We watched as Rachel walked two of her friends to their car. She was beautiful. I loved the way that she carried herself, her poise, her grace. I felt something tear inside me, like a weakness in a wall that slowly begins to expand, threatening the strength and stability of the whole.
“She won’t like it,” said Angel.
“I owe Louis,” I replied.
Angel almost laughed. “You got no debt to him, or to me. Maybe you feel like you do, but we don’t see it that way. You have a family now. You have a woman who loves you, and a daughter who depends on you. Don’t screw it up.”
“I don’t intend to. I know what I have.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
What could I tell him? That I wanted to do this, that I needed to do this? It was part of it, I knew. Maybe also, in some low, hidden part of myself, I wanted to force them away, to hasten what I saw as an inevitable end.
But there was one more element, one that I could not explain to Angel, or to Rachel, or even to myself. I felt it as soon as I saw the cab moving along the road, drawing slowly closer and closer to the house. I felt it as I watched the woman step onto the gravel in our drive. I felt it as she told her story, trying to hold back the tears but desperate not to show weakness in front of strangers.
She was gone. Alice was gone, and wherever she now was she would never walk through this world as she once did. I couldn’t say how I knew it, any more than Martha could explain her sense that her daughter was at risk to begin with. This woman, filled with courage and love, was brought here for a reason. There was a connection, and it would not be denied. I had learned from bitter experience that the troubles of others that found their way to my door were meant for my intervention, and could not be ignored.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just know that it has to be done.”
Gradually, most of the guests slipped away. They seemed to take with them whatever gaiety they had brought along, leaving none behind in our house. Rachel’s parents, as well as her sister, were staying the night with us. Walter and Lee were due to spend a couple of days with us too, but Martha’s visit had caused the abandonment of that plan and they were already on their way home so that Walter could talk to cops in person if necessary.
I was clearing up outside when Frank Wolfe cornered me. He was taller than I, and bulkier. He’d played football in high school, and there were colleges sufficiently impressed by him to consider offering him a scholarship, but Vietnam intervened. Frank didn’t even wait for the draft. He was a man who believed in duty and responsibility. Joan was already pregnant when he left, although neither of them knew at the time. His son, Curtis, was born while he was “in country,” and a daughter followed two years later. Frank won some medals, but he never spoke about how he came by them. When Curtis, who had become a deputy with the county sheriff’s office, was killed during a bank raid, he didn’t disintegrate or descend into self-pity the way some men might have done but instead held his family close to him, binding them to him so that they would have him to lean upon, so that they would not fall. There was much that was admirable about Frank Wolfe, but we were too dissimilar to ever manage more than a few civil words to each other.
Frank had a beer in his hand, but he wasn’t drunk. I had heard him talking to his wife earlier, and they had witnessed Martha’s arrival and the conclave that resulted. I figured Frank had subsequently slowed down on the booze, either of his own volition or at his wife’s instigation.
I picked up some paper plates and threw them into the garbage bag. Canine Walter was shadowing me, hoping to snatch any scraps that fell in his path. Frank watched me but didn’t move to lend a hand.
“Everything okay, Frank?” I said.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
There was no point in brushing him off. He hadn’t become a good lawyer by lacking persistence. I finished clearing the plates from the trestle table, tied up the garbage bag, and went to work on the empty bottles with a new bag. They made a satisfying clink as they hit the bottom.
“I’m doing my best, Frank,” I said softly. I didn’t want to have this discussion with him, not now and not ever, but it was upon us.
“With respect, I don’t think you are. You got duties now, responsibilities.”
I smiled, despite myself. There were those two words again. They defined Frank Wolfe. He would probably have them inscribed on his gravestone.
“I know that.”
“So you got to live up to them.”
He tried to emphasize his point by waggling the beer bottle at me. It diminished him, somehow, making him appear less like a concerned father and more like a garrulous drunk.
“Listen, this thing you do, it’s got Rachel worried. It’s always got her worried, and it’s put her at risk. You don’t put the people you love at risk. A man just doesn’t do that.”
