A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (38 page)

     
She shook her head, and he glanced at her drink, then proceeded to pour himself a shot of eighteen-year-old cognac. He foamed the golden alcohol with a blast of soda. Then he walked over to her, his fringed bulk oddly compatible with all the stark modern whiteness, the arctic decor. He touched her shoulder, sat on a couch, and downed two thirds of his drink. "Back in Texas, Grandma Teague used to say, Shit and fall back in it."

     
Sylvia raised one eyebrow. She realized she was tucked deep into the egg-shaped chair, legs crossed, arms wrapped around her body. Her eyes seemed trapped by the flickering gold and silver light display; sunset over urban landscape.

     
"The show's amazing when the sun hits the mountain above Juárez." Teague's voice broke like a choirboy's. He coughed, finishing the last of the cognac with a grunt. He heaved himself off the couch, walked unsteadily to the bar, and refilled his snifter. As a snack, he popped a handful of stuffed green olives between his lips.

     
Sylvia forced herself to make eye contact with the lawyer, noticing for the first time how his graying hair curled around his ears. His skin was tanned with a ruddy cast. Beneath his trademark bead-trimmed leather jacket, his white shirt was missing a button. His bolo tie had slipped askew. She unwrapped her arms and leaned toward him.

     
She said, "The snake-woman." She slurred the word, and he looked puzzled. She tried again. "Your tie. The Aztec goddess . . ."

     
He nodded. "You mean Coatlicue? The bloodthirsty lady herself. When the Spaniards conquered Mexico, they really did a job on the Indians. They wiped out the old temples, but"—he overemphasized the conjunction—"they didn't wipe out the beliefs."

     
"Where did you get it—your tie?"

     
He shrugged. "A knickknack from Noelle. She's crazy about Coatlicue." He took another pull on his cognac, and a glint flashed in his eye. "Want to go to bed?"

     
Her eyebrows shot skyward.

     
He was humoring a tired child. "How long has it been since you've slept, Sylvia?"

     
She blinked, spoke too brightly. "I just slept for six hours straight."

     
"Excellent. And before that?"

     
"Yesterday. No. Two days ago."

     
"Shouldn't you get horizontal?"

     
"I
am
horizontal." She gripped the chair that threatened to swallow her up.

     
"Try your bed. One thing about the Eagle's Nest—guest accommodations are first-class."

     
Sylvia stood, swaying in a nonexistent breeze. She turned her back on Teague and carried her glass to the bar. With a flourish, she poured herself a second shot of vodka, then she added another dash. Using silver tongs, she collected two cubes of ice from a sweating silver bucket. It
looked
like silver. It probably was silver.

     
Sylvia leaned her hips against the bar. "How the hell do you stand it?"

     
Teague didn't answer, and she pushed. "How can you work for her?"

     
"Time to eighty-six you on the martinis."

     
She sipped vodka, shrugged.

     
"Right. I'll make this short. Noelle has been granted temporary status as Serena's foster parent."

     
Sylvia didn't even blink. "That was fast."

     
"Until the paternity issue is resolved, it's the most logical solution—"

     
"Is it?" She let her gaze travel the room. She was surrounded by all the trappings of civilized power—aesthetic grace, stateliness, wealth. And absolute control.

     
Noelle Harding controlled Serena's destiny. The Harding empire was a billion-dollar enterprise. If Noelle wanted press coverage, she got press coverage. If she wanted to take a young, innocent child under her wing—a child who might be her own long-lost niece—then who would stop her?

     
Teague frowned at her. "Certainly you agree this will serve the child's needs."

     
"No." Sylvia stood, suddenly rigid. "I don't agree. But Noelle gets what she wants." She turned her back on Teague.

     
Behind glass, the city was aflame. Beneath the darkening sky, buildings shimmered in dying sunlight. The Rio Grande was a golden ribbon wrapped around El Paso and Juárez and its neighboring barrio of Anapra.

     
Sylvia's tone bit the evening air. "What's the deal, Big Jim? How does it all work? It's something to do with the drug trade, isn't it? Did Noelle get pulled in when she was too young to know better?"

