Falling Down Read online

  She knew, even before I jogged into her yard and lay on her massage table, she knew something was wrong. But Sandy never probed and pressured, never asked too many questions unless you gave her permission. If you’ve never been to an astrologer or a psychic, my friend, if you’ve never given yourself over to tarot readings or to Reiki, don’t jump to a quick dismissal.

  Sandy was my new Reiki master, after Georgia Roan told me that she’d not work with me unless I left my Beretta at home. Not wanting to do that, not wanting to feel less vulnerable without the Beretta, our relationship ended suddenly and it took me quite a while to find Sandy.

  Sandy places her palms on my shoulders. I lie on her massage table, but I could equally sit in a chair, or, and this is totally unfathomable to nonbelievers, I can be anywhere in the world and Sandy can connect.

  Reiki is not like a massage, where you fall asleep. Reiki attunements send you to such deep relaxation that your body sags, warmth spreads from the Reiki master’s touch, warmth radiates from the spot of physical contact.

  Sandy was my priestess, I was her altar.

  Or to come down from that soap opera feely-touchy way of talking, quite simply, Sandy had a power. Sandy had the power to give you relaxation. She also did traditional massage.

  This morning, I needed every kind of relaxation.

  Massage is a bond between giver and taker. If you don’t really communicate stress to your masseuse, you never get maximum relief. It’s as simple as that. Massage is also about pressure. Physical pressure, sure. Like you feel physical discomfort and the masseuse presses and pokes your body until it hurts good.

  A time of pure pleasure, a banishment of pain.

  But of course it’s only temporary.

  My cell rang. Thinking, believing that Nathan would call, I’d violated one of Sandy’s basic rules. Turn the cell phones off.

  “Nathan?” I said. Sandy frowned, shook her head.

  “No. It’s Bob Gates.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, Bob.”

  “Something’s just gone down,” he said.

  “I can’t deal with you now. Not right now.”

  “There’s a crime scene,” he said.

  “Absolutely no way.”

  “We’ll need to talk. Once I get some input, we’ll at least need to talk.”

  “When?”

  “Keep your cell on.”

  I disconnected.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here?” Sandy said. “Damn! Laura, your body just went ballistic. You, Laura, what’s wrong? Laura, just cry, sweetie, just cry it out.”

  She swiveled her body to cuddle behind me, her head sideways on my sweaty back, one hand stroking my forehead. We lay there together for so long I wondered if I was dreaming.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said finally.

  “Do you want to talk at all?”

  “I’ve got four hours to change my life,” I said.

  “Geez laweez. That’s kinda…kinda cosmic. You ever cross over? From one way of life to something different, something you’d not even imagined was out there?”

  “No. But. I’ve got to leave. I’m going over to Tohono Chul Park.”

  “I’ve got two clients there!”

  “Do you know Mary Emich?”

  “What are the odds?” Sandy said. “That I’d know both of you. So. What’s the story, is Mary Emich a friend?”

  “Never met her.”

  “Why are you seeing her?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Okay,” Sandy said. “Guess she’s not a friend of yours.”

  “Just somebody that needs help,” I said.

  Sandy gently laid her hands on my shoulders again.

  Relaxed, almost asleep. Wishing I hadn’t even mentioned Emich’s name. It’s the stress, my friend, the body wants to release its secrets in order to heal.

  “Help with what?”

  “Computers. Something. I don’t know, really, what she wants. Listen, Sandy. Actually, I don’t want any more clients right now.”

  “She comes here. Friend of hers from the park brought her. Peggy Hazard. Both of them lay out on the same table as you. So. Mary needs some help?”

  “I don’t want another client.”

  “All right.”

  “But I need another client.”

  “Laura, you’re so irrational today. We’re not going to solve anything, just let me tell you some things about Mary, then you decide what to do. You know Tohono Chul Park?”

  “You’ll see her, okay?”

  “Uhhh,” I said.

