The Lies that Bind (7 page)

“All right,” I said, since we seemed to have moved from the business part to the social part of this meeting. I got up and joined Cindy in the kitchen. Martha followed us.

“I don't need anything,” Martha said. She sipped her vodka more slowly than anybody I'd ever seen.

“What'll you have, Neil?”

“A tequila. Up.” With some salt and lime juice to squeeze on the back of my hand was the way I liked to drink it, but I didn't ask.

Cindy pulled the handle on the metal ice tray and cracked loose the ice. “I don't think Mother has any tequila in the house. “

“I don't,” Mother agreed.

“How 'bout a vodka? There's plenty of that.”

“All right,” I said. Cindy opened the freezer and pulled out a bottle of Stolichnaya, which was smoking with cold. She took a glass from a shelf and began to pour my drink.

“Don't use that one,” Martha ordered. “You put those glasses in the dishwasher the last time you were here, and they came out spotty.”

“I was trying to help, Mother.”

“Use the ones on the second shelf.”

“What's for dinner?” Whit entered the kitchen and took up more than his share of the limited
space.

“Smells like roast beef,” offered Cindy.

“Leg of lamb,” said Martha. “Baked potatoes and peas.”

“Of course,” said Cindy.

“Of course what?” asked Martha.

“Peas. We always have peas with lamb, and actually, we always have them with roast beef too. Here, Neil.” Cindy handed me my vodka and not a second too soon.

“What's wrong with peas?” asked Martha. “I thought you liked peas.”

“I do, Mother. Everybody
likes
peas. How can you not like peas? But we
always
have peas. With everything. You're supposed to serve mint jelly with lamb.”

“If you want mint jelly, there's some in the cupboard.”

Cindy looked through the shelves and found the jar. “Mint jelly should be
cold.”

“And just
what
is wrong with you tonight?” snapped Martha in her best disapproving-mother voice. In this family every sentence had at least one underlined word in it. “You've done
nothing
but criticize me ever since you walked in the door.”

“Nothing is wrong with me, Mother.
Nothing.
Everything is peachy keen.”

“It wasn't easy raising a child on my own, you know, and I certainly didn't get any help,” Martha said. Every paragraph in this family had at least one cliché in it too. “I always tried to do my best. I gave you a good home surrounded by beautiful things. I took Michael in when he was having trouble. It's not my fault he met Justine.”

“I know. I know you have beautiful things. I know you took Michael in, Mother. You don't have to tell me. I
know.
” Cindy picked up the ice tray, intending to put it back in the freezer, but it fell out of her hands and smashed into the sink. The metal tray hit the stainless steel hard, and the ice clattered as it fell out. Cindy gripped the counter and stared at the ice. A silence followed that was more than welcome to me, but Whit filled it up.

“Welcome to the Conover family,” he said.

The hard-core members of this family, Cindy and Martha, the ones that were in it for life, looked at each other over the sink full of broken ice. “It wasn't Justine's fault, Mother. You'll never understand that. Justine didn't kill Michael. It was an accident. It's terrible that Michael's dead. It's worse that Justine's dead too. Sometimes, if you want to know, I don't think I can stand it.”

“It's not my fault.”

Cindy sighed. “Of course not. Sorry you have to listen to this, Neil.”

I shrugged. Domestic disagreements were one way I earned my living. Everybody hates them, everybody has them. Most people would rather argue about peas and mint jelly than life and death.

Martha
took the leg of lamb out of the oven and placed it on a platter. “You carve,” she said to Whit.

“Be glad to,” he replied.

“Do you want another drink?”

“A splash.” He handed her his glass, carried the platter to the table and started hacking off pieces of gray meat that appeared to have had every ounce of juice cooked out of it. As a butcher he lacked finesse. A child with a dull knife could have done it better, but the man's right and obligation to carve the meat were a tradition that remained intact in some families.

