Chapter Six
They managed to find the place Flip had told them about without any problem. Little white crosses and bouquets of marigold marked the spot better than police tape could. Snowflake pulled over to the opposite shoulder and threw the truck into a rumbling idle. Manuel slid out, then went around the front of the truck to the arroyo. He looked back the way they had come, then around the horizon, squinting against the sun.
He crouched and looked at the small crosses. “Muriel” was written on two of them in magic marker. Manuel looked back towards the factory, the smokestack and southern wall clearly visible around the side of a hill. “This isn’t the place.”
Snowflake looked skeptical. He was well versed in looking skeptical. “Isn’t this where the kid said they found the body? Do you think maybe he was lying to you?”
Looking closely at the memorial revealed marigold petals strewn all over near the site, scattered by the breezes. The flowers had been there several days. “You see this?” Manuel pointed to the petals. “These are cempasúchil petals. It’s a species of marigold, and these have been here a while, probably since the body was discovered. The Aztecs used them to remember their dead, thinking they would guide the spirits of their dead loved ones to their altars or home and then to the afterlife. A lot of people in Mexico still grow them just for use as offerings. Around el Dia de los Muertos, these things are everywhere.”
“So, this was where people were, um, told the body was found, then?”
Manuel looked down the steep embankment to the bottom of the arroyo six feet below. It narrowed there, and a sand bar created a tight bend. The body snagged there. That’s why it was found here. “No, they found it here, but it was dumped somewhere else. Didn’t you say they found it after a big rainstorm?”
“Yeah, the next day.”
“Then we need to look upstream from here.” Manuel looked towards the factory tower and adjusted the topography in his head to make the hill line up with the plume of smoke. “It might be a ways. Maybe a mile down the way we’re already pointing.”
“Boss, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but there isn’t any creek to be downstream on. Its just a ditch.”
“It might just be a ditch now, but the night of the rainstorm it was a river, at least for a few hours. Then when it stopped raining, the water had either run off or been absorbed back into the ground. If someone buried the body close to the edge of the arroyo, then the water could have broken the body free, or coyotes could have dug it out prior to the rain. Either way, we aren’t going to find any clues here. We need to go back to the source.”
Snowflake sighed, recognizing that he wasn’t the detective of the two and it was best to let Manuel do what he did. But it frustrated him that the great detective wasn’t even watching the road and instead had his head turned back towards Buena Rosa until he called a sudden halt just over a mile later in an utterly unremarkable location. With little except scrub brush, dirt, and cactus, this stretch of road offered nothing distinctive, nothing worth notice, but Snowflake was along for support and pulled over as instructed.
Hopping out of the cab nimbly Manuel forgot that his legs couldn’t hold his weight in that way anymore, and he had to grab the door to keep from pitching into the sagebrush. He felt it as soon as the factory disappeared behind the hill, the darkness spreading beneath the soil. It was almost overpowering, and he knew this was it. This is where the dead spilled their secrets. This is where he had seen Muriel the first time, in that vision back at his desk in far off Cobalt City.
The scent of sun-baked dust, sagebrush, and piñon was unmistakable. A glance up the road showed a narrow bridge, allowing vehicle access to the vast emptiness. From his vantage point on the other side of the road, Manuel could see the burned down foundation of a small house, all but lost in an overgrowth of shrubs. It was a perfect dump site. Close, but with limited access, and in an area where no one was likely to discover the body for some time.
If not for the coyotes or rain or any number of random, unpredictable events that could have led to Muriel being found, she would still be out there.
Manuel made his way to the other side of the road with Snowflake at his side. “Look out over there and tell me what you see.” Manuel indicated the other side of the arroyo with a tilt of his chin.
Snowflake looked long and hard, opening his mouth a few times to offer an answer then stopping. Finally he had to trust his first instinct. “A whole lot of nothing.”
“A good place to hide bodies.”
Snowflake’s eyes narrowed. “You think there are more people buried out there?”
“This town has an awful lot of missing people. Some of them might have headed for the border, tried to make it to America. But if that were the case, I don’t expect that their families would want to draw attention to it by putting up fliers.”
They started walking up the side of the road towards the small bridge, Manuel watching the ground closely for any kind of tracks or other clue. Other than coyote and white-tailed jackrabbit, he wasn’t seeing much of anything.
“How many people, do you think?”
Manuel couldn’t answer. He wanted to think it was maybe a dozen, two dozen at most. But he had no way to know how long this had been going on. And his feeling was that the number was much, much higher. They had reached the bridge, and there in the dirt over the bridge were tire tracks, no more than a few days old.
“Those are standard all terrain tire treads for the Pegasus Motor trucks and SUV’s,” Snowflake said with authority. Manuel raised an eyebrow as if to question him. “Trust me. You know Mexico, I know tires. I’m not a mechanic for nothing, you know.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Snowflake’s attention had been drawn up, back towards town and his mouth tightened into a hard smile. “Speak of the devil. We have company.”
Directing his gaze casually back up the road, Manuel could clearly see the Buena Rosa sheriff’s vehicle rolling towards them through the heat haze on the asphalt. “Do you have a cover story you’ve been using?”
“Made a small fortune in investments, looking to retire somewhere cheap and buy some property.”
Manuel had to admit, that was a good cover. He wondered, however briefly, if Katherine had taken a hand in concocting it. “Good call. I just ran into you at the hotel and you agreed to be the Good Samaritan and drive me around, but you wanted to look at some property on the drive.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Now, smile big for the creepy police man.” Snowflake waved widely at the green and white converted SUV as it pulled to a stop behind his truck.
Manuel was not overly surprised to see Deputy Aldovar step out of the cab and walk across the road towards them. “Car trouble, gentlemen?”
Snowflake smiled. Nothing he ever drove would have car trouble, not as long as he had worked on it recently. “No, far from it. I was hoping to find out who owned this little parcel. I’m looking to buy some land and this little stretch has a lot of potential.”
Deputy Aldovar’s eyes went from Manuel to Snowflake and back again. He never lost his polite smile, but that same smile somehow failed to reach his eyes. “I don’t think it’s for sale.”
Undeterred, Snowflake went on. “Oh, everything is for sale at the right price. Do you know who owns it? Maybe I could get in touch with them and make them an offer.”
“I afraid I can’t help you. I don’t know who owns this parcel. It has been vacant for some time.”
“But you know it isn’t for sale.”
Detective Aldovar’s eyes grew flinty and dark. Manuel took the cue that his friend was so clearly missing. “I’m sure someone at city hall might know, Mr. Snow. I don’t see the potential, but I’m not the investor I guess.”
Deputy Aldovar gave Manuel his full attention. “No, you are a police officer, aren’t you, Mr. de la Vega.”
“I’m taking some time off to write a book, but yes, I’ve recently been a police detective.”
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I was looking for you.”
Snowflake licked his lips, trying to contain a nervous glance in Manuel’s direction. To his credit, Manuel kept his cool. He had been expecting something like this eventually, and it was good to get it out of the way early. “Well, I’m glad you found me. What is this about?”
“About? It is about your cousin of course. You can speak with Esther today. I have arranged it with Sheriff Bragga. I can give you a ride back to the station if you like.”
Every fiber in his body was screaming “No”, that this was a setup. But a turtle never got anywhere without sticking out his neck first. Manuel offered Snowflake his hand in a hearty thank-you and good-bye shake. “Good luck, Mr. Snow. I hope you find the owner without too much digging in public records.”
“Of course. And if you get tied up with your cousin, I’ll understand. Just beep me or whatever and we can get together some other night for dinner.”
Snowflake was in the truck heading back towards town in minutes, while it took a little longer for Manuel to get across the street and buckled in. He ran his fingers across the leather interior. “Very nice for a police vehicle.”
“It was donated by the manager of the Pegasus Motors plant. I think he meant to encourage faster response time to his hacienda.”
“Does he frequently need a fast response to his hacienda?”
Deputy Aldovar shrugged and started the truck. “I don’t know. He’s never called us. He has his own security to handle most of his police needs.”
That was somewhat of a surprise for Manuel. Two sets of cops meant double the fun and double the possibilities for corruption. This just kept getting better.
They arrived at the police station quickly, with Deputy Aldovar cutting through several side streets to a parking lot tucked behind a high wall topped with razor wire. The deputy indicated the security with a casual wave of the back of his hand. “Motor pool. If we parked on the street, these cars would be gone by morning. There are people here who have no respect for law. You should understand. I imagine it was the same in Mexico City.”
“There are similarities. Car theft wasn’t such a big priority, but it happened, certainly. Not to police vehicles so much.”
“Hm...maybe it is just here in Buena Rosa that they steal our cars or strip our tires?”
Manuel felt the urge to cry out, Maybe if you did your job, but a sense of self-preservation prevented him from saying anything. They pulled into a painted space alongside the building and stepped out onto the sun-hot asphalt of the parking lot. Already, a deputy that Manuel didn’t recognize was rolling the gate closed before retreating to the shade of his sentry booth. Whether it was a trap or not, they certainly had him where they wanted him.
The deputy selected a key from the mammoth key ring on his belt and unlocked a heavy, blue painted steel door at the back of the building. Manuel set his shoulders and propelled himself along after the deputy into the cool white interior of the police station jail. He followed Aldovar down several short halls, filled with solid doors with no windows, no bars – a jail full of solitary cells.
Shortly, they came to an interview room, the chipped avocado green paint of the walls more at home on an old refrigerator than in a police station. A broad mirror was along the left hand wall, and only an idiot would think it was actually a mirror. A pair of durable steel chairs was bolted to the floor on either side of a similarly secured steel table. A flickering fluorescent light fixture provided an intermittent, sickly light through the detritus of insect husks scattered inside plastic fronted light fixture.
His cousin, no surprise, was nowhere to be seen.
“Take a seat, please.” Deputy Aldovar indicated one of the seats and Manuel sat in the other one because he was feeling contentious. If this bothered the deputy, he didn’t react, which disappointed Manuel somewhat. He was relieved, however, that the visions didn’t come over him again. With some of the horrible scenarios running through his head already, the last thing he wanted to deal with in the face of a potential adversary was a vision of evil or pain. It felt that a vision like that couldn’t help but undermine his confidence, and that was one of the few things he felt he came into the room with.
“And my cousin Esther is where, exactly, Deputy Aldovar?”
The deputy sat in the opposite chair, a languid smile spreading across his broad face like spilled blood on linoleum. “Oh, she’s on her way. She should be here any second. I don’t suppose you would mind answering a few questions while you’re here?”
“I’ll play along for now, but if I don’t like the questions then the interview is over. Comprende?”
“Si.”
The deputy leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table before him. Manuel couldn’t help but notice that there was no stenographer, no cassette recorder, no note taking of any kind, which could mean two things: this “talk” was completely off the record, or the room was very well miked. He was leaning towards the latter.
“You left the Mexico City Police department three years ago, is that correct?”
That sent Manuel thinking. He did the math in his head and found that it had indeed been a long time since he left for Cobalt City. “Not quite three years, but pretty close.”
“What made you decide to leave the police force?”
“I didn’t leave the police. I merely left Mexico City. I was offered a job as a detective in Cobalt City, in America.”
Aldovar sucked at his teeth, a slight show of discomfort over Manuel’s answer. The detective decided then and there to remember the deputy’s reaction, treating it as a “tell” as though he were a poker player. Whether it ever paid off, only time would tell, but he wasn’t being thrown many bones. And in a pinch, he had learned to make due with what he had. “Cobalt City? Well, you must be very...”
“Proud?” Manuel ventured, knowing it wasn’t the word the deputy was looking for, but calculating it was the one which might irritate him more.
“I was going to say talented. It isn’t every Mexican police officer who is offered such opportunities in the U.S.”
Manuel leaned into the table as well, his hands crossed before him in a deliberate attempt to strike Aldovar’s same posture. “Well, I am very good at what I do.”
“And what is it that you do? What department have they put you in? Certainly not narcotics. Gang unit, perhaps? Vice? Internal affairs?” the last one said slowly, Aldovar’s eyes boring into Manuel.
So he had done his homework, Manuel thought. It was his cooperation with a major corruption investigation that helped finalize his decision to leave Mexico City. And it was more than simple finger pointing. Manuel had been building a case for well over a year, documenting every pay off, every drug transport with cops working security, everything. And then when he felt he had enough to send some people to jail, he took the file to the State Police, to someone he could trust.
There was no way he could ever be a cop in Mexico again. And not only because it wasn’t safe anymore, no, Manuel was a traitor. For all the public scrutiny on police corruption, all the big talk about cleaning up the department, it was just too widespread. There wasn’t a station that would hire him south of the border once they got his transfer paperwork.
“You might be surprised by this, but IA doesn’t have quite as much work to do in Cobalt City as it does in Mexico. So I work in homicide.”
Aldovar didn’t blink, his dark eyes locked on Manuel, his tone when he spoke utterly devoid of inflection. “Homicide. How exciting.”
