A Flower in the Desert (17 page)

“OTMs?”

“Sorry. Border Patrol lingo.” His pipe had gone out again. “Other than Mexican. Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans.” He thumbed his lighter, sucked at the flame. “No problem with the Mexicans. Border Patrol just VR's them—VR, that's voluntary return.” He puffed, waved away the smoke. “Gets them to sign an I-274, waive their right to an immigration appearance, and then ships 'em back across the border. A farce. Most of' em slip over the fence again an hour later. They know they're going to, and so does the Border Patrol.”

“What about the rest? The other than Mexican?”

“Bit more trouble there. They do
not
want to go back. Who could blame them? Salvador, give you an example, has a wretched track record when it comes to handling returned emigrants. Some of these poor people are arrested. Disappear, never heard from again. Some are simply shot on arrival. Simpler that way. Sets a nice example for the others, as well.”

“The INS knows that?”

“Course they do. Thing is, the INS likes to call these people illegal aliens. They're not. The Geneva Convention of 1948 forbids signatories—and the U.S. is a signatory—from returning refugees to a war zone. And if any country qualifies as a war zone, it's El Salvador. But of course this government, the United States government, has gone on record as saying that the government there is a fine, upstanding, peaceful democracy.”

He puffed at his pipe. “Which it isn't, of course. Basic fascist oligarchy. Fourteen families own everything, including the police and the army. Official government policy for dealing with the unruly countryside is
pacification.
Means the same thing there it used to mean in Vietnam.”

He puffed some more. “Fact is, under international law, all these refugees have a legal right to come here, and a legal right to stay here, until hostilities cease. The INS, by denying them that right, is the party that's acting illegally.”

“Does Sanctuary provide shelter for the kind of refugees you're talking about?”

He smiled. “Safe houses, you mean?”

I nodded.

“Official policy is to operate entirely within the law. And we do. As I say, legal aid, sponsorship, educating the public. But that's not to say that individuals within the organization mightn't stretch the law a bit. We discourage it, naturally, but—” He shrugged. “Some people see it as a matter of saving lives. Simple as that.”

“Was Melissa Alonzo,” I asked him, “ever involved in the movement of illegals?”

His eyebrows lowered and his lips frowned around the pipe stem. “Been talking to the FBI, have we?”

“Yeah. They talked to you?”

He nodded. “Fellow named Stamworth. Very smooth, very polite. Bit too smooth, I thought. He wanted to know the same thing.”

“When was he here?”

“End of September.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Absolutely not. Too visible. A celebrity's wife. Our spokesperson's wife.” He shook his head, frowning against the pipe stem. “Wouldn't do, you know.”

“Would she know people within the organization who might've been involved in sheltering illegals?”

He puffed thoughtfully. “Perhaps. But she wasn't involved herself. I'd swear to it.”

I nodded. “Does Sanctuary have an office in Santa Fe?”

He nodded. “Want the address?”

“Yeah. Thanks. Did Melissa do any work for the Santa Fe office?”

“Don't think so. If she did, it was on an unofficial basis. What I gathered, she used Santa Fe as a kind of … sanctuary.” He grinned. “No pun intended. But that was where she went to relax. Recharge. You follow? I shouldn't think she involved herself in anything with our people out there.”

“Did Melissa ever mention a woman named Deirdre Polk to you?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Can't say she did.”

“What about a woman named Juanita?”

Again he thought, again he shook his head. “Doesn't ring any bells. Sorry.”

“Did you ever meet Melissa's sister, Cathryn?”

“She stopped by the office a few times, when Melissa was here. Nice girl, she seemed to be. Retiring type. Shy. Shame about her death. Makes you wonder what this town's coming to.” He frowned suddenly. “You don't think her death's got anything to do with Melissa?”

“I don't know. I hope not.”

He stared off at an unpleasant distance. “Good Lord,” he said. “How awful.”

“The phrase ‘
The flower in the desert lives.
' Does that mean anything to you?”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head again. “Can't say that it does.”

“Did Cathryn ever contact you, to tell you that she'd heard from Melissa?”

“No. Why should she?”

“You have no idea where Melissa might be?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not a one. Sorry.”

After leaving Hatfield's office, I drove back to the hotel. I called Beatrice Wocynski, one of the three people who had accompanied Melissa Alonzo to El Salvador. She was polite and concerned, but she was unable to give me anything I didn't already have. Melissa's disappearance from Los Angeles had been as much of a surprise to her as Melissa's disappearance from El Salvador. Like Hatfield—but less intimately, I suspected—she had known Roy Alonzo. And like Hatfield, she had no trouble seeing him as a child molester. She liked Melissa, thought she was a “wonderful person,” but, again like Hatfield, she had no idea where Melissa might be now.

I had dinner in the restaurant downstairs—some fish and some brightly colored vegetables artfully arranged around an expanse of white porcelain plate, like bits of sculpture on a skating rink—then I went back to my room and packed.

Part Two

Fifteen

R
ITA SIPPED AT HER COFFEE. “IF
Stamworth isn't FBI,” she said, “then who or what do you think he is?”

“No idea,” I said. Sitting at the opposite end of the sofa, I was drinking hot cocoa. A bright rectangle of morning sun lay across the Persian carpet. Rita wore a white silk blouse and a pleated black skirt. Her hair, thick and black, was pulled loosely behind her neck, folded like wings along her Indian cheekbones. The stainless steel walker stood upright beside her.

