Falling Down (3 page)

Gates hesitated, shoved the snapshots back into his briefcase. Laid the Glock in front of me, closed the case lid, and snapped it shut.

“Do you ever hear any of these names? Rogelio González Pizaña, known as El Kelín? Osiel Cárdenas Guillén? A gang of assassins called
Zetas
?”

“No. What's in the other folder, Bob?”

“Our first break,” he said. “In the gangbanger hoods, people are afraid to talk. This woman is completely different.”

Opened the other folder. No picture, just a single sheet of paper with a name and a phone number, below it a long résumé:

“This woman called three days ago. Asked for me only.”

“Mary…Em…
itch
?” I said.

“Pronounced
Em
-ick. Spelled with the
h
at the end. German name. She's the director of Visitor Services at Tohono Chul.”

“The park?”

“Yeah. I've never been there. You?”

I nodded, not going to tell him the story of Tigger and the deaf pharmacist, my first murder case after moving to Tucson. Five long years ago.

“What's the connection?” I said.

“This Emich woman, she claims she's got a computer lead to the
maras
.”

“What lead?”

“Won't tell TPD unless we send a computer expert to the park. Something about protecting a daughter of hers. I called the number she gave us, she's a real person, didn't want to talk on the phone. I thought about pitching this idea to Kligerman…since he wants you on his team, I figured you'd be perfect to talk to the woman. But I decided to keep this woman just between you and me.”

“How complete's her résumé?”

He chuckled. “Got it off the Internet.”

“How solid is her information?”

“Totally off the record?”

“Okay.”

“An ex-cop works at the park. Director of all the volunteers. He's a good friend of Mary Emich, he's a longtime good friend of mine. Ken Charvoz.”

Pronounced like a French name.
Char
veau.

“Undercover detective, retired with heavy medical disabilities. Emich saw something on his computer, she asked him what to do. Ken called me personally. Nobody else knows about it. But I trust Ken's instincts. I want it checked out by the best person I can find. That's you.”

I heard voices below, went to the roof's edge and saw Spider, lifting Sarah Katherine out of her stroller. Nathan knelt beside them, rubbed Sarah Katherine's
cheek as he stared up at me. Spider carried her baby to the small pool downhill from the house, lowering the baby's legs into the water, up to the knees. Sarah Katherine shrieked with delight. Spider jerked off her sandals, sat poolside, their legs wiggling together in the clear blue water.

Spider turned on a boombox, cranked up Ruben Blades and Willie Colon doing
Siembra
. She lifted Sarah Katherine and began a dance routine.

“My God,” Gates said. “What is she doing?”

“Dancing. Salsa.”

“She's really
good,
” Gates said.

“Well, she teaches.”

“Teaches…what?”

“Dancing.”

Spider's hips rotated in her own blend of salsa and merengue.

“I hear it from car CD players. Never knew what it was.”

“She dances, she teaches, she practices…right now, she's tuned out most of the world except for her baby and salsa.”

“Good-looking baby,” Gates said.

“I'll fix you some lunch,” I said, “but I don't have much time.”

“Nope. Can't stay. Section meeting in an hour, they'll want to know about you. Whether you'll come on board.”

“All legal claims dropped, I keep my PI license?” He nodded. “I couldn't care less about the gun. I've got another gun. It's not licensed. You'll square that?” Nodded again. “Okay. I'll talk to this Emich woman. If there's an honest lead, you turn it over to TPD staff and at that point, I'm clear. Out of it, altogether.”

“Sounds like a start.”

“No, Bob. That'll be the end.”

“Can I ask…why?”

I left him alone at the table for at least three or four
minutes. Thinking about the job. Watching Spider and Sarah Katherine dunking their heads into the pool, Spider demonstrating how to flick her head around and spin off water beads. Sarah Katherine, almost two, insisted on spinning her whole body.

“I'm not…I guess the word would be, I guess I'm unsympathetic.”

“Just a computer job. Just what you love to do.”

“Bob. I don't know if I'm that passionate about computers anymore. Besides, anything that starts with drugs and cartels and gangs will get messy. Right now, life is messy enough. I love my house, I love the people in my life, I
don't
much enjoy the outside world anymore. Down here, near the border, it's only going to get worse.”

Bob watched Spider dangle Sarah Katherine's feet in the pool.

“This Mary Emich,” he said. “She's got a daughter. You've got a daughter. The teenage drug mules that die, they're somebody's daughter.”

“You goddamn
bas
tard,” I said. “You son of a
bitch
. Drugs and daughters, that's just, that's just
low
.”

“Ah, Laura. I'm really, I didn't mean it that way. I'm so sorry I said that, I really didn't mean to say, to make a connection with your daughter.”

