Lost in the Light

by Mary Castillo

  "Oh yes, mija," Grammy said, taking Gavin by the arm. "I can handle him just fine."

  Chapter Five

  The train, April 1932

  Eighty-something years is a long time to go without a drink.

  Vicente paused in raising the coffee cup. Where had that thought come from? He shook his head to clear it; not having slept last night because of the dream in the white house.

  He concentrated on the coffee shivering with the swaying of the train. The silver spoon rattled on the table. He looked out the window, framed by green velvet curtains to see where they were between Los Angeles and San Diego. From the looks of the writing on the buildings, they were chugging through an Italian quarter. The sunlight peaking over the hill seared straight into his eyes.

  "God damn," he said, slamming the coffee cup on the mahogany table.

  "More coffee, Mr. Sorolla?"

  Vicente looked over his shoulder at Andy Munemitsu, who like him, had been recruited from the orange groves to transport product from the midnight deliveries along the coast. Now, Vicente was James McClemmy's personal secretary and Andy served as the butler and gunman when needed. They and a few heavies Vicente had personally selected traveled in the private Pullman car.

  The bright sun had blinded him. All he could make out were Andy's white coat and his silhouette against the open windows facing the hazy ocean. "Go to hell."

  "Very good, sir," Andy replied. He almost kept a straight face but then snorted out a laugh.

  Vicente fought to keep from smiling.

  "Good thing he's not here to see this," Andy said, whipping out a towel and then mopping away the few drops of coffee.

  Rubbing his aching forehead, Vicente asked, "When are you heading back?"

  "Right after I make sure you're fed and diapered."

  "Well, I won't spend all your money all in one place."

  Andy didn't live up to the stereotype of his race. He couldn't play poker for shit.

  "I'll get it back and some." Andy held up the cup. "You done messing up my private car?"

  "Not by half."

  Andy muttered something in his father's tongue as he walked away. Vicente had long given up demanding the translation years ago.

  With all these wild colors swirling and fading and reappearing before his eyes and the swaying of the train, his stomach felt as if it were crawling up his throat. He was almost home. His shoulders and neck tightened like screws. Six years of having vanished like a ghost, he was on the train from Los Angeles.

  The train slowed and the brakes screamed against the wheels.

  Ever since Mr. McClemmy had given him this assignment, Vicente hadn't slept. Would he face his grandmother and sister again, having left them all those years ago? And then there was Anna. They were three women he'd loved and hated; the ones he'd promised to take care of, but abandoned. They probably wouldn't even recognize him.

  Vicente pushed himself up to his feet and walked to the windows facing the ocean. No point in thinking of them right now. Repeal was coming. With Mr. McClemmy's appeal hanging in the balance, Vicente had been sent to consolidate their territory and make sure they had import agreements in place. Once he accomplished his mission, he'd worry about the women.

  "The conductor just informed me that we arrive in fifteen minutes," Andy said, shouting from the kitchenette. They never would've been this informal if the boss had been on board. But with the trial underway, Mr. McClemmy couldn't leave the county.

  Vicente stared across the new airport tarmac at the San Diego Bay. It was a hazy blur of blue. He could almost smell the brine and feel the give of the sand under his shoes. If he closed his eyes, he might feel the wind and see her-

  He staggered when the train pulled to a stop.

  "Here," Andy said, holding the camel hair coat open for Vicente to slide his arms into the sleeves.

  "Give it over."

  "Let me do my job while I still have it."

  Vicente gave him a dirty look and then yanked his coat free. He nearly caught his watch on the satin lining. Andy sighed. "At least let me open the door."

  "See ya later," he said to Andy and then stepped out, letting the sun slide over his head before he put his hat on.

  He was the first off the train. The porter ran over, holding his hat to his head. Andy's whistle cut sharp through the grumbling of the engine. He shouted at them to collect the trunks. Vicente walked across the tracks eager to stretch his legs and get to work.