“Yes. I catch killers, Deputy Aldovar. Real ones.”
The air between them reached a fascinating balance between ice cold and electric for a long moment, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door. Aldovar stood while the door swung open, revealing Esther Vega wearing an orange jumper, her hands cuffed before her. Deputy Attencio stood behind her, towering a good foot over Manuel’s hunch shouldered cousin.
Esther’s eyes brightened into sparks when she saw Manuel, but then nervously shifted to the deputies in the room. She was led to the chair and she sat without being directed to do so. She nervously licked her lips, forming the words “Thank you” without making a sound.
“Deputies, if I could have a few minutes alone with my cousin, please?”
Attencio sneered, then turned and sauntered out. Deputy Aldovar began to shake his head in protest. “I’m afraid that regulations state that she has to be accompanied at all times except when she is with a priest or lawyer.”
It was a show. Manuel could tell. “I assure you, deputy. My cousin and I won’t go anywhere. I think its probably okay to for me to talk to her, don’t you?”
Aldovar sucked on his teeth, looking at the two of them. It was more of the act, of course. Manuel was a cop in Mexico. He knew how it was played. Don’t leave your “suspects” the impression that you gave up too easily then leave, allowing the people in the room to talk freely. That was where the microphones and probably recording equipment became very handy, and Manuel had already established that the room was most certainly miked. And he knew that Aldovar would suspect that he knew. The dance was far too complicated for both of them to keep up for long, and in the end the deputy fell back to routine, and left with a satisfied nod of his head.
Once the door was firmly closed, Esther allowed a nervous smile to surface. “Manny...I can’t believe that you are actually here.”
“I was going to say the same thing.”
Fear blossomed in her eyes. “I didn’t do it, I swear, I didn’t even know what I was signing a confession for.”
“Then why did you sign it?”
The dam broke, and Esther started choking back sobs. Manuel wanted to get up from the chair and go to her, but he was afraid they were watching on the other side of the glass, afraid that Aldovar and Attencio would sweep in at the first sign of contact. “I thought they were going to kill me. God help me, Manny, I thought I was going to die. I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”
Manuel tried to catch his cousin’s eyes. “Hey. Look at me, okay?” He waited until she raised her tired, sunken eyes to his, he indicated the double-sided mirror on the wall with a slight twist of his head, and watched to make sure she got it. When he saw comprehension flicker in her eyes, he continued quietly. “Don’t say anything, but I need to know. Did they hurt you?”
Esther nodded so slightly he almost didn’t see it, but the look in her eyes was sufficient. They had dressed her in a long sleeved jumper. Any bruising, burning, scaring, whatever they did to her, it wouldn’t be visible. And anything that turned up later as evidence of torture would be dismissed as self inflicted anyway.
Manuel wanted to know how she had contacted him, who sent him the postcard that brought him here. But he couldn’t think of a way to ask Esther that wouldn’t give away that person’s identity to the police also. And when it came down to it, he wasn’t sure if she would even know who passed the information along. If she had been locked up in one of the solitary cells, it was probably jail staff. The other, far more likely possibility was that she had a friend in town who knew about him. In the end, he decided to save that mystery for another day.
“You trust me, don’t you?” He asked quietly.
“Of course.”
“I’m going to try and get you out.”
Esther’s eyes grew wide, this time with a potent alchemy of fear and hope. “How...”
Manuel spoke clearly, and in just enough of a stage whisper that he hoped the microphones could pick it up. “I have access to some money. It isn’t a lot, but it’s all I have. A few thousand dollars - U.S. dollars. I can get it here in a day, maybe two. I might be able to convince the police that this is all a misunderstanding and get them to let you go. But you’ll have to leave town and never speak of this again.”
There, he thought. The bait was out in the water. He could suggest a bribe in such a way that most anyone inclined to take it would hear the offer. He didn’t need the entire department to be crooked. He just needed one person. And finding a crooked cop in Mexico was easier than looking down and seeing ground.
But he was not prepared for the expression on Esther’s face. And he realized that he had badly, badly miscalculated how to play this game.
“You want me to WHAT?”
“I want you to forget this ever happened.”
It was too late. This was why he had always loved his cousin Esther. She was passionate. She believed in causes, usually ones she couldn’t ever win. They were her bread and butter. It drove Uncle Chui crazy. It drove everyone in the family a little crazy.
Everyone except Manuel de la Vega, that is. He was always supportive of her fire, if for no other reason than he felt she was a kindred spirit. And deep down, he believed that if enough people went tilting at windmills, then the world would be a better place.
Only now it was likely to get her killed.
And there was a better than good chance that he was going to get killed right along with her. “Please, Esther, just don’t say anything else.”
“Be quiet? Forget about it? I thought you got it, Manny! I can’t forget about this! Someone killed Muriel Cruz. She wasn’t a friend of mine, but I knew her, and she’s dead.”
“Please...”
Esther would not be deterred. “If I forget about this it all goes away. She goes away. And her death doesn’t matter. I can’t let her be one more silent victim. I need my day in court! I need you to help me expose...”
Manuel stood quickly, pulling himself up with the table for support. His voice hissed out from between clenched teeth, and he knew, he just knew, it wouldn’t do any good. It was too late. “For the love of God will you just shut up?”
With his dramatic movement, the show was over. They could both hear footsteps in the hall. Esther looked up at her cousin with the wretched expression of an animal in a snap-jawed trap. Somewhere in there, she realized what she had just done. Manuel told himself that. He had to, just to keep from hating her for the slightest second.
As the door opened, he leaned in close to her and whispered tightly in her ear so that the microphones couldn’t hear it. “Ok, so much for plan A. Sit tight and say nothing. I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”
Attencio and Aldovar were joined by two fresh deputies whose nametags read “Chavez” and “Ortega”. Manuel was separated forcibly from Esther, but he didn’t put up a fight. It looked like the fight had gone out of his cousin too, and as she was dragged slack-jawed from the room, he could only guess what she was thinking. What was the “hard way?”
Manuel sighed inwardly. He had really hoped he could avoid doing things the hard way, but that option had been snatched from his fingertips.
No. Manuel de la Vega had played his trump card and found it lacking.
It was time to see what Gato Loco could do.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Sunday, November 13, 2005
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.
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.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Buena Rosa Chapter Four
Chapter Four
There had been no serious attempt to make the Buena Rosa Police Department attractive when it had been built sometime in the ‘70s. From the glass brick entry way, to the white painted cinderblock bulk of the building itself, it was an exercise in utility, nothing more. Manuel entered alone, leaving Snowflake to watch the front from down the street.
Night was fully upon the town, and Manuel almost expected to find the glass double doors locked up tight, but they swung open with an easy push when tried. The front counter was deserted even though the lights were on. Behind the counter was a wooden divider that reached to the ceiling, and halfway to the walls on either side. “Buena Rosa” was spelled out in brushed steel letters a foot high, and suspended from the ceiling by wires a few inches from the divider. The indistinct sound of grunting reached Manuel’s ears as he pushed thorough the doors into the lobby, making a bell above the doorway jingle.
Immediately, there was a sound of cursing in Spanish and what could only be the rustle of clothes. Seconds later, a uniformed Sheriff’s deputy rounded the divider with a sour expression beneath his thin mustache. The brass nametag gave his name as Attencio, and Manuel gauged him to be in his early twenties. A few inches taller than Manuel, he also had more muscle mass and broader shoulders, giving the impression that he might have played basketball in high school. Deputy Attencio had heavy eyebrows, and they knit together with annoyance at Manuel’s interruption.
“Can I help you with something?”
Manuel gave the deputy his most conciliatory smile and tone. “Yes. I’m looking for my cousin. She’s gone missing.”
Deputy Attencio licked his lips and looked back towards where he came from for a second, perhaps regretting that he had not locked the station door. Manuel followed his gaze and saw a blue sequined purse hanging on the back of a desk chair. So he was right in assuming that it wasn’t work that his visit had interrupted, Manuel thought. The deputy rolled his head on his shoulders, loosening up his neck, and then pulled out a clipboard from under the counter.
“Name?”
“My cousin’s name is Esther Vega,” Manuel enunciated clearly and slowly.
Attencio paused then looked up at Manuel, his eyes narrowed slightly. “Esther Vega? 29 years old, 5’4” tall with straight black hair and a butterfly tattoo on the small of her back?”
“You know her?”
The deputy put the clipboard back under the counter, a thin, hard smile on his face. Manuel noticed for the first time that the deputy was wearing his gun belt, and that his fingers were dangerously close to it. “I know her. She isn’t missing. She’s under arrest.”
“She’s been arrested? There must be some kind of mistake.”
“No, no mistake, señor. She killed another woman. She’s very dangerous, this cousin of yours.”
“But she couldn’t hurt anyone, especially not killed someone. There must be some kind of misunderstanding.”
“But she already admitted that she killed this girl. She gave us a signed confession.”
“Isn’t there some kind of arrangement we can come to? I know she couldn’t have done something like this.” Manuel piled on as much charm as he could, but it wasn’t looking good. The deputy wasn’t giving any opportunity for Manuel to offer up a bribe. That’s the way the dance was done, but it felt like they were dancing to different songs. Either Deputy Attencio was new to this game or he was one of those rare breed: an honest cop. Unless. Unless there was something more going on in this town, he realized.
“Arrangement? I don’t think you heard me. Your cousin signed a confession saying that she killed someone. What kind of arrangement were you thinking of, eh?”
Clearly open bribery was not going to work, so Manuel changed tactics. “I was hoping that I could at least talk to her and make sure she’s okay.”
Deputy Attencio smiled at mention of Esther’s safety. It was a wolf’s smile, and it chilled Manuel to the bone. It was not done as a show of happiness. It was a challenge. Manuel could see it in the deputy’s eyes. “You suggesting that your cousin is unsafe in our care, Mr. – I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”
“Manuel de la Vega. I am not planning on being in town for long. When can I see her?”
The sneer on Deputy Attencio’s face was certain to precede a particularly cutting answer to Manuel’s question, if his reply hadn’t been interrupted by a voice from the other side of the divider. “Ray, before you say something stupid, why don’t you go back to your...desk.”
It was an older voice, calm and weathered, and it came from around the right side of the divider while Attencio had come from around on the left. Heralded by the call to reason that he had given the young deputy, a balding uniformed officer stepped out into the lobby. He appeared to be in his fifties, his hair trimmed almost to his scalp and peppered with gray. The name badge read “Aldovar”, and unlike Attencio, his smile seemed genuine.
“Are you the sheriff?” Manuel asked, trying to keep his cool. He had been certain for a moment that Detective Attencio had been seconds away from doing something stupid, either arresting him or quite possibly shooting him. And even thought Aldovar was essentially a clean slate, he still had the sense that something was off, and made the decision not to pursue a bribery angle just yet.
For his part, Aldovar came to the counter with a friendly, can-do attitude. “I would like to apologize for Ray. The passion of the young is not exactly tempered by experience. Oh, and I am not the sheriff. He left hours ago, but he will be in again tomorrow around ten. You said you were a relative of the prisoner?”
Manuel nodded and hobbled the rest of the way to the counter. He pulled out his wallet and handed his Mexico driver’s license across to Aldovar. “She’s my cousin. Her father knew I was coming through the area and asked me to look in on her. Uncle Chuy hadn’t heard from her in a while and he was getting worried. Now I see he had reason to be concerned.”
Deputy Aldovar finished recording the information from Manuel’s license and handed it back. “We have had some difficulty in reaching Miss Vega’s father.” Which Manuel took as code to mean that the problem they were having is that they hadn’t tried. His uncle rarely if ever left his workshop in Taxco where he did silverwork. If they had tried to reach him, they would have.
“I will try to reach him again and will confirm that you are related to Miss Vega.” Which was code to mean that they might call Uncle Chuy, but probably not, and they would do a background check on Manuel since he was now in town and, as they said in America, “up in their grill.”
“I understand.” Manuel said, which was code for nothing. He had no choice but to let the local police set the ground rules for this encounter. At least no choice yet, he thought, and his thoughts turned painfully to the leathers and bike that Snowflake claimed to have brought to Mexico.
“And I will let Sheriff Bragga know that you are in town and wish to arrange a visit. It shouldn’t be a problem, but in a case like this, it is best to follow procedure. Are you staying at the Soledad?”
“Yes. You can reach me there or leave a message if I’m out.”
Deputy Aldovar nodded, making notes on the same page he had recorded the drivers license number. “Once again, I am sorry for the unpleasantness earlier. If you have any questions or further concerns, please call and ask for Pedro Aldovar.”
Manuel nodded. “That would be you?”
“Si. In the meantime, enjoy your stay in Buena Rosa. If you get a chance, try the Casa del Rancho. Best breakfast in town.”
“Casa del Rancho?”
“On the southern edge of town, it’s easy to miss, but their chorizo and eggs with a little cojita sprinkled on top – I tell you, it is the best food in Buena Rosa.”