But I knew he really did say that intentionally. Truth to tell, I
do
have a daughter. I can't imagine her in harm's way, I can't imagine what I'd do, living with any threat of harm.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You've got a bad cop. A traitor, somewhere inside TPD. You want me to be…what, a spy? What do they call it, you want me to be a mole?”

“Yes.”

“And who would know what I'm doing?”

“A very few, a very small, select, and trusted group of people.”

“But I'd be at risk.”

“No risk. You'd be hired in a bogus position. To advise TPD in setting up a Computer Crimes Department.”

“But if the wrong person found out what I was doing?”

“Wouldn't happen,” Bob said.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Just like you wouldn't have a bad cop working with teenage drug mules and Mexican crime cartels.”

“The risk would be remote,” Bob said. “We'd set up firewalls.”

“Remote,” I said.

“Nothing personally connected with you.”

“That's like lying in the sun with the remote chance of getting skin cancer.”

“Well, okay,” he said. “Fair enough. These
maras
have a fixed rule. Death to anybody who talks. Death to all witnesses.”

“Death to cops?”

“Not directly, no. The threat is for people who'll rat them out. Got a picture of some woman called
La Bruja
. With a slogan.
No me jodas
.”

“Meaning?”

“Don't fuck with me.”

“Great.”

“It's really a remote thing, Laura. You're not going to be on the street, dealing directly with anybody.”

“Do you
like
what you're doing to me?”

“You're the only source I've got that I'd trust, Laura.”

He spread his hands, a supplication, a gesture of honesty and appeal.

“Plus,” he said. “You'll get your PI license back. Guaranteed.”

“Who's doing the guaranteeing?”

“Me.”

“You'd put your honesty on the line? Knowing the hell I'd unleash if TPD overruled you, if TPD went against your promise?”

“Yes, Laura.”

“Okay,” I said. “So. I talk to this Emich woman, you get my PI license reinstated. Deal?”

“Deal. But. Look also over Kligerman's data. So you can up or down, yes or no, you'll at least listen to his proposition. He's not married, either, got no kids. Just so you know, if it gets that far.”

“It won't. Last thing I need is another man I've got to deal with.”

“Another thing. Between you and me. Kligerman hates Charvoz. Some deal went bad, Charvoz nearly tore Kligerman's head off in the squad changing room. Nobody knows why. Not important, just keep that to yourself.”

Shielding his eyes, studying the southern horizon.

“You could see both ends of a rainbow,” he said. I smiled, nodding. “You ever see a double?”

“From up here, double rainbows are common. You ever see a triple?”

“Never.”

He folded his jacket over a forearm, swung the briefcase into his hand, and without another word went down the stairway and out the back door.

Nathan moved quickly to the driveway, but Gates had already three-pointed his car around the driveway and I caught a quick glance of him driving down the hill. Nathan back to look up at me.

And our troubles continued.

N
ine in the morning, floating naked in the pool.

Morning sun crispy on my body, feeling burned, feeling burned as I ran through the options of what I'd say to Nathan.

My body loosened after twenty laps of backstroke and twenty more freestyle. Loosened, but not relaxed.

Had so few options, had only one that made sense to me.

Tried to rehearse what to say when Nathan came between me and the sun, his silhouette black and unreadable. I paddled sideways, until his shape and colors came into focus. Soft white cotton tee, sleeves ripped off. Cammo shorts left over from Nam. Nathan wore clothes until they rotted off his body, or until I threw them out.

Held one hand behind him, hiding something.

“What did he want?” he said finally.

“I told him to leave me the hell alone.”

“And?”

“Nathan. Sweetie. He's got a deal for me. A guarantee that I keep my PI license.”

“In exchange for?”

I paddled toward him, hung on the edge of the pool.

“Please sit down,” I said.

He moved again, the sun behind him. You can take the boy off the rez, you can't shuck the rez off the Indian.

“In exchange for?” he asked again.

“One little job,” I said. “Nathan. Sweetie. All I've got to do is go talk to a woman at Tohono Chul Park.”

“Talk to a woman.”

“That's it.”

“Talk about what?”

“A computer glitch.”

“Guy was a cop, right?”

“Yes. TPD. But he only came because a friend of his, another cop, well, an ex-cop, medical retirement, anyway, this friend…”

“Some cop is going to reinstate your PI license if you talk to his friend.”

“Yes.”

“And this?”

Nathan withdrew the hand behind his back, laid my Glock on the deck tiling. “What's that for?” he said. Pursed his lips, nodded toward it with a kissing gesture. Navajo's rarely pointed a finger directly. He tossed my Glock into the pool. I let it sink to the bottom, the dull black matte blurred by the water motion.

