Pay Here

by Charles Kelly

  It was not possible to redeem her on earth, and I don’t know if there’s a more merciful elsewhere in which she can be saved. But I do know that in August, when the storms are hissing and grumbling in from the Pacific and the winter seems such a long way off, I make my pilgrimage down to Pinal County and park just off the highway and walk over the path that Daly walked to the grave the first time I saw her. I look far out to the horizon and beyond, and I think of the sweep of the earth and of all things on the earth. On the border, the immigration agents are checking papers and the border crossers are moving through. In the desert, the illegals trudge, and many will make it. In the mission of San Xavier del Bac, the worshippers’ faces are turned up to the candlelight. In Tucson, a mother is trying to get her child to eat his breakfast. In the reservation casinos, the gamblers are trembling with anticipation, bathed in the flash and jingle of the slot machines. Hope is alive. The world is carrying on.

  I stand by the grave. Daly’s handkerchief angel is no longer there, of course. But long ago she taught me how to fashion such an angel out of a clean handkerchief and a simple gold ring, and each year I do. Then, in the vicinity of the cross, I begin a search, looking over the rough ground for a bit of sanctuary. And always I find it. Amid the desolation, I encounter a rock or a rise or a dense scrap of brush—a makeshift barrier that will ease the wind. I arrange the angel and it stands in place. Errant drafts pummel it. The dust blows over it. Hawks dive and bank around it, their wings beating. But the angel continues to stand there, still and alone, as if nothing could dislodge it.

  It is dislodged in time, of course. The illegals who pass that way have heard about my practice, and each year they come and pluck the ring, leaving the angel. They sell the gold and, I presume, put the money to good use. But, though they could, they never take the ring right away. They always wait at least a week. They know about me, you see, and they tell my story. They say that a man loved a woman and killed her, and now he grieves. It is an old story, they say, and one that must be respected. And every year, they give me that week to be with Rhea.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Patrick Millikin, whose knowledge of the hardboiled mystery is limitless and whose contacts in the mystery world are legendary, to my energetic and supportive agents, Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle of Cine/Lit Representation, to J.T. Lindroos, for toughening up my prose, to Angela Cara Pancrazio, a great photographer, for shooting the author portrait, and to my good friend Joan Brett, for helping me celebrate.