The hell with him. All of them.
As she tidied the kitchen, Luz spotted a white card she’d stuck on the refrigerator. Shit. This morning was the follow-up appointment with the doctor she’d seen after her attack of dysentery.
Her first thought was to cancel. Or simply not go. She took the card and slapped it against her other hand. Another image percolated to the surface: Dr. Guzman patting her knee when he learned she had ALS. His spontaneous kindness had almost toppled her unsteady emotional equilibrium.
Luz bit her lip. Rather than disappoint the lonely old man, she’d go see Dr. Guzman and listen to his stories of patients past and dreams for an uncertain future. Better to spend her time that way than to stay here brooding. Plus, if she hurried, Luz could check in with Juana beforehand.
She arrived at the market much earlier than usual, with Evan nowhere to be seen. Juana, however, handed over nothing but oranges. Luz opened her mouth and almost protested. No news? It was Wednesday already. And while Toño hadn’t committed to arranging a speedy return visit for Luz, he’d promised to try. He knew her Sundays-off schedule, but of course, he didn’t know this would be one of her last Sundays.
Perhaps she ought to compose a brief note for the next day begging Juana to make the arrangements a priority as she would be—what?—leaving town soon. Or she could simply bring the ashes to the market with her. Oh. Like a balloon untethered, her spirits floated higher. Of course. If Luz didn’t get news by Friday, she’d write instructions, wrap the urn, and present it to Juana, saying it was a gift. Luz wouldn’t be at the waterfall, but she’d said goodbye. Let Toño and the older men who remembered her parents take care of it.
With the sense of one more item crossed off her to-do list, Luz took a bus uptown. The once-elegant building housing Dr. Guzman’s office smelled like an old lady, faintly flowery with undertones of furniture polish. The air had the same hush as on her first visit. Dust motes still pirouetted in the slipstream of the heavy wooden paddles of the ceiling fan. Luz had the sense things seldom changed in this space, that should she come back in one year, or ten, she’d find the same yellowing sign taped to the elevator, the same fluffy drifts of dirt at the corners of the steps.
Of course, Dr. Guzman wouldn’t be there. Luz shook her head as she mounted the marble steps. Iowa. Snow and rolling farmland. Cows and American football. And his family, she conceded.
This consultation didn’t matter. He’d tell her to stay off her ALS medications or to start taking them again. Either way—well, she probably wouldn’t bother. In the days since her intestinal disturbance had cleared up, Luz had felt stronger than she had in a while. It was some kind of remission, she guessed, although her U.S. doctor had not been optimistic she’d experience anything like that.
But Dr. Guzman surprised Luz. As before, he took her arm to escort her into his examining room, seated her in the same leather chair. “I’ve been doing some research this week.” He stopped and, sounding embarrassed, added quickly, “I have too much time on my hands. As my practice has shrunk and all my patients have dispersed, I find I miss the puzzle each one presented. You see, my strength as a doctor of internal medicine was as a diagnostician.” The doctor leaned forward intently. “If you will permit me, I would like to do a complete work-up this morning. There are one or two things about how you describe your symptoms and their onset that have me curious.”
Luz hesitated. Not wanting to sound impolite, she restrained her impulse to tell him it didn’t matter.
Dr. Guzman must’ve read her reluctance as a money worry. She’d asked him to send a bill for her first visit since she didn’t have health insurance and hadn’t brought enough cash to cover the cost. “I wouldn’t charge you for this,” he said, picking up a pen with the zeal of a smoker reaching for his first cigarette of the morning. “It would be a welcome diversion.” His bleak look around the office took in the dismantling of his professional life.
So I’m to be your distraction, as you are mine.
“Really,” he added, and Luz read the unspoken entreaty in the tension at the corners of his mouth, “it would please me to go over a few things with you.”
An old man with too much time. “Of course,” she said. “But what—”
“Let me start with some questions and then examine you. Based on what I learn, I’ll write a request for lab work.” Dr. Guzman picked up a legal pad covered with tidy handwriting.
