I said, “How are you paying your bills, Mr. Delarosa?”
“She sends me what I need.”
“Where does she live? Where does the money come from?”
“From Spain, obviously. She is in Spain, as you know very well.”
“Are you sure? I heard she was still in Los Angeles.”
“Spain, you fool.” He belched, then took another drink. He muttered, “Everybody knows she is in Spain.”
Something about the word “Spain” triggered the awareness of a missing memory. It should have been a simple thing to call to mind. I knew that, and it frightened me because it wasn’t simple. The memory was someplace in my head, but I couldn’t reach it. For all of my life, I had been able to remember what I needed to remember, then had come the night when I lost Haley, and now I was a man with mysteries inside his head.
I sensed fear arising just outside my perimeter. It was the worst possible moment, but I felt the floor beneath me start to vibrate. I heard the humming of machinery. Was it the refrigerator I could hear, or the vast metallic core at the earth’s center? How had I missed it before? What else was I missing? How could I be sure that what I seemed to remember was actually a memory? I told myself to concentrate on what was true, to cling to what was excellent, but how could I be sure of where I stood? What I saw? What I heard?
The screams of children in the streets took on a terrifying connotation. I had only the past sense of experiencing a football game to explain them. The light through the window seemed to produce little flames around the edges of the things it touched. I told myself it wasn’t true. I told myself the room was not on fire. I told myself to think of what is good. I knew it was only beams of light that formed impressions in my mind of solid things. I didn’t see the things. I only saw reflections from the things. Did that mean the things themselves existed only as reflected light? What if the football game had merely been a vision? What if real children were in trouble, just outside, screaming as they fell apart in pieces, and I stood there doing nothing?
Everywhere I looked, the edges were alight. I needed a distraction. I began to move about the apartment, looking for something, anything to cling to. I saw very little that was excellent or noble.
The chair where Delarosa sat and one other were the only furniture in the apartment. In the kitchen was a concrete countertop with open concrete shelves below, a sink, a gas hob, and a small refrigerator. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Clothes lay piled in the corner, and books had been stacked haphazardly along the walls. Mostly they were pulp fiction novels. Spy stories and the like. Also, I saw some civil engineering magazines and a stack of newspapers. Nothing romantic. Nothing that seemed like it would interest a woman. Grime from the filthy air had drifted in through the window to settle on every horizontal surface. The apartment clearly had not been properly cleaned in months. Maybe years.
I said, “May I use your bathroom?”
Emilio only stared through the open window.
I went into another room. It was dark, with thick curtains over the one window and a mattress on the floor and more clothing and paperbacks in piles along the walls. I saw no female clothing. I entered the bathroom and saw no cosmetics, no brushes or bath oil, or any other sign that a woman had been there. The toilet seat was up. There was a black ring around the inside of the tub. I saw the filth around me for what it was. I began to trust my mind again. The wave of insanity was ebbing.
I went back out to the front room. Emilio Delarosa’s chin had dropped to his chest. He was snoring loudly.
I went through a stack of papers on the concrete counter by the sink. My hands seemed far away, as if I were watching through the wrong end of a telescope. I saw notices from the electricity company and the water company and the gas company. All of them wanted money.
I thought of Haley running out into thin air. Then I closed my eyes and thought of Haley on the flybridge of her yacht in Avalon Harbor. She was beautiful. I remembered her that way.
I found a statement from Banrural, a local bank. It appeared that Emilio Delarosa had a balance of just over three million nine hundred thousand quetzals. I did the math and figured it was around two hundred thousand dollars. I was pretty sure it was enough to buy the whole building where he lived, and maybe the rest of the block too. A king’s ransom in Guatemala. A kidnapper’s ransom in California.
I returned to the bedroom, walked to the window, and drew back the curtains. I looked down toward the street. The van was gone, if it had ever really been there.
I turned from the window and stood still, then looked around the room. On the floor beside the mattress was a small lamp, an electric clock, and a picture in a black metal frame. I bent and picked up the picture, and all in a flash I remembered why Spain was important.
Ah, sanity.
In the frame I saw an image of a happy family. I recognized Alejandro Delarosa from the photos I had seen in connection with the kidnapping, and I recognized the proud husband and father, Emilio Delarosa, even though the change in him since then was remarkable. For every year that had passed, he had aged three.
In the photograph between Alejandra and Emilio was a laughing girl who must have been their teenaged daughter. I stared at the image and thought that even eight or nine years before, when the photograph was likely taken, even before she had learned how to wear her makeup properly and dress herself in ways that would blend in with the wealth and privilege of Beverly Hills, even before she had learned about engines from the only Formula One racing team in Spain, even then the Delarosa’s daughter had shown every sign of growing up to be the stunning woman I knew as Olivia Soto.
39
Emilio Delarosa was dead to the world. After shaking him and yelling in his ear, I gave up and left. Eight blocks away I finally saw a cab. I stepped from the curb to hail it. The driver had to lock his wheels to stop in time.
