Land of Burning Heat

by Judith Van GIeson

  To narrow her search she added the name Manuel Santos to Joaquín Rodriguez. This time she only got a thousand hits and a number of them were references to articles Peter Beck had written. Some were entries on syllabi for courses he and others had taught. There were numerous websites, but she only found five articles. She opened them, read them, found nothing new.

  Nemesis came into the room, meowed and rubbed against her leg saying it was past bedtime. She stopped for a minute and looked at the window. Had she gone outside she would have seen the distant warmth of the stars, but her window had the impermeable blackness of her computer screen after it was turned off. Except for the yellow light of her desk lamp, her room was dark, her house was dark. She was sure her neighbors’ houses were also dark. Her office was a boat adrift on a sea of dark. She stretched, shook the sleep from her brain, said “in a minute” to Nemesis and started another search.

  This time she entered the name of Daniel Rodriguez ending up with 20,200 entries, most of which belonged to a baseball player. Some were the same articles she had found in her previous search. It was getting later. She needed to narrow her search even further.

  Giving it one last go-for-broke search before turning off the computer she combined the names Daniel Rodriguez, Joaquín Rodriguez, Manuel Santos and Peter Beck, which should have been complicated enough to eliminate all the o’s from Google. To Claire’s surprise she got a response, the URL for the syllabus of a course in Mexican history taught by a professor named Richard Joslin at Berkeley. On his supplemental reading list was an article titled “The Identity of the Man in the Crowd at the Inquisition of Joaquín Rodriguez” written by Peter Beck and published in the Historical Journal of the Americas, which Claire knew had lost its funding several years ago and was no longer being published. Professor Joslin had made a notation below the title saying “Daniel Rodriguez, Joaquín Rodriguez, Manuel Santos. An interesting theory, but the facts didn’t support it.” That remark struck Claire as the kind of not so subtle put-down at which academics excelled, although they were more likely to say it in class than put it in writing on the Internet. She knew Peter Beck would love to read that an article he published was not supported by fact. If it had been in his power he was likely to have deleted the notation and closed the website. She printed the page so she would have the information at hand in the morning. While she waited for it to print out she wondered about the upstart professor who would dare criticize Peter Beck on a syllabus, searched some more, and found he was no upstart but a man who’d had a long and distinguished career as a history professor before retiring from Berkeley.

  She did another search using the title of the article but nothing else came up. She searched for the Historical Journal of the Americas but found no website. Apparently the journal had gone out of business before the Internet boom compelled scholars to put everything they had ever read or written on the web. She felt she had come to a wall as impermeable as the darkness of her window, and allowed herself to look down at her computer clock. Three thirty a.m., even later than she had expected. She was still burning with the fire of her computer chase, but she had to go to work tomorrow. She shut off the computer and went to bed wondering what Peter had discovered that earned him a put-down from a respected scholar.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  SHE SPENT THE REST OF THE NIGHT CHASING THOSE THOUGHTS around the bed, finally falling into a deep sleep a half hour before the alarm went off to jangle her awake. She climbed out of bed knowing she would face the day through the dull haze of exhaustion and her nerves would have a ragged edge. Lights would be too bright, noises too loud. People would violate the perimeter of her private space which extended a couple of feet beyond normal. She had to go to work. Staying up most of the night searching for a document was no excuse to take the day off. The best way to get through days like this was to keep the blinds drawn, the door shut, and do routine work on the computer. She had an extra cup of coffee before she left the house and another when she got to the center.

  She was sitting at her desk staring at a blank computer screen trying to lasso a thought that remained out of reach when someone knocked at her door. She was tempted to ignore it and pretend she wasn’t in, but the visitor knocked again.

  “You in there?” Celia asked. The one person Claire didn’t mind seeing today was Celia. “I’m here,” she said. “Come on in.”

  Celia swirled in wearing a black dress accented by a liquid silver necklace and a slew of silver bracelets. “What’s up? You look like you were awake all night.”

  “Most of it,” Claire replied.

  “Doing what? Dancing? Snuggling?”

  “I wish,” said Claire. “It was a computer search.” “You can do that all day. Nights are for snuggling and dancing.” Celia made a cuddling motion and her arms rattled, making Claire wish she weren’t wearing so many bracelets.

  She had a husband to snuggle with. Claire did not. Even when Claire had a husband, he wasn’t a snuggler. “I was hot on the trail of a document,” she said.

  “Did you find it?”

  “Not exactly. Tey Santos told me on Sunday that her family is descended from crypto Jews. Her given name is Ester.”

  “That’s an amazing discovery.”

  “I meant to tell you yesterday, but you were out. She still practices some of the old ways like lighting candles on Friday night and covering the mirrors when someone dies. She used the same phrase Joaquín Rodriguez did—Adonay es mi dio. Isabel died before Tey could pass the knowledge on to her. She took me back to Isabel’s house to show me a mezuzah, but it had been stolen.”

  “That kind of information usually isn’t shared with outsiders,” Celia said. “Tey must have found you simpatica.”