“Thanks. And my cousin?”
“She will be right here. I will take it up with Sheriff Bragga when he gets in. You should be able to talk to her tomorrow.”
It was going to have to be good enough, Manuel thought. He nodded, and saw that his apparent satisfaction was well received by the deputy. “I will see you tomorrow then.”
“Muy buien. Have a safe trip back to your hotel and we will speak again tomorrow.”
Manuel rendezvoused with Snowflake further down the block. The panda was sitting in the cab of a battered looking pickup he had brought with him to Buena Rosa. Despite his assurances to Manuel the there was a 5.1-litre HEMI engine under the hood, the trucks usefulness in a pinch had yet to be tested, and Manuel remained skeptical. Still disguised as an American tourist, the panda was contentedly munching on sunflower seeds, watching the front of the police station in the side mirror of the truck. Manuel paused for a rest at the passenger window and leaned against the scarred and pitted red door.
“How did it go in there?”
“Got a good lead on breakfast for tomorrow.”
“The Casa del Rancho? Yeah, good food. Anything else?”
Manuel shrugged, then looked casually over his shoulder in the direction of the station. No sign of any movement, but that could change. “Well, she’s there. It doesn’t look like bribery is an option at the moment, so I’m kind of winging it.”
“I like winging it. Good plan, boss. So, next step?”
“I’m going to play concerned family member for a bit. Stay here another twenty minutes or so to see if they put a tail on me. They know where I’m staying so they might just watch the hotel, in which case its best if we don’t go in together.”
“You don’t think they’ll figure out that I’m here with you?”
Manuel bought some time by making a show of stretching out his arms. “You got here a few days before me, and you’re a gringo.”
“I’m a panda, but point taken.”
“At this point, they think I’m still living in Mexico, but I don’t know how far they’re going to dig. Eventually, they will probably figure out you’re not just some tourist. But I don’t want to make it easy for them either.”
Snowflake cracked another sunflower seed. “And when they figure it out?”
“Well they might arrest you, at which point they are likely to figure out you aren’t human. That could be a problem.”
Neither of them said nothing for a several long moments, and then Manuel de la Vega pushed himself away from the truck door to finish his walk to the hotel. He only made it a few steps before Snowflake stopped him. “Hey boss?” The panda called softly from the cab of the truck.
Manuel half turned to look back at Snowflake.
“It’s great working with you again,” the panda who was not a panda said with a delighted wink and smile.
Manuel said nothing in return, but he found his sidekick - his “Sancho Panda’s” - enthusiasm just a bit contagious. He committed himself to the task at hand of humping the four blocks back to the hotel. The deputy’s final words to him concerned him a bit. He repeated them back to himself under his breath. “Have a safe trip back to the hotel.”
He shook his head. It might have been a simple warning. It might have been a threat. As long as Snowflake was watching the station, he felt relatively safe.
But he had no way to suspect that his entire curbside conversation had been witnessed by someone entirely unknown to the both of them. And as Manuel stumped down the street and out of sight, that unknown figure rolled a motorcycle silently back down the alley. Then, safely out of earshot of the truck, they started the cycle and rode off into the dark night of Buena Rosa.
There had been no serious attempt to make the Buena Rosa Police Department attractive when it had been built sometime in the ‘70s. From the glass brick entry way, to the white painted cinderblock bulk of the building itself, it was an exercise in utility, nothing more. Manuel entered alone, leaving Snowflake to watch the front from down the street.
Night was fully upon the town, and Manuel almost expected to find the glass double doors locked up tight, but they swung open with an easy push when tried. The front counter was deserted even though the lights were on. Behind the counter was a wooden divider that reached to the ceiling, and halfway to the walls on either side. “Buena Rosa” was spelled out in brushed steel letters a foot high, and suspended from the ceiling by wires a few inches from the divider. The indistinct sound of grunting reached Manuel’s ears as he pushed thorough the doors into the lobby, making a bell above the doorway jingle.
Immediately, there was a sound of cursing in Spanish and what could only be the rustle of clothes. Seconds later, a uniformed Sheriff’s deputy rounded the divider with a sour expression beneath his thin mustache. The brass nametag gave his name as Attencio, and Manuel gauged him to be in his early twenties. A few inches taller than Manuel, he also had more muscle mass and broader shoulders, giving the impression that he might have played basketball in high school. Deputy Attencio had heavy eyebrows, and they knit together with annoyance at Manuel’s interruption.
“Can I help you with something?”
Manuel gave the deputy his most conciliatory smile and tone. “Yes. I’m looking for my cousin. She’s gone missing.”
Deputy Attencio licked his lips and looked back towards where he came from for a second, perhaps regretting that he had not locked the station door. Manuel followed his gaze and saw a blue sequined purse hanging on the back of a desk chair. So he was right in assuming that it wasn’t work that his visit had interrupted, Manuel thought. The deputy rolled his head on his shoulders, loosening up his neck, and then pulled out a clipboard from under the counter.
“Name?”
“My cousin’s name is Esther Vega,” Manuel enunciated clearly and slowly.
Attencio paused then looked up at Manuel, his eyes narrowed slightly. “Esther Vega? 29 years old, 5’4” tall with straight black hair and a butterfly tattoo on the small of her back?”
“You know her?”
The deputy put the clipboard back under the counter, a thin, hard smile on his face. Manuel noticed for the first time that the deputy was wearing his gun belt, and that his fingers were dangerously close to it. “I know her. She isn’t missing. She’s under arrest.”
“She’s been arrested? There must be some kind of mistake.”
“No, no mistake, señor. She killed another woman. She’s very dangerous, this cousin of yours.”
“But she couldn’t hurt anyone, especially not killed someone. There must be some kind of misunderstanding.”
“But she already admitted that she killed this girl. She gave us a signed confession.”
“Isn’t there some kind of arrangement we can come to? I know she couldn’t have done something like this.” Manuel piled on as much charm as he could, but it wasn’t looking good. The deputy wasn’t giving any opportunity for Manuel to offer up a bribe. That’s the way the dance was done, but it felt like they were dancing to different songs. Either Deputy Attencio was new to this game or he was one of those rare breed: an honest cop. Unless. Unless there was something more going on in this town, he realized.
“Arrangement? I don’t think you heard me. Your cousin signed a confession saying that she killed someone. What kind of arrangement were you thinking of, eh?”
Clearly open bribery was not going to work, so Manuel changed tactics. “I was hoping that I could at least talk to her and make sure she’s okay.”
Deputy Attencio smiled at mention of Esther’s safety. It was a wolf’s smile, and it chilled Manuel to the bone. It was not done as a show of happiness. It was a challenge. Manuel could see it in the deputy’s eyes. “You suggesting that your cousin is unsafe in our care, Mr. – I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”
“Manuel de la Vega. I am not planning on being in town for long. When can I see her?”
The sneer on Deputy Attencio’s face was certain to precede a particularly cutting answer to Manuel’s question, if his reply hadn’t been interrupted by a voice from the other side of the divider. “Ray, before you say something stupid, why don’t you go back to your...desk.”
It was an older voice, calm and weathered, and it came from around the right side of the divider while Attencio had come from around on the left. Heralded by the call to reason that he had given the young deputy, a balding uniformed officer stepped out into the lobby. He appeared to be in his fifties, his hair trimmed almost to his scalp and peppered with gray. The name badge read “Aldovar”, and unlike Attencio, his smile seemed genuine.
“Are you the sheriff?” Manuel asked, trying to keep his cool. He had been certain for a moment that Detective Attencio had been seconds away from doing something stupid, either arresting him or quite possibly shooting him. And even thought Aldovar was essentially a clean slate, he still had the sense that something was off, and made the decision not to pursue a bribery angle just yet.
For his part, Aldovar came to the counter with a friendly, can-do attitude. “I would like to apologize for Ray. The passion of the young is not exactly tempered by experience. Oh, and I am not the sheriff. He left hours ago, but he will be in again tomorrow around ten. You said you were a relative of the prisoner?”
Manuel nodded and hobbled the rest of the way to the counter. He pulled out his wallet and handed his Mexico driver’s license across to Aldovar. “She’s my cousin. Her father knew I was coming through the area and asked me to look in on her. Uncle Chuy hadn’t heard from her in a while and he was getting worried. Now I see he had reason to be concerned.”
Deputy Aldovar finished recording the information from Manuel’s license and handed it back. “We have had some difficulty in reaching Miss Vega’s father.” Which Manuel took as code to mean that the problem they were having is that they hadn’t tried. His uncle rarely if ever left his workshop in Taxco where he did silverwork. If they had tried to reach him, they would have.
“I will try to reach him again and will confirm that you are related to Miss Vega.” Which was code to mean that they might call Uncle Chuy, but probably not, and they would do a background check on Manuel since he was now in town and, as they said in America, “up in their grill.”
“I understand.” Manuel said, which was code for nothing. He had no choice but to let the local police set the ground rules for this encounter. At least no choice yet, he thought, and his thoughts turned painfully to the leathers and bike that Snowflake claimed to have brought to Mexico.
“And I will let Sheriff Bragga know that you are in town and wish to arrange a visit. It shouldn’t be a problem, but in a case like this, it is best to follow procedure. Are you staying at the Soledad?”
“Yes. You can reach me there or leave a message if I’m out.”
Deputy Aldovar nodded, making notes on the same page he had recorded the drivers license number. “Once again, I am sorry for the unpleasantness earlier. If you have any questions or further concerns, please call and ask for Pedro Aldovar.”
Manuel nodded. “That would be you?”
“Si. In the meantime, enjoy your stay in Buena Rosa. If you get a chance, try the Casa del Rancho. Best breakfast in town.”
“Casa del Rancho?”
“On the southern edge of town, it’s easy to miss, but their chorizo and eggs with a little cojita sprinkled on top – I tell you, it is the best food in Buena Rosa.”
“Thanks. And my cousin?”
“She will be right here. I will take it up with Sheriff Bragga when he gets in. You should be able to talk to her tomorrow.”
It was going to have to be good enough, Manuel thought. He nodded, and saw that his apparent satisfaction was well received by the deputy. “I will see you tomorrow then.”
“Muy buien. Have a safe trip back to your hotel and we will speak again tomorrow.”
Manuel rendezvoused with Snowflake further down the block. The panda was sitting in the cab of a battered looking pickup he had brought with him to Buena Rosa. Despite his assurances to Manuel the there was a 5.1-litre HEMI engine under the hood, the trucks usefulness in a pinch had yet to be tested, and Manuel remained skeptical. Still disguised as an American tourist, the panda was contentedly munching on sunflower seeds, watching the front of the police station in the side mirror of the truck. Manuel paused for a rest at the passenger window and leaned against the scarred and pitted red door.
“How did it go in there?”
“Got a good lead on breakfast for tomorrow.”
“The Casa del Rancho? Yeah, good food. Anything else?”
Manuel shrugged, then looked casually over his shoulder in the direction of the station. No sign of any movement, but that could change. “Well, she’s there. It doesn’t look like bribery is an option at the moment, so I’m kind of winging it.”
“I like winging it. Good plan, boss. So, next step?”
“I’m going to play concerned family member for a bit. Stay here another twenty minutes or so to see if they put a tail on me. They know where I’m staying so they might just watch the hotel, in which case its best if we don’t go in together.”
“You don’t think they’ll figure out that I’m here with you?”
Manuel bought some time by making a show of stretching out his arms. “You got here a few days before me, and you’re a gringo.”
“I’m a panda, but point taken.”
“At this point, they think I’m still living in Mexico, but I don’t know how far they’re going to dig. Eventually, they will probably figure out you’re not just some tourist. But I don’t want to make it easy for them either.”
Snowflake cracked another sunflower seed. “And when they figure it out?”
“Well they might arrest you, at which point they are likely to figure out you aren’t human. That could be a problem.”
Neither of them said nothing for a several long moments, and then Manuel de la Vega pushed himself away from the truck door to finish his walk to the hotel. He only made it a few steps before Snowflake stopped him. “Hey boss?” The panda called softly from the cab of the truck.
Manuel half turned to look back at Snowflake.
“It’s great working with you again,” the panda who was not a panda said with a delighted wink and smile.
Manuel said nothing in return, but he found his sidekick - his “Sancho Panda’s” - enthusiasm just a bit contagious. He committed himself to the task at hand of humping the four blocks back to the hotel. The deputy’s final words to him concerned him a bit. He repeated them back to himself under his breath. “Have a safe trip back to the hotel.”
He shook his head. It might have been a simple warning. It might have been a threat. As long as Snowflake was watching the station, he felt relatively safe.
