by David Gordon
“Sam! How’s it going?”
“Good, good, listen: I wanted to tell Buck that even though I’m superpsyched to start working with you guys, I’ve kind of had a personal crisis come up.”
“Oh no…”
“No big deal. I just have to leave town for a few days and I wanted to let you know.”
“OK, no problem.”
“I also have a favor to ask. My computer had a meltdown and I was wondering, those copies of my books that Buck had, could you maybe get those to me or make me copies? I totally lost my files. It’s a nightmare.”
“Don’t worry. I have them right here.”
“Really? Great. Thanks Russ, I appreciate it.”
“Sure thing. Safe journey.”
I locked the car and we joined the line of tourists filing over the border, like one big parking lot and ticket booth, all headed for the amusement park of Mexico: sex, booze, highs, greasy food, cheap prescription drugs.
“Who was that on the phone?” Nic asked.
“No one. It’s about a writing job. But I remembered they have copies of my books.”
The overwhelming sense of relief I felt surprised me, but I was too tired to figure it all out. Sleeplessness, stress, fear, and freeway numbness had drained my brain. My eyes burned and there was a low hum in my head like a fluorescent tube on the blink. The mob of tourists flowed around me like pink cartoon blobs, hairy legs, angry red necks, white arms speckled with prickly heat. Packs of children attacked from nowhere, nipping at our knees, brandishing tiny boxes of Chiclets and phony silver jewelry. Mariachi music lurched from open bars and tequila fumes rippled in the heat. I smelled burning grease, sweat, dogshit and suntan lotion. The sun was a white disk. This was why it was hard to think fast in Southern California. The blank brightness made me feel like I’d been hit across the head with a two-by-four. I was stunned, like a cow heading down the chute.
“I have to sleep,” I told Nic. “I’m going to end up in a ditch without a kidney.”
She snorted, but said, “I know a place we can crash. There’s a hotel I’ve used before on the next block. It’s safe and fairly clean.”
“What do you mean ‘used’?” I asked, but she ignored me and I trailed her into a doorway and up a flight of stairs. The dark, narrow hall was dubious, but as promised, once she pushed through the inner door, we were in a small lobby smelling of disinfectant, where a young man in a pressed white shirt and flat, parted black hair greeted us politely from a desk. To my amazement, Nic addressed him in rapid Spanish. He nodded quickly, Sí señorita, and retrieved the key.
“Did you ask for adjoining rooms? It’s safer.”
“I asked for one room. It’s even safer.”
“For you maybe.”
“Don’t worry.” She patted my arm. “I won’t jump your bones this time. If you recall I got paid to do that.” With that, she led me down the narrow, tiled hall. The room was tiny, clearly partitioned with the thinnest drywall from a larger former room, with a preformed bathroomette containing a plastic toilet and a shower. The mattress was thin foam over a plywood base. I took off my shoes and lay down and was asleep. Nic poked me. I opened one eye. She was in her panties, removing her bra from under her shirt in that complex way women have.
“You know, that phone call you made reminded me of something. What was that guy’s name again?”
“Buck Norman. He’s a director,” I told the pillow. “A storyteller really.”
“What?”
“Nothing. He’s hiring me to write something, supposedly. We’ll see.”
“No, not him. The guy you spoke to, who you said had your books.”
“Russ? Russell something.”
“Yeah. My client. Not the guy himself, but the one who worked for him. His procurer, I guess. The one who managed everything, told me what to do, paid me. Like I said, they were super crafty, but one time I heard a chambermaid call him Mr. Russ. I didn’t remember till I heard you and it rang a bell.”
My eyes opened. I blinked at the window, where a thick Mexican blanket glowed with Mexican sun. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. Dark hair. Six foot. One-eighty maybe. Long face. Wide forehead. Narrow nose.”
“Take it easy, I’m not a sketch artist. Did he have kind of a TV star look? Wavy hair, white smile, tan?”
“Yeah that’s it. You think it’s the same guy?”
“Maybe.” Now I was awake again. I sat up and looked in my pants for my phone. “I’m going to call Lonksy and tell him.”
