Mean Streets

by Jim Butcher

“You don’t know the truth, Luzita. The Dulcia sank because it was old.”

  Still more ghosts flooded toward our little huddle of misery, perhaps a dozen, all drenched in seawater. I spotted Ernesto Santara, but he didn’t look at me. He kept his empty gaze on the ghost of Jimenez. He was no longer a pleasant haunt, but an angry one. The drowned crew moved toward the dead lawyer and Iko stalked along with them, hackles raised, teeth bared.

  “My dog!” Maria-Luz screamed at me. “Give me my dog!”

  I held up the bundle of hair and pot shards. “This?” I asked.

  Maria-Luz lunged at me. Mickey leapt to his feet but I’d already pulled a bit of the Grey between us and the furious woman’s shade recoiled with a screech.

  “Mickey, keep her back,” I said, in the calmest voice I could muster.

  “Me? How?”

  “Just like you kept Señora Acoa from dying. Just put out your hands and send that feeling toward Maria-Luz.”

  Jimenez was backing away, starting to fade, but I grabbed him, sinking my fingers into the stinging electrical fire of his ghostly form.

  “No, no. You have to face the music, Counselor,” I said.

  Mickey was talking as fast as he could, crooning, and holding his hands between himself and Maria-Luz. The gold strings spun out from his fingertips, stroking over her, making her more solid, more alive-seeming. She began to cry.

  Jimenez struggled in my grip. “Let me go, puta loca!”

  I waved the bundle of Iko’s figurine at him. “You want me to give this to her? You dodged this bullet before, but I can make sure it hits you this time.” I was guessing, but I knew Maria-Luz had not meant any comfort for Jimenez when she’d tried to have Iko sent to him before. Iko jumped and snapped at him, snarling.

  Jimenez froze and the crew gathered tight around him. I let him go so they could hold him prisoner themselves. They muttered to him and the sound raised the hair on my arms.

  Mickey shot me a panicked look over his shoulder and I stepped closer to him. Maria-Luz was still standing in front of him, looking almost solid, while Hector hovered just behind her, clucking and making the soothing noises people murmur to upset children.

  “It’s all right, Mickey. You can stop.”

  “But—I—what—?”

  “Ask Tío Muñoz.”

  Mickey jerked his gaze back and forth, searching for the bogeyman. We were creating a ruckus. The other partiers in the cemetery were beginning to look our way with curiosity.

  I sat down on my stool and tried to act like there was nothing at all strange at our feast of souls. I bobbed my head and let my feet tap in time with the brass and strings of the mariachis nearby. I motioned to Maria-Luz, who wafted closer. Jimenez was still petrified in the circle of dead sailors.

  “All right,” I started. “You tried to give the dog to Jimenez before, then you decided to give it to Hector, and then you gave it to me to give to Hector. Why?”

  She hung her head. “At first, I was angry. Iko never liked those lawyers—”

  “A good judge of character,” Hector injected.

  “Iko was all I had after Papa—went away. And when Iko died, that was all I knew how to do, all I could think of to keep him for a little longer—to take me to Mictlan someday.”

  “Some people think this is a very bad kind of magic.”

  “It’s not. It’s just . . . the dark kind. The death magic. What is death but part of life? And my dog was dead. I had done bad things with the magic when I was angry at that . . . man who called himself my father,” she spat, “but I never meant harm with keeping Iko. But I found out Jimenez had lied to me. He had never tried to find out what happened to my father. He spied on me and he took the information to Leon and they tried to kill my father a third time so he had to run here and hide. I was so angry when I found out what he had done, I wanted to punish him! I thought Iko would keep him from Mictlan. Keep him in limbo and torment, forgotten but never released to the third death, wandering the way he had done to the sailors on the Dulcia.”

  “Tell the rest, pequeña,” Hector urged.

  She sobbed for a moment. Mickey sat next to me, wide-eyed and still, watching the ghostly woman weep until she raised her head and looked at him. “You understand the magic, you know how hard it is . . . to be good. It was so hard, but I thought I should do a better thing. I changed my will so Iko would go to my father, to help him find the road, and I gave all the money for the families of the sailors. Leon and the insurance company gave them nothing. I thought I could repair the wrong, even if the magic was a little . . . dark.”