  “It could be because I’m a woman and after Isabel died she didn’t have anyone else to tell it to.”

  “You’re a good listener. A rare skill these days.”

  “Am I?” Claire asked. In her tired state listening seemed like a skill that was beyond reach.

  “Of course.” Celia picked a paperweight from Claire’s desk and balanced it in her hands. “What document were you looking for?”

  “I read Peter Beck’s book last night, the part about the Rodriguez family and the Inquisitor, Manuel Santos.”

  “That kept you up all night?”

  “No, I was done by nine, but I came across something I hadn’t known before. A cross was tied to Joaquín’s hands as he was led through the crowd on the way to the quemadero. A young man holding another cross exchanged words with him and then he spoke to Manuel Santos. That event was interpreted as the conversion that saved Joaquín from being burned alive at the stake.”

  “The church would have interpreted a sneeze as a conversion at that point if it would save face.”

  “Maybe I was reading between the lines but it seemed to annoy Peter Beck that he wasn’t able to identify the young man. I did a search and found an article he wrote titled The Identity of the Man in the Crowd at the Inquisition of Joaquín Rodriguez published in the Historical Journal of the Americas.”

  “That publication is history now. That’s an article that would have been read by six people even when the journal was still being published.”

  “It makes it difficult to find. Here’s the reference I found for it on the syllabus of a course taught at Berkeley.” She handed the printout to Celia whose bracelets clinked as she reached across the desk to take it. “Don’t you think it’s unusual for a professor to criticize an article he recommends even if it is only on his supplemental reading list? He might be willing to say that in class but to put it in print?”

  Celia read the syllabus. “It would be unusual for this professor. Richard Joslin was a wonderful man with a generous spirit, highly respected, but then he developed Alzheimer’s and had to retire. It was a great loss to the department.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In a home somewhere, I’d say. Some kind of Alzheimer’s theme park if he’s lucky. Alzheimer’
s patients are happier if they live in an environment that reminds them of their past, someplace where they can eat comfort foods, wear bell bottoms or Bermuda shorts, and listen to the old songs.”

  “Maybe my own mind was gone in the middle of the night, but when I read in Peter’s book that the young man embraced Joaquín, I had the thought that they exchanged crosses and the young man ended up with Joaquín’s cross with his last written words stating that he would not convert to Catholicism.” In the fuzzy haze of exhaustion the conclusion to that thought seemed to have lost the definition it had last night.

  But Celia, wide awake and full of energy, reached the same conclusion. “And someone brought that cross to New Mexico and it ended up under Isabel Santos’s floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then who was the young man?”

  “I wish I knew. Tey Santos agreed to DNA testing so eventually we will know if she is descended from the skeleton found under the floor. It’s possible that person brought the cross to New Mexico, but how would you prove it? You can’t get fingerprints from a skeleton. It will also be hard to determine whether that skeleton is Manuel Santos the settler or not, but if he turns out to be Tey’s ancestor he’s a crypto Jew. The question is how could there be a crypto Jew named Manuel Santos and an Inquisitor named Manuel Santos living in the same time and place? Even now it’s not that common a name.”

  “Sometimes crypto Jews took the names of prominent citizens as protective cover.”

  “But the name of an Inquisitor?”

  “Why don’t you just call Peter Beck and ask him what he said in his article?”

  “I don’t trust him. I don’t like him. He’ll accuse me of inserting myself into his field. If he intended to tell me about the article, he had plenty of opportunity to do so the day I met him.”

  “He may have been embarrassed that his scholarship was challenged by Richard Joslin.”

  Claire wondered if Peter Beck was capable of embarrassment. “Maybe,” she said. “There are other ways of finding the article.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  Celia pushed her bracelets aside to consult her watch. “I have to go to a meeting. Talk to you later.”

  “Okay.”

  She left the office, shutting the door gently behind her, leaving Claire with the rest of the day to fill. Although she wanted to spend it entering boring data on the computer, she needed to track down Peter Beck’s article. She thought about her datura plant putting out runners and creeping along the ground, opening its satiny blossoms to let bees, moths, hummingbirds, whatever happened to be flying through the night settle in. She needed to send out feelers herself.

  First she put out an interlibrary loan request. Then she called Harold Marcus and told him her theory about the crosses. “Interesting,” he said. “I’ll see if anyone here can track down the article.”

  Then she called August Stevenson and asked him to keep an eye out for it. “Delighted to help,” he said.

  She wanted to talk to John Harlan, too, but decided to visit the store after work. The other people she needed to call—May Brennan and Detective Romero—were more problematic. She didn’t know whether Tey had kept her promise and talked to Romero. Then there was the issue of why May hadn’t told her she’d spoken to Tey about the grave of Isabel Suazo.

  She dialed May’s number at the Bernalillo Historical Society.

  “Oh, Claire,” May replied in a weary, put-upon voice. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” Claire replied, thinking her own voice was a blanket thrown over a teddy bear cholla.

  “That’s nice.”

