“Damn!” Sonny cursed. “Damn! No valgo maseta! I can’t even take care of my own mother!” A strange jealousy mixed with the impotence he felt.
He called Howard as he drove back downtown. He wanted to know if the cops had gotten hold of Dominic’s phone records, but Howard didn’t answer. He went back to the library and spent the time hunting through files on Akira Morino.
“Dig,” Sonny told Ruth, “all the way back to Japan if we have to. I want to know everything there is to know about this man.”
Late that afternoon he went home exhausted, feeling like he was coming down with a cold. He almost fell asleep on the couch, but he didn’t want the nightmares, and he didn’t want to be late to pick up Rita. He got up, showered, put on his tux and the Tony Lama boots he reserved for dancing, then he drove over to Rita’s. He felt drained, and he couldn’t put his finger on the cause. He hadn’t slept well, he knew, but it was more than that.
Seeing Rita improved his mood. She looked stunning in a low-cut burgundy evening gown. “Que guapa,” he said and kissed her. “Let’s not go.”
“Gloria?”
He nodded.
“All right,” she agreed.
He looked at her. She had dressed carefully for the occasion, but she would do what was best. What more could he ask for? A beautiful woman who loved him. He felt like a world-class ass.
“No. Let’s go. We promised we would, and we’re ready, so let’s go. The party will get things off my mind.”
“You surer?”
“Vamos.” He kissed her and walked her to the truck, where he opened the door for her.
“Por Dios.” Rita smiled at the courtesy.
10
The lobby of the Hyatt downtown was full of City Symphony aficionados when Sonny and Rita entered. The music lovers, artists, and wealthy patrons of the city always turned out for the annual fund-raiser. Board members circulated in the crowd, greeting old friends and working the room for new contributors. It was an event that drew the city art community together. But this year the mood was subdued; the murder of Gloria Dominic had touched a chord of grief and disbelief in the city, especially the elite circles she traveled in.
“Feels like a funeral,” Sonny whispered as they made their way through the crowd. The music of the string quartet hidden in a corner of the lobby did little to cheer things up.
“They need a mariachi,” Rita replied.
Music and raising money for the symphony weren’t the only things on the minds of the symphony supporters, Sonny thought. Business will get done and politics hashed over. The upcoming mayoral election was being hotly debated. Walter Johnson and the incumbent, Marisa Martinez, were in attendance, meeting old friends and pressing the flesh. Johnson, the old conservative businessman from the Country Club area, reminded friends that he was a longtime supporter of the symphony. Marisa reminded them she was spearheading the drive to build a new Performing Arts Center that would house the symphony. But she was fighting opponents who said the center would cost too much and serve only a few, so her ambitious plan was now an endangered project.
But the murder of Gloria Dominic was the most-whispered topic. Sonny could feel the undercurrents it created as they made their way through the crowd.
“Try to enjoy yourself,” Rita whispered as she drew him toward a group of business acquaintances. A small group was gathered around Mike Gallegos, president of the Hispano Chamber of Commerce. Rita was a member working on the committee that was trying to build a Hispanic Cultural Center. The city had been founded by the Nuevo Mexicanos in 1706, and now, three hundred years later, there was still no organized way in which to show off their arts and culture.
The Chicano Arts and Resistance show at the Alburquerque Museum a few years ago had galvanized the Chicano community. Now the activism for the cultural center had moved out of the artists’ hands and into the hands of the business community.
“The city fathers move too goddamned slow when it comes to showcasing our arts,” Rita had complained. “And before anything will get done, we’ll need to set off dynamite under Mike’s ass. He spends most of his time kissing up to the gringos at the Rotary.”
Mike Gallegos was the man many said was the up-and-coming politico in the city. He was a handsome, young Hispano who seemed born to be a politician. He was on the city council now, and although he was letting this mayoral race slide by, he was already laying the groundwork to jump into the next one.
Mike and Sonny had attended high school together. Mike had gone directly to college, then straight to law school at UNM, and now he spent most of his time on advisory boards and charitable causes around town.
