The Man Who Killed His Brother

  Encino’s expression was perfect, as noncommittal as a rock. “Mrs. Axbrewder chose to make no complaint. We look for her daughter, of course. Each patrol officer has a description. But without a complaint—” He gave us a delicate Chicano shrug. “You understand, it is not against the law to run away from home. The girl is a minor, so we have our eyes open for her. But in a city so big as Puerta del Sol, we are unlikely to find her. Also she has possibly left the city. The sheriff’s office has been informed. What more do you want?”

  With just a hint of sarcasm, Ginny said, “You assume she ran away.”

  “Why not? As I have said, the city is big. Girls disappear each week. Do you think she has been kidnapped? That is doubtful. For what purpose? There has been no demand for ransom.”

  That was true enough. Any hint of kidnapping, any hint at all, and this whole situation would’ve been different. For one thing, Lona would’ve had the FBI camped in her living room. But that didn’t faze Ginny. In the same light-acid tone, she said, “I don’t know whether I’m talking about kidnapping or not. I haven’t gotten that far yet. What I’m interested in right now is thirteen-year-old girls who disappear and then turn up dead.” She was trying to irritate Encino, nag him into defending himself. Maybe spring loose some spontaneous information.

  I could see the muscles along his jaw tighten, but he didn’t change his ground. “Is Alathea Axbrewder dead?”

  “Carol Christie is.”

  He blinked. As far as the rest of his face was concerned, he was sound asleep. “Of what interest is Carol Christie to you?”

  “There’s a connection between her and Alathea.”

  “Are the parents of Carol Christie your clients?”

  Ginny could’ve refused to answer that. She had a right to protect her client. But I guess she didn’t see any point to it. She said, “I’ve been retained by Lona Axbrewder.”

  “Then the death of Carol Christie is of no concern to you.”

  “I said there’s a connection.” Ginny let herself start to sound angry. She took out the notes and put them down on the counter in front of Encino. “Both Alathea and Carol wrote to their parents after disappearing. If you look at them, you’ll see that they were written on the same kind of paper. The sheets were torn in half the same way. What they say is almost identical, and the handwriting is similar.”

  “That’s most ingenious.” Encino didn’t even glance at the notes. “Unfortunately the truth remains. Carol Christie’s death can be of no concern to you. The rights of your client do not include her. Mr. Christie and his wife desire privacy.”

  “Says who?”

  “Their wishes were made known to the investigating officer, Detective-Lieutenant Acton.”

  Investigating officer, huh? Ginny was getting somewhere. Now we knew there was enough wrong with Carol Christie’s death to interest the cops.

  But she didn’t stop to chew it over. She had Encino backing up, and she kept at him.

  “That’s wonderful. The Christies don’t want people to know what really happened to their daughter, so the cops clamp a lid on it. Having money is good for something after all. I just wonder what you and Acton are getting out of it.”

  Encino’s composure split for a second. “Hija de la puta.” Before he could get it back, I reached for him. I was going to knot my fist in the front of his nice blue uniform and shake him up good. But Ginny stopped me with an elbow that almost caved in my ribs. I could feel blood pounding in my face.

  The sergeant had his blankness back in place, but he couldn’t keep the rasp out of his voice. “Go away. You Anglos, you’re all the same. A girl runs away and is later found dead. There’s an investigation, and everything is kept with great propriety, even from the papers, to avoid distress for the family. But someone hires private investigators, and because they can’t do their jobs they accuse the police. It’s like that everywhere. And why? Because the girl is white. Anglo. If a Chicano girl runs away, and the mother asks for help, you Anglos say, ‘What do you expect? Look for her in the brothels.’ And if that Chicano girl is found dead, then the papers print every rumor they hear about her, true or false.” His sneer twisted his whole face. “Go away. You interfere with my work.”

  My pulse was still racing, but I heard him. I picked up the notes, pulled open the door, said to Ginny, “Come on.” But she was really mad now. Leaning over the counter, she thrust her face at Encino. “I work for whoever asks me,” she said very softly. “I don’t have any control over who asks. I just take whatever they ask and give it my best shot. That’s my work.”

