Thin Air

Chapter 36

It was getting dark.

Chollo eased into a more comfortable position on the front seat and said, "You think of anything yet?"

"If we're going to go in, we need a plan," I said.

"You think of that so quick?" Chollo said.

"Trained investigator," I said. "I know the place is a maze, but can you find the woman's room?"

"Si."

"House has a stairwell in a front hall," I said. "I can see that from here. Probably designed originally as a three-family."

"How you tell?" Chollo said.

"My father was a carpenter," I said. "It's in the genes."

"Was he also an asshole?"

"No. That's an acquired trait," I said.

"Well, you're right. Woman's room is off the secondfloor front hall. Should be where those windows are boarded up. There's a set of back stairs too. And a couple places where holes have been cut in the floor and ladders go down, or up, depending where you are."

"A nice amenity," I said.

We were quiet. The darkness settled slowly around us. Most of the street lights in San Juan Hill didn't work. The night sky was overcast. It was dark in the way it must have been dark in earlier times, except for some light that showed in the barricaded windows at the Deleon citadel.

"Who's going in?" Chollo said.

"You and me."

"How's your plan coming?" Chollo said.

"It's probably going to have something to do with me going in with you on the deal to make Deleon Mr. del Rio's East Coast marketing manager."

"I told you, no gringos. They won't buy it."

"How about I'm from the local mob, to discuss the territorial fee?"

"Isn't that Freddie Santiago?"

"I'm from Boston," I said. "Joe Broz sent me up to see where this fits in with us."

"Broz the stud duck around here?"

"Used to be," I said. "Thinks he is."

"What if Deleon checks with him?"

"Deleon probably can't get to Broz, but no harm being careful. Broz owes me a favor."

"You can get to Broz?"

"Yeah."

"You big with the bad guys, Spenser. You got Santiago helping you, Mr. del Rio helping you, now this guy Broz, that I don't know, he's helping you. And I'm helping you. You sure you are a good guy?"

"No," I said. "I'm not sure."

Chollo was silent in the almost perfect darkness next to me.

"Okay," he said after a while. "Say that works and it gets us in. Then what?"

"Then we improvise," I said.

"And you're sure she's in the castle there with Deleon?" Chollo said.

"Yes."

"What makes you so sure?"

"It makes more sense than anything else we can think of."

"And she's there against her will."

"She hasn't come out at all while we've been watching."

"Neither has he," Chollo said. "Maybe they are in there doing the funky chicken all the time."

"Possible."

"Once they ball one of us, you know," Chollo said, "they never want to fuck no gringo again."

"I didn't know that," I said.

Chollo grinned.

"Been my experience, at least."

"Funny," I said. "Mine's been different."

"Lot of broads take off on the old man. Don't say a word. Just get in the station wagon and go. The old man's walking around saying, `She'd never do it. She don't even like sex.' And the old lady's banging some guy's ears off in a motel in El Monte."

"El Monte?" I said.

"Lotta people getting laid in El Monte," Chollo said.

"How nice for them," I said. "But we've played grab ass with this thing long enough. We got to go in."

In the darkness I could hear Chollo inhale quietly, a long breath which he let out slowly. We both sat in the near solid darkness staring at a house we could barely see, looking for a woman who might be there.

After a while Chollo said, "Works for me, Kemo Sabe."

"I do not know who my father was," he said.

He was not crying now, but his voice was still shaky and he spoke haltingly, sitting on the floor beside her, her arm around him, his head on her shoulder.

"My mother was with many men. Many Anglo men. My father might have been Anglo. My mother would bring them to our room because she had nowhere else to bring them. We had only a room, with a sink and a stove and a television. My mother hung up a blanket to hide my part of the room, but I could peek around, and I could hear, even when she turned up the television. I did not like being there, but I had nowhere else to go."

His breathing was short and he stared at the floor in front of them while she patted his shoulder.

"And afterwards my mother would say to me that she didn't love these men. She would say that she only loved me. But that the men had to come here and she had to pretend to love them. We could pretend too, she told me. We could pretend that we were living in a high room in a great castle. And we could pretend that the men were handsome knights who bravely stormed the castle and climbed up to the room to seek her hand in marriage."

"And that's what you pretended," she said.

"Yes."

They were quiet for a moment. She could feel tremors run through him as he breathed. The room was dim, and it smelled dank. She heard a sound that might have been rain falling outside the boarded windows.

"Every Sunday," he said, "she would take me to the movies. There were no men on Sundays. We would go sometimes to the movies all day. We loved the movies. It is why she bought me the camera. She said maybe I could be a movie person someday."

The pictures of his mother and the men she was with moved jerkily on the monitors. Luis stood up suddenly and disappeared behind the scenery. The monitors went black for the first time since she'd been in the room. Luis came back and stood looking at the blank screens. The room seemed dark without their glow… and damp. She shivered and hugged herself.

"How did she die, Luis?"

"She was killed by Freddie Santiago."