Dinner was served on white linen place mats. The china was white with a gold border. The flatware was engraved with the initials
MCC.
The candles in the silver candlesticks never got lit. The peas were soggy, the lamb overcooked. The mint jelly quivered in its crystal dish, but nobody broke through the surface tension to take a bite. The conversation concerned real estate and was dominated by Whit. I discerned a once-familiar pattern. The woman of the house was the boss when it came to domestic matters, but when the family sat down to dinner, everybody shut up and let the male dominate, especially when he talked about business—and Whit's business was real estate. So was Martha's and so was mine, but I've never considered it a fit subject for dinner conversation.

“Interest rates are down to eight percent,” Whit said to nobody in particular, “the lowest point in twenty years. What are you paying on the mortgage here?” he asked Martha.

“Nine and three-quarters,” she said.

“It's a little soon to think about refinancing. You ought to wait until there's a full two-point spread.”

“Really?”

“I'd give it to next spring. The administration will want to keep the economy pumped, and the Federal Reserve'll be cutting the prime rate. It ought to get down below eight percent by April.”

“Did you know that Katie Pollock is living in Scottsdale, Neil?” Cindy asked me.

“No,” I said.

“She's opening a day care center, and she wanted me to go into business with her, only we came here.” Her attempt to grab the conversational ball didn't work; she got blocked by tight end Whit.

“A day care center. Now there's a great way to lose your shirt,” said Whit. He changed the subject to one that was more to his liking—big money. “Has anybody been watching the Keating trial?” he asked. “CNN has been televising it. Everyone's out to get Charlie now, but they forget what a boon he was to Arizona. The economy was pumped when he had control of Lincoln.”

Boondoggle would be more like it. A ton of office buildings, apartments and resorts were built that nobody needed or wanted. Federally insured deposits were used to pay for them and pad the pockets
of
Keating and his friends to the tune of a couple billion dollars. Now the empty buildings were rotting in the desert, and Charlie Cheating's boon was going to cost every American taxpayer dearly.

“What did he do that was so bad anyway?” asked Whit.

“How about he invested people's retirement income in junk bonds?” said I.

“High-yield investments are high risk. You pay your money, you take your chances.”

“Only he never told people what the risks were.”

“Caveat emptor.” Let the buyer beware, which more often than not means let the buyer get fucked.

“I saw a Cheating cartoon the other day,” I said. “He's in jail, reaching his hand out through the bars, and a guard walks by, mumbling under his breath, ‘That goddamn Keating's asking for the Grey Poupon again.'”

Cindy laughed. Martha helped herself to a slice of cooked-to-death lamb. Whit said, “I don't get it.”

Either you have a sense of humor or you don't. You can't explain jokes to people like that. Whit didn't give me a chance anyway. He went right on talking.

“I was playing tennis today with Ed George from First Western Bank. Do you know him, Neil?”

“No.”

“It went three sets. He had me down four love in the third, but I rallied and took him. Ed's not a bad tennis player, but he has a weak backhand. It's his grip, I think. I've been working on mine with Jim, the pro at the country club. He teaches skiing at Sandia in the winter. Have you ever skied there, Nel … Neil?”

“No,” I said again.

“It's not every city that has its own ski area. It's funny that the economy in Albuquerque never took off. I was asking Ed about it when we had dinner with him on Halloween, and he doesn't understand it either. What was the name of that place we went to, Cyn?”

“Chez Henri.”

“That's right. Great desserts, but the crepes were soggy and the service was terrible. Now Taos is an interesting area. Remember when we skied there, Cyn? Great runs, super powder, but there is absolutely nothing to do at night. It's dead as Tucson in the summer. Give me Europe or Aspen any day. I don't understand why Ernie Blake didn't do more to develop Taos. First Western would have backed him, I know.”

Whit talked, Cindy and Martha ate, I yawned. Who needed Halcion when you could spend the evening with Whit, the kind of guy who warms up his vocal cords in the morning by looking in the mirror and singing “Me, me, me”? He reminded me of the joke about the man who talks about himself all
evening
and then says, “Enough about me. Tell me about yourself. What do you think of me?” One of nature's laws is that the more successful men are, the more they talk and the less they listen. It's never been my idea of bliss to sit around and listen to men talk about themselves.

