Heartless

by Alison Gaylin

  Her aunt’s room was empty. Naomi should have predicted that. Vanessa’s new habit—cranking James Taylor and leaving the house. Just to be sure, she headed down to the kitchen and confirmed it with Soccoro. Yep, Vanessa had gone to Brad Pitt’s for the night.

  Great . . .

  As she headed back to her bedroom, Naomi heard the chime of her cell phone and hurried in to answer it. The screen flashed RESTRICTED NUMBER. “¿Bueno?”

  “Naomi Boyd,” said the voice on the other end—a small, shy voice she recognized immediately.

  “Alejandro?”

  He spoke in English. “Don’t come back to the parque again. Don’t look for me. Don’t ask anyone any questions, Naomi. . . .”

  “What? Why?”

  “I am serving someone. A powerful person. Evil.”

  Naomi’s spine froze up. She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t.

  “You are not in danger right now, but others are. And if you go to the parque again, you will be. It can happen to you just like Jordan Brink. Just like . . .”

  “Who? Just like who, Alejandro?”

  “I like you, Naomi.” His voice changed. Naomi sensed a tightness, a wetness. . . . Was he crying? “I don’t want it to happen to you. I really don’t.”

  Naomi felt tears coming to her own eyes. She tried to keep her voice calm, tried to stay together. “Alejandro. Who are you serving?”

  “You are being watched.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ask any more questions and you will stay safe.”

  Alejandro ended the call. Naomi sat perfectly still in her desk chair, terror crawling through her, Alejandro’s voice melding with James Taylor’s and then becoming the angel’s voice, from her dream in the desert. You are safe. . . . Naomi’s body felt numb. She walked over to her bed and picked up her baby toy, her stuffed turtle. She held it to her chest and shut her eyes tight, wishing she was a baby again, a dreaming baby in her mom’s arms. From downstairs, she heard Soccoro’s voice telling her dinner was ready, and to turn down the music. But all Naomi wanted was to do was feel safe enough to sleep.

  TWELVE

  “Where are we going?” Zoe asked, still tipsy from the wine.

  “I told you,” said Warren. “It’s a surprise.” He opened the passenger’s-side door. She got in. He started up the car and said, “There’s another festival in town.”

  “Saint’s birthday?” Zoe asked.

  “No. It’s Presidential Message Day. The president’s first big speech of the year—it’s always on September first. Kind of like the State of the Union address.”

  The jardín was jammed with people—Zoe and Warren couldn’t get within five blocks of it—and the sky was ablaze with smoke and light. “All this for the State of the Union?” Zoe asked.

  “That’s San Esteban,” he said, smiling.

  She was feeling a little too loose for her own good, a little too warm and rubbery. Zoe had heard that high altitudes intensified the effect of alcohol and that appeared to be what was happening now. She opened her window, inhaled the scent of gunpowder and listened to the fireworks and the blaring church bells. She gazed at Warren’s splendid profile, the way the explosions lit it up like spotlights, and thought, My vacation, all mine and nobody else’s . . . Warren’s hidden safe and its contents crawled into that corner of her mind—right next to Naomi’s stress-induced warnings and Patty Woods’s tragic green eyes and she thought, It’s going into storage, at least for the night. “Aren’t you going to park the car?”

  “Nope.”

  “We’re not going to be able to get closer than this.”

  “We’re not going to Fecha del Presidente.” He made a sharp right, avoiding the festival. Soon, the street was clear and there was no traffic, the Cherokee bouncing over the cobblestones as he headed east.

  Zoe felt a slight pang in the sprained wrist. Some of Rafael’s magic was wearing off. Or maybe some of the wine. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I told you,” said Warren. “It’s a surprise.”

  They hit a poorer residential area, with smaller, squatter houses, dogs howling at them from the roofs as they drove past. Soon that neighborhood was in their rearview and the cobblestones turned to smooth highway, and they were out of San Esteban, in the middle of the desert, where there was nothing but the road flanked by sparse clusters of cactuses, boulders scrawled with Spanish graffiti and parched ground, gray as dead flesh in the blazing moonlight. “This the scenic route?”

  Warren didn’t reply. His silence was beginning to bother her, the effects of the wine evaporating fast as, within her, a vague panic started to build. Why had she agreed to this surprise? “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She turned and looked at him. “Warren?”

  “Mmm-hmmm?”

  “I like you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But this air of mystery of yours is really starting to freak me out.”

  His smile faded, but still he said nothing. Zoe stared at Warren’s tense profile, and all she could think about was how little she really knew about him. Yes, he’d opened up some tonight, but Zoe knew more about Steve than she would ever know about the man sitting next to her. It was unsettling, considering how much she’d let Warren into her life, how much she’d shown him of her darkest fear. Last night, she had told him more about Daryl Barclay than she had ever told anyone, Steve included. She’d revealed the fascination she’d felt for a murderer. And what had Warren given her in return? His first kiss? His hometown?

  “Where are we going?” she asked again.

  “You’ll see.”

  “You said that.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I don’t want to see,” she said. “I want to know. Now.”

