Trauma Page 11

  “Dan Munoz said he tried to eat cardboard.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “The kid in the box. He was starving to death, so he tried to eat cardboard.”

  “Hey, you’re looking terrible. Why don’t you go sit in the truck for a while?”

  “I—no, I’ll be okay.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re white like a sheet. I can finish the vacuuming.”

  Bonnie took two or three deep breaths, but she lost her balance and nearly fell over, and she was sweating the way she always did when her period was due.

  “Just give me a couple of minutes. I didn’t eat breakfast—that’s the trouble.”

  “You want me to help you?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. You just carry on.”

  She went outside. It was hot, but there was a slight breeze blowing from the southwest, and it cooled the sweat on her forehead. She climbed up into the cab of her truck, opened the 7-Up cooler in which she always brought her breakfast and took out a chilled bottle of Diet Coke. She swallowed some, but it rushed straight back up again and it ran out of her nose.

  She had never felt as bad as this before, even when she had cleaned up a crib in which twin baby sisters had been lying for over two months. Her hands were shaking, and when she looked at herself in the rear-view mirror she saw that her lips looked completely bloodless. “Take it easy,” she told herself. “Count to ten and think about nothing at all.”

  After five minutes, she began to feel a little better. She climbed down from the truck and walked back toward the house. A small boy with a pink-striped T-shirt and shining chestnut hair came up to her and squinted up at her with one eye closed against the sun.

  “Is that a space suit?”

  “No … it’s a suit to stop me catching any nasty bugs.”

  “People got dead in that house.”

  “I know.”

  “A little boy got dead.”

  “Yes. It was very sad.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “No, he’s not. He’s gone to heaven now.”

  “When people get dead, you say a prayer.”

  “That’s right. You could say a prayer, couldn’t you?”

  “I heard a noise in that house.”

  “Well, it’s all over now. Best not to think about it.”

  The small boy clutched his hands into claws and grimaced like a gargoyle. “I heard a noise like grrrarrrrrgghhhhhh!”

  “That must have been pretty scary.”

  “It was the scariest noise in the world. It was grrrarrrrrgghhhhhh!”

  A young redheaded woman came out of the next-door house and called, “Tyler! What are you doing? You come inside this minute!”

  She gave Bonnie a hard, suspicious frown and made a point of waiting in her doorway while the small boy galloped across the front yard. Bonnie was used to it. Nobody liked anything to do with violent death, even if you were just cleaning it up.

  Back inside, Esmeralda had finished the vacuuming and was making a start on the walls. They were made of soft, absorbent plaster so it was difficult to leach the bloodstains out completely. There was a diagonal spattering of blood across the bedroom armchair, too, so Bonnie poured some enzyme stain remover on a soft cotton cloth and began to dab it off.

  She lifted up the seat cushion and put it on one side. Underneath she saw six or seven brownish, shelllike chrysalises, the same as she had seen in the Glass residence. She picked one of them up and held it to the light. It was translucent, and she could see the shape of the growing larva inside it.

  Right in the deepest crevice at the back of the chair, she saw something wriggling. She flicked her cloth at it, so that it dropped out onto the floor. It writhed and twisted on the carpet, because she must have hurt it. It was another Clouded Apollo caterpillar, exactly like the one she had taken to show Howard Jacobson.

  And this was the room where a girl called Maria Carranza had been murdered. With a name like that, she must have been Mexican. Another Mexican connection.

  Carefully, Bonnie picked up the caterpillar and two or three of the chrysalises, and dropped them into a plastic bag.

  “What’s that?” asked Esmeralda, pausing in her scrubbing.

  “A caterpillar, the same as the ones we found at the Goodman house.”

  “What for you want to keep them? They’re no good.”

  “I showed one to Professor Jacobson up at the university. You remember Professor Jacobson? He said they were Mexican.”

  Esmeralda crossed herself twice and took two or three steps backward.

  “What are you so scared of?” Bonnie asked her.

  “They’re no good. I should kill them. Listen, I fetch the bug spray.”

