Javier stared at her. “What?” It was like she was a politician at a podium.
Keno turned to her and scowled. “Shut up, Mari! What the hell are you even talking about?” He turned and stalked his way out the door with Marisol following behind like a small, barking dog. The last of the group made their way out, and the people in the house let go of a collective breath and conversation started up again.
Javier pushed a breath out and felt the adrenaline seep out from his pores. The gaggle of women pulled a shaking Señora Lopez into their midst, and moved her toward the living room and a comfortable chair.
Javier watched out the window as the group dispersed to their cars. His heart stilled when he saw Keno shove Marisol into a blue, beat-up hatchback.
Old San Juan. Could that be the same car?
Sebastian put his arm around Javier’s shoulder and led him to the food table. “Why don’t we get something to eat, huh, Javi?” For a lean man, the padre was always focused on food. Eating was the last thing on Javier’s mind. Lupe had mentioned something about Marisol being involved.…
Javier was distracted as the priest dished out food on a paper plate for him. He picked at some roasted pork and sweet plantain as Sebastian chatted, but he couldn’t summon an appetite. Sebastian was watching him out of the corner of his eye.
“In Jamaica a fight during Nine-Night is a dangerous thing.”
“What’s Nine-Night?”
“It comes from African tradition; the belief is that the deceased’s duppy—”
Javier nodded. “Their spirit.”
“Exactly, the duppy takes nine days to return to Africa. So family and friends gather for nine nights. You’re supposed to give the deceased a good send-off to the next world or the spirit stays around and bothers the living, so fighting is a big no-no.”
“Did you ever see a fight at one anyway?”
Sebastian chuckled. “Oh yes. The tradition also includes hundred-proof rum so, as you can imagine, that isn’t very conducive to quiet reflection.”
Javier chuckled. Sebastian was smiling, but staring at him. Staring at him in that man-of-God-sees-all type way. “¿Qué, Padre?”
“Just wondering how you’re dealing with all this. First Vico, now Memo.”
Hearing the names brought back the feeling of being in a shadow, the memory of fingers across his neck. He shoved a piece of plantain into his mouth and choked it down to buy a moment. He swallowed and felt it trudge its way down every centimeter of his gullet. “I’m fine, Padre.” Lying to a priest now, ay Javi? Add that to his long list of transgressions.
The priest looked at him again. Nothing got past the man. Javier didn’t know why he even bothered. But Sebastian’s voice was soft. “Why don’t you go up to the retreat for a few days, son? I think getting out of town might be a good idea.”
Just the thought of the parish’s retreat center in the mountains brought a smile to Javier’s face. High in the mountains where it was always cool, waterfall-fed pools in the backyard, eating fruit fresh from the trees that hung over the patio, the song of thousands of coquís singing you to sleep at night. It was the closest to heaven Javier had ever experienced. It was tempting, but he had work to do. He had to talk to Lupe and soon.
“Thanks, but I can’t.”
“Sure you can, I gave you the week off, remember?”
“No, I mean I have other work to do.”
Sebastian was giving him that look again.
Javier had to admire the man’s tenacity. “Look, Padre, it’s nothing terrible, I promise. I just … I need to find Izzy, before … well, just before.”
“Gracias a Dios. You had me worried! Yes, I think finding Izzy is a good idea.”
“You do?” Did the priest have some idea what was going on?
“Yes, you can help each other through this difficult time. Maybe once you find him you could both go to the mountains.”
“Oh. Right.” Javier was kind of relieved when an older woman pulled Sebastian away to introduce him to her husband. For a moment he’d thought that Sebastian was going to help him understand what was going on. It was too much to hope that someone would just hand him the answers. When Javier was little he worshipped his father, thought that he was impossibly strong and smart, that he knew the right thing to do at all times, knew all the answers.
But then again, he’d also believed in the Easter Bunny.
July 8, 11:48 A.M.
