by J. A. Jance
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he told her with a laugh.
Delia’s mother was the one who translated the word. Moikchu meant Soft One. When Delia first learned what it meant, she accepted the name as a compliment. It was only later, after everything had sorted itself out, that she wondered if the word couldn’t also be used to mean soft in the head. Because when it came to Philip Cachora, she was certainly that.
“Now tell me,” he continued, “are you really booked for dinner tonight, or were you just trying to get rid of me?”
“What time and where?” she asked, giving in. After all, for a twenty-seven-year-old struggling young professional, flowers and the offer of a free meal held some appeal.
She took a cab from her office in Interior to Philip Cachora’s hotel, the Dupont Plaza. From there they walked the few blocks to the Iron Gate Restaurant on N Street NW. It was April and particularly balmy. With the air perfumed by hanging wisteria, they had an elegant romantic dinner at an outside table. When Delia fretted about the prices, Philip reassured her.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m here on a grant. I’m on display as one of an endangered species-you know, Indian-artist-under-glass. This is all on somebody else’s nickel. Have a ball. Order whatever you want.”
Then he smiled across the table at her and asked, “What exactly does a smart lady lawyer do for the BIA?”
“I analyze treaties.”
“No shit!” he exclaimed.
“No shit!” she shot back, mimicking his delivery.
“Looking for loopholes?” he asked. She nodded. “In whose favor?”
“In anybody’s favor.”
“And where do you live?”
“Are you saying whoever told you where my office was didn’t also tell you where I live?”
“I’m from out of town.” He grinned back at her. “My sources are good only up to a point.”
She laughed aloud as a waiter refilled her champagne glass with bubbly that had clocked in at more than a hundred dollars a bottle. “If you must know, I live in Glover Park in a town house on Tunlaw Road-1849 Tunlaw Road. I live with a friend from law school, Marcia Lomax. You met her last night at the exhibit.”
“Tunlaw Road,” he repeated. “Sounds very upscale.”
Delia smiled and shook her head. “Not really. Lots of students and young professionals, all of us struggling. The best thing about Tunlaw Road is the name. It’s ‘walnut’ spelled backward. According to a legend I heard, nobody in the District was allowed to name a street after a tree, but somebody slipped that one past.”
Philip raised his glass. “Here’s to Tunlaw Road. I like it, too. I’m always in favor of slipping it to the Great White Father.”
Dinner stretched far into the night. When it was time to go home, Philip invited her to his hotel. Delia shook her head and caught a cab, but on the way home she knew she was smitten. If he asked her out again, she’d go. If he invited her to his room again, she’d probably go there, too.
In the week and a half that followed, they’d had a great time together. She showed him the sights, his credit card provided the meals, and they availed themselves of the king-sized bed in his Dupont Plaza hotel room. Between times, Philip Cachora told Delia stories.
He was a charming and engaging storyteller. Ten years her senior, he had gone to both grade school and the first two years of high school on the reservation, at Topawa and Indian Oasis High School. He told her about going to rain dances and getting drunk on thick cactus-juice wine. He told her about his art and about some of the shows he’d been in. He told her about going to powwows around the country and trying to integrate what he saw there into his art.
Beguiled by his stories, Delia failed to question what he was editing out. Somehow, during that first evening and the whirlwind days that followed, he never mentioned a single one of his three ex-wives or why any of them had left him. And Delia never had the presence of mind to ask.
Gayle was glad Larry had been able to get it up with no difficulty. Once she took care of that item on her to-do list, Larry was out like a light, leaving Gayle free to slip out of bed and prowl around the familiar old house-the house of her childhood. Other than the relatively recent modifications in the basement, little else had changed. Much of the furniture was still the same high-quality and often re-covered highly serviceable stuff Great-Grandmother Madison had shipped by train from Ohio when she arrived at the ranch as a bride in 1901.
