by Gil Reavill
The accounts of the incident had not admitted doubt. The forty-eight-year-old woman, born Evelyn DeYoung and heiress to one of the largest fortunes in California, fell into the cascade on the estate’s grounds. She either drowned or died from multiple contusions as the current buffeted her against the waterfall’s concrete channel. She perished, at any rate. “Death by misadventure” had been listed as cause in the coroner’s report—meaning an accident, not a crime.
The beautiful stone-stepped cascade at the back of the Loushane estate was actually part of the Los Angeles public water system, an overengineered heirloom from the early days of the city’s development. It functioned as an aerator for an underground aqueduct. The Loushane kids were always warned away from the waterfall as dangerous, which rendered it all the more enticing. To hang out nearby was to exist in a mist-freshened kingdom far away from the parched Los Angeles desert, the air moist and blue as if they sat beside some Alpine lake.
When Simon was alive he could see a conspiracy behind everything and anything, from the shape of a doughnut to the fall of the Twin Towers. He had a streak of natural paranoia, probably exacerbated by his enthusiasm for illegal alkaloids. So Remington wasn’t exactly surprised that Simon had hired a private eye.
But Evelyn Loushane’s death had been safely put to bed. In the five years since, no one had raised a whisper of a doubt that it was an accident.
Remington set aside the Investigaciones Especiales invoice. She had a feeling it was exactly the kind of “untoward” material about which Brock Loushane would want to be informed. If Simon had been around, Remington could have asked him what was up with it.
“Is Simon around?” Without Remington’s noticing, the Frisbee guy in the Wayfarer sunglasses had approached the deck. He stood on the beach sand below, looking up at her.
Remington told him no, Simon wasn’t around, giving no further explanation.
The Wayfarer nodded. “You’re the sister? You the older or younger one?”
“And who are you?”
“I’m up the beach.” Gesturing vaguely west, toward El Matador. “Simon and I play ultimate once in a while.” He spun the Frisbee in front of him. Tapping it out of the air with a finger, he ran the disk up his arm, seemed to fumble and drop it, then with a miraculous save popped it back upward with his foot.
Remington laughed.
The Wayfarer gave Remington a dazzling smile. “How about you? You want to come out and play?”
—
“The real tragedy of the poor,” said Cardinal Purchase, “occurs when they become dependent on charity and thus lose their natural bent for enterprise, innovation and hard work.”
“We see it all the time,” Caroline Loushane purred. She sat next to the prelate at an outdoor supper on the Wildermanse terrace.
Remington watched the two of them. She knew that Caroline was playing with the Cardinal, leading him on a bit, prompting him to say things that, if they were quoted in the press, might not reflect to the church’s benefit. Caroline had shoved her chair right alongside the archbishop’s. The two of them were actually holding hands.
A perfect Southern California evening unfolded around the intimate group. They had consumed a lazy, extended dinner—Caroline, Brockton and Victor Loushane, plus the Cardinal, his secretary and Victor’s second wife, Jenna.
Remington deeply felt her outsider status. She had come to Wildermanse to return the keys to the beach house, having completed her packing and shipping and cleansing the premises of all sign of its late resident. Brock had insisted that she join the group on the terrace.
The wine was superb, on the direct opposite end of the quality spectrum from the rotgut retsina Remington had consumed at the Zuma Beach place. This was a bordeaux from an outstanding year, as everyone kept repeating, and the men especially seemed to relish it. The Cardinal’s teeth, already stained and worn to begin with, now took on a plum-colored tinge. Every so often the sound of a popping cork punctuated the desultory talk.
“The illegals coming over have the expectation of charity, that’s for certain,” said Brock.
“We’re being overrun,” Jenna said. She sat straight-backed, as if poised for a photograph, seated next to her husband, a lipstick-marked wineglass in her hand.
“Oh, the illegals,” Caroline put in.
“You understand that we are under the gun with the new Father,” Cardinal Purchase said, referring to the recently elevated Pope Benedict. “Our hands are tied. But we find ourselves in a quandary—whether we want a church in Los Angeles that conducts the Mass exclusively in Spanish.”
