“So what you’re saying is that the invasion of the Lizaurian Second Wave could come much earlier than 2011 as a preemptive strike?” Ed Clark asked.
“I’m saying the handwriting is on the wall,” Bartleby replied. “I’d personally be more worried about us accidentally shooting ourselves in the foot than any sort of external threat. I’m sure the government encourages people to focus on things like alien invasions instead of what’s really going on. When a program reaches a certain size, the only way to conceal it is with disinformation. No offense to your listeners. The problem is that with this kind of power, you can’t just shoot yourself in the foot. You’ll blow your whole leg off. Metaphorically speaking.”
“Interesting interesting stuff,” the host said mellifluously. “This is Ed Clark, Sea to Shining Sea, WROZ 1190 AM from Roswell, New Mexico. When we come back, was Frank Sinatra a Traveler? With that kind of charisma, it’s hard to deny, but what does your intuition tell you? But first, is your mattress too firm? Too soft… ?”
DeLuca turned the radio off.
It was crazy, of course, to pay any attention whatsoever to such nonsense. Yet there was something about the way the caller identifying himself as Bartleby spoke that was undeniably credible. He was obviously educated, or at least well read. He wasn’t defensive, he didn’t name the people who were doubting or persecuting him for his ideas, and he hadn’t felt the need to reinforce his statements by naming authorities who believed him or friends who supported him, either, which was how DeLuca usually knew somebody was bullshitting or lying to him.
He made a mental note to have somebody get Ed Clark’s call list for him. As strange as it was going to sound, he kept coming back to a single question—where was Cheryl Escavedo going when she vanished, and why was she going there—what did she want? He knew enough now to know she was running from somebody, frightened, smoking cigarettes and watching with binoculars focused at infinity, but at the same time, as far as he could tell, she hadn’t left a note for anybody, either in the trailer or in the Jeep. People who thought they were going to die left notes. She believed she was going to be all right. Did she believe in UFOs? If she did, did she believe she was going to meet one? In which case, it didn’t matter what DeLuca believed. It only mattered what Cheryl Escavedo might have been thinking. So far, he couldn’t tell if she was running away from something or toward something. Or both. Why Shijingshan? Why Qadzi Deh, whatever that was? And why Bob Fowler?
Chapter Seven
DELUCA SENT THE RUBBER BAND WITH THE hair on it and the piece of lightning glass that Marvin Yutahay had found at the site where Cheryl Escavedo disappeared to a pathologist in Boston he knew, a man named Mitchell Pasternak who’d been an assistant to DeLuca’s old friend Gillian O’Doherty, who’d served Suffolk County, Boston, as chief coroner and medical examiner for years. Pasternak had taken her place. He was young and cocky, but he could usually back up the claims he made. Gillian had taught him well before she died, killing herself in her lab late one night after discovering she’d accidentally infected herself with weaponized smallpox and realizing that without Biosafety Level 4 protocols and apparatus in place, self-annihilation was the only way to stop the plague that was sure to follow. It was a heroic act of self-sacrifice, though she would have argued that it was just common sense. Pasternak was the one who discovered the body, or what was left of it, a pile of brittle bones inside the alkaline-bath tissue digester her lab used to dispose of animal carcasses. She never liked to leave a mess, even at the weekly poker games she’d been part of, always clearing the bread crumbs from her chip tray and tidying up after everybody else when the game was over. The Army had pathologists and forensic labs at Fort Gillem in Georgia, but they were too slow and tended to get bogged down in paperwork. DeLuca asked Pasternak for a full workup on both pieces of evidence. Before she died, Gillian had left instructions for her assistant telling him that he was to cooperate fully with any requests from her old friend David. She was a thorough woman. DeLuca missed her.
He e-mailed Walter Ford and asked him to find out what he could about Shijingshan, Qadzi Deh, and Bob Fowler—what they might have in common.
Dan Sykes showed up in the Ms. Kitty the next morning with a bruise on his cheek. DeLuca took one look at him and said, “I hope the other guy looks worse.”
