Tucson airport was undergoing renovation, and a temporary tunnel led from the baggage claim to the car rental counters. The two men were given a Camry, which caused the smaller of the pair to complain bitterly as they made their way into the garage.
“Maybe if you lost some of that weight off your ass, then you wouldn’t find it so damn pokey,” said Louis. “I got a foot on you, and I can fit into a Camry.”
Angel stopped.
“You think I’m fat?”
“Gettin there.”
“You never said nothing about it before.”
“The hell you mean, I never said nothing? I been telling you ever since I met you that your problem is you got a sweet tooth. You need to go on that Atkins shit.”
“I’d starve.”
“I think you are missing the point. Folks in Africa starve. You go on a diet, you be like a squirrel. You just need to nap, let your body burn off what’s already there.”
Angel tried to give the flesh on his waist a discreet squeeze.
“How much can I squeeze and still be healthy?”
“They say an inch, like on the TV.”
Angel looked at what he had clenched in his hand.
“Man, you even have to ask and you in trouble.”
For the first time in many days, Angel allowed himself a smile, albeit a small one, and very short-lived. Since Martha’s appearance at the house, Louis had barely eaten or slept. Angel would awake in the darkness to find their shared bed empty, the pillows and sheets long cold on his partner’s side. On the first night, when they had brought Martha back to the city and transferred her to her new lodgings, he had padded softly to the bedroom door and watched in silence as Louis sat at a window, staring out over the city, scrutinizing every passing face in the hope that he might find Alice’s among them. Guilt emanated from his pores, so that the room seemed almost to smell of something bitter and old. Angel knew all about Alice. He had accompanied his partner on his searches for her, initially along Eighth Avenue, when they first learned that she had arrived in the city, and later at the Point, when Giuliani’s reforms really started to bite and Vice Enforcement began hitting the streets of Manhattan on a regular basis, NYPD “ghosts” mingling with the crowds below Forty-fourth, and monitoring teams waiting to pounce from unmarked vans. The Point was a little easier in the beginning: out of sight, out of mind, that was the Giuliani mantra. Once the tourists and conventioneers in Manhattan weren’t tripping over too many teenage hookers if they accidentally—or purposely—strayed from Times Square, then everything was better than it was before. Over at Hunts Point, the Ninetieth Precinct only had the manpower to operate a ten-person special operation maybe once a month, usually targeted at the men who patronized and involving just one undercover female officer. True, there were occasional sweeps, but those were relatively infrequent in the beginning until “zero tolerance” began to hit hard, the cops creating a virtual ticker-tape parade of summonses, which almost inevitably led to arrests, since the homeless and drug-addicted who formed the bulk of the city’s street prostitutes could not afford to pay their fines, and that was a ninety-day stint in Rikers right there. The almost continual harassment of the prostitutes by the cops forced the women to “stagger” their beats in order to avoid being seen in the same spot two nights running. It also forced them to frequent increasingly isolated places with the johns, which left them open to rape, abduction, and murder.
It was into this sucking hole that Alice was descending, and their interventions counted for nothing. In fact, Angel could see that the woman sometimes seemed almost to take a strange pleasure in taunting Louis with her immersion in the life, even as it inexorably led to her degradation and, ultimately, to her death. In the end, all Louis could do was make sure that whatever pimp was feeding off her knew the consequences if anything happened to her, and paid her fines to ensure that she didn’t do jail time. Finally, he could no longer bring himself to witness her decay, and it was perhaps unsurprising that she slipped through the net when Free Billy died, and came instead under the control of G-Mack.
And so Angel watched him that first night, not speaking for some time, until at last he said: “You tried.”
“Not hard enough.”
“She may still be out there, somewhere.”
Louis gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.
“No. She’s gone. I can feel it.”
“Listen to—”
“Go back to bed.”
And he did, because there was nothing more that could be said. There was no point in trying to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that people made their own choices, that you couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved, didn’t matter how hard you tried. Louis would not, or could not, believe those things. This was his guilt, and Alice’s path was not entirely of her own choosing. The actions of others had set her upon it, and his were among them.
