Greetings From Buena Rosa - Chapter One

Chapter One
The old black woman clutched her purse tightly against her chest and eyed Manuel suspiciously. He offered her a warm smile and tilted his head down, drawing her eyes to his sleek, black forearm crutches. Her attitude shifted quickly through shades of relief to pity then back to relief. From criminal to cripple in seven seconds, he thought, a new personal record. He almost preferred she think she was a mugger.
Wind sliced up from the river, carrying with it the smell of diesel and urban decay. A pair of cargo ships had docked in the night, and a steady stream of rigs had been making their way into the freight yards all morning, choking the air with fumes and noise. Even in the Hollows, blocks from Quayside, it had disrupted traffic enough to make Manuel’s morning commute difficult. And with a low pressure system camped out over the city for the past few days, temperatures had climbed to a very un-New England high nineties, reminding Manuel of the weather back home. It was hot and muggy in Cobalt City, but it was no Mexico City.
The weather was starting to make people crazy, and violent crime rates had been spiking. No wonder the woman was suspicious. She had every reason to be. In fact, a little suspicion in her direction wouldn’t be unhealthy. A mugger had been dropped with pepper spray by an old lady in Lafayette Park two days ago, and when the mugger was down she tasered him in the head, killing him.
Manuel gave the old woman a quick look over, reassuring himself that she still thought he was harmless.
Harmless.
And to think. He used to be a super hero.
How the mighty have fallen.
A well-maintained brown hybrid sedan pulled up to the bus stop, the passenger side window already on its way down. Manuel caught sight of the curly ginger hair and porn star mustache of his partner Donegal in the driver seat and stumped closer to the curb, leaning over to put his head into the air conditioned interior.
“You riding the bus again like the common people, de la Vega?”
“Closer than the monorail stop.” Manuel shrugged.
“No friend of mine rides the damn bus,” Donegal growled. “Get in.”
It had been two months since Manuel had started back to work at the station. Donegal had picked him up at the same spot for a all but a week of that time. It wasn’t a formal arrangement, and Manuel suspected that eventually Donegal would tire of the charity and stop driving twenty minutes out of his way every morning.
“You plan on stopping for coffee?” Manuel asked as he tucked his forearm crutches into the back seat.
“Is it your turn to buy?”
“Si.”
“Then I’m stopping for coffee. Buckle up, I’m going to try to make the light.” Donegal zipped dangerously out into traffic and through the yellow light, eliciting angry horns from other drivers.
Ten minutes later, Donegal flipped a U-turn in the middle of a relatively quiet street, securing a parking space across from Schrodinger’s Cup. It was Manuel’s favorite coffee in town, but Donegal didn’t play favorites, generally going wherever was closest. “What’s the occasion?” Manuel asked, secretly glad that his friend hadn’t stopped at the Cup O’Chino Drive-thru Coffee Experience again.
“I need an occasion? I’ll hop in grab the java. You want the usual?”
Manuel was too good of a detective to believe for a second that there was nothing unusual in the air, but decided to ride with it and see where it was going. He fished into the breast pocket of his leather blazer, finding $10 which he handed to Donegal. “Yeah, thanks.”
Donegal looked at the $10 with a forlorn, almost insulted look.
“What? It’s my turn to buy, right?” Manuel said.
With a shrug, his partner looked up then back at the bill. “So, no muffin?”
“I ate before I left home.”
“No muffin for me?”
Manuel smiled and dug out another dollar to cover the additional costs of one of the caramel apple muffins his friend had developed an addiction to. He leaned the seat back a bit, and contemplated closing his eyes while he waited. Sleep had been coming easier these days, and he no longer had to take pain pills to drift off. That alone was a blessing, as they always made him feel a bit blurry for a few hours after waking up. But lately his sleep hadn’t been restful. He found it strange that less than a year ago, he was lucky to get six hours of sleep in a night. Ever since the accident, he had done little but sleep, and now it seemed that even his waking hours were some kind of dream he couldn’t break out of.
A glint of light caught the corner of his eye, and he craned his head up to see Stardust fly past high above Lafayette Park. The shining blue and gold body armor glinted in the sunlight, and even from this distance, it stirred emotions that Manuel had been trying to fight down. Adrenaline pumped into his veins and he reached for the door briefly before reality set in.
