by Linda Welch
She presented a small white card which had miraculously appeared in her hand. “This is my number. Call me anytime.”
As she walked out the kitchen she paused, swung back, and said with a smile which didn’t reach her eyes, “You didn’t need the gun.”
Until then I hadn’t felt the chill intimidation she could project. I felt it now.
I watched her walk down the path and get in the driver’s side of a gleaming black Corvette. Why did I think she could have added, “and it wouldn’t do you any good, anyway.”
***
I have three bedrooms, so we each have our own. Not that my roommates need a bedroom, but everyone should have their private space. I remind myself of that every time they invade mine. I found Mel and Jack upstairs in Jack’s room, which I use for storage. Apart from having a bed in there, it doesn’t look much like a bedroom, but Jack doesn’t care.
I walked in the eight-by-ten room with its sloping ceilings and small square window. Two wardrobes made of transparent plastic either side of the door hold clothes I may never wear again. A narrow path between packing cartons, piles of old books and an ancient leather trunk leads to the twin-sized bed. Jack and Mel stood there, as always looking startled and on the verge of terror, but nonetheless radiating a sheepish demeanor. Their expressions never alter, but they can and do use body language. I could liken them to dogs, which can let you know their emotions although their faces can barely contort to express them the way a human face can, but that would be impolite to the canine population.
My entry stirred up the stale air and motes drifted, glittering in a shaft of sunshine. The room needed cleaning in a bad way.
I faced them with knuckled hands on hips. “What was with you down there?”
Jack held up his hands as if to ward me off. “I know this sounds weird, but we thought she was dead.”
“We thought she was moving in,” Mel said.
“The dead can’t move in. You know that better than anyone. And why did you think she’s dead?”
They exchanged glances. “I . . . I don’t know. Her body seemed, it seemed, well . . . lifeless,” Mel said with an apologetic lift of one shoulder.
I leaned on the door frame. “You realize that is totally bizarre.”
Jack made a helpless gesture with one hand. “I know. I wish . . . we wish we could explain better, what it felt like. Nothing came off her, no essence.”
“Essence?” I asked, interested. “There’s an essence?”
“Of life. It’s not something I can describe.”
“Try.”
“We really can’t.” Mel’s voice went high. “It’s not a physical emanation, something you see, like an aura.”
I ground the heels of my hands in my eye sockets. So Gia wasn’t dead – obviously - but didn’t have this essence of life. What in hell’s name are you, lady?
Jack dropped his chin. “We feel like idiots.”
I pushed away from the door. “You know what, you acted like idiots. I ask you to keep to yourself and not distract me and what do you do? I had the hardest time keeping my mouth shut and my face straight.”
“But she’s not normal,” Jack said.
Definitely not, but I didn’t want to get them more upset than they already were. “I grant she’s a bit strange.”
“She could be . . . well, you know.”
I sighed. I had lost count of the times I told them werewolves, fae, vampires and other supposedly supernatural beings don’t exist.
“Isn’t the phone ringing?” Mel said.
I heard the machine pick up. I gave them another glare and pounded down the stairs, my hand sliding down the banister. I reached the bottom step just in time to hear Royal say, “I’ll call you when we get back.”
I charged in the kitchen and pounced on the phone. “Royal? Royal?” It clicked off and I got the dial tone.
I looked at the phone, willing it to ring again, but of course it didn’t. I played back his brief message: “Tiff, Daven and I are going after a lead. Don’t worry about me. I’ll call you when we get back.”
Going. After. A. Lead. Royal and Daven going after a lead. I had to repeat the words inside my head. Royal and Daven, not Royal and Tiff.
I called his cell and let it ring eight times before I gave up. Then I dialed Star 69 to trace the number and the recorded voice gave me one I didn’t recognize. I dialed the number, but got no reply either.
I replaced the phone in the receiver and sank on a kitchen chair. I didn’t know what to think. First he refused to answer my questions and now he was off chasing a lead with Daven?
