Scorpion Rain

by David Cole

  “Two different groups,” he said. “Peraza. Or what’s left of his organization, after that shootout back there. The policia are going to descend on him like the wrath of god. Two policemen killed, a mother, her baby. There’s a lot of killing down here. Usually the police can’t do much. But this time…and the second group, that’s Victorio. I don’t see the connection between the two groups, except for those messages you get. Revenge on you and Meg. I’m wondering…”

  “What?”

  “Go back to Tucson. Work your computers, try to get this Victorio to talk to you, see what he says.”

  “Rey! I’m not going to be bait.”

  “If it’s by computers, how the hell will he ever know where you are? I’m going to call in all my favors down here, get a task force, go after the two that escaped with Meg.”

  victorio

  sestrichka,

  I HAVE HER PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS…I AM TRACKING HER NOW

  do not lose faith in what we are doing, please, stop asking that i cease this desire for revenge, please, sestrichka, i must do this part, we have much money, we can always start the black market again

  in her memory,

  v

  27

  The front room of Jo’s house was completely empty of furniture. Light peach curtains hung over both windows, drawn closed and fastened tight with clothes-pins.

  The huge kitchen was halfway down a hallway, between the front room and another hallway that led to two bedrooms. Inside the kitchen area, two computers were jammed on the counter space next to an expensive espresso machine. An oak table was set for three people. Plates, silverware, napkins, glasses. I could smell curry, something in two pots, a rice cooker steaming in the corner.

  “Kyle?” Jo called toward the bedrooms. “She’s back.”

  Cruz drove me across the border without incident, drove me up to Jo’s house. When I asked him to just leave me there, he refused and took his car fifty yards down the winding, narrow road until he found a place he could park.

  Kyle came out of the bathroom, face buried in a terrycloth towel. He shook his head like a terrier, water spraying off his long sandy-colored hair.

  “Right!”

  It sounded like ryeght.

  He nodded at me, head tipped to the left as he wobbled a finger inside, trying to get water out.

  “Brilliant,” he said.

  “Outstanding,” Jo said, turning to the espresso maker.

  “You don’t look so good,” he said. “You look like you need—”

  “How can you help me?” I said to Jo, ignoring him.

  “—some chai. Yes. Right.”

  He started mixing a dark liquid with milk into a huge coffee mug, which he hung underneath the steam spout of the espresso maker. It burbled and sputtered for twenty seconds, the three of us focused on the mug.

  “Chai,” he said, turning off the steam. “Sit yourself, drink it.”

  The young girl came out of the far bedroom, frizzy blond hair, wearing fuchsia shorts and a yellow tee-shirt covered with sheep.

  “Me too, Daddy.”

  “Me too, me too,” he said, fixing another mug. “You’d think that’s your name. Me Too.”

  “My name’s Hilary,” the girl said to me. “I’m seven.”

  “Not a bit of it,” he said. “Six.”

  “Six and ten and fifteen,” she said.

  “Six years, ten months, fifteen days,” he explained patiently.

  “Oh all right, Dad, you’re always so bloody right.”

  I couldn’t tell if all her emphasis on certain words came from a relentless young girl’s energy, or if it was just the way people talked in New Zealand.

  “Don’t say ‘bloody.’”

  “You say ‘bloody’ all the time.”

  “I’m grown up.”

  “Well I’m almost seven. That’s the age that Catholic children are declared to be grown-ups. I heard it down the street, I did so hear it. By the swings, this girl had just come back from church. She told me I was almost grown up.”

  “Umm,” I said, “please, I’ve had a long day, I just want to talk to Jo for a while, then I’ll leave.”

  “You do look whacked out at the moment,” he said with his quiet smile. “Sit for just a few minutes? Some chai? Then we’ll talk?”

  “Dad makes brilliant chai,” Hilary said, taking my arm and pulling me to the table. “What’s your name? Are you staying for lunch? Dad! Jo! Please, one of you, please do set one more place.”

  I fumbled in my bag for the vial of Ritalin, remembered it was empty.

