Seven Spanish Angels Read online

  “Like you have any,” I said.

  “Like you would,” he said back.

  Five minutes later we were outside, between two dumpsters.

  Davidson had the joint in his wallet, tucked behind a picture of Berry and Marcia.

  “Ladies first,” he said, offering it. When I shook my head no he shrugged, took it himself, coughed into his mouth.

  “You’re not going to pass your pee test,” I told him.

  He smiled, said, “I’m already not going to pass,” then offered the joint to me again. I looked away, knew I was going to take it. Did. Looked at it in my fingers.

  Davidson exhaled, nodded. “What about your—jovencito?” he said.

  I looked up to him through the smoke.

  “Listen to you,” I said. “Talking all Mescan… ’

  “I looked it up in a dictionary.”

  I leaned back, into the grime caked onto the side of the dumpster like bat guano.

  “Don’t let it die,” Davidson said, nodding to the joint in my hand.

  I held it to my lips, told myself I was breathing in just to keep the cherry alive, that it wasn’t going deeper than my throat, but then it did, and was.

  I coughed it all out, and more. Davidson, laughing. Again, again.

  We’d just seen a girl die. There was nothing else to do. At the nursing home, seeing Barry and Marcia Davidson once, I’d walked out into the parking lot to breathe some clean air and watched people in the parking lot act the same: after pushing their Parkinson grandfather or great-uncle up and down the hall then sneaking away one by one, to collect by the truck, they’d laughed like they were dying, just because if they didn’t, they’d all go home and shoot themselves in the face with the first gun they could find.

  I felt myself smile, looked away, came back to Davidson.

  He was looking at my eye, the colors there fading.

  “Don’t,” I said, and he shrugged, and I saw him on accident then, looking up jovencito in the dictionary just to say it to me, and from there I flashed forward, to him with Richard’s gun somehow, shooting into Richard over and over like a kid with a finger pistol, making the sound with his mouth. Taking step after step, trading himself for me. Doing what my father should have done.

  “Qué?” Davidson creaked, jutting his lower jaw out.

  I shook my head no, handed him the joint and walked away, to the women’s restroom, to trace my eyeliner over and over.

  Forty minutes later he was in the waiting room. Waiting for me, his eyes heavy. I sat down beside him, the couch rising around us. I nodded to the gum machines in the corner. “Go chew on something,” I said. “Your breath smells crudo, like throw-up.” When he didn’t I just passed him a Sports Illustrated. He read the same page so long I looked over. Asleep. Ganja dreams.

  I lowered the magazine down onto his stomach, my hand on his for a moment. Two minutes later he jerked, stepping off a half-remembered porch probably, then fell into a more even pattern of breathing, his chapped lower lip relaxing out. I laughed without quite smiling, never knew he’d always been holding it in.

  “Sleeping beauty, yeah?” somebody said from the far entrance. Nate, always Nate. “Maybe a little dark though…” he added.

  “Congratulations,” I said, “the Durex.”

  “Wearing one right now…” he said, grinning thin, “some people try to get into the killer’s head. Me, I go for the pants.”

  I didn’t think I was stoned, but laughed some anyway.

  “What’s with sleepyhead?” Nate asked, nodding to Davidson.

  “Too many bangdejos, I guess.”

  “That’s like… pendejo, but worse?”

  Bangdejo was Davidson’s word for all the gunshot gang bangers he had to process.

  “Worse,” I said, “yeah.”

  I was sitting down by him now, close to him. For some reason it felt like a betrayal, too—like I shouldn’t acknowledge Nate anymore, with Davidson around. But then Nate was still talking about him: “You wore him out, more like. Hard to be a puppydog.”

  “What?”

  “Puppydog,” Nate repeated. “They love you, like, unconditionally. Follow you around all day. And all you have to do in return is take care of them. Not let anybody hurt them.” He shrugged, added, “It’s a good life, I mean, having somebody like you watching out. Go to jail for them…”

  “I didn’t know you knew about that.”

  “Ear to the ground, baby.”

