Stalking Moon

by David Cole

  "Meg," I said. "Shut up."

  "I made a mistake about you," Taá said to Meg.

  "No mistake, no wake. Wakey wakey."

  Taá slammed the gearshift into drive and drove away in angry silence. We got out of the airport maze onto Benton, but instead of going straight through to US 10 she turned right at Kino Parkway.

  "Where are we going?" I said.

  Taá held up her left wrist, showing me her watch.

  "I promised to pick up some meat scraps for Sophie. The butcher will close in five minutes, so if it's all right, I'll just stop by there first."

  "Puercocita," Meg said. "Carnecita. Fresh meat. Neat."

  Taá turned off at 36th Street and drove into South Tucson to an old storefront building. She parked the Caprice, opened her door, and started to get out.

  "Want to come in?" she said.

  Meg popped out of the car and I caught Taá with a very small, satisfied grin that disappeared quickly.

  Meg gave us a huge grin and nodded yes.

  "Just take a minute," Taá said, but I grabbed Meg and pulled her to the car.

  "No," I said.

  Taá reached down to her right ankle, lifted the leg of her khaki pants and took out a snub-nosed .38 revolver. Holding the barrel against my right temple, she patted me down for a weapon, touching my armpits, my sides, down the outside and inside of my legs, and finally ramming her hand tight into my crotch. As an afterthought, she felt carefully underneath my leather belt, grasping the rectangular object she felt inside the belt buckle. I tensed my entire body, leaning forward just an inch, thinking I could grab the .38, but Taá took two steps backward and waved the .38 at the doorway.

  "Inside," she said. "Now."

  The shop's door was locked. Dirty slatted blinds covered the windows and the door. Taá knocked. Somebody stuck a finger in the door blinds, drawing several slats down in a vee. Somebody unlocked the door, and Taá pushed it open. The three of us went inside, and the door closed behind us. A young Hispanic woman smiled brightly at us and locked the door.

  "I was in the freezer. Sorry. Nobody else here, I had to lock the door."

  Outside, it must have been at least one hundred degrees, but the butcher shop had heavy-duty air-conditioning and in my tanktop I felt chilly. The woman wore heavy jeans and a sweatshirt and what looked like long underwear.

  "It's cold work," she said, "being a butcher. Got long underwear, top and bottom, shirt, sweatshirt, pants, sweat socks, boots. Cold."

  "Cold, but bold," Meg said.

  "Don't mind her," Taá said.

  The butcher pulled on a plastic apron that went over her head and covered almost her entire body. She handed another apron to Taá.

  "Got one for me?" Meg said in a singsong voice, but underneath the tones I heard the intelligence of her question and knew that however manic she was feeling, she was getting ready for what came next.

  "I've got this for you," the butcher said, showing a SIG Sauer.

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  The butcher went behind one of the meat counters and stood there, looking at me, looking at Meg, and then picking up a bone saw. Taá waved her .38, motioning us to move behind the counter.

  "This isn't necessary," I said.

  "You had to look at the website," Taá answered.

  "Money to Chihuahua."

  "Yes. How did you know?"

  "Until now, I didn't."

  "I don't believe that," she said. "You're too smart. You're too thorough."

  "Check them for weapons," the butcher said.

  "This one's got something under her belt buckle."

  Taá reached toward me suddenly, grasping my blouse at the neck and ripping it open, the buttons clacking on the floor as Taá kept yanking on the blouse material until she'd completely ripped it off. She pulled the miniature tape recorder out from underneath the belt buckle, yanking it violently to free the microphone cord taped up my left side. The butcher stepped behind me with a paring knife and with rapid movements sliced open my sports bra vertically from bottom to top, then severing the shoulder straps. She pealed the bra scraps from my body, uncovering the microphone which she examined as though it was a bit of cartilage or gristle in a slab of meat. Setting the microphone on a butcher's block, she smashed it flat with a meat cleaver, the way you'd mash a clove of garlic, and then she began to study Meg.

  "Let's make her get naked too," she said. "See what we can find."

  "I'll go for that," Meg said, and stuck her thumbs inside the top of her shorts as though to pull them off.