  “You know what these are, don’t you? Professor Jacobson said they were butterflies, Clouded Apollo butterflies.”

  “I should kill them.”

  “Why?”

  “Unhealthy, that’s all.”

  “Well, I don’t know about unhealthy, but Professor Jacobson said that there was some kind of Mexican goddess called Opsapopalottle or something like that, and that when she wasn’t being a goddess she turned herself into one of these butterflies.”

  “You don’t say the name,” said Esmeralda, furiously crossing herself again and again.

  “Esmeralda—we’ve found these things at three different trauma scenes. You’re obviously scared, and I need to know why.”

  “You don’t say the name!” Esmeralda shouted at her. “I don’t work for you no more! You don’t say the name!”

  “Esmeralda, for Christ’s sake, will you calm down? These are nothing but caterpillars, but there is a connection.”

  Esmeralda covered her face with her hands and said nothing for a long time. Bonnie stood beside her waiting for her to recover herself. She kept looking down at the brown rectangular stain on the floor, but now she felt that she could cope with it. If she could find out why David Hinsey had killed Maria Carranza, and why Aaron Goodman had shot his children, and why the Glass family’s lives had ended in blood and flies, then maybe she could make sense of her life, and the hideous things that were happening all around her.

  Eventually, Esmeralda lowered her hands and said, “You talk to Juan Maderas. He will tell you.”

  “Who is Juan Maderas?”

  “He is a friend of my father. He knows all about the old stories. He knows all about these butterflies.”

  “Well, how do I get in touch with Juan Maderas?”

  “You call me later, three o’clock. Call me at home. I will talk to my father and he will fix it for you to see Juan Maderas.”

  “And Juan Maderas … he knows all about Opsapopalottle or whatever her name is?”

  “Don’t say the name! Don’t say the name even in fun!”

  Bonnie wrapped her arms around Esmeralda and held her close. “I’m sorry, Es. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I love you—you know that. Come on, everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to find out what this is all about, and probably it’s all about nothing, but we’re going to find out anyhow. Come on, sweetheart. Don’t be scared.”

  “I should kill those things.”

  “Don’t get upset. They’re only bugs. Really.”

  They stayed together for a long time. Bonnie could hear traffic passing along the street outside, and planes taking off from LAX. Esmeralda’s hair was wiry and greasy against her cheek, and she smelled of perspiration and cooking fat, but Bonnie kept on holding her for as long as she needed to be held.

  Ralph Calls

  They finished cleaning the house by lunchtime. Bonnie was on her way across town to the Riverside waste facility when Ralph called her on her mobile phone.

  “Bonnie! Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”

  “What do you mean? Why didn’t I say anything about what?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what happened with Phil Cafagna?”

  “I don’t understand. Nothing happened with Phil
Cafagna.”

  “According to him, it did. He says you made a pass at him, and when he told you he was a married man, you called him all the names under the sun. He’s canceled his whole order because of you.”

  “Ralph, are you kidding? It was Phil Cafagna who came on to me. He was giving me all kinds of bullshit about setting me free and stuff like that. And I certainly didn’t call him any names. All I said was I wasn’t interested.”

  “He’s canceled the order, Bonnie. Don’t you understand what that means? Pacific takes over sixty percent of our production. Without Pacific, we’re finished.”

  “Ralph, I swear to God that I’m telling the truth. He came on to me and wanted me to go to bed with him. I said no, that’s all.”

  “Jesus, Bonnie, it’s taken me fifteen years to build up this business.”

  “Well, doesn’t Phil Cafagna have a boss? Call him up and explain what really happened.”

  “Phil Cafagna’s boss is his older brother, Vincent. You think he’ll believe me? This is the finish, Bonnie. I’m totally sunk.”

  “Listen, why don’t we meet? I have to go to the Riverside waste facility, but then I can change and come right over.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is we can work out what to do.”

  “Forget it, Bonnie. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “We can ask Phil Cafagna to reconsider.”

  “I don’t think so. He was upset, Bonnie. I mean he was really, really upset.”