“It all makes one so wish for the days before Vatican Two.” Caroline employed a mock-wistful tone that went right over the heads of her father and the Cardinal.
Remington and the Loushane twins were the same age, twenty-two. Sitting with them around the wrought-iron table as the last glow of the day faded, she realized that Caroline had now come fully into her beauty. The mother had been celebrated for hers. The daughter had the former Evelyn DeYoung’s copper-blond hair. Her fine, pale, faintly freckled complexion, probably a product of the maternal side’s English heritage, was balanced by a less regal, full-lipped sensuality that supposedly came from the Scottish Loushanes.
Cardinal Purchase peered at Caroline through his wine haze. He patted her hand. “I know you’re only egging me on, dear girl, but you’re not far wrong.”
“Pretty soon we’ll all be down at Mel Gibson’s chapel in Malibu,” Brock said.
The Cardinal chuckled. The actor Mel Gibson and his ultraconservative father, Hutton Gibson, adhered to the pre–Second Vatican Council version of Catholicism. Mel had erected his own house of worship, the Church of the Holy Family, nestled in the hills above Malibu. There the Gibsons and a small congregation of faithful celebrated the traditional Tridentine Mass in Latin.
“I’ve heard the Malibu chapel described,” Cardinal Purchase told them. “ ‘Million-dollar rustic,’ it’s been called, a phrase that strikes me as an oxymoron.”
“Have you ever been, Your Eminence?” Caroline asked.
Remington gave an inward roll of her eyes. When Caroline started to trot out “Your Eminence,” the bullshit faucet had been turned on high.
Cardinal Purchase laughed gaily. “Oh, goodness, no. I can imagine the headlines. Then the red phone would ring-a-ling-ding, ‘Halloo? Direct call from the Vatican.’ ” He put on a German accent. “Jawohl, Puh-chusss? Vut’s this I hear?”
The Loushanes laughed. The Cardinal showed his wine-stained teeth.
“I’ve been,” Remington said. The words were the first she had said at the gathering. No one noticed. It was as if a maid had spoken.
“They might not let you in, Your Eminence,” Brock teased. “They have hella security out there.”
“Yes, what’s all this ‘hella’ business?” demanded the Cardinal. “I’ve had to discipline my altar boys for saying the word.”
Brock smiled. “They have a lot of security.”
The conversation rolled right over Remington. But Caroline put on the brakes. “Wait, Layla, did you say you’ve been out there?”
The guests looked at her politely, expectant. It was simple curiosity on her part, Remington told them. She had wanted to hear a Latin Mass. The chapel was very pretty. The welcome wasn’t exactly warm, since the Church of the Holy Family experienced its share of looky-loos, people who only showed up in hopes of getting a glimpse of a movie star. But she had convinced security—an usher who looked as though he had stepped out of a medieval keep, and a sexton with the build of a bodyguard—that she was harmless enough.
“The Gibson father is a pretty piece of work,” Caroline put in. “He says the Second Vatican Council was a Masonic plot backed by Jews.”
“Well?” Cardinal Purchase said, and all the party except Remington laughed knowingly.
Ellis Loushane emerged from the house onto the terrace. A pretty wisp of a young woman came with him. Something about her was familiar. Remi
ngton had heard about the reality TV star that Ellis had taken up with, the daughter of one of the women featured on Divorced Housewives of Malibu. Genevieve somebody.
“Hi, everyone,” Ellis said. “If you’re going to keep talking about politics, Gena and I are leaving.”
“Hello, he must be going,” Caroline said.
The two new arrivals approached the table. “Cardinal Purchase, may I present Genevieve Ratsy-Patsy?”
Ellis hadn’t really said that, not “Ratsy-Patsy,” but Remington hadn’t caught the girl’s Polish-sounding last name.
The young TV star became flustered in the presence of the prelate. She first attempted a curtsy, but her dress was too short and she had to break off in the middle of the gesture. She then seized the man’s hand, ripping it away from Caroline’s and bending to kiss the Cardinal’s ring.
“My, my,” Caroline commented. Genevieve straightened and leaned in to buss the cheek of her boyfriend’s twin. Caroline airily offered her own hand. “You may kiss mine, too.”