But he had no way to suspect that his entire curbside conversation had been witnessed by someone entirely unknown to the both of them. And as Manuel stumped down the street and out of sight, that unknown figure rolled a motorcycle silently back down the alley. Then, safely out of earshot of the truck, they started the cycle and rode off into the dark night of Buena Rosa.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Buena Rosa Chapter Three
Chapter Three
The air in Buena Rosa carried a faint metallic taste the Manuel suspected couldn’t possibly be good for him. He hoped that the impressive heat would bake any impurities out of it, even though the scientist in him knew that wasn’t the way things worked. If anything, it was probably making things worse. He tried not to think about it too hard. With luck, he would be done with this town in only a few days and back to civilization.
It was his first time back in Mexico since leaving to join the police in Cobalt City, and while he hadn’t forgotten the rampant poverty, he had forgotten how some people were so accepting of it. The longer you lived with the status quo, the more calcified the status quo became, until there comes a time when you can’t imagine anything outside of your own experiences. So many people had bought into this dream that working in a factory gave you an opportunity, that industry would solve all their problems, they were willing to overlook the miseries it brought with it.
Manuel had seen the slums. You couldn’t avoid them in Mexico City, the so called la Ciudad de los Palacios, the “City of Palaces”. With the population in the greater metropolitan area estimated anywhere from 18 to 22 million people, the desperation in some neighborhoods was so thick, you could feel it on your skin. Violent crime, kidnappings more often than not, were so prevalent that they were a way of life for everyone in the city.
In Cobalt City, the major concerns were parking and over priced coffee. In Mexico City, it was the knowledge that the next time you got in a cab, the driver could abduct you and force you to empty your bank account with your ATM card, sometimes even holding you overnight to circumvent daily withdraw limitations.
But he hated the perception that everyone in Mexico was some poor dirt farmer or criminal, just looking for some chance to make the midnight crossing into America for a better life. And he hated the admission that he had gone to America, albeit with a valid work visa, for much the same reason. The general perception that all police departments in Mexico were corrupt in some ways was prevalent and while unkind, not untrue. It was difficult to aspire to being a great cop when so often the bar was set so low.
And the fact that Manuel’s father would probably never understood why he became a cop, well, it was even more justification to move far away. The feeling that you had somehow failed your parents, even if unjustified, was made easier by never having to deal with them. But now his experience in the questionable ethics of Mexican law enforcement might be just what his family needed most. And while he was certain Esther would appreciate the help, he couldn’t help but hope that his father would appreciate it as well.
Manuel had arrived in Buena Rosa anonymously, lest he draw attention to himself. He had flown to Midland, Texas by charter plane then been lucky enough to catch a ride to the border with an elderly couple heading south for their granddaughter’s baptism. Dressing casually in a rarely worn denim jacket and jeans, he crossed the border at Ojinaga and caught a bus there to bring him the final 150 or so miles.
The bus had been virtually deserted, with only four other people making the trip to Buena Rosa from the direction of the border. This close to the “American Dream”, most traffic tended to go in the opposite direction. He felt the eyes of the other passengers on him and suspected that they might be sizing him up, weighing the ease of robbing a cripple against the apparent value of what he might be carrying. Manuel kept his dusty duffle bag within an easy arm’s reach and his attention finely tuned for the entire four hour trip, pleasantly surprised that no one decided he was worth the effort.
He had close to 200 pesos in his wallet, amounting to less than $10 American. $2,000, half in dollars, half in pesos had been tucked into two cleverly designed veladoras. One of the glass saint candles featured Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the other had an image of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos printed brightly upon it.
While it was a fortune for anyone who shared the bus with him, he doubted they would be able to find the release even if they were to suspect there was money hidden within. And the candles were so common among the largely Catholic Mexican community that no one would think anything of finding them in his bag.
Manuel stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of what appeared to be the only hotel in town two blocks from where he had been deposited by the bus. There were vacancies, of course. There were probably always vacancies. Buena Rosa was not the tourist town it might have once pretended itself to be. The Soledad was a two story building with faded flyers taped up in the windows. Low quality photocopies of old photos and hand drawn faces revealed many of them to be missing person posters.
Nothing official, not put up by the police, of course, but instead posted by loved ones – friends, family perhaps. A lot of people, Manuel thought. And these are just the ones who people think are missing. He wondered again about the vision he had received when touching the postcard – a field of carrion birds. Just how big was this thing he had come to confront?
He slung his dusty duffle bag over his shoulder and pushed into the dim interior of the hotel office. Light from between the posted flyers dappled the small space like a secluded grove. A desk fan was working overtime to circulate the air and having little success doing it. A small man with a pinched face looked up from his tattered paperback with a look of surprise. “Buenos dias! Can I help you with a room?”
“Gracias.”
The desk clerk turned a guests register on the counter around to face Manuel. It didn’t surprise him to see the entire operation running without the use of computers. There was only one other name on the registry that was less than a month old, a sloppily printed “Harry Snow”, who appeared to have checked in just a few days ago.
It was too much of a coincidence. “I’m here to meet my friend, Mr. Snow. Could I get a room next to his, perhaps?”
“Si. There is one across the hall. I give you that one. If I can see your drivers license...” the clerk’s eyes flickered down to the forearm crutches and he barely skipped a beat, “or your ID card or passport?”
Manuel considered the false ID card he had prepared but decided against it. It was still entirely possible that this was nothing more than typical graft and corruption, at which point his being registered under his real name would allow the police to research him if they cared to do so. If that happened, the fact that he was a decorated police officer would give him a little clout. He fished out his wallet and handed over his old Mexican driver’s license. He still had over a year left on it until it expired, and a reputation as a Mexican resident, whether it was true or not, might also be to his advantage. He had so few advantages, he realize, no reason not to exploit them all.
“Have you seen my friend recently?”
“Not since this afternoon. He left a few hours ago.”
Manuel nodded as if that was what he had expected, hoping it would mask his disappointment. “Any idea where he might have gone?”
“Si, senior. He is probably at Dos Padres, down the street. He spends much time there.”
Well, if Dos Padres was a bar, then there was little doubt who Harry Snow was. Manuel thanked the clerk and, after collecting the key, hiked up to his room. It was not as entirely dismal as he had expected. The room was small, but wasn’t used frequently, so other than a little dust, it was clean. And with the possible exception of something living in the mattress, it appeared to be more or less bug free. He sat on the edge of the narrow bed with his bag beside him and considered his options.
A long minute later, he stood with the evening’s course of action firmly in mind. The money-laden candles were placed on the small dresser. He lit them both and left them burning while he went into the bathroom and washed the travel grime from his face and neck with a wet rag. Thus refreshed, he extinguished the candles, leaving the paper book of matches from the lobby downstairs in the ashtray. He retrieved a library card from his wallet and pressed his thumb against the line drawing of the library building on the front until the line drawing flashed brightly twice. His tracking device and communicator now switched on, he tucked the card into his jacket’s breast pocket and left, locking the door behind himself.
The sun was low in the sky when he found Dos Padres, making the sky a brilliant rose color. Manuel figured that the smoke from the factory might have something to do with the vibrancy of it, but had to admit that it was spectacular. The painted window of the bar showed two robed Dominican monks, heads bowed, on either side of a wooden table with a bottle of wine between them. A neon Corona sign hummed next to it on one side, while a neon Tecate sign was on the other. He grunted and pushed open the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness before going deeper into the room.
He figured picking out “Harry” would be easy, but a long look around the room turned up a lot of gringos, none of which looked familiar to him. The neon beer signs out front tipped him off that this was not exactly a “locals” bar. Locals didn’t drink Tecate and Corona, not if they could help it. This was a bar which owed its existence to American drinkers. Since most transnational corporations used their own management teams, it meant a steady supply of gringos with American money and American tastes. The owner of Dos Padres probably couldn’t print his own money faster than he was bound to make it here.
Manuel worked his way deeper into the room towards an empty booth, and saw a heavy-set man with a buzz cut and pale blue windbreaker waving him over to his table. It was no one he knew, but he trusted his instincts and altered his course. “Harry?”
“Surprised to see me, buddy?” came the all-too familiar voice of Snowflake, the panda former driver/mechanic/pilot associate of the Protectorate. This must be the backup and support Katherine sent for him. She must truly hate him for something or other.
“Yeah, surprised is a good word for it. You’re looking, um, good.” Manuel couldn’t help but stare. Snowflake was a panda, albeit a highly evolved one. A Chinese research project several years ago had tried to save the pandas from extinction by altering their genetics, essentially simulating tens of thousands of years of evolution on their test subject. The end result was Snowflake, a crass, rude, trigger happy, and generally surly individual with undeniable mechanical skills. The experiment was considered a failure and not repeated, making the panda-man one of a kind. It was a fact not lost on Snowflake, who frequently claimed that if they had made a female equivalent for him to hang out with, he would have been considerably less surly.
But before Manuel sat, very clearly, a human male in his late forties. He didn’t know what to say, but in a world of super-humans he had gotten somewhat used to being surprised. He took pulled out a seat and sat, staring at Harry who was looking very pleased with himself.
“Barkeep!” Harry waved at a young, long-haired Hispanic man in a cleanly pressed shirt and red vest behind the bar. “Two more, please.”
Manuel watched his friend closely as he retrieved money to pay for the beers, and realized that if he looked closely, there were some subtle indicators of what was going on. “So, let me guess. Kara Sparx did some custom work for you?”
Harry winked while he touched his nose. It suddenly made sense. Kara Sparx had done state of the art holographic work for the Protectorate on a contract basis. As far as Manuel knew, she had never tried to branch out into holographic disguises, but it was a logical extension of some of her other work. “I have to keep an eye on the battery, but as long as I limit physical contact, its pretty freaking foolproof,” Harry confided in a conspiratorial whisper.
A careful examination of the bar showed no one within easy earshot even if they were paying attention. Manuel took a draw on his beer despite not being a particular fan of Corona, then leaned into the table in what he hoped would appear to be a friendly, conversational manner. “So, you’ve been here a few days now. Have you learned anything?”
“Oh yeah. Don’t drink anything that isn’t fermented or distilled, if you catch my drift. I had a spiritual awakening after a tamale plate and glass of water my first night here, and believe me when I say you don’t want to go through that yourself.”
“That’s a lot of help.”
“You know, sarcasm is an ugly, hurtful trait, Manuel.”
“Okay. Have you learned anything else?”
“Well, factory town, which shouldn’t surprise you. Pegasus Motor Company has this place bought and paid for. These poor bastards here are middle management at the factory, and they live in a little gated community in the hills called Perseus Glen. Way I hear it, there are definite benefits to being management here. The actual employees, and by that I mean the local labor force lives in this shantytown between here and the factory itself. I don’t recommend going there.”
“Depressing?”
“Dangerous. They don’t like whitey too much there. And there have been disappearances which only make them more likely to get all riled up.”
Manuel nodded. It fit with the missing person flyers he had seen. He didn’t like the pattern. “Okay. So what about my cousin?”
“Muriel Cruz, one of the shift supervisors at the factory went missing for about a week. Her sister came up from their hometown, were ever the hell that is, and started raising holy hell. Then there was a rain storm, and Muriel’s body turned up in a ditch the next morning. Animals had been at it, but they were still able to make an ID based on a tattoo, if I heard right.”
“And this implicates my cousin how?”
“Your cousin has a reputation for being a trouble maker. She was trying to unionize the workforce and the plant security had her banned from the factory and tried to keep her out of the shantytown as well. Hard to - no - impossible to enforce, but they tried. The theory is that Muriel went to the floor manager about your cousin, and that’s why she was banned. So she was killed in a fit of anger or revenge.”
“That doesn’t sound like Esther.”
Snowflake shrugged, sipping on his beer. “That’s just what I hear, chief. It’s the official party line, and most of the locals seem to buy it too. She signed a confession and everything.”
“Guess I have to talk to the police.”
“I don’t think you heard me.” Snowflake leaned over the table, his shoulders hunched. “She. Signed. A. Confession.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Manuel sighed. Maybe it was easier for Snowflake to see things in black and white because he was a panda, but nothing was black and white south of the border. “This is Mexico. I grease the right palm, and I might be able to make this entire thing go away.”
Snowflake leaned back in his chair and it creaked dangerously under his weight. He pointed at Manuel with his beer bottle. “If you say so. But if you ask me, I think you’re going to need a change of clothes before the nights over.”
“A jacket and tie isn’t going to make a difference here.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Snowflake looked genuinely confused.
“I’m talking about waving money about. What are you talking about?”
Snowflake laughed hard enough to elicit curious looks from several bar patrons who quickly turned back to their own conversations. “I figured her royal kitty-ness would have told you. Damn.”
Manuel got an uncomfortable sinking sensation in his stomach. “Told me what?”
“I brought your leathers. Them and the bike, which is, if I do say so myself, a thing of absolute beauty, are here in Mexico.”
The room started spinning for reasons completely unrelated to the weak beer he had been drinking. It was as if the floor had fallen out from beneath him and he was in a sudden, uncontrollable fall with nothing secure left to hold onto. “The bike, the leathers, they were all destroyed.”
