Fifteen

RITA SIPPED AT HER COFFEE. “IF Stamworth isn’t FBI,” she said, “then who or what do you think he is?”

“No idea,” I said. Sitting at the opposite end of the sofa, I was drinking hot cocoa. A bright rectangle of morning sun lay across the Persian carpet. Rita wore a white silk blouse and a pleated black skirt. Her hair, thick and black, was pulled loosely behind her neck, folded like wings along her Indian cheekbones. The stainless steel walker stood upright beside her.

“It’s the INS,” I said, “who handles illegal aliens, not the FBI, but I can’t see him as INS either. He’s something federal, though. He has to be. The FBI is backing his story, or the L.A. cops wouldn’t be buying it. Which must mean he’s got some kind of federal juice.” I shrugged. “Maybe he’s a mailman.”

“He was on the scene before Catherine was killed.”

“Yeah. And he says there’s no connection between her death and Melissa.”

“But you think there is.”

“I think it’s a possibility.”

“I think you’re right,” she said. “And I think you’re right to worry about the phone,” she said. Her large dark eyes were thoughtful. “I’ll have Leroy put an indicator on the line.” Leroy, a distant relative of Rita’s, was an electronics expert. “And you and I will have to be discreet for a while. Not say anything over the phone we’d prefer that Stamworth not hear.”

“I’m always discreet, Rita.”

“Obviously there isn’t much point in our getting scramblers.”

“Not unless we issue one to everybody who might be calling us.”

“It’s possible that I can learn something about him on the computer.”

I sipped at my cocoa. “About Stamworth? You can do that? Hook into the government’s computer files?”

“I can’t, no. But I know someone who could, possibly.”

“Who? Captain Crunch?”

She smiled. As usual, her smile created a constriction in my chest. “A young hacker on CompuServe,” she said. “He’s helped me out before.”

Still another item she hadn’t shared with me. My early-morning high spirits—my pleasure at being back in New Mexico, at the shining sun-splashed October day, at the elegant curve of Rita’s throat—I could feel all of that beginning to unravel.

I said, “That doesn’t sound especially legal.”

“It isn’t. We’ll wait to see if Stamworth makes another appearance.” She sipped at her coffee and she smiled again. “I know I’m going to regret this, but how was Los Angeles?”

“I’m thinking about moving out there,” I said. “Get myself a couple of silk shirts, a bunch of bean sprouts, start working on my tan and my screenplay.”

Another smile. “I do hope that when you become famous, you won’t forget all of us little people.”

“Who?”

She laughed. It was a very gratifying sound. “Enough,” she said. “You talked to Melissa’s parents.”

“Yeah.” Without mentioning my rent-a-cop experience at Bigelow’s office, I explained what I’d learned and what I hadn’t.

“That poor woman,” Rita said. “She’s caught in the middle, between her husband and her daughter.”

“I think the sister was, too. Cathryn. Apparently she wasn’t supposed to see Melissa. Daddy didn’t like the idea. But she saw her anyway. I keep thinking that I should’ve stayed out there longer, tried to find out more about her. She’s as much of a cipher as Melissa is. More so.”

“Joshua, her death was either connected to Melissa’s disappearance or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, there’s probably nothing you could learn about her that would help us locate Melissa. If it was, the police will probably determine that. They wouldn’t want you interfering in an open case, anyway.”

“I know.”

“The last anyone heard from Melissa, she was somewhere here in the Southwest. This is where you should be looking right now. If it’s necessary, you can always go back to Los Angeles.”

“Swell.”

She smiled. “Tell me about Elizabeth Drewer.”

I told her about Elizabeth Drewer.

She said, “The two of you got along very well, evidently.”

“Like peaches and cream. She thinks that convicted child molesters should be castrated. And I got the feeling that she wouldn’t mind if that practice were extended to a large percentage of the male population. Maybe all of it.”

“Her compassion, evidently, has a narrow focus.”

