She poured him a glass of sangria and gestured toward his bowl of soup. “Dig in! You’ll need the energy.”
Lunch passed pleasantly enough. The trauma in the cathedral seemed to be diminishing and Claudia let herself believe that Mano was beginning to relax. They each finished off the meal with a cup of coffee. Then Claudia stood up and announced, “Now I’ve got a quick errand to run. Wait for me, will you?”
Expecting an explanation, Mano raised his eyebrows.
“Just women’s business,” Claudia replied blithely. “It’ll only take me a second. Keep an eye on my stuff.”
She trotted off in the opposite direction that Mano had taken, slipped out of the plaza and entered a newsstand, where she bought an international calling card. Convinced now that her cell phone was no longer functioning, she had resolved to dial directly. Half a block away, she spotted a phone booth. She tried both numbers. Again, the same recorded announcements informed her the service was out of order. There was only one other option.
Once she had navigated the automatic menu, an actual person came on the line. “Lowell Police Department.”
“Hello. I was wondering if you could help me. I’ve been trying to get through to 14 Winona Street. But something seems to be wrong with the telephone. I’m beginning to get worried.”
“14 Winona Street, did you say?”
“Yes, I’ve been trying since yesterday to reach Olga Anderson. She’s not a well woman and I’m afraid she might have had an accident. Could a patrolman go by the house and check on her?”
“Who’s calling? May I ask?”
“This is her daughter, Claudia. Claudia Anderson. I’m out of the country right now or I’d go by myself.”
“Oh. Um … Ms. Anderson, could you hold a moment?”
“Of course.”
In the plaza, Mano called for the bill. The e-mails still disturbed him. “Disassociate yourself from whomever you are with immediately!” Surely that couldn’t mean Claudia. He thought back to their night together in La Habana. For twenty-four hours, he had felt liberated from all the demands that had been thrust upon him and the expectations that now hung around his neck like an iron chain. He’d never asked for this. What he’d give now for that feeling of freedom to return!
He reached into Claudia’s backpack and took out her camera, eager to see the photos from that day. A button brought them up on the small screen, starting with the most recent and working backwards in time. The first shot was of him right here in Salamanca standing in the midst of the Plaza Mayor. Then came the ones taken on the blocks in Llanes. In the background was a man crawling over the rocks, the man who would soon lose his balance and strike his head on a cube. Each click of the apparatus took Mano further back. There was the series of photos of Claudia in the field next to the hotel La Habana, when he’d gone wild and snapped her indiscriminately. A close-up of her face was so luminous it took his breath away. Such beauty right in front of his eyes - how had he stopped seeing it? Then he came upon more photos of himself, leapfrogging over the wildflowers in the field. He grinned. The person in those shots was a happy man, unrecognizable to him now.
He kept clicking. The cliffs above the Playa de Poo appeared, where the two of them had clutched one another on the edge of the dizzying void. Then the tumble in the grass, when they’d first kissed. Click. A close up of him. Click. Him again, but he couldn’t identify the location. She was obviously taking pictures, when he was unaware. Click. He was back in Oviedo. In the plaza the day of his arrival. He was looking up at the cathedral tower. He paused, confused. How was that possible? He hadn’t met Claudia yet. Had she captured him in the picture by sheer chance?
His heart began to beat faster. There he was outside the hotel in Oviedo. And then in the airport terminal in Madrid. His vision blurred and he had to look twice before he could make out the next photo. It was of the Plaza de Armas. In Mexico! His mind grasped futilely for an explanation. But picture after picture now showed him in Queretaro. Talking with Dr. Johanson and Judith. Eating at the Hotel Santa Rosa. How could that possibly be, unless Claudia had been in Mexico all that time, too? Unless Claudia was one of them.
His parents’ warning came back to him, loud and ominous. “Disassociate yourself immediately,” they had said.