Sometime in the early seventies, Gayle’s mother, Gretchen, had replaced the creaking 1950s-era appliances with all new Maytag-brand versions. Gretchen’s once state-of-the-art appliances could now be considered museum pieces, but to Gayle’s amazement, they continued to plug along. As far as she was concerned, they would never be replaced. When the time came, they’d be bulldozed right along with the house.
The ranch had been Gayle’s father’s domain and her mother’s nightmare. He liked living there, while Gretchen preferred the social milieu of her own family’s house in Tucson-the home that was Gayle’s to this day. Had Winston lived, he would most likely have inherited that, just as Gayle had inherited the ranch. But Winston had died in the mid-1980s, and Gretchen, mourning her lost son, had soon followed. That left Gayle with both the ranch and the house in town and with her parents’ model on how to conduct herself.
It was strange for Gayle to realize how much her marriage to Larry Stryker resembled that of her parents-her home in town and his miles away on the ranch. In private, Calvin and Gretchen had made no secret of their mutual loathing, but in public they had maintained a smilingly polite decorum that had held gossipmongers at bay for decades. In their respective lairs, Calvin had kept a steady string of dark-eyed and curvaceous housekeepers, while Gretchen had carried on secret liaisons with several of Tucson’s highborn but decidedly “mannish” women. As for their children? Winston, permanently attached to his mother’s apron strings, had avoided the ranch like the plague, while Gayle, adoring her father, had loathed the city.
It amused Gayle sometimes to wonder what a therapist would make of her incestuous relationship with her father. Supposedly she should have minded, but she didn’t. Conventional wisdom said that she would grow up hating her father, but she hadn’t done that, either. Gayle had resented her mother’s mistreatment of Calvin and was glad to do what she could to cheer him up. Admittedly, she’d been jealous when a new housekeeper would show up, causing Calvin to absent himself temporarily from his daughter’s bed. Gayle supposed that, to some extent, maybe what she did to Larry’s girls-that wonderfully endless supply of lithe brown bodies-was a means of finding redress for the attentions Calvin’s mistresses had stolen from her.
Here in this house, Gayle could see how the way she’d been raised had contributed to what she’d become-smart, pragmatic, unflappable. Both of her parents had provided outstanding role models about what to do when life turned out to be different from what you had expected. Irreconcilable differences plainly existed in her parents’ separate households, but they were never mentioned. Neither was the word D-I-V-O-R-C-E. That simply wasn’t done. If you made a bad choice, my dear, you pulled up your socks, stuck with it, and went looking for fun and entertainment wherever you liked-as long as you were discreet about it.
That was why Larry’s actions with Roseanne Orozco had so infuriated Gayle. It had been anything but discreet, and it would surely have brought the whole world down around their ears if Gayle hadn’t taken definitive action. The same thing almost happened again two years later, when one of Larry’s old poker-playing buddies was caught sticking his dick where he shouldn’t have. To save his sorry ass, he made a plea bargain that included shooting off his mouth about what had gone on in the hospital at Sells and had named names in the process-Larry’s included. As a result, Larry and several other physicians were summarily drummed out of the Indian Health Service.
But what had first seemed total disaster turned out to
be not that bad after all. A few calls to one or two of Gretchen’s well-placed friends kept the story from making it into the local papers. Amazingly enough, arcane rules and regulations governing Indian Health Service physicians meant that lists of disciplined doctors were not made available to state or national medical associations, leaving Larry and the others free to practice medicine wherever they chose.
But by then Gayle no longer wanted to be married to a doctor. What had sounded like a great idea when she was in college had lost its allure. She didn’t want to live with someone who had to be on call. She didn’t like Larry’s being out of her sight that much, either. As long as he didn’t have brains enough to keep his pants zipped, she couldn’t risk his going off to work at a hospital or clinic. The Easter weekend interlude at the beachfront hotel in Mazatlan had proved to Gayle Stryker just what she’d suspected about her husband’s sexual preferences and had supplied her with the key to keeping Larry under her complete control.