  “Don’t take any more,” Jo said. “You need to hear what we’re doing. You need to rest for just a bit, you need to eat some food.”

  “And the chai,” Hilary said ever so politely, “you’ve not tasted your chai.”

  I burst into tears.

  Kyle led me to one of the chairs, pulled it out, waited to let go of my elbow until I was seated.

  “Christ,” I said, “I can’t deal with all you people right now.”

  “Dad,” Hilary exclaimed, one hand to her mouth in delight. “She’s a Jesus person. Dad, does she have a Bible, can she read to me about the lepers and the fishes and stuff?”

  “As we’re from New Zealand,” Kyle said with both apology and amusement, “we don’t spend much time with religion.”

  Jo came back from the bathroom with a box of tissues, handed me several.

  “It’s a zoo in here,” she said irritably, bursting into tears herself, body shaking uncontrollably. She ran into the bathroom.

  “I know she wants to talk about things,” Kyle said. “But she’s ragged, at the moment, she’s taken too many drugs. We don’t know quite what she’ll say, so we just let her stay in there awhile, we’ll try to sort it out.”

  Twenty minutes later, when she returned with huge energy into the kitchen, her eyes were wide open, pupils almost pinpoints. Kyle made some more chai and we all drank it in silence. I looked at her magnificent hair, couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

  “What?” she said, finally turning into my stare.

  “Your hair. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Ah,” Kyle said to Hilary, “here we go. On and on.”

  “Jo just loves her hair,” Hilary said.

  “Yes and yes,” Jo said, brightly, with incredible energy. “I actually do.”

  Her eyes had the manic gaze of a cocaine user. But she had some control over herself, moved her head in tiny jerks, like a bird feeding, as she thought through what to say to Kyle’s back as he disappeared into the bedroom.

  Silence after he left. Hilary sorted through her set of crayons, decided she was missing some colors and went to her room to find them.

  “Your hair…how do you get it done like that?” I asked.

  “I’ve never been to a hairdresser. For years, until I was fifteen, I never actually thought about it, except in a disinterested way. It was just…mine. It’s wavier now after the chemo.”

  “But when I saw you yesterday, your hair was four feet long. And now it’s much shorter.”

  She fumbled in a brown leather bag at her feet, took out a long hair extension, gathered her real hair into a bundle, rubber-banded it tight against her neck, and fastened the extension.

  “I have two,” she said, taking out another hair extension that was woven into a long braid. “Depends on my mood, what I wear. I’ve had long hair for years. That was my trademark on CNN, the hair. I couldn’t give it up. Like that reporter that went to Moscow, Jill somebody, and suddenly turned up on-air with short, graying hair, almost white in spots. I could never do that.”

  She saw my confusion.

  “Mastectomy, a year ago. That’s when they took me off the network broadcasts, due to the chemo. And losing all my hair, from the chemo…that’s definitely the most traumatic part of having breast cancer. But the texture and electric aspects of my hair are exactly the same as before.”

  “When I was younger,” Hilary said
with a sigh, as she and Kyle came back.

  “When I was in my twenties, actually,” Jo said.

  Kyle started to brew more chai, and Hilary began fiddling with some crayons.

  “Go on,” I said. “I had a friend who had a double mastectomy. A year ago.”

  Mari Emerine.

  “And did her hair grow out differently?”

  “She died.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Hilary said, with that almost total lack of understanding a child has about death. She said some words like her dad, putting a emphasis on syllables that was definitely foreign. Sawree. “Was she carried up by the angels?”

  “Let her talk, sweetie,” Kyle said.

  “After the chemo,” Jo said, pretty much unaware that the three of us were in the room, “after that…when my hair started growing back in, I had a hairdresser who worked on me free. For the experience! I saved what she cut off. Before the chemo I heard that if I ever had cancer in the other breast, I could use the hair. I could get a wig made out of it, you know, when I knew I would lose it. The second one.”

  “It’s the left one,” Hilary said, “that’s real. I’ve seen it. In the bath.”

