The Death Box(46)

A traffic signal changed down the block and the street filled with cars and trucks, horns and engines. A rusted station wagon rattled to the curb, the drunken driver leering out the window. “Hey chicka, how much por felación?” He mimed pushing a head into his lap.

“What?”

“I got twenny bucks, chicka. I meet you in the motel lot, no?”

Leala walked away as quickly as her legs would carry her, the drunk yelling at her back. The traffic was frightening and Leala turned past a closed bodega. Three men sat atop a car in its parking lot, drinking from bagged bottles. They hooted and whistled at Leala, but didn’t get up.

She kept moving.

Within minutes the clubs and motels and bars turned into tiny houses on palm-fronded lots, the doors and windows grated, vehicles parked haphazardly in the street and across the pavement. Streetlamps dusted the night with a gauzy white, the air steamy and thick. It was a poor neighborhood, Leala knew, but safer than the busy avenue.

After another ten minutes the houses and lots grew larger and their portals were ungrated. The flowers and palms seemed healthier and better-attended, and even through her fear Leala smelled the sweet perfume of jacaranda and bougainvillea.

She heard a roar at her back and saw headlights veer onto the street. Leala ducked into a yard, crouching behind a tall agave until the lights passed. Struck by a crisp and pungent scent, Leala crept toward a picket fence beside a dark house. Behind it was a blue hole centering the backyard with a long plank of wood projecting across water lit blue from beneath.

La piscina. A pool for swimming.

Leala had been smelling herself and her clothing. Shooting glances at the house, she slunk to the edge of the pool and splashed the clean-smelling water over her face. When the house remained dark she edged into the cool agua, dress and all, taking a deep breath and dipping her head beneath the surface, staying under as long as possible, coming up for air, then submerging again, hoping the bright-smelling water was cleaning the filth from her body and her soul and renewing her for the journey ahead.





23





My phone rang and my eyes popped open. I blinked to find focus and read a blurred clock: 10:14 a.m. My hand scrabbled for the phone but my rum-afflicted eyes couldn’t discern the name. “What?” I barked into the device, noticing I was still in yesterday’s clothes.

“Not a morning person, I take it?” Morningstar’s voice.

“Sorry,” I said. “Not this morning, at least.”

“At least you slept, Ryder. Some of us have been working all night. I just thought you’d like to hear that you were right.”

“Right about what?”

“We’re nearing the bottom of the column and found two seams, which I’ll interpret as two additional and disparate dumping events in the cistern. Makes sense, right?”

“I, uh …”

“It will, Ryder. Go back to sleep.”

I fumbled to my feet to face the excesses of last night’s pityfest. Fuzzy recollections arrived as I showered: A diminishing bottle of Myers’s. Gershwin cajoling me to the deck as he attempted conversation. Me waving it off and taking a swim, stepping on a lobster and getting my toe pinched before splashing back to shore. When I found Gershwin had left, I’d headed inside and tried to Skype Jeremy while leaning back in the chair with feet on desk and somewhere in there the chair tipped over backward and that’s all I could remember.

The kitchen floor was strewn with limes for some reason. I drank a mug of coffee and headed to my car, figuring to drive to the site and see what Morningstar was talking about. My belly fought the coffee and my spinning head felt like monks had used it for gong practice.

I retreated inside, dressed in cutoffs and launched my kayak. The day was already hot and the humidity was in wet-sponge range and I was sweating like a roofer within a minute. I paddled to open water and pulled intervals – racing full-tilt boogie for a minute, arms and shoulders screaming, heart roaring in my ears – then dropping to a lower rhythm for a minute. The toxins started clearing and along with them, my head. I returned to shore a half-hour later and was feeling halfway decent by the time I arrived at the site.

Morningstar’s busy night was evident in the diminution of the column, now the height of a footstool, a gray circle in the soil like a Yap Island money disk. She was on the upper level with the tables and equipment, a coterie of techs dusting and bagging and labeling. To my surprise, Gershwin sat to the side, watching the process. His eyebrows raised at my approach.

“Glad you didn’t drown,” he said. “The last time I saw you was splashing out into the cove. I was afraid you’d swim to open sea, but it seemed you could only go in circles.”