Aztec Sun

by Judith Arnold

  What did Sandra have?

  As much to escape from the rancid burrito Flannagan tossed into her waste basket as to think things through, Sandra left the news room for her car. As she cruised the freeway, Don Henley’s voice wailed through the speakers, singing about how news reporters loved to air people’s dirty laundry. She didn’t want to be like the reporters in the song, poking into the private business of citizens and exposing their secret foibles for no good reason. Pulitzer prizes weren’t bestowed upon journalists who devoted themselves to sensational coverage of petty scandals.

  On the other hand, if she wrote the puff piece Flannagan expected, she’d wind up getting pigeon-holed. Flannagan was never going to let her write about real news unless she showed him she could investigate, she could find the story behind the story, she could be enterprising and adversarial and all the rest of it.

  She wasn’t going to give up on this assignment, not as long as she still had questions.

  His past remains shrouded in mystery. The line from the business-section article about Rafael Perez resonated inside her. What was the mystery? Why did nobody know anything worth knowing about him?

  She reached the East L.A. block Aztec Sun occupied and pulled to the curb. She couldn’t go back into the studio today. Rafael and Diego would grow suspicious of her coming and going and playing hide-and-seek. And as long as she was on Rafael’s turf, it seemed she would never hear a discouraging word from any of the Aztec Sun employees she interviewed.

  Off the grounds, however, out of earshot of the top brass, maybe she’d be able to shake something loose.

  The traffic on the street was beginning to build with the onset of rush hour. She edged out into the flow of cars, drove to the end of the block, parked near the entry to Cesar’s, and shoved open her car door.

  In deference to the late afternoon warmth, she tossed her blazer back onto the seat before locking up. The burnt odor of auto fumes mingled with a familiar aroma—hot oil, frying corn meal, the perfume Sandra had grown up inhaling in the back rooms of her parents’ restaurant. Gazing up, she noticed an exhaust fan built high into the adobe wall, blowing the heat of the of the cantina’s kitchen out into a back alley that separated Cesar’s from an auto-parts store.

  The smell consoled her. Her parents’ restaurant was, if not elegant, at least upscale, with polished-wood tables and colorful murals on the walls. University professors and students frequented the place. They liked to linger outside in the central courtyard, sipping strawberry daiquiris and margaritas before diving into the culinary delights her mother and grandmother created with the help of their talented staff. People came to Alessandra’s for the cuisine, the ambiance, the service.

  People came to Cesar’s for the camaraderie. For the beer and the fried tortillas, too, but mostly for the company, the chance to kick back with their fellow Aztec Sun workers.

  Sandra smoothed her silk shell blouse into the waistband of her slacks, centered her belt buckle, and strolled into Cesar’s. It was well within the bounds of journalistic ethics to buy a source a beer or two in exchange for a little chat.

  Barely inside the door, she was greeted by a chorus of commentary on her appearance from the men seated at the bar. One of them made a kissing noise and invited her over, promising she wouldn’t be disappointed. “Hey, muchacha, I’m in love with you,” he sang out.

  Sandra sent him a chilly smile and turned away. No one had hassled her when she’d come here yesterday. But yesterday, she’d been escorted by Rafael.

  She saw a couple of tame-looking men seated at a table. One of them was wearing a polo shirt with Vendetta silk-screened across the front in blazing yellow letters. Sandra recalled that Aztec Sun had released a movie named Vendetta a few years ago.

  She made her way among the small round tables until she reached the two men. “Hi,” she said as they glanced up at her. “My name is Sandra Garcia. I’m from the L.A. Post, and I’m doing a story on Rafael Perez and Aztec Sun Productions. Do you work there?”

  “Yeah, we work there,” the older of the two said. He had long silver hair pulled into a braid down his back, and a dark, wizened face. His smile encouraged her.

  “Could I buy you guys a couple of beers and ask a few questions?”

  “You could buy me a case of beer,” joked the younger man, whom Sandra guessed to be in his mid-forties. He was stocky, his belly bulging as if he made a habit of drinking beer by the case. He stood and pulled a chair over to the table for her. She smiled her thanks.