  He pushed through the crowd into the Santa Fe Depot. He paused under the giant bronze chandeliers. It was so small and quiet in comparison to the cavernous station in Los Angeles. To think he'd once thought this place glamorous when he'd admire the glossy Pullmans as he came to and from his job cleaning street cars. He shook his head and found the car waiting for him. He nodded to the driver as he stepped into the back. The walk to the US Grant Hotel was an easy one, but he wasn't a kid hustling papers anymore.

  The doormen called out good morning as Vicente walked up the carpet and through the main entrance. He didn't recognize them from his days selling the afternoon paper. His shoulders tensed, expecting someone to quietly ask him to leave as if he were a mongrel who wandered in off the street.

  But with a slight bow, the desk manager said good morning and they'd looked forward to his arrival. He then presented Vicente with the ledger and a silver pen. "If you'd sign here, please."

  Vicente signed his Americanized name, Vincent Sorrelle.

  "Welcome to San Diego, Vincent."

  He glanced over his shoulder. Two feds stood behind him. The desk manager cleared his throat and kept his gaze on the ledger.

  "Agents." Vicente handed the pen to the manager. "I'll be up in my suite later this afternoon."

  The hotel manager kept his eyes averted. "Thank you, sir."

  Vicente faced the agents, about to invite them to coffee as his boss had done when the U.S. Treasury goons had searched his wife's modest bungalow. Always be a gentleman to the men who were about to arrest you, was Mr. McClemmy's rule. It pissed them off.

  But his smile froze on his face when he recognized the blue-eyed, curly haired agent. The older guy looked like a boxer who gave it up for a more lucrative line of work. "You come with us," he said loud enough to startle the guests in the lobby.

  Ignoring his command, Vicente turned to the younger officer. "Good to see you again."

  Agent Rick Campbell held out his hand. "I thought you looked familiar. Come back home?"

  "On business."

  "This is Agent Hollner," Campbell said. "Agent Hollner this is-"

  "I know who this spic is."

  Vicente nodded a greeting to Agent Hollner, whose face turned the same color as the red carpets he had just trod upon.

  "We know exactly what kind of business you're in," Hollner said.

  "Yes, the dairy business," Vicente said, glad that Andy had stayed on the train. He would never have kept a straight face.

  "Right," Agent Campbell said. "Minding the farm for the boss."

  Vicente liked Campbell. He always thought of him with gratitude after he'd arrested him with decency.

  "Your boss needs all the help he can get," Hollner cut in. "At least he's an honest crook, spilling his guts to his arresting officer."

  "How can I help you?" Vicente said, almost offended that Hollner thought he could be baited that easily.

  "Go back to the Mexicans," Hollner offered. "The sharks will move in and eat you alive when your boss goes to prison."

  "Our dairy business is here in the U.S., not in Mexico. Far as I know, milk, eggs and butter aren't illegal," Vicente replied.

  "San Diego's a small town, but we're not small time. After the Aqua Caliente killings, we've got a zero tolerance policy-"

  "Your mayor and the coroner learned the hard way," Vicente said in a perfect imitation of his boss. He then strolled away from the desk and Hollner followed him like a dog in heat. "But my interests are of no concern to the law."

  "
We'll make sure of that."

  "If you're not going to arrest me, I have to go to work."

  Vicente held out his hand to Campbell in a friendly gesture as if Hollner weren't ready to boil over. "Glad to see you made something of yourself," Campbell said.

  "The feeling's mutual."

  As Campbell loosened his grip, Vicente bore down with all his strength and leaned in. "I'd like to contribute to the fallen officer's fund. My secretary will personally deliver the check."

  He released Campbell and turned his back on them.

  They let him walk out the main doors, but they'd stick a tail on him. Vicente made a bet with himself that it was the man in the blue suit sitting in a wingback chair by the door, reading the paper. The doors opened as he approached and he had two tens in his hand to tip the door men.

