“I don’t keep animals for amusement,” Peter said. “My dogs work for me, and they are trained for one purpose only—protection. That’s what they excel at, that’s what they do. If they have reason to believe they are threatened, they attack. They patrol the property at night and when I am not here. No one enters this property without my consent.”
Nevertheless, it would have been nice to have some old Spot to curl up at my feet while I waited for Peter to begin his pitch. He sat down at an antique desk that wasn’t much bigger than mine, but a whole lot neater. The only things he had out were a green blotter and a silver letter opener. I sat down in front of him.
“We might as well get right to the point here, Miss Hamel,” he began.
“You may call me Neil,” I replied.
He picked up the letter opener, apparently no longer inclined to call me anything at all. “It may or may not surprise you to know that I am the owner of Los Niños de los Angeles.”
I recrossed my legs and wished I had a dog’s head to fondle, some ears to scratch. I didn’t say anything; what could I say? If it did surprise me, I was stupid. If it didn’t, paranoid.
“Leona called and told me you had been there,” Peter said.
I laughed. That was where she was hustling off to on Sunday—el teléfono. “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. She seemed like a very efficient woman.”
“She does her job. She wouldn’t be working for me if she didn’t. I consider myself an excellent judge of character; I don’t hire people who don’t perform.” And who else did he hire to perform? I wondered, but it didn’t seem like the right moment to ask. He tapped at the blotter with the letter opener. I could see the initials engraved on the handle, P.G.E.
“The news she gave me was most disturbing, as you can imagine. You told her my son-in-law has been receiving threats having to do with the adoption of Edward.”
“With Carl’s permission, I told her.”
“What does that mean?”
“I am Carl’s attorney. I can discuss this case with his permission only. I was authorized to speak to Leona. I haven’t been authorized to speak to you.”
“That’s ridiculous. Carl is my son-in-law.”
“Then you should talk to him.”
“He’s out of town, and this is a matter of immediate and grave concern to me. I want you to tell me what took place.”
“I can’t.”
His voice was like air conditioning, a running motor that kept the elements outside the window, but it was breaking down and the hot air was sneaking in. “Your obstinacy is most annoying,” he said. “Edward’s welfare is my concern. I have a right to know.”
And I had the right to remain silent. “I am sorry,” I said, “but I do not reveal a client’s confidences. Ever.” Leona couldn’t have done it better.
Peter Esterbrook was not accustomed to being refused. He studied me across his desk as if it were an open field and I was a distant prey. I watched the view through the French doors. Lupe and the children were crossing the lawn. She carried the dogs’ food and some carrots for the horses in a basket in one hand and held on to Emma with the other. Eduardo ran ahead of them. He was playing with a red balloon that he tossed into the air and tried to catch with wide open arms. When it fell to the ground he kicked it, then tossed it up again.
Peter tapped at the blotter with the letter opener. “I must say I’m most curious to know why my son-in-law sent you to Mexico.”
“I am his attorney.”
“You? There are a number of competent attorneys in Carl’s firm,” he said with what might be seen as over-emphasis on competent
“Carl didn’t want to involve his firm.”
“He could have come to me.”
“But he didn’t, did he? I’d like to know how you could arrange an adoption for Carl without him knowing.”
“I didn’t arrange it; a lawyer in Juárez did, as I am sure you are aware.”
“You own Los Niños de los Angeles.”
“Carl doesn’t know that.”
“Why not? He’s your son-in-law.”
“It’s my nature. I am a private man. I don’t discuss my affairs with anyone, including my family.”
I assumed that also meant his daughter, who, as it happened, had just come around the corner of the house. I watched through the French doors as Celina walked alone across the lawn toward Lupe and the children, pale and elegant as always in a pink dress and high-heeled sandals. She stopped to take off her sandals and continued barefoot across the lawn.
“You might favor me with your attention, Miss Hamel.”
“So your daughter and son-in-law adopted a baby from an agency you own, and you’re telling me you had nothing to do with it.”
“I won’t deny that I tried to find them the most suitable baby, but that’s all.”
“Then you know who the mother is.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“You don’t? When Carl is receiving threats from someone, possibly the mother?”
“I thought you were a bright woman. Only a fool would believe the mother was responsible.”
“Well, if you know who is responsible then why are you bothering me?”
“It’s perfectly obvious to me that it’s one of Carl’s political opponents, and I intend to find out which one.”
“Right.” My gaze had strayed to the open window again. I couldn’t see Celina’s face from where I sat, but I imagined she was smiling at the children. Suddenly she stopped and put her hand to her mouth as if to smother a scream. I followed her stare across the lawn, through the spray of sprinklers that were watering it. Emma and Lupe were at the far side of the lawn beside the chain link fence that caged the dogs. Lupe had dropped her basket and the carrots spilled onto the ground. She, too, was standing deathly still. The whole scene was like a freeze-frame, children playing the game of statues frozen in place. Lupe gripped Emma’s hand. Emma seemed to be crying, but they were far enough away that I couldn’t hear. It was a silent, still tableau, seen from a distance that made me powerless to affect it.