  “You both work at the studio?” she asked as the older one signaled the waitress.

  “Yeah. We’re carpenters. My Uncle Hector, though, he’s a movie star.”

  “Really?” She eyed the older man with due respect.

  He laughed and shook his head. “Three beers,” he requested of the waitress. “On my tab.” He turned to Sandra and explained, “I don’t let ladies buy my liquor for me. Call me old-fashioned, but I buy for the ladies. Not the other way.”

  Sandra’s smile widened. She liked these two. “Are you an actor?”

  “Naw. I’ve been an extra in some of Aztec Sun movies, though. Rafael says I’ve got a good face.”

  “You have a wonderful face,” she concurred, causing him to laugh in embarrassment. She pulled out her recorder. “Listen, do you guys mind if I record our conversation?”

  The men exchanged a look. Neither said anything.

  “It’ll make you think before you talk,” she pointed out. “This way you won’t say anything you might regret later.”

  “All right, go ahead,” the older man said. “Turn it on.”

  “You shouldn’t mind getting recorded,” his nephew teased, “being as you’re a movie star and all.”

  He shook his head again and chuckled. “What happened in Vendetta—” he gestured toward his shirt “—was, Rafael grabbed anyone who wasn’t busy and said, ‘Go stand over there on that street corner and shout at Valdez as he runs by. Curse him out.’ So, I stood on the street corner and shouted curses. I guess I did okay, becuse he asked me to be a wino outside a bodega in El Diablo.”

  “He got shot,” the younger man said. “It was great. They strapped bags of fake blood under his shirt, with little detonators that popped when the gun was fired. And then he staggered around and fell. Man, he was great.”

  “It was scary. I don’t like guns.”

  “Yeah, well, you were supposed to look scared before you looked dead. It was great. I was so proud of him.”

  “It was a change of pace from building sets,” the older man conceded with a grin. The waitress arrived with a round of draft beer and a bowl of tortilla chips. From somewhere in the distance a juke box came to life, booming a Los Lobos tune.

  “Do you like working for Rafael Perez?”

  “Oh, yeah, he’s great,” the younger man said. The older man nodded.

  “I heard a rumor,” she said, “that he single-handedly keeps fifteen churches afloat.”

  “Fifteen?” The older man guffawed, then shook his head again. “Not that many. Maybe five or six.”

  “He must be a very religious man.”

  “He’s a good man,” the older man explained. “Religious? I don’t know. But he’s rich. I guess he figures it can’t hurt to give money to a church.”

  “Yeah, and then there’s his sister,” the younger man added.

  “His sister?” Sandra asked.

  “I hear she’s a nun.”

  “No kidding? A nun!” Questions filled Sandra’s mind, filtered down to her mouth and then froze, unvoiced, as a chill rippled down her spine. A chill, followed by a searing heat. The room seemed to shift, the earth’s axis to tilt.

  She knew he was behind her before he spoke. “My sister,” said Rafael, “is none of your business.”

  Sandra twisted in her seat, prepared to apologize—even though she had nothing to apologize for. Rafael knew she was doing a story on him. He had to assume she’d be talking to people who knew him, trying to
find out about him. She’d broken no laws in chatting with his employees at Cesar’s.

  But as soon as her gaze met his, her words again died on her tongue. He towered above her, tall and dark and glowering, his lips thin and tight with anger, his eyes as black as the far side of the moon.

  Reaching around her, he pressed the off button on her recorder, lifted the machine and shoved it into the tote at her feet. Then he curled his long, strong fingers around her upper arm, his palm warm and leathery against her bare skin, and pulled her gently but firmly out of her chair.

  “Hector, Vinnie,” he acknowledged the two men with a nod. “Ms. Garcia has nothing more to ask you.”

  With that, he hauled Sandra out of the cantina.

  Chapter Five

  THE HEAVY LATE AFTERNOON WARMTH swaddled them like a woolen blanket. Los Lobos was replaced by the drone of traffic cruising by, tires rumbling over pot holes, engines chugging impatiently at the stop light on the corner.

