Trauma (14 page)

“No, of course not. But Howard said that you never find this butterfly outside of a certain part of Mexico. And there's kind of a Mexican connection, isn't there? There was a Mexican sugar skull at the Glass residence, wasn't there? And there was a painting of Mexican guys in hats at the Marrin house. And the Goodmans had a Mexican maid.”

“Oh, sure. The Goodmans and a million-and-a-half other families in Los Angeles.”

“I'm not saying any of this
means
anything, but I thought you might be interested, that's all.”

Dan said, “I'd rather leave the bugs and the maggots to you, sweet cheeks. Are you sure I can't buy you dinner?”

That evening she made Duke's favorite supper:

2½ lbs pork ribs

2 cups pineapple juice

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons sesame oil

4 cloves chopped garlic

Hot red-pepper flakes

2 teaspoons chopped ginger root

She simmered the ribs in pineapple juice until almost all of it had evaporated, then tossed them in the rest of the ingredients so that they could marinate for thirty minutes. Then she baked them in a hot oven until they were crispy.

“To what do I owe this pleasure to?” asked Duke, with marinade glistening on his chin.

“I don't know. I just thought it was time we started trying to be nice to each other.”

Duke sniffed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You look different. You wearing some kind of different eye shadow or something?”

“Unh-hunh. Same old Midnight Caress.”

“Who thinks these stupid things up, huh? Midnight Caress.”

Bonnie helped herself to salad, and thought of Ralph's hand reaching across the bed in the small hours of the morning and gently cupping her breast.

“Any beans left?” asked Ray.

“Sure.” Bonnie stood up. “You want some more, Duke?”

Monday morning they started by dragging down the orange drapes. They opened the windows wide, too, to get rid of the smell of blood. Between them, wearing their bright yellow protective suits, Bonnie and Esmeralda carried the two single mattresses out to the truck, and Bonnie pulled one of the drapes over them.

When they shifted the beds away from the wall, they found that something rancid and indescribable had slid down the wall onto the skirting board, and the corner of the room was thick with maggots. Esmeralda brought in the vacuum cleaner and sucked them all up. They made a soft pattering sound inside the vacuum cleaner's hose, almost like rain falling on a dry day.

“How was Pasadena?” asked Esmeralda.

“Okay. It was okay.”

Bonnie got down on her hands and knees and sprayed stain remover on the rectangular brown mark on the carpet. As she scrubbed, she tried not to think about what she was actually cleaning up, but the horror of it suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed her, like a huge, cold wave. She stood up—she had to stand up—and when she did so, she almost fainted.

“Bonnie? What's the matter?”

“Dan Munoz said—”

“Dan Munoz said what?”

“Dan Munoz said he tried to eat cardboard.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“The kid in the box. He was starving to death, so he tried to eat cardboard.”

“Hey, you're looking terrible. Why don't you go sit in the truck for a while?”

“I—no, I'll be okay.”

“No, you won't. You're white like a sheet. I can finish the vacuuming.”

Bonnie took two or three deep breaths, but she lost her balance and nearly fell over, and she was sweating the way she always did when her period was due.

“Just give me a couple of minutes. I didn't eat breakfast—that's the trouble.”

“You want me to help you?”

“I'm fine, I'm fine. You just carry on.”

She went outside. It was hot, but there was a slight breeze blowing from the southwest, and it cooled the sweat on her forehead. She climbed up into the cab
of her truck, opened the 7-Up cooler in which she always brought her breakfast and took out a chilled bottle of Diet Coke. She swallowed some, but it rushed straight back up again and it ran out of her nose.

She had never felt as bad as this before, even when she had cleaned up a crib in which twin baby sisters had been lying for over two months. Her hands were shaking, and when she looked at herself in the rear-view mirror she saw that her lips looked completely bloodless. “Take it easy,” she told herself. “Count to ten and think about nothing at all.”

