The Last Girl

by Danny Lopez

  On the way I called Holly and left her a voice mail about getting together. I’d invited her to Michael’s on East, a nice fancy restaurant—old school and classy. I reextended the invitation, suggested tonight or tomorrow. Whatever worked best for her. Last night was still sketchy in my brain. I was dying to find out if what I remembered really happened the way I thought it did. I didn’t want to get my hopes up for nothing. With Holly you never knew. And with Holly, I was playing with fire. I didn’t want to get burned again.

  * * *

  I’ve never been one to face authority straight on. As a matter of fact, I had a serious disdain for people in positions of power, people who needed to have control and buried themselves in their own bureaucracy. Still, when I arrived at New College, I went straight to the administration building and asked for Dr. Tabor.

  Big mistake. Right away they needed to see my ID. They unloaded a barrage of questions: Who was I, why did I want to see him, did I have an appointment, could I fill out this form?

  After about twenty minutes of bullshit, I just walked out. I drove across the campus and pulled over by a group of students and asked them where I might find Tabor. They pointed me to the biology labs.

  Tabor was in his office. He was a short man with wire-rim glasses and a twitch in his left eye. He was in his late fifties, overweight, and pink in the face from either too much booze or too much sun. His office was tiny, like a large cubicle. And extremely well organized. It kind of made him look larger than he was. On the back wall he had a few framed diplomas and awards—a shrine to his academic ego.

  “Of course, I know Maya,” he said when I asked about her. “But I can’t discuss a student unless you’re a family member, or unless Maya has cleared you to receive information about her academic standing—”

  “I’m not here for anything like that. I just want to know where she is.”

  “What makes you think I know?” He sat up, straightened his back, and squinted, his left eyelid trembling.

  “Apparently she’s gone to Mexico to study a salamander or something,” I said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But her family has lost contact with her and they’re worried sick.”

  “And you’re family?”

  “Kind of,” I said. “I’m a good friend. They asked me to look into her whereabouts. They’re afraid maybe she was kidnapped. Mexico’s not the safest place to hang out.”

  “Well.” He sounded flustered. “They need to contact the administration. You can’t just come in here asking—”

  I leaned over his desk. “Look, Doc. Take it easy. We don’t have to make a big deal about this, okay? I just want to find out where she is.”

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose. Then he reached for his computer mouse and made a few clicks.

  I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “I’m not trying to be threatening, but you were the one who encouraged her to go to Mexico. If anything happened to her …”

  He raised his eyes at me. “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone knows. It’s on the record.”

  “Are you with the police?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “If you are, you need to identify yourself as a law enforcement officer. There are protocols.”

  I leaned forward, placed my hands on his desk, looked him in the eyes. “Spill it, Tabor.”

  “What are you talking about? I have nothing to hide.” He stood and hung his hands on the sides of his waist. “I suggest you leave. I’ll call security.”

  “No problem,” I said and dropped down on the only other chair in the room. “Call whoever you want. I can’t wait to let them know what happened to Maya and how you incited her to travel alone to a place that the U.S. Department of State has issued warnings about. You put her in danger.”

  He stared at me, then past me, past the door at the hallway. “What’s your problem?”

  “I told you. I want to know where she is. I want an address.”

  “But I don’t know—”

  “Facebook, Doctor. Log in and get me her info. Now.”

  He shuddered and sat back down. The keys on his computer began to sing. In a moment he started reciting her info. “She’s in Mexico City, but there’s no address, just Colonia Roma and that she’s working with a team from the university in Xochimilco.”

  I came around the desk and glanced at the Facebook page on the screen. Her profile picture was a funny-looking salamander with little arms and beady purple eyes. Her last post was two weeks ago. She’d been searching for the little critter near the Island of Dolls.

  “Has she sent you any e-mails?”

  He shook his head. “She sent me a couple of e-mails when she first arrived to let me know she had arranged for a tour of Xochimilco with the Biology department from the university—”

  “What university?”

