Aztec Sun Page 13

  Carlotta rolled her eyes at the implication underlying Rafael’s words. “He’s back. Looking none the worse for it. He wasn’t the least bit rumpled. Are you sure that’s where he was?”

  “Maybe they just talked.”

  Carlotta snorted. “Well, he went down to the conference room to regale the reps. Melanie is supposed to be shooting interiors. I would guess she’s on the set.”

  “Fine.” Rafael straightened his shoulders, attempting to shake off the persistent chill left by Sandra’s departure, by the bleak look in her eyes. He had to go and discuss the advertising strategy for White Angel with the reps. He had to be an executive, a successful independent movie producer.

  He had almost reached the end of the hall when he heard the footsteps behind him, the gasping breath. “Rafael!” Carlotta shouted, her voice bouncing off the smooth white walls.

  He spun around and saw her racing down the hall, the black curls of her hair trembling as she galloped toward him in her sensible low-heeled shoes. Her eyes were round with panic, her arms pumping wildly. “Rafael!” she wailed as she stumbled to a halt in front of him and gasped for breath.

  “What?”

  “I just—” she panted “—I just got a call. They need you in Building B.”

  He cursed. “Why? What happened?”

  “It’s Melanie.”

  “Of course it’s Melanie. It’s always Melanie.” Please, God, don’t let Sandra be there to witness whatever disaster that bitch has done this time. “I’ll have Diego—”

  “Diego can’t do anything for her. It’s too late for Diego. Oh, God, Rafael...” Carlotta, his starchy, dependable secretary, dissolved in tears.

  If he’d felt chilly before, he felt downright frozen now. “What happened?” he asked in the low, taut voice that signaled how close he was to erupting.

  “She collapsed. John Rhee is hysterical. He says she stopped breathing. Bob Jorgensen pounded on her chest, again and again, he blew into her mouth...” Carlotta wept openly.

  The walls seemed to tilt, closing in on him. He grabbed Carlotta and forced her to look at him. Tears cascaded down her cheeks. “What are you saying?”

  “She’s dead, Rafael. Melanie Greer is dead.”

  Chapter Eight

  SHE WANTED TO BELIEVE RAFAEL. With all her heart, she wanted to believe he wasn’t related to the Ricardo Perez currently in prison on a drug conviction. Flannagan had been right when he’d pointed out that there had to be countless men named Ricardo Perez in the Los Angeles area. Any one of them could be Rafael’s kin, or perhaps none of them at all. Why not assume Rafael had told her the truth?

  He wasn’t given to opening up, yet he’d opened his office to her, and shared his pottery collection. He’d let her glimpse the strange, almost reverent glow in his eyes when he’d regarded the ceramic Sol Azteca. She’d been intrigued by Aztec sun piece, not only because it was beautiful—his entire collection was beautiful—but because she’d known the instant she’d seen it that it was special to him, that it possessed a symbolism that resonated well beyond his life as a movie producer.

  When she saw the way Rafael regarded the sculpture, she understood that he was more than just a successful businessman. He was a man connected to his heritage, a man in touch with where he’d come from. If only he felt comfortable talking about such things, she could write a magnificent profile of him. Even if it was fluff, it would be the best damned fluff the Post had ever published.

  But she had to be sure. All his pride, all his anti-drug fervor couldn’t mask the fact that he had a stoned starlet running amok at his studio. Rafael wasn’t blind; surely he had to know what was going on with Melanie. And if he did...

  Doubt nipped at Sandra. It didn’t matter that he swore there were no drugs at Aztec Sun, and no connection between him and a dealer named Ricardo Perez. She couldn’t accept his statements on his word alone. She was a journalist. She needed proof.

  Back at her desk in the Post building, she searched the telephone directory for a listing for Rosa Perez. Unable to find one, Sandra decided to try her luck with the fifteen churches Rafael allegedly kept afloat. Catholic churches were easy to locate; at least some of the churches listed must have received money from Rafael.

