Answering The Call, page 10
He nodded, absorbing this. He could identify with that same feeling for Lauren. Sizzling hot white lightning. “Vincente Talamantes is a rather common name. Do you have any other information? His parents’ names? A street name? Where he worked?”
Tony returned and passed around a plastic tray of the sangria-filled chipped glasses, serving first the girl, who dimpled a grin up at him. Not good, David thought.
Lauren said, “Should you be drinking, Andi—given your pregnancy?”
“Whatever. I’m an adult.” She then looked back to David, “No. None of that kind of info . . . uhh, except I do seem to remember now that Vincente mentioned returning here to finish up his degree—like some kind of law program, if that helps.”
He glanced at Tony. “Do you recognize the name?”
His son set the tray on the coffee table, plopped into the other chair, and rubbed his cleft jaw that so reminded David of his own.
Shaving its cleft was a ritual bloodletting. He occasionally thought about the convenience of sporting the mountain-man beard in style these days, but that was hardly advantageous to winning legal cases. When appearing in court, he made it a point to wear a suit jacket, his tats hidden, and his long and heavy hair inconspicuously knotted tidily at his nape.
“Vincente Talamantes,” Tony mused with a slow blink. “The name’s not familiar. Do you know which campus? There are several.”
Swallowing a sip of her sangria, the girl shook her head and in a grooming gesture raked her fingertips through her spiked hair. Per force, David had become a social analyst of body behavior. The gesture in itself was not indicative of being deceptive, merely a motion at being presentable. She flashed Tony a sheepish grin. “We never got around to that.”
Lauren set aside her glass, “Listen, I don’t want to take up a lot of your time. We just need some advice, legal advice. And, clearly, I want to pay.” She drew a deep breath then expelled it in a rush. “But I guess I need to know up front what kind of fee I am looking at here for the two of us.”
David was not going to let sympathy get in the way of business. He had a son’s future to save. “My fee would depend on what your own issue entails, as well.”
She licked her lips. “I told you my family thinks I am loco. Especially with my decision to move here.” She paused. Her lips flattened, suppressing what he suspected was a traitorous trembling. She looked down at her sangria.
He could see was laboring under her pain of admission. He made no move to assist her. All the while he was imagining what it would feel like for his lips, his tongue, to explore that soft, lovely mouth.
She looked up, her unflinching gaze meeting his. “My oldest daughter Renita is a Doctor of Psychology. I managed her office until recently.” She extended her hand toward the pregnant girl. “Andi here works the front desk for Renita. It seems, based on Renita’s professional opinion, my mental competence—or lack thereof—makes me a danger to myself and society.”
Perforce, he had undertaken to learn her credit score, her traffic violations—there had been few over the years, and her health history. He knew even about her partial hysterectomy. He probably was more intimately familiar with her than her husband and lovers. He knew of only three but possibly there had been more he had missed in his detailed research.
“I recall your referencing something to that effect that day we met for lunch—your family’s objection to your move.” And he recalled quite vividly the landmine effect she had on him. Disorienting. Skewing his certainty of the validity of his internal compass.
Given his experience that demanded instantly reading people, he would relegate her to the caretaker type of person. But his finely attuned senses, generated mainly by his gut feelings, whispered this was a woman of far more depth and complexity.
Lauren proceeded to fill him in on the more recent details of her quandary, with the pregnant girl putting in, “I faxed the document for Dr. H—Dr. Hillard—early yesterday. It was going to a law firm in Mexico City.”
“Burney Cohen’s law firm—my son-in-law—issued the temporary restraint order,” Lauren clarified. She bit her bottom lip, sighed, then said, “I need to know what ramifications I am facing here under Mexican law.”
“Which law firm?”
“What? It’s Cohen, Muller, and Levy.”
“No, the legal firm in Mexico City your son-in-law is affiliated with.”
“Oh. Give me a moment to think.” She set down her neglected sangria and rubbed her temples, then looked up at him. “Yes, the firm he uses in Mexico City—it’s Kramer something or the other.”