  “I was with Tey Santos over the weekend and she told me you asked about Isabel Suazo’s grave.”

  “It was a couple of years ago. She told me she was a good Catholic. I wasn’t going to argue with her.”

  “Did you have any reason to argue with her?”

  “Not really. I was just gathering information, that’s all. People are always asking me for information about the crypto Jews. Isabel Santos married a Jew. I thought there might be some connection. Look, Claire, it’s busy here. Can I call you back?”

  “Please.”

  After that unproductive conversation, Claire called Detective Romero on his cell phone to ask if he had spoken to Tey Santos. “I got a message from her yesterday,” he said. “But I haven’t had a chance to go over there. I’ll get back to you once I talk to her.”

  “Thanks.”

  That left Claire with nothing better to do than enter data onto the computer. She kept her door closed and her blinds drawn and at noon she put her head down on the desk and went to sleep. She woke up feeling her head had been screwed sideways. She stretched to get out the kinks, then she had lunch—another cup of coffee, an apple and a granola bar—and went back to entering data on the computer. At three she received a call saying there was someone at the information desk to see her. She walked out and found Detective Romero in his brown uniform.

  “I happened to be in town,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind my stopping by.”

  “Of course not,” said Claire. “Come into my office.”

  She led him down the hall and shut the door behind them, thinking this happened to be a good time to talk to Detective Romero. Her door and blinds had been closed all day. Whatever attention that would attract had already been attracted. She had inadvertently created an intimate atmosphere. As he sat down she remembered how relaxed Jimmy Romero looked in jeans and a T-shirt the night he drove her home. It was a thought she should have checked at the door.

  “I called the mechanic before I left Bernalillo. Your truck will be ready in a day or two.”

  “Yay,” Claire said.

  “Getting tired of the rental car?” He smiled.

  “Very.”

  “I went to see Tey Santos and she told me they are Marranos, which was why she lit the candles and covered the mirrors. She said her old ways are Marrano ways.”

  Claire tensed when she heard the word Marrano. Literally, it meant swine. Sometimes people used it in an ironic way to refer to themselves, but it was as derogatory as “nigger” or “wetback” or “beaner” or all the other insulting names people called each other. “She told me that, too. I thought you should know.”

  “When I talked to her before she was convinced that Tony Atencio had killed Isabel, but now she doesn’t think so. What changed her mind?” He leaned back in his chair and his eyes lit on Claire.

  “A mezuzah was stolen from Isabel’s house Friday night. Did she show you where it was hidden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whoever took it may have been the person who ran me off the road.”

  “Possible,” Romero said.

  “It couldn’t have been Tony,” Claire said.

  “No, but it could have been one of his homeboys.”

  “How would a homeboy know where to look and what would he want with a mezuzah?” she asked. “It’s not likely to have any monetary value.”

  “It might,” Romero said. “Anything has value if it’s old enough, and according to Tey it was very old. The other things stolen from the house didn’t have much value.”

  “Except for the last words of Joaquín Rodriguez.”

  “We don’t know yet if that document was stolen or what its value is,” Romero pointed out. “We haven’t found any evidence that it was offered for sale.”

  The image of him in casual clothes faded as he took the official line. Today Detective Romero seemed very much a police officer. Perhaps he was putting on his armor for his next call. “Did you find any evidence that the dig had been disturbed?” she asked.

  “The OMI archaeologists looked into it. Someone had sifted through the dirt, but we don’t know who. Family members were in the house. It could have been one of them.

  Tey agreed to have her DNA analyzed and compared to the skeleton.”

  “So she said.”

  “We’re setting it up with the O
MI and they will work with the Smithsonian. That man died four hundred years ago. It will be interesting to know if he is a Santos but I don’t see how it will help solve Isabel’s death. It’s unlikely anyone killed her just for being a Marrano.”

  “May Brennan had reason to think the Santoses were crypto Jews. A couple of years ago she asked Tey about her background.”

  “It would be hard to get my boss to consider May a suspect, if that’s what you’re suggesting. She’s been in Bernalillo for a long time. She’s the town historian.”

  As a middle-aged white professional woman she didn’t fit the criminal profile. It was the same profile Claire benefited or suffered from, depending on her point of view at the time. She’d thought before that the profile was a good façade to hide behind. In fact, it almost gave one license to commit a crime.

  “For me it goes back to the document,” she said. “I believe someone wanted Joaquín Rodriguez’s last words. Isabel got in the way and got killed. The mezuzah in Isabel’s house proved that the Santoses had a Jewish connection and the killer didn’t want that fact known. I read Peter Beck’s book last night. He described Joaquín Rodriguez’s execution. Joaquín had a conversation with a man in the crowd who held a green cross, maybe even the same cross we found in the house. I’m wondering if that man ended up with Joaquín’s last words and brought them to New Mexico. Beck published an article about the identity of the man, but I haven’t been able to locate a copy.”

  She’d been hoping to pique Romero’s interest in the historical aspects but sensed failure as he shifted his weight from one side of the chair to the other.