by Sarah Lovett
"I understand," Renzo said. "I share your sentiments."
Amado was ready to end the conversation. In impeccable Spanish he said, "There is someone, a mutual friend from El Paso, who is waiting for you when you return. This is someone you must talk to soon. Someone who needs your professional touch. Can we tell him that you will hurry back?"
The mutual friend would be the cop Bobby Dowd—the last man to talk to Paco before he crossed the U.S. border. "Of course. It will be a pleasure."
"Bueno. Hasta mañana."
Renzo hung up the phone gently. He smiled to himself. He could see his teeth glistening, reflected in the silver metal; they looked perfect. He was beginning to feel better.
CHAPTER TEN
BOBBY DOWD THOUGHT he was looking at the inside of his eyelids. But in a remarkably short time he figured out that the darkness was too velvety—and minus the little red sparks that always exploded when he squeezed his eyes shut.
So, it wasn't eyelids, it was the inside of a trunk—and the trunk was part of a motor vehicle. Yeah . . . there'd been a black Mercedes following him down the street before the assault. As fragments of his memory returned, he felt a staggering sense of relief. His mind was functioning logically.
There were more reasons to be grateful. He was still breathing, which meant he was still alive—and this was no coffin. Sure, he was packed like luggage inside a car, but the Germans had designed a very roomy trunk for the Mercedes. Things could be worse.
Abruptly, nausea threatened to overwhelm him, and his heart tightened in his chest. Things were worse. He broke out in a sweat, recognizing his body's reaction to a foreign substance. They'd shot him up with something. Christ! With what?
Breathe. Get a grip.
Some drug was cruising inside his veins like a shark—a sand shark, a hammerhead, a great white? So far, the animal—the drug—was an unknown. Was it deadly? He told himself no. He told himself he would find out soon enough.
After a few minutes, the terror subsided with the pulse of the drug. Whatever it was, it was moving inside his body with a tidal flow all its own. At the moment, the tide was out. Only now did Bobby realize he could hear voices; they were muffled but clearly male, definitely Mexican.
He spoke fluent Spanish, but he couldn't quite catch the words as they filtered through leather and metal. He wished he could replay the conversation in the privacy of his own life; but he'd stopped wearing a wire after a small-time drug dealer had demanded a body search out of the blue, and he'd only just managed to flush the sucker—he'd come within a mosquito's ass of dying, bullet through the head, body dumped in a trash heap.
Not the fucking Cadillac of Last Reposes.
Bobby caught something about Amado. Amado Fortuna, patron saint of the El Paso-Juárez trafficking operation. The story went like this: Amado Fortuna, illiterate, dirt poor, and ambitious, had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of the Pacific drug cartels.
Befitting a man of his importance, he decided he would learn to read. One of the first sentences he actually understood was "The moving finger writes . . ."
Buzz was: the pendejo being so thrilled with his ABC's had started his memoirs—goddamn journals complete with transactions, dates, and names.
When Bobby first heard the story, he'd pictured the Big Tuna writing: "Mi querido diario, Today I sold 2 tons of Colombian heroin to my best friend the Panzini godfather in Detroit."
Bobby had worked next to feds who joked that the Tuna Diaries had existed—until Fortuna destroyed them. Anything was possible. In 1985 the biggest bust in history had gone down in a warehouse in Sylmar, California; the booty included tons of cocaine and a stack of ledgers. Sometimes these guys were not very frigging bright.
Dear Diary. The journals could've taken Amado down like a rock, but the Fish finally wised up and burned them in his front yard.
If the diaries had ever existed, they were long gone by now. And so was Paco; he'd taken flight with all his wild stories.
So what was Bobby Dowd doing in the trunk of a Mercedes? As far as he knew, he hadn't done anything to piss off Amado Fortuna. There was no cover to blow; he made no secret of the fact he was a cop on the take. Besides, he'd been incommunicado for weeks.
Except for talking to Paco . . .
A monster wave slammed into Bobby—the drug was at high tide again, jarring loose some fragment of memory.
He and Paco sitting at a table . . .
