Nine Days: A Mystery Page 2

  “You’ll have to ask them, but I’m guessing it’s at least partially because of my zero-tolerance policy for ‘white power’ crap in my jurisdiction.” She brought the pot over to the table. “I’m kind of lame on some things, I admit it, but racist gangs?” She shook her head. “Homey, as they used to say, don’t play that.”

  My radar homed in on her vehemence, and I wondered if there were something personal behind it. She didn’t look like she had any color in her blood, but neither do I. “Why’s that?”

  She got a couple of heavy white mugs out of the cabinet, ignoring my question. “Your interview’s at one, with Hector Guerra. In case the name doesn’t make it obvious, he owns the place.”

  “You don’t give a hell of a lot away for free, do you?”

  She spooned a couple of sugars into her coffee and sat down, stirring it. She didn’t say anything. It was starting to piss me off.

  “Seriously,” I said, “do I have to take this job?”

  Her doe-lashed eyes flashed up at me, but she kept quiet. I gave her points for waiting out her temper this time.

  “There’s not a lot of work around here,” she said when she finally spoke. Her voice was calm and even. “Hector’s doing me a favor, giving you dibs on this bartending gig. I’m not gonna be very happy if you jerk him around.”

  “What if I want to do something for a living that I’m actually qualified for?”

  “Like what, dealing guns and drugs?” A little crack in the calm and even.

  I frowned at her. “We never dealt drugs.”

  “They’re two ends of the same stick,” she snapped. “You deal in one, you deal in the other.”

  I shut up and pulled my coffee over, just for something to do while she got a grip. A couple of minutes without talking, then she said, “Look, you helped your husband and father-in-law sell those black market pieces, and you laundered the profits through your construction books. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in somebody responsible for the public safety.” She tapped the Formica table with the tip of her index finger. Her nails were tastefully manicured, with a subtle pink polish. “You need to prove to me that you can be a law-abiding, responsible citizen. Holding down this job for a while is an easy first step.”

  “Helping the feds shut down that bunch of Ladders didn’t buy me anything?”

  She fixed her wise brown eyes on me. “Yeah, it bought you this chance. Don’t fuck it up.”

  Before I could reply, she caught sight of her watch and got up, gulping her coffee. “I gotta go.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said as she headed for the door. “How am I supposed to get downtown?”

  “You can walk it in half an hour,” she threw over her shoulder. “Make sure and give yourself enough time.”

  I waited until she was out of visual range to flip her the bird. Then I got up and poured out the coffee. I hate that shit.

  IV

  Around noon, I put my sneakers back on, wishing I had something a little nicer to wear. Hearing myself think that told me I was more stressed out than I’d realized. I’ve always been a pretty spectacular failure at femininity, what with the fat thing, the brain that won’t shut up, and the obsession with machines and buildings; I’d successfully thrown in the towel after my torture-chamber puberty, and discovered that hauling plywood and Sheetrock instead of a purse didn’t change anything except the way other people treated me. I only ever worry about how I look anymore when something else is bothering me. Right now, that included just about everything on the planet.

  Chapped at having to think about it, I considered what to do with my hair. I’d worn it short and dyed dark since bailing out of Tucson for California after high school, but the feds had advised me to change my appearance as much as possible after going into protection, so I’d been letting it grow. It was past my shoulders now, an unruly pain in the ass with sprigs of gray silvering up its natural dead-grass color. I didn’t mind the way it looked, but in this heat it was kind of like wearing a fur coat in hell, and putting it up required the kind of decision making I’d cut it off to avoid. I finally just twisted it up on the back of my head and clipped it there. It didn’t exactly scream professionalism, but maybe failing my job interview would make it easier to talk some vocational sense into the Amazon.