Lupe
AFTER GETTING JAVIER’S text, Lupe managed to talk her uncle into giving her a lift to Old San Juan again when he came home for lunch. She worried he might be suspicious, but counted on the fact that he would be glad she was not asking about Izzy or the case and instead wanted to do something “normal.” Whatever that was.
“More shopping, sobrina?”
“Yes, I saw a cute sundress that I want to try on.” She said it with a highish bouncy voice that might have lowered her IQ several points.
Ten minutes and one iced latte later, Javier’s car pulled up to the small park in front of Starbucks and Lupe felt her pulse go from zero to sixty. Because of the two shots of espresso, not the boy, she convinced herself. She knew this whole fiasco was totally crazy, even for her. He hadn’t seen her yet. She could still turn around and walk away. Run, even. That would be the sensible thing to do. Yeah, no. She was no coward and something bad was coming, she felt it in her bones.
Lupe stood up straight and as tall as she could get at 5'1", and strode toward the car. She tried not to look at Javier as she opened the door and dropped into the passenger seat. So much for not taking rides from strange guys. That rule lasted, what, twenty-four hours? She looked over to see Javier’s whole body turned toward her and he was smiling big.
Getting into a car with a demigod, however, was the thing of bucket lists.
She tried to smile back, but it felt more like a grimace. “Where are we heading first?”
“Miss Lupe gets right down to business. I like that.” The two-hundred-watt smile lit up the car again and Lupe felt the whole block spin. She put her hand on the passenger door, trying to steady herself. Addict, remember? She already had one of those in her life and that was enough.
“Izzy isn’t going to be easy to find. He’s kind of a vagabundo.” He pulled the car around a sharp turn near the parking garage and they began to make their way out of the city.
“Vagabond? Like, homeless? Izzy?” She pictured his mother’s comfortable home. It had a pool in the backyard, for God’s sake.
“Yes. I mean, he lives with his mother, but over the last few years he stayed wherever he does his drogas. I hear that he’s been trying to get clean, which makes it even more difficult to guess where he’ll be. But we can start with her.”
“No!” It was so loud even Lupe jumped at the sound of her own voice. “I can’t. Izzy’s mother is my uncle’s sister-in-law, and she would tell her sister.…” Her voice trailed off.
Javier looked over at her until the traffic started moving again. “So your uncle doesn’t know you’re here? That you’re with me?”
Lupe didn’t want him to think she was ashamed of being with him. She had so much more to be ashamed of. “No. He wouldn’t understand.”
His jaw was twitching. “Because of my past?”
“No! Well, yes. But mainly he can’t know I’m looking for Izzy, or the murderer. Especially the murderer. And it’s not just you, he wouldn’t approve of me riding alone with anyone of the male species other than him.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Species? Is that what you consider me?”
“Well, yes. You can’t help it if you’re a member of the inferior gender.”
He chuckled at that. The sound was warm and clear, like water tumbling over rocks.
She smiled back. “Besides, if we’re going to hang together, you should know that I’m good at ignoring authority. Even if he’s the chief of police and family.”
“Well, that we have in common.” He took an exit off t
he highway. “There are a few areas we can check, places Izzy liked to go.”
“Okay, so I thought we could talk strategy.”
He smiled as he drove. “Strategy, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. Like, who might want your friends dead.”
Javier’s jaw tightened.
Lupe’s hands flew to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. My father says my mouth goes faster than my brain. What I meant to ask is … is there anyone who might have a grudge against Vico and Memo?”
Javier sighed. “I don’t know. Like I told your uncle, addicts travel in dark circles.”
“Yes, but what connects them? Being cangrejos?”
“But that would mean … me, Izzy, and Carlos would be at risk.”
She sat quietly, wishing she could press Undo. But it was the truth: it could mean that. “Well, hopefully we can find Izzy and put together this puzzle.”
“I hope so.”
They proceeded on a tour of the sketchier parts of the island. To Lupe, the streets looked sucked dry, like a snow cone that you’d drained all the syrup from and all that remained was pale, sad shards of ice.
