Blue Heaven (5 page)

As he walked down the hill toward his ranch house, he listened to the silence and the soft watery sound of a breeze in the treetops. He heard no more shots.

E
DUARDO VILLATORO pressed his nose against the window of the Southwest Airlines flight to Spokane from Los Angeles, via Boise. Below him was an ocean of green broken up only by lozenge-shaped lakes that reflected the sky, and snowcapped mountains that rose in the distance, the tops of the peaks at eye level as the 737 descended. He had only seen so much green once in his life, years before, when he had flown to El Salvador to bring back his mother. But that was jungle, and this was not, and El Salvador had silvery roads slicing through the green and an ocean holding it in, and he could see no roads, and that realization began to create anxiety in him that was only released, slightly, when squares and circles of farmland finally appeared and the flight attendant asked the passengers to put their tray tables in the full-upright and locked position.

He had been keenly aware as he boarded the connecting flight in Boise that he was the only passenger wearing a suit, even though it was his old, lightweight brown one. He had removed his tie on board, folded it neatly, and put it in his pocket. The other passengers, mostly young families and retirees, seemed to pay no attention to him, but in a deliberate way. He was very aware of
them
, and it took him a while to realize
why.
He was the only person on the plane who wasn’t Anglo.
This phenomenon was new to him, and he couldn’t decide what he thought about it. A big part of his success in his career had always been that he didn’t stand out. This allowed him to study the people around him and the situations they were in without being observed himself. The last thing he could be called was exotic or flashy, not where he came from. This wholly white world might be a little tough to blend into.

He raised his arm and shot his cuff to look at his new gold watch. He was grateful he didn’t need to reset the time, since Spokane was Pacific time as well. He didn’t yet know how his watch worked. There were several knobs and buttons, and he assumed he would need to work a combination of them to reset the time, date, alarm, and other functions if he needed to. The dial would light up at night, someone pointed out to him. Unfortunately, he had left the instructions for the watch in the packaging it came in, after he’d opened it and slipped it on to the apparent delight of his former coworkers, who clapped while he did so. They had all contributed to buy the retirement gift, and Celeste, his longtime partner, had taken it to a jeweler to have the back inscribed:

WHILE WAITING for his two bags to arrive on one of three carousels in the airport, Villatoro continued to study the people around him. Families had rejoined, and there was excited chatter. A soldier in desert fatigues had returned from Iraq, greeted by balloons, hand-drawn posters, and his extended family. Villatoro nodded at him, said, “Thank you for your service.” The marine nodded back.

If Villatoro were to characterize the residents in a general way, he would say they were plainspoken and blunt. Flinty, maybe. He noted how many of the men wore cowboy hats and big buckles and pointed boots, and how it looked like clothing on them and not a costume. Women and children wore bright colors and opened their mouths wide when they talked, as if it didn’t matter to them if anyone heard their conversations. As the bags began to spit out onto the carousel, he saw the flashing of their clear blue eyes.

At the rental car counter, a boy with moussed hair and a starched white shirt and tie told him the company could upgrade his reservation from a compact to a midsize for only five dollars more a day.

“No thank you.”

“But it looks like you’ll be in the area for a week,” the boy said, looking at the reservation on his computer monitor. “You might be more comfortable in a larger car. I’m sure your company would understand.”

“No,” Villatoro said. “There is no company. I’m retired, as of two days ago. The compact, please.”

The boy looked hurt. Villatoro could see a blackboard in the office behind the counter that listed all of the employees by name with check marks to indicate how many upgrades they’d sold. He looked at the boy’s name tag, saw his name was Jason, and saw that Jason was leading the pack.

“Arcadia, California,” Jason said as he keyed Villatoro’s license number and address into the computer. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s a small town,” Villatoro said. “About fifty thousand people.”

“Is it near L.A.?”

Villatoro smiled bitterly. “It was swallowed by L.A. like a snack.”

The boy didn’t know how to answer that, and Villatoro wished he hadn’t said it. Too much information.

Jason said, “You wouldn’t believe how many folks from L.A. we rent to.”

“Really?” Villatoro said.

“A ton of them have moved up here,” Jason said, pushing the button to print out the contract. “Have you ever been here before?”

“Spokane?” Villatoro said.

Jason corrected his pronunciation, “It’s ‘Spoke-Ann,’ Mr. Villatoro, not ‘Spoke-Cain.’ ”

“And it’s ‘Vee-Ah-Toro,’ not ‘VILLA-toro,’” Villatoro said back, smiling.

WITH HIS KEYS and an agreement for a red Ford Focus in his hand, Villatoro started to pull his bags through the door to the rental lot but stopped until Jason looked over.

“May I please get a map to Kootenai Bay?”

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, tearing one off a pad and using a highlighter pen to mark the route. “It’s easy. You just take a right out of the airport and follow the signs to I-90 East.”

“Thank you,” Villatoro said.

Jason handed him the map and a thick, four-color real estate booklet. “I assume you’re looking for property.”

“No,” Villatoro said, taking the booklet anyway, “I’m here on business.”

“Really? What do you do? I thought you said you were retired?”

“I am,” Villatoro said, not really lying, just not telling the entire story. The boy was more forward than he thought proper.

“Oh,” Jason said, puzzled.

As he walked out onto the sun-baked lot, Villatoro thought he’d said half-again too much, and chastised himself.

VILLATORO POINTED his little red Ford Focus toward the mountains to the east and eased onto the interstate through tree-shrouded on-ramps. He passed a large sign and fountain that read:

Spokane itself seemed surprisingly old and industrial, the downtown buildings rising out of the trees with a sense of purpose that had likely been forgotten, Villatoro thought. He saw an exit for Gonzaga University—he had heard of it, something about basketball—and another that said Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was only fourteen miles away.