     
Teague said, "I can't answer that."

     
But he
knew
the answer—Sylvia could hear that admission in his voice. The fight went out of her.

     
The lawyer watched her for a few moments. Then he walked across the room, stopping only when he was inches from Sylvia. She looked up to see his eyes, and she could smell the cognac on his breath, feel his breath on her cheeks. He leaned down, even closer, and murmured, "Does arbitrage ring a bell?"

     
"What?" Sylvia knew she'd disappointed him because he shook his head and pulled away abruptly.

     
He said, "Maybe I'll see you up in Santa Fe one of these days."

     
She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Big Jim Teague was gone.

S
YLVIA SLEPT FOR
two more hours. She awoke, stretched on the white couch, in darkness. Her body had stiffened painfully. Her neck ached. She stood unsteadily. Night had closed around the Harding Building. Groggily, she made her way to Serena's room. The nurse greeted her with a finger to moued lips. Sylvia nodded, stood over the sleeping child for several minutes, then retreated to her guest room.

     
She sat on the bed and studied the telephone's myriad buttons. At the moment Line 2 was blinking; she chose Line 4 and dialed the number Matt had given her. A man answered, "Pitkin here."

     
Sylvia said, "Dale? This is Sylvia Strange. Matt told me—"

     
Pitkin interrupted her with anxious questions: Was she hanging in okay? Was the child all right? Did she need anything? After only seconds of his sympathetic inquiries, Sylvia felt better. She asked for news.

     
Pitkin said, "You didn't hear this from me, but the latest word is the Mexican cops got your guy—Lorenzo Santos Portrillo—Renzo. He's got a hundred aliases."

     
A.k.a. Jesús
. "Who did he work for?"

     
Pitkin hesitated—just for an instant. Then he said, "Ditto what I said before—he worked for Amado Fortuna.
And
for the
federales
."

     
Sylvia believed he'd also worked for Noelle Harding. But she had no proof—only gut instinct. She spoke slowly. "Dale? Do you know where I am?"

     
His voice was suddenly wary. "Eagle's Nest. The Harding penthouse—"

     
"I need to know something—"

     
"Sylvia, let's talk about this later. You'll be fully debriefed at some point."

     
She knew the lines might be tapped, and Pitkin did, too. But she pressed. "I've made a connection. I need to know . . . this Lorenzo, was he working for someone else, too?"

     
"I've told you everything I know, Sylvia. I'm just some poor schmuck at E.P.I.C."

     
Neither of them interrupted the long silence until she sighed, asking only, "Is he dead?"

     
Pitkin spoke slowly, probably trying to keep her from revving. "The Mexicans say yes, but they refuse to turn the body over to our guys. They're haggling over extradition issues—it's a political firecracker."

     
Sylvia took in the information. She was suddenly disoriented—spooked by the unfamiliar room and the shadows. She was hungry.

     
She said, "I haven't heard from Matt—"

     
"Sorry. He left a message with me; I should've told you right away. Urgent business. He and Vargas are busy for the next few hours. He said he'd find you early tomorrow morning."

     
"Urgent business?" Sylvia knew she was going to crack.

     
Pitkin must've heard it, too—he cleared his throat. "Hey, Dr. Strange?"

     
"Yeah?"

     
"Out there today—you did good."

     
She thought he'd hung up, but she still had the phone to her ear when she heard Dale Pitkin ask, "Do you remember Snow White?"

     
"The wicked stepmother." She held her breath. Pitkin wasn't talking about fairy tales.

     
"That's her. The one with the looking glass. If you don't watch out, you might miss the poisoned apple."

S
YLVIA HUNG UP
the telephone, reluctant to let go of Dale Pitkin. She'd never met the man, but she was already attached to him. He seemed decent and smart. Matt believed he was honest. And hadn't he given her what she needed—veiled confirmation that Noelle Harding was connected to the kidnapper? From the sound of Pitkin's voice, she knew he'd put himself at risk. And he'd warned her that she was at risk, too.

