Falling Down (15 page)

“How many people?”

“You're a detective,” Ken said. “Work out some figures.”

“A few hundred?” He snorted. “A few thousand?” He growled, shook his head. “I'll guess, six thousand, three hundred and forty-nine hummers.”

“Last group hum, something like fifty thousand.”

“No way.”

“Way,” he said. “Course that doesn't count everybody humming alone at home. So. Music. Who do you like?”

“I used to have some raps,” I said. “But tell me, what did your wife hate so much that she left you?”

“Some years ago,” Ken said, “I really loved margaritas to the point where I'd have a few every day. To forget about the violence of my work. Then I got to having a few at lunch and more with dinner. I never thought I might be an alcoholic, until my ex listed margarita as one of the reasons she was leaving me. I was in such denial about drinking that for a while I thought she was referring to another woman, a Latina named Margarita.”

“Ken,” I said. Reached out to touch his hand on the table.

“Laura,” he said.

“Ken,” I said. I almost felt like flirting, except I couldn't quite remember that dance and anyway I didn't care enough about him to flirt. Liked him, yes, but flirting raises the temperature when you're least ready to get hot.

“So. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Hell, that's easy,” Ken said. “Either a cop or a jet pilot. And you?”

He laughed at his answer. I'm used to asking people that question. Not answering it myself.

“To be loved,” I said.

“Mary used to ask me this question. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? My answer? Here's directions to the margarita bar. And you?”

“I've been so far away from God, for so long…I don't know, I really don't know. Listen. Here's what I'm going to do. First I'll read Mary's diary. You can ask her if she'll let you read it also, I'm sure it's the story of
where she found the girl. Then I'm going to spend time with Jordan Kligerman and consider his offer of working with TPD.”

“You just decided that,” Ken said. It wasn't a question.

“Yes.”

“All right. Here's what I'll do. I don't know how it fits together with everything else, but I do know that this weekend is the finale of the local cockfighting contests. The champions go on to the state finals. So there's bound to be cocks fighting all day long, probably already gearing up for the first match. Let me work some of my sources, find out where we could see one tonight. Would you go?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I usually ride a Harley Fat Boy. You rig yourself out like a biker chick, I'll pick you up between eleven and midnight. You really up for this? It'll be…you'll have a hard time watching.”

“I'll be ready,” I said. Gave him my private cell number. “For whatever.”

“Weird things do happen. I worked in Texas for a while, before I joined TPD. One day, I'm going to work, I've got this new convertible, at a stoplight,
wham,
this pickup broadsides me from the left. Not much damage to either vehicle, both of us jump out to see if the other person's all right. And guess what? The other driver I recognized. Thirty years before, when my parents had a pecan orchard, this girl would come over with her family to harvest the pecans. The same girl, same me, everything else is random. What are the odds of that?”

“So what are the odds?” I said. “Of us meeting like this?”

“A long shot. But, as Mary would say, there's got to be a meaning.”

“Or just a coincidence.”

“To us, maybe. To Mary? She'd say, God doesn't roll dice.” Eying me over the salted rim of his glass. “You're a kinda fascinating person yourself, Laura Winslow.”

“That's the booze talking,” I said.

“There's no need to be sarcastic.”

“I wasn't, I mean, I hardly know you. What am I supposed to say?”

“Not my purpose,” Ken said, “to put words in somebody else's mouth. So what are you going to do about this…about…this is bad shit going down. You should just walk away from it, Laura.”

“Now, that's the third time I've heard that. This morning, I'm going to the park and talk to Mary. Later, I'm doing a command performance for some cops.”

“And tonight?”

“Let's get this really clear,” I said. “I don't have patience for another man in my life. Not after being dumped by my partner.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“So am I.”

“None of my business,” Ken said. “But, this just happened?”

“He made me an offer he said I couldn't refuse.”

Ken held up a hand to the bartender, thought better of it.

“I got dumped by email,” he said.

“Email?”

“Not even face-to-face.”

“Email?”