But there was more that Angel could not have guessed at, small, private moments between Louis and Alice that perhaps only Martha might have understood, for they found an echo in the phone calls and the occasional cards that she herself received. Louis could remember Alice as a child, how she would play at his feet or fall asleep curled up beside him, bathed in the glow of their first TV. She cried when he left home, although she was barely old enough to comprehend what was happening, and in the years that followed, as his visits grew fewer and fewer, she was always the first to greet him. Slowly, she recognized the changes that were coming over him, as the boy who had killed her father, believing him guilty of the murder of his own mother, matured into a man capable of taking the lives of others without exploring questions of innocence or guilt. Alice could not have put a name to these changes, or have precisely explained the nature of Louis’s ongoing metamorphosis, but the coldness that was spreading through him touched something inside of her, and half-formed suspicions and fears about her father’s death were given body and substance. Louis saw what was happening, and determined to put some distance between himself and his family, a decision made easier by the nature of his business and his reluctance to put those whom he loved at risk of reprisal. All of these tensions came to a head on the day that Louis left his childhood home for the last time, when Alice came to him as he sat in the shade of a cottonwood tree, the sun slowly setting behind him, his shadow spreading like dark blood across the short grass. By then, she was approaching her teenage years, although she looked older than she was, and her body was maturing more quickly than the bodies of her peers.
“Momma says you’re leaving today,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“The way she said it, it’s like you ain’t ever coming back.”
“Things change. People change. This ain’t no place for me now.”
She pursed her lips, then raised her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes as she stared into the redness of the sun.
“I seen the way people look at you.”
“What way is that?”
“Like they’s scared of you. Even Momma, she looks like that, sometimes.”
“She’s got no call to be scared of me. You neither.”
“Why are they scared?”
“I don’t know.”
“I heard stories.”
Louis stood and tried to pass her by, but she blocked his way, her hands splayed against his midriff.
“No,” she said. “You tell me. You tell me that the stories ain’t true.”
“I got no time for stories.”
He gripped her wrists and turned her, slipping by her and heading toward the house.
“They say my daddy was a bad man. They say he got what he deserved.”
She was shouting now. He heard her running after him, but he did not look back.
“They say you know what happened to him. Tell me! Tell me!”
And she struck him from behind with such force that he stumbled and fell to his knees. He tried to rise, and she slapped him. He saw that she was weeping.
“Tell me,” she said again, but this time her voice was soft, barely a whisper. “Tell me that it isn’t true.”
But he could not answer her, and he walked away and left them all. Only once, in the years of her descent, did Alice again bring up the subject of her father. It was fourteen months before her disappearance, when Louis still believed that she might yet be saved. She called him from the private clinic in Phoenicia, in the midst of the Catskills, and he drove up to see her that afternoon. He had placed her there after Jackie O called him and told him that Alice was with him, that a john had hurt her badly, and she had nearly overdosed in an effort to dull the pain. She was bruised and bleeding, her eyes slivers of white beneath heavy lids, her mouth agape. Louis took her to Phoenicia the following morning, once she was straight enough to understand what was happening. The beating had shocked her, and she appeared more willing than ever before to consider intervention. She spent six weeks isolated in Phoenicia, then the call came.
Louis found her in the main garden, sitting on a stone bench. She had lost a little weight, and looked tired and drawn, but there was a new light in her eyes, a tiny, flickering thing that he had not seen in a long time. The slightest wind could blow it out, but it was there, for the moment. They walked together, the chill mountain air making her shiver slightly even though she was wearing a thick padded jacket. He offered her his coat, and she took it, wrapping it around her like a blanket.
“I drew a picture for you,” she said, after they had made a circuit of the grounds, talking of the clinic and the other patients she had encountered.
“I didn’t know you liked to draw,” said Louis.
“I never had the chance before. They told me it might help me. A lady comes in every day for an hour, more if she thinks you’re making progress, and she can spare the time. She says I have talent, but I don’t believe so.”
She reached into the pocket of her jacket and withdrew a sheet of white paper, folded to a quarter of its size. He opened it.
“It’s our house,” she said, as though fearful that her work was too poor to enable him to guess its subject matter.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, and it was. She had depicted the house as though seen through a mist, using chalks to dull the lines. A faint, warm light shone through the windows, and the door was slightly ajar. The foxgloves and dayflowers in the garden were smudges of pink and blue, the trilliums tiny stars of green and red. The forest beyond was a wash of tall brown trunks, like the masts of ships descending into a sea of green ferns.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I called Momma,” she said. “They said it was okay to call people, now that I’d been here for a time. I told her I was doing fine, but that ain’t true. It’s hard, you know?”