“Yeah. Rebuilding the bike was quite the little project. It hasn’t been field tested, but all the diagnostic tests have been outstanding. I got the Tesla twins to help out. Xander reconfigured the leather body suit, so it should be better than new, and the synthetic muscles in it should more than compensate for your gimpy legs.”
“My gimpy...”
“Congratulations, chief. You’re a hero again.”
Manuel only distantly heard the words. He thought he said something akin to “But I don’t want to be a hero.” The details of that were sketchy, as he was too busy falling to be sure.
The air in Buena Rosa carried a faint metallic taste the Manuel suspected couldn’t possibly be good for him. He hoped that the impressive heat would bake any impurities out of it, even though the scientist in him knew that wasn’t the way things worked. If anything, it was probably making things worse. He tried not to think about it too hard. With luck, he would be done with this town in only a few days and back to civilization.
It was his first time back in Mexico since leaving to join the police in Cobalt City, and while he hadn’t forgotten the rampant poverty, he had forgotten how some people were so accepting of it. The longer you lived with the status quo, the more calcified the status quo became, until there comes a time when you can’t imagine anything outside of your own experiences. So many people had bought into this dream that working in a factory gave you an opportunity, that industry would solve all their problems, they were willing to overlook the miseries it brought with it.
Manuel had seen the slums. You couldn’t avoid them in Mexico City, the so called la Ciudad de los Palacios, the “City of Palaces”. With the population in the greater metropolitan area estimated anywhere from 18 to 22 million people, the desperation in some neighborhoods was so thick, you could feel it on your skin. Violent crime, kidnappings more often than not, were so prevalent that they were a way of life for everyone in the city.
In Cobalt City, the major concerns were parking and over priced coffee. In Mexico City, it was the knowledge that the next time you got in a cab, the driver could abduct you and force you to empty your bank account with your ATM card, sometimes even holding you overnight to circumvent daily withdraw limitations.
But he hated the perception that everyone in Mexico was some poor dirt farmer or criminal, just looking for some chance to make the midnight crossing into America for a better life. And he hated the admission that he had gone to America, albeit with a valid work visa, for much the same reason. The general perception that all police departments in Mexico were corrupt in some ways was prevalent and while unkind, not untrue. It was difficult to aspire to being a great cop when so often the bar was set so low.
And the fact that Manuel’s father would probably never understood why he became a cop, well, it was even more justification to move far away. The feeling that you had somehow failed your parents, even if unjustified, was made easier by never having to deal with them. But now his experience in the questionable ethics of Mexican law enforcement might be just what his family needed most. And while he was certain Esther would appreciate the help, he couldn’t help but hope that his father would appreciate it as well.
Manuel had arrived in Buena Rosa anonymously, lest he draw attention to himself. He had flown to Midland, Texas by charter plane then been lucky enough to catch a ride to the border with an elderly couple heading south for their granddaughter’s baptism. Dressing casually in a rarely worn denim jacket and jeans, he crossed the border at Ojinaga and caught a bus there to bring him the final 150 or so miles.
The bus had been virtually deserted, with only four other people making the trip to Buena Rosa from the direction of the border. This close to the “American Dream”, most traffic tended to go in the opposite direction. He felt the eyes of the other passengers on him and suspected that they might be sizing him up, weighing the ease of robbing a cripple against the apparent value of what he might be carrying. Manuel kept his dusty duffle bag within an easy arm’s reach and his attention finely tuned for the entire four hour trip, pleasantly surprised that no one decided he was worth the effort.
He had close to 200 pesos in his wallet, amounting to less than $10 American. $2,000, half in dollars, half in pesos had been tucked into two cleverly designed veladoras. One of the glass saint candles featured Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the other had an image of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos printed brightly upon it.
While it was a fortune for anyone who shared the bus with him, he doubted they would be able to find the release even if they were to suspect there was money hidden within. And the candles were so common among the largely Catholic Mexican community that no one would think anything of finding them in his bag.
Manuel stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of what appeared to be the only hotel in town two blocks from where he had been deposited by the bus. There were vacancies, of course. There were probably always vacancies. Buena Rosa was not the tourist town it might have once pretended itself to be. The Soledad was a two story building with faded flyers taped up in the windows. Low quality photocopies of old photos and hand drawn faces revealed many of them to be missing person posters.
Nothing official, not put up by the police, of course, but instead posted by loved ones – friends, family perhaps. A lot of people, Manuel thought. And these are just the ones who people think are missing. He wondered again about the vision he had received when touching the postcard – a field of carrion birds. Just how big was this thing he had come to confront?
He slung his dusty duffle bag over his shoulder and pushed into the dim interior of the hotel office. Light from between the posted flyers dappled the small space like a secluded grove. A desk fan was working overtime to circulate the air and having little success doing it. A small man with a pinched face looked up from his tattered paperback with a look of surprise. “Buenos dias! Can I help you with a room?”
“Gracias.”
The desk clerk turned a guests register on the counter around to face Manuel. It didn’t surprise him to see the entire operation running without the use of computers. There was only one other name on the registry that was less than a month old, a sloppily printed “Harry Snow”, who appeared to have checked in just a few days ago.
It was too much of a coincidence. “I’m here to meet my friend, Mr. Snow. Could I get a room next to his, perhaps?”
“Si. There is one across the hall. I give you that one. If I can see your drivers license...” the clerk’s eyes flickered down to the forearm crutches and he barely skipped a beat, “or your ID card or passport?”
Manuel considered the false ID card he had prepared but decided against it. It was still entirely possible that this was nothing more than typical graft and corruption, at which point his being registered under his real name would allow the police to research him if they cared to do so. If that happened, the fact that he was a decorated police officer would give him a little clout. He fished out his wallet and handed over his old Mexican driver’s license. He still had over a year left on it until it expired, and a reputation as a Mexican resident, whether it was true or not, might also be to his advantage. He had so few advantages, he realize, no reason not to exploit them all.
“Have you seen my friend recently?”
“Not since this afternoon. He left a few hours ago.”
Manuel nodded as if that was what he had expected, hoping it would mask his disappointment. “Any idea where he might have gone?”
“Si, senior. He is probably at Dos Padres, down the street. He spends much time there.”
Well, if Dos Padres was a bar, then there was little doubt who Harry Snow was. Manuel thanked the clerk and, after collecting the key, hiked up to his room. It was not as entirely dismal as he had expected. The room was small, but wasn’t used frequently, so other than a little dust, it was clean. And with the possible exception of something living in the mattress, it appeared to be more or less bug free. He sat on the edge of the narrow bed with his bag beside him and considered his options.
A long minute later, he stood with the evening’s course of action firmly in mind. The money-laden candles were placed on the small dresser. He lit them both and left them burning while he went into the bathroom and washed the travel grime from his face and neck with a wet rag. Thus refreshed, he extinguished the candles, leaving the paper book of matches from the lobby downstairs in the ashtray. He retrieved a library card from his wallet and pressed his thumb against the line drawing of the library building on the front until the line drawing flashed brightly twice. His tracking device and communicator now switched on, he tucked the card into his jacket’s breast pocket and left, locking the door behind himself.
The sun was low in the sky when he found Dos Padres, making the sky a brilliant rose color. Manuel figured that the smoke from the factory might have something to do with the vibrancy of it, but had to admit that it was spectacular. The painted window of the bar showed two robed Dominican monks, heads bowed, on either side of a wooden table with a bottle of wine between them. A neon Corona sign hummed next to it on one side, while a neon Tecate sign was on the other. He grunted and pushed open the door, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness before going deeper into the room.
He figured picking out “Harry” would be easy, but a long look around the room turned up a lot of gringos, none of which looked familiar to him. The neon beer signs out front tipped him off that this was not exactly a “locals” bar. Locals didn’t drink Tecate and Corona, not if they could help it. This was a bar which owed its existence to American drinkers. Since most transnational corporations used their own management teams, it meant a steady supply of gringos with American money and American tastes. The owner of Dos Padres probably couldn’t print his own money faster than he was bound to make it here.
Manuel worked his way deeper into the room towards an empty booth, and saw a heavy-set man with a buzz cut and pale blue windbreaker waving him over to his table. It was no one he knew, but he trusted his instincts and altered his course. “Harry?”
“Surprised to see me, buddy?” came the all-too familiar voice of Snowflake, the panda former driver/mechanic/pilot associate of the Protectorate. This must be the backup and support Katherine sent for him. She must truly hate him for something or other.
“Yeah, surprised is a good word for it. You’re looking, um, good.” Manuel couldn’t help but stare. Snowflake was a panda, albeit a highly evolved one. A Chinese research project several years ago had tried to save the pandas from extinction by altering their genetics, essentially simulating tens of thousands of years of evolution on their test subject. The end result was Snowflake, a crass, rude, trigger happy, and generally surly individual with undeniable mechanical skills. The experiment was considered a failure and not repeated, making the panda-man one of a kind. It was a fact not lost on Snowflake, who frequently claimed that if they had made a female equivalent for him to hang out with, he would have been considerably less surly.
But before Manuel sat, very clearly, a human male in his late forties. He didn’t know what to say, but in a world of super-humans he had gotten somewhat used to being surprised. He took pulled out a seat and sat, staring at Harry who was looking very pleased with himself.
“Barkeep!” Harry waved at a young, long-haired Hispanic man in a cleanly pressed shirt and red vest behind the bar. “Two more, please.”
Manuel watched his friend closely as he retrieved money to pay for the beers, and realized that if he looked closely, there were some subtle indicators of what was going on. “So, let me guess. Kara Sparx did some custom work for you?”
Harry winked while he touched his nose. It suddenly made sense. Kara Sparx had done state of the art holographic work for the Protectorate on a contract basis. As far as Manuel knew, she had never tried to branch out into holographic disguises, but it was a logical extension of some of her other work. “I have to keep an eye on the battery, but as long as I limit physical contact, its pretty freaking foolproof,” Harry confided in a conspiratorial whisper.
A careful examination of the bar showed no one within easy earshot even if they were paying attention. Manuel took a draw on his beer despite not being a particular fan of Corona, then leaned into the table in what he hoped would appear to be a friendly, conversational manner. “So, you’ve been here a few days now. Have you learned anything?”
“Oh yeah. Don’t drink anything that isn’t fermented or distilled, if you catch my drift. I had a spiritual awakening after a tamale plate and glass of water my first night here, and believe me when I say you don’t want to go through that yourself.”
“That’s a lot of help.”
“You know, sarcasm is an ugly, hurtful trait, Manuel.”
“Okay. Have you learned anything else?”
“Well, factory town, which shouldn’t surprise you. Pegasus Motor Company has this place bought and paid for. These poor bastards here are middle management at the factory, and they live in a little gated community in the hills called Perseus Glen. Way I hear it, there are definite benefits to being management here. The actual employees, and by that I mean the local labor force lives in this shantytown between here and the factory itself. I don’t recommend going there.”
“Depressing?”
“Dangerous. They don’t like whitey too much there. And there have been disappearances which only make them more likely to get all riled up.”
Manuel nodded. It fit with the missing person flyers he had seen. He didn’t like the pattern. “Okay. So what about my cousin?”
“Muriel Cruz, one of the shift supervisors at the factory went missing for about a week. Her sister came up from their hometown, were ever the hell that is, and started raising holy hell. Then there was a rain storm, and Muriel’s body turned up in a ditch the next morning. Animals had been at it, but they were still able to make an ID based on a tattoo, if I heard right.”
“And this implicates my cousin how?”
“Your cousin has a reputation for being a trouble maker. She was trying to unionize the workforce and the plant security had her banned from the factory and tried to keep her out of the shantytown as well. Hard to - no - impossible to enforce, but they tried. The theory is that Muriel went to the floor manager about your cousin, and that’s why she was banned. So she was killed in a fit of anger or revenge.”
“That doesn’t sound like Esther.”
Snowflake shrugged, sipping on his beer. “That’s just what I hear, chief. It’s the official party line, and most of the locals seem to buy it too. She signed a confession and everything.”
“Guess I have to talk to the police.”
“I don’t think you heard me.” Snowflake leaned over the table, his shoulders hunched. “She. Signed. A. Confession.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Manuel sighed. Maybe it was easier for Snowflake to see things in black and white because he was a panda, but nothing was black and white south of the border. “This is Mexico. I grease the right palm, and I might be able to make this entire thing go away.”
Snowflake leaned back in his chair and it creaked dangerously under his weight. He pointed at Manuel with his beer bottle. “If you say so. But if you ask me, I think you’re going to need a change of clothes before the nights over.”
“A jacket and tie isn’t going to make a difference here.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Snowflake looked genuinely confused.
“I’m talking about waving money about. What are you talking about?”
Snowflake laughed hard enough to elicit curious looks from several bar patrons who quickly turned back to their own conversations. “I figured her royal kitty-ness would have told you. Damn.”
Manuel got an uncomfortable sinking sensation in his stomach. “Told me what?”
“I brought your leathers. Them and the bike, which is, if I do say so myself, a thing of absolute beauty, are here in Mexico.”