“It's the INS,” I said, “who handles illegal aliens, not the FBI, but I can't see him as INS either. He's something federal, though. He has to be. The FBI is backing his story, or the L.A. cops wouldn't be buying it. Which must mean he's got some kind of federal juice.” I shrugged. “Maybe he's a mailman.”

“He was on the scene before Catherine was killed.”

“Yeah. And he says there's no connection between her death and Melissa.”

“But you think there is.”

“I think it's a possibility.”

“I think you're right,” she said. “And I think you're right to worry about the phone,” she said. Her large dark eyes were thoughtful. “I'll have Leroy put an indicator on the line.” Leroy, a distant relative of Rita's, was an electronics expert. “And you and I will have to be discreet for a while. Not say anything over the phone we'd prefer that Stamworth not hear.”

“I'm always discreet, Rita.”

“Obviously there isn't much point in our getting scramblers.”

“Not unless we issue one to everybody who might be calling us.”

“It's possible that I can learn something about him on the computer.”

I sipped at my cocoa. “About Stamworth? You can do that? Hook into the government's computer files?”

“
I
can't, no. But I know someone who could, possibly.”

“Who? Captain Crunch?”

She smiled. As usual, her smile created a constriction in my chest. “A young hacker on CompuServe,” she said. “He's helped me out before.”

Still another item she hadn't shared with me. My early-morning high spirits—my pleasure at being back in New Mexico, at the shining sun-splashed October day, at the elegant curve of Rita's throat—I could feel all of that beginning to unravel.

I said, “That doesn't sound especially legal.”

“It isn't. We'll wait to see if Stamworth makes another appearance.” She sipped at her coffee and she smiled again. “I know I'm going to regret this, but how was Los Angeles?”

“I'm thinking about moving out there,” I said. “Get myself a couple of silk shirts, a bunch of bean sprouts, start working on my tan and my screenplay.”

Another smile. “I do hope that when you become famous, you won't forget all of us little people.”

“Who?”

She laughed. It was a very gratifying sound. “Enough,” she said. “You talked to Melissa's parents.”

“Yeah.” Without mentioning my rent-a-cop experience at Bigelow's office, I explained what I'd learned and what I hadn't.

“That poor woman,” Rita said. “She's caught in the middle, between her husband and her daughter.”

“I think the sister was, too. Cathryn. Apparently she wasn't supposed to see Melissa. Daddy didn't like the idea. But she saw her anyway. I keep thinking that I should've stayed out there longer, tried to find out more about her. She's as much of a cipher as Melissa is. More so.”

“Joshua, her death was either connected to Melissa's disappearance or it wasn't. If it wasn't, there's probably nothing you could learn about her that would help us locate Melissa. If it was, the police will probably determine that. They wouldn't want you interfering in an open case, anyway.”

“I know.”

“The last anyone heard from Melissa, she was somewhere here in the Southwest. This is where you should be looking right now. If it's necessary, you can always go back to Los Angeles.”

“Swell.”

She smiled. “Tell me about Elizabeth Drewer.”

I told her about Elizabeth Drewer.

She said, “The two of you got along very well, evidently.”

“Like peaches and cream. She thinks that convicted child molesters should be castrated. And I got the feeling that she wouldn't mind if that practice were extended to a large percentage of the male population. Maybe all of it.”

“Her compassion, evidently, has a narrow focus.”

“What there is of it.”

“Well, she certainly seems compassionate enough about the children.” She sipped her coffee, returned the cup to the saucer on her lap. “But she seems to be forgetting that by her own account the victimizers were often victims themselves.”

“I don't think she allows much room for subtle nuances of motivation.”

“Nor should she. It's a terrible thing. But there are other approaches.”

“Besides ‘Off with his balls,' you mean?”

She smiled faintly. “Do you remember Norma Hermann?”

“The shrink? Her brother-in-law disappeared with her case histories?”

“Yes. I spoke with her yesterday. She's working at St. Vincent's now, with abused children. Her thinking, which makes sense to me, is that when an accusation of sexual abuse has been made, the legalistic approach is basically mistaken. What these people need, the parents and the children, is some kind of therapeutic help that deals with the entire family, all of them, as members of a single unit. And that's true, she thinks, even when the accusation is false.”

“It may be a little late for that here.”

“Probably. But I can't help worrying about that little girl.”

“Neither can I.” I sipped some cocoa. “But I'm not a shrink, Rita. All I can do, if I'm lucky, is find her. I can't heal her.”

“Finding her would be a start. What else happened out there? Did you talk to Charles Hatfield?”

“Yeah. He's one of those Brits who haven't really existed since
The Charge of the Light Brigade.
The movie, I mean, not the poem. Tweeds, a pipe, a guardsman's mustache. Very pukka. I liked him. But he didn't know anything about Melissa's whereabouts. No one does. The thing is, I can't get a handle on her, on what she's really like. On the one hand, she's a dedicated volunteer for a group that aids political refugees. On the other, she's a loving mother. On the
other
, she's involved in S and M orgies. This is a life riddled with contradictions, Rita.”

“That's three hands,” she smiled.

“Yeah. What is the sound of three hands clapping?”

“Joshua, only idiots and saints live without contradictions. The idea is to find out what the contradictions have in common.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, I'm not a shrink. I'm beginning to dislike this woman.”

“Obviously she's never realized how much her life would inconvenience you.”

“Obviously. I did find out who Deirdre is.”

“Who?”

“An artist. Deirdre Polk. She lives up in Hartley. I tried calling her, but I got her machine. If I can't get through to her, and if there's time, I'll drive up there later today.”