  On my way out, Jesse Reed popped into my memory, and I checked the stone foundation for basement windows. Sure enough, there they were, which I hadn’t expected. Every now and then I’d come across a basement in Bakersfield, but they were rare because of the shallow frost depth, and I couldn’t imagine that it got much colder here. I stopped to examine the house more closely. It was two stories with a steeply pitched roof—Victorian, if you held a gun to my head—easily a hundred years old or more. It was in pretty good shape, but needed a new roof and some repointing on the foundation masonry and chimneys. Looking at it made my hammer hand itch.

  At the end of the driveway, I paused under a solitary tree to absorb some shade. Flat landscape covered in yellow grass spread almost treeless to that weird, low horizon in all directions, knuckling under to a sky so bright that it was almost white. The few buildings that dared stand up under it did so timidly, keeping low to the ground and far away from their neighbors. I could smell cows, but didn’t see any. Up the road to my right, a sunburned Cadillac DeVille slanted off the pavement, bumper-deep in the weeds. To the left, toward town, the white clapboard church where we’d turned the night before stood to one side of a blockwide cemetery surrounded by a fence of heavy black chain slung between low granite piers. It seemed miles away.

  I started walking along the gravel shoulder, wondering if the Amazon had warned my prospective employer that I’d be on foot, overdressed, and underqualified. Resentment stung the back of my throat again. I knew my way around a saloon, but not so well that you’d want to pay me for it. I’m good at reading people, and when Joe and Old Pete, his dad, had a buyer they weren’t sure about, they’d stick me behind the bar so that I could observe on the down low. I’m not psychic or anything—just better than average at reading the unconscious, nonverbal information that every human being on earth throws out. It’s a nice skill to have, but probably not worth its weight in actual bartending experience.

  By the time I got to the church, I was giving serious thought to just telling Guerra, straight up, that I didn’t want the job. The Amazon wouldn’t like it, but what could she do? Tattle on me to WITSEC, I guess, but surely they’d prefer I not make an incompetent spectacle of myself. I was supposed to blend in.

  A couple of the church’s granite fence piers were in the shade, and I stopped to sit down and let some sweat dry. As I did so, the DeVille I’d seen parked in the ditch down the road from the Amazon’s house appeared on the other side of the cemetery. It had dark-tinted windows, so I couldn’t see who was driving. The back of my stomach went cold when it slowed and then stopped, watching me across the tombstones like a sheet-steel animal of prey.

  My brain snapped off and I dropped into a high, cold landscape of pure-body survival that slipped on like a familiar custom-made garment. The government shrinks had decided this was some kind of psychological damage from the shooting, but it’s a trick I’ve always had up my sleeve, and no way was I interested in being cured of something that’s kept me alive for thirty-eight years and made me a damned successful criminal. The split seconds I save by not having to run everything through my prefrontal cortex are probably the reason I’m still here and Joe isn’t.

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat there before the DeVille finally gunned its motor and sauntered insolently away, turning toward downtown on the other side of the church. It was still early afternoon, but it could have been a year later. I waited until my thought processes were working again, then got up and crossed the graveyard, putting some speed on it.

  V

  When I came into the northwest corner of the square about ten minutes later, the Cadillac was parked in front of a shopworn department store half a block straight ah
ead. I stayed on the sidewalk in the shade of a tall stone building on my right, keeping my eyes open while I decided what, if anything, to do.

  In the daytime, the square looked almost monochromatic, most of its color bleached out by the hard white light. Some of the buildings had wood awnings that hung out over the sidewalk, but the sun seemed to blast right through them, sucking all the visual detail out of the window displays. The ones there were, anyway. I counted up the number of vacant properties: eighteen of twenty-four. Still showing signs of life were the department store, a corner store directly across the street from where I was standing, the courthouse, the bar, an indeterminate business a couple of doors down, and a large stone building diagonally across the intersection from that. Everything else seemed coated in graveyard dust, still and blank, like blind mice. The marquee above the theater on the other side of the courthouse still advertised a first-run matinee of Pulp Fiction, the plastic letters yellowed and crooked.

