I moved slowly against a thick, flapping white wall of dangling hotel robes. I pushed a robe aside, stepped through, saw the young man moving between a long row of wheeled carts piled high with beige, soiled towels. I shouted after him and he stopped. As soon as my hand went beneath my suit coat and reappeared with my badge, the young man took off. Of course, I thought, he’s got a warrant or something and here I am trying to ask the kid about his superstition. I sprinted to cut him off from the exit. He was circling back, trying to get to the same door where we both entered the laundry room. He dodged behind a row of drying machines and I angled toward the other side. I heard the woman shout as I rammed into him. We both tumbled, a clumsy symphony of limbs and grunts and pained expressions, and skidded across the polished concrete floor. He was struggling as we flew, reminded me of a puppy when you try to hug it as tight as you can. We both smacked our heads against the stainless-steel base of another odd laundry machine and there was a brief pause. I said, “It’s okay. I don’t care about your trouble.”
He struggled harder, found a way to escape my grip. After a few exchanged holds, he was on top of me with a fist in my face. My throat felt small, constricted, cut off from the vault of air in my belly. His strength was wiry, deceptive. Strength gained from hard labor and sacrifice. You know that muscle when it’s used against you—there’s no mistaking where it comes from, how it got there. His left hand gripped my neck and the calluses on his palm scraped my skin. An image of Slade hunched over the bar at Goodwin’s, likely checking the time on his cell, flashed through my mind. Slade saying to himself, “Where the hell is Frank?” as I was about to get my face decorated by a scrappy hotel worker. I saw the young man’s fist clench tight, his bicep scrunch into a hard ball, and I screamed: “Santa Muerte! Santa Muerte! Santa Muerte!”
His eyes widened, centered on my moving lips.
The Santa Muerte pendant dangled in front of me, swung from left to right, its gold color glinting in the halogen light. I reached out with a free hand, closed my fingers around it. “Santa Muerte,” I said. “La Bonita. The White Lady.”
The young man’s fist stayed right where it was.
Ricky held the pendant while he talked to me and, as he did, I began to think of it more like a charm than a pendant. It was a cultural object with magic inside it. I saw that in Ricky’s eyes, and I began to feel it inside me. We stood outside in the dark, cool alley. Ricky placed one foot flat against the building, leaned sideways on the other. He wore a semi-smile while he spoke. And I liked him. Knowing he bested me in our scuffle made me like him more.
“You’re lucky I didn’t hit you, Detective. Maybe I would have messed up your face.”
I shook my head, played with my tie. I patted the silver handcuffs holstered on my belt. “Shoot, Ricky. You hit me and I would have taken you to jail before the blood dried on my lips. You’re a strong cookie, huh?”
Ricky looked down the alley, didn’t seem to acknowledge the compliment. “What you want to know about the lady, Detective? You trying to convert or something?”
I said, “From what?”
Ricky laughed and said, “You got Catholic written all over you.”
“How’s that?”
“I heard all cops are Catholic,” Ricky said. “That’s how those old movies do it.”
“All the good cops are Catholic,” I said. “Even the movies get shit right once in a while.” I told him I wanted to know about Santa Muerte, how he came to believe in her. I wanted to know what she was to him, how it all worked. “I know it takes some rituals from Catholicism, okay? I’m not some hardcore bastard who gives two shits about that. Let me be clear: I’m looking into some murders and it seems like the lady there—” I pointed at his hand wrapped around the charm. “—is some part of the whole thing.”
He said, “It’s because the White Lady deals in vengeance.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You want some revenge, you just ask her. She can give it to you.”
I watched him with interest. He was well-groomed, but still had a roughness about him. I got the sense he had trouble sleeping. His eyes were dark and set back far in his head. His fingernails were cut short, but slim moons of dirt showed beneath them. “Where you do the praying around here, Ricky? They have a shrine around here?” I thought again about the shrines in the neighborhood where Chato met God (or his White Lady). I wondered who asked for vengeance against Chato, whether Santa Muerte made choices between people. That’s the problem with believing all sorts of shit you can’t see—it’s full of paradox and senseless logic. As a Catholic and a murder detective, I knew paradox and senseless logic like I knew the penal code. But there I went thinking too hard again.