Frank was trying his best to be reasonable with me, but he was already getting under my skin, maybe because all that he was saying was true.
“Look, there are other ways that you can use the skills you have,” he said. “I’m not saying give up on it entirely. I got contacts. I do a lot of work with insurance companies, and they’re always looking for good investigators. It pays well: better than what you earn now, that’s for sure. I can ask around, make some calls.”
I was hurling the bottles into the bag with more force now. I took a deep breath to rein myself in, and tried to drop the next one as gently as I could.
“I appreciate the offer, Frank, but I don’t want to work as an insurance investigator.”
Frank had run out of “reasonable,” so he was forced to uncork something a little more potent. His voice rose.
“Well, you sure as hell can’t keep doing what you do now. What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you see what’s happening? You want the same thing to happen a —”
He stopped abruptly, but it was too late. It was out now. It lay, black and bloody, on the grass between us. I was suddenly very, very tired. The energy drained from my body, and I dropped the sack of bottles on the ground. I leaned against the table and lowered my head. There was a shard of sharp wood against the palm of my right hand. I pressed down steadily upon it, and felt skin and flesh give way beneath the pressure.
Frank shook his head. His mouth opened, then closed again without uttering a word. He was not a man given to apologies. Anyway, why should a man apologize for telling the truth? He was right. Everything that he had said was right.
And the terrible thing was that Frank and I were closer in spirit than he realized: we had both buried children, and both of us feared more than anything else a repetition of that act. Had I chosen to do so, I could have spoken at that moment. I could have told him about Jennifer, about the sight of the small white coffin disappearing beneath the first clods of earth, about organizing her clothes and her shoes so that they could be passed on to children still living, about the appalling sense of absence that followed, of the gaping holes in my being that could never be filled, of how I could not walk down a street without being reminded of her by every passing child. And Frank would have understood, because in every young man fulfilling his duty he saw his absent son, and in that brief truce some of the tension between us might have been erased forever.
But I did not speak. I was retreating from them all, and the old resentments were coming to the fore. A guilty man, confronted by the self-righteousness of others, will plead bitter innocence or find a way to turn his guilt upon his accusers.
“Go to your family, Frank,” I told him. “We’re done here.”
And I gathered up the garbage and left him in the evening darkness.
Rachel was in the kitchen when I returned, making coffee for her parents and trying to clean up some of the mess left on the table. I started to help her. It was the first time we had been alone since we had returned from the church. Rachel’s mother came in to offer help, but Rachel told her that we could take care of it. Her mother tried to insist.
br />
“Mom, we’re fine,” said Rachel, and there was an edge to her voice that caused Joan to beat a hasty retreat, pausing only to give me a look that was equal parts sympathy and blame.
Rachel used the blade of a knife to begin scraping the food from a plate into the trash can. The plate had a dark blue pattern upon its rim, although it wouldn’t have it for much longer if Rachel continued to scratch at it.
“So, what’s going on?” she asked. She didn’t look at me as she spoke.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“What does that mean?”
“You were kind of hard on Angel and Louis today, weren’t you? You hardly spoke a word to them while they were here. In fact, you’ve hardly spoken a word to me.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t spent the afternoon cloistered in your office we might have found time to speak.”
It was a fair criticism, although we had been in the office for less than an hour.
“I’m sorry. Something came up.”
Rachel slammed the plate down on the edge of the sink. A small blue chip flew from the edge and was lost on the floor.
“What do you mean, something came up? It’s your daughter’s fucking christening!”
The voices in the living room went quiet. When the conversation picked up again, it sounded muted and strained.
I moved toward her.
“Rach — ,” I began.
She raised her hands and backed away.
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
I couldn’t move. My hands felt awkward and useless. I didn’t know what to do with them. I settled for putting them behind my back and leaning against the wall. It was as close as I could come to a gesture of surrender without raising them above my head or exposing my neck to the blade. I didn’t want to fight with Rachel. It was all too fragile. The slightest misstep, and we would be surrounded by the fragments and shards of our relationship. I felt my right hand stick to the wall. When I looked down there was blood upon it, left by the splinter cut.