  While I was thinking about Uma Thurman taking a needle in the chest, the old lady who’d talked to me at the fire the night before came out of the department store, a package under one arm. She got into the DeVille and drove off, in no hurry.

  I stood there flat-footed for a minute, trying to decide whether I had something to worry about, or if I were overreacting to a normal level of local curiosity because of my circumstances. After ten minutes passed with the radar liking neither answer, I walked down and went into the department store. Bells hanging from the inside handle jangled as the door swung shut.

  “I’m coming!” a faint voice called from somewhere out under the fluorescent lights.

  The place smelled a thousand years old, even though it was probably only eighty or so. The mannequins in the front window were plaster, with hairstyles from the early ’60s. I fingered a rack of blouses near me. They had a slick, plastic feel.

  “Plus sizes are in the back,” rasped the pint-size man in bow tie and horn-rims who materialized at my elbow. He was about the same age as the building, narrow-shouldered and wide-hipped, with strands of still-dark hair plastered back over his pale skull.

  “Great, another segregationist,” I muttered.

  The old man scowled and withdrew his left hand from the pocket of his pleated gabardine pants. Only there wasn’t any hand there, just the healed-over end of his wrist, which he shoved into my face. “This I lose to the worst racist in history so you can come in here calling me names?”

  “I meant the clothes,” I said, forcing myself not to flinch. “The bigger sizes are the same styles as all the other stuff, so why do they need their own section?”

  He lifted his chin and examined me through the bottoms of his bifocals, pursing his lips. I paused to make sure he wasn’t winding up to throw me out, then added, “Nobody likes being shoved to the back of the bus.”

  He stuck his wrist back in his pocket, still scowling. “Interesting pitch. What line are you with?”

  “I’m not a sales rep,” I said. “Just an easily annoyed fat broad who’s done too much shopping.”

  He made a dismissive motion with one shoulder, eyeing me thoughtfully, then said, “What suburb of Los Angeles are you from?”

  My stomach jumped. “What?”

  The old man grinned, like he’d just done a magic trick, and tugged his right earlobe. “Still know my accents!”

  “You might want to get a checkup,” I told him. “I’m from Boston.”

  His expression turned skeptical, and I changed the subject before he could ask any more questions. “Listen, the lady who just left, Silvia something. Do you know her?”

  Before I’d gotten my teeth back together, he sprang at the rack of clothes behind me, crying, “Those gonif kids!”

  He yanked a satin slip off the rack, holding it out to show a long rip in the shiny pink fabric. It had clearly been slashed.

  “That’s the fourth one this week! What’s the point of tearing up my goods and just leaving them here, will you tell me that?” He stalked over to the cash register by the front door, kvetching, “For their trouble, they could just steal the damned things.”

  “There’s not much fence value in clothes,” I said before I could stop myself.

  He gave me a look, and I added quickly, “I’m a friend of Teresa Hallstedt’s. I guess she’s kind of rubbed off on me.”

  I thought it was pretty good for an extemporaneous fake, but his glare intensified, and he came back around the register. “Friends, are you? Then maybe you can make her see some sense.”

  I learned a long time ago that the best way to keep people talking is to give them room to do it. I showed him my best puzzled face and stayed quiet.

  “I know she’s against this downtown development project because it was Richard’s idea, but we’ve gotta do something,” the old guy said, waving his lone hand at his front window and the boarded-up storefronts beyond it. “People listen to her. If she keeps running it down, the whole thing will go kaput, and then I guess we can all go fly a kite.”

  My ear hair pricked upright. “What development project?”

  “Oh, you know,” he said, glancing around his faded business. “Tax incentives and whatnot. There was an article this morning—” He went back behind the register, throwing over his shoulder, “Silvia Molina’s one of those Mexican witch doctors. Does her voodoo for the poor people down by the river.”

  “You mean she’s a curandera?”

  “Whatever,” he grunted, rummaging under the counter. “Don’t waste your money. We got a real doctor here, just like the rest of civilization.”