There was a loud noise, and the car jiggled. A scraping sound alerted Bobby that a key had been inserted in the lock of the trunk. The lid flew open.
The first thing Bobby saw was a bright light in his face. Big arms wrenched him out of the trunk. When he could focus again, he caught his bearings; he was outside the Buenas Noches, an hourly-rate motel somewhere on the oily fringe of Juárez.
Somebody muscled him headfirst into the bumper of the Mercedes. He moaned, head jammed against metal, his shirt reeking of sweat.
He shouted hoarsely—felt hands release his arms—and then he vomited on the gravel of the Buenas Noches parking lot.
Lying there in the dirt, a fat man of a moon laughing down at him, Bobby Dowd thought about his old man. Smoky Joe Dowd had been proud when his son became a cop in 1982. Said it was a step up the ladder for all the Dowds. What would the old man say this minute if he were looking down from the Big Ranch in the sky? Would he know that Bobby had never intended to shoot up? That he'd always tried to be the best cop he could be? Would he understand that the drugs and addiction had come with the territory?
Somewhere over him, Bobby heard whispered voices. It wasn't the moon, and it wasn't Smoky Joe. He swallowed, hoisted himself over onto his stomach, and managed half a push-up. One man was waiting, arm outstretched, to give him a boost. Bobby attained a fully upright position with some difficulty. He swayed in the muggy air, a boat of a man moored in a choppy sea of desert.
But not so far gone he missed the word: madrinas. "Godmothers."
Madrinas was slang for the elite secret killers on the payroll of Mexico's federal police—assassins was another name.
Bobby Dowd found that extremely alarming.
The same hand that had helped him off the dirt now held out an offering. A dirty syringe, dripping fluid, right in front of Bobby's face.
A voice spoke in English: "Get comfortable, friend. Let's talk about your girlfriend Paco and that Honda he was driving when he flew north."
A tiny man rang a tiny bell deep in Bobby's brain. Snow White and the Seven . . .
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MATT ENGLAND WAS looking for a ruined Honda. He tapped chain link with the toe of his cowboy boot, and the gate swung open a few inches. A lock hung limply from metal; the clasp was no longer in one solid piece. Either Mungia 24-Hour Towing kept the gate open for midnight visitors or someone had cut the lock.
No one said boo when Matt entered the yard; he didn't draw his weapon, but his fingers were itching. He moved in shadow for twenty feet; the overhead security lamp was dark.
The tow yard covered several acres north of Siler Road. Most of the acreage was enclosed behind a ten-foot-high fence, which was topped with double strands of barbed wire and cuffed with broken glass—a standin for junkyard dogs. Matt had known Joe for years; as he prowled the yard, he looked for the short, barrel-chested man. Mungia still worked the graveyard shift—claimed it was the secret of his long, happy marriage.
Matt almost tripped over the entrails of a battered Pontiac. Metal carcasses were strewn everywhere, depressing monuments to Henry Ford's vision. He stepped around what had once been a Ford Mustang—nuts, bolts, and trim shed long ago. The sole of his boot picked up a nail, and he hopped on one leg and yanked out the rusted metal spike before it penetrated to his skin. Away from the gate, the yard was lit up by the glare of overhead lamps. Flying animals—either huge moths or small bats—hovered around the circles of light. Matt stayed in the shadows, a strategy he planned to maintain until he found Joe.
Thirty minutes e
arlier, when he'd called the tow yard from his office at the Department of Public Safety, he'd reached Mungia's answering machine with its terse message in English and Spanish. There was nothing unusual about that; Joe often wandered his acreage, even when his night-shift driver was out on a towing job. He probably considered it one of the small privileges of staying in business for more than thirty years.
Matt had another hundred feet to go before he reached Mungia's fair-weather office—a corrugated-steel shack. Behind the shack, a small trailer provided winter lodgings. A portable toilet served both shack and trailer—all the modern conveniences.
A half dozen vehicles had been deposited near the shack. Matt figured these were the yard's newest arrivals because the vehicles' assorted paint jobs weren't yet obscured by grime and dust. Mungia 24-Hour Towing handled law-enforcement calls—abandoned vehicles, accidents, D.W.I.'s, impounds. First in line was a dark-colored pickup truck. Second was a beige Honda, crumpled, hood gaping open, and missing two wheels.
