Buena Rosa Chapter Five

Chapter Five
Manuel’s dreams were troubled, but he would have been kidding himself if he had expected anything else. The arroyo was back, and the body at his feet was not that of his cousin. He knew that now, based on what he had found about the circumstances of her arrest. Additionally, there was no tattoo on the base of her spine, butterfly or otherwise. No, this was the victim. And she had something to say, something she was screaming in a voice that he couldn’t hear, but which made the hair on his arms stand up.
Bodies didn’t disturb him. He had been a homicide detective for too many years, had seen too many horrible things. Yes, they affected him, but not disturbed. This body, this...girl, her death just seemed like such a waste. And at the same time, there was something strangely familiar about it.
Taking his eyes from the victim, he turned instead to the scenery, trying to place where he was, hoping that it was some real location, imparted to him through the vision. In the distance, smoke from the factory rose from over the hills. A pitted two lane blacktop stretched through the arid waste nearby, but there was nothing distinctive about right there, nothing that would tell him definitively that he had found the right spot. He considered asking Deputy Aldovar to take him out to where the body was found, but suspected that the local lawman could not be trusted.
Manuel knew he would have to take a look himself, and rely on the vision to guide him to the right spot. He would have to get as much help as he could from the factory smoke and the road in finding the spot. It wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be impossible, either.
The other dream which haunted him was far less lucid. What little he could remember of the dreams involved him being chased through dark streets which became increasingly narrow and hard to navigate. He spared one look over his shoulder and saw a figure made out of darkness pouncing towards him. And for the briefest of seconds in a moment of cry-inducing vertigo he was both the hunter and the hunted. He awoke drenched in sweat, which was as much a fault of the dream as it was the oppressive heat that refused to let up even after dark.
When the sun came up, Manuel gave up trying to sleep. Instead he maneuvered himself into the bathroom and filled the tub for a much needed bath. He had been thankful that the hotel had tubs instead of showers. If he had been stuck with only a shower, he was pretty damn sure that it wouldn’t be handicap friendly. Things down in Buena Rosa were going to be tough enough without having to ask Snowflake’s help showering.
Looking at his legs through the water distorted the details, blurred the scars enough that he was able to disconnect a bit and think of them as belonging to someone else entirely. Long claw scars covered his back and both forearms. There was a long burn scar on the back of his left hand from a super-heated muffler, and his hip still had bits of Mexico City asphalt imbedded beneath the skin from a long ago cycle accident. He felt like Frankenstein’s monster. “You’re a piece of work, Manuel,” he said quietly to himself in the dawn light, “a broken, freak of a man.”
He took the early morning silence of the street below as affirmation.
When the water became too close to body temperature to be comfortable, Manuel pulled the stopper, letting the water drain languidly out. Summoning up the strength to face the day, he hoisted himself up to a sitting position on the tub’s edge and reached for a towel to dry off. He was interrupted by a soft knocking on the door.
Manuel froze, towel halfway to his scarred body. A few seconds passed then the knock came again, followed by Snowflake’s distinctive voice, allowing Manuel to release the breath trapped within his chest. “Boss. You awake yet?”
“I’m indisposed, but I’m awake.”
“Cool. You ready for breakfast in ten minutes?”
Contemplating the task of drying, grooming, and dressing, ten minutes was pushing it, but seeing as how he had skipped dinner the night before, breakfast sounded awfully good. The grooming could wait until after food, he decided. “I’ll meet you at the truck.”
“Solid.”
A quick towel dry, a brush through his thick, dark hair that he had let go long enough that it was starting to bother him, and then jeans, boots, and gray cotton western shirt, and he was ready to go with a minute to spare. Snowflake was waiting with the truck idling at the curb when Manuel stepped out into the still morning air. The sun was already burning away pink ribbons of clouds on the eastern horizon, enough to give a hint of the day to come without being quite hot yet.
Manuel clambered up into the truck and belted himself in. “So I take it I wasn’t followed last night?”
Snowflake shook his head and nosed the truck smoothly out onto the road heading for the intersection which would take them south. “One of the deputies, the tall one, he left with a woman about five minutes after you left and locked the door behind him.”
“That would be Ray Attencio. He might be trouble, but I’m not sure what kind of trouble yet.”
“The woman with him was completely drunk, he practically had to carry her to his car. She was wearing a blue skirt and sort of puffy white shirt...”
“And she had a small blue purse.”
The panda man nodded, obviously impressed by Manuel’s deductive skills. “The deputy was carrying it, but yeah, a small blue purse. It sparkled in the street lights. You saw her?”
“I saw the purse when I was in the station. It was covered in sequins. Which direction did they go?”
“West, towards the shantytown and factory.”
“And what’s south of here?”
“Other than breakfast, there isn’t anything for miles. There used to be some ranches, I hear, but the cattle got sick a few years ago, so there isn’t much of that going on anymore.” Snowflake was silent for several blocks, watching Manuel out of the corner of his eye. “So do we have a schedule for today?”
“The sheriff doesn’t show up at the station until ten, so we have several hours to kill. I’d like to take a look at the factory and the shantytown, and Perseus Glen if I can. And time permitting, I’d like to try and find out where the body was discovered.”
“You think they missed something when they found the body? Some kind of clue, maybe?”
“That would imply that they were trying. It isn’t like they have crime-scene teams out here. I don’t imagine they even have a medical examiner. No, I think they found a body, decided it was murder because no one would be out there on their own accord, and just picked someone convenient to finger for it.”
“They can’t do that.”
“No. But they did.” Manuel stared out the truck window as houses and storefronts rolled by beyond the glass. “They do it all the time.”
