Accustomed to the Dark (18 page)

It had all taken only a few seconds.

I turned to Martinez. He was standing there, staring down at the wrist he held cradled to his chest. He looked over at me in disbelief. “
You broke it, you fuck
.”

“Get out of here,” I told him.

“
You broke it, motherfucker
.”

“You've still got one left.” I jerked my head. “Out. Take your friend with you.”

“
Motherfucker
.”

I slapped the nightstick against my palm. “Out.”

“This ain't over, bro.”

“It is for now.” I took a step toward him.

He backed away. “Yeah, right,” he said. “For now.” He turned to his friend, who was sitting up now, rubbing at his shin. “Carlos.”

Awkwardly, Carlos got to his feet. He hobbled toward Martinez. In the yellow light, his teeth showed in a rictus of pain.

Martinez said to me, “Another time.”

“Sure.”

“Believe it, bro.” He looked at Carlos, nodded, and then the two of them walked off, Martinez holding his wrist, his friend limping.

Sally Durrell was up. She was examining a tear at the left knee of her jeans. “Damn it,” she said. She looked at me. “These are Calvin Kleins.”

“I'm sorry.”

She straightened up and expelled a rush of air, part laugh, part incredulous gasp. “
Sorry?
You knock me down, you rip up my clothes, you rip up my knee. You make me listen to some of the most incredibly stupid, macho conversation I've ever heard. And you're
sorry?
”

“Not anymore.”

“Look at that,” she said, in a kind of awe. She was holding out her hand, fingers spread, and it was trembling. “That won't do,” she said. She fumbled open her purse, rummaged in it for a moment, found her keys, held them out to me. “You drive,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You got me into this. You can get me out.”

“And where am I driving you?”

“Home. My house. You can take a cab back.”

I nodded. “You don't want to report this? To the police?”

She shook her head dismissively. “They'd be out in an hour. Let's go.”

As it happened, I didn't take a cab back from Sally Durrell's house. I stayed there that night, and in the morning she drove me to the parking lot. As it happened, we were involved for a while, and then, as it happened, we weren't. About a year and a half after the incident in the parking lot, she defended me in court when Ernie Martinez sued me for damages.

At eleven o'clock—ten o'clock in Santa Fe—I was still on Highway 83 South and I was coming up on Perryton, Texas. I tried the cellular phone. There was a dial tone, and I called Norman Montoya.

“Mr. Croft,” he said. “How good to hear from you. I understand that your conversation with Mr. McBride was fruitful.”

“Yes it was. I meant to call you, to thank you, but I've been running around. I apologize.”

“Not at all. You've had good reason to be distracted. Mrs. Mondragón is still in the hospital, I understand. There's been no change?”

“No. Mr. Montoya, is your offer of help still good?”

“Of course. As I said, I am in your debt.”

“Are you familiar with Luiz Lucero?”

“Only by reputation. A most unpleasant man.”

“There's a possibility that he and Martinez may be running for Texas, or maybe for Florida. I was wondering whether you had any contacts in either place.”

“Mr. Croft,” he said, and I thought I could hear a smile in his voice, “you overestimate the small sphere of my very small influence. I know only a few people in Texas, acquaintances only, and I know no one at all in Florida.”

“The people in Texas,” I said. “Would they know anything about Lucero?”

There was a pause. “Possibly,” he said at last. “I shall make inquiries, of course. What leads you to believe that Lucero and Martinez will be going to Texas?”

“They've got to go somewhere. So far as I know, Martinez doesn't have any bolt-holes. Lucero used to work in Dallas.”

“So I understand. Ah, something occurs to me. My nephew, George—you remember him?”

“Yes.”

“George has spent considerable time in Miami. Perhaps he knows someone. I shall ask him.”

“Lucero was working for a Miami drug family, the Ortegas.”

“Yes,” he said. “Colombians,” he added, the way a czar might've added
serfs
. “I shall speak with George,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You are most welcome,” he said. “But perhaps you should save your thanks until such time as I accomplish something.”

