Satan’s Lambs (6 page)

“What you thinking, Lena? You got that look.”

“Just maybe I shouldn't eat your pickles anymore.”

He lunged across the seat, scattering cardboard hamburger boxes and french fries.

“Eat 'em.” He put his arms around her. “Come stay with me till this stuff with Jeff blows over.”

“Wouldn't be room with Judith there.”

“Hmmm. Hell, Lena, she probably won't care. God, you smell so good.”

“I smell like hamburgers.”

“No, it's you, the way I remember.”

“My natural musk.”

“Don't talk dirty, Lena, my pants are tight enough already.”

8

Mendez met her at the black iron cemetery gate, right at closing time. Newcomb had told the custodian to stay and wait. Lena recognized the navy blue Mazda before it turned in the drive. Mendez had his lights on. It was just on five o'clock, but the sky was dark and heavy.

Lena was sitting on the hood of the Cutlass, and she saw Mendez smile, as if the sight of her, cross-legged on the car, amused him. He rolled down a window.

“Car trouble?”

Lena shook her head, though car trouble was something of a constant with the Cutlass. “I'm waiting for you.”

“How far is it?”

“Couple miles.”

“Hop in.”

She dusted off her jeans and got in.

“Getting cold again,” she said, closing the window. She reached for the seat belt, then didn't use it, on the off chance that Mendez might be annoyed. “Bear left here, then take the first right. It'll meander awhile, then I'll tell you when to stop.”

She glanced at Mendez. His tie was neatly knotted still, here at the end of the day. Though for Joel, it probably wasn't the end of the day.

Lena had the urge to say something irritating.

The inside of the car was immaculate, unlike her own. There was a tape player, and a handful of tapes stacked in a compartment behind the emergency brake. Lena sorted through them. Classical. She curled her lip.

“We getting close?” Mendez asked.

“Hmm? Whoa. Passed it, sorry. Back up to that cottonwood tree.”

The reverse gear made a whirring noise as Mendez backed the car down the narrow lane. He parked by the side of the road. Lena got out, slammed the door shut, then hesitated.

The wind was picking up and the cottonwood swayed, limbs creaking. Mendez moved quickly, and Lena lengthened her stride to keep up.

The headstones still lay on their sides, but the inverted crosses had blown over. The wind whipped the grass and made the painted letters hard to read.

Lena held her hair back with one hand, trying to keep it out of her face. She watched Mendez take it all in. His black hair streamed backward; his pants and sport coat billowed. He didn't frown or smile.

“The king of stoic,” Lena muttered.

“Pardon?”

“I said did you ever see anything like this before?”

“Many times.”

Lena let her hair go and jammed her hands in her pockets. “He knocked over the lamb.”

Mendez looked at her, then put a hand on her shoulder. She almost pulled away—reflex—but this time she didn't. Turning the lamb over on a baby's grave was a violation. For once, they agreed.

“These are the only graves that were messed with,” Lena said. “Whitney's and Kevin's.”

“It's Hayes, Lena. You don't have to convince me. Anything else?”

“Just the song on the answering machine. I've got the tape.”

“This is the one your sister sang?”

Lena nodded.

“I want to hear it,” Mendez said.

“It's at the house.”

“Let's eat first.” He looked at her. “Can I take you to dinner?”

Lena looked at him, thinking the hand on the shoulder might be going to his head. “You like barbecue?”

“Yes.”

“I'll take you. There's a place still owes me free dinners.”

Mendez turned toward the car, but Lena grabbed his arm. She pointed to Whitney's headstone.

“What does that mean? ‘L-i-v-e'?”

“Not ‘live.' Read it backwards.”

“Backwards? E-v … evil?”

He nodded.

She studied the letters on the grass. “S-i-h. His.”

Mendez stood beside her. “His Satanic Majesty.”

“You're good at reading backwards, Joel.” A raindrop spattered her shoulder, making a dark spot on the red material. “He's really gearing up again, isn't he?”

Mendez took her arm and pointed her toward the car. “We'll talk about it after we eat.”

