The Lies that Bind (31 page)

He sipped at the beer. “You did a good job for her, Nellie.”

“I guess,” I said. Martha, who'd played the part of a woman addled by Halcion, had had enough rattled moments herself to be convincing. She'd won the legal game, and one part of me—the lawyer part—had to admire her for it. “What do you think?” I asked them. “Is it worse to kill somebody when you're under the influence or sober?” It's a question I've never been able to answer.

“Sober,” said Emilio. “It's worse when you know what you're doing. I always thought I was sober when I pulled the trigger in Vietnam, but I could have been wrong.”

“Under the influence,” said Cindy. “It's so irresponsible. You could kill anybody at all when you're loaded.” She sighed. “I should go to Mother; she'll need me now.”

“Why?” asked Emilio. “She got off, didn't she?”

“Yeah,” said Cindy. “But she won't see it that way. She'd think any penalty was unjust. Life is so much easier when you get along with her, but no matter how you slice it, your mother is your mother. When she suffers, so do you. When she gets older, so do you. When she dies, some of you gets buried too. You have to hope you get a good one, because right or wrong, good or bad, there's a part of you that needs to love your mother. You're connected to her by a cord you'll never be able to sever.”

Cindy knew what was at the end of her cord, but what was at the other end of mine? A woman at the wheel of a convertible? A grasping tentacle? A black hole? Even Los Desaparecidos make themselves felt, sending signals like the ones amputees receive from their phantom limbs.

Cindy stood up and put her hand on Emilio's shoulder. “Mother was terrible to you, Emiliano,
and
she lied to you, Neil. I know that, but I have to go.”

He put his hand on top of hers. “Don't worry about it.”

“Do what you have to, Cindy,” I said.

After she left, Emilio and I sipped at our beer. “Have a smoke if you want,” he said. “It doesn't bother me.”

“Okay.” I lit up. For lack of an ashtray, I dropped the match in the empty lime dish. “Cindy is pretty forgiving.”

Emilio shrugged. “Considering that none of us is perfect and every one of us is gonna die, what else is there to be?”

There wasn't much to say after that, so I put my cigarette out, finished my Tecate and went home to La Vista.

******

The Kid came for dinner, stopping by the parking lot on his way in to leave a couple of tacos for La Bailarina. After she came back, they had picked up where they left off. He gave her the food; she kept her pride and her distance. Martha's sentence was a victory of sorts, but I wasn't feeling any pheromones or power. The Kid and I argued about nothing at all and everything. The tacos were not hot enough, the beer was not cold enough, someone had promised to buy limes and forgotten. When we'd finished eating and I cleaned up by throwing the wrappers away, we got into bed and tried to resolve the tension.

Something woke me later—the wind, maybe, rattling a leaf or a branch against the window. Winter was in the wind, and snow would be falling in the higher elevations. It was the hour the infomercials come on TV, when the secure and the steady are fast asleep, when the man in dark glasses plugs God and the fat boy dances in the street, when even the homeless have found a den somewhere and burrowed into it for the night. I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans, a sweater and running shoes, went to my purse, took out all I had, five twenties, put them in an envelope, went outside and shut the door behind me. The moon sat on the horizon like a half-full cup. The air smelled of piñon burning, and I could see the shape of my breath. In the medium distance eighteen-wheelers crisscrossed the Big I. In the near distance, La Vista's parking lot, La Bailarina's van was in place.

I walked across the lot and looked in through a space where the curtains didn't meet. There was enough light to see her curled up in the back like a sack of old clothes. There's no pride or pretense or bravado in sleep, and she looked like what she was—vulnerable and sad. She might be a woman who found herself somehow without a job or a man in midlife. She might also be one of those reckless women who'd cut the cord and committed herself to the lonesome highway. If she had, did she ever wish she could find the way back? Was she too ashamed or too weak or too sad or too proud? I took the envelope
from
my pocket, folded it and stuck it under the windshield wiper. “Don't blow it all in one place,” I said. I rapped on the window so she'd know it was there and get it before someone else did.

