“I don’t see that you’re entitled to any answers here. If you want your friend back, then you’ll tell me what you know about Martin Aguilera’s corpse. You told me you got a look at it. I want it.”
“I assume you had it at one point.”
“That doesn’t matter. Where is it?”
“This has something to do with the burns on him, with the squirrel, with the missing animals.”
Peabody looked at his watch. “I’m not into all these deadlines like other people, you know. We have your friend. That’s what you need to understand. And we want the old man’s body. You can tell me where it is or you can get it for me.”
“I have no idea what’s going on, but I know that I’ve seen the burns and I know that you want me dead.”
“I don’t want you dead.”
“Your men tried to run me off the road.”
“What can I say? If people followed directions I wouldn’t be here telling you to get a body you should never have seen.”
“What they say about good help and all that,” Lewis said.
Peabody chuckled.
“I don’t believe you’re going to let Maggie or me live.”
“You’ve seen too many movies. Look at it like this: If you don’t help me, we’ll kill her and we’ll kill you. That’s a given. If you do help? A chance anyway.”
“Just so I’m clear on this,” Lewis said. His hands were sweaty. He was cold. He wanted to laugh. He felt crazy. “You want me to get Martin Aguilera’s body and bring it to you. Then, you’ll let Maggie go.”
Peabody pointed a finger at Lewis. “That’s it. That’s perfect. That’s exactly what I’m saying to you.” He leaned back in the chair. “It’s a pleasure doing business with intelligent people.”
“I’m not sure I can get the body.”
“You can try. If you fail, you fail your friend. I kill you and that’s that. I’m glad you got the kid out of the way. That’s just too much to explain. Parents and all that, you know. But you, you I can explain. I can give you a heart attack. You can have a car wreck.”
Lewis tried to think of someone to tell. There was really only his daughter and he would only scare her. Everyone else would think he was insane, a paranoid old man.
“You can see the sort of thing I mean,” Peabody said.
“I’m surprised you don’t already know where the body is. I’m sure you had me followed.”
“I’m not here to discuss this with you. I want the body. You get it. Now, I think it’s time you were on your way.”
Lewis stood and walked to the door. He turned and looked at Peabody. He’d never really hated anyone before, but he hated this man. He watched the awful man’s face smile at him.
Lewis didn’t think about saying it, didn’t really know he was saying it, but he did say it, “If you hurt Maggie Okada, I will kill you.” He felt stupid saying it, felt like he had been tricked into saying it.
“Good day, Lewis.”
Lewis left. He drove to town and parked in the lot of Archie’s Lumber Company. He just sat there in his car, replaying all of it over and over, shaking his head and not understanding how any of it could be real, remembering how normal the day had been when he and Laura were off to pay a visit to old Martin. He waved at some people crossing the lot. They seemed to look at him a second too long.
Chapter Twenty-one
Lewis checked his mirror as he drove through town and saw no van nor sign of anyone else following him. He parked in the grocery store parking lot, walked across the street and into a mineral and gem shop and exited through the back door. He crossed a vacant lot and was on the dirt road that went to the Episcopal church. He walked via backroads toward the plaza, realizing just how visible a six-foot, sixty-six-year-old, black man was in these parts. He found his way to the alley that ran behind the House of Boots. The back door was open and so he walked in.
He went to the curtain and looked at the room full of customers. A woman with a massive blonde hairdo was having her pre-school son try on fifty dollar snake-skin boots. A very large man had a peculiar, high voice and he was saying the boots in question were too tight. Salvador was sitting on a stool, his back to the store room, helping a couple of homosexual men in leather pants.
Salvador’s daughter Gloria was helping the mother and the very large man. She was a pretty young woman, a little heavy, but she bore her weight well. She wore a lot of makeup on her eyes. She saw Lewis.
Lewis smiled and waved at her.
“What are you doing there?” she asked.
Salvador turned around.
“I need to talk to your father,” Lewis told her. “Salvador?”
