“You keep a tight ship,” I said.
“That’s what Cindy says.” He smiled. “I’m too poor to be a pig. I don’t do so bad for a cripple or an otherly abled. That’s what they’re calling us now: otherly ableds.”
“Is that anything like calling a divorce lawyer a marriage counselor?”
“Something like that,” he said. “Hell, I’m a paraplegic. I live in a fucking wheelchair. I’ll never use my legs again. No matter what you call it, it sucks, but I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it by now. How’d you know I live here, Nellie? It’s not something Cindy or I have been advertising.”
“I didn’t know. I just happened to see her car parked here yesterday on my way home from Martha’s. I thought I’d stop and say hello. I saw her talking to you through the window, and—I’ll admit it—I wanted to find out who you were. Cindy gave me the feeling the other day that she was hiding something; you were it.”
“Cindy thought that now that her mother can’t drive anymore, it would be all right to leave her own car out front. We didn’t think about you. You’re pretty observant.”
“I try to be.”
“Can I get you a drink?”
“How ’bout a glass of water,” I said.
“You got it.”
The only decorations in Emilio’s living room were two photographs in brass frames, standing on a table. While he went to get the glass of water, I picked up the pictures. In the first one Justine Virga was leaning against a wall, wearing a black beret and a black leotard with a scooped-out neckline. I’d seen her before, but this was the first time she really came into focus. The blackness of her hair and the leotard gave her pale skin the look of moonlight floating on dark water. She had a long, graceful neck, and she held her head high, making a deep shadow under her chin. A black curl that had fallen loose was a question mark on her forehead. She had the pouty lips and high cheekbones of a model but the eyes of a desperado. They had the sad, passionate recklessness of a gaucho, a tango dancer, a gypsy, and there were dark smudges under them that hadn’t been caused by smeared makeup. Martha had said those eyes were open as she lay on the ground at Los Cerros. What was she looking at when she faced the final mystery? I wondered. Headlights?
The other photograph was of the fair-haired Michael Velásquez. He was leaning against the silver Porsche, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and running shoes and smiling dreamily. It was easy to see how these two had fallen in love: one was gentle, one was wild, both were beautiful—and now both were dead. Emilio came back into the room. “They were two good-looking people,” I said.
“They were beautiful on the inside too.”
“Justine looks older than Michael.”
“She was by a couple of years, which Martha didn’t approve of. Justine had more experience too; Martha didn’t like that either.”
“Did it bother you to have a son who looks so much like his mother?”
“Not when the mother is Cindy,” Emilio said. “Miguel looked Anglo and was raised Anglo, but Justine brought out the Latino in him—another thing that didn’t make the old lady happy.”
“What was Michael doing with a Porsche?” I asked him.
“You won’t believe this, Nellie.” If he had been anyone else I would have told him not to call me that, but he was my old friend Emiliano. “It was the weirdest thing. Miguel found this ad in the newspaper for a Porsche for five hundred dollars. I said it was a mistake, there had to be some zeroes missing, but he said what the heck, he’d give the guy a call. There was a divorce going on that the husband didn’t want. He’d agreed to sell all the couple’s possessions and give the wife half as a settlement, so he sold them all dirt cheap. It was his way of getting even.”
He was right. I didn’t believe it. I also didn’t believe I was going to win the lottery or get married and live happily ever after. I knew for sure I was never going to own a Porsche. It sounded like one of those apocryphal stories you hear all over America that everybody swears happened to somebody that somebody else knew. Like the one where a pet python gets loose and ends up in the pipes of an apartment building. Someone is going to the toilet, looks down and sees the python staring at her. “It reminds me of the story of the python in the punch bowl,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “Justine looks like a gypsy.”
“She mighta been,” he said. “She was from Argentina, you know.”
“When did she come here?”
“Several years ago. She lived with her aunt, Mina Alarid, for a few years before she met Miguel. After he died she moved to Colorado, but she came back every year on the anniversary of his death.”