She examined his face, her lips slightly pursed, and he was suddenly reminded of the girl who had confronted him beneath the cottonwood.
“I’m sorry,” she said. I think maybe whatever you did, before I was born, you did out of love.”
“I’m sorry too,” he replied.
She smiled, and for the first time since she was a young girl, she kissed him on the cheek.
“Good-bye,” she said. She began to shrug off his coat, but he stopped her.
“You keep it,” he said. “It’s cold up here.”
She drew the coat around her, then headed back into the clinic. He saw an orderly search the coat for contraband, then return it to her. She looked back at him, waved, then was gone.
He did not know what happened subsequently. There were rumors of an argument with a fellow patient, and a painful, troubled session with one of the resident therapists. Whatever occurred, the next call he received from Phoenicia was to tell him that Alice was gone. He searched for her on the streets, but when she emerged after three weeks from whatever dark corner she had been inhabiting, that tiny light had been extinguished forever, and all he had left was a picture of a house that appeared to be fading even as he looked at it, and the memory of a last kiss from one who was, in her way, bonded more closely to him than any other in this world.
Now, for the first time since Martha’s appearance and the discovery of the remains in Williamsburg, Louis seemed energized. Angel knew what it meant. Someone was about to suffer for what had been done to Alice, and Angel didn’t care once it brought his partner some release.
They arrived at their rental.
“I hate these cars,” said Angel.
“Yeah, so you said already.”
“I’m just offended that she’d even think we looked like the kind of guys who’d drive a Camry.”
They placed their bags on the ground and watched as a man in rental livery approached them. He had a small titanium case in his hand.
“You forgot one of your bags,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Louis.
“No problem. Car okay?”
“My friend here doesn’t like it.”
The guy knelt, removed a penknife from his pocket, and carefully inserted the blade into the right front tire. He twisted the knife, removed it, and watched with satisfaction as the tire started to deflate.
“So go get something else,” he said, then walked out of the garage and into a waiting white SUV, which immediately drove away.
“I guess he doesn’t really work for a rental company,” said Angel.
“You should be a detective.”
“Doesn’t pay enough. I’ll go get us a decent car.”
Angel returned minutes later with the key to a red Mercury. Louis took the baggage and walked to the car, then popped the trunk. He glanced around before opening the titanium case. Two Glock nines were revealed, alongside eight spare clips bound with rubber bands into four sets of two. They wouldn’t need any more than that, unless they decided to declare war on Mexico. He slipped the guns into the outer pockets of his coat and added the clips, then closed the trunk. He got in the car and found “Shiver” playing on an indie station. Louis liked Howe Gelb. It was good to support the local boys. He passed one of the Glocks and two of the spare clips to Angel. Both men checked the guns, then, once they were satisfied, put them away.
“You know where we’re going?” said Angel.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Great. I hate reading maps.”
He reached for the radio dial.
“Don’t touch that dial, man, I’m warning you.”
“Boring.”
“Leave it.”
Angel sighed. They emerged from the gloom of the garage into the greater darkness outside. The sky was dusted with stars, and a little cool desert air flowed through the vents, refreshing the men.
“It’s beautiful,” said Angel.
“I guess.”
The smaller man took in the vista for a few seconds more, then said: “You think we could stop for doughnuts?”
∗ ∗ ∗
It was late, and I was back at Cortlandt Alley, the taste of the Thai food still lingering in my mouth. I could hear laughter over on Lafayette as people smoked and flirted outside one of the local bars. The window of Ancient & Classic Inc. was illuminated, the men inside carefully positioning a new delivery of furniture and ornaments. A sign warned of a hollow sidewalk, and I thought that I could almost hear my footsteps echoing through the layers beneath my feet.
I made my way to Neddo’s doorway. This time, he didn’t bother with the chain once I’d told him who I was. He led me into the same back office and offered me some tea.
“I get it from the people run the store at the corner. It’s good.”
I watched as he poured it into a pair of china cups so small they looked like they belonged in a doll’s house. As I held one in my hand I could see that it was very old, the interior a mass of tiny brown hairline cracks. The tea was fragrant and strong.
“I’ve been reading all about the killing in the newspapers,” said Neddo. “Kept your name out of it, I see.”
“Maybe they’re concerned for my safety.”