  Without a word, Rafael marched Sandra around the side of the building to the alley. His hand remained on her arm, his fingers not squeezing but iron hard, his skin too callused to belong to a movie mogul. No hundred-dollar Beverly Hills manicure for the head of Aztec Sun. Rafael had the hands of a laborer.

  And the eyes of a killer, she thought, taking in his dark gaze and wondering exactly how alarmed she ought to be. When a man dragged a woman into an alley, something bad usually happened.

  Yet this was Rafael Perez, the cool dude, the good boss, the man about whom no one could think of anything negative to say. Really, how bad was this going to be? Whatever he had in mind for her, she was reasonably certain she’d emerge in one piece.

  The low sun threw a distorted slab of light onto the salmon-colored wall of the bar. Sandra heard the hum of the exhaust fan above her. She smelled the tangy scent of frying tortilla chips once more, chilis and herbs and roasting tomatoes—and the scent of Rafael, soap and citrus and masculinity.

  Deeper into the alley, where the shadows fell in sloping shafts, he turned her to face him but refused to let go of her. She stood close enough to see the day’s growth of beard darkening his jaw. His chest shifted beneath his linen shirt with each ominously slow breath. His hair flared out from his face like a lion’s mane; his eyes were black edged in gold like two solar eclipses, the sort that blinded anyone foolish enough to look directly at them.

  “Listen to me, and listen to me good, mujer,” he murmured, his voice dangerously quiet. “I won’t have you buying my people drinks and interrogating them. You have questions, you ask Diego. Do you understand?”

  She opened her mouth to argue that it was standard practice for reporters to interview acquaintances of an article’s subject, and that in any case Rafael had nothing to worry about. Everyone she’d talked to had been unanimous in praising him.

  But she couldn’t seem to force the words out. Not with Rafael’s palm molded to her arm, not with the gilded dusk light emphasizing the harsh lines of his face, not with his mouth just inches above her own, so close she could feel his breath against her cheeks. Not with her heart pounding like a jackhammer and her pulse roaring in her ears.

  “You ask Diego,” he repeated, his tone growing lower, tauter. “Maybe he’ll answer your questions, and maybe he won’t. But under no circumstances are you to sneak around behind my back and ask people about my personal life. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said, hoping he didn’t notice the quiver in her voice. The fact that she could speak at all reassured her, and she said, more confidently, “In fact, I have lots of questions—but I want answers from you, not Diego.”

  “Any questions you want to ask, he can answer.”

  “What are you afraid of, Rafael?” she asked, wondering why a man who could inspire such awe in others would run from her—and wondering, even more, how she’d found the courage to challenge him.

  He stared at her. That she should doubt his bravery seemed to anger him. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Then let me ask you a few things.”

  He almost smiled—a smile of concession, of grace in defeat. Almost. “Ask,” he said.

  Heartened, she pressed her luck. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  “We’re already somewhere.”

  She broke from his gaze long enough to survey her surroundings. The wall opposite her was spray-painted with colorful streaks, initials, and warnings about who owned the territory and when the world would end. Bits of litter sullied the gravel-covered ground; bulging plastic bags of trash shaped a mound above the rim of the rusting dumpster occupying the far end of the alley.

  Was he really going to make her interview him here? Well, then, damn it, that was exactly what she’d do.

  She met his stern gaze and asked, “Are there drugs on the set of White Angel?”

  “No.” The answer shot out of him like a bullet, quick and deadly.

  “Are you sure?”

  His fingers tensed around her arm. “I’m sure.”

  “How did you get Melanie Greer to work for you?”

  “We offered her a decent script and a decent contract.”

  “She said you were paying her only union scale.”

  “I’m not going to discuss the details of her contract with you. She’s a professional. Her agent okayed the deal, and Melanie signed it.”

  “It’s a big leap for her, from the small screen to a major motion picture.”

  Rafael snorted. “I don’t make major motion pictures. I make B-movies. Maybe Melanie signed on because she wanted to get away from all the Hollywood glamour. Who knows?”