“What's the difference? A note on the kitchen table, a letter overseas, an email message. When they're gonna leave, they're gonna leave.”

“And
why
?”

“Because it's time,” Ken said. “For them, it's just over.”

F
ollowing Mary's directions to her office, I bypassed the main entrance to the park and drove slowly up the service road, all the way to a chain-link fence bordering the staff parking lot. Past a short patch of ground, I went up three steps and opened the back door to the gift shop.

“Hello,” a tall woman said. “Can I help you?”

“I'm here to see Mary Emich.”

“Go through the gift shop, turn left, and go through the two gallery rooms. At the far end, you'll see a swinging door, go through that and turn quick left and quick right. I think she's the only staff person back there today.”

I walked away without saying anything, took several steps, realized what I'd done again. I have a hard time with some social things, like, when I'm done talking to somebody, on the phone or in person, I'll just leave without saying goodbye.

“Thanks,” I said. The woman smiled.

The first and smallest of the galleries had fascinating pottery called Green Feelies by a woman named Rose Cabot. One had that clear, distinct green that immediately reminds you of broccoli, another the exact faded yellow of a summer squash. In the main gallery I didn't stop to look, pushed on the swing door, and worked my way back to Mary's office.

“Welcome to the vortex,” she said. Moving piles of
paper from the guest chair, looking around with no hope, finally stacking the papers on top of other papers. Her entire office awash with paper, cardboard, signs, calendars, event brochures, books, computer disks, and software manuals.

Pinned to a wall, a dozen balloons, all different colors, but limp, exhausted, nearly flat, and still tied tightly at the neck and all of them joined by a yellow ribbon.

“I keep them,” Mary said, “because they've still got some of my dead husband Jim's breath inside.”

When I sat down I kicked an empty water bottle.

“Sorry,” Mary said. “I usually throw that bottle to get somebody's attention. The rest of the staff keeps the debris from flooding the hallway, sometimes my stuff wanders by itself out to Kim's desk.”

Lighthearted, chatty, giggling, smiling, and wrapped very tight.

“I'll help you,” I said immediately.

“Oh. God. Bless you.” Fingering the religious medal.

“What is that?” I said.

“Oh.” She reached behind her neck, opened a clasp, folded the medal in my hands. “Mother Teresa medal.”

About an inch round, made of silver, hung on a silver chain. A somewhat familiar Mother Teresa in three-quarter profile. On the back, a flattened reddish irregular object, either a bone or a stone, probably a garnet.

I handed the medal back.

“I didn't know she was a saint.”

“She's not. But she's who I pray for. That stone on the back, I don't really know what it's supposed to be. They call it a third-class relic, but I don't think it's a bit of her bones.”

Giggled, refastened the medal around her neck.

“Plus she went to an Irish convent. I'm part Irish. Did you know that when Mother Teresa died, India gave her a state funeral in Calcutta? Her body was carried through the streets on the same gun carriage that bore the bodies of Gandhi and Nehru. Are you Catholic?”

“No,” I said.

“Sorry I'm rambling here. I'm sorry.”

“Please,” I said. “Don't apologize for your beliefs.”

“So you have news?”

“Other than that I'll help you, not really. It's early days. There's something, but it's so intangible, I don't want to tell you about it yet.”

“Something you got from that website? The online casino?”

“Do you know the man who visited the website?”

“Yes. Ken told me. One of our part-time staff, I didn't know him.”

“He was murdered this morning.”

Both hands flew to her chest, a finger touching the medal, her breath drawn in so long and held forever I thought she'd turn blue.

“You didn't know?” I said. She shook her head. “Don't be frightened. As far as we know, it's just coincidence.”

Her control returned in degrees, face and throat muscles gradually relaxing. I looked carefully away during all of this, studied her walls, the odd mixture of things spread around the office. A black rubber mouse, four inches long, his whiskers and red eyes peering around the doorway. A baseball cap with the traditional 9/11 letters FDNY. A reproduction of Van Gogh's
Starry Night
painting. A card with a black and white photo of what looked like an old man, bent against the wind and age, walking beside a wall. I stood up to look at the card closely, and the man's shadow projected on the wall showed he was playing a saxophone. The caption read: Some things have to be imagined to be seen.

