The Bones of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  We soon arrive at a toll entrance to a federal highway that runs south along the coast. It’s a winding, picturesque route of rocky shoreline, vast ocean, and pale blue sky showing almost no clouds at all. Gorgeous weather. As we cruise along the seaside road we discuss various stratagems for persuading Kitty Belle, should she be with the group at the mall, to come with us. We end up sticking with Frank’s original idea—the offer of a fat contract to do an adult entertainment film—and embroider the pitch with a few more details. We know Rayo’s our best chance for selling it to her, and we work out a mode of approach that includes references to our meetings with Lance and Dolan, the better to convince the kid of our bona fides.

  “What if she’s not interested?” Rayo says.

  “Then wing it,” Frank says. “Do what you have to. Just get her ass in this vehicle.”

  We roll into Ensenada at a quarter after eight. Twenty minutes later I pay a taxi driver two hundred American bucks to let us have his curbside parking spot. It’s under a tree near the top of a steep hillside street facing toward the fifteen-story mall on the far side of a four-lane north-south avenue. The building is fronted by a wide set of steps leading up from a semicircle driveway that right now is occupied solely by a pair of taxis. Our elevated vantage gives us an unobstructed view of it all, and the vehicle’s dark glass prevents curious passersby from seeing Frank and me peering through binoculars back and forth between the mall driveway and the front doors, where a crowd of shoppers is awaiting admission. Rayo googled the mall as we came into town and learned that its driveway is restricted to taxis and to private vehicles showing a special permit on the windshield. Parking lots flank the other sides of the building. A short block to our right is an intersection with a traffic light and a pedestrian crosswalk. A longer block to our left is a similar intersection.

  The shopping party from Vista Pacifica arrives about ten minutes before the place opens. Four dark-green SUVs—Lincoln Navigators—led by a bronze Chrysler 300 sedan and trailed by an identical one. The first three SUVs have plain glass, and through the binoculars we can see the girls inside, as well as the drivers and front-seat riders, but the glass of the fourth Navigator, like that of the two Chryslers, is too dark for us to make out the occupants. All the windshields show a driveway permit, and the convoy is waved into the curving driveway by an attendant. The only vehicle that doesn’t pull in is the black-glass Navigator, which continues to the intersection on our right, then turns east and out of our view. We figure it for the crew going to collect the meth shipment. The rest of the party parks all in a row along the central portion of the driveway’s curbside, which has apparently been reserved for it.

  Two Sinas get out of each of the vehicles, ten escorts all told. They’re all wearing sunglasses and baggy guayabera shirts. The SUV drivers open the rear doors and the girls alight—six of them from each vehicle. Some are in sundresses, some in jeans, all of them carrying tote bags. Their excitement’s evident in the hand gestures, the energetic body language, as they start up the steps. Except for two men who stay with the vehicles, the Sina escorts go up with them. We work the glasses on the girls as close up as we can, but they’re all facing away from us, their attention shifting about from one to another as they jabber. They’re nearing the top of the steps when Frank says, “Yes! On the left flank! Pale green dress, only one that color. Hair’s shorter than in the movie.”

  I find the green sundress, its hem riding high on fine legs. Her hair’s been cut in a shag similar to Rayo’s and just about as short. She keeps turning to talk and laugh with a girl on her right and another a little behind her, giving me a clear look at her face.

  “No question about it,” I say.

  Rayo taps me on the head. “Let me!”

  I hand her the glasses. “Far left side. Be quick, they’re opening the doors. Haircut sorta like yours.”

  She steadies the binoculars on my shoulder as the mall doors come open and the crowd surges through them. Then she laughs. “Yep! That’s her.”

  “Let’s hook up phones and get you going,” Frank says.

  She phones Frank, then me, then curses for not having recharged her phone on our way here. I offer to swap units with her—mine’s got plenty of juice and I can use hers while it’s plugged into the dashboard and charging—but she says no. Her phone’s smaller than either of ours and easier to hide. “It’s still got nearly fifty percent juice,” she says. “That’ll hold.”