The custodian was glad to see them go. The rain came down as they turned from the blacktop drive onto Fourth Street. Fat raindrops smacked the pavement and beat against the car, and the wind rocked the Mazda to the left. The windshield wipers slashed back and forth, but visibility was negligible. The windows fogged and Mendez turned the defroster on full blast. They forded a deep puddle, the sides of the car cutting into the water with a coarse, grating sound. A Chevy pickup passed in the left lane, throwing muddy splats of water onto the windshield.

Mendez glanced at Lena.

Probably checking to see if my seat belt's on, she thought.

Deke's Piggy Palace was on North Lime. By the time they found a parking place, three blocks away, the rain had eased.

It was good to leave the flow of traffic. The sidewalks were wet and muddy, cracked and ill-kept. The glassed-in storefronts were cloudy with condensation.

The restaurant was almost empty. A green sign that said Piggy Palace was nailed over the doorway. The front window had been coated with black paint. Tired yellow light glinted through the cracks. The door was propped open with a chipped concrete block, and a swatch of warped brown linoleum lay across the entrance like a welcome mat.

A tired-looking waitress sighed when they walked in. Lena guided Mendez to a booth upholstered in blood-red vinyl. There was a rip across the back that had been repaired with masking tape.

Mendez sat across from Lena. He took off his suit coat and folded it neatly, laying it on the seat beside him.

“Nice place.”

Lena grinned. “Honest, Mendez. The food's fantastic.”

“Which client?”

“Which client? Oh, the one got me the free dinners? The owner's sister. Her daughter was involved in one of those relationships, you know. One of those guys who are pathological liars that young girls can't seem to resist.”

The waitress brought them two dog-eared paper menus.

“Owen here?” Lena asked.

The waitress narrowed her eyes. “In back.”

“Tell him Lena's out front, okay? And bring us two beers and two orders of fried banana peppers.” Lena glanced at Mendez. “You drink Coronas?”

He nodded.

“Good,” Lena said. “Don't cut the lime so big it won't go down in the bottle.”

The corner of Mendez's mouth lifted in a half smile. “I'm almost afraid to ask how you handled the boyfriend. Don't incriminate yourself.”

“I rustled up a substitute. Boy who's the son of a woman I know. Nice kid, good-looking, rides a Suzuki. Girls that age are usually impressed with the bike.”

“It didn't work?” Mendez said.

Lena shook her head. “The pathological liar creep was older, and this kid was really hooked on him.”

“Like an addiction.”

“Yeah, exactly like that.”

The waitress came back smiling. She laid out two thick white napkins and two spotted forks, then unloaded the banana peppers and the beers. Thin slices of lime rested on the tops of the beer bottles.

“Owen says to give you this and say hi.” She pulled a whole lime from her apron pocket and laid it down on the table.

Lena grinned. They ordered large pork barbecue sandwiches and a double order of onion rings.

Mendez picked up the lime and squeezed it gently. “So what did you do, Lena? How'd you get rid of the boyfriend?”

“Did some checking down at the courthouse, and found out he had a wife and two kids in Tennessee. I just wrote the wife and gave her the jerk's address—plus where he was working. All of a sudden he packs up and disappears.”

Mendez dipped a banana pepper in the red cocktail sauce that came in a small plastic cup.

“Hard on the kid.”

Lena squeezed lime into her beer bottle, then licked the juice off the glass rim. She studied the boar's head that was nailed over the cash register. Mendez ate another banana pepper. Lena looked out the window.

They'd had dinner together once before, after Whitney died. Lena tried to remember why they'd wound up eating together, but those memories, so soon after Whitney's death, ran together in her mind.

“You ever going to finish grad school?” Mendez asked her.

“I'm a PI, Mendez.”

“You should have stuck with economics. Why don't you go back?”

“Too late, and I don't want to. That's a whole other world.”

The sandwiches arrived, hot and soggy. Lena picked hers up, letting the sauce drip between her fingers. Mendez ate his with a fork.