  She narrowed her search to churches located in East L.A. The second church she called informed her that, yes indeed, it had been the fortunate recipient of Rafael Perez’s largesse on more than one occasion. Although the church wasn’t sure why he’d been so generous, since he wasn’t a member of the congregation, everyone was most grateful. His contributions helped to sustain the church’s day-care program for working single parents.

  More accolades for the hero of the Chicano community. The skeptic in Sandra muttered that he seemed too good to be true, but the optimist—the woman who wanted to believe him for personal, not professional, reasons—argued that it wasn’t impossible for a rich, handsome, successful man to be also a decent, honest man. Uncommon, perhaps, but not impossible.

  The next three churches she phoned refused to discuss private donations with her. The fourth was led by a garrulous priest named Father Andreas, who happily took her call.

  “Oh, yes, of course I know Rafael Perez,” he said once Sandra had identified herself and explained that she was writing a feature story on Rafael for the Post.

  “Is he a member of your church?” Sandra asked.

  “No. Rafael isn’t a church-going man.”

  “But he gives so much money to churches.”

  “It’s possible to have faith without having religion,” Father Andreas explained. “Some people have religion but no faith. In Rafael’s case it’s the opposite.”

  “I find it hard to believe he has no religion,” Sandra said. “His sister is a nun.”

  “She has faith and religion. The best of all possible worlds.”

  “What about his brother?” Sandra bluffed, feeling traitorous. She was only doing her job, but her heart thudded as she waited for the priest to speak. Please, she prayed silently, please say, what brother? He doesn’t have a brother.

  “Ah, yes. His brother.” Father Andreas sighed. “Ricardo has religion but no faith.”

  If she were only a reporter, the priest’s revelation would have thrilled her. At last, here was a chink in the knight’s armor, a lead she could pursue. Rafael had lied to her. He had a brother. A faithless brother named Ricardo.

  But she wasn’t just a reporter—a realization that appalled her, though she was too honest to deny it. She was a woman who had kissed Rafael, who wanted him to be a perfect man, who wanted him.

  She struggled to revive her objectivity. Just because Rafael had lied about his brother didn’t mean this Ricardo Perez was the man who’d been sentenced to prison for selling cocaine. If he was, she’d have a story worth writing about. If he wasn’t, so much the better. “Do you know Rafael’s brother?” she asked Father Andreas. “Do you know how I could reach him? I’d like to interview him.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Rafael is a role model for the community,” Sandra said. “I’d like to present a well-rounded picture of him. Interviewing his brother would be awfully helpful.”

  “Ricardo isn’t an easy man to talk to, Ms. Garcia.”

  Neither is Rafael, she almost retorted. “Even so, if you could just give me his number—”

  “He’s a convicted drug dealer, Ms. Garcia. The only number he has these days is his prison ID. I don’t know when, or even if, he’s permitted to take personal calls. I think he attends mass in prison, but he’s never asked to see me.”

  He’d never asked to see a reporter from the L.A. Post, either. But that wouldn’t stop Sandra. She thanked Father Andreas, then hung up and slumped in her chair. She didn’t want Rafael to have lied to her. She didn’t want him to have viewed her as nothing more than a reporter to be deceived and deluded.

  But that was how he saw her. His kisses, his fierce gazes, his flattery, his phony earnestness and righ
teousness...damn him for having sucked her in.

  She phoned the prison in Chino. The officer she spoken to said she would be able to meet with Ricardo Perez between noon and one, but he offered no guarantee that Ricardo Perez would be willing to talk to her.

  “I’ll come anyway,” Sandra said.

  She clung to her journalist persona until she was in her car, cruising east along Route 60 toward Chino. The boredom of the freeway gave her little in the way of distraction from her anger, her brooding rage at a man who could deliberately lie to her about his own brother—a man she’d wanted so badly to trust.