  “You just lied,” Sandy said. “I felt the aura.”

  “What’s she like? This Mary Emich.”

  “Just call the park. Ask for the director of Visitor Services.”

  “What’s she like?” I said again.

  “First, listen to her voice,” Sandy said. “Then you’ll know. But I’ve done her chart. I can tell you what I think.”

  Chart, meaning astrology chart.

  What a way to run a business, depending on the stars to tell you if a client is good or…or whatever.

  “Whatever use is that?” I said.

  “She’s a very complex, a very bright woman,” Sandy said.

  Launching into Mary Emich’s chart without blinking.

  “She’s got a hop-scotch mind and loves to engage in ping-pong conversations. Why do I say this? She’s a Libra, that’s an air sign, with her moon in Gemini. Another air sign.”

  I sat up on the table.

  “That’s gibberish,” I said.

  “Listen, just take it in, just…for god’s sakes, Laura. Just turn off your head for a while. Okay?”

  “I survive because of my head.”

  “Oh, puleeze,” she said. “You survive because you analyze with your head, you draw up an agenda of choices with your head, and your gut tells you the right choice. The only thing really private about your investigating is that you make your decisions, you keep your life bottled up inside, and you keep insisting that your head is what’s making the choices. Survival is here.” Thumping my gut, my heart. “Thinking is up here.” She laid a hand on my head. “It’s not up to me if you go see Mary Emich. You’ve got a whole lot more than another client on your mind. But I know Mary. Maybe you can help her.”

  I rummaged around in the clothes I’d removed, got the Beretta, laid it on the massage table.

  “What do you think about this?” I said.

  “It’s a gun.”

  “You look at it. Do you see protection? Violence? What?”

  “I see a tool,” Sandy said. “Shane said that. In the movie, he’s teaching little Joey how to quick-draw, and Joey’s mother tells Shane she doesn’t want guns. Shane says a gun is just another tool. I saw that movie when I was twelve years old. I talked about it with my dad, he said Shane was right. I loved my dad. So that’s what I thought then, that’s what I think now.”

  “Sandy. I’m going to see this woman, but I’m going to blow her off. Okay? Then I’m driving up north to find Nathan.”

  “Oops,” Sandy said. “Whoa! Major stress. Lover leaves you.”

  “Please. I won’t, I can’t talk about that right now.”

  “Okay. Mary Emich. Ascendant in Virgo, earth sign.”

  Determined to make me hear her out.

  “Libra and Gemini are what they call dual signs. Libra’s symbol, the scales of justice. Always seeking what is fair and balanced. Gemini. Twins. Off in two directions. Gathering information. So right off the bat, you have four people going in different directions. I’ll bet she never met a conversation she didn’t like but oh so charming. Next, let’s add the fact that both Gemini and Virgo are ruled by Mercury, the fastest-moving planet in the Zodiac.”

  “Stop,” I said. “You want me to see her? I’ll see her.”

  “Just let me add that Virgo Ascendant means she loves being helpful, also, when there is an abundance of Mercury in the chart, she could be awash in nerv
ous energy always on the move both physically and mentally.”

  “This is exhausting me,” I said.

  “That’s because it’s you writ all over.”

  “Me?”

  “Let. Me. State. This. Very. Plainly. No way are either of you ever, ever, ever going to make a snap decision. It just isn’t in your makeup.”

  “You talking to me?” My Robert De Niro impression.

  “The need to weigh everything,” Sandy said. “Every single thing. About a dozen times, and even then you might change your mind.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Where do you get this stuff?”

  “Birthdays.”

  “If I give you somebody’s birthday, you can…what do you call it?”

  “An astrology chart. Yes. You want advice about somebody?”

  “Maybe,” I said. Fishing in my bag, I handed her Kligerman’s info sheet.

  “Hey. What a hunk. This guy married?”

  “Nope. But he’s a cop.”

  “Okay. I’ll make up his chart. If. If you’ll promise not to blow off Mary until you talk to her.”

