A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (22 page)

     
"The next time you buy the Gold shots, I'll listen to that fusty old wives' tale again."

     
Dale Pitkin got serious. "You ever work with an El Paso narc named Dowd, Bobby?"

     
"Rings a bell. Why?"

     
"He's missing, too." Pitkin's voice dropped. "The thing about Paco Fortuna . . . if he happens to be your guy, he's Amado Fortuna's bookkeeper. If you caught the big
pescado
, maybe you better throw him back, call the feds. Hey, am I the information officer, or what?"

     
This time, Matt could actually hear knuckles cracking. Pitkin continued. "But there's someone you should talk to, one crazy
hombre
—a lone cowboy but a pretty good amigo. You ever met a Juárez fed named Vargas? Victor Vargas?"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

W
ITH A GRIMY
baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, Victor Vargas sauntered along Avenida Paso del Norte toward the bullring. He moved with a sloping gait, hands shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched beneath a grease-stained jacket.

     
Marking the entrance to the bullring, plastic confetti shimmied in the hot breeze. Twisting on rope ties, the brightly colored signs announced: ¡
CORRIDA DE TOROS
! ¡
HOY
! Bullfight today. But there were no crowds, there was no scheduled fight. The banners were optimistic.

     
He slumped another inch into his heels when he felt the touch of the street. He didn't turn to look but cut his eyes over and caught sight of a funky red van. He hoped it belonged to his associate.

     
Here the
avenida
widened to four lanes bordered by additional frontage routes; the complex scheme made motorized navigation almost completely impossible. Traffic merged, diverged, and collided.

     
Victor heard a quick honk—more accurately, a bleat—once, twice, three times. He tacked over toward the road, moving parallel to the red van, passing the passenger door just as a bag fell into his arms.

     
He swore violently, ready to explode. Clasping the bag under his arms, he kept moving as if nothing had happened. The clumsy exchange could cost him his life. He was almost beyond the entrance to the bullring now, but he turned sharply right, passing beneath the straining sign, into a parking area.

     
Victor kept walking, sending a flock of pigeons skyward. He moved between plaster arches, past food stands that were closed until the next fight.

     
He clutched the bag even tighter. For several anxious seconds, he thought he'd been followed. It turned out to be a dog, a mangy, parasite-ridden street hound desperate for a scrap of food. The animal was so ugly, Victor was tempted to kick it. He shook his head; he liked dogs. But some creatures seemed to beg for abuse.

     
He found a shaded arch, beyond the parking lot, well beyond the street. He sat, pulled his legs into the plaster lap, and opened the bag. A file was inside. It was thick, accordion-style, and bore the filing-system numbers of the M.F.J.P.—the Mexican Federal Judicial Police.

     
Inside the first manila folder, he found photographs. One of Amado Fortuna. Others of his associates. Of his staff.

     
He set the file on his lap, took a deep breath, and glanced around. What he saw was the street hound, crouched just out of kicking range. Pus drained from one of the animal's eyes. An open sore on its belly had attracted flies. Victor shook his head, searched his pockets. He found the last dregs of a bag of chile-dusted peanuts in the pocket of the greasy jacket. He emptied the sack, scattering the nuts in front of the animal, and watched them disappear. The dog offered him a wag of his tail in thanks.

     
Victor murmured, "
De nada
."

     
He found the surveillance photograph he was looking for buried deep in the folders. It pictured undercover narcotics cop Bobby Dowd walking almost shoulder to shoulder with a second man. It had been taken on a Juárez street. If you hadn't been looking for it, you would never know the two men had made contact.

     
Victor knew the identity of the second man. Out of habit, he turned the photograph over. It was numbered—132
-W
-95.

     
It took him fifteen minutes to find the corresponding legend. The number had two names typed carefully alongside: Dowd, E.P.P.D./Fortuna, Paco.

     
And to the right of the names someone had penciled three words in Spanish—
¿Proyecto Nieve Blanca???
Project Snow White???

