Hold of the Bone (15 page)

The courtyard is hard dirt, swept clean but for a few skittering leaves. A mossy fountain circled by rusty chairs burbles in the center. Thick-trunked roses cover the fence with vivid red and yellow blooms.
A shed cowled in grapevines leans drunkenly against the back of the store. Frank walks toward it. Her mouth has gone dry and her heart beats much faster than it should. Her hand wants to rise to her breast, but she keeps it firmly in her pocket. A beaded curtain with a faded image of Our Lady of Guadalupe dangles in front of the shed. Sucking in a breath, Frank gathers it aside.

“Hi there.”

Without waiting for an invitation, she drops into a metal chair. It rocks crookedly and she squares it with a grin while Sal recovers.

“I'm working, Lieutenant.”

“I know. I'm here for a reading. Or whatever it is you do.”

Sal sits up, momentarily straightening a chronic slump. “What's bothering you?”

“You're the one with the magic hands. Why don't you tell me?”

Sal sighs. “Is there really something you'd like help with or are you just testing me?”

“A little of both.”

Their wills arm-wrestle over the table. Sal's bends first. She closes her eyes and shifts in a chair as rickety as Frank's. The cloth-covered table between them is an old door laid on stacked cinder blocks. Tin retablos and burning candles flank a Lady of Guadalupe on an altar behind Sal. Another cloth hides the shelves beneath, where the bags from the ladies peep out. Bare party lights circle the corrugated plastic ceiling, its opacity long dulled by weather and persistent leaves. The air is dense with candle wax and the spices from the women's offerings.

But suddenly the room disappears and she crouches by a fire in a dim, smoky space. Rain beats on thatch. Drops get through and splat on the ground, but she is warm and dry. Her stomach growls. A woman speaks from the shadows and hands her a leathered strip. She chews on the fishy meat, counting the different colors in the fire.

“May I?”

Frank looks down. Sal's hand hovers over her scarred arm and she instinctively jerks it to her lap.

“Do you want to tell me what happened there or am I supposed to guess?”

Frank takes a deep breath. She puts her arm back on the table. “Guess.”

For a moment Sal looks as if she'll refuse, but with a small shake of her head she repositions her palm above the scars. Her eyes close. Frank feels pressure from her hand, even though it's held a good seven, eight inches above her arm. She's tempted to pull it back again and fights the urge to squirm. Sal's eyes pop open, such a startling blue, and for an instant Frank is the one taken by surprise.

“Physically this has healed very well, but there's still a great deal of unresolved energy here.” The sky-colored eyes lift to Frank's. “Do you know what a
susto
is?”

“A scare, a fright.”

Sal nods. “That's the literal translation. In healing it means a trauma. Say a woman is raped. The flesh will mend, her tears and bruises will heal, but she'll retain the trauma of the attack. She has a psychic and physical memory of the assault. That's a
susto
, and it has to be healed if the woman is ever to be well again. You have a great
susto
here.”

She lowers her hand, and again Frank hides her arm in her lap.

“It looks like bite wounds, yes?”

“Yeah.”

Sal nods. “I get the image of a reddish dog, chunky like a pit bull, on a chain. And lots of blood.”

Frank unconsciously cradles the arm mauled by a roan pit bull. The dog had crawled through a gap in a chain-link fence and though tied to a tree had enough slack to lunge for Frank's arm. It hadn't let go until her cops beat it off with a two-by-four. She doesn't know if it's the vivid memory or Sal's accuracy that makes her queasy. She grasps at the rationalization that Sal knows pit bulls are common in ghettos, and with so many scars of course she was traumatized. That the dog was red is just a lucky guess. “Enough about my arm. How's the rest of me?”

Sal stands and tells Frank to. She cups a hand in front of Frank's torso. “There's a lot of heat here. Around your liver. Do you have hepatitis?”

“Nope.”

Sal lowers her hand a couple of inches. Frank feels its heat through her clothes. “Do you drink?”

“Everyone drinks.”

“Alcohol,” Sal says patiently. “Do you drink a lot of alcohol?”

Frank stares into the brilliant eyes. “Used to.”

Sal nods. “It feels like you did a lot of damage to your liver, but that it's healing. Drink water, lots of clean water, probably for the rest of your life. And if you're serious about taking care of yourself instead of just playing with me, I can give you some dandelion to help.” She continues her scan, explaining, “This is a very physical energy.”

“As opposed to?”

“As opposed to a spiritual wound, like your arm. Those send out the most energy. I could feel your arm across the table. Physical wounds send out the least. I don't usually feel them until I'm about this close.” She repositions her hand about a foot from Frank's waist. “Emotional wounds—” she raises her hand to Frank's chest and steps back “—are about this close. Do you have a cold, or bronchitis?”

“No.”

“Have you ever had pneumonia?”

“No.”

“It feels like there's liquid here.”

Her hand is a good two feet away, yet crazily, Frank still feels it.

Sal frowns. “Your lungs are congested.”

“I'm fine,” Frank assures. “Just passed my annual physical with flying colors.”

Sal shakes her head. “This is an emotional wound. Not something a physician would pick up. It feels like blood here.”

Frank flashes on her first lover. Maggie took a shotgun blast to the chest during a liquor store robbery and bled to death on a pile of candy bars. Frank grips the back of the chair.

“I need to talk to you about your father.”

“It's been a long morning. My dogs are penned. You know where I'll be.”

Frank is about to argue. She could threaten Sal with hampering an investigation, obstruction of justice, any of half a dozen charges, yet hears herself say, “I'll wait. What do I owe you?”

Sal shrugs. “I don't have a set fee. My patients pay however they can.”