  She changes from her chambray shirt to a black tunic she had specially made for asignments like this. Like us, she’s wearing her Toltec ID badge out of sight on her belt and has her Mexican carry permit in her pocket. She inserts audio buds in her ears and plugs their cord to her cell phone and slips the phone into a little pocket just below the front of the tunic’s neck. The pocket’s near enough to her mouth that we’ll hear her clearly even when she speaks softly as long as she keeps her distance from loud noises. But because the tunic makes a holstered gun or one tucked in her pants too awkward for quick access, she takes out a small tote bag, shoves a wadded-up T-shirt into it to serve as a cushion for the gun and to disguise its shape against the bag bottom, then puts in the Glock and extra magazines. Frank and I have our pistols under our shirts. She hangs the tote on her shoulder and puts on an orange baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses. “Okay, dudes, let’s rock and roll.”

  She gets out and strides down the hill to the avenue and then over to the intersection on our right and joins the waiting crowd at the crosswalk just when its light turns green. As she’s crossing the avenue our phones are louder with crowd talk and the sounds of idling traffic. Then comes her clear voice—“You read me all right?”

  “Just dandy,” Frank says. “If you hear me okay, give a wave.”

  She pretends to wave at somebody down the street. Then she’s across the avenue and mounting the steps.

  The Sina escorts are lounging in the shade of an overhang near the mall entrance, smoking, batting the breeze, checking out the passing women, most of whom give them a wide berth and ignore their salutations. As Rayo nears the top of the steps, some of the men address her. Without slowing down as she passes, she points at one of them and says something and they both laugh. She puts a little more verve in her strut and the men applaud. Then she’s in the building.

  RAYO LUNA

  She’s taken off the cap and glasses and is murmuring to Frank and Rudy as she seeks after Kitty from floor to floor, bobbing her head rhythmically as though singing along softly to some tune issuing from the earbuds. The search is slow going. She consults the directory stand at each escalator landing, then makes a circuit of the floor to check out every jewelry shop, shoe store, and boutique on it, scanning the crowd closely as she moves through it. Given their loveliness and self-possession, most of the party girls are easy enough to spot as she makes her way up the floors.

  “The flock has scattered all over the place,” she says. “Mostly in twos and threes.”

  When she’d studied Kitty through the binoculars, she had also focused on the girls nearest to her, the ones she’d seemed most vivacious with. If those were Kitty’s close friends, then wherever in the mall she sees any of them, there’s a chance Kitty will be nearby. By the time she arrives on the thirteenth floor—whispering, “No fear of unlucky thirteen in this place”—it’s after eleven and she’s begun to fret that she’s missed her, has simply failed to spot her on a lower level.

  She checks a shoe store and two jewelry shops, then enters a dress boutique that’s not very crowded and immediately spies a couple of girls she’d made special note of through the binoculars. They’d been babbling with Kitty in the animated way of good pals as they went up the front steps, and they’re unmistakable, one with a black buzz cut and wearing a flower-print sundress, the other with a short brown ponytail and in jeans and an LA Dodgers T-shirt. Taking a casual look around, Rayo doesn’t see Kitty.

  The two girls are browsing the cocktail dresses on revolving racks near the cente
r of the store, the buzz-cut one with a tote bag on each shoulder, the other girl with only one bag. Ambling up to a neighboring blouse rack, Rayo whispers the situation to Frank and Rudy and tells them she’s removing the earbuds to try to eavesdrop on the girls. She’s affecting to look through the blouses when the buzz-cut girl holds a short yellow dress against her body and, addressing the other one as Rosa, asks her how it looks.

  Ay, Lupita, that’s so perfect, Rosa says. You have to try that on!

  Lupita grins and hands the two totes to Rosa and heads off toward the left side of the row of dressing rooms against the far wall, apparently headed for the next-to-last room in the row, the only one whose door is open. Then the door of the last room opens and Kitty Belle comes out holding a black cocktail dress on a hanger, and Lupita stops to admire it.

  “Whoa! She’s here!” Rayo hisses into the phone. “She was trying on a dress!”

  Lupita holds up the yellow dress, and Kitty smiles and nods and says something, and Lupita grins and goes into the room and shuts the door. Now Rosa has seen Kitty and goes to join her at the register, where a clerk enters the sale and Rosa hands Kitty a tote to put the dress in. Kitty checks her watch and says something, and Rosa nods and they both give a little wave and Kitty departs. Rayo exits behind her, the buds in her ears again as she tells Frank and Rudy she’s on Kitty’s heels.

