In Plain Sight (13 page)

“W
hat was that all about?” Tim asked from behind me.

“You got me.” I picked up the mouse and stared at it for a moment before I tossed it back in the box. “But I'll tell you one thing—I'd sure like to find out.”

Tim made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “The guy's just a nut case from Hutchings.”

Pickles jumped up on the counter, rubbed her head against my hand, then lifted it up so I could scratch under her chin. “I hope so.” But I wasn't entirely convinced. There had been something very controlled about the guy, very purposeful. I had the feeling this was the opening shot in a game I didn't know I was playing. I shook my head to clear it. I was getting jumpy in my old age. Tim was right. The guy was a nut case. He'd probably just forgotten to take his morning Thorazine.

Tim twirled one of his earrings around. “Mrs. Garriques called earlier,” he told me, changing the subject. “She wants us to deliver and set up the tank next week. I told her I'd check with you.”

“That's fine.”

“I guess she's really not going to get the retic.”

“It certainly looks that way.”

I took out a cigarette and was searching for my lighter when the door opened and Rabbit and Manuel came in. “Find Estrella yet?” Rabbit asked.

I shook my head. “Have you?” Maybe I wouldn't have to run over to Estrella's aunt after all.

“No.” So much for that hope. “But I just heard she burned some dealer,” Rabbit said.

“Great. It's nice to know she's doing well.”

Manuel interrupted. “Did you get rid of Rabbit's rattler yet?”

I turned toward him. “No,” I replied. “Why?”

“I think I got a buyer.”

I left Tim to deal with the two of them and took off.

 

 

Ana Torres lived on Clifford Street. It was almost impossible to see the house from the street. The view was obscured by overgrown clumps of yew and cedars. If it wasn't for an old rusted-out Chevy Chevette parked in the buckling driveway I would have missed the place altogether. It had started raining, and the drizzle increased the house's sense of desolation, although in truth I don't think sunlight would have helped. The house was too far gone for that. I parked my car and followed the indentation of what had once been a brick path through the weed-clogged lawn to the door. Except for the tarnished brass knocker, the door was that grayish color wood acquires when it's stripped and left unfinished.

As I stood on the cracked concrete stoop I could hear the faint sounds of a TV inside. I used the knocker. The rapping scared a stray cat that had been peeking out of the shrubbery back into its hiding place. No one came. I sighed and wished I'd brought an umbrella. I don't like being damp. Of course, it was always possible that Ana Torres hadn't come back from the store yet. Or maybe she had come, taken the kid with her, and gone. Maybe that was somebody else's car in the driveway, but even if it was, I still wanted to talk to them. I knocked again. No response. Except for the TV I couldn't hear any activity inside at all. Shit. I took a step back, and as I did I happened to look up. I sucked in my breath. A face was staring down at me from the corner of the window. A second later the curtain dropped.

Well, one thing was for certain. Someone knew I was here.

And it wasn't the kid I'd spoken to on the phone either.

It was an adult, a woman. I was positive of it.

Whether or not it was Ana Torres was a different matter.

I cupped my hands. “My name is Robin Light,” I yelled. “Gregory Garriques sent me. He asked me to help find your niece.”

The curtain remained down. No one peeked out. I didn't hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

I tried again. “Listen, Mrs. Torres, if you're there, I really need to speak to you about Estrella. I'm not from Immigration. Call Garriques and check if you don't believe me.”

Still nothing.

I repeated myself in fractured Spanish and got the same response.

Nada.

I turned and walked back to the car. There was no point in standing in the rain and getting even wetter than I already was. As I was getting into the cab I glanced up at the curtain covering the window on the second floor. There was no movement, the curtain didn't even flutter; but I couldn't help feeling that someone was watching me just the same. I waved, got in the cab and drove off. Then I circled the block and parked in back of a large red truck which was sitting about thirty feet down from Ana Torres's house and waited for her to come out. One way or another I was determined to talk to her. It didn't take long. I was just finishing my second cigarette when Ana Torres emerged. I flicked the butt into the street and ran over.

She gasped when she saw me and hugged the child standing next to her tightly to her side. “I don't want no trouble,” she said. She was short. Her face was round. Her features were Indian.

I tried to reassure her, but the tremors in her hands told me she clearly didn't believe me.

“I didn't do nothing wrong,” she protested.

“I know. I just want to talk to you about Estrella.”

Ana Torres clutched the child next to her even more tightly. “I don't got nothing to do with her. Nothing.”

“But she lived with you.”

“Not no more.”

I sighed. “Her friends said she may have gone to visit her mother. Do you have her address?”

“I clean house for Mr. and Mrs. Garriques,” Ana Torres said, pretending she hadn't heard my question. “I do a good job. You ask them.”

“I'm sure you do,” I said soothingly.