“What there is of it.”

“Well, she certainly seems compassionate enough about the children.” She sipped her coffee, returned the cup to the saucer on her lap. “But she seems to be forgetting that by her own account the victimizers were often victims themselves.”

“I don’t think she allows much room for subtle nuances of motivation.”

“Nor should she. It’s a terrible thing. But there are other approaches.”

“Besides ‘Off with his balls,’ you mean?”

She smiled faintly. “Do you remember Norma Hermann?”

“The shrink? Her brother-in-law disappeared with her case histories?”

“Yes. I spoke with her yesterday. She’s working at St. Vincent’s now, with abused children. Her thinking, which makes sense to me, is that when an accusation of sexual abuse has been made, the legalistic approach is basically mistaken. What these people need, the parents and the children, is some kind of therapeutic help that deals with the entire family, all of them, as members of a single unit. And that’s true, she thinks, even when the accusation is false.”

“It may be a little late for that here.”

“Probably. But I can’t help worrying about that little girl.”

“Neither can I.” I sipped some cocoa. “But I’m not a shrink, Rita. All I can do, if I’m lucky, is find her. I can’t heal her.”

“Finding her would be a start. What else happened out there? Did you talk to Charles Hatfield?”

“Yeah. He’s one of those Brits who haven’t really existed since The Charge of the Light Brigade. The movie, I mean, not the poem. Tweeds, a pipe, a guardsman’s mustache. Very pukka. I liked him. But he didn’t know anything about Melissa’s whereabouts. No one does. The thing is, I can’t get a handle on her, on what she’s really like. On the one hand, she’s a dedicated volunteer for a group that aids political refugees. On the other, she’s a loving mother. On the other, she’s involved in S and M orgies. This is a life riddled with contradictions, Rita.”

“That’s three hands,” she smiled.

“Yeah. What is the sound of three hands clapping?”

“Joshua, only idiots and saints live without contradictions. The idea is to find out what the contradictions have in common.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m not a shrink. I’m beginning to dislike this woman.”

“Obviously she’s never realized how much her life would inconvenience you.”

“Obviously. I did find out who Deirdre is.”

“Who?”

“An artist. Deirdre Polk. She lives up in Hartley. I tried calling her, but I got her machine. If I can’t get through to her, and if there’s time, I’ll drive up there later today.”

“I told you you’d find her. Have you located Juanita yet?”

“Nope.”

“You will. Did you ask Hatfield about Santa Isabel?”

“Yeah. Nothing happened there.”

“Not in Santa Isabel, no.”

I sighed. “Rita, Rita. You’re about to sandbag me again, aren’t you?”

“About thirty miles northeast of Santa Isabel,” she said, “there’s a small farming village called Cureiro. On August sixteenth, sometime during the night, the village’s Catholic priest and a woman friend were murdered. He was Father Manuel Cisneros. She was Maria Vasquez. They were apparently dragged from inside the house and shoved into a car that drove them a few miles away, into the countryside. They were made to kneel down and they were shot in the head with automatic weapons. The bodies weren’t found until a week later.”

“You got that off the database?”

“Yes.”

Apparently there was something to be said for the database. “But this place is thirty miles, you said, from Santa Isabel.”

“Thirty miles isn’t that far. And the timing is right. If Melissa saw something while she was in Santa Isabel, or heard something that concerned the murders, it might explain why she left the country when she did.”

I swallowed some cocoa. “Sounds like kind of a long shot to me, Rita.”

“Have you discovered any other reason for her leaving so suddenly?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist.”

“And it still leaves this one open as a possibility.”

“Remote.”

“Suppose that before she left for El Salvador, Melissa had been in touch with Elizabeth Drewer. Suppose that she’d been seriously considering disappearing along the Underground Railway, taking Winona with her. And suppose that she saw or heard something down there about these killings. Suppose that she knew who was responsible, and suppose she felt that the knowledge put her life in jeopardy.” She sipped her coffee.

