Lifeblood (4 page)

“Yes. Thanks for calling back. As you probably know, your parking lease expires next week. I guess we need to talk about a renewal.” Normally she would have seen to this a month ago but she had mismarked her calendar. Hutton had been with her from the start, always paid on time, and always expressed appreciation when she went out of her way to help their staff, so she wasn’t worried, but the lease did need to be renewed.

“You mean no one contacted you?”

“Contacted me? About what?”

“We won’t be renewing,” Mason said. “I’m afraid notifying you must have slipped between the cracks. I’m sorry. We’re moving to the Valley. We’re in the process right now. We’ll be out before the lease is up. I’m really sorry no one told you.”

Rachel put her hand over her mouth as if to stop it from shouting Omigod! Then, “I see. Well, it’s been a pleasure serving you.” The reduction in cash flow would be serious.

Well, it’s not the end of the world. Then again, she wasn’t so sure.

999

The overhead lights in One-Eyed Jack’s poker club shone brightly as the dealer laid out two hole cards face down on the green baize tabletop in front of Marty Chavez.

A drop of adrenaline charged through him as he lifted the corner of the top card just enough to see what it was. Marty always peeked at one card at a time. Looking at the cards that way had become something of a fixation for him. He wasn’t sure it brought him good luck, but maybe it warded off bad luck. If there ever was a time for good luck, this was it.

He could almost feel his short salt-and-pepper hair rise on his scalp like that of a dog that sees a choice morsel.

The first card was the king of diamonds.

His eyes slid from face to face around the oval table, watching for signs the other players were pleased or unhappy with their hole cards. A ”tell.” The faces didn’t betray much, but Marty had played often with each and knew them well. Sometimes all it took was a twitch, a lick of the lips, a scratch of the nose to give him an idea about the cards a player held.

Not that his instinct was always right. Rachel would never forgive him for losing the farm that way. Not that he missed the place—he was never cut out to be a farmer. But Marty would never forgive himself for doing Rachel out of her rightful home. He’d been trying to make it up to her ever since.

His second hole card was a diamond ten. When the bet came to him, he pushed forward a stack of black checkered chips. Hundred-dollar jobbies.

With a sweeping motion, the dealer laid out the first board card. A seven of spades. Not great. But Marty met the raise from Louis, who sat across the table.

The next board card…a jack of diamonds. Yes! A line appeared between Marty’s eyebrows as if a ghost had pressed a finger there.

He pursed his lips to confine a sound that wanted to leak out.

Today just might be the day.

Chapter Seven

It was after midnight, but Rachel wasn’t sleepy. She was compiling a list of businesses within walking distance of the garage. Clancy was sprawled over the top of her computer monitor supervising her work. Clancy was a large orange tomcat with a torn ear doubtless gained during a feline equivalent of a bar-room brawl. He was clearly a street fighter before they met at the animal shelter. It was love at first sight.

Rachel’s work was slow going, using first the Yellow Pages, then her computer to transfer nearby addresses into Google maps to see if they were within the distance people would be willing to walk to and from work. It might take weeks to find all the possible firms, but in the morning, she would start calling the places she identified tonight.

She couldn’t last long without replacing the revenue from Hutton. She made a note to add to her standard lease boilerplate a clause about sixty days’ notice to vacate.

Through an open window, she heard someone calling her from the street. “Rachel? I know you’re still up. I can see the light. Let me in.”

She ran down the ramp and opened the people door. “Pop? What are you doing here at this hour?” She caught a whiff of whiskey, but he didn’t seem drunk. Marty’s problem wasn’t booze.

“Came to celebrate.” He produced a bottle of champagne. Nearing sixty, he was still a good-looking man, not tall or heavy, but solid, with a complexion that always looked like he had just left the beach. The crevices in his face only seemed to enhance it. His deep baritone voice could have landed him a job at any radio station.

She locked the door behind them and started up the ramp. “Celebrate what?” she asked, afraid she knew the answer. This was typical when Marty did well at the poker tables. A week or so of over-confidence would soon cost him more than he’d gained.

