Desert Noir (9781615952236) (21 page)

Dulya Albundo rose when we entered the room. She was older than I had expected her to be after meeting her son, well into middle age, but then I remembered that her mother had been in her early nineties when she'd been crushed under a collapsed adobe wall. Unlike some Hispanic women for whom age lent a comfortable plumpness, the years did not set lightly on Dulya. The high cheekbones which revealed her Aztec ancestors only increased the dark shadows under her eyes, and her black polyester waitress's uniform merely accentuated the unhealthy sallowness of her skin. Her back was as bowed as her mother's. Even her gray-streaked hair looked tired.

Without a word, she moved away from the shrine and went to her purse. She opened it and began to count change, a nickel at a time, into her palm. “Manuel, why do you bring someone here when you know I need to leave for work?” 

Still not looking at me, intent upon her counting, she said, “If you are from the school, you are too late. I must be at work.” In contrast to her son's barrio-thickened speech, Dulya's words revealed hardly any accent at all. But then again, she had been born and raised in Scottsdale.

Manuel shrugged, winked at me once more, and went back out. Hopefully, to guard the truck.

The room's closed drapes reminded me of Serena Hyath and her drug-induced paranoia. But here the darkness was an obvious attempt to keep out the scorching sunlight. Like so many homes in South Phoenix, the Albundos' house had no air-conditioning. Given the triple-digit heat, the room was close to unbearable.

As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I was able to see an overstuffed but threadbare sofa. Matching chairs were shoved up against the wall, separated by a dark-stained end table on which perched a lamp in the shape of a matador. On the floor, thin, floral-patterned linoleum testified to years of use. The scrubbed white walls were hung with family photographs, a crucifix, a print of the Madonna, a framed cover of
Time
magazine depicting Cesar Chavez on the march. A woman with a familiar face marched behind him. A younger Dulya Albundo?

Seeing me staring at the picture, she said without inflection, “Yes, that was me when I still believed that with faith and courage, things could be changed.” 

“You no longer believe that?”

“What do you think?” Her face was as immovable as her statue of the Madonna.

I knew better than to disagree with her. In this life, money talks and bullshit walks. Dulya Albundo had access to neither.But the room's claustrophobic heat gave me an idea. “Mrs. Albundo, I understand that you're in a hurry, but I can drive you to work and we can talk, ah, about Manuel along the way. My truck's got great air-conditioning.” 

Still no smile. “I work in Scottsdale.”

I smiled for her. “Isn't that a coincidence! I'm headed in that very direction.” 

She stood for a moment in thought, her face giving nothing away. Then she suddenly gathered up her purse and started for the door, obviously expecting me to follow. I did.

Standing in front of the screen, she finally began to unbend. “My Manuel, I know he has caused you problems but he needs his summer school classes. They are necessary if he is to go to college. This year, well, you know that it was a bad year for him.” 

I said nothing. All I wanted was to get her in the truck and we'd sort the truth out later.

Believing that I held the fate of her son in my hands, she forced a smile but it failed to erase the solemnity from her face. “Manuel is a good boy, but after his brother was shot in the drive-by last Christmas, it changed him. He gave up, I think. You and I, we must stop that. We must give him back his heart.” 

Heart.
There was that word again.

I held the screen door open with my left arm, and with her at my right side, we walked into the glaring sunlight towards the truck. Halfway there, I heard her gasp. Startled, I turned to find her staring at me, a shocked expression on her face.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “It is nothing. It is just that… I do not like that boy Manuel is with.” 

I looked slightly to my left and saw Manuel talking to an older boy who appeared to be pretty far along in the gangbanger process. A long red scar, the mirror image of my own, marred an otherwise handsome face. His arms were so thickly tattooed that the natural skin color hardly showed.

Mrs. Albundo spat a stream of Spanish at Manuel, who made a great point of ignoring her. The tattooed boy looked down from his superior height and sneered. He was trouble, all right.

“Dios, Dios,” Mrs. Albundo muttered. “What should I do?” 

Even if it had been my place, I had no advice for her. Given where the Albundos now lived, gang affiliation was an almost necessary survival mechanism for teenage boys. The problem was, the survival tended to be short term.