“When did she get here this year?”
“The Saturday before Halloween. After Miguel died I had a hole in my heart big enough to put your fist through. Justy and I helped each other, and she got to be close as a daughter to me.” He shook his head. “Now she’s gone too. When death gets into a family, sometimes it won’t let go. Miguel and Justy are like waves. I can forget about them for a while, and then the wave comes along and pushes me under. Bad as Justy’s dying is, Miguel’s was worse. That was a wave that came out of nowhere and flattened me. Of all the rotten things that can happen in life, you never think your son is going to die before you do. Justy didn’t surprise me so much; I kind of knew we’d lose her someday.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t care whether she lived or not after Miguel died. She had that faraway look in her eye. It’s a look I’ve seen too much of.”
“Vietnam?”
“Yeah. I got my green card out of it, but I hated that war. You know what was even worse?” He gripped the wheels of his chair and stared at me until I thought the brown would bleed through his irises and stain the white. “I loved it too, and I hated it that I loved it. I went through some bad, bad times when I got back.”
“Drugs?” I asked.
“Drugs, alcohol, you name it. I was trying to kill myself without taking the responsibility. But I got my act together eventually and was a good father to Miguel. I learned that the only way you get over something is to go through it. At least we had the time we did. Except for the year with Cindy, it was the best part of my life.”
“How long have you been living here?” I asked.
“I got here not long after Miguel did. Whit Reid wasn’t being any kind of a father, and Miguel asked Cindy to find me. When I found out where he was, I moved here. With my disability pay I can live anywhere.”
“Cindy tracked you down?”
“Yeah. She’s learning how to stand up to the old lady.”
“Doesn’t Martha know you’re here?”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? I could roll right by her and she wouldn’t know the difference. People in wheelchairs are invisible to her. She only put this section for the handicapped in because she had to to get her permit. Believe me, it wasn’t out of the kindness of her heart. To her we’re just government checks. Besides, even people I used to know well can look right in my eyes and not recognize me these days.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Don’t worry about it. You look good, Nellie.”
“Not that good. I go by Neil now.”
“That’s right. You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? Cindy tells me you’re representing Martha.”
“I am.”
“That’s why Cindy couldn’t tell you I was here, you know. She didn’t want to put you in the position of having to hide something from the old lady. Will you have to tell her?”
“I don’t know yet. I won’t if I don’t have to.”
“She’s a hard-hearted woman, but she’s gonna need your help, because in one way or another she killed Justy.”
“How?”
“She never stopped blaming her for Miguel’s death, and she wouldn’t let Justy forgive herself.”
“You know a note typed on a manual typewriter was found in Justine’s pocket that said—”
“�
��I knew this was going to happen, but I couldn’t prevent it.’ Right?”
“How did you know that?”
“The old lady told Cindy, and Cindy told me.”
“Who wrote it? Do you have any idea?”
“A psychic, I think.” I looked into his whiskey-colored eyes. The typewriter that his neighbor Dorothy had seen on its way to Last Chance was floating down my mind’s river, through a channel, out to sea. If he was lying, I wasn’t ready to confront him with it yet.
“A psychic?”
“Yeah. There’s a New Age fair going on at the Pyramid, and Justy went there the day before she died.”
“Did she tell you who she saw?”
“Some woman from Santa Fe named Sky.”
“You don’t mean Cielo?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You know her?”
“Yeah. What did she say?”
“Justy wouldn’t tell me, but it wasn’t good. I could tell that much from her expression when she got back.”
I felt I’d seen and heard enough about bad news and death for one morning. I put my hand on Emilio’s shoulder; he put his hand on top of mine and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll be in touch,” I said.
“I hope so, Nellie,” he replied.
******
I called Cindy the minute I reached Hamel and Harrison, but Emilio had gotten to her first. “You could have told me the truth about Emilio,” I said.