“I watch your show,” Jenna Loushane offered. “We almost have the same first name.”
“Thank you,” Genevieve said.
“My stepmom, Jenna,” Ellis explained.
Amid the chatter, Remington went unnamed. As a rule, privileged families do not introduce the help.
“Oh, and Layla, you’re here, too,” Ellis suddenly said, leaving Genevieve and coming over to give her a warm hug. “Gena, this is Layla Remington, one of Car and my oldest, oldest friends.”
“Oh, she’s not old, El,” Genevieve protested, giving Remington a quick, practiced assessment before deciding she was not a threat.
Ellis plopped himself down on the arm of Remington’s chair. “Is there anything besides wine?”
“It’s apple juice for you, young brother,” Brock said. He greeted Genevieve.
“Ha-ha,” Ellis responded.
Remington handed him an icy tumbler of sparkling water.
“Wow, just what the doctor ordered.” He drank as if discovering Perrier for the first time.
The longer the sun-blond Ellis sat near her, the more a blush spread over Remington’s features. She was excruciatingly aware of being in close proximity to him. What a girl she was being. Her face turned completely red. Pivoting away, she rose. The chair tipped, almost throwing Ellis off.
“Whoa!” He righted himself, laughing.
Caroline laughed, too. “Not the first time Ellis was ever dumped by a girl.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Remington stammered. “I should go.”
Cardinal Purchase and Victor Loushane had retreated into a private, murmuring conversation, their heads bent together like a pair of diplomats who didn’t want to be overheard.
Ellis left Caroline, Jenna and Genevieve chatting among themselves. He walked Remington out.
“Bunch of stiffs,” Ellis remarked lightly, indicating the terrace with a tilt of his head. “You were there, so it wasn’t a total loss,” he added. “We never see you anymore. Oh, ‘we,’ I said ‘we.’ I mean I—I never see you. You know, if you’re a twin you can always get away with using the royal ‘we’—isn’t that great? How are you?”
“Oh, you know…we are fine.” She smiled.
“You came by.” He seemed to think it was a question, but Remington didn’t answer. “I miss you, Layla.”
“She’s very nice,” Remington said. “Nice-looking.”
“Genevieve? I thought my family was screwed up, but we’ve got nothing on hers.”
Remington stood there with him just outside the front door of Wildermanse. The driveway curved away into the dark. She lowered her voice to imitate an older male. “ ‘I want you to do something for me, Layla. I’ll pay you handsomely for the service.’ ”
Ellis looked at her quizzically. “Wait, what?”
“ ‘When I walk through the door, I don’t want to see anything that’s a reminder of my son.’ ”
“Wait, wait. Who is that? Is that Dad? Did he ask you…? What did he ask you to do?”
Remington dug into her purse. She extracted the Investigaciones Especiales invoice. “Brock said it had to be all on the down-low, that anything strange I found at the Malibu house I should give to him. Here’s a bill from a private eye that was in a pile of discards in the upstairs back bedroom.”
Ellis scrutinized the invoice uncertainly, trying to make sense of it. “Simon and his documents, his oh-so-important papers,” he murmured. “Brother was a pack rat.”
“This one’s a corker,” Remington said.
Chapter 4
They went under the wire outside Reforma, behind a drug train.
Chupé Torres marveled. “We drive through just like that?”
Three hours after sundown, a couple of hours before a quarter moon would show itself, Fausto waited atop a small rise, empty desert all around. His giant Dodge dualie pickup idled at a smooth growl. Forty yards below them, a battered, well-graffitied barrier made of corrugated steel crossed a dry wash, marking the official border line between Estados Unidos Mexicanos and the United States of America.
The border. El Alambre. The Wire.
It seemed like magic. A dusty, rutted roadway ran straight toward the border fence, seemingly dead-ending there. Then, as they watched, two galvanized-steel panels slipped to the side, opening a space thirty feet wide. The dead-end roadway lay revealed as leading north through the fence, directly across the border. Chupé could just make out four silhouetted figures, muscular men in jeans, cowboy hats and white T-shirts, as they moved the fence panels apart.