After I was in the backseat, he said. “You must be crazy walking around this neighborhood.”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I am.”
I told him to drive to the hotel. When we got there, I told him to wait for me at the curb, and went inside. I ignored the desk clerk and the desk clerk ignored me as I walked through the lobby. I climbed the stairs and followed the narrow hallway to my room. The door had not yet been replaced. I went in and knelt in front of the old washstand in the corner. I bent to reach underneath it, and found the envelope containing my cash, credit cards and passports, still wedged tightly where I had hidden it the night before. I stood, raised my shirt tail and slipped the envelope under the waist band of my jeans. I dropped the shirt tail back in place to hide the envelope and left the room.
Outside the hotel, the taxi was still at the curb. I got in and told the driver to take me straight to the airport. It was almost dark when we arrived. The woman working the AeroMexico ticket counter was putting on her uniform jacket as I walked up. She stooped to get her purse. As I reached the counter, she straightened and slipped the strap over her shoulder.
“We are closed,” she said.
“Is there not an eight thirty flight to Tijuana?”
“No. Only on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
“But this is Friday.”
“Today is Thursday, sir.”
I tried to smile. “I’m sorry. Of course it is. When is the next plane to Mexico City?”
“Six thirty tomorrow morning.”
“I would like a seat.”
“We are closed, as I already said.”
I lifted a finger. “One moment, please.”
Turning my back to her, I lifted my shirttail and slipped my hand beneath my trousers. I withdrew the slender envelope and took out some cash. I faced her again and put two fifty-dollar bills on the counter.
“That is for your trouble,” I said. “And how much is the ticket?”
She glanced quickly left and right and then slipped the bills into her purse. Moving to the computer, she started tapping buttons on the keyboard. “I can get you on it for an
other two thousand seven hundred and twenty quetzals.”
I spent a long night in the waiting area at the gate on the black-leather-and-stainless-steel seating at the unexpectedly modern La Aurora International Airport. I tried not to imagine what would have happened if I had lost control of my mind in the mountains or in the van with Vega instead of while I was alone with Emilio Delarosa. I watched the few people wandering beneath the crisscrossed steel trusses over the concourses and wondered if any of them had followed me. Mostly they were airport employees, janitors, and security. A guard entered the restroom, and I had the crazy idea of following him and taking his gun.
At one point, around three in the morning, a man with a thin beard and military boots came into the area where I was waiting. He sat down a few rows away from me. I stood up and walked to another gate.
When I walked off the AeroMexico flight in Mexico City the next morning, I realized that some of my dizziness might not be due to the damage in my head. It had been more than a day since my last meal. I found a snack shop and gorged on two prepackaged sandwiches and a bag of potato chips. Then I went looking for a ticket to Tijuana.
The Mexico City airport was enormous. By the time I found the correct ticket counter, it felt as if I had already walked halfway to the US border. It turned out that in stopping for a meal, I had missed my chance to board the only morning flight. I wandered through the airport for nine hours, waiting for the next one.
It was dark again when we touched down in Tijuana. The rental car was waiting where I had left it in the parking garage. I tried to remember how long ago that had been, but the days and nights had merged together.
I walked past the car along the driveway. I followed the curve up and up until I found a Ford Taurus with California plates parked beside a van. It looked as if the van blocked the line of sight from the nearest security camera. I knelt and used the flat tongue of my belt buckle to remove the plates. I carried them back to the rental car, got in, and drove to the exit. There, I handed the parking chit to the man in the booth and paid the amount that flashed on the small screen. When he handed me a receipt, I checked the date printed there and saw it had been four days.
On a side street several blocks away from the airport, I parked at the curb, got out, and switched the plates. I threw the rental plates onto a pile of trash bags and drove on. I found an OXXO convenience store and pulled over. I went in and bought a blue-and-silver Dallas Cowboys gimme cap, a pair of full-frame reading glasses from a revolving stand that also displayed sunglasses, and the fattest cigar they had. I also bought another prepackaged sandwich, some more chips, and a bottle of tea for the caffeine.
Ten minutes later I pulled to the end of the half-mile-long line at the border crossing and settled in to wait. There were five or six other lanes of cars, thousands of us inching toward the USA while people strolled between the lanes selling ceramic turtles, sodas, deep-fried pastries called churros, bags of peanuts, chewing gun, and piñatas in all shapes.
It took two hours to roll that last half mile to the border. When only two vehicles remained between me and the US Customs booth, I put on the reading glasses and the gimme cap. I also unwrapped the cigar and stuck it in my mouth, pushing it back so it filled out my cheek on the left side, where the customs cameras that were focused on drivers would be.
The car in front of me moved on. The light turned green. I rolled up to the customs booth.
“Passport and driver’s license, please,” said the border guard.
I handed them to him.
“Where have you been today, Mr. Carver?” asked the guard.
I did my best to talk around the cigar. “Down at Ensenada. I was looking at a little condo.”
“You planning to buy?”
“Thinking about it.”
“You know about the drug cartels, don’t you?”
