Like the conquistadores before me, I turned north to search for El Dorado. The road was red dirt, the desert green cacti, the sky deep blue with white puffs of clouds floating across it. A large bird with a white belly and black falcon wings lifted up and flew away. A coyote ran down the road, and its white tail bobbed like a bunny’s. This place was a desert paradise. If it had to have a building, it deserved at least a Frank Lloyd Wright.
What it had received was a bloated corpse rotting in the sun. I came upon it about a mile later, a sprawling unfinished hulk of a building beside a sign that labeled it El Dorado. The wooden frame stuck out like the rib cage of the corpse, where the mud-colored stucco didn’t cover it up. In some places the concrete-slab foundation lay exposed, a landing pad for helicopters or extraterrestrials. A pile of plywood and pink fiberglass insulation lifted and bucked in the breeze. Wires dangled from exposed beams. The size of it was appalling; so was the ugliness, the stupidity, the greed and the waste. You don’t often find water in the desert, but you do find real estate fraud. This was a Las Tramponus project, which never should have been built with depositors’ money that never should have been lent. A bank had collapsed, taking El Dorado down with it, or was it the other way around? Did it matter to the taxpayers who were going to be paying for it?
El Dorado looked as though it would have a three-day-old carrion smell, and I was tempted to remain in the car, sealed in and air conditioned. “You didn’t come this far just to sit in a car,” I told myself, so I changed into my running shoes, got out and walked toward the building. A mourning dove cooed, a sad and lonely desert sound. The pile of warped plywood shuddered and banged. I entered the El Dorado hotel, walked across the lobby and climbed the stairs to the second floor, wondering how long it would take this monstrosity of a building to decompose and this patch of desert to return to what it had been, remote, pristine, beautiful, wild. Forever, probably. It was for sale, I remembered, and would in fact be auctioned off in a few days. Some investor would buy it and borrow more money to finish it, maybe even from New West Bank. Water would be brought in from somewhere, and before you knew it, people would be playing golf at El Dorado and building their dream houses where saguaro had stood. Whit Reid’s dream would come true, but he wouldn’t be part of it.
Even in running shoes my footsteps sounded loud as I walked down a corridor on unfinished plywood floors. They echoed as I passed by room after room after empty room. No one had gotten around to putting down any sound-numbing carpet, or if they had, it had been stolen. This place, derelict as it was, would be a palace to Santo and all the other homeless, but they couldn’t live here; it was too far from water, too far from food. The law of supply and demand didn’t work in the Arizona desert unless you had money and a car. I turned a corner and passed a small room, intended to be a bathroom. The plumbing fixtures had left holes where they’d been ripped from the wall; they probably had not been gold, as they were in some S&L rip-off buildings, but would have been expensive enough. This was, after all, supposed to be a luxury resort. I continued down the hallway and entered one of the rooms. The wall behind me had been stuccoed over, and I crossed to the far side of the building, where I could look out through a space for a sliding door that led to a terrace. The arms of the watching saguaros were raised as if they’d been held up at gunpoint. I wondered how many Whit had dug up to build this place and what he’d done with them. I heard tires approaching on gravel, then a car door shut, reminding me that I was a woman alone in a lonely place and empty-handed too. I’d locked my purse and my weapon in the car. I had nothing with me to steal, but I had nothing to protect me either.
“It’s a prospective buyer,” I said to myself. I crossed the building to a window-sized hole on the parking lot side and saw a white subcompact car dusted with red Arizona dirt, but whoever had been in it had already entered the building. I heard footsteps coming slowly up the stairway. “Hello,” I called, but the only answer was feet reaching the top of the stairs and turning down the hall. “Who’s there?” I called again, revealing that I was a woman and probably even that I was alone, if the intruder didn’t already know. The mourning dove stopped cooing. The footsteps continued. There was a hesitation in the step and a scuffing sound like one foot dragging behind the other. I looked around for some means of self-defense, found a two-by-four in the corner and whacked it hard against the wall to make my point. I made a dent in the Sheetrock; the board held solid. The footsteps kept on with their erratic beat. I thought about Justine Virga frozen in a pair of headlights, about Las Manos, about my own hands. I could live without hands if I had to, but I couldn’t live without blood. This was not a good place to empty your arteries. Trying to dial a phone would be the least of your worries out here.