  I just shook my head, tried to close my eyes some. Nate still talking, nodding to the ICU, to what was left of Tina Ortiz: “Thought she was dead. They going to make her into the bionic woman or what? RoboVic 2000?”

  “You don’t always have to be funny, y’know,” I told him.

  He shrugged, said back, “Like you don’t have to always be pissed at the world?”

  I rubbed a point on my forehead, was maybe going to elbow him but then the double doors flashed open. A bunny man walked out, his helmet under his arm.

  “Shit,” Nate said. “They had to call in Buzz Aldrin?” He saluted as the doctor walked past, then said, his elbow still cocked out, “What was she dressed up like?”

  “Church,” I said. “I don’t know. Lacy, white, conservative. A quincenera maybe. Or confirmation.”

  Nate nodded, said, “Let’s see, this one—a blood center, where they take blood. Now a church, where they symbolically give blood.”

  “It doesn’t explain why he’s making them swallow the stuff,” I said.

  “True love is your girl with a donut face,” Nate said, like it was obvious.

  “Donut?”

  “The glaze,” he said, smiling. “Maybe not for him, though, I know. Maybe true love for him is whatever it means for her to keep his symbolic semen down.”

  “Or maybe it’s not that complicated,” I said. “Maybe his wife or girlfriend just never… does anything for him.”

  “Or maybe she does go down on him, but when it comes time for the milkshake, she points the straw somewhere else, yeah?”

  I blew air through my teeth.

  “You want to ask me about Richard,” I said, looking over to him.

  “Is Marta Villarreal… full-service?” he said, already leaning away.

  “Don’t you wish you knew.”

  Nate shrugged, relaxed. “We may not need an answer anyway,” he said. “That’s kind of why I’m here, so you can hear it from me.” I looked over to him and he looked away. “That crew I was talking about earlier,” he said, “breaking into rich people houses through the garage?” I nodded. Nate went on: “They were doing it like our guy. Most people don’t even change the factory settings on their remotes.”

  “So?”

  “So, there’s only so many jumpers on those little boards, that’s what. All they had to do was rig up this magic remote that would cycle through the codes. Open sesame.”

  “And this has to do with Richard,” I said.

  Nate rubbed the side of his mouth, said, “Your loose cannon boyfriend-cop there, it was his case. Homicide’s Robbery-Homicide, right? Anyway, it all came down to a real, live Bo and Luke car chase, except here, those crazy Duke boys pulled out in front of a semi.”

  “And the remote was never recovered,” I said.

  “And the remote was never recovered,” Nate repeated, trailing off. His words and his eyes.

  I followed: Madrone.

  He was shaking his head about the three of us in one room.

  “Like fucking rabbits,” he said. “I leave you alone for five minutes…”

  Davidson woke. Just his eyes.

  “Trevana send you?” Nate said.

  “Nobody sends me,” Madrone said back. “Our lady tech’s not answering her phone, that’s all.”

  “What—?” I said, and palmed my phone up, flipped it open.

  “And…” Nate led off, “because the victims all look like her, and because the killer might be her boyfriend, you, concerned for her safety—”

&n
bsp; I wasn’t listening. My phone was off. I turned it on.

  “Call me,” Madrone said, holding a phone up I didn’t know he had. When he started to say his own number Nate interrupted, finished it. Madrone just stared at him.

  In maybe eight seconds—four towers, twelve miles of signal—Madrone’s phone rang.

  “It works?” I said, not getting it.

  In answer, Madrone held his phone out to me. Face-out, so I could read the display, the caller ID. It was Godder, R, then the number.

  I stepped back, mouth open. Looked to my phone again. The one I thought was mine. That Richard had switched while I was asleep. The batteries too. Then either set it up so whoever was calling him would call, or had intercepted a call of mine, but then known the caller.

  “How’d you know?” I said, about the phone.

  “That you were in contact with him, or that you had his cell?” Madrone said ack.

  “The phone,” Nate said. “That was how you knew about the contact.”

  Madrone looked over to him the way a gila lizard looks at a bird, touching down in his sand. He came back to me, was only talking to me.

