“But what about the police?”
“I would have been their best suspect except that I was at Noche Azul the night Yiolanda died. They’ve been monitoring my phone for suspicious calls but so far no luck. I’ve had calls from Vegas, but the police haven't asked about them. They’re not so clever. Or maybe they’re practical. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. Or should I say bitches?”
I raised my eyebrows, unsure whether to agree or disagree.
“I know you tried to help her,” he continued. “It’s a comfort to me in a way. But by then it was too late.”
“I never meant to help her at your expense.”
He pushed a tuft of hair off his forehead. “When I was out of town, you were a natural ally.”
Above, the fan squeaked.
Rolando drained his glass, checked mine, which was mostly full, and poured more for himself. “She trusted you.” He leaned towards me. “Do you know why? She thought you were stupid. Don’t take that wrong. She saw me as the most stupid of all. By the way,” he kicked at the bullet stuck in the floor, “any idea where that came from?”
“No.”
“What time is it anyway?” He consulted his watch. “They’re late. One-thirty. How do you manage, staying up late every night?”
“I’m used to it.”
He continued with the receipts. “I’m beginning to think I’ve had enough. Maybe I’ll start copying Alfonso at Moonlit Nights. When customers come in too late, he sends them down the street to another place so that he can still close up on time. Maybe he loses business that way, but he doesn’t lose any sleep.”
“Moonlit Nights?” I should have remembered. The meowing cat.
“In Vegas. I was there recently. A little side trip. But some people claim that half the fun is getting there. Half the time I’m inclined to agree.”
I nodded imperceptibly.
Rolando brought his shoulders together and then stretched them out like an accordion. “Do you want to know why Yiolanda married me, Andy?”
I thought back to his wedding day. It was the second time I’d been best man, but Joey’s had been a gala event planned months in advance. Rolando’s had taken place at a week’s notice.
“Why?”
“To spite a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife. Try finding that out from your mother-in-law on your wedding night. See what it does to set the mood.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Names a fucking hotel after her but won’t marry her. Leaves the dirty work to me.”
“But that was before you were married, right?”
“Before, during. What’s the difference?”
“Those times she went down to Vegas to visit her mother—”
He rubbed his chin with his palm. He hadn’t shaved for several days. “You saw the old bag at the funeral. She’s never been sick a day in her life.”
Silence filled the room. Outside a motorbike poked the air with gassy hisses. “Even her Nevada jaunts I accepted. Beautiful women need reassurance, I told myself. And they get it from other men, not from the same man over and over.”
I swung the key chain from my index finger, making slow loops.
“Do you want to know what happened a couple of weeks ago?” He took a swig of Presidente and rolled it around in his cheeks before swallowing. “I caught her with Marco Antonio Gutiérrez in my own bed.”
“You did?”
“I know it’s shocking. But there he was plain as day. In fact it was day. Bright sunlight was streaming in from the window and warming Gutiérrez’s ass.”
No vacancies at the Osborn?
“She thought I’d gone out. I had, of course. But she didn’t notice I’d left my wallet, which is why I went back.”
I could imagine the scene: Marco Antonio’s general position, Rolando’s silhouette as he signaled his own presence, and Yiolanda, smiling victoriously.
“It’s a low feeling to open the door to your home, hear sounds coming from your bedroom, and know that it’s not your daughter or your son or your mother or your maid who’s getting it on, but the woman you pledged the rest of your life to.” He fingered the brandy glass but didn’t pick it up. “That’s about as low as you can feel, probably.”
“Probably.”
Rolando pushed the calculator’s equal button and wrote down the total with a pencil. He’d already tallied half the slips. “I bet you can’t guess what happened when I walked in the bedroom, can you? Go ahead. Take a guess.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to guess.
“She laughed.” He imitated a woman’s voice. “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
“Was she drunk?”
“Hell no.”
“And Gutiérrez?”