The room started spinning for reasons completely unrelated to the weak beer he had been drinking. It was as if the floor had fallen out from beneath him and he was in a sudden, uncontrollable fall with nothing secure left to hold onto. “The bike, the leathers, they were all destroyed.”
“Yeah. Rebuilding the bike was quite the little project. It hasn’t been field tested, but all the diagnostic tests have been outstanding. I got the Tesla twins to help out. Xander reconfigured the leather body suit, so it should be better than new, and the synthetic muscles in it should more than compensate for your gimpy legs.”
“My gimpy...”
“Congratulations, chief. You’re a hero again.”
Manuel only distantly heard the words. He thought he said something akin to “But I don’t want to be a hero.” The details of that were sketchy, as he was too busy falling to be sure.
Buena Rosa Chapter Two
Chapter Two
She made Manuel wait in the reception area for close to ten minutes. Katherine Wilde was a very busy woman, and he understood the complexities of her schedule, perhaps better than her own staff did. After all, for a while, they were both heroes. And while Gato Loco might have hung up the mask, Wild Kat was still far from retirement.
And when she wasn’t out fighting crime in thigh-high boots and leather bustier, she was still the head of a large arts foundation. Or was it a company? He was never really sure what they did in the three floors of offices beneath her private workspace. It was something to do with promoting or preserving art. Something to do with art, he was sure. They had a snazzy logo and corporate letterhead, and a lot of money was thrown about with their name attached to it.
Manuel never paid a tremendous amount of attention to it. While they had been dating, it had really been Katherine Wilde – Wild Kat – who fascinated him, not her company. And now he sat in a bamboo paneled reception area watching water drip down a slab of granite on the far wall, and he wondered not only what it was that they did here, but if maybe he should have paid attention to it sooner.
He had been through the room plenty of times. But he had never lingered. Katherine’s touch was all over the place, her own style, her attention to detail. This venture of hers was not a front. It was important to her, perhaps as important being Wild Kat, if not more so.
More importantly, it was a part of her life that he suddenly realized he had neglected. It made him a little sad. And he wondered, just a little, if that was part of why they weren’t spending as much time together.
“Mr. de la Vega? Ms. Wilde will see you now.”
Manuel stood and gave the receptionist with the perfect teeth a distracted smile. He checked his jacket reflexively, then swung his legs out and forward, stumping towards the quiet office beyond.
The floor was carpeted in a layer of Indian rugs that stretched from wall to wall, overlapping in places, in others revealing a polished cedar floor. Traditional block print tapestries hung from the walls between ornamental stone pillars. Rattan sofas with brightly colored cushions lay along each wall of the long room, and a pair of matching chairs sat before the desk. Small palm trees held down the far corner of the room, just past the large cedar desk. Her public face. British born, she kept one foot firmly on the throat of her family’s colonial legacy. It was as if she recognized that she may never outgrow the shadows of her ancestor’s deeds, might never repay the fortune they made from the sweat of British colonialism.
Katherine was waiting for him behind the desk, glasses she didn’t actually need held between deceptively strong fingers as she chewed on one earpiece. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She stood and greeted him halfway across the room. “I was out of the country for a few weeks and I had some business to get tidied up.”
“Understandable.” Manuel nodded. They greeted each other with a hug and a quick, efficient kiss. He paused, a far off look in his eyes.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Katherine took a seat on one of the sofas and after a long second Manuel hobbled over and joined her.
“My cousin is in trouble in Mexico, a town called Buena Rosa. I don’t know the specifics, but I have reason to suspect that it’s bad. Very bad.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know, actually. I’m beginning to wonder that myself. Part of me thinks that I can handle this as Manuel de la Vega. That’s all I am anyway, right? But a good detective can be the difference that gets her out. Maybe that’s enough.”
“But what if it isn’t?”
“And I think that’s why I’m here. Maybe I was thinking you would tell me this was crazy and that someone else could do it. That someone else can play the hero.” Manuel stared at his hands as the tightened and relaxed on the grips of his forearm crutches. He couldn’t meet her eye. Now that he was here, he wished he hadn’t come, that he had listened to his instinct and not even tried. But it was too late for that. The words were out.
They hadn’t ever talked about it. Not really. Katherine was convinced that if she put the Tesla twins to work on the hardware, if Snowflake did some mechanical work, that someday Gato Loco would ride again. He had always put it off. It was always a discussion for later. And after months of trying to get him back on the horse, she stopped mentioning it. But his retirement, as such, was never officially open topic for discussion.
But there it was. “Someone else can play the hero.” It was acknowledgement, perhaps that he had given up. And it felt right saying it, like he had been holding onto it for months.
Manuel wasn’t a hero. He never wanted to be. Circumstances had pushed him in that direction, and he had never pushed back. And then circumstances blew him the hell up, and he found a reason to push back.
“I can go down and deal with it, maybe.” Katherine said quietly. There was sadness, resignation in her voice that tore him up inside. “Or I could send Archon down. He could probably clear it all up in a matter of hours.”
Manuel said nothing, loosing himself in the pattern of the rug just past his hands. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it; someone to take the problem, the responsibility off his hands? But it all came down to if he could sleep at night knowing that he gave up.
“No, I’ll take care of it. I just wanted to hear someone offer to take it off my hands, to tell me that I couldn’t handle this on my own. I needed to hear how that sounded.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, you know that don’t you?” Katherine smiled at him. Her eyes were misty, like she might start crying without warning. He wondered if his own eyes had the same threat of rain.
“I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either.” Manuel laughed and it surprised him how easily the laugh came. “But I might need backup or some tactical support if you can spare it.”
“Consider it done. I’ll have it in place in Buena Rosa this time tomorrow.”
Manuel pushed himself to his feet, testing his grip on his crutches. “So, just got back in town from a few weeks out of the country? Sounds exciting.”
Katherine stood and her smile was unexpectedly chilly. “I was called to inland China on family business.”
“You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.”
She met his gaze and her eyes said it all. No. She didn’t have to tell him anything. He took the hint.
They shared a long hug. With his face buried in her jasmine scented auburn hair, he began to regret his decision to leave. But it was too late for that. It was too late for a lot of things. “Take care, Kat.”
“You take care too, Gato. Call if you need anything.”
Manuel didn’t take another breath until the elevator doors closed. He didn’t want to be rid of the scent of jasmine.
She made Manuel wait in the reception area for close to ten minutes. Katherine Wilde was a very busy woman, and he understood the complexities of her schedule, perhaps better than her own staff did. After all, for a while, they were both heroes. And while Gato Loco might have hung up the mask, Wild Kat was still far from retirement.
And when she wasn’t out fighting crime in thigh-high boots and leather bustier, she was still the head of a large arts foundation. Or was it a company? He was never really sure what they did in the three floors of offices beneath her private workspace. It was something to do with promoting or preserving art. Something to do with art, he was sure. They had a snazzy logo and corporate letterhead, and a lot of money was thrown about with their name attached to it.
Manuel never paid a tremendous amount of attention to it. While they had been dating, it had really been Katherine Wilde – Wild Kat – who fascinated him, not her company. And now he sat in a bamboo paneled reception area watching water drip down a slab of granite on the far wall, and he wondered not only what it was that they did here, but if maybe he should have paid attention to it sooner.
He had been through the room plenty of times. But he had never lingered. Katherine’s touch was all over the place, her own style, her attention to detail. This venture of hers was not a front. It was important to her, perhaps as important being Wild Kat, if not more so.
More importantly, it was a part of her life that he suddenly realized he had neglected. It made him a little sad. And he wondered, just a little, if that was part of why they weren’t spending as much time together.
“Mr. de la Vega? Ms. Wilde will see you now.”
Manuel stood and gave the receptionist with the perfect teeth a distracted smile. He checked his jacket reflexively, then swung his legs out and forward, stumping towards the quiet office beyond.
The floor was carpeted in a layer of Indian rugs that stretched from wall to wall, overlapping in places, in others revealing a polished cedar floor. Traditional block print tapestries hung from the walls between ornamental stone pillars. Rattan sofas with brightly colored cushions lay along each wall of the long room, and a pair of matching chairs sat before the desk. Small palm trees held down the far corner of the room, just past the large cedar desk. Her public face. British born, she kept one foot firmly on the throat of her family’s colonial legacy. It was as if she recognized that she may never outgrow the shadows of her ancestor’s deeds, might never repay the fortune they made from the sweat of British colonialism.
Katherine was waiting for him behind the desk, glasses she didn’t actually need held between deceptively strong fingers as she chewed on one earpiece. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She stood and greeted him halfway across the room. “I was out of the country for a few weeks and I had some business to get tidied up.”
“Understandable.” Manuel nodded. They greeted each other with a hug and a quick, efficient kiss. He paused, a far off look in his eyes.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Katherine took a seat on one of the sofas and after a long second Manuel hobbled over and joined her.
“My cousin is in trouble in Mexico, a town called Buena Rosa. I don’t know the specifics, but I have reason to suspect that it’s bad. Very bad.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know, actually. I’m beginning to wonder that myself. Part of me thinks that I can handle this as Manuel de la Vega. That’s all I am anyway, right? But a good detective can be the difference that gets her out. Maybe that’s enough.”
“But what if it isn’t?”
“And I think that’s why I’m here. Maybe I was thinking you would tell me this was crazy and that someone else could do it. That someone else can play the hero.” Manuel stared at his hands as the tightened and relaxed on the grips of his forearm crutches. He couldn’t meet her eye. Now that he was here, he wished he hadn’t come, that he had listened to his instinct and not even tried. But it was too late for that. The words were out.
They hadn’t ever talked about it. Not really. Katherine was convinced that if she put the Tesla twins to work on the hardware, if Snowflake did some mechanical work, that someday Gato Loco would ride again. He had always put it off. It was always a discussion for later. And after months of trying to get him back on the horse, she stopped mentioning it. But his retirement, as such, was never officially open topic for discussion.
But there it was. “Someone else can play the hero.” It was acknowledgement, perhaps that he had given up. And it felt right saying it, like he had been holding onto it for months.
Manuel wasn’t a hero. He never wanted to be. Circumstances had pushed him in that direction, and he had never pushed back. And then circumstances blew him the hell up, and he found a reason to push back.
“I can go down and deal with it, maybe.” Katherine said quietly. There was sadness, resignation in her voice that tore him up inside. “Or I could send Archon down. He could probably clear it all up in a matter of hours.”
Manuel said nothing, loosing himself in the pattern of the rug just past his hands. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it; someone to take the problem, the responsibility off his hands? But it all came down to if he could sleep at night knowing that he gave up.
“No, I’ll take care of it. I just wanted to hear someone offer to take it off my hands, to tell me that I couldn’t handle this on my own. I needed to hear how that sounded.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, you know that don’t you?” Katherine smiled at him. Her eyes were misty, like she might start crying without warning. He wondered if his own eyes had the same threat of rain.
“I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either.” Manuel laughed and it surprised him how easily the laugh came. “But I might need backup or some tactical support if you can spare it.”
“Consider it done. I’ll have it in place in Buena Rosa this time tomorrow.”
Manuel pushed himself to his feet, testing his grip on his crutches. “So, just got back in town from a few weeks out of the country? Sounds exciting.”
Katherine stood and her smile was unexpectedly chilly. “I was called to inland China on family business.”
“You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.”
She met his gaze and her eyes said it all. No. She didn’t have to tell him anything. He took the hint.
They shared a long hug. With his face buried in her jasmine scented auburn hair, he began to regret his decision to leave. But it was too late for that. It was too late for a lot of things. “Take care, Kat.”
“You take care too, Gato. Call if you need anything.”
Manuel didn’t take another breath until the elevator doors closed. He didn’t want to be rid of the scent of jasmine.
Monday, November 07, 2005
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.”
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.”
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Greetings From Buena Rosa - Prologue
Prologue
The cell was dark, and in that darkness, Esther heard things moving. She gauged they were cockroaches by the sound; the dry, scraping of tiny legs on the cinderblock walls. She had grown up in a middle class neighborhood of Mexico City, but even there the relentless insects could find a home somehow, making them familiar. No, the roaches didn’t bother her too much. She knew they hated the smell of people, and would most likely leave her alone. But here, near the U.S. border, there were worse things in the dark. The idea of a scorpion living in the poorly maintained jail, nesting under the floor, or in the wall, no, that was not entirely unlikely.
And as much as that thought knotted her stomach every time she contemplated rolling over on the hard cot, wondering what she might “disturb” by her movement, she knew that there was even worse than scorpions roaming this building. That something worse wore a badge.
They had come for her in the dead of night. Arresting someone half asleep was always much easier than risking a confrontation. She woke with a start, woolen-headed with sleep and a belly-full of Dio Diablo beer, and heard shouts and wood splintering. The lights were bright in her face, and it took a full twenty seconds to realize that someone had cuffed her arms tightly behind her back. Two minutes later, and Esther was in the back of the dust covered Pegasus Motors SUV which the local law used for their paddy wagon.