“I even clean for that crazy brother of hers, the one with all the dead animals in his place.” After saying those words Ana Torres made the sign of the cross.

I tried to steer the conversation back to the subject at hand. “So you don't know where your niece is?”

“No.” She opened the door of the Chevette. The child scrambled in. “I must go now.”

I played my last card. “Then she's not at the Colony Plaza?”

Ana Torres's eyelids fluttered in alarm. She'd told me what I needed to know. “She's in Liverpool,” she lied.

I thanked her for the information, but from the expression on her face I could tell she knew that I knew that she was lying. As she backed out of the driveway it suddenly occurred to me that she might be going to warn Estrella that I was coming to find her. I cursed and hurried back to my car.

But it turned out I was wrong and I needn't have bothered following her. When I spotted the Chevette a couple of minutes later it was parked in front of Burger King, and Ana Torres and her child were inside eating lunch. Watching them made me realize I was hungry, too.

I stopped at the first Nice N' Easy I came to and bought myself two chili dogs and a cup of hot chocolate and consumed it all in the cab while I listened to the radio play Golden Oldies and watched a fine mist form on my car windshield. On the way to the Colony Plaza I stopped again and bought a flashlight and batteries at Fay's, then continued on. I parked the cab under the metal overhang in the vacant lot next door—after all I didn't have to advertise my presence; I was trespassing—and went inside through the window I'd used earlier.

The first thing I saw was a rat. It was sitting in the middle of the floor next to a white crumpled up paper bag. When I took a step in its direction it scurried halfway under an upturned chair, then stopped. It watched me as I walked over to where it had been sitting. The remains of somebody's hamburger and fries were spread out on the floor. The question was, was it Estrella's hamburger and fries or someone else's?

I entered the next room carefully. Nothing had changed from the last time I'd been here. I took a cursory look, turned on the flashlight, and cautiously moved on to the third room. This time no one was there waiting for me. The only living things I saw were two more rats. Caught in the beam, they froze for a few seconds, then scampered under a desk. I walked by them quickly, went through a fourth and fifth room and landed in the main hallway.

Light streaming in from the windows that weren't boarded up illuminated the blue tiles that lined the walls and floor. A fountain, a monument to better times, stood in the middle of the entrance way. Its basin was filled with paper cups and beer cans. I walked around it to the stairway. Portions of carpet covering the steps had rotted or been ripped away, and I could see the concrete underneath.

It took me twenty minutes to go through the second floor. The rooms looked the same as the ones on the first floor. No one seemed to be living in any of them. Whoever had been here had just trashed the place and left. When I was done making the circuit I went back to the hallway and lit a cigarette. At least if I smoked I wouldn't be able to smell the urine and the garbage. I started up to the third floor. I'd climbed five steps when I heard the music. I stopped dead and listened. It was coming from somewhere above me. It looked as if someone was here after all. I wondered if it was Estrella. And then I wondered what whoever was up there would do when they saw me.

I gripped my flashlight tighter and tiptoed up the rest of the stairs to the third floor.

The sounds were louder.

They were even louder on the fourth floor.

Now I could almost make out the words to the song that was being played—and I heard a cry that I couldn't quite place.

I moved up the next flight of stairs as quietly as I could.

I shouldn't have bothered.

Because when I got to the top someone was waiting for me.

T
he first thing I noticed about the guy was his hair. It was blond and dreaded, and since he was bean pole tall and skinny it made him look like a human string mop. The second thing I noticed—which should have been the first thing—was the hunting knife he was carrying in his right hand.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded and scowled, but the squeak he ended his question with counterbalanced the effect of menace he was trying to create.

“I'm looking for someone,” I explained, doing reasonable and inoffensive, although if I were a reasonable sort of person, I wouldn't be in the Colony in the first place.

His eyes narrowed and he looked me up and down. “You a Five-oh?”

“Do I look like a cop?”

“They come in all shapes and sizes, man,” he observed. He had enough sincerity in his voice to make me think he'd had a sufficient number of run-ins with the law to know something about the subject.

“Look,” I told him. “I'm not from the police and I'm not interested in anything you've done or could do. All I want to do is find this girl.” I started to tell him about Estrella, but he interrupted before I got ten words out of my mouth.

“I've never seen her.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. His dreads bobbed to the rhythm of his movements. “She ain't been in here.”

I didn't believe him, he'd cut me off too fast, but I didn't say that—never insult a man with a knife is my motto. Instead I asked if he could give her a message for me.

“I just told you I haven't seen her.” His tone was querulous. I decided he was in his late teens, early twenties at the most.

“I know, but
if
you do, could you give her my card and tell her to get in touch with me. Tell her Garriques isn't going to have her arrested. Tell her he just wants his stuff back.”

“And I'm telling you she ain't here,” the kid repeated. “She ain't gonna be either.”

