MOSAICS: A Thriller Page 11

  I reciprocated the courtesy.

  “I need another chat with your favorite client,” I said, my shoes still popping on the linoleum floors of the stingy lobby.

  He squinted and exhaled. I smelled his lunch of refried beans, frijoles, pico de gallo, and Tums. Or maybe early dinner, since it was four already. “He’s no longer here. He wasn’t paying rent. I called his parole agent and he was moved.”

  Damn it. These guys go through relocations like cops go through wives.

  “Do you happen to know where?”

  “What am I, his keeper? I’m still waiting for my late rent, now you guys come and ask questions. Call his agent.” He slammed a sign “Ring the Bell” on the desk and vanished at the back.

  Fucking cooperative, the citizen.

  I stepped outside in the afternoon heat and reflected on the human condition.

  Hell, my human condition.

  The working day was coming to an end and I still hadn’t had a bite to eat. I was after an assassin who left plenty of traces, except we couldn’t decipher them. I’d flirted with João Gilberto and sought redemption in Bill Evans’s solos. I’d found half a suspect and lost a quarter of a witness.

  And I still hadn’t had a bite to eat.

  The thought that good ol’ Doctor Watanabe might’ve been somehow right about me not being super-healthy lately did cross my mind for a very brief moment. The Pain was there, subtly reminding me of its presence, whether I chose to ignore it or not, yet I still hadn’t turned up at the lab for the blood tests he’d ordered.

  I slid behind the wheel of my Charger, turned the stereo on, and forgot all about that.

  It’s called jazz, and it’s my therapy.

  It worked. By the time I got home I was ravenous.

  And felt too lonely to eat by myself.

  * * *

  “You look thinner.”

  I swirled the glass of Bordeaux. Deep ruby, as it should be.

  “Thinner compared to what?”

  “Thinner than last time I saw you.”

  I brought the glass to my lips and took in the wine in small sips, letting the flavor simmer on my tongue before swallowing.

  A touch of berry flavor, as rich and velvety as Eva Cassidy’s voice.

  I was fed, rested, and particularly happy over the choice of wine for the evening.

  Hortensia couldn’t care less. She sat on the board floor of her porch, holding a jar filled with glass shards on her lap. “Do you think there’s too much green?”

  I took another sip and swished it in my mouth. “You’ve crushed green bottles to make that. Of course there’s going to be green.”

  The evening was crisp and carried the rugged scent of the ocean. Fifteen miles away from downtown, the relentless heat of July had melted away, swallowed by the sea breeze. The nocturnal voices of the Venice Boardwalk came and went in waves, making a lazy background, like a tune you don’t really enjoy but somehow grow accustomed to. Yellow streetlights projected onto the sky, hiding the stars. Only a pale moon poked its lopsided grin through the fringed tops of the palm trees.

  Hortensia tipped her head to the side and drummed her long nails against the jar on her lap, pondering. She’d pinned her hair up with a pencil, and her neck was pale and inviting like an icicle on a hot day. I’d kiss it, but then she’d give me the boyfriend Gary crap all over again.

  “It’s an Amazon parrot,” she said. “Amazon parrots are green.”

  “Why d’you ask, then?”

  She turned and gave me a weary look. “You’re so thick about these things, Track. I just want you to tell me you like it.”

  I downed the rest of the wine and poured another glass. “I like it,” I said.

  Hortensia clonked the jar on the floor next to her masterpiece and got back to her feet. “Thanks a lot, Track. That was heartfelt.”

  “Jeez, Hort! I said what you wanted me to say,” I yelled over the slam of the screen door. “Besides, you told me you don’t do mosaics.”

  I heard her pad inside the house, sulking. I shrugged, sipped my wine, and watched the kids zip by in their skateboards.

  Truth was, her mosaic looked nothing like a parrot.

  She’d glued glass shards from broken bottles onto a baseboard she had previously cut in the shape of a bird. Aside for some blue and red on the wings, the rest was a jumble of green glass shards mangled together.

  The screen door squeaked again, followed by the jingle of Hortensia’s bangles.

