Ten

Benny Silva wanted to know what brought the detectives back. They weren’t really interested in how customers found him, his rates for parking a dumpster, what the city charged at the only landfill he could use for construction waste.

“Tell us about Dolores Baca,” Detective Aragon said.

Getting to it.

“Which one?”

“You know more than one?”

“There’s Bacas from Espanola. The grandmother, Dolores. Dolores Maria Baca Trujillo y Alarid, she taught me math at Chimayo Elementary. Dolores Baca at the Public Health Department, she does permits for waste disposal, my toilet rental line.” He scratched his head. “Let me think, there’s one down in Bernalillo, she—”

“Dolores Baca, mother of Cassandra Baca. Also known as Andrea Chacon, Andrea Luna, Andrea Tenorio.”

“Now we’re talking half of northern New Mexico, all those families. Five hundred years they been here. That adds up.”

“Who’s Rigo Silva?”

“Are you just flipping pages in the phone book?”

“Your vice president.”

“You know, why ask? He’s my brother, too. I’m gonna bet you know that.”

“Where can we find him?”

“Out on a job. Working, like I should be.”

Lewis tapped Aragon’s arm, pointed to a painting behind a desk, Spanish conquistadors, Indians kneeling before them, some being whipped, some being run through with lances. A sword on the wall.

“That’s Don Juan de Oñate,” Silva said. “Y Salazar, the whole name. A great man. I carry that sword in the Fiesta. The Aragons came into this country with him. Your people. How come I never seen you march? You forget who you are?”

Aragon wanted to throw something back, but said, “You know everybody but the Dolores Baca we want to know about. Her daughter was the one in your dumpster. Your brother knows the mother. He posted her bail three times when she was arrested for prostitution. Have him call us.”

Aragon and Lewis left a different way than they’d come in, taking a side door and a long walk around the building back to their car in front. They saw bins of scrap metal, glass, newspapers, the rows of portable toilets, a metal crusher, a metal hangar, the door partially opened, something like a huge pressure cooker in there. And unwound copper coaxial cable on the ground, by itself, looking used, like it had been pulled out of something.

“Too many coincidences,” Aragon said as she snapped photos on her phone.

“I wonder if E. Benny has that copper in his book,” Lewis said.

Silva was there waiting for them, the book open to the right page, showing the copper scrap he bought, from who, where they got it, where he sold it down the line. He said he saw them go the wrong way, maybe they were lost. They want a tour, just ask. By the way …

“There’s a Dolores Baca in Cuyamungue, now I recall. Her husband works State Highway Department. Another Dolores Baca over in Cebolla, ranching family, and one in Ojo Caliente, the restaurant when you come off the hill. Best rellenos in the state. That’s Dolores Saracino Baca, she says she’s got Arab in her from when the Moors had Spain. I think of more, I’ve got your card.”

An hour at their office playing with search engines, they found the case of E. Benny Silva Enterprises versus Jeremiah Kohn Productions. They accessed the online First Judicial District Court file and read docket entries. They understood the multi-million dollar judgment part, but not much else. Aragon called her cousin, Deputy DA Joe Mascarenas, and asked him to make sense of it. Mascarenas pulled it up on a computer in his office. Aragon put the call on speaker so Lewis could hear.

“It’s been in limbo. Post-verdict motions, hearings, the trial judge recusing himself. Interest is adding up fast. The time for appeal hasn’t started with the motion for new trial pending. Hold on. It’s been pending almost a year.”

“If there’s no judge,” Lewis asked, “what happens?”

“There is a judge, by default. The Chief Judge. The First Judicial Court adopted that procedure when the governor and legislature deadlocked over adding new judges to tackle the backlog. This way the Chief Judge could send work to those with the lightest or fastest dockets.”

“Or keep it for herself?”

“Why would she?”

Somebody stepped into the doorway to their small office. They looked up to see Tomas Rivera holding an armful of roses.

“For me?” Lewis asked. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Hang on, Joe.” Aragon glared at Rivera. Flowers the day after their date? Members of a joint federal-state task force screwing each other was not in the protocol.

“This isn’t what you think,” Rivera said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I stopped by Whole Foods for a bite. Your Elaine Salas has been asking about collecting roses from local florists with the goal of trying to match them genetically to those around Andrea. I got these at Whole Foods. It’s hot in the car. Can you put them in water?”

He only needed one for the lab. He was pushing it with a dozen. Other cops would see. The talk would start.

