Pay Here

by Charles Kelly

  “We’ve only got a theory, but we’ve got some people we need to talk to,” he said. “You know the personnel, and you knew Rhea, so we thought you could help.”

  Daly puffed a breath. “You thought he could help.”

  Robles continued smoothly, “The department’s short-handed right now, and I’ve got investigations I need to push.” He’d done some rehearsing. “Besides, you draw attention, and that will surface things sooner, if there’s anything there.”

  His eyes reached me then, not begging, but I got the idea. He was a good fellow, and you hate to see a man desperate.

  “Clay pigeon, eh?” I said, laying on the chuckle. “Yes. I’ve been doing well in that department.”

  Daly didn’t want to be left out.

  “Rhea’s been murdered, like I told you before,” she said, “and now we’re getting close to proving it.”

  Robles ducked and reached for the catsup.

  “Murdered why?”

  Daly didn’t hesitate. “It’s some sort of illegal drug running operation, based at that clinic out in the Hotel Escalera Grande. Dr. Aguilara is in charge of it. It has to do with generic drugs coming in from Mexico. He uses illegal immigrants as couriers, but Rhea found out about it and wouldn’t go along. She was going to blow the scheme when they figured out a way to do her in. It had to look accidental, so they covered themselves by getting together and doing it. But now it’s all beginning to come apart.”

  “That’s marvelously detailed,” I said.

  Robles bit his hamburger as if he meant to kill it.

  “It’s a little odd how a bunch of Rhea’s friends and associates were at the accident scene,” he said, chewing. “There’s a truck driver in Tucson who might know something. I ran down his address.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “That’s it?”

  “For now,” he said.

  Daly’s lips tightened. “Rhea was killed for some reason, and you two don’t even bother to think about why.”

  I reached for her iced tea and drank most of it.

  “We’ll find out why,” I said. “When we find out if it happened.”

  * * * *

  We had a visitor that night, Daly and me, in the Mesa Verde Motel just past the southeast edge of Florence, where we’d set ourselves up with rooms next to each other. The city has never reached into the desert to catch up with this motel, though the structure was put up in the 1920s. By now it should have been overtaken by mobile homes and Oscos and Circle Ks. But no. The land there is cut by dry washes, bumped about by sediment hillocks, guarded by mesquite and yucca and saguaro. Around Mesa Verde, the coyotes lope and the hawks sweep and the rattlesnakes whisk. It’s cheap, thirty-five dollars a night plus tax, and pre-packaged coffee in the rooms, and you go to sleep on a thin mattress on a clean bed with the night cries of the desert outside the window.

  If you can sleep.

  I did sleep, for a while. But half an hour after midnight I came awake clutching my pillow, my underclothes sweated through. The window air-conditioner was groaning like a buzz saw, pumping out frigid gasps. What had awakened me? A sound, a dream, a vision? No. At some points we are meant to awaken. Moonlight leaked through rents in the tacky curtains, spattering the floor with gobbets of yellow. My throat was dry and my tongue felt thick. I rolled from the mattress—the box springs released me without squeaking—and shuffled to the bathroom. Without turning on a light, I found the tap, knocked the paper cap from the stubby glass, ran a half-measure of water and drank. The water filled me, but some spiritual thirst remained. I slipped back across the room, found the window, twitched the curtains aside and looked out. There was no reason for this, except I knew I had to, and instantly I saw why.

  At the mouth of the arroyo running within twenty yards of the motel stood a woman. At first I thought it was Daly. She was the right height, her hair was styled like Daly’s, even the ankle-length dress was reminiscent of Daly. I saw all this in silhouette, because at that moment the moon was lurking behind a cloud, and its light was choked and pale. The woman did not move, but the cloud moved, and its shimmering light came full on her face. My first thought was of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, the ghost that sorrows for her dead. But that was simply my brain clutching for safety. It almost worked, for the clouds shifted again, and when their shadow passed, the woman was gone. A phantom, my mind tried to say, issuing from tortured sleep. But my stomach told me the truth. The moonlight was merciless. And it had fallen for a moment on the face of Rhea Montero.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I believe she saw me,” I said. “That’s why she disappeared.”