“Biggest win ever,” he exclaimed, turning to beam at her as they reached her apartment door.

His excitement was contagious. Rachel threw her arms around him. She had decided some years ago that there was no point in depriving him of this moment. The outcome would be the same, regardless, so he might as well have his short season in the sun.

“I mean really big, this time.” Marty’s grin nearly split his face.

“That’s wonderful.” Rachel tried to sound enthusiastic as she set out two stemmed glasses on the countertop of the kitchen bar that separated her living room from the eating area. She gestured for him to open the champagne and took a bottle of club soda from the refrigerator for herself.

“Damn, Rachel, my mind must be going, I don’t know how I forgot,” Marty said as he wrested the cork from the bottle, which gave out a loud pop. “I was just so excited.”

Rachel had to smile. “I haven’t seen you like this in a long time.” Even if it wouldn’t last long, it was nice to see him happy.

“But I shouldn’t have forgotten your…thing.”

“No problem,” Rachel said. “Other than wasting some of that champagne. You can’t take an open bottle with you in the car, and you can’t leave it here. So we’ll have to pour it out.”

“Maybe you know somebody you could give it to.”

“Nope. I won’t have it in the house. Period. Except for right now with you here.”

“I never really believed you were an alcoholic.”

“Well, believe it, Pop. And it isn’t were. Or was. I am. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.”

“I know that’s what they say. You still going to AA?”

“Yes and no. I haven’t been in a while. I’ll go as soon as I have time.” She settled onto the arm of the sofa. “So tell me about your good luck.”

Marty launched into a card-by-card description of his game.

Rachel was always amazed at how he could remember every play. Clancy climbed into her lap and she petted him, pretending to listen until Marty finished.

“How long were you there?” she asked when he reached the finale.

“Ten hours or so.”

“Did you eat?”

Marty thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

“You can’t drink on an empty stomach.”

Rachel moved Clancy from her lap and got up. “So A, you’re going to spend the night here, and B, you’re going to eat something right now.”

“Aw, Rachel….”

But she was already putting a frying pan on the stove. Taking a carton of eggs from the refrigerator, she stopped and leveled a look at him. “Okay. I should tell you I’m really glad you won, Pop, because it will be a while before I can help you out again. I lost a client today. A fairly big one.”

“But that’s just it,” Marty said, watching her grate some cheese, “now I can help you.”

“No you can’t. I won’t let you. You save that money. How much is it?”

“Almost fifty-six thousand.”

Rachel almost dropped one of the eggs she was breaking into the frying pan. “You’re kidding!” She tilted her head and watched his face to see if he was fibbing. “You have fifty-six thousand dollars?”

“Well, I owe Charlie eleven something.”

“Eleven what something?” Rachel asked, stirring the eggs. She stared across the stovetop at him, hoping she was wrong.

“Thousand. Eleven thousand.”

Rachel’s eyes flashed. “And who is Charlie?” She already knew the answer. No bank would loan Marty that much money, even if he had something to put up for security, which he didn’t.

“Just a guy who loans money.”

“Jesus, Pop! A loan shark! Are you out of your mind?” Rachel banged the wooden fork she was using on the counter, splattering raw egg. “You borrowed eleven thousand dollars from a goddam loan shark?” She grabbed a paper towel and mopped up the globs of egg.

Marty was wearing his best poker face. “I guess.”

“Dammit, Pop! You’re gonna wake up some day with busted kneecaps.”

They both were silent as she finished scrambling the eggs, topped them with cheese and a spoonful of green chile, and put them in front of him. “Just the way you like them, que no?”

Marty nodded and began to eat. “Really good. Thanks.”

“You save that money, Pop. You put it somewhere that you can’t get your hands on it real easy. Open an account in a bank in New York or Timbuktu or somewhere you can’t put your hands on it too easily.”

Marty swallowed a forkful of eggs. “Umm-hmm.”

“You want some coffee?”

He shook his head. “No thanks. Must be getting old. It’s started keeping me awake.”

Rachel was cleaning up the kitchen. She frowned. “Did you hear what I said when I handed you the eggs?”

