Nine Days: A Mystery Read online

  Entering my real name into the search engine yielded several news hits, but their Web sites all wanted me to register for access to the articles. I didn’t want to leave an electronic trail, even with my new name, so I opened up another browser window and created a dummy e-mail account with one of the free services, under the name Margaret Ness.

  Margaret was Elliot’s fictional ex-wife, one of Joe’s dad’s creations. Despite being among the most feared of the West Coast capos back in the day—Old Pete was a small, trim man with one of those scary-calm faces that makes you wonder what executioners look like under their masks—he had a streak of ribald wackiness that made even people who were scared of him laugh out loud on a regular basis. Margaret’s peccadilloes kept us entertained over many a family dinner, and prospective gun customers coming into the bar knew she was the one to ask for if they were interested in buying.

  I got Margaret registered and took a look at the articles. None of them so much as mentioned the trial; most of them were about the restoration projects I’d done in California. I read through these wistfully, missing the clean sharp smell of aged pine and the way my shoulders ached after a long day of pulling nails and hanging trim.

  I tried Joe’s name next and got quite a few hits, which I clicked through gingerly. Most were safely general articles about his death and the arrest of the two skinheads. About half mentioned his wife, but not by name. I was a little afraid to do an image search, but managed it; there was only one, the ten-year-old headshot from his obituary.

  An image search on both my maiden and married names yielded zip. “Julia Kalas” got me two hits, both in Finland. The feds had done a good job. The old me had ceased to exist, and the new me was a blank slate.

  Which left me still in the dark on Silvia Molina. She’d never even addressed me by name, yet she’d managed to obtain a carefully hidden personal fact. OK, maybe I was paranoid, but I had good reason. I couldn’t afford to believe that it was just a lucky guess.

  I sat there cogitating unsuccessfully for maybe half an hour, then got up to make some dinner, feeling rough. There are downsides to this automatic pilot of mine, the primary one being that the brain often takes its sweet time clocking back in after the pressure’s off. It usually brings some pretty good stuff with it, but it’s a pain in the ass having to wait on it. In my next life, I want to be one of those fast thinkers. Being a fast feeler instead isn’t much consolation.

  XII

  Hector was sitting next to the cash register with his feet up on the edge of the under-counter cooler when I came in, reading a book. There were two couples and a lone biker at the bar, and half a dozen other customers scattered out amongst the tables. I saw Jesse Reed slouched at the edge of the dance floor, watching a trio of young women undulating to some bass-heavy roadhouse blues. Near him, the purple-haired hotel clerk was sharing a pitcher with a small group.

  Hector hopped up and slid his book under the register. “Mike’s running late. You want a beer?”

  I nodded and walked down around the curve in the bar, taking the stool in the corner formed by the serving top and the limestone wall. Joe had always referred to this as the “catbird seat”—the spot in a bar where you have full surveillance of the room and nobody behind you.

  Hector got a frosted mug out of the refrigerator and filled it. Connie appeared at the wait station, which was situated halfway down the long side of the bar. Her springy hair lofted crazily around her shoulders as she moved, like a cloud of black birds rising from a field.

  “Hey, Julia,” she said; then, to Hector, “Can I get a couple of top-shelf martinis and a Shiner? Oh, and another peppermint schnapps for Marie.”

  The name caught my ear and I peeked over her shoulder at the booth she’d just come from. Sure enough, there was Charlie, still wearing her crinoline and boots. All I could see of her partner was the back of her head, which was covered in stringy hair that had been dyed blonde several times too many.

  Hector frowned at Connie. “That’s her fifth one.”

  “The judge took her license, remember?” Connie said. “She’s not going to kill anybody.”

  “Just herself,” Hector growled.

  “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying that trying to control other people’s behavior is insane? Just cut it with some tonic or something. She’ll never know the difference.”

  Hector pressed his lips together, then started making up the order. Connie rolled her eyes, stage-whispering toward me, “Ethical bastard.”