  “It’s a deal,” Sandy said. “Now get back on the table.”

  But after the massage, after I said goodbye, she held me with both arms. Not a hug, but hands on my upper arms, her arms extended, her eyes searching my face.

  “When you’re ready to do the work,” she said. “Call me any time.”

  “I’ll spend an hour with Mary Emich,” I said. “Then I’m done.”

  “Not with Mary. With yourself.”

  “I’ll do my own work,” I said shortly.

  “Ummm,” Sandy said. “You’re a private investigator. Out in the world, I have no idea whose privates you investigate. But if I’m wrong, and forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’m getting this aura from you about trouble with Nathan. If you ever need me, come by. If you ever need just to vent, I’m open twenty-four seven.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  Tohono Chul.

  An island of serenity inside a state of chaos.

  Where art and nature connect.

  I went there whenever I really really needed to be serene.

  I Googled the Park website.

  Director of Visitor Services.

  Mary Emich.

  Marketing

  Using one of my untraceable cell phones, I called the park’s central answering system, got switched to her voice mail.

  “Hi. Thanks for calling Mary Emich, the director of Visitor Services at Tohono Chul Park.”

  I waited through the rest of her message.

  A distinctive, clear, happy voice. Careful enunciation, more than a hint of an Irish lilt. I left a message, I’d be there later in the day, meet me in the grotto.

  I loved the grotto.

  I started to hang up, but a woman answered.

  “Who is this?” Mary Emich said.

  “A friend of Bob Gates.”

  “Yes, but…who are you?”

  “My name?” I said, the conversation going in a strange spiral.

  “I need to make sure,” Mary said. “I need to know you’re…” Sound of papers rustling. “Laura Winslow?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll be here today?”

  “Yes. But…what is this about?”

  “I can’t talk on the phone.”

  “Does it involve your daughter?” I said.

  A long, I mean, a really long silence.

  “She’s not my daughter,” Mary said finally. “But yes, it’s about a young girl. I want you to help me.”

  “Help you how?”

  “Keep us both alive.”

  “I don’t, what are you saying, what does that mean? Help keep you alive? I work in computers. That’s all I do.”

  Another call. The Cosmic ring, a triad that moved down a full note and then up and up. C. B. C. D. I’d set it to ring Cosmic for Bob Gates.

  “Wait,” I said to Mary, and disconnected. “Bob?”

  “You want to know about the maras?”

  “No. I do not want to know more.”

  “It’s an official request from TPD. You specifically. You’ve been requested.”

  “By who? For what?”

  He gave me an address.

  “Jordan Kligerman wants you to help us out.”

  “Help with what?”

  “Some men at a crime scene. They have, I don’t know what they’re called, some kind of computer phones. Plus all of our CSI photographers are at other scenes, so bring your Nikon.”

  “Bob. What’s this got to do with a bad cop? You know, what you came to see me about?”

  “For your ears only. One of the dead people was an undercover cop. The only person we’ve got inside the maras. Three years and change, he’s been working his way up the cartel as one of their money launderers.”

  “A white-collar guy?”

  “No. Another drone. Born in Guatemala, parents killed by the right-wing death squads. This guy’s one of the maras contacts with financial institutions. All done by computers, I don’t know, stuff bounces around the world, you can move millions without making eye contact.”

  “But if he’s dead, why me?”

  “They’re not all dead,” Bob said. “And there’s some kind of cell phone gadget, our people at the scene don’t know what to do with it.”

  “A cell phone gadget,” I said. Shaking my head.

  “Will you come?”

  Flip a coin

  Run the odds

  Make a decision

  I looked at the address

  “Meet you there in twenty,” I said.

  “Not me. Lead detective’s a friend. And listen. You don’t have to give an answer about joining TPD, but I’d like just to introduce you to Kligerman.”

  “I’m leaving today.”

  “Tonight. Late evening. Just for a drink.”

