Stalking Moon

by Неизвестный

  “Yeah. Well. Her latest thing, she's running a restaurant.”

  “Meg doesn't have that kind of patience. Or cooking ability.”

  “Not a real restaurant. Well, she actually serves some food. Thai. She rented a space on 4th Avenue, not far from the women's bookstore. It's a fundraiser. To help abused women.”

  “Can you take me there?”

  “Jake will come by, about noon. He's bringing some clothes for you to wear at dinner, but he'll also take you to see Meg.”

  “You're not coming?”

  “It's difficult between us right now. I'm the law. I can't ever quite let that go when we're together. Plus. . . I still have this thing for her, but she's not interested. I was just an experience to her. Not a relationship.”

  “Why is Nasso taking me to see her?”

  “We're using your friendship. Simple as that.”

  “Is there anything you people won't exploit?”

  “Not with this.”

  “Ah,” I said. “You want me to ask Meg if any of these smuggled women have gone through her safe houses. Is that it? Well, she's already told me they have. So spare me going anywhere with Nasso.”

  “He's really likable,” she said. “Just takes a while for him to trust you.”

  “Why both lunch and dinner?”

  “Meg's place only serves lunch. Tonight, Jake's taking you to dinner at Hacienda del Sol. Dance has the whole restaurant reserved. It's his fortieth birthday, and he's celebrating. And there'll be some interesting guests. Pinau Medina.”

  “And the ape?”

  “Garza? I suppose so. Plus the third person in their own little team. Francisco Angel Zamora. Now, if I liked men, I'd move on him in a second.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A businessman. In Sonora.”

  The doorbell rang and Nasso let himself in. He smiled at Taá, a look passing between them, a glance, a hint, a sparkle in his eyes. He crooked a finger, beckoned me to join him, but as we left the house I saw he'd checked out both my ankle bracelets.

  19

  “But I don't need a license,” Meg cried. “It's not a restaurant.”

  “Are you serving food?”

  “It's just friends, just people I know.”

  “Are you serving food?” the man asked again, less patient. He folded back the vinyl cover of his citation book and started to write.

  “Well, sure. That's the whole idea of this piece.”

  “Piece?”

  “It's a performance piece. Jesus, don't you ever go to the theater?”

  “Not to eat,” he said, walking over to one of the half-dozen tables. “Are you folks eating something here?”

  A young couple looked up, startled, the woman with chopsticks full of noodles halfway to her mouth.

  “It's pad thai,” she said, looking at Meg.

  “It's food, then.”

  He started writing in his citation book.

  “Wait a minute,” Meg pleaded. “It's theatre. I'm only doing this for two weeks, but I've been preparing since January.”

  “Do you have a restaurant license? Is this place certified as a restaurant? Has your kitchen been inspected? Where are your food lockers, your refrigerators? Are your cooks certified? Are you certified?”

  “Certified? What the hell for? Nobody ever has their play certified.”

  “Tell you what,” the man said, flipping the cover of his citation book shut with a flourish. “I could be wrong about this. Look, it's almost one o'clock, and I've had a long morning. I'll just check with the Health Department this afternoon. If they've given me a bum steer, you're in the clear. Hey, that's theatre. At least, it's poetry. So you've got until tomorrow. My advice, though? You'd better close this place before I come back.”

  He brushed past me going out the front door. Meg watched him, exasperated, then cocked her head at me and stared in shock.

  “Laura?”

  Nasso stepped past me and nodded.

  “Yeah. It's your old friend Laura. I'm Jake. We all met the other day, remember? What kind of food you got in here?”

  He went to one of the tables and sat down to read the menu.

  “Laura?”

  Meg hugged me and whispered in my ear.

  “What is he doing here?”

  “I got arrested.”

  “By him?”

  “And some other people. He knows all about your safe houses, and I wouldn't even be surprised if he knew there'd be a Health Department inspector here. In fact, he probably arranged it.”