  A wiry redhead came trotting through the front door. His auburn hair was clipped short, and he wore a small soul patch under his lower lip. His arms were roped with hard muscle, and his fashionably baggy clothes did little to conceal the fact that the rest of him probably was, too.

  “Dr. Livingston, I presume,” Hector said as the redhead came around and through the flip-top next to where I was sitting.

  “Sorry, man,” he said, getting a bar towel out from under the serving top and wrapping it hastily around his trim waist. “Where’s the new meat? Tova said you hired somebody.”

  Hector nodded over toward me.

  The man turned, eyes wide, and stuck his hand out. “Mike Hayes,” he said.

  “Ow,” I answered involuntarily. His grip was brutal.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I beat people up for a living.”

  “Mike’s a fighter,” Hector explained to me. “He’s finally trying to go professional this year, which is why I need you.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I didn’t know people still did that.”

  Mike’s face went puzzled. “What?”

  “Boxing. I thought it went out with communism.”

  He laughed and glanced at Hector, who lifted one of his long eyebrows and said, “You’re not from around here, so we’ll ignore that remark.”

  I waited a couple of seconds to see if they’d explain what the hell they were talking about. When they didn’t, I moved on, asking Mike, “Where do you train?”

  He gestured at Hector. “Grandpa Marx here insists we support our local sweat lodge. Tino’s. It’s down by the railroad tracks, on the east side.” His amber eyes were darting over the part of my physique he could see, sizing me up. “Why?”

  “I need to find a decent weight room. Something without a bunch of pink barbells and Nautilus machines.”

  “Don’t see a lot of female powerlifters in these parts,” Mike remarked.

  “You’re not seeing one now,” I assured him. “Sometimes I just want to shove heavy things around.”

  “I know the feeling,” he said, grinning. He paused to set up a couple of cocktail glasses, then asked, “You ever thought about training up to fight? The women’s division down here is really slim.”

  I demurred, “I don’t like people hitting me in the face. Especially on purpose.”

  Hector, who’d moved down past the ice well to take an order, snorted a commiserating laugh as he came back over to the cash register. “I hear that.”

  “Like you ever let a glove near that gorgeous mug, you vain bastard,” Mike chuckled.

  It didn’t surprise me to learn that Hector had a past in the ring. With those shoulders, he easily made up in reach for what he lacked in height, and he looked about as easy to knock down as a Sherman tank.

  He squeezed behind Mike, giving the bartender’s head a good-natured shove. “Can you and Connie hold the fort while I give Julia the grand tour?”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Mike said.

  Hector ducked under the flip-top and came to stand next to me, getting a flat yellow box out of his shirt pocket. He extracted a short cigarette and lit it.

  “Did he just call you Grandpa Marx?” I asked.

  “He’s just yanking my chain,” Hector said. “I’m a democratic Socialist, not a Marxist.” His voice was easy, and he let his gaze wander lazily around the bar as if not interested in my reaction, but I felt him waiting for it.

  “So that’s why people have been giving me funny looks all
day,” I said.

  A flash of guilty amusement shot across Hector’s face, and I realized that I’d been set up. It couldn’t be easy for a pinko to find employees down here in the red state belt, so the Amazon had brought him an out-of-towner. I wondered what he’d done to earn the favor.

  Hector cleared his throat and changed the subject. “OK, let’s see. Well, I guess you can tell, I’m set up for two bartenders, which has been me and Mike up to now, but he’s needing more time off to train, and I can’t be around cigarette smoke for very long.” He tapped his breastbone with a forefinger. “Asthma.”

  I looked pointedly at the smoldering cylinder between his fingers, and he explained, “These’re herbal. I dunno what’s in them, but if I smoke four or five a day, I don’t need an inhaler. The local curandera makes them for me.”

  There couldn’t be two in a town this size. “Are you talking about Silvia Molina?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “I met her at the fire last night,” I said. “Teresa picked me up late, and she got the call just as we were coming into town.”