  Warren looked at her. “Calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down.” Zoe’s voice pitched up. “We’re in the damn desert, and there are no buildings or people, and it’s the middle of the night, and I want to know where the hell you’re taking me!”

  “And I said calm down!” The car windows shook with his voice.

  No, I do not know him at all. . . . Zoe was starting to tremble. The back of her neck was sweating and the muscles in her legs felt weak, as if someone had yanked all the strength out, rendered them useless.

  Zoe saw headlights in the rearview mirror. She considered opening her window, throwing her body out the side, signaling to the other driver. She couldn’t believe she was actually going to do this while on vacation with the man she thought she might be falling in love with, couldn’t believe she was actually putting her finger on the button that opened the window, couldn’t believe she was pushing it, but the truth was, he had a gun and his last visitor’s watch and God knew what else, and she didn’t know him, much as she told herself she did, much as she wanted to. Warren Clark was as real to her as the TV character he’d just stopped playing.

  Warren made a hard right onto a bumpy private road, knocking her back into her seat. Her breath caught. Her eyes felt hot. Don’t show him you’re afraid. And again she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe she was having a thought like that. What is happening here?

  “Zoe?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Zoe, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at—”

  “Why don’t you ever take pictures?”

  “Huh?”

  “You live in two of the most photogenic places I’ve ever seen, and if your family is anything like you, I’ll bet they look great on film, too. Why don’t you have pictures of your homes, your family? Your friends?”

  “I hate pictures.”

  “No one hates pictures. That’s like hating people. Do you hate people?”

  Warren gripped the wheel. He flipped on his brights and stared at the road ahead—a hard stare, as if someone had taken a screwdriver to his face and tightened all his features. “You aren’t acting like yourself,” he said.

  “Actually, I
am.” The SUV bumped and reeled over the unpaved road, toward some surprise she no longer wanted, but Zoe didn’t feel frightened anymore. The wine buzz was long gone and her blood had adjusted to the altitude, but it was more than that.

  I am acting like myself.

  It was as if a thick and constant fog had momentarily lifted, and she wasn’t Zoe Greene anymore. She was Zoe Jacobson. “Who is Nicholas Denby?”

  Warren stopped the car, threw it into park. He stared at her. “Who told you that name?” he said.

  “It doesn’t make any difference who told me.”

  “Was it Patty Woods?”

  She stared back at him, a bright light blazing on that corner of her mind. There’s some group. A group Mrs. Woods was talking about . . .

  She swallowed hard, made herself ask it again. “Who is Nicholas Denby?”

  Warren took off his safety belt and turned his whole body toward her. Zoe was afraid he might yell again . . . or worse. But when she looked into his eyes, they were soft, sad. “He was a friend.”

  “A friend.”

  “Yes.”

  “So . . . why the secrecy?” she said. “Why all the concern over who told me his name?”

  Warren sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose, as if he were trying to stave off tears, and when he looked at Zoe again, his eyes glistened, just a little. “I never wanted to keep Nick Denby from you,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you on my own.”

  She watched him.

  His gaze shifted away from Zoe’s face. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, and Zoe saw how hard this really was for him, relaying personal information. What made someone this way—so emotional in front of cameras, so passionate in bed, but when it came to simply telling a true sequence of events, he was in pain?

  Zoe said, “It’s okay, Warren. Take your time.”

  “Nick Denby was my best friend in high school,” he said. “Great guy. Looked a lot like me, so we often went out for the same parts, but we were never rivals, you know? If we got into a fight, it was like fighting with your brother. There was always that understanding it’d blow over, we’d still be friends no matter what.”

  He leaned back, gazed up at the car’s ceiling as if it were a sky filled with stars. “Anyway, after high school we sort of lost track of each other. He went off to Pace, I moved to the city and started auditioning for stuff. . . . Flash-forward five years. I’m in some audition—not sure what is was for. . . . And there, waiting to be called, was Nick Denby.”

  “What a coincidence.”

  “Huge one,” he said. “We became friends again. Saw each other a few times a week, caught up.” He looked at Zoe. “I was doing pretty well with episodic roles and commercials, and I’d saved up some money, so I went down to San Es, like I told you, fell in love with it, bought the house. I invited Nick down to visit. He stayed at my place for a week. Then . . . he disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “We had an argument that Friday night—not a big one. I don’t even remember what it was about, but we were drunk at some bar and it escalated and it got physical. Two grown men in a public fistfight . . . Even as it was happening, I felt like a jackass. Anyway, I woke up Saturday morning, and all his stuff was gone. I knew he was planning on traveling on to Oaxaca after he left San Es, so I called the hotel down there— no sign of him. A day later, I filed a missing-person report. It was like he had dropped off the face of the planet.”

  “He was never found?”

  “Never. The police said maybe some banditos got him on the road, disposed of his body by . . . burning it or . . .” Pain washed through his features. His jaw tightened.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “There were people here,” he said. “Terrible people. Rumors started to spread that I had something to do with it. Could you imagine? People saw us fighting, and they thought I . . .”

  “That’s awful.”