“He found it in TPD evidence storage. Thought I'd want it back. Nathan. I've got three handguns locked up in our safe. I don't need another one.”

“You don't need
any
of them.”

Guns. One of the elephants in our living room.

I never felt safe without carrying my unlicensed Beretta. Nathan despaired of ever having to kill again, despaired of guns and weapons, despaired of violence.

He knelt beside me, stroked my nose, my ears, circled a thumb and forefinger around my hair to squeeze out the water.

“So the trip's off,” he said.

“What trip?”

“Tomorrow. You and me, up to the rez. Adopting the boy? You forgot.”

“Oh, Nathan. I didn't forget the trip. Can't we just wait a day, can't we just…like, go the day after tomorrow?”

“The boy's clans are gathering tomorrow. They're
coming from all over the rez, just to meet me. And meet you.”

“Just call them. Tell them to wait a day. It's only a day.”

“There was an agreement that we'd meet tomorrow. I can't go back on that. With or without you, I
won't
go back on my word.”

“Nathan.”

I grabbed his arms, slid down to hold his hands.

“I'll do everything I can to finish this up quickly. So we can leave.”

“Promise?”

“Nathan. I love you. I'll tell TPD I can't take their job. I'll have a quick talk with this woman, I'll blow her off this afternoon. I'll go over there right now. Don't leave without me, please.”

“We'll talk on it tonight,” he said.

Picked up his trimming clippers and went around the side of the house.

“No,” I said, dripping from the pool, clinging to his arm as he walked away, the arm behind him, I wouldn't let it go. “Why are you leaving me?”

His coal-black eyes on me, buttons with no shine, no crinkle of a smile.

“I can't live this life anymore,” he said finally.

“This is a
good
life.”

“This is not a good city, these are not good people here.”

“I'm here,” I said. “My business is here.”

“Your business,” he said shortly. “You find things, you find people.”

“Yes. I do.”

“But what if people don't want to be found? Not bad people, not criminals. Just people who want a simpler life. Who don't have telephones because there's no phone line. Who don't want computers because there's no electricity.”

“Where's this all coming from?”

“You have the smell of violence on you,” he said after a long, long time. “I can no longer abide that smell.”

“Abide? Abide? What kind of word is that?”

“I need…I need…I want to live with my family.”

“Nathan, I
am
your family.”

“You have been good for me.”

“Good
for
you?”

“Come with me,” he said. “Come be part of my family on the rez.”

“That's it?” I said. “That's it? That's it?”

“The only life we have together is up there, up on
Dinehtah
.”

“This is a good life here. I am a good woman to you. My daughter, her daughter, we are good people to you.”

“I have to choose,” he said. His voice so calm, so void of emotion, so much a slap in the heart. “My people, or you. I've made the choice, you can come with me, you can be with my family.”

“How can you make this so quick? How can you choose so suddenly?”

“I have been choosing for months,” Nathan said. “You've just now heard the truth of it.”

“Truth?”

“We've always promised we'd tell each other the truth,” he said.

“And what's so fucking great about your
truth
? Why can't you just try lying, just for a change? It's the way lovers survive.”

“The truth is,” he said, “the truth, the truth about you is the smell of violence and accommodation about you. I cannot live down here. You can. You love this house, this…this palace. I'd be happy in a
hoghan
.”

“If I promise to follow you tomorrow,” I said, “will that work?”

“Laura,” he said, “I truly don't know.”

“Then I promise to follow you. Tomorrow. Just one day.”

He pressed his forehead against mine, I felt tears on his face.

“Maybe,” he said finally. “I just can't make a promise of my own.”

 

Except I didn't know how to tell him that I'd break
my
promise. Only for a day, I thought. My PI license has to matter to my lover. What
I
want, what I
need,
has to matter to my lover. What other more basic trust can there be with a partner?

I wanted to talk to him, to convince him. Instead, when it came time to talk that night, I found him naked in our bed, still wet from a shower.

 

There are many ways to make love without saying anything, many ways to make love slow and gentle or over-the-top wild, can't wait to finish and start all over again. And somewhere on the edges of however you do it, there are those times when you couple together and one person is totally, completely, sensually lost in the moment and the other person participates wholly with the body and yet in the corner of the mind is the active, disturbing realization that your lovemaking is the same as it's always been or something's changed, you'd crossed a boundary, and you didn't know if it was possible to look back.

And the worst part of those thoughts, before you stuff them far down into the unconscious so you won't dwell on them, is you don't know if you're continuing what
is
or beginning what
was
.

Thinking about change. About what I'd said to Bob Gates, about crossing boundaries, going back to work with the agreement my PI license would be reinstated. I wondered if I'd hyped my answers, if they sounded slick, contrived, flippant, or facetious.