“What did you get your degree in, Mendez?”

He cut a neat square off his sandwich. “Law enforcement.”

Lena ate the edge off her pickle. “Figures.”

“Do you always eat the pickle first?”

“What?”

“Do you always eat the pickle first?”

“You know what, Mendez? I know you said we'd talk
after
we ate, but we're down to pickles here. I want to know what you think, and what you know.”

He chewed thoughtfully.

“I'm listening here.”

“When I was a cop down in Florida, I was married. My wife was—”

“Mendez.”

“Patience, Lena. My wife was Cuban.”

Lena leaned back in her seat. “I didn't know you were divorced.”

“I'm not.”

Lena felt a flutter of disappointment. She checked his left hand. No wedding ring. As far as she knew, there'd never been a wedding ring.

Mendez wiped his fingers on his napkin and took a sip of beer. “My wife spent most of her childhood in Grappa—it's a small Florida town. Very small. She was … unsophisticated. Religious. A practicing Santera.”

“Santera?”

“You know much about Santeria?”

“I thought it was … I guess not.”

“You thought what?”

“Voodoo stuff.”

He nodded. “A common misconception in this part of the country.”

“The redneck South.”

“There
are
strong ties to Haiti, and to Africa. What you call voodoo stuff. It's also strongly influenced by Catholicism. Saints and the Ten Commandments. And it has its dark side—as does any religion.”

“I could tell you things about Southern Baptists.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile.

“The thing about being a cop in Florida … Religion is very mixed up in the drug trade. The dark side of Santeria—Palo Mayombe—can accommodate any profession. It's a good religion for criminals. You take a player who
believes
—who prays to his god for the latest drug deal to go down smoothly—that's dangerous. Gives him a sense of safety, invincibility, that makes him lethal to deal with. He won't put his knife away if he feels divinely protected from your bullets.”

“You think Hayes feels invincible?”

“That's my guess.”

“So where's your wife?”

“I was tracking down one of the Marielitos. A hard-core piece of trash from the bottom of Castro's prisons. He called himself a brujo. A witch. He threatened me. My wife. I made arrangements to see she was safe. Physically. What I didn't understand, at the time, was how much
she
believed. You understand? I didn't realize that believing she would die, could make her die. But this man, this Marielito, he knew this. And he sent her things—little tokens I didn't understand, but that had great meaning for her. I told her he could not get to her. I was wrong.”

“What did he do?”

“She got a doll in the mail, a mutilated doll. There were five little black stones around it representing five gods, and a white candle on its head. From what we pieced together, the doll showed up that afternoon, sometime before lunch. She didn't tell anybody. She didn't call me, or anyone. She went straight upstairs and took a bottle of tranquilizers. Then she drank a bottle of brandy we'd gotten as a gift one Christmas.”

“And she was dead when you found her?”

“One of my colleagues, one of the ones protecting her, got worried and found her.”

“Did you catch him? The Marielito?”

“Yes.”

“You feel guilty.”

“Sad. It was why I left Miami. You can't get away from it down there, it's always hand in hand with the drug trade. So I came here.”

“A fat lot of good that did you.”

9

“It's in here somewhere.”

Lena stood on a wooden chair, rummaging through the top shelf of the kitchen pantry. A small brown moth with black markings on its wings landed on the doorjamb.

“Don't worry about it, Lena,” Mendez said.

“No, it's in here, unless Beth forgot to get it.”

“Beth?”

“She's doing my grocery shopping for the next six months. I hate going to the grocery.”

“Why?”

Two more moths flew from the bottom of the pantry, and soared out into the kitchen. Mendez waved them away.

“Because,” Lena said. “It's always crowded. The stupid wheels on the baskets get bent and get stuck or veer sideways when you're trying to go straight. There's always a long line at the deli, people are grumpy, and I always
spend
more than—”

“I mean why is this woman doing your grocery shopping?”

“Umm. You told me not to incriminate myself. What did you think of the tape?”

Mendez shrugged. “I'd like to know what it means to Hayes.”