Unscrewed (13 page)

Silence echoed through the crowd of mourners who had gathered outside, then, “You think I’m an idiot?” Kindred’s voice was lower still. “You think I’m a goddamn moron?”

Rivera shook his head, like a small boy being chastised. I could see now that blood was dripping down his forehead. It was diverted by his left eyebrow, then flowed in a dark eddy along the hollow of his cheek.

“Then give me the gun.” Kindred sounded tired suddenly, like a father who’s missed too much sleep.

“Put me on the case.”

“This case?” Kindred laughed. It was little more than a weary snort. “Are you out of your fucking mind? I’ll be lucky to keep you out of jail. Just hand over the gun before someone blows this so out of proportion I can’t—”

But just then a cop car careened around the corner, lights wheeling, sirens suddenly full blast. Another came from the opposite direction, spraying colored lights across Rivera’s face and gleaming off the gun that dangled chest-high from his fingers.

14

H
OLY CATS!” Laney said. She was perched on the edge of her desk, peeling an orange.

I nodded and paced the narrow length of my reception area. It was empty except for Laney and myself, and her longbow, of course—ever vigilant.

“So they took him away in the squad car?”

“Yeah.” The memory still made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Front seat or back?”

I shook my head. It had all happened in an instant. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. Kindred had wasted no time removing him from the scene. But what had happened after that?

“What happened after that?” Laney was reading my mind again.

“I don’t know. I grabbed my phone and took off before anyone could decide it was my fault.”

“Did you try calling him?”

“No answer.”

“How about his dad?”

“The
senator
?”

“Does he have another dad?”

“I can’t call the senator.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” I did a jittery thing with my hands. I’m not normally a jittery person, but I’d dreamt about Rivera the previous night. He’d found out that
I’d
made the 911 call, and he hadn’t been happy. Then he’d morphed into an alligator. Which was odd. I’d always figured he’d turn into a wolf if he were a shape-shifter. He’d be all dark and bristly and kind of sexy in an animalistic kind of way. “Because he’s the senator,” I said, then paused, scowling. “And his number’s unlisted.”

“His mother?” she asked.

I closed my eyes and did a full-body sigh, trying to relax, but my nerves kept jumping. I would have sold my hair for a pack of cigarettes and a get-out-of-lung-cancer-free card. “She invited me to dinner.”

Laney’s perfect brows shot toward her hairline. “Mrs. Rivera wants to have dinner with you?”

“Or to have me for dinner,” I said. “I’m not sure which.”

“I haven’t actually heard that the Riveras are cannibals.”

I stopped pacing. “What have you heard?”

“About Rosita Rivera?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. Not much. There was that scandal about the senator and his aide, like I mentioned before. When I saw him with his wife at the premiere, everything seemed fine, though. But maybe that was just their public image and didn’t reflect—”

“You saw them?”

“Uh-huh.” She continued peeling her orange. Laney doesn’t eat real food like Doritos and cheesecake and the kind of stuff that makes life worth living.

“Together?”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“That was months ago, Mac. That’s a long time in Mac Land. Andrew Bomstad hadn’t dropped dead at your feet. The brooding lieutenant hadn’t accused you of murder. You were just another nonfelonious citizen of L.A. Updating you about the Riveras would have been like telling you I met Grayson McCouch.”

“Who?”

“Exactly. Anyway, I think the Riveras still attend some social functions together.”

I pondered that while I munched on a section of her orange. It was organic. And not bad for something that hadn’t been processed to within an inch of its life.

“Was that before or after the senator was engaged to Salma Hayek?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Did Mrs. Rivera look as if she wanted to kill Mr. Rivera?”

“It’s hard to say.” She was still masticating on the first section of her orange. Give Laney an environmentally friendly lettuce leaf and she’s busy for half an hour. “Viggo Mortensen was signing autographs.”

“Holy crap!” I remembered Viggo from
Lord of the Rings.
The hair, the attitude, the body.

“I know.”

“Was he wearing chain mail?”

“Blue jeans and a fringed leather jacket. He’s an equestrian.”

“Of course.”

“And a poet.”

Despite my jumping nerves, I drooled a little. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the orange. Viggo had made one hell of an Aragorn. When I was a kid, I’d imagined myself as a hobbit. After seeing the movie, I’d wanted to become an elfin princess, or a royal codpiece.

“Screw Rivera,” I said.

“A little late for that,” she said. “He might be in the slammer.”

“Laney!” I scowled and ate another orange slice. “What would your dad say?” Her father is a Methodist minister, which may have prompted the dearth of swearing and fornicating and other all-American activities on Laney’s part. But now she just laughed.