  Jo seemed to enjoy this. She stroked Hilary’s arm, stroked her hair.

  “To my astonishment,” she said, “the wig-makers all exclaimed, ‘Oh! Virgin hair.’ Because it had never been stripped, you see. Never been permed, never colored or tinted. Also, there was a lot of it. Actually, my grandmother must have had very luxurious hair as well. Her mother cut chunks out of it to make her own wig. It’s the thickness, I think, that’s so distinctive. And it’s rather silky. For some reason, it actually takes an unusually long time to dry when it’s been washed. If I put it into a bun without letting it dry first, it will stay wet for hours and hours and hours. At different times in my life it went down almost to my waist, below my bra strap. But then the weight would give me headaches, so I would cut off a foot or so. Now that it’s shoulder length, grown out from the chemo, this time it gave me curls, it gave me an identity crisis. I looked so…different. On camera, I mean. That’s why I had to use extensions. Plus, I had to use these extra-long hairpins. They’re so very hard to find. Small ones won’t hold anything, they slip out. I tend to leave a trail of them. Like Gretel.”

  Hilary was totally absorbed in her coloring, and Kyle stood directly behind Jo. I could tell they’d heard her go on like this before. She was in a zone, talking.

  “For the sides of my head, I use combs. European ones, slightly curved and wider than most. Small ones won’t stay in or won’t hold the weight. That’s what I meant about it being slightly unruly. When I get excited, I tend to twirl my hair, and lose all my hairpins. Silk scarves slide off my head. Anyway, I now wear cotton scarves, they have more…more…traction.”

  She stood up too abruptly, a foot slipping on the floor. Kyle reached out to help her, but Jo shook her head, waved her arms, recovered her balance.

  “I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”

  She left without another word.

  “Sheesh,” Hilary said. “I hope we don’t have to listen to that for a while.”

  “I have to make some more phone calls,” I said, taking out my Fujiyama. “I’ll just go outside.”

  “Kiss kiss,” Hilary said. “I’ve got to beddy-bye now.”

  She kissed me in the European style. Left cheek, right, left again.

  “You’re not running off?” Kyle said to me.

  “No,” I said, realizing in that moment that I trusted him and immediately regretting the thought. I’d trusted too many people, no, too many men.

  But no, I did trust him. I just didn’t trust her. Yet.

  28

  “How did the kidnappers contact you?” I asked her. “Phone call? Fax? Email?”

  Jo turned to Kyle, shrugging her shoulders, palms up in confusion.

  “They faxed the network headquarters,” he said, rooting around the work tables for a sheet of paper. “Atlanta forwarded the fax to Jo.”

  “I’m confused,” I said. “You were kidnapped two months ago. You got away from them. Why are you getting ransom demands?”

  “My cameraman. My soundman. They were both kidnapped with me. They’re still there.”

  “Why are they contacting you?”

  “Once I got back, CNN decided they weren’t sure about ransoming my crew. They’re still figuring out what to do. I was the valuable one. The on-air talent.”

  She fiddled with her hair extensions. I studied her face, looking for any sign that she somehow could make the moral decision that all lives were equal, when kidnapped, that on-air talent should be of no more value than a TV crew. But I didn’t think she really believed that her crew was in her league.

  In that moment, I decided not to trust her. I’d use her in any way I could, I would use her money, but I wouldn’t trust anything she told me unless I could verify it independently.

  I read through the single sheet of paper.

  “There’s no phone number here,” I said. “No way to contact them back.”

  Kyle pointed at the bottom of the sheet.

  “Next fax. Two hours. Except Jo hadn’t heard about the fax, so the two hours passed. She got a second fax.”

  Kyle took out another sheet.

  last warning—two hours from now

  “But after two hours, there never was another fax. It was a phone call. A woman’s voice. Sort of.”

  “What did the person…the voice, on the phone, what did they say?”

