Aztec Sun

by Judith Arnold

  Again Ricardo’s eyes flickered with a hint of respect at her forthrightness. “Luck,” he said.

  She smiled and shook her head. “Try again.”

  “Why not luck? He found a legitimate way to make a buck. I didn’t.”

  “How did he find it? Why didn’t you?”

  “Oh, lady, give me a fuckin’ break.” He tossed the cigarette angrily onto the floor. Sandra instinctively glanced toward the window in the door. She didn’t want to believe she was in any danger, but Ricardo was a convicted drug dealer, after all. One didn’t end up in prison by acting like a Boy Scout.

  Refusing to allow her apprehension to surface, she took another deep, steadying breath. “Let me ask this, then. What is Rafael hiding?”

  Ricardo leaned back in his chair and regarded Sandra from beneath lowered lids. He was measuring her, weighing his response. “What makes you think he’s hiding something?”

  “Just a hunch.” She returned Ricardo’s gaze, feeling brave for no good reason. “Does it bother you that he’s rich and you’re in jail?”

  “He supports my wife and kids. I got no gripe.”

  “Financially supports them?”

  “Yeah.”

  She tapped her pen lightly against her pad. “One thing that’s puzzled me is where he got the money to start up his studio.”

  Ricardo laughed. “You think he’s financing Aztec Sun with drug money?”

  “The possibility crossed my mind.”

  Still laughing, Ricardo shook his head. “I wish I could make as much money selling cocaina as he makes selling blood and sex on the screen. I’m small time, senorita. He’s the one with the golden touch, not me.”

  “Everyone at the studio acts as if he thinks drugs are the worst thing in the world.”

  “It’s his privilege to think that. You look like a nice lady, you don’t know what it’s like on the streets, okay? Drugs screw people up. Rafael knows that.”

  “Then where did he get the money to start a studio?”

  “We’re fighters, okay? He and I. We’re brothers. We both know how to fight.”

  Sandra frowned. What exactly was Ricardo saying? Had Rafael raised his production company’s start-up capital by boxing?

  Ricardo must have read her puzzlement in her expression. “Forget the money, okay?” He lit another cigarette. Sandra had grown inured to the smell by now. She waited impatiently while he shook out the match and dropped it onto the floor. “We’re brothers. Los Hermanos del Sol. You learn how to figure out what you need, and you go out and get it. Whatever it is. Money. Respect. Whatever. When you’re a Hermano you go out and do what you have to do to get what you need.”

  “Los Hermanos del Sol,” Sandra repeated, groping through her rusty memory of Spanish. “Brothers of the sun?”

  Ricardo stared at her, smoking silently.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a gang.”

  “Rafael was in a gang?”

  “He still is. Once you’re in it, you don’t leave. It’s in your blood.”

  “What do you mean, it’s in your blood?”

  Wedging the cigarette in his teeth, Ricardo rolled his right sleeve up past his elbow, past the hard biceps muscle to his shoulder. He twisted in his seat to display for her the tattoo adorning his skin there: a circle rimmed in flame.

  She recalled the sculpture of the Aztec sun she’d seen in Rafael’s office that morning, and the logo of his film company. Ricardo’s tattoo was eerily similar.

  Her head ached from too much information. She needed to sort it, assimilate it, but she didn’t have time. “He named his studio after your gang?”

  “No.” Ricardo rolled the sleeve back down, then took the cigarette from his mouth and shook his head. “The gang is brothers. The Brothers of the Sun. We ruled the neighborhood when we were kids. The studio came later.”

  “Did gang money finance—”

  “Forget the money,” Ricardo snapped. “He had a change of luck. Ten, fifteen years ago, whenever it was, after his last big fight. A priest, a friend of my sister’s, he helped Raf get a job hammering nails on a movie set. Bunch of Anglos in a movie, trying to act like greasers. They were doing it wrong, so Raf taught them how to do it right, and they taught him how to make movies. He made a movie cheap, and it earned a big profit, and then the money flowed his way. So now he’s legitimate. But before he went legitimate he was in a gang, just like me. He was the same scum as the rest of us. And it doesn’t matter what you do with the rest of your life. Once it’s in your blood, you’re always a part of it. It’s always a part of you. You’re always a hermano.”