I said, “So she runs back to L.A., grabs Winona, and the two of them jump on the Underground Railroad, which is already waiting for them at the station.”

Rita nodded.

“A lot of supposing,” I said. “And I don’t see how we can follow it up. Do the police down there have any suspects?”

“The police down there are the suspects. Have you talked to Hector about any of this?” Our friend Hector Ramirez worked in the Violent Crimes Division of the Santa Fe Police Department.

I said, “I was out in Lotusland, remember?”

“I’ll call him and ask him if he knows anything about Railroad safe houses here in town.”

“Hector won’t know anything about safe houses, Rita. That’s federal business. And you know, there’s another possibility here.”

“The Sanctuary group.”

“Yeah. They’ve got an office in Santa Fe, which probably means they’ve got a fair amount of members here. From what Charles Hatfield tells me, some of those members might be helping illegals move around.”

“And some of them might be helping Melissa.”

“Right.”

“Your friend Montoya. Would he know anything about the movement of illegal aliens?”

“Maybe. But I don’t want to bring him into this. I can hardly act as a go-between if he’s the one who locates her.”

“So you don’t trust him.”

“I think I do. But I could be wrong. And I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize Melissa and Winona.”

She nodded. “Who will you be talking to at the Sanctuary office?”

“A woman named Rebecca Carlson. Got her name from Hatfield. She’s the honcho there. I’ve already called her, made an appointment for this afternoon.”

“All right, Joshua. Let me know what happens.”

“Don’t I always?”

She smiled. “Sometimes you tend to gloss over an incident or two.”

“I? Gloss?”

“You neglected to mention, for example, the two security guards you assaulted at Calvin Bigelow’s office.”

“You found that on the database?”

She laughed. “Bigelow called me last night.” We have call-forwarding on the office phone; after five o’clock, anyone telephoning there will be routed to Rita’s home number. I had left my business card, with the office number on it, on Bigelow’s desk. “He was not pleased,” she said.

“Really? He seemed happy enough the last time I saw him.”

“Something about sneaking around his back to harass his wife. And, of course, the assault in his office.”

“Not an assault. A minor dispute.”

“I see. Well, it might be in your best interests not to dispute with anyone today.”

“Yes dear.”

“And don’t forget to pick up the fax from Arthur at the fax service.”

“Yes dear.”

“Go away, Joshua.”

“Yes dear.”

I drove downtown. There’s a pay phone just outside the entrance to our office building, and I used it to call Deirdre Polk. She still wasn’t home. I called the fax service and learned that no fax from Arthur had arrived. I went to the office, where I worked on reports until twelve, then I walked down the stairs, out into the garden courtyard, and out through the archway that opened onto the territorial-style portico facing Palace Avenue. I called Deirdre Polk again, and this time she was in. She told me, with just a hint of asperity in her voice, that she didn’t have any information about Melissa Alonzo, but she agreed to speak with me that afternoon at five thirty, at her house in Hartley. I didn’t mind the asperity. I get a lot of it.

I walked down to Washington, bought a carnitas-filled tortilla and a glass of lemonade at Rogue and Mona’s stand, beside the museum, and ferried them across the street to the Plaza. I found a shaded bench not far from the Memorial, sat down, and ate my lunch.

It was a beautiful day. Overhead, the sky was a canopy of cobalt silk. The sweet smell of freshly mowed grass swayed in the air like a drapery. The bright clear sunlight angled through the yellowing leaves; the bright clear carol of children’s laughter floated across the lawn.

