“We agreed on an hourly rate plus expenses, didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Neil, that couldn’t possibly compensate you for—for what you went through.”
“A fee is a fee,” I said. “I don’t charge extra because the case turns out to be more difficult than I expected.”
“This is a special situation.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a case. I’ll charge you for time and expenses, that’s it.”
“Nevertheless, I’d like to give you more. You have Anna prepare the bill. This is a little extra.” He opened the checkbook.
“No.”
“Yes.” He wrote out a check for a thousand dollars in cash and put it on my desk. It was one of those checks with pine trees, mountain peaks and blue sky in the background. Celina and Carl Roberts, it said, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.
“No.” I pushed the check back to him.
“Please.” He pushed it toward me, closing his checkbook and replacing it in the inner pocket of his jacket.
“I won’t cash it.”
“That’s your prerogative. I can’t make you cash it, but I wish you would.”
As far as I was concerned, I had done what I had said I would do and our business was concluded. I waited for him to leave; he didn’t. He continued to sit in my chair, in my office, surrounded by my potted plants and papers, and I could practically hear the fizz fizzing out of him. It was his time and I intended to bill him for it, but it irritated me to see Carl sitting there flat as last night’s leftover drink.
I waited. Waiting wasn’t my forte, but I could do it when I had to. I watched him twist his wedding ring round and round on his finger. He was a skilled trial lawyer who knew how revealing gestures could be; it wasn’t like him to fidget. In the courtroom his hands were subtle and aquatic, gliding and darting like fish. The air was the wrong element for Carl’s hands; they belonged in water, in the emotional realm. I watched Carl once giving his summation in a rape trial. The jury hardly heard a word he said, they were so intent on his hands. His hands were the victim, pale, limp, crushed. The jury flinched as his hands acted out her humiliation. He won that case, of course. He won most of his cases.
“We’re having a party this weekend,” he said finally. “To announce my candidacy.”
I shrugged. So what?
“I’d like it if you could come.”
“I have other plans,” I said.
“I got another note, Nell—Neil.” His voice was low and defeated as he handed it to me. It was, like the first, folded and refolded until the creases were frayed. I opened it up. GIVE ME BACK WHAT IS MINE it said in the same block letters, pencil pressed down hard, smears where the point had broken off.
“They’ve changed their message,” I said. “Do you suppose this is an escalation?”
“It’s possible.”
I handed the note back to him. “When was this mailed?”
“Yesterday, from Albuquerque. It was in this morning’s mail.”
“Well, that proves one thing,” I said. He waited. “They can deliver the mail in one day.” He was not in the mood for a joke. “It also proves Menendez didn’t mail it.”
“It doesn’t prove anything.”
“Dead men don’t send notes.”
“He was working with someone else.”
“Why are you so sure it was Menendez?”
“I never liked the guy. I think he was a sleaze. I’m not happy he was murdered, but I still think he was a sleaze.”
“You think he was a sleaze.” Prejudice like that was enough to make me love Menendez.
“It’s just a hunch, not something you can explain exactly.”
“You’re just paranoid about anyone who isn’t as white as you are.” It wasn’t the first time I had blown up at Carl.
“That’s an outrageous thing to say,” Carl replied. “I happen to have a Mexican son who is extremely dear to me.”
“You also have a Mexican maid; is she dear to you too?”
“As a matter of fact, she is. She’s one of the family.”
“Right. And how about the wetbacks your father-in-law hires to pick his chiles for a dollar an hour? Are they one of your wonderful family? You must really be fond of them—they don’t even vote.”
Carl’s courtroom cool was leaving him. “That’s a rotten thing to say. I’m not responsible for my father-in-law. You talk about prejudice; you’re so prejudiced against me and anybody who has anything to do with me you can’t see straight.”
“That’s bullshit. You and your stupid hunches. Are you making a hundred thousand dollars a year on your stupid hunches?”
“So what are you going on when you say Menendez has nothing to do with it?”
“I met the man, and like I told you, he has too much to lose and nothing to gain. Besides, he doesn’t need your money.”