  "Look at her," Taá said. "Shorts and tanktops and sandals. As naked as the day she got dressed. You stupid bitch."

  She raked the front sight of the .38 along Meg's cheek, and a small river of blood ran down Meg's chin. She licked at it and grinned.

  "Good meat," she said.

  "Christ. She's stoned," the butcher said.

  "She's on the edge of going wacky," Taá said. "I don't think she even knows where she is."

  "Then let's do it."

  The butcher took up the bone saw in one hand and the cleaver in the other. Several boning knives lay beside her on the chopping block, and I flicked a glance at them. Taá rapped me solidly on the back of the head, and I staggered.

  "Uh uh," she said. "If only you hadn't looked at that website."

  "Actually," I said, "I did more than that. I found all your offshore accounts."

  She hesitated, but recovered and smiled.

  "Not a chance."

  "Look at the papers I left in your car."

  "Not a chance."

  "It was never about smuggling, was it?"

  "I'm telling you," the butcher said. "Don't make a movie out of this, where you've got to confess everything before she dies. Put one in her head."

  "And it was never money out of Mexico," I said. "It was all that money that the undocumented workers were sending back to their families. You figured a way to get a major percentage of it by hacking into the Internet money exchanges."

  "For Christ's sakes," the butcher said as she strode over to where Taá stood. "Give me the piece, I'll do them right now."

  "Not now," Meg said, reaching behind her and pulling the Glock from the holster underneath her tanktop. She racked the slide in an instant and slammed the Glock against Taá's forehead. "Drop the .38. Or die. Choose. Right. Now."

  "You wouldn't kill me," Taá said. "We were lovers, we were friends."

  "After what you did to my daughter?"

  "I never touched your daughter."

  "Yes, you did," I said. "Satellite tracking. Video cameras at the border crossings. That specialty software you showed me, when you lost track of all of us, you must have been watching for me, Rey, Meg's daughter, even the Emerine girl. And you never saw Rey and me, but you saw the two girls. They must have driven right through the main crossing at Nogales. You called Zamora and Nasso, and they kidnapped the girls."

  "You're guessing," Taá said.

  "Good Christ!" the butcher shouted, moving at us with her knives. "I told you, I fucking told you, don't make a movie out of this. Kill them!"

  Meg staggered, blinking her eyes and shaking her head violently. I didn't know if she'd reached overload from the drugs she'd been taking, or because of the enormity of what Taá was telling her. The Glock wavered between Taá and the butcher, then slowly began to drop, as though it was too heavy to hold. Meg slumped to her knees, forcing her upper body erect, using her left hand to grip her right arm and lift the Glock.

  Taá realized it was too late and tried to get her .38 against Meg's body, but Meg shot her immediately. Taá's head flew back, bits of blood and bone spattering the butcher who without hesitating picked up a boning knife and lunged at Meg. I tripped her, but she partially recovered and starting swinging the boning knife like a scythe at Meg's leg until Meg reached down and shot her in the chest.

  "Jesus Christ!" Meg said, collapsing to the floor. "I didn't ever want to do that again. You stupid wo
man, you made me kill you."

  "Come on," I said, trying to pull her to her feet. "We've got to get out of here."

  "Why did she make me kill her, Laura?"

  But there are some questions so basic that no answer will be enough.

  And then, for a moment, she came back from the brink.

  Near the front door, an Arizona Cardinals baseball jacket hung on a single wooden peg. Meg focused on the jacket with a singular purpose, like a deepsea diver watching a depth gauge and knowing there were only seconds of oxygen left to surface.

  "Laura. Take this. Put it on."

  She dressed me, like a mother with a sleepy child, carefully fitting my hands through the cuffs, pulling the sleeves tight, locking the bottom of the zipper, and oh so slowly and lovingly sliding the zipper to the very top.

  "Now," she said. "Now we can leave this horrible place."

  I got the keys to the Caprice, and we drove away from the butcher shop.

  "Your daughter's alive," I told her. "I'm alive. You're alive."

  "I need help, Laura."

  Yeah. Don't we all.