Mano grabbed for his backpack and tossed Claudia’s camera in it. Then he threw some bills on the restaurant table and took off in the opposite direction that Claudia had gone. The waiter was yelling after him and holding Claudia’s backpack up in the air, thinking Mano had left it behind.
Ignoring him, Mano ducked into the shade of the colonnade and did exactly what his parents had ordered. He disappeared.
2:42
“The shop’s okay,” Jimmy reported, after he’d managed to fight his way through the crowd and slip through the front door. “Someone sprayed-painted graffiti on the front door, though.”
“What’s it say?” Hannah asked.
“Like a Thief in the Night!!!”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s a quote from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians about the second coming. He says that the Lord shall come ‘Like a thief in the night.’ Meaning no one will be ready when the final destruction begins. It will be too late to save ourselves.”
“How terrible!”
“Just another crackpot. Don’t think about it,” Jimmy reassured her. “I painted over it. That’s why I took so long.” He had always tried to shield his family from the violence that was never too far away in this land. He didn’t want them to be afraid. He would be afraid for them.
The ringing of the telephone broke the mood. Normally, Hannah had to plead for someone to pick up the phone. Now everybody automatically ran to the answering machine and listened for the message, hoping it would be a call from Mano, although so far it had been an unending series of cranks with their doomsday messages, not unlike the one that had just appeared on the door of the shop. The answering machine clicked on, inviting the caller in Spanish to leave a message. Then a beep, followed by the fumbling voice of someone who wasn’t sure if he’d dialed the right number. “Um…Jimmy? … Is this the house of James Wilde…It’s his brother calling. His brother, Billy…”
Jimmy grabbed the receiver off the hook. “Billy! It’s Jimmy. You got the right number. We’ve just been screening calls lately… How are things?”
“Fine, fine. And you? How’s the family?”
“Everybody’s fine here, too. Thanks for asking.”
“Look, Jimmy. I don’t want to beat around the bush. Is Manning there with you?”
“No. Not right now. Why?”
“Will he be back soon? I need to talk to him.”
“To be honest, Billy, I don’t know when he’ll return. What’s so urgent?”
Hannah put her ear closer to Jimmy’s in an attempt to hear what was being said. “What’s he want?” she whispered to her husband. Jimmy held up a hand, as a signal for quiet.
“Well, is he there in Mexico with you?” Billy asked.
“No…He’s traveling.”
“Where exactly?”
“I’m really not sure.”
“Oh, boy!” Billy sighed. “Then we have a problem!”
Jimmy gestured for Little Jimmy to bring him a chair. Something told him this was news he didn’t want to hear standing up. “So exactly what’s up, Billy?”
Billy explained about the fire across the street and the three charred female corpses, two of them nurses apparently, that had been found in the ashes. “One of them had a photograph of Manning clutched in her hand.”
“Manning? Are you sure it was him?”
“Positive.”
“How did it get there?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. It’s a crime scene, Jimmy. And one of the few clues right now is a photograph of your son. That’s why I gotta find him.”
“What are the police planning to do?”
Billy took in a deep breath. This conversation was proving harder than he
had expected. It was his little brother he was talking to, after all, not some deadbeat suspect. “Nothing for the time being. Look, Jimmy. I have the picture. No one knows about it, but me. I could get myself busted for altering a crime scene. That’s why I was hoping Manning would have some explanation. Because, frankly, this is the sort of thing crazed killers do, Jimmy. Leave their signature behind.”
The words burned, as if they’d been stamped on his brain with a branding iron. “Are you suggesting my son is a killer?”
“Calm down, Jimmy. All I want to know is why would a nurse in Lowell, Massachusetts die with a picture of your son in her hand?”
“You’re asking me the impossible. Who are these people anyway?”
“The house belonged to a sick old lady who needed care 24 hours a day. Mrs. Anderson. Olga Anderson. She lived kitty corner across the street from us. You met the daughter, Claudia.”
“I did?”
“At ma’s funeral, last year. Pretty girl. Blond. I saw you talking to her.”