“It's amazing how Santa Fe got through the eighties without experiencing any dip in property values at all. In fact the valuation of property in Santa Fe County increased six times. Did you know that?” Whit asked the table, but it did not answer. “The price of an average home there now is a hundred eighty thousand. It's incredible. Most of the influx comes from second-home buyers, flex households with flex jobs. They're the force that's driving that economy. Here I think it'll be high-tech. The salaries and cost of living are so much lower here than California. That's got to make Albuquerque attractive to venture capital.” It also made us the equivalent of a third-world country. One of our fifty states was missing again.

After the vanilla ice cream, Whit paused from his monologue to light a cigar, which was all the excuse I needed to get myself out of there. “Thanks for the dinner,” I said.

“Let's get together for lunch next week, Neil,” said Cindy. “How about Wednesday?”

“Okay.”

She gave me her number and made me promise to call.

“You'll be calling me as soon as you hear anything from Saia?” asked Martha.

“Yes.”

“You ought to get to know Ed George, Neil,” said Whit. “I'll be glad to get the two of you together sometime.”

“Right,” I said.

Cindy let me out. Her wet shoes were still sitting beside the door. As I walked down the sidewalk toward the parking lot and my car, a color TV flickered and signaled like a campfire from the window of a town house across the lawn. An older woman was sitting in front of it, stoking the fire alone. That's how it happens these days. The children (if you ever get around to having any) move away, the men split or die off, the women end up alone eating frozen dinners, watching TV, taking little helpers at bedtime. The sidewalk I was walking on was dry as a diversion channel in winter, not a wet spot or a puddle on it. The sprinklers that kept this part of Los Cerros grass green were not running.

7

I
T DOESN'T MAKE
any sense to leave a car at Mighty to get the oil changed when Jiffy Lube will do it while you wait and you know a mechanic who will do it for nothing, but I called them on Monday anyway. “Mighty,” the guy who answered said. “Ramón Ortiz speaking.”

“Neil Hamel,” I replied. “I'd like to bring my car in for an oil change.”

“When?”

“How about noon on Wednesday?”

“No problem. Do you want to use our courtesy van?” He had a slight Hispanic accent, but it wasn't native New Mexican, I knew; it didn't have the right rhythm.

“Yes.” It beat sitting around the waiting room on a plastic seat reading
People
magazine. Besides, I was due at Cindy Reid's for lunch at twelve-thirty.

“No problem,” he said again.

******

I called Cindy and got directions to her place. It was in the Heights and not far from Mighty. “Eleven Juniper Road in Los Verdes Meadows,” she said. “It's a house that Mother built, and she's renting it to us. You won't have any trouble finding the place; it has Mother written all over it.”

“I'm getting my oil changed at Mighty, and I'll have the courtesy van drop me off,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied.

******

When I got to Mighty, Ramón Ortiz was standing behind the counter talking on the phone and wearing a pin that had his name on it. He was tall and good-looking, and he knew it. He had a bullfighter's arrogant expression, a hawk's steely eyes and an aloof manner, a man more comfortable in spurs and a cape than a white Mighty shirt. He sized me up while he conducted his phone conversation, as if he were deciding whether I was worth waiting on or not. “Loosen up, dude,” I wanted to say. “I'm only asking for an oil change.”

“
Ta luego
,” he said to the phone and hung up.

“I'm Neil Hamel.”

His eyes moved across the checklist on the counter. “An oil change?”

“
Right. It's the yellow Nissan.” I handed him my keys. He wrote Hamel on a tag, attached it to the keys and hung them on the keyboard near the phone.

“You want to use the courtesy van?”

“Yes,” I said.

I happened to be standing next to the door to the shop and could hear men joking in Spanish while they elevated a car on the hydraulic lift. “Chico.” Ramón raised his voice slightly, and one of the guys came around the corner. Ramón's aristocratic manner gave him some kind of pedigree; Chico's appearance wouldn't get him a bone. Chico was a street dog, scruffy and scrawny. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, shabby running shoes. He had a broken front tooth that would cost more than someone who worked at Mighty could afford to fix. Unlike the guys in the shop, he wasn't wearing a mechanic suit, and his hands weren't stained with grease either. He was the driver, not a mechanic; a lightweight or the newest illegal alien.