“Unfortunately, the other guy is a bar stool,” Sykes reported. He’d spent the night asking questions at the bar where Theresa Davidova worked, a strip club called Foxies on Central Ave that was a popular hangout for military personnel from Kirtland. A fight had broken out between a group of intoxicated Air Force PJs and a group of Army Rangers who’d made a bet about who could do more pushups with a naked girl on his back. A volunteer from each group had taken the stage, where, each with an accommodating dancer mounted on his shoulders, the competition commenced. The rescue jumper was up to thirty and still going strong when the Ranger collapsed, which didn’t surprise Sykes, because the PJs were the guys who trained to fly in and rescue the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers and Green Berets who were too exhausted to rescue themselves. PJs were arguably the fittest people in the military and perhaps the craziest. When the Rangers insisted on weighing the girls to arrive at a figure for most-total-pounds-lifted before paying up, even though the girl riding the PJ was clearly larger, the fight broke out, starting in the bar and spilling into the parking lot.
“I thought you were a black belt in karate,” DeLuca said.
“I am,” Sykes said. “Opponents, I can take. Bar stools flying through the air that I don’t see coming, I’m less effective against.”
“Did you learn anything useful?” DeLuca asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sykes said. “A couple of the girls who worked there were Russian and none of them had heard anything. There’s kind of a sex workers’ pipeline running from Russia through Juarez and then El Paso and then here. They knew who Leon Lev is, either personally or by reputation, and they all said he’s a nasty piece of shit, but nobody had seen him or any of the goons who work for him in the bar any time lately. I also went over the apartment again and found this,” he said, laying a medicine bottle on the table.
“Which is?”
“Prescription allergy medicine,” Sykes said. “Theresa’s. She didn’t take it with her, wherever she went.”
“What was she allergic to?” DeLuca asked. “She lived with cats.”
“The boyfriend said cats didn’t bother her, but most tree and flower pollens did, which was why I thought this was a little odd.”
He tossed a Ziploc bag on the table, and in it, a single rose petal, dried out to a deep maroon.
“That’s full-sized, probably long-stemmed, maybe two or three weeks old. I found it inside the vacuum cleaner bag, but it was the only one. It wasn’t crumpled or broken, and it was one of those Mighty Mite canister vacuums with a lot of power, so it was probably sucked up before it was completely dried out, or it would have crumbled.”
“So three or four weeks ago, allowing for the time it was in water, Theresa got one or more long-stemmed red roses, put them in a vase, they dried up, she threw them out but missed a petal and that ended up in the vacuum. Was it her birthday?”
“I don’t think they were for her,” Sykes said. “That’s what’s odd—she was allergic to flowers. Truitt didn’t give her any. She had admirers at the bar…”
“She was just a bartender, right? Did she ever dance?” DeLuca asked. Sykes shook his head.
“Maybe it was a secret admirer, but nobody who knew her would have sent her flowers. So maybe they weren’t for her. Maybe they were for Cheryl Escavedo. She got some at work, right? Maybe it was the same bouquet. She would have kept them in her room. So I looked under her bed and behind the end table and guess what I found?”
He produced a second glassine bag with a matching rose petal.
“We’d need a lab test to prove they come from the same plant, but they certainly look like they do,” Sykes said. “None of the local florists have an
y record of making any deliveries to that address in the time frame given.”
“I know. I already checked,” DeLuca said. “So somebody sent Sergeant Escavedo roses.”
“Unless she bought them for herself,” Sykes said. “Maybe to cheer herself up.”
“But do you buy roses to cheer yourself up?” DeLuca asked. “You buy tulips, or daisies, or carnations. Roses are too loaded with meaning. Maybe.”
“Maybe,” Sykes said. “I’m talking with the boyfriend later today to ask about it to see what he remembers.”
“Good work,” DeLuca said.
“We might go back to the strip club to see what we can scare up,” Sykes said. “I figured I’d bring the boyfriend in and troll him around to see what happens, but I gotta get a cash advance on the credit card for garter-belt money first.”