  EPILOG

  When I checked into the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard, I almost ran into Dolly Parton. Then I saw Liz Taylor, except it was Liz at forty. After John Wayne and three Elvises walked by, I finally asked what was happening.

  "Impersonators annual banquet and performance night," the desk clerk said.

  "Female impersonators?"

  "No, no, nothing like that. You see a Barbra or a Liza, it's a woman. Staying just the two nights, Miss Winslow?"

  "Maybe longer. Can't say."

  "Mr. Villaneuva is in a connecting room. Have fun. Next?"

  "You sure about this?" Rey asked.

  Waiting for a taxi, we crossed Hollywood Boulevard to Mann's Chinese Theatre, and Rey knelt on Rita Hayworth's square, tracing her signature in the cement. Standing, uneasy, uncertain of what we were doing together, he fidgeted with his Hawaiian shirt, tucking it neatly into his jeans and in the next moment pulling it out.

  "I wanted to knock on your door last night," he said. "I wanted..."

  "Rey." I laid a palm on his cheek for a moment. "You're here with me. Right now, that's as much as I can deal with."

  He jumped over Charles Laughton to Doris Day and knelt again to place his palms into the impressions left by Joan Crawford.

  "It's enough," he said. "To be here. With you."

  It clearly wasn't enough for him, but I had a long way to go to sort out what kind of relationship I wanted. When I'd told him I was going to look for my daughter, he refused to let me disappear again from his life. I'm not sure what drew us closer over the past week, but Meg's breakdown was clearly a monsoon that swept our lives off course into uncharted territory.

  We were on the edge of something, but I refused to step over to the other side.

  One thing was clear.

  I am so tired of reinventing myself. After years of many identities, I wanted to be my own person, my own self, my own soul. I arranged a set of ID papers in the name of Laura Winslow.

  For two depressing days I was jailed in Tucson on a charge of murdering Michael Dance. But crime scene investigators cleared me once they'd dug through all of Taá's files. Her obsession with keeping meticulous data had led her to storing computer records of all her financial transactions, her deals with the Zamora smuggling cartel, her agreement to share profits with Jake Nasso, and, most damaging, her total contempt for Michael Dance. She'd also kept a diary of every single hour she'd spent with Meg, ending with her bitterness that Meg had no real interest in a long-time relationship. Taá drew unrealistic and obsessive details of Meg moving into the house. Meals they would plan, sheets and linen and furniture they would buy, movies to see and trips to enjoy.

  Several of Meg's friends joined myself, Rey, and Amada for an intervention, finally convincing Meg to enter a drug clinic so that she could reestablish a chemical balance to offset her depression.

  Many things never were resolved. Alex Emerine and Don Ralph vanished. All the LUNA chat messages vanished from AOL. New smuggling cartels were already formed, taking over Zamora's business. Jonathan Begay left Sonora, and months later I saw his face in a newspaper photograph amidst a crowd of protesters organized by the Zapatistas marching on Mexico City to demand better rights for Indians.

  I didn't care.

  The taxi took us along Lexington, slowing to find number 4255. It was a small two-story adobe bungalow.

  "Wait for me," I said to the driver.

  "You want to give me twenty now?"

  Rattled, eyeing the bungalow's front door, I handed her a fifty-dollar bill. Rey followed behind me. A dog barked from the next yard when I went inside the chainlink gate. I stood so long, not wanting to ring the bell, that I didn't notice the man who came up the driveway alongside the house.

  "Can I help you?"

  "Ah," I said. "Ah ... do you live here?"

  "Yes. I own the house. Live upstairs."

  "How long have you owned the house?"

  "That's an odd question, lady, for somebody who just walked into my yard. If you're a realtor, just leave."

  "I'm looking for somebody who used to live here. Maybe a tenant of yours."

  "Who?"

  "Ashley? Or, maybe, Kimberly?"

  "I've had one of each," he said warily. "What's the last name?"

  "Begay."

  "Are you related to her?"

  "She lives here?"

  "Are you related?"

  "I'm her mother."