Ricky watched me, too. I saw the thoughts turning in his head, behind those see-it-all eyes. Why should I let you in? Who do you think you are? Go fuck yourself, Detective.
“Maybe she doesn’t want you to see her. You think about that?” His eyes fell to the pavement and he shifted against the wall, leaned so it looked like he was holding up the entire building.
“You work here?”
He nodded and said, “In the laundry.”
“You like it?”
“Why, you going to get me something better?”
I shook my head. “You don’t need me for anything, Ricky—I know that.”
“What’s the point of your question?”
“I’m trying to get to know you, my fellow citizen. Shit, I’m just being friendly. Is something wrong with that? You’re the one who wanted to hit me.”
“And you want me to show you my saint. I’m talking to you and looking at you, but I’m thinking you don’t see. You don’t believe.”
“What’s to see, Ricky? I’m trying to get to know her. I want to believe, man.”
“Maybe you say you do, but it’s easy to talk. Like everybody, all the Catholics, maybe you’re going to call me a witch, say I’m perverted. You’re going to burn down my church, call it a cult.” He dropped his hand from the Santa Muerte charm and it bounced into his chest.
“I’m a detective, Ricky. The things I do are for families, for people to know the truth. I’m out here trying to find a way for death to make sense. That’s all I am, all I’m doing.”
He shrugged and said, “You get a curse if you laugh at her.”
“There’s nothing funny about the two dead men I’ve seen the past few days,” I said. But my mind flashed on the desert and the Jacoby girl’s dead hand, how it jutted from the sand like she was reaching for me from her shallow grave. “Death is my work, and it’s nothing to laugh about. Or to mock. I hope you know that.”
“What do you want with the White Lady then?”
I said, “I’m trying for justice, Ricky. That’s why I want to know. I’m doing what’s right.”
Ricky nodded, pushed himself away from the wall. He balanced atop one foot, took a long slow step, and turned to fully face me. Behind him, the dark alley framed his face and his eyes seemed brighter somehow, like I flipped a power switch in his head. He said, “You want to go to church, Detective? I have some time before work—let’s go.”
“Where’s it at? I need to let my partner know.”
Ricky was already past me and halfway down the alley, headed toward the busy street. He called out to me in an eerie voice, “It’s not far, Detective. You’ll be home in no time.”
Chapter 22
It was still hot. The afternoon had worn on in the way they tend to do. As I walked with Ricky east on Broadway, we passed a group of Somali cab drivers sipping coffee outside a liquor store, dodged a bus as it pulled to a stop for a group of uniformed high school students, and waded through the crowd of retail and office workers headed toward the nearest trolley stop. The sun hit our backs and I felt sweat pool in the center of my back and run down to my waistband. It was a welcome change when Ricky headed south on a side street. The street ran alongside a tow yard and the rear loading dock of
a Salvation Army storefront. On the opposite side of the street, I noted the 4500 block addresses of a tailor, a tire shop, and two or three bars I’d never frequented. Ricky moved fast and my breathing quickened as he hustled along the sidewalk. He told me he needed to clock in at the hotel by four—we had almost thirty minutes. I imagined Slade could wait that long for me to show up at Goodwin’s. If not, it wasn’t the end of the world. He’d chew me out, but I could take care of myself. Slade knew that.
Ricky stopped after we passed the Salvation Army. I noted a few frayed couches dumped in the lot, numerous piles of old clothes and, in one large area, a jumble of particle board and pine—desks and dressers and random armoires.
We turned right and walked through an empty parking lot toward a small white building with gang writing scrawled on one side. Above the building, the cityscape loomed like the open mouth of a dog. The entrance had a keypad, like what you’d see at fast food restaurants: A vertical row of silver buttons had to be pressed in the right order, otherwise the door wouldn’t unlock. Ricky punched the buttons—I tried to memorize the pattern, but he moved in front of me and I wasn’t sure I got it—and the door swung open into cool dark air.