  “Active trace,” he said. “When I used your phone this morning, it activated.”

  “Then he’s got mine…” I said. “Why?”

  “He knew about the trace, I guess, Villarreal. The bad thing about hunting a hunter is that he knows how to hunt too, right?”

  “Sometimes hunts you back,” Davidson inserted. Madrone looked down to him in some way that made Davidson turn away. As if he should have known better.

  “Then—” I started.

  “He’s been getting your calls,” Nate said.

  Madrone shrugged, unfolded a paper for me: my calls.

  “Another trace?” Nate said.

  “Just records,” Madrone said. “For now.”

  I scanned up the numbers from the bottom—Madrone, Madrone, Madrone, Trevana, Madrone—then skipped up, to the top. This morning. I held my finger to the number, asked Madrone who it was.

  “Payphone,” he said. “Already dusted.”

  Now I worked down, back to the middle. Only one number didn’t fit. No name associated with it.

  “This one?” I said.

  “The phone company has its information blocked,” Madrone said. “Had to make a… special request. The Anglo Management Program.”

  It was a joke of some kind; Nate got it.

  “A women’s shelter,” he said.

  Madrone shrugged. Because he knew they were calling me back, because of my eye. Because I was battered, had called them. It was the first I’d sensed of anything like tact, from him.

  “Thanks,” I said, folding the paper into my pocket.

  The call had been for one minute, thirty-three seconds. Longer than a voice mail.

  “One more thing,” Madrone said, eyeballing the three of us, the corner of his mouth maybe lifting a touch for Davidson. Like they had a secret here or something. He came back to me before I could ask, though. Said, “You, go for a ride with me.”

  “Do I have a choice?” I said.

  Madrone laughed through his nose, turned away.

  In the car he let me choose between aiding and abetting a fugitive and helping bring one in.

  “Thought we tried that,” I said.

  “I’m not asking here, Villarreal.”

  I shook my head, opened Richard’s cell phone, dialed my number, and, instead of seven sixes for the numeric page, dialed seven sevens. It was the difference between home and cell.

  Madrone, watching, said, “You better not be fucking with me here.”

  “Believe me,” I said, waiting for the cell in my hand to ring back, “that’s the last thing I want to be doing with you,” and then it rang.

  “Como ’sta,” I said, dragging my voice out, down along the border.

  On his end, for too many breaths, nothing, then, “Tell him it’s not me.”

  I lowered the phone, told Madrone it wasn’t him.

  “Well then,” Madrone said, doing his eyes in mock surprise, “yeah. Let’s just let him go, yeah? Maybe give him a fucking commendation…”

  “Mala suerte,’ I said to Richard, then, to test Madrone’s Spanish, “I think—te ama le ley wey.”

  Madrone just sat there, watching my mouth. Listening to me call him an asshole and not even knowing it.

  “Bueno…” Richard said, about my ama, “bueno. Then I’ll just have to fuck him I guess, right?”

  “Exactamente,” I said back.

  I didn’t know if I was doing this to protect Richard, or to deal with him myself.

  He wants you to meet me,” Richard said next.

  “Algo así.”

  “¿Dondé?”

  “Dígame.”

  Beat, beat, impossibly long fucking beat.

  “Tú eres—tú eres Felina,” Richard said, finally.

  It took me a moment to get it, that he was talking in Marty Robbins code: if I was Felina, he was the cowboy who sees me at Rosa’s. For us, Rosa’s was Rosa’s CBT.

  “¿Una hora?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Ahora.”

  “Where?” Madrone demanded, after I’d hung up.

  “Now,” I told him, in case he’d heard. “It’s what ‘ahora’ means.”

  “Don-dé?” he said, making it into two words somehow.

  “De Vargas,” I said.

  It was the park from the news, where the flower delivery boy had been beaten up. The first place I could think of. Not as far from Rosa’s as I’d like, but far enough. And, a park, an open place, what Richard would want, if he didn’t care about helicopters and snipers.

  “Now?” Madrone said.

