“Sonny.” He smiled. “Sonny Baca. I’m glad to—” He stopped, seeing the pistol, and frowned. “Why?”
Sonny looked up at Father Luna, then down at the pistol. “I—”
“You know I don’t allow guns in the church.” Father Luna reached out and touched Sonny’s shoulder. “Now put it away. I’m surprised you would come to church with a gun.” He pulled at Sonny, as if to take the pistol.
The interruption was enough for Stone to slip away. When Sonny turned, the man was already hurrying up the side aisle and toward the front door.
“Good to see you, Father! I’ll explain later!” Sonny shouted as he ran after Stone, pushing through the thick crowd to get to the door.
“He’s got a gun!” someone shouted.
“Wait!” Father Luna shouted after him. “Whatever you’ve done! We forgive you! Come and pray with us!”
“A gun!”
“Stand back!”
“Is this for real?” a startled tourist cried.
A flashbulb burst in front of Sonny as he pushed through the door, temporarily blinding him. He ran through the courtyard gate in time to see one of Stone’s bodyguards hustle the man into the black BMW. The second one jumped behind the wheel and shot out of the parking place, rubber burning and screeching as the car hung a wild right on Romero Street, leaving a cloud of exhaust hanging in the air. Gawking tourists looked after the car, then at Sonny.
“Hey mister, is this a movie?”
It was the little girl Sonny had seen inside the church, tugging at his sleeve. Her anxious mother wore a look of consternation; behind them the father kept his camcorder rolling.
“Yeah.” Sonny tried to smile. “Just a movie.” He stuck his pistol under his belt.
“Where’s the cameras?” the girl called out as Sonny hurried to his truck.
“Your father’s holding it,” Sonny replied, “see?”
The little girl turned to look at her father. “Oh, yeah.” She smiled.
“Ah, tourists,” Sonny muttered, and walked quickly to his truck.
He jumped in the truck and wiped his forehead. It didn’t make sense to chase Stone.
Damn! He hit the dashboard in frustration. He had been close and lost it. But Stone had given him some information. Raven had double-crossed everyone!
The photograph? He had stuffed it into his jacket pocket when he rushed out of the church. He took it out and stared at it again. He shook his head. It was worthless. There was no negative, and the face in the photograph was so creased and tattered, there was no way of telling if it was Stone or not.
Stone hadn’t come for the photo; he wanted whatever Sonny knew about Raven. It was Raven he wanted, and the drugs.
26
Sonny looked out across the plaza. Yeah, the man was well connected, and therefore protected. He had earned his badge of evil in clandestine operations with the Contras in Nica, and that meant his hands were bloody. Very bloody.
Hell, putting the pistol to Stone’s head just brought back all the survival instincts the man had honed to perfection in the Central American jungles. He wasn’t bluffing when he said he would give the signal for his bodyguards to open fire. Innocent bystanders be damned. That’s the way they operated.
Stone, alias Billy the Kid, had been Gilroy’s boss, Gilroy’s alias was Juan, and the CIA right-wing group Libertad took care of its own.
Stone was an untouchable. Too many shredded files protected him. Maybe Noriega would name names, shed light on the atrocities that had been committed in those countries in the name of “America’s vested interests.” Or maybe someday the Justice Department would make the Cali bosses talk, find out exactly who that money bought.
Just maybe there was hope in the system.
He and Howard had spent many a Saturday afternoon watching football games on TV and discussing the United States’s role in Central America.
“The U.S. needs the Panama base to springboard into South America,” Howard said. Howard analyzed events in terms of a world context. “That’s why we created a puppet government in Panama. To keep our base there, to keep the canal. Does the U.S. need the base because it fears the military might of Latin America? Hell, no! The big boys need to be poised for the new impending war for the control of the vast ‘cocaine fields’ of South America. Those who control the coke control the money, and therefore the governments. The cartels are not only buying governments, they are becoming governments. And why do the big boys need the coke?”