I felt antsy and my thoughts churned. I went back upstairs, changed into shorts and a tank top, went in the bathroom and stepped on the treadmill. I looked over the programs and settled for one which started slowly on the level, built up speed, and went up and down different gradients. I hoped the exercise would distract me. It didn’t. I pounded along so hard, I almost outran the machine.
I slowed so my feet matched the revolving mat instead of trying to beat it to the finishing post, and settled into a steady jog.
Where was Royal? What did he and Daven have to do which excluded me that he didn’t tell me beforehand?
Shut up brain! I concentrated on the bathroom. I love the big pink freestanding tub, deep enough and long enough so I can sink in with just my face above water. The pink pedestal sink is as old as the tub. I think they were installed as a matching bathroom suite. Someone painted the walls, ceiling and floor-to-ceiling fitted storage cabinets pale terracotta. I had the separate shower installed, and the green glass tiles do look okay with the pink. I especially like the laundry chute, which is cleverly concealed beneath a flap in the waist-high cabinet near the door. I drop laundry down there and it ends up in the basement next to the washing machine.
One of the former occupants of my home obviously had a fondness for the color pink.
How could Royal be scared of our clients - maybe not scared, but definitely wary - and at the same time chummy with Clare? You have to be pretty chummy with someone to take off with them, leaving your partner, the one person you should share everything with, in the dark.
Thump, thump, thump. I looked down at my feet, which seemed to have a will independent of my brain, and made myself slow down, again.
Or did he have a choice?
I tried Royal’s cell before I turned in for the night and still no answer. I called the other number. On the fifth ring someone picked up the phone, a public pay phone in Salt Lake City International Airport.
***
I had a bad night, waking and tossing till I went back to sleep, and doing so several times before sunlight pouring in my window brought me groggily awake. Five o’clock? Good grief! I sat up, fastened my arms around my upraised knees and ran it through my head yet again. Royal.
Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. It would not be the first time a guy fooled me.
But I didn’t want to go back there, to the place in which I lived before I met him, where I distrusted everyone and imagined ulterior motives for their actions. I closed my eyes and silently echoed Jack’s words: oh ye of little faith. There had to be an explanation. Had to be.
I looked over at Mac where he stretched across his red plaid dog bed. “What do you think, Mac?”
He lifted his head, ears perked, eyes inquisitive, his are you finally getting up? Now can I have my breakfast? look. He was usually already in the kitchen when I got out of bed, but I’d surprised him this morning.
I fumbled into to my robe and went downstairs with Mac at my heels. Jack and Mel were nowhere in sight. Guess I surprised them too. Yawning, I got Mac’s bowl, filled it from the bag of kibble in the pantry, and because I adore the little excuse for a real dog, crumbled a liver treat in his chow. I knew I shouldn’t, because Mac would expect the same tomorrow morning.
I needed a jump-start, so I filled the coffeemaker with Turkish roast. If this didn’t bring me awake, nothing would. Cup i
n hand, I went back up to my bedroom.
I sat at my desk, staring at the monitor, pecking at the keyboard with my right hand because my left firmly held a giant cup of java, which I couldn’t put on the desk without pushing off some of the clutter.
I hacked into the Tremonton Marble Motel’s database. Rio and Rojero had Room 15. The only phone calls made to and from the motel were to Gia and their family home. Groping for the phone, I called the Marble, announced myself as Tiff Banks, consultant with Clarion Police Department, and asked if the Borrego boys had any visitors. According to the manager, they did not.
More delving showed Rio used his credit cards to pay the motel bill and buy gas at a station just outside Tremonton, but nothing after.
Royal would have hacked into Clarion PD database, but I didn’t dare go that far.
I picked up the phone and punched in a number. A feminine voice answered on the third ring. “Hola, esto es Margot.”
“Senora Labiosa? How are you?”
Chapter Seven
Driving in gang territory didn’t bother me. No person would approach me unless I approached them first, and if I did, they would cooperate. Not only are the Labiosa family respected, they are esteemed. They would have put the word out.