“You aren’t a hero anymore.” His voice sounded hollow in his chest. The adrenaline died down, turning sour in his stomach, sending his hand to shake. He was so focused on calming his shakes that he didn’t even see Donegal return to the car until the door was opened suddenly, sending the shakes into a jumpy repeat performance.
Donegal handed a large cinnamon latte across the driver seat before sliding into the car himself. He took notice of the quiver in Manuel’s hand and grunted. “I spook you or something?”
Manuel shrugged, taking a sip on his perfect and piping hot coffee. “Something.”
They sat in silence for a moment while Donegal buckled himself in and arranged his breakfast on the armrest and drink holder. He started the car and let it run for a second, his eyes looking out the front windshield but unfocused. Finally, he shook his head and turned off the car, turning to face Manuel. “This has been bothering me too long, de la Vega. It’s the frickin’ elephant in the room and since you’re never going to say anything about it, well, I guess I have to.”
“Is this about…” Manuel couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t find the words, and instead looked down at his ruined legs.
“Yeah, and no, not entirely.” Donegal shook his head, making faces while he struggled with what was apparently a difficult topic for him. “I need to know. Is that why you quit?”
“Quit? I didn’t quit…”
Donegal looked at Manuel out of the corner of his eye and sighed. “Then why hasn’t anyone seen him since your accident.”
Manuel felt his mouth go dry. “I don’t understand.”
“Damnit, buddy. I’m not an idiot, okay? I admit it took me a while, but come on, what kind of detective would I be if I didn’t figure out that my partner on the force was the vigilante Gato Loco?”
Denial was the first thought that sprang to mind, and Manuel hated himself for it. But what would he really be denying? That he was Gato Loco, which he was, or that he had quit, which he was afraid that he had? “How long have you known?”
“Ah hell, I don’t know.” Donegal sighed and rubbed his eyes. He took a sip of his coffee and gave the matter a moment of sincere thought. “I think maybe I always suspected. I mean, your helmet masked your voice pretty well, electronically, I bet. But how many 6’2” skinny detectives with a penchant for motorcycles live in this town? Three, four at most, right? And he always seemed to overlap the cases we were on, like the thing with Jubal Kane, or the ventriloquist dummy murder. And I never saw the two of you in the same place at the same time…”
“By that logic, he could be Michael Jackson.”
“Too short, wise guy.” Donegal smiled. He started tearing off bits of muffin and tucking them into his mouth. “Anyway, the accident cinched it. You get damn near killed in an accident for which there is some suspicious accident report filed on the same night Condor and Wild Kat get nailed to a wall down near the river, well, a smart detective gets curious. Then Gato Loco just disappears, never to be seen again. Meanwhile they’re replacing shredded muscle tissue in your thighs, trying to patch major arteries, and did I mention that accident should have killed you?”
“Sometimes, Donegal, I almost wish it did.”
Donegal opened his mouth to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. They sat in the car sipping coffee and Donegal continued dismantling his muffin. “So, you want to tell me what happened?”
“There was a shipment down at the docks…major drug delivery fresh out of the Caribbean was the rumor. A few of the Protectorate went down to deal with it, and I had my own interest in the case, looking for a friend who was missing and had ties to those circles. There wasn’t supposed to be any heavy hitters there, just a drug gang, violent maybe, but human.”
“But it was a trap.” Donegal grunted around a mouthful of muffin.
Manuel nodded. “When I got there, Wild Kat and Condor were nailed to the wall of a warehouse as a warning. Wild Kat was alive, but only barely. Condor…he had only been with them for a few weeks. He was still on probation. But they killed him anyway. I was on my cycle trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I didn’t even see who did it.”
“Who did what?”
“Someone blew up my bike. I had my reflexes wired up fast it would make your head spin. I had a multi-stage force field on my suit. And none of it mattered. The bike went sky high, and I went with it.”
“That suit of yours probably saved your life.”
“After five months of painful surgery and physical therapy, I still need sticks to walk. I have one questionably functioning testicle remaining. I might never be able to ride a cycle again. That suit saved my life. But if it wasn’t for the suit, my life wouldn’t have been in danger.”
“So it’s all gone now? The costume, the bike, the super powers; they’re all gone?” Donegal said quietly.
“I never had any super powers.” He hoped that his personal conviction that the questionable psychic gift he possessed didn’t count as a super power would be convincing enough to prevent Donegal from seeing through the lie.
Donegal seemed satisfied with the answer. “Well, you’re still a damn fine detective, and a hell of a partner.”