Howard answered his own question. “To create a chemical dependency in this country. Give the colored people enough crack to keep them poor and in misery. Fill the jails with them and convince the whites that all people of color are their enemies. Their object is to divide and conquer. Keep the colored people separated from the white world. Yeah, that’s what they’re doing, cranking up the fear level between blacks and whites. As long as they keep the country divided, they stay in power. A complex formula, but it’s working! Damn if it ain’t working! Prejudice has not gone away. The rise of militia groups in this country is part of the plan. Fear of the colored people. Now they’re turning on the Latinos crossing over the border. Of course they don’t want to get rid of the so-called drug problem! They created it! It creates power for those who want to stay in power!”
Exactly what Alisandra had said: the cartels control the drug trade and drug routes, and now they also control governments.
Sonny groaned. Lord, I don’t want to solve world politics, I just want to find Rita. Let people like Stone control the killing fields of cocaine, let him be the man without a soul, just let me find Rita!
He felt helpless. A gnawing feeling knotted his guts, then flowed through his blood like a cold transfusion. He had come to the end of the rope. When had he eaten last? When had he slept? The day was so peaceful and beautiful, while he felt only the torment of failure.
He was like a drowning man reaching for a lifeline. He needed help. Fast. Raven wouldn’t wait. He dialed Lorenza Villa’s number.
“She’s alive,” Lorenza said. “I’ve been meditating all morning, and I know she’s alive! I saw the place!”
Sonny listened intently. He knew her meditation meant fasting, maybe the sweat lodge. Prayer meant vision. And she had been right about the warehouse.
“What did you see?” he asked and held his breath.
“I saw a cemetery …” Her voice trailed, fear in its tone. “There are skulls, feathers, black birds. She’s in danger, much danger …”
“A cemetery,” Sonny repeated. The black birds meant Raven, but the cemeteries around town had no skulls to mark the grave sites.
Lorenza seemed to read his thoughts. “Raven has grown very powerful. Even if you found him, there is extreme danger. He’s at the center of his circle, his entry to the underworld.”
“His circle of power?”
“Yes.”
“And Rita?”
Lorenza hesitated. “He needs a woman.… There will be an initiation …”
Dread coursed through Sonny’s blood. Lorenza needed to say no more. Raven no longer needed Rita as protection, but he did need her as an ally. His woman in a world of evil. Raven’s plan was to take Rita into his world of spirits, to transform her, make her enter the nagual of the raven. If he could do that, there would be no return for Rita.
“Nothing can touch him,” Lorenza said. “The only way to get Rita back is to enter Raven’s world.” Her words held a sense of finality.
She was warning him, but he didn’t understand what she meant by “nothing can touch him.” A bullet would put a stop to him, even if he had to etch a cross on it. A bullet with a cross on it would kill even a brujo like Raven.
For the first time he realized he was truly capable of killing a man. To save Rita and the girl, he would kill Raven.
“Where are you?”
“Old Town,” Sonny replied.
“There isn’t much time.”
He knew. With the dope delivered, Raven w
ould move, and like William Stone, he would not take hostages with him.
“She’s trying to reach us, that’s why she appeared to me. Call to her,” Lorenza suggested.
“What?”
“Call her name. Do you have anything of hers with you? A photo?”
“Yes.” Sonny reached in his wallet and took out her picture.
“Call her name. Use your song to call her.”
Sonny felt awkward. Looking down at the face in the photo, he thought of Rita. He loved her; he wanted her back, and he would tear the city apart to find her. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
“Rita,” he whispered.
The drone of the October day filled the space of the cab. Children called from the grassy area of the plaza. They ran around the gazebo. Sonny felt isolated, alone in the stream of time that swept around him. He thought he heard Rita’s voice, saw for an instant the image of her face, her frightened eyes.
He swayed softly, back and forth, sang his song: “To Grandfather Sun I send my prayers. To Tata Dios y los santos I pray. To the four sacred directions I send my prayers. I pray to the spirits of the mountains. May the power of my ancestors fill my soul. Guide me on the path of the sun. Fill me with clarity and goodness.”
