“Maybe in your size,” I interrupted. “I can’t find the ones that do that for asses my size. Everything above a ten is basically a denim girdle.”
“My point,” Mikela cut in, “is that some old, white CEO with a trophy wife somewhere has decided how you should look, for the sensibilities of his brethren. How you wear your hair, what soap you use, the way you speak, how you see yourself in the mirror—all of it.”
“Men look at women,” I shrugged. “Women look at men. Welcome to the human race.”
Mikela shook her head, sighing. “Fish don’t understand water until you take them out of it.”
I thought about asking if her sister’s death had anything to do with her enlistment in the gender wars, but it occurred to me that the reason she hadn’t shot me yet was probably because she didn’t know that I’d figured out who she was. I hadn’t clocked her until after she and Maines had started back to Azula, so he wouldn’t have told her. And my coming after her didn’t necessarily mean I knew anything more than that she’d tried to kill the guy she’d met me with.
“Listen, Rachael,” I said, using the name to test my theory, “I get annoyed with the male of the species as much as the next chick, but that doesn’t make me want to wipe out the entire brotherhood.”
Mikela’s lips curled into a disagreeable smile. She seemed to relax slightly, making me hope I’d been right about her feeling safe with her anonymity.
“We don’t want to wipe them all out,” she said. “Just the ones who are trying to wipe us out. I think that’s fair, don’t you?”
Before I could figure out how to reply, heavy steps clomped up onto the porch. Mikela looked out the window behind me and got off the sofa. I turned and saw that Nalin had arrived, and was talking to the woman on the front porch. Mikela went over to the door and opened it, remaining inside so that she could listen through the screen door and still keep an eye on me.
I leaned my head back against the windowsill, grateful for the interruption, and put the brain to work on how I could use the angle I’d just realized existed. Did Nalin know that Rachael was a fake? If she didn’t, outing her might give me some kind of edge. If Nalin did know, the effort would be pointless, and letting them know that I knew might get me killed. Just once, it’d be nice for that not to be one of the choices.
It was colder today; someone had started a fire somewhere, and the faint sweet smell of wood smoke hovered in the room, drowning out Mikela’s cigarette. I reached for the blanket folded at the end of the bed, glancing toward the far end of the room, and something tickled my brain. I let my eyes slide casually across the other windows, which gave a full 360-degree view around the house. A fire going within fifty miles would have shown smoke out there in the landscape, but there was nothing.
Then I realized: the smell. It wasn’t wood smoke. It was that Cuban cigar.
A quick look out the front window showed me that neither of the women on the porch was smoking. It was possible another member of the crew had lit up nearby, but something made me doubt that any of these women were cigar aficionados. I supposed it was possible, it just didn’t seem that bloody likely. What was more likely was that Hector and his compañeros were somewhere nearby.
My hand wandered toward my chest. The phone was still there, pressed up against my breastbone. I could feel the warmth of the battery, so it would still be sending out a GPS signal. Hector must have had Benny track me here during the night. Hector would have Cigar and his crew along, easily outnumbering the three women holding me, but maybe the rest of Nalin’s force was fanned out around the house.
Nalin stepped inside, and she and Mikela stood near the front door speaking to each other in low voices. Nalin said something through the screen to Salt-and-Pepper, who propped her rifle against the siding and stepped down off the porch to head for the van parked some ten yards away. After a few minutes, Nalin and Mikela came back over to my end of the room.
I had closed my eyes, forcing myself not to turn away from the memory of my mother’s face, scrunched into that eviscerating sneer. The old words coming from her mouth—those were what I wanted. I selected the ones I needed, then opened my eyes.
“She’s not one of you,” I said to the tall woman, in Apache. At least, I hoped that’s what I’d said. I’d never learned to speak it fluently, just picked up words and phrases here and there from my mother.
The two women glanced at each other, then Nalin looked at me. She took a breath, measuring me with her eyes, then replied in the same language, “Neither are you.”