They didn’t tell her what she had been arrested for until they had beaten a confession from her with hoses. She had gotten off lucky, she thought. There was still blood on some of the surgical and less-than-surgical tools displayed in the “interview” room. And a room she had been led past on the way there had the reek of ozone and singed flesh.
Before then, she had never really seen any proof that the local law used torture. She suspected, of course. They all did. And the residents of Buena Rosa generally knew that their police had the toys to carry out torture if it was their desire to do so. The police in Buena Rosa had a chilling record for closed cases, something of which they took significant pride.
It wasn’t until after Esther had signed the confession that she realized that she was being held for the murder of Muriel Cruz, a local woman she knew only superficially through her attempts to unionize the workers of Pegasus Motor Corporation in Buena Rosa. There was no way it would hold up, she told herself. A confession under torture…no court in the world would accept it. But still she tossed and turned on the hard cot, careful not to disturb any unknown cellmates. And her bruises began to heal. And she began to lose track of days in the dark.
And gradually, she began to lose hope.
Skritch, skritch, skritch-
That wasn’t a cockroach. She knew that. No scorpion either. She pulled her long, matted dark hair free from around her ear and listened intently.
Skritch, skritch, skritch-
No…too large…too...regular. A thought occurred to her and she desperately tried to put it out of her mind. But in the darkness, all it took was the slightest suggestion to let the imagination run wild. The jail shared an alley with a greasy taco stand, and she had seen the rats running in herds there on occasion. A rat, given the inclination, could chew through concrete. And if they were hungry enough, there was little that a rat wouldn’t eat.
Skritch, skritch, skritch – tap, tap-
Esther froze. The sound, wasn’t coming from near the ground, she realized, but higher up, near chest level. And had she really heard that? Had she really heard the tap, or was she finally going out of her mind in isolation and darkness?
Tap, tap-
Reaching towards the untreated cinderblock wall, she ran her fingers
across the rough surface, trying to ignore how much they shook. She curled her hand into a fist and it felt good. It felt strong. She pounded against the wall twice, feeling the rough concrete abrade her hand. Esther didn’t care. She had been hurt far worse recently.
Her pound was met with two more taps. No, she thought. Definitely not a rat. That was metal she heard. “Hello?” she heard her own voice, dry and cracked. She summoned up reserves of strength, willing herself to raise her voice past the painful whisper. “Hello?” Louder this time, she thought. Good.
A dusting of mortar fell across her knuckles, startling her. And a pinprick of light filtered through a crack between cinderblocks. “Who is this? Who did I find?” The voice was terse, and Esther couldn’t tell if it were male or female.
But she didn’t care anymore. She had been forgotten there, left to die in the dark, without being given the chance to let anyone know where she was, to let them know she was innocent. “Esther Vega. My name is Esther Vega. Please you have to help me.”
“Why should I help you, Esther? You killed Muriel, left her body in a wash outside of town for the coyotes.”
“I didn’t do it,” Esther pleaded, surprised that she still had tears left as they cut rivulets through the grime on her face. “Please. They made me sign a confession. I didn’t even know what I was signing until it was too late. I didn’t hurt anyone…didn’t kill anyone. You have to believe me.”
There was silence on the other side of the wall. It seemed to Esther that it stretched on forever. She wept, trying to do so silently to not drown out any possible answer.
“I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I believe you, but I can’t help you,” the voice on the other side of the wall finally answered. “I wanted to know. I didn’t think it could have been you who killed her. Muriel’s friends thought you were a trouble maker, but not trouble, comprende? So I believe you, but what I believe won’t help you. I don’t think there is anyone in Buena Rosa who can help you. I’m sorry.”
Esther felt her heart sink. Of course this stranger couldn’t help her. And who was she to be contemplating a jail break, anyway? She was just a labor organizer, in her thirties with a lifetime of drifting and high ideals. She wouldn’t last a day on the run from the law. “Can you at least let my family know I’m here? Can you tell someone where to find me?”
The silence which greeted Esther’s request was absolute. She stilled her breath until she could hear nothing but her own heart beat pounding in her ears. No response from the other side came for a long moment, and she began to think the voice was gone never to return. The stomach-churning possibility that she had imagined everything clawed at the edge of her thoughts, and she fought that idea down.
“The police almost saw me,” the voice whispered harshly through the space between cinderblocks. “I can let someone know you are here, but you had better hurry. I don’t want to risk getting singled out by the police. Not in this town.”
“Manuel de la Vega,” Esther said immediately, her voice stronger now. “He’s with the police in Cobalt City, in America. A detective, I think. I don’t know his address or phone number…”
“I can find that part out. It was Manuel de la Vega in Cobalt City, right?”
Esther leaned against the wall and sobbed. Her cousin Manny would be able to fix this. If anyone could help her now, it was him. “Yes. Cobalt City.”
“Keep your chin up, Esther. Help is on the way.”
In the dark of the Buena Rosa jail, Esther repeated her visitor’s words again and again, holding them as a feeble flame against the blackness. “Help is on the way. Help is on the way.”
And in the alley between the jail and the back of a busy taqueria, a mysterious figure slipped from shadow to shadow with another mantra repeated over and over again in a terse whisper. “Manuel de la Vega, Cobalt City Police.”
Shortly the night swallowed both the words and the person who spoke them as if they had never been there at all.
The cell was dark, and in that darkness, Esther heard things moving. She gauged they were cockroaches by the sound; the dry, scraping of tiny legs on the cinderblock walls. She had grown up in a middle class neighborhood of Mexico City, but even there the relentless insects could find a home somehow, making them familiar. No, the roaches didn’t bother her too much. She knew they hated the smell of people, and would most likely leave her alone. But here, near the U.S. border, there were worse things in the dark. The idea of a scorpion living in the poorly maintained jail, nesting under the floor, or in the wall, no, that was not entirely unlikely.
And as much as that thought knotted her stomach every time she contemplated rolling over on the hard cot, wondering what she might “disturb” by her movement, she knew that there was even worse than scorpions roaming this building. That something worse wore a badge.
They had come for her in the dead of night. Arresting someone half asleep was always much easier than risking a confrontation. She woke with a start, woolen-headed with sleep and a belly-full of Dio Diablo beer, and heard shouts and wood splintering. The lights were bright in her face, and it took a full twenty seconds to realize that someone had cuffed her arms tightly behind her back. Two minutes later, and Esther was in the back of the dust covered Pegasus Motors SUV which the local law used for their paddy wagon.
They didn’t tell her what she had been arrested for until they had beaten a confession from her with hoses. She had gotten off lucky, she thought. There was still blood on some of the surgical and less-than-surgical tools displayed in the “interview” room. And a room she had been led past on the way there had the reek of ozone and singed flesh.
Before then, she had never really seen any proof that the local law used torture. She suspected, of course. They all did. And the residents of Buena Rosa generally knew that their police had the toys to carry out torture if it was their desire to do so. The police in Buena Rosa had a chilling record for closed cases, something of which they took significant pride.
It wasn’t until after Esther had signed the confession that she realized that she was being held for the murder of Muriel Cruz, a local woman she knew only superficially through her attempts to unionize the workers of Pegasus Motor Corporation in Buena Rosa. There was no way it would hold up, she told herself. A confession under torture…no court in the world would accept it. But still she tossed and turned on the hard cot, careful not to disturb any unknown cellmates. And her bruises began to heal. And she began to lose track of days in the dark.
And gradually, she began to lose hope.
Skritch, skritch, skritch-
That wasn’t a cockroach. She knew that. No scorpion either. She pulled her long, matted dark hair free from around her ear and listened intently.
Skritch, skritch, skritch-
No…too large…too...regular. A thought occurred to her and she desperately tried to put it out of her mind. But in the darkness, all it took was the slightest suggestion to let the imagination run wild. The jail shared an alley with a greasy taco stand, and she had seen the rats running in herds there on occasion. A rat, given the inclination, could chew through concrete. And if they were hungry enough, there was little that a rat wouldn’t eat.
Skritch, skritch, skritch – tap, tap-
Esther froze. The sound, wasn’t coming from near the ground, she realized, but higher up, near chest level. And had she really heard that? Had she really heard the tap, or was she finally going out of her mind in isolation and darkness?
Tap, tap-
Reaching towards the untreated cinderblock wall, she ran her fingers
across the rough surface, trying to ignore how much they shook. She curled her hand into a fist and it felt good. It felt strong. She pounded against the wall twice, feeling the rough concrete abrade her hand. Esther didn’t care. She had been hurt far worse recently.
Her pound was met with two more taps. No, she thought. Definitely not a rat. That was metal she heard. “Hello?” she heard her own voice, dry and cracked. She summoned up reserves of strength, willing herself to raise her voice past the painful whisper. “Hello?” Louder this time, she thought. Good.
A dusting of mortar fell across her knuckles, startling her. And a pinprick of light filtered through a crack between cinderblocks. “Who is this? Who did I find?” The voice was terse, and Esther couldn’t tell if it were male or female.
But she didn’t care anymore. She had been forgotten there, left to die in the dark, without being given the chance to let anyone know where she was, to let them know she was innocent. “Esther Vega. My name is Esther Vega. Please you have to help me.”
“Why should I help you, Esther? You killed Muriel, left her body in a wash outside of town for the coyotes.”
“I didn’t do it,” Esther pleaded, surprised that she still had tears left as they cut rivulets through the grime on her face. “Please. They made me sign a confession. I didn’t even know what I was signing until it was too late. I didn’t hurt anyone…didn’t kill anyone. You have to believe me.”
There was silence on the other side of the wall. It seemed to Esther that it stretched on forever. She wept, trying to do so silently to not drown out any possible answer.
“I can’t help you. I’m sorry. I believe you, but I can’t help you,” the voice on the other side of the wall finally answered. “I wanted to know. I didn’t think it could have been you who killed her. Muriel’s friends thought you were a trouble maker, but not trouble, comprende? So I believe you, but what I believe won’t help you. I don’t think there is anyone in Buena Rosa who can help you. I’m sorry.”
Esther felt her heart sink. Of course this stranger couldn’t help her. And who was she to be contemplating a jail break, anyway? She was just a labor organizer, in her thirties with a lifetime of drifting and high ideals. She wouldn’t last a day on the run from the law. “Can you at least let my family know I’m here? Can you tell someone where to find me?”
The silence which greeted Esther’s request was absolute. She stilled her breath until she could hear nothing but her own heart beat pounding in her ears. No response from the other side came for a long moment, and she began to think the voice was gone never to return. The stomach-churning possibility that she had imagined everything clawed at the edge of her thoughts, and she fought that idea down.
“The police almost saw me,” the voice whispered harshly through the space between cinderblocks. “I can let someone know you are here, but you had better hurry. I don’t want to risk getting singled out by the police. Not in this town.”
“Manuel de la Vega,” Esther said immediately, her voice stronger now. “He’s with the police in Cobalt City, in America. A detective, I think. I don’t know his address or phone number…”
“I can find that part out. It was Manuel de la Vega in Cobalt City, right?”
Esther leaned against the wall and sobbed. Her cousin Manny would be able to fix this. If anyone could help her now, it was him. “Yes. Cobalt City.”
“Keep your chin up, Esther. Help is on the way.”
In the dark of the Buena Rosa jail, Esther repeated her visitor’s words again and again, holding them as a feeble flame against the blackness. “Help is on the way. Help is on the way.”
And in the alley between the jail and the back of a busy taqueria, a mysterious figure slipped from shadow to shadow with another mantra repeated over and over again in a terse whisper. “Manuel de la Vega, Cobalt City Police.”
Shortly the night swallowed both the words and the person who spoke them as if they had never been there at all.
NaNoWriMo Progress
So this is the official meter. Not much time to write anything that isn't associated with Greetings From Buena Rosa now, but I'm sure there will be ample posts in December when I return to sanity. My novel? It is a noir south of the border mystery with a little masked vigilante influence. Think of it as a contemporary Touch of Evil, the Orson Wells movie released in 1958 which is widely considered the last true example of film noir. Only mine has a wise-cracking panda in it.
If you want to see a sample, seek me out on NaNoWriMo and do an author search for me. I can only post 10,000 words at a time there, so earlier chapters will be deleted as newer ones are finished.
-T
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
A religious experience
Perhaps I should preface this by stating that with the exception of a few visits to a friends Unitarian church to hear her sing in the choir (an excellent experience every time, by the way, thanks!), I am not the type to go to church. The last time I went other than those mentioned above was probably close to 15 years ago. This is not to say that I'm not spiritual. I am. And I know...saying so is the last refuge of a scoundrel, something to say to reassure others and perhaps even yourself that you are not completely morally bankrupt. Not so with me. I consider myself a Bhuddist and will happily identify myself as such. However I am about as orthodox as a Jew who celebrates Christmas and wouldn't say no to bacon on a sandwich.