“I appreciate the effort.”

“It is nothing,” he said. “Good-bye, Mr. Croft. And good luck.”

“Thanks. Good-bye.”

The big Cherokee swayed slightly as a gust of wind slapped at it. The sky out there was growing lower and darker. I wouldn't be outrunning this storm.

I made another call that I should have made earlier. It was just after nine in California.

Ed Norman was in. “What's up?” he said. “How is she?”

“The same,” I told him. “I need some help.”

“Anything.”

“I need the name of a good investigator in Dallas, and one in Miami.”

“Teddy Chartoff's in Dallas. Small agency, just him and his partner, but they're top notch. Hold on. Okay. In Miami, there's Dick Jepson. I've never met him, but I hear good things. What do you need them for?”

I told him what I needed them for.

“I'll call them,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I don't care what it costs,” I told him.

“Forget that. Teddy owes me. And we'll work something out with Jepson. You want their numbers?”

“Yeah.”

He recited them, I wrote them down.

“One other thing,” I said.

“Shoot.”

“Could you ask Chartoff to find what he can on a man named Thorogood, Thomas Thorogood? Residence in Carlton, Texas.” I spelled the name, gave him the street address.

“I'll tell him,” he said. “What's the matter with your phone?”

“It's a cellular. The signal's breaking up. Wait.” I slowed down, drove the Jeep to the side of the highway. “Ed, you there?”

“Give me your number.”

I gave it to him. “I'll talk to you later,” I said.

“Fine. You take care.”

“Thanks.”

Just as I hung up, the storm suddenly broke. Fat round raindrops shattered against the windshield and hammered against the rooftop. I turned on the wipers, turned on the headlights, pulled the lever that changed the drive to four-wheel, and drove back onto the highway.

I stayed below sixty miles an hour. On either side of me, the prairie had vanished behind swiftly shifting curtains of gray. Beneath me, the tires sizzled. Ahead, the raindrops blasted through the headlight beams like tracer bullets.

It was in the summer, a year and a half after I first met him, that I met Ernie Martinez for the second time.

By then I had worked with William and Rita Mondragón for over two years. I had learned a few things about both of them.

William was one of those people who are sometimes resented because they believe they're smarter than everyone else. They're also sometimes resented because they're usually right about this.

Personally, I liked him. He left me alone.

I had gotten to know Rita better, and I suppose we had become friends. I liked her, too, and there were times when I almost forgot that I felt something more. There were times when I thought about nothing else.

Occasionally, with the keen eye of your trained detective, I noticed tensions between them. No matter how charming he could be, and he could be very charming, William lived inside an impregnable solitude. There was a part of him, isolate and private, which I don't think even Rita ever reached, and I think this bothered her. From the other office, very rarely, I heard her snap at him. Once, when the two of them were in there, I heard her stalk from the room and slam the door behind her. No one ever said anything about the incidents. No one ever acknowledged that they'd actually occurred.

As infrequent as they were, however, they produced small blips on a radar screen at the back of my mind. I noted them, wondered how William could cause her even the slightest unhappiness, wondered how Rita could put up with even the slightest unhappiness, but I tried not to linger over them. Mostly, I succeeded.

I wasn't thinking about William and Rita, though, or at least not any more than usual, on that sunny Friday morning in June. I was parked on San Francisco Street, six blocks west of Vanessie's in the Hispanic barrio that runs between Guadalupe and Paseo, beside a low chain-link fence that surrounded a small run-down adobe house. The tiny yard was hard-packed dirt, tufted with weeds. A pair of dusty lilac trees braced the tiny wooden portico. Shades were drawn at the window. The house looked empty. But inside it, I was pretty sure, was a young woman named Nancy Gomez.

She had run away from home a week ago. She was eighteen, no longer a minor, but her father had hired the agency to find her. I had traced her here with information I'd obtained from another young woman, Rosa Sanchez. Rosa had taken the money I'd offered, but she had given me the information more out of jealousy than greed. She had been involved with Ernie Martinez before Martinez became involved with Nancy. The renter of record for the house on San Francisco was Ernie Martinez.