  Daly tugged on her right ear lobe, and Robles tapped the reports on his desk, as if trying to connect with something authentic. “You’ve been thinking a lot about her, haven’t you?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. I shuffled to the window. The sharp morning was up, and hot details of the town stood out. Across the street, semi-empty lots boiled with dust, and I could see a fenced enclosure topped with barbed wire, departmental vehicles peeking through the mesh. Across the street, a square-cut adobe. Old growth trees. All solid and real. I knew what Robles was talking about.

  “Yes,” I repeated, without turning. “And it was dark, and I had been sleeping, and I had been reflecting on old mysteries. This is Arizona and the myths are alive, I know that. And I’ve been under a strain. I’ve been thinking a lot about dying lately, more so than usual. I make up stories for a living, so I know how fragile truth is. And I’ve been sad, and sadness can do queer things to you. And the mind plays tricks. And it couldn’t have been Rhea, because why should she be there?”

  I turned back to them, to Daly pacing, Robles now standing with his shoulders thrown back.

  “It was Rhea, all right,” I said. “You can put all that aside. It was Rhea, and she’s alive. She was here to talk to Daly. Rhea died to throw me off her trail. Events were moving too fast, or she was simply ready to leave. Her death would have ended pursuit, no matter what turned up. But Daly wouldn’t let Rhea rest in peace. So now she’s come alive to tell her friend to give up, to let her fade back under the earth.”

  Daly swung her head in negation. It was impossible to see if her eyes were wet, but I suppose they were. She had adjusted to so much in the past few days, burned so much energy on faith. All for that long-ago friend she’d worshipped.

  “She must be in terrible trouble,” Daly said. “She must have done this to hide from her gang.”

  “It’s not likely,” Robles said, taking her elbow. “They were all there.”

  And I noticed that, in an instant, he had begun to believe me.

  She shook him off. “They say they were all there. Why would they say that if it were true?”

  I was trying to work it out for myself, but some things were obvious.

  “Because they were caught in the open,” I said. “And remember, there’s a body. Someone is buried in Rhea’s grave.”

  Daly passed a hand in front of her eyes.

  “Will she come to me again?”

  “No,” I said. “Now we must go to her and finish the whole thing out.”

  My own words struck through my guts like a knife. A surprise, that. I was doing just what I should. Except that Daly had believed Rhea was good, and I had wanted to believe. Now my belief was buggered. God has His little tricks, doesn’t He?

  * * * *

  Robles was uneasy. “There’s nothing left for me here,” he said.

  We’d spent a brisk half-hour trying to decide where Rhea was, how it might be best to approach her, what she was up to.

  “There’s no murder, there’s nothing,” he said. “If Rhea’s alive, no one killed her, and I’ve got no reason to investigate.”

  “False criminal report,” I told him. “And don’t forget the body in the ground. Somebody’s dead, and Rhea and her people arranged for it.
Murder.”

  “Or maybe they took somebody’s corpse and used it. In any case, no judge is going to order an exhumation on this kind of evidence. A quick look from a motel window late at night. No light.”

  He was slapping his right fist into his left palm, as if trying to gear himself up for a game he was unsure of winning.

  “Fraud,” I said, pushing him. “Criminal mishandling of a corpse. And don’t forget the murders of Sweeney and Arthur Morrison.”

  “Those are out of my jurisdiction, as you sure know. And now we’ve got this thing down to a Health Department violation, or a case for the State Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. The sheriff’s not going to let me run along on this one.”

  Daly said, “I don’t believe you—how can you do this?”

  I saw now what lay between them. It was personal. How quickly these things developed.

  “Don’t push me, Daly,” he said. “I know you want to find your friend, and I know you want to find out what happened and you’re all upset—”

  “All upset! You—”

  I thought she was going to say, “You bastard!”