Frank drops two twenties on the table.

Tucking the bills into her jeans, Sal asks, “Did any of what I said make sense?”

Again their wills lock, but this time Frank caves. She nods. “I'll be in my car.”

She steps through the swinging curtain into the normalcy of sun and sky and blood-red roses. The fountain gurgles. A jay swoops to it from a pepper tree and hops along the rim, a cool eye cocked to Frank. Overhead, in the brilliant blue, a vulture circles. Frank stalks through the dimly lit store, signaling to the last woman on the bench that she is through.

Chapter 17

The bench is in shade and all the women gone by the time Sal's pickup rumbles from behind the store. Frank rights her seatback and follows. The Honda drops onto the bumpy dirt road, and Frank wonders if her old car will make it all the way.

When Sal stops to open the first gate, she saunters back to Frank. She says, “You're never going to make it in that.”

“Can I hitch a ride?”

Sal studies Frank blankly. “Park over there.”

She points to a turnout on the side of the road. Frank locks up, hoping the car won't be vandalized by the time she gets back. She hops in, automatically reaching for the seat belt.

“They're busted,” Sal says, shifting into second. Frank sees she doesn't wear one, either.

“I'm a cop. I could arrest you for that,” she jokes.

Sal ignores her.

Frank cranks the window down and sticks her elbow out into the rising dust, happy to be on the move. She tries to concentrate on the cattle that graze the stubbled range and ruminate in clumps under the oaks, but inevitably her gaze is drawn to the mountains. She sees the trail again, the dusty brush on either side. There is silence but for the steady fall of hooves and monotonous drone of a fly. She rocks to a horse's drowsy rhythm.

Frank is thrown against the dashboard. Sal leans across her, pointing out the window. “Bears.”

Frank sees a shambling hump on the far side of the fields, followed by two smaller humps. The women crane their necks to watch the animals lope across the meadow.

“Do you see a lot of them?”

“Not often. Plenty of signs, though. They prefer the high country, but it's not unusual for them to come down this time of year.”

“What do they eat?” Frank asks nervously.

“Anything they can. Berries, insects, leaves. Sometimes they'll kill a calf or older cow.”

“People?”

This elicits the first smile Frank has seen on Sal. “Only if you piss them off.” The cubs dip out of sight and she puts the truck in drive.

Frank grins. “That was great. I've never seen a bear.”

“Not even in captivity?”

Frank thinks back to an outing at the Bronx Zoo. There's a picture in her head of her father holding her hand and her mother sitting on a bench. He is pointing to a giraffe munching leaves. She feels like he is trying to get her to feed the giraffe and she wants no part of it. “Nope. I don't think so.”

Silence settles in the truck like the dust. They come to the next gate, and Sal explains that the first gate is kept locked to keep people out. The rest are for cattle and unlocked, so when she stops Frank hops out to open and close them. Each time she is struck by the immensity of the silence.

As they near the ranch, the mountains rise taller. Pointing at a toothy ridge, Frank asks, “You ever been up there?”

Sal glances where Frank points. “Sure.”

“What's it like?”

The ranch materializes over the top of the hill. Sal drives to the corral and parks. “Come on.” She jumps out. “I'll show you.”

Frank has opened her door, but when she sees two horses watching from the corral, she says, “Oh, no.”

Sal disappears into the black hole of the barn and Frank wonders at her inordinate involvement with women fond of horses; Gail had adored the beasts, and here she is, interviewing a woman who lives on a working cattle ranch. She shakes her head as Sal emerges from the barn with two halters.

“I don't do horses.”

“You do if you want to talk to me.”

Frank checks a curse. It's one thing talking to Sal on her own turf, quite another doing it from the back of a half-ton quadruped. She thinks again about pulling rank, yet eases from the cab and slips into the corral. The horses turn and stare as one.

“I don't know how to ride,” she says, hating the whine in her voice.

“Don't worry. Anyone can ride Buttons.”

Sal holds out a halter. Frank starts as if she's been offered a rattlesnake. Sal shakes it. The trail rides at Griffith's Park, purely at Gail's insistence, are a fond memory compared to what Frank is afraid Sal has in mind.

“Shit.”

Frank grabs the halter. The horses prick their ears and study Sal's approach.

“Come here, Dune,” she says sweetly.

“Doom?”

“Dune,” Sal corrects. “That's a good boy.”

The horse nickers as she drapes a rope around its neck, slides the halter on, and buckles it in one smooth motion. Then she turns to Buttons and puts a rope around the mare's neck.

“Your turn.”

“Uh-uh.” Frank tries to give the halter back, but Sal refuses it.

“Come on. I'll help you.” Scratching under Buttons' mane, Sal patiently, insistently coaches Frank through the task of grooming and saddling her ride.

“The bridles are tricky,” Sal says. “I'll do them, but watch.”

Sweating, trembling a little, Frank is relieved to step away from the horses. But the relief is short-lived. Sal deftly slips the bit into Buttons' mouth and hands Frank the reins.

“Up you go.”

“When do I get to ask some questions?”

“As soon as you get on.”

Frank watches the mare bob her head. “Why's she doing that?”

“She's just adjusting herself to the reins. Don't worry. Just trust her.”

Frank scowls. She's been hearing that a lot lately.

“Do you need help?”

“No,” Frank snaps.

Inserting a sneakered foot into the stirrup, she drags herself up
into the saddle. It's an ugly mount, but she's on. Then Sal lights onto Dune as effortlessly as a butterfly onto a flower. She wheels the horse around and bends to the gate, riding it open. Buttons follows without prompting and Sal orders, “Make her stop.”