Duplicity

by Jane Haseldine

  “I grew up in East L.A. My dad drove a bus, and my mom worked in the cafeteria at the middle school. They worked hard and made sure my little brother and I stayed out of the gang life. The White Fence was everywhere. They owned my neighborhood. When I was a teenager, there was a block party on my street. The local city councilman at the time wanted to strengthen the community, so it was his idea to get people together. It was summer, the Fourth of July, and I remember they had this big mariachi band playing. My little brother, Carlo, was on top of my father’s shoulders when both of them were shot. They were in the cross fire of two stupid rival gangbangers, both trying to be harder than the other one.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Julia says.

  The pain of the memory reveals itself in Felix’s eyes for just an instant and then it’s gone. “Julia, you have the address of Nick Rossi’s compound?” Felix asks.

  “Yes. I gave it to Navarro. There are two roads that lead there on either side of the mountain and a separate path that runs parallel to the main road, which I understand can be accessed with an off-terrain vehicle.”

  The waitress returns with their food, served in bright yellow bowls. “Pasta al Mojo de Ajo con Camarones, Chipotle y Queso Anejo, the chef’s specialty this evening,” the waitress says.

  “Linguine with seared shrimp, chipotle and queso anejo,” Navarro, whose first language was Spanish, based on the roots of his Spanish father and Mexican mother, whispers to Julia.

  “Yes, it looks delicious,” Julia says, and realizes the last thing she ate was a bag of pretzels on the plane some three hours before.

  “Rossi’s compound will likely be guarded,” Felix says. “Enzo Costas has been running Rossi’s West Coast operation while he’s been in jail. Costas is dangerous and crazy, which is a deadly combination. The guy’s a religious zealot, and he believes everything he does is righteous and ordained by God. There used to be a convent just on the outskirts of the mountains here. One of the sheriffs told me there was a young woman who was circumcised and then brutally raped and murdered while she walked alone along one of the trails there about a year ago. No one was ever arrested, but I’d bet money Costas did it. He’s got some heinous crimes on his record dating back to when he was in juvie.”

  Julia suddenly loses her appetite.

  “It’s late. We have a big day tomorrow,” Felix says as he looks up at the burning candles on the chandelier above them as though hypnotized by their light. “ ‘All is visible and all elusive, all is near and can’t be touched.’”

  “That’s beautiful. Did you write that?” Julia asks.

  The spell broken, Felix looks back at his guests and laughs. “No, not me. I was quoting the poet Octavio Paz. Like I told you, I’ve always liked words and books. I can admire writing and recite it, but I can’t create it. You’re the only true writer in our group this evening.”

  Felix stands up and reaches his hand out for Navarro to shake. “I’ll pick you up in the hotel lobby at seven tomorrow morning, Ray.”

  Julia gives Felix a kiss on the cheek. “Dinner was lovely. Thank you very much. I’m sorry that we got off on the wrong foot earlier today.”

  “Some of the best friendships start out that way.”

  Felix heads up to his room, and Julia follows Navarro to the front desk as he checks to see if another room has become available. Then Julia steals out to the patio, the night air feeling warm and luxurious, and she is drawn to a three-tiered, slowly trickling fountain. She pulls out a coin from her purse and tosses it into the water, watching it land against tiny silver and blue tiles that sparkle against the strands of white lights that wind around the base of a palm tree above them. She makes a silent and ardent wish that she will always be able to protect her boys, and right now, especially from Rossi.

  “If you were making a wish that the hotel had an extra room tonight, you’re out of luck.”

  “That wasn’t my wish, but that’s too bad.”

  “I’ll take the rollaway,” Navarro says.

  “As if there was ever any question.”

  The two walk in silence, the worries of the next day and the three-hour time difference starting to catch up to them.

  Inside the room, Julia moves to the window, still open from earlier. She closes her eyes, the night air feeling exotic and wonderful, and realizes she can’t lose her edge. She shuts the window quickly and catches a reflection of Navarro in the room’s full-length mirror. He leans against the dresser and stares at Julia in the blue dress, unaware she has caught him checking her out when her back is turned.