  The clock on the wall behind him warned that I was ten minutes late for my interview. I told him not to worry about finding the article, and made for the bar.

  VI

  Guerra’s was the tallest building on its row, two stories with a nice old Metzger storefront. The big bay window on the second floor was mirrored in reverse on the first, and the recess in front of the door was paved with hexagonal black and white tile, ’20s style.

  The lights were off inside but the door was unlocked, and the familiar perfume of stale smoke and spilled liquor wafted up as I went in. A long serving top ran down the right side, with a row of short booths facing it across the worn board floor. At the far end of the high, narrow room was a small dance floor with a jukebox. To the right of this, a short hallway glowed with light.

  “Hello?” I called.

  I heard a chair creak, and a short, beefy figure appeared in the hall. As he ambled toward me, away from the light, I got a load of the details: long black hair, big dark eyes, Aztec nose, delicious mouth. The man was gorgeous.

  “Sorry about that—the breaker went,” he said, extending a hand about the size and shape of a bear’s paw. His voice was rough and youthful sounding, with the full vowels and relaxed consonants of a native Spanish speaker. “I’m Hector Guerra. Come on back.”

  I followed him down into a hall about a third as big as the bar, all thoughts of throwing the interview evaporating.

  A walk-in cooler faced the door, and a mismatched sofa and chairs were arranged around a low table in the center. In the far corner, a big black and white cat sprawled on the seat of a BMW motorcycle. The carburetor was lying in pieces on a mattress of stained newspapers underneath it, scenting the air with gasoline. There was a battered metal desk in the remaining corner, from which Guerra picked up a clipboard to hand me.

  He stayed quiet as I took a chair, watching me frankly and without apparent self-consciousness. There was an uncanny calmness about him; he sat absolutely still, not even his eyes moving, as if rapt by some hypnotic internal mantra. My radar kept feeling around the edges of it, looking for a way in and not finding one.

  I was halfway through the second page of the job application when I heard someone coming down the wood stairs we’d passed in the short hallway. A young Latino came around the door into the office. He was maybe twenty-five, with a shaved head and indigo prison tattoos spilling from the arms and neck of his snug white
T-shirt. The only colored tag was a red crown on his left biceps, half hidden under the hem of his sleeve. The baggy chinos and illegible eyes told me the rest. If he wasn’t a banger, he deserved an award for his impersonation of one.

  “¿Qué piensas?” Guerra asked him, getting up.

  The banger wiped his hands on a red shop rag. “Lo puedo arreglar,” he replied, his eyes taking a short trip in my direction. “It’ll only be temporary, though, man. You probably need a new roof.”

  “Está bien,” I said. “Hablo español.”

  Both men looked at me with their eyebrows up, and I explained, “In case you switched to English on my account.”

  The banger smiled a little. I occasionally have that effect on tough guys.

  “What’s a new roof gonna run?” Guerra asked him with a grimace. “You know how broke I am.”

  “Depends,” the banger said. “There’s a couple different kinds. A membrane roof would be best, but they ain’t cheap.”

  “What’s up there now?” I asked.

  Again with the startled look, both of them.

  “Tin,” the banger said. “Why?”

  “Sometimes on these old flat-roofed masonry places, the inside part of the building settles away from the exterior walls,” I said, demonstrating by holding my hands out flat and dropping one a few inches. “That creates a dam at the drainage scuppers where water pools up. If that’s what’s going on, you can fix your leaks by enlarging the scupper openings.”

  I love it when guys look at me the way these two were looking at me right now—like I’d just grown a second, freakishly intelligent head.

  “I’m not saying you don’t need a new roof,” I added deferentially, “but the scupper thing is something cheaper you can try first.”

  Guerra chuckled and gestured toward me. “Alex Méndez, Julia Kalas.” He gave Alex an apologetic look. “Teresa didn’t tell me she was a ringer.”

  “The scuppers are all plugged up with leaves and stuff,” Alex challenged.