I heard another car approach, moving faster and less carefully than the first. The gravel spun. One door slammed and then another. “It needs a hell of a lot of work,” said a man in a real estate salesman’s loud and jovial voice.
“A handyman’s special,” said another.
The footsteps began moving rapidly away. Clutching the two-by-four, I sidled up to the doorway in time to see running shoes and a pair of jeans disappear around an unfinished corner. I looked out the window and watched two real estate men in leisure suits approach El Dorado’s entrance. A man wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and running shoes ran through the doorway and burst between them. Whatever was hesitant about his gait he lost once he began to run. The interloper was quick and skinny, with curly dark hair. The real estate men were slow and fat and pale. One of them fell on his butt. The other guy helped him up. The intruder ran toward his car. If he was carrying a weapon, he had concealed it. I couldn’t get a good look at his face as he jumped into the white car, but I saw enough to make me believe he spoke Spanish. He slammed the door and sped away, raising clouds of pink dust, but not before I had memorized the license number, Arizona 4FR668. I ran down the hallway and down the stairs, repeating the number to myself so I wouldn’t lose it. One real estate guy was brushing the other one off.
“What happened?” they asked.
“Just a minute,” I said. I went to my car and wrote down the number on a pad in my purse. Then I returned to the men. “I heard him walking down the hallway, but when you pulled up he ran away.”
“Probably looking for something to steal. Happens all the time in these deserted properties,” one of the men said.
“There isn’t much left to take here,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s been pretty well cleaned out, but some of these guys are desperate.”
“He has a new car.”
“Probably stole that too. Those Mexicans will steal anything that’s not bolted down.”
“How’d you know he was a Mexican?” I asked.
“What’d he look like to you?”
“Argentine, maybe,” I said.
“Yeah, well, they’ll steal too.” It was a snap judgment. I see it often enough—Latino men are thieves. Rapists too, but he hadn’t gotten around to that yet. I hoped it wasn’t a judgment I’d been making myself. If anyone knows better, it ought to be me.
“Well, what do you think, John—you want to take a look?” he asked his companion.
“Why not?” his companion answered. “We didn’t drive all the way out here to play golf.”
“You guys prospective buyers?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Not exactly. I’m a lawyer looking for a client of mine.”
“It’s not a great place for a woman alone,” he said.
“What is?” I replied.
18
JUST TO REMIND myself that not everything that gets built is crap, I stopped at the Arizona Biltmore for a drink when I got back to Phoenix. It’s the kind of sensual luxury hotel that makes me think about midafternooners. It was four, the digital clock in the car said; not too early, not too late. Sometimes I imagine I’m the kind of woman rich men take to luxury hotels, but if I wait a few minutes the fe
eling goes away.
The road to the Biltmore was thick with orange trees, country-club-sized houses and For Sale signs. Palm trees strolled down the median, and the shadows of the fronds fingered the road. The flower beds were brilliant with New England colors. No xeriscaping here. This was a luxury area, and the one necessary luxury in Arizona is water. A sign beside the road said to “Drive gently.”
The turrets of the Biltmore appeared over the tops of the palms. It was the ultimate desert oasis, and it probably was a true oasis when it was built, before the city grew up around it. It was a sprawling, inventive Frank Lloyd Wright building and a monument to beauty, comfort and intelligence. No detail was ignored in the Arizona Biltmore. Every surface was carved and sculpted and planned. The gardens were brilliant and perfect, the sprinklers ticked unobtrusively. Even the birds sounded happier.