CHAPTER TWENTY

A
FTER
N
OELLE
H
ARDING
left Mesa Verde Hospital in the waiting limo-van, Sylvia had spent the rest of the day with Serena. The child seemed especially withdrawn, hunched over her worn coloring book, drawing intricate abstract patterns—stars and moons linked in ever-expanding chains.

     
Pale and distant—with dark eyes that had seen everything—Serena reminded Sylvia of an apparition, a child from a distant world. But
which
world? The question nagged at Sylvia.

     
Serena was no street urchin. She was thin, a waif, but she had not suffered from long-term malnourishment. If she was from a barrio in Mexico, she was one of its exceptions. If she was related to members of the drug trade, she had been educated, cared for. She was bilingual, and her artistic talents had been nurtured by someone.

     
The dead man they were calling Paco?

     
Sylvia would remember to ask Matt about plans for the man's funeral. When the body was released, would it be buried in Santa Fe?

     
She had pondered these things on her drive to Rosie's house. Now she pulled up and parked the truck on Hopi Street. She jumped when she caught sight of a man walking his dog—an old man with a harmless corgi tugging on the end of a leash.

     
She recognized her paranoia; in the circumstances it was a normal reaction to yesterday's violence. For several minutes, she watched the streets to see if someone had followed her, searched for any sign of a dark four-wheel-drive vehicle. When nothing and no one threatened, Sylvia drove two more blocks and parked directly in front of Ray and Rosie's house.

     
The sky was smeared with sunset colors: hot orange, turquoise blue, pink, gray. The truck radio was playing Sinead O'Connor singing "Nothing Compares 2 U." She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes, not quite ready to face people, not even friends.

     
The sky's palette was imprinted in her vision, the colors vibrating behind closed eyelids. Pieces of the day finally settled around her. She thought about her meeting with Noelle Harding and wondered how she was dealing with the day's revelations.

     
But just behind all her thoughts, like a translucent emotional scrim, she felt her longing to help Serena. It was arrogant to think that she had somehow been chosen to protect the child. Or maybe it wasn't arrogance after all; she felt as if Serena had picked her out. Circumstances continually brought people together from different worlds—the results were sometimes chaotic, occasionally even dangerous.

     
The sound of a child's laughter brought her out of her reverie. Down the street, a half dozen boys and girls were making the most of twilight, racing from yard to yard, dashing after a large red ball. A rowdy boy tumbled over a hedge; a smaller girl grabbed the ball and whooped. In front of one of the neat, adobe-style homes, a gray-haired man raked leaves into orderly piles. The houses in this small neighborhood had been built in the 1950s and 1960s. The lots were compact, but the tree-lined streets gave an added sense of space and comfort.

     
Sylvia smiled and sighed. It was time to face the Sanchez family and try to make amends for screwing up yesterday's party—
her
engagement party. A shrink would say she'd missed it because she was afraid of commitment; a shrink would be half right. She was fully committed to Matt, but the other M word scared the hell out of her.

     
As she reached over to lock the passenger door, her eyes caught a glint of silver on the floor. She grasped the child's medallion in her hand; the silver work was unusual for its careful detail and ornate overlay. A link in the chain had pulled loose. She pushed the open link over its partner and applied force with her fingers. Instant, if temporary, repair. Without thinking, she slipped the chain around her throat, the medallion settling in the cleft between her breasts. At some point yesterday in the pandemonium, Serena must have lost it.

     
She stepped out of the truck and heard whistling. The sound was coming from the garage. More precisely, from Ray Sanchez's lips. Sylvia found him on his back wedged beneath a battered gray Chevrolet Impala. Another set of legs, lying parallel to Ray's belonged to his eighteen-year-old son, Tomás. In Sylvia's eyes, the car was a wreck, but she knew that to the Sanchez males, it was a low-riding work of art in the making.

     
Ray's body appeared inch by inch from underneath the automobile, until finally his grease-smudged face was visible. "It's our hero!" With surprising agility, he was on his feet, wrapping her in a bear hug. When he finally released her, he made a show of dusting off her clothes.

     
"I'm sorry, Ray," Sylvia began, "I screwed up the party—"

     
"Sorry? You've got a fan club waiting inside."

