Seven Spanish Angels

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “You called from my father’s house.”

  “You told me to take him home. It’s like you wanted me to know where he lived.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “¿Por qué?” I said, then. Why. “Don’t act like you don’t want to tell me.”

  Davidson shrugged, a bite of enchilada balanced on his fork.

  “Doesn’t really matter to me, I guess. Really—en realidad, right? I know, I mean. I’m supposed to make a big speech, all that. Want you and the world to see how smart I am, how much smarter. But… I don’t know. I mean, that’s the Riddler, yeah? Sure, it’s better than being Jason Voorhees maybe, but c’mon. It’s not like you’re going to tell anybody for me anyway, right? Nobody’s watching. We could just leave it at this if you wanted. Big mystery. Misterio grandé.”

  “Walk away.”

  “Well.”

  My eyes were so hot. Trying to see everything at once. Into everything.

  “So you are—you are going to—”

  “Do it to you?” Davidson said. “I think I kind of have to now. Sorry.”

  I tried to say something, couldn’t. Ate instead. The mechanical part of it anyway.

  Davidson stared at me as I chewed.

  “I want to know,” I finally managed. “Need to. I mean, if you’re going to—to—” I closed my eyes, said it: “You owe me.”

  That was funny to him. “Other way around,” he said, tracing a vice-versa circle with his fork. “I mean, it was all pretty much for you. At first, I mean.”

  “You…” I said. “You thought I wanted—dead girls all over town?”

  “Well, out in the desert, yeah. A body to apply your forensic skills to? Tell me I’m making this up. That you didn’t think you could solve it all in a week.”

  I tried, couldn’t.

  “When Madrone called you that first morning—”

  “My cell,” Davidson said, wagging it by his side for a moment. “I was down at—”

  “Jacking off in the bathroom of the tiendita,” I filled in.

  This stopped him chewing.

  “Don’t say it like that,” he said, his voice not his, almost.

  He saw me hear the difference, held his hand up by his head, miming a chattering mouth. “…all these people in my head,” he said.

  I shook my head no, though.

  He shrugged.

  “Why seven?” I asked, finally.

  “More like six, right? I mean… before now, tonight. I don’t know. I mean—twenty-one’s my lucky number, really. Real original I know. But… that’s like a month of killing, yeah? I mean, when for each one you’re drawing on more and more luck not to screw it up somehow. And seven’s like a part of twenty-one, anyway. Just enough to let them know it was intentional, that there was some structure. Who cares about five, right? Yeah, if you’re not like Bundy or Lucas—going for body count—then you’ve got to have estilo, a message. Some big plan for them to write books about. John Doe, mi chica. Franco goes to Hollywood.”

  “And your plan was me.”

  Davidson traced the rim of his cup with his index finger. Shook his head no. “More like Richard,” he said. “He was—I don’t like your boyfriend, Marta. I’m sorry to have to tell you like this.”

  “I don’t like him either sometimes.”

  Davidson looked away, at the front door, the current Rosa behind the register, not seeing us, or anybody. “Bueno?” he asked, about my food.

  “Not terrible,” I said. “Not Chorizo’s, though.”

  “Yeah, well. We Mexicanos verdaderos eat here,” he said.

  I closed my eyes around it. Around this. Heard him talking perfect, fluid Spanish to the waitress, not even about the food, but the band—a man with comical grey patillas, playing mariachi on Friday nights, louder and louder with each beer. The waitress laughed. I opened my eyes and Davidson was holding an imaginary guitar out against his imaginary stomach. He smiled across it to me.

  “You never needed me,” I said. “For the Spanish.”

  “I needed you to even be able to breathe,” he said back, still strumming.

  I swallowed, looked away. “So this was about Richard?”

  “Don’t patronize me. It was about you.”

  “But framing Richard.”

  “He is the dick who got me suspended.”

  “Well,” I said, shrugging. “What you do then, Hector, is spray perfume in his locker or something. Plant a dime bag if you really want him. Not kill seven women.”

  “Six.”

