Falling Down (19 page)

T
he middle of nowhere, completely off-road in the desert. Promoter conscious in the back seat, lying still, eyes on us calmly. Ken motioned me to get outside, came around the front of the Porsche to talk.

“What you're going to see now,” he said. Sheet metal hood
tinking
as it cooled, the night air intolerably humid and hot, sweat all over my body.

“Yes?”

“I've got to do something, with this guy, something I haven't done in years. I've got to make him afraid for his life, I've got to make him truly fear me, truly believe that I am the wrath of the Lord. But. Laura. Remember that what you'll see me do and say will
not
be me.”

“All right.”

“I used to be that kind of man,” Ken said. “Let's just hope I remember what to do. But you, don't say or do anything, okay?”

“Sure, okay.”

Around to his side of the Porsche SUV, yanking open the back door and pulling the man out, both Ken's hands on the man's belt buckle, dumping him crudely on the caliche. Ken took out a pocketknife, opened a blade, cut away the duct tape from the man's mouth, ripping out several chunks of blond hair caught in the tape. Rolling the man over, he flicked a wallet out of the man's back pocket, then cut the tape off his hands.

Ken knelt, pulling out a huge chrome-plated .357 revolver.

“Nice rodeo buckle you're wearing there,” Ken said.

He bent over, hands on knees, focused on the silver buckle about the size of a salad plate.

“Broncs? Calgary? I can't quite read that, son. Take off your belt, I want to read what's on the buckle, I've got to take it in front of the headlights, so I can see what you rode to win that thing.”

“Fuck you,” the man said.

“Who is this jag-off?” Ken said. I'd opened his wallet, held a flashlight so Ken could read the name on the driver's license.

“Max Cady,” Ken said. “Hello, Mr. Max Cady.”

“He's not Max Cady,” I said. Giggling, nervous, but it was still funny. “Oops.” I'd already forgotten I wasn't supposed to say anything, but Ken didn't mind, eyebrows cocked into question marks, eyes cutting between me and Cady.

“You're not Robert Mitchum,” I said.

The man's face immobile.

“You're not Robert De Niro, either.”

A tiny smile on his lips, if the flashlight wasn't right on his face I wouldn't have seen it.

“So who's the real Max Cady?” Ken said.

“It's a part in a movie,” I said. “
Cape Fear
. A sociopath is released from prison and terrifies the lawyer who sent him there.”

“Let's have that belt, Max,” Ken said.

“Not takin' my pants off,” Cady said.

“Just the belt.”

“Not lettin' my pants down, I don't do that except for ladies.” He turned to me. “'Less
you
want to see my bidness? I'll untuck it for you.”

Ken swept the cowboy hat off Cady's head, stood back. “Just a moment,” he said. Pulled me aside, back a few steps. “What I'm going to do next, Laura. It's just acting, remember, you've got to play your part.”

“Acting, what do you mean, acting?”

“Don't you believe for a minute that what you're going to see me do is in any way the real me. Just a piece of acting, here.” He turned back to Cady. “Now, bud, let's start the ball.”

“Not takin' my pants down for you, homo.”

Ken leisurely stretched out his hand with the .357, whacked Cady on the right elbow. “The belt first. That's for your attitude. Then we'll get to the questions. Now, this is the sticky part.”

“Ask what you want. Let's get done with this, I've got two women to see.”

“Gonna be like strip poker,” Ken said. “You shuck off a question, you shuck off part of your clothes. You answer a question, you give me an answer I'd really put in the church poor box, you get to put something back on. Start with the belt. Get it off.”

Cady removed his belt, held it out.

“Just drop it,” Ken said. “Now. You got the rules? Only two answers possible to my questions. The right answer, or take off more clothes. First question. Who do you work for?”

“Nobody.”

“You don't believe me, son. You're not really afraid of me, right?”

“I know who you are,” Cady said. “You're that has-been cop. You used to work Vice, but you were a total fuckup. People saw you coming along, they didn't move away, they just laughed at your ass.”

“Ezekiel,” Ken said. “The Book of Ezekiel. Chapter twenty-five, verse seventeen. You can look it up, it's in the Bible.”

“Ah,” Cady said. “Now, that's real sweet. You're gonna preach on me, you're gonna save my soul.”

