Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (41 page)

    
Highway 68 into Taos was like all access roads to
all places of pilgrimage. The camp followers of sprawl—fast-food outlets, insurance
offices, beauty salons, liquor stores—had found their way there and planted
flimsy foundations. Not even timeless Taos could keep Burger King off the Paseo
del Pueblo Sur. Even so, the steep boulevard leading to the old village
promised haven from commerce, if only because there was nothing beyond but the
mountains and the Rio Grande.

    
Raszer
dropped his bags at the Adobe Pines Inn, the most indigenous of the more
modestly priced places on the strip. It was a low-slung, tile-roofed hacienda
of 1832 vintage, surrounded by orchards and fronted by an eighty-foot grand
portal. The beds were as sturdy as galleons, the decor tastefully rustic, the
breakfast advertised as home-cooked. Raszer took an approving look around, then
headed into town.

    
Special
Agent Djapper had given Raszer the last known address for Constance and Ruthie
Endicott, estranged wife and elder daughter of the late Silas. It was a tiny,
wind-blasted cracker box of a house on farm property along the Camino del
Medio, probably built to shelter a ranch hand’s family and now rented by the
month. The screen door was half off its hinges, the porch sagged with dry rot,
and the place was clearly unoccupied, but through a pane glazed over with red
dust, Raszer spotted an empty half pint of Cuervo and a cat curled on a stained
pillow. He figured that the cat probably came with the house, the Cuervo with
Ruthie.

    
He
stepped off the porch, feeling temporarily adrift. He’d purposely not warned
Ruthie of his coming, for fear she’d bolt, and because both Djapper and the
elders of the church had assured him that mother and daughter were still in
Taos. But people did blow in and out of this town like tumbleweed, didn’t they?
And where would Ruthie have blown? The wind rippled across a swath of columbine
and carried the delicate fragrance to his nostrils. Spring in the high country.
He thought of the girl in the church, of the dress she wore, and he determined
to start from scratch, beginning with the local phone book, then the local
Witnesses, and then the local taverns.

    
After
two hours of leaving calling cards, Raszer circled back to Taos Plaza, dead
center, as in all old Spanish towns. He parked himself on the steps of the
bandstand and surveyed the tiled plaza and the little shops that bordered it. The
locals were inside the shops, the tourists squinting through the glass at
turquoise and silver and glazed pottery—squinting because the storefronts all
mirrored the low sun. There were barely two hours of daylight left, and Raszer
was no closer to finding Ruthie. In the window of a New Age trinket store, he
spotted the reflection of a crew of townie kids headed off in a huddle. They
had just about vanished when he saw a fringed pant leg rounding a bend into a
narrow lane off the northwest corner of the plaza.

    
At the
end of the lane, wedged into a cul-de-sac, was the Alley Cantina. The door was
open, and a Ryan Adams song slapped off the surrounding adobe. The kids had
gone inside, as the air was turning cool, and Raszer followed them into the
dim, moderately crowded barroom. It smelled of hops and tortillas, and he
realized he had a taste for both after the drive. He found a stool, ordered a
Carta Blanca, and finished a basket of nachos before taking Ruthie’s picture
out and calling the bartender over. It wasn’t difficult to command his
attention; Raszer was easily fifteen years older than the next-oldest person in
the room. Beyond that, he had a $20 bill on the bar.

    
“Ever
seen this girl?” he asked. “The hair might be different. Look at the eyes and
the mouth. And the attitude.”

    
“Uh-
huh
,” the bartender grunted, drying his
hands with a towel.

    
Raszer
held a beat, hoping for some elaboration on the grunt.

    
“Does
that mean you’ve seen her?” he asked. “Her name’s Ruthie.”

    
“Is she
in trouble?” the bartender asked with a grin. “Wouldn’t surprise me, with that
mouth. You a cop?”

    
“Nope,”
said Raszer. “Private investigator. It’s actually her little sister I’m looking
for. She was abducted over a year ago in L.A. I just want to talk to Ruthie.”

    
“Right,
well . . . I’m not positive, but she looks familiar. Cat’s eyes. See those even
in the dark. Lemme call Sage over. She’s half Tiwa. Knows everybody.” The
bartender summoned a heavy, brown-skinned young woman who smelled of her
namesake and had been drinking in the corner. She came slowly, gravity weighing
on her limbs. The Tiwa were the Indians of the Taos Pueblo, but this
girl—Raszer guessed—was an outcast.

    
Raszer
introduced himself and refreshed her 7 and 7.

    
“Know
this pistol, Sage?” the bartender asked her. “Isn’t she the one—”

    
“The one
who rode off on Bobby T’s Indian last Saturday,” Sage affirmed. “Hell, you
oughta know her. Your drink orders double when she comes in. All the boys
scrambling to get ’er lubricated.” The Tiwa girl turned to Raszer. “Are you a
bounty hunter, mister, or a Hollywood casting agent?”

    
“He’s a
private eye,” answered the bartender. “But he is from Hollyweird.”

    
“She
done somethin’ wrong?” asked Sage. “I sure hope you haul her ass off somewhere.
Us local girls got enough competition.”

    
“Not
that I know of,” said Raszer. “But I will try to sideline her for a few days.”

    
Sage
smiled and tipped her glass to Raszer’s. “She ’n her mom live out by the tin
works on outbound Highway 64. There’s a trailer park called Reynaldo’s. Not too
trashy. The mother’s got a man. It’s his trailer. He’s a holy roller.”

    
“You
wouldn’t happen to know his name?” Raszer asked. “There could be a lot of
trailers out there.”

    
“Sure I
do,” said Sage. “For a refill.”

    
Raszer
nodded to the bartender.

    
“It’s
Angel,” she said. “
Ong-hell
. Angel
Davidos.”