  “I don’t normally do mosaics,” she said. “But you brought it up the other day, so I thought I’d give it a try. Here. Mix this.” She took the wine glass from my hand and passed me a wooden spoon and a bowl with a peanut-butter-like paste inside.

  It smelled awful. I made a face. “Dessert?”

  “No. Grout.”

  Thank goodness.

  Hortensia drained the rest of the wine in my glass as if it were a schooner—a blasphemy to drink a Bordeaux like that. She sat on the floor again, leaning with her back against my knees. She plucked the pencil off her hair, and used the tip to shift the glass shards closer to one another. As it fell on her shoulders, her hair filled the air with the zesty scent of her shampoo. When she was done, she donned a pair of blue rubber gloves, spooned a blob of grout onto her hand, and smothered it on the parrot with a palette knife.

  “How long have you been on a diet?” she asked, her fingers carefully coaxing the grout into the grooves between the shards. Her voice was tuned to cheerful and casual.

  I love Hortensia. To her, the world is divided into things she believes and things she doesn’t believe. The rest is irrelevant.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Hort? Did you not see me eat?” I stabbed the grout with the wooden spoon. It smelled of acrylic and glue. Nothing like the sweetish, rotten smell I’d detected on the tiles left by the Byzantine Strangler.

  Hortensia worked her fingers around the groves in the mosaic. She smoothed the edges, filling the spaces between the shards. “You look thinner.”

  I scoffed. “It’s summer and I’m wearing less clothes.”

  “I’ve seen you with no clothes.”

  “I need more wine.”

  I left the bowl of grout on the floor, got out of the chair and leaned on the railing. Down the street, a blinking row of block after block of traffic lights hiccupped from red to green and then back to red.

  “I’ll get another bottle,” Hortensia said. She took the gloves off, left them by the baseboard, and walked back inside, her bangles jingling with every step.

  The parrot stared at me with its lonely, black eye. I crouched down and picked up one of the gloves Hortensia had left on the ground and brought it to my nose. The sharp smell of grout hit my nostrils first and then, as I inhaled more, I detected a new, familiar aftertaste.

  Nitrile.

  And something suddenly snapped into place.

  The smell on the Byzantine tiles.

  Something sweet, something rotten, something rubbery. Nitrile rubber.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  TEN

  ____________

  Friday, July 3

  My shirt was drenched. A siren blasted in my ears, but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.

  The lower half of my body was tied.

  The siren was still howling. It was in my head.

  I tried to move and my whole body screamed in pain.

  The Pain.

  Awareness hit me like a sniper.

  Will came licking my face, nudging me with his wet nose.

  “One—second,” I mumbled.

  I crawled out of the tangle of sheets wrapped around my waist, saw the edge of the bed looming above me, grabbed it, and pulled myself up. The room spun, its edges blurred.

  Bits of a nightmare clung to me. Pain reached my chest, crept up to my neck, and then slowly vaporized, carefully letting go of its grip, like a toying lover. It finally ebbed off, and all that was left was its me
mory, echoing in my joints and muscles.

  The walls realigned, the bed stopped running away.

  Will stuck his muzzle between my legs and wagged his tail, thrumming against the mattress.

  I heard the silence around me. The alarm clock read 3:17 a.m.

  Have you been feeling well, Ulysses?

  Hell, Doc. I’ve been having a blast.

  I picked up the sheets from the floor and tossed them back on the bed.

  So then why have you not gone to the lab to get those tests done, Ulysses?

  That was my other self, asking.

  I sent my other self to hell and shuffled to the bathroom to pee.

  Nothing clears the mind like releasing your bladder in the morning. I filled the boiler of my little Moka espresso maker with water, set it on the stove, and pulled on a T-shirt and some work pants while it brewed. I drank the espresso straight and bitter, then went to the garage. It smelled of car oil and molasses from the last derusting job I’d done on the fuel tank. I opened the window a crack and inhaled the nippy night air wafting through. A staccato of crickets chirped outside.