“‘The path of the righteous man,'” Ken said, “‘is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the
valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.'”

“That's just from some stupid movie,” Cady said. “And you aren't even a nigger, saying that dumb shit.”

“Sit down,” Ken said. Voice dropping at least four notes. “Pull off a boot.”

Cady didn't protest, his face a mask. He leaned against the Porsche, slid down with his back against it, and tugged off his right boot.

“Twelve-inch alligator tops,” Ken said. “From Paul Bond. Now, that's truly the finest boot made. Myself, I've just got some standard lizardskin boots. Handmade, sure. But not so fancy as alligator. Too bad, looks like your feet are a couple sizes smaller than mine. Let's try that question again. Who do you work for?”

“Myself.” Cady's face totally blank, as though he were concentrating on something entirely remote, like playing solitaire on a computer.

“The other boot.”

Once it was off, Ken reached down, handed both boots to me with his pocketknife.

“Slash his boot tops.”

I stabbed through the alligator skin, ripping long swaths through each boot.

“Now,” Ken said. “I've just called some honest-to-God Jesus fire down on your boots. Next wrong answer, that Jesus fire lightning bolt comes right out of this .357, comes right down on your balls. So. There's no mistake here, you know what I'll do. Tell you what, though. We'll let that question slide awhile. Who do you work for, we'll come back to that. Who was the person who shot the video?”

For the first time, Cady looked surprised, his head bobbing from Ken to me and back to Ken.

“Deb,” he said. “Deb. I don't know her last name.”

“Deb No Last Name. Does she work for you?”

“No. I arrange the fights, she turns up with her crew. I never see pictures.”

“So do you both work for the same person?”

“No. Yeah. I guess so.”

“And that person's name?” Ken said.

“I don't know, honest to Christ, I don't know.”

“Okay. Where do the fighting cocks come from?”

“All over, man, that's easy. The champion cocks come up from Sonora.”

“Okay, third and last time. Somebody arranges all this, somebody further up the food chain from you. So, who is it?”

Cady didn't answer, Ken fired his .357 a foot away from and alongside Cady's head, black goo trickling out the left ear.

“God
damn
!” Cady said.

“You beginning to see a pattern in my questions?” Ken said.

“I'm just somebody in the food chain,” Cady said. “I get cell phone instructions from somebody I've never met. He tells me where and when, I hire a crew and run the matches. But I can't give you no names, man.”

Ken fired again, alongside the other ear. Blood trickled from the ear and the promoter wiped at it, groggy, wincing.

“Why are you so interested in cockfights anyway?” he said. “The real money is in the dogs.”

“You stage dogfights?”

“No. Somebody else does that.”

“Back to names,” Ken said. “Is it the same person?”

“Do you work for the
maras
?” I said.

“Oh, man. Oh, Christ, man.” Cady blanched in terror. “Come
on,
man! I'm not saying anything more.”

“The videotapes,” I said. “What happens with the videotapes?”

“I don't know, man. Please. That woman, Deb, she takes the tapes. That's all I know. I just run the cockfights. “Yeah, sure, okay? They own a lot of the birds, they dope the birds, they rig the fights, nothing is just fun for those people, not unless it makes money.”

“How much do
you
make?” Ken said.

“I'm paid five thousand a fight.”

“In cash?”

“Money transfer. It shows up in a bank account. Two thousand up front, the rest the morning after the fights.”

“What bank?” I said.

“Bank of America.”

“What branch?”

“Green Valley. The account's in the name of Dakota Barbie. Like the state, like the doll. Okay, that's all, that's all I know.”

“Do we believe him?” Ken said to me. I nodded. “All right, Max. Whatever your real name is, I'll keep your wallet, we'll get your ID checked out real good. Hand me that duct tape.”

After being wrapped in the tape, this time around both hands and ankles, Cady thought he'd go back into the Porsche, but Ken dragged him ten yards away. Cady tried shouting, but the desert swallowed his voice as we drove away.

 

He pulled up next to the warehouse, got out to slide open one of the doors, drove the Porsche inside. “These people who run the fights, they're worse than the animals that get slaughtered.”

The barn was almost totally empty, the bleachers gone, nothing left but an ancient Ford pickup parked askew in one corner, the hood up, two fifty-gallon iron barrels on the ground near the tailgate.