“Bet these places aren’t in the tourists’ guides.”
“We don’t have the resources that you take for granted on the mainland.”
“I can’t speak for my entire country, but I don’t take anything for granted.” She slumped down in a sulky slab against the car door. But she did take it for granted, didn’t she? There were always dinners out in Stowe, good clothes, a nice house and truck. It made her even more angry that he was right.
The lunchtime traffic crawled to a stop on a block where it seemed all the store windows were crisscrossed with graffiti-decorated wooden boards. The signs above the windows were reminiscent of a better time: BORICUA GROCERY, TROPICAL NAILS, and CARMEN’S FASHION. Lupe wondered where Carmen was now. “Wow, the recession has really hit hard here.”
“We’re in a depression here, not a recession. We have a saying in Puerto Rico: ‘Cuando Los Estados Unidos tiene catarro, Puerto Rico tiene pulmonia.’”
Lupe just nodded. She understood most of it, but was damned if she was going to admit there were words she didn’t know. She always failed that How Puerto Rican are you? test.
“That means, ‘When the U.S. gets a cold, Puerto Rico gets pneumonia.’” He looked around, his gaze resting on a trash-strewn lot out Lupe’s window. “Whenever you think it’s bad on the mainland, you can guarantee that it’s worse here.”
She was furious she didn’t know this. “Why doesn’t my father talk about these things? Doesn’t he think that what goes on down here is important to me? It’s half of my blood!”
They drove in silence while Lupe fumed. As she looked out the window, the scenery changed, the scent of salt in the air got stronger, and she felt her anger begin to dissipate. She sat up higher as a bright turquoise bled into the horizon.
“The ocean!” The minute the words left her mouth she was embarrassed. Of course it was the ocean: it’s an island, after all. But she couldn’t contain her glee as cinnamon-sugar beaches came into view.
Javier turned left onto a street that ran parallel to the beach, small wooden shacks appearing on either side of the road, the smell of fried foods reaching for her through the open windows.
“This is Piñones. Izzy sometimes comes here to hang at the kioskos.” Javier was ducking his head to look out the windows, the traffic weaving slowly through the strip of rustic restaurant and bar kiosks.
Lupe noticed a souvenir stand with brightly colored swim rings hanging from a rope like party garlands, rows of rope hammocks with the Puerto Rican flag printed on them leading to the entrance. A memory of going into a similar place with her parents—her mother was still around in those days—flitted just out of reach, an image of a Spanish doll with a red flouncy skirt and tiny castanets glued to her hands. She remembered wanting it so badly. Was a descendent of that Spanish dancer still there, looking down from the sand-dusted shelf at another sunburned little girl? Lupe was comforted by how little things changed here, how something from her childhood could look exactly the same.
Javier pulled the car over to a seedy open-air bar and turned to face Lupe. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’m going in with you.” Lupe grabbed the door handle just as Javier clicked the locks. She shot him a look that would melt stone. “I know you didn’t just lock me in this car.”
“Lupe, it’s better if I go in alone.”
“Why? Your girlfriend work there or something?”
“No, but they’re much more likely to talk to me alone.”
She glared at him. “Why?”
“I speak Spanish—”
“I can manage! Sort of.”
“I’m from here.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She let go of the handle and crossed her arms over her chest like a petulant child. “Fine.”
He had the nerve to smile that smile at her. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, Dad.” She hated the way her voice sounded, but she hated the feeling of not belonging more. She was half Puerto Rican! Half! If only she actually looked it. When she was little she used to rub her hands over her freckle-covered, pale arms as if that would spread the freckles around and give her skin the same warm color as her father’s.