  Sandra tried to merge her image of the cool, laconic movie executive with that of a street punk. For some reason, it wasn’t as difficult as she would have liked.

  “We were survivors, okay? Brothers. We kept each other alive and we kept Rosa safe. It was the way we knew how to live.”

  “Does Rafael have a police record?”

  Ricardo shrugged. “He went through the juvenile system a few times. He never got in trouble like this.” He waved vaguely at the barred window, the cement walls. “This was not for Rafael. He was always luckier than me.”

  “Was your gang into drugs?”

  “We sold, we clocked. Raf tagged along. He was torn in two. He would have died for a brother—not just me but any of the hermanos. He would have laid down his life for us, I know this for a fact. He would die for us today if he had to. But the drugs always scared him. And a Chicano man can not let anyone know he’s scared.”

  “I’m a little unclear. Did he actually sell drugs?”

  “He did what he had to do.”

  She wished Ricardo would be specific, but he clearly had no intention of going into detail. “So he was—is—a member of your gang.”

  “Ask him to show you his arm,” Ricardo said, tapping his finger a couple of inches below his right shoulder, at the spot where his skin wore the mark of the Aztec Sun. “He has it there. Fancy businessman, rich sonofabitch, with his noble attitude and his donations to the Church. But look at his arm and you’ll see what he really is, senorita. He’s a Hermano. No better than the rest of us. Just luckier.”

  Luckier was right. She mentally reviewed the press packet Diego had given her on her first day at Aztec Sun, with its emphasis on the studio and White Angel and its dearth of information on Rafael’s background. “What about Diego Salazar?” she asked. “He and Rafael have known each other since childhood.

  “Salazar.” Ricardo sneered. “He’s a poco perro.”

  “A little dog?”

  “He yaps. He pants. He runs and fetches and he humps anything that stands still too long.”

  “Was he a Hermano?”

  “In his dreams, maybe.”

  “Rafael is close to him, though. He told me Diego is one of the few people he trusts.”

  “In his own way, Salazar can be dependable.”

  “It’s more than just dependable,” Sandra said. “I got the impression they were very good friends.”

  “Yeah, okay, the whole life-saving thing.”

  “What life-saving thing?”

  Ricardo studied her for a minute. “Raf doesn’t like to talk about it. I thought maybe Salazar would have told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  Ricardo mulled over his response. “It was a long time ago. Rafael was hurt and Salazar got him to a hospital in time. Raf is still grateful for that.”

  “I should think he would be. To save a person’s life—”

  “Look. The thing about Salazar, he’s a perro. Man’s best friend, right? All he wants is to be loved. He’ll do anything for a scratch behind the ears.”

  “Is he your friend as well as Rafael’s?”

  “Raf owes him. I don’t.” Diego studied the cylinder of ashes on his cigarette before tapping them onto the floor. “Diego does what he wants to do. He’s got his own story. You want to know, you ask him.”

  Sandra could imagine
how much good that would do. If she asked Diego for his story, he’d give her his usual speech about Aztec Sun’s wonderful star, Melanie Greer, and about the high expectations everyone had for White Angel.

  She double-checked her recorder to make sure the record light was still on. “What about Rosa?”

  “What about her? She’s my sister. Raf and I did what we could to protect her. Now she’s got Jesus and the Order of the Sacred Heart to protect her.”

  “Why did you have to protect her? She’s an adult—”

  “She was a beautiful girl, the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood. We had no father, our mother was away all the time working, and every boy on the block was baying at Rosa’s window like a hungry wolf. Raf promised our mother we’d keep Rosa safe. I guess he’s still trying to keep her safe, even if she doesn’t need it anymore.” He sighed. “That was the way it worked out. I took care of things, and Raf took care of Rosa.”

  “Rafael still takes care of her,” said Sandra. “He told me if I interviewed her he’d make my life hell.”