“Our tax dollars at work,” DeLuca said.
Mack and Vasquez were disappointed when Colonel Martine Guzman, of the Chihuahua State Anti-Drug Joint Task Force, asked to reschedule their meeting so that he could fly to Mexico City to meet with the leader of the national antidrug task force and members of the armed forces. Wes Vogel, DeLuca’s friend at the ICE, had given them the name of a club across the border that Leon Lev owned but warned them against traveling in Juarez alone, and to stay on Avenida de Juarez if they went and avoid the side streets where los pandillas controlled the neighborhoods. They’d posed as newlyweds, but apparently no one believed that young newlyweds would come to Juarez on a honeymoon—that wasn’t the kind of tourism the town once called Paso del Norte was known for.
They paid the twenty-five-cent toll and walked across the Rio Grande Bridge on foot. Immediately cab drivers asked them if they wanted to see the zona roja, a trip to “Boys Town,” perhaps—were they interested in women, or maybe a “donkey show”? The cabbies said they knew of safe bars where the whores specialized in couples and threesomes. “Te quiero, bonito chocho,” men hissed to MacKenzie in the one bar where they stopped, a place called The Persian Slipper. “Eres casi demasiado bonito—cuanto cuestas? Te parece bien por la boca? Hace sexo al estilo Griego?” She was waiting alone while Vasquez talked to a Nana, the old woman who inspected the men for venereal diseases before they accompanied the girls upstairs to one of the various rooms. Mack pretended she didn’t speak Spanish, but when a pair of American sailors approached her in English, she switched to Russian.
“You’d better make an arrangement with the bartender if you want to keep your tits,” a girl next to her said in Russian. “The rest of us tip him five dollars a customer.”
“I told her I was told to talk to Leon, and she said he didn’t come in that often but the bartender could help me,” Mack reported to DeLuca upon her return to Albuquerque. “I said my friend Theresa Davidova recommended this place and did she know her? She said she didn’t. She said Leon didn’t like to put too many white girls in one place. It might be our way in. Hoolie could be my pimp.”
“Colleen…”
“I just got a 5-5 rating at DLI—my Russian is almost native,” she said. “And don’t tell me it’s dangerous. I just spent eleven months in Iraq. I think we know how to take care of ourselves.”
“I paid the Nana a hundred dollars and she gave me the whole story,” Vasquez said. “I told her I was writing a book on sex tourism. Lev owns two upscale restaurants and a resort in the fancy Condesa District—he lives at the resort, which is more like a private club and spa, but he made his nut running whorehouses, and he still owns something like twenty of them—I wrote down the names. Tia Maria’s on Begonias Street. Club Hombre on Martinez. Zoom Zoom on Otumba. Diablo’s on Mariscal. Casa Bambinas on Degollado. The Nana didn’t know how many girls total, but what she did say was that for the last ten years, he’s made more money pushing porn on the Internet than he does in the clubs, and five years ago he got into the film business, and I don’t mean adapting Chekhov classics for Masterpiece Theatre. Really hard-core stuff, much harder than what used to come out of Mexico. The guy’s becoming one of the biggest porn suppliers to Latin America.”
“By himself or with somebody?”
“Lev is backed by the Cabrera family, which took over the Mexican cartel after the untimely demise of Amado Carillo Fuentes in Sinaloa-Chihuahua and Jaime Nevares in Durango and the Arellano Felixes in Tijuana. Cipriano Cabrera has God only knows how many politicians in his pocket, and part of what he does for them, in addition to cash, is supply them with girls, which he gets from Lev. Lev was basically a white slave trader for years, right after the Soviet Union fell apart—he’d bring poor Russian and Romanian and Bulgarian girls over, telling them he’d find them work as domestics or temps, and peddle them on the streets.”