I parked my car in a shady spot, nodded to the doorman and went inside to the bar, where it was cool and dark and crystal prisms hung from the ceiling, reflecting what little light there was. I felt the way I used to at the end of a day of down-and-dirty third-world traveling: hot, beat, as if I’d been on a desert expedition and had a life-threatening but mind-expanding experience, as if what I needed was a soft seat and a cold drink. In one way I felt like an outsider here—layered with desert dust, not rich enough, not cautious enough, too close to the edge. In another way I didn’t; Frank Lloyd Wright knew something about the edge himself. Excellence can push at the limits, but so can failure. There are the risks you choose to take (like sex) and the risks (like poverty) that choose you.
A waitress swam out of the darkness to ask what I’d like. “A margarita up,” I said. My voice came out as snappy and irritable as a commuter in a traffic jam. If I’d been behind the wheel I would have been leaning on the horn. Maybe I was closer to the edge than I thought.
“You’ve had a hard day, haven’t you?” She smiled, and her eyes crinkled up and said: Don’t worry; we’ll take care of you here. I looked into those eyes and was surprised to see that she meant it, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. You’d expect the Biltmore to have the best and most unobtrusive service. I don’t go to places like the Biltmore in Albuquerque; we don’t have places like the Biltmore in Albuquerque.
“You’re right,” I replied.
My margarita arrived, big and cold and encrusted with salt. In my heart I know there are no safe places, but for the moment anyway I felt coddled and secure, as though no one had been lying to me or following me, or if anyone had, he wouldn’t get to me here. I licked my way through the salt, arrived at a sheltered cove of triple sec and tequila, took a sip. About halfway through my drink I felt so secure that I began peering around the bar to see if there was anyone I might be interested in exploring the long, dark corridors of the Biltmore with. There were plenty of men here, but no one who seemed the right mix, whatever that was in this dark age of disease and limited expectations. The prospects were pale and prosperous businessmen in leisure clothes, cautious in some ways, maybe, reckless in others, but they weren’t my ways. I wasn’t an Arizona businessman’s idea of an adventure, and they weren’t mine. I wasn’t even sure if the idea of romantic adventure still existed.
As I finished my margarita I thought about where I’d spend the night. It wasn’t going to be here, in a two-hundred-dollar-a-night room, which left me with two choices: go back to the Duke City; go someplace in Phoenix I could afford. There were questions that still needed to be asked about El Dorado and about Whit Reid, so I decided to spend my night in a Motel 9.
It was, like all Motel 9’s, seedy and cheap, with a tinny stall shower and no tub, near the highway where semis roll by like waves on the interstate shore. Places like this make me feel I’m underwater. To stay in the junk-traveler mood, I’d gotten dinner to go at McDonald’s. I ate my Quarter Pounder and fries, then watched Jay Leno from the bed for five minutes, until I fell asleep without even lifting a finger to zap him off. When the phone rang a few hours later, Jay had been replaced by a fuzzy blank screen. “Hello,” I said before I was awake enough to remember that I shouldn’t answer the phone. Nobody would be calling me; nobody knew I was here. I was as alone as a woman could be in a cheap motel in Sunbelt City.
“Your car has been in an accident,” a male voice said.
I was awake enough to recognize a scam. “Bullshit,” I replied.
“Your name is Neil Hamel. Right?” the voice in the darkness rasped. He had an accent, but at this hour I couldn’t tell what kind. I thought about turning on the light, but who knew where the con artist was calling from and whether he was watching my room for a reaction? Wherever the voice was, he wasn’t going to get me to admit my name. I didn’t say anything, but that didn’t stop him. “You rented a gray subcompact from Budget. Right?” He was right, but I didn’t let him know it. “Your car ran into mine. I don’t think you will want to involve the police and the insurance company, so why don’t we talk about it.” Still no answer from me. “I will be there in five minutes.”
The object, apparently, was to get me to open the door. It wasn’t a brilliant scheme, but the criminal mind is more deviant than smart. I hung up and dialed the police. “It’s a scam,” a bored policewoman answered. “Happens all the time. Don’t open the door. They’re looking to get in and rob you.”
“Could you send somebody over to investigate?” I asked.
“By the time we got there, hon, the guy will be long gone. Your best bet is to call hotel security.”
I called the front desk. “We’ll be over in a few minutes,” motel security said. “Your door has a security lock. Don’t open it.”