  “I don’t believe this, Ralph. Let me meet you later and we’ll talk it over.”

  “I’m sorry, Bonnie. I have an appointment at the bank. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Ralph—”

  “How do you think I feel? You couldn’t get anything out of Phil Cafagna, so you chose me as second best. Great. You’ve done wonders for my ego, believe me, not to mention my faith in women.”

  “Ralph—I have to talk to you.”

  “Not now, Bonnie. Go off to your goddamned waste facility.”

  Duke Confesses

  Instead of driving to Riverside, she turned off Washington Boulevard and headed for home. When she parked outside, she heard loud rock music playing from the back of the house. She let herself in, yelling as she did so, “Ray! Do you hear me? Turn that goddamned music down!”

  She walked through the kitchen to the yard. There she saw Ray lying on one of the sun loungers, playing air-guitar, his eyes closed. Next to him, reading the newspaper and picking his nose, Duke sat, bare-chested, with a six-pack of beer beside him.

  Bonnie slid back the patio door and stepped outside. She was halfway across the yard before Duke glanced up. He froze, with his finger still halfway up his nose.

  “What are you doing here?” Bonnie demanded. “I thought you were starting work today.”

  “They—uh—they said they didn’t need me today. Overstaffed. They sent me home.”

  “They said they didn’t need you, on your first day?”

  “That’s right.… It happens sometimes. Business gets slack. They don’t need so many people stocking the bar.”

  “This is the middle of the vacation season and we’re talking about the Century Plaza Hotel and business is slack and it’s your first day?”

  Duke stared at her and obviously didn’t know what to say. On the next sun lounger, Ray had suddenly become aware that she was there and opened his eyes.

  “Duke,” said Bonnie, “I can think of two possible options here. The first is that you’re telling me the truth, in which case I’ll call your boss at the Century Plaza and check it out. The second is that you’re lying, which will save me the trouble.”

  Duke looked over at Ray, but all Ray could do was shrug. In the end, he looked back at Bonnie and said, “Save yourself the trouble.”

  “Okay, you’re lying. So I can think of two further options here. The first is that you haven’t shown up for work without bothering to tell your boss, in which case I’ll call him and make an excuse that you’re sick. The second is that you don’t have a job at the Century Plaza at all—that you never made even the slightest attempt to get one—in which case I don’t have to make the phone call at all, do I? I can save myself even more trouble.”

  Duke chewed over this for nearly half a minute. Then he said, “Yeah.”

  “Yeah what, Duke?”

  “Yeah, save yourself even more trouble.”

  She called Esmeralda shortly after three. Esmeralda said, “Everything’s arranged. Come downtown and see us at eight o’clock.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there.”

  “You don’t sound so good. Is everything okay?”

  She turned to look at Duke and Ray, still sprawled on their sun loungers out in the yard and said, “Sure. I can manage. I’ll see you later.”

  The Mystic

  Esmeralda lived in a seven-story apartment building on Sixteenth Street only a block away from the Santa Monica Freeway. It was a brown brick edifice that stood on its own between two rubble-strewn demolition sites. Outside, children were playing in a dilapidated Mercury Marquis with no windows in it.

  At 7:56 P.M., Bonnie parked Duke’s Buick next to the Mercury and climbed out. She checked her lipstick and primped her spray-stiffened hair with her fingers. The traffic noise here was tremendous, and there was an eye-watering tang of exhaust fumes in the air. She climbed up the steps to the front door, which was already half open. It was freshly painted in glossy maroon, and inside Bonnie could see a green linoleum floor that had been polished to a high shine. She pressed the door buzzer for apartment four, and a man’s voice said, “Quién?”

  “It’s Bonnie Winter. I’m looking for Esmeralda.”

  “Sí Esmeralda’s here. Come on up.”

  She walked along the corridor until she reached the elevator. One of the apartment doors was open, and she could see a young woman standing in front of a mirror fixing combs in her hair. A TV was tuned to a Spanish-language comedy program, and the young woman was smiling at herself.