“Well, she was here last week,” I retorted, “I know because I followed her in.”

“She never made it up the stairs.” The kid's voice was flat, admitting no debate.

“Okay.” I raised my hands and did placating.

“You're damn right okay.”

I didn't reply immediately. I was thinking of some way to jump start the conversation when the mewling I'd heard earlier started up again. Then it changed into an odd bark. The kid muttered something under his breath. I thought he said “damn bird,” but I couldn't be sure and I wasn't interested enough to find out. Even though I didn't think this guy was dangerous, I still didn't like having someone standing there pointing a knife at me. I just wanted to wrap up the Estrella thing and get out. I was about to ask him if I could at least leave him my card when a woman's voice floated down from the top floor.

“Mike, is that Jennie?”

“No,” Mike called back.

“Then who's there? Who are you talking to?”

“My name is Robin Light,” I yelled up. “I'm looking for Estrella Torres.”

The guy called Mike groaned. “Why'd you have to tell her that?” he asked.

“Why shouldn't I have?”

Before he could answer the woman started coming down the stairs. She was as pale as her boyfriend and about as young, but she had the hectoring tone of a long put-upon wife. She shook her finger at Mike. “I told you she was trouble, but did you listen? Oh, no.”

“Aw come on, Traci,” Mike whined. “What the hell was I supposed to say? She was scared. She needed a place to crash for a couple of days.”

“She was crazy,” Traci retorted. “She was loony tunes. People like that only bring trouble.”

“How was she nuts?” I quickly asked before Mike could say anything.

Traci cocked her head and regarded me carefully. I guess she must have liked what she saw because she answered me a few seconds later. “She did stuff.”

“You mean like drug stuff.”

“Among other things.” And she threw a meaningful look in Mike's direction. He flushed and looked down at the floor.

“Come on. Stop it,” he mumbled. “We went through this already. She was doing some dope—so what?”

Traci ran her hand through her cropped blond hair. It was clean, as was her face. Her clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, looked washed and pressed. I was wondering how she managed to do that in a place with no running water when she started talking again. “Hey, Mr. Wiseguy,” Traci snapped. “What about the bad acid she popped? She thought she had roaches all over her body. She was gonna jump out the window. I had to knock her out to stop her.”

“Hey, I'm sorry I wasn't here to help. Excuse me for going out and collecting bottles so we could get something to eat.” Mike jabbed his knife in the air for emphasis.

“Why don't you just put that thing away,” Traci said, pointing to the blade. “It makes me nervous.”

“I was just trying to protect you.”

“From what? Her?” Traci asked contemptuously. I felt oddly insulted that my appearance didn't evoke more fear. “What's she gonna do?”

“She could be a cop,” Mike said.

Traci curled her lips in derision and put both hands on her hips. “You think they're gonna send someone special to look for you? You ain't that important to them.”

I decided not to ask what Mike was wanted for. It seemed better that way.

Mike snorted. “KE-RIST,” he muttered as he sheathed the hunting knife. “I try and do the right thing and this is what I get.”

“Excuse me,” I said, trying to work the conversation back to Estrella.

“Yeah?” Traci said.

“How long was Estrella here for?”

Traci ran her hand through her hair again. “You know I was readin' in some magazine that information is becoming the new currency.”

“So you want me to pay you?”

“It's not that I don't want to help you,” she explained, “but we're a little short right now and you look like you got a few bucks extra.”

“Fair enough.” I took my wallet out and extracted two twenties. I'd just ask Garriques for it the next time I spoke to him.

Mike's eyes gleamed as he took the money. “Two days,” he said. “She was here for two days.”

“Three,” Traci corrected, taking the bills out of his hand and stuffing them in the side pocket of her jeans. “She was here for three.” Mike glared at her. “Well, she was,” she said to me. “She kept making eyes at him, wanting to sit next him.”

“You're nuts,” he said.

Traci's jaw set. “Don't think I didn't see her rubbing up against you, mister.”

I interrupted again. “Did she have a friend with her?”

“No,” both Mike and Traci said simultaneously.

“Did you see anyone else around?”

“No,” the two repeated again. Well, at least they agreed on something.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Traci rubbed the corner of her eye with one of her knuckles. “Absolutely. See, people can run around downstairs and we don't hear 'em, but once they get up to the third and fourth floor we know they're coming.”

Interesting—I wondered what had happened to Estrella's friend.

“What did Estrella talk about?”

“Nothing really,” Traci replied. “The first night she was like hungry, you know? So we gave her the rest of our pizza. Then we gave her some of our newspapers to use as a blanket and she curled up and went to sleep. She was gone before I got up. The second day she showed up, she wasn't hungry or anything. Mike was out and she just went and sat in a corner, and then all of a sudden she went nuts. She started ranting and raving and carrying on.”

“What did she say?”