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” the old man said. He let his daughter know it was okay.
“Estos son—son.” One of the homosexual men searched for a word, standing on a thick-heeled boot.
Salvador helped him. “Corto? Apretado?”
“Which one means tight?” the man asked.
“Apretado,” Salvador said.
“Apre-tado,” the gay man said proudly, smiled at his friend. “Estos son apre-tado.”
Salvador said in English, “Would you like to try the next size up?”
“Please.”
Salvador got up and walked to the store room. He let the curtain down over the doorway behind him.
“I’m really sorry to bother you, Salvador, but I can’t help it. Please don’t be upset with me. I need Martin’s body.”
Salvador looked as if he wanted to run from his own store. He was terrified. “I cannot talk of this,” he said.
“Another life is at stake. We have to.”
Salvador turned away and studied a wall of boxes in the dim room. “I do not hear what you’re saying to me. Please, Lewis, leave now.”
“They’ve kidnapped my friend Maggie. I don’t know if you know Maggie Okada. She’s Japanese, short, about sixty. Oh, forget this—” Lewis stopped, and sighed a frown. “Salvador, I’ve been told that if I don’t turn over Martin’s body, they will kill her.”
Salvador sniffed.
Lewis turned away, then back. He thought Salvador was crying. He felt sick and guilty. He was breaking his word to this man. “I need your help, Salvador.”
Gloria pulled back the curtain and looked at Lewis and her father. “Que le ocurre?”
“Nada.” Lewis waved her back onto the floor.
The woman gave Lewis a threatening stare before going back to the customers.
“Please, Salvador.”
“I will not discuss this with you. Find Ignacio. He is a young man with a strong heart and he can talk to you. I am too old, too close to death. Please, just find Ignacio.”
“Okay, Salvador. You relax. Forget I was here.” Lewis was sure the man was crying now. “I wasn’t here, all right?”
Lewis left. He didn’t know where to find Ignacio. Had it been the evening he could have gone to the Best Western and asked Ernesto. He remembered that Ignacio for a while lived in Arroyo Azul.
He made his way back to his truck. It was already noon. The sun was high and it was hot. He longed to be up on the mountain. He wondered if all of this would go away if he just ignored it.
He pulled from the parking lot and drove north out of town, then east to Arroyo Azul. The land was beautiful out there, a small valley green and dotted with little places. Whites hadn’t moved into it yet because they were afraid of the Mexicans who were poor and who drove low-riders and played their music loud.
Lewis stopped in front of an adobe house with two junk cars on blocks beside it. An old sway-backed horse was tied to a tree with a rope around its neck. The horse looked up from its nibbling at the grass when Lewis pulled up, then put its head down again. A man was haying a field across the road. Lewis thought he had the right house. He knocked on the door.
A dog barked, then appeared, running full speed round the corner of the house. It was a Doberman and Lewis was not pleased to see him.
“Nice boy
,” Lewis said.
The dog stood in the yard, between Lewis and his car, and barked, standing tense and ready. Lewis knocked again.
A teenage girl opened the door. She was pulling a robe closed about her small body.
“Does Ignacio Nunez live here?” Lewis asked.
The girl was groggy from sleep. “Yes, but he’s not here.”
Lewis looked at her face. “Are you Ignacio’s wife?” he asked, though he didn’t believe it.
The girl laughed. “He’s my father,” she said and she tilted her head down and looked up at him in that teenager way.
“Do you know where your father is right now?”
“At work.”
“Can you tell me where he’s working?”
She leaned against the door and rubbed her temple. “He’s—” She thought while she spoke. “—putting a roof on a barn. That’s what he told me.”
“Where?”
She sighed. “I think he’s over at San Luis. A man named Rubens, something like that.”
“Thank you,” Lewis said. “You have a very good memory.”
The girl smiled weakly, unimpressed by the flattery, and started to close the door.