“What will happen to this place?”

“I'll report it, cops might stake it out, probably not. These promoters move from place to place.”

We looked in the barrels, both of them full of dead cocks. Ken went berserk. Finding a rusted tire iron in the pickup cab, he went to the Porsche, smashed all its windows, headlights, taillights, long scratches and dents in the body. Back at the pickup, he found two red cans of gasoline and dumped some of it in the barrels, then took some rags from the barn floor and soaked them with gasoline before cramming the rags into the Porsche's gas tank. The rest of the gasoline he sloshed over the wooden walls. Waving me outside, he stood in the doorway, touched a match to the trail of gasoline he'd laid down from the Porsche and lit it up.

We ran to the Harley and Ken popped a wheelie, he was so anxious to get away, fighting down the front of the bike as the warehouse burst into flame.

I flipped open my cell.

“What are you doing?” Ken shouted.

“Calling nine-one-one.”

“Let it burn,” Ken said. “Just let it burn.”

H
ome.

I pushed through my bedroom door, going to the windows. The door hung slightly askew and swung shut behind me. When I turned, I saw myself in a full-length mirror on the back of the door.

Startled, I saw myself regard myself with surprise. Biker chick, that's not
me,
is it? Reddish spots on my bare legs, below the knee. More spots on my boots.

Still surprised, I bent toward the mirror to examine the spots, not even thinking to look at the real person. Speckles of blood all over my boots. I looked directly down at them. Sat on the floor, propped left boot on my right thigh. Boots flecked with rooster blood, like sprinkles on a mocha ice-cream cone. I'd not realized I'd splattered myself when dropping the dead rooster into the burn barrel.

 

I left my house at dawn. I drove west for a while, drove north, the sunrise low on the horizon and sometimes in my face, against my left cheek or my right and because I wanted its warmth, I turned south when I crossed I-10 for the fourth time.

Without noticing, I merged onto I-19, headed toward Nogales and the border, past the Desert Diamond Casino, with a dozen RVs parked on the edges of the
lots and fifty or sixty empty cars around the front and side of the casino, early morning slot machine players.

At Esperanza, I exited into Green Valley, pulled up to the empty parking lot near the Book Shop, where I'd once parked window to window with Nathan. I read the scrapes and oil markings on the pavement like they were tea leaves, but found nothing there, so I eased out onto La Canada and headed south again until by sheer coincidence I saw the Bank of America branch, its clock reading the wrong time, big hand pointed at six and the little hand at eleven. I pulled into the parking lot, stopped, put both hands in back of my neck, trying to stretch tension out of my neck muscles. Using my fingertips, I tried a shiatsu massage on my temples, but nothing stopped my headache, so I turned onto Continental and saw I needed gas.

A brand-new GMC pickup pulled to the pump across from me. A tiny woman with pink hair jumped out to pump gas, the driver eyeing me from underneath his cheap straw hat, the straw crushed and folded until the sides came up almost vertical with the brow pointing down. As I pumped gas, I saw his eyes switch to the I-10 on-ramp, where three people stood in a huddle. A Mexican family, parents and a small boy.

“Damn Mexicans,” the pickup driver said. “You hear so many stories, you know, people down there on the take, bribes, up the food chain the bribes get bigger. But that's their country, I don't like 'em personally, I don't want 'em in Arizona. Drive down here, look at that plastic everywhere, bottles, baggies, they're just litterbugs.”

Wiggling his back against the beaded seat cushion, scratching a spot somewhere below his shoulder blades, then moving up and down, drawing his jeans tighter against his crotch until he had to reach inside his belt and rearrange his parts inside the white jockey shorts. Jerking so much the pickup bounced until he got everything in place. He'd dropped his seatback almost to a
forty-five-degree angle, lying back like he was watching football on TV, his chin nearly on his neck, watching the road and his mirrors from the top of his eyes. I remembered a rodeo in Flagstaff, watching bronc riders stretched horizontal over the horse's back, legs extended to rowel the bronc.