As he drove he pushed the scan button on the AM radio in the car. As it swept the stations, he heard snippets of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlesinger, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Mark Fuhrman, famous from the O. J. Simpson trial, who obviously had a local talk show. That discovery astonished him.

Acres of outlet malls marked his entrance into Idaho, as well as strip malls that looked just like the strip malls in L.A., with the same fast-food
places and convenience stores. He had replaced palm trees with pine trees, but this was all familiar. In a way, he was relieved.

But when he turned north at Coeur d’Alene, the strip malls thinned, and the forest seemed to shoulder its way back toward the road, as if to intimidate the drivers, he thought. It certainly worked with him. Forty miles later, the trees broke, and he was on a long bridge crossing a huge lake, the sun streaming through the windshield with an intensity he wasn’t used to. On the other side of the lake, twinkling through a pine forest, was the town of Kootenai Bay, and beyond that, thirty-five miles north, was Canada.

THE DOWNTOWN was small, the vestige of another era, when it was more of a railroad outpost than what it had become. The primary route into Kootenai Bay stretched three tree-covered blocks, then ended with a sharp turn to the left. Old brick buildings—none above two levels—sported signs for snowboards, espresso, bicycling, fishing, real estate. He turned right, away from downtown, dipped under a railroad trestle, and emerged on the lakefront near the Best Western where he had a reservation.

Pulling under a slumping veranda, he uncoiled from the small car and stretched, heard his spine pop with a sound like shuffling cards. The boy at the car rental counter had been right, he thought. A larger car would have been better for his back. As he entered the small lobby, he instinctively hit the remote control lock button on his key ring.

Three people were waiting to check in before him, two large men with crew cuts and a short, heavy woman with big hair and lime green shorts. All three held sixteen-ounce cans of Budweiser and spoke loudly, and he gathered they were in town for some kind of reunion. While he waited, Villatoro looked over the rack of real estate brochures near the door, and took several because they contained maps of the area. When the guests got their keys and left to find their rooms, Villatoro stepped up to the counter.

The check-in clerk was flustered from the three conventioneers, and she blew back a strand of graying hair away from her face and sighed loudly. “You’d think they’d put another person on the desk at check-in
time, wouldn’t you?” she said. “Especially when there’s a Navy ship crew reunion in town.”

He shrugged, and smiled. Checking in four guests didn’t seem to be an exhausting task.

She nodded at the brochures he had picked up. She was in her late forties, he guessed, and had lived a hard life. Blooms of small threadlike veins mapped her cheeks. Alcohol. Nevertheless, she had an attractive, open face and smile.

She said, “A girlfriend of mine sold her house for $189,000 last week, and the guy who bought it resold it the next day,
the next day
, for $250,000.”

“Goodness,” Villatoro said.

“Damn right,” she said, finding his reservation card. “Makes me wonder what my place is worth. I bought it for forty grand twenty-five years ago.”

These people, he thought, talk to you like they’ve known you all their lives.

“Probably a lot,” he said, thinking how familiar it sounded. His own community was filled with tales like that, as longtime homeowners sold their homes to new residents for three or four times what they had originally paid.

“Business or pleasure?” she asked, looking up at him. He felt her eyes sweep over his wrinkled brown suit, his cream-colored shirt, his olive skin.

“Business,” he said.

“What kind of business?” she asked pleasantly.

“Unfinished business,” he said, a little amused at how it sounded.

“Sounds interesting and mysterious.” She laughed. “Come on, fess up.”

He felt his face flush. “I’m retired,” he said. He was still having trouble actually saying it without being self-conscious. It reminded him of the weeks after his wedding thirty-two years ago, when he stumbled as he introduced Donna as “my wife.” It just didn’t sound natural at the time, just as retirement didn’t sound natural now.

“How long?”

He flushed. “Two days. I was a police detective in Arcadia, California.
” As soon as he said it he didn’t know why he had volunteered the information.

“You have a badge and a gun?” she asked, making conversation.

“Not anymore.” He was very conscious of not having either. Like he was walking around without pants. Not that he’d ever drawn his gun, except at the range.

She scribbled something on the reservation card. “You held this with a credit card,” she said. “You want to keep it on that card?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you have a real estate agent yet? I can recommend a couple of good ones.”

“Excuse me?”

She looked at him. “I assume you’re looking for a house or land up here. You don’t need to sneak around. Half of the guests who stay here are looking to buy and retire. And believe me, not all of the real estate agents are trustworthy. There are some real crooks, and they don’t care if you’re a cop. Or an ex-cop. They’re used to ex-cops, believe you me.”

“I’m not interested in retiring here,” Villatoro said, somewhat defensively.

“Hmmm.” She clearly wasn’t sure she believed him. “Mr. Mysterious, you are.”

“No one ever said that before.”

“You seem like a nice guy. How about I cut you a deal, then,” she said, almost whispering. “I’ll give you the AAA rate instead of the rack rate. Saves you $20 a night.”

He wanted to refuse. But $20 a night for six nights would be helpful. “Thank you,” he said.

“You bet, Mr. Villatoro.”

She pronounced it “VILLA-torro.”

IN HIS ROOM, which was on the lower of two floors, Villatoro opened his curtains and looked out. While the hotel itself was tired and dowdy, the view was magnificent. Through a sliding glass door was a lawn that led to a beach, and a marina half-filled with boats. The lake was smooth as a tabletop all the way to the mountains on the other side that were white with snow. The afternoon rain clouds opened up, and
columns of sun lined up across the horizon. He expected an orchestra to swell at the sight.