After five minutes, she began to feel a little better. She climbed down from the truck and walked back toward the house. A small boy with a pink-striped T-shirt and shining chestnut hair came up to her and squinted up at her with one eye closed against the sun.

“Is that a space suit?”

“No … it's a suit to stop me catching any nasty bugs.”

“People got dead in that house.”

“I know.”

“A little boy got dead.”

“Yes. It was very sad.”

“Is he still there?”

“No, he's not. He's gone to heaven now.”

“When people get dead, you say a prayer.”

“That's right. You could say a prayer, couldn't you?”

“I heard a noise in that house.”

“Well, it's all over now. Best not to think about it.”

The small boy clutched his hands into claws and grimaced like a gargoyle. “I heard a noise like
grrrarrrrrgghhhhhh
!”

“That must have been pretty scary.”

“It was the scariest noise in the world. It was
grrrarrrrrgghhhhhh
!”

A young redheaded woman came out of the next-door house and called, “Tyler! What are you doing? You come inside this minute!”

She gave Bonnie a hard, suspicious frown and made a point of waiting in her doorway while the small boy galloped across the front yard. Bonnie was used to it. Nobody liked anything to do with violent death, even if you were just cleaning it up.

Back inside, Esmeralda had finished the vacuuming and was making a start on the walls. They were made of soft, absorbent plaster so it was difficult to leach the bloodstains out completely. There was a diagonal spattering of blood across the bedroom armchair, too, so Bonnie poured some enzyme stain remover on a soft cotton cloth and began to dab it off.

She lifted up the seat cushion and put it on one side. Underneath she saw six or seven brownish, shelllike chrysalises, the same as she had seen in the Glass residence. She picked one of them up and held it to the light. It was translucent, and she could see the shape of the growing larva inside it.

Right in the deepest crevice at the back of the chair, she saw something wriggling. She flicked her cloth at it, so that it dropped out onto the floor. It writhed and twisted on the carpet, because she must have hurt it.
It was another Clouded Apollo caterpillar, exactly like the one she had taken to show Howard Jacobson.

And this was the room where a girl called Maria Carranza had been murdered. With a name like that, she must have been Mexican. Another Mexican connection.

Carefully, Bonnie picked up the caterpillar and two or three of the chrysalises, and dropped them into a plastic bag.

“What's that?” asked Esmeralda, pausing in her scrubbing.

“A caterpillar, the same as the ones we found at the Goodman house.”

“What for you want to keep them? They're no good.”

“I showed one to Professor Jacobson up at the university. You remember Professor Jacobson? He said they were Mexican.”

Esmeralda crossed herself twice and took two or three steps backward.

“What are you so scared of?” Bonnie asked her.

“They're no good. I should kill them. Listen, I fetch the bug spray.”

“You know what these are, don't you? Professor Jacobson said they were butterflies, Clouded Apollo butterflies.”

“I should kill them.”

“Why?”

“Unhealthy, that's all.”

“Well, I don't know about unhealthy, but Professor Jacobson said that there was some kind of Mexican goddess called Opsapopalottle or something like that,
and that when she wasn't being a goddess she turned herself into one of these butterflies.”

“You don't say the name,” said Esmeralda, furiously crossing herself again and again.

“Esmeralda—we've found these things at three different trauma scenes. You're obviously scared, and I need to know why.”

“You don't say the name!” Esmeralda shouted at her. “I don't work for you no more! You don't say the name!”

“Esmeralda, for Christ's sake, will you calm down? These are nothing but caterpillars, but there is a connection.”

Esmeralda covered her face with her hands and said nothing for a long time. Bonnie stood beside her waiting for her to recover herself. She kept looking down at the brown rectangular stain on the floor, but now she felt that she could cope with it. If she could find out why David Hinsey had killed Maria Carranza, and why Aaron Goodman had shot his children, and why the Glass family's lives had ended in blood and flies, then maybe she could make sense of her life, and the hideous things that were happening all around her.