  “I know, man, I’ve got a watch,” she says in response to Frank’s reminder that the girls are due back at the vehicles in less than forty minutes.

  She follows her down to a food court on the ground floor and stops to observe from a short distance as Kitty goes to the serving window of a concession. Her order—a clear-wrapped sandwich and a can of soda pop—is served on a small plastic tray, and she pays for it out of a wallet she takes from the tote, then carries the tray to an unoccupied table near the far end of the court.

  Rayo tells Frank and Rudy she’s removing the buds again so she can talk to the girl. She puts them into her phone pocket, then buys a cup of strawberry yogurt from the nearest stand and begins eating it with a plastic spoon as she casually ambles in Kitty’s direction. She’s almost abreast of her table when she stops and stares at her with feigned surprised. My God, she says. It’s you!

  Kitty looks up from her sandwich and says in her distinctive rasp, What’s your problem?

  Oh, God . . . I’m sorry, Rayo says. She casts a quick look around as if making sure there’s no one near enough to overhear them, then steps closer to the table and says softly in English, “You’re Kitty, right? . . . Kitty Quick? Or Kitty Belle, last we heard.”

  Kitty’s expression becomes quizzical. “You in the business? We ever work together or what? I think I’d remember.”

  “No, no, we haven’t. Jeez, I can’t believe this. We got here yesterday and been looking all over town for you—theatrical agencies, photo studios, TV and radio stations. We’ve tried everywhere in town we could think of where you might’ve had some professional dealings, but we came up with nothing. We finally gave up this morning and were just about to leave, but my partners had to convert some money at a bank down the street and I came in here to get a snack and . . . damn, here you are! It’s mind-blowing!”

  “Who the fuck’s we? And what do you want?”

  Rayo takes another look around and says, “May I sit, Miss Belle? I think you might be interested in what I have to tell you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “Like a movie offer. One that will pay you very well.”

  Kitty stares at her for a moment, then nods at a chair. Rayo pitches the rest of the yogurt into a trash can and moves the chair to within low-voice range of the girl.

  She tells her that we is herself, Rayo San Luna, and her two partners, and that the three of them work as talent agents for an adult entertainment company in Texas. They’re always on the lookout for new actors, and it so happened that just as the company was working out a deal to produce a sex-sword-and-sorcery flick called Throne of Eros for a satellite TV group, she and her partners saw The Love Tutors and were totally convinced that Kitty would be ideal for the lead part in the throne flick. They showed the producer the Love Tutors DVD and got a quick okay to look her up and see if she’s interested.

  “The producer said he wants me?”

  “She wants you. Stella Lupino. Not many women honchos in this business, but she’s better than most men. Great eye for casting. We knew she’d jump at you. And here’s the best part . . . the job pays twenty thousand.”

  “Twenty thousand? For a little skin flick? They make most of them in about a week.”

  “This movie’s several levels above most, and the company doesn’t pinch pennies when it comes to getting what it wants. And Miss Lupino wants you. As it stands, the shooting schedule’s around three weeks, maybe four. The thing is, shooting starts next Friday and the cast has to be in Dallas no later than Tuesday, just three days from now. Naturally all the contracts have to be signed and verified no later than Monday. Miss Lupino’s already optioned a backup actress to play the lead if we couldn’t find you, or, if we did, you weren’t interested. But if you want the job it’s yours, as long as we get you to the company office in Dallas by day after tomorrow, and we can do that.”

  “How’d you know I was in Ensenada?”

  “We didn’t know, but it was the only lead we had. We went to Tucson to see if you were still with Mount of Venus, but Lance Furman said you’d gone to LA.”

  “Lance,” Kitty says with a chuckle, and shakes her head.

  “I know.” Rayo grins. “You believe he wanted to put me in a movie?”

  “Oh, God, yeah, I believe it!” Kitty says, and they burst out laughing. “He’s always on the watch for sexy girls. His eyes musta got this big when he saw you! He say he could make you a star?”

  “He did, yes!”