“More concerned than you are, clearly. Someone might suspect that you had a death wish, Mr. Parker.”
“I’m happy to say that it’s unfulfilled.”
“So far. I trust that you weren’t followed here. I have no desire to link my life expectancy with yours.”
I had been careful, and told him so.
“Tell me about Santa Muerte, Mr. Neddo.”
Neddo looked puzzled for a moment, then his face cleared.
“The Mexican who died. This is about him, isn’t it?
“Tell me first, then I’ll see what I can give you in return.”
Neddo nodded his assent.
“She’s a Mexican icon,” he said. “Saint Death: the angel of the outcasts, of the lawless. Even criminals and evil men need their saints. She is adored on the first day of every month, sometimes in public, more often in secret. Old women pray to her to save their sons and nephews from crime, while the same sons and nephews pray to her for good pickings, or for help in killing their enemies. Death is the last great power, Mr. Parker. Depending upon how its scythe falls, it can offer protection or destruction. It can be an accomplice or an assassin. Through Santa Muerte, Death is given form. She is a creation of men, not of God.”
Neddo rose and disappeared into the confusion of his store. He returned with a skull on a crude wooden block, wrapped in blue gauze decorated with images of the sun. It had been painted black, apart from its teeth, which were gold. Cheap earrings had been screwed into the bone, and a crude crown of painted wire sat upon its head.
“This,” said Neddo, “is Santa Muerte. She is typically presented as a skeleton or a decorated skull, often surrounded by offerings or candles. She enjoys sex, but since she has no flesh, she approves of the desires of others and lives vicariously through them. She wears gaudy clothes, and rings upon her fingers. She likes neat whiskey, cigarettes, and chocolate. Instead of singing hymns to her during services, they play mariachi music. She is the “Secret Saint.” The Virgin of Guadalupe may be the country’s patron saint, but Mexico is a place where people are poor and struggling, and turn to crime either through necessity or inclination. They remain profoundly religious, yet to survive they have to break the laws of church and state, albeit a state that they regard as profoundly corrupt. Santa Muerte allows them to reconcile their needs with their beliefs. There are shrines to her in Tepito, in Tijuana, in Sonora, in Juarez, wherever poor people gather.”
“It sounds like a cult.”
“It is a cult. The Catholic Church has condemned her adoration as devil worship, and while I have a great many difficulties with that institution, it’s not hard to see that in this case there is some justification for its position. Most of those who pray to her merely seek protection from harm in their own lives. There are others who require that she approve the visitation of harm upon others. The cult has grown powerful among the foulest of men: drug traffickers, people smugglers, purveyors of child prostitutes. There was a spate of killings in Sinaloa earlier this year in which more than fifty people died. Most of the bodies bore her image in tattoos, or on amulets and rings.”
He reached across and brushed a little dust from beneath the empty sockets of the icon.
“And they are far from the worst,” he concluded. “More tea?”
He refilled my cup.
“The man who died in the apartment had a statue like this one hidden in the wall of one room, and he called on Santa Muerte throughout the attack,” I said. “I think he, and maybe others, used the room to hurt and to kill. I believe the skull came from the woman I was looking for.”
Neddo glanced at the skull upon his own desk.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Had I known that, I would have been more sensitive about showing you this icon. I can remove it, if you prefer.”
“You can leave it. At least I know now what it was meant to represent.”
“The man you killed,” said Neddo, “have they identified him?”
“His name was Homero Garcia. He had a criminal record from his youth in Mexico.”
I didn’t tell Neddo that the Federales were very interested in Garcia. The news of his death had drawn a great many telephone calls to the Nine-Six from the Mexicans, including a formal request from the Mexican ambassador that the NYPD cooperate in every way possible with Mexican law enforcement by providing them with copies of any and all material relating to the investigation into Garcia’s death. Former juvenile offenders did not usually excite such interest in diplomatic and legal circles.
“Where did he come from?”
I was reluctant to say more. I still knew little about Neddo, and his fascination with the display of human remains made me uneasy. He recognized my distrust.
“Mr. Parker, you may approve or disapprove of my interests, and of how I make my living, but mark me: I know more about these matters than almost anyone else in this city. I have a scholar’s fascination. I can help you, but only if you tell me what you’ve learned.”
It seemed that I didn’t have too much choice.
