Hot Shot (23 page)

The cigars in the fourth box were Churchill-sized, eight inches long and fat as a chunk of pipe. I picked one up to give it a sniff, and then I saw the name on the box:

Águilas.

La águila. A symbol of strength, fierceness, protection.

The eagle is a symbol. My familiar.

“Concepción?”

A woman came out of the back. She was about thirty-five, with curly brown hair, bright-yellow dangle earrings shaped like lemon slices, and zaftig hips. She rattled off something in Spanish to the woman at the register, who handed her a ledger book, never taking her eyes off me. Apparently I was a security risk.

“Marga?” I asked.

She looked at me, surprised. “Yeah?”

“Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

“I don't know,” she said agreeably. “Who are you?”

“My name's Kieran O'Connor. Is there somewhere else we can talk?”

Marga looked puzzled, but her curiosity was roused. “Sure. Come on back to my office.”

I followed her behind the counter, the old woman shooting me a hooded look.

Marga Garza led me through a door that opened onto a large room redolent of tobacco. The gallery was warm as a greenhouse, lit with fluorescent fixtures that were harsh on the shabby ochre walls and peeling paint. If the scent of tobacco was intoxicating in the anteroom, here it was overpowering in its richness.

A couple dozen men and a few women, most of them old, sat at wooden desks, rolling sheaves of tobacco leaves into neat cylinders, with the same casual precision Elise used to chop her bell pepper. The men wore ribbed white tank tops and jeans; the women, cheap blouses. An unseen radio warbled sad
canciónes.
We could have been in Havana in the 1930s.

“Marga!” A man in a clip-on tie flagged her down. “You got those invoice numbers?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Hang on a second.”

The old man nearest me grabbed a handful of leaves and gave them a quick roll between his palms. Magically, the loose leaves turned into a crude cylinder. He picked up an odd knifelike object—a flat metal semicircle with a convex cutting edge—and gave the sticking-out leaves a whack. A few more twists in his palms, and it began to take the shape of a cigar. He used the flat part of his knife like a rolling pin to finish the sides and trimmed the straggly end. When he was done, he placed the cigar in a wooden mold where several other cigars were resting. I was fascinated.

“Yadda yadda yadda. What a pain in the butt.” Marga was back, fumbling with a key in an office door. “C'mon in. There's not much room, but there's a folding chair behind you there.”

It looked like a mop closet that had been converted into an office; my head brushed the ceiling. A small desk had been wedged under the stairs, next to an old wooden file cabinet with brass pulls. Ledgers, files, and Pendaflex folders were piled in liquor cartons, stacked everywhere. A battered ten-key spit out a paper tongue of figures that curled on the floor. Taped to the wall was a large sign that said
NO SMOKING
.

“Is this your family's business?” I asked.

Marga's eyes widened. “God, no. I mean, no. I used to do the books for a record company in San Diego. My husband moved us up here last year and then walked out on me a few months ago, the bastard. This is just transitional. At least I hope it is. They don't even have computers here. And they don't like me.”

I grinned. “Why?”

“Oh, most of 'em are old-school Catholics. I made the mistake my first day of telling someone that I thought the Pope was a misogynist pig, and by lunch they were all acting like I was Rosemary's baby, getting all Hispanicker-than-thou with me. I grew up in a tract house in Wisconsin, not some apartment in the
barrio.
So sue me. Anyway.” She puffed out her cheeks and blew air. “What did you want?”

“I called you earlier. About Eduardo Lopez.”

Distrust began to make little furrows around her eyes. “What about him?”

“His daughter is dead. I came to tell him.”

Marga looked blank. “His daughter?”

“I'm a reporter. I was ghost-writing a book with her. She was murdered a couple of weeks ago.”

“His
daughter?
Sugar, are you sure? I think you might have the wrong Mr. Lopez.”

“Her name was Felina. She was about forty.”

Marga shook her head. “Hm-mm. No way. I eat lunch with Mr. Lopez sometimes. He would have mentioned a daughter.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I even go over to his house once in a while. He needs help going through his bills, writing checks. We usually end up having dinner. He would have mentioned a daughter by now. There's no pictures in that house. Nothing.”