“I didn’t lie. I didn’t tell you everything, but I didn’t lie. It’s not the same.” Cindy and her mother had more in common than she thought.
“It’s pretty damn close.”
“I knew you before you became a lawyer, Neil,” she said.
And I knew her before she became a liar. At least I thought I did. “You should have told me. It’s not my idea of fun to come across Emilio in a wheelchair and have him watch the expression on my face when I find out he’s a paraplegic.”
“You didn’t have to follow me.”
“I wasn’t. I happened to be leaving your mother’s, and I saw your car.”
“I couldn’t tell you, Neil. You’re working for Mother, and we don’t want Mother to know. She’d be furious.”
“You think Emilio has been living at Los Cerros for years and your mother doesn’t know? She may be a … She may be difficult, but she’s not stupid.”
“You didn’t recognize him. Why would she? Besides I hardly ever go there; only when I know Mother won’t be driving by. Usually when we get together we meet somewhere else.”
“Um,” I said.
“Promise me you won’t tell her, Neil.”
“I can’t,” I said. “If I don’t want my clients to lie to me, I can’t very well lie to them. There are a couple of things I need to ask you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Does your mother usually use her kill switch?”
“Always. She’s paranoid that someone will steal her Buick.” “Did Whit recommend she have the car serviced at Mighty?” “Yeah. He’d been there and he liked the place.”
“Emilio told me a crazy story about Michael buying his Porsche for five hundred dollars from a guy who was getting a divorce. Do you believe that?”
It was one thing to accuse Cindy or even her mother of being a liar, quite another to accuse her son. Her voice had the cold smoke of her mother’s vodka bottle. “Michael was a very sweet boy, Neil,” she said, in a voice that came from the back of the freezer. “He never lied to me or anyone else.”
“And he didn’t take drugs either.”
“That’s right. He didn’t.”
“What about Justine? Your mother thinks she was involved with drug dealers.”
“You know my mother. She likes to believe the worst of people.”
“Emilio said Justine didn’t care if she lived or died anymore. You don’t think she might have thrown herself in front of Martha’s car, do you?”
“It’s possible,” Cindy said. “Justine wouldn’t forgive herself until Mother forgave her, and Mother never would do that. People Mother’s age went through some hard times with the Depression and the war. That’s what the sixties were all about, weren’t they? Trying to escape from our parents’ difficult lives?”
“Maybe.”
“Hard times make hard hearts.”
“Not always,” I said.
“Just so you don’t think I am hiding anything else, there is something I should tell you, Neil. Nobody likes to think their Mother is capable of murder, but mine has killed.”
“Your mother?”
“Her best friend, Kay Hooper, was dying of cancer. Mother got a prescription for painkillers from her own doctor and gave Kay an overdose. ‘It was something I had to do,’ Mother said.”
“That’s different. The woman was dying anyway. She was probably in terrible pain.”
“So was Justine,” Cindy said.
And so was Cindy Reid.
11
I WENT OUT to the reception area, to find Anna reading the Journal and drinking coffee. Brink stood behind her, reading over her shoulder. It was Friday, when the paper lists the weekend’s coming events. “Do me a favor, will you?” I asked Anna. “Check and see if the New Age fair is still on.”
Brink’s eyebrows scrunched way up in an exaggerated gesture, like that of an actor trying to reach the last row. “You’re going to a New Age fair?”
“You don’t even listen when I read your horoscope,” Anna said.”
“It’s business,” said I.
Anna flipped through the pages. “On again this weekend.”
“Good,” I said. “Remember the psychic from Santa Fe, the one who knew Lonnie Darmer?”
“The one who washes her hair in Perrier?”
“Evian.”
“Does that make her a bubblehead?” asked Brink.
“It makes her a babblehead,” said Anna. “She psychic-babbles.”
“She babbles for bucks,” I said. “And makes more money at it than we do.” If Brink or I could ever afford a big house in Santa Fe, it wouldn’t be in this lifetime.