  “Counting tonight.”

  He nodded, gave me that.

  “But…” I said, circling around, “Richard. He’s—back. No murder charges.”

  Davidson smiled, shrugged. “For now,” he said. “I don’t know. This is my first time with all this. But, chingado… it’s like, you start out just killing a few simple people, nothing that complicated, you can stop anytime, and then boom, everything just gets all fucked up, y’know? Like you’re killing people to cover up these other people you killed, and then before you know it you’re trying to tape yourself into a stupid hazmat suit while blindfolded, only breathing through your nose, and then pretty soon you’re like looking on the black market for a nuclear missile, just to kill everybody in town, so you can start somewhere else…”

  My enchilada was half gone. I couldn’t believe I was eating it. That chewing still made sense.

  “So you—you were doing the Lote Bravo-thing—”

  “Because dick-boy would have, yeah.”

  Davidson was looking hard at somebody three tables over. He came back to me, rolling: “You were supposed to figure out his ex-wife a lot sooner, though,” he said. “But they kept fucking not saying their names on the news. So the ex kept never calling in.”

  “And then we got to Monica Iglesias before you could,” I said.

  Davidson nodded.

  “You try to do one, good, beautiful little bullshit thing,” he said, “and then the girl you’re doing it for swoops in, blueballs you.” He shrugged like the past was past, though, changed directions: “I didn’t mean for Nate, though,” he said, no eye-contact. “Not at first anyway. Innocent bystander. Too damn smart for his own good. He was going to crack it eventually.”

  “You mean—?” I said.

  Davidson nodded like it hurt, pulled the Yanez remote up from his pocket. “It’s five ounces, not four,” he said. “But yeah. It was where the liver used to be, though it works just completely different.”

  I couldn’t say anything now. Was just staring at him until he buckled under it, swallowed hard, too early, and threw his napkin down again, said, “Okay, okay. You want to know? In the movies they’re always talking about the perfect murder, all that? Yeah, well, they’re all mamones. Full of bullshit. Strangers on a Train. I mean, the way they look at it, it’s all about the most random victim, or the most complicated knife made from chemical ice, whatever. But they’re wrong. It’s about the perfect killer, Marta. That’s all. You find somebody, say… I don’t know, an abusive, alcoholic homicide detective taking advantage of someone half his age? Beating on someone that you’d go to the wall for every day if you had to?” He shrugged, trying to calm himself. “Then you just kill people he would have killed, if he snapped. In the way he would have killed them. They’re like—free, then, y’know? Practice dummies somebody else gets to pay for.”

  “But Richard—” I started.

  “I’m not talking about him anymore here. I’m sorry. It’s like—he’s my Mary Hart, yeah? Except when I hear his name I kill seven women…”

  “Six.”

  He smiled. “Not counting tonight.”

  Not counting me.

  “That was why seven,” I said, my voice not quite connected to my mouth anymore. “Because it was a week before you were supposed to come back from suspension… you needed time, but still wanted—wanted to be in the morgue when the bodies were.”

  “I’m not into dead girls,” he said, a flat edge t
o his voice.

  I shrugged like I believed this.

  “You were going to be the hero,” he said then, like an apology, “not Nate. I was going to leave you clues, y’know? Stuff only you would see. Nancy Drew to the rescue. Letters of glue in the carpet or something, a leftover reflection in the mirror, I don’t know.”

  “But Madrone saw you in that tape.”

  Davidson shrugged. “You think of everything you can,” he said, “then you just try to keep up with the rest.”

  “It was just—a magazine, though,” I said.

  He nodded, said, “I got the shit earlier in the week. But… just a magazine? On that night? What if somebody with a brain knew about it? Think Nate-buddy would have connected some dots there?”

  My enchilada was all the way gone, now. I looked at my plate and threw up calmly into it, fingering the strands away, all very polite, very proper, my hair in my bandanna so it didn’t even get in the way. A man at the table closest to us looked over but Davidson flapped a napkin open, blocking the man’s view.