Inside, I smelled incense and sulfur. A small radio played Mariachi music somewhere out of sight. Ricky moved forward and crossed through a hallway, turned right into a doorless and windowless room. There were candles lit at the front of the room—I counted ten rows of foldable steel chairs, maybe fifteen to a row. The candles flanked a likeness of Santa Muerte, and I shivered when I took in the sight: It was a reclining skeleton with a dark hooded cape drawn over it, a reaper’s blade propped between its bony legs. The skeleton was propped up on what looked like a throne, all plush red fabric and golden armrests. The candlelight hit the bones with delicate splashes of fiery illumination. The scene appeared manufactured, like an amusement park ride, but my mouth dried when I saw it and my groin pulled up into my swollen belly. I swear the skeleton’s eyes shined and I blinked hard to clear my vision. Tears welled in my eyes and I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I followed Ricky through the chairs and the incense smell got stronger while the sulfur vanished. We stopped a few feet from the figure and I reached up to wipe my cheek—my right hand came away wet and it surprised me. The yellow candlelight made the skeleton seem to twist and shake in front of me. The light flitted through the visible white bones and reflected off the dark cape.
Beside me, Ricky kneeled and began to mumble. He closed one hand over the gold charm around his neck, and he swayed to the rhythm of his own voice.
I didn’t know what to do. After some hesitation, I wiped my tears across my chest and kneeled beside Ricky. I crossed myself without thinking. I bowed my head. I heard Ricky’s voice, but the words were faint, a selection of Spanish I didn’t know well enough to pick out at his subdued volume. He sniffed twice and I turned to see that he, too, was crying. I reached up and wiped more tears from my cheeks. I was unsettled. My groin pulled up higher into my belly and my throat constricted. I had the overwhelming urge to weep. It was a feeling I knew well from the previous six months, but one I’d never allowed to grip me. I shoved it back down inside, buried it in the deepest parts of my being. But somehow being there in front of Santa Muerte, the feeling seemed too powerful to suppress.
I heard a sob and realized it came from my own mouth.
I looked into the skeleton’s eyes. Shiny and deep, like pools of black water. I sobbed again and Ricky’s voice beside me went silent. The heat from the flickering candles warmed my face. Another sob. I closed my eyes. For a moment, I saw only blackness and felt the warm candlelight against my closed eyelids. But the darkness gave way to a shimmer. I tried to see through it, with my eyes closed, and it began to wave. It was like moving through water. From a great distance, I heard more sobbing. My body lightened, lifted. I kept moving through the water and went deeper, deeper, deeper. Until the candlelight didn’t feel warm on my face. Until I shivered and shook. Goosebumps erupted on the back of my neck and I squinted without squinting—I tried to see into the cold black waters.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t descending, but rather the water was flowing over me, rising toward me, into me, closing all around me. I couldn’t breathe, but the water cleared, grew thin. I felt warm all over and a face appeared in front of me—it was my wife. It was Miranda. Her lips bloated, purple with blood. And her hazel eyes had a dead look to them—an anti-shine that made me think of matte finish spray paint. She’s floating, I thought.
My God, Miranda’s floating.
But my body tightened. Transformed from warm to hot. Sweat ran across my face and neck and shoulders. It dripped onto the backs of my hands, pooled on my upper lip.
Kneeling there in front of Santa Muerte, with my eyes still squeezed shut, I watched Miranda’s bloated face slip beneath a sheen of blackish water, grow faint, sink into the sea of my mind.
And she was gone.
Chapter 23
I woke up with my face planted into cold dirty cement, my mouth dry and sticky. I shifted to my knees. The candles still burned, though shorter and with smaller flames. And she was there, Santa Muerte. I stared at her for a minute before hearing shoes scuff the carpet behind me. I turned to see a short Mexican woman in a slim, dark-colored pantsuit. She was a thin woman, but the way she moved—she came toward me in a few short steps—spoke of strength and surety. She lowered a hand and I took it, let her yank me—a near-fat man—to my feet. I towered over the woman, but I felt small. I’d felt that way around other men, sure, but never with a woman.
She glared at me and smirked. “You fell asleep beside our White Lady, the White Sister.”
