Falling Down Read online

  The bench where I’d been sitting, remembering.

  Tohono Chul is a nonprofit Tucson park, dedicated to showing and preserving Sonoran Desert vegetation. Spread out over forty-nine acres, with a completely remodeled parking lot, many looped trails, and a lot of new fencing.

  Some years before, the night security guard had been inexplicably shot five times in the head, and the park was now marginally less accessible. Most of the fencing would be easy to get over for anybody determined. Mostly, I realized, the fencing just kept out random night visitors like sexually active teenagers or the stray large dog, but not bobcats or coyotes.

  I’d used the park five years before because I could always guarantee privacy when talking to clients. Back then, I rarely met clients face-to-face because I didn’t like them seeing me.

  I remember being nervous, back then. I remember I couldn’t find the water fountain where, bending over to drink from the spray, I’d fingered my belt pouch, wanting to take another Ritalin or two, just to keep me focused.

  Sliding the zipper open and closed, open and closed, trying to resist the pills. I did that a lot, back when I was addicted to meth.

  But I’d always remember that day when I first met Ana Maria Juarez, which led to Tigger’s murder.

  I could hit replay and run the vivid memory.

  Tigger was out of sight as I walked up to the pincushion cactus ramada. The circular roof was interlaced with twigs and branches, woven into a grid of plastic-coated green wire. A semicircular concrete bench provided shelter for those who wanted to escape the hot summer sun. I could hear traffic noises from Oracle and Ina roads, but nobody sat on the bench.

  Tigger’s real name was Tigist. She was Ethiopian, scarcely five feet tall, with luminous kohl-blackened eyelids and intense ocean-green irises, the eyes set deep over a long, slightly hooked nose in the exact middle of a thin face. Since few people remembered how to pronounce her name, she’d started calling herself Tigger after reading a Pooh book to her son. And the name fit, since both the fictional and the real Tigger were always nervous, excited, bouncing up and down with relentless energy.

  Tigger was a Fugitive Recovery agent. She tracked down bail-skippers, arresting them without any help except assorted stun guns. I’d never met a client without having Tigger look them over first, then staying out of sight during the meeting so she could track the client back to a vehicle and make sure it left before I did. It’s part paranoia, I tell you, but when I did mostly illegal things with computers, I had fixed rules about security.

  And the first rule was to make sure that clients were exactly who they claimed to be. I still follow that rule.

  Another rule was to avoid letting clients know things about me, which was why I disliked personal meetings. I’m a lot more social now, but back then few people knew what I did. I remember when Tigger told me from her microphone that the women had moved.

  I remember what they looked like, the colors, the fingernails, what they wore, and how they spoke.

  I’d walked along curving dirt paths toward guidepost twenty-six, where a trapezoidal concrete table sat underneath another circular ramada.

  Two women sat on a concrete bench along one side of the table. One of them toyed with a folded sheet of paper and a yellow legal pad. Seeing me approach, she stood up quickly, her eyes darting in all directions to see if we were alone. She was near my height, but slim and small-boned, with shoulder-length brown hair pulled back by twin brown barrettes. She wore yellow spandex runners’ pants and a pale strawberry North Face tank top, with spaghetti straps over bare arms and shoulders. Veins popped along her well developed arms, and her body looked muscled and taut in that way which only comes from working out with free weights.

  “Laura?” I heard somebody say. “Excuse me?”

  This had to be Mary Emich, seeing the old woman, the walker, confused, mistaking her for me.

  “Over here,” I said.

  A tall blond woman hurried toward me, not running, but stepping quickly and with purpose. Wearing a sleeveless cotton pullover, with a small hula girl on the front, bits of yarn hanging loose for the hula skirt. A short above-the-knees Madras skirt, the kind you wash and ring out by hand to dry in the sun. Lightly streaked and dyed-blond hair bunched loosely and carelessly in the back with a huge butterfly clip and

  two dangling earrings, wood, parrots

  designer sunglasses

  another pair of sunglasses tucked into her hair

  a tiny patch of green dye, where she parted her hair in front

  “I’m Mary.” Held out a hand, a huge smile over white teeth. “And your name is…what is your name?” She fumbled through a stack of folders and pads held under her left arm, trying to be casual, taking off the sunglasses and sticking them up into her hair without realizing she now had two pair up there already. A real or a feigned casualness, asking me my name. She knew who I was, but I measured her fear in her offhand, seemingly forgetful question.

  “Laura,” I said. “Laura Winslow.”

  A clanking sound, the old woman moving around.

  “Let’s go to the grotto,” Mary said.

  A half-moon-shaped pond, set against an unfinished wall, probably from the original property. Water bubbled from uncapped pipes and something intensely blue glittered and disappeared when I looked into the pond.

  “Puppyfish,” I said to myself. Knelt to look. “I call them puppyfish.”

  Close up, the pond alive with small, silvery fish, barely two inches long, each banded with half a dozen or more stripes of brilliant blue.

  “They don’t live very long,” Mary said. “But they’re so beautiful.”

  I read the placard aloud. “‘Desert Pupfish develop quickly, sometimes reaching full maturity within two or three months. Although their average life span is short, some survive more than a year.’”