  “Yup,” Nasso said. “But let's keep this all friendly. I can't read this menu. Just bring me what they're eating.”

  “I've got to go to the bathroom,” I said. “Where is it?”

  “In back.”

  As I brushed past Nasso's table, he put up a hand to stop me.

  “Tell me this isn't some twist on that scene from The Godfather. Where Pacino goes to the bathroom to get the gun, comes back, and kills Sollozzo and the crooked cop. McCluskey. Played by Sterling Hayden.”

  “You sound like Rey.”

  “Yeah. We liked the same movies. What I mean here, you're obviously not going into the back room to get a gun.”

  He eyed Meg, standing with her clenched fists on her hips.

  “Well,” he said, “I don't know about her. How do I trust that she's not going to let you slip out the back door?”

  He followed me back through an improvised kitchen. A young Mexican woman was carefully slicing the skin off a papaya. Nasso stood against the back door, and I went into the bathroom. There was a small window with frosted glass, but the old wooden sash was painted shut, and I could see the shadow of iron bars on the other side of the glass. I slumped on the toilet seat and sobbed. I'd hoped there would be a way to shake Nasso.

  I flushed the toilet and went into the kitchen. Nasso was talking with the Mexican woman, who was showing him how to julienne the peeled papaya. He paid no attention to me as I walked back into the restaurant, but I saw a Tucson policewoman standing outside, her foot upon a Ford Explorer front bumper as she wrote out a parking ticket. I sat beside Meg.

  “What's going on?” she said quietly.

  “In your safe houses, do you ever get women from Russia? Eastern Europe?”

  “Never. Most of them now are Salvadoran, Honduran, some from Guatemala. But anyway, they're all women who've been living in Tucson. Laura, what is this about?”

  “Have you ever heard of Russian or European women being smuggled across the border? Asians? Thai, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, any women from those places?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever heard of. . . ”

  “Whoa!” She put a finger on my lips. “This is weird shit you're asking. What's it got to do with that guy in there? And why did they arrest you?”

  “For being Laura Winslow.”

  “But. . . ”

  “And for being Laura Marana.”

  Her shoulders sagged.

  “For fifteen years I've run these safe houses. I knew that the police department had heard of them, maybe even knew where they were. But you're telling me the government knows all about me. What I do? What have you got me into, Laura?”

  “I swear, Meg, until yesterday morning I wasn't involved in any of this. I went for a horse ride with you and got arrested. They humiliated me by making me spend a night in the immigration detention center at Florence. Today I had to make a deal to help these people with some computer stuff. In return they'll get rid of all those old federal arrest warrants from when I was a kid.”

  Nasso came in with the Mexican woman, each of them carrying plates of food. He sat at the table and began eating.

  “Who is he?” Meg asked.

  “Just one of them. He's my babysitter, he says.”

  “Mine too. Now.”

  “Meg, I'm sorry. But believe me, they knew all about you. I told them nothing. Only that I wanted to see you. That's all. And they showed me your life history.”

&n
bsp; “And what do you have to do for them?”

  I explained what I knew about the smuggling ring.

  “There's something else,” I said. “Taá Wheatley.”

  “What about her?”

  “I'm staying at her house. I saw her pictures of you.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ,” she said. “Ain't this a frosty Friday. No wonder you showed up. You're working with them. And that fucking woman, she swore she'd never talk about my safe houses.”

  She clutched the back of a chair, rigid, muscle spasms running up and down her arms, rippling across her face as she breathed in and out so quickly I thought she was going to have a stroke or a heart attack. But just as quickly she relaxed.

  “Laura, let me bash that fucking guy over the head. You'll get away from them.”

  “Except there's a cop standing outside, writing the same parking ticket for the last twenty minutes. And there's probably another one outside the back door. They put security anklets on me. I can't get away from them.”

  I pulled up my jeans, showed her the bracelets.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “This performance piece runs until Sunday. Unless that guy from the Health Department comes back.”

  “He won't,” Nasso said from his table, pad thai noodles hanging from his fork.