Shit. She’d forgotten to keep him current on the girl’s identity. But it wasn’t irritation that pushed an apology out of the way.

“Whole Foods doesn’t sell roses,” she said. “We were there yesterday.”

“Someone had bought them out. A loving husband bought six dozen for his wife, all they had. They restocked this morning.”

“How many roses were in that dumpster? It could have been six dozen.”

They finished with Mascarenas, then called Elaine Salas and got their answer. Sixty roses. Five dozen.

Lewis and she were thinking alike. He passed around copies of the florist pages in the Santa Fe Dex and five pages of a Google search. They divided the stores and made calls. They didn’t bother with FTD or Flowers.com on the assumption those outfits would merely route an order through one of the brick and mortars on their list. In all, each called nine florists. It didn’t take long.

They came back with only two possibilities. Thirteen dozen red sweetheart roses had been purchased from Ava’s Flowers for a bat mitzvah. They were still in the store’s cooler, awaiting delivery this evening.

The other large purchase had been for a funeral at the Santuario de Chimayo the previous Sunday. They’d run that down, but it was probably a dead end.

“Let’s learn who cleaned out Whole Foods,” Aragon said, “and what they did with the flowers. We’re one dozen short, but that’s close enough. A Whole Foods bag on Cassandra Baca’s head, flowers from Whole Foods around her. Just maybe.”

Lewis headed to district court to obtain copies of the pleadings and trial transcript in the Silva lawsuit. Aragon went with Rivera to Whole Foods. He called ahead and asked to meet with the manager.

She noticed Rivera left the roses behind on her desk.

In his car she told him they’d identified Andrea as Cassandra Baca.

“Superb work.” He plugged his phone into the car stereo. “You have me listening to country music. This song is about us.”

She knew it, about not closing your eyes, not looking backward to another love, another time.

Rivera sang along, his voice nothing like Miguel’s, the lyrics telling her what he wanted: see me, not someone else.

Brown adobes rolled by, the city historical or cultural commission, whatever it was, thinking every building looking the same was a good idea. Aragon was tired of it, all the brown, millions of dollars for a building of mud and straw, no angles, nothing new. Not a city, a theme park.

She hit eject and cut Rivera off in the middle of the next verse.

It wasn’t the buildings. She honestly liked the look, was proud of it, nothing coming close anywhere in the country. It felt sometimes like a piece of Spain, or Mexico centuries ago. It was Rivera, first playing with the roses, now having fun with the hard time she had loving him. Had she told him Miguel was a beautiful singer? He shouldn’t even try. It didn’t help.

Did she just think that? ‘Loving him’?

Not Miguel Martinez. Him, Tomas Rivera?

“I do something wrong?” He glanced at her, then back to the windshield.

“No.” She wasn’t going to tell him. “I was thinking about the case. I couldn’t concentrate. Sorry.”

“Look at this place,” he said as they pulled in the Whole Foods lot. “A money factory. Always packed. I didn’t ask if the flowers were organic, free trade, animal friendly, whatever.”

“Fregan. I learned that from a smelly girl named Gray, whose family has more money than any Aragon or Rivera. But she won’t buy food. She’ll only eat what people throw away. And she won’t wash.”

She’d explain later if Rivera asked. They parked and entered the store. Again she saw vegetables and fruits from another planet.

“I still want to know what celeriac is,” she said.

Flowers, but not roses, were displayed outside. They asked a cashier for the manager and were pointed to a young man helping another stack boxes of soy milk. He introduced himself as Simon Townsend and led them to the small floral department.

There they saw roses, dozens, their ends in black plastic buckets filled with water, each dozen wrapped in a crisp, clear plastic sheath. They learned the roses were indeed free trade, grown in El Salvador, and distributed by an importer committed to ethical, sustainable practices. Even more, the roses bore Veriflora labels, a certification, the manager told them, ensuring equitable hiring and employment practices, safe workplace and housing conditions, access to health care, education, transportation, and the prevention of child labor.

Aragon leaned in close and sniffed. All those ethics and they forgot about smelling good.

She said, “We understand someone bought you out the day before yesterday, one person. We’d like to know who that was. Can you pull up a credit card transaction? If it was cash, we’re out of luck.”

“I’ll check sales. Help yourself to coffee. Give my name to the cashier.”

“I could eat,” Aragon said. “We’ll be at the tables.”