The door to one of the dog pens had swung open and Eduardo was standing inside the pen facing one of Peter’s well-trained guard dogs. The dog stood as tall as Eduardo. He was big and powerful and mean. His ears were pinned back and his fangs were bared. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew there was a vicious growl in his throat. He was an attack dog ready to attack, and I saw why—Eduardo had startled him and violated his space. The red balloon lay on the ground between them.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
“What is it?” Peter leapt up, the silver letter opener still in his hand. He ran from behind his desk to the French doors and then stopped himself. I knew why. Dogs perceive motion, not substance. How could the dog know it was his master, Peter Esterbrook, at this distance? It would be just a glimmer of movement to startle and threaten him. Eduardo stood absolutely still, a totally unnatural posture for a little boy. It was an eternal moment; the fragile child, the dog that snarled in nasty rage, the rest of us not daring to move. A gust of wind found its insolent way through Peter’s lilacs. It danced across the lawn, leapt, whirled, caught the balloon, spun it into the air and dropped it against the dog’s chest. He lunged then with all the speed and meanness that had been bred and trained into him, and he had the boy down on the ground just like that.
“Shep, halt, stop it!” Peter yelled, grabbing for a silver whistle he kept on a hook by the door. It made a sound much too high-pitched for humans to hear, but Shep heard it. He let go of Eduardo and looked in confusion at his master, then snarled at the boy. He was only doing what he had been trained to.
Celina screamed, a tense, shrill sound like glass breaking. And then the shot came, the sound of a high-powered rifle. It hit the dog in the shoulder, just inches away from the boy. The dog yipped and fell back. There was the crack of another shot; this one hit S
hep’s neck and he fell over, dead. As the life went out of him, all the other dogs began to howl. We were all running, but Lupe was the first to reach Eduardo. She picked him up, his blood smearing her white uniform. He grabbed her neck and buried his face against her shoulder. Peter reached them, but he made no move to take the child.
“Is he all right?” he said.
“Mi niño,” Lupe mumbled. “Mi niño.”
The shot had come from the stable doorway. The person who fired it was walking toward us with the rifle in his hand, the barrel pointed down toward the ground. He was a short man with broad shoulders, brown hair clipped close to his head.
It was Andrew Monogal.
16
“ANDERS, I AM so deeply indebted to you,” Peter Esterbrook said, using the German version of Andrew’s name. His voice was about as warm as the air in the bar refrigerator he was leaning against. The rest of us sat in the Prado room on sofas and chairs that were not what I’d call user friendly. Celina was an empty glass teetering on the edge of the sofa; one light tap would have made her ping delicately, then shatter. We were awaiting word from the doctor who was examining Eduardo in the boy’s room. Eduardo had his own room in Peter’s house and it was Peter who insisted that he be taken there, not to the hospital, and it was Peter’s doctor who came immediately when called.
Peter was the only one who spoke. The rest of us were struck dumb by the incident. It seemed that if no one left the room or talked, everything would come out all right. The only way Peter knew how to make things right—or wrong—was to give orders. Carl was on his way back from a campaign appearance in Silver City. Lupe, still in her blood-stained uniform, sat on the sofa next to Emma and Celina. Monogal stood at the bar with Peter, giving no hint that our eyes had met once across a crowded room. No one questioned what I was doing there; they were too worried about Eduardo to notice me. Of them all I had the least reason to be there, and I wasn’t eager to be, but I was trapped, unable to step outside the doorway until this episode was over.
Peter put his hand on Monogal’s shoulder, a gesture I wouldn’t exactly call an embrace. Monogal stood at attention and didn’t say a word, but I saw a slight smile, subtle as springtime, move across his jowly face, and just for a second, in spite of the number of cubic feet he occupied, in spite of his bulldog charm, he looked like a sly little boy getting away with something he knew he’d done wrong, a kid who had just killed his pet gerbil and was letting somebody else take the rap.
Something tied these two together; it didn’t look like love to me.
“Thank God you are such a superb marksman. Can I ever repay you, Anders?” Peter Esterbrook asked.
“Yes,” said Monogal. It was the first time I’d heard him speak, and his voice was deep and reluctant, as if he didn’t use it often.
“We’ll talk,” Peter said.
Monogal, who managed to seem pathetic and mean at the same time, looked as if talk were the last thing on his mind, but whatever was occupying him got put aside, because at that moment the doctor entered the room.
“You’ll be happy to know that he will be all right,” the doctor said. “He’ll be just fine.”
Celina began to cry.
“Gracias a Dios,” said Lupe.
“Will he be scarred?” asked Peter.
“Not noticeably. His face was practically unmarked; the bites were in the neck and shoulder area and they should heal nicely. He’s resting comfortably now.”
The beauty would remain intact, then, but you had to wonder about the scars inside. An apparently secure world shattered like that by a gate carelessly—or not so carelessly?—left open, a grandfather’s vicious dog.
“Well,” said Peter, “this calls for a celebration!” He opened the bar refrigerator, took a bottle of Stolichnaya from the freezer, and poured everyone an ice-cold shot. Celina, who needed something stronger than vodka, stared into her glass.