Trying my best to look like a high school counselor, I made a sympathetic noise. We climbed into the truck and I turned the air-conditioning up full blast, and for the first time, her face began to relax.

“Roberto and Manuel, they used to have jobs delivering groceries to the old people from Alvarez's Market. They were saving up their money for some wheels. That's what they called them, wheels. They did not want me to take three buses to Scottsdale. But I used the money to help bury Roberto.”

We sat in silence while she basked in the unusual luxury of air-conditioning. We'd made it all the way to Central and McDowell in downtown Phoenix before she began to get suspicious.

“Why are you not asking me questions about Manuel?” she said, a frown creasing her face. “Why are you sitting there so quiet?” 

I took a deep breath. “Mrs. Albundo, I'm not from the school.” 

She pursed her lips in disapproval. “But why would you lie to me?” “

Did I tell you I was from the school?”

She digested this and for the next few blocks, the only sounds I heard were the usual traffic noises and the comforting hiss of the truck's air-conditioning. Eventually, though, she sighed. When I looked over at her, her expression displayed a peculiar combination of anxiety and acceptance.

“Well, then, Miss-Not-A-School-Counselor, what do you want from me? If you are selling insurance or magazine subscriptions you are out of luck.” 

I flashed her an apologetic smile. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Albundo, but my name's Lena Jones, and I'm a private detective. I need to talk to you about Clarice Hyath.” 

An intake of breath, then, “That
puta!”

I winced. Even though my investigation had uncovered many unsavory facts about Clarice, I hated hearing my dead friend called a whore. I didn't rebuke Mrs. Albundo, though. A dead mother, a murdered son, and a family banished to the streets of South Phoenix were enough to make even a saint coarse-tongued.

“I hear you threatened to kill her,” I said instead.

Mrs. Albundo crossed her arms across her chest in what appeared to be satisfaction. “Somebody did and I say good for them.” 

She was either an honest woman or a foolish one. I wondered which. “Do you have an alibi for the evening Clarice was murdered?” 

“I work three days and five nights a week, Miss Private Detective. What do you think?”

The truck rolled east towards Scottsdale, caught up in the afternoon rush hour. We were going nowhere fast, but even at our snail's pace, we were traveling faster than the fume-spewing buses. For a while we said nothing, but just before we cut through the Buttes at the Scottsdale city limits, Mrs. Albundo surprised me.

“I am going to be very early for work,” she said, her expression suddenly Sphinx-like. “Let us stop and get coffee. If you will buy.” 

This sounded promising, so I hooked a left and went up to Thomas Road, which had a string of espresso bars, some of which even sold regular coffee. Pretty soon Mrs. Albundo and I were hunkered down in Einstein's over two caffe lattes, a dash of vanilla in hers.

“Mmmm,” she said, licking the froth off her upper lip. “They are always ordering this on
Friends
. Do you know what would also be good? A sesame bagel with a veggie cream cheese schmear. Toasted.”

I went back through the line and got her bagel and schmear. Toasted.

She ate daintily and with great satisfaction, every now and then giving me that peculiar, stoic look again. Finally, when she was finished, she asked me, “That scar on your forehead, it is like Juan's, that gangbanger friend of Manuel's. He was shot holding up a Circle K. He would be in prison but he is only fifteen, too young. Six months in the Adobe Correctional Facility and he is back on our street telling all the boys in the neighborhood how macho such a life is.” Then she gave me a sly smile. “Were you also shot holding up a Circle K?” 

I smiled back. “I was shot, all right, but not holding up the Circle K. It happened when I was only four years old, and I can't remember anything about it.” 

Her expression changed to one of sorrow. “Four years old? I am sorry. That is a wicked act, to shoot a child.” 

Remembering her youngest son, I shrugged. At least I was still alive. “The social workers told me some Hispanic woman carried me into the emergency ward at St. Joseph's and just left me there.”

She frowned. “But your mother and father? What do they tell you about this? Surely they seek justice for you, just as I seek justice for my Roberto.” 