“Kramer, Garcia, and Figueroa,” the younger woman interjected.
“Yes,” Lauren said, “that’s it.”
David mentally winced. “I’m familiar with the firm. Occasionally, I handle minor cases for it when it is overloaded. It tosses me the scraps. In fact, it was that firm that turned over to me your rental policy.”
“What can you tell me about it, about Kramer, Garcia, and Figueroa?”
Can or will? He was not inclined to share much with anyone. Like for instance, Joaquin Macho Lopez, Kramer’s quasimodo of a process server and henchman for the firm’s illegal side. Macho had inflicted David with a nasty facial scar five months ago. If ever a human was half-made per the French term quasimodo, it was Macho Lopez. The man reminded David of the pitiless hitman Anton Chigurh in the film No Country for Old Men, set on the Texas border.
Following a meeting with a prison inmate one afternoon, David had opposed Macho’s barbarous tactics on the prison exercise grounds and taunted him with the name Macho Nacho. The hulk had sideswiped David’s cheek with a melted down toothbrush used for a shiv. However, it was tit-for-tat.
The bored inmates were ripe for hostile entertainment. They had gathered round, goading the two combatants with shouted cheers and catcalling. David knew how to fight dirty. He wrestled the shiv from Macho and drove it up into his testicle. You made sure what you gave was worse than what you got. That effectively stopped most bullies. But then Macho Nacho was not most bullies.
“I’ll put it this way. Jürgen Kramer, the firm’s founding attorney and senior partner, is a formidable opponent both in and out of the courtroom. He makes use of our corrupt legal system quite effectively.”
The man was a Little Napoleon. For all his refinement, there was something brutish about him. Flashy and crass with a nasal accent, he sported a sense of taste to match. In the courtroom, his Armani suits were custom tailored; in private, his leisure suits were adorned with a colorful shirt slashed to the chest to reveal a heavy cabled gold chain. In or out of court, Kramer possessed a mind like a whetted blade.
Her narrowed gaze reflected her consternation. Her fingertips massaged the hollow at the juncture of her collarbones. Which stymied his breathing. “Is there not some kind of judicial resolution to which I can resort under Mexican law?”
Contemplating the question, he rolled his half-empty glass back and forth between his palms. “It’s like this. A court ordered injunction might be their next move. You could be ruled not to possess the legal capacity to make decisions for yourself.”
“But surely the order can’t be enforced here in Mexico.”
He smiled grimly. “With mordida—the bite, the bribe—anything can be done. Legalities do not necessarily apply in Mexico. La mordida accomplishes far more and far more quickly an objective than does the plodding process through legal channels.”
Andi’s shoulder’s slumped, pronouncing the swell of her stomach. Her lips formed an inverted horseshoe. She slid a sideways glance at Lauren. “Like, so what now, Ms. L?”
Absently, Lauren fretted with one of her blouse’s drawstring tassels. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”
He took pity on her, a sentiment he rarely allowed himself to bestow upon the prisoners requiring his legal help. “For the moment, you have one saving grace. A psychiatric hold or even a restraining order, for that matter, cannot exceed ten days without additional and time-consuming court proceedings that with luck might entail years. You merely have to stay out of sight, avoid being served, during the next ten days or so, depending what day the court signs off on the order.”
“We can’t stay anywhere that I would have to use a credit card,” Lauren was muttering, more to herself. “Where we could be traced. However, I do have enough cash on hand to cover a hotel for us for a couple of days—if the accommodations are dirt cheap.”
Andi affected a shudder. “I don’t cotton to cucarachas, Ms. L.”
Lauren’s lips twisted. “Neither do I, babe, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
She looked up at him, then nodded, as if reaching a decision, and a lock of hair tumbled down from her clip’s messy anchorage. She lifted an arm to nudge the tendril back up, which drew his attention to her hiked breast. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
“I’m sure you’re familiar with the hood,” she said, delivering a devastating smile that decimated his professional intention always to remain objective. “Any suggestions for a place to lay low?”