Nothing special marks the area as Clarion’s gangland. It’s a worn-out, worn-down neighborhood in west Clarion and looks like other run-down areas in other cities. The sidewalks and homes sit in deep shade cast by big old trees with wide-spreading branches. The houses are small brick or clapboard, the latter once painted, but now faded and peeling. Some of the small front yards are well-kept, the grass mown and small borders colorful with flowers and shrubs. In others, the grass is long and quickly dies in summer due to lack of water. Children’s battered toys sit on sidewalks and in gutters. The rusting hulks of old cars squat between houses, along with old refrigerators and kid’s swing sets. Some of the houses feature outside Christmas lights, left up year-round, tattered by the ferocity of winter storms.
The air felt warm and lazy, the streets seemed to drowse in the heat of the sun. Ahead of me, a dog trotted across the pavement to lap up water which ran from a lawn sprinkler into the gutter. It looked up as I passed, and looking in my side mirror, I saw it stare after me for a second, then circumnavigate the damp lawn and settle in the dusty soil beneath a ragged privet hedge. Teen boys and girls lounged in porches, on a miscellany of old furniture, sodas and cigarettes in hand. Older men, talking in low voices, sat in groups in porches and beneath shade trees.
I pulled over and cut the engine. Ernesto waved at me from his perch atop the steps leading up to his house.
Finding Ernesto Sanjurjo is easy. He never moves from his spot on the steps of a tumbled-down house on Weston Avenue. He can’t.
Many shades are restricted to a small area. Ernesto has his steps. I’ve driven past his old home and seen him walking up and down, up and down. Mel and Jack are the only ghosts I know who roam an entire house.
“Hola, Ernesto!” I called out as I walked along the overgrown path.
“Hola. I bin waitin’ for you.”
Ernesto is five-seven, raven-haired, built like a tank with the seamed, craggy face of a thug, something other youth of his day misinterpreted. Ernesto was never a thug, and eventually joined a gang only after years of pressure. He died at age sixteen. One night, at a local party, he got involved in a fracas over, of all things, a cigarette. He got a big knife from the kitchen and went after Jose Mallaca, but didn’t find him. He had cooled off by the time he got back to the party. But when he left to head home, Jose was waiting for him with his own big knife. Jose stabbed unarmed Ernesto twice in the chest. Ernesto managed to drag himself up the steps to his house and there he died. His mother discovered him early the next morning. She took her other children and left Clarion. The house remains empty and is coming apart. If you look carefully, you can still see the stains where Ernesto’s blood sank into the old, faded wood.
I sat next to him. “Why have you been waiting for me?”
He spread his hands in a you-know gesture. “The Labiosa put out you comin’ down here. So I say to myself, Ernesto, that big ol’ white woman wan’ somethin’ from the Labiosa. Must be ‘cause young Alissario Borrego gone missin’. She gonna be askin’ if you seen anythin’.”
Big ol’ white woman? I am a six-foot-four Caucasian with long silver-white hair, so I suppose it’s an apt description, but not exactly flattering.
“Did you see anything?”
Ernesto looked at me with a sly smile in his half-closed eyes. “First we talk.”
So I sat on the creaky wood porch of a broken-down old house for an hour, chatting to the shade of a murdered teen. Ernesto is not totally isolated, he listens in on conversations between people passing up and down the street, and he had stored up a whole lot of questions. We discussed local news and events, national news, education, global warming, Barak Obama, the Utah Jazz, the Grizzlies, the economy, and a host of things you would not expect a young man of Ernesto’s youth and background to show interest in. Then I did an impersonation of Entertainment Tonight, updating on the celebrity gossip.
Ernesto leaned back on one elbow, eyes half closed, face wearing a look of desperation, the front of his body drenched red. On the night he died, he was determined to get up the last step and into the house, but he didn’t make it.
As I slouched there, the top half of me in shade, my legs in the sun and starting to burn through the denim of my Levis, I thought of all the things Ernesto would never do. He would never grow up, never fall in love, never have a family. And never watch his children grow into little gang-bangers.
