I didn"t pause in my approach to the car. As I neared it, I said, "Excuse me, please," to the one leaning against the door.
Neither of them moved.
One said, "You been asking bout La Alejandra."
"That"s true," I said.
I noticed several other g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers approaching us from where they had been standing in front of a liquor store.
The one who had already spoken said, "You need to stop."
I said, "Or what?"
One of the newcomers had circled around behind me. He drove a fist into my kidneys. I turned just in time to catch another fist on the jaw. The blows felt like hammers. The guy was wearing bra.s.s knuckles. I managed to deflect a third jab and landed a punch that sent him staggering away, clutching at his throat and gasping for air.
Two others moved in. I kicked the first one in the groin, which dropped him to the pavement. The other one had a knife. He didn"t know how to use it. After he took a clumsy swipe at my midsection, I moved in tight before he could pull back and broke his arm just above the wrist. Then the rest of them got smart. They all came at once. I tried to reach my gun, but they were already too close. Two of them grabbed my arms from behind and pinned me while several others took turns landing blows. After a while they let me fall to the sidewalk, where I curled into a fetal position and tried to protect my head as they circled me and landed kick after kick.
All I could do was take it and pray for help.
23.
When they stopped kicking me, I opened my eyes to see two cops emerging from a squad car. As the cops hustled over to where I lay, one of them spoke into a microphone clipped to his uniform blouse and the other watched the last of my a.s.sailants as they disappeared down the block.
"Sir, are you all right?" said the first one to reach me, a Latino about thirty years old.
I said, "Don"t worry about me. Go get those guys."
"Are you sure you"re all right?"
"Just go get them."
"We called an ambulance for you. Don"t move."
The Latino and his white partner ran down the block."
I rolled onto my back. I winced as my holster pressed against my kidneys. It was a miracle that the g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers hadn"t noticed the gun. If they had, maybe one of them would have tried it out on me.
A woman carrying a Chihuahua pa.s.sed me on the sidewalk without a glance. The Chihuahua growled. Two old men walked past in the other direction a minute later. Neither of them looked down at me as I lay there, staring up at the cloudless blue above the city. I had a fleeting sense of disappointment. For a moment it had seemed I might be on my way to Haley, but there I was, still alive.
I rolled onto my right side, pushed myself into a seated position, and then rose unsteadily to my feet. I prodded my ribs a little, and while it felt as if at least one of them was broken, I decided it was more likely they were only cracked a little.
Moving gingerly, I made it to Haley"s Escalade. I got in. I locked the door and sat there staring through the windshield. All around me were people going about their business, shopping in bodegas, dining at the Cuban cafe, talking on the corner by the liquor store, leaning against stucco walls covered with graffiti. Although I was sitting in the middle of it all, n.o.body seemed to see me there.
I gave my head a little shake to clear it. I checked my watch. Since I was alive, I would continue. There was time for at least one more interview that day.
I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. I drove aimlessly for a few minutes, then found a parking spot in the shade of a sycamore on Wilshire where it crosses MacArthur Park. I decided I might have better luck if I tried talking to some people who were playing for the other team. I drug my cell phone out of my pocket, wincing at a sharp spike of pain from my ribs. I called Congressman Montes and left a message with a man who said he was the congressman"s personal a.s.sistant. I leaned my head back against the seat, closed my eyes, and waited.
Time pa.s.sed. I fell asleep.
The phone rang. I woke up and answered, and the congressman"s a.s.sistant said he had scheduled an appointment with someone at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services field office in the Federal Building. I thanked him, then started the Escalade and drove out of Pico-Union.
Over at the Federal Building, a woman came into the waiting room and invited me to follow her. I stood up slowly and trailed along a hallway after her. The woman said her name was Elizabeth Peterson. She was large-boned, pushing sixty, with straw-colored hair as short as mine, that pallid look you get when you spend too much time under fluorescent lights, and a brown suit that looked as if it came off the rack at a men"s big-and-tall shop.
She led me into a small conference room. Before I could sit at the table, she looked me up and down and said, "What happened to you?"
"A little accident," I said, settling slowly into a chair.
"You look half-dead."
"Not to worry," I said. "The other half is fine."
She didn"t smile. "Normally I don"t liaise with the general public, Mr. Cutter."
"I"m sure Congressman Montes appreciates it."