I sat back in the rickety folding chair, baffled. Lopez was a common name; Eduardo less so. But how many Eduardo Lopezes were working as cigar rollers in Los Angeles?

“Would you recognize his signature if you saw it?”

“I think so.”

I handed her the model release I'd stolen from Leo Lazarnick. Marga looked at it for a long moment.

“That's strange,” she said. “It looks … Hmm.” She opened the file cabinet and pulled out a manila folder. “Here's Mr. Lopez's file. Look at this withholding form. I think it's a different person.”

It was an old man's signature: shaky, cursive letters, slightly formal and antique. Not too close to the one on Lazarnick's model release, but the longer I looked, the more similarities I saw.

“Marga, look at the flourish on the capital E, and the L.”

“Maybe,” she said dubiously. “Mr. Lopez can't read. He can't write much more than his own name.”

“This piece of paper I've got was signed more than twenty years ago. Would you have anything that old that Mr. Lopez might have signed?”

“He's been here a while. But not twenty years.” She rummaged through the folder. “Hey, look at this.”

It was Eduardo Lopez's original employment application: dated fifteen years ago, and typed on a manual. At the bottom was a signature.

“It's the same man.”

“Son of a…” Marga whistled. “He always said he and his wife couldn't have children. You're telling me he has a daughter?”

“
Had
a daughter. He tell you that, that he couldn't have kids?”

“No, but I picked it up from what he— Wait. Yes. Yes, he did. I was over there, going through his bills. He was going on about why me and Ralph, the jerk, never had kids, 'cause he's real Catholic, and I turned it around on him. He said his wife couldn't have children.”

“Marga,” I said, “could I talk to him?”

*   *   *

When the door opened again, it was the man I'd seen shaping the cigars so expertly. He wore a ribbed tank undershirt and a pair of old corduroys with shiny wales. The huaraches on his feet were soled with tire-tread rubber. Despite the deep furrows in his skin and the crepe at his neck, Lopez's hair was still thick, and he kept it as neat and clean as he did his old clothes. Could I detect a bit of Felina's strong chin in his jawline, or was it just my imagination?

Marga stood behind him, putting one hand on his shoulder protectively. “Eduardo, this is Mr. O'Connor.”

“Hello, Mr. Lopez.”

No reaction. He peered at me, puzzled, his hands in front of him as if he were holding an invisible hat.

“I'm a friend of your daughter's.”

Still no reaction. Lopez's face didn't change. I shot Marga a glance, but she shrugged. Did he speak English? Was this the right man?

“Mr. Lopez? You have a daughter named Felina?”

Nothing.

“Is Felina Lopez your daughter?”

Nothing.

“Mr. Lopez … Felina's dead.”

He stared at me, and then the tears welled up in his eyes and his shoulders began to shake.

17

T
HE HUMIDITY HAD SKYROCKETED
and the sun was a white-hot ball of hell hanging over Alameda Street. Eduardo Lopez followed me numbly down San Pedro. Once the tears and shaking had stopped, shock had set in and he had become scarily impassive. I was worried about Lopez and wanted to get him off filthy, urine-stinking San Pedro into someplace cool and quiet.

The only place I knew within walking distance was over on Sixth: a faux-proletarian hangout called Trotsky's, which supplied the remaining downtown loft dwellers with blini, omelettes, and Americanized Russian fare. Claudia liked it for Sunday brunch. Not the kind of place Eduardo Lopez would hang out, but I couldn't think of any other.

“Is this okay?”

He didn't say anything, but followed me inside like a bewildered puppy.

Trotsky's had a postmodern Marxist motif, designed to appeal to the sensibilities of the arugula-eating Bolsheviks who could afford a two-thousand-dollar-a-month loft. Old copies of
Pravda
were framed on the concrete walls, and the exposed ceiling ducts were hung with portraits of Lenin and banners marked in Cyrillic characters. Lopez plunked down in the nearest booth. I sat down opposite him gingerly.