  Vicente froze in place. The door men vanished. The sounds of the taxis honking and the gentle murmur of conversation abruptly switched off. The cool, damp morning was replaced by a stale mustiness. A moment ago, he'd headed out the door of the fanciest hotel in town. Now he stood on a scarred wood floor in a small room with sickly yellow walls. The fireplace was cracked and stained, its black mouth hanging open like some sleeping drunk.

  He looked around, trying to remember how he'd gone from the lobby to here. His coat was missing and he now wore a pale grey suit streaked with soot and a ripped out knee.

  Voices sounded from the next room. He stepped forward. Then he stopped, not sure if he wanted them to know he was here. He had no idea what day it was, or why he was here.

  But then it looked familiar, as if he'd been here a long, long time ago. He was dreaming again. Was this the white house again, or had he passed out? He couldn't remember what he'd done between dismissing Agents Campbell and Hollner and walking out the door. Had they gotten him and dragged him here? Vicente felt the back of his head. He then brought his hand to look for blood. It was clean.

  The voices started again. Two women and a man. He looked down at the floor as he heard them moving closer.

  Vicente flexed his fingers and then curled them into fists as he looked around the room. No curtains hung in the windows and yet all he could see where blurry shapes through the glass. His gut tightened; he knew something terrible had happened here.

  Then he was on the floor, his body on fire with pain. Two men leered down at him, their lips drawn tight over their teeth. He heard the clanking of the chain but he couldn't move his arms to shield his face as it came down at him.

  He was then on his feet, the men gone but the agony remained. Someone approached the room. Before he could move, she stood in the doorway. She wore men's pants and strange, soft looking shoes. There was nothing delicate about her compact figure. She stood proud and defiant as she cautiously stepped towards the room.

  Vicente felt his teeth swimming in blood. He shifted his weight and the floor creaked under his weight. She looked right at him. Their eyes met and fury erupted in his chest.

  "Who are you?" he asked. He moved towards her, now standing right in front of her.

  She jerked back. Her eyes flashed up and around as if she couldn't see him crowding near her. When he looked behind her and saw the wide hallway, Vicente knew this house. He'd been here before, but he couldn't-

  This had to be a nightmare and if it was, it was a helluva realistic one. "What am I doing here? Talk damn it!"

  Vicente reached for her. "Where am I?" he demanded. "Who brought me here?"

  She acted as if she couldn't hear or see him, but she knew he was there.

  He raised his mangled hands to wrap them around her neck, to somehow release the pain by squeezing the life out of her. But he wasn't that kind of man. He'd never hurt a woman, no matter how low she was. Instead, he planted his hands on her chest and shoved her away.

  Her arms flailed out. When she caught her footing, she looked in his eyes, trying to catch her breath. Vicente dropped his hands, drowsy on his feet. As he came to his knees, he had this feeling that he knew why he was here and who those men were. But he was losing consciousness as it started to come back at him like water, slowly rising up his body and then over his head, from which there was no escape.

  She backed up, fading into the light. He was about to call out for her to help him when everything around him blurred and all went quiet again.

  Chapter Six

  Dori's eyes snapped open. She grabbed her neck, the raw meat feel of his hands lingering on her skin.

  "Holy-" She couldn't finish from the tightness in her chest. Her tank top was plastered to her skin. Even her hair was wet with it. For one horrifying second, she thought it was blood. She pressed her hand to her chest and then pulled it back, staring at it in the moonlight. Her hand was clean. Only sweat.

  It was the same dream. Again. She'd followed Vince into the house and watched him die. Dori pulled air into her lungs, shivering so bad that she couldn't move to turn on the lamp by her bed.

  Downstairs, the pocket doors slid open. Her fists curled as she listened to shuffling directly below her room. One of them made a sound that sounded like a curse as they bumped against the wall.

  "Here," a man’s voice said.

  Dori held her breath to be as quiet as possible. She heard the men moving towards the back of the house. They were talking but she couldn’t make out the words. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as the back door opened and they moved out into the yard.