Covered. Luz settled back in the chair. If those were his questions, she’d be here until time for work.
Evan almost didn’t answer the phone. Before it interrupted him, he’d been sitting on a hard cane chair at the kitchen table with his sketch pad in front of him. At first, his pencil had drawn only doodles. Then one of the swirls had reminded him of Luz’s ear and hairline, and he’d begun sketching in more detail.
Mid-stroke, Margo’s gripe zapped him as distinctly as if she were still in the house. You leave all your emotions on the canvas.
Maybe that’s what he was doing. But what should I do, Evan temporized. Breakfast was over; time to get to work.
Good try, Evan. But actually, you’re ignoring that your girlfriend left you because you screwed another woman, and your uncle is orchestrating a scheme that will cause the other woman’s death. And then there’s that other woman herself.
Luz. Evan crossed the room and removed the Botanical Gardens sketch from the easel, where he’d hurriedly placed it to hide Luz’s portrait the afternoon Margo returned. He paced back and forth, side to side, squinting at it. He needed to soften the lines under her eyes. The jaw still wasn’t right.
Evan slammed the sketch back onto the easel. Damn. He was doing it again, letting his thoughts ricochet to avoid looking at the real problem. He stomped back to the kitchen table and flipped his sketchbook closed.
Okay. Identify the problem: Margo didn’t approve of Richard. No, that wasn’t accurate. Margo had cited a specific instance in which she claimed he lied, and she used that lie to suggest a pattern of dishonesty.
Evan accepted that Margo had seen Richard with the general, but the meeting probably came with an innocent explanation, like the lie Richard had told Luz about his job. Richard, after all, lived in a world of secrecy. Margo didn’t know her indictment of Richard’s honesty coincided with Evan’s own misgivings. Not about his honesty, but about his methods. There was a quote Richard occasionally spouted—something about applauding “extremism in the defense of liberty.” So if Richard was charged with the disruption of the Benavides drug cartel, of course he would concoct a rationale for assassinating its leader.
It was his next step that shocked Evan. Sending Luz on a suicide mission, no matter what the state of her health, violated everything Evan believed in. If this was the sort of extremism Richard accepted, he had crossed over the line.
The real problem was Luz. In the background—churning beneath his pencil strokes, behind the nice linear progression he was constructing to indict his uncle’s methods, beyond his own distress—ran an undercurrent of disordered ideas, none of which seemed sufficient to persuade Luz to abandon this whole indecent scheme. He had to figure something out. And soon.
Evan’s phone rang. Conscious of once again choosing distraction over introspection, he crossed the room and grabbed the receiver, punching the wall hard as he did.
“Aló?” he barked.
“Evan, my boy!” came across a line that crackled and popped.
Evan frowned at the wall, where the charcoal dusting his hand had left a faint outline of his clenched fist. He placed his fist precisely on the charcoal shadow and beat a fierce rat-a-tat-tat before saying, “Hi, Richard. What’s new?”
“Oh, this and that, this and that.” The call sounded like it came from the end of a long tunnel, but Richard’s buoyancy came through crystal clear.
“You’re in a pretty good mood,” said Evan, not bothering to camouflage his acerbity.
“Yep, it’s shaping up to be a good day for the good guys.”
“Where are you, Richard?” he asked instead. “It’s a lousy connection.”
“Can’t do anything about that, so we’ll keep it short. Tell me what’s happening in the big city.”
“Not much.” Here was his chance to pin Richard down. But he had to ask—and get the answers he needed—as a trusted business associate, not some wet-behind-the-ears kid.
“The weather’s cleared,” Evan said, buying time.
“You’re getting to the market daily?” Richard asked.
So he was calling about Luz. Evan contemplated her unfinished portrait on his easel. Maybe he wouldn’t complete it; it could stay forever sketchy and imperfect, like his understanding of her.
“Evan?”
“Sorry. Yeah, I go.”
“What has she reported?”