  She spins around quickly, and Navarro plays it cool.

  “As I said, you can take the bed,” he says, and begins to unpack his bag.

  “I’m uncomfortable with this setup,” Julia answers.

  “It’s not like I planned it,” Navarro says.

  He unbuttons his shirtsleeves and heads into the bathroom. Julia glances at Navarro through the open door as he removes his shirt. Something deep and primal goes off inside Julia, and she quickly casts her eyes to the floor, feeling surprised over her unexpected reaction. She realizes how easy it would be to come on to Navarro and convince herself she earned a pass card in light of David’s deceit. But deep down, she knows revenge is a fleeting satisfaction and not worth ruining a friendship over.

  Navarro emerges from the bathroom wearing a Detroit Police Department T-shirt.

  “Come on, Julia. I’m not some kind of beast, you know. What do you think is going to happen? I’m going to try and come on to you? You don’t know me at all then, and I figured out of all the people in the world, you still did.”

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes I think you’re looking at me a certain way, and it makes me feel strange. I realize there’s a good chance I’m probably wrong and I’m sounding like a complete idiot right now.”

  Navarro sits down on the edge of the rollaway bed and turns in the opposite direction of Julia, not wanting to face her. “Well, I do look at you that way, probably more than sometimes, and I guess I’m the one who should be sorry. You’re a beautiful woman. But it’s more than that. You’re the one who left me, and I never got over it. But that’s my issue, not yours. The day you walked out, I told you if you ever wanted me back you’d have to be the one to tell me you were ready. At first, I hoped to God every day you were going to change your mind, but you didn’t. You found someone else, and you created a beautiful life for yourself. So I walked to the sidelines and that was okay, because what I want for you most in the world is for you to be happy, even if it isn’t with me. So if you want me to stop feeling, I can’t, but don’t think I’m going to make a pass at you just because we’re alone in a hotel room, because I’m not that guy.”

  Julia escapes into the bathroom and closes the door, feeling stupid and wishing she and Navarro could continue the dance without her knowing the truth. Julia stares at herself in the mirror, feeling cheap in her blue dress and dirty about the way she felt when she saw Navarro changing his shirt.

  Navarro raps on the bathroom door.

  “I bet you want these,” he says, and hands Julia a pair of her sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt from her bag. “We’re okay, right?”

  “Yes, of course,” Julia lies.

  CHAPTER 20

  Julia pretends to still be asleep as Navarro gets dressed to meet Felix in the lobby. She lies motionless in bed and watches Navarro out of the corner of her eye as he writes a note and leaves it on the dresser. He stands over her for a few seconds and then grabs his wallet and gun and pulls a light suit coat on over his shoulders. Julia waits until she hears the hotel room door close and then stays in bed an extra minute to be sure he is gone. When she is certain, Julia gets up and peeks from behind the window curtain to watch Navarro walk toward Felix’s van parked in the valet area of the hotel.

  The van drives away, and Julia quickly dresses in her running shorts and top. The note Navarro left catches Julia’s eye, and she turns the paper over.

  Dear Julia,

&n
bsp; I’m sorry about last night. Please know your friendship means the world to me and is more important than anything else. I know you well enough that you aren’t going to want to sit around in the hotel all day, but as your friend and as someone who cares about you, I’m asking you to stay put until we bring Rossi in for questioning. In other words, don’t do anything stupid.

  Navarro.

  Julia crumples up the paper, tosses it in the wastebasket, and pulls out her cell phone to call Helen.

  “Did you catch the man who hurt your David?” Helen answers, cutting to the chase sans the need for a hello.

  “Not yet. Are Logan and Will okay?”

  “Yes. A policeman stayed up all night in the living room and another was in a car parked outside the house. Logan just got on the school bus.”

  “Navarro arranged a police tail, and another plainclothes officer will be outside Logan’s classroom. I’d still prefer if Logan were at home.”

  “All this police protection, we’re fine.”

  “Can you put Will on the phone? You can just put it on speaker.”