  I nodded, didn’t want to give him time to play back whatever tape they probably had of our talk, and, when he stepped up out of the car, I scooted over, into his seat. It was disgustingly warm. When I tried to ease the seat forward it came up all at once, pinning me to the wheel. Madrone leaned down to the open window, reached down between my legs, pushed the seat back a few clicks.

  “You better not be trying anything here, Villarreal,” he said.

  “I want to catch him too,” I said, and pulled away, didn’t tell him how Marty Robbins’s song ended: with the cowboy, the outlaw, getting shot because of the girl.

  Madrone’s car handled like the tires were flat. Where it should have taken five minutes to angle over to Ochoa, it was taking fifteen, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn the radio off. Looking at it instead of the road, I dead-ended myself in residential, stared too long at an old man watering a lone flower, and had to back up, start over.

  Two intersections later I aimed the heavy car at a yellow light, was about to cross onto Ochoa when the patrol car to my immediate left flashed its lights once.

  It was Madrone, in the passenger seat. He waved his fingertips.

  “You’re going to meet him,” he said, “ahora.”

  I just stared, both hands locked on the wheel, ten and two.

  “Mira párriba,” he said in perfect Spanish, hooking his finger up.

  I did. A black dot in the sky. One of our helicopters.

  “Rosa’s, right?” he said, not even bothering with my lie about the park. “This is a good thing you’re doing, Villarreal.”

  “Just let me go in first,” I said, the light red again, and when he started shaking his head no like I knew he would, I jumped the light to make Ochoa, then Rosa’s, leaving the patrol car mired in the inner lane, unable to use its siren because that would be announcing that I wasn’t alone here. There was another patrol already car in the parking lot, though. It was trying to look innocent, accidental.

  I nodded to the two officers in the front seat, and, as I backed into the front door, opening it, held my arms out, to show them I had no weapons.

  There would be knives on each table, though.

  Inside, I tried to blink away the sun, see everything at once. There wasn’t much. The restaurant was deserted. J
ust the girl sitting behind the register, guarding the toothpicks. Baskets and baskets of chips warming under the lights at the edge of the kitchen. A sad piñata bull lolling under a fan.

  “Where is he?” I said to the counter girl.

  She answered in Spanish: “He said you pay.”

  Meaning he was already gone. That he knew Madrone was going to see through me. Was going to reach through me, for Richard.

  “How much?” I asked her.

  She told me; I wrote a check. It wasn’t unreasonable.

  “The bathroom?” I tried, hoping, speaking Spanish so she could trust me.

  She shook her head the way people do in the heat: with as little movement as possible.

  “What did he have, at least?”

  “What did he eat?”

  She was talking English now, clipping the words.

  I just stared, and finally she opened her hand to a table near the window. It hadn’t been bussed yet. I made my way over, sat in his seat. The cheese of his mole enchiladas wasn’t even set yet. The fork balanced in the rice the way he did, always ready for the next bite.

  I said his name to myself, studied everything—the salt, the chips, the kid crayons, the wax in the candle bowl (cold), the unbreakable, microwavable plate. Under it was one of the kid menus. Like at every table. It was face-up, a maze that led to a happy taco. I didn’t do the maze, was happy enough without the taco. Across the room, the counter girl was watching me, not caring if I knew about it.

  Slowly, I took the bite of the rice I’d just paid for. It was cold on the outside, warm near the tines.

  Another thing about Tina Ortiz was that she’d aspirated the hydrofluoric acid after throwing it up, then coughed it out again, onto her face. It collected in her right eye, collapsed the ball, just left the little corneal disc there like a contact lens, floating in fluid.

  I spat the rice out, pushed the plate away.

  In its place was more of the kid menu. One of the puzzles had been done. The acrostic. In blue ink, the ball-point dragging across the letters, as if Richard had just been killing time. He hadn’t circled the burritos and chalupas you were supposed to find though, but camino. It was the letters of Monica, my first name, just in a different order. Through the white spaces between the train tracks of a tamale train, there was more of it, too—blue ink, finding all the letters for chorizo. Chorizo’s.