“Believed,” I said to myself.

“What?”

“I think the actual quote reads, ‘Some things have to be believed to be seen.' A psychic friend of mine said the writer believed in ESP. I don't really know.”

“Belief, imagination,” she said. “They're not so far apart. Wishes. Prayers.”

“If wishes were horses,” I said, “lovers could ride.”

“Psychics,” Mary said. “I've always wanted to learn more about alternative belief systems. Look out this window. Over there is the old children's garden. Some days, if I'm here early enough, I watch this family of coyotes, mom, dad, five pups.”

“Mary?” A woman's voice from down the hall.

“Kim,” Mary said. A cheerful blonde poked her head in the doorway. “Kim Miller, this is a friend. Laura Winslow.”

“Welcome to the park,” Kim said.

“I've been coming here for ten years,” I said.

“Are you a member?”

“No.”

“You should sign up. I'm the membership coordinator. Well. You two look busy, I just stopped by for something I forgot last night. See you both. Mary, give her a membership packet, get her to sign up.”

“She's great,” Mary said. Kim was gone. “I hate lying to her about you, I know it's just a small lie. I'm really uncomfortable with lies.”

“I'm not,” I said. “If I have to tell a white lie, even a black one, I'll do it.”

Mary considered that, but just shrugged.

“Whatever works,” she said. “Everybody here is great, it's a wonderful place to work. So you've come here for ten years? Is this a personal thing, or do you come with your girlfriends?”

“Girlfriends?”

“Like, who do you hang with?”

“My daughter. My…” Trying to get some word out about Nathan, unable to talk about him. “And you? So you've got a lot of girlfriends.”

“Yes,” Mary said. “Well. Actually, I don't have many really close friends. Two, maybe. Or three. But I know a lot of people. I call them friends, even though I don't see many of them often. My Christmas card list is about three hundred names long. But close friends? I mean,
like, soul-sharing friends? Heart-baring friends? Only two of those. But what I'd call a girlfriend? Lots of them.”

“Where do you and your girlfriends hang out?”

The question dangled between us, not the thing either of us really wanted to talk about, but then neither of us wanted to talk about violence.

“First off,” Mary said, “it's a matter of your time schedule. You've only got half an hour, so you'll go to one place. Second consideration, money. Your wallet's feeling kinda slim, you go to another place where the drinks are less expensive. So, say we want a quick drink. We'll go to Basil's, or Wildflower, a few blocks from the park. Or maybe Risky Business, if there's more than two or three of us, so we can sit out on the patio, same as Old Pueblo Grill on Ina.”

Cocked her head. Closed lips turned down at the edges, two small vertical lines popping up a bit between her eyes.

“How long have you lived here?”

“In Tucson?”

“Yes,” Mary said.

“Three, four years.”

“You don't have…” She didn't quite know which word to use. “Girlfriends?”

“No.”

“You don't have friends to…like we're doing here, you don't have friends to talk things over? With? You don't?”

Whoa,
I thought.
This woman doesn't hesitate boring into my soul
. “I've had girlfriends.” Thinking of Meg Arizana, thinking of…I couldn't really think of another woman friend. “Do men count?”

“Sure men count,” Mary said. “But…they've got their own stuff, sports, how are the Cardinals doing, who's the next best NFL quarterback…the women in their lives. I don't believe this,” she said. “You really, I mean, honestly, truly, you don't have a bunch of girlfriends you hang with?”

She saw my face shutting down, realized I'd shuttered off talk about emotions, about my personal life, and she made a quick decision and that glorious smile bloomed across her face as she extended her right hand to me.

“You want to be
my
girlfriend?” she said.

Whoa. Nothing else to do but take her hand and shake it and nod. She wouldn't let go of my hand, she put her left hand out, held my single hand with both of hers. “It's not a blood oath,” she said. “But I would like to be your friend.”

However can you say no to somebody like that?