  “Is it a bad crime scene?”

  “You’ll need a drink afterwards,” he said finally, and disconnected.

  6

  “They came in front and back,” Renteria said.

  Wanting some of the Cuervo Gold on the table beside him.

  A crime scene tech had already coated the bottle with black fingerprint powder and lifted off the prints. Renteria, stretching out shaking fingers, reaching for the bottle, got some of the powder on his hand and jerked the hand away, trying to rub off the blackness.

  “Been printed before,” the lead detective said to me. “He knows what it’s all about.” A very patient man, somewhere in his fifties.

  We waited.

  Renteria sat on the white plastic patio chair. Knees clamped together, trying to stop his thighs shaking, head in hands.

  “They came in front and back,” Renteria said again.

  “So you told us,” lead detective said.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the detective. “I don’t know your name.”

  He thumbed a card from a gold case, handed it to me.

  “Christopher Kyle. Numbers at the precinct. And my pager.”

  “Chris,” I said. Took the card.

  “Christopher.”

  Skin wattles drooping along his neck, like he’d lost at least fifty pounds in recent months. Saw me eying his canes.

  “Hip replacements,” he said. “They offered me retirement, but I said I was too old to retire.”

  Wraaaaaack. Wraaaaaack.

  Cactus wrens chattering on the roofing tiles above us, but otherwise it was quiet out here on the patio.

  No bodies out here, no blood.

  “These GPS units?”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Renteria said.

  Meant to be a curse, or a scream, instead came out just a whisper, he’d gone past his defense positions.

  We knew it. He knew it.

  We just sat there, waiting.

  “This lady here,” Kyle said. Cut his chin toward me. “She knows all about computers. And things like that.”

  “Why is she taking my pictu
re?”

  Clatter from the wrens, two of them on the aluminum rain gutters.

  “Well, she does that, too. She does forensics, she takes pictures, she looks at anything we think is a computer.”

  “It’s just a cell,” Renteria said. “Just a cell phone.”

  “With a cloned chip.” Kyle scrunched his head at me.

  “Phony,” I said to him. I’d taken the back off, ran a diagnostic with my laptop. “Stolen number. Untraceable.”

  “Ain’t mine,” Renteria said. “They didn’t give me one.”

  “Is that why you’re still alive? Because you didn’t have a cell phone?”

  “Shit, man, I hear that front door crash open, I crawl under the sink.”

  “A GPS unit,” I said. “Global Positioning Satellite.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “C’mon. Ramon?” Kyle said. “That’s right? Ramon Renteria? That’s the name you gave us?” Didn’t wait for an answer. “Ramon. That his woman and kid in there? Your friend’s woman? Their child?”

  “I don’t know them, man.”

  “How old’s the child? That baby child?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “I’d say, four years old. Tops. And the woman?”

  “Not his woman, okay? Not his kid, okay?”

  “So. Ramon. You know the guy well enough, you know it’s not his woman or his four-year-old child?” Renteria said nothing. “Are they just hired out from Rent-A-Family?” Head still down, Renteria’s eyes cut to Kyle for an instant.

  “Drug couriers,” Kyle said to me. “Women and kids, they sell space in their bodies for a day. Drug mules. Swallow balloons of heroin, bring a kid along to look like a family. I go into the bathroom, Ramon, I’m gonna find some laxatives? Well, I’m here for drug smuggling. You’re a suspect for a triple, Ramon. Three people dead. Your friend in there. His jacket’s probably loooong and thick. Once we got him all ID’d, multiple multiple drug busts. Jail time, county time, prison, his friends, their jackets also an inch thick. Soon as we find out your real name, we’ll know that you’ve got a jacket.”

  “It’s a cell phone, okay?” Renteria said. “It ain’t mine. I don’t even know how to use it.”

  “Back to whoever came in. Front and back.”

  “Pendejo!” Renteria said. “I’ve told you about that a dozen times, I’m not telling you again.”