The Honda fit the description of the car the girl was driving when she ran off the road. Matt had reviewed the accident report within the past hour. Between the vehicle's murky ownership—registration to a drop-box business called Hat-Trick in El Paso—and the inquiry by the Federal Judicial Police in Juárez, Matt's curiosity had been piqued. He'd decided to take a close look at the Honda.
He stepped forward to peer inside the small vehicle, noticing immediately that the interior had been trashed. The door panels were gone. The floor mats lay outside the vehicle, and the interior carpet had been cut and ripped up from the floor. The glove compartment hung open; the ashtray was missing. Front and back seats had been stripped of large squares of upholstery. The visors looked as though they'd been shredded by huge cat claws. One radio speaker lay stranded on the ground in a tangle of wires. The hatchback was up. The side storage panels in the baggage area were gone, the spare tire missing.
Matt walked around to the front of the vehicle and shone his flashlight into the exposed engine. The radiator was minus a cap. The windshield-wiper fluid tank had been knocked loose. The carburetor looked naked without its casing.
The hair on the back of Matt's neck stood up. He'd searched vehicles in the same methodical effort to expose contraband. The Honda had been torn apart rapidly but thoroughly—by a pro. Just maybe by a cop.
His right hand hovered above the pancake holster that held his Colt .45. Somebody was behind him; he caught a whiff of rank smoke and sweat. Perspiration broke out on his forehead. He was about to make a move when a voice said, "You looking for new wheels, pendejo?"
Slowly, Matt eased himself around. He nodded at Joe Mungia. "Don't tell me. It's got three thousand miles on the odometer and a little old lady kept it in her garage?"
"It's got less than two, and the old lady was mi abuela." Joe spat in the dirt. His face lost its play. "You see anybody on your way in?"
"I saw your padlock after somebody cut it in half. They get into your office?"
Mungia shook his big head. "Just messed with my cars."
Matt nodded toward the Honda. "I saw this one. Which of the others?"
Mungia led Matt to a second light-colored Honda a row over. This car was powder blue instead of beige, but otherwise, the two cars closely resembled each other, especially in the dark. Both had been searched.
Matt asked, "Just these two?"
"That's all I found so far." Joe Mungia stood watching the state cop think. When Matt asked if there were any other Hondas on the lot, Joe shook his head. He answered Matt's questions: his driver had gone out on a call about an hour ago; he'd locked the gate after his driver left; the light had been working when he locked the gate; he'd been on the other side of the yard when he heard a noise; the noise had come from somewhere near this same blue Honda; when he checked it out, he realized he'd had a visitor.
Joe shook his head. "Thing is, I think somebody broke in last night, too."
"Persistent guy." Matt retrieved his crime-scene kit from the trunk of his Chevy Caprice. Joe Mungia whistled, highly impressed, when he saw the semiautomatic AR-15 secured in the trunk. He followed the investigator back to the first Honda, held the floodlight, and watched Matt go to work with notebook, camera, brushes, and fingerprint powder. There were prints—too many. Probably none of them belonged to the night's interloper.
By the time Matt was finished with both vehicles and ready to leave, it was after one in the morning. Joe walked him toward the Caprice. Both men stopped outside the yard gates. Joe lit a cigarette and dropped the match on asphalt. "So, what do you think, friend?"
"I think he messed your place up for nothing. He searched the beige Honda first, then he started on the light blue one before he realized it wasn't the right car. I don't think he found what he came for."
Joe wagged his head. "At least he was good enough to come and go without disturbing me." The portly man seemed to find that fact comforting.
Matt did not. He had a very bad feeling about this whole thing, and he didn't like the idea that Sylvia and the child were involved. He had double-checked the Honda's plate number against the plate in the accident report—it was definitely a match.
He was convinced the car had been torn up by someone who needed very badly to find something. Drugs? That was Matt's first guess. His second guess: whoever had done the damage would return.