“I think what you should be concentrating on is that the Riveras travel in the same circles as the king of Middle Earth,” she said.

I tried to focus, but the thought of Viggo in leather, writing haiku, was almost more than I could bear. Which made me realize a sobering point: “He was right,” I said. “I
am
out of my league.”

“What are you talking about?”

I shook my head. “I’m not royalty, a codpiece, or a politician.”

“Uh-huh.”

I glanced out the window, giving the parking lot a glare. “So what am I going to do about Mrs. Rivera’s invitation?”

“Don’t go.”

I snapped my attention back to her. “What are you talking about? I have to go.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Because you’re supposed to talk me out of it.”

“When have I ever talked you out of anything?”

“There was that time I was going to do a three-day liquid fast.”

“You’d already opened the Lay’s bag before I intervened.”

“I was planning to pulverize them and drink them like a shake.”

“You’re sick.”

“What am I going to do about Mrs. Rivera?”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Mac.”

“Like fasting?”

“Like getting yourself killed.”

“Damn, I never thought of that. I should have talked to you before the Bomstad fiasco.”

“I’m serious. Salina Martinez is dead. There’s no reason to assume Mrs. Rivera wasn’t involved.”

I gave that some sagacious consideration as I finished off her orange. She wasn’t going to eat it anyway. “The same could be said of a hundred other people.”

“Just be careful.”

“Yeah, I could tell a police officer where I’m going. Or a U.S. senator. Oh, wait, they’re both murder suspects.”

“Just bring some protection.”

I eyed her up. “The longbow’s kind of bulky. And it doesn’t go with my pants.”

“I was talking about your Mace, genius.”

A car pulled into the parking lot. My first client, spot on time. “I’ve got to find out what’s going on.”

She scowled.

“I’ll be okay, Laney. I promise,” I said, and wandered into my office.

N
ine hours later, as I trundled east on the 210, I wasn’t feeling so cocksure. My mind was racing like an overloaded freight train and my stomach felt queasy.

I don’t know what I expected from Rosita Rivera’s house, but I was surprised from the first moment I spotted her address. It was written in scrolled numerals on the ceramic-tiled pillars that formed the ends of her wrought-iron fence.

It was a simple home, not huge, but certainly not small. The most striking thing about it was the roses. They grew in wild abundance, a mixed rainbow of colors mingled in riotous harmony. They nodded behind the green iron fencing and smiled beside a pond where koi flitted about in the dappled sunlight. They lined the cobbled walk that marched to an arched front door, looking tumbled but graceful against the muted adobe.

I couldn’t help but think about the lone cactus that overlooked the rock in the dust I call my front yard. Had it not been for Rivera, I would only have the rock.

I rang the doorbell, my heart doing a masterful tango in my throat.

“One
momento.
” The yell came from deep inside the low-built hacienda.

I waited, holding a bottle of Veuve Clicquot like a dagger in my right hand. I had spent a full hour standing in Fuhrman’s Liquors deciding on the brand. Veuve’s had looked the classiest. But in actuality I had no idea how it tasted or if Veuve was the name of the champagne, the vineyard, or the guy that gave samples in little plastic cups. My stint at the Warthog hadn’t exactly familiarized me with fine spirits. But I knew how to belch the “Star-Spangled Banner” backward. So far that skill hadn’t come in as handy as I had hoped.

The door opened a few scant inches, then, “Christina!” Mrs. Rivera suddenly appeared in the doorway, clapping her hands together like an ecstatic schoolgirl. “You have come.” She was dressed in a pair of white capris that hugged her like a second skin. Her hips were generous but shapely, her thighs slim. The capris were embellished with a multicolored sash at the waist. Strings of cheery garnets dangled at her dark-skinned calves. Her blouse was red, sleeveless, and showed a good deal of smooth, mocha cleavage. Her sandals had two-inch platforms and braided leather thongs that disappeared between her scarlet-painted toes. In comparison, I felt as big as a hot air balloon and as dull as dirt. “I am so glad. Come in. Come in.”

I did so, towering over her like a lumbering penguin and wondering how long to wait before inquiring whether her son had been incarcerated. Or if he was guilty. Neither seemed to be the perfect opening gambit to cement a congenial relationship. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“No, it is I who must thank you for coming. My son, he does not tell me about his loves as he once did. I must learn about them on my own.”

“I, uhh…” I was stumped already and I hadn’t even left her vestibule. “I’m not really…That is to say, I’m afraid your son and I aren’t exactly…”

I was sweating like a running back. It was the first time in my life I was hoping to be interrupted. She let me stumble along, brows arched over black coffee eyes.