They ordered from the deli section. Rivera ordered quinoa salad and got a look from Aragon. She went for a brick of meatloaf. They took seats up front looking out on the parking lot.

“We’re interested in a guy named Benny Silva,” she said. “His brother posted bail for Cassandra Baca’s mother when she was picked up on prostitution beefs long ago. Cassandra adopted her mother’s street name. She ends up in one of Silva’s dumpsters. He’s got a nine-million-dollar verdict hanging on a decision by Judge Judith Diaz, who, we know, was having sex with this girl. There’s a circle here. They’re all inside the line, but I’m not understanding it yet.”

“The mother, did she know about her daughter’s after-school activities?”

“She was too doped up to get anything out of her. The house is like two worlds. The one Dolores Baca inhabits, trashed out, a junkie’s flop. You step into Cassandra’s room, you’re somewhere else.” She thought of the kids at Camino High filming the class movie, stepping into lockers to reach a better world. “Neat, tidy, clean. New things. Sports car posters on the wall. I had boy bands on my wall. Lewis says his daughters have horses. Cassandra had a car tattoo on her hip. A neighbor says she tinkered with cars. Maybe Cassandra saw them as a way out, she was going somewhere, fast. Maybe a statement she wasn’t like her mom with the shitty heaps in the driveway.”

“Except in how she was making money. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Mom went through the room looking for money for another carpet ride. The way she went straight to the closet, leaving everything else untouched, I get the feeling she’s tossed the room before and learned where Cassandra didn’t keep cash.”

“Cassandra had money outside the house?”

“She bought her own clothes, lunches. I don’t see Dolores Baca giving her that. Maybe she was saving up for that fast car to get her out of Dodge. Rick is going to swing by the school, deliver the parental consent form, and take a look at her locker.”

“Mom was too doped to talk, but read and signed a consent form?”

Aragon fluttered fingers in front of her lips, saying sorry, I’ve got a mouthful.

“Here it is.” Townsend was at the table. He handed Aragon an index card. “Daniel Breskin. He bought six dozen roses. I can’t give you his credit card number.”

“We’ll find him,” Aragon said. “This meatloaf’s great. You put in pine nuts. My grandmother did that. We’d pick them where Jack Nicklaus built those houses for millionaires.”

Rivera said he’d be right back. She read texts from Lewis. He had the court files in Silva’s case and was on his way to Camino High. Rivera climbed in with a small shopping bag.

“For you. Stretch your horizons.” He unpacked on the seat. “Kohlrabi, Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, and your favorite, celeriac.”

“Ain’t gonna happen.”

“I’ll cook for you.”

“I’ve never had a guy cook vegetables for me. Flip burgers, burn a steak, maybe. This is new.”

“Can’t cook in your brother’s truck. It would have to be one of our places for once. I’ve got a kitchen I don’t use enough.”

“I’ve got one I never use.”

“My place then.”

“I’ll bring Lotaburgers in case it’s a mistake.” He looked hurt. She punched his shoulder. “The rabbit food, silly. Not your place.”

They had Daniel Breskin with a few taps on the screen of Rivera’s phone.

The top search results gave them a computer entrepreneur in Seattle with connections to New Mexico. Reports about Breskin’s success with three start-ups led them to a story about the modernistic mansion he’d built above Santa Fe. They got the address with a call to the County Assessor’s office.

They saw his place from a half-mile away. At the crown of a hill, sunlight bouncing off white walls. The driveway was a paved road. Halfway up, on the steepest slope, they passed through an open gate on rollers retracted into the pinyon and juniper.

They reached the house after more bends in the roadway. Macadam gave way to interlocking masonry blocks ending at a four-car garage. A path of crushed sea shells bordered by lavender led to the front door.

A woman was bending into the trunk of a white BMW. She came out with a white gym bag. Asian, thirties, long straight black hair against a white exercise bra, white stretch pants, white sandals. Strong calves, graceful back. She straightened when she saw them. Rivera pulled his car close. They got out, showing their badges and giving their names.

“We’d like to talk to Daniel Breskin,” Aragon said.

“My husband is away. Can I help you?”

“May we talk inside?”

The woman bumped the car door shut with her hip.

“Would you like something to drink? It’s so awfully hot.”