  That would have been the correct expression in a conflict like this, but Daly stopped herself, lips twitching. She was unwilling to throw the bomb. She simply flushed and locked her fingers together.

  “If it would be a problem for you, Callan and I can go on our own,” she said. “Whatever Rhea did, she’s in trouble, and I have to try to save her.”

  He gestured at the papers, as if wishing there were something there to please her.

  “There’s still the truck driver,” he said. “I could give him a shot.”

  “He’s the second string,” I replied. “Too far from the central action. Things have run beyond him now.”

  He accepted that and turned to Daly. She was his concern.

  “If you can bring me something more—”

  Daly’s lips parted. I was sure she could bring him something more. The question was, could I?

  * * * *

  Daly had described the Hotel Escalera Grande as a dead place sinking back into the desert, but it seemed writhing with life to me. That was my first impression as we rounded the last curve and it lay before us, huddling under a hot sky. Though I’d never seen the defunct hotel, I knew of it. Rhea never visited it in all the time we’d been together. Dr. Aguilara ran the place and Rhea only dabbled. At least, that was my impression. It was not part of her migrant smuggling operation, the illegals it served appeared to be mostly local, and I wasn’t interested in her spurious efforts at philanthropy.

  Civic involvement was nothing new for Rhea’s inner circle, after all. I thought of Bracknall, with his aspirations to elite business circles and his contributions to Boys and Girls Clubs, sheriff’s volunteer posses, and Save-the-Saguaros. Even Arthur Morrison had forked over $100 each year for two tickets to the Soroptimist Lunch and Fashion Show, had been front-and-center at the Aid-to-Zoo affair. And he’d haunted the lobby at Phoenix Symphony Hall, hinting he’d coughed up big to keep the music playing because, y’ know, you can’t have enough of this culture, this high culture, in a rough-and-ready place that was just turning the corner into somethin’ world-class and substantial. I felt a pang. Poor Arthur. He had been a shit, but so was I. And he had been, like me, one of the old-time shits. The parade was passing, and now there was one more riderless horse.

  Sentimentality aside, most of this philanthropy was conventional. Not so a clinic in a hotel in the desert, like the one now glowing in my eyeballs as the rough track under us bounced Daly’s rental car around. Still, Rhea was anything but conventional. And there was further reason for me to have overlooked the clinic, to have down-rated its importance in my investigation. At the time, I was reeling from my break-up with her, and my mind was clouded. Oh, I sense an objection. What do I hear you saying? That I was compromised, out of line, unethical, that I shouldn’t have been investigating her at all, given my personal involvement? Thank you. That is certainly the American view, and I am a proud American. God Bless America. But being compromised is part of the Irish tradition. In the sudden waking of the night, in the battle when the blood is up, in the darkness of the confessional, I am Irish. God Save Ireland.

  “What makes you think she’s here?” Daly asked, downshifting.

  “I don’t, necessarily,” I said, “but she staged her death nearby, and she hasn’t been spied in Phoenix. And I’m eager to speak to Dr. Aguilara. He speaks so highly of me.”

  I’d chosen the passenger seat. Perhaps I’d need to duck down and present Daly as the only occupant of the car. So I thought. But we weren’t taking fire as we approached the hotel, so I stayed upright. And the place engaged my imagination in an odd way. Its extravagance in the midst of desolation was like something out of a Tarzan comic book—one of those ancient palaces on the African plain. The American Southwest harbors many such semi-ruins, but the awe they once inspired has eroded down the centuries. I thought of Nineteenth century Pima Indians venturing across the waste of southern Arizona, stunned by the towering presence of San Xavier del Bac—a monument hard men raised to an unseen God, a masonry prayer to an empty sky. We parked, marched through the yard, went in—and there was Dr. Aguilara, fixing a light bulb. Such is the nature of modern wonder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Are you a sports enthusiast? If so, you’ve seen a strange phenomenon. A team is moving together in perfect synchronization, swinging the ball to each other, choosing exactly the right time to shoot or kick or run the pick-off, thinking as one, moving as one. Then something breaks down. Someone drops a pass or a throw or stumbles and loses his grip, or blows an easy play. Suddenly, nothing goes right. No one can catch, no one can throw, no one can communicate. The opponents run up and down, scoring at will, making plays that had been impossible minutes before. And hell follows after. Who could have guessed that I could have caused such a breakdown among the conspirators, just by pushing through the front door of a ruined hotel? Notwithstanding that the evil forces had a battle plan in place, and just the man to carry it out.