“Jack and I are just friends,” I sputtered.

She threw back her head and laughed. I stared. She calmed finally, still smiling as she caught me in her sparkling gaze.

“You think I have no eyes, yes? Come along. Come along.” We passed a living area. It was stuffed full, packed with cushy chairs, leather couches, colorful pillows, and two cages housing tiny birds as bright as fireflies.

I wandered after her.

“I, umm…I didn’t know if you liked wine.” After the riotous laughing, I was a little chagrined. “I brought you a bottle of…” I glanced at the label but couldn’t remember how to pronounce the name. “Wine.”

She turned toward me, scowling slightly. “Did Gerald not tell you? I do not believe in hard drink,” she said.

“Oh!” I felt immediately guilty. “I just…I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

She laughed and clapped her hands again. “I joke,” she said, and traipsed into the kitchen with a wave of her hand. The walls were lined with iron racks from ceiling to floor. Bottles filled the metal circles like eggs in a nest.

“Well, hurry along. Open it,” she said, and snatched a corkscrew from a counter covered with…everything. It had been nestled between a pair of orange peppers and the rest of the universe. If there was something missing, I couldn’t guess what it was. There might not have been an orangutan.

Seven seconds later I was pouring wine into long-stemmed blue crystal.

Mrs. Rivera took a generous swig and gave an approving nod, either for my efficiency or my choice of wines. I wasn’t certain.

I took a classy sip.

“So,” she said, pulling a butcher knife from a cutlery block beside the sink. “Tell me, Christina, have you yet slept with my husband?”

15

T
HE WINE EXPLODED into my trachea. I coughed, sputtered, thought I might drown, momentarily hoped I would, then gazed at her with streaming eyes. “What?”

“My husband,” said Mrs. Rivera, holding out her glass for a refill. “Have you bedded him?”

“I…I mean…I…just met him five days ago.”

I replenished her drink. The bottle tinkled against the crystal.

She stared at me, wineglass in one hand, knife in the other. I missed Laney’s longbow something fierce.

“Is that a yes or is that a no?” she asked.

“No!”

“No?”

“No!”

She paused for a moment, still watching me, then nodded. “Ahh, that is good,” she said finally. Draining her glass, she plopped the crystal onto the tile counter. “Hand me that cutting board, will you, Christina?”

I lowered my gaze with an effort, searching hopelessly amidst the clutter.

“Right there.” She waved the knife. Light glistened along the serrated edge. “By the books.”

I found it buried beneath a half-embroidered dish towel and a pair of Harlequin romance novels. It was shaped like a pig. My hand only shook a little as I handed it over.

Her knife thunked like a guillotine through the first pepper. It sprang in two, seeds flying in every direction. “You know, Christina…” She pointed at me with the knife. “…it is possible that you and I are the only two women in this city who have not slept with him recently.” She plopped some carrots on the board and whacked off their tops before waving at me with the weapon. “Drink your wine.”

I considered arguing, but my mouth felt dry and she was armed. I took a sip. “He, ummm…I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” she said. Staring wordlessly into space, she finally shrugged. “
Sí,
I suppose I was, too. Sorry he is a
chancho,
huh? Here.” Turning, she opened the oven and pulled out of pan of triangular somethings. “Sprinkle them with cheese,
sí?
It is in the refrigerator.”

The fridge was reminiscent of her counter, loaded to overflowing. I found the shredded cheddar after a safari into its frosty depths and pulled it triumphantly into the open air.

“How much?” I asked.

“You are not…” She waved the knife distractedly. I watched the light glimmer on the blade, mesmerized. “What is it called?”

“Scared?” I said.

“What?”

“What?” In retrospect, I think that I may have been feeling the effects of the wine already. One glass and I can usually be found facedown on the nearest horizontal surface, but sometimes fear for my life can keep me erect for a good hour or two.

“Lactose intolerance,” she said. “You are not that, are you?”

“Oh. No.” I drank again. “I’m not anything intolerant.” Except for knife wounds. I was pretty sure I was knife-wound intolerant.

She laughed. “Good. That is good. Go ahead, sprinkle. Sprinkle.”

I sprinkled.

“Those are quesitas. Miguel’s mother made them the first time I ate at her house.”

“Where was that?”

“Satillo. In Mexico. I was sixteen.” She stared into space, momentarily forgetting the severed pepper and newly decapitated carrots. “We had not yet been dating four weeks when he asked me to marry him.”

Holy crap. Sixteen! “And you said yes?”

She shrugged. “He was a fine catch,” she said, still staring. “Ambitious. Courteous. Had a
culata
hard as a Spanish onion.”