  She giggled.

  Actually, while reading, I looked sideways as best I could, trying to read Mary Emich and contrasting what I saw with what I’d memorized from her résumé. The giggle stopped, she turned in profile, a strong face, strong profile, somehow reminding me of Crazy Horse, or not really the man, but that big statue being carved in the hills near the four presidents.

  “That green spot,” I said. “Right above your forehead. Does that glow in the dark, or what?”

  “Oh.” She touched it, I realized she’d forgotten it was even there.

  “A dye stick, supposed to be gold. It’ll wash out tonight.”

  I stood suddenly, faced her directly.

  Several inches taller than me, which put her about five-foot-ten. As tall and slim as a Kansas cornstalk with curves. Her smile returned quickly. A brilliant smile, nodding her head as though to some song, both pairs of sunglasses falling from her hair. She picked them up, not at all embarrassed.

  “Behind your back,” she said. I turned around, confused. “No. Under your shirt. Is that a pistol?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  My shirt must have ridden up in the back when I knelt to look at the puppyfish. So she’d seen my Beretta, so she’d been reading me also.

  “Most people don’t notice it,” I said.

  “Nine millimeter,” she said. “Glock?”

  “Beretta,” I said shortly.

  “I’ve fired the 92FS, but that looks totally different. What model Beretta?”

  She cocked her head, a combination of seriousness and curiosity.

  “A new model,” I said. “A Px4 Storm.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “No. No, you can’t. I came here about computers, not handguns.”

  “I shoot a lot,” she said. “There’s a target range down off Flowing Wells. Inside a gun store. I go there two or three times a week. But I never heard of that model Beretta.” I must have looked skeptical. “Even from a few feet away, I can see there’s a very different back-strap. What else?”

  “Slide stop can be either standard or low profile. Magazine release button comes in different si
zes, depending on small or large grip. And I’ve got this rigged out for constant action, with a spurless hammer.”

  “Magazine capacity?”

  “Seventeen,” I said. “But I could extend it to twenty. This is just a little weird, two women talking about pistol tech specs. How come you know guns?”

  “I grew up on a farm. Well. My family owned a farm, for a while, but the bank foreclosed, so we all trooped off as seasonal pickers. You name it, we picked it. Everybody had guns of some kind.”

  “I thought seasonal pickers were, well, from Central America.”

  “We were poor. Apples, pears, grapes, tomatoes, cherries, walnuts, we traveled all around the circuit. But this is Tucson. Why do you carry a pistol?”

  “If you think I’m that kind of PI,” I said, “if you think that I’m available for personal security, or a bodyguard…I’m not really the person you need.”

  She fingered a medal at her throat, dangling from a silver chain. A religious medal of some kind, probably Catholic. I don’t know much about religion.

  “No,” she said finally. “I don’t need a bodyguard right now. I just need your help.”

  “For what, Mary?”

  “Will you? Help?”

  Not begging or pleading, not defensive, just an outright question, almost matter-of-fact, her mouth starting a smile, then just open.

  I tell you, she had this…honesty? Directness? Openness? For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I liked her so immediately.

  “You are Laura?” she said.

  “Yes. I am.”

  Confirming it to herself, the smile gone, replaced by lips closed and curved down gracefully, like a sad clown’s smile.

  Liked her, yes, I liked her for whatever reason, but I wasn’t in the park to find friends, and that was the problem.

  “Listen. Mary. I have to be clear about something. I’m seeing you as a favor. For my friend Bob Gates. You talked to him, he gave you my name. That’s pretty much all you have to know, I mean, know about why I’m here. But I don’t have much time. I should really be driving up to Window Rock right now.”

  “Are you Navajo?” she said.

  “Hopi,” I said. “Half. Please. Don’t ask about my going up to the rez.”

  “I’m Lakota Sioux. Half. But…why won’t you help me?”

  “Mary,” I said. “I don’t really know what you want. Something about maras? That’s all Bob told me. Something on a computer?”

  “Mr. Gates told me that you were a computer expert. I Googled your company.” Reaching for one of the hundred stray ends of paper sticking out of the packet of folders and pads. “So you know about…hacking?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, uh, I don’t understand computer security that well, you know how people hack into your system? You do that kind of work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Illegal hacking?”

  The smile, back again. This time, too bright. She giggled, something I knew a lot about. Giggling around a stranger. When I first started spending a lot more time around strangers, I hung by walls, sat on couches, and giggled because I didn’t yet know how to interact. Mary Emich’s giggles sounded like she’d laughed all her way through life. This woman, I thought, is wrapped way too tight.

  “Yes,” I said shortly. “But I don’t do anything illegal.”

  “But you know people that, what do you call it, um…create identities?”

  “Fake ID?”

  “More than that.”

  “You mean…” I said, understanding where she was going and already backing away from her—in fact I took two steps back and nearly stumbled into the grotto pond—“you mean,” I said, “change somebody’s identity.”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose?”

  “There’s a girl,” Mary said. Shook away the thought of a tear, I wondered if she was wrapped too tight to cry, I sure knew what that was like.