  I realized he'd been listening to us talk and wondered if he'd heard me give Rey's new name. But he picked up his empty plate and went to the kitchen for more.

  “Meg,” I whispered, “when you're sure nobody's watching you, go down to Sonoita. Ask for Heather Aguilar's ranch. Tell her I said she could trust you. She'll show you where my horse is stabled.”

  “You raise horses now?”

  “He's coming back any minute, so just listen. Go to the stable. Once you're in the door, go to the far left corner. Two feet under the dirt floor you'll find a package wrapped in plastic baggies. Take the package, but make sure nobody sees you. There's liable to be police there. Or Border Patrol. Get Heather to go in with you, tell anybody who asks you're looking after my horse.”

  I noticed Nasso standing in the kitchen doorway, eating pad thai while keeping his eyes on us. I wondered if he could lip read, and in that instant knew that my sense of paranoia was coming back.

  “Laura, how will I talk to you?”

  “Give me an unlisted phone number. I'll call when I can.”

  She wrote out a phone number on a napkin and pressed it into my hands.

  “When I get this mystery package, am I going to lose you again?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It's got to be only one thing. Identity papers for a new Laura.”

  Not Laura, I thought. All three sets of ID were in completely different names, but none of them began with Laura. Subconsciously, I must have known that Laura Cabeza was the last time I'd use that first name.

  I hated to let it go.

  Your first name is like your first time for anything. You never forget it.

  “Laura,” Meg whispered as Nasso came to the table, “Laura, don't abandon me this time. Wherever you wind up after I get you those papers, don't just leave me twisting while I wait for that phone call that never comes.”

  “Find Mari Emerine and bring her to Tucson.”

  “You're asking a lot from me. You bring the wrath of the law down on me, but you want more favors. Why should I help you? No, no. Forget I said that. I'm wacky without my meds. I don't think straight.”

  “So start taking them, Meg.”

  “Not yet. Not yet. I have to find out. . . ”

  “Find out what?”

  “I don't know, I don't know. Yet. It is what it is. Leave it that way. For me, just leave me as I am.”

  “Okay.”

  “This Mari. Why should I bring her to Tucson?”

  “Can't tell you that. Just do this for me, okay? Think of her as another survivor. Like you and me.”

  She scrunched her eyes shut, waggling her head, contemplating.

  We're all survivors, I thought, and she read my mind and smiled.

  “To survive is to live. When will I see you next?”

  “To survive is to live. Look. Laura, I know you don't understand why I quit my medications. Why I'm forcing myself into depression. But I do have a purpose, I do know what I'm doing, and I believe when I come out of this madness, I'll be able to better help some of the women and kids that come through my safe houses.”

  “I've been through depression,” I said. “Anxiety, paranoia, panic attacks, depression. Good Christ, Meg, none of it is worth the trip.”

  “I'm really trying to hold onto my sanity. Trust me.”

  “Do you trust yourself?”

  “You mean, will I know if I go over the edge? Maybe. Enough of this.” She shook her head violently, like a dog emerging from a lake and flinging off water. “When will I see you next?”

  “I'll call you when I can dump these police people.”

  “Taá? You'll never dump Taá. Once she's onto you, she's a second skin.”

  “Skin comes off. I'll call you.”

  “Ladies,” Nasso said, “have you had your little chat?”

  “Yes,” Meg said. “Would you like some homemade mango ice cream?”

  I thought Nasso was ogling her rear end, but he raised a hand to stop her.

  “You're packing,” he said.

  Meg lifted her blouse and pulled her Glock from the holster that lay against the small of her back. Smiling, she held the Glock out to Nasso, who took it reluctantly, hefted it, flicked off the safety, and racked the slide. An unfired cartridge flew out of exhaust port and shattered a small china vase on one of the tables.

  “Jesus Christ!” he said. “You keep a round in the chamber?”

  “Got to be ready for anything,” she said.

  “You got a license for this piece?”