  Encino jerked his head contemptuously. “Muy bravo.”

  I took Ginny’s arm, dragged her out into the corridor, and shut the door behind us. She threw off my hand. Stalked along for a minute in silence. Then she said, “That sonofabitch.”

  I said, “He has a point.”

  “He has orders. Somebody told him to put a lid on Carol Christie. It’s not my fault he doesn’t like it.” Then she asked, “How come you’re so sympathetic all of a sudden? Two minutes ago you wanted to take his head off for him.”

  I didn’t have a good answer to that, so I just said, “I spend a lot of time in the old part of town. Probably he’s a good cop.”

  “A good cop,” she snorted. She didn’t say anything more until we got into the elevator. Then she muttered, “You big ape, you’ve got to learn to keep your temper.”

  “Dear God,” I said. “Did I lose my temper? I’m pitifully sorry. It’s never happened to me before.”

  She said, “Aw, shut up.” But she didn’t sound so angry anymore. After a minute, she asked, “What was that he called me?”

  “‘Hija de la puta.’ Daughter of a whore.”

  She considered that briefly, then grinned. “It sounds nastier in Spanish.” When the elevator doors opened, she led the way out.

  Following her toward the exit, I had a wild urge to put my arms around her and kiss the back of her neck. But when we walked out into the late afternoon, the sun hit me in the eyes like a hammer. Suddenly my head was reeling for a drink. It was coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. Except get a drink. My nerves pleaded for the stuff. Get a drink get a drink get a drink. Feel the alcohol flow like bliss through the sore lining of my stomach straight into my blood.

  Usually when I go sober, I have three big withdrawal crises—along with half a dozen or so smaller ones—before my body gives up on pain and starts looking for other arguments. So far this time I’d only had one. One coming on, and after that at least one more to go. With the sun in my eyes, and my brain aching, I didn’t think I was going to make it.

  I didn’t realize I was just standing there with my fingers clamped over my face until Ginny came back for me. She put her hands on my arm. “It’s that bad?”

  “All of a sudden. Doesn’t usually come on this fast.”

  She said, “Is there anything I can do?” But she knew there wasn’t. She’d done everything anybody could do when she came looking for me in the first place.

  I said, “Take me home.”

  She shook my arm. “No chance. We’ve got all those friends of Alathea’s to go see, remember? We’re late already.”

  I said it again. “Take me home.”

  “Brew,” she whispered, “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  With an effort, I pulled my hands off my face. I must’ve looked pretty fierce, because she winced. “I want to be alone. It’s bad enough when I’m alone. This morning was easy. It’s going to get worse. Do you think I like having you watch me fall apart?”

  That reached her. It didn’t ease the tight worry in her face, but it got me what I wanted. She took me home.

  By the time she got me up to my apartment, the pressure in my skull was squeezing sweat out of my face like beads of thirst. I shook like a cripple. It was all I could do to get across the room and sit down on the convertible couch I use for a bed.

  This one was going to be a sonofabitch.

&nbs
p; Had it ever been this bad before? I couldn’t remember. Probably not. Every time is always the worst.

  Ginny sat down beside me for a while. She looked like she wanted to hold my hand. “Are you going to be all right?”

  From somewhere, I dredged up the energy to say, “There’s nothing here. I never keep the stuff in my apartment.”

  “That isn’t what I asked. I asked you if you’re going to be all right.”

  I said, “You go on.” If she didn’t leave soon I was going to scream. “Talk to Alathea’s friends. I’m going to sit here. As long as I have to. Then I’ll get something to eat. Then I’ll go to bed. Pick me up in the morning.”

  “All right.” She didn’t like it, but she swallowed it. “I’ll make sure the answering service knows where I am.” A minute later she was gone.

  A minute after that, I wanted to cry out, Ginny!

