The Body of Martin Aguilera (11 page)

The patrolman came back. “Listen, unofficially, we're considering your friend missing. We're keeping our eyes open, but no one is assigned to finding her. Okay?”

Lewis nodded. “Thanks.”

“We'll just leave the car here. She might come back for it.”

Lewis got into his truck and headed home.

Lewis didn't think there was any chance Maggie would be waiting for him. Perhaps she'd had car trouble that she recognized, like the cop said. Maybe she hitched a ride with a crazed rapist. Lewis shook his head and wondered what other kind of rapist there was. He started up the mountain. The night seemed darker than usual. Lewis had never felt so lost, so helpless. All of it was his fault, too. He parked by the corral and looked at his house. He remembered leaving a light on, but it was pitch black. He climbed the steps, opened the door and walked in. He paused, his finger on the switch to the light in the kitchen, and listened. Nothing. He turned on the light.

The phone rang and startled him. Then he ran to it. “Hello.”

“Papa?” It was Laura.

“Hi, Sweetie.”

“I'm home.”

“You made it safe and sound, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Are you doing fine?”

“Yes. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Mommy wanted me to call and tell you I got here.”

“I'm glad you did. I miss you a lot.”

“I miss you. Do you want to talk to Mommy?”

“No, I'll talk to her later, okay? Bye, honey.” Lewis hung up. He went into his living room and sat on the sofa with his shotgun. He held the cold barrel against his face. The night was dead still, dead quiet. Lewis kept seeing in his mind the body of Martin Aguilera, naked and bloated, burns on the legs, and he could see the procession of men marching around the ugly sight of death, beating themselves, bleeding and hurting and for a second he understood, for a second would have been able to strike himself in the same manner. He took a deep breath and tried to think more useful thoughts.

Peabody was the next step. Lewis reviewed all his suspicions of the man. If he was involved in whatever was going on, then Lewis had to confront him. If the man was not a part of it, then Lewis would only make a fool of himself. He could live with that, was quite used to it.

He went to the kitchen and put on water for tea. Why had they taken Maggie? If indeed they had. Some unrelated crazy might have abducted her. The thought was no less disturbing. He fell into a chair at the table. The water boiled and the kettle whistled. Lewis cried.

Chapter Twenty

Lewis managed a couple of hours of sleep. The phone remained silent in bed next to him. He showered and dressed in the morning, ate a bowl of oatmeal, dumped the horses' trough and put in fresh water. He got out into his truck and drove down the mountain. He skidded to a stop in the dirt lot of Peabody's office. He found the front door ajar. The assistant was not at her station. The room was dim and so Lewis opened the blinds. Peabody appeared in the doorway behind the desk.

“I thought I might be seeing you this morning,” Peabody said, stepping fully into the room.

Lewis just looked at him. He was afraid. He looked at the man's hands to see if he was armed. He felt dumb for not having brought his shotgun.

“How is your friend Maggie?”

“You tell me.”

Peabody smiled and sat at the desk. “Please, Lewis, have a seat.”

Lewis sat on the fake-leather-covered bench.

“Yes, we have your Maggie.”

“Please don't hurt her.”

“Whether we do is up to you, Lewis.”

Lewis looked at the man's face. He wasn't the same Cyril Peabody, for the eyes were cold, the face hard. “Who are you? What's going on?”

“I don't see that you're entitled to any answers here. If you want your friend back, then you'll tell me what you know about Martin Aguilera's corpse. You told me you got a look at it. I want it.”

“I assume you had it at one point.”

“That doesn't matter. Where is it?”

“This has something to do with the burns on him, with the squirrel, with the missing animals.”

Peabody looked at his watch. “I'm not into all these deadlines like other people, you know. We have your friend. That's what you need to understand. And we want the old man's body. You can tell me where it is or you can get it for me.”

“I have no idea what's going on, but I know that I've seen the burns and I know that you want me dead.”

“I don't want you dead.”

“Your men tried to run me off the road.”

“What can I say? If people followed directions I wouldn't be here telling you to get a body you should never have seen.”

