The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (108 page)

The fat reader had poked and prodded Mosca’s little folds of skin and fat with her eyes closed. From time to time she would make a deep sigh, as if she were sad or tired. “You might go one direction or you might go the other,” she said. “You tend to be thin, so you are at risk.” Thin ones tended to be not well attached to life. Without capacity for pleasure, thin ones preferred the sensation of denial and pain. Injury and illness could easily carry off a thin woman or man. Skinny ones burned up in fires and blew away in big winds. “One more thing,” the fat reader had said as Mosca was leaving. “The voice in your shoulder says, Fatten up! There’s a great storm brewing in the South. In the big flood that’s coming, only the fat will float.”

Mosca had not told anyone about his visit to the fat reader. Liria and even Calabazas would make fun of him the way they had when Mosca told them his ideas about death. The old people used to request
that their remains be left out in the hills for the scavengers to eat. That way they started “living” again within a matter of hours, surging through the blood veins of a big coyote as she raced across the desert to suckle her pups. Calabazas had wisecracked about becoming coyote shit. Mosca had only nodded; he didn’t mind being coyote shit because the rain carried the shit to the desert roots and seeds, and all kinds of beings and life. Fed back to the earth, Mosca believed he would bound and leap in the legs of the mule deer and soar in the wings of the hawk.

What had depressed Mosca was the way Calabazas, Root, and Liria had been so quick to laugh and make jokes whenever Mosca tried to discuss the ideas and theories that filled Mosca’s head more and more each day, like gifts from God. Mosca did not know what was wrong with Calabazas and Root; they both should have known better—Calabazas because he had been reared by old-time people, and Root because he had almost died in that scooter wreck. Mosca did not expect anything worthwhile from Liria because she wanted to be a white woman.

Liria stood up to excuse herself. Conversations about turning to shit after death did not interest her. Liria’s air of superiority had infuriated Mosca.

“You think the mortuary does any good?” he shouted. “Morticians take a last fuck on top of you while the machine replaces your blood with embalming fluid!” Liria had been laughing by then, and she shook her head as if she could not care less what Mosca was saying.

“Embalming fluid turns your bones to jelly,” Mosca said, but Liria had slammed the door, laughing wildly; then she had abruptly opened the door a crack to taunt Mosca. “And what was
your
plan for the bones, eh, Mosca?” Liria had taunted.

“I’d jump your bones!” Mosca said, startled by the answer he had given. Liria had snapped the door shut and laughed down the hall. Mosca’s face was hot, and he glanced quickly out the corner of his eye to see if Calabazas was pissed off. But the old man had been laughing. So had Root. To them, Mosca knew he was a joke; for a long time he had not minded their laughter, but lately his feeling had been changing.

HIMSELF, Mosca preferred to call Tucson “City of Thieves” because there were fourth- and fifth-generation thieves living there. Tucson was a place where betrayals ticked off with each second, most of them little stabs in the back, and then, once a day, a murder or two. Mosca could feel sorry for the old and the weak or ill who had to live in a place such as Tucson where the police were as predatory as the mob and the gangs. There was no honor among the generations of thieves in Tucson. Mosca himself had never felt even the slightest sensation of loyalty. He understands loyalty exists for some, and therefore Mosca recognizes loyalty as a variable, though Mosca sees loyalty is more easily bought and sold than most commodities.

Mosca did not have any embarrassment about killing the Santa Fe poet. He hadn’t been disloyal to Calabazas or the others. The police were always killing innocent bystanders with stray bullets. FBI agents in Phoenix had accidently shot their own female agent. Mosca wondered what the true story had been in that case. Mosca did not claim to be anything more than who and what he was, and guys in his line of work often had to fire guns around innocent people. Mosca had never sworn or promised to serve or uphold anything for anyone. If Mosca had ever sworn himself to any cause, the cause would have been land and justice for native people. The Santa Fe poet had been an intruder. It was one thing for a crazy guy such as Mosca to shoot someone, but it was a whole worse matter when the
locos
were the police with .45 automatics.

