Desert Noir (9781615952236) (28 page)

That whatever had happened, somebody wanted it kept secret.

Why?

What deed, what act could be so horrible that the permanent loss of a four-year-old child would seem trivial in comparison? I closed my eyes, shutting out the vision of the Apache girl.

Had no one ever loved me?

Cowboys go to bed early, and my phone call woke Dusty up. “It's after midnight, Lena,” he moaned. “I need to be up by five in the morning.” 

“I just got back from South Phoenix.”

Silence. Then, “What the hell were you doing down there in the middle of the night? Are you all right?”

I decided not to tell him about the shooting in Papago Park. “I'm fine. I just had to take someone home. Listen, can you skip work tomorrow? I need to go to Rocky Point and I'd like a little company.” 

“Rocky Point?” he said, he too using the English name for the Sea of Cortez resort village. The joke was that at any given time, there were more Arizonans down there than locals. “It's a pretty place, Honey, but isn't this kind of short notice for a vacation?” 

I told him.

When I was through, he said, “I'll be right over. We can leave as soon as it's light.” 

He was at my apartment within the hour and I wrapped myself around him. “I'm scared,” I managed to say, my nose smashed against his chest.

“I know, Baby, I know.” I felt his lips on my hair, his arms holding me tight. Then he picked me up and carried me into the bedroom.

I was shaking too hard to make love, but he held me all night long.

 

Rocky Point, Mexico is a fishing village only two hundred and fifty miles southwest of Phoenix. It is to Arizona what Ft. Lau-derdale is to East Coast college students, and every spring break, the town of thirty-six thousand people is inundated with students camping, drinking, screwing, and puking their guts out on the pristine white beach north of town. The students tended to be a little tamer to the south, along the black beach of Malecon Fondadores, where they quietly passed out along the lava rocks. The locals are disgusted by this Ugly American behavior, of course, but for the main part, they endure it with grim politeness.

Because other than fishing for Rocky Point shrimp, some of the tastiest around, tourism is the town's main source of income. Accordingly, most of the residents were bilingual and most business establishments were more than happy to accept American dollars. You didn't need a visa to get there or trips to the money-changers. Just cash or a credit card, and not really much of those. You could stay in Rocky Point's finest beachfront hotel and get your own private balcony for about what you'd pay for a Motel 6.

The only thing I had against Rocky Point was the fact that I had to leave my .38 at home. Too many Arizonans had spent months in the Mexico jails because they'd forgotten the hunting rifle they always carried in their car trunk. For the past few years, Mexico had been in a state of political and social unrest, and more guns were being smuggled to the insurgents there from Nogales, Tucson and Phoenix than from anywhere else in the U.S.

When the Federales caught you with a gun at the heavily armed border crossing, they didn't take it for granted you were a forgetful tourist; they saw you as a gun-runner.

The drive down took us less than four hours. The Jeep sped through the cholla-dotted desert southwest of Phoenix, slowed down only for the border crossing at Lukeville, then picked up speed again as it blasted past the sandy flats of Sonora, where tin-roofed shanties leaned against a merciless wind. The poverty we saw was so extreme that we were overjoyed when we finally arrived at the relatively flush resort town.

Dusty had called ahead and booked us into the Hotel Vina Del Mar, which sat high on a cliff edge overlooking the beach. As we checked in, we could hear the squawks of the caged parrots that lived in the hotel's cabana, and behind them, the incessant thunder of surf. I stepped out onto our balcony to be greeted by a spurt of laughter from the gringo tourists sitting on submerged barstools at the poolside bar. They were drunk on margaritas and telling stupid light bulb jokes. Miles of sapphire blue ocean available just yards away, yet more swimmers were frolicking in the chlorinated pool than in the ocean. Maybe because chlorinated water seldom played host to mean fish with big teeth.

“When do you want to go down to Agnezia's Cantina?” Dusty asked.

I stepped farther out onto the patio and looked up. The noontime sun hung high over Rocky Point, bleeding the color from the tile roofs and gaily painted storefronts. “Mrs. Albundo said to wait until about two, let the lunchtime crowd go away. Then Agnezia would have time to talk to us.” 

According to Mrs. Albundo, Agnezia had saved the money she earned cleaning rich people's houses in Scottsdale and after returning to Mexico, purchased one of the brush-roofed
loncherias
that lined the Malecon, the old port. Now that she was secure in her own country, I doubted she would hold back anything that happened the night I was shot.

“As long as you truly want to know,” Mrs. Albundo had said. “But did you ever wonder, Miss Jones, what kind of people would shoot a four-year-old child?” More than once, I'd answered.

Dusty slipped into his bathing suit and headed for the pool. “You did nothing but toss and moan all night,” he said. “Why don't you try and get some sleep?” 

But I couldn't sleep, not even after a long, hot shower. While Dusty frisked in the pool with the other gringos, I lay wide-eyed on the bed, watching a cable news show from Los Angeles. That morning an eighteen-year-old television star had been found decapitated in her apartment; her drug dealer was under arrest. Further north, Charlie Manson was again petitioning for parole; his chances weren't considered good.

A basketball star, sentenced to fifteen years in prison for killing his wife, had given a shocking television interview where he'd admitted killing her because he “loved her so much.” 

I fingered the bullet scar on my forehead. No wonder love made me so nervous.