“Hi, Rita. You’re looking beautiful as ever,” Mike greeted them. He presented his wife, Tiffany, and the cluster of friends surrounding them. “So how’s business, Charlie Chan?” he said, and slapped Sonny heartily on the back. He laughed, and the group smiled.
“Fine,” Sonny replied. He wasn’t in the mood to trade barbs.
“I told Sonny years ago, when we were at UNM, let’s go into business together. But did he listen to me? Oh no. Spent his time reading books. Then to top it off! He got into this chasing missing husbands business!”
“Darling,” Tiffany interrupted, “Sonny does all right. Didn’t he save the Dodge lady from Mexican bandidos?”
Sonny stared into her blue eyes.
“Yeah, he did.” Mike nodded. “You want a medal, Sonny?”
Sonny let it pass, smiling halfheartedly.
“Well, I thought it was romantic. I certainly wouldn’t mind being saved by Sonny.” Tiffany smiled.
Mike put his arm around her. “Okay, okay, so Sonny’s a hero. I wouldn’t tease him if I didn’t like Sonny. Hell, we played football together. Remember, Sonny? You dropped a lot of passes!” He laughed loudly.
“I remember,” Sonny replied. Mike the quarterback. He always needed the limelight. Now Mike was making big bucks being a lawyer for the electric utility. The utility allowed him time to serve on the city council and be involved as a supporter of the symphony. But that was his style. He had been the backslapper all through high school: student council president, senior class president, Boys State. The teachers treated him like a god; they predicted he would go far.
“So how’s the grape business?” Sonny asked.
Mike’s family had been produce distributors for generations, and Sonny knew Mike was very sensitive to the fact that his family trucked in grapes to sell while Cesár Chavez was boycotting the growers.
Sonny liked to remind Mike that the California farmworkers would be living in poverty, sleeping under plastic bags, and sick from the pesticides as long as the boycott wasn’t supported.
“Making fine wine.” Mike smiled and changed the subject. “We’re sorry about Gloria. It’s a great loss,” he said.
“She was a good woman,” his wife agreed.
“Helped get Marisa elected, helped the Hispano chamber on a lot of projects,” Mike added. “We’re going to miss her.…”
The group nodded in consolation.
Tiffany asked Sonny if he thought there was a connection to the recent series of rapes in the Northeast Heights. Sonny shook his head, thinking about the coalition of women Gloria had organized to protest for more police involvement in the cases. She’d had to tone down her activities because of her husband’s bid for the mayor’s seat, but it hadn’t softened her private opinions.
“The city is becoming too violent,” she had told Sonny, “and much of it is violence against women.”
“It adds a bitterness to her death,” Rita said. “I mean, even if there’s no connection, she’s still a victim of the violence she fought so hard against.”
“I heard you were there that morning,” Mike said.
Sonny shook his head. “I took my tía to see her, that’s all. I only know what’s in the news—”
“Come on.” Mike leaned toward Sonny in confidence. “This is familia,” he said, indicating the friends around him. ??
?Is it true what the news said? The way she was killed? Sounds like a damn cult or something. Or is Frank just smart enough to make it look like that?”
Before Sonny could respond, he felt Rita touch his arm. The group turned to see Tamara Dubronsky working her way across the room toward them. Dressed in an elegant black gown with diamonds glittering on her fingers and throat, she was the most dramatic-looking woman in the crowd.
“Darling, I’m so happy to see you,” Tamara greeted Sonny, and he leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “Mr. Mike Gallegos, how pleased we are to have you and your lovely wife join us tonight. All of you.” She smiled at the group and at Rita but returned her attention quickly to Sonny.
“My, you look more handsome than ever.”
The women smiled. Tamara was right; dressed in his tux, his face tan from the sun, trim and muscular, and technically still eligible, Sonny always drew the attention of the women.
Tamara, too, was extremely alluring. Her eyes were dark, intense, mesmerizing, and she accented them with just the right makeup. She had the lithe body of a flamenco dancer, and she knew how to use it to best effect.