“Scared shitless. I was afraid he was going to crap on the sheets. Then she pats him on the ass. ‘Get up and get dressed, dear,’ she tells him. ‘Don’t worry. Rolando won’t hurt you.’”
“You’re kidding!”
“I always kid about being cuckolded.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Rolando lifted his glass. “I know, Andy. Don’t worry about what you said.”
Rolando took another drink, and this time I copied him. Down on the street, a dog barked, and a single set of heavy feet passed by.
“That was the final straw. After that, I set the whole thing up in a couple of days.”
“Set what up?”
“Andy, you’re a helluva nice guy, but you’re not quick.” He pointed his finger at me. “And don’t take that wrong.”
I jumped when the door creaked open.
“Rolando?” Tomás entered sheepishly. “I’m sorry I took so long to finish up.”
“Nonsense. We had lots of customers.” Rolando reached back to the desk and picked up the heavy key chain. “Would you mind locking up for me downstairs?”
Tomás vanished with the keys.
Rolando scooted his chair out from the table and stretched his feet over its edge. “Like my new shoes?”
I hadn’t noticed, but the brown leather shoes were so shiny that they sparkled.
“Bought them at Caesar’s. Same as the ones I’d buy in downtown L.A., but they were on sale.” He put his feet down and started tallying the other set of receipts.
“You set something up?”
“The hotel owner’s wife was the crucial link. Edith had found our phone number by signing up to pay the phone bill via the Internet. She called, ready to give Yiolanda an earful. Guess what happened.”
Rolando’s pack of cigarettes was in the middle of the table. After I shook one out, Rolando leaned over and lit it with a wooden match. “She found solace in talking to me. That woman was more desperate than I ever was. For weeks I just listened. I felt sorry for her, stupid woman, pouring her heart out over one unfaithful man. I may have been upset, but never to the point of dysfunction. By the time I was ready to take action, she was too.”
Tomás bounded back up the stairs. “Anything else?”
“No, thanks. Good night.” Rolando waited for Tomás to distance himself. “Is he working out all right?”
“Sure. Make him a waiter.”
“He’s ready?”
“He pitched in while you were gone even when Dennis got on everybody’s nerves.”
“You’d be surprised how willing people are to help you if they believe in your cause. Just take Edith.” Rolando refilled our empty glasses. “Of course, it wasn’t so hard. Mathews and Leonard were easy targets since she’d carefully tracked their movements. All I had to do was show up and make arrangements. But the beauty of it is that Edith didn’t see anything first-hand. Even if she cracks, she won’t have any proof.”
Even Edith had played me. Evidently anybody could.
“But that stupid photograph! Who would have thought it could get Yiolanda out of jail?” He grimaced. “Otherwise it was perfect. What more do police ever want than fingerprints on a murder weapon? Still, for a novice, it was a respectable att
empt.”
I couldn’t have imagined a calmer, more focused novice.
He shifted to an upright position. “Then the damned police lost the gun. Can you believe that? After all my hard work, I practically had to turn Yiolanda in myself.”
“Gun?” I asked weakly.
“It’s easy to get fingerprints from someone you live with. You know how deep their sleep is. You know when you can take a gun to their hand and mold their fingers around it. Mathews was an afterthought.” Rolando nodded, remembering. “Edith found out about him because when her husband went through a month of being in a bad mood, she thought Yiolanda had given him up. Instead Yiolanda had taken an additional lover right there in town. Can you believe that? It sounds like one of those Brazilian soap operas they play on Channel 67. Anyway, we hired a detective to see what Yiolanda was up to.
“She’d gotten bored taunting Leonard with me. I was too normal. Poor man. Can you imagine being jealous of your mistress’s bisexual lover? Leonard is better off dead. No one seems sorry he’s gone. One dickhead more, one less, what’s the difference? It’s not like Mathews had anything going for him either although he did have loyal friends. They scared the panties off our little Yiolanda. Wanted to avenge their lover’s death. When they couldn’t figure out how to blame me, they blamed her. They must have called ten times, leaving breathy messages. ‘It’s all in your mind, dear, I kept saying.’ But I liked watching her squirm.”