  “Nine hundred thousand dollars ransom,” Jo said. “For the two men of my crew, CNN had six hours to say yes or no. They said yes immediately. I’m too valuable, I guess. I don’t know, maybe they were just stalling. But they said yes. Except…except when Chac changed his mind, once he got to know me. Kyle. Can you get me another Diet Coke?”

  He went into the kitchen and Jo leaned into me, her mouth just inches from my right ear as she whispered.

  “I haven’t told him this. But I knew there was only one way to stay alive in there. At the camp. The head man. Chac. I took off my tee-shirt for him, second time he came round. Took off my bra. I knew I’d do anything. I did.”

  “What…?”

  “I did for days. Every day, twice a day, sometimes more. He really wanted me, so he kept me around.”

  “You want it in a glass? Ice?” Kyle shouted from the kitchen.

  “Yes. Ice. Glass.”

  I knew he was waiting until she asked him to come back.

  “My cameraman, my soundman, they were in this…hut, I guess…it was made of some pieces of wood…”

  “Mesquite, probably.”

  “Whatever. They were handcuffed to each other’s ankles, they never got out of that hut. But I came out of mine, whenever he wanted me. Chac. I know he didn’t trust me, but he gave me more freedom. He thought I wanted him. Maybe…I don’t know, maybe he thought…a story about him…on CNN, I don’t know. Kyle!”

  He stood in the doorway.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m going out. Bit of a stroll. You tell Laura everything you need. I’ll pop back in ten, fifteen minutes. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Did you get the Coke?”

  “Oh.”

  He returned a moment later with a half-empty plastic bottle.

  “Didn’t think you wanted it, really.”

  Jo said nothing for a few moments after the front door banged shut. I thought she was listening to see that he was actually walking away.

  “I haven’t told him all this,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Too embarrassed, I guess.”

  She sorted through the papers on the work table, flinging some of them away in anger until she found the bag of Ritalin. She put several in her mouth, emptied the Coke bottle in one long drink.

  “I knew, you see, deep down, I knew I had to get out of there. By myself. Run away. Escape.”

  I waited until she stopped shuddering, face shiny wi
th tears. She rubbed her face with her hair, trying to get it dry, get the tears off.

  “I told you, I ran away,” she said finally.

  “I think you’d better tell me what that means.”

  “I was in Mexico.”

  “Where?”

  “Sonora. They told me later, anyway. Somewhere in the Sonoran desert. I’m in fantastic physical shape. See?”

  She started to lift her tanktop. Suddenly shy, embarrassed by what she was doing, probably embarrassed that I’d see her mastectomy results, she lowered the tanktop.

  “I’ve run a dozen marathons. Three hours, thirty-one minutes my best time. I used to run forty, fifty miles a week. I ran the Death Valley One Hundred, so I knew I could run in the desert. One afternoon, Chac wanted me, I gave him everything, for two hours, I just gave it to him. I wore him out. And he said, Okay, back to your place. The guards were used to me walking around the camp. They didn’t pay much attention, when I came out of Chac’s hut. They wanted me too, but Chac was very straight with them, I was his. Nobody saw me and I just ran.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Running? Easy at first, but—”

  “No. The place they held you.”

  “Oh. That.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Desert. Up in the mountains. Low…mountains. Rocks, cactus…”

  Her simplicity and narcissism maddened me.

  “Where?” I shouted. “What kind of desert? What did you see when you were running? How far did you run?”

  “I’m sorry, Laura. I’m really sorry, I know you want to find your friend. But…I just ran. For hours, until my right shoe started to come apart. There are a lot of rocks out there, and when I came down from the mountains…”

  She went into the kitchen and returned with a warm plastic liter bottle of Diet Coke. Twisting off the top, she realized it was warm, started up to get some ice, but shrugged and kept drinking.

  “They call them sky islands.”

  “Yes. I know. But where?”

  “All those dinky mountain ranges. You see them everywhere down here. You can’t drive anywhere without seeing two or three different sky islands. They all look the same to me. Look at this. Kyle’s trying to match up the map that Jaime gave me. That guy, up at Paul Bond’s boot shop. In Nogales.”