“I'm gonna say something really, really dumb here,” I said to her.

Gave a slight tug on my hand, but she wasn't going to let it go. Not yet.

“I don't know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Be a girlfriend.”

“Oh, pooh,” she said. “Listen. Tonight I'm calling a few women, okay? We're going to make a date, okay?”

“Uh,” I said. “Sure. This is an even stupider question. What should I wear?”

Mary laughed and laughed, not an insult or an insider joke or anything but sheer delight. “Whatever,” she said. “I mean, I've got this huge, huge bucket of margaritas in my freezer. We'll go somewhere outside, I know, we'll go to Ric's. Not far from you, actually. You live at Sunset and Swann?” I nodded. “Perfect. We'll grab an outside table, we'll get there late enough so we'll pay for one drink and eat something, and then, here's the thing, when the wait staff sees you're not going to leave, they close up the restaurant and just leave you there. And then I go to my car, I get the margaritas, which by this time have melted just enough so they're still cold but they're not frozen. And we sit around and drink 'em all. Deal?”

“Deal,” I said. “But I've got to make sure my daughter's okay if I leave her.”

“Get a babysitter.”

“She's twenty-three.”

For the first time, Mary looked totally puzzled, her mouth opening and closing like a guppy, I could sense a thousand questions trying to work their way from her brain to her mouth, but she finally just pumped my hand, flashed that smile, and nodded.

“I'll call you,” she said. “I'll see who wants to come. Cathe for sure, maybe…so I'll call you, maybe, no, let's say, definite for tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night,” I said. “Sure.”

But I didn't know if I really meant it, or more honestly, what excuse I could come up with so when she called I'd say, I'd already figured out what I'd say, I might as well say it right now.

“Gee. Mary. I'm so sorry, I totally forgot. There's this client, he wants me to turn in a project by midnight tomorrow. I don't think, probably I'm not going to be able to make it tomorrow.”

“Laura Winslow,” Mary said. “About this client, and about the job and the deadline and I think, I'm not trying to judge here, and I could be all wrong, but the truth? About your tomorrow night, it sounds like, I'd bet my best hat, and I've got fifty hats, that what you just told me was one outrageous awesome lie.”

And yeah. She was right.

Embarrassed, I looked at a picture of a man in civvies sitting beside her computer monitor, a black and white photograph in a silver frame.

“Ken told me about your husband,” I said.

“Ken is sweet.”

She held the frame, turned it so I could see the picture.

“A fishing boat,” I said. “San Carlos, right? Down near Guaymas?”

“We'd scuba down there,” Mary said. “When he had leave, he'd always come directly to me, wherever I was, he'd wrap his passion for me around my soul. In San Carlos, I'd gone there with Cathe, she's my best girl
friend, we wanted a weekend to ourselves, and Jim ran down to the dock just when Cathe and I boarded the dive boat, and just like that, he jumped into the boat, hugs and kisses, wow, could that man hug. As the boat pulled away from the dock he'd already shucked his clothes, standing there in his boxer shorts, not his military issue, a special pair of shorts he'd bought in some airport just to wear for me in San Carlos, lots of fish swimming around, and with no hesitation flung himself into the water and launched into his powerful sidestroke, swimming alongside the boat and laughing up at me. Oh, my good sweet mother of Christ, I loved that man so.”

She carefully placed the framed photo next to her monitor, beside a Zuni fetish of a mountain lion, carved from Baltic amber.

“You've been to San Carlos?” she said.

“Yes. It wasn't, for me, it wasn't peaceful. This park,” I said. “This place is a conundrum to me,” I said. “Why do we talk about violence in such a peaceful place?”

“Peaceful, yes, serene, yes,” Mary said. “But violence is out there in the world. Those coyote pups? At one time there were eight. Now there's only five.”

“And how do you stay serene, with all that?”

“The park,” she said. “My Catholicism, and Ana Luisa. My adopted child. What are you doing later this afternoon?”

“I don't know, but I think I'll pass on the bucket of margaritas.”

“Do you swim?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Where?”