  The man went back to his dinner.

  Davidson took another bite, talked around it, keeping his fork close to his mouth. “I think we need to leave here,” he said, suddenly nervous, looking down at my plate. “Done?”

  I looked down at it too, then sideways, at Rosa’s. Nobody knew anything.

  Finally Davidson said it: “What’s with the scarf, anyway? Going to a waffle party?”

  I touched it, had forgotten about it.

  “My wire,” I said. “We didn’t have much time to—to hide it.”

  Davidson moved side to side, taking my bandanna in like a photographer, a painter. It was a game, though. He shook his head no.

  “You didn’t want it to be true,” he said. “For it to be me. You wouldn’t have told anybody until you were sure. But, well…”

  By the time I was sure, now, it was too late.

  I raised my face to him, my mouth open, but then all around me a song broke out.

  It was the mariachi wait staff. A cumpleaño at the table next to us. They set a flock velvet sombrero down on the old man’s head, danced around it, shaking dried gourds in the air, the seeds long dead.

  I smiled, was crying. Told Davidson thank you. He stopped eating, looked up to me, to see if he’d heard right. “For not hurting the boy,” I said.

  “He’s just a kid, Marta. Goddamn, what do you think I am here? I brought him some food, even. But, yeah. He kind of fucked things up, walking in like that. Because you were already looking for a blood bank girl, right? So I gave you another one.”

  “Gave us a chance.”

  He smiled, shook his head no. “You think there was ever really a chance?”

  I shook my head no, slowly.

  “I loved you,” he went on. “God, Marta. That first one, down here”—Tays, Jennifer Rice—“I had to make myself do it. Kept telling myself that it was for you.”

  “Then… don’t—don’t do it again,” I said, faking a smile.

  He lowered his head, shook it slightly.

  “I have to now,” he said. “If we—I don’t know. If we run off together or something, your detective boyfriend will either come after us and kill me, or he’ll figure it all out.” He brought his eyes back up to me. “He wasn’t supposed to… to live through last week, really. Through Friday.”

  “So kill him, then.”

  Davidson smiled, sat back. Shook his head no. “I’m more like Andy Kaufman, I think. I only wrestle women. More my weight class.”

  “You’re afraid of him.”

  “I’m smart, yeah. The only way to bring that guy down is to—it’s you. To get him mad like that. Set his ass up some more. Let him shoot it out with El PPD.”

  “So you’re—you’re sacrificing… me. For you.”

  “Doesn’t sound much like true love anymore, does it?” he said. “Know what I found out this week?” he asked then, leaning forward like a child with a secret. “Last week, I mean. It was that—and I think it’s like this for a lot of people. I never planned on killing, all that shit. Didn’t grow up thinking about it, practicing on cats and dogs. But then, bam, it was the straightest line between two points. From me to you. So I figured What the hell?” He shrugged, studied the patrolmen and their many baskets of chips. “But then,” he said, “I was—that one with the… the…”

  He was holding his hand in front of his chest, too shy to say it.

  “Her nipple bitten off,” I filled in. Carrie Mena.

  “Yeah. I mean, I was only doing that because that’s what people who are fucked in the head do, right? Who have some serious mental disturbances.” He smiled. “But then I liked it,” he said, quieter, embarrassed again. “I mean. I don’t know. I swallowed it, yeah? She’s part of me now.”

  “And then the—Rosario Flores.”

  “The superglue on her pezóns? You should have seen how far they were standing up. In that cold water? Shit. I didn’t think that could even happen after her blood was all gone. I just wanted to show somebody. But, I mean, there was that guy out in California. He was making paperweights from women’s breasts, right? I mean, now that’s some sick shit…”

  I swallowed, couldn’t look at him anymore.

  “You wouldn’t have come with me anyway,” he said, shrugging. “We’re not Thelma and Louise, us.”

  “How do you know?” I said, softly.

  “Because I would never hit you,” he said, just as soft.

  “But,” I said, “that jacket.” On the chair by Estetica Barrientos.