  She then lunged for her cell phone. Her hand smacked the nightstand. Just then, she had a clear memory of setting it on the kitchen counter after she had walked Grammy to her car.

  Using the moonlight that came in through the windows, Dori got down on the floor and reached under her bed for the lock box. Careful not to make a sound, she pulled it out. She stabbed in the code.

  Finally, the weight of her off-duty weapon gave her some comfort. She grabbed the SureFire flashlight and then turned towards the blade of light at the bottom of the door. She'd left the hall light on before going to bed. She slowed her thoughts until her head went into that place where instinct took over. Standing with her back against the wall, she aimed at the floor, counting to three before reaching to open the door.

  After waiting to hear if they'd come back into the house, Dori stepped out into the hallway. Her gun aimed forward as she scuttled alongside the wall.

  Her bare feet whispered along the wood floors. She peered down the main staircase and then headed towards the servant's staircase that spiraled down into pitch black. No one moved; the house was silent. Dori switched on the flashlight as she descended the stairs.

  She took a deep breath as she approached the mud room. Expecting to see the back door open, she froze when she saw it was still shut. Scanning the floor, there were no recent markings or prints. She tried the knob. It was locked.

  Her blood pounded past her ear drums. She then heard gurgling and desperate gasps for air. Her gun swung up as she moved towards the sound. The chill in the air swept over her before she turned the corner into the main hallway. The flashlight caught him in the beam. It was Vince. She shook her head. This was a dream. She wasn't fully awake. But the gun grip in her hand and the cold floor under her feet were real.

  He lay sprawled face down, a blood trail evidence of his agonizing crawl from the front parlor. Dori recognized the high-pitched wheezing breath of a dying man.

  "Wake up Dori," she said to herself. "Just wake up."

  If this wasn't a dream, she had to help him. But the guys who did this could easily overtake her. He let out one last hissing breath and then went completely still. Screw it. She couldn't just stand here.

  Ignoring years of training and experience, Dori ran over to him, completely exposed to whoever waited in the shadowed rooms. As she bent over him, she saw his gray suit, ripped and stained with blood. His black hair hung over his face.

  A floorboard popped and Dori swung around, aiming her gun and flashlight into the darkness. No one stood there with evil intent. No one jumped her. She
then looked down. The dying man and his blood were gone.

  Her knees gave out and the gun clattered against the floor.

  Dori began trembling, shaking her head in denial of what she’d just seen. She drew in her feet and wrapped her arms around her shins, horrified that she'd just emerged from an elaborate hallucination.

  For the first time in her life, Dori prayed that she'd just seen a ghost.

  The good thing about discovering a guy lying in a pool of blood in your hallway - only to realize that he wasn’t real - was that it roused a girl into cleaning her house.

  At four in the morning, Dori had enough of shivering on the floor. She refused to sit there another second and deny what she'd seen. So she did what any self-respecting woman would do. She walked into the kitchen, drank straight from her bottle of Herradura Silver and tried to catch her breath from the might of 80 proof.

  If this were a movie, she'd jump into her car and never come back. But it wasn't. Dori had invested a hefty down payment and she'd sent in her first mortgage payment last week. She paid her insurance and her property taxes. If she walked away, she couldn't afford rent until the house sold. Her only alternative was to live with Grammy.

  The thought of going back to her grandmother's house had Dori reaching for the tequila again. When she came back up for air, her fingers and toes tingled and she had to blink a few times to see straight. The kitchen lights pushed back the darkness. Her heart jolted when she saw the wide-eyed, wild-haired woman staring back at her in the reflection of the window.

  She twisted the cap back onto the tequila bottle before she became one of those cops who drank to get through the night. At least she hadn't started taking the Lexapro.

  Dori had the bandage to prove that she'd survived worse than seeing a dead guy vanish from her floor. Then again, what had she expected when she bought a 120 year-old house? To be honest, she’d thought she’d get some disembodied voices, footsteps, a door or two opening and closing; maybe a nice old lady ghost who died peacefully in her sleep.