  "Ashley Begay lived here for five months until I threw her out. By that time she'd conned me for almost four thousand dollars. Are you going to pay me for that?"

  "I haven't seen her since she was two."

  "Oh. Oh. I'm ... well, I'm sorry. But she stiffed me for a lot of money."

  "I'll pay you," I said, taking out a checkbook and writing him a check.

  "Is this check good?"

  "Yes. I can wait, if you want to call the bank."

  "Hard to figure you as Ashley's mother. She's a grifter. A con artist supremo."

  "Do you know where she went?"

  "Pasadena."

  In West Pasadena, the taxi driver took a wrong turn and we went by the Rose Bowl. It was Sunday morning, and more than a hundred people thronged on the grass and along the parking lots of the stadium. Families already had picnic baskets out, and many walkers and joggers moved on the streets, which were barricaded against traffic.

  Spider had moved three times in Pasadena, and we finally found her last known address on Prospect Avenue in a very rich section of old houses. Number 449 lay hidden behind thick, high walls overflowing with purple bougainvillea. The taxi driver waited, not asking for more money.

  Inside the gate, I went up a long bricked driveway and rang the doorbell. A woman with a very young baby on her left hip came to the door, leaving it locked as she studied me through the glass.

  "I'm looking for Ashley Begay," I said loudly.

  The woman stared at me for a long time.

  "You mean Spider?"

  "Yes. Is she here?"

  "Try New York City. And if you ever find her, just tell her there's a warrant waiting here for her arrest. Tell her never to come back to California."

  "Where now?" the taxi driver asked.

  I walked into the middle of the street, looked one way, looked the other, totally undecided, lost, on the edge of wanting to find my Spider but not wanting to find her.

  "Laura?" Rey said. "You want me to come with you?"

  "I don't know where I'm going."

  "Get in the taxi."

  He led me to the car, a gentle but firm hand on my elbow. He settled me into the backseat, sat beside me, held my hand. Sobbing, I rested my head on his shoulder.

  "Decide for me," I said. "I just don't know what to do."

  He fumbled with an airline schedule, folding and refolding the pages, finally drawing a fingernail across an entry of available flights
from LAX to Kennedy.

  "The airport," he said to the driver.

  Somewhere over Kansas, looking down through thin tendrils of horsetail clouds, I thought of Xochitl and her new life.

  If I'd learned anything from all the events of the past days, it was that you can start again if you have the will to do so. There is no way to escape your memories, your history, your life up to now. If you ever doubt the influence of the past on the future, just look over your shoulder at the ghosts of those who survived and those who didn't. If you keep your gaze fixed on history, you are condemned forever to running from the hounds of past identities.

  If you look ahead, at the edge between past and future, you can change.

  I'm not sure I really believe that.

  But this time, I was going somewhere, instead of running to escape my past. I turned to look at Rey, found him staring at me with concern and hope, and I took his hands in mine and smiled and grinned and leaned over to kiss him for the first time.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Sadly, the problem of illegal trafficking in women is not fictional. It has long been a global issue, but until very recently it has not been a serious issue for justice and law enforcement agencies in the United States. The President's Interagency Council on Women has basically defined trafficking as the recruitment, abduction, transport, harboring, transfer, sale or receipt of persons; within national or across international borders ... to place persons in situations of slavery or slavery-like conditions, forced labor or services, such as prostitution or sexual services, domestic servitude, bonded sweatshop labor or other debt bondage.

  Simply put, trafficking is the buying and selling of women as slaves, a horrible experience made easier by the unequal status of females in the source and transit countries. China has only recently (and reluctantly) admitted that girls are kidnapped and sold within its borders. In the year 2001, trafficking from Mexico into the United States increased exponentially to the point where smuggling people can be more profitable than smuggling drugs. Traffickers operate in small gangs, rather than more easily tracked large cartels. Traffickers use technology in highly innovative ways to establish organizational structures which hide transfers of money. (The Internet is a major vehicle for these operations.) Because trafficking in women is a relatively new criminal business and is not controlled by traditionally organized crime cartels, the United States justice and law enforcement systems are ill-equipped to deal with the problem.