I envisioned her at the phone, holding it away from her ear, pretending not to hear.
Rolando looked directly at me. “Are you surprised, Andy? You shouldn’t be. Enough is enough, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself of the opposite.”
“And that Californian who got killed in Vegas?”
Rolando shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a bone Yiolanda threw to the Mathews’ boys.”
I remembered the guys with blond hair who had come in looking for special tequilas. “What about Gutiérrez?”
“Ha! Pure luck. He was such a crooked businessman that a crew of detectives working for a year wouldn’t have time to list his enemies. Maybe Yiolanda set him up.” Rolando stared straight at me as he punched the calculator for a final time. “You don’t look well. Want some bicarbonate?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Why would Yiolanda set him up?”
“Blackmail, I guess. It turns out she was trying to raise money.”
“Because of gambling debts?”
Rolando stood and took some papers from his top desk drawer. He handed me the stack. “Check this out.” The first page appraised Hotel Hot Spot, a fifty-unit hotel with a Vegas street address. Paperwork named Yiolanda the new owner. She’d signed an eight-page contract in which she’d promised to make good on the loan.
“She bought a hotel?”
“She promised to put a fourth down. Where was she going to get that kind of money?”
“How was she expecting to pay the other three-fourths?”
“With a good manager, you could make mortgage payments, upkeep, and still turn a profit. But to raise the initial payment?”
In comparison, the amount of money she’d sent me to retrieve was a trifle. Interest on what she’d borrowed, perhaps? Payment for the guys who were supposed to kill me? “She never mentioned the hotel to you?”
“No. But it’s conveniently located around the corner from Leonard’s Hotel Farfalla.”
“Why compete with him?”
“To prove she was tougher? I have no idea. Rather, I don’t want to know. You can’t know everything anyway. The most you can do is get through a few layers.”
The fan squeaked so loudly I could barely think.
“Why would Yiolanda want property? I thought her mother was loaded.”
“Sure. Because Mr. Contreras worked his butt off. That’s probably what killed him. He died when Yiolanda was ten. He’d made such good investments that Mrs. Contreras never had to work. Or worry.”
“Wouldn’t Yiolanda have gotten some of that money?”
“Not while the bitch was alive.”
“You’d think she’d have been more generous towards her daughter.”
“Ha. Jealous of her since the day she got tits. At least that’s what Yiolanda thought.”
Rolando snapped the matchbox with his thumb and forefinger, and it sailed across the table and onto the floor. “Had I known about Gutiérrez’s finances, I could have saved myself a trip to Vegas. Hindsight. But I was so looking forward to visiting Yiolanda in jail! Thank God for Mrs. G. And to think we got on the topic by accident. She was even more eager to help me than Edith was after I’d explained everything.”
Outside a car screeched to a halt. Maybe the neighborhood was going downhill faster than I thought. Who went around screeching tires on quiet streets at two a.m.?
Moments later a strong hand banged on the door.
“Come in!”
Rocky and Dexter, my favorite pals, strode into the room.
“Hey, look!" Rockford shouted. “It’s our very own detective.”
“Only he forgot his raincoat.”
“Yeah. And he’s a little too tall.”
“Sorry we’re late,” said Dexter.
“Another jaunt to Huntington Beach?” Rolando smiled.
“You could say that. But we didn’t mean to make you wait.”
“No problem. I’ve been talking Andy’s ear off.” He scooted over to the desk and pulled two wads of bills from the drawer. “Nice touch with the scuffed shoes.”
Rockford grinned. “We’re professionals!”
My boss handed over the money. “Count it. I’m bad at math.”
Dexter took the other wad and stuffed it in his pocket. “We trust you. Need anything else?”
Rolando tilted his head in my direction. “No. He’s promised to stop meddling. Right, Andy?”