“The Nana said she made a living looking at dicks but she’d never seen a bigger prick,” Mack added. “We figured we’d put out the word that there’s a girl from his hometown working the zona roja—if that doesn’t get his attention, we’ll think of something else. The other thing we heard is that Cipriano Cabrera’s bodyguards have flooded town and started listening to police scanners and spreading extra threats and bribes around, which is what Cabrera does before he visits in person—he lives in Hermosillo. So something is going down.”
“It’s some kind of summit meeting, according to what I could pick up,” Vasquez said. “Vogel said he’d heard one had been planned. He’s got some SIGINT, but they’re pretty cagey about what they say on their cell phones. The chatter’s been about a wedding, a big party, but nobody knows anybody who’s getting married.”
“Connect that to Theresa Davidova,” DeLuca said.
“I’m not sure it connects,” MacKenzie said. “I’m thinking, what if he’s put her back to work to pay off the money she owes him? Lev gets the girls for the parties—maybe Theresa is going to be there. I was thinking of saying I used to dance at the bar where she worked in El Paso.”
“Just be careful,” DeLuca said. “Talk to Dan if you want to know anything about Theresa. And brief me before you do anything, and make sure you get backup from Vogel. He’ll know the ropes down there—don’t forget what happened to Kiki Camarena,” he said, referring to the DEA agent who was tortured and killed by Mexican cartel members in 1985.
He couldn’t reach Walter Ford for an update, and there was nothing in his e-mail. Ben Yutahay called to say they’d found a receipt suggesting the trash they’d found near where Cheryl Escavedo had vanished was purchased at a CostCo supermarket in Albuquerque. Brother Antonionus called to say the name of the space ship hovering over Arizona that night was the Zak-4. He hoped that was helpful. DeLuca showered and changed before the lecture. He asked Peggy Romano if she wanted to go with him, but she only laughed.
“Sorry, but there’s a game between UConn and Duke tonight,” she said. “I hate Duke. They’re the New York Yankees of college basketball.”
He arrived early and found a seat at the back of the auditorium in room 103, Regener Hall, north campus, University of New Mexico, and watched the room fill with college kids, boys in goatees and girls in shirts that exposed their bellies even though it was below freezing outside. Already seated, down front, was a contingent from the Brethren of the Light in full crimson regalia, and seated among them he saw Sami, next to Rainbow, who was talking animatedly, her hands moving in the air above her. DeLuca was pleased when a familiar face appeared in the seat next to him.
“Do you mind,” Penelope Burgess said. “I might need to hold your hand if I get too scared.” A part of him wouldn’t have minded her touch. It wasn’t hard to figure out which part of him.
“I didn’t think you’d be up for this kind of thing,” DeLuca said.
“Unfortunately, it fits loosely under the rubric of what I teach—alien life forms. I don’t want my students accusing me of being closed-minded tomorrow.”
When the lights came down, the dean of students introduced the speaker, listing his accomplishments. Hilton Jaynes was professor emeritus and holder of the Adler chair in the psychology department
at Harvard. He’d won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for a book he’d written on early cognition, and numerous other prizes, grants, and awards. He’d turned his attention to UFOs in the mid-nineties, when he began to interview and study over a hundred subjects who’d reported having one or more abduction experiences. He’d written up his results in a book entitled Chosen by the Gods, which became a commercial bestseller and the cause of great controversy in the academic community. The methodology of his work had been gone over with a fine-toothed comb, both by academics at large who disagreed with his conclusions and by his own faculty review board at Harvard, where there was some concern that the old professor had gone off his rocker. After careful review, their conclusion was that he had not, that his methodology and his research were sound, and that his conclusions were drawn from solid scholarship and scientific practice. They were, however, conclusions the psych department found difficult to embrace: that UFOs were real, they’d been visiting earth for a long time, and they would be with us in the future.
“I give you Dr. Hilton Jaynes,” the dean concluded.
Jaynes was in his sixties but young-looking and vigorous, dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, gray pants, and black shoes, his white hair combed back and falling over his collar. He seemed like the kind of guy who would be equally comfortable at an academic seminar or at a party at the Playboy mansion. He spoke from memory, with a gentlemanly southern accent.
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