Evan brushed away the smudge of charcoal on the wall. He glanced back at Luz’s portrait. “Hey, Richard, I want to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Raul de la Vega called while Cesar was in the tub. “You need to stay overnight. The blasted night nurse called in sick, and the regular replacement is out of town.”
“Tonight?” Luz had just reached seventeen minutes in her countdown to escape. “Overnight?” Dr. Guzman’s questions had indeed occupied her all morning. So many picky points, dredging up memories of those days in early summer when—still rocked by her mother’s death—Luz’s occasional problems with balance escalated to frequent falls and debilitating muscle cramps.
“You want to keep your job, you stay. I’ll have a housekeeper bring clean sheets for the bed in the alcove off Cesar’s room.”
She wasn’t going to get out of this. Besides, she didn’t need to go home. That morning, in addition to asking a million questions, Dr. Guzman had given her a complete physical. Afterward, he recommended she stay off her meds for another week unless her muscle tremors resumed, so that wasn’t an issue. She kept a little toothbrush in her purse; she could shower here. And it solved the problem of a potential Evan ambush. She’d varied her routines to avoid him but, in the deserted late-night streets of her neighborhood, straight home was the only smart option. Let Evan think what he liked when she didn’t return. Asshole.
When Luz told him she was staying overnight, Cesar rushed around assembling his idea of necessary supplies for an impromptu sleepover: an extra pillow for the little bed, a fuzzy blanket, one of the soft toys that lay hidden under his pillow—never acknowledged, since Cesar was too old for baby stuff. He also brought out a small clock to put on his bedside table, explaining that he liked to look at the numbers if he woke up, but the regular nurse had banished the clock. Its glowing green lights annoyed her.
Guilt, an itch that sent Luz’s arm twitching toward Cesar. She’d battled him so often over his bedtime routine—but not tonight. He was clean and in his pajamas in record time, sitting on his bed, dark hair curling over his forehead, cocker spaniel–style.
“How many stories can I have?”
Guilt, now irresistible, a fiery prickling that cried out for relief. This time, her arm encircled the boy’s shoulders, and he snuggled next to her. So instead of reading from the too-familiar books in Cesar’s little library, Luz told him tales she remembered from her childhood—Los Tres Sueños, Los Puercos del Rey, El Compadre Malo, Los Niños Perdidos. The last was a Central American version of Hansel and Gretel, a tale of abandoned children finding their way home. It was the one Luz had always requested first.
Cesar resisted sleep in the way of young children: Can I have some water? Tell me another story. After she’d exhausted her entire repertoire, Luz lay down next to Cesar and yawned. She pretended to have trouble keeping her eyes open and responded only in a soothing monotone, mmm, uhhh. His chatter subsided. His breathing deepened.
Cesar slept, and Luz rolled slowly off the bed. In the adjacent alcove, she took off her sweater and, noticing the wrinkled Band-Aid the young lab tech had slapped on her arm after taking blood, she removed it as well. She untucked her thin cotton shirt, unfastened her bra, loosened the catch on her pants, and curled up under the covers.
It was warm in the house, and quiet, except for Cesar’s light snuffle. There were none of the night sounds Luz was accustomed to: the off-balance squeaking of her refrigerator, the rustle of the silly bird who’d adopted her bedroom window sill as a shelter, the slow drip of the hot-water faucet in the bathroom.
Luz and a lonely little boy. Lonely Luz. She stopped herself. No, she was not going to end the day as it had started, with a pity party.
Putting Cesar to bed had reminded Luz of her first years in the U.S. The upheaval had turned her from a tomboy into a fearful child. After a day at school, she came home—not to endless giggling phone conversations or trips to the mall with her boisterous classmates—but to hot chocolate prepared the Guatemalan way, with chocolate shaved from big disks added to boiling water, and to nursery tales she’d outgrown years earlier.
So tonight, Luz had lain there, with her hand light on Cesar’s chest, and played her mother’s role—telling the old stories, speaking Spanish, soothing a solitary child whose needs she could never meet.
A noise in the bedroom woke her. Another creak. Movement. Concerned Cesar was trying to get to the bathroom in the dark, Luz jumped up.