  “But the will I saw doesn’t give the money to the families of the Dulcia’s crew.”

  “No.” She hung her head, ashamed. “Banda changed it. I don’t know why I thought he was different than Jimenez. They were both charming liars. . . .”

  “Banda forged your will.”

  She nodded. “He is my father’s man, even after death. Just like that pig,” she added, spitting in Jimenez’s direction. Her spittle hissed and raised a red spark on the ground where it hit.

  Jimenez recoiled, but kept silent.

  Hector tapped her again and motioned her on.

  Maria-Luz sighed the smell of earth and copal. “The spirits told me of you. I was sick with the cancer that killed me, but they came when I called and they said you could fix the horrible mess of this. I believed them. I told Banda to give the dog to you. I thought you could solve my puzzle of the graves, find out what had happened and make it right. And my papa and Iko could be together again.”

  “So . . . this bit of junk controls Iko’s soul. . . .”

  Maria-Luz and Hector nodded together.

  I studied the bit of hair and thread. I glanced at Mickey.

  “What do you think? Eternal torment for Jimenez? Or can we do something else with this?”

  The boy was trembling. “Why are you asking me?” he demanded.

  “Because you have the magic. And Maria-Luz doesn’t anymore. She’s dead, Mickey. She can’t change the things she did.”

  “I don’t have any magic! Just the ghosts! That’s why I read up on the Santisima Muerte—so I could use the ghosts for magic,” he finished in a harsh whisper.

  “You already have the magic. You do. Look at your hands.”

  “They’re just hands!”

  “Look at them the way you look at the ghosts—sideways, through the worms and lights and crazy mist. Look softly.”

  He stared down at his gangling, oversized paws, flexing them slowly in and out of fists and turning his head side to side. Tears began to well and fall over his lower lids as he stared without blinking. “It’s—there’s something on my fingers. . . .”

  “Yeah. That’s it. That glowy stuff. Real magic, brat-boy. Live magic.”

  He stared at me. “Do you—?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t have anything like that. I just see ghosts.” That wasn’t strictly true, but that wasn’t the time for messy little details. “But I can tell you that’s life magic, not death magic. If you die, it goes away. That’s what’s happened to Maria-Luz.”

  He glanced all around the panteon, taking note of the ghosts, the living, the dead . . . and Tío Muñoz, who sat on the ground among the tombs of the Arbildos and smiled at us, glimmering with a golden sheen.

  “What do you think?” I asked again. “Should we sic Iko on Jimenez for eternity? Poor old Iko, faithful unto death and beyond. I’m not sure he deserves an eternity spent snapping at the heels of this scum.”

  “No,” the lawyer agreed, and was silenced again by the drowned crew that surrounded him.

  Maria-Luz and Hector hung on the moment, watching Mickey.

  “What . . . what about the other one? The guy who faked the will?”

  “Banda,” I supplied. “Yeah, he’s a piece of work.”

  “Can you—?”

  “You, Mickey. I can deliver the bomb, but only you can build it. Iko hates him. All you have to do is make the magic go
the right way so it’s alive. If the magic is tuned for Banda, Iko will seem to be alive to him, but he’ll still be a ghost dog to everyone else.”

  I cut a glance at Maria-Luz. “Then all we have to do is tether Iko to Banda. . . .”

  She nodded. “I think . . . it can be done. If you rewind the thread just right.”

  “But what will happen to the dog? Will it . . . be . . .”

  “Doomed to eat lawyer in hell?” I added.

  Mickey nodded, but he was looking at Maria-Luz now.

  “Wind the thread the other way, wind it to the life of the man,” Maria-Luz whispered, beginning to fade. “Iko will come to me when his job is done. Or when you break your binding.”

  Was it so late . . . or so early that the night was ending already? No, I could see it was still dark. But she was tiring, her energy fading after such an evening—her first and probably last return from the Land of the Dead. Only the sailors and Jimenez were as present as ever. Hector and his daughter had started to slide away.