Jimmy had to search his memory. There had been so many mourners at the funeral that he hadn’t seen in years. It was the first time he’d ventured back to the States after fleeing to Mexico. There were quite a few young people present - mostly friends of his nieces and nephews making the obligatory appearance. But now he remembered. She was quite striking-looking, it was true. And he recalled the awkward conversation they’d had. The girl kept pressing him for information about where he lived. “Everyone seems so happy to see you,” she’d said. “I guess you’ve been away for a while.” Jimmy had made up some story about traveling a lot and having lived in many different countries.
“Which ones?” she said brightly.
“Too many to count.”
“You were a priest once, correct?” she’d asked, looking him directly in the eyes. That was one subject not even his closest relatives brought up.
“Yes, very briefly,” he had replied, thanked her for coming and then excused himself. But he remembered that for the rest of the day, every time he caught sight of her, she was watching him intensely.
The funeral, Winona St., the crush of his mother’s friends, it was all coming back into focus. “So tell me more about these people across the street.”
“Not a whole helluva lot to tell. The mother had been sick these past few years. Very religious. Apparently went to church every day before she became bedridden. Used to sit in the back of the church and mutter strange things. She once cried out something about the devil being among us. People talked about that for months.”
“And the daughter? This Claudia? How is she taking it?”
“Don’t know. We haven’t seen her on the street for quite a while. In fact, the funeral was probably the last time. We were unable to locate her at first. But then the station got a call from her yesterday, worried because she couldn’t get through to her mother. She should be arriving today. Apparently, she was traveling in Europe.”
All at once a premonition gripped Jimmy. Johanson had talked to him in the shop of a beautiful young woman, pursuing Mano. What were his words? “She does not have his best interests at heart.”
“Where in Europe?”
“I think they said Spain,” Billy replied.
“Spain! Of course! Where else?” Jimmy said, half to himself.
Billy interrupted his speculations. “Listen, Jimmy. There have been too many secrets in this family of ours for too many years. I’ve never pried before. I figured your life was your own. But this is not just about you and Hannah and Manning. A picture of my nephew has been found at the scene of what may be a murder just across the street. Probably a triple murder. Perhaps it’s time you let me in on a few things.”
Jimmy glanced at Teresa and Little Jimmy. Their faces were drained of all color. “You guys, your mother and I going to finish up this conversation in the bedroom.”
Hannah closed the bedroom door behind them and picked up the extension phone.
“Billy? We’re both on. Okay, no more secrets.”
After they hung up, Jimmy walked out into the garden and gazed up at the clear blue sky over the blindingly white walls of the house. The sky was what he’d always liked best about Querétaro. Its vastness. So much bigger than the puny earth it covered. To look at the Querétaro sky was to believe all was well with the world. But now he felt as if he were treading quicksand and no longer knew where solid ground lay.
Hannah came up beside him. “I was about to tell you when the phone rang that while you were out, I called Teri. In Fall River.”
“She’s still there? Why Teri?”
“I thought Mano might need someplace safe, someplace where we knew we could find him.”
“What did she say?”
“That he’d be welcome.”
Jimmy shook his head ruefully. “That’s kind of her. But it doesn’t look like Massachusetts is the best place for him right now.”
“I already had Teresa e-mail him the address.”
“Why didn’t you wait until I got back?”
“You were gone so long and, I don’t know, it was so comforting talking to Teri again. Once I hung up, I just told Teresa to do it.” She bit her lower lip to keep from crying. Like a child caught red-handed. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll just send Mano another message right away, telling him to avoid Teri’s place for the time being, in the event he ever picks these messages up.”
“It’s too late. He already has.”
“You got word from him? What’s did he say?”
“Nothing. Just two words: ‘Got it.’ He didn’t even sign his name.”
