“Sounds like you know a lot about her.”
“Oh hell yes. Got an app on my phone. Dial her any time I want and get a blessing.”
“You’re kidding.”
“True story. There’s a lady down in Mexico runs a big shrine. You send her a dollar, she puts up an offering for you. Makes miracles happen. There’s a whole list of miracles that Santa Muerte does. Got her own hashtag.”
“So what kind of miracles do you look for?”
“Tips, girl! What you think?” Timo sighed. “Narcos call on Santa Muerte all the time when they want to put a bullet in their enemies. And I come in after and take the pictures. Skinny Lady gets me there before the competition is even close.”
Lucy was looking at him like he was crazy, and it annoyed him. “You know, Lucy, it’s not like you’re the only person who needs an edge out here.” He waved at the dead Texan. “So? You want the story, or not?”
She still looked skeptical. “If anyone can make an offering to Santa Muerte online, what’s this Texan doing upside down on a fence?”
“DIY, baby.”
“I’m serious, Timo. What makes you think Tex here is an offering?”
Because Amparo’s boyfriend just lost his job to some loser Longhorn who will work for nothing. Because my water bill just went up again, and my rationing just went down. Because Roosevelt Lake is gone dry, and I got Merry Perrys doing revivals right on the corner of 7th and Monte Vista, and they’re trying to get my cousin Marco to join them.
“People keep coming,” Timo said, and he was surprised at the tightness of his throat as he said it. “They smell that we got water, and they just keep coming. It’s like Texas is a million, million ants, and they just keep coming.”
“There are definitely a lot of people in Texas.”
“More like a tsunami. And we keep getting hit by wave after wave of them, and we can’t hold ’em all back.” He pointed at the body. “This is Last Stand shit, here. People are calling in the big guns. Maybe they’re praying for Santa Muerte to hit the Texans with a dust storm and strip their bones before they get here. For sure they’re asking for something big.”
“So they call on Lady Death.” But Lucy was shaking her head. “It’s just that I need more than a body to do a story.”
“But I got amazing pics!”
“I need more. I need quotes. I need a trend. I need a story. I need an example…”
Lucy was looking across the CAP canal toward the subdivision as she spoke. Timo could almost see the gears turning in her head…
“Oh no. Don’t do it, girl.”
“Do what?” But she was smiling, already.
“Don’t go over there and start asking who did the deed.”
“It would be a great story.”
“You think some motherfucker’s just gonna say they out and wasted Old Tex?”
“People love to talk, if you ask them the right questions.”
“Seriously, Lucy. Let the cops take care of it. Let them go over there and ask the questions.”
Lucy gave him a pissed-off look.
“What?” Timo asked.
“You really think I’m that wet?”
“Well…”
“Seriously? How long have we known each other? Do you really think you can fool me into thinking the cops are gonna give a shit about another dead Merry Perry? How wet do you think I am?”
Lucy spun and headed for her truck.
“This ain’t some amusement park!” Timo called after her. “You can’t just go poke the Indians and think they’re gonna native dance for you. People here are for real!” He had to shout the last because the truck’s door was already screeching open.
“Don’t worry about me!” Lucy called as she climbed into the beast. “Just get me good art! I’ll get our story!”
“So let me get this straight,” Timo asked, for the fourth or fifth time. “They just let you into their house?”
They were kicked back on the roof at Sid’s Cafe with the rest of the regulars, taking potshots at the prairie dogs who had invaded the half-finished subdivision ruins around the bar, trading an old .22 down a long line as patrons took bets.
The subdivision was called Sonora Bloom Estates, one of those crap-ass investments that had gone belly up when Phoenix finally stopped bailing out over-pumped subdivisions. Desert Bloom Estates had died because some bald-ass pencil-pusher in City Planning had got a stick up his ass and said the water district wasn’t going to support them. Now, unless some company like IBIS or Halliburton could frack their way to some magical new water supply, Desert Bloom was only ever going to be a town for prairie dogs.
“They just let you in?” Timo asked. “Seriously?”
Lucy nodded smugly. “They let me into their house, and then into their neighbor’s houses. And then they took me down into their basements and showed me their machine guns.” Lucy took a swig of Negro Modelo. “I make friends, Timo.” She grinned. “I make a lot of friends. It’s what I do.”
“Bullshit.”
“Believe it, or don’t.” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve got our story. ‘Phoenix’s Last Stand.’ You wouldn’t believe how they’ve got themselves set up. They’ve got war rooms. They’ve got ammo dumps. This isn’t some cult militia, it’s more like the army of the apocalypse. Way beyond preppers. These people are getting ready for the end of the world, and they want to talk about it.”
“They want to talk.”
“They’re desperate to talk. They like talking. All they talk about is how to shove Texas back where it came from. I mean, you see the inside of their houses, and it’s all Arizona for the People, and God and Santa Muerte to back them up.”
“They willing to let me take pictures?”
Lucy gave him another smug look. “No faces. That’s the only condition.”
Timo grinned. “I can work with that.”
Lucy set her beer down. “So what’ve you shot so far?”
“Good stuff.” Timo pulled out his camera and flicked through images. “How about this one?” He held up the camera for her to see. “Poetry, right?”
Lucy eyed the image with distaste. “We need something PG, Timo.”
“PG? Come on. PG don’t get the hits. People love the bodies and the blood. Sangre this, sangre that. They want the blood, and they want the sex. Those are the only two things that get hits.”
“This isn’t for the local blood rags,” Lucy said. “We need something PG from the dead guy.”
She accepted the rifle from a hairy biker dude sitting next to her and sighted out at the dimming landscape beyond. The sun was sinking over the sprawl of the Phoenix basin, a brown blanket of pollution and smoke from California wild fires turning orange and gaudy.
Timo lifted his camera and snapped a couple quick shots of Lucy as she sighted down the rifle barrel. Wet girl trying to act dry. Not knowing that everyone who rolled down to Phoenix tried to show how tough they were by picking up a nice rifle and blasting away at the furry critters out in the subdivisions.
The thought reminded Timo that he needed to get some shots of Sumo Hernandez and his hunting operation. Sucker had a sweet gig bringing Chinese tourists in to blast at coyotes and then feed them rattlesnake dinners.
He snapped a couple more pictures and checked the results. Lucy looked damn good on the camera’s LCD. He’d got her backlit, the line of her rifle barrel across the blaze of the red ball sun. Money shot for sure.