“You all right, sir? You want some water?”

He shook his head no, and then shook it again, like a sleepwalker just coming to.

The waitress had a pierced tongue and crayon-yellow hair, but that didn't even seem to register with Lopez. I ordered two St. Petersburg omelettes and two iced teas. When she'd left, he bit his lip and looked across the table, fixing me with his one good eye.

“How do you know my Felina?”

“We were writing a book together.”

“Felina was writing a book? My Felina?”

“Yes.”

He processed that for a minute and then said, “But she is dead.”

“Yes.”

“I knew it.” His voice was like dry leaves.

“I'm sorry.”

Lopez stammered a few words in Spanish and rubbed the lip of the table with his thumb. “When?”

I was taken aback. Was it really possible Lopez hadn't heard or been told? Maybe. But then, Marga had told me he couldn't read, and he certainly wouldn't watch
Headline Journal
or
Hollywood Today!

“About a month ago,” I said. “She was living in Mexico. I'm sorry to break the news to you. I thought you must have known.”

“No. No. Thank you.
Gracias
 … Mexico … Were you with her?”

“No.”

“Was there a priest?”

“I don't think so.”

“She died alone?”

“I'm sorry.”

“No one should have to … Oh, Felina,” he whispered. “You were a good girl. You were such a good girl.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't know her very well, but I'm sure she was a good woman.”

Lopez shook his head. “She was a good
girl.
She got good marks. She made me dinner when I came home from work. Her mother was dead. We were all we had, each other.
Mi mija. Mija y Popi.
”

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Lopez.”

“
Mija, mija.
Felina. She was so good then. Later she was…” A sigh. “Thank you for coming to tell me.”

“You're welcome.”

He combed his hair with his fingers, looking away. “How did you find me? She told you about me?”

“A little. She mentioned that her father was a cigar roller.”

“We did not agree. I had not seen her for … Felina Maria. After her mother. She looked so much like her mother. I loved her so much …
Mija, mija.
”

He mumbled a few more words in Spanish. I waited. His voice finally dribbled away. He took a sip of iced tea.

“When was the last time you saw her, Mr. Lopez?”

The question seemed innocuous to me, but it shattered Lopez. His mouth opened, and he began to weep, great silent sobs that wracked his body.

Our omelettes arrived at that moment, each topped with a blob of sour cream and tiny sturgeon roe that dotted the sour cream like tattoo ink. The waitress set the plates down timidly. “Is he, um…”

“He's fine. He just got some bad news. Thanks.” I shot the nearby diners a look. They went back to posing. Lopez sobbed. I sat quietly and let it come.

When he was done, Lopez mumbled a silent prayer and made the sign of the cross.
“Lo siento,”
he said. “I am sorry.”

“I understand. You loved her very much.”

He shook his head no.

“Of course you did. Felina knew that.”

More head shaking, violent this time. “She disgraced her mother's name. Felina Maria. I prayed for her to change. She lived with a man who sold drugs. She tried to give me money. I made her take it back. She was a whore,
ramera
—”

“Whatever Felina did, she's in heaven now. Right?”

He didn't reply.

“Mr. Lopez, please listen. Felina had stopped that. She was living in Mexico, writing a book. Whatever Felina might have done in her past, it's not your fault. You did the best you could.”

Agony twisted his features, an agony I began to realize had less to do with Felina's death than their relationship while she was alive. “She told me she was not going to live.
Dios Mío…
”

Lopez was like a radio station, fading in and out of English. I was so busy trying to pick words out of his muttering that it took me a minute to process what he had just said. “Mr. Lopez—she
told
you she was—?”

He cut me off with another burst of Spanish.
Puta
and
que vergüenza,
he kept repeating—whore, shame. Then there was
Dios Mío,
and a word I couldn't understand; something that sounded like “seeda.” Over and over again, those four phrases.

“Mr. Lopez—Mr. Lopez, please listen to me. She
knew
that it would happen? She told you she was going to die?”