How long had I been a part of the system, Manuel asked himself. How many years did I try to reconcile myself to the corruption, try to justify that one honest cop could balance out ten dishonest cops? And when I went to America with the dream of making a difference, did I abandon my own people or embrace my own potential? And were the two concepts mutually exclusive?
Snowflake could tell that his partner had a lot on his mind and remained silent for the rest of the relatively short drive to the Casa del Ranchero. It was still early, but there were already a handful of vehicles in the lot, all dusty but new Pegasus Motorcars vehicles, with security stickers in the back window. Snowflake noticed Manuel looking. “The locals, most of them don’t drive. And this place is popular with the Pegasus crowd, so you won’t see many locals around anyway. I’m not sure where the locals eat.”
“The locals probably cook.”
“Savages.”
The interior of the Casa del Ranchero was air conditioned, and other than the staff, the only Hispanics there were Manuel and a burly man with handlebar mustache and significant acne scaring on his cheeks. He was wearing a short-sleeved white oxford shirt with a Pegasus Motors logo on the breast and narrow red tie. Company man, through and through, Manuel figured.
The stranger watched Manuel and Snowflake from the moment they entered to the moment they took a seat at the counter. Even with their backs turned, Manuel could feel the pair of coal black eyes boring into his back. “I think we’ve been spotted.”
“Yeah.” Snowflake hunched his shoulders. “I’ve seen him in here a few times. I heard his name is Mr. Contralles. I don’t know what he does for the company, but he’s kind of scary so I’m leaning towards lawyer or security.”
“Lawyers don’t body build like that.”
Snowflake shrugged, catching sight of the subject of their conversation in a reflection on the napkin dispenser. “Gay lawyers might.”
“You aren’t helping.”
“So you think he’s security, then.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, no.”
Shortly, they either got used to the evil eye or he stopped watching, because the chill was gone from their spines by the time the waiter came to take their breakfast order.
Manuel was impressed with the selection, but found the food catered more to north of the border tastes than he would have liked. After conversing with the waiter for a few minutes, he was assured that his huevos rancheros would be authentic and not gringo. The waiter’s name was Flip and claimed to have grown up in the area. Manuel chatted him up casually about the town in general, careful not to touch on any hot button topics like the missing person flyers, the factory, the police, or his cousin’s incarceration. By the time the check came and most of the Pegasus crew had left, he and Flip had managed to build a foundation of trust important in any detective / informant relationship.
Not that Manuel mentioned that he was a cop, of course. He had decided to pass himself off as a novelist. It was innocuous enough and had the tendency to get people to open up. He had found that there was nothing like the prospect of being in a book to get the stories flowing.
As Manuel was paying for breakfast, he made sure to catch Flip’s full attention, and spoke to him in subdued Spanish, in case any lingering Pegasus employees overheard. “The desk clerk at the hotel said that there was a murder in town recently, is that true?”
Flip looked nervously out over the dining area, but was quickly reassured that no one was listening to them. Even Snowflake went over to the postcard rack near the door, well out of earshot. “Si. A week ago, maybe more.”
“Did they catch the person who did it?”
Flip was on the spot and he knew it. He shrugged, and began counting out change. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Where did they find the victim? I might be able to use the information for my book.”
Flip looked out at the dining area again, then back at Manuel, his eyes refusing to settle anywhere for long. He was scared. Hell, he had a right to be, Manuel thought.
“West of town, just before the workers camp, there is a road that goes south into the desert. They found Muriel in an arroyo, four miles south, just where the road bends.”
Manuel was surprised to hear Flip know her name. His understanding was that the victim was not local, and that only Pegasus management types ate here, but clearly there was more to Flip than he knew. “You knew the girl?”
“I had talked to her a few times. She let me buy her a soda once and we talked about things a few times.”
“Things like what?”
“Like the factory, and the town, and family and things. Nothing special. Just talk. And her sister stopped in a few days ago after work and talked to me about Muriel for a while also.”
“Do you remember her sister’s name or where I might be able to find her? I’d like to be able to talk to her too, if I could.”
Flip had already clearly established that Manuel wasn’t with the police. The company he kept was a dead giveaway, for one thing. And the nasty stares he had received from Mr. Contralles had cemented that status. But now he began to suspect that there was more to Manuel than a simple novelist. Manuel could see the gears turn, each scenario getting more fanciful in his head the longer it went on. Internal affairs, or maybe state police, or the Presidente’s personal police, or, even better, CIA operatives, all scrolled past on the list of possibilities. He found himself giving in to the mystery, unable to deny Manuel anything just to be allowed to be a part of whatever was going on. “Her name is Anita. I don’t know where she is staying, but she might be at her sister’s place.”
“In the workers camp?”
“No, Muriel was a floor supervisor, she could afford an apartment. She lived in the Torrerro Court between the work camp and town. I don’t know the apartment number.”
“That’s okay. I can find it. Thank you Flip. Keep the change.”
The large tip vanished into Flip’s apron pocket so quick it almost looked like a magic trick. “If you need to know anything else, I am here until two every day.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Snowflake preceded him out into the parking lot. They still had several hours to kill and no desire to go back to the stuffy hotel rooms.
“So, we go looking for where the body was found before it gets too hot?” Snowflake said, starting up the truck with a smile.
Manuel squinted into the rising sun, already a white hot pinprick in the azure sky. “And before someone gets out there to try and destroy evidence. And then we take a look at the factory and maybe, just maybe, we track down the victim’s sister.”
“Ah, the femme fatale!”
Manuel shook his head slowly, but couldn’t help but smile. “Has anyone ever told you that you read too much?”
“All the time, my brother. All the time.”
The truck kicked up a rooster tail of dust as it left the parking lot, and within seconds they were speeding down the ill-repaired asphalt on their way to find an unmarked grave.