  They laugh all the more.

  Rayo tells her that Lance put them in touch with Ben Steiner, who sent them to Nolan Dolan, who said he’d heard she’d gone to Ensenada with some Mexican big shot a few weeks ago. But that was all he knew. “All that matters now is, do you want the job?”

  “Yeah, I want it,” Kitty says. “But I have to tell you, that one movie’s all I’ll do. Sometimes they want you to sign a contract, says you’re gonna do two or three or however many, but I’m only gonna do this one and that’s that. That’s all I’ll agree to.”

  “Okay. If that’s what you want, no problem.”

  “Hey, look, I won’t bullshit you. I always liked sex, right from my very first time when I was fifteen. And when I did my first sex movie, the one with Lance, I really loved it. To get paid so good for doing it in a movie with nice, good-looking guys seemed like the best job in the world. I mean, yeah, Lance can make you roll your eyes with some of the stuff he says—you know that—but he always made the job fun. And most of the other actors were new to the business, too, and were great to work with. We joked around and laughed a lot between takes and felt sorta close in a way that’s hard to describe, but still it’s true. One of the girls even admitted she’d once had to do a little hooking for a while and said making sex movies was a thousand times safer and could never ever be as lonely as hooking. Anyhow, right after that movie for Lance, I went to LA where I knew the pay was better, and I made a couple of movies for Nolan Dolan. But it wasn’t the same. The pay was better, yeah, but nobody joked much and everything was all the time strictly business. I still liked it in some ways, but in some ways it pretty soon started feeling different even though I couldn’t say why. Then one day when I was making the second movie for Dolan, I was watching them film a scene where this girl was doing three guys at once. I’d done two at a time but never three, and I’m watching her real close and she suddenly gets this look on her face that . . . ah, man, it made me feel awful bad for her. Like I was seeing something about her that was way more, I don’t know, personal, more . . . private than even her pussy could ever be. I knew the final cut of the movie wasn’t gonna include th
at look, and I couldn’t help wondering if I was gonna get it, too, or maybe sometimes already did and didn’t even know. All I knew was that whatever she was feeling just then was something I didn’t ever want to feel. She wasn’t but a coupla years older than me. Ah hell, I wish I could explain it better.”

  “I think I understand,” Rayo says.

  “Anyway, that’s when I started to hate sex movies. But see, as much as I hate them, I’ll damn sure make one for twenty thousand dollars, because with that much money I can take care of myself awhile and maybe even—”

  She suddenly focuses her attention on something behind Rayo and flaps her hand at it in shoo-away fashion. Rayo turns and sees Lupita and Rosa staring at them from the entrance to the food court, Rosa scowling at Kitty and tapping a finger on her wristwatch. When Kitty gives them a more vigorous hand flap of dismissal, Rosa responds with a hand sign of “Up yours,” then tugs Lupita away by the arm, and they stalk off into the crowd.

  “Sorry about that,” Kitty says. “Friends of mine, but they can be a real pain in the ass.”

  “I totally understand, Miss Belle. I have a pair of friends exactly like that. Anyhow, you set to go?”

  “You can call me Kitty. Down here they call me Gatita. And yeah, I’m set to go but, ah, did Dolan tell you the name of the fella I came down here with?”

  “Yeah, honey, he did. I didn’t want to bring it up if you didn’t.”

  “Chuy was awful sweet when we met. He asked me to come stay with him as his guest for as long as I cared to and said he’d pay for everything and I’d have nothing to worry about. I knew it meant having sex with him whenever he wanted, but I figured that was better than staying in sex movies, so I said okay. It didn’t really surprise me when I saw he had a lot of other girls living with him, too. To tell you the absolute truth, I was glad I wasn’t the only one. And I gotta admit he’s real generous. Lets us buy clothes at some real nice stores in Culiacán and like today at this place. What I’m saying is, it was all pretty okay for a while. Then one night we got in an argument about something, and in the middle of it he told me to suck his dick and I told him to suck it himself, and he grabbed me by the neck and said if I ever talked to him like that again he’d let every one of his men fuck me and then, if I made him mad enough, he’d give me to a guy he knows who makes snuff films. You know what that is, a snuff film?”