“You think he didn’t do it, prove it. You’ve got the means right there on your desk. Check out the rest of those phone numbers. Find out for yourself whether he was behind it or not.”
“For myself?” I replied. “Now, wait a minute. I told you I would go down there and interview Menendez and that’s all. No more. I want out of this.”
“Afraid of what you might find?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Then do it.”
“You’re wrong, you know.”
“Prove it.”
Carl was so cool he didn’t even smile, but he had fizzed right up in the course of our argument. There was a reason why he won all those cases: the manipulator supreme. Too bad he never cared about whether or not they should be won. Well, if he thought he was going to manipulate me like some inarticulate jury, he was wrong. “You fuck,” I said.
“Please, Neil. You’re a great investigator. The best.”
“Not that great.”
“I need your help.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“I’m willing to pay you very well,” he replied, his hand going unconsciously toward the checks with the corrosive power and the insipid message.
“Why don’t you get yourself a private detective?” I began to shuffle through the papers on my desk, searching for another project on which to bestow my great investigative skills, indicating, I hoped, that our conversation was through.
“I don’t want a detective,” he said. “I want you.” His voice was so forlorn. If I’d looked up right then I would have seen a little boy sitting before me, his feet dangling from the chair. But I didn’t look. I continued rummaging through my papers until I found what I wanted, the Bates file. He was not a little boy, he was one of the most successful attorneys in the state, a grown-up who knew exactly what he wanted. Just because he was capable of switching from lane to lane en route didn’t mean he ever lost sight of his destination. Pleading, flattery, bribery, cool—they were the pavement on Carl’s highway. I spread the Bates file out before me. If I put my skills to work maybe I could uncover the truth about Peanut. Was Judy giving him enough munchies? A soft place to lay his head?
“This meeting is over,” I said.
7
I WORKED LATE that night, and when I got home I was tired, hungry, and thirsty for my old friend, Cuervo Gold. On a day like this the motel atmosphere of my apartment was just what I wanted. There’s not much you can do to make an apartment with gold shag carpeting and fake stucco walls look like home, and I hadn’t done it. There was the furniture left over from the marriage to Charles, a lot of newspapers and magazines falling off the coffee table, a small black-and-white TV, a cactus that had forgotten what it knew about water. It wasn’t much, and I liked it the way it was. The office was where I worried about possessions, entanglements, screwed husbands, embittered wives. If I wanted to think about anything when I got home, it wasn’t my or anybody else’s furniture. Home was where I went to maybe be surprised by the Kid, or, more likely, be left alone.
I was alone, but I didn’t feel like it. I’d been gone only one night, b
ut it felt like my apartment had changed in my absence, like everything had been removed and replaced by an exact replica, like whoever had done it had just left. There was no sign that anything had been taken, but the atmosphere had been disturbed and the door to the deck was unlocked when I remembered locking it. When you live alone you notice things like that. I went to the kitchen, took the Cuervo Gold from the cabinet, poured myself a shot. At a moment like this, who needed ice? “It’s been a long day,” I told the bottle, “I’m glad to see you.” I needed to go to bed badly and I locked up tight before I did, but bed wasn’t any better. If anyone had been in the apartment, they’d been there, too. I fell asleep late, dreaming of light fingers, fat fingers, and diamonds big as peas.
I woke to a gray morning, wondering who had left an empty bottle beside my bed. As soon as I figured it out, I got up, dressed quickly, skipped the Red Zinger, and left for the office. As El Conejo negotiated Albuquerque’s empty streets, I watched the sky changing in color from pigeon gray to dirty flamingo. At every intersection I had a long view of deserted streets and the thought occurred to me that I was the only one in town who was awake. That’s the difference between old Mexico and new, old Mexico is always populated, always awake. Once the same country—Mexicans say they get along well with us considering that we took half of their country and the best half besides—it’s the same terrain: high, barren, sunny, colder. But Mexico is never empty. You could climb thirteen thousand feet up Popocatepetl and some guy will be there with a box of Chiclets to sell. You could descend fifty feet to the floor of the Gulf and someone will tap on your oxygen tank and ask you the time. A Latin American poet wrote that the world exists only when someone is awake to imagine it. If that were the case, Mexico was being overimagined, Albuquerque under. Who would dream up this collection of fast food restaurants and perpendicular streets? Not me, although I might take responsibility for the mountains, resting elephants with a globe red as fire climbing the back of the herd.
