Halfway House (33 page)

Not again.

Never again.

“Did that boy find Elvis?”

“I don’t know.” That was a good question. He hadn’t heard from Bobby or his Angel all day. He’d sent Blockbuster with the kid for more reasons than just to keep the boy company. Manolo had found out that Blockbuster had a Salvadoran uncle. Why Lucy hadn’t been told this fact, he didn’t know, but he felt something amiss in his gut, and his gut was rarely wrong.

“What happens when he finds his Elvis?”

“Good question.” He remembered what Bobby had said.

“The idea of belonging. Seems that everyone else had people to belong to. I never had that. If Elvis does turn out to be my father, I can at least know that I had a family out there. Every time I hear a song or see a picture or watch a movie I would remember that he was my father. I don’t know. Just the idea of that seems special to me.”

“Belonging is important,” she said.

He grinned quickly and shook his head. Like she did so many times, she’d seemed to read his mind. He got another beer and tossed the empty in a box, then sat down to hear her out.

“With belonging comes ownership. You know that with your dear Angels.” She gave him a look that meant he better listen. “You made them and they belong to you. And now you want to protect them, keep them safe. That’s only right. It’s what your father wanted. It’s what I wanted. This belonging is all over the place.”

“Not such a bad thing.”

“You say that now, but it can be taken too far.”

“I don’t know. I love the Angels and I love San Pedro. I feel it when a business goes under. I feel it when someone’s home burns down. Sometimes it’s almost physical.” He touched the left side of his chest above the heart. “It hurts here.”

“You love this place. There was once one who loved like you.”
Abuela
spat between two fingers and crossed herself. “No. I shouldn’t have compared you. That’s bad luck.” She spat three times on the shirt she was ironing then put the iron to the spit. She crossed herself again. “I should not have said that.”

Lucy chuckled. “Not a big deal, Grandma.”

“You don’t know what you say,” she whispered savagely.

He decided to ask her once and for all. He’d beat around the bush his whole life and never really asked, but now he felt the impetus to know. Who was this woman who was supposed to eat the souls of the San Pedro dead? Was she real? Was it magic? Or was it more rumor and fearful belief?

He asked her.

Abuela
shook her head. She lifted the iron from the cloth and set it aside. She unplugged it and placed it on the counter. “It’s not rumor. She’s real. It’s her body that keeps everything alive.”

“But she’s been dead for twenty or more years.”

“Do you think that matters? Jesus been dead for two thousand years and he has power. Time doesn’t matter.”

She opened a container of rice and pulled out a handful. She carried it to where he sat and used a chair to sit beside him, where she dribbled the rice in a loose circle around both of them. It took a while and Lucy was quiet while she worked. When she finished, she covered her left eye with her right hand to ward off evil spirits. “Her body traps the energies and uses it for the curse.”

“What energies?”

“The souls of the dead. Haven’t you been listening to me, boy?”

“You mean all the stories are true?”

“Of course they’re true, child. Why did you think I’ve been telling them to you all of this time?”

“I thought they were just stories to scare us children.”

“Scare you? If I wanted to scare you I’d have told you about the cops and the welfare and the blacks in South Central. Why should an old dead woman scare you?”

“Come on. You knew we were scared. Sometimes I even thought you enjoyed it.”

Although he could see an echo of mischief in her eyes, she wouldn’t admit it. Instead, she frowned deeply. “I was trying to prepare you. You’re becoming like her. You live and die by this land.”

“But I don’t suck souls.”

“Not yet.” She coughed. “Listen to me. This thing she’s done is out of hand. She needs to be stopped.”

“The
Bruja?
But what can we do? How do you fight magic?”

“Burn the body, kill the spell.”

“The body? There can’t be much left of it.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I remember when I was a child in Tijuana, I saw the body of a woman who’d died when Poncho Villa was still young. She sat in an immense chair in one corner of the parlor wearing a black dress. She looked like she’d stopped living a second ago. Something about the magic kept her body from doing what bodies are supposed to do.”

He wanted to ask her what the woman was doing there and who she was, but this was probably too much. He didn’t know if he could take the answer. Instead, he asked, “Do I have to burn the body?”

“
Si
. It’s the only way. Fire cleanses and purifies.”

He shook his head as he tried to fit the concept into his way of thinking. Jump the trustees at the halfway house and torch the building? It seemed like overkill.

“Laurie is stuck there. It’s eating her like everyone else.”

“What?”

“And Split, too. I thought you loved him. You want her to eat his soul too?”

“Of course not! What kind of question is that?” He looked at her sharply. “You mean that’s what she’s doing?”

“What have I been telling you? Listen, she needs the energy of the dead to power her life. Everyone, everything that dies here, feeds her.”

“Everyone or just those living here? What about visitors?”

“Aren’t you listening to me?
Everyone
. Every single person who dies here dies forever. They don’t go to Heaven. They don’t go to Hell. Instead, they go to the halfway house to feed her revenge.”

Lucy digested the idea. He’d never been much into church because of the formality of it all, but he did believe in God, the Saints and Mary. He was raised a good Catholic and was able to fit his gang work into the directives of God. As blasphemous as it seemed, he often thought of himself as a gangbanger apostle, following in the footsteps of Christ as he healed and repaired the lives of the city and those within. He didn’t steal from those in need. He didn’t kill those who didn’t deserve to die. He committed sins, but he didn’t feel that they’d made him an irredeemable soul. He expected to be blessed and absolved of his sins so that he could reach Heaven and meet his Lord. But what his
abuela
said was that not only was he never going to get to Heaven if he died in San Pedro, but no one had for the last fifty years. The concept of all those souls eaten and destroyed was too much to contemplate.