A flash of adrenaline shot through me. As I’d hoped—and maybe remembered—the two tribes still shared enough in common after all these centuries as neighbors to understand and speak each other’s languages. Also, the puzzled look on Mikela’s face told me that she didn’t know that. If she was trying to hide her identity from Nalin, which was the bet I was rolling the dice on, making that apparent would sink her.
I took another shot at speaking Apache to Nalin: “Her face is not her face.”
“What’s she saying?” Mikela demanded.
Nalin turned her head, gazing carefully at Mikela, and I saw her realize that if Mikela was who she said she was, she should understand what I was saying. Mikela’s already wary expression intensified, and she took a quick step back, leveling her AK at Nalin and me.
“Turn around,” she said to her boss.
Nalin did it, without haste, her expressionless eyes sliding across me.
Through the window above the bed, I saw Salt-and-Pepper coming back from the van. Mikela saw her, too. She sidled up and grabbed the collar of Nalin’s coat, planting the muzzle of her AK at the base of the tall woman’s neck.
“One word, one sound…” she muttered.
Nalin’s dark eyes glittered, and a smile touched her wide mouth. “You might take me down, but that won’t get you out of here. You’ve been among us long enough to know that.”
Mikela froze for a second, wheels turning, then unwound her hand from Nalin’s collar to reach quickly into her coat pocket. She brought out a set of keys, which she tossed onto the bed.
“You’ll go out first,” she said to me.
“No, thanks,” I said.
She took two quick steps back, away from Nalin, so that her gun covered both of us again. “It’s not a request.”
I unlocked the cuffs and scrambled to my feet, glad to be at liberty again, but trying to figure out how not to get shot when I opened the front door.
Mikela gestured me over with her AK. Salt-and-Pepper was on the porch now, stretching and yawning next to her chair. Her rifle was still leaning against the house.
I put my hand on the screen door and pushed.
Then I was on the far side of the porch, looking at a widening pool of blood underneath Salt-and-Pepper’s prone body, the echo of the shot that had killed her dying away.
I hadn’t had any warning this time, as I did when I’d watched Benny and Page move Orson Greenlaw’s body—no cooling of my limbs, no high, drifting feeling. I’d just disappeared like a light switch going off.
Mikela was standing to my right, her hand wrenched up in Nalin’s collar again, her AK still pointed at Salt-and-Pepper. Both of them were staring at the body with wide eyes.
The fragrance of the cigar seemed stronger now. I don’t know why Mikela and Nalin didn’t smell it. Maybe they did. It’s not like they were keeping me in the loop.
Mikela brought her AK back up to Nalin’s neck and gestured at me to head for the van. I stepped down off the porch and began to walk toward the afternoon sun like a daytime ghost. It struck me that Nalin had to be fronting about us not being able to get out. That shot on the porch would have brought the rest of her gang running, if they’d been within earshot.
It also should have brought Hector out. What the hell was he waiting for? Once we started driving, we would be very difficult to follow. Plus, I had no idea where Mikela might take us. It might be somewhere with an even scarier crew than Nalin’s b
unch.
By the time we reached the van, the cigar odor had become so strong that it almost made me cough. Finally realizing that Hector must be waiting for me to create a diversion, I paused.
Mikela, a few steps behind me, snarled, “Don’t even think about it.”
I turned my head to look at her over my shoulder. She still had the end of the AK pressed against the base of Nalin’s skull. If she pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t be my brains painting the desert.
I turned the rest of my body, facing them. Mikela moved back, away from Nalin, who stayed where she was, holding completely still. The muzzle of the AK swung toward me.
I took a step toward Mikela. Her hand flinched at the trigger of her rifle, drawing my eye. I kept it there as I took another step.