“Thanks. Now, would you like to get us to the station before someone notices that we’re fifteen minutes late?”
“Shit.” Donegal dropped the picked-clean muffin wrapper on the floorboard and started up the engine. Manuel finished his coffee on the way to work, thankful that his friend hadn’t pried too closely. Super powers, no, he had nothing so grand as super powers. But when he touched things from time to time, he – saw things. A fork at a restaurant could give him a vision of the last person who used it, or the busboy picking it up off the floor and wiping it on his apron. A doll at a murder scene could show him a happy childhood memory or a scene by scene re-enactment of a murder. They were strong, sometimes requiring all of his concentration to not let on that he was seeing things. But they were random, and that was a source of constant frustration.
And ever since the accident, they had been – different. He had five months on world class pain killers, laid up in bed for most of it, and that was a lot of time to focus on more cerebral pursuits. It wasn’t like there was anything on daytime TV. And it wasn’t like he received many visitors. Manuel had learned to interpret the visions a lot better, and he was proud of that. And sometimes he could tell, as his fingers approached an object that a vision was in the offering. But it was never at his bidding.
Considering how tough traffic had been earlier, they made great time. Once upstairs at his desk, Manuel noticed a short stack of paperwork, with a colorful postcard on top of the stack, as if it were pinning the folders to his desk. He reached to pick it up and felt a now familiar electric tingle. His fingers stopped inches from the bright and sunny painted cardstock and he paused to contemplate it a bit longer.
A small tourist town, brightly adorned with wild, red roses stared up at him from the 4x6 card. “Greetings from Buena Rosa” was printed across the top in sweeping white letters. He had never heard of Buena Rosa. The buildings were classic haciendas, but that meant nothing except that the town was probably in or near a desert. He imagined it was somewhere in America, because the writing was in English, but he had known tourist traps in Mexico that catered to Americans and printed their postcards in English.
Manuel glanced casually around to make sure no one was watching. Thankfully, Donegal was pulling files for an ongoing case and was nowhere to be seen. Manuel picked up the folder beneath the postcard, and deftly flipped the card over so he could read the back without touching it.
Mexican stamps and postmark were the first thing he noticed. The second was the chilling message printed carefully on the back.
“Esther Vega is being held by the police in Buena Rosa, Mexico. She is innocent, but the charge is very serious and they say they have a confession. She needs your help.”
It was signed simply, “A friend.”
He looked closely at the postmark. The card was mailed from Mexico, but not from Buena Rosa itself. He fired up the computer at his desk, and after entering in his password, pulled up Buena Rosa on a map. It was near the U.S. border with Mexico, just west of the southern tip of Texas. He knew without looking further why the postcard was printed in English.
Buena Rosa was a maquiladora. Time was, they were only near the borders, but now they were all over Mexico. Towns built up around factories that did final assembly on products while the parts were generally made somewhere else. Building factories, training a staff who would work for far less than American workers, it was all very cost effective, and the factory towns spread like a virus. Manuel had seen one himself, but only the once.
He didn’t doubt for a second that his cousin Esther was there. She was a fiery hearted activist, always had been. She had been traveling around trying to unionize worker last he heard, and it made perfect sense that she would have tried to do so at one of the many maquiladoras. And if she stirred up too much trouble, putting her in jail on some trumped up charge was par for the course.
“Someone on vacation and they didn’t think to take me?” Donegal pointed at the postcard with the thin folder in his hand.
“My cousin, Esther. She’s in some kind of trouble back home.”
Donegal’s tone became somber instantly. “Is it serious trouble?”
“Legal trouble.”
“Then it’s serious. She need you to bail her out or something?”
“Or something.” Manuel set his jaw and touched the postcard.
A vision washed over Manuel, and he could smell factory smoke, tinged ever so slightly by the scent of wild, desert roses. A woman’s body was lying in an arroyo and the birds and coyotes had been at her. Nearby, he could hear a woman crying, but couldn’t see who it was. His gaze drifted out over the arid hills and saw a storm of carrion birds circling overhead like a tornado of feathers.
There was death there – a lot of death. But it wasn’t just death, which had its own scent. No, this was murder. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it on his skin like chemical dust and oil, clinging to him.
Manuel blinked and saw Donegal looking down at the postcard from across the desk. “Jesus. I wonder what they’re holding her for.”
“I don’t know,” Manuel said, his jaw set with grim determination he hadn’t felt in months. “But I intend to find out.”