  Ricardo chuckled. “He could make anyone’s life hell if he wanted to.”

  Don’t I know it, she muttered to herself. Before she could form her next question, the door swung open. “It’s time,” the guard declared.

  Ricardo ground his cigarette under his heel and stood. “Do you have any messages for Rafael?” she asked as she turned off the tape recorder and folded her pad shut.

  “Tell him to watch his ass,” Ricardo said. “It’s a dangerous world.” Then he turned and slouched past the guard, through the door.

  The guard waited for Sandra to gather her things. He accompanied her out of the room and down the hall to the entry, where she signed out. The female warden who had frisked her was stationed behind the desk. She glared at Sandra as if she were as low-life as the criminals in custody.

  Sandra mumbled her thanks to the various officers loitering in the entry, then bolted for the parking lot. Desert-hot air, pungent with the scent of hot tar, slapped her in the face as she raced to her car and sank onto the seat. She slammed the door, ignited the engine, punched the air-conditioning button and wilted against the upholstery.

  Los Hermanos del Sol. Brothers of the Sun. Aztec Sun.

  Sandra had lived a sheltered life in the bosom of her family. She’d been nurtured by the Berkeley School, surrounded by friends as academically gifted and ambitious as she. She’d had her own bedroom in a modest but comfortable house not far from the ritzy Berkeley Hills neighborhood. She’d worked hard, studied hard, earned what she had accomplished—but she’d never known the kind of desperation that led a person to welcome the embrace of a gang.

  On the other hand, she was a reporter, and she liked to think of herself as reasonably hard-headed. She knew from living in Los Angeles and writing “daily miseries” what gang membership entailed. She knew the boys who joined Hispanic gangs did so not just for the sake of safety or identity but to prove their machismo. They had to be cockier than the others, tougher, meaner. A man’s ego was measured by just how cool and fearless he was.

  The gangs of East Los Angeles were male enclaves; the gentling influence of women was rarely felt. The gangs were societies where boys tried to become men by tattooing their arms, drinking too much, cruising in customized low-riders and indulging in criminal activity.

  That was who Rafael was. According to Ricardo, that was who he would be until the day he died.

  Then again, it was possible that Ricardo had deliberately misled her. His envy of Rafael’s success was palpable. Perhaps he’d insinuated that his brother had a dark, ugly side just to get back at him for having transcended his past. Perhaps Ricardo had chosen to undermine his brother’s sterling reputation just because he knew everyone else had only glowing things to say about Rafael. Sibling rivalry was obviously alive and well in the Perez family.

  But what if Ricardo wasn’t lying? What if Rafael was a punk in a movie producer’s clothing? What if he had, in fact, financed Aztec Sun with money he’d raised through gang activity? What if he bore the mark of Los Hermanos on his arm, etched in ink beneath his skin?

  What if the man Sandra had been fantasizing about since the moment she’d seen him, the man who could shatter her defenses with a kiss, who could impale her soul merely by standing close to her, gazing into her eyes, brushing his hand along her shoulder... What if he was truly a Hermano, his money tainted, his movie studio built on a foundation of crime and drugs and shady dealings? What if all his gritty, R-rated movies—Vendetta and El Diablo and the like—were actually autobiographical?

  She was overdramatizing. Assuming the worst of Rafael was no more objective than assuming the best of him. If he had a tattoo on his arm, it might be there because he didn’t want to go through the complicated procedure of having the tattoo removed. Just because he’d made a mistake in his youth didn’t mean he was still a gang member.

  And maybe he didn’t have a tattoo. Maybe Ricardo had made the entire story up.

  Her phone chirped. She swore out loud. She was trying to think! She couldn’t handle an interruption right now.

  It chirped again. Groaning, she lifted the receiver. “Sandra Garcia here.”

  “Sandra? It’s Ella Connors. I’ve been ringing this number for an hour! Where the hell are you?”

  “In Chino, doing an interview.” The urgency in Ella’s voice made Sandra sit straighter. Of all her colleagues in the news room, Ella was the most reliable. She wouldn’t have been trying to reach Sandra for an hour unless she had a good reason. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. But you’d better get back to town, pronto.”