I coughed on my wine. I didn’t know what a
culata
was, but I wasn’t too drunk to make an uneducated guess.

“Of course…” She shrugged and made a face. “…he was also a slimy bastard. But I did not know that at the time.” She resumed chopping. “My mother did not wish for me to marry him. We ran away to Mexico City without a peso between us, but, oh, the wedding night, huh? His hands were like voodoo.” She glanced up, eyes bright. “More cheese.”

I shut my mouth and sprinkled madly.

“Good. That is good. Now put them back in the oven. You know what is needed?” she asked, propping her fists on her hips.

A cold shower? A lobotomy? A bullet in the brain pan? A—

“Margaritas.”

Whoa. “I really don’t think—” I began, but she was already taking the cover off the blender.

“Get the ice, Christina.”

I did. She used half a pint of tequila. Some of it made it into the blender, but most of it washed across the counter. Sugar was added, inside and out.

“This will hold us over until our marvelous dessert, yes?”

“I—”

“Which I cannot complete yet, for I do not have the brandy.”

“Ahh…”

“But do not worry. It will be delivered soon.”

“They do that?”

“
Sí.
I have a good relationship with Manny from Pablo’s Spirits. Now, about the margaritas…the trick is in the fruit, huh?” she said, and added a banana, a boatload of strawberries, and the juice of a lime. She hit a button. The blender buzzed raucously, chewing up ice and fruit. A slice of orange came next. Liquid spattered the wall. She slapped on the lid. “If you add fruit enough, you will not become the drunk.”

“Really?”

“That is what Miguel told me on our first time together.” She shook her head and punched the
OFF
button. Silence exploded around us. “Gerald was created that very night.”

When she was sixteen and drunk as a sailor? Did she resent the senator for that? Enough to think him guilty of murder? Enough to kill his fiancée?

“We decided to marry a week later. Mama did not know I was with child. But I was well aware.” Padding across the tiled floor, she opened a cupboard and gazed up at the top shelf. “Fetch those glasses, will you, my dear?”

I towered over her, reached up, and came away with glasses the size of birdbaths.

She filled them to the brim then made a kind of salute.

I was compelled to drink. We had served margaritas at the Warthog. They’d tasted a little like battery acid. This one didn’t.

“I knew I would give birth the moment Miguel filled me,” she said.

I gripped the fat stemware and refrained from choking.

“I know these things. It is a gift.” She shrugged. “And a curse.”

I drank again. She seemed relatively well adjusted, but then again, so had David Hawkins, up to the moment he’d threatened me with a butcher knife, at which point I’d classified him as mentally unstable. Thank God for that Ph.D.

“So you knew you were pregnant when…” I cleared my throat. “You knew…right away?” I asked.

“Sí,”
she said, “but the truth is this, I would have married him anyway. He had magic in his hands.” She wiggled her fingers. “And in his
pene,
too, huh?”

Jesus save me,
I thought, but either Jesus was busy, or he’d heard this kind of talk before.

“I knew also that he would someday be important,” she added. “I knew it in my heart. And my family…we were as poor as empty corn husks. Still, Mama cried when she found out we had been wed. Perhaps she had the gift, too, and saw things to come. I do not know, for I did not get a chance to ask her. After we wed, Miguel was given a job in Houston. Texas.” She smiled at nothing. “America. It was a good opportunity for him. He said he could not refuse it, though I did not wish to leave my mother. We moved when I was heavy with Gerald. I did not see Mama again.”

Oh, crap.

She shrugged, opened the refrigerator, and brought out a salad in a big wooden bowl. Setting it on the counter, she scattered the chopped peppers onto the lettuce bed. Five slices actually made it inside the bowl. The others were liberally spread across oven mitts, recipes, and a pen that said “True Health” in red letters.

“It is ready,” she said, and striding into the dining room, she deposited the salad onto the table. “Bring the margaritas.”

After that it was a gastronomic orgy.

I ate food I’d never heard of. Food I couldn’t pronounce. Food that tasted like sunlight and happiness. The conversation ranged like wildfire.

Finally, Rosita leaned away from the table, propping an arm across the back of her chair. I had no idea how much she had eaten. But the margaritas were almost gone. She filled my glass with the dregs. It seemed impolite to refuse.

“So you had not met Salina before her death,” she said.

“No.” I sipped my drink and took the plunge. “In fact, I had never even heard of her.”

She stared at me for one long moment, then shook her head, her expression sad. “Do not feel bad for this. Gerald, he does not like to speak of her.”

“Why is that?”

“She was…” She leaned forward, stabbing her elbows onto the table. “I do not like to speak ill of the dead, but…Salina Martinez could not cook worth two beans.”