  Hector’s long brows dropped, shading his eyes. “What was Silvia doing there?”

  “Talking to the cops. They think it might be arson, and apparently she saw somebody run off.”

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, his gaze sliding away from me. He seemed to be feeling for something just beyond his grasp, and the radar gave me a poke. Before I had time to focus the brain, Hector startled, looking down. The black and white cat that I’d seen at my interview was winding itself around his leg.

  “Damn it, Lou, not again,” Hector said, bending to pick it up. It gave me a friendly look, and I reached over to scrub behind its ears.

  “Cat hair doesn’t bother your lungs?” I said.

  “Not in this place,” Hector replied, his eyes running over the shiny floorboards. “No place for it to stick.”

  He motioned me to follow him, saying, “The only hard-and-fast rule here—besides don’t rob me—is that Luigi stays upstairs or in the office when the bar’s open.”

  I hopped down from the stool, smiling at the name. The cat did look cartoonishly Italian, with his big black mustache.

  “I think he’s figured out how to open my apartment door,” Hector said as I followed him toward the office. “I haven’t had time to fix the lock.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  Hector pushed the office door shut behind us. “Break-in last week. They stole some stuff and busted up the place. Cost me a damn fortune.”

  The last comment felt tacked on, obligatory. It wasn’t the money that was bothering him.

  “What did they take?” I asked.

  “Nothing valuable. It was just destructive, mostly. Probably a bunch of kids gearing up for Halloween.”

  I watched him rummaging in the desk drawer, remembering a story Pete had told me about some West Coast wiseguys breaking into a mark’s house and moving the furniture. The invasion of personal space produced results where more violent measures had failed.

  “I can probably fix your lock, if you want,” I offered.

  Hector’s slow grin started up. “Ah, yes, the secret superpowers. What else you got hiding under there?”

  He’d come over from the desk, holding out a key, his otherworldly composure returning. A saucy response bubbled up into my mouth, but stayed there. I took the key mutely, and Hector gestured at the stacks of boxes against the stone wall.

  “We keep beers and ales in the cooler, and hard liquor out here,” he said. “There’s no real system, just try not to cover up the labels. The most important thing—if you take the last case of something, mark it on the order sheet on the desk, so I’ll know we’re out.”

  I nodded, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I haven’t missed a flirtatious opening like that since my salad days.

  “Hey, man,” Mike’s voice buzzed from the intercom. “Can you bring me a couple cases of Shiner longnecks? We’re out up here.”

  Hector mashed the reply button and said, “Coming right up.”

  He went into the cooler and shouldered two beer boxes like they were meringues. As he came out, kicking the door shut behind him, an odd-shaped charm on a length of black cord swung out of his shirt, and I jumped at the chance to make up for lost opportunity.

  “What is that thing?” I said, stepping over to take hold of the charm. Maybe I’d gone temporarily banterless, but there are other ways to gauge whether or not a man’s attracted to you. Hector didn’t retreat or adjust his posture as I moved into his personal space, and I felt a zing of satisfaction.

  “It’s a chakana,” he said.

  The charm was a gold square about an inch across, with zigzag edges and a circular hole in the middle through which the string looped. I peered at it, stalling to stand there close to him as long as possible. He smelled warm and spicy, like leaf fires in the fall, and my body began to heat up like it had just had a shot of good whiskey.

  “It’s a pre-Columbian thing, symbolizes heaven and earth and the four directions,” Hector explained, going a little breathless—probably from holding up the beer cases, but I let myself enjoy the fantasy that it was my physical proximity. “Get the door for me, will you?”

  The club had filled up quite a bit while we’d been gone. There were a dozen couples on the dance floor now, and the air was thick with conversation and music. Mel, the one-handed department store salesman, was sitting on the first barstool inside the front door, smoking a pipe and carrying on a lively conversation with another geezer in dusty overalls and a John Deere cap. Jesse Reed had moved to one of the booths and been joined there by a man who looked a lot like the picture of Richard Hallstedt I’d seen in the newspaper.

