Читать книгу Panopticon - David Bajo - Страница 10

Rita suddenly leaned upright and alert on the trolley seat beside him. She was lifting her chin and frowning in disdain at two mozos riding by the door. They were eyeing her and holding the pole suggestively between them, saying things just above a whisper. Passengers could catch some words, the right words.

Even if Margarita Valdez hadn’t had some beers and whatever the Luchadors were serving in those little green glasses, even if she weren’t in the last week of a job she loved, even if she weren’t about to leave the country and go work for an expat paper in Manzanillo and take photos of things and people that really mattered, still she would have let the mozos have it. Klinsman could not keep up with her Spanish, could only jump to snippets here and there.

Her opening was perfect, winning the car first. “Fucking mozitos. You think these people need to hear your little-boy thoughts? Watch you jerk each other off on that pole between you? You think that’s what they want? After a hard day’s work? It’s already tomorrow. They gotta go right back to work. Today. You think they want to see your liver tongues in these few minutes they have? Cocksuckers.”

Somewhere in her scolding, Klinsman saw her glance briefly at another young man, a Latino, too, but dressed in a white shirt and thin black tie. He was watching her in a different way. Looking at her shoulders, part concerned, part measuring. And somewhere in her scolding she glanced again at the young man, just a splinter off her hard glare at the mozos, and called him something, too. Something odd. To Klinsman and his slow ears, it sounded like Ojos ausentes salamandro.

Rita kept jabbing at the mozos with her words, the passengers’ eyes and smiles with her all the way to the next stop. There, at Iris Street, the mozos got off, probably not their stop, seeing as they looked dressed and awake for a longer night in the Tijuana clubs now that the American side was shutting down. The guy in the tie left, too, but not before looking back at Rita openly, thoughtfully adjusting his collar as though he were stepping out into a cold East Coast night.

Rita looked at Klinsman apologetically as the trolley picked up again, gliding them toward the border, over the lights of Otay, Nestor, and San Ysidro. Most of her hair had now sprung loose from her ponytail, a full lock of it draped down one side of her face and neck. Other strands wavered over her head, willowing down, brushing the tip of her nose. She blew at them.

Klinsman made a circling motion with his finger, moving his look from her hair to her eyes. “You want me to …?” He made the little circling motion again.

She turned her head away and offered him her hair and neck. He gently gathered and clutched as much as he could hold in one hand and then removed the clasp. Before putting the clasp into the corner of his mouth like a cigarette, he eyed it carefully in the fluorescent trolley light. It was amber, like a bend of whiskey. It felt pearly against his lips.

With his fingers he combed and gathered more of her hair, pulling it to him. She relaxed her neck, letting his calm tugs loll her head. She closed her eyes, eased her lips out of their disdainful bend, almost opened them. So they were at their fullest. He watched the side of her face as he pushed his fingers up her nape and carefully raked the heaviest mass of hair, felt the bumps of her skull. His hand was buried up to his wrist in black coils.

“You’re good at this,” she said, eyes closed.

“I grew up with four older sisters.”

“I hope you didn’t do this with them.”

“I watched them do each other’s hair. When I was a boy. I believed I was getting a glimpse into another world, the one they really lived in, dreamed of. Their secret girls’ world. I grew my hair long, too, but it wasn’t the same.”

“I’m sorry, Aaron,” she said, letting her head fall back with the tug of his soft gathering.

“For what?”

“For that remark. Sounding that way about your sisters. I still have leftover sparks. From those fucking mozos.”

He could feel her jaw moving with her words, his little finger slipping into a cusp.

“You said something else.” Klinsman assessed the sheaf of black he had managed to bring under control, two fistfuls. “To that other guy. The one dressed like a waiter.”

“I didn’t see another guy. Just the mozos. Everything at the mozos.”

“No. You glanced at that other guy, too. Twice. You knifed him twice. With words the second time. Something I couldn’t quite understand. Something like … maybe like, ‘eyes away, salamandro.’‘Eyes’ you said for sure. That I could tell for sure.”

“You watch me too much, Aaron,” she said, keeping her eyes closed, her head almost back to his chest as he attempted the impossible, to set the amber clasp into her hair.

The trolley slowed as it neared the border stop, like something easing into its collapsed state. Rita sat neatly, her hair gathered, her expression smooth. They passed above Mt. Carmel, where Klinsman had gone to school. The asphalt playground formed a dark patch in the San Ysidro lights.

“You like riding this trolley down here because it puts you above everything,” Rita told him, following his gaze out the window. “Everything you know.”

“Everything I know is buried under lights and condos,” he replied. “Save for a few things. That schoolyard. That smokehouse over there. That church.”

“And the motel we’re going to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play me,” she said. “You told me once. You owned that motel once. You inherited it.”

“Only for a month, Rita. As a kid. My father sold it for me. He used the money for my college. I never went to it. Except once after, with a date.”

“Why are we going there?” she asked.

“I was sent there. This evening, on a damned beat call. I thought we stopped doing those. But it popped up on my billet. Just as I was heading out to the Luchador assignment. I haven’t had to do a beat call in three years. I figured Gina was trying to jab me one more time. Before we’re done.”

“Gina sent you.”

“It was just from the office. Gina’s still gone. I tried calling her twice today. I don’t think she’s coming back. I think she’s just going to wind it all up from wherever she’s gone. Up north. Whichever job she picked up there. Typical of her to disappear on us like that.”

“There’s nothing typical about Gina,” said Rita.

He told her about room 9, about the light, the tape, the covered mirrors, and the imprint of the woman on the bed. All he learned from the evening clerk was that two officers had dropped by before him, had seen nothing unusual for an empty motel room, and had assumed they’d received either a prank call or misinformation. The clerk wouldn’t give Klinsman the name of the person checked into the room but did say that person was still checked in for the night. So Klinsman called the desk sergeant and used Gina’s currency. Gina always made sure to portray the cops as weary but willing and bemused in the Review’s crime blotter.

The name Klinsman got was Marta Ruiz. No Marta Ruiz had been reported missing in San Diego or Los Angeles. Thirty-seven had been reported missing in Tijuana. Klinsman remembered two from grade school, three from high school, and two more from college. He had known none of them well enough to receive anything from them fourteen years later.

“But the room was open when I got there,” he told Rita as they walked across the motel parking lot.

“Thirty-seven,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the light-draped mesas of Tijuana. The neon sign shone on her lips like a prayer.