Everything about Tamara made a statement, including her intriguing accent. Some said it was Russian, others said Polish, still others said German. Nobody knew for sure, because Tamara Dubronsky did not talk about her past.
Sonny knew only the rumors about Tamara’s past. It was said she had been born in Eastern Europe, in that marginal land created in the aftermath of World War II. She was intensely focused and intelligent. She spoke Russian, Polish, German, and French. She was said to have been studying music when she met Peter Dubronsky, a widower who had been in Berlin on sabbatical from teaching Russian at the University of New Mexico. He returned to tell colleagues and friends that he had fallen in love, and although he was sixty, he proved his love. It took him a few years, but he finally got Tamara out of East Germany. He brought her to New Mexico, where they were married.
What everyone knew for sure was that three years after Dubronsky and Tamara were married, he died of a heart attack, leaving her a fortune in artwork. Using the family money left to him by his mother, Dubronsky had collected art since he arrived in New Mexico in the early fifties. He fell under a spell, he said, of the land and the people, and he wanted to safeguard the romance of New Mexico. The only way to save the past was by preserving its art, so he religiously bought the old New Mexican masters and as many Georgia O’Keeffes as he could.
He roamed through the northern villages and bought wood carvings, the old santero pieces of Barela and the other native carvers. He bought old Navajo blankets, the black Santa Clara pottery of Martinez, anything he could get his hands on.
He had bought an estate in the North Valley large enough to hold all his artwork. There Tamara still lived, once a year splurging on a big party for the City Symphony, the rest of the time visited only by a small coterie of friends. Recently she had become more reclusive, moving her annual party to the downtown hotel, though she was, as always, an Alburquerque society regular. People whispered that she was part of a secretive group of women who were into psychic phenomena. Tamara herself said she was psychic. Many swore by her predictions.
Tamara claimed no country, but in New Mexico, she said, she knew she had arrived at a sacred and primal place on earth. She had given her soul to this tierra encantada. She now called herself a citizen of this land of the sun.
Tamara and her “powers” were always the subject of cocktail party conversation, and with some derision, but no one denied she had a gift for raising money. Elderly widows who learned of her powers were attracted to her, especially those who wanted to communicate with their departed husbands.
The last woman who had contacted Tamara for this reason was from the southern part of the state. Her husband had died and left her a large ranch, but life was lonely on the open space. She begin to hear the voice of her husband in the vastness of the arid desert. She sought out Tamara, and Tamara became her spiritual guide, the channel through which the woman spoke to her husband. He told her the City Symphony needed help, and that same afternoon the woman wrote a check for a quarter of a million dollars to the symphony. No one, especially not the symphony director, thought of asking what Tamara charged the woman for her services.
Looking at Tamara, Sonny remembered the first time he was introduced to her. Her grip was strong, and the flow of energy was like touching a low-voltage power line. There was an immediate sexual attraction that both recognized. Tamara’s eyes were the eyes of a Gypsy woman, dark, holding him in their power. She had invited him to her home, and he had declined.
Had he been afraid of her? That’s the question he had never answered for himself. She had sensed his lust, and so she seduced him by acknowledging his need. The thought of Rita had made him decide not to pursue the chemistry that attracted him to Tamara. But then, a woman like Tamara only came along once in a lifetime, he thought, and there had to be something wrong with a man who got an invitation from her and didn’t respond.
Now when they met, even with Rita standing beside him, the sexual chemistry was still there, unresolved.
“Tamara.” He coughed softly to break the tension. “You remember Rita.” Rita had met Tamara once before and instinctively disliked the woman.
“How lovely to see you.” Tamara acknowledged Rita with a glance. “Sonny, you pick the sweetest girls.”
Sonny winced.
“He didn’t pick me.” Rita smiled coldly, putting her arm through Sonny’s. “I give him the pleasure of my company, dar-link,” she responded, mimicking Tamara’s accent.
The women in the group smiled. Good for Rita, the smiles said. Sonny was worth fighting for.