I nodded.
“Thanks, boys. I guess not.”
They waved as they left the room. I looked on, nonplussed.
“I admit they’re a little gruff, but they get the job done,” Rolando said.
I tried to swing my key chain, but it flew from my hand.
He handed me the keys. “You’re edgy, Andy. You ought to sleep in tomorrow.”
There could be a tomorrow?
“Rolando and Yiolanda,” my boss continued. “I always thought the names matched because we were perfect for each other. That’s what I’m really mad at—the gut feeling that told me she was right for me. When people hinted she was too young and beautiful, I never listened. Andy, I give you credit. You never tried to warn me against her. My gut feeling fooled you too.”
I’d been fooled all right. Until that moment.
“Don’t look so startled. Yiolanda was no helpless woman. What I did was self-defense. It was her or me. I picked me. You would have done the same. But do you know what I appreciate about you the most, Andy? Your loyalty. To me, to my father, to Noche Azul. In your own way, to Yiolanda.”
“And now what?”
“Business as usual. Happy music as usual. Nothing’s perfect, but everything goes back to normal. It already has.”
No. Nothing would be the same. But Rolando wasn't counting on my loyalty. Not exactly. He was counting on the fact that I loved my quiet, predictable life. That I loved my steady, dead-end job. That I would do anything to keep it even if that meant never having a nice car or a swell condo in Rolando’s part of town. Maybe I wasn’t convinced I wanted such things. Maybe I wasn’t convinced I deserved them.
And it would have been a good life, too. I could have gone on forever without changing a thing. Thanks to my coworkers I could avoid being lonely without the trouble of having a girlfriend. I could borrow Joey’s kids without having my own. I could continue going to the beach on my scooter, spending late nights on my balcony, and walking off insomnia on the streets of Squid Bay.
Such a life was within my grasp. It would have been easy, which was one reason why I couldn’t do it. The other r
eason hurt more. Yiolanda had done lots of wrong things. She had loved wrongly. She had made poor choices and compounded them with worse ones. That didn’t give Rolando the right to decide her fate. She deserved another chance. Everybody did.
“Do you know what I might like to do?” Rolando asked. “Start a music school for mariachi players. No big deal. Just some after-school program. In my father’s name. He would have liked that. And you’d be a good teacher. We should think about it. Ready to go?”
I followed Rolando outside and waited while he locked the door. I would miss the restaurant. I would anguish about making my friends lose their cushy jobs, but as I stood at the top of the stairs, I knew what I had to do. The call I had to make, the finger I had to point. For a final moment I was poised between two worlds: the one I knew and loved, and the one I would be stuck with afterwards.
For years Joey had insisted that I needed a change. A new challenge. For once I hoped he was right.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Mike Orenduff at Aakenbaaken & Kent for his encouragement and guidance. Thanks also to Billie Johnson, Suzi Yazell, and Jeana Gartshore-Thompson. Many thanks to all the readers who helped with drafts of this manuscript, including Elise Ransdell and Sandra Ransdell. Mil gracias to my friends from Mariachi América, especially George Bejarano, Gilbert Velez, Urbano Márquez, Ruben Moreno, Concho Gomez, and José (Chiltipín) Yebra. They taught me everything I know about the fascinating world of mariachi.
Turn the page if you enjoy reading.
More books by D. R. Ransdell
forthcoming from Aakenbaaken & Kent:
Island Casualty
An Andy Veracruz Mystery Book 2
When Andy Veracruz flies to a Greek island for a holiday with Rachel, he expects to spend afternoons swimming and nights making love. After his troubles in Mariachi Meddler, he deserves a break! But he meets a fellow traveler who accidentally leaves behind a package. Before Andy can return it, the man disappears. When Andy substitutes in a bouzouki band, he learns more about the island and its missing man than he intended to and soon realizes he’s not safe on Amiros.
Mariachi Meddler Page 23