Two sixteen-wheeler semis packed with contraband had been waiting down below Fausto’s dualie. Emblazoned on the sides and back of both the trailers were intentionally vague logos that read “National Transport.” Now the big trucks revved their engines. Inky diesel smoke blackened the already dark sky. Chupé heard the metallic crunch as the drivers put their vehicles into gear.
Taking a forty-yard head start, the semis rumbled down the rutted roadway and hit the opening in the fence at high speed. They drove into the United States as easily as if they were tooling along Main Street.
“Me toca,” Fausto said. “My turn.” He liked to be at the wheel, had his controls mounted on the steering column because his feet couldn’t reach the pedals. Chupé didn’t know if he completely trusted Fausto as a driver. The whole rigged-up arrangement with the accelerator and the brake levers always looked unreliable to him. But the boss was the boss, and, more important, the boss was a warlock, un brujo, a santero who practiced the dark arts of black magic. Chupé didn’t insist on doing the driving himself, because he didn’t want his heart removed from his body and tossed like a scrap of meat into a black cauldron.
Fausto pulled the truck out fast, powering the pickup down the little hilltop where they had waited for the fence to open, falling in behind the drug train. A mini-tornado of dust, pluming out from the two semis, enveloped them.
In the rear seat of the crew cab, Marco and David crowed as they blasted across the border. Chupé turned his head to look back. The cowboy-hatted gatekeepers were already pushing the panels closed.
A quarter mile beyond the fence the drug train continued north, but Fausto swung the pickup west. The wrong way, Chupé believed. He watched the shadowy shapes of the semis as they were swallowed by the enormous Sonoran night.
“National Transport,” he whispered to himself, trying to get the pronunciation right, working on his English now that he was headed straight into the belly of the beast.
For a while, Fausto paralleled the border. Either as a joke or as camouflage, he had ordered the dualie repainted the sick-looking pale green that the U.S. Border Patrol fleet used. A couple of times they saw what could have been the headlights of Border Patrol SUVs off in the distance. Fausto did not slow. They looked like a Border Patrol truck.
David thrust his head forward, so that his face was just over Fausto’s right shoulder. “He’s sick, patrón.” Speaking low, so as to be unh
eard by the cadaverous-looking figure propped up in the far corner of the seat.
“He’ll be fine.”
Raúl dos Santos didn’t look fine. His head had swollen to the size of a pumpkin. Even in the nighttime heat of the desert, his flesh gave off a hot, furnace-like glow. Raccoon-like bruises had developed in the hollows of his eyes. Fausto had been feeding him antibiotics as if they were popcorn.
Muerto viviente. The living dead. Zombi. Fausto told Chupé that he was going to make a whole army of them, that Raúl was only the first one, the prototype.
Chupé Torres had met Fausto in Chihuahua. The little guy was called El Enano there, the Dwarf. Already heavily connected with Sinaloa families, so nobody fucked him over, no matter how short he was.
Back when Chupé first started running with him, Fausto wasn’t into all this black magic Santería shit. A year and a half earlier, he returned from a trip to Miami bragging that he had been initiated, been made into a santero. Spouting palo this and palo that. Regla de Ocha, the religion was called. Out from Africa, imported into North America via the Caribbean. The dark rites were taking the Mexican narcotraficantes by storm. Every cartel wanted its own pet santero.
It all gave Chupé the jitters. He couldn’t tell if Fausto believed his own bullshit or not. El Diablillo, they now called him behind his back, Little Devil. Imp. Demon. But there was something about the guy that forced you to take him seriously. Fausto had a sense of purpose. Like now, driving through a hellish desert wasteland at night as if he knew exactly where he was headed, looking at no map, no GPS, not stopping to figure out the way.
They turned northwest, the dualie rocking along barely-there cattle paths that spidered across the landscape. The limp form of Raúl was flung around in the backseat like a mannequin. Marco always got him propped up back into his corner.
Finally they slammed onto a dirt track, one that wasn’t exactly smooth but that at least didn’t resemble the surface of the moon. The mountains receded. Maguey cactus lined the pitiless landscape on both sides of the little road. For a long while a bombing-range fence popped up on their right, signs every quarter mile reading THIS LAND IS CONDEMNED in black block letters.