“So what?” He lifted his cue to the ready. “I was just telling the little bitch what you’re all about. You fuck Rhea a few times, take her money, then dig around in her trash so you can use her for a story.”
I tossed the cue ball and caught it.
“I’ve not written any stories—yet. And I never took her money.”
“Took your pay in twat.” He made a great show of clutching his chin. “Yeah, you would have thought that was better.”
I tossed the cue ball higher, his eyes followed it, and I kicked him hard in the left shin. When I do that, I expect to hear a bone crack. Where I kick, the flesh is shallow and the bone is thin. But he was milk-fed and muscular, and he simply woofed and stumbled and tried to club me with the cue stick. He was off-balance, though, so I took advantage. I snatched the stick from him and whipped him with it along the right of his jaw, crumpling the ear. I stepped back and he collapsed against the table, catching himself. That wouldn’t do. He wasn’t far enough down yet. I kicked his legs out from under him and he fell, a very fine crash. The balls on the table jittered.
“I’m upset with you,” I said. My voice was getting thicker, and I felt myself going far away, to a place where I’ve done things I can’t go back and think about. “You speak of my relationship with Rhea in the crudest terms, and you question my standards as a reporter. Those are two things I hold dear.”
I crunched his left ear in my hand and pulled and blood spurted through my fingers, and he squealed on a high, rising note that seemed to split the ceiling. I was trying to stop myself, but it was no go. I released the ear and slammed my palm into it, trying to drive the hand through his head. Something popped—an eardrum, a bone? The sound was comforting. It led me back, and the room came into focus again. My arms stopped twitching. I rolled my shoulders to make sure the muscles were under control. Now he was just whimpering, and the loudest thing in the room was my breathing. I spoke, and my voice sounded just fine.
“Arthur’s helping me with a story about your smuggling operation. I’m going to feed it to the coppers, then quote them as saying they are investigating it, and your ass is going to be on a meathook. Don’t talk about Rhea to me ever again, or I’ll crucify you in person, not in the newspaper.”
The trap was set now. Bracknall’s type couldn’t sit quiet after being bloodied up. He’d lash back and I’d learn something. If I survived.
I straightened. “Come along now, Arthur.”
Morrison wasn’t eager to go, but he did. We walked out through the quiet.
* * * *
A mile from the Hotel Escalera Grande, Daly and Robles could see its five stories rising from the desert. As they bounced closer along the pitted road, they noted beams extruding, places where white paint had bled away, sections of roof sagging. Its deep-set windows were rows of eyes keeping watch on the mountains. The ground level splashed across the desert in arcaded passageways.
The hotel was gross patchwork. In places, details stood sharply in the sun. But in the hotel’s turnings and angles and overhangs were shaded areas that inhaled brightness and breathed it out again as shadow. As their tires swirled dust in the courtyard, they passed piles of lumber, a concrete mixer, buckets, piles of paint cans.
Robles nodded. “Like I say, they’ve been building.”
“Not for a while,” said Daly, as they pulled to a stop and Robles killed the engine. “Those paint cans are rusty.”
The creak and slam of the car doors dented the silent heat. Their feet crunched on the graveled driveway. Two vehicles were parked there, a Ford SUV and an antiquated Land Rover, its military gray-green paint flaking, tires heavy with dried mud from some flash rainstorm that had been swallowed by the hissing dryness. The desert was all around them. No fences kept it back. Small creatures they couldn’t see scuttled beneath emaciated paloverde and indifferent saguaro.
They moved into an angle of shade and pushed through the front door, into a lobby surprisingly clean and well arranged. Red saltillo tile, Navajo rugs, rustic-timber sofas with Indian-blanket cushions. Leather easy chairs and a huge fireplace under an arching mantel. Toward the back, the grand staircase of polished wood that gave the hotel its name. A reception desk with no one behind it. All quiet and empty, accessed by an unlocked door. Like a church, Daly thought.
Footsteps, unhurried, tock-tocked from some hard-floored passageway in the rear of the lobby and a man appeared at an open doorway. He was dressed in white, thin-faced and brown, his expression tentative, as if he had suffered. Spanish-looking, rather than Mexican. Sculptured forehead, noble nose, caring mouth.