“The Mexicans are more interested in him than they should be, given his record,” I said. “They’ve provided some information about him to the police, but it’s clear that they’re holding back on more. Garcia was born in Tapito, but his family left there when he was an infant. He began training as a silversmith. Apparently, it was a tradition in his family. It seems he was melting down stolen items in return for a cut of the resale value, which led to his arrest. He was jailed for three years, then was released and returned to his trade. Officially, he was never in trouble again after that.”
Neddo leaned forward in his chair.
“Where did he practice his craft, Mr. Parker?” he said, and there was a new urgency to his voice. “Where was he based?”
“In Juarez,” I said. “He was based in Juarez.”
Neddo released a long sigh of understanding.
“Women,” he said. “The girl for whom you were searching was not the first. I think Homero Garcia was a professional killer of women.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Harry’s Best Rest was less than busy when the Mercury, considerably dustier than before, pulled up in the parking lot. There were still rigs scattered through the darkness, but there was nobody eating in the diner, and any lonely trucker looking for comfort from the cantina women could have enjoyed a range of choice had he arrived earlier in the evening, although the attentions of the police in the aftermath of the Spyhole killings had somewhat depleted even their numbers. The cantina was locked up for the night, and only two of the women remained, slouched sleepily at the bar in the hope of picking up a ride from the man who remained with them, smoking a joint and sipping a last Tecate in the murk, the carnival lights that illuminated the bar barely touching his features.
Harry was out back, stacking beer crates, when Louis emerged from the darkness.
“You own this place?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Harry. “You looking for something?”
“Someone,” Louis corrected. “Who takes care of the women around here?”
“The women around here take care of themselves,” said Harry. He smiled at his own little joke, then turned to go back inside. His partners would deal with this man, once he had informed them of his presence.
Harry found his way blocked by a small man with three days’ worth of stubble and a haircut that was a month past good. The guy looked like he was putting on a little weight, too. Harry didn’t mention that. Harry didn’t say anything, because the man at the door had a gun in his hand. It wasn’t quite pointed at Harry, but the situation was a developing one, and there was no telling right now how it might end.
“A name,” said Louis. “I want the name of the man who ran Sereta.”
“I don’t know any Sereta.”
“Past tense,” said Louis. “She’s dead. She died at the Spyhole.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Harry.
“You can tell her yourself, you don’t give me a name.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
“Those your cabanas over there?” asked Louis, indicating three little huts that stood right at the edge of the parking lot.
“Yeah, sometimes a man gets tired of sleeping in his truck. He wants to, he can have clean sheets for a night.”
“Or an hour.”
“Whatever.”
“If you don’t start cooperating, I’m going to take you into one of those cabanas, and I’m going to hurt you until you tell me what I need to know. If you give me his name, and you’re lying to me, I’ll come back, take you into one of those cabanas and kill you. You have a third option.”
“Octavio,” said Harry quickly. “His name’s Octavio, but he’s gone. He left when the whore got killed.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“She’d been working for a couple of days when men came. One was a fat guy, real fat, the other was a quiet guy in blue. They knew to ask for Octavio. They spoke to him some, then left. He told me to forget them. That night, all those folks got killed up at the motel.”
“Where did Octavio go?”
“I don’t know. Honest, he didn’t say. He was running scared.”
“Who’s looking after his women while he’s gone?”
“His nephew.”
“Tall, for a Mexican. Thin mustache. He’s wearing a green shirt, blue jeans, a white hat. He’s in there now.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ernesto.”
“Does he carry a gun?”
“Jesus, they all carry guns.”
“Call him.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘Call him.’ Tell him there’s a girl out here wants to see him about work.”
“Then he’ll know I sold him out.”
“I’ll make sure he sees our guns. I’m sure he’ll understand your reasons. Now call him.”
Harry walked to the door.
“Ernesto,” he shouted. “Girl out here says she’d like to talk to you about some work.”
“Send her in,” said a man’s voice.
“She won’t come in. Says she’s frightened.”
The man swore. They heard his footsteps approach. The door was opened and a young Mexican stepped into the light. He looked sleepy, and the faint smell of pot hung about him.
“Stuff will ruin your health,” said Angel as he slipped behind the Mexican’s back and removed a silver Colt from the young man’s belt, his own gun touching the nape of Ernesto’s neck. “Although not as fast as a bullet will. Let’s take a walk.”
Louis turned to Harry.