"Yes. And what exactly is your connection with the congressman?"
"Tenuous, at best."
In spite of my witty banter, her lack of amus.e.m.e.nt seemed to deepen. "I"m very busy," she said. "What can we do for you?"
"I need a copy of everything you have on Alejandra Delarosa; her husband, Emilio; and their daughter."
"I"m sorry. Who?"
"The woman who kidnapped the congressman"s wife, Dona Elena Montes. I"m especially interested in the woman"s family."
"I see. If you would wait just a few minutes, I"ll see what we can do."
She left the room. I remained seated. I swung left and right in the swivel chair while I waited, flexing my midsection to explore the way the motion caused me pain. I took a few deep breaths, just to make sure I still could. I thought of what was excellent and true.
In about ten minutes, Elizabeth Peterson returned with a few pieces of paper in her hand. She sat, slid the papers across the table toward me, then said, "I"m afraid we are confused."
I started looking through the papers. "We are?"
"We are. The congressman"s office requested this same information just a few days ago. It seems strange that he would send you here for it again."
I said, "He gave me a copy of that file. There was nothing in it about Delarosa"s husband or daughter."
"That is incorrect. We were asked for everything related to the woman, and that is what we sent, because that is all we have."
"Are you sure? Maybe there was a mistake."
"That is unlikely."
I nodded. "Yes. I"m sure it is."
I flipped through the little stack of paper. In addition to the information I had already seen about Alejandra Delarosa, there were a few pages on Emilio Delarosa and their daughter, including two photos, both of which looked like mug shots. The quality of the images was no better than the one I already had of Alejandra, extremely vague and grainy. Photocopies of photocopies of faxes, most likely. With such poor resolution, the man could have been any of a thousand Latinos I had seen before, and the girl any of a thousand children.
I said, "There"s nothing more recent on the husband?"
"Our records end with that standard deportation file. He was sent back to Guatemala a few months after the incident. The daughter went with him."
"Are you sure there aren"t any clearer photos in the database?"
"I just printed that from the database, Mr. Cutter. Now unless you or the congressman needs something from a different file, I"d like to get back to work."
I left the Federal Building and drove back to El Nido, where I spent a troubled night in bed, trying to find a position I could lie in that didn"t cause me pain. The four or five gla.s.ses of Scotch I drank didn"t seem to help.
The next morning I felt stiff of body and of head, but the pain from the beating had subsided slightly. I decided to look into one more item from the congressman"s file. I rose early and looked at myself in the mirror. My legs and torso were covered with bruises, but other than a slight swelling along the right side of my jaw, all my facial features appeared to be in the usual places. They hadn"t managed to break my nose, and because it had survived the beating intact, the skin around my eyes hadn"t been bruised.
Haley had always said she loved my eyes the most. She used to try to get me to stare straight into hers. It was something that didn"t come naturally to me, but after a while, I got used to it. People said my eyes were like black holes into my head. Hers were more like windows into heaven. I told her that one time, and she said it was some pretty corny dialogue. I pointed out that I was just a leatherneck who didn"t know much about words, but I did know heaven when I saw it. She had smiled when I said that, and her smile lit up her eyes, confirming my description.
I put on faded Levi"s, my usual white polo shirt, and my New Balance workout shoes. I rubbed a little sunblock on my neck, face, and arms. I checked myself a final time in the mirror and had a funny feeling, as if I were still naked. I removed the shirt and went back to the closet. I found a green-and-brown-plaid cotton shirt two sizes larger and a Kevlar armored vest. I put on the vest, cinched it tight, and then put the larger shirt on over the vest. It occurred to me that I was wearing the vest from force of habit. It wasn"t that I cared all that much if I was shot. It was just what you wore on reconnaissance in hostile territory.
I put on a black gimme cap and a pair of Ray-Bans. I wore my shirttail untucked in case I needed to clip the holster onto my belt later, but when I got to the garage, I laid the handgun on the pa.s.senger seat of the Range Rover.
At the last minute, I decided it might be good if someone knew where I was going. I left the garage and looked around for Teru. He was by the big house, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a hedge. I walked over and filled him in on my plans. He pulled the pipe out of his mouth and asked when I"d be back. I told him to start worrying around three in the afternoon. He said he would do that.