“I mean,” he said, “I got nothing against money, I got nothing against the smugglers and cartels and politicos and even the
policia
down there. What I got is this really pissed-off feeling that the money people are driving the poor people north, up here where they work illegally and take money out of
my
pocket. I could give a shit about what's legal, what's…how do you say it, what's right? Morals. Morally right. Money talks, it don't give no mind to morals.”

Slim Pickens popped into my head, Pickens spurring the bomb, waving his crushed cowboy hat with a free hand, riding the hydrogen bomb in
Dr. Strangelove
and hollering,
YeeeeHaaaaa,
toward the end of the world.

Finished pumping my gas, I swung down Continental and onto the ramp, the man with his thumb out, but he pulled it back when he saw my face. I stopped just ahead of them, waved them to my car.

“Where you going?” I said.

“San Xavier,” the man said. “The mission. Sunday mass.”

“Let me give you a ride. Get in.”

The woman and boy climbed in back, the woman smiling as she worked her way through a rosary. The man sat beside me, admiring the car's interior.

“
Mucho gracias, señora,
” he said shyly. “We light a candle. For you.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, thank you, but you don't have to light a candle.”

“I will pray for you,” the woman said, leaning forward from the back seat and pressing a card in my hand.

“No, no,” I said. “Please,
por favor,
no prayers.”

“But señora,” the man said. “It is us who pray for you.”

“Whatever,” I said. I dropped them off near the front of Mission San Xavier and circled the parking lot to return to I-10, but stopped the car dead when I passed the W:AK minimall. Three stray dogs bounded over, tails wagging as I half stepped out of the car and immediately got back in and slammed the door shut, the dogs standing on their hind legs, all on my side of the car, my power window down and not going up fast enough, my thumb aching on the button to close the window faster. But the dogs only wanted to lick my hand, lick my face, get some food. They trotted off after the next car, ready to beg all over again.

Dogs. The W:AK minimall. This is the place of my worst nightmare. The night five years ago when Rey Villaneuva and I went looking for Miguel Zepeda, and Charley Not A Bear set a boy on fire.

 

We hurried through the doorway just as a large German shepherd lunged at my ankles. Rey slammed the door shut. Broken glass crunched under my feet. Rey flicked the flashlight down and around
.

Plates, cups, saucers, bowls, everything breakable had been swept from two shelves above the sink and lay in pieces on the floor. Every drawer had been pulled out, emptied, smashed, and broken. One of three wooden chairs had been used to smash cabinets, the other chairs, and a card table. Two framed photographs lay in the sink amid shattered frames and glass
.

The dog threw himself at the wooden bottom of the door. Rey played the flashlight around the doorway frame and down the hallway leading from the kitchen into the rest of the house
.

A board squeaked in a front room as somebody put weight on it, and it squeaked again when the weight was released. At the far end of the cone of light I saw a shadow flicker from one room to the next
.

I crossed both arms across my breasts and gripped my shoulders hard, blood pounding in the vein in my right temple
.

I moved backward into the kitchen, glass crunching with every step. The noise really set off the dog and he tried to jump through the broken glass at the top part of the door. I hunkered on my ankles against the wall, hands over my ears, wanting to scream. My left calf muscles tightened in an excruciating cramp and I had to stand suddenly, banging against the wall and flinging one arm out to brace myself
.

The dog leapt up through the window, knocking the remaining shards of glass into the kitchen just as three shadows exploded down the hallway. Somebody crashed into Rey, knocking them both to the floor. Rey's flashlight moved across a blue backpack and down onto a pair of lizardskin cowboy boots, one of them in motion, kicking Rey's hand
.

The flashlight bounced and skittered on the floor and came to rest, illuminating Rey's head just as a second man burst into the kitchen, swinging a tire iron downward toward Rey. A third man got to the door and flung it wide open. Rey fired at him and missed, the man running toward the plaza as lights went on inside a house several doors away
.

The dog snarled at the second man, sinking his teeth into the man's leg. The man screamed in pain as he smashed the tire iron into the dog's head so savagely it stuck there. He pushed Rey aside and ran out the doorway. Rey fell sideways, bumping against my leg
.

I crashed to the floor, writhing among the broken dinner plates as he jumped out the doorway, turning to fire the Glock. My ears rang from the gunshots, the noise bouncing off the walls. Ejected shell casings clinked on the floor, and I drew in a deep breath filled with the acrid scent of sulfur and gunpowder
.