  “UNAM, National Autonomous University of Mexico.”

  “Did she mention any friends, colleagues, roommates?”

  Tabor pushed his chair back and moved away from the computer, gave me a sly smile. “Maya Zavala has no friends.”

  I couldn’t imagine a pretty, elegant young woman like Maya not having friends, an entourage, even. “Four years in college and not a single friend?”

  Tabor shrugged. “You know Maya.”

  “Not really,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “She’s quiet. And very ambitious. She works harder than any student who’s ever come through my department.”

  “Still,” I said. “She could have had a friend. At least a lab partner or something.”

  “Not Maya.” He gave me a sly smile. “Perhaps it’s a character flaw.”

  Her boyfriend was rich. Her father was a millionaire. I suppose she could be abrasive. Maybe she was an asshole. You can’t tell someone’s personality from a photograph. “Tell me about these critters, the salamanders.”

  “I didn’t put her up to it. I just mentioned the—”

  “There’s no need to get defensive, Doc. Just tell me about them. That’s why she went, right?”

  He took a deep breath. “The axolotl is a fascinating animal. They’re amphibious but never grow lungs. And they can regenerate limbs. But they’ve disappeared from the wild. Maya knew about them. We study them in class. Well, not real axolotl, but we look at various animals with peculiar anomalies and how their mutations and genes are affected by environment. Like sharks. We look at how their—”

  “You’re getting on a tangent.”

  He stopped and fixed his glasses. “Right. Well, I mentioned, perhaps in passing, how … if someone found an axolotl in the wild it would be quite an achievement. Something like that could make someone’s career.”

  “You didn’t think she would jump on the next plane to Mexico.”

  “Of course not. It’s not as if I told her a big secret. I was addressing the class. We were talking about research they might take on, projects that could help them get into graduate school or find publication for their papers in academic journals. One of my students made a smart comment about how all the great subjects had been tackled. I was only trying to make a point.”

  “Right. And so if Maya or anyone else found one of these critters, they’d get published. Instant fame.”

  “It’s a big deal. These animals are endemic to Mexico City. The valley where the city is built was a series of lakes during the time of the Aztecs. The axolotl hasn’t changed in thousands of years. They’re fascinating—”

  “Except they don’t really exist anymore.”

  He shook his head. “Not in the wild.”

  I left it at that. I was beginning to get a pretty good picture of Maya Zavala. What I didn’t get was why she wasn’t communicating with Boseman or her father or Dr. Tabor. Ambitious or not, you’d think she’d at least send a postcard, let someone know she was okay.

  And then there was her Facebook page. She might not have friends in Sarasota, but she had over two hundred friends on Facebook. But th
at didn’t mean much. They could have been colleagues, contacts. Who knew?

  I wanted to swing by Nick’s place on my way home and give him the news, but I was running late to meet the AC repairman at my house. I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend another night in that sweat lodge. And then there was Holly. She hadn’t called back. It had my gut in a knot. If I had another chance to fix things with her, I was going to go all out. What I needed now was a drink for courage.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE AC REPAIRMAN arrived. He had to change a $120 gizmo in my air handler. At least Mimi didn’t seem to mind the heat. She was lying in my desk chair like she owned the damn thing.

  I pulled a cold beer from the fridge and called Holly again. It went right to voice mail. I began to grow paranoid. Maybe the whole thing had been hatched up in my drunken imagination. Maybe the reason I was so taken with her had to do with the fact that we never really completed our relationship. We’d had no real definition. We were never really an item, but it was more than just dating. It was a strange, noncommittal relationship. We were best friends. We had sex—great, fun sex. And then it was over. Just like that. We both let it go. But deep down I’d wanted more. I’d wanted to make a go of it—try for the real thing. But you know what they say: if you love someone, set them free. So like a fool, I let her go. Only then did I realize she was never mine to begin with.