“He won’t be coming back. You tell anyone what happened here, and we’ll be talking again. You’re a busy man. You have a lot of things to forget now.”
With that, they took Ernesto away. They drove for five miles until they found a dirt road, then headed into the darkness until they could no longer see the traffic on the highway. After a time, Ernesto told them what they wanted to know.
They drove on, coming at last to a shabby trailer that sat behind an unfinished house on unfenced land. The man named Octavio heard them coming and tried to run, but Louis shot him in the leg, Octavio tumbling down a sandy slope and coming to rest in a dried-out water hole. He was told to get rid of the gun in his hand, or die where he lay.
Octavio threw away the gun and watched as the twin shadows descended on him.
∗ ∗ ∗
“The very worst,” said Neddo, “are in Juarez.”
The tea had grown cold. The image of Santa Muerte still stood between us, listening without hearing, watching blindly.
Juarez: now I understood.
One and a half million people lived in Juarez, most of them in indescribable poverty made all the more difficult for being endured in the shadow of El Paso’s wealth. Here were smugglers of drugs and people. Here were prostitutes barely into puberty, and others who would never live long enough to see puberty. Here were the maquiladoras, the huge electrical assembly plants that provided microwaves and hair dryers to the First World, the prices kept down by paying the workers ten dollars a day and denying them legal protection or union representation. Outside the perimeter fences stretched row upon row of crate houses, the colonias populares without sanitation, running water, electricity, or paved roads, home to the men and women who labored in the maquiladoras, the more fortunate of whom were picked up each morning by the red-and-green buses once used to ferry American children to and from school, while the rest were forced to endure the perilous early-morning walk through Sitio Colosio Valle or some similarly malodorous area. Beyond their homes lay the municipal dumps, where the scavengers made more than the factory workers. Here were the brothels of Mariscal, and the shooting galleries of Ugarte Street, where young men and women injected themselves with Mexican tar, a cheap heroin derivative from Sinaloa, leaving a trail of bloodied needles in their wake. Here were eight hundred gangs, each roaming the streets of the city with relative impunity, their members beyond a law that was powerless to act against them, or more properly too corrupt to care, for the Federales and the FBI no longer informed the local police in Juarez of operations on their turf, in the certain knowledge that to do so would be to forewarn their targets.
But that was not the worst of Juarez: in the last decade, over three hundred young women had been raped and murdered in the city, some putas, some faciles, but most simply hardworking, poor, and vulnerable girls. Usually, it was the scavengers that found them, lying mutilated among the garbage, but the authorities in Chihuahua continued to turn a blind eye to the killings, even as the bodies continued to turn up with numbing regularity. Recently, the Federales had been brought in to investigate, using accusations of organ-trafficking, a federal crime, as their excuse to intervene, but the organ-trafficking angle was largely a smoke screen. By far the most prevalent theories, bolstered by fear and paranoia, were the predations of wealthy men and the actions of religious cults, among them Santa Muerte.
Only one man had ever been convicted for any of the killings: the Egyptian Abdel Latif Sharif, allegedly linked to the slayings of up to twenty women. Even in jail, investigators claimed that Sharif continued his killings, paying members of Los Rebeldes, one of the city’s gangs, to murder women on his behalf. Each gang member who participated was reputedly paid a thousand pesos. When the members of Los Rebeldes were jailed, Sharif was said to have recruited instead a quartet of bus drivers who killed a further twenty women. Their reward: twelve hundred dollars per month, to be divided between them and a fifth man, as long as they killed at least four girls each month. Most of the charges against Sharif were dropped in 1999. Sharif was just one man, and even with his alleged associates could not have accounted for all of the victims. There were others operating, and they continued to kill even while Sharif was in jail.
“There is a place called Anapra,” said Neddo. “It is a slum, a shanty. Twenty-five thousand people live there in the shadow of Mount Christo Rey. Do you know what lies at the top of the mountain? A statue of Jesus.” He laughed hollowly. “Is it any wonder that people turn away from God and look instead to a skeletal deity? It was from Anapra that Sharif was said to have stolen many of his victims, and now others have taken it upon themselves to prey upon Anapra’s women, or on those of Mariscal. More and more, the bodies are being found with images of Santa Muerte upon them. Some have been mutilated after death, deprived of limbs, heads. If one is to believe the rumors, those responsible have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. They are careful. They have protection. It’s said that they are wealthy, and that they enjoy their sport. It may be true. It may not.”