“I think…” I ran my tongue up and down the sides of my mouth. It was like scraping stone with sandpaper. “I think I passed out. Maybe I—”
“You let the lady do her work.” She moved past me to lower her head beside the skeletal figure.
I turned and watched. “Are you one of her followers?”
Without looking at me, the woman said, “We don’t follow her. She gives us gifts, answers our prayers. If you have something you need, the lady will listen to you. In turn, we listen to ourselves. This is all she wants from us.”
I knew it sounded odd, slightly mystical and unfounded. But I remembered that feeling of black water moving into me, the image of Miranda surfacing, and I believed the woman. Not fully. Not in the sense that I worshipped Santa Muerte, but in the sense that—in the woman’s own mind—she was giving me the truth. I listened to her and I heard the truth. I’d heard so many lies in my life. I knew the timbre of lies, the occult melody of murder and denial. This woman didn’t speak that way—the criminal way.
I said, “Has she done anything for you?”
She lifted her bowed head, stared into the skeleton’s eyes. “She killed my husband. I thank her every day for that. And I know it was the work of vengeance, because vengeance is an answered prayer.” She turned and held out her hand. “I’m Vera. I’m caretaker for this place.”
I shook her hand. I looked around at the room again—a church, really—and turned back to Vera with confusion. “Is this a…church? A shrine?”
“We started here because nobody will have us.” She motioned toward the skeleton. “They fear the lady and, maybe more, they fear the church.”
“You mean—”
“Catholics.” She half-smiled. “Like you, mister…”
“Pinson,” I said. “Frank Pinson.”
“Police?”
“I am, but I’m not here for that, to give you any trouble.”
She walked past me through the rows of chairs, sat down in one near the back of the room. The metal creaked under her slight weight. “If Ricky brings you here, I cannot deny you. My role is to bring people to Her, to let them pray, to have those prayers answered.”
I said, “Like a priest.”
“I’m not a priest, Mr. Pinson. I’m a caretaker. That’s all.”
I moved through the chairs. My legs were weak and I was thirsty. In the back of my mind, I worried about Slade, what I’d tell him. I stopped in front of Vera and cleared my throat. “I’m a detective here in the city and—”
“I can see that.”
“I’m investigating two murders. Each victim was connected to this,” I said motioning at the shrine. “To Santa Muerte. One had a tattoo and the other carried a rosary—” I caught myself and said, “A charm around his neck. They were both gangsters, and we think—”
“Narcos,” she said. “Traffickers.”
“That’s correct.”
She straightened in her seat, brushed off her pantsuit. “I know about the murders, but it’s not what you think, Detective. It runs deeper than you imagine.” She looked past me toward the figure at the front of the room, the skeleton bathed in candlelight and prayer. “Santa Muerte is with you, Detective. She’s angry. Like you. She’s grieving. Like you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that the lady is grieving. She’s lost something. And haven’t you?”
The warm, swallowed-up feeling I had beside Santa Muerte faded, and I got angry. It happened in an instant. “What do you know about what I’ve lost?”
Vera shook her head, stood, walked away from me. She grabbed a vacuum-broom leaning against a wall and began running it across the thin carpet. “I don’t know anything,” she said. “But Santa Muerte knows everything. Some say she is the Saint of Narcos. But sometimes we forget, even people who do bad things need a saint. Isn’t that true?”
I turned and studied the figure again. Anger spread through my body like a rising, uncontrollable fever. I wasn’t mad at Vera or Saint Death. No, I couldn’t be. I was mad instead at the world for being what it was. I was mad at the nonsense of death, at the futility of murder and its cruel punishments. I was mad at being alive while my wife slept in a coffin. And I was angry at my faith for talking saviors and disciples and promises of heaven. In that moment, staring at Saint Death, I didn’t believe a damn word of what I’d learned. Fuck Sunday school, I thought, my wife is dead. And I wanted to get back at something or somebody for that—I wanted vengeance, and I didn’t give one fat shit where or who I got it from. I left the Santa Muerte shrine with that feeling raging in my head and through my whole body.
To Bring My Shadow Page 11