“Well…” I cleared my throat. “I’m not exactly a maestro—”

“And…” She shrugged. “She was a whore.”

“Literally?” It occurred to me in that moment that perhaps I should quit drinking, but Rosita was already laughing and motioning me toward the living area with a bottle of wine she’d pulled out of some crevice.

“So far as I know, she did not charge for her services,” she said, and seating herself on an overstuffed chair, she dropped her sandals and curled her feet up under her. I sat close by, on a couch the color of a papaya. “Besides…” She shrugged and sloshed some Chablis into a pair of glasses. “She did not need the money. She only needed…” Her lips curled and her eyes were aflame. “What was not hers.”

“Such as?”

She leaned back, took a deep drink, and watched me. “She did not truly want my Gerald.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was not interested in him.” She made a flitting motion with one hand. She wore five gold bangles on her right wrist. Her arms were firm and brown. “He was but a…How do you say it? A step of stone.”

“A stepping-stone?”

“Sí.”

“To what?”

“Bigger things.” She lifted a shoulder. Wine bobbled. “The Senate? The White House, perhaps?”

“The—?”

“They were all steps of stones. And eventually they would all come to know the truth. But Miguel…” She snorted. “He was too vain to believe it.”

“All who?”

“Surely you do not think the Riveras were the only men she took to her bed.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, I cannot say the same, Christina. I have had a good deal of time to think on it.” Her eyes narrowed. “To wonder why me. Why
my
family. But I see now that every man with a
pene
and a couple of pesos had their time with her.”

“Ummm…”

“You have heard of Benjamin Weber?”

I shook my head. It wasn’t as simple as it should have been.

“He is an aide to the president.”

Holy crap.

“And Danny Hohl. He is barely off his mama’s teat. But that did not matter to her.”

“Danny—”

“His papa’s money and his mama’s brains. Not to mention Robert’s support.”

“Robert?”

“Peachtree. You met him, I think.”

“The Texas guy?”

“
Sí.
His name was well known when he played the baseball. That is why Miguel first met him. It makes him feel important to know those who are famous. And the famous, they are often…” She shook her head and scrunched her face. “Like the puddle who pretends to be the ocean.”

“Shallow?”

“
Sí.
Shallow. But Robert is different. A good man. He treated Danny as his own since his papa’s death. Took him into his home. They never had a son of their own. Dottie doted on Danny something fierce, I am told. Washed his clothes. Cooked his favorites. Baked lasagna, cocoa cookies. She is not so good in the kitchen as I, but she is not so very bad. And perhaps their generosity was not all for the boy’s good,
sí?
”

“I don’t know Danny.”

“Ahh, but you must. The handsome boy with the dimples. Surely you saw him. He has a face like Saint Michael come to earth.”

Ken,
I thought.
Of Ken and Barbie fame.
“The blond kid?”

“It is said he is a genius in the laboratory and will quadipple our fortunes once he settles in.”

“Was he with a woman with legs up to her—
Our?
” I said.

She shrugged. “It is, as they say, a big boys’ club.”

I thought for a moment. “
Old
boys?” I guessed.

She laughed. “
Sí.
They are that. Old boys who share their stocks and their floosies.”

“Is Jack a club member?”

She stared at me, making me realize I’d said the words out loud. “My Gerald is a good man.”

“Is he…?”

Her brows lowered as I searched for words.

“I mean, yes, of course he is…a good man…but I was wondering, is everything okay?”

“Okay?”

“After last night. I was afraid—”

She waved a dismissive arm. Bangles jingled. “Graystone is a thorn in the side, but all is well.”

“He wasn’t reprimanded, then?”

“Leighton Kindred loves him like a son.” She scowled at her own thoughts. “Loves him as a son should be loved.”

I made a pretty safe stab in the dark. “Not like your husband loves him.”

“A pair of plastic breasts were always more important than his own flesh and blood.”

“So things have never been easy between—” I began, but just then her words sank in. “She had a boob job?” In retrospect, I realize that might not have been the most pertinent question, but at the time I was sure my lack of focus wasn’t due to the amount of alcohol in my system. I wasn’t drunk. In fact, I felt surprisingly lucid. There’s just something really fascinating about the idea of someone cutting themselves open and sticking bags of saline in their chests.

“Her breasts, they were more real than the rest of her,” she said, eyes narrowed. “She could seem as sweet as honey. But inside she was like the acid. I knew it from the moment I saw her. Even as a little girl. She never cared for Gerald. She only used him.”

“For what?” Okay, maybe my speech had lost a little polish, but I was sure I was a long way from belching jingoistic tunes.