Tony interjected, “You can stay here.”
David shot his son a taser glare.
“Papi, you already said you’d be out of town tonight and maybe tomorrow. They could have your bedroom. When you get back, you and I could double up in mine for the next ten days.”
“Umm,” Lauren asked, “what about things like toothbrushes and such? We brought nothing with us.”
“Papi has a collection of unused travel toothbrushes.”
“I got my tote.” The teenager gestured toward her huge purple and chartreuse bag. “It’s loaded with tools, like everything from makeup to masturba—”
“Umm, Andi, we’re talking essentials here,” Lauren interrupted. She shook her head, and the silvery curl drifted loose again. “Look, I don’t want to put you two out.”
“I’m flying back in six days,” Andi chimed in. “Next Wednesday, Ms. L. So, you wouldn’t have to worry about me. For the next ten days or so you just need to make sure you keep off the radar.”
With an exasperated sigh, Lauren dropped her chin to her chest, then peered up at David. Her eyes were pinpoints of pain, of a deep sadness.
He could not even imagine what it would be like for his child, for Tony, to turn against him in later years as had her daughter against her.
“We haven’t even discussed your fee yet,” she murmured.
Stalling, pondering, he stared up at the ceiling, and noted an extensive corner cobweb he had somehow missed in his last cleaning. Several varmints were snared by those tenuous filaments. As he was by her particular mesh of feminine wiles.
Granted, when was that last household scouring, half-a-year ago? He grunted. He was such a chump. “The house could use a good swabbing.”
“Done deal.” Her answering smile of relief smote him. He was not the good guy she surmised.
CHAPTER 17
That next morning Andi suffered a momentary twinge of guilt, leaving Ms. L swabbing the squat little house in the marginal neighborhood. But Andi could not pass up the opportunity when Tony offered to drive her around the various University of Querétaro campuses in search of her elusive Vincente Talamantes.
With Tony’s father on a flight to somewhere in the far southern region of Mexico, his dusty, dented SUV was his son’s for the day. One hand lapped casually on the steering wheel, Tony navigated the Pathfinder among the darting autos like it was an extension of his body.
She found the danger of the calculated near-misses both harrowing and exhilarating. “Like, you ever thought of becoming a test driver for Ferrari?”
He slid her a rueful grin. His face held a warm intelligence. He wore his hair in an outgrown buzzcut that played off rather decently the contours of his square shaped face. He was dressed in chinos and a camo t-shirt. “Only if I could afford a Ferrari on my own, because my father will publicly execute me if I don’t get a college degree first.” He stroked the shift knob. “But I do find driving a sensorial experience.”
Her eyebrows shot up. Sensorial? She had a good idea of the word’s definition. But who tossed off a word like that? She studied the young man next to her with serious respect. He had overlapped his spectacles with sunglasses, and he looked bad ass. “So, what do you do when you are not in class or studying, Rambo?”
“Rambo? That’s my father. I’m what you gringos call a nerd. Carrying eighteen hours eats up a lot of my time. But I don’t mind it that much. Let’s stop by the main campus first. See if we can get a lead on your guy there.”
She scowled. “That’s the worm in the apple. He’s not my guy.”
He shook his attention off the road to glance at her belly. “But he is . . . uhh . . . your baby’s father? That is why you want to find him, right?”
She sighed, smoothed her loose smock over the bump in her belly. “I want to find him to find out if I still want him.”
He returned his focus to his fearless driving. “And if you still do . . . but he doesn’t want you—or the baby. . . then what?”
“Then I hire one of your Mexican hit men.”
His head whipped toward her, and she grinned. “Just messing with you. Are you for hire?”
“Not as a hit man.”
“Is your father? A hit man?”
He chuckled. “Hardly. Papi contracts out his legal expertise, but his main focus is our penniless pinche Human Rights Commission. No pay but his way, as he reminds me often enough.”
“And his way is, like, you’re getting that college degree?”