“There’s a lot of guys named Russ around, I’m sure. It’s probably just a weird coincidence, don’t you think?” she said, yawning.
“Probably. But Mr. Lonsky doesn’t believe in weird coincidences. That’s why he’s a genius. My phone’s not working.”
“No. You’re out of the country now, remember, genius?”
“Right.”
“We can call him from a pay phone after we nap.”
“Right.” I remained sitting up, my mind swirling pointlessly, like a drain. A thought was struggling to declare itself but gravity was pulling it down.
Nic tugged my hand. “Lie down,” she said.
“Right.” I lay down.
“Shut your eyes,” she said.
“Right.” I shut them.
“Now sleep,” she said.
I slept.
68
WHEN I AWOKE NIC was gone. Panicked, I jumped up and dressed, but then found the note on her pillow, “back soon—relax,” so I undressed again and took a shower that was more like a lukewarm sprinkle. Still, it helped, and I was feeling halfway human by the time she walked back in, now in jeans and a fresh T-shirt, and gave me an excellent café con leche, the Styrofoam warm in my hand, a skin of brown milk over the coffee. It was perfect. She’d found a short flight to Puerto Vallarta, she told me, where we’d change for the bus to Tepic, the small provincial capital of the tiny state of Nayarit, where our now Mexican mystery lady was born and where she was to be laid to rest tomorrow.
We climbed in a cab. Hadn’t my wife once warned me to never take a cab in Mexico? They were notorious kidnappers of dumb wealthy gringos. But as Nic asked for the aeropuerto, a word I recognized at least, I admitted that the miniature old man who nodded and stuck a smoldering brown cigarillo between brown gums looked harmless enough, except for secondhand smoke. Then, without warning, he kamikazied into traffic, leaning on the whining accelerator of his beat-to-shit Toyota and drifting laterally across a spinning circle of delirious vehicles. A Tijuana traffic circle seemed to function like a centrifuge, sending cars flying everywhere. There were no seat belts, of course. And a brain-size nest of cracks in the passenger’s half of the windshield let me know what would happen if I made any false moves. Nic pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes and lit up happily.
“It’s nice to be back in Mexico,” she said, leaning back and exhaling. “It’s so easygoing.”
We somehow got to the airport alive and, as my fear of Mexican driving segued into a fear of Mexican flying, I found an international phone and called Lonsky. I was nervous and weirdly guilty about confessing the Buck Norman connection, out of loyalty or sympathy or perhaps charity. I was sorry for the lonely nut and felt bad abandoning him.
His own interpretation differed slightly. “I see,” he said after listening to my recitation. “Well, the motive for your reticence is clear. Of course you were afraid to tell me about your sudden and rather surprising success as a writer because you wanted so desperately for it to be true, and you knew I would shatter it, however unwillingly. In any case, the pieces now fit without doubt. First, you encounter this Russ person at Dr. Parker’s office. Clearly the undisclosed board member he represented was this Mr. Normal.”
“Norman. He’s very famous…”
“I do not attend the cinema. I find the stories ludicrous and the seats insufficiently commodious. In any case, this Norman, famous as you say, suddenly wishes to employ you to write for him, a
highly paid and urgent but vague assignment that would necessitate immediately terminating your service with me as well as being out of your house while it is ransacked. And now, thanks to Ms. Flynn’s fine memory, we know the same Russ was the one who facilitated her work as a courtesan, allowing us to consider Mr. Norman as perhaps the unknown masked client and also as quite possibly the prime mover behind the plan to kill Mona and use the three of us to make it appear as a suicide.” He paused for a breath.
“But why? What motive could he have?”
“That we cannot yet know. But I suspect it has something to do with the third part of the trilogy, the lost film of Zed Naught’s suicide. And with Mona.”
69
IN PUERTO VALLARTA WE ate smoked marlin tacos at a stand by the airport and glimpsed the marlin-blue sea before connecting for the bus inland. A Mexican bus ride is different: the danger of travel has created a system of higher-end luxury buses cruising on safer, smoother, and theoretically faster toll roads. Luxury meant doilies on the headrests and blaring Latin disco, not necessarily effective air conditioning or shocks.