He prayed to the brilliant sun that even now stood poised over the earth at its zenith point, sending its rays in the four sacred directions. The four sacred mountains were the homes of the spirits, the ancestors. Mount Taylor to the west, Sandia Mountains to the east, the Sangre de Cristos to the north, and the Manzano Mountains to the south. These mountains encompassed Sonny’s world, the world of his ancestors.
The coyotes appeared, and he ran with them through a dark forest until he heard her voice.
“Sonny,” Rita called in the October rustle of leaves, “don’t come, don’t come!”
She didn’t want him to find Raven’s place, even if it meant her life. It was a trap for him. He saw the flutter of black birds, dark gigantic wings circling around the Zia medallion. He heard Raven’s laughter, then the alluring voice of Tamara Dubronsky.
“Come to me,” she said. “You are an old soul, a lover from my past. You have found your way to my heart. I am with you.”
Then the coyotes withdrew and the image was gone.
The brief flash left Sonny with vertigo. He opened his eyes, tried to focus, looked out the truck window. No, the world had not gone away, it was still there, humming its ordinary hum of being. But beneath the ordinary world lay the images of the world of spirits.
“What did you see?” Lorenza whispered.
“I heard her, but I didn’t see the place. She doesn’t want me there.”
“Because it’s dangerous for you,” Lorenza said.
“Then Tamara entered the vision. Why?”
“You are connected not only to one person. You are connected to many. I cannot tell you what this will mean in the future, but for now she pulls power away from you. She knows where you are.”
“Knows where I am?”
“No time to explain. You need to focus on Rita.”
“Yeah,” Sonny answered. “And I know where to look.”
“I’ll go with you,” Lorenza said.
“No.”
“You need help.”
“It could be dangerous.”
“I went up in the balloon. What was that?”
“Okay,” Sonny agreed. “I’ll pick you up.”
“I’ll be ready.”
He turned off the phone, started the truck, and headed out of the plaza, north on Río Grande toward Corrales.
He dialed Howard’s lab number at police department forensics.
“Sonny? Where have you been?”
“Church,” Sonny replied.
“What?”
“Talking to Billy the Kid.”
There was a pause, then Howard’s low measured voice: “You talked to—Hold on.”
Sonny waited, heard a door close, a urinal flushing, then Howard’s barely audible voice. “What did he say?”
“Raven’s flown with everything.”
“Double-crossed Billy the Kid? Damn, the man’s loco. Doesn’t he know the CIA protects Billy?”
“And who protects Raven?”
“Ah,” Howard intoned. “You need backup?”
“I’m okay. Have you heard from Diego?”
“He called earlier. He’s staying by the wife. It’s really been hard on them. I told him to hang in there.”
“Good. Okay, I’m going to Lorenza’s. Call you later.”
“Hey, if I can help.”
“Hang loose.”
“Will do,” Howard replied.
Sonny clicked the phone off. According to don Eliseo, the evil sorcerers of the world had been around since the beginning of time. Their power was incredible. And now Lorenza said that Raven was at the center of his world, transformed into his Raven guardian spirit. Unstoppable.
What is this all about? Sonny wondered. Then he remembered something don Eliseo had told him as they sat sipping wine one evening under the old man’s cottonwood, shortly after Gloria’s murder.
“There is the path of light,” don Eliseo had said, “and there is the path of evil. Some souls chose the path of evil. They became the sorcerers. Yes, they are men and women who can fly, but they fly not to liberate the soul, but to draw it into their web. They are the sorcerers who eat souls.”
Fly to devour souls. Old sorcerers from the ancient past, walking the earth, destroying the positive symbols of the soul and creating weakness. And he, Sonny Baca, had not thought of his soul since childhood. Since Bolsas died.