  “Oh, God. Is Flannagan demoting me to Lifestyles?”

  “Just hit the road, Garcia. Get yourself down to Aztec Sun as fast as you can. There’s already a zillion reporters crawling all over the place—”

  Sandra propped the receiver between her shoulder and her chin and shifted the engine into reverse. “Why?” she demanded, checking the rear-view mirror and backing out of the parking space. “What happened?”

  “—Including Russo, the pig. Wouldn’t you know Flannagan would put him on it the minute it turned into something big? But it’s your story, Sandra. So get your ass down there before Russo steals it out from under you.”

  “What are you talking about? There’s nothing there for Russo to pursue.” He couldn’t know about Rafael’s relation to a convicted drug dealer. As far as Flannagan was concerned, this was simply a human-interest piece about a Chicano community leader. Definitely not Russo’s kind of story.

  “What’s-her-name. Melanie Greer, is that it? She collapsed on the set this morning. She got taken to Cedars-Sinai. Nobody’s talking at the hospital—or at Aztec Sun, either. Everyone’s stonewalling like crazy. But the buzz is, she O.D.-ed. She’s dead, Sandra.”

  “Dead!” Sandra thought she’d screamed it, but in fact she’d whispered it. Her hard-headed-reporter veneer cracked, allowing tears to leak, to slide down her cheeks. “Melanie’s dead?”

  “You’ve been cultivating those folks for two days. Get back here and see if they’ll talk to you. Elbow Russo out of the way. It’s your assignment.”

  It was Sandra’s assignment, all right. But suddenly she couldn’t think of it as an assignment. She could think of it only as a tragedy, the grievous tale of a friendly, flaky blond actress who was dead and a movie mogul whose life was about to come crashing down around him.

  She thanked Ella for contacting her, folded her phone shut and navigated back to the highway. Then, blinking away her tears, she floored the gas pedal, heading west, chasing the biggest story of her career, a story she was no longer sure she wanted to write.

  Chapter Nine

  HE REMEMBERED A STORY his mother used to tell him, about a little boy named Filipe who lived in a village in the mountains west of Hermosillo. Standing on a promontory high above the sea, Filipe would watch the condors soar from the cliffs. Their wings wide and proud, the condors
possessed the sky.

  Filipe wanted to possess the sky, too. He spent many days and nights collecting the feathers that molted from the noble condors. He mixed an adobe paste and plastered the feathers together, shaping them into artificial wings which he tied to his arms with vines. Then he, too, jumped from the promontory. The condors gathered around him, believing him to be one of them. They welcomed him into their midst. But as they soared higher, he fell down, down until he crashed against the bottom of the cliffs. Condors could possess the sky, but a boy could possess only the earth.

  Rafael recalled the day he’d told his third grade teacher the legend of Filipe and the condors. “That’s not a Aztec folk tale,” Miss Allston had scoffed. “It’s an ancient Greek myth about Icarus, who made wings of wax but flew so close to the sun his wings melted and he plunged into the sea.”

  Rafael hadn’t cared about Greek myths or wings of wax. Filipe had been his story, and he believed it in a way he would never believe Greek mythology.

  I am Filipe, he thought, falling to the rocks below. A lovely blond bird had led him off the edge of a cliff, and he’d foolishly believed that he could fly. She’d flown and crashed, and now he was following her down.

  Damn her. Damn her for being so stupid, so young and adorable and certain of her indestructibility. He wanted to hate Melanie for having taken a fatal dose of cocaine, but he was too shocked, too sad. All he could feel was grief.

  In the hours since the hospital had informed him that Melanie had died, he had remained holed up in his office, taking calls from investors, the insurance company, the attorneys at Freeman, Barr, and Melanie’s agent and publicist. Carlotta screened each call, filtering out those from the media, nosy fans and gossip-mongers. Rafael had spoken to no one from any of the news organizations. Diego was better at coddling them than Rafael would ever be.