering each other’s needs, instead of loving each other, he was spending the night in a holding cell and she was spending the night awake, uneasy, besieged by questions.

  The answers—what few there might be—were on that memory chip. They were somewhere in Melanie’s mangled, muddled babbling. In retrospect, Sandra recognized that Melanie had been under the influence at the time of the interview in the trailer. But she’d said things, and they were all there, in her own voice. Too cool to get down in the mud with the rest of us, she’d described Rafael—and Sandra was positive there was more. Diego would do anything for Rafael....

  If Diego would do anything for Rafael, why would he tell Sandra that Rafael had supplied Melanie with drugs? She was a reporter. Why would he have revealed such a dreadful, incriminating piece of news to her? He was one of the few people in the world Rafael trusted. Why hadn’t he protected his boss, his best friend, even if it had meant lying to a nosy reporter?

  Maybe the answer was on the chip. Maybe it was in the pauses, in the silences or the giggles. One way or another, Sandra would figure it out. She had to. It wasn’t just a story.

  It was Rafael’s life.

  ***

  SHE SAT IN THE BACK of the small courtroom, trying to be inconspicuous. She probably shouldn’t have even come. If Rafael saw her, he might lunge at her, fists flying, and then he’d wind up in even bigger trouble.

  His temper didn’t manifest itself in violence, though. She’d seen him infuriated only twice. The first time, he’d kissed her. The second time, he’d thrown her out of his office.

  Today, who knew? He had nothing left to lose. Everything that mattered to him was already gone.

  A side door opened and a guard escorted him into the room in handcuffs. Sandra had to stifle a cry at the sight of him, tall and proud in yesterday’s wrinkled apparel, his hair mussed and his cheeks dark with an overnight growth of beard—and his hands, hands that had caressed her, learned her body, made sublime love to her—manacled.

  From the crowd of people occupying the courtroom seats, a crisp, austere woman and a slightly rumpled man rose, lugging leather briefcases, and strode quickly to the front of the room to stand with Rafael. On the other side of the aisle another lawyer stood. The court officer announced the case number, “People of the state of California against Rafael Perez, charged with possession of cocaine, possession with intent to sell, and homicide in the second degree.”

  The judge, an astringent-looking woman with smooth mahogany skin and salt-and-pepper hair, gazed down at Rafael from her elevated seat. “How do you plead, Mr. Perez?”

  “Innocent.” His voice was soft but intense, piercing the atmosphere.

  “Not guilty.” The judge turned to the lawyer on the other side and asked for a bail recommendation.

  “Your honor, we have a woman dead. A beautiful young starlet with her whole life ahead of her, dead because this man—” he jabbed a finger in Rafael’s direction “—supplied her with tainted cocaine. He has a history of juvenile crimes. His brother is a convicted drug dealer currently incarcerated at the penitentiary in Chino. The state believes Mr. Perez is not only a danger to society but a serious flight risk. We respectfully request that he be held without bail.”

  Rafael’s two attorney’s sprang into action. The austere woman scribbled on a pad while the rumpled man argued that Rafael had strong ties to the community. He owned a house in the Silver Lake neighborhood, he had family in the area, he had a business to run and hundreds of employees depending on him. His sister, a nun, taught at the Sacred Heart Academy in Pico Rivera. He was prepared to supply an affidavit from the pastor at Iglesia de San Pablo in East L.A., Father Andreas Ortega, who would vouch for Rafael’s character. The defense requested that Rafael be released in his own recognizance.

  There was bickering back and forth, attempts at one-upmanship and can-you-top-this. Sandra took notes; Flannagan was expecting a recap of the hearing, and although it would be only one step removed from a daily misery, she was determined to do a competent job of it. When Rafael’s bond was set at a quarter-million dollars, Sandra knew he would be able to make bail.

  Relieved that he wouldn’t have to spend more time in police custody, she stuffed her pen and pad into her tote and edged toward the main door, hoping to go unnoticed. The instant her hand touched the door he turned, as if radar had told him to seek her out. She felt as if everyone else in the hearing room had vanished. The only ones present were Rafael and Sandra, his eyes meeting hers, his gaze sucking all the light from the room, all the life from it. She felt her heart stop, felt her skin grow cold. Tears hovered along her lashes but refused to fall.