I had been parked outside for fifteen minutes. There were no other cars parked nearby. No one had entered or left the house. I could sit there all day, practice making stern detective faces in the rearview mirror while I waited for something to happen, or I could try a more direct approach.

I got out of the car—I was driving an old Ford back then—and walked through the opened gate of the fence, up the crumbling concrete walk. The warped floorboards of the portico creaked as I crossed them. Through the closed door I could hear the sounds of a television set.
The Price is Right
. “Lucille Baker, come on DOWN!”

I knocked on the door. After a moment it opened, and Nancy Gomez stood there. Five foot six, one hundred and thirty pounds. Her black hair was straight and shiny, hanging past her shoulders and cut in sleek bangs at her round forehead. She hadn't lost her baby fat, and maybe she never would. Maybe no one would ever suggest that she should. Like the forehead, the rest of her face was round, but it was very beautiful—poreless skin, almond-shaped dark-brown eyes, a small Indio nose, a wide red mouth. Beneath a clean white T-shirt that reached to her thighs, her breasts were plump and proud.

“Yeah?” she said. The beautiful face was slack with boredom.

“Hi, Nancy,” I said. “Your father sent me.”

The slackness tightened and she slammed the door on me, but it bounced against the steel-reinforced toe of a Justin mule-skin boot that had somehow wandered over the threshold.

“Go away,” she said. She held the door with both hands. “You can't do nothin' to me. I got a legal right to be anywhere I want.”

“That's true,” I said. “But your father asked me to talk to you. So here I am.”

“I don' wanna talk to you. Or anyone else. You tell him that.”

“Look, Nancy,” I said. “Just give me ten minutes.”

“I don' gotta give you
nothin'
.”

“Nancy, if you don't talk to me, your father will only send someone else.” I put on my stern detective face.

She turned to her left and hollered over her shoulder, “
Ernie?
”

I should have practiced in the car.

“
Hey Ernie!
”

I heard him answer from somewhere within the house. “
Yo?
”

“
Ernie, this guy's botherin' me
.”

“
What guy?
”

She turned again, looked back at me triumphantly, then swung the door wide open. “
Him
,” she said.

Ernie Martinez stood there, blinking sleep from his eyes. His pompadour was flattened on the right side, as though it had been ironed. His right cheek was creased. Tucked into his jeans was a T-shirt that matched Nancy's, except for the dirt. His feet were bare and they weren't any cleaner than the shirt. He had put on weight since I last saw him, but it was beer flesh, loose and pale. “Hey,” he said, and pointed a finger at me. “I know you.”

“Hello, Ernie,” I said. “I'm working for Nancy's father. He'd like me to talk to her. Deliver a few messages.”

“
Josh-you-ah
,” he said. He was still pointing the finger. He grinned. “
Josh-you-ah
, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, good to see you.” Nancy was looking up at him with a kind of vacant puzzlement. Still grinning, he stood back and waved a hand at me. “Come on inside, bro.”

I wasn't puzzled. Once I was inside, he could claim that I was an intruder. Legally, he was allowed to defend his home by any means he chose. There are some Santa Fe cops who'll tell you that when you shoot a burglar in the front yard, you should drag him inside afterward.

“Maybe some other time,” I told him. I turned to Nancy. “I'll talk to you later.”

“No you
won't
, motherfucker,” he said. He leaned toward me. He was pointing a finger again. “You stay the fuck away, you hear me? She's mine, bro, and she's street legal. You got that?” He stood upright and he wrapped his meaty arm around her shoulders. “You tell her father to fuck off.”

Nancy smirked at me, proudly, and then she looked up at him again, with pleasure in her big sloe eyes, and admiration. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.

I had a notion that I could somehow shatter her admiration for the man, smash the image she held of Ernie Martinez. So I smiled and I said, “How's the wrist, Ernie? Slowing you down any?” And then I turned and walked away, offering him my back. I thought it was an offer he couldn't refuse.