I went back inside, took off my clothes, got into bed, closed my eyes and turned the headlights on my own life. I saw a bend in the highway. The high beams made a long arc that landed on a woman in midflight. I put my foot on the brake, slowed down and took a good look. It was one of those nights when people reveal just what they are capable of. The woman stopped running, turned to face the light, and her hair fell down around her shoulders. Her eyes glittered, red and blank like the eyes of animals you come across in the road at night. She was no longer laughing or at the peak of her power. Her hair had turned gray, and her chin and breasts were showing the sag of gravity's pull. Like everyone else who lives long enough, she was growing old. She began to shrivel under the high beams' glare. Her shoulders hunched over, her knees bent. She put up a hand to protect herself from the light, but she got small as a child anyway. What should have happened over thirty long years was taking place in a flash. She was losing her desire, her youth, her power to hurt or to nourish. “You have to make peace with what can't be resolved. I did what I had to. I'm sorry,” she said. There was nothing left in the highway, and the headlights went out.

I made a noise in my sleep or touched the Kid with my cold feet. He woke up, turned over and put his arm around me. “You have that dream again, Chiquita?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” I said.

THE END

Enjoy
a free preview of A N
EIL
H
AMEL
M
YSTERY
, #6

Parrot Blues

1

I
T BEGAN WITH
the sound of high-heeled shoes. It ended with the sound of a hand shuffling money, but that was many miles away. The heels clipped the sidewalk to a staccato beat. They were stilettos, maybe, or spikes, heels that left their impression on the pavement. A key turned in a lock, a dead bolt snapped from its chamber, a door swung open. There was a gasp and then a woman's angry voice asked, “What are
you
doing in here?”

“What do you think?” a man answered. “You're coming with…” He left the sentence unfinished, slurring his words from laziness, possibly, or drink.

“No, I'm not.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Stop it, you're hurting me.” A slap was followed by a thud, then the sound of wings beating furiously. Someone or something screeched.

“You can't take Perigee. Terrance will be livid.”

“Fuck Terrance. Ouch. Goddamn it. He bit me.” The laziness left the man's voice once he got bit.

“What did you expect?” the woman asked.

There was another, lighter thud. More wings began to beat, the screeching escalated; the cry of one annoyed individual became the cacophony of a pissed-off flock. It was a whirlwind of sound, but words floated to the top like feathers riding the airwaves. “Hello-o?” queried the voice of a tentative woman. “Call my lawyer,” demanded a deep-throated man. “I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too,” cackled the wicked witch of the West. “Start me talkin', babe, tell you everythin' I know,” growled a whiskey-soddened blues singer. “Pretty boy, pretty boy,” a new voice croaked. The next word, “
malinche,
” was a vindictive hiss.

“Move it,” said the man.

“I'm coming,” answered the woman. “Stop shoving me.”

The
cacophony stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The door slammed shut. Boot heels scuffed the pavement, mingling with the pointissimo of the high-heeled shoes, but the snap had gone out of that step. The cassette player whirred. I struck a match, lit a cigarette, blew out the match. My client, Terrance Lewellen, who was sitting on the other side of my desk, reached over and clicked off the cassette player. It was a sleek, black, expensive model that belonged to him. He took the cassette out and placed it on my desk.

“I made you a copy,” he said.

“That sounded like it was taking place in the next room.”

“I use a Marantz extended-play recorder; it's the best in the field.”

What field was that? Electronic surveillance? Bugging? Whatever you call it, it's illegal without the consent of the people involved.

“Actually,” my client continued, “the incident took place at the Psittacine Research Facility my wife runs at UNM.”

“Your wife wears high-heeled shoes to work?”

“My wife wears high-heeled shoes everywhere; her arches shrunk, so she can't wear anything but. Her name is Deborah Dumaine. She works with Amazon parrots and has taught them to do things no one ever believed parrots were capable of. If you ask them how many blue blocks are on a tray, they'll tell you—when they feel like it. They're smart. They're also first-class mimics. You have to watch what you say around an Amazon; you're likely to hear it repeated … over and over and over again.