  “You didn’t offer her anything else?”

  His expression relented, anger giving way to bemusement. “Like what? Points? Final cut?”

  He’d already denied the existence of drugs at Aztec Sun. Yet her question had clearly puzzled him, and his puzzlement gave her an edge. She decided to give him another jolt.

  Smiling, she said, “I was thinking maybe you offered to sleep with her.”

  His answering smile was predatory. “Would that bother you?”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “You’re damned right it’s none of your business. Nothing you’ve asked is any of your business.” His grip relaxed a bit more, his fingers lightly stroking the skin below her sleeve. Tiny goose bumps pricked her flesh and then vanished, leaving in their wake a lazy heat that insinuated itself throughout her entire body. She wanted to pretend her sudden feverishness resulted from the September air being churned by the exhaust fan, the evening warmth trapped between the walls of the cantina and the neighboring store—anything but Rafael’s nearness.

  She wanted to pretend, but she couldn’t.

  “Do you trust anyone?” she asked. Her voice was steady but hushed, as if she lacked the breath to support it.

  The question was even less her business than the others she’d asked. Yet he seemed to give it more consideration than anything else she’d tossed at him. As he mulled over his response, he studied her upturned face, his eyes losing their fiery edge, his fingers tracing slow circles on her skin. “I trust very few people,” he told her. “Diego. My sister.”

  “Is she really a nun?”

  “Yes,” he answered, although his look grew forbidding once more. If he claimed his sister was off-limits, he’d be totally within his rights.

  Even so, Sandra was feeling just a little reckless. Reckless enough not to bolt from the alley the instant his hold on her loosened. “Is she the reason you contribute money to so many churches?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you?”

  “The churches I give to are doing good things in the community. The money gets to people who need it.”

  “Your sister has nothing to do with it?”

  “My sister...” He hesitated, pondering Sandra in the waning light. “My sister is important to me. She teaches in a school, and she prays, and she treasures her privacy. If you go pestering her with your question
s, I’ll make your life hell.”

  He spoke the threat calmly, as if he were commenting on the weather. His plain tone and steady gaze lent the warning a greater impact. Sandra didn’t doubt for a minute that Rafael could make her life hell if he chose to.

  “I won’t mention her,” she assured him. “I promise.”

  He continued to study her upturned face, his eyes growing milder, less accusing. As the sun dipped lower the light in the alley grew dimmer, adding intriguing nuances to his features. “Diego and Rosa I trust,” he said, reaching up with his free hand and brushing a strand of hair back from her cheek. “I don’t trust you.”

  The sinuous warmth that had spread through her body rose to her cheeks as he skimmed his work-roughened fingertips along her cheekbone to her temple and down to her chin. His eyes locked onto hers for a pulsing moment, and then he tilted her face up and brushed his lips against hers.

  She heard a gasp—she couldn’t say whether it came from him, herself, or both of them together. They stared at each other, yearning and unsure and as far from trusting each other as it was possible to be. She felt his every intake of breath in her own lungs, the beating of his heart echoing her own. The universe outside the alley had vanished. Nothing existed but Rafael, his eyes boring into her, one of his hands still cupping her chin and the other her shoulder.

  He brought his lips to hers again, slowly, deliberately, sliding his hand deep into her hair and angling her head beneath his mouth. He was no longer restraining her with his grip. She could escape any time she wished.

  But she didn’t wish to escape. It was his kiss, not his hands, that held her in place.

  His lips moved over hers in an erotic ballet, graceful, subtle, each caress a benediction, an invitation. She tried to recall the threat he’d posed just moments ago. She tried to remind herself that she was a journalist, that he was her quarry, that he was uncooperative and suspicious and stubbornly determined to thwart her. But the benediction soothed her soul, and the invitation was too sweet to refuse.

  She lifted her hands to his shoulders as he eased her closer to himself. Through the soft fabric of his shirt she felt rigid bone, sleek muscle, the vibrant heat emanating from his skin. The hair covering his collar in back was silkier than she had expected. She toyed with the curling ends, then combed through them to the nape of his neck.