“What did that woman want?” said Rachel. Her head was down, loose strands of hair falling over her cheeks and eyes. I wanted to see her face clearly. I wanted to push back her hair and touch her cheek. Like this, her features hidden, she reminded me too much of another.
“She’s Louis’s aunt. Her daughter has gone missing in New York. I think she came to Louis as a last resort.”
“Did he ask you for help?”
“No, I offered to help.”
“What does she do, her daughter?”
“She was a street prostitute, and an addict. Her disappearance won’t be a priority for the cops, so someone else will have to look for her.”
Rachel ran her hands through her hair in frustration. This time she did not try to stop me as I moved to hold her. Instead, she allowed me to press her head gently to my chest.
“It will just take a couple of days,” I said. “Walter has made some calls. We have a lead on her pimp. It may be that she’s safe somewhere, or in hiding. Sometimes women in the life drop out for a time. You know that.”
Slowly, her arms reached around my back and held me.
“Was,” she whispered.
“What?”
“You said ‘was.’ She was a prostitute.”
“It’s just the way that I phrased it.”
Her head moved against me in denial of the lie.
“No, it’s not. You know, don’t you? I don’t understand how you can tell, but I think you just know when there’s no hope. How can you carry that with you? How can you take the strain of that knowledge?”
I said nothing.
“I’m frightened,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t talk to Angel and Louis after the christening. I’m frightened of what they represent. When we spoke about them being godfathers to Sam, before she was born, it was like, well, it was like it was a joke. Not that I didn’t want them to do it, or that I didn’t mean it when I agreed, but it seemed like no harm could come of it. But today, when I saw them there, I didn’t want them to have anything to do with her, not in that way, and at the same time I know that each of them, without a second thought, would lay down his life to save Sam. They’d do the same for you, or for me. It’s just . . . I feel that they bring . . .”
“Trouble?” I said.
“Yes,” she whispered. “They don’t mean to, but they do. It follows them.”
Then I asked the question that I had been afraid to ask.
“And do you think that it follows me too?”
I loved her for her answer, even as another fissure appeared in all that we had.
“Yes,” she said. “I think those in need find you, but with them come those who cause misery and hurt.”
Her arms gripped me tighter, and her nails dug sharply into my back.
“And I love you for the fact that it pains you to turn away. I love you for wanting to help them, and I’ve seen the way you’ve been these last weeks. I’ve seen you after you walked away from someone you thought you could help.”
She was talking about Ellis Chambers from Camden, who had approached me a week earlier about his son. Neil Chambers was involved with some men in Kansas City, and they had their hooks pretty deep in him. Ellis couldn’t afford to buy him out of his trouble, so somebody was going to have to intervene on Neil’s behalf. It was a muscle job, but taking it would have separated me from Sam and Rachel, and would also have involved a degree of risk. Neil Chambers’s creditors were not the kind of individuals who took kindly to being told how to run their affairs, and they were not sophisticated in their methods of intimidation and punishment. In addition, Kansas City was way off my turf, and I told Ellis that he might find the men involved were more amenable to some local intervention than the involvement of a stranger. I made some inquiries, and passed on some names to him, but I could see that he was disappointed. For better or worse, I’d gained a reputation as a “go-to” guy. Ellis had expected more than a referral. Somewhere inside, I too believed that he deserved more.
“You did it for me, and for Sam,” said Rachel, “but I could tell the effort that it caused you. You see, that’s the thing of it: whichever way you turn, there will be pain for you. I just didn’t know how much longer you could keep turning away from those who reached out to you. I guess now I know. It ended today.”
“Rachel, she’s family to Louis. What else could I do?”
She smiled sadly.
“If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. You know that.”
I kissed the top of her head. She smelled of our child.
“Your dad tried to talk to me outside.”
“I bet you both enjoyed that.”
“It was great. We’re considering going on vacation together.”
I kissed her again.
“What about us?” I asked. “Are we okay?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I love you, but I don’t know.”