“Dr. Aguilara,” said Robles.
Aguilara glided to them like a dancer unconscious of his skill. Fifty years old or so, he was comfortable in his age. An evolved person, Daly thought. Spiritual. One who thought of others, not himself. Everything about him—his perfunctory haircut, his slightly awkward manner, his simple cotton clothing—seemed appropriate.
“Deputy Robles,” said Aguilara, extending his hand to the lawman, bowing at Daly. “I heard a vehicle and I thought, medical supplies from Casa Grande. Or, perhaps, an accident, though they usually call ahead if that happens, and of course we can’t handle anything serious.”
Robles’ handshake was short. “Oh, it’s nothing serious.”
“And the young lady?”
“Daly Marcus,” Robles said. “A friend of Rhea Montero’s.”
“Yes,” Aguilara said, and took her hand. “You have the questions, then,” he said. “Yes.”
Daly hesitated, feeling Robles should take the lead. But she was not going to be intimidated.
“Can we sit down?” she said.
Robles and Aguilara exchanged glances, and Daly realized, with a surge of satisfaction, she had been right to take charge.
“Yes, yes,” said Aguilara, and Daly wound up uncomfortably close to Robles on an Indian-blanketed sofa, the physician in an easy chair.
“I didn’t see you at the funeral,” Daly began. She realized that sounded accusatory, though she had not meant it that way. But now that she’d said it—
“I was shaken by the accident,” Aguilara replied. “A physician is not supposed to react to such things, I know. Still, a friend— I had known Rhea long time. Well, two years—a long time for this part of the world.”
People in Arizona were always qualifying their statements, Daly thought.
“She financed your clinic?”
Aguilara tilted his head toward the back of the lobby.
“The clinic, yes. I must show you, she was quite proud of the work. The Indians have their health service, the poor Hispanics have the state system, but all that takes time, not everyone can wait, and we are free.” He shrugged. “Some of the Hispanics are illegal. It’s easier.”
Daly glanced at the deputy, but apparently being illegal here was not exactly a crime. His tolerant expression had not changed.
“Rhea was a good person, then?” Too blunt. She blushed.
“Quite a good person,” Aguilara replied. “Unconventional, of course.”
“Do you know Michael Callan?”
“I do.”
“He says Rhea smuggled illegals. That she made money smuggling illegals.”
Aguilara continued to look serious. “Many believed that. It is not hard to get a reputation here. And journalists theorize, it is part of their duty to the public. They must be aggressive and curious. Like Mr. Callan. There should be more like him.”
“I don’t think so. I think he has it in for Rhea.”
Aguilara caressed his chin. “Mr. Callan had an emotional attachment to Rhea. I’m sure in his heart he does not mean to damage her memory. He may act inappropriately, yes. That does not make him either a bad journalist or a bad man. Things cannot be easy for him right now.”
“Callan doesn’t seem interested in Rhea’s death.”
Aguilara’s expression was sympathetic, but puzzled. “Interested?”
“Curious. He doesn’t care to look into it.”
The physician looked to Robles for help, but the deputy didn’t offer any. Aguilara’s eyes grew more liquid, and he folded his hands as one does to forestall an impolite gesture. “What is there to look into?”
“A Mr. Bracknall told me Rhea died instantly. Arthur Morrison, her legal advisor, said she lived for a few minutes. You would know the truth, of course.”
Dr. Aguilara obviously did know the truth. Still, it took him some time to decide just what it was.
“She was . . . dying . . . after the crash, but she was able to speak a few words, yes.”
“About me?”
The physician coughed. “Yes.” He coughed again. “I believe so. I was shaken myself, you know. Events were moving so quickly. I was . . . blaming myself.”
He jumped up and began to pace.