“Yeah. But in the United States. He wants me to have a better life than one afforded here in the barrio.”
“Your father may have a one-up on your druthers.”
“Druthers?
“Yeah, like, I’d druther get high than bottom out. Your neighborhood is bottomed out. A dump.”
At this, laughter rolled out of him. “Tactful, you aren’t, gringa.” He wheeled abruptly into a diagonal parking spot before a tree-shaded cluster of contemporary-looking buildings. “We’re here. Let me do the talking, bien?”
He surprised her by coming around to help her as she struggled with both her girth and tote bag to exit the Pathfinder. Gone With the Wind gallantry was still in force in this day and age?
Circumventing one imposing white building, he led her down a hallway, weaving in and out of both young and old students lugging backpacks and computer bags.
Occasionally she would give some thought to attending college. Then she would scoff at the idea. She had barely made it through high school. Unfailingly, her bored mind drifted, unable to concentrate, unless the subject involved math. It contained no confusing variables.
One teacher had mentioned ADHD, one of many abbreviations ascribed to her—like CD, for conduct disorder, and SD, for standard deviation, and G&T for gifted and talented. The last which proved her point—what did teacher’s know?
At a doorway on the left, Tony steered her inside and approached a long counter topped with baskets of forms. Behind it, on a tall stool before a computer, perched a bored but pretty chick, her shiny brunette hair snared back in a ponytail. At their approach, she glanced up and pitched them the mandatory inquiring smile. Then her eyes glowed. “Tony!”
“Hola, hermosa.” Smiling, he leaned one forearm on the counter, addressing in Spanish the now lively young girl. To Andi, who knew only a few Spanish endearments acquired from Vincente, Tony’s following words ran together unintelligibly.
Something he said set the girl to giggling. Her caramel skin flushed a becoming pink.
He lowered his voice. Whatever he was next saying caused her to peer over her shoulder at a couple of coworkers at desks in the back of the office. Next, she shook her head at Tony, her ponytail swishing like a horsetail at flies.
From somewhere he produced a one-hundred peso bill slid across the formica counter by his covering hand. Andi calculated five dollars would be a lot to the student worker.
The girl quickly palmed it then turned back to the computer. Her fingers danced across its keys. For a moment, her dark eyes scanned the screen. She reverted her consideration to Tony, completely ignoring Andi, and, frowning, spat out a spate of Spanish in a hushed voice.
Tony nodded. “Gracias, Carmen.” He winked at her, then took Andi’s elbow, steering her out of the office.
“Well?” she asked, as he propelled her down the hall. With the burden she now carried, her short stubby legs had to quicken their pace to keep up with his longer strides. “Is Carmen the love of your life?” Somehow she could not picture this techy as a lover boy.
His wide shoulders hunched. He jammed his hands in his pockets and kept walking. “Carmen loves life.”
Okay, so the subject of Carmen was off limits. “What did you find out?”
“She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—provide an address or phone number. She did pass along the info that your Vincente Talamantes is attending the University’s Juriquilla campus. Juriquilla is the Beverly Hills 90210 of Querétaro. We’re heading there next.”
“No TV in your house—how would you know about 90210?”
He tapped toward the cellphone in his back pocket. “Lots of re-runs here in Mexico.”
“From that machine gun-fire exchange with the chica, I gather she does not hold Vincente in high esteem.”
Opening the Pathfinder passenger door for her to climb aboard, he looked down at her with a pitying expression. “If this Vincente Talamantes is the same one you are looking for, it appears your Romeo is engaged to none other than the daughter of Querétaro’s police chief.”
As he closed the passenger-side door, she felt as if he was also closing the door on her hopes. But then what was she hoping for?
Initially, she had thought she merely wanted to find out if she still felt the same stomach-quivering sensation when with Vincente. Now, this disappointment she felt at learning he was engaged . . . was it that she had wanted, expected, Vincente to marry her? And the stomach quivering sensation she now felt, that of her baby moving within, well, it was an entirely different kind of thrill.
