Louis was thinking about Emma Fielding, the missing woman from 1953. Frank would have been young and handsome enough to lure her to her death. But by 1984, he was in his mid-fifties. No way he could have been mistaken for a boy.
“Angela called him a boy, not a man?” Louis asked.
“Yes, a boy. That is what she said.”
“Did she tell you his name?”
The man shook his head “I do not remember, but I know it was a good Hispanic name.”
Hispanic?
“Did she describe him to you?” Louis asked. “Tell you anything about him?”
The man shook his head “I think she call him...”
He looked at his wife and asked her something in Spanish.
The woman hesitated. “Papi chulo," she whispered.
She called him papi chulo,” the man said.
“What does that mean?” Louis asked.
“It is something young people say. It means he was handsome, a hunk you would say.”
He took a drink from his beer. His face was hard when he put down the can.
Louis looked at the woman. Her expression had changed too. Now she looked sad, not so much like she was remembering what Angela said but what any woman could remember feeling about any young man. She disappeared into the back.
Louis gathered up his photos, stacking the papers and folders. “The file says her father reported her missing,” he said. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“I heard he died last year in Texas,” the man said. “Angela had no one else.”
Louis closed the folder and stuck out a hand. “Thanks for your time.”
The man wiped his palm on his jeans then shook Louis’s hand.
Louis went out, pausing in the hot sun, watching the kids playing around his Mustang. He was surprised when the woman came out to stand next to him.
“Can I see the picture?” she asked softly.
Louis pulled it out of the file and handed it to her. The woman’s face seemed to slowly cave in on itself. She brushed at her eyes.
“She did not like to be called Angela,” she said. “I did not call her that.”
“What did you call her?” Louis asked.
“Angel.”
She was quiet for a long time, staring at the picture. “When Angela became fifteen, she started working with her father in the fields,” the woman said. “The same age I was when I started.”
She looked toward the children playing around the Mustang. “It is hard work,” she said. “You wake before the sun is red and you walk the three miles to the bus so you can be chosen to work. In the fields, you run and grab a bucket and start picking. You pick as fast as you can so you can eat.”
The woman brushed a hand over her hair. “You fill your bucket with tomatoes and the man gives you a ticket. You put it into your pants because it is precious, worth forty cents. When the sun goes down, you take your tickets to the house and you get your money. Then you get back on the bus and walk home. You take a cold shower because the hot water is all gone by now. At eleven, you eat then go to bed. The sun comes up again the next day and you do it again.”
The children were beeping the Mustang’s horn. Louis let it go.
“I was lucky to marry a good man,” the woman said. “I didn’t have to work in the fields long. I hoped Angel would be lucky, too.”
“You were close to her?” Louis asked.
She looked up at him, then down at the picture in her hand. “She was like my daughter. We used to talk at night when the store was quiet,” she said. “Angel say she would get away from here someday, that she would never have her children here.”
The woman paused. “I told her that she should go and never come back, not even to see me. I want to believe that is what she did.”
Louis couldn’t think of anything to say so he nodded.
“Thank you for your help, Rosa,” he said.
She hesitated then held out the photograph. It was just a copy, not even a good one.
“You can keep it,” he said.
She smiled.
“If I find out anything about Angela —-”
Rosa shook her head. “No,” she said softly, clutching the picture. “Don’t come back here. If you come back it will be to tell me she is dead. Don’t come back, please.”
CHAPTER 22
Louis slid into the old wicker chair on the porch and propped his bare feet on the small table. In his hand was a Heineken and in his lap was the baby skull.
It was hot again tonight, the black velvet air hanging heavy and dark over the still gulf waters. The cottage next to his was empty, eliminating any nearby lights. Far out in the blackness he could see a twinkle of white. A ship. A low star. He couldn’t tell.
All the girls were on his mind, but it was Neil Fielding who nagged at him, closed up tight in that tin-can trailer, waiting to die.