  Kathleen’s party eyed Hector hungrily as he hauled through the flip-top and dropped the beer cases in front of the ice well. Connie appeared at the wait station, and I went over and shouldered up next to her.

  “Is that Teresa’s husband over there?” I murmured, shifting my eyes toward the booth.

  “Yeah. Teresa never introduced y’all?”

  “I haven’t seen her since she got married,” I feinted. “He’s a doctor, right?”

  “Yeah. He runs the surgery program down at Memorial Hospital.” Connie’s eyes were focused on her hands while she counted change, but I felt her attention elsewhere.

  I gave it a nudge. “He doesn’t really seem like her type.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with him that a decade or so of intensive therapy wouldn’t fix,” she said cheerfully, keeping her eyes on her money.

  I looked over at Richard again. He and Jesse were leaning toward each other across the table, deep in conversation that didn’t appear to be going well. I wondered what the two of them could possibly have to talk about. They were like aliens from different planets.

  “What’s your diagnosis?” I asked Connie.

  She folded a slim stack of singles between her fingers, embarrassed. “Forget it. Richard and Teresa don’t need me taking sides. Their divorce is acrimonious enough as it is.”

  I started to take another shot at it, but was distracted by a flash of bare skin. Hector’s shirt had come unbuttoned, and bare skin showed all the way to his navel as he bent over the ice well.

  “Am I supposed to be able to read this?” I heard Mike complain.

  “Cuba libre,” Connie’s voice replied with a giggle in it. “Had your eyes checked lately?”

  I came up for air and realized that the giggle was aimed at me. My face went hot. I like to think I’ve got more class than to ogle a man in front of his relatives.

  “Oh, girl, don’t even worry about it.” Connie said in response to my obvious embarrassment. “Every woman in town has been through a Hector Guerra crush. It’s a rite of passage around here.” She picked up her tray. “Just don’t let Teresa catch you at it.”

  I watched her swing back out onto the floor, the comment fizzling down into my consciousness. Now I u
nderstood that the funny looks I’d been getting on Hector’s account had been about more than politics.

  “Somebody just dropped an anvil on you, maybe?” Mel remarked on his way back from the men’s room.

  “Yeah, kind of,” I said, putting a hand on his arm. “Why’d you act so surprised this morning, when I told you I was interviewing with Hector?”

  Mel performed his old country shrug, black eyebrows appearing above the horn-rims. “Teresa gets her nose outta joint if Hector so much as stands downwind of a female under sixty, but she sends a tomato like you over here for a job?” He pursed his lips, his shoulders rising another delicate fraction of an inch. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

  “So they’re an item?”

  “What, girlfriends don’t talk about these things anymore?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mel,” a cool voice said, “the woman just moved here. Let her get her furniture arranged before you start winding her up with the local gossip, will you?” Tova Bradshaw was coming around the wait station, gazing archly in my informer’s direction.

  “Feh,” he muttered, waving at her.

  Mike came down the bar to meet her, and she slid a smartphone across the serving top at him, saying, “It was under the bed.”

  He hiked himself up and leaned toward her. I saw her eyes glint at me as she gave him a light kiss on the lips.

  “I’ve got a thing tonight that’s going to run late,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “Just business,” she replied airily.

  Mike seemed dissatisfied with this answer, but rolled his shoulders and said, “I gotta take Oscar in for some dogscaping in the morning anyway.”

  “When you gonna make an honest man of him, Tova?” Mel gibed at her.

  Tova turned her cold blue eyes on him again. “As I’ve told you before, Mel, neither of us wants children and we’re both financially independent. Marriage would be pointless.”

  “Doesn’t want him getting his hands on her money, she means,” Mel scoffed under his breath.

  If Tova heard him, she gave no indication, and he made a tsking noise and went back to his seat at the far end of the bar.