“There were tapes in Garcia’s apartment,” I said. “They showed women, dead and dying.”
Neddo had the decency to look troubled.
“Yet he was here, in New York,” said Neddo. “Perhaps he had outlived his usefulness and fled. Maybe he planned to use the tapes to blackmail the wrong people, or to secure his safety. It may even be that such a man would take pleasure from revisiting his crimes by viewing them over and over. Whatever the reason for his coming north, he does appear to provide a human link between Santa Muerte and the killings in Juarez. It’s not surprising that the Mexican authorities are interested in him, just as I am.”
“Aside from the connection to Santa Muerte, why would this be of concern to you?” I asked.
“Juarez has a small ossuary,” said Neddo, “a chapel decorated with the remains of the dead. It is not particularly notable, and no great skill was applied to its initial creation. For a long time it was allowed to fall into decay, but in recent years someone has devoted a great deal of time and effort to its restoration. I have visited it. Objects have been expertly repaired. There have even been new additions to its furnishings: sconces, candlesticks, a monstrance, all of far superior quality to the originals. The man responsible apparently claimed only to have used remains left to the ossuary for such a purpose, but I have my doubts. It was not possible to make a close examination of the work that had been done—the priest responsible for its upkeep was both secretive and fearful—but I believe that some of the bones were artificially aged, much like the skull that you brought to me that first evening. I asked to meet the man responsible, but he had already left Juarez. I heard later that the Federales were seeking him. It was said that they were under instructions to capture him alive, and not to kill him. That was a year ago.
“Across from the ossuary, the same individual had created a shrine to Santa Muerte: a very beautiful, very ornate shrine. If Homero Garcia came from Juarez, and was a devotee of Santa Muerte, then it’s possible that he and the restorer of the ossuary were one and the same. After all, a man capable of intricate work with silver might well be capable of similar work with other materials, including bone.”
He sat back in his chair. Once again, his fascination with the details was clear, just as it had been when he spoke about the preacher Faulkner and his book of skin and bones.
Perhaps Garcia had come to New York of his own volition, and without the assistance of others, but I doubted it. Someone had discovered his talents, found him the warehouse in Williamsburg, and given him a space in which to work. He had been brought north for his skill, out of reach of the Federales, and perhaps also away from those for whom he sourced, and disposed of, women. I thought again of the winged figure constructed from pieces of birds and animals and men. I remembered the empty crates, the discarded shards of bone that lay upon the worktable like the remnants of a craftsman’s labors. Whatever Garcia had been commissioned to create, his work was nearing completion when I killed him.
I looked at Neddo, but he was lost in the contemplation of Santa Muerte.
And even after all that he had told me, I wondered what it was that he was keeping from me.
∗ ∗ ∗
My cell phone rang as I was nearing the hotel. It was Louis. He gave me the number of a pay phone and told me to call him back in turn from a land line. I called from the street, using my AT&T calling card to reach the number. I could hear traffic in the background, and people singing on the street.
“What have you got?” I said.
“The pimp running Sereta was called Octavio. He went to ground after she was killed, but we found his nephew, and through him we found Octavio. We hurt him. A lot. He told us he was going back to Mexico, to Juarez, where he came from. Hey, you still there?”
I had almost dropped the phone. This was the second mention of Juarez in less than an hour. I began joining the dots. Garcia may have known of Octavio from Juarez. Sereta fled New York and entered Octavio’s ambit. When Alice was found, she probably told them what she knew of her friend’s whereabouts. Garcia put out some feelers, and Octavio got back to him. Then two men were dispatched to find Sereta and retrieve what was in her possession.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll explain when you get back. Where’s Octavio now?”
“He’s dead.”
I took a deep breath but said nothing.
“Octavio had a contact in New York,” Louis continued. “He was to call him if anyone came asking about Sereta. It’s a lawyer. His name is Sekula.”
∗ ∗ ∗
In Scarborough, Rachel sat on the edge of our bed, cradling Sam, who had at last fallen asleep. There was a patrol car outside the house, and the Scarborough cops had boarded up the shattered window. Rachel’s mother was beside her daughter, her hands clasped between her thighs.
“Call him, Rachel,” said Joan.
Rachel shook her head, but she was not responding to her mother.
“It can’t go on,” said Joan. “It just can’t go on like this.”