“Ha. Ha.” Terrance Lewellen laughed a big man's double-barreled laugh. He wasn't a big man exactly—he was about five feet five inches tall, a few inches shorter than me, and I never wear high-heeled shoes. But he took up a lot of cubic space. His shoulders were broad, his belly big enough to hide his belt buckle. His hands had the thick, doughy shape of a bear claw pastry. His eyes were deep set and grayish green. They could twinkle when he laughed, glitter when he got mad, turn as opaque as one-way glass when he sat back and waited for a reaction. His shirt was undone a couple of buttons, revealing gray chest hair that didn't match his brown piece. It was a bad piece, but nobody ever sees a good one. It was the same hair that middle-aged actors and newscasters wear, not big hair, TV hair. If Terrance had gone natural, he might have looked distinguished. The piece made him look like a late-night infomercial salesman, which could have been exactly the effect he intended. Terrance was a successful businessman, a seasoned and wary corporate raider. He never revealed his hand if he didn't have to, and he didn't leave much to chance. He took out a cigar and lit up. I hate the smell of cigar smoke, but my own cigarette butt was burning in the ashtray, which limited my right to complain.

“Were those the Amazons screeching?” I asked.

“Yes. Deborah's grad students have let them get out of control. They're spoiled rotten.”

“
How many were talking?”

“It's hard to tell. One Amazon can do many voices, and many Amazons can do one voice. They sound just like people, they sound like dogs, they can sound like the dishwasher if they want to. That last parrot voice on the tape was Perigee, my male indigo macaw. The macaws are bigger and better looking, but they don't have the vocabulary of an Amazon and they're more likely to talk in their own voice than to imitate.”

“That was the one that said ‘
malinche
'?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“Malinche was the Indian girl who became Cortes's mistress and interpreter in the new world. There are those who believe she betrayed her people, and
malinche
means traitor to them. She's still a figure in pueblo Indian ceremonials.”

“How 'bout that?” Terrance Lewellen leaned back, stretched his legs and exposed a pair of scaly cowboy boots, expensive but ugly. Ostrich hide? I wondered. Snake? “The Amazons belong to Deborah's lab; the indigo macaws belong to me,” he continued. “When I got to the lab, Perigee was gone. He's one tough hombre and he put up a hell of a fight. Feathers were all over the floor.”

There was a sleek leather briefcase with a combination lock on Terrance's lap. He keyed in the combination and snapped the briefcase open, giving me a glimpse of his cellular phone. He took out a long, thin feather and handed it to me. I thought indigo was the color of jeans after they've been washed a few times, but the feather was a turquoise that was as deep and iridescent as the Sea of Cortez.

“It's a tail feather. Beautiful, isn't it?” asked Terrance.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Keep it.”

“Thanks.” I stood the indigo plume in an empty glass on my desk and it arced gracefully over the side, a hit of beauty whenever I needed a break from my sun-baked Albuquerque lawyer's life.

“The Latin name of the indigos is
Anodorhynchus leari,”
Terrance said. “They are extremely rare in captivity, damn near extinct in the wild and very, very valuable.”

Some people are collectors by nature, some are dispersers. My own personal motto is to never own anything you can't afford to lose; it's too much trouble. “Where did the indigos come from?” I asked Terrance.

“The Raso in Brazil.” His eyes sparked. “I cannot believe that Deborah allowed Perigee to be taken.” He smashed the fist of one large hand into the palm of the other.

“It didn't sound like she had a choice.”

“
She had the choice of not associating with Wes Brown, a worthless human being if ever there was one.”

“The voice on the tape?”

“That's him. Those were his boot heels, too. He grew up in Southern California, but he thinks he's a cowboy.”

Terrance, I knew, had grown up in West Texas, which gave him a license to wear boots. “Macaws have the bite of a snapping turtle,” he continued. “I hope Perigee got a chunk out of Wes Brown's hide.”