Rey got up, unsteady, and staggered out the door and into the yard, streaked by the first rays of false dawn
light. Charley stood there, his head angled sideways to keep his long black hair out of his eyes as he sighted along the barrel of his .30-30, tracking the man fifty yards away who was limping badly. He disappeared behind a house and we ran toward him as he entered the San Xavier Plaza parking lot
.

Charley fired just as the man stumbled on a rock and lurched forward. The bullet caught him squarely in the center of his backpack. The man exploded into a fireball and dropped solidly to the ground, his arms and legs wiggling frantically as the fire consumed his entire body
.

“Bad luck for him,” Charley said. A siren sounded down San Xavier Road. “And bad luck for me if I stay out here and they find me with a gun.”

“Give me the .30-30,” Rey said. “I'll get it back to you later.”

Without hesitation, Charley tossed the rifle to Rey and disappeared into the next house. The red-blue bubblegum police lights came across the parking lot, stopping abruptly when the car's headlights illuminated the burning man
.

Two young Tribal Policemen crouched nearby, one with a nine-millimeter, the other with a riot gun. In the distance, a third man sprayed a fire extinguisher over the man's body
.

Except it wasn't a man. Just a young boy
.

“Geez, Rey,” one of them said, coming up to us, his hands shaking on the riot gun. “What the hell is happening, anyway? Why'd you shoot that kid?”

And so I stared at the charred body, only partially covered with some EMT cotton blankets. Just for an instant, I tell you. I swear I couldn't have looked at the body for more than a few seconds, but that was enough for the image to get permanently locked into my head
.

 

“Mary,” I said.

A hesitation on the cell phone, Mary trying to register my voice.

“Who is this?”

“Mary. It's Laura Winslow.”

“Laura. Have you, what, why are you calling?”

“Can you meet me somewhere? Right now?”

“What's wrong?”

Something in my voice alerting her, alarming her.

“It's nothing to do with you. It's just, um, I really need a friend. Right this time, this place, I really need a friend.”

“Where are you?”

“The mission. San Xavier.”

“I'll have to bring Ana Luisa. Is that all right?”

“Yes. I'll be up that small hill, to the right of the mission?”

“I know it. There's a resting place up there, wait for me there.” I climbed the hill, alone at the shrine, the morning still early enough that those people arriving had come for early mass and not sightseeing. I'd taken the pink diary from my car, I'd hadn't yet read it, but I couldn't put that off any longer.

I read the only entry. Mary Emich finding two survivors of a terrible accident, the death of the boy, the discovery at the Arivaca Medical Clinic that both children were drug mules, each having swallowed somewhere around twenty balloons of heroin.

Diary clutched between my hands like a hymnal, like a prayer book, like a bad dream, I sat immobile for fifteen minutes, seeing only the contradictions of my life in front of me. The terrible chaos of the burned boy in the parking lot, the white towers of hope and serenity of the mission.

Shifting my body, a card fell out of my bag, the card that the Mexican woman had given me. A prayer card.

A beatific woman, head covered with a loose blue shawl, tears runneling down her cheeks, kneeling before a crown of thorns, hands clasped in prayer, looking hopefully upward.

Two shadows crossed my face.

“Laura,” Mary said. “Meet Ana Luisa.”

A shy brown face poked around from behind Mary's waist, the head turned sideways as though to see me from a different perspective.

“
Hola,
Ana Luisa,” I said. She grinned, ducked behind Mary's back, and then held tightly to Mary's left arm. The mission bells rang and rang. “It's a beautiful morning,” Mary said. “Please. Come with us to mass. We'll add you in our prayers, and we'll all light candles.”

 

I sat still and silent during the mass, barely following the liturgy, not kneeling with Mary and Ana Luisa, but gradually relaxing to the serenity of the service.

Afterward, we strolled the inner courtyard of the mission, the walls lined with tables of candles in glass jars. Mary bought three candles and we each lit one, Mary saying a prayer, Ana Luisa more attracted by the friendly stray dogs that roamed everywhere in the courtyard. I lit my candle and we walked back up the hill to the shrine.

“There are two or three hundred lit candles here,” I said. “What are they for?”

“To keep the flame of Jesus alive.”