  But this mess was one I’d made for myself, and I was going to have to live with it. So I just sat where I was and watched the sunlight in the room get dimmer.

  Soon there were red-hot bugs crawling along my nerves, ticks and chiggers and cockroaches of need, and at one point I thought I could hear high-pitched mewling sounds coming from somewhere in the vicinity of my face. But I just sat where I was and waited. Waited for the sun to set. Waited for night. There was a cure for this, and I was going to go get it. Never mind what I’d told Ginny. I was going to go as soon as it was dark. As soon as I recovered enough control over myself to move.

  I hung on for the sake of the dark. After a while there was no more light in the room, and the pressure eased a bit. Not much—this was going to be a long one—but enough so that I could tell my arms and legs what to do with some hope of having them listen to me.

  I lurched into the kitchen and drank what felt like about a gallon of water. Then I left my apartment, struggled down the long stairs to the street, and went shambling in the direction of the old part of town.

  Looking for that cure.

  5

  The cure I had in mind was an old Mestizo named Manolo.

  Somewhere in the old part of town, he would be sitting alone in the corner of a bar, sipping a glass of anisette, and looking for all the world like the last remains of some long-dead grandee’s noble family. He’d be sitting there like a sleepwalker, and if you saw him you’d be afraid to wake him up for fear the shock might fuddle what was left of his wits. But all the time he’d be as alert as a cat, soaking up little bits and hints of rumors, facts, information, as if he took them in through his pores. He knew a world of secrets. And if you asked him the right questions—or if you asked them the right way, or maybe if he trusted you for some reason—he’d tell you one or two of them.

  There was a good chance he’d be able to tell me the secret of Carol Christie, and I knew how to ask.

  I had an idea in my head that made my nerves crawl as bad as the DT’s, and this was the only way I knew of to check it out.

  I’m not like Ginny—I’m not a puzzle solver. For instance, it might never have occurred to me to compare the watermarks of those two notes. My brain doesn’t work that way. I get where I’m going—wherever that is—by intuition and information. In a city like Puerta del Sol, there are a lot of information dealers, and I know at least half of them. And I’m not talking about stool pigeons, punks who shill for the cops.

  Like most independent businessmen, old Manolo was a specialist. Next to el Senor himself, Manolo knew more than anybody in the city about who’s doing what to whom and how in the grubby world of drugs. The cops could put away most of the pushers in the state if they just knew what old Manolo knew.

  I was doing my best not to think too much about Alathea. I didn’t dare. I was already too jittery—if I stopped to consider what I was thinking, I might not be able to control myself until I ended up at the bottom of a bottle somewhere. No, all I wanted to know was how a good swimmer ends up drowning in the Flat River.

  It was the kind of question you had to ask at night. People like old Manolo don’t exist during the day. When the sun comes up, they evaporate, and all you can find of them is what they leave behind—a rank, sodden body snoring away like a ruin on a pallet full of fleas somewhere, as empty of answers as an old beer can.

  But I didn’t get the chance to ask. I wasn’t more than five blocks away from my apartment, just turning onto Eighth Street on my way toward the Hegira and all the other bars where Manolo might be drinking his anisette, when things started to get out of hand.

  Down from the corner of Eighth and Sycamore, there are a couple of abandoned buildings with a long dirty alley between them. They’re close enough to the old part of town so even the cops don’t walk into an alley like that unless they have backup on the way. I was just about to cross in front of that alley when the screaming started.

  A woman screaming, terror and pain. Somewhere back in the semidarkness of the alley.

  My body is faster than my brain, and by the time the woman screamed again, before I’d even thought about it, I was headed toward the sound as fast as I could run.

  Probably I should’ve pulled the .45 out where I could use it, but when you’re as big as I am, you get in the habit of thinking you don’t need a weapon. Anyway, I had good reason not to trust the way I handle a gun.

  This time—for once—it turned out I’d done the right thing. The only reason the woman didn’t get hurt worse was that I got there so fast. The man had already torn off most of her clothes, and he had her on her back in the dirt. She fought like fury, but he was much too strong for her.