“I’ve never been good with motor vehicles, but I’m a child around them. I always want to drive. Rhea knew, and she indulged me. We had been to Tucson that day to consult with an architect. On the way back, we were both talking with our hands, excited about expanding the clinic. As we approached the turn for the hotel, a big truck braked suddenly to our front. I saw it at the last moment, braked, swerved left. We almost missed, but its left rear bumper caught us. Rhea’s seat took the blow. If I had been a better driver—”
Daly interjected, “But the driver of the truck messed up, too.”
“He did,” said the physician, “but he was typically so conscientious that I could not fault him.”
Next to her, Daly heard Robles’ starched uniform squeak as he sat up straight.
Robles said, “Typically?”
That stopped Aguilara’s pacing.
“Yes, yes,” the physician said. “He had brought us several loads of building materials. Very reliable. He was bringing some that day.”
“So he worked for Rhea Montero?” Robles asked.
Aguilara seemed to be weighing this. “For the corporation.”
“The corporation that owns the hotel.”
A vague gesture. “Yes.”
Daly had begun to see what Robles was getting at.
“And Rhea owned the corporation?” she asked.
Aguilara’s sad lips compressed, just a little. “She had . . . influence . . . with it.”
“And Arthur Morrison was bringing up the rear?”
“He had been with us in Tucson, but he’d taken his own car because of other business he had to attend to. We were convoying back.”
Daly glanced at Robles. The deputy was waiting for her. She turned back to Aguilara.
“All of you,” she said. “All of you who knew Rhea. All together in the same place when she died.”
Dr. Aguilara raised himself on his toes, stretching his calves, looking suddenly quite comfortable. The lobby was his home ground. He knew the cove ceiling corners and ancient Hopi wall hangings and authentic Navajo carpets. He had helped shape the accommodating fireplace, polished wood, groomed saltillo tile, and the clinic in the back, giving moral weight to the hotel’s animal comforts. It had been his place for a long time, Daly realized, more so now Rhea was gone.
“Yes,” said Dr. Aguilara. “Nothing could soften the tragedy, but that at least was good. Her wish, perhaps, in that extreme moment.” He put a hand to his chest, and for the first time Daly noticed his wristwatch. It was a Rolex. “Friends all around,” he said. “We may have been some comfort to her.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
If I’d known at this point how well my efforts to throw Daly and Robles together were going, I’d have been more sanguine about my chances of making landfall before I was taken off by a bullet or a wire around the neck. But I couldn’t depend on that. In fact, I’d put her in Robles’ direction to keep her safe while I kicked up my heels in Phoenix and waited for hell to roll in on great cat feet. Now, as I kept Arthur Morrison at my right hand, I threw more fuel under the cauldron. Things were boiling nicely.
“In the line of entertainment, there’s nothing like an autopsy on a hot afternoon,” I told him as we rolled south on Arizona 51, a sweeping dart of a thoroughfare aimed at the heart of Phoenix. “Would you like to see what happens when things go badly wrong for a member of Rhea’s gang?”
His left hand flickered in a throwaway gesture. Sweat brightened his brow, and his eyes boggled as if they were trying to escape from his face. His body heat, working with the outside temperature, had crumpled his white shirt, and his tie was loose and straggly. He seemed to have resigned himself to the fact that, willy-nilly, he was going on a madman’s adventure.
“Talk,” I urged. “I love company, and you are providing me very little.”
“You hate company.”
“If that’s true, my future’s bright. Nobody comes around any more except to do me harm.”
He turned away, looking out the window at the low houses capped by palm trees slithering toward the sky.
“You’re not getting anywhere taking me on this ride,” he said, and his voice had an edge of satisfaction. He seemed to know things were in the wind, bad things for me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had the sand to defy me. Well, that was fine. I’d hoped for information, but action can be revealing too.
“Who cares if we get somewhere? You are far too goal-oriented,” I replied. “I never make that mistake. I simply try to keep moving, drinking in the passing scene.”