“Don’t sip, drink it down,” Peter said.
“I can’t. It’s too strong.”
Chugging never bothered me. I can drink vodka just about as fast as I drink tequila. I swallowed my shot and was thinking about asking for another when Celina turned and looked at me like she was waking from a deep sleep. Or maybe she hadn’t awakened yet, maybe she was still dreaming. Maybe the dream was a nightmare and she found me in it. “Neil,” she said in a dazed voice, “what are you doing here?”
“I had an appointment with your father.” If someone was going to lie about my presence, it needn’t be me.
“Miss Hamel is advising me on a land purchase,” Peter said, smooth and cold as the vodka.
“But Carl does your legal work,” said Celina.
“He does,” Peter replied, “but there was a conflict of interest in this case, as the firm represents the owner. Would it be all right, Doctor, if Celina and Lupe went in to see Edward now?”
“I gave him some sedation and he’s sleeping, but I think it would be fine.”
Celina and Lupe left the room together, the adoptive mother and the Mexican maid, united by love for a boy. I wondered exactly how much Celina, or even Peter, knew about Lupe. I’d bet it was a lot less than Lupe knew about them. It’s the servant who studies the master, the master who takes the servant for granted.
“It was criminal negligence to leave that gate open,” Peter said angrily once the women had left the room. “Now I am going to find out who did it, and I am going to find out why. If you will excuse me, gentlemen. Please help yourselves to another drink.”
I wasn’t averse to another drink, but I wasn’t a gentleman, and having no particular desire to spend any more time in the same room with Andrew Monogal, I said, “I guess I’ll be on my way.” No one asked me to linger, so I made my exit down the hallway, feet slinking along the slick carpet.
I let myself out the antique door and went down the brick path, noticing as I did how the lilacs bloomed, lavender and white pom-poms, swaying on bushes as tall as a tree. The lawn was coming along nicely; the sprinklers tickety-ticked, the cottonwoods showed the first hint of green, the geraniums blossomed under the portal. I listened to the driveway gravel crunching beneath my feet crunch by crunch and watched the clouds float across the enormous New Mexico sky, images of forgetfulness and knowing. I got all the way to my car, put my hand on the door handle—but of course in the excitement I had forgotten my purse. Since my keys were inside, I had to go back to get it, and since I was going in anyway, I should go to the bathroom, as it was a long drive home.
I passed the doctor on the path.
“Forgot my purse,” I said, and stopped to be polite.
“Beautiful place Peter has here, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Oh, it is. But what a frightening thing to have happen.”
“Terrible. Children can give you such a scare.”
I agreed and elaborated and killed some more time saying good-bye. A good good-bye can stick like flypaper if you let it, but what does time mean anyway measured by cumulonimbus billowing and disintegrating in the wild western sky? I left the doctor and walked around the side of the house, the side I hadn’t seen yet. Peter’s house was rectangular, four wings with a courtyard in the middle.
This side didn’t reveal much more than the rest of the building; a white wall, a lovingly tended lawn, a harmonious arrangement of daffodils and tulips in bloom next to the house. There was a door about halfway down the wall, the kitchen probably; the remnants of an herb garden were next to it. I recognized the stubs of parsley, dead for the winter, about to spring back to life. The dog pens and the barn were behind the house, approachable from either side, but I preferred this one as it was the side away from Peter’s study.
The dogs’ runs connected with the barn, and someone had let them inside and shut the doors. Shep’s body had been disposed of. I could see his pen from where I stood behind the house. Part of the pens and barn were visible from Peter’s study, the remainder extended behind the corner of the house. As all the dogs’ pens appeared to
be the same, I examined the closest one. There was a door in the chain link fencing that opened into each run, so that the dogs could be let in or out individually. There were dishes attached to the inside of the door and a flap for food and water to be poured through. The door to the run I was looking at was latched. I reached through the chain link fence, unlatched the gate, and pushed at the food flap. The door swung open.
Esterbrook Farms would have a door that swung easily, but it only swung in. The dogs couldn’t get out if the door were left unlatched, but somebody could get in. It was apparent that the children spent a lot of time here; the dogs must have known them. I wondered what had set Shep off. That his space had been invaded? That he was startled by the red balloon? Or maybe he was just mean and vicious. It took a certain kind of arrogant stupidity to keep attack dogs around children, but it wasn’t uncommon, as evidenced by all the people who keep pit bulls. Lawyers could survive and probably prosper just by representing claims against pit bulls. It could have been an accident that the gate was left open; it could have been deliberate. Who knew?
At the end of the pens where I was standing, a door opened into the barn, a long white building with a red roof. As I approached the doorway, I heard men talking, in English and Spanish. In most bilingual places people speak one language at a time; here, if they knew how, they spoke both.
“Puta madre. I should have known better than to trust that chingarra. He’s got too much money. Never trust anybody with mucho money, amigos,” Kiefer, the gardener, said. He was throwing work clothes and gardening tools into a duffel bag while the Mexican gardeners watched morosely.
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