  Julia hears thirty seconds of fumbling and Helen probably swearing in Polish until she likely gives up trying to figure out which button to push and hands the phone to Will.

  “Hi, Mamma,” Will says in his high-pitched, little-boy voice.

  Julia feels a painful tug in her heart and wishes she were back home keeping a constant eye on both her children instead of about to embark on a lone mission to try to bring down the man threatening them, but she realizes what she needs to do to keep them safe long term.

  “Hello, beautiful boy. I’ll be home tomorrow. Just one more night, I promise. Listen to Helen while I’m gone. Mamma loves you.”

  Julia says good-bye and shifts from Mamma mode to investigative reporter. She reaches inside her suitcase and extracts her reporter’s notebook, which has the location of Rossi’s compound—not the address, since there isn’t one, but a series of coordinates and distances between landmarks that Tyce Jones gave her. Julia looks at the strange chase of directions in front of her and realizes Rossi took great measures to stay hidden.

  Julia estimates the distance from the hotel up the mountainside to his location is around twelve miles, not a measure that daunts her. She folds the directions into her waist pack, and puts in a bottle of water followed by her phone and driver’s license. She grabs the folding knife from her luggage, fits it in her pack, and then zips it shut.

  Julia stretches before she embarks on her journey, thinking herself not foolish but driven. Julia flashes to the little boy, Michael Cole, and his mother, whom she met in the hospital after he died, and the last thing she asked of her:

  Make sure you kill that bastard when you find him.

  Julia wishes Navarro had left one of his guns behind. She has never physically harmed anyone in her life, but the idea of hurting Rossi for what he did gives her a rush that feels hot and thrilling. The seductive pull of revenge moves through her like an opiate, and she doesn’t want it to stop. Before she succumbs to it completely, a decades-old memory takes its place, the one of Ben wiping away a gush of fresh blood from his nose after he got beat up by a pack of older kids who taunted him and Julia about their stringy-haired, alcoholic mother, who had passed out in front of their trailer again.

  (“Hold your head high and just keep walking. We’ll fight the bullies, but not with our fists. I’m going to go tell their parents what they did to me. Then they’ll really get it. Use your smarts, Julia, and only punch back when you’ve got no other choice.”)

  Julia waits for a moment until she is clear-headed again and peers out cautiously at the hotel entrance from behind the curtain. Across the street is a dark sedan with a single driver who has been waiting there since Julia first looked out the window some thirty minutes earlier. She connects her pack around her waist and closes the hotel room door behind her. In the hallway, a chambermaid pushes her cart in the opposite direction. Julia follows the woman to a back stairway with a posted sign that reads HOTEL EMPLOYEES ONLY, and ducks in behind her. The woman turns around at the sound of approaching footsteps, and Julia throws up her hands as if indicating she is lost and hurries down the internal corridor until she reaches a loading dock in the rear of the building. She jumps down and starts sprinting in the opposite direction of the busy center of town and away from any roads and Rossi’s lookouts.

  Julia arrives at the place Tyce told her about. She turns around to find her first marker, the Santa Maria Temple directly to the south, as if she could reach her arm out and touch the silver cross that sits atop its white steeple now far in the distance. She turns in the opposite direction to find the path once used by ranchers and farmers some fifty years ago as they brought their livestock down the mountain to sell. The path is barely visible, long overgrown by low-lying shrub bush, but Julia can find what is left of it and the footpath that will run parallel to the road that leads to Rossi’s compound. Julia starts off, the rough brush slapping against her bare legs, and she can hear what sounds like a truck heaving its way up the grade on the road next to her, but she remains protected by a thick shroud of jagged rock and brush that lines the path and keeps her out of view from passing motorists. She feels comfort in knowing that Navarro and Felix will take the back route to the compound along an old road that was closed off years ago on the other side of the mountain.

