Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

She didn’t answer. He must leave, she thought, but must I?

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming down the mountains into Ensenada, Luis turned off the highway and onto Calle Segunda. They would check the hotels and Hussong’s.

“We used to stop at Hussong’s,” he said. “Dad wanted a beer and I went in with him to read the papers. They have all the papers, including the Times. Very big cantina for gringos.”

She pointed across the street. “Let’s start with that real estate place.”

Saturnino Gomez, proprietor of Inmuebles y Propiedades, had finished lunch and returned to his agency for a nap. At four o’clock, he reopened and was settling in for one more quiet afternoon. Business was not good. The Depression was bad for everyone. There were days when the only people to cross his threshold were Calle Segunda neighbors. He looked up when the young couple walked in, clearly gringos—at least la rubia. “Good afternoon.”

Lizzie smiled, happy to hear English. “Maybe you can help us.” She took a photo of Willie from her folder. “Have you seen this man?”

“Ah, el pastor. Very big story. No, I have not seen him. Good face. I would remember. But try Hussong’s. They all stop at Hussong’s.”

“This woman,” said Lizzie, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen her either.”

He looked closely at the publicity photo of Sister Angie in white robes, hands clasped behind her head, long sleeves billowing out like wings, halo over the head, an angel.

He chuckled. “Oh, no, Señorita, I would remember something like that.”

“Well, thank you anyway,” she said, turning to go, then turning back to hand him twenty dollars. “Take this is for your help.”

He was rubbing his chin. “Thank you, Señorita, but . . . I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Something there. Do you have another photo of the girl—you know, more natural?”

She took out a newspaper clipping, a photo of Angie without wings and halo.

He studied it for some time. “Could be. Very close. She came in alone, spoke Spanish, said her marido was shopping. Rented a house off a dirt road a half hour south. On a hillside over the ocean. Just a month. She should be coming back soon for the deposit.”

The highway was a rough asphalt road. “Someday this will go all the way to the end, to Cabo,” said Luis. “I hope I am still alive.” They passed a few other cars, heading north. One of them, a blue Chevy, had once been on the stage at the temple. Lizzie, who sees everything, would have noticed, but she had closed her eyes for a few moments.

The door was locked. They went around back. She picked up a woman’s bathing suit draped on a chair to dry. “Still damp.” She peered in the bedroom, the mattress turned down. The kitchen, everything put away.

“We missed them,” she said.

“Why leave the bathing suit?

“She wouldn’t need it anymore.”

♦ ♦ ♦

He was ready to leave. For three weeks he’d led a dog’s life, drinking rum, visiting whores, tracked by flatfeet, back at night telling himself to move on, get his life back. He was tired of reporters. He talked to them at first, why wouldn’t he? It’s what happens when you cut a woman too much slack, he told them. They might never turn up. If it was him, he’d know how to disappear. There are places in the bayous where no one ever goes, places where the Cajuns have lived by themselves for two centuries and the strangers that go in after them don’t come out again. Or parts of Mexico. He’d driven to the oil fields near Tampico without seeing ten people. Angie’s mother was Mexican. They could go to ground in Mexico and never surface. He’d read every word printed since he hit town and no one knew a thing. Police incompetence he could understand, but neither had the newspapers picked up the scent.

Curtains drawn, lying in the dark on Angie’s bed with his bottle, aroused because he could still smell her but too drunk to head for Chinatown, he decided it was time to move on. He’d thought about it, even thought he might get in on the reward. Trouble was that they’d never give him the money, not as her husband. Anyway, he’d probably kill them first.

He would wait until midnight and slip out the back. Why would the cops care where he went anyway? Maybe he’d get a job on one of the oil platforms they were building in the Gulf. He’d heard about that: platforms miles out there, people living like it was a hotel on some Caribbean island. Nobody would find him. He lay there drinking and drifting and dozing in the dark with one hand around the neck of the bottle and the other around his large warm dick. He’d finished a can of corned beef hash and bag of potato chips. He didn’t want to fall asleep with the open bottle for he’d already done that and the bed stank of rum. Sneak out the back, circle around the building to escape the flatfoot, who would be asleep in his car anyway.

The coach dropped them at Fourth and Olive just after ten o’clock. They waited a moment by the depot, a stooped, bearded man in Levi’s, shirt and sombrero and a young woman in a cotton dress with a Mexican mantón draped over her shoulders. The border buses drop off people like that at Fourth and Olive all day. Two cheap suitcases sat beside them on the sidewalk. He hoisted them, and they started up Olive. Reaching Second, they had a short wait before the Big Red Car from Alameda clanged to a stop. They walked to the rear of the near-empty car, beginning a trip that would take them onto Glendale Boulevard, past Echo Park, past the Temple of the Angels, past Sunset, past Silver Lake and over the dry bed of the Los Angeles River to Angie’s apartment