“Someone is waving at you,” Alfred said, nudging him away from his food.
Sunderson looked up and about three tables away there was Melissa and her little daughter and a man. He felt his blood heating in his face and he swallowed a bite of machaca with difficulty. He got up slowly fearing the effects of a large margarita.
“It’s so good to see you,” Melissa said. “This is my brother Xavier and my daughter Josefina.”
Xavier stood and Sunderson shook his left hand because his right was withdrawn. Sunderson restrained his startled reaction to Xavier’s appearance. The man was dressed in a fine dark suit and red tie. His appearance was more than vaguely effeminate but his face had the pale specific edge of the ominous, the feral as if all of his schooling, his life in fact, had taken place at night.
“Are you liking our area?” Xavier asked with a cool smile.
“Yes, despite a certain unfriendliness.” Sunderson wondered why he was admitting this but then Xavier was obviously no man’s fool.
“Yes, Melissa said that you tripped on a vicious rock and fell off a fifty-thousand-foot cliff.” He winked and clunked his gloved right hand on the table. “I tripped once myself and lost a hand.” He laughed a metallic laugh. “Please sit down.”
“Accidents happen,” Sunderson said. Josefina was crawling on his lap and feeling the beginning of his beard with a smile the moment he was seated.
“She thinks all older men are nice grandfathers,” Melissa said.
“It is a rare pleasure to sit with a detective.” Xavier glanced toward the front door where two very large men were standing.
“I’m recently retired,” Sunderson said with a clench in his gut.
“Someone didn’t know you were retired,” Xavier said, standing and dropping a hundred-dollar bill on the table. He leaned and kissed both his sister and niece. “Be kind to my sister. She likes to fish and have picnics. Call if you need help.”
Sunderson watched as Xavier walked through the crowded restaurant with everyone averting their eyes including a big table of Border Patrol agents. Through the front window he saw Xavier and the two big men who had stood near the door get in the back of a black Suburban with tinted windows.
“He took a degree in the history of Spanish drama at the University of Arizona. Now he thinks of himself as a stockbroker.” Melissa sighed and held her daughter close. “Let’s go fishing on Patagonia Lake when you wish.” She handed Sunderson a card with her cell phone number, kissed his cheek, and left.
“I know her from the hospital. Isn’t she lovely,” Molly said when he returned to the table.
“You’re already in over your head,” Alfred said gruffly. “I’d expect a visitor.”
“I’m only an old man with a crush on a nurse,” Sunderson said grabbing the check and noting that now the waiter Alphonse wouldn’t look at him directly.
After saying good night to Alfred and Molly he wasn’t in a mood that included a semblance of equilibrium. Why did fate make him infatuated with a young woman who had a brother like Xavier? He got a pint of Canadian whiskey out of his suitcase in order to calm his nerves. The only time he had run into anyone similar to Xavier was in Detroit in the early seventies when as a rookie state policeman he had been ordered to keep an eye on a cabin on the Huron River near Ann Arbor. This was back when Detroit was a vibrant, angry town with high wages in the auto industry and a residual unrest from the violent riots of 1967. All Sunderson was supposed to do was park his squad car near the driveway of the cabin to make its inhabitant, a murder-for-hire assassin from Chicago, nervous enough to go home. Sunderson had been told the man had been seen talking to a primary figure of the Detroit mafia at a Grosse Pointe horse show of all places. He only saw the man once in two days and when he drove toward him in his rental car Sunderson felt a tremor of nausea simply looking at the man’s smiling face. As opposed to what is seen on television cops can become very frightened. In Detroit he had been out of his league like a cub scout with a pistol in drag.
The whiskey tasted very good and Sunderson was thinking that if the day was warm enough Melissa might wear a bathing suit when they went fishing. He very much needed a dose of life that didn’t scare him. He had a dimmish recollection of an evening years before when Diane had cooked Marion’s favorite pot roast dish and Marion had brought over an old movie that he said was America’s best, Touch of Evil by Orson Welles. Sunderson had his usual too many drinks but before he fell asleep on the sofa halfway through he thought the movie was the scariest he had ever seen. And now here he was in the center of the same sort of mise-en-scène, the same ambience of dread you couldn’t quite locate.
There was a sharp knock on the door and Sunderson wished he had the pistol he would buy the following day. It was the Arizona detective who had visited him in the hospital. This time he caught the man’s name, Roberto Kowalski.
“Kowalski?” Sunderson smiled.
“My mom married a soldier over in Sierra Vista. He was from up in your country. Flint, Michigan, to be exact. I been there. It sucks. I’m here to ask you what the fuck you were doing having dinner with Xavier Martinez.”
“I wasn’t. I stopped by to say hello to his sister. I developed a crush on her in the hospital.”
Roberto paused for a full minute. “I thought it had to be something else. No one is allowed to talk to Xavier. He beat her husband to death with his artificial hand. He’s got a couple of heavier ones than the plastic he wears in public.”
“It must have been about money,” Sunderson joked.
“Of course. If I were you I’d take my affections elsewhere. If she develops a hangnail in your presence you’re dead. She’s a nice kid and you’re a fucking geezer.”
“She’s twenty-five. She’s a woman. Maybe a little young. You ever attracted to younger women?” Sunderson felt irritable.
“Never mind. I’ve tried but they can’t talk. The words are the same but now they mean something different. Meanwhile I stopped at your commune. I saw a lot of blood on the rocks. Why didn’t you press charges?”
“The perps, the rock throwers, were kids, girls. Maybe around twelve years old plus or minus. Charges wouldn’t work.”
“Yeah. They’ve started a school for troubled girls. Real teachers, however Daryl had a charge for underage sex.”
“Yes, in Choteau, Montana. Settled out of court. How come a guy like Xavier can cross the border?”
“His parents are Mexican but Xavier was born in Tucson when his dad was in college so he’s an American citizen. He’s always clean here. He’s in the yellow pages as a stockbroker.”
“That’s funny in this economy,” Sunderson suggested.
“Nothing about him is funny. Ironical maybe. We got Melissa work papers so she wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire down south.”
“She’s safe here?” Sunderson was surprised.
“Pretty much so. It’s considered bad etiquette for cartels to kill anyone north of the border.”
“I’m thinking of going home. This place spooks me but then so did Detroit.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Maybe you could do me a favor and run Daryl out of here so he’ll go back north where I feel more comfortable.”