  Dr. Aguilara was as cool a man as I ever saw. He wasn’t expecting us, it seemed to me, but he accepted our entry with the casual grace of an Old World gentleman. In fact, he could not be distracted from his mundane task, probing the ceiling with a long pole whose tip clutched a fluorescent bulb. Someone, no doubt some years ago, had installed recessed lights in the fretwork of ancient beams that crisscrossed the high ceiling. Regular maintenance: that’s what such a system requires. The good doctor glanced over his shoulder at us, but we did not disturb his focus.

  “Momento,” he said.

  He left the staring to a young man at his elbow—a copper-faced man in his early twenties wearing a white shirt, worn jeans and athletic shoes. He appeared to be the doctor’s assistant, though it wasn’t clear what assistance was needed. Aguilara forced the new bulb home with a graceful lunge and a crisp twist. Light beamed from the niche. The doctor pirouetted, handed the pole off.

  “Thank you, Diego,” he said, and the young man slipped away.

  Dr. Aguilara came forward.

  “Miss Marcus,” he said, extending his hand to her, his eyes on me. I could have delayed to see how he would handle his approach—you learn things from such trivia—but I knew immediately I should not play the childish game I had played with Bracknall.

  “Michael Callan,” I said, going for his grip. His slim fingers on mine were like spring steel, though he wasn’t one of those bashers who try to impress with their bully-boy squeeze. My instincts stirred. I’d encountered that supple power in another handshake recently, but couldn’t place it. Well, no matter.

  “I know your reputation,” he said. “Rhea described you as a journalist with passion.”

  “And how is Rhea these days?” I asked

  You may not consider that a brilliant sally. Well, sometimes a blunt in
strument does the job as well as a stiletto. Aguilara hadn’t known just how I would get this point up, but he knew I would. He had options for responding, and he must have considered them all. Should he look at me with surprise and mild distaste? Act puzzled? Wax angry at my flippant attitude? He chose none of these. Never underestimate the professional.

  “Would you like to see the clinic, Mr. Callan? Miss Marcus? There are no patients today, even charity requires the occasional day off, but the facilities are quite impressive.”

  Game on, as the Americans say. And Daly, to her credit, picked up on the correct attitude.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  “Lead on,” I seconded.

  Aguilara turned and set us all clattering across the polished flagstones. I didn’t hesitate, though danger might lurk in the recesses of the hotel. Diego had disappeared, perhaps to fetch a nice machete. And who knew how many troops backed the suave doctor? Still, I have absurd faith in the mystical power of the Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol, even one stuffed with simple round-nose, copper-jacketed cartridges, 158 grains of powder each, seven in the magazine and one up the spout. My left side tilted comfortably with the weight of the shoulder holster and that threw me into a rolling stride.

  The doctor took us on a long walk, ranging beneath arcades, through L-shaped passages, even around gardens centered on dry fountains with palm trees and volunteer creosote bushes scratching against their adobe sides. Each fountain had a central statue, broken-faced, egg-eyed, vaguely heroic. Their clothing was functional and antique. The figures could have been anything from Pimas to Spanish explorers to frontier arms traders lately arrived from Illinois.

  “Impressive maze, this,” I told Aguilara, as we breached a door near the back of the place and pattered down a stairway. “It hardly seems like a hotel at all.”

  “The builder had a love for complexity, and a century ago the cost was such that he could indulge it,” said the doctor, pushing open a door. “Of course, Rhea modernized it down here, so that we could more efficiently deal with the ills of the poor.”