“Could you call your dog?” Lewis asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Mala.” The dog ran by Lewis and into the house. She closed the door without another word or look.
Mala, Lewis thought as he got into his truck, Spanish for bad. He wanted to get Mala the dog and take it to see Doctor Peabody.
Lewis knew the Rubens place. It was a small ranch. He drove by pastured cattle with yellow ear-tags. Calves trotted after their mothers. Lewis could see where men were working on a barn.
Ignacio was on top, trying to line up a new piece of tin against an old seam. Lewis waved up to him, but Ignacio didn’t wave back. He did not seem pleased to see Lewis.
Ignacio scooted across the roof to the ladder and climbed down. “Hello, Lewis,” he said. “What brings you out here?”
“I’m looking for you.”
“Yes?” Ignacio unhitched his leather tool belt and let it rest over the side of the pickup bed.
Lewis let out a deep breath. “I don’t even know how to start this.”
Ignacio looked at him and seemed to anticipate the subject. “Then don’t,” he said and he turned away just as Salvador had.
“My friend Maggie has been kidnapped. I know how this sounds. I don’t really believe it myself, but it’s true. She’s been taken.”
“By who? Who took her?” Ignacio turned and faced him.
Lewis shook his head. “Ignacio, I don’t know who they are.” He felt a tear on his cheek. Ignacio was staring at it. “They want Martin’s body.”
Again, Ignacio turned away.
“I talked to Salvador and he sent me to talk to you. I’m so sorry. I’m sick about it. If there was any other way, I wouldn’t be here.”
“We let you see Martin and you said that would be it.”
“I know. What can I say? They say they’ll kill her, if I don’t give them the body.”
“I can’t help you.”
“Ignacio.”
“I can’t even talk about it.”
Lewis was sick of begging. “Fine, Ignacio, great. Save your soul by not talking about the dead, but be damned for letting someone die. Think about it.”
Ignacio said nothing, picked up his tool belt and fastened it around his waist. He was looking at the ground as he turned away.
“One other thing,” Lewis said. “Maybe you can do this.”
Ignacio looked at him.
“Switch trucks with me. Mine has a full tank and I’ll fill yours.”
“Keys are in it.”
Lewis thanked him. He took the beat up truck and drove to town and out the other side. Since it didn’t look like he was going to get Martin’s body, he decided to try the state police.
Chapter Twenty-two
Lewis went over the things he might say to the state police when he got to Santa Fe. All of it sounded wild and unbelievable. Burns on dead bodies and kidnapping and vets who weren’t vets. He thought about Manny and remembered his looking the other way and filing the drowning report. Manny he knew to be a good man. If they could get to him, they could get to the state police. Maybe they had something on Manny personally. Maybe they kidnapped someone close to him. Lewis watched the yellow line of the highway flash by. He’d have to try the state police. He was out of options.
At the police headquarters, Lewis parked in the first spot in the lot he saw, hoping the walk to the building would steady him. A man and woman came through the door with a teenage boy with a bandage on the side of his face. A Mutt and Jeff team of patrolmen got into a car. A cluster of patrolmen stood laughing a few yards away from the door. One spat tobacco juice into the bushes.
Lewis entered. The station was clean, almost antiseptic, he thought. He realized he had little reason or opportunity in his life to be in police stations. It wasn’t what he expected. A woman at a desk with striking green eyes asked Lewis if he needed help.
“Yes, I’d like to file a missing person report.” He hoped he was saying it right. “Actually, I think it’s a kidnapping. Do I talk to the same person?” He felt himself breaking up. At least he didn’t like the way he sounded.
The woman’s too-green eyes showed sympathy. “Have a seat here, Mr.?”
“Mason.” He sat beside her desk in the seat she had indicated.
She picked up the phone and asked for a sergeant. She hung up. “I’ll get a call back in a second,” she said.
Lewis nodded.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee? There’re doughnuts over on that table.” She pointed.