The Ortega Highway wound through the Santa Ana Mountains from San Juan Capistrano to Lake Elsinore. It was a beautiful two-lane drive along deep canyons, but the road had lots of hairpin turns, and it climbed up pretty high in places. Guys on j.a.panese motorcycles loved to take it doing anywhere from sixty to one hundred miles per hour, leaning so far into the turns that their knees almost sc.r.a.ped the pavement. Guys in sports cars also tended to take the turns too fast. Several of them lost control every year and had to be sc.r.a.ped off the canyon floor below.
After the beating the day before, I was in a careful mood. I took it easy that morning, cruising about fifty on the straightaways and slowing to thirty on the turns. The Range Rover was extremely quiet. Too quiet after a while. I turned on the stereo, and Perry Como"s voice flowed from the speakers, one of Haley"s favorites. I realized it was what she had been listening to the last time she took her Range Rover out alone. I thought about her sitting where I was sitting, touching the same places on the steering wheel and listening to the same music. I turned the music off. I lowered the driver"s-side window and let the roaring wind and road noise flow into my head. The views ahead and beside me were beautiful. They were excellent. They were praiseworthy. The same G.o.d who took Haley from me also made those views. I did my best to think about the one thing and ignore the other. To me it made no sense to be angry with G.o.d. Might as well be angry with gravity.
Just past the ranger station on the right side of the Ortega, there"s a little side road that heads deeper into the mountains. I took it. For the first three or four miles, it ran along a ridge, offering excellent views down into a valley on the left. I saw Lake Elsinore far below, and beyond it, the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. Then the road pa.s.sed through an unexpected residential development, big houses on five- and ten-acre lots, which seemed out of place so far up in the hills. Right after that, the asphalt became spotty where heavy rains had created little washes. I was in the Cleveland National Forest, which was something of a joke, since there were hardly any trees. Except for a few sycamores along seasonal creek beds in the bottoms, the canyons were lined with scrub brush, manzanita, and boulders. Also rattlesnakes, coyotes, mountain lions, and if the local rumors were correct, a few brown bears that had returned to their old habitat after being driven out nearly one hundred years before.
I thought about Simon, well past midage and tackling me like a teenager when it looked as if Castro was going to run me down. I thought about Teru"s serious expression when I told him where I was going, Teru wanting to know when I would be back. I wondered if maybe I was taking certain things for granted and decided that I probably was.
When the odometer indicated I had traveled ten miles past the Ortega turnoff, I slowed and started looking for a dirt road on the left. According to the notes, it would be marked by an old cattle guard. When I reached the twelve-mile mark, I knew I had gone too far. I found a slightly wider spot where I could turn around, and after a lot of backing and filling, I managed to get the Range Rover pointed back the way I had come without driving off the mountainside. I saw a small cloud of dust beyond the next ridge, probably another vehicle coming my way down the road. A park ranger, maybe, or some hikers or campers heading into the wilderness.
I found the cattle guard this time and turned.
The notes in the congressman"s file had called it a road, but it was a path, really, mostly fit for hikers and horses. It was also what the Range Rover had been built for, although I was probably the only person in the state of California who was using that make of vehicle to its full potential at that moment.
I rolled and pitched and yawed along the path until I reached a spot where some large rocks and little boulders had fallen across it in a rock slide that even the Range Rover couldn"t handle. The soil there was a deep red, which was unusual, since that part of the Santa Ana Mountains were mostly made of white to dark-tan rock. I wondered where the red color came from. I thought about the blood that had been spilled nearby and felt my mind begin to slip along bizarre connections.
An image came-red rivers flowing from a fallen man"s open skull and seeping down into the soil to stain it for all time. The soil around the Range Rover began to undulate with waves of blood. It was rising to the axles. It was curling up like breakers. Any minute it would overwhelm me. I shook my head and stopped the Range Rover. I sat there with my eyes tightly shut, tasting metal on my tongue, hearing laughter in my head, and willing the chaotic visions back to the reptilian place from which they came. I thought of what was excellent and good. I thought of Haley.
Eventually the world around me coalesced again. When the things I saw and heard were more aligned with what one would expect along a remote mountain road, I got out of the Range Rover and clipped the M11 onto my belt. I didn"t expect any company, but there were always the rattlesnakes and mountain lions to consider, even if the red beneath my feet was only from iron oxide.