  “You’d better start before Maria-Luz is all gone, or you might lose the chance,” I prompted Mickey.

  “But . . .”

  “Try it. What’s the worst that can happen? You let the dog go. Right?”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  I handed Mickey the bag of Iko’s shards. He took the bundle of hair out and began picking the red thread loose. He concentrated, pulling the thread loose, unwinding it with care.

  Iko began to fade with a whimper.

  “No, Iko,” Hector called to the dog in a singsong voice, thin as steam. “No, perrito, stay. Good dog. . . .”

  “Think of the man,” Maria-Luz whispered. “Think of him, Jimenez’s partner, Banda, the lawyer, the thief, the fraud. . . .” She pointed toward the thread, a stream of her knowledge flowing out of her skeletal fingertips, touching the boy and the bundle of hair.

  Mickey rewound the red strand the other way, muttering under his breath. The gold threads from his fingers caught on the hairs in the bundle, caught in the twist of the thread and bound up, muttering with Mickey, singing magic, alive and golden and hot as the sun.

  Hector and Maria-Luz stepped backward, back, back, fading as they went, until they were only a whisper and a shred of smoke on the air. Iko stopped whining.

  A hush fell, as if all the spirits of San Felipe del Agua held their breath.

  Mickey tied off the string. “There. OK? You think?” he asked, holding it out. But there was no one left to see it but me and Tío Muñoz.

  The old man had come up on us without any warning or apparent movement.

  “Muy bien!” he cackled.

  Mickey started with surprise, jumping to his feet. The old man backed away, chuckling.

  “Where did they all go?” Mickey asked, bewildered.

  “Back where they came from, I’d guess. The sailors took Jimenez—I think he may be in for some trouble in the afterlife,” I said.

  “Good!” Mickey spat.

  “And Maria-Luz and her father went . . . wherever.”

  “To Mictlan,” Mickey corrected. “I think.”

  “Not so sure now?”

  “I—I’m not sure about much. . . .”

  Well, that was a change. But I didn’t comment. Instead I said, “I think we can go now, if you want to.”

  “I guess. We can leave the ofrenda. No one will steal from ghosts.”

  We started back through the crowds, the music and laughter jarring against the strangeness of the night. Mickey handed me the bag of clay pieces and the knotted bit of hair, magic, and string as we approached the gate.

  “Where’s Iko?”

  I pointed at the gate, where the dog had appeared again, looking more like a real dog than ever. Mickey grinned and went to pat the little mongrel, carefully, as if he wasn’t sure his hand could really touch it.

  “Gracias, Señorita Blaine.”

  I turned, not at all surprised to find Tío Muñoz behind me.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For helping him find a better path. He was headed for bad things.”

  “I just do what the choreographer tells me. What are you going to do now?”

  He laughed. “I think that is up to Miguel. What about you? You are finished here.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Here. But there’s one thing left in Mexico City.”

  Muñoz shook his head. “Justice may be hard to serve with only the word of ghosts.”

  “That depends on which sort of justice you’re talking about.”

  He seemed pleased by that and nodded his head. Then he turned and walked away into the night.

  Mickey and Iko ran up to me, the dog grinning a satisfied doggy smile, not nearly as tentative as Mickey’s.

  We walked back to the Chevy and got in. This time, Iko jumped in and curled on the floorboards at my feet.

  As we drove back down the hill, Mickey cleared his throat and glanced at me.

  “What?”

  “Uh . . . so. What now?”

  “Now, I’m done. I get to go home. By way of Mexico City. And Mr. Banda’s office. Maria-Luz and Hector still have a little pay-back coming.”

  “And the guys from the Dulcia.”

  I nodded. “I think I have a way to set things up as Maria-Luz wanted them. And I won’t mind giving Banda a good scare.”

  “How’s it going to work?”

  “I’ll give the bundle to Banda, so he becomes the vessel—I can figure out how. Then he’ll be stuck with Iko until he dies, or you let Iko go.”

  “Can I do that?”

  “Yeah. You’ll figure it out.” I had.

  He made a thoughtful frown and was silent for a while. Then he said, “I think I must have missed something. Why did they kill the sailors?”