“What about her?” asked Anna.
“Justine Virga went to see her the day before she died. A sealed note was found in Justine’s pocket that said: ‘I knew this was going to happen, but I couldn’t prevent it.’ Maybe Cielo wrote it.”
“You mean she gave Justine a note saying she was going to die, then told her not to open it?” Anna asked. Her eyebrows went up too.
“It’s possible.”
“Way weird,” said Anna.
“Have you ever been to a New Age fair?” I asked Anna.
“Once. I had my cards read.”
“What did they say?” That she would meet a man with a nonstop stereo?
“That my boyfriend was smart in some ways, stupid in others, and that made him mean,” she said.
“I knew a psychic once who breathed into the mouth of a chicken,” Brink said. “You know what happened? The chicken died.”
Anna and Brink went back to the newspaper. I went into my office, where I debated asking Saia to send an investigator out to the Pyramid to question Cielo. But I knew what he’d say. “C’mon, Neil, those psychic dames are always one taco short of a combo plate. I’d like to put all of them on their crystal balls and roll them back up north where they came from. Questioning a psychic would be a waste of an investigator’s time and the taxpayer’s money.” Besides, telling him about Cielo would be disobeying one of a defense lawyer’s primary laws—never give up a witness, especially when you don’t know where that witness will lead.
I called him and asked if anyone had been out to the Atalaya lot yet.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What did you find?”
“Not much. Some broken glass.”
“Did it come from Martha’s car?”
“We’re checking on it,” he said.
******
The taxpayers weren’t paying my salary—Martha Conover was. On Saturday I had nothing better to do, so
I went on my own personal truth quest at the Pyramid. The New Agers had set up their tables in the main ballroom. I walked up one aisle and down the next, getting asked to remember the goddess, choose my own reality, reverse the aging process, journey into the body, quit smoking, turn pain into joy and create a more fun, vibrant and conscious me. There were tables advertising colorpuncture, vibrasound, psychic surgery, brain machine relaxation sessions and Native American tarot enlisting the assistance of power animals. That was one I might get interested in.
At the end of the third aisle I found a table with the sign Forward Life Progressions by Cielo inscribed in silver ink on a black background. She stood beside the table, surrounded by adoring groupies, women who were shorter, older and less striking-looking than she was. Most people are less striking than Cielo, a.k.a. Ci, especially when she’s dressed in her psychic costume, and I’d never seen her any other way. She wore her trademark silver, a broomstick-pleated skirt and a matching shirt with a concho belt over it. It’s a look they call wearable art in Santa Fe, rip-off anywhere else. Around her neck was a crystal suspended on a silver chain. Her Evian-washed hair hung full and loose to her shoulders. Silver streaks framed her face. Dangling turquoise earrings matched the color of her eyes exactly. It’s a color you often see in turquoise, never in eyes, and it made me wonder if she didn’t put the eyes in every morning right before she put on the earrings.
Most of her admirers were women who had the time and money to indulge in the fantasy that they’d have another life, which would be better than this one, and there had been enough of them to buy Ci a big house in Santa Fe. New Mexico is the one place in America where psychics make more money than lawyers.
“Pluto is the creator and the destroyer, the Hindu god Shiva,” she trilled to her admirers in her silvery voice. “It is not a very subtle influence. When Pluto transits your chart, the message is to regenerate or die. Only very evolved people can regenerate without suffering. Our life’s work is to suffer. We are both the marble and the sculptor in our own lives.” Maybe she’d been reading the same horoscopes Anna had. Her audience hung on every word, which made me wonder if she hadn’t started charging by the syllable. She finished her talk by spinning her arm in a circle around her head. I heard a tinkling sound—money changing hands or something shaking inside the silver ball she held. Her groupies moved up close to question her. They were so wrapped up that I was able to push my way to the front of the pack. “Well, Neil Hamel,” Ci said when she saw me. “The woman warrior.”
The Lies that Bind Page 10