“You are wise.” Tamara smiled and turned to Mike, unflustered. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Mike Gallegos, I must take the very important Mr. Baca to meet someone,” she said diplomatically and led Sonny and Rita away. “It is a terrible thing about Gloria,” she said as they walked away. “Terrible. We thought about canceling tonight, but I talked to Frank. He’s so sweet. The poor dear is so distraught.”
Frank, distraught? Sonny thought.
“Life must go on, I told him,” Tamara continued, “and he said he agreed.”
Tamara didn’t pursue the subject. She led them to the center of the lobby, where a small group was clustered.
“I want you to meet someone who will be very important in your life,” Tamara whispered. “I told you about my friend, Anthony Pájaro. I want you two to meet. He fights to save our Earth.”
Anthony Pájaro, Sonny thought, sure. He was the leader of a statewide antinuclear group. Pájaro’s group had been focusing their attention on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad. They were protesting the storage of high-level plutonium waste at the facility. The Department of Energy storage tests at the WIPP site had been barred, and it sat empty. Millions of upkeep dollars poured into the storage facility, but the DOE couldn’t proceed.
Recently the tables had turned. The Senate had approved the test run of a large truck carrying radioactive waste from Los Alamos to the WIPP facility in a couple of weeks. The run was headline news, and every anti-nuclear group in the state was reenergized.
“Would you like to meet him?” Tamara asked.
“Why not?” Sonny said.
Tamara pushed through the crowd, and Pájaro turned to greet her.
Sonny expected to meet a “back to nature” environmentalist with a thick beard full of ticks from sleeping in the forest. Instead, the man who turned to smile at them was lean and handsome. He had dark, penetrating eyes, a hawk nose, and polished black hair, which he combed back and tied in a ponytail. He was dressed in a tux, but instead of the usual black bow tie he wore a gold medallion around his neck. It was a beautiful large piece, round, inscribed with the Zia symbol.
“Tamara.” He smiled in greeting and kissed her cheek, but his eyes remained on Sonny.
“Darling,” Tamara said sweetly, “
I am so glad you could come. I want to introduce you to Mr. Sonny Baca, whom I’ve told you about. And his lady friend, Miss Rita Lopez.”
“Sonny Baca,” Pájaro said, and took Sonny’s hand. “Any friend of Tamara’s is a friend of mine. Anthony Pájaro, at your service.”
The man’s charisma was strong. He was approaching forty, Sonny thought, and was as trim and muscular as a runner. His black eyes bore into Sonny, and in them Sonny saw a zeal he did not see in most men. He was a man with a mission.
Pájaro turned to Rita and took her hand. “You don’t know me, but I know you. I’ve eaten at your place. Best carne adovada in town. I worked around the Navajo reservation for a while, so I learned to love mutton and chile.”
“Thank you,” Rita answered.
“Nice piece,” Sonny said, nodding at the gold medallion that hung around Pájaro’s neck.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” He smiled and looked at Tamara. “A gift from a very special friend. But let me introduce my friends,” he said, indicating the people gathered around him. He gave their names.
“Our wonderful group of warriors,” Tamara said. “They fight against this pollution of the Earth.” Her eyes flashed with genuine pride.
Ah, Sonny thought, he is also Tamara’s lover.
“Tamara is one of our true believers,” Pájaro complimented her.
Sonny sensed Tamara’s enthusiasm. So Pájaro was her friend, and he wore the gold medallion with the Zia symbol, so what? Was he getting so suspicious of the symbol that every time he saw it, it would remind him of Gloria? The Zia symbol, after all, was the most-used symbol in the state. Electricians, plumbers, medical groups, dozens of small businesses used it on their stationery, on their fleets of cars or trucks.
“You must be upset about the Senate decision to allow a test run,” Rita said.
“Yes, we’re getting ready for the battle again,” Pájaro said, his look growing serious. “We’re a small group, we have only one goal: to close down WIPP. Our reasoning is simple, but it will work. If the nuclear waste producers have no place to store their garbage, they have to stop producing it, right? During the cold war the whole world went insane producing plutonium. Now they want to shove that high-level waste down our throats. We resist. We’re committed to saving Mother Earth.” Though he addressed Rita and Sonny, the few around him nodded in assent.