  He nodded. “There’s nothing worse, Zoe. Nothing. You’re . . . you’re confused and scared out of your mind that something horrible has happened to your best friend. You can’t even grieve because there is no body. He’s just vanished. . . . And then people start accusing you of . . .” He closed his eyes. “I started getting anonymous phone calls, threats on my life. Once, when I came home, my door had cow’s blood splashed all over it.”

  “Why didn’t you leave? Sell the house and just—”

  “Because that would have been running away,” he said. “I don’t run away from anything. Ever.”

  Zoe gazed at him. “I understand now,” she said softly, “why you have the gun.”

  Warren’s back straightened. His mouth went tight and his eyes closed off—thousands of steel doors slamming behind them. “How do you . . . ? How could you . . . ?”

  “Don’t be upset,” she said.

  He turned away from her, stared out the window.

  “I was worried because you weren’t home,” Zoe said. “I was trying to find Vanessa’s phone number. I thought maybe you kept papers in the safe. I found the gun in there.” She watched his profile. “I found Nick Denby’s watch.”

  Warren rested his head on the back of the seat and closed his eyes. He was quiet for a long time, and Zoe did nothing. A sad calm ran through her—the lightening that comes after confession. He put his hands on the wheel, and she thought, He’s going to drive home now. But he didn’t start the car, just kept his hands there, resting. “The watch,” he said, “was the only thing he left behind. I probably should have sent it to his family, but it felt like . . . like . . .”

  “Admitting he was dead.”

  “Yes.” He lifted his eyes to her face. “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I understand.”

  He nodded. “The gun though . . . I don’t know where it came from. I don’t want to know.”

  “How could you not know? You have it.”

  He inhaled sharply. “About . . . a month after Nick disappeared . . . the same time as the threats, I got this package. It wasn’t sent. Someone had put it on the sill of my first-floor window, just in front of the bars. God knows why, but I took it inside. I opened it. . . . The gun was in there, and a note that said, Para tu protección.”

  “That’s all?” Zoe asked. “Just . . . for your protection.”

  “It might have said my name, too. I don’t remember.”

  “But it didn’t say the sender’s name. You didn’t know who it was from. Didn’t recognize the handwriting . . .”

  “It was typewritten. I . . . I burned it.”

  “You burned it?”

  He nodded.

  “Why didn’t you bring it to the police?”

  “I . . . wasn’t on the best terms with the police at the time, Zoe. People were saying bad things about me. They would have taken any excuse—possession of an illegal firearm— and I didn’t even know who the gun belonged to. What if it had been used in a crime?”

  “So you just . . .”

  “I would have thrown it out, but I was afraid someone might see me with it. So I locked it up. Never touched it again, just like you do with a bad memory—you put it away, shut the door on it. After a while it’s like it never happened.”

  Zoe stared into Warren’s eyes. They were like glass. “That’s what you do with bad memories?”

  “It’s what I do with most memories, Zoe.” Gently, he touched the side of her face, traced her closed lips with the tip of his index finger. “I have no use for the past.” He cupped his hand under her chin and brought her face to his and kissed her gently. His touch was soft and his eyes glimmered with care, and Zoe was no longer afraid. But still, she didn’t believe him. He had use for the past. He remembered.

  “Warren?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you ask if Patty Woods was the one who told me?”

  He pulled away.

  “She was one of those people, wasn’t she? The ones who spread the rumors.”

  “Yes,” he said.

 
“I met her today,” said Zoe, “when I was in the park with Naomi. She said she was leaving San Esteban. She seemed mad at Vanessa.”

  He shook his head. “And Vanessa has never been anything but kind to her. Don’t get me wrong—I’m sorry for what happened to Patty’s nephew, but . . .” His glare pressed into the window, the blue eyes burning cold. “Now she knows what it’s like to have a visitor disappear.”

  Zoe’s mouth dropped open. “What are you saying, Warren?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just karma, Zoe. That’s all.”

  “But Jordan Brink didn’t—”

  “I know. Let’s drop the subject. Like I said . . . the past is worthless.” He took a breath, smiled at her. “We’re here, you know.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your surprise.” He started up the car, drove about thirty more feet—to where a flowered arch, illuminated by outdoor lights, stretched over the road—fresh daisies spelling out two Spanish words on a background of dark green leaves.

  “Las Aguas?” Zoe asked.

  He nodded. “I reserved the mineral baths for the night.”

  Morrison and Barbara Brink lived in a brick duplex on a small square of trimmed lawn with white rosebushes blooming against either side of the doorway. When Barbara had asked Steve over the phone if he’d wanted to come by tonight, he’d spent about all of three seconds deliberating before he’d said yes. He had called Debbie Cohn, told her he had the flu, and she agreed to a rain check, so long as he let her keep the Dreamcoat tickets.

  Then he’d called the metro section editor and gotten her to accept a feature on Jordan Brink—a piece that would show him, not as a doomed tourist who stole drugs, but as a real human being, with grieving parents who were willing to go on the record for the first time.

  All this, just to see if that poor kid had had any disputes with Warren Clark.

  It was hard for Steve to find the house. Nearly every residence on the street was brick and similarly shaped, and the addresses weren’t prominent. Barbara had told him to look for a green Volvo, but that was gone—Morrison had left “because we needed more milk” she said when Steve was finally at the door.