In the face of morning primeval, my office seemed shabby and dull, but curious beneath the dull. There was the reception area: two-year-old New Mexicos on the coffee table, a wastebasket that needed emptying, a half filled cup of coffee with plum lipstick on the rim. There was my office: the potted plants, the window open a crack to let the vagaries of springtime in, the desk overflowing with papers, that looked like a mess, but wasn’t—I knew where everything was.
I knew I had been working on the Bates file when I went home but it was not at the top of the pile. I knew, too, that I had made a copy of Carl’s file before I gave it to him, and that I’d filed it carefully in a stack of folders on the bookcase. I knew its exact location, but I checked the entire pile to be sure—it wasn’t there. File R for Roberts was missing. “Okay,” I said, “you’ve got what you want, now leave me alone.” There was no one to hear me but the plants, and for all I knew they were listening. I shut the window—spring was on the horizon; I’d gotten that message—found the Bates file, and went to work. I’d finished a day’s worth of divorces, a bankruptcy, done paperwork for two real estate closings, and gone back to sleep by the time Brink and Anna showed up. They found me, my head resting on a pile of manila folders.
“She said she was tired,” I heard Anna whisper.
“I told her not to go to Mexico,” Brink sniffed.
“Why not?” asked Anna.
“Shh, you’ll wake her.”
“I am awake,” I said, lifting my head and rubbing my eyes. “Don’t you two have work to do?”
“Did you spend the night here?” Brink asked, not noticing that I was wearing a blue shirt, not the gray one I’d had on yesterday. So much for his investigative skills.
“I got here early. I have an important case to work on: joint custody for the Bates’s dog. It wears me out. Does Judy pay for the kibble, or Ken? Should Ken get him every weekend or every other? Who gets him for Christmas and New Year’s? What do you think would be fair?”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have some typing to do.”
“No doubt,” I mumbled, watching her detour in the direction of Mr. Coffee.
“You’re so hard on Anna,” Brink said.
“We are running an office here,” I replied, shuffling my papers. Brink had been dismissed, but he hadn’t noticed. Something was on his mind. He blinked slowly and flapped his mouth, making me feel like I was outside an aquarium looking in. Something was on my mind, too, and I thought of telling him about it—the break-in, the violation, the missing file—but I decided not to. I was certain nothing of his had been taken, and I knew what he’d say, anyway: “Carl Roberts should do his own dirty work.”
Brink cleared his throat. “Anna tells me there’s not enough money in the account to pay the rent.”
“We must have some outstanding billings,” I said.
“Winter says he won’t wait any longer. We’re two months behind.”
“How much do we need?”
“Seven hundred fifty dollars.”
I remembered Carl’s check then, lying in my drawer like a pack of M&M’s a dieter leaves lying around just to prove she can live without them. That check was as good as cash, although I didn’t intend to cash it. I slid open the drawer. It was still there, maybe it had been fingered, but it was still there, which confirmed what I already knew—the motive had not been money, and a thing of beauty is a joy forever. I shut the drawer and reached for my purse. “I’ll cover it,” I said.
“Thanks, Neil, I’m real short this month.”
“Right.”
“There is one more thing. Today is Anna’s birthday.”
An Aries. All that nail polish—I should have known.
“Do you think we could take her out for a drink or something after work?”
“If I’m awake we can.”
******
For her birthday Anna got to choose the place, and the place she chose was Bailey’s a singles bar on Louisiana. Bailey’s was like all singles bars, full of potted plants and uprooted people and comfortable as a Mexican bus at rush hour. We squeezed our way in and I took the one seat remaining at the bar, entitled by my advanced age and my having had an irritating day. The birthday girl preferred to stand anyway; it was easier to make contact. At the bar, which was large and rectangular, you got to look at everybody who was looking at you. Standing, you got to feel them. Anna struck up a conversation with a man in a red and white striped shirt and a yellow mustache about the Dukes, Albuquerque’s farm team. What was there to say about the Dukes? They lost or they won.