     
Maybe she was too exhausted to react properly to the warning; or maybe she just needed to think everything through—the complications and the consequences for the child and for herself. Noelle Harding wasn't going to throw her off the roof of the penthouse. But she could cause Sylvia enormous injury—all she had to do was bar her from Serena.

     
Sylvia lay back on the bed, then immediately pushed herself up. She felt sick to her stomach—and she was starving. She'd seen a massive refrigerator in the kitchen; she was craving a bologna sandwich. As she moved toward the door, she caught a whiff of her own sweat. She walked to a full-length mirror and stood with her hands by her sides. She looked like something the cat wouldn't bother to drag in—kitty would leave her out on the doorstep.

     
Ignoring the rumblings of her stomach—and a dim panic—she detoured into what looked like the bathroom. It was a small mirrored anteroom with three additional doors; she smacked her forehead on a mirror. She found the first door: sauna. Door number two opened onto what looked like a Japanese bathhouse. The Jacuzzi was humming. Soft blue lights glowed from a lap pool.

     
The third door offered access to a shower that was larger than Sylvia's office. She turned the jets to hot, stripped off her soiled clothes, and stayed under pulsing water streams until her muscles melted. Then she borrowed one of a half dozen swimsuits and dove into the salt-treated water.

     
As she began a series of laps, she let her thoughts dissolve like the liquid her body glided through. One lap, two, three . . . one breath, two, three . . .

     
Eventually, with her muscles measuring each familiar stroke, each kick, her mind settled into balance. What came to her was the ghostly image of swimming neck and neck with Noelle Harding. She was sleeping in the other woman's penthouse, wearing her clothes, swimming in her pool; as fatigue set in—and the laps surged past—it seemed only natural to imagine her life.

     
Noelle Wheeler had begun her existence as an abandoned child, an orphan whose only relative was a younger brother named Cash. She'd kept her family together—through years of deprivation, through the orphanage in El Paso, through loneliness and shame, through her own rise to power.

     
She'd done only what was necessary—what other lost children did: she'd put her knowledge of the streets to work. She'd hustled, she'd manipulated, she'd stolen—and she'd gotten herself noticed by Amado Fortuna or someone just like him.

     
And when her brother was accused of murdering the woman he loved, she had stood by him—becoming in his reflection a heroine, a savior, a martyr. For ten years playing the role of her lifetime. And why not? She'd sacrificed everything to keep her brother from following in her footsteps. She had been tough enough and ruthless enough so that he could remain innocent . . . so he could fall in love with a sweet young girl.

     
So he could pay back all her sacrifices by betraying her with Elena Cruz.

     
But that was something Noelle could never allow. It would have been easy to enlist the help of someone like Jesús—to manipulate him so he would eliminate the competition. The fact that her brother was convicted of the murder must have come as a shock. But with her brother on death row, she became a crusader—and she had Cash all to herself.

     
So where had Paco figured into the equation? Had he been involved in the murder of Serena's mother?

     
Sylvia broke the rhythm of her strokes, and she gulped air. She felt sick, shaky.

     
She remembered the lighthearted psych lecture she'd given Tomás Sanchez a lifetime ago about the narcissistic personality, about a soulless vampire who exists only by feeding on the lifeblood of the people around him . . . or her.

     
Trembling, she pulled herself from the water. She found a thick white terry robe draped over a hook and put it on.

     
Barefoot, she padded down the softly lit hallway toward the living room. She was halfway there when she caught a glimpse of shoulder-length hair and pale skin in the glass. For a moment, she thought she was viewing her own reflection—but the hair was too light, the body too rigid.

     
Noelle Harding was waiting for her on the verandah. Sylvia opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the wide balcony. Thirty stories above the city, the soft, warm wind had begun to clear away the worst of the smog. The bristling heat of the desert was finally backing off. Shimmering strands of light stretched for miles, alive like a million winking eyes. When she looked back at the penthouse, she saw she was almost directly outside the bedroom where Serena slept. The nurse was sitting stiffly in her straight-backed chair, reading a magazine with a small book-light clamped to the pages.