Down we went through the Valley, peering through the shallow man-made canyons of development, struggling against the mucus-like pollution, noting the street names whipping past us—Bethany Home, Camelback, Indian School. South Mountain butted up against the horizon, and downtown was glitzy and full of hollow hope. Bank One Ballpark, America West Arena, the Renaissance Center—great, shiny new commercialism rising on the grave of the old, dead commercialism. Phoenix had started as a city of boosters and it had never looked back. To hell with history and preservation and the environment, and hoorah for jobs and profits and growth. The city was clamorous with cotton-mouthed pieties and bustling with leaders who prated about the public good while they gave the high sign to the bulldozers and clinked the cash in their pockets. I loved the damned vicious place. Phoenix was perfect for me. It was the city that didn’t care.
We slipped down off the freeway onto Washington Street and pressed west past horrid new apartments with the prefabricated look of egg cartons, franchise pizza palaces that had morphed from the shells of porno shops, breakfast restaurants with sea-faring themes. Past Pioneers’ Park, with its rearing metal sculpture clutching dead laser-light globes like grapefruits pinned in a barbed wire fence.
And then there it was, as we drove south on Seventh Avenue, swung left to Sixth and pulled into a surface parking lot. A low barracks-like building enclosing a refrigerator for humans, metal tables, and bright cutting tools. The morgue. In a couple of years, the operation would move to a three-story forensic-science palace a block away. But for now there was no fear that the Chamber of Commerce would be showing it off to a gaggle of German tourists or Kansas housewives or backpacked schoolchildren. This operation could not be cleverly promoted, and Arthur Morrison looked a little sick.
“What’s the point of bringing me here?” he said.
“Two things,” I replied. “We’ll visit an old friend, and we’ll check out our future accommodations.”
* * * *
Inside, I looked around for Rathbun, but the detective was not present. Sometimes they aren’t, when the cause of death is obvious and there are other cases afoot. But there, peering over a post-mortem report, was Dr. Hans van Lubo, Bavarian by extraction, “Dr. V” in the parlance of local journalists. Dr. V was a sturdy little cliché of an exit sawbones—glowing bald pate, spade beard, glittering eyes. Hatchet scar on his forehead where
a killer had registered an objection.
“Look, will you, at this fat man,” Dr. V had once said to me, his forearms dewed to the elbows in the bloody guts of a deli owner. “How can I hope to find .22 caliber bullets in this?”
Perhaps the public, if it cared, might have asked for a politically correct professional to do up their suspicious corpses—a woman, say, or a Native American or a violin-playing Mormon. Someone sensitive. But the public does not care. And, left to its own devices, the work of probing the dead embraces the strangest personalities. A good thing in this case, for Dr. V could sort out his corpses with the best of them.
“Michael, Michael,” said the medical examiner, “You have come for our garroting. I know you. You enjoy the bizarre. And your friend?”
I glanced at Arthur, who was skulking behind me.
“Mr. Morrison, a former member of the bar,” I said. “He’s heard of your touch with a scalpel.”
“Let us hope we do not disappoint,” said Dr. V. “Shall we go introduce ourselves to Mr. Sweeney?”
Yes, indeed we should, though Mr. Sweeney seemed indifferent to the proceedings. A dry-faced attendant in a long blue medical blouse hauled him from his 38-degree refuge in a metal-enclosed back room, gurneyed him under the fluorescent lights of the operating theater, and—with the help of another attendant—ripped the zipper of his plastic body bag and rolled him up onto a perforated stainless-steel table with a trough at the bottom and a hose attached. Under his head went a curved wooden block. Bridged over his feet was a metal tray with a handy assortment of tools—forceps, scissors, brain knife and garden shears for chopping ribs. Dr. V stood by in medical blues, latex gloves on his hands, plastic booties tied over his shoes.
“An interesting case,” he said. “We’ve had a boring run of death lately. Gunshot, smash-up, overdose.”
As he spoke, he was busy with the scalpel, making the Y-shaped incision from the shoulders to the crotch. Then he was scooping out the internal organs and weighing them, describing them for the tape recorder.. The heart was unremarkable, the lungs were smoky, the liver was hammered by booze—I’m not giving you an exact blow-by-blow, but you get the idea. Morrison was off in a corner, clutching the edge of a counter and struggling to stay upright. When Dr. V worked the buzz saw and exposed the brain, the lawyer gave up and slumped into an office chair, hands over his face, gasping shallowly through his fingers.
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