About a quarter-mile farther down the path, I found the shack sitting on a level area a little bit higher up the hillside. There was a narrow trail that zigzagged up the slope toward it. I climbed.
The shack was mostly made of plywood. There was a small deck in front, big enough for four chairs and a table if someone had been so inclined, and a single window with four panes overlooking the deck. Alongside the window, the door stood open. Looking inside I saw an undisturbed film of dust on the plywood floor and some sort of animal scat. I didn"t bother to announce myself. It seemed clear that nothing but racc.o.o.ns or possums had entered the little building for years.
Once I was inside, I saw the shack was only about fifteen feet wide and twenty deep. In addition to the one window in front, there was a second one in back, which had been boarded over. I saw a set of cabinets along one wall that looked as if they had once served as a kitchenette, and a small compartment in the back left corner, where I saw a fibergla.s.s shower stall and a hole where there used to be a toilet. Vandals had long since stolen the toilet, the kitchen sink, the faucet, and everything else they could haul away.
Screwed into the blank side wall opposite the cabinets, I saw a pair of eyebolts, the kind a person might use to chain a prisoner, should they be so inclined. I sat on the floor and leaned my back against the wall between the eyebolts. It was where Dona Elena would have spent those horrific days waiting for release or death. From where I sat, it was impossible to see outside, either through the single window or the open front door.
I stood up and went to the blank wall in back beside the toilet compartment. There I found a row of nail holes high up near the ceiling. I thought it was probably where Alejandra Delarosa had fastened the backdrop she used to film the videos-black fabric with the URNG"s logo in white and red. I searched the rest of the walls and the floor carefully.
Then I went back outside. I hopped down off the front deck and walked around the side of the shack. I knelt and peered into the s.p.a.ce between the hillside and the floor framing. I sighed, thinking of black widows and rattlesnakes, and then I dropped onto my stomach and crawled into the shadows. I found plenty of cobwebs and some evidence of the original construction, bits of lumber left behind, but nothing else of interest. I crawled back out, stood, and dusted myself off as best I could.
So. There were no bloodstains, no bullet holes, no other evidence of the crime. It had been seven years, after all, but I was still disappointed.
I walked downhill to the path. I followed it to the Range Rover, got in, removed the handgun, and put it on the pa.s.senger seat again. I turned the vehicle around very carefully and then drove back out to the park road.
Just beyond the first hairpin turn, I nearly hit a white Escalade, which was parked in the middle of the road with its hood up. A man stood by the front b.u.mper reaching down into the engine compartment. He didn"t bother to look around when I stopped. He wore a straw cowboy hat tipped back on his head; a pair of jeans; a red-and-black-striped, western-cut shirt; and a pair of boots. He rose up on his toes and reached a little deeper into the engine compartment.
I glanced over at the gun on the pa.s.senger seat. I thought about slipping it into my holster, but a strange lethargy had settled in. I simply didn"t bother. I wanted the pain to stop. The ache of missing Haley and longing for her touch. The constant sense of being incomplete. I left the weapon where it was and got out of the Range Rover.
"Need a hand?" I asked.
"This thing," he said. "I had to take it back in three times already. Dealer won"t admit it"s a lemon."
I walked up beside him and looked down at the engine. "What"s it doing?"
He removed his hand from where it had been hidden down among the pulleys. In it was a Beretta M9 semiautomatic. He took one step back to get out of my reach, the Beretta aimed at my midsection. Both moves were the kind of thing they teach you at the Western Hemisphere Inst.i.tute for Security Cooperation, what used to be called the School of the Americas. He was one of the guys who had been following me. Not the one with the gold medallion around his neck. The Other One.
He said, "Okay."
I heard a door open as someone got out of the Escalade. Although I couldn"t see him behind the raised hood, when he stepped into view, I saw he was the one with the medallion. He wore his top shirt b.u.t.tons undone, like before.
"You guys got a different SUV," I said.
"We have lots of them," said Medallion. He said it in Spanish.
I switched to that language too. "Who are you guys again?"
"You know what it means to be disappeared?"
"I have heard the expression."
"We are going to make it happen."
"I wish you would reconsider."
"We warned you fairly, did we not?"
"You certainly did. I have no objections about that."
"And our friends warned you again yesterday, but here you are."
"Those guys are your friends? You should keep better company."