With that she released me, and left me alone in the kitchen. I heard her climb the stairs, and there came the creak of the door to our bedroom, where Sam lay sleeping. I knew that she was looking down upon her, listening to her breathe, watching over her so that no harm would come to her.
That night, I heard the voice of the Other calling from beneath our window, but I did not go to the glass. And behind her words I discerned a chorus of voices, whispering and weeping. I covered my ears against them and squeezed my eyes tightly closed. In time, sleep came, and I dreamed of a gray leafless tree, its sharp branches curving inward, thick with thorns, and within the prison that they formed brown mourning doves fluttered and cried, a low whistling rising from their wings as they struggled, and blood upon their feathers where the thorns had pierced their flesh. And I slept as a new name was carved upon my heart.
4
The Spyhole Motel was an unlikely oasis, a resting place for travelers who had almost entirely despaired of ever finding respite before the Mexican border. Perhaps they had skirted Yuma, tired
of lights and people, longing to see the desert stars in all their glory, and had instead found themselves facing mile upon mile of stone and sand and cactus, bordered by high mountains they could not name. Even to stop briefly by the roadside was to invite thirst and discomfort, and maybe the attentions of the Border Patrol, for the coyotes ran their illegals along these routes, and the migras were always on the lookout for those who might be colluding with them in the hope of making some easy money. No, it was better not to stop here, wiser to keep moving in the hope of finding comfort elsewhere, and that was what the Spyhole promised.
A sign on the highway pointed south, advising the weary of the proximity of a soft bed, cold sodas, and functioning air-conditioning. The motel was simple and unadorned, apart from a vintage illuminated sign that buzzed in the night like a great neon bug. The Spyhole consisted of fifteen rooms set in an n shape, with the office at the bottom of the left arm. The walls were a light yellow, although without closer examination it was difficult to say whether this was their original color or if constant exposure to the sands had resulted in their transformation to that hue, as though the desert would tolerate the motel’s presence only if it could lay some claim to it by absorbing it into the landscape. It lay in a natural alcove, a gap between mountains known as the Devil’s Spyhole. The mountains gave the motel a little shade, although barely steps from its office the heat of the desert winds blew through the Devil’s Spyhole itself like the blast from the open door of an incinerator. A sign outside the office warned visitors not to wander from the motel’s property. It was illustrated with snakes and spiders and scorpions, and a drawing of a cloud puffing superheated air toward the black stick figure of a man. The drawing might almost have been comical, were it not for the fact that blackened figures were regularly found on the sands not far from the motel: illegals, mostly, tempted by the deceptive promise of great wealth.
The motel derived as much of its custom from referrals as from those who saw its sign in passing on the highway. There was a truck stop ten miles west, Harry’s Best Rest, with an all-night diner, a convenience store, showers and bathrooms, and space for up to fifty rigs. There was also a noisy cantina, frequented by specimens of human life that were barely one step up from the predatory desert creatures outside. The truck stop, with its lights and noise and promise of food and company, sometimes attracted those who had no business there, travelers who were merely tired and lost and seeking a place to rest. Harry’s Best Rest was not meant for them, and its staff had learned that it was prudent to send them on their way with a suggestion that they seek some comfort at the Spyhole. Harry’s Best Rest was owned by a man named Harry Dean, who occupied a role that would have been familiar to his predecessors on the border a century before. Harry walked a thin line, doing just enough to satisfy the law and keep the migras and Smokies from his door, which in turn usually enabled him to stay on the right side of those individuals, mired in criminality, who frequented the shadier corners of his establishment. Harry paid some people off, and was in turn paid off. He turned a blind eye to the whores who serviced the truckers in their rigs or in the little cabanas to the rear, and to the dealers who supplied the drivers with uppers and other narcotics to keep them up or bring them down as the need arose, as long as they kept their supply off the premises and safely stored amid the tangles of junk in the back of their assorted pickups and automobiles, the smaller vehicles interspersed among the huge rigs like bottom feeders following the big predators.