I ordered a margarita—the first of a series, I hoped—from Sally, the bartender. Sally was a comfortable kind of bartender, soft and sympathetic, the way women used to be. She had brown hair that fell to her shoulders like a spaniel’s ears, and flabby arms. She’d probably never worked out a day in her life, but she was someone you could lean on. Rarely as I came to Bailey’s these days, she remembered.
“So, Neil, how’s it going?” she said, plopping a margarita in front of me.
“Great.” I began licking the first crack in a barrier reef of salt.
Someone sitting next to me was speaking—an attorney, of course. “Fuck litigation,” he said. He looked like he’d been fighting the legal wars for too long, and the effort had left deep marks of erosion in his cheeks. He was talking to a young male who wore a sterling silver watchband inlaid with turquoise, a belt buckle to match, and cowboy boots that made him at least five six.
“I’m talking big,” Young Male replied. “I’m talking City Corp. I’m talking Number One.”
“Jeez,” Sally said, rolling her eyes. “Excuse me. Duty calls.” She picked up a bottle of Kahlúa and squirted some into a glass.
“I’m gonna make a mil by the time I’m thirty,” Young Male said, “and you know how I’m gonna do it? Real estate,” he answered himself before anybody had even had a chance to ask. “That’s where the action is.”
Anna, Brink, and Yellow Mustache continued to talk
about the Dukes, reaching over my shoulder and dipping into the chips and salsa, spilling wet sloppy chiles on the bar. I didn’t partake. I like homemade salsa so hot it makes you cry. Bailey’s comes from a jar and it just makes you drink.
I looked around the bar, saw some faces I knew and nodded, saw some faces I didn’t know and didn’t. A lot of attorneys, a couple of salesmen. There was the guy who’d tried to sell me a typewriter that never forgets. He had a Coors in one hand and the other on the shoulder of Jay Dean, unfortunate fellow, counsel to the despicable Ken Bates, slimy philanderer and kidnapper of Peanut. Okay, Jay, I thought, if you want to negotiate, I’ll give you Easter weekend for two Janie Fricke records. Maybe the salesman had a typewriter that could settle: a trailer in this column, a car in that one, here a chain saw, there a dog. Buy it, Jay. I sent him the message telepathically across the crowded room. I’ll get into technology when they build a machine that can transmit thoughts; this keyboard and memory stuff will be Stone Age before long. Jay got the message, but I guess he didn’t feel like negotiating, because he smiled, shrugged guiltily, and looked away. Jay was playing, the Bates were work. Sometimes it’s easy to tell the difference, sometimes not. Anna and Yellow Mustache may have been playing, but it seemed like work to me. Already he was asking her what she was doing later.
“Did you see that triple play last year?” Brink asked.
“Not much,” Anna replied.
Listening to the dangling conversations and continuing my survey of the clientele, I was getting the distinct feeling that one of them was watching me. But everybody in Bailey’s was watching everybody, glances roving around, bouncing off plants. Why me? I wasn’t exactly at my best in a dark blue shirt with matching circles under my eyes. You’re being a narcissist, I said to myself. Even narcissists have admirers, myself replied.
The faces at the bar were like fruit in a Mexican market, primping for buyers, and I picked them over, admiring the fresh ones, rejecting the ones with bruises and rot. But that’s what I ended up with, standing way around the bar directly opposite us, hungry brown eyes staring at me; a broad man with a fullback’s shoulders, a chest to match, and legs that didn’t. If his legs had been as powerful as the rest of him, he’d be a whole lot taller than he was. He looked fifty but could have been older; his hair was still brown and clipped close to his head in a menacing military fashion. His skin had droops and folds where even a sharp blade wouldn’t reach. He had a pug nose, but that didn’t make him cute. He was wearing a brown suit that fit like it had been purchased off the rack in some small-town cinder-block mall, but he’d be a hard man to fit, even in Hong Kong. He was wearing a white shirt with no tie—there was no neck to put one around.
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