  “Your daughter.”

  “She’s not really my daughter. Here.” She pulled a teenager’s pink diary from inside a folder. “I wrote in this, I couldn’t find anything else to write in. This is the girl’s story. Somebody almost killed her once. I’m afraid…she’s Mexican, she’s illegal. I’m afraid, with what showed up on one of our computers, Laura, I’m afraid somebody knows about her and wants to hurt me. Hurt her.”

  She held out the diary.

  “Read this,” she said.

  But I sidestepped away, slung my bag over my shoulder. Ready to leave.

  “I can’t help you,” I said. “I won’t help you. Not with a fake ID.”

  “Please,” Mary said. Iron in that word, pure steel.

  I remembered what Sandy told me about Mary’s astrological chart.

  Awash in nervous energy always on the move both physically and mentally. No way are either of you ever, ever, ever going to make a snap decision. It just isn’t in your makeup.

  “At least, okay, I can look at whatever is on your computer,” I said. “What is it that makes you so afraid?”

  “The maras,” Mary said. “They’re inside the park.”

  Instinctively, I looked around. She put a hand on my shoulder.

  “No. I mean, there’s nobody here. No real person. It’s on a website.”

  “Maras,” I said. “Until yesterday, I’d never heard of them. Now everybody wants to tell me about them. Is it a threat, have you been threatened?”

  “Not really. No.”

  “Your daughter, this girl,” holding up the pink diary, “has she been threatened?”

  Ah! I thought.

  “How old is she?”

  “I’m not sure. Fourteen, fifteen?”

  “Was she a heroin mule?”

  That staggered her, she reeled against the sign describing the pupfish, she shuffled her papers, she looked everywhere but into my eyes. “How did you know that?” she said.

  “A lucky guess.”

  “Just hearing about you,” she said, “just meeting you and your Beretta,” she said, “I don’t think you make guesses of any kind.”

  “Another case,” I said finally. “And it was really an educated guess. Is that part of why I’m here?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You’re kinda hard to pin down, Mary Emich. Was the girl a heroin mule?”

  “Yes. Once,” she said. “At least once. And I can’t let it happen again.”

  “You asked about whether I could create new identities.”

  “Yes.”

  “For your daughter.”

  “For the girl, yes.”

  “And?” Stunned at my insight. “You want a new identity for yourself?”

  Mary fingered her religious medal, kept her eyes on me, nodding.

  “If that’s what it takes,” she said. “Yes. I’ll give up my whole life here. We’ll go somewhere, we’ll start as a mother and her daughter.”

  “And if they find you then?”

  She stepped off the path, bent down to what looked like a dead twig, thrust in the ground and surrounded by a circle of foot-high chicken wire. The ID tag said NIGHT BLOOMING CEREUS, but soil fragments blurred the Latin name. A few yards away, she knelt beside a little legume vine with half-inch magenta flowers against a background of dark green leaves.

  “The flowers will open a bit in the late afternoon,” Mary said. “When it cools down. Galactia wrightii. The flowers shine brightly, once they open. Our Curator of Plants says…this is a great landscaping plant for people who work days, because it is at its best as they return home. The vines will form a low mound or climb if a shrub or trellis is provided to probably four or six feet.”

  She stood up.

  “Mr. Gates told me what you do best. You find people. Is that what you meant? That somebody like you, a scalp hunter, no, a bounty hunter, you’d find me even with a new identity.”

  “Yes. Eighty percent certain.”

  “Eighty percent. So you can fail.”

  “To find somebody?”


  “To find somebody, yes.”

  “With a new identity, a false identity?”

  “Yes.”

  My cell rang. Caller ID showed it was Bob Gates.

  “Let me check if Ken Charvoz is here. I’ll be right back.”

  “What?” Mary said, when I disconnected. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re so emotionally honest,” I said finally. “If I wanted to, I’d find you. They, whoever they are…they would, too. And what would you do then?”

  “Then? If they still find me,” she said. “Then I’ll get a gun.”

  “And then?”

  “I’d do anything to protect this girl,” she said finally. “I’m a complete pacifist. I can’t stand senseless violence. But, to protect this girl, I’d do anything.”

  “Even if you had to shoot somebody?”

  “Even if I had to kill somebody. Yes. If that’s God’s plan. Yes. It would…it would be the end of my life, as I know it. But Ana Luisa’s life is more important. She’s the future.”

  “I’ve never met anybody quite like you,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Mary said.

  “Like I said. You’re so…so…emotionally honest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re not so different,” I said. “I’m not sure about God’s part in anything. But you and I, as people, we’re really not so different.

  “I asked what you would do to protect your child. You said you’d kill.”

  “If that’s truly God’s plan,” she said. Hand on her religious medal, hiding it between thumb and index finger, I couldn’t see what saint she admired, who would protect her, and why God would approve killing.

  “Yes,” she said. Defiant, sad, determined. “Wouldn’t you do the same?”

  8

  “Did you know?” I shouted into my cell.

  “Know?” Gates said.

  “Did you know?”

  “What? Laura, what are you talking about?”

  “The girl.”

  “Girl? Laura, what? I give up.”