Gayle had learned something about herself that afternoon as well. She’d been electrified by the girl’s first involuntary whimper as she tried to shy away from the invading touch of that chilled beer bottle. The child had been helpless. She couldn’t protect herself from what was coming, not from whatever Larry might want to do nor from what Gayle might want Larry to do. Gayle had felt that kind of power only once before in her life, but on the afternoon she had slaughtered Roseanne Orozco, it hadn’t occurred to her that the heady stuff was something that could be duplicated. That afternoon, as Larry finally did it-when at Gayle’s insistence he finally screwed up his courage and shoved the bottle home-Gayle had been thrilled. Hearing the cries, watching the girl writhe in agony had turned Gayle on in a way nothing else ever had.
That was when and why she had dreamed up Medicos for Mexico. Her parents, both of them, helped provide the initial seed money. Gretchen had written a check. Calvin had done his part by having the good grace to die and leave the ranch and a whole lot more to his daughter.
Over the years, running a cross-border charity had proved to be a gold mine. Yes, someone had to go out and raise money. That took work and skill, and Gayle was exceptionally good at schmoozing. But once those donated dollars flowed into the Medicos coffers, there was virtually no outside oversight-not from the public at large and not from the IRS. Medicos paid generous salaries to both Gayle and Larry. They paid their taxes on those without a whisper of complaint, but much of their lavish lifestyle was paid for in full or in part by monies gleaned from vaguely labeled items in the expense columns of the charity’s books. Artful skimming also accounted for the almost finished mansion Gayle was having built, at no small expense, in a gated compound outside Cabo San Lucas.
Medicos for Mexico had provided Gayle and Larry Stryker with money, respectability, and standing in the community. It also supplied that unending stream of girls-those expendable little girls-Gayle needed to keep Larry firmly in line. Sometimes just watching what Larry did to them was enough to satisfy Gayle, but there were other times when the pressure was too much, when Gayle needed more than simply observing. Which is exactly what had happened today-the pressure had been too much.
Gayle went to the bar and poured herself a drink. Last night, setting Erik up to take a fall for killing the girl had seemed a far better idea than it did tonight. Gayle had done something she shouldn’t have-she had allowed her emotions to get the best of her, thus creating a whole new set of problems. Now she’d have to figure out a way to deal with them. It was what she’d done in the past, and it was what she’d do again. The difficulty was, she wasn’t entirely sure how.
It would take a day or two to handle the money issues, to empty the Medicos accounts and ship the money to Mexico-or the Cayman Islands. Certainly the money she had would stretch a whole lot further if she didn’t have to split it two ways. That would mean sacrificing Larry, but so what?
He’d had a good run and enjoyed himself-probably more than he deserved-and he was every bit as expendable as Erik LaGrange.
J. A. Jance
Day of the Dead
Seventeen
As time went on, the hunters brought their families along when they came north. With everyone hot and thirsty, it was a good deal of trouble to slip up to the pond to drink, all the while watching for the coyotes.
One day, an old wise man from the village said to the others, “I am going to drive the coyotes away, or else I will make them share their water with us.” The old man went away and was gone for a week. When he returned, he was leading a baby coyote on a string. When they saw Baby Coyote on the string, the people of the village laughed and laughed. They laughed so loud and made so much noise that Coyote grew curious, wondering what all the noise and laughter was about. So he came out of his cave to see what was so funny.
Old Man led Baby Coyote a ways from the water and tied him to a tree. Then he told the children to go away and leave Baby Coyote alone. Soon Baby Coyote grew hungry and thirsty and lonely, and he began to cry.
Now the Mil-gahn-the Whites-will often walk away from other white men when they are hurt or injured or thirsty in the desert, but I’itoi’s people would never do such a thing. This is as true of coyotes as it is of the Indians who cannot deny a call for help. After Coyote and his mate listened to Baby Coyote cry for a while, finally they went to see who was in trouble. Mama Coyote went at once to find some food for the baby, but Mr. Coyote did not like the looks of that string that tethered Baby Coyote to the tree. The first thing Mr. Coyote did was chew the string in two.