A figure stood by Cesar’s bed. She gasped. It turned at the sound.
Martin Benavides put a finger to his lips and mouthed shhhh. He crossed the room in a few quick paces.
“Where’s the nurse?”
“She was unable to come tonight, sir, so I stayed in her place.”
His body was closer to her than it had been to her father the night Martin betrayed him, the night, dark and still like this one, when his machete swung—once, twice, and left her father to bleed to death. The night Luz’s mother lost her otra ala, her other wing, and forever lost the ability to soar. The night Luz lost her father, the patient and kind man who always made time to nourish her curiosity.
She could smell his cologne, his musty old man smell, hair cream. She hated Martin Benavides. He was so close she could reach around his neck and squeeze. And squeeze.
With an abrupt yearning more intense than she’d ever had for a lover, Luz needed him to see his death in her eyes. If she set off the bomb the way Richard wanted, Martin would die without seeing death approach, never knowing that she, Luz, would finally exact retribution.
“Go back to bed.” His words were peremptory but the tone mild. “I often come here at night when I can’t sleep. Watching Cesar helps me see the future more clearly.”
He waved his hand in dismissal.
Luz ducked her head and retreated. She sat on the little bed, tingling with this new raw emotion. Personal vengeance. Not an anonymous blast but an angel of reckoning.
She would make it happen.
Martin Benavides, I am Maria Luz Concepcion, daughter of Emilio Concepcion. His eyes would widen. He’d sense danger. She’d say, I watched you murder my father. I saw his blood soak the ground. I still hear his screams in my sleep. Then she’d have a gun, if she could get one, or perhaps it would be the bomb after all. But before the blast, he would beg her for mercy. He would beg and plead and cry, and she would obliterate him.
Luz watched Martin through a gap in the skimpy curtain. He stood beside Cesar’s bed, head sunk low and shoulders hunched, an old man. She could kill him tonight, now—but, no, not in front of Cesar. And she’d promised Toño to wait until he knew more.
Martin sat on the edge of his grandson’s bed, mumbling words too faint to discern. Then he sagged. Placing one hand on Cesar’s chest, much as Luz had done earlier, he rubbed the other across his forehead and cheeks. Oddly, Luz found her earlier explosion of hatred, her desire to face him in death, had
prepared her to see Martin as a person, not the mythic ogre of her upbringing. A drug trafficker. Cesar’s grandfather. A man who traded his ideals for easy money. The only person in Cesar’s family who showed him simple affection. A double-crossing murderer.
A rustle of bedclothes and a creak. Martin stood. He smoothed his grandson’s blanket and shuffled out of the room.
Long after he left, Luz lay awake in the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After his testy telephone exchange with Richard, Evan had returned to the kitchen table and grabbed a piece of charcoal. Doodling again, but—the hell with Margo and anybody else who objected—that’s how he worked out his problems. At first, he drew only angry slashes; then a slip of his hand created a sloping blur. As Evan sketched, his subconscious began to hum. He tidied the slashes into logs piled askew; the blur became a plume of smoke. He added flames, a path, a distant hill.
Evan’s idea took shape along with his drawing. If he couldn’t persuade Luz to abandon Richard’s odious scheme, then he was going to do his dead-level best to get her to consider an alternative. So Evan drove to Luz’s house early the next morning, hoping to catch her leaving for the market. Instead, she came rushing home around mid-morning. The boyfriend again.
And here he was, outside her gate once more. Luz might think he was stalking her, but it couldn’t be helped; he needed to talk to her. “It’s not what you think.”
Luz’s head snapped back as though his words had lashed her cheek. She stared into space, her head still bent at an angle. She looked distracted. Not angry. And not like a woman satisfied. A songbird filled the space between them with melody. Something was different this morning. Evan waited. This difference held possibility. Perhaps she would listen to his proposition.
Finally, Luz said, “Nothing is.”
“Huh?”
Luz massaged the back of her neck. She said in a low monotone, “Nothing is what I think.”
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