Mosca believed his mother’s illness during his childhood had been the cause of his mistrust of people who were close to him. Mosca believed he had been affected by nursing his mother’s milk laced with the strange natural chemicals of her poor schizophrenic brain. Mosca had listened to radio show experts discuss human milk; weak mother’s milk had left Mosca shorter than he should have been. Mosca did not thank his mother. No one had asked him if he wanted to be born short, skinny, dark, and dirt-poor in southern Arizona. Mosca’s mother had betrayed
Mosca when she had conceived him in the swirling rainbows of her deranged blood.

Mosca had always enjoyed imaginary plots, fantasies in which he was a traitor. Mosca loved to imagine the expressions on all their faces—Calabazas and Root, the bitches Sarita and Liria, when they learned of their betrayal by Mosca. Mosca reveled in the pain they would feel at the moment his treachery was revealed to them. The betrayal of Jesus was Mosca’s favorite Bible story. Mosca and the other street kids had gone to Mass on Palm Sunday to rip palm fronds out of the hands of rich Catholics outside the Tucson cathedral. Mosca had laughed wildly as he seized palms the priest had blessed for old, rich women because the rich were suffering a little, suffering to remind them of Jesus’ suffering. The betrayal of Jesus had not stopped with the crucifixion; Paul and Peter had corrupted Jesus’ creed of forgiveness and brotherly love. Mosca had seen all the gold and silver and silk and satin on Catholic Church altars. Mosca had seen the big Cadillacs, new every year, parked in the drive of the monsignor’s residence.

Mosca did not expect women to be loyal because men threatened them and their babies and slammed them against walls. Mosca did not blame women, but he was careful around women. Treachery was everywhere throughout history. The prophet Muhammad had preached tolerance and love, as Jesus had; but when Muhammad had passed to heaven, the Moslems, like the Christians, forgot the teachings of their God.

Christians and Moslems had lost contact with their Gods whenever they had slaughtered their own brothers in so-called holy wars. Only God had the right to kill everything because he had created everything. Accidents, plagues, and famines would carry away the unbelievers; it was not necessary to make war, to take God’s will into puny human hands.

Mosca thought someday the Moslems might take over the world. They might simply settle for Western Europe because European Christians would be dangerous and troublesome captives who would require the Moslems’ undivided attention; or perhaps the Moslems would simply wait a few hundred years until fertility and birth rates among Moslem immigrants in Western Europe gradually overtook them, overwhelmed the Christians. What would Moslem Germans or German Moslems resemble? Mosca imagined the bellowing cattle sounds of German opera side by side with the nasal caterwauling of Arab music. Would there be a Moslem Reich? The Europeans should never have left their homelands in the first place.

SEESE TOOK A CAB to a cheap hotel on Miracle Mile, and while the driver waited, she hid the kilo under the foot of the bed. She kept telling herself over and over that Root hadn’t rejected her, he had only refused to buy the cocaine. Wholesale prices were low, Seese could believe that. If something happened to Lecha or her job with Lecha, Seese would need cash. If she was able to endure the old routines, Seese knew she could easily sell the cocaine to the pimps on Miracle Mile. The easy way out was to sell the kilo for what she could get from Tiny because Tiny had everything worked out with the undercover cops—Tiny always had things worked out with the law.

The Stage Coach was quiet on weeknights. The married men stopped by on their way home from work, but after seven there were only bikers playing pool and the diehards watching the dancer under the black lights. Seese did not recognize the girl on stage—a skinny, boyish blonde in black panties and bra. Three bikers nursed bottles of beer and watched the topless dancer in silence. In the corner Seese saw the same jukebox she had danced to in the old days, when she had worked for Tiny. An “out of order” sign was taped to the front. Nothing had changed; Tiny was still as stingy as he had been when Seese had danced at the Stage Coach. The jukebox used to stay broken for weeks. There had been days when Tiny told the dancers to turn on the radio because no one cared about the music except the girls; the afternoon crowd only wanted titties, ass, and crotch.