They followed her into the house, cool and dark. A dozen roses sat in a ceramic pot on a table in the entry. Same small, tight blooms as the ones in Andrea’s dumpster. At the end of the hallway they stepped into an ocean of light so piercing they winced. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed an infinity pool beyond the glass, the water line underscoring a view across Santa Fe’s rooftops. Everything was sharp angles, hard surfaces, and, where there wasn’t artwork or rugs, white. White leather furniture low to the ground. White blinds pulled above the glass. Built-in cabinets almost white, a very pale variety of ash or maple, Aragon guessed, not knowing how to identify much beyond pine and oak.

The Asian woman was standing at a counter with a sink and refrigerator sunk into white surfaces.

“We didn’t get your name?”

“Sun-Hi Breskin. I go by Sunny.”

Aragon scanned the mantle over a glass-enclosed fireplace. Small Asian figurines, cut glass, nothing with New Mexico style. On the bookshelves, volumes about localities around the world, not one on Santa Fe. She looked down another hallway, a glass wall here instead of stone, a view across a courtyard to a separate building, a smaller version of this one but still larger than most New Mexico homes.

“What’s that playing?” Rivera asked. She hadn’t noticed the music but now that she listened, it was airy stuff, no beat, no drive. Loose, shapeless sounds. No lyrics telling stories about broken hearts and broken homes.

“It’s the loop they play at my yoga studio.”

“I like it,” Rivera said.

Breskin smiled at that and filled glasses from a pitcher in the refrigerator. They moved to seats around a coffee table. White again. Aragon tasted pineapple in what she thought was plain water.

“From pineapple cores,” Breskin said as Aragon flicked her tongue across her lips. “It adds bromelain. Good for recovery. I just finished my power-flow class. I bet you have amazing abs. May I see them?”

Rivera hid a smile behind his glass.

“I don’t think so.” Aragon put her drink on a white coaster on what she guessed was white marble. “Mrs. Breskin, we have a very serious case. I can’t go into all the details. We’re looking into purchases of large quantities of roses in Santa Fe on Monday of this week.”

“Roses.”

“Did your husband purchase six dozen roses from Whole Foods?”

“He always brings me roses when he comes home from Seattle.” She paused. “You said six dozen?”

Aragon studied her: Quadriceps and calves filled out the stretch pants. Her bare midriff showed rippled abdominal muscles. The inverted triangles of delts topped her arms. The white top was sheer enough to see nipples and aureoles. Coal-black eyes. The light in the room bounced off her black hair.

“May I ask, how long have you been here?”

“Almost two years.” Breskin got up to bring the pitcher to the table. Aragon caught Rivera’s eyes following her. “We moved down from Seattle when this home was ready. Daniel maintains a condo there, where his work is.”

“And you stay here?”

“His business is not my business. He spends most of his time out there when he’s in Santa Fe.” She flipped a hand at the glass wall revealing the large guesthouse.

“Do you work?”

“I maintain the house.”

“What is your husband’s business?”

“He made his money in virtual reality technology. First for medical surgery, then computer games.”

“I take it you and your husband don’t spend much time together.”

“What’s this about? Why are you interested in the state of our marriage?”

“I apologize.” Aragon took a long drink of pineapple water to change gears. “I get that way, trailing one question off another. Back to the roses. Would it be too much to ask if we may have one of the blooms? I understand they may hold some special meaning for you. We can wait until you’re ready to throw them out.”

“You can have them. I usually get rid of them when Daniel leaves.”

“Can you tell us where he was Monday night?”

“Again, what does that have to do with people buying large quantities of roses? Is that a crime?”

“The roses may be connected to a very serious crime. We need to eliminate your husband from our inquiries. If you can account for his time.”

Sunny Breskin pushed silky black hair behind an ear. Aragon scratched her scalp stubble.

“We went to Coyote for an early dinner. He needed to work all night. We were done and home by seven. He went to his office in the guesthouse.”

“Why would he have bought six dozen? Did he have a purpose for the five dozen he didn’t give you?”

“I don’t like your insinuations. Why don’t you ask Danny yourself? Call his office. No, here’s his cell phone.” She found a pen and paper in an ivory box on the bookshelf and wrote out his number. “I’m wondering whether there’s more to your visit than you’re telling me.”

“Why would that be, Mrs. Breskin?”

She removed a cell phone from the same ivory box and tapped numbers on the screen.

“Who are you calling, Mrs. Breskin?”

“I want my lawyer here, unless you’re leaving.”

Aragon gathered the flowers on the way out, water dripping from the stems on the cold stone floor.

“One dozen for me, five for someone else, that’s what Sun-Hi Breskin’s thinking right now,” she said as they got into the car. “You were sure quiet. You really liked that music?”