The newscaster was still describing recent killings when Dusty came back into the room, smelling like tequila and chlorine. “You've got a strange look on your face.”

“I was thinking that love sucks.”

“Jesus.”

I glanced at my watch. It was 1:30. I rolled off the bed and combed my hair.

“You ready?” Dusty asked, his eyes still reflecting the hurt my thoughtless remark had inflicted on him.

“Not really.” But I followed him out the door.

We left the Jeep at the hotel and walked along Malecon Fondadores, enjoying the cool breeze off the Sea of Cortez. A sports fishing boat chugged back into the marina where the commercial fishers had already moored. The ocean appeared calm with only the occasional whitecap marring its glass-like surface. As I searched the cobalt sky, a pelican swooped down towards us, veering away at the last possible moment.

A dark-skinned child of about ten, playing among the black lava rocks, laughed. “He thinks you are a great big fish.” Like most of the children of Rocky Point, I figured he was on duty, paid to tout the excellence of one cantina over another. He didn't disappoint me. “If you are like him and eager for fish, you must stop by Agnezia's Cantina. My grandmother, she has the freshest fish in all Rocky Point.” 

I stiffened.

Dusty put a comforting hand on my shoulder and brandished a dollar bill. “Perhaps you could show us the way to Agnezia's.” 

The child's eyes gleamed.
“Si,
yes!” He danced towards us, took the dollar politely from Dusty's outstretched hand, and skipped ahead down the sidewalk. “Manolo will show you. It is not far, just beyond the statue of
El Piscadore.”
 

We passed vendors selling brightly colored
sarapes,
huge
piñatas
shaped like porpoises and llamas, hammered copper bowls. Without asking, Dusty ducked into a shop and emerged a minute later with two enormous sombreros. He put on one me, the other on him.

“With the sun bouncing off that water the way it is, we're headed for lobster time.” “Thank you, Daddy.”

The look he gave me wasn't pretty. “Lena, do you always have to be such a bitch?” “Just most of the time.”

Agnezia's Cantina was perched so close to the ocean that if you got drunk and fell off the balcony, you'd go out with the tide. Like most of the waterfront establishments, it was little more than a bar and kitchen attached to a wide slab of concrete and shielded from the blistering sun by a thatch-covered cabana. Wafting from the kitchen, and almost smothering the pervasive odor of tequila, was the delicious smell of frying fish, garlic, and cilantro. It reminded me that I hadn't been able to eat breakfast. Or lunch. Maybe after I found out what I needed to know, I'd be able to choke something down.

Or maybe not.

The cantina was deserted except for a few lingering tourists hunkered over bottles of Carta Blanca and Corona. Manolo ushered us to a table and told us to wait there while he fetched his grandmother.

As soon as we sat down, Dusty took my hand and squeezed it.

I snatched my hand away. I didn't want anyone touching me.

A shadow fell across the table and I looked up. The sun was behind her and I couldn't see her face.

Apparently she could see mine.

“Tina?” she whispered. “Tina?”

Before I could stop her, Agnezia fell to her knees in front of me and took my face in her hands. She kissed my scar and smoothed my hair, much like a mother comforts a weeping child. But I wasn't weeping. I was fine, just fine. Nothing could hurt me. I was invulnerable.

“Oh, my little one, I have prayed for you for so long.” Not content with these hesitant caresses, Agnezia then threw her arms around me, pressed my head to her huge bosom and began to cry. Fat tears dropped onto my hair but I could not move.

I had been embraced by this woman before.

Tina.
The name floated back to me on the winds of memory. 
Tina.
The name I had tried to tell to the social workers but which had come out of my four-year-old mouth as “Lena.” 

But I was Tina.

Above the ever-present surf, I began to hear other voices.

Numerous hands patted my back, my hair. “It is our Tina!
Dios gracias! Dios gracias!” 

When I finally managed to struggle away from Agnezia's grasp, I found we were surrounded by a crowd of teary-faced men and women of all ages bearing a strong resemblance to either Agnezia or the child Manolo
. As I stared at their faces, a hard kernel of fact fought its way through all the emotion.

They were so dark and I was so pale.

I swallowed hard, fighting to keep my voice steady. “I don't understand.” 

Agnezia leaned forward on her knees again and caressed my face. Her hands were careful, soft. What a wonderful mother.

But not mine.

“You are Tina, the little girl I have asked the good God to protect all these years.” 

“Our mother has told us all about you, about the little girl she saved,” said a woman of about my age. “She has made us pray for you every day since we were all children. She has told us to keep you safe in our hearts.” Why? None of these people were related to me. Why should they give a shit?

“Please, tell me who I am,” I begged.

Agnezia got off her knees, not bothering to brush the grit away. She slid onto a chair beside me while several family members trouped back to the kitchen. Now that I could see her clearly, I recognized the strong resemblance to Mrs. Albundo, but where the South Phoenix woman's face was thin with worry, Agnezia's face was round and merry, even while she wept. Like many cooks, she was plump, and as I had already experienced, she had a large, soft bosom ideal for comforting sobbing children.

But now her own tender eyes were sorrowful. “I am sorry, Tina, but I do not know who you are. After that woman shot you I picked you up and ran away. I ran as fast as I could to the hospital with the statue of St. Joseph carrying the Christ child, praying to him that he would not let the good God take you.”