 

That night, with Nathan, something had changed.

After the sex, my head on his stomach, next to the old,
puckered bullet scars from Nam, he kept silent. I'd promised to talk.

He waited.

I couldn't tell him the truth about not joining him on the rez, but I couldn't lie about it, either. He stroked my body in all the familiar ways, wanting to make love again and feeling my response. Entered me. And I felt a change settle between us. Like he knew I wouldn't come.

Like he knew I'd changed.

 

When changes happen to me, they rush through my entire being without thought, there's a before and an after. Sometimes, I'd get this, I don't know, a shiver flooding across my body,
every
where on my body, then the sensations vanished.

In the earlier days, when change smacked me without warning, I'd not even realize I'd changed for days, occasionally weeks, until a moment when I just knew things were different. Now I know immediately. At first…it's not something a word describes, my body…okay, my body vibrates. And I know. Change has come upon me.

Of course, the real work is figuring out what's changed.

In my Ritalin days, when I really popped a lot of Ritalin, I'd do a lot of crazy things. One of my favorite personal dares was to get close to the railroad track when a train came barreling down toward me. I'd stand so close the ground vibrated and my bones vibrated, I'd stand as close as I'd dare, depending on how much Ritalin I'd popped.

I got the idea from an old William Holden and Mickey Rooney movie, I think it was about Korea, I think the name involved some bridges with an Asian name like Tokoriko. But somebody in that movie would stand on back of the aircraft carrier right near the spot where the plane launch piston would slam to a halt. I can't even remember how the piston worked, but when a jet was
launched, this piston propelled it off the carrier deck, and this guy, it might have been William Holden, but I don't remember, anyway, he had things figured out to the inch of where that piston would come to a complete stop. And the guy would stand there, he'd scratched a long metal marking on the deck, he'd put his boot toes right up against that marking and wait for the piston to
whoooooooshBAM
and stop just in front of him.

I never felt responsible for what I did when I was on a Ritalin high.

At least, not until I met a woman who took fifteen times as much Ritalin as I did, she'd grind it up into a powder in a blender shake with pineapple, mangoes, and half a Snickers bar.

And then drink the whole thing. Do that four times a day.

 

“I've got to do this,” Nathan said later. Tearing one-inch strips of a penny-saver newspaper, crinkling them between his fingers. “Go back to the rez. Take in this boy, he's got no family. Nobody wants him.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I said.

“To you? I'm not doing anything to
you,
I'm helping a boy.”

“Bring him here,” I said. “We'll raise him here.”

“Made a promise.”

“You've promised me, Nathan. You promised you'd live here. With me.”

“Promised my elder aunt Sophie I'd take care of the boy. In the traditional ways, that's my word to Sophie.”

“You've given
me
your word. To live here. Live with me.”

“Boy's got problems.”

“I've got a problem.”

“You kicked your drug habit,” Nathan said. “I've promised Sophie I'd raise the boy in traditional ways.”

“Please stop shredding the newspaper.”

He looked at his hands, he'd not even realized what he was doing. Dropped the newspaper, picked up a thick rubber band, and started twisting it between his fingers, stretching his hands over a foot apart as though he thought he could make a cat's cradle from the rubber band.

“When are you leaving?” I said finally.

“Oh.” He folded the rubber band around his left wrist, twisted and folded it two more times. “I guess…. I guess I was waiting until I told you.”

“How long has it taken you to say that?”

He shrugged.

“Okay,” I said. “You've told me. I still don't want you to go. Don't you care about that? What will people think?”

“People?”

“Spider. She loves you. What will she think, if you leave me like this?”

“I'm not responsible for what other people think.”

“And me? I
love
you, Nathan.”

Rubber band so tight around his wrist, veins popping on the back of his hand. I didn't speak.

“Then I'm headed out tomorrow,” he said. “I guess it's best.”

He stared at his hand, watched it swell and darken from the trapped blood.

“I just wanted you to be all right with this, Laura.”

“Well, I'm not…it's
not
all right, Nathan.”

 

“You're not going with me tomorrow, are you,” he said later.

It both was and wasn't a question.

“I'll be there the next day,” I said.

We'd both pretended to fall asleep for a while. My declaration lying between us like a bundling board. But you can't fool anybody with that, not somebody who knows you well, like a

Got up, went to my stash of cell phones and accessories, programmed one of them to auto-dial my private line.

“You take this,” I said. Smoothed the rumpled sheet beside him, laid down the cell. “And here's a charger. You plug this into the wall, this end snaps into the cell here. Like this. This is a car charger. Your lighter socket.”

I folded them into his hands. His entire body immovable. A statue.

“I'll be there the next day,” I said. “Is that so bad?”