  Bonnie went up to the fourth floor. The elevator was cramped and slow and smelled of Lysol, but somebody had tried to make it more cheerful by pasting postcards of Mexico on the walls and varnishing them.

  Esmeralda was waiting for her outside the elevator. She was wearing a crimson satin dress that Bonnie had never seen before, and there was a crimson ribbon in her hair. “Juan is already here,” she said, in a hushed voice.

  She ushered Bonnie into a small living room that was filled with oversize 1950s furniture—a chocolate-brown couch with white lace antimacassars on the back, two chocolate-brown armchairs with tapestry cushion covers, a circular table with a brown fringed velveteen tablecloth. In one corner stood a glass-fronted display cabinet crammed with china and ornaments, and the fireplace looked like the altar of a Catholic cathedral, with a plaster figure of the Virgin Mary, candles, rosaries and luminous plastic grottoes.

  In one of the armchairs sat Esmeralda’s father, whom Bonnie had met several times before. He was a shy man with curly gray hair, a large gray mustache and an intensely white shirt. In the other armchair sat a thin, almost emaciated man of about forty-five with acne-pitted cheeks and hooded eyes. He was handsome in a ravaged way, with slicked-back black hair and chiseled sideburns. He wore a black shirt with a silver bolo necktie and a black suit with a narrow waist and very wide lapels.

  “Bonnie, this is Juan Maderas.”

  Juan stood up and took both of Bonnie’s hands. He was very tall, at least six foot three inches, and he was wearing some floral cologne that immediately took her off her guard because it reminded her so much of the camellias that had been laid on her father’s casket. “Esmeralda has told me about you,” he said, in a deep, hoarse voice. “It seems as if you are somebody very special. The job that you do, that takes somebody very special.”

  “I just do my best,” said Bonnie. “Thanks for taking the trouble to see me.”

  “No, no. No trouble. I was very interested when Esmera
lda told me about the butterflies. Very interested.”

  “I never saw anything like them before, and I’ve seen just about every creepy-crawly that there is. In my business, you get to be an amateur expert on bugs.”

  “Why don’t you sit down?” suggested Esmeralda’s father. “Esmeralda, open some wine.”

  “I never drink and drive, thanks,” said Bonnie.

  “Coca-Cola, maybe?”

  “Watching my figure. Water would be fine.”

  She sat down on the couch next to Esmeralda’s father. Juan Maderas sat down, too, and laced his long fingers together. On his right middle finger he wore a silver ring with a skull on it. “Esmeralda said that you took the butterflies to a professor at UCLA.”

  “Howard Jacobson. Yes, he’s the best. He’s written all kinds of books on bugs and forensics. Often it’s the only way that you can tell how long somebody’s been dead, by the life cycle of the flies that infest their body, having regard to the ambient temperature and all. People go off real quick in a heatwave—you’d be surprised.”

  “And this Professor Jacobson was sure that the butterfly was the Clouded Apollo?”

  “That’s right. And he told me about the legend, too. The demon goddess whose name I can’t pronounce too good.”

  “Itzpapalotl,” said Juan Maderas. “Her name translated means ‘obsidian butterfly.’ That was because she had broad butterfly wings sprouting from her shoulders, with the blades of sharp obsidian knives all the way around the edges.”

  “That’s what Howard told me. He said she had a knife for a tongue, too.”

  “That’s right. Itzpapalotl fell from heaven, along with the Tzitzimime, who dropped from the sky in a tremendous variety of shapes, such as scorpions, or toads, or even walking sticks. We call them ‘deadly things.’ There was one Tzitzimime which took on the form of a donkey’s skull, and it would appear at crossroads at night. If you saw it, it would follow you all the way home, screaming.”

  Juan Maderas took another sip of wine, and then he said, “Itzpapalotl sometimes wore an invisible cloak so that nobody could see her. At other times she dressed up as a lady of the Mexican court, caking her face with white powder and lining her cheeks with strips of rubber. Her fingers tapered into the claws of a jaguar, and her toes into eagle’s claws.