But this is about a religious experience of another kind, gentle readers.
New Model Army has been kicking around for 21 years now. Their first album, released on vinyl (remember vinyl?) came out in 1984. Shortly thereafter, they were signed by EMI and put out a string of hit albums and became bigger than U2. Only they didn't. They should have. They were certainly talented enough. They had the same political edge that U2 embodied early on before they got rich. But despite cranking out several albums, many of which did well, they didn't ever really do great. And with lyrics that didn't hold back its venom towards Thatcher's England, they alienated the US audiences. They came to my attention around about 1986 when Ghost of Cain was released with the hit "51st State". They were at the forefront of the late 80's alt rock scene. But their criticisim for US - England relations led to their being banned from touring the states. So they continued to plug away, turning out amazing albums that took a critical look not only at politics, but global economic policy and mankind's inherent barbaric nature. And they did so with more musical chops and painful sincerity than a lot of bands at the time. New Model Army has been one of my three favorite bands since Thunder and Consolation in 1989, the album which was the inspiration for my only tattoo. When I moved to Seattle, I found tracking down imports of any of their albums a priority.
But I had resigned myself to the fact that, although the still toured in the UK and Germany where they were still popular, I would never get to see them live.
They played the Tractor Tavern on September 20th of this year. Having found out about the show only six hours earlier, I was in attendance. Despite having to be up early for work the next day, despite my already full schedule which included commuting down to Kent, shipping a pet to Chicago, then driving into a somewhat out of the way neighborhood, despite money being tight, despite all of that, I was there.
And it was a religious experience.
About halfway into the song "Believe It" from Love of Hopeless Causes, my favorite album of theirs, I felt the most amazing connection; to the song, to the room, to Svengali-like lead singer Justin Sullivan, to the world, but most importantly, to the cause. And that cause is, in a nutshell, the eternal struggle of mankind to live up to our potential and truly become the loving, responsible, humans that we are capable of being but so often are too lazy or corrupt to actualize. I felt this. I felt both embraced and confronted by the challenge of our potential, and I realized that we are losing. And I couldn't stop crying. I'm crying now thinking about it, over two weeks later.
I believe the lyrics that triggered this catharsis were "Oh how they only talk about us when we're far away. Behind their frigid eyes they know more than they ever say. They only tell the you truth when they get drunk enough. Its a town of cornered animals, teeth bared - out of control. Is this what we've come to - I don't believe it. After everything we've been through - I don't believe it."
But I do believe it. And you do too. The world is going to hell. The people in positions to fix things are more interested in lining their pockets and pointing fingers. The people who try to change things are silenced, or ignored, or simply have their findings "spun" to reflect something far from the truth. And we are, for all intents and purposes, our of reasonable alternatives, reasonable means for recourse, for justice. The bastards are winning, ladies and gentlemen. And that bastard is us. "Every night I clench my teeth and fail to get to sleep. I can not bear the stillness drawn across the surface of the world." From the same song, actually.
But that night, for one glorious concert a little less than two hours long I was with kindred souls, shouting and singing and pumping our fists and dancing and yes, occasionally, crying. I was not alone. I was not the only voice crying out into the wind. I was not the only person who listened to these songs and heard anthems, who heard calls to action. Not to arms, necessarily, not like a previous administration who shall remained un-named might have thought when the single "Here Comes the War" was released with instructions to build an atomic bomb on the sleeve...I mean, they got that from the fricking library...that was the whole point. But more a call to be better people, to live up to the promise of humanity, and, perhaps bear witness because its entirely possible things are going to get a whole hell of a lot worse.
As I said. A religious experience. I felt reborn. And I know how strange it sounds, so don't be shaking your finger. I'm not about to put on a robe and hand out flyers at the bus stop. But it was reafirming.
So let us end today's parable with a final lyric from Justin Sullivan, recorded by him and the mates, from "Ballad" off their first big album --
"When they look back at us and they write down their history, what will they say about our generation? We're the ones who knew everything still we did nothing, harvested everything, planted nothing. Well we live pretty well in the wake of the goldrush, floating in comfort on waves of our apathy. Quietly gnawing away at Her body until we mortage the future, bury our children. Storehouses full with the fruits we've been given, we send off the scrag-ends to suckle the starving. But still we can not fill this strange hunger inside - greedy, restless, and unsatisfied."
-T
But this is about a religious experience of another kind, gentle readers.
New Model Army has been kicking around for 21 years now. Their first album, released on vinyl (remember vinyl?) came out in 1984. Shortly thereafter, they were signed by EMI and put out a string of hit albums and became bigger than U2. Only they didn't. They should have. They were certainly talented enough. They had the same political edge that U2 embodied early on before they got rich. But despite cranking out several albums, many of which did well, they didn't ever really do great. And with lyrics that didn't hold back its venom towards Thatcher's England, they alienated the US audiences. They came to my attention around about 1986 when Ghost of Cain was released with the hit "51st State". They were at the forefront of the late 80's alt rock scene. But their criticisim for US - England relations led to their being banned from touring the states. So they continued to plug away, turning out amazing albums that took a critical look not only at politics, but global economic policy and mankind's inherent barbaric nature. And they did so with more musical chops and painful sincerity than a lot of bands at the time. New Model Army has been one of my three favorite bands since Thunder and Consolation in 1989, the album which was the inspiration for my only tattoo. When I moved to Seattle, I found tracking down imports of any of their albums a priority.
But I had resigned myself to the fact that, although the still toured in the UK and Germany where they were still popular, I would never get to see them live.
They played the Tractor Tavern on September 20th of this year. Having found out about the show only six hours earlier, I was in attendance. Despite having to be up early for work the next day, despite my already full schedule which included commuting down to Kent, shipping a pet to Chicago, then driving into a somewhat out of the way neighborhood, despite money being tight, despite all of that, I was there.
And it was a religious experience.
About halfway into the song "Believe It" from Love of Hopeless Causes, my favorite album of theirs, I felt the most amazing connection; to the song, to the room, to Svengali-like lead singer Justin Sullivan, to the world, but most importantly, to the cause. And that cause is, in a nutshell, the eternal struggle of mankind to live up to our potential and truly become the loving, responsible, humans that we are capable of being but so often are too lazy or corrupt to actualize. I felt this. I felt both embraced and confronted by the challenge of our potential, and I realized that we are losing. And I couldn't stop crying. I'm crying now thinking about it, over two weeks later.
I believe the lyrics that triggered this catharsis were "Oh how they only talk about us when we're far away. Behind their frigid eyes they know more than they ever say. They only tell the you truth when they get drunk enough. Its a town of cornered animals, teeth bared - out of control. Is this what we've come to - I don't believe it. After everything we've been through - I don't believe it."
But I do believe it. And you do too. The world is going to hell. The people in positions to fix things are more interested in lining their pockets and pointing fingers. The people who try to change things are silenced, or ignored, or simply have their findings "spun" to reflect something far from the truth. And we are, for all intents and purposes, our of reasonable alternatives, reasonable means for recourse, for justice. The bastards are winning, ladies and gentlemen. And that bastard is us. "Every night I clench my teeth and fail to get to sleep. I can not bear the stillness drawn across the surface of the world." From the same song, actually.
But that night, for one glorious concert a little less than two hours long I was with kindred souls, shouting and singing and pumping our fists and dancing and yes, occasionally, crying. I was not alone. I was not the only voice crying out into the wind. I was not the only person who listened to these songs and heard anthems, who heard calls to action. Not to arms, necessarily, not like a previous administration who shall remained un-named might have thought when the single "Here Comes the War" was released with instructions to build an atomic bomb on the sleeve...I mean, they got that from the fricking library...that was the whole point. But more a call to be better people, to live up to the promise of humanity, and, perhaps bear witness because its entirely possible things are going to get a whole hell of a lot worse.
As I said. A religious experience. I felt reborn. And I know how strange it sounds, so don't be shaking your finger. I'm not about to put on a robe and hand out flyers at the bus stop. But it was reafirming.
So let us end today's parable with a final lyric from Justin Sullivan, recorded by him and the mates, from "Ballad" off their first big album --
"When they look back at us and they write down their history, what will they say about our generation? We're the ones who knew everything still we did nothing, harvested everything, planted nothing. Well we live pretty well in the wake of the goldrush, floating in comfort on waves of our apathy. Quietly gnawing away at Her body until we mortage the future, bury our children. Storehouses full with the fruits we've been given, we send off the scrag-ends to suckle the starving. But still we can not fill this strange hunger inside - greedy, restless, and unsatisfied."
-T
Friday, September 30, 2005
Under pressure
Yes. Long time no post. Between a regular job for a change (which I LOVE, just for the record), the sometimes crappy commute (70 minutes minimum on the bus), getting the house ready to sell, and the new fall season (yes, I am a media whore), I just haven't had the time to update anything.
That said, I'm not about to head to a clock tower with a rifle anytime soon. With the exception of my lovely wife living in Illinois where she is setting up for the next stage of our planned world conquest, things have been great. I'm getting paid to do what I love, at least in a general sense. Never pictured myself writing product copy for an e-commerce team, but it IS writing. And as my better half pointed out today, its the biggest paycheck I've ever brought home. Finally cracked into 4 digits! Whoo-hoo!
Got a new scarf which I am in love with. No. Really. In love with. So much so that it may be against the law in some of our more "rustic" states. Alabama, I'm looking in your direction. You can get one too, and I heartily suggest you do. If this one doesn't excite you, there are plenty others that should.
As media whore and, to a lesser degree, trend pimp, I heartily endorse CBS's "Threshold" and WB's "Supernatural" as best new dramas and NBC's "My Name is Earl" as the clear winner in best new situation comedy, or sit-com as it is known in the biz. Musically, go out and buy Ben Folds "Songs for Silverman". No, really. Stop what you are doing now and trust me. Why this guy doesn't get significant airplay is truly beyond me. Also been listening to a lot of Calexico and am excited that they are coming to Seattle in October. Fate willing, I shall be there. I should tell you about my most recent concert experience, seeing long time favorite band New Model Army live at the Tractor a last week, but that is a post unto itself. It was a religious experience, and thats all you need to know for now.
Haven't had much time to write, so no updates from my continued efforts to take the publishing world by storm. When it happens, it will be noted here. Right now I'm just coasting on previously written pieces and trying to make time to work on my upcoming vampire-noir novel. Also have two new short story ideas incubating, both kind of disturbing in a good kind of way. As Halloween grows closer, I'm sure I'll pound out at least one of them in a coffee and vicadin haze late one night. (ok, aspirin, really, but it helps build the myth) .
Other than that, excited about Serenity. Giddy, even. I need to buy a winter coat soon, and I'm thinking I need to make it a brown one. If you don't understand why, "I swear by my pretty blue bonnet, I will end you."
Enough rambling for now. Work must be done. I will be making updates more frequently from now on. Yeah. I mean it this time.
-T
That said, I'm not about to head to a clock tower with a rifle anytime soon. With the exception of my lovely wife living in Illinois where she is setting up for the next stage of our planned world conquest, things have been great. I'm getting paid to do what I love, at least in a general sense. Never pictured myself writing product copy for an e-commerce team, but it IS writing. And as my better half pointed out today, its the biggest paycheck I've ever brought home. Finally cracked into 4 digits! Whoo-hoo!
Got a new scarf which I am in love with. No. Really. In love with. So much so that it may be against the law in some of our more "rustic" states. Alabama, I'm looking in your direction. You can get one too, and I heartily suggest you do. If this one doesn't excite you, there are plenty others that should.
As media whore and, to a lesser degree, trend pimp, I heartily endorse CBS's "Threshold" and WB's "Supernatural" as best new dramas and NBC's "My Name is Earl" as the clear winner in best new situation comedy, or sit-com as it is known in the biz. Musically, go out and buy Ben Folds "Songs for Silverman". No, really. Stop what you are doing now and trust me. Why this guy doesn't get significant airplay is truly beyond me. Also been listening to a lot of Calexico and am excited that they are coming to Seattle in October. Fate willing, I shall be there. I should tell you about my most recent concert experience, seeing long time favorite band New Model Army live at the Tractor a last week, but that is a post unto itself. It was a religious experience, and thats all you need to know for now.
Haven't had much time to write, so no updates from my continued efforts to take the publishing world by storm. When it happens, it will be noted here. Right now I'm just coasting on previously written pieces and trying to make time to work on my upcoming vampire-noir novel. Also have two new short story ideas incubating, both kind of disturbing in a good kind of way. As Halloween grows closer, I'm sure I'll pound out at least one of them in a coffee and vicadin haze late one night. (ok, aspirin, really, but it helps build the myth) .
Other than that, excited about Serenity. Giddy, even. I need to buy a winter coat soon, and I'm thinking I need to make it a brown one. If you don't understand why, "I swear by my pretty blue bonnet, I will end you."
Enough rambling for now. Work must be done. I will be making updates more frequently from now on. Yeah. I mean it this time.
-T
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