“I was watching her.”

“I bet you were.”

The gate was open for them on the way down and started closing as soon as they passed through. Aragon stopped at the bottom of the drive to point out the cameras for Rivera.

She brought up on her phone the crime reporting map from the SFPD’s website.

“We’re here,” she said, “where there are no recently reported crimes. Nothing. Not even registered sex offenders nearby. Down here … ” She scrolled to bring up southwest Santa Fe, past Jaguar Road. “These red dots, like measles. Sex offenders, the heaviest concentration of violent and property crime. This is where Cassandra Baca’s body was dumped. Two different worlds, a lot more than ten miles apart. Say those roses were his. What would a guy like Daniel Breskin be doing down there?”

“I think she’s watching us.”

Aragon followed Rivera’s gaze. A camera that had pointed at cars entering the drive now pointed at them.

Aragon said, “She might have seen his coming and going. We need to ask if Mr. Breskin went out.”

“We have his personal cell.”

“Let’s learn more about him. When I asked what his business is, notice she said how he’d made his money in the past, not what he’s doing now? And see what your FBI mad scientists say about these flowers, whether they’re the same as the ones in the dumpster.”

“We’ve got plenty to do. I don’t think tonight’s ideal for you to experience celeriac and kohlrabi.”

“Lotaburgers and work. I’m happy.”

Benny Silva telling her who she is.

You don’t march in the Fiesta. You forget how your people got here?

On her knees in her efficiency apartment on the far west side of town, pushing aside coats and holding back the ironing board before it fell on her head, she pulled the suitcase from the back of her closet. Then the long wooden case her father had made, over five feet long. It took the entire floor under her clothes. Wire twisted around nails held it closed. Inside, not a fake conquistador sword like the one she’d seen on Silva’s wall with his lost Spanish Empire fan club stuff. This one had markings showing it had been forged in Toledo, Spain. Nicks in the blade, her father said, from when an Aragon fought with Don Juan de Oñate all the way from Mexico City to here. Four-and-a-half feet long, a foot soldier’s weapon. With the hilt it was as tall as her.

A corset of chain mail was wrapped in black velvet, a couple ringlets dented and twisted where her father said it had stopped an Apache spear. In another wooden box, a morion, a Spanish soldier’s crescent-shaped helmet, the pointed brim in front and back curving up, a ridge of tin splitting the crown. The dent over the right eye: stones hurled from Acoma’s sky fortress, a city on a pillar of rock above a dry valley. An Aragon had survived the first Indian attack and returned with Oñate and cannons. They had done terrible things. But it was war on both sides. When Indians got a soldier, the Spaniard took a long time dying. The women got them at the end. Guess what they did?

That’s what her father had said to the little girl watching him suit up.

She had marched with him in the Fiesta parade. She’d be in a pleated dress, usually bright blue or red, whatever her mother was wearing that year. They had matching fans and tiaras with glass stones. He father marched with the heavy sword in front of his face, point up, sweating under the chain mail and morion. They’d precede La Conquistadora, Our Lady of the Rosary, a four-hundred-year-old statue carried on a platform. The very same statue that had escaped the Pueblo uprising and returned to Santa Fe in the reconquista. An Aragon had entered the city with De Vargas and his troops.

Her parents never marched after she’d been raped on the playground across from their house. We have lost, her father said. We are not the victors here.

Her brothers were sent out of town to the New Mexico Military Academy, in Roswell. It felt like Texas down there when she’d gone to see them graduate, marching in blazing sun in military uniforms they’d never wear again. Javier hated coming into Santa Fe. Her other brother, Christobal, left the state entirely, another proud export.

She’d fought to go back to school. Her parents had talked about sending her to a convent. Where else do you put a girl who’s been raped? Thank Jesus she didn’t get pregnant.

She’d made it through those years, always running straight at the violence, making herself get stronger, but never claiming her place in the parade, showing who she was, proud as hell of it and not making any excuses.

She marched in the shadows, her beautiful black hair gone, her armor the muscles she’d built to cover her bones. What she’d wrapped around her heart, she didn’t have words for.

Aragon returned the ancient soldier’s tools to the floor of her closet and lined cross-trainers and hiking boots on the boxes. She should probably donate the family treasures to a museum. She would never use them. No one would. They took up so much space.

No conquistadors left in the Aragon family.

And Benny Silva saw it.