“Your turn,” I eventually said.
“Aw . . . c’mon.”
“Next time, Ernesto. Now, do you have anything for me or not?”
He sat up. “I seen it all. I seen his lady come down here when half a dozen Nor‘side punks had him. I seen them flyin’ all over the place. I seen her take a bullet for him.”
Whoa! “When?”
“’Bout a year ago. Craziest thing I ever seen.” He looked at me out the corners of his eyes. “You wanna know more?”
You bet I did. “I don’t know if it’s relevant to his disappearance, but go on,” I said casually.
He pointed south along the street. “Down there. ‘Bout eight at night. They was out for his blood. Couldn’t see good, but I seen them round him an’ she comes outta nowhere. Then, like she disappears an’ they fallin’ all over an’ then she’s back in the middle of them. One of them, he has a gun an’ he shoots her. Then they run off. Rio, he picks her up an’ takes her away. I thought she’d had it. But I see her down here a couple times after an’ she’s fine.”
“This was a year ago?”
“Uh huh.”
I didn’t know what to make of any of that, but it sounded like a rival gang went after Rio and Gia took a bullet for him. And she said he didn’t have enemies? The little feuds were over?
I stored it away for future consideration. “What else? I’m looking for something recent.”
“Big black automóvil goin’ up an’ down past the Borrego place three nights runnin’, a couple weeks ago. Fancy. Musta cost a bundle.”
My hip numbed up. I shifted on the hard step. “You didn’t happen to get the license plate?”
He shook his head. “But it came past a half-dozen times or more each night an’ it went real slow. Big black bastard.”
“You said that. Big black car isn’t much help.”
“Foreign make. Older model. Mint condition. Mercedes-Benz.”
I whistled appreciatively. There couldn’t be many older-model Mercedes-Benz in the area. If it was still in the area.
I got to my feet and dusted off my backside. “Nothing else?”
Ernesto shook his head.
“Then I’ll be going. I’ll see you later, ‘Nesto.”
“Yeah, yeah. Yous just go on with your life, lady. Leave me here sunnin’ on the porch.”
&n
bsp; I waved and started off.
“Hey! You hear anythin’ ‘bout that bastardo Mallaca?”
As far as I knew, Jose Mallaca had served time, had his sentence remitted and left the state with his family, and Ernesto should know it. Like many shades, as time passed he became forgetful. I looked back. “I’ll try and find out for you.”
“Gracias. Voy a esperar por ti.”
Yeah, he’d be waiting for me. He wasn’t going anywhere and only I could talk to him.
I went back to my car, got in and pulled away from the curb. Ernesto waved. I waved back.
I felt the pressure of eyes as I drove down the street. The residents watched me, and I’m sure they wondered what the crazy white woman was up to, getting out her car and sitting on the steps of an old, deserted, ramshackle house for over an hour. Maybe they saw my lips moving. Maybe they grinned at one another and made loco signs with their hands. If another person had strayed in their territory, they would have wandered over, gathered around and looked menacing. Perhaps they would have done more than look. But the Labiosa expected me and nobody would get in my way.
***
You can’t miss the double cast-iron gates of the Labiosa property and the high brick wall fronting the block. Several muscular young men lounge either side of the gate day and night, their long black hair pulled back in braids, the white of their singlets emphasizing dusky skin etched with tattoos in all colors of the spectrum. They may seem lazy, but they see everything, and nobody gets near those gates without their okay.
The young men are not guards. Senor Labiosa doesn’t believe he needs protection and he’s probably right. An attack on the family could bring on a gang war the likes of which has never been seen in Clarion, and nobody wants that, especially not the gangs. It would bring the cops down hard on them and their territory. The lads stand at the gates of their own volition, makes them feel big and mean, and Gerarco Labiosa indulges them.
Of course, they are big, and they are mean.
I pulled up on the end of the driveway and stayed put until one of them came to the car and looked me over in a deliberate way. He nodded, and someone inside the property operated the mechanism which made the gates slowly swing apart. I thanked him and drove on through.