From one of the vehicles, a radio blared. As Cesar eased Shel down into the passenger seat, he stopped, listening to the tune. An ugly grin appeared. “Conjunto,” he said, as though it were a newfound insult. “Do you know what the words mean?” He stared through the trees at the squatter camp. “It’s about the ghost of some loca, a crazy woman, who killed her family. The woman wanders the river, the Rio Huixtla, looking for them.” He slammed the door and shambled around the front of the car through the headlights to the driver side. As he opened the door, the overhead light revealed the blood spattered across the door and smeared across on the seat. He sat down as though it weren’t there. When the door closed he said, “Spooks,” gesturing his head back toward the squatter camp. “We Mejicanos, we love our freaks and spooks.”
He turned the car around and headed out the gravel road flanked by the eucalyptus trees. The fires of the squatter camp faded behind them. Around the first bend a man’s body appeared, facedown in the road. Cesar put the car in park and removed a pearl-handled navaja from his pocket, flicking the blade open.
“I’d like to leave a message,” he said, as though speaking into a phone.
He opened the door, tottered out into the rain and knelt down beside the body in the mud. Resting one knee on the dead man’s arm, he began to saw at the wrist with his knife, cutting through the muscle and digging at the bone until the hand came away. He struggled to his feet, spat at the body, and tramped back to the car.
He was drenched when he collapsed again behind the wheel, his wet hair dripping in his eyes. He wiped his face and placed the severed hand on the dash above the steering wheel. It was flecked with mud. The skin was a yellowish-gray color, with a knot of bloody bone and tendon congealed with nerve endings coiled in the gore. It lay there on the dash like a freshly butchered oxtail, except with fingers.
“I know a back way out of here,” Cesar said, putting the car in gear again.
A half mile on he turned into a private road. It was slick with mud and grass. Twice the car’s rear end slid sideways, edging toward the culvert running parallel to the road. Cesar slowed down then, more so than he wanted, and Shel watched as he checked the rearview mirror every few seconds, whispering to himself in Spanish.
“Where are we going?” she ventured as they rounded a stand of pear trees.
Abatangelo drove Waxman to the Vallejo waterfront. As they waited for the San Francisco-bound ferry’s final call for boarding, Abatangelo asked for pen and paper, then began to print out instructions to the coroner’s people or whoever else might find his body that night. When he noticed Waxman staring in puzzlement, he explained, “I don’t want anything I shoot disappearing if it all goes wrong.” He handed the note to Waxman. “Read it.”
The note instructed anyone who discovered Abatangelo’s remains to hand over the cameras, the film, anything found on or near him, to Bert Waxman, care of the newspaper. Waxman nodded, handed the note back and said, “Thank you.”
Abatangelo put the note inside an envelope which he marked, IMPORTANT, then sealed it shut. He then perforated one end of the envelope with his pen tip, unlaced his scapular, threaded the lace through the hole in the envelope, knotted the lace back together again and hung the envelope around his neck. It lay flat against his chest beside the image of the dying St. Dismas.
“What I said back at the hotel,” Abatangelo said, “about Shel, if she isn’t dead already, you killed her? That was unfair.”
Waxman shrugged. “I suppose,” he replied, “when all is said and done, there will be blame enough to go around for everybody.” He chafed his hands between his knees, trying to warm them. “I still maintain it would be best if the authorities were notified.”
“No, Wax, no authorities. I lack your confidence there.”
“Confidence has nothing to do with it. People like Moreira and Facio wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the authorities.”
“Nicely put.”
“But we’re talking about a crime.”
“I don’t know about it,” Abatangelo said. “I heard some garbled trash from a suicidal tweak. You don’t know anything, either, Wax. Everything Frank spewed out is just stuff. Until I come back with the goods, you’d be a fool to believe him. Besides which, if the boys in Homicide didn’t believe you when you told them what I said, I hardly think your credibility will get better when the source is Frank.”
Waxman made a helpless gesture of acceptance. With difficulty, he confessed, “I’m afraid for you.”
Abatangelo smiled at the thoughtfulness. He’d put Waxman through a lot these past two days, manipulating him, cajoling him, accusing him of falsity and begging off when it came time to need him all over again. And in the face of all that, Waxman, for all his faults, had demonstrated a mindful persistence that, in light of his obvious fear, spoke of real courage. Now, Abatangelo thought, he’s saying he fears for me.
“I won’t be any safer if you call the law, Wax,” he said. “I’d probably end up getting tagged with everybody else, and in jail I’m obscenely easy to kill. Besides which, if this trade really is going down, and the cops walk into the middle of it, things’ll go crazy. And in that kind of chaos, with people like this and the heat I’m sure they’re going to bring, Shel’s life won’t be worth the breath it takes to talk about it.”
The ferry for San Francisco began boarding. Waxman glanced at it, then asked, sensing time was short, “Do you honestly think she’ll be there?”
Abatangelo smiled despondently and looked away. “Yes. I honestly do.”
“Alive?”
He remembered the article Waxman had recited to Facio, about the woman left bleeding in the jungle for the insects, the women hung from trees with their dead babies tied to their backs. “No,” he confessed. “But if her body’s there, I want to be the one to claim it.” The ferry sounded three short blasts from its whistle. “Thanks for all you’ve done, Wax. I mean that. Do the story proud, you tweedy motherfucker. No matter what I bring back. Or don’t bring back.”
Waxman blushed and adjusted his glasses. “Yes, sir. Good luck.” He exited the car and waved like a man trying to convince himself the farewell was not final. Then he turned away and hurried through drizzle up the slick gangplank and onto the ferry.
As Abatangelo drove back to the marina, the mist created a slick, oily veneer across the asphalt. It sent a chill through the air, too, and he warded off intimations of death as he peered past the wipers and the rain-streaked windshield at the road. He considered stopping at a liquor store, a pint for warmth, but decided drink would only make him moodier. Get any more depressed, he thought, and you’ll start singing.
When he got to the marina he drove through slowly. The boats sat high and dark in the rising tide, hulls bumping faintly against the sagging pier. No dogs barked as the car drifted past, nor was anyone about to scowl at his presence. It made him wonder if a little forewarning had gone around. He came abreast of the sawhorses he’d seen that afternoon and spotted what he wanted among the debris.
Turning off the ignition he sat awhile, listening. Steam purled off the hood. A wind chime made of sawed-off bottles rattled dully in the rain. He opened the door, navigated the mud troughs in the road, and gathered up a paint-spattered tarpaulin. Scudding back to the car he folded it into his trunk.