“What they say about good help and all that,” Lewis said.

Peabody chuckled.

“I don't believe you're going to let Maggie or me live.”

“You've seen too many movies. Look at it like this: If you don't help me, we'll kill her and we'll kill you. That's a given. If you do help? A chance anyway.”

“Just so I'm clear on this,” Lewis said. His hands were sweaty. He was cold. He wanted to laugh. He felt crazy. “You want me to get Martin Aguilera's body and bring it to you. Then, you'll let Maggie go.”

Peabody pointed a finger at Lewis. “That's it. That's perfect. That's exactly what I'm saying to you.” He leaned back in the chair. “It's a pleasure doing business with intelligent people.”

“I'm not sure I can get the body.”

“You can try. If you fail, you fail your friend. I kill you and that's that. I'm glad you got the kid out of the way. That's just too much to explain. Parents and all that, you know. But you, you I can explain. I can give you a heart attack. You can have a car wreck.”

Lewis tried to think of someone to tell. There was really only his daughter and he would only scare her. Everyone else would think he was insane, a paranoid old man.

“You can see the sort of thing I mean,” Peabody said.

“I'm surprised you don't already know where the body is. I'm sure you had me followed.”

“I'm not here to discuss this with you. I want the body. You get it. Now, I think it's time you were on your way.”

Lewis stood and walked to the door. He turned and looked at Peabody. He'd never really hated anyone before, but he hated this man. He watched the awful man's face smile at him.

Lewis didn't think about saying it, didn't really know he was saying it, but he did say it, “If you hurt Maggie Okada, I will kill you.” He felt stupid saying it, felt like he had been tricked into saying it.

“Good day, Lewis.”

Lewis left. He drove to town and parked in the lot of Archie's Lumber Company. He just sat there in his car, replaying all of it over and over, shaking his head and not understanding how any of it could be real, remembering how normal the day had been when he and Laura were off to pay a visit to old Martin. He waved at some people crossing the lot. They seemed to look at him a second too long.

Chapter Twenty-one

Lewis checked his mirror as he drove through town and saw no van nor sign of anyone else following him. He parked in the grocery store parking lot, walked across the street and into a mineral and gem shop and exited through the back door. He crossed a vacant lot and was on the dirt road that went to the Episcopal church. He walked via backroads toward the plaza, realizing just how visible a six-foot, sixty-six-year-old, black man was in these parts. He found his way to the alley that ran behind the House of Boots. The back door was open and so he walked in.

He went to the curtain and looked at the room full of customers. A woman with a massive blonde hairdo was having her pre-school son try on fifty dollar snake-skin boots. A very large man had a peculiar, high voice and he was saying the boots in question were too tight. Salvador was sitting on a stool, his back to the store room, helping a couple of homosexual men in leather pants.

Salvador's daughter Gloria was helping the mother and the very large man. She was a pretty young woman, a little heavy, but she bore her weight well. She wore a lot of makeup on her eyes. She saw Lewis.

Lewis smiled and waved at her.

“What are you doing there?” she asked.

Salvador turned around.

“I need to talk to your father,” Lewis told her. “Salvador?”

“I'll be with you in a minute,” the old man said. He let his daughter know it was okay.

“Estos son—son.”
One of the homosexual men searched for a word, standing on a thick-heeled boot.

Salvador helped him.
“Corto? Apretado?”

“Which one means tight?” the man asked.

“Apretado,”
Salvador said.

“Apre-tado,”
the gay man said proudly, smiled at his friend.
“Estos son apre-tado.”

Salvador said in English, “Would you like to try the next size up?”

“Please.”

Salvador got up and walked to the store room. He let the curtain down over the doorway behind him.

“I'm really sorry to bother you, Salvador, but I can't help it. Please don't be upset with me. I need Martin's body.”

Salvador looked as if he wanted to run from his own store. He was terrified. “I cannot talk of this,” he said.

“Another life is at stake. We have to.”