“Yeah. But the place is cheap. ʼSides, I figure they won’t bother me if I don’t bother them.”
The guard shook his head. He compared my open passport to something on the computer screen beside him in the booth. He said, “Do you have any fruits or vegetable products with you?”
“No, sir.”
“Where are you from?”
“Originally, Salina, Kansas, but I live in LA now.”
He stared hard at me. I chewed on the cigar and waited.
He closed the passport and gave it back to me, along with the driver’s license. “You should think a little more about that condo, Mr. Carver. These cartels down here aren’t fooling around.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking the documents. “I will.”
An hour and a half later, I pulled off the highway in San Clemente and passed a gas station with a pay phone. I wasn’t carrying a cell phone. Cell-phone locations can be traced. I drove a little farther to park the car out of the gas station’s camera range and then got out and walked back to the phone. I called Teru and told him where I was. I dropped the cap and glasses and cigar in a Dumpster beside the station, then walked back to the car, got inside, and went to sleep.
Sometime later I awoke to the sound of Teru tapping on the driver’s-side window. I put the rental-car keys behind the visor, got out, locked the door, and closed it.
When we were in Teru’s Porsche, he said, “So?”
“Remind me to call the rental people tomorrow about where we left that car.”
“Did you find Vega?”
“He found me.”
“And?”
“I’m not completely sure yet.”
I told him everything that had happened.
When I was done, he said, “I still don’t know what’s going on, do you?”
“Maybe it’ll make more sense after I’ve had some sleep.”
The next morning I woke up thinking about being served Simon’s french roast coffee in bed, but apparently now that Sid Gold was in residence, my days of being buttled were over. I made my own coffee. I heated a couple of frozen waffles, spread some butter on them, and smothered them in maple syrup, and then took them and the coffee outside to the patio. When I was done eating, I promised myself to start paying more attention to my diet. Then, since the police search had left the guesthouse in a shambles and Simon had done nothing about it, I spent several hours putting everything back in place. It was a hard thing, not being buttled, but it was better to have been buttled and lost, than never to have been buttled at all.
Simon dropped by around noon with a large brown paper sack in his hands. We had lunch together on the patio. From the paper sack he withdrew Cobb salad and tomato bisque, a couple of chilled bottles of Perrier, and yet another M11 semiautomatic. Simon had used maple-smoked bacon in the salad, and Bleu de Gex instead of Roquefort cheese. He told me Sid Gold was going to work out fine. Even his children seemed all right, although with teenagers, you could never tell.
I removed the sidearm from the holster and checked the action. “Have you hired a housekeeper?”
“I am still interviewing applicants,” he said. “But I engaged a woman from a temporary agency in the interim.”
“Can she cook?”
“Tolerably, although should Mr. Gold desire to entertain formally, I believe we would turn to a caterer for a more sophisticated bill of fare.”
I ejected the magazine, checked the load, and replaced it. I put the weapon in the holster and clipped the holster to my belt. “How’s Sid handling the divorce?”
“I overheard him weeping in the library yesterday.”
“Well, at least you’re making his life simpler.”
“Indeed.” Simon nodded. “There is that.”
“Has his wife come by?”
“From what Mr. Gold has mentioned, I believe she has no plans to visit.”
“Women can be hard to understand.”
“That has also been my experience.”
“Were you ever married?”
“Briefly, quite some time ago.”
“An English girl?”
“No. I met her
in the Philippines. She passed away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“As I mentioned, it was quite some time ago. One does move on.”
“Really? How?”
He turned his pale gray eyes toward me. “One finds a way, if one is wise.”
We ate silently for a while. The soup was extraordinary.
Finally I said, “Thanks for the gun.”
“My pleasure.”
“Olivia Soto is Alejandra Delarosa’s daughter.”
“Is she indeed?”
“She is. The case files I was given only mention the Delarosa’s daughter by her first name, Maria. It turns out her full name is Maria Olivia Delarosa Sotomayor. What do you make of that?”
He took a bite of salad and chewed for a moment. “She is working for the Delarosa woman’s victim. For her mother’s victim. That is concerning.”
“It is.”
“But has she broken any laws?”
“Not that I know of. It’s not illegal to use an assumed name, except on contracts and so forth. And she was born in Los Angeles according to the file, so she’s an American citizen, not here illegally.”
Simon said, “There’s the woman Mrs. Montes saw during the home invasion.”
“Doña Elena seems pretty certain that was Alejandra Delarosa.”
“Family resemblance? Dim lights? Extreme stress?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“One thinks of reporting this to the authorities or of warning Mrs. Montes directly. But given your current situation and the fact that you left Orange County to obtain this information, perhaps it would be best to gather more intelligence before taking that step.”
“That had also crossed my mind.”
“Of course, the authorities could be advised anonymously.”
“Of course.”
“But if a person in possession of this information were to interview Miss Soto, and if Miss Soto were unaware that the person knows her actual identity, she might reveal more unwittingly than she would in direct interrogation.”
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