Most of the tourists were gone now. I saw only one couple from Out of Town. Standing at the corner of San Francisco and the Old Santa Fe Trail, she was squinting extravagantly as she peered down at a street map, while he stood rock steady and used a bulky VHS camcorder to take an extremely protracted snapshot of the La Fonda Hotel’s rock-steady facade. On the low stone wall that circled the Memorial, two long-haired young boys and a long-haired girl sat sunning themselves, eyes shut, backs curled against the green wrought iron fence, heads uptilted, all of them looking as though they had slipped here through some time warp from 1968 Haight-Ashbury. A few feet away, a red-haired teenage girl, a man’s bulky black work shirt hanging loose over black spandex tights, sat hunched over a paperback book. Two small giggling children, boy and girl, played tag around the trunk of an oak tree. Down the leafy sidewalks walked a pair of Hispanic grandmothers, a fat businessman boxed in gray worsted, two slender businesswomen, one wearing a black miniskirt and a red plaid blazer, the other more formal in gray tweeds. Here and there around the square, in small flocks of five and ten, pigeons strutted with enormous self-importance, as though they were sporting dinner jackets. Occasionally, attacked by a whooping child, they took sudden fright, and flight.

I sipped at my lemonade and watched a young woman and her daughter enter the square from the east side, at the Trail. The woman, tall and slim, in her late twenties, wore long brown western boots outside her tight stone-washed jeans, and a bulky white cotton turtleneck sweater whose hem reached to her thighs. Her long hair was brown and fine and it was shiny in the sun. The young girl, probably Winona’s age, wore a thin white cotton sweater under a lemon yellow jumper, white anklet socks, and black patent leather shoes. Her hair was blond and loose and it was as shiny as her mother’s. Her left hand clutched at her mother’s right, and she moved in that pigeon-toed, determined march of childhood, her right arm swinging in exaggerated arcs at her side.

As they passed by me, and I caught the faint fragrance of their soaps and shampoos, the girl said something. Her mother laughed, tossing back her head, and sunlight flashed along her hair. It was a good strong laugh, free and easy, unrestrained, filled with a gladness that seemed suddenly to define the moment, the day, and their entire lives.

I wondered if, somewhere, Melissa Alonzo were still able to laugh like that.

I wondered if, sometime, I would ever be able to laugh like that.

Sitting there, watching the woman and her daughter walk away, I felt abruptly old and battered and solitary.

I had never been close to children. Had never had any, had never really spent time with any. Had never been in a relationship where children, the having of them, had seemed part of an inevitable progression.

Cowardice, perhaps, on my part. They made demands, they needed food and clothes and shelter, they needed love and time. And they needed protection. Their vulnerability was absolute. This world was filled with jagged edges, sudden drops, explosions, with machinery and malice and very real monsters. Things that could pummel and tear tender flesh, shatter fragile bones, poison a small heart, smash a budding universe of thought and feeling. Perhaps Winona, right now, was facing some of these.

It was cowardice, certainly. I simply had not ever possessed the bravery required to protect and cherish another life. Not another adult’s, not a child’s. And I wondered now whether my recent unease with Rita was related in some way to the cowardice. Rita was no longer imprisoned in her chair. Soon she would be walking. Soon, the kind of involvement between the two of us that I had fantasized for years, that I had convinced myself I wanted—soon that might actually be possible. The notion of children was just one among many that we might have to confront.

That I might have to confront. Maybe I wasn’t afraid that Rita would be walking out of my life. Maybe I was afraid that I’d be walking out of hers. Maybe, now that she was suddenly attainable, Rita was suddenly a threat.

I caught myself. Hold on there, scout. Who said that she was attainable? Aren’t you maybe rushing things a bit? The woman has never suggested children, never suggested an involvement, never suggested a date at the malt shop. Perhaps panic is a tiny bit premature.

Enough, as Rita would put it. Forget the angst. Next week you can join a men’s group, head up into the mountains with a bunch of accountants, pound drums and yodel and roll in the mud. In the meantime, you can do your job. You can use your old, battered, solitary skills to find a lost child and a lost mother, root them out from whatever underground they were hiding in, and bring them back into the sunshine. Give both of them a chance to laugh again.

You can do it. It’s what you do. You ask questions, you get answers, and you find people.

So get started. Now.