I got out of bed and went to the window. The white polyester drapes were pulled tight, and I separated them a crack to peek through. Mercury vapor lights gave the parking lot the deep shadows and the brilliant fluorescence of a combat zone. Headlights signaled from the interstate, white first, then red. A gray subcompact with a pool of shadow under it was parked out front where I remembered leaving mine. Could someone have taken my car and replaced it with its exact replica? All gray rental cars look alike to me. I couldn’t remember the license number. I can’t remember my own license number. If my car weren’t bright yellow and loaded with bumper stickers, I’d never be able to find it in a parking lot. Raspy Voice had gotten my name and room number. How? He could have stolen the car. He could also have broken into it here and looked at the rental records. Once he had my name, it wouldn’t be hard to get my room number, or would it? You’d like to think that was information the night clerk wouldn’t give out.
On the other hand, he could have followed me here. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that everyone who has an accent and/or looks Latin American is a criminal. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that every criminal is after me. It’s paranoia either way you look at it, but even paranoids get followed. I wasn’t at anybody’s mercy, however. I didn’t have to be a victim; I had a weapon. I got dressed in the parking lot’s ambient glow and took the security lock off the door. The criminal and hotel security were on their way, but I was kind of hoping the criminal would get here first. That’s the kind of woman I was. Facing down trouble alone is a pattern you learn early. First you fear it, then you adjust to it, then you begin to like it. Then you find you like it so much that—like a drug—you can’t live without it.
He signaled his arrival by a furtive knock at the door. I’d known he was coming; I’d heard his footsteps, and they weren’t the secure and confident steps of a security guard. They were the quick and light steps of someone who was used to getting in and out fast, but they had the slight hesitation of someone who had a bad leg.
I flicked on the overhead light, yanked the door open to get a good look at him and found myself facing a black ski mask with holes for the mouth, nose and eyes, smooth and threatening as an assassin’s hood. He was medium-sized, skinny and all in black: his jeans, his windbreaker, his running shoes. He moved fast. His hands were encased in black leather g
loves, and in two seconds they were pushing me against the wall. Leather fingers moved from my shoulders to my collarbone and closed around my throat. “Who are you? What do you want from me?” I gagged. My voice box was jammed, my trachea squashed, and then I couldn’t speak or scream or even breathe much. His knee pressed into my groin. I raised my hand with the weapon in it. He noticed, brought his knee back and kicked my arm with a fluid and powerful motion.
The weapon fell to the ground, slid across the floor and broke open against the door, releasing a sharp and pungent odor, poison in the nose and lungs, that straddled the line between smell and pain. It was the odor that will repel a man faster than any other. New Mexico’s one-hundred-percent all-natural free-range skunk stunk. If smell had a color, its color would have been puke green. It had me reeling. The masked man gasped, let go of my throat and staggered out the door. I followed. Anything to get out of the fouled den my room had become.
He ran down the walkway with no trace of his limp. He seemed to possess an athlete’s ability to ignore it when necessary. He’d never said a word, so I didn’t know if he and Raspy Voice were one and the same. I bent over my rental car, trying to catch my breath and throw off the smell, feeling I would vomit green vapor. He was getting away from me but taking his smell with him. He’d taken a direct hit, and he didn’t have any neutralizer. He’d have to burn his clothes and douse himself in tomato juice to get rid of it. He ripped off his hood, jumped into an anonymous white car at the far end of the parking lot and burned rubber getting out of there. Once again I couldn’t get a good look at his face, but I did get the last two digits of his license plate number: 68.
I held my breath, went back into the room thankful I’d messed up a Motel 9 and not the Biltmore, grabbed the neutralizer and sprayed it around. It would be a long time before anyone would want to stay in here again. I sprayed my clothes too, but it would be a long time before I’d want to wear them again. While I waited for the security guard, I went out and investigated the gray rental car. It was mine; the key fit. There was no sign of breaking and entering. The rental documents were in the glove compartment, exactly as I had left them.
The Lies that Bind Page 16