“What kind of woman was she when she was alive? I remember seeing her, but I was so little.”

“She was a fine woman. She was a healer and had a
botanica
across the street from the halfway house. That place where Mark Nunez is. Everyone went to her when they had an ailment, whether it was for the body or the heart. She even made love potions that people came for from as far away as Las Vegas. The police, the priests, the mayor—everyone respected her and gave her special consideration.”

“Did she get in trouble with the police?”

“Not really. They had issue with some of the ingredients of some of her spells. She dealt with several morticians for grave dirt and small pieces of the dead. She also used coca and
went to bed with rosemary
.”

Lucy smiled. His
abuela
had said
acostarse con rosemaria,
which was an old way to say smoked marijuana and literally meant to go to bed with rosemary, the herb. “How did the priests feel about her?”

“They liked her just fine, but they didn’t understand Santeria. They thought it was a Caribbean version of Catholic. They didn’t understand the African roots and the seriousness of the spells. The priests thought she was just a midwife with some country remedies. Even now they don’t know.”

He watched her carefully as he asked, “Are you Santeria,
Abuela
?”

She crossed herself three times. “Only a little and only what was passed to me by my mother. Like the
Bruja
, our family has roots in Africa. But we don’t do selfish things, you and I. We try and help when we can, but don’t do things that the church wouldn’t want us to.”

“Only a little?”

“A spell here and there. Sometimes we can read people and tell what they’re thinking. Your mother was especially good at that. She never let on to your father, but she knew he was going to ask her to marry him before he asked. She kept putting him off for weeks, never letting him ask her, always finding a way to change the subject. She wanted the moment to be perfect and waited until the anniversary of the
Bruja’s
death, when the energies were the most powerful. He asked her that night. You were made that night.” She reached out and touched Lucy on the cheek. “She knew the moment you were conceived. She was so happy.”

“So you actually met the
Bruja
?”

“Oh, yes. We’d go see her on Saturdays then go to church on Sundays. She was a beautiful woman. I remember that she always wore a simple white dress with a red ruby necklace.”

Lucy shook his head and grunted. “Hard to believe she’s so evil now.”

Abuela
shrugged. “She didn’t mean to be. If her daughter hadn’t been killed she never would have changed. The death of her daughter made her hate, and it was the hate that ate up all of her goodness.”

“And you think I’ll end up like her?”

“No. Like I said, I shouldn’t have compared you.” She spat between two fingers and crossed herself again. “Listen, Louis. She’s as evil as anything is evil. She ate her own soul to give her this power. She ate Laurie’s soul and a million souls in between. It’s time that you took care of San Pedro’s biggest problem. You might find that all of your other problems sort themselves out after this.”

Lucy stared at his
abuela
for a full minute. Her face was a mask of concern. He’d need to think about what she said. He doubted his other problems would sort themselves out, no matter what he did. This was a new problem, and one he couldn’t ignore. Split’s soul was out there somewhere and if Lucy was any kind of leader, he’d take care and make sure it didn’t get eaten by a dead witch.

Bobby spent the night at the cove alone with a bottle of Cluny, his thoughts, the knowledge of his father, and the great wide ocean. Long into the night he cried for himself and for what he’d never have. Then he cried for Laurie, tears of selfish love and loss twisting away in the onshore breeze. Then he cried for Kanga.

Sometime just before dawn, Mark Nunez found him shivering next to the long-dead fire, nearly hypothermic from the cold and wind. The stout martial arts instructor carried Bobby to his car and drove him to the studio. After a pot of coffee and some warm bread from the Croatian bakery next door, Bobby was almost back to normal.

Mark left him there and ran some errands. While he was gone, Bobby cleaned up in the shower and changed into a spare martial arts
gi
while his jeans and T-shirt tumbled in the washer. A desk with a computer, a telephone and a stack of martial arts books sat near the front window. Bobby turned on the machine. While it booted, he glanced out the window. Still circling in front of the halfway house were the strange triplets, the one-armed man, Kanga and the others.

Bobby had an idea.

He opened a web browser and searched for obituaries of San Pedro residents. He got thousands of results. Then he sorted them by date of relevance. In a city this size there were dozens of deaths each day. So where were the relatives? Looking at all of those who’d died and at those in front of the halfway house, it was clear that not everyone had come to speak with the dead. Should he call them and tell them? How crazy was that idea?

Searching back, he found Laurie’s obituary.
Laurie May Jenkins passed today from wounds sustained from a car accident
. He could only read the first sentence before he retreated from the announcement and checked other deaths. His chest was tight as he scanned the names and descriptions. Then he saw one he’d been looking for.

Desmond Brian Howard of Long Beach perished in the waves off San Pedro, Tuesday, while surfing. Son of Brian and Rebecca Howard of Crestline, Desmond Howard was training for the Brummel Beach Invitational, for which he was one of three Americans invited. He is survived by his parents, wife, Johanna, and daughter to be, Rebecca Jo.

Johanna and daughter to be, Rebecca Jo
. Bobby gazed through the glass at the pregnant woman sitting on the ground, her eyes fixed to the sky, spittle running down her cheek. She looked like a crack addict in thrall to a dragon high, but Bobby knew better. Like Kanga and the others, she was communicating somehow with those spirits of the dead; in Johanna’s case it was Desmond Howard.