  He should’ve heard me coming—I’m not exactly light on my feet—but he must’ve been too far gone. Holding her down, he sprawled himself between her legs and started to thrust at her.

  I was moving too fast to land on him without hurting her, so instead I caught hold of the back of his shirt with both hands as I went past and used his weight to pivot me to a stop. I was ecstatic with rage—the pressure inside me was exploding. Frustration and dread and all the long pain of trying to fight my way off the stuff came to a head in a second, and I went happily crazy.

  The man wasn’t small, but for all the good his size did him he might as well have been. My momentum lifted him bodily into the air, and as I pivoted I swung him around and slammed him against the wall of the building. When he bounced back at me, I saw he had a switchblade, but even that didn’t slow me down. I blocked it aside, grabbed him again, wheeled, and threw him face first into the other wall as if I were trying to demolish the building.

  Before he could turn, bring his knife around, I got him. With a long swing that came all the way up from my shoes, I hit him in the small of the back, just on the left side of his spine.

  A gasp of pain broke out of him. His knife skittered away into the dark somewhere. He spun around and flipped forward, fell on his face, then jerked onto his side, arching his back as if he were trying to get away from the pain. His legs went rigid, and he kept pushing with them, slowly skidding his body in a circle.

  There was a high keening noise in my ears, like the sound of blood rushing through my head, and I had a terrible urge to haul off and kick him. I wanted to do it. I could already feel the jolt of my toe hitting his back. But I didn’t. He’d had enough.

  Instead I turned away and went to see about the woman.

  She huddled, sobbing, against one of the walls. She had her knees pulled up tight in front of her, and she clutched the remains of her clothes about her desperately, as if those scraps were all that was left of her. Her face was pressed against her knees. She didn’t look up when I spoke to her.

  I hunkered down in front of her. Not knowing what else to do, I put one hand on her arm.

  She flinched away so violently that I had to draw back. But at least the movement made her lift her head. I saw she was Chicano. It’s hard to tell the age of young Chicano women—when they first stop being kids they look too old for their years, and later on they look too young—but I didn’t think she was more than seven
teen. Not pretty, but beautiful. Either the bad light or the tears made her eyes look dark as bruises.

  “Hush child,” I said to her gently in Spanish. “The harm is past. I am Señor Axbrewder. My name is known in many places. Are you injured?”

  She didn’t say anything. But she made an effort and finally managed to swallow her sobs. In answer to my question, she shook her head.

  The man on the ground behind me groaned.

  Her eyes jumped fearfully toward him, but I said, “Do not fear. He is hurt, and will not harm you now.” This time when I touched her arm she looked back at me and didn’t flinch.

  “That is well,” she said in English. Strength was starting to come back into her face. There was a dignity in her tone, perhaps in the way she spoke English, that touched me more than any amount of crying. “He is a pig, and I spit on him.”

  I liked her English so much I switched to it myself. “We’ll do better than spit on him. The rape laws around here are pretty tough.” That’s one advantage of living in a state where some of the old Spanish traditions and values still carry weight. “We’ll put him in jail. He won’t get out until he’s too old to even think about doing something like this again.”

  She nodded her head once, sharply. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  I got up to check on the man. He was groaning louder and moving around a bit now, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He was a white dude—an Anglo all dolled up in the kind of cowboy-tourist finery no self-respecting Westerner would wear. That made him a hit-and-run rapist, the kind that never gets caught because by the time the cops go looking for them they’re already in some other part of the country, bragging about how those “Mex chicks” couldn’t get enough of them. “Not this time, ace,” I muttered at him. Then I went back to the woman and asked her name.

  She said, “Teresa Sanguillán.”

  “Well, Teresa Sanguillán.” All of a sudden, I was trembling—reaction, I guess—and I had to fake a hearty tone to keep my voice from quavering. “I’m afraid you’ve got a long night ahead of you. We’d better get on with it.”