    
“Thanks,”
said Raszer, handing the girl her drink. “You’ve been a help.”

The wind comes up with sunset in the mountain
Southwest, and for at least a few minutes, modern man walks in the same spirit
world as his ancestors. Raszer felt it rising on his back, finding the dampness
in his shirt, in the furrows that ran along his spine. It was as if the massive
red ball of the sun was displacing an ocean of air as it sank between the
peaks. It was also a harbinger of night’s coming, and of the wolves.
   
The turnoff to Reynaldo’s RV Park was as
advertised, just north of the Taos Tin Works, through a broken gate that led to
a graded dirt road over an empty pasture and past a stand of cottonwoods. On
the far side of the grove, across a little stream, a wooden fence bounded a few
acres of flat, rocky land that was home to a transitory community of about
three hundred souls. There were campers up on cinder blocks that looked to be
there for keeps, forty-year-old trailers with hulls as encrusted as ships in
dry dock, and a few late models of the Winnebago type. The turf occupied by
long-term residents had a sunken-in look and an accretion of mostly out-used
junk that was probably kept in place to mark the imaginary property lines.

    
Having
Angel Davidos’s name was no help. There was no directory at the front gate, and
no landlord on-site. So Raszer began at an outside corner and wandered up and
down the ill-defined paths between the trailers, the streets of this makeshift
neighborhood. The residents, many of them Hispanic or of mixed race, seemed to
be either in the act of preparing the evening meal or out in meager yards,
enjoying the sunset and cocktail hour. The smell of beer and marijuana smoke
hung in the air like a net suspended from the trees, and griddle smoke drifted
from tiny, louvered kitchen windows. There could, Raszer thought, be worse ways
and far worse places to live.

    
Some of
the owners had buttressed the front steps of their homes with narrow wooden
decks constructed from plywood and two-by-fours, just wide enough to
accommodate a couple of beach chairs and a barbecue. A few had flower boxes,
American flags, and a coat of paint, enough to create the semblance of a front
porch. On one of them, painted pale yellow and located at the far end of a
diagonal thoroughfare running from corner to corner in the lot, Raszer spotted
a girl in a blue dress, waiting.

    
There
was no question she was waiting. Her elbows were propped on the railing, and
her chin was in her palm. Her feet were bare, and the skirts of her sundress
billowed around her legs like lace curtains in a storm. Raszer approached from
fifty yards’ distance with the sun at his back and his shadow thrown long in
front of him. At one point, he instinctively lifted his arm in greeting, and
she did the same. He doubted immediately that what he saw was what it appeared
to be.

    
He
doubted it because the hair spilling messily around her heart-shaped face was
long and auburn, like Katy’s. Her oval mouth was a natural dark pink, like
Katy’s. The tilt of the head and the sweet little smile seemed to be Katy’s,
too, based on the photos.

    
The blue
dress belonged to the girl in the Santuario de Chimayo.

    
Up to a
point, Raszer enjoyed having his mind fucked. It was part of the learning
curve, always instructive, and visions no longer unsettled him. In fact, he
chased after them. But this was different. The girl on the deck was not the
girl from the Santuario de Chimayo, yet she seemed to
know
of her. She was not Katy Endicott, either—not unless things
were really upside down—but she seemed to want to suggest that possibility. The
impression was more than mimicry. It was an embodiment of inviolate longing.

    
Why
? Nothing about the vision on the
yellow deck said “Ruthie” except for the feline eyes and the guile. As Raszer
drew closer, she toyed with him, shuffling personae like playing cards, all of
them some variation on the theme of bruised innocence. Finally, she leaned into
the railing and just let the wind blow back her hair.

    
“Lookin’
for a showdown, cowboy?” she asked, when he was within thirty feet.

    
“Nope.
Looking for a girl.”

    
“You
don’t look like you’d need to look hard,” she replied.

    
“You’d
be surprised,” he said, moving closer. “Were you expecting me?”

    
“I was
expecting somebody,” she answered. “But not you. Fat, sweaty, and bald, I
guess. Like most private dicks really look.”

    
“And
wearing wingtips and a worsted-wool suit in summer, right?”

    
“Somethin’
like that. Or maybe that guy with the glass eye.”

    
“The
bartender from the Cantina call you? Or was it the Indian girl?”

    
He stood
beneath her now. Her face was in the shadow of her hair, but her eyes, which on
closer inspection were emerald green, had him fixed.

    
“Neither
one,” she answered. “Matter of fact, it was Lupe down at the police station.
Ex–sister-in-law of my mother’s hombre. Those people stay close.”

    
“I guess
so,” he said. “Nice to have friends in high places.”

    
“She’s
only a dispatcher, but Lupe knows what’s what.” She cocked her head, exposing
one side of her face to the low sun. There were pale freckles on either side of
her nose. “But thanks for cluing me in. Pays to know who’ll sell you out for a
drink.”

    
“What’d
you do with your hair? I’d have figured you for a natural redhead.”

    
“Wasn’t
any more natural than this,” she said, pulling at a strand. “I forget what
color my real hair is.”

    
“Well,
it’s red, according to your California driver’s license.”

    
“Which
one?”

    
Raszer
laughed. “Mind if I have a cigarette?”

    
“Not if
you give me one.”

    
He shook
one from the pack and held it up for her to withdraw. He lit it, carefully
navigating between the hanging curtains of hair, and she touched her palm to
the back of his hand to steady the lighter. A learned gesture—movies, probably.
Then he lit his own and stepped back to exhale the smoke—also a learned
gesture.

    
“You and
your sister,” he said, “you were pretty good at trading identities, right? From
the looks of it, you decided that the world needed Katy more than Ruthie.”