  As always, Rafael could transform a room. Right now, as he stared at her with wrath and sorrow and something more—regret? wistfulness?—he had transformed the courtroom into a place frozen in time, frozen in pain.

  And then he turned away.

  She exceeded the speed limit more than once on her way back to the Post building. It took her less than a half hour to bang out a piece on the arraignment for the following morning’s edition. As soon as she’d typed the final period and sent it into the computer’s central system, she booted up her file of notes plus the transcriptions of the recorded interviews which she’d typed earlier that morning.

  The words cluttered the screen of her monitor, a welter of clues. There were the statements of Luis Rodriguez, the lighting technician: Drugs? Rafael would never put up with it. He’s got a thing... And Hector, the fellow she’d chatted with at Cesar’s, saying of Rafael, He’s a good man. Another worker, telling her, He treats his people with respect. But mostly Melanie, running at the mouth, forgetting to censor herself: Rafael is strictly nose-to-the-grindstone.... He told Diego, “Melanie is our star. Make sure she’s happy.” And: He’s too cool to get down in the mud with us. He has Diego get muddy instead.”

  Melanie’s “happiness” had cost her her life. But time and again, she’d said it was Diego’s job to make her happy. Not Rafael’s. Diego’s.

  Sandra scrolled the screen to the transcripts of her interview with Ricardo, who had said of Rafael: He would have laid down his life for us. But the drugs scared him. As an envious older brother, he would have had a motive to lie, to paint Rafael worse than he was. But: The drugs scared him. And: Diego does what he wants to do. He’s got his own story.... He’ll do anything for respect.

  Another scroll, and the transcripts were replaced by her written notes. Rafael had said, Drugs destroy people. I come from the barrio, I’ve seen what drugs can do. And later, that evening in the tech booth with Diego, when they’d talked about their one big fight. She hadn’t been writing or taping as they’d talked; she’d had to reconstruct the conversation afterward. But she believed her notes were accurate: Rafael saying he’d whipped Diego’s ass, accusing Diego of taking Rosa for a ride. Diego complaining that Rafael had beaten the hell out of him and that his heart was still broken.

  Rosa, she thought. Rosa would know Rafael was innocent—but what was more, she would be able to explain her brother to Sandra. Rosa knew him in a way Sandra didn’t. If there were any answers at all, Rosa would have them.

  Sandra turned from her computer, closed her eyes and pictured Rafael standing before the judge, his wrists locked in iron but his head held high. The arrest she’d brought about might ruin his life, but it couldn’t break his pride.

  God help her, she had to save him. If there was anything in him worth saving, she had to do it.

  ***

  SHE GOT LOST ONLY ONCE on her way to Pico Rivera, but a local gas st
ation attendant was able to set her back on track. Ten minutes later, Sandra pulled her car to a stop beside the grassy quadrangle that connected the church, the school, and the convent where Rosa lived.

  The sun was edging toward noon, denying the oak, almond and citrus trees their shadows. When Sandra emerged from her car she heard a cacophony through the open windows of the school building: children’s voices, adult voices, an out-of-tune piano playing “This Land Is Your Land” in strict march tempo, accompanied by a chorus of young voices, many of them equally out of tune.

  Despite her anxiety over Rafael, she smiled at the lusty exuberance of the children. How normal and healthy the school seemed, compared to what she’d been through during the past twenty-four hours. If drugs were in the vicinity, if crimes were being committed within shouting distance of the Sacred Heart Academy, Sandra didn’t want to know. She wanted to know only that not far from where Melanie had died, not far from where Rafael had stood in handcuffs before a judge, children went to school and sang songs and lived wholesome lives.

  She strolled across the lawn to the front door of the school building. Just inside the door, she was nearly stampeded by several dozen youngsters, the girls in plaid jumpers and white blouses, the boys in white shirts and navy blue trousers. They raced past her and outside, swarming toward the playground that abutted the building.

  Sandra flattened herself against a wall until they passed, then walked to the long counter that served as a front desk. A smiling clerk approached from the other side.

  “Hi. I’m Sandra Garcia. Is Sister Rosa Perez here?”

  The clerk glanced over her shoulder at a clock. “She’s probably getting ready to send her kids out for recess. I’ll tell her you’re here. What did you say your name was, again?”