Marty shrugged.

“I said, que no. You taught me that when I was little. That and a couple other words, but that’s all. Not even sentences. Why didn’t you teach me any more Spanish?”

“Your mother wouldn’t have liked it.”

“She would have loved it. You know she would.”

“It would have made her uncomfortable.”

“Because of Nana and Gramps?”

Marty raised an eyebrow and gave a little shrug, but said nothing.

“Well, they’ve been dead for years and years. So teach me some Spanish now.”

“Can’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t remember any.”

“Okay, let’s both learn some Spanish. I’ll bet one of the community colleges offers a short course in conversational Spanish. You can use some of that big win of yours to take us to Mexico, to where you were born.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t want to. Where did all this interest in Spanish and Mexico suddenly come from?”

The lines between Rachel’s eyes deepened. “Can’t I just want to know where you came from?”

“Seems sort of silly at this stage of the game.”

Well, dammit, you owe me a little something about my own history.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Bullshit! I knew everything about Mom, her family, where she was from. All I know about you is you’re half Mexican, half Irish and I guess there were problems with her parents over the Mexican part. Which was incredibly stupid, but it doesn’t matter any more.”

Marty gave her a hurt look. “I came over here to offer to help you out.” He caught her look. “Okay, pay you back for some of the times you bailed me out of money trouble. And you just want to yell at me about being Mexican.”

“I am a quarter Mexican! I have a right to know about that part of me.”

“You are not a quarter Mexican.”

“I am so.” She stopped, staring. “Omigod! Are you telling me you’re not my father?”

Chapter Eight

Marty’s eyes were avoiding Rachel’s. “Don’t be silly. I’m saying you are half Mexican.”

“What?…Like from where?”

“From me.”

“You’re half Irish.”

“Far as I know, my blood is one hundred percent bonafide Mexican.”

Rachel didn’t say anything for a moment, then, softly, “You were lying all this time?”

“I guess so.”

“But you have blue eyes.”

Marty moved those eyes to hers. “Yep. That was a puzzlement. A bee in the old ointment. It caused some problems for my mother. My father’s family gave her a real hard time about it. When I was about six, even the padre told them it could happen and pointed out that already I looked more like my father than my brother and sisters did. A recessive gene maybe, from some Spaniard who escaped the Moors, or some guy who got over the fence long, long ago.”

“Your father didn’t trust your mother?”

“Nope. And he wouldn’t let up. When I was fourteen, we started fighting a lot. Physical stuff. One night he broke my arm. A couple months later I was in San Francisco. My mother arranged for me to go to her sister there.”

“You have papers?”

“Of course.”

“How did you get them?”

“We weren’t poor. My mother paid a lot. They were good papers. The best. I think she knew the whole thing eventually would be necessary. She was probably getting ready for it.”

“What happened to her?”

“I wrote her many times.” Marty looked down, avoiding whatever he saw in Rachel’s eyes. “I never saw her again.”

Rachel walked over to her father and drew him close. “Jesus,” she said, voice almost a whisper. “You’re an illegal alien?”

999

The next morning, Rachel was still trying to digest her father’s news. He had obediently spent the night on the sofa and was complaining over an early cup of coffee that Clancy had insisted on sitting on his chest and staring at him. “As if I was a mouse. A very large mouse.”

“More like a rat.”

“You still mad?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. It just takes some getting used to.”

“Good. I was afraid you might turn me in to the Border Patrol.”

They laughed, shyly at first, then the kind of laughter that brings tears to the eyes.

Marty left early, wanting to get his car off the street before the rush hour.

Rachel opened the garage and as soon as the flow of cars slowed, she climbed into the glass booth and began dialing the businesses she had listed as within walking distance. She left messages at the first three, hating the whole thing, the calling, the spiel, the phone tag, but it had to be done. Before she could punch in the next numbers, her own line rang.

“Archie Van Buren,” the voice said when she had identified herself, “with Jefferson Hospital business office.”

Had they found the boy she had been inquiring about? But why the business office? Were they were going to try to twist her arm again about paying the bill?