  But like my good friend the photographer Rachel Mann told me while I drowned my sorrows after losing Holly, no girl wants freedom. She said what Holly really wanted was to see me step up to the plate, tell her I loved her, offer commitment.

  Of course, Rachel was gay. What did she know? And she was too late with her advice anyway. We were drinking at the Bahi Hut, an old drinking hole on the North Trail. I was in miserable shape. I had just learned that Holly had hooked up with del Pino. Rachel stroked my hair, ordered another round of Mai Tais, and gave me the most solid piece of advice on women anyone has ever given me: “You need to make a woman feel like she’s wanted. Read between the lines. Fight for her. Show her you give a shit.”

  That was three years ago when I was a fool and totally full of myself—when I still believed in journalism. And in myself. It took me almost forty years to learn the greatest life lesson: never put your career ahead of your own happiness.

  I’m bitter. I’m bitter about drinking the fucking Kool-Aid and believing all the bullshit they fed me in journalism school. I’m bitter about my divorce, about the paper, about not seeing Zoe enough, about what happened to my father. And, yeah, I’m also bitter about my breakup with Holly.

  I called Holly again. Still no answer. Maybe she was avoiding me. Paranoia began to crawl over me. No. I needed to chill. We needed to start over clean. We needed to do it right this time. One thing I was sure about was that I had to act soon. She’d dropped the lawyer. I had to make my move before another one of those vultures in suits snatched her away.

  * * *

  The AC repairman finished his work. The vents in the old house blowing cold shook me out of my daze. I pushed my thoughts of Holly aside and focused on what was important: Maya Zavala. Now, there was a mystery woman. She was pretty, ambitious, and obviously rich. She had everything anyone could want, and yet there she was in some muck lake in Mexico digging for reptiles like a ten-year-old boy.

  I was intrigued. I couldn’t figure why I couldn’t find anything on the web about her. It got me going. I mean, who has a nonexistent digital footprint these days?

  But there was something else. I stared at her picture for a long time. There was something in her eyes, like a wisdom beyond her years. She must have been seventeen, maybe eighteen when the photograph was taken. She looked like a senior going to the prom. But she also looked like a woman. Like someone who had lived and was already jaded by life. There was a sadness, a cynicism—something dark behind her large brown eyes.

  By seven p.m. Holly still hadn’t called. It was too late to make dinner plans, especially at a nice place like Michael’s on East. Without a reservation, we’d never get a table. And that was the date—the place where I could swoon her to my side. That’s what we’d dreamed of doing in the old days.

  Nothing was going to happen—not tonight. I texted her and told her to call me tomorrow. Right now I had to deal with business. I called Nick. I had to give him the news. Maya was in old Mexico. I imagined he’d be thrilled. But as the phone rang, I felt my stomach do a little dance. What if he asked for some money back?

  I had only worked two days for ten grand. Then again, he might ask me to go to Mexico.

  There was no answer. I left him a vague voice mail. I figured some things should not be left on machines. I just said we needed to talk so we could move forward. When I hung up I fed Mimi, took a shower, drank the last beer in the house, and left. My plan was to stop in at Nick’s, give him the lowdown, then pop over to Memories Lounge and get happy.

  The sun had just set behind the bay when I turned off the North Trail and approached Nick’s house. Blue and red lights reflected on the hood of my Subaru like Christmas decorations. Five police cruisers crowded the driveway. At first it was like a dream, like it couldn’t be happening in the place where I was going, that Nick’s place was not surrounded by cops, that my job had either ended or gotten complicated.

  The officers were Sarasota PD. That was better than dealing with the hillbillies from the County sheriff’s office. I pulled up on the side, just off Bay Shore, slightly ahead of the driveway, and walked back toward the house.

  A handful of neighbors were standing in a tight group staring at the circus. The good citizens of Sapphire Shores dressed in shorts and t-shirts maintaining a polite distance from the action, taking photos with their smartphones, gossiping. I was sure their curiosity was burning like wildfire.