  Julia runs farther along the path into the palm trees, and plants seem to double in size. She looks up to the sun, now in a northeast position, and heads in its direction. She sees a clearing up ahead where her second marker should be and sprints faster up the mountainside. To her left, she spots a fast and fluid movement in the brush. She turns toward the flash of motion, refusing to stop, and spots a mountain lion leaping from a rock covered with an intricate map of clinging green moss and gray mold. The animal lunges with deadly grace in the opposite direction. Julia pounds forward, just catching the mountain lion snatching the neck of a wild hare before it disappears with its breakfast into the trees.

  Julia pats the front of her waist pack, feels the hardness of her knife for reassurance, and continues on. She reaches the clearing and the second marker, the former convent, abandoned now for at least twenty years. The probably once magnificent structure now looks like a Roman ruin, left alone to die with no one around to care anymore or witness its tragic collapse. The path in front of Julia forks, one route to the west and one to the east of the rotting building. Julia takes the western trail, which leads her around the back of the convent and into what was most likely a beautiful garden and meditative spot for the nuns. Julia spots the back of a statue of a figure with shoulder-length hair wearing what looks like a robe. The statue is slightly off the trail, but Julia is drawn to it, and against her better sense she runs in its direction. Julia reaches her hand out and lightly grazes the back of the statue’s robe, the metal burning hot against her fingers. She runs in a semicircle until she faces the statue, the beautiful and grotesque remains of Christ. The statue’s nose and left arm have been decomposed by the elements. The Christ statue reaches out its one good hand toward Julia as if beckoning her closer, as two thick garden snakes slither through his fingers.

  Julia takes a surprised step back and begins to run faster away from the disconcerting scene. The rush of air makes her lungs ache, and Julia feels her muscles working harder as the trail laces up the mountain’s incline. She keeps going, pushing down her fear of what lurks in the bushes around her, and concentrates on what she will do when she reaches Rossi’s compound. Julia takes stock in the fact that she has put herself in danger on more than one occasion as an investigative reporter and always relied on her smarts to get what she needed and out of harm’s way in time. Julia feels certain she’ll be able to find the bar surveillance footage and the money David told her about more easily than the police, since they have rules and she doesn’t.

  A twelve-mile run is no stranger to Julia, but the mountainous terrain is. She feels her calf muscles stra
in as she makes the final push to her third marker, refusing to stop. She knows she hasn’t come this far to quit. Julia spots the glint of tired rust just a quarter mile ahead, and she forces herself to run faster, her breath now hard and ragged against the staccato sound of grasshoppers quickly flapping their wings together with a sound like a fast-moving pair of castanets.

  At the top, she sees a dilapidated barn. Its roof sags sadly to one side as if it will cave in at any minute, and its front wall is long gone, giving her a bird’s-eye view inside. Still hung in the interior of the skeletal structure are black-and-white photos of early settlers who worked this land, proud and virile as they rode horseback, luring their animals back in line with expert hands. Adjacent to the remains of the barn is an old motor home, somehow with all four of its wheels intact.

  Julia doesn’t allow herself to stop and concentrates on her final marker, the one on top of the mountain, where she will stay hidden until Navarro and Felix arrive.

  Julia looks up at the sun still straight in front of her and runs forward in its brilliant path.

  She reaches the top of the mountain and falls down underneath the shade of a massive citrus tree, pulling her knees against her chest until her breathing becomes normal.

  From the distance and on the other side of Julia’s protective canopy, the sound of rap music plays in the background. Julia pulls her knees in even closer to her body and tries to temper her loud breathing until it steadies, lest whoever is playing the music can hear her.

  Two men converse on the other side of the trees, and Julia hears the sound of Jay Z rapping with measured veracity about his ninety-nine problems.

  “Do you think we’re going to get ambushed? I heard talk about a Detroit and L.A. cop sniffing around. But there’s no way they’ll get inside the compound if they can find it.”

  “The cops are pussies. They talk tough, but they don’t have the courage to confront Rossi. If those officers show up today, we’ll take them, easy. Costas called me a few minutes ago and said the police will likely come through the road in back of the compound. Costas has an ambush already in place to kill them. It’s hidden along the road, and they won’t have a clue.”