"It is business, querida. I am sorry it had to be this way. But I cannot trust you yet not to be crazy. Let me get some skin cream for you, where the tape was."
I can control myself, she thought. If I can do that, I can do anything.
"Who was here?" she said.
"There were important people here, Angela, they have sought me out. They want me to help them here with their business. They admire me. But why should you think about business? Your beautiful head should be thinking beautiful thoughts."
"So why didn't you want them to know about me? What are you afraid of, if they are such good friends of yours?"
"People should know of me and my business only what they need to know," Luis said. "Only what I choose for them to know."
"Who was that woman who tied me up?"
"Rosalita," he said. "She is nothing. She has always thought I belonged to her."
He paused as he spoke, watching the latest videotape.
"I'm sorry, chiquita, that you had to be tied."
"-No," she said, herself surprised at the strength of her voice. "No, you're not sorry. You'd like me bound and gagged for you all the time."
"What can you be saying? Did I not rush in here and untie you as soon as I could?"
"Don't be so literal. Don't you understand that the image of your feeling for me is embodied in those tapes, the picture of me bound and helpless, hauled in here on a dolly, tied and gagged when there's visitors. I'm yours in a way that offers me no choices."
"There are pictures of you and me at the beach," he said. "Pictures of you and me on stage."
"You don't want a lover, you want a slave."
"Angel, I am your slave."
He was beginning to pace again.
"Since my mother… Wait, let me show you. You've never seen my mother."
He disappeared behind one of the theatrical flats, and in a moment the image on the monitors changed. There was a picture of a young Hispanic woman. Long dark hair, high breasts, black tank top, white miniskirt, white boots. The camera movements were sudden and jerky. The images were slightly indistinct, and the color was odd, like a colorized movie, but she could see how much she looked like Luis.
"It is my mother," he said. "Isn't she beautiful?"
Too much makeup, Lisa thought. Hair's too big, skirt's too tight.
"She gave me the camera, an eight millimeter. She taught me how to use it."
The camera steadied and then a young boy came into the picture. He put his arm around his mother's waist. She put her arm around his shoulder, and they stood and smiled into the camera.
"And that is me, with my mother," he said.
The scene cut clumsily to another picture. The same woman, dressed differently, but no better, Lisa thought. She was sitting on the lap of a heavy-set, red-faced Anglo man in a loud sport coat. Her short skirt was high on her thighs and the man's hand rested on the inner part of her thigh above the knee.
"That is a friend of my mother's," Luis said. "My mother had many friends."
The woman in the camera smiled and gestured at the camera to stop filming. It kept on, and then stopped abruptly.
"I took all the old films and had them transferred to video, " Luis said. "That way even though she's gone I will have her still."
Chapter 34
There was a Subway sandwich shop in a shopping center off Route 93, a little west of Proctor. I pulled in and parked in front of it. Chollo looked at the sandwich shop.
"What's this," Chollo said, "your native cuisine?"
"Good Yankee cookin'," I said.
"Get me a ham and cheese sub," Chollo said. "No hot peppers."
"No hot peppers?"
Chollo shrugged.
"Now and then," he said, "I am untrue to my heritage."
"Hell," I said. "It happens. I don't always eat potatoes."
"Cultural genocide," Chollo said.
I went into the shop and bought us a couple of sandwiches and some coffee and came back. Chollo took a sip of coffee and made a face.
"What the fuck is this?" he said.
"You must have got mine," I said and we swapped.
"You drink that?" Chollo said.
"You get used to it."
"Why would you want to?"
"You may have a point," I said. "What went on in the house?"
Chollo put his coffee into one of the holders in the middle console and began to unwrap his sandwich.
"They bought my story," Chollo said. "Deleon knew of Mr. del Rio. I told him we had talked with Freddie Santiago, but we weren't happy. Said Freddie looked kind of tired to me. Said Mr. del Rio and me thought we might need a younger guy, some fresh blood to run this end."
Chollo picked up half of his sub sandwich and took a bite. He managed not to get any on himself, and I wondered how he did it. Susan always claimed that when I ate a sub I looked like I'd fought with it. He chewed happily. I waited. The hot coffee steamed the inside of the windshield a little so that the only clear reality seemed to be here in the car, where the food was.
"Deleon liked that," Chollo said. "Got him excited. Says he's just the man for the job. Says he's got the perfect setup. So I say, lemme take a look around, see what you got here, and we take a tour."
Chollo drank some coffee. I waited.
"Three things," Chollo said. "One, Deleon's a froot loop. Two, there's a locked room with a guard outside on the second floor. It would be the corner on the second floor, where the windows are covered with plywood. Guard pretended he was just hanging around, but he was guarding. And there's a new padlock on the door. I said to Deleon, `What's in there?' and he says it's his private quarters. Says `I alone have the key.' Like fucking Basil Rathbone, you know? Except he's speaking Spanish with a Puerto Rican accent."
The good thing about listening instead of talking is you can eat while you do it. I was finished with my sandwich, Chollo just took his second bite.
"What's number three?" I said.
"Walls are sandbagged, windows are all wire-meshed or boarded over. There's a lot of ammunition, lot of food. For crissake, they got a garden on the roof, maybe a dozen shooters, plus women and kids. Buildings are all connected through sheltered access. We gotta go in there we can do it, but I don't see how we do it without we blow up some women and kids."
"Probably why they're there," I said.
"Now that's cynical," Cholla said. "Nothing as cynical as a cynical Yankee."
"Yeah, you're probably right," I said. "Why do you think they're there?"
"To keep people from assaulting the place for fear of killing the kids," Chollo said.
I nodded.
"Of course," I said. "You say they got a garden on the roof? Stuff grow in pots or what?"
"No, they dumped a bunch of dirt up there, must have carried it up in buckets. It's a flat roof and it's covered with dirt and there's a bunch of plants growing up there."
"What kind?"
"I look like fucking Juan Valdez?" Chollo said. "How the fuck do I know what kind? I was twenty-three before I found out that stuff didn't grow canned."
"House is supporting a lot of weight," I said. "How about Deleon? What do you think?"
"Deleon's not normal," Chollo said.
"You mentioned that," I said.
"He walks around in there like he's on the Starship Enterprise. And he dresses like he's going to a masquerade. He had some kind of fucking vaquero look today-boots, the whole deal. Even carried a short leather whip around his wrist. Like a quirt, you know. Like he was Gilbert Roland."