2:43
The cabdriver pulled off the interstate and entered a labyrinth of drab streets, linking the lower-class neighborhoods of Fall River, when Mano saw the sign glowing through the evening drizzle. It was a throwback to another era. The Blue Dawn Diner, it announced in letters that had once been cobalt blue, but which time had long since stripped of their color. The rays of a rising sun flashed regularly to attract the passing motorist, but time had taken its toll here, as well. The sun now looked like the eye of a winking chorus girl, with absurdly long lashes.
“Stop,” Mano called out to the driver. “You can let me out here in the parking lot.”
“You’re still a ways from Leverette Street.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Your call, buddy.”
Mano paid the driver and looked up at the sign with wonder in his eyes. Then he walked around the parking lot, before putting his backpack down and studied the diner itself. It was just as his mother had described it to him. Inside, a couple of brown-uniformed waitresses scurried about to take care of the evening crowd. He tried to imagine his mother as one of them, a girl of 19, younger than he was right now. Just a week ago, he learned that the decision that had brought him into the world had been made in a back booth of this diner, when his mother had seen a newspaper ad, looking for surrogate mothers. Her parents had been long dead and she said she’d felt trapped in Fall River, living with her aunt and uncle. Becoming a surrogate mother was a way out. But there was more to it than that. She felt “guided” – that was the exact word she’d used, “guided”- by the newspaper ad. She’d be helping a couple to have a family, while she herself would be gaining her freedom. Ironically, it hadn’t turned out that way, but the innocent decision had shaped the rest of her life.
It was hard to reconcile the image of a young, lost girl with the strong confident woman she’d become. Standing in the rain, letting his thoughts drift, he wondered if she ever had moments of regret.
The spring nights were still chilly in this part of the country. He pulled his jacket around him, walked closer and peered through one of the windows. It was like an Edward Hopper painting come to life. In a universe of fast-food emporiums, it was difficult to believe these places still existed. The clatter of silverware and the buzz of conversation came through the windows. How much lo
nger before it would become a thing of the past? Torn down for something newer, more impersonal, institutionalized. He realized the Blue Dawn Diner meant more to him than the Camara Santa and stirred more feelings in his soul that the holy cloth itself. This place was attached to someone he loved, someone who had loved him in ways he was just beginning to understand. It was, in its way, a relic, halfway to oblivion. But no one would protect it, as they had the Camara Santa, or claim that its utensils, the pots and pans and dishes, were anything but disposable junk. Sooner than later, it would be no more.
“Manning?”
He turned sharply, as if someone had jolted him out of a dream. Framed in the doorway was a middle-aged waitress with red hair piled on top of her head. “I saw you out there and something told me you just might be Manning Wilde. Am I right?”
Mano didn’t know whether to answer the lady or run from her.
“I’m Teri. Teri Rizzo. Your mother’s friend.”
“Oh, hello.”
“Well, you’re not going to stand out there in the wet, like a duck, are you? Why don’t you come in and get dried off. You hungry? I’ll bet you’re hungry. Great big thing like you. Let me rustle up something for you to eat.”
There were only a few customers left, dawdling over their coffee and postponing the moment when they had to go back out in the rain. Teri showed Mano to a booth in the back, told him to take off his jacket and shake the water off it and she’d be back “in a jiff” with the hamburger special.
“Thank you,” he said, tentatively.
“Oh, there’s nothing special about it. Don’t want to mislead you. But it’s warm and it’ll stick to your insides.” And off she raced to the kitchen, as if she were in competition with a stopwatch.
So this was Teri, he thought!
There were only two customers left, when she was finally able to sit down in the booth with him. “The last time I saw you, you were two weeks old. You’ve put on weight since then. Don’t worry. So have I! It was the last time I saw your parents, too. I always wished I was able to track them down, pay a visit, wherever they were. But they were pretty good at covering their tracks and, you know, there was always another hamburger special on the grill. Well, what do they say? You wait long enough and the mountain will come to Mohammed!”
The Son, The Sudarium Trilogy - Book Two Page 20