  “Do you need to see it?”

  He shook his head and handed the Glock back to her. She reholstered it and went to the kitchen to get the ice cream. Nasso turned to me with deep frown lines etched across his forehead.

  “I found a baggie of coke back there. Somebody'd just snorted three lines laid out on a meat cleaver. I hate to see that kind of thing.”

  “Meg's having problems,” I said. “That's why I wanted you and Dance to leave her alone.”

  “I'd never turn her in for using. I'm more worried that she's about to go over the edge. Right now, you need all the friends you can get.”

  “And you want to be my friend also?”

  “Yeah,” Nasso said slowly. “You're good people, you know how to work computers like nobody I've ever known, and you don't hesitate to bust my chops.”

  “You arrested me. You stuck me in that awful detention center. Friends? I don't think so.”

  “Give it time.” He smiled. “I might surprise you yet.”

  20

  Summarize. Plan. Act.

  I slouched at Meg's kitchen table, deep in thought, mentally planning, looking for the logic in everything that had happened to me in the past few days, looking for a plan, looking for a final way out.

  Isolating the threads of the thing.

  First thread. Bobby Guinness, Donald Ralph, Mari Emerine.

  Two clients, two contracts.

  Smuggling people. Embezzling money.

  Conclusions?

  Forget about both contracts, forget about Mari, forget about LUNA13.

  Second thread. Pinau Medina, Hector Garza.

  No conclusions, except I couldn't forget about them, because I knew I'd be going into Mexico, where they controlled access to the police.

  Conclusions?

  On hold. Unpredictable. Don't waste time working on it.

  Third thread. Taá Wheatley, Jake Nasso.

  Michael Dance meant nothing. He just maneuvered his people, but whatever threats came from him would come through Taá and Nasso.

  Conclusions?

  Get out of the boat, I thought.

  What Meg once said about Rey. Locke
d into his cycles of violence, he couldn't escape, he couldn't get out of the boat. But in the newly released version of Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen does get out of the boat. He finds a French lady on a rubber plantation, he talks politics, and for a while he forgets going after Marlon Brando.

  Conclusion. Get out of Taá's house.

  Fourth thread.

  Jonathan Begay.

  Conclusions?

  Forget about Basta Ya, forget about the smuggling rings, forget about everything except finding Jonathan. Then he'd tell me how to find Spider.

  Wait. Fifth thread.

  The water man.

  Meaningless. Something in Mexico. Would have to wait until I met Rey.

  I ran back and forth through all the threads and conclusions, not liking anything about them, but fixed on one thing only. I had to get out of the house and away from any kind of surveillance. Then I'd contact Rey, and we'd go looking for Jonathan.

  At least it was a plan.

  No, it was more.

  A year ago, I'd have been wound so tight I'd have had a panic attack, I'd have been frozen and unable to do anything. Now I felt almost serene. Anxious about how I was going to follow through with my plan. But serene that I could do it.

  Just a matter of finding the moment to start the ball rolling.

  21

  Nasso sat me in a wooden captain's chair, pulled up another one across from the round oak table. A young Mexican waiter in a tuxedo placed glasses of water on the table and lit a small candle inside a fluted, hand blown crystal bowl, tucked his left hand behind his back, and offered us menus.

  “Two Negra Modelos,” Nasso said to the waiter. “We'll order when you get our table inside the restaurant.”

  We sat outside the bar at one of a half-dozen tables set with yellow tablecloths, each surrounded by four elegant black chairs with cane-woven backing set into curved wooden frames. It was only twenty feet from the entrance to Hacienda del Sol, a circular driveway where harried attendants were parking cars.

  “Sorry, senor, but the restaurant is closed. A private party.”

  “No problem. We're with that party. We just want to sit here at the bar for a while. Just leave the menus, bring the beer.”

  The server left us. People drifted steadily past us along the walkway toward the central fountain. Somebody turned on outdoor lighting, and a Mozart piano scherzo began on the sound system.