Seese didn’t see the bartender, but saw the storeroom door was open. She knocked on the door to Tiny’s office. Tiny always kept a .38 on the desk beside the phone. Seese had seen the pistol many times while she had worked for Tiny. If there was a knock at the door, Tiny always slipped his hand over the .38. Tiny didn’t care whose voice it was outside the door; Seese knew he didn’t move his hand from the gun until he could see the visitor in the doorway. Tiny was a fat man, but Seese had watched him, and he was faster than he looked. Seese and Cherie and some of the other dancers used to joke about Tiny’s shooting someone
in the tit if she forgot to knock. Tiny did not lock the door, but Seese knew he liked privacy to snort coke at his desk and sip whiskey all evening long.

Seese had to repeat her name three times before Tiny said, “Come in.” Tiny seemed surprised to see her. He was sitting at his desk with bookkeeping ledgers and computer printouts stacked around him. Cherie said Tiny had another bar, on the east side, not a dump like the Stage Coach, but a cocktail lounge that booked
Playboy
playmates of the year. Off- duty Tucson police and sheriff’s deputies drank at Tiny’s other bar. Tiny had been in the Marines and so had most of the deputies and cops. Cherie said Tiny had a rule; he never talked about the other bar, and he never wanted to see any of the Stage Coach dancers near the east-side place.

Tiny had gotten even fatter, but still wore a Marine Corps haircut. Seese was reminded of the color illustrations in children’s books of Humpty-Dumpty. Seese had never felt comfortable with Tiny, and not just because he had been in love with her once. There had been something else too—only a feeling really; Seese thought it might be Tiny’s connection with the military and her father. Seese glanced down; the .38 was on the desk by the telephone. Tiny stood up from his chair behind the desk and took both her hands in his; suddenly he seemed very happy to see her. He buzzed the bartender for a bottle of whiskey and brought out a brown vial and a little spoon from a desk drawer. Seese shook her head and set her vial of cocaine on the edge of the desk.

“See what you think of this,” she said. Tiny looked at her closely. Seese knew he was trying to figure how she had managed to turn her luck around in Tucson. Tiny could see the glitter of pure crystals that had not been “cut”; Tiny held the vial, then set it back on his desk without opening it. There was a voice and a knock. Seese watched Tiny’s hand settle on the snub-nosed .38. Suddenly Seese wished she had taken the taxi back to the ranch. The bartender brought two glasses and whiskey. Seese needed the whiskey; otherwise she was going to have to reach for the vial of cocaine. Seese had forgotten the negative charge in the air when Tiny knew he could only look but not touch. She should have taken the train case home and pushed it to the back of the closet until she thought of someone else besides Tiny or Root who might buy the kilo.

Tiny wasn’t interested in buying cocaine, he was interested in her. After all that time the fat pig was still after her. No money—nothing—was worth the clammy, bulging belly or thick black hair that grew out of the crack of his ass. Seese reached for her purse on the floor by her
feet. Returning to the Stage Coach was always a mistake. Seese wondered if she would ever learn. She hardly knew Cherie anymore; there wasn’t much they could safely discuss in front of Cherie’s boyfriends or husbands. A few years had made a lot of difference. Cherie’s eldest was in sixth grade. Tucson was seedier and more run-down. The pavement on big streets such as Oracle and Broadway had cracked and left potholes. Stores and restaurants where Seese had once shopped with Cherie were gone. Even the shopping malls were partially vacant; real estate
FOR SALE
signs were everywhere. “Money’s been tight in Arizona ever since the feds took over all the banks,” Tiny said, as if he had read her thoughts. The apology in his tone was unmistakable. “I’ll see what I can do,” Tiny said, his eyes on hers. “How much do you want for it?” Seese took a big swallow and finished the whiskey. “A kilo for twenty thousand,” she said. “It’s never been cut.” Seese knew she should have started at thirty because Tiny would take the price down five thousand right away. All the bluffing and bullshit in drug deals bored Seese. “Ten max,” Tiny said. Seese stood up to leave. Her hand was on the doorknob. “All right, twelve. But not tonight.” Seese nodded and walked out the door before Tiny could get out from behind the desk. Tiny followed her past the bar to the pay phone.