“Thank you.” Lewis was hungry. “I think I will have a doughnut.” He got up and went to the table. He looked over the selection, then up and out the large window.
Parked in the lot was a brown van. Lewis rationalized that there were many brown vans around. This one was parked with the patrol cars. He picked up a glazed doughnut and took a bite. He remembered the van which had driven past him on the street in front of the restaurant that day. He remembered that he could not make out the tag because of the dirt. He tossed what he was eating into the can by the table and went back to the green-eyed woman.
“Where is the men’s room?” he asked.
She pointed.
He didn’t go to the restroom. He left the building and made a wide circle in the parking lot to get a view of the rear plate of the van. It wasn’t a New Mexico tag, he knew that, but he could not make it out. Because of the dirt. He found himself wanting to run, but he walked back to Ignacio’s truck and drove away.
Lewis stopped at a restaurant in Española. The tables were in booths that wore facades of old west town places; the livery, the saloon, the barber shop. The hostess sat him in the undertaker’s.
He ordered a hamburger, a lame attempt at convincing himself he was somewhere else. The sandwich came with green chiles on it. He was especially glad now that he had exchanged his truck for Ignacio’s. He never imagined he could be so afraid. Once, while at a conference in Chicago, a man had pointed a gun at him and demanded his money. He was scared then, but it was a simple matter of handing over the cash. There were too many unknowns here. Maybe if he had some idea of why Martin had been killed in the first place, he could have found more purchase.
He thought of Maggie. Was she really all right? Was she alive? Hurt? Blindfolded? Did Peabody think they knew more than they did? He could hear Maggie’s smart ass remarks flying. Perhaps that would amuse them enough that they wouldn’t just hurt to relieve the boredom. He’d had three bites of the burger, but could eat no more.
He would leave here and go to see Manny. He knew Manny had to be getting tired of this stuff. And he’d have to do something once he learned that Cyril Peabody had admitted to Lewis that he had abducted Maggie.
The waitress came and topped his iced tea and he asked for the check.
Unlike the sta
te police headquarters, the county sheriff’s office had no cars, patrol or otherwise, parked in its lot. Lewis walked in to find Flora, the heavy dispatcher and secretary alone at her desk, eating a packaged snack-cake.
She wiped her mouth daintily with a handkerchief. “May I help you?” she asked.
“Is the sheriff in?”
“He’s on patrol.” She looked at the clock. “He should be back at three, but I can call him.”
Lewis decided he could wait the forty-five minutes. There was no sense in getting started on the wrong foot by rushing the man back. Lewis looked at back issues of Popular Mechanics and Motor Trend. Flora burped and excused herself. Lewis smiled at her.
Flora got up and left the room. Lewis assumed she was off to the restroom. He looked at the clock. He had twenty minutes. He stood and walked to the door of Manny’s office. He went inside and pushed the door to gently. He stood there and searched for his breath and thoughts. He went to the sheriff’s desk and glanced at the papers atop it. He looked at everything. There was an unsigned complaint of a woman accusing her husband of assault and an accident report saying that the teenage driver had been drunk.
He pulled back the blinds and looked at the lot. Back at the desk, he found a television schedule open and a program circled: Invisible Weapons. The guide said it was a documentary about the chemical warfare agents of World War I. He found a letter from the State Association of Law Enforcement Officials reminding Manny of an upcoming meeting in Las Cruces. There was nothing on the desk that helped him. He went to the file cabinets. He looked up Aguilera, Martin. The folder was thin, containing only the report which stated that an old man had drowned in the Rio Grande. He paused and listened. He guessed that Flora had just assumed he’d left. He looked at the report. Aguilera, Martin; born 1919, five-feet-six-inches tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Lewis closed the folder. He dropped it on the floor, not absently, but defiantly and he kicked it. He snatched open the Ñ-through-S drawer without a thought to Flora in the next room. He was looking for Peabody.
Lewis could hear Flora at the door. She knocked. “Manny?”
The Body of Martin Aguilera Page 9