Eventually, Esmeralda lowered her hands and said, “You talk to Juan Maderas. He will tell you.”

“Who is Juan Maderas?”

“He is a friend of my father. He knows all about the old stories. He knows all about these butterflies.”

“Well, how do I get in touch with Juan Maderas?”

“You call me later, three o'clock. Call me at home. I will talk to my father and he will fix it for you to see Juan Maderas.”

“And Juan Maderas … he knows all about Opsapopalottle or whatever her name is?”

“Don't say the name! Don't say the name even in fun!”

Bonnie wrapped her arms around Esmeralda and held her close. “I'm sorry, Es. I didn't mean to frighten you. I love you—you know that. Come on, everything's going to be fine. We're going to find out what this is all about, and probably it's all about nothing, but we're going to find out anyhow. Come on, sweetheart. Don't be scared.”

“I should kill those things.”

“Don't get upset. They're only bugs. Really.”

They stayed together for a long time. Bonnie could hear traffic passing along the street outside, and planes taking off from LAX. Esmeralda's hair was wiry and greasy against her cheek, and she smelled of perspiration and cooking fat, but Bonnie kept on holding her for as long as she needed to be held.

They finished cleaning the house by lunchtime. Bonnie was on her way across town to the Riverside waste facility when Ralph called her on her mobile phone.

“Bonnie! Why the hell didn't you say anything?”

“What do you mean? Why didn't I say anything about what?”

“Why didn't you tell me what happened with Phil Cafagna?”

“I don't understand. Nothing happened with Phil Cafagna.”

“According to him, it did. He says you made a pass at him, and when he told you he was a married man, you called him all the names under the sun. He's canceled his whole order because of you.”

“Ralph, are you kidding? It was Phil Cafagna who
came on to me. He was giving me all kinds of bullshit about setting me free and stuff like that. And I certainly didn't call him any names. All I said was I wasn't interested.”

“He's canceled the order, Bonnie. Don't you understand what that means? Pacific takes over sixty percent of our production. Without Pacific, we're finished.”

“Ralph, I swear to God that I'm telling the truth. He came on to me and wanted me to go to bed with him. I said no, that's all.”

“Jesus, Bonnie, it's taken me fifteen years to build up this business.”

“Well, doesn't Phil Cafagna have a boss? Call him up and explain what really happened.”

“Phil Cafagna's boss is his older brother, Vincent. You think
he'll
believe me? This is the finish, Bonnie. I'm totally sunk.”

“Listen, why don't we meet? I have to go to the Riverside waste facility, but then I can change and come right over.”

“What's the point?”

“The point is we can work out what to do.”

“Forget it, Bonnie. There's nothing we
can
do.”

“We can ask Phil Cafagna to reconsider.”

“I don't think so. He was upset, Bonnie. I mean he was really, really upset.”

“I don't believe this, Ralph. Let me meet you later and we'll talk it over.”

“I'm sorry, Bonnie. I have an appointment at the bank. I'll call you tomorrow.”

“Ralph—”

“How do you think I feel? You couldn't get anything
out of Phil Cafagna, so you chose me as second best. Great. You've done wonders for my ego, believe me, not to mention my faith in women.”

“Ralph—I have to talk to you.”

“Not now, Bonnie. Go off to your goddamned waste facility.”

Instead of driving to Riverside, she turned off Washington Boulevard and headed for home. When she parked outside, she heard loud rock music playing from the back of the house. She let herself in, yelling as she did so, “Ray! Do you hear me? Turn that goddamned music down!”

She walked through the kitchen to the yard. There she saw Ray lying on one of the sun loungers, playing air-guitar, his eyes closed. Next to him, reading the newspaper and picking his nose, Duke sat, bare-chested, with a six-pack of beer beside him.

Bonnie slid back the patio door and stepped outside. She was halfway across the yard before Duke glanced up. He froze, with his finger still halfway up his nose.

“What are you doing here?” Bonnie demanded. “I thought you were starting work today.”