It was a long ride, with many stops. We passed dusty valleys and ridges of bright rock, where at each stop men dressed like cowboys in tight Wranglers, pointy boots, and big hats came outside and looked the bus over or greeted the driver while long-haired women watched from doorways and kids peeked from behind their legs. We passed through a tunnel of jungle, green umbrella leaves sweeping the roof, and hanging vines brushing the windows. Old ladies got on with every conceivable cargo, woven plastic bags of vegetables, bananas, blankets, coffee, then got off again fifteen minutes down the road in front of another, identical little town. There was an ancient woman in men’s overalls with a tiny face like an old plum, purpled and folded into hundreds of wrinkles, covered in fine white fur. There was an old man on a bench watching us go by, eating a tomato from his hand like an apple, in big bites. We passed Indians in bright clothes with embroidered bags over their shoulders, selling crafts roadside, waiting for the bus or walking along with their children. It’s like a soft blow to the heart. When was the last time you saw an Indian family strolling down the sidewalk in LA, New York, Chicago, Missouri, New Jersey, Miami? Finally, shaken by the mumbling engine and lulled by the heat, Nic and I both fell asleep, sticky and leaning together. I woke with a start when she elbowed me. We were in Tepic.
The bus left us in the central square, where as if to mock me the sleepy little cinema was playing an import from up north, Fritz: El robot con corazón—una película de Buck Norman.
“Bastard,” I muttered under my breath.
We dropped our luggage at a small hotel before taking a local bus, a van really, to where the Garcia family lived, on a quiet, run-down block.
The street was formed from stones—not cobblestones or paving stones—just plain rocks, gathered at random and dug into the dirt to form a path that was more like a riverbed than a road. Open sewers ran along the high curbs, past homes and the occasional corner shop or bar. Skinny dogs slept undisturbed. The cars rolled around them, lurching and halting over the raw rock. The house fronts were walled, whitewashed plaster or cinder block, with iron gates and shards of broken glass stuck in the cement along the tops. The waxy green wings of orange trees were visible here and there. We heard chickens and children and a faint, laughing TV.
The gate to their house was open. It was a lot nicer inside: a sheltered courtyard with a hand-set flagstone floor, fruit trees and sunflowers, a bench and a freshly washed Toyota Corolla. The house was a single story, with a small barred window in the front and a shadowy open door. A man in a black cowboy shirt, dark jeans, and black Stetson stepped out.
“Buenas tardes,” we said.
“Buenas tardes,” he responded.
Nic explained in Spanish that we were friends from America, passing through, and wanted to pay our respects. He seemed somewhat confused, Tepic was hardly a major crossroads, but he nodded politely and welcomed us in. He was a neighbor, he said, who lived a few streets away. We stepped into a dim living room, tile-floored, with cement walls and a low ceiling. There was a thick rug and a red plush couch covered in plastic with a matching recliner. There was a huge antique cabinet-style TV with another, flat screen TV on top of it. The remote was inside a plastic Ziploc bag. There was a grandfather clock in a corner, stopped at 3:10. There was a large crucifix, a picture of Mary, and a calendar from a supermarket on the wall. We could glimpse action in the kitchen, women bustling, dishes clanking, and see through to a yard out back, but in here people sat in shadowed silence. The neighbor introduced us. Two older aunts in shiny black dresses, one fat, one thin. An uncle with a thick gray mustache and dark wraparound shades. I realized, when he held his hand out to shake while facing slightly off at an angle, smiling at the space beside me, that he was blind. Another uncle, skinny in a toobig Western suit, blue with white piping, and slicked-back hair, his wide hat like a pet on the couch beside him, asked Nic in Spanish where I was from.
“Los Angeles,” I said. We shook hands.
“Mucho gusto.”
“Mucho gusto.” He explained, again addressing me through Nic, ignoring and yet speaking to her, as if she were there as my translator, that he’d spent several years working in Colorado.
“Sí.” I nodded.
“Coffee and donuts,” he told me gravely.