Salvador turned away and studied a wall of boxes in the dim room. “I do not hear what you're saying to me. Please, Lewis, leave now.”

“They've kidnapped my friend Maggie. I don't know if you know Maggie Okada. She's Japanese, short, about sixty. Oh, forget this—” Lewis stopped, and sighed a frown. “Salvador, I've been told that if I don't turn over Martin's body, they will kill her.”

Salvador sniffed.

Lewis turned away, then back. He thought Salvador was crying. He felt sick and guilty. He was breaking his word to this man. “I need your help, Salvador.”

Gloria pulled back the curtain and looked at Lewis and her father.
“Que le ocurre?”

“Nada.”
Lewis waved her back onto the floor.

The woman gave Lewis a threatening stare before going back to the customers.

“Please, Salvador.”

“I will not discuss this with you. Find Ignacio. He is a young man with a strong heart and he can talk to you. I am too old, too close to death. Please, just find Ignacio.”

“Okay, Salvador. You relax. Forget I was here.” Lewis was sure the man was crying now. “I wasn't here, all right?”

Lewis left. He didn't know where to find Ignacio. Had it been the evening he could have gone to the Best Western and asked Ernesto. He remembered that Ignacio for a while lived in Arroyo Azul.

He made his way back to his truck. It was already noon. The sun was high and it was hot. He longed to be up on the mountain. He wondered if all of this would go away if he just ignored it.

He pulled from the parking lot and drove north out of town, then east to Arroyo Azul. The land was beautiful out there, a small valley green and dotted with little places. Whites hadn't moved into it yet because they were afraid of the Mexicans who were poor and who drove low-riders and played their music loud.

Lewis stopped in front of an adobe house with two junk cars on blocks beside it. An old sway-backed horse was tied to a tree with a rope around its neck. The horse looked up from its nibbling at the grass when Lewis pulled up, then put its head down again. A man was haying a field across the road. Lewis thought he had the right house. He knocked on the door.

A dog barked, then appeared, running full speed round the corner of the house. It was a Doberman and Lewis was not pleased to see him.

“Nice boy,” Lewis said.

The dog stood in the yard, between Lewis and his car, and barked, standing tense and ready. Lewis knocked again.

A teenage girl opened the door. She was pulling a robe closed about her small body.

“Does Ignacio Nunez live here?” Lewis asked.

The girl was groggy from sleep. “Yes, but he's not here.”

Lewis looked at her face. “Are you Ignacio's wife?” he asked, though he didn't believe it.

The girl laughed. “He's my father,” she said and she tilted her head down and looked up at him in that teenager way.

“Do you know where your father is right now?”

“At work.”

“Can you tell me where he's working?”

She leaned against the door and rubbed her temple. “He's—” She thought while she spoke. “—putting a roof on a barn. That's what he told me.”

“Where?”

She sighed. “I think he's over at San Luis. A man named Rubens, something like that.”

“Thank you,” Lewis said. “You have a very good memory.”

The girl smiled weakly, unimpressed by the flattery, and started to close the door.

“Could you call your dog?” Lewis asked.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Mala.” The dog ran by Lewis and into the house. She closed the door without another word or look.

Mala
, Lewis thought as he got into his truck, Spanish for bad. He wanted to get Mala the dog and take it to see Doctor Peabody.

Lewis knew the Rubens place. It was a small ranch. He drove by pastured cattle with yellow ear-tags. Calves trotted after their mothers. Lewis could see where men were working on a barn.

Ignacio was on top, trying to line up a new piece of tin against an old seam. Lewis waved up to him, but Ignacio didn't wave back. He did not seem pleased to see Lewis.

Ignacio scooted across the roof to the ladder and climbed down. “Hello, Lewis,” he said. “What brings you out here?”

“I'm looking for you.”

“Yes?” Ignacio unhitched his leather tool belt and let it rest over the side of the pickup bed.

Lewis let out a deep breath. “I don't even know how to start this.”

Ignacio looked at him and seemed to anticipate the subject. “Then don't,” he said and he turned away just as Salvador had.