Since there was no point in distressing her further, I gave her the short, expurgated version of my childhood. But the brief digression worked to lower the ice between us, and while the Scottsdale yuppies slurped their half-decaf cappuccino around us, she finally began answering my questions about Clarice.

“Do you know what it is like to be ninety years old and live all your life in one house?” she said. “My mother, she was born in that house. My grandfather built it for my grandmother before they were married, he built it with his own hands. His sweat and his blood were mixed into that adobe. My father, he added two rooms, working in the same traditional way my grandfather did. Sweat, straw, adobe mud. You must understand that for my mother to leave that house, it was like leaving the body of her father, the body of her husband. Our neighbors, with them it was all the same. Our homes were… They were…” 

Here words failed her. Amidst the hiss of a nearby cappuccino machine, she took a few deep breaths and tried again. “Our homes were not
things
. They were a part of us, our blood and our bones. And our neighbors, they were good people, decent. They all had calluses on their hands from work. You saw where we live now, how far I must travel to come to my jobs. I must take three different buses, each way, so it take me almost two hours to come to work and then to return. And when I get home, what do I have? You have seen my house, where it is. Do you think I have a nice life? Do you think my son has a nice life, Miss Detective?” 

Although I felt sympathy for her, I didn't like being blamed for an act I had not personally committed. “Surely you don't have to live in South Phoenix, Mrs. Albundo. Why not some place closer?” 

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you know how much money they gave my mother for her house? After they had her house condemned, they gave her $32,000, Miss Detective. Have you tried to buy a house in Scottsdale or even Phoenix for $32,000? This will make a
down payment,
not a purchase. My husband, he died right after Roberto was born, and my mother and my sons and me, none of us had enough money—or credit—to make house payments or pay rent. We had to buy for cash.” 

Her eyes took on a faraway cast. “Do you know what one of those lawyers called our neighborhood? They called it urban blight. Our houses were trash, they said, and that our
trash
should be torn down to make way for their idea of beauty. I ask you, Miss Detective, why are Hispanic things, the creations of earth and dreams, always called trash? And why are Anglo things, no matter how strange and ugly—like that museum—always called beautiful? Does beauty only exist in blue eyes and steel?” 

I had no answer for her, having often wondered that very thing myself. Setting aside its unsavory origins, most people found the new museum grotesque, but the architectural magazines termed it “glorious,” “impressive,” and “magnificent.” In one newspaper article, E. Hampton Lockspur, the museum's architect, was described as “the possessor of a far-reaching vision.” 

Lockspur was, of course, Anglo. From Boston.

I doubted if it would make Mrs. Albundo feel any better to know that I hated the new museum, too, so I just waited until she continued. It didn't take long.

“We were not asked to vote on the museum. The city council did that themselves. And then the lawyers, the rich Anglo lawyers, they were able to get our property condemned. In the court papers they filled, they said all our homes were…” Here she paused, quoting the exact wording. “‘…not fit for human habitation.' This was a lie. Our homes were beautiful, made from the earth, built from history. But truth has no place in the courtrooms, so after it was all decided by those blue-eyed men with the English names, I told my mother, ‘This is a thing that has been done, there is no hope. This Clarice Hyath and her lawyers, they will have their way. The rich always do. We must take that money and we must move.'” 

She looked down at her caffe latte. “I thought she understood what I was saying. After we moved to South Phoenix, I thought she would give no more trouble. But she was an old woman and she was frightened of the new place. I got up that first morning and found her gone. By the time I thought to look for her in our old house, she was already dead. Buried under the wall her father had built.” 

Now it was my turn to stare into my cup. I didn't see anything there, just guilt. At the table behind her, a red-faced man in an expensive suit was telling a joke to his friends, something about a Frenchman, a Scotsman, and a Texan on board an air-plane. The plane was losing altitude, so the pilot told them they needed to lighten the load or they'd all die. They ditched the luggage, but that was not enough. The pilot said three people would have to sacrifice themselves for the good of the others. A selfless Frenchman jumped out the plane's door, crying, “Vive la France!” Then a Scotsman jumped out, crying, “For bonny Scot-land!” Next, a Texan pushed a Mexican out the door and cried, “Remember the Alamo!”