“Right.” I smiled.
“He says that’s all the English he learned to say,” Nic told me. “On his way to work in the morning.”
He grinned broadly, showing some gold.
“Very good,” I said. “Coffee and donuts.”
“Coffee and donuts,” the fat aunt said, smiling and nodding at me. I shook her hand too.
“Coffee and donuts,” I told her, and nodded at the skinny aunt, who smiled shyly. “Coffee and donuts to you.” She seemed pleased, giggling and batting her lashes, so I gestured to the company. “Coffee and donuts for everyone.”
“OK, that’s enough,” Nic said, and steered me toward another open door. Perhaps it was usually a dining room or bedroom. Now there was a coffin on a long table, candles burning at the head. I hesitated. The flames seemed to float and throb in the air above the wicks, pulling at the shadows on the wall like puppets. I entered, walking quickly but carefully, as if crossing a narrow bridge, and looked in the box. I saw a dead girl with long dark hair, or what appeared to be the body of one anyway: her figure was draped in a long black dress, her hands, in white gloves, held a rosary, and a black veil, woven of opaque muslin, completely covered her face.
I stared at the black cloth, as if trying to pierce it with my mind. I stared so hard that I almost convinced myself I saw it move just slightly in the faint, jumping flame light, as though lifted by a breath. I held my own breath and put out a shaky hand to peel the veil back: there was only a plastic form, a kind of white mask holding the veil in place. I felt a hand on my arm and assumed it was Nic.
“It’s just a mask,” I whispered over my shoulder.
“Sí, señor.” The voice was male and not friendly, and the hand on my shoulder was strong. “Her real face was destroyed in the accident. This is just for the funeral.”
He was a big guy in his thirties maybe, in a black suit, white shirt, and thin tie. The uncles stood in the doorway, no longer smiling. One cradled a shotgun casually in his crossed arms. The hand tightened. “Now that you’ve mocked our grief,” the man said, “I think you had better come out back and explain yourself.”
70
“MY NAME IS RAMÓN. I am the cousin of Maria.” I’d been led out to the backyard, a walled garden with a few trees, some plants growing tomatoes, red peppers, and cukes, or maybe zucchinis. Hens burbled in a coop. A big dog slept peacefully on the end of a thick chain. Over an open grill, women turned slices of steak and cactus. Flames hissed and jumped at the grease. Nic stood with them, nodding and smiling, but when she looked over at me her eyes were wide and anxious. I sat on a plastic chair across a table from Ra
món, with the two uncles standing above us.
“You said you were friends from Los Angeles,” he was saying. “OK. Friends are nice but they don’t come to Tepic for a funeral. I want to know what you are doing here.” He leaned in close to me and fixed his eyes on mine. “Did you really know my cousin?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I took another breath but couldn’t think of anything more to say. “That’s what I wanted to check. I’m sorry.”
He took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one out, then offered the pack to me. I declined. He lit up with a Zippo and snapped it shut. “Explain.”
“I’ll try. I’m not sure I can. Your cousin was living under the name Mona Naught, in a hospital in California. We don’t know how exactly, but she was at the center of some kind of mystery. This girl”—I nodded toward Nic—“was hired unknowingly to impersonate her. I was also tricked, into witnessing her suicide.”
“And you now question this?”
“Perhaps. I was really just following the clues. I don’t know what they mean but they led here.”
“And you think she was murdered.”
I said “Maybe,” but I nodded yes.
Ramón nodded with me. “I have suspicions too. When out of nowhere, the Americans tell us that my cousin, who was missing for so many years, was found dead, we contacted the Mexican government. They say she crossed back into Mexico years ago.”
“That’s all they have?”
“That’s it. They’re sending the documents. But my question for you is, if she really came back, why didn’t she tell us? Where has she been all this time? And how did she end up dead up north?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
Ramón patted my arm, in a manner half threatening, half friendly. “You and me both. She was my cousin. We grew up together. If someone killed her, then it’s my job to see justice done.” He put his lighter in his inside jacket pocket and I saw the gun he wore under his arm.