As she watched Javier walk away, it was hard to stay angry at him when she was fascinated by how his jeans fit his body perfectly without being too tight or fussy, by how his curls tumbled in the ocean breeze. The midday light was weird, though. His shadow was a bizarre shape, stretching and pulling like it belonged to someone else, like his shadow was stalking him instead of following. A horn honked nearby and Lupe jumped, glaring at the impatient businessman who shook his fist at another car, and when she looked back, Javier’s shadow was normal.
A trick of the light.
Had to have been.
After she lost sight of Javier, she stared out the window at the scrawny men leaning on the wooden bar rail like sad, scruffy lions in the midday heat, slowly lifting brown beer bottles to their lips, Bacardí and Medalla banners stretched below them like safety nets. She imagined that once they had been bold lions, full-maned and strong.
She thought of her father sitting in the dark interior of the Vermont version of these bars, his brown skin standing out among the pale New Englanders around him. It was like he was feeling the hopelessness of the island despite his lake house, shiny new truck, and full-time job, like an amputee still feels ghost pain from a long-missing limb.
Lupe was lost in thoughts of her father when the click of the locks and the sudden opening of the driver’s side door made her jump. She yelled, loudly, before she saw Javier slide behind the steering wheel, balancing packets of tin foil in one hand.
He stopped and smiled at her. “It’s just me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, embarrassed, when the smell reached her, the oil-soaked heavy scent of deep-fried Puerto Rican goodness.
“No one has seen Isadore, but I thought you might be hungry.” He opened the shiny silver envelopes exposing the golden banana shape of her favorite island food.
“Alcapurrias!” Lupe said, the r’s rolling off her tongue as her father had taught her. She gleefully took one of the packets from Javier’s hand and realized he was staring at her.
“What?”
“The way you said that—”
“What?” Why were people always surprised when she spoke Spanish without an accent? She didn’t feel confident enough to speak it often, but she had heard it spoken her entire life, so of course she had picked up the Puerto Rican pronunciation.
He shook his head and smiled. “Nothing.”
The smell of the food was smoothing out her annoyance. Who could stay irritated with someone who brought you food like this? She took a bite, reveling in the deep-fried goodness of the plantain exterior, the savory picadillo beef spilling on her tongue. She was pretty sure she scalded her mouth but didn’t care. It was
worth it.
Javier took a bite of an alcapurria as he threw the car into drive.
Back to the business of finding Izzy.
July 8, 1:26 P.M.
Javier
JAVIER WAS TRYING to put himself in Izzy’s place. Lord knew he had spent enough time thinking like Izzy, but luckily he’d met Padre Sebastian and things had changed. Now he worked hard to not think like that again. It made him feel raw, like ripping a bandage off a not-yet-healed wound. But he had to find him. Together the three of them would figure out what the hell was going on.
They had looked in every spot Javier could think of: parks, bars, flophouses. Javier had to admit, there was a part of not finding Izzy he liked, spending more time with Lupe.
Focus on Izzy, idiota! The last resort would be Omar, the dealer he and Izzy went to in El Norte, but Javier was hoping to avoid that. There was no way he was bringing Lupe to that snake pit no matter how much she would insist she could handle it. And he hadn’t known her long, but he knew that she would. Besides, going to one’s dealer two years after getting clean was not a good idea. He’d been so relieved when word reached him that Izzy had started recovery. El Norte was the last place—
Wait, El Norte.
“I know where he is!”
“Great! Where?”
“He probably heard about Memo and went to where he feels safest. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.” Javier had to consciously keep himself from pushing the car’s accelerator all the way to the floor.
The heavy afternoon air dragged through the windows as they weaved in and out of afternoon traffic along Expreso Baldorioty toward Amapola’s north side. He leaned forward in his seat as the white columns of the Museo del Arte came into view on their left and squealed the tires in his rush to get to the parking garage. As they pushed through the glass doors to the museum, Lupe stopped to read the sign.
“An art museum? This is where you think Izzy is?”
Javier was already wound pretty tight, but this made his blood pressure rise even higher. “What, just cause someone does drugs they can’t appreciate art or culture?”
Five Midnights Page 11