  “You were supposed to be asleep all day Friday,” Davidson said. “Those Prevacid tablets I gave you? I soaked them in the Special K. Rave cereal, baby. You were supposed to be like all scared the killer was coming for you, then take that stuff to protect your stomach, slow the fry down.”

  “You could have just asked me,” I said. “To—to be with you.”

  “Guess I’m a romantic,” Davidson said, shrugging his little boy shrug.

  I took a single chip from the bowl with my other hand, watched it with every rod and cone in my eye.

  “So,” I led off, stalling now, not at all sure where I was going, “your plan. Us. We were going to run off, get married, have kids…”

  Davidson smiled, looked down then back up.

  “C’mon, Marta. Be serious. I mean, I’m a serial killer here, right? The things that turn me on, you don’t live through. We’d have to adopt. Anyway, who better to adopt than a couple of adoptees, right?”

  “But… but we could…?”

  “Have our own? Physically?” Then he opened his mouth, got it: “I am fully functional, if that’s what you mean. And then some.”

  “The girls though, you never—did anything to them.”

  “Because I’m not a rapist,” he whispered, hiding his lips with the web of his hand.

  “Just a serial killer,” I quoted.

  He nodded, relaxed. Smiled that I was finally getting it.

  “You’ve got it all planned,” I said, with wonder. “Tonight, this.”

  “Mitch is real big on organization, yeah. It kind of rubs off.”

  “But—”

  “I’m not going to jail, Marta. I weigh one hundred and fifty-four pounds, and grew up white. They’d find me in an industrial washing machine one morning. Very clean.”

  I lowered my head.

  “I wrong?” he said.

  “I’m not leaving with you,” I said back. “If you drag me out, they’ll stop you.”

  The riot squad at their long table.

  Davidson looked to them, waited for one of them to catch his eye, then waved the tips of his fingers.

  Watch this, Davidson mouthed to him, then dropped from his chair to one knee, my hand in his somehow, the back of it to his lips, so that I could feel his words between my fingers.

  I tried to take my hand back, but he had it.

  All around us, old Mexican women not chewing, just watching us. Watching this. Waiting
for me to nod.

  From the kitchen, the mariachi staff rolled out in their sombreros, their instruments held high, ready.

  “I thought you wanted to kill me now,” I said to Davidson, not moving my lips, my smile so fake, “not marry me.”

  One of the old Mexican women nodded, pushing me on—that I shouldn’t make this easy for him. That he was on his knees to beg for my hand, not just ask.

  “Seen your padre lately?” Davidson said, into the top of my hand.

  “I don’t go to church.”

  “Your father, Martina. Daddy dearest.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it. A fish on the driest land in America.

  Davidson nodded.

  “Where is he?” I asked, swallowing tears already. “You can’t…”

  “In a John Wayne movie,” Davidson said, like that was the obvious place.

  I didn’t follow, though.

  “El pinche Rio Bravó,” he hissed, “yeah?”

  The river.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” Davidson said back.

  I moved vomit across my plate with the corner of my chip, finally stood the chip up in it. One of the women three tables away laughed to her husband, was holding his hand. About us. Me, Davidson. The proposal. How romantic we were.

  “Well?” Davidson said, loud enough for all of them.

  “We’ll go from here to him?” I said, my face so pleasant, so fake. “My father?”

  “He’s waiting,” Davidson said, and I lowered my head, nodded once, and Rosa’s exploded into applause and music and celebration. Davidson stood, pushed all the rust remover and stuff back into the tiendita bag and led us out through the tables, one of the patrolmen rising even, to shake Davidson’s hand, nod to me. I nodded back, dying. Davidson could see it, that I was about to collapse. He shook his head no, please, then, at the cash register, handed me the tiendita bag and started digging out one dollar bills, straightening them out on the counter, finally getting down to silver, then copper. As much as anything, this amazed me. That we could get caught here for jumping dinner.

  “Need some?” I asked, touching my purse.

  He shrugged, still embarrassed. “Just the tip.”