He glanced at his watch. He would drive by Sylvia's, check on the property, make sure everything looked right. He wouldn't disturb woman or child, but he would talk to Sylvia first thing in the morning.
SYLVIA WOKE WHILE it was still dark. She was sweating, breathing hard from a nightmare. The oppressive heaviness of her dream lingered, but the imagery was shadowy and only half remembered. Serena had occupied the dream world. And so had Sylvia's father, Daniel Strange. His silent presence, however holographic and unconscious, disturbed her deeply.
She felt eyes on her skin. The moon was staring in the western window of the bedroom. Milk-white light spilled over the cotton duvet and the child's feet. Carefully, Sylvia shifted her body. On the other side of the king-sized bed where Matt usually slept, Serena lay curled up next to Rocko's bristled little shape. Dog and girl breathed fitfully, and the air was heavy with sleep.
It had not been easy to get the child to bed hours earlier. Sylvia had tried soothing words, hot cocoa, silence, and finally—after she was way beyond exhaustion—a story. She had pulled the well-worn copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales off a living room shelf. The book was leather-bound; it had belonged to her father and his father and grandfather.
Which surely accounted for her father's attendance in her dream.
Serena had thumbed through the book, gazing intently at each color illustration. Eventually, she had pointed to a picture of a nobleman, a princess, and a crone. The story was the Six Swans. Whether by chance or intuition, the heroine of that story was a young girl who did not speak or laugh for six years in order to restore her brothers from an evil spell.
As a girl, Sylvia had loved this particular tale for its dark, evocative imagery. She knew the research, the modern feminist admonitions of patriarchal bias. Classically, old women were the tellers of tales, sharing stories with other women and their children, easing the grind of domestic life. Over the centuries, as the stories were written down and printed in books, the male characters evolved heroically while the female characters were more narrowly cast as witch-crones, predatory stepmothers, or ingenues. The young, sweet, and sometimes mute princesses represented wish models of female stoicism. Sylvia acknowledged the critiques, but the story's power had never dimmed.
A king who was a hunter pursued his wild prey deep into a forest where he became hopelessly lost. An old witch agreed to show him the way out of the woods on the condition he marry her daughter. Although the young woman was fair, she made the king shudder; still, he took her from the woods, married her, and made her his queen.
It so happened that the king was a widower with seven children from his first ma
rriage. Fearing that his new wife would do his children mischief, the king hid the six boys and one young girl in a castle deep in the woods. Eventually, the jealous queen discovered where her husband spent so many happy days, and she used the witchcraft she had learned from her own mother to turn the children into swans—except for the young girl, who escaped the spell.
Serena listened so intently to the beginning of the narrative, Sylvia was sure the child was familiar with the ritual of bedtime stories; her body language and affect made that clear. Someone had loved this child deeply, which made the fairy tale—with its absent mother and loving but unavailing father—all the more poignant.
Tonight, Act I of the old story had accomplished a miracle—it lulled the child into slumber.
At the foot of the bed, Nikki stirred. Her golden muzzle crested the mattress, and her taupe eyes watched Sylvia. The digital clock showed 3:07. A familiar time for restless musing. This night her mind was focused on the haunting presence of the child; even in slumber Serena's anxiety was palpable, invading Sylvia's thoughts. As the minutes ticked by, Sylvia lay in limbo between waking and sleep. Once she thought she heard a car engine, but the sound quickly faded and she decided it had been an airplane. Her land was isolated, and stray vehicles weren't common this far from city limits. She rolled over, let her hand touch the child, and closed her eyes.
SERENA FELT THE demon's presence before she heard the deep throbbing noise, the crunch of gravel. She stiffened, and her breath caught in her throat. Her fingers flew to clasp the medallion.
Paco had come to her in a dream, whispering a warning that the demon would return. I cannot help you now. Use prayer to keep you safe. Let Our Lady hide you in the folds of her mantle.
Paco, with his sad lullabies and his scent of pencils. Paco, who had come back to the child after a day's or a week's absence, always walking like a very stiff old man. A million times he had whispered longingly to her, "You are my soul, you are my heart."