It wasn’t that I somehow knew she wouldn’t shoot me; it was that I didn’t care if she did. As my right hand moved out away from my body, toward the barrel of her AK, that truth hit me full force: I was ready to die. I wasn’t afraid of it. That’s what the weird thrill I kept feeling was. It was hope. My provocative talk to dangerous people, my rash behaviors, the suffocation that crushed me upon waking, maybe even this weird checking-out thing I kept doing. I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Mikela did fire, but I had already started to pull the AK toward me, and the rattle of shots went past my right side. She lurched forward, following the gun, and I brought my left arm up, pointing the elbow at her face. She fell into it and separated from the rifle, her head snapping back. The rest of her did likewise. She tilted backwards and sat down hard on the sand, the wind grunting out of her.
I lifted the AK and stepped sideways so that I could get Nalin in my sights without taking my eye off Mikela. The tall woman wasn’t there.
It was flat all around, but she was nowhere to be seen. Unless there was a hole in the ground nearby or someone had invented the transporter without my knowledge, disarming Mikela had taken longer than I thought.
“Hector!” I shouted out into the heat.
There was no answer. The smell of the Cuban cigar was overpowering.
“Hector!” I called again.
Nothing. No movement, no sound. The odor of the cigar suddenly disappeared. My heart was pounding.
I gestured at Mikela to get up and into the van. I climbed into the back so that I could keep her covered while she drove.
The going was slow, dodging rocks and plants, but at the end of an hour, the compound of shacks where Nalin had traded me for Finn appeared in the distance. It was sundown, starting to get dark, and smoke rose from between the buildings. I made Mikela park some distance away so that we wouldn’t have to dodge gunfire. Then we got out and walked, me behind her with the AK.
As we neared the compound, Aguilito appeared. He’d been on lookout, concealed behind a section of wood fencing. He shaded his eyes in our direction, then called behind him. Hector and Cigar appeared, and when Hector realized it was me, he trotted out toward us.
“What the hell, man?” I said to him as he came within earshot. “Did you go deaf or something out there?”
He was on me, hugging me, muffling me with kisses, and these last words were smothered in his shoulder. He pulled back and said, “What?”
“I knew you were out there, I could smell that cigar,” I said. “Why didn’t you come in after that first shot?”
Hector glanced at Cigar, his face baffled. The gangster had taken the AK, to cover Mikela. He returned Hector’s look in kind, with a shrug.
“Not sure what you mean,” Hector said. “We’ve been here since daybreak. Fanned out and searched through the night but we couldn’t find a trace. Aguelito drove Finn back to Sonoyta to get his plane early this morning, so we could search from the air. We’ve been doing it in shifts since then.”
Annoyed, I fished the phone out of my bra and waved it at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I tried. Benny couldn’t get a signal.”
“Stop gaslighting me,” I told him, a hot anger rising up into my throat. “It’s not funny, and I don’t like it.”
Hector appealed to Cigar with a gesture.
“He’s speaking the truth,” Cigar said. “You can ask any of my people.”
I remembered the scent of the Cuban suddenly disappearing, the lost minutes between being inside the house and seeing Salt-and-Pepper dead on the porch, Nalin vanishing into nowhere. I was apparently losing whatever grip on reality I had left.
“I need some rest,” I murmured. My limbs felt hot and weak and my stomach was doing bad things.
“No problem,” Hector said. “We need to lay low until dark, and it’s gonna be too hot to do much of anything until then. We can take a siesta in the bunkhouse.”
Cigar prodded Mikela with the AK, and we started toward the compound with the two of them in front. Hector kept hold of my hand, and I made myself focus on the warmth of his rough palm, the sensation of being pulled forward. If I thought about anything else, I’d be gone again.
At the compound, Cigar called out, and Grenade Launcher and Braids appeared from one of the shacks. Hector pulled me toward another.
It was cool inside, the windows, walls, and doorway hung with blankets to keep out the heat and light. There was a twin-size mattress on the plank floor, with a crate next to it serving as a side table. I dropped onto the mattress and stretched out, sighing at the sweet pleasure of finally being able to relax.
“I’ll get everything set up and wake you when we’re ready to head out,” Hector said.
