“Well, there’s just the ones I told you,” Annie said.
“Write them down, por favor. Please.”
She went into the kitchen, took a pad and pencil from where they were resting near the phone, and carried them back into the living room. She switched on a floor lamp near the couch, leaned over onto the coffee table, and began writing. As she wrote, she spoke. Ernesto had always admired that, people who could talk and write at the same time.
“She may be a redhead by now, who knows?” Annie said. “Or back to her real color, which is brown. Well, more like... well, yeah, brown I guess you would say. She was a blonde the last time I saw her. But who knows what she is now? Did I mention Virginia Darrow? Did I give you that name?”
“No,” Ernesto said.
“That’s one of the names she uses. Virginia Darrow. I like that one a lot. That and Melissa Blair. The last time I saw her, she was Virginia Darrow and she was a blonde. She looked terrific. Well, she’s a beautiful girl, would you like to see some pictures of her?”
“That would be helpful,” Ernesto said.
“These are all the names I can think of,” Annie said. “Oh wait, there’s one more she used to use, but that was when she first went to Los Angeles. When she was still trying to get in pictures. She used this very young name, it was Mary Jane Hopkins. But I don’t think she’s used that in a long time. Do you want me to put it down?”
“Put it down, please,” Ernesto said.
Annie wrote down the name, and then tore the sheet of paper from the pad and handed it to Ernesto. “Here you are, Detective Gomez,” she said, and then frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said, “is that what you told me?”
Ernesto had forgotten what he’d told her.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, “Gomez.”
Domingo looked at him sharply.
Lady, Ernesto thought again, please don’t make this hard for us.
“Would you like to see the pictures?” she asked.
“Por favor,” he said, and remembered that he’d told her Garcia.
They went into the bedroom. She opened the closet door, and reached up onto the shelf. “Can you help me here?” she said. “It’s the gray box.”
Ernesto hefted the box down from the shelf. They went back into the living room again, and she began leafing through the pictures, proudly displaying them.
“These are my two daughters when they were little girls,” she said. “And this is my first husband. And this is when we used to live in New Jersey. And this is the four of us in Vero Beach, which is the first time we came to Florida. That was when Al decided he wanted to come live down here. My first husband. And this is—”
I don’t want to hear this bullshit, Ernesto thought.
“—my second husband, Dom. Well, Dominick Santoro. Do you know Santoro Brothers Construction in Miami? That used to be my husband. Ah, here’s Jenny,” he said.
Por fin, Ernesto thought, and almost sighed in relief.
He looked at the picture of a six-year-old girl.
“Have you got anything more recent?” he asked.
What it sounded like was, “Ha’ you gar anytin’ more rissin?”
“Oh sure, just a second,” she said, and began rummaging in the box. “The thing is, you know, there aren’t very many because she left home so young, she was only sixteen when she left for California. Wanted to be an actress. Well, she was very good, you know, ask anybody. She was the star of The Crucible, do you know that play? By Arthur Miller? When they did it at the school. She was the star. The dramatics teacher said she was a very talented young lady. Those were his exact words. A very talented young lady. Still, it broke her father’s heart when she went out there. Well, you know, he had a heart attack two years later. Here she is, look, she must be fifteen in this picture, isn’t she beautiful?”
She showed them a photograph of a girl in a bikini, good breasts in the skimpy top, wide hips, long legs, standing on tiptoe like a model, a grin on her face, dark hair blowing in the wind.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Annie said, “she’s my stepdaughter and all, but she’s my favorite. Of all the three. The others are my natural daughters, but I like Jenny best. Is that a terrible thing for me to say? I’m supposed to be the wicked stepmother, I know, but I always thought of myself as her real mother, and I loved her better than my own daughters, still do. Here’s another one of her on the beach, this was taken in Florida, too, we were living in Bradenton at the time. She was very well developed at an early age, so beautiful. And smart, too, she used to get A’s even in mathematics, which is difficult for a girl. I don’t know what happened out there, I’ll never be able to understand how she became a prostitute, never. Well, listen, Alice, poor thing, was a drug addict, you know. And Katie’s been divorced twice, who knows what she’ll make of her life. She sent this from Los Angeles, this is fairly recent. It was a party at a producer’s house. In Hollywood. They give big parties, the producers out there in Hollywood.”
Ernesto looked at the photograph.
Blonde, good, that was more like it. Sexy chiquita grinning into the camera, silky low-cut dress, tits spilling over the top, one hand on her hip, the other holding a drink, long legs in high-heeled sandals.
He handed the picture to Domingo and then said, “Have you any more like this?”
“I think she sent some from Seattle when she was up there, let me see.” She began rummaging through the box again. “Is that wrong of me?” she asked. “To love her the most?” She turned to look into Ernesto’s face. “Detective Garcia?” she said. “Is that wrong of me?”
Domingo suddenly tensed.
“One cannot dictate to the heart,” Ernesto said, and tapped his chest.
“I’m sorry,” Annie said, puzzled. “You did say Garcia, didn’t you?”
Domingo was perched on the edge of the couch now, the picture of Jenny Santoro at a Hollywood party in his left hand, like Fay Wray in King Kong’s huge paw.
“Gomez,” Ernesto said, and placed his hand gently on Domingo’s right arm.
“Gomez, yes,” Annie said, and smiled. “I have a terrible time with names.”
“If you can find those other pictures,” Ernesto said, and returned the smile. “Por favor.”
In his pocket, Domingo loosened his grip on the switchblade knife.
7
Luis Amaros was known as El Armadillo to those in the drug trade. This was not because he looked like an armadillo. Not many people looked like armadillos. In fact, not many people knew what armadillos looked like. Most people confused armadillos with anteaters. An anteater had a long narrow snout, and a long sticky tongue, and a long shaggy tail, and it looked like a hairy flying saucer with legs. An armadillo, on the other hand, had a covering of armorlike, jointed, bony plates, and it looked like a small tank with legs. Luis Amaros did not look like a tank. He looked more like a fire hydrant. Short and squat and a bit chubby. An amiable fire hydrant was what he looked like. A good-natured fire hydrant. He looked like Baby Doc Duvalier of the island Haiti, was what he looked like, but he was not a member of the Duvalier family. Luis was a fire hydrant member of the Amaros family of Bogotá, and he was into dealing drugs. Well, that was a given. If you were Colombian, and you lived in Florida, you were not moving coffee beans.
The reason Luis Amaros was called El Armadillo was because, like the armor-plated burrowing mammal that was his namesake, Luis was very well-armored. There was hardly any way anyone could get to him. Anybody took a fall for dealing dope, it wasn’t going to be Luis. It was going to be a dozen other people lower in the echelon, but it was not going to be Luis. That was why so many other Colombians lived in shitty prison cells and Luis lived in a luxurious house on Key Biscayne.