Just then Baby Coyote cried, “Look. Here they come.”
Mr. Coyote looked and saw that the whole village had surrounded his water hole and the people were guarding it.
So the three coyotes ran away very fast, but even as he ran, Mr. Coyote laughed to think about how he had tricked the hunters and about how long he had kept the water from the hunters by sitting on that rock in the middle of the pool.
Baby’s here,” Leo Ortiz whispered in his wife’s ear. “Gotta go.”
Delia blinked awake. It was barely sunrise. She heard the rumble of Richard Ortiz’s Ford pickup outside the house.
“You’ll be at Mom’s later?” Leo asked.
Delia nodded, and Leo gave her blanket-covered belly an affectionate pat. “Don’t let Mom and my sister work you too hard,” he added. “And remember to sit down and put your feet up.”
“I will,” she said.
With Leo gone, Delia lay in bed and savored the fact that she didn’t need to get up just yet. The baby, who had spent most of the night pummeling her ribs, seemed to be snoozing, too. She lay there and was grateful that, after all that had happened, not only were Richard and Leo brothers, they were also still friends.
Once they started dating, Philip Cachora had somehow parlayed his temporary grant status into a permanent gallery situation, where he was installed as resident artist. He said he had taken the position so he could stay close to Delia. It also gave him a somewhat regular paycheck regardless of whether or not he was producing and selling paintings. There were other benefits in the relationship as well, but Delia was oblivious to those.
The gallery job ended for reasons Delia never quite understood, and they moved into the combination studio/loft apartment on Kalorama Street, but Philip’s paintings seemed to be losing their appeal as well as their patrons. Sales just weren’t happening. At least the money wasn’t there. Finally, insisting he had to do something, Philip bought a used van, loaded his unsold paintings into it, and took it on the road, heading off for a powwow in Montana. He returned home a month later with a credit-card balance full of hotel and meal charges and with most of his paintings still in the van.
A few nights later, Delia returned from work. On the living room coffee table she spied something that looked like a mushroom on a piece of clear plastic wrap.
“What’s this?” she demanded, holding it up.
“Peyote,” Philip answered, snatching it out of her hand. “Maybe you should try i
t sometime. It might make you less uptight. Besides, it’s a religious thing.”
“It’s also illegal,” Delia pointed out. “I don’t want it in my apartment.”
“It’s your apartment now instead of ours?” he returned.
“It is if you look at who’s paying the bills,” she told him. The moment she said it, she was afraid she had gone too far.
Philip rounded on her in fury. “If you were a real Indian instead of such a stuck-up, straitlaced Bostonian, maybe you’d understand!”
Minutes after that, he was in the bathroom, puking his guts out. He slept on the couch in his studio that night. Much as Delia didn’t want to admit it-especially to Marcia and others who had tried to warn her away from Philip in the first place-she knew it was the beginning of the end. She hung on for a time, hoping things would change and he would get better. That was why, a few months later, it hurt so much to realize that even Aunt Julia, more than two thousand miles away, somehow knew how bad things were and tried to help by sending Fat Crack Ortiz to the rescue. She responded to his offer of help by more or less telling him to take his job and shove it.
Two weeks later, she came home from work early with a migraine and walked in on a disaster that had been ten years in the making. There in the apartment she found Philip passed out in the company of a sixteen-year-old male prostitute. Delia turned around and stormed out of the apartment without waking either of them. She made her way back to her old neighborhood and checked into the Savoy. The next morning, she called in sick and made an appointment to see her ob-gyn, where she underwent a series of tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Then she went back to the hotel to await the results, which wouldn’t be available until the following Monday.
She called no one, not even her mother. Especially not her mother. Instead, she sat in the hotel for the next eighteen hours, staring blindly at the traffic on Wisconsin Avenue and wondering whether or not Philip had contracted AIDS, and if he had, had he already passed it along to her? How long did it take to die of AIDS, she wondered, and how painful was it?