     
"Yeah." Tomás had scooted out from under the Impala. He unfolded his lanky frame until he stood two inches taller than his father. "We heard he shot you!" His brown eyes glowed with admiration.

     
As father and son escorted her across the garage to the kitchen door Ray said, "Rosie and my
abuelita
are enjoying the sunset from the portal." A quizzical expression crossed his face. "Your party decorations are still up from yesterday."

     
Sylvia followed him into the kitchen. "I feel so badly—"

     
"Hey, we had more fun without you,
jita
." Rosie Sanchez pecked Sylvia's cheek. She was barefoot, on her way from the refrigerator, two beers in hand. "And you better watch out, Matthew almost got engaged to someone else. Remember Angelique from the lab? She just happened to invite herself over."

     
"You mean Angelique from latent prints? Bleached blonde, room-temperature I.Q.?" Sylvia smiled sweetly, and Rosie gave a throaty chuckle. The penitentiary investigator was one of Sylvia's oldest friends—Sylvia had gone to elementary school with Rosie's younger sister—and the women had renewed their friendship a few years back when Sylvia returned to Santa Fe from California.

     
Rosie raised dark eyebrows. "It's over and done, and everyone's just glad you and the little one are safe. Getting chased by a madman is a decent excuse."

     
"
I
don't think so."

     
Sylvia recognized Matt's voice coming from the portal. She accepted a beer from Rosie and stepped out the back door to find her fiancé seated next to Abuelita Sanchez. The wide, screened porch ran the length of the house. It faced west, offering a view of the sunset framed by a white wooden fence and a variety of trees.

     
Sylvia kissed Matt on top of his head, and she smiled down at the elegant eighty-one-year-old face of Abuelita Sanchez. Ray's grandmother occupied her garden chair like a queen on a throne. And why not? She was surrounded by generations of her family: her fifty-year-old grandson, Raymond, her great-grandson, Tomás, and his three-year-old cousin, who now utilized Matt's knee as a rocking horse.

     
Sylvia heard Abuelita Sanchez murmur. "Sylvia,
tienes una familia, necesites un esposo ahora." You
have a family, now you need a husband. "
¿Matrimonio éste semana?
" The old woman's expression was serious, but she pinched Sylvia on the bottom with strong fingers.

     
"Did I hear someone say we're getting married this week?" Matt reached into a dish of tortilla chips. Sylvia smiled at the man she'd been involved with for the last . . . year and ten months. She shrugged.

     
He winked back at her, then cast a baleful eye at
la vieja. "¿Abuelita, comprende usted? Estoy desolado
. Sylvia's been stalling me for a year. She even goes out and gets attacked to avoid her engagement party. I think maybe I'll have to marry Angelique after all—an old flame never dies." The three-year-old squirmed his way off Matt's knee, propelling his tiny body away from the adults toward a pile of small metal race cars on the floor of the porch.

     
Abuelita Sanchez patted the empty chair by her side, and Sylvia sat as ordered. Through wrinkled eyelids, the grandmother studied the two lovers. After a few moments, she grunted. She produced a flask from the pocket of her floral-print dress and shook it. She unscrewed the cap, which doubled as a shot glass, poured out a full measure, and held the brew out to Sylvia. "
Salud
, Sylvia."

     
Gingerly, Sylvia sniffed the concoction; she caught the essence of rosemary, sage, vervain—and God knows what else. She was familiar with the old woman's herbal beverages, designed to cure rheumatism, grippe, and "female complaints." She put her lips to the shot glass and drank; she didn't dare refuse. The beverage was sticky sweet, then bitter with a zinging aftertaste, and it made her skin tingle. As she returned the small container to Abuelita Sanchez, she caught Matt watching her. His grin was cocky, insolent, and irritating as hell.

     
"
¡Jijito, ahora, tú!
" Abuelita Sanchez refilled the shot glass and held it out to Matt. Sylvia laughed at the old woman's familiar use of tú. As far as the
abuelita
was concerned, Matt was just an unruly kid.