  “That was an accident, but it didn’t matter to Arbildo and Jimenez that they died. The boat was old and the company was in a temporary financial crisis. So Arbildo decided to sink it—have a little accident at sea—and collect the insurance. The sailors were just in the way. Except for Hector. Who’d been having an affair with Arbildo’s wife.”

  “Yeah, I got that. Maria-Luz was Hector’s daughter, really.”

  “That’s right. He followed her mother to Mexico City. I think Arbildo must have caught on and so Hector did his first disappearing act. He abandoned his real identity as Estancio Rivera and took on the name Hector Purecete, Señora Acoa’s long-lost relative. Estancio was from Oaxaca—he worked in the mezcal distillery down the mountain—and he’d seen the name on the headstone in the Panteon San Miguel just like we did. He got a job with the Arbildo shipping company as Hector so he could still be near Consuela and their daughter. While he was at sea, Consuela died and she probably let his new identity slip as she was dying. So Arbildo decided to get rid of his wife’s lover once and for all.”

  “But . . . Hector called his daughter Carmencita. . . .”

  “That was Maria-Luz’s middle name: Carmen. They probably called her that so it was less likely they’d trip up in front of Leon Arbildo—but he knew.”

  Mickey continued to frown. “I’m still not sure I get it. . . .”

  “Arbildo sank his ship with the help of his trusty henchman Jimenez, and he didn’t let on to anyone that Maria-Luz was not his daughter.”

  “Why didn’t he just . . . have another kid?”

  “Last night, I saw hundreds of dead kids in the cemetery. They were all Arbildo children. I’m not sure what the problem is, genetics, bad luck, a curse . . . but whatever it is, the Arbildos don’t have healthy kids. They die young. Only one or two make it to carry on the family name. Consuela had four children, but only Maria-Luz made it past the age of three. Leon Arbildo didn’t have any surviving brothers or sisters, or any other kids. He had to have Maria-Luz and she had to be his daughter, unequivocally.

  “He was a very proud man—a jealous man, too,” I continued. “And Catholic. The illegitimacy thing was not acceptable. He had Maria-Luz watched, the same way he’d had Consuel
a watched. She must have known she was watched and been resentful. She started doing black magic to hurt him—she got thrown out of school for it a couple of times. When she finally met Hector and found out he was her real father, that’s when the hate started. But Arbildo got even: he died and he left the estate in the hands of the lawyers who’d helped him in the past.”

  “And they kept on watching her and manipulating her, right?”

  “Yeah. And they kept right on doing all the same things they’d done for her father and not telling her they did it. They drove Hector into hiding, and when he died, Maria-Luz had nothing left but the dog and her hate. She started trying to find out about her real father, so she went to Oaxaca a lot, looking for his family or his grave or whatever she could get. She laid that false trail for us with the Registrar of Deaths to confuse her lawyers in case they were keeping track of her. We know Jimenez had tracked the graves, but so long as she didn’t show up there, he’d never know she’d discovered the truth and he’d never be able to stop her plans for revenge.”

  “But she changed her mind!”

  “Yeah, she did. Because she found out about the Dulcia. She decided justice was better than vengeance and, again, she left a puzzle for someone—me—to solve that would reveal the truth.”

  “She was devious, that Maria-Luz.”

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  We pulled into the tiny covered carriageway of the guesthouse and I stumbled out of the car, suddenly exhausted.

  Mickey caught my arm. “Hey . . . uh . . . you leaving soon? ’Cause I still got a lot of questions.”

  “Sorry, Mickey. I have to go tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  The church bells from the zocalo rang the quarter hour. I checked my watch; it was still early for Oaxaca on el Día de los Muertos—only ten fifteen. But it felt like two a.m.

  We walked up the stairs to my room, the house still quiet while everyone was at the cemetery. I stopped and studied Mickey as he waited for me to unlock my door. He was tired, but standing straighter. His sullen look had changed into a thoughtful frown as he tried to understand what had happened and what might happen next.

  “Hey,” he said again. “Is Iko . . . going to . . . chew on the lawyer in hell?”

  “I don’t think so. When Banda dies, the dog gets to go free.”