His mother had initiated him into the world of God and the saints, and so as a child he followed that strict path. Never scored with a girl while in high school, bragged to his friends that he had, but he hadn’t. His soul was to be kept pure. For what? To enter heaven. Ah, he lost faith when his father died. When Bolsas died.
With Gloria’s death he had been thrown into the world of soul-devouring sorcerers. But Raven’s flight was not just the burst of a cocaine snort, his was the flight of evil.
“How did I get into this?” he had asked don Eliseo.
“Ah, Sonny, you, too, are an old soul,” the old man answered. “You have it in you to be a man who can fly.”
“Me, a brujo?”
“A good brujo,” don Eliseo said, laughing. “Listen to Lorenza, she can help. The greatest danger is to allow the darkness of evil to consume you. Do not allow the sorcerers of evil to devour your soul. You must find your own power within. Find the good brujo.”
Yes, Sonny thought as he turned down the dirt road that led to Lorenza’s house. I didn’t listen to the old man. I didn’t know about the coyotes, didn’t know the kind of power we have inside. To fly, to enter the world of spirits.
Maybe he hadn’t paid attention to the old man or to Lorenza. She had guided him into the underworld with the help of the coyote spirits. Their strength had been with him these past few days, he realized that now. He had to learn to trust it, to use it.
There was a further step to take, and that was to the center of Raven’s world. A dangerous step. Yes, he needed Lorenza’s help.
“You have two handicaps,” Manuel Lopez, the man who taught him the vagaries of detective work in the city, had told him. “You’ve never aimed the pistol at a man, and someday that might get you dead. And you think too much. Philosophers don’t make good detectives.”
Okay, Sonny thought, it’s time to act.
In a small, sunny clearing in the bosque sat Lorenza’s house. She opened the door and greeted him.
“I’m glad to see you,” she said, and embraced him.
It was the first time she had greeted him with an abrazo, a common greeting among New Mexicans. Sonny had seen her embrace Rita, as a greeting or in parting; the abrazo was part of the warmth of friendship. Coming from Lorenza, the abrazo was a flow of energy mingling with the aroma of her body. It left Sonny breathless.
“Gra
cias,” he said.
“Por qué?”
“For all you do—”
“Rita is a sister,” she said. “And Raven is an evil force. Come, we have a lot of work to do.”
She led him to her consultation room and made him lie on the small cot.
“Do we have time?” he asked, eager to be off to find and rescue Rita and Cristina.
“We must take time,” she replied. “Raven has gone to his circle. You must meet him there. To be unprepared means death to you. Let’s begin with you describing Raven’s place.”
He closed his eyes and described Raven’s compound in the mountain. It was surrounded by a circle of white stones and poles with feathers.
When he was done, Lorenza said, “Ah, so that’s the place I saw in my vision.”
Sonny nodded. “I was there this summer. He was living there with his four wives, but they’ve scattered. So he went back, a perfect place to hide.”
“And dangerous,” Lorenza warned him.
Sonny knew. Within his circle Raven was supposed to be invincible.
“Can I meet him there?” he asked.
“You have no choice,” Lorenza replied. “He calls the shots, he has Rita. You have to go to him. He knows that. He’ll be waiting.”
“I’m ready,” Sonny said.
“He’s a brujo,” she said softly. “Not in the sense that people usually understand the word. Most people say witch and think of old women gathered around a cauldron. In the old-world religions, the women were priests. As they lost their power, their ceremonies to the earth and the moon were banned. They began to be called devil worshipers.”
“What do you mean by brujo?” Sonny asked.
“Brujo is not a word from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. The word is Spanish, so it has meaning to the beliefs of the Catholic Spaniards who settled here.”
“What’s the word in Nahuatl?”
She looked at him. It was time to reveal to Sonny things she had not revealed to anyone. She had told Rita a few of her experiences, but it was Sonny who had to know. He had gone through the first phase of initiation. He had met his guardian spirits, but now he had to meet Raven. There wasn’t time for slow preparations. He must realize his potential now; he must know his nagual before it was too late.