  Under Will’s watchful eyes, I gathered my toolbox, wrenches and drills, and set to work on the Porsche engine. Manual work helps me think, and the Byzantine Strangler had given me a great deal of thinking to do over the past couple of weeks. Last weekend, as I puzzled over mysterious fibers and elusive ligatures, I’d put the crankshaft and connecting rods together and installed them in the case.

  The next step was to install the pistons and barrels—a delicate task that requires a lot of patience, which, I soon realized, is not one of my best qualities at four in the morning. The first wrist pin went in just fine, the second took me a little wrestling, and by the third one I was swearing like a drunkard. The Pain came back instantly, like an awakened beast. I banged my fist on the workbench and growled.

  Oedipus.

  My other self came back too, with renewed fervor.

  You’re just like stupid Oedipus. Stop running away from your fate, Ulysses. The more you run away, the more it comes back to bite your ass.

  I waited until the Pain let go of its grip, then left the garage, went back inside, peeled off my drenched shirt and briefs and stepped under a cold shower. When I returned to the bedroom the alarm clock on my nightstand read 4:55 a.m.

  The lab opens in thirty minutes.

  Time to get poked, Ulysses.

  I picked a black suit and a black tie to go with it, treated myself to another espresso, and left.

  * * *

  I proceeded at fifteen miles per hour, windows down and shades on my eyes. Even the crows bickering on the treetops could tell I was a cop.

  After stopping at the lab to get the blood draw Watanabe had requested, I called Ricky Vargas’s parole agent and had a chat on Ricky’s whereabouts. One hour and forty-five minutes later—gotta love morning traffic—I was cruising the winding roads of South Pasadena. In front of me unrolled tree-lined streets with manicured lawns and colonial houses with as many front windows as the number of digits on the annual household income. Hollywood crews had taken over a couple of streets, while Mexican workers were sweeping through the following two blocks, mowing, trimming, plowing and raking.

  It was the kind of neighborhood where houses are statements, not homes. The kind of neighborhood where if you’re skilled enough and down on your luck you might find some work, so long as you don’t expect more than minimum wage and don’t need medical insurance.

  I set my eyes on two such down-on-their-luck guys, working on a retaining wall between the two levels of a front lawn. The house was a pink cottage with a gabled porch and matching planters decorating two sets of bay windows. I drove another hundred yards up the hill, parked by the street and walked back. By the time I got to the cottage, there was only one man laying down bricks.

  Vicente Vargas dunked his trowel into the wheelbarrow and mixed fresh cement with damp and brisk swooshes. “See?” he said. “Not too soft, not too hard. Just like you’d want a woman’s breasts.”

  Phlegm gargled up his throat like bubbles in a fish tank. He turned and spit on the ground.

  I stood on the sidewalk and watched.

  He didn’t know I was watching.

  He picked up a brick from the ground with the ease of a freight making a U-turn. His joints looked like they were about to creak and fall apart, yet they held together and pulled him back to a semi-vertical position. The brick seemed soft in his large, rugged hands. He tapped its sides with the tip of the trowel then smothered it with a blob of fresh cement that smelled cool and earthy.

  Vicente, instead, smelled of tobacco and sunburnt scalp. He smelled of insomnia, hard labor, occasional sponge baths, and an old suitcase large enough to contain all his possessions.

  He wiped the extra cement off the sides of the wall then reached for the level. “Gotta make these things straight, you do. Blocks need to be level on all sides. A sturdy wall can last through flood and fire. A crappy wall—”

  “Who are you talking to, Mr. Vargas?”

  He took his time turning, and when he finally did, he blinked, one eye looking at me, the other one going its merry way. I thought of going my merry way too but I had to talk to Ricky Vargas one more time, which meant I had to talk to his uncle Vicente first.

  Once Vicente had me all figured out, he turned back to check on the level, making small adjustments with the tip of the trowel. “My wife,” he said at last. “I talk to my wife. Been dead for thirteen years. Them ghosts are pretty hard to let go.”