  I walked up the driveway. Then I saw the crime scene van. It was like walking into a crooked photograph. The cops were moving in slow motion, talking among themselves outside the house. One of them saw me coming, and as if by some secret order, they all turned and stared, waiting for me to reach them. Then the fat one with the sergeant stripes raised his hand to stop me.

  The whole gig flashed before my eyes: the ten grand, Maya Zavala, the topless girl, the damn salamanders.

  “Sir,” the fat cop said. He had a wide gap between his two front teeth. “No one’s allowed through. One of my officers will be taking statements from the neighbors in a few minutes. If you—”

  “I’m not a neighbor.”

  “You with the paper?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I spotted Rachel Mann, her black curly hair and a pair of heavy Canon cameras hanging on her skinny little neck. She was talking to Detective Jack Petrillo at the entrance to the house. I called out: “Rachel!”

  She waved. The big sergeant saw this and moved aside, letting me pass. I joined Petrillo and Rachel by the front door.

  Rachel gave me an awkward hug, her cameras pressing against my stomach. “I got some serious gossip for you,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Isn’t that what he’s supposed to ask?”

  Rachel smiled and laced her arm around mine. “We’re a team.”

  Detective Petrillo grinned. “He’s no longer with the paper.”

  “So?” I said. “I’m still a member of the press. What’s going on here?”

  Petrillo hesitated, but his ego was his biggest weakness. One day he was going to be chief of police, mayor of the city, governor of the Sunshine State. His ego was either going to make his career or destroy it. But right now that’s what gave us leverage. We were press. He wanted the attention. He ran his hand over his thick mane of black hair, the stink of too much Paco Rabanne polluting the air. He gave us a politician’s smile full of straight white teeth. “We have a body. We’re treating it as a homicide.”

  My knees felt weak. I grabbed Rachel’s arm.

  “Can we go in and take a look?” she asked. She was relentless. Her livelihood depended on it. If she was wo
rking for the paper, she was either getting a hundred bucks for the assignment or fifty for a picture. No picture, no money. It was a shit life.

  Petrillo seemed to be weighing the request, considering the pros and cons, probably wondering how to capitalize on the moment.

  “Officer Gasanov,” he called to the fat cop in the driveway. “I’m taking these folks in for a quick tour. No one comes inside.”

  Gasanov nodded and turned back to face the street where more neighbors had gathered. There were kids on bikes, couples with dogs. It was a real show.

  When we walked into the living room, Rachel spied the Warhol. “Nice.”

  “Fake,” Petrillo announced.

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  “Well, probably,” he corrected himself. “No one has an art collection like this unless they’re a museum.”

  “Maybe the guy had taste,” I said.

  “And beaucoup bucks,” Petrillo said and led us into the study—the same place where Nick had tossed me an envelope with ten grand two days ago. I averted my eyes, my brain racing with all the possible implications. My message was probably still in his voice mail. This wasn’t good.

  When Rachel saw all the sexual paraphernalia lining the shelves, she smiled and raised her camera. “What is this, paradise?”

  Petrillo shook his head and placed his arm around Rachel. He reined her in. “No pictures, okay? Please.”

  “Come on, Detective. Give me a break.”

  “Not here,” he said. “Not right now.”

  Rachel gave me a look. But I had my own problems.

  Two women with the medical examiners office were taking notes, both of them wearing blue latex gloves, Nikon’s hanging from their necks. One of them looked familiar. She had a pierced nose and dyed black hair, like Joan Jett. Rachel leaned close to me. “She’s the guitar player of the Funky Donkeys.”

  I had seen the band once, couldn’t remember the music. The woman nodded at Rachel, gave her a brief smile. I glanced at Rachel. She grinned and whispered in my ear: “I fucked her.”

  A plainclothes detective was crouched down behind the desk where a white sheet covered the body of Nick Zavala. A pool of blood had run down the grout lines of the tile to the edge of the Persian rug where the giant penis sculpture by Louise Bourgeois lay on the floor, a police tag taped to one of the testicles.