“Just shit about her face melting and people were gonna come and put her away and everything kept disappearing on her—you know, stuff like that.”

“And then what happened?”

“I told you. She screamed she had roaches crawling all over her and she tried to throw herself out the window. I had to knock her over the head to stop her.”

“Did you hurt her?”

Traci grinned. “Naw, she was fine. The next day she got up and walked out.”

“Did she tell you where she was going?”

“She said she had to go see a friend.”

“Any names?”

“No.”

“And then she came back?”

“For a little while. Then she left again. She said she had some sort of appointment and we ain't seen her since.”

“Did she say anything about any jewelry?”

“You mean like gold chains?”

“No, I mean like diamond pins and earrings.”

“Wow.” Mike's eyes widened. “I wouldn't have figured her for big-time stuff.”

“Neither did the person she took them from,” I said dryly. “So,” I continued, “she never mentioned anything about the diamonds?”

Mike shook his head.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure.”

“I don't suppose you happened to get a chance to glance in her backpack?”

“I don't do things like that,” Mike told me in a tone that indicated that he had.

“And she didn't talk about selling any jewelry?”

“The only thing she was selling,” Traci said, “was a couple of nickel bags of weed, and we weren't buying.”

I tried one last question. “I don't suppose Estrella mentioned the names of any friends?”

Traci shook her head. “Sorry.”

I sighed. Well, I'd found where Estrella had stayed all right, only it hadn't done any good. I was now forty dollars poorer and no closer to finding the girl than I was when I walked in. Oh, well. Who knew? Maybe she'd come back here. The problem was I couldn't wait around to find out. I had too many other things to do. The best I could do was give Traci my business card and ask her to call me if Estrella showed up. I was just reaching in my backpack for one when a loud shriek cut through the air.

Mike's eyes narrowed. “Can't you shut that goddamned bird up?” he snapped at Traci.

“She's bored,” Traci growled. “What the hell do you want me to do?”

“Get rid of it. You complain about me letting Estrella stay here, but then you have that goddamned bird. You can hear her through the entire building.”

“No, you can't.”

“You sure as hell can.”

“What kind is it?” I asked, hoping to head off another spat.

“A raven,” Traci said.

Well, that explained all the sounds I'd heard. Ravens were excellent mimics. “That's an unusual bird,” I told her. Which was true. “You don't see many of those around.”

Traci's eyes brightened. “You know something about them?”

“A little. I run a pet store called Noah's Ark.”

“Hey, I heard of that,” Traci said to me. Then she turned to Mike. “She sold that lizard to Angelo.”

“Maybe you could sell her the bird.”

Traci balled her hands into fists. “I told you. I ain't selling it. She's been with me longer than you have.”

“Yeah, but it ain't looking so good.”

I volunteered to take a quick peek. Traci hesitated for a moment, then said yes. We trotted up the stairs and I followed them into the second room on the left side of the hall. It was not what I expected. For one thing there was no garbage on the floor or graffiti on the walls. A stack of newspapers sat between two beige sofas.

“We use those to keep warm at night,” Traci explained.

The room smelled pleasantly of oranges.

“We scatter orange peel around the baseboards 'cause mice and rats don't like them,” Traci told me when I asked. “My grannie taught me that.”

“I bet they don't like the raven either,” I commented.

Traci laughed. “Yeah, Annette does her part.”

“We put boric acid down, too,” Mike added. “For the roaches. It collects in their joints and freezes them so they can't move. It's not bad, is it?” he went on.

“Not at all,” I agreed.

“It took us two days to clean this room out. The only problem is the water—we gotta bring it in from outside—but the guy that owns the Mobil station across the street lets us use his bathrooms to wash up and do our business.”

Traci looked around. “And we ain't gonna be here for that long. We're gonna get out of here real soon.”

“Before the end of the summer,” Mike agreed, reciting what was obviously a familiar mantra. “We just got to put together some cash and we'll be on our feet.”

“That's right,” Traci said and moved toward the bird. “Annette, meet Robin,” she introduced.

“Hello, Annette,” I said.

Annette cocked her head, regarded me, and gave out with a deep
corronk.

“She looks okay to me,” I told Traci. The bird's feathers were glossy, her eyes bright.

Traci stuck out her tongue at Mike. For a few seconds they were both twelve years old again.

“How did she make it through the winter?”

“Oh, we've just been here since the end of March,” Traci told me. “That's when Mike got kicked out of his house.”

Mike muttered something under his breath and turned to the wall.

“But we're gonna be going someplace soon,” Traci told me, an anxious expression on her face as she watched Mike. “And things are gonna be fine. Isn't that right?”

“Yeah,” Mike said softly and faced us again, having put his private demons back in their boxes. “Yeah. Everything is gonna be fine. We're going to head down to Austin. I hear they got lots of jobs down there.”