  A second trowel lay abandoned on the ground next to the pile of bricks. Closer to the house, two parallel rows of two-by-four’s marked the foundation for a walkway. I picked up the second trowel, brought it to my nose, sniffed it, and then let it drop back on the ground. A slap hammer stood on its head on the last tile.

  “You building all this by yourself, Vicente?”

  Vicente didn’t seem to mind a stranger knowing his name. Like I said, he had me all figured out already. “If you don’t count them ghosts,” he said.

  I smiled. Judging from the prints on the sand, them ghosts wore size eleven boots and smelled awfully familiar—adrenaline, sweat, and a midnight joint. Or two. With some company, most likely.

  I knew exactly where Ricky was hiding. I could’ve bluffed, pretended I was leaving, only to blast into the shed and grab him by the back collar.

  And then what?

  I paced, feigning indifference. “Will you tell Ricky a friend came looking for him?”

  The trowel dug into the fresh cement with a swish. “You’re no friend of his.”

  I smiled. “Let’s put it this way. I need his help. I’m very friendly with people who help me out. I can be very friendly with parole agents too, as a matter of fact. You can tell that to Ricky. Or, you can tell him to keep hanging out with his real friends from Eighteenth Street. And while he’s doing that, you count the minutes until he gets back to the joint. With no friends, this time.”

  The straight eye stared at me like a chicken smelling danger. I shoved a hand in my pocket, found a paperclip with a bent end and stuck it into my mouth. Vicente sucked on his teeth, I sucked on my paperclip. You could hear the neurons working with all that sucking.

  An airplane flew by, scratching a perfectly blue sky. A garbage truck turned into the street and clonked trash bins at the end of the block. A crow cawed from the top of a telephone pole.

  “Very well,” I said, and started back toward the sidewalk.

  Vicente slapped the trowel in the cement. “Like I always says to my wife, a man’s got no real friends, just good company or bad company.” He let his last words hang in the air, clinging to a thin thread of phlegm, before turning to spit. “Those guys from the street—”

  “They’re good guys. They’re my friends.”

  Ricky Vargas stood by the shed, half hidden behind the door. The one hand I could see was deep in his pants’ pocket.

  Adrenaline shot up my spine.
It’s a cop reflex: hand-in-pocket equals hidden gun. My right hand crept to my holster.

  And just like that, nerves jumping in my arms and legs, and cold sweat condensing on my lower back, I examined the boy. He was lean and fibrous, strength dictated by sheer instinct and manual work. His small, dark eyes came down a notch at the sides so that his smiles looked melancholy even when they didn’t mean to.

  Women tend to fall for that kind of eyes. So do some men.

  They were proud eyes, eyes that had seen everything and yet not enough, that had known life and death and had not cared, eyes that had been scared shitless because no matter how many times they’d come this close to death, those eyes still craved to see the world.

  They were a survivor’s eyes.

  The white cinderblock wall.

  A voice emerged from the dark well of my memory. The voice smelled of stale and it yelled in my ears, “Toes and eyes against the wall!” Over and over it yelled in my ears and face, because personal space had become a lost commodity… the white wall, the metal bars, the rugged cot, the restraint chair…

  Never… never again …

  The white cinderblock wall in juvi.

  Ricky had slammed his face against the white cinderblock wall.

  And so had I.

  Ricky Vargas killed at age fourteen over a ten-dollar bill.

  He did it to prove to his gang he was a man.

  The joint made him a man.

  Just like the joint made me a man.

  You got a second chance, Ulysses.

  I was acquitted of all charges.

  He deserves a second chance too.

  From behind me came a low, monotone rumble. It hissed and mumbled and gargled, until it became words. “Don’t do anything stupid, Ricky,” the gargle said.

  Ricky’s hand came out of his pant’s pocket. Slowly.

  Something dropped on the ground.

  A pocketknife.

  “That’s a good boy.” The gargle appreciated. “Now talk to the cop. He’s a nice cop.” I turned. Vicente was pointing his trowel like a handgun, his eyes squashed to slits, and his voice coming out in wet gargles. He spit on the ground and tuned his voice a notch up. “My wife told me he’s a nice cop.”