There was a soft scuffle at the door, and Cigar came in. Hector turned, and I rolled up onto one elbow.
“She won’t be any trouble,” he said, looking amused. “She’s scared shitless.”
“Of what?” I said.
“These women, the group she joined, they call themselves Kokoi’uvï—ghost women. They consider themselves dead already. They are greatly feared in these parts, for good reason.”
My head started to feel cool and light as I remembered Nalin’s sudden disappearance. I pulled Hector’s hand over to my wrist and wrapped his fingers around it.
“They don’t normally kill their own kind,” Cigar went on, “but they are ruthless with traitors.”
“What do you mean by ‘their own kind’?” I said. “Women?”
“Las mujeres Indias—Native women. The Kokoi know all the old tribal torture shit, and they use it generously on traitors. Being captured is considered treason.” Cigar lifted his chin toward the shack containing Mikela. “If they ever see her again, I would not like to be present.”
Hector glanced at me, no doubt remembering what I’d told him about my grandmother’s war stories.
Despite my exhaustion, Cigar’s remarks were exercising the brain. “How long have they been around?”
“It’s hard to say exactly, but they formed in response to these women being killed along the border in recent years,” he said. “They extract the vengeance denied the families.”
“The feminicidios,” I sighed, falling back onto the bed. “Why does everything go in fucking circles?”
“I’d say ‘wheel of life,’ but I don’t wanna get slapped,” Hector cracked.
I laughed and lay there looking at the rough-hewn rafters, just breathing and trying not to think. It didn’t work.
“The Kokoi, they only accept Native women?” I said to Cigar.
He nodded.
“Well, that explains why Mikela stole Rachael’s identity, but it doesn’t explain why she wanted to join up with them in the first place.”
“Didn’t you tell me that her sister was killed by whoever’s doing this feminicidio shit?” Hector said.
“That’s right,” I said, remembering. “That’s the party line, anyway.”
Hector made a “there you go” gesture.
Voices rose outside the shack. Cigar excused himself and left.
“You want me to tuck you in?” Hector said, sitting down near my feet.
“God damn it,” I said, the mat
ernal phrase reminding me. “I was supposed to meet Norma and my mother yesterday.”
“Call her,” Hector said. “That phone I gave you has already been spoiled.”
I got it out of my pocket. “You’re going to go broke replacing these things.”
“They’re cheap,” he said.
I punched in Norma’s number, then clicked “call.” She answered right away.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” I joked. “You guys didn’t drive all the way down from Florence, did you?”
“Of course we did,” Norma complained. “What happened?”
“Are you still on the O’odham?”
“Yeah, we stayed over. Your mom was too tired to drive all the way back.”
Hector had gotten up and was doing something at the table on the other side of the shack.
“Just put her on the phone,” I said.
Norma made a scoffing noise. “You know she won’t.”
I’d inherited my loathing of telephone communication from my mother, but thought maybe she’d gotten over it after all these years.
“Well, I dunno what to tell you,” I said. “She’ll just have to write me a letter or something.”
Norma muffled the phone, and I could hear her talking to someone in the room with her.
“Where are you?” Norma said when she came back.
“Not that far away, actually, but I can’t come back onto the rez.”
“We’ll come there.”
I laughed at the idea of Norma and my mother trying to make polite conversation with our hosts. “Uh, no.”
“Well, somewhere in between, then,” Norma replied, sounding irritated.
I sighed, watching Hector raise a cracked blue mug to his lips on the other side of the room. “It’s just not a good time, Norma.”
“You promised,” she said. “I did what you asked me, and it wasn’t easy.”
The chances of me being anywhere within driving distance of my mother again—ever—were slim, especially after I pulled the trigger on my Mexican retirement. I’d probably never get another chance to see her in person, and if I knew Norma, she’d find a way to make my life a living hell until I held up my end of the deal.
South of Nowhere: A Mystery (A Julia Kalas Mystery) Page 14