  Sandra had been lied to plenty of times before. But this time it hurt. It hurt in the cruel way of a personal betrayal. It hurt because Rafael had kissed her, and she’d foolishly wanted to believe his kiss had meant something. Even though she knew it hadn’t, she’d wanted to pretend it had.

  She drove deeper into the valley, putting more miles between herself and Rafael, and closing the distance between herself and the man who would disprove his lies. The further she traveled from Los Angeles, the more the traffic thinned out. The September air was as dry as sandpaper, scraping her skin. Royal palms and cyprus drooped listlessly along the side of the road, weary from battling three months of summer heat. Gnarled manzanita shrubs crawled up the slopes bordering the highway, thirsty, searching for shade.

  All right, so Rafael had lied. She tried to convince herself this was good news: it meant she was onto him, he was scared, he was hiding something. Something that would produce a story for her before twenty four hours ticked by.

  And maybe...God forgive her for giving him the benefit of the doubt, but maybe he’d had a justification for lying. If Sandra had had a brother in jail for selling cocaine, she wouldn’t have wanted the world to know about it. Rafael had worked so hard to attain success—of course he wouldn’t want his brother’s criminality dished up in the pages of the Post.

  Sandra didn’t have to take his evasion as a personal attack. He’d been defending himself from negative publicity, not from her.

  Despite her experience writing daily miseries, she had never been to the prison in Chino before. It reminded her, in a perverse way, of Aztec Sun—a compound of drab warehouse-like buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence. Here, of course, the fence was eight feet high and trimmed with coils of barbed wire. Here the buildings had bars on the windows, and the guard at the entry gate carried a firearm.

  Once she’d been cleared by the guard, she drove down a dusty strip of asphalt to a parking lot. Inside the door she had to produce her driver’s license and her employee card from the Post. Her tote was searched; her recorder was opened, the batteries inspected, the case examined for contraband. A female warden escorted her to a private room and frisked her with unnerving thoroughness.

  “Better fix yourself up,” the warden said once she was done groping and poking at Sandra. “As soon as you’re ready I’ll bring you down the hall. No saying whether Perez’ll see you.”

  “He was informed that I was coming, wasn’t he?”

  “It’s not like you’re his wife,” the warden remarked, refusing Sandra the dignity of privacy to smooth her blouse back into the waistband of her skirt. “You’re a reporter. If you’re not in his corner, he might just decide he’d rather be doing laundry.”

  Sandra finger-combed her hair, then gave the warden a nod to indicate that she was ready.

  The warden led her back to the front desk, where a male warden waited to usher her down the hall. He led her to a small, cell-like room with a couple of metal folding chairs and an old pine table the top of which had been carved with initials. Sandra wondered what the inmates had used to engrave it. The possibility that Ricardo Perez might be carrying something sharp enough to nick wood unsettled her.

  The guard left the room, shutting the door behind him. Sandra glanced at the narrow window set in the door. Her ghostly reflection showed a disheveled woman with panic in her eyes. She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

  You’re a reporter, she reminded herself. Toughen up and do your job.

  If only her fellow staff members from the high school newspaper could see her now. Sandra Garcia, girl reporter, locked into a holding room in a medium-security men’s prison, awaiting an audience with a convicted narcotics merchant. No need for anxiety. She was intrepid. She was stalwart. And there were half a dozen guards down the hall, just in case.

  The lever on the door twitched, then jerked downward as the door was opened from the hall side. Sandra’s hands fisted reflexively around the handles of her tote and she took another deep breath, shoving aside her misgivings.

  The man who entered the room wore clean blue jeans and a pale blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a number stenciled above the breast pocket. He stood six feet tall, with broad shoulders and long, slim legs. His skin was coppery, his cheeks chiseled, his nose sharp and straight and his hair as black as a crow’s wings. His eyes...

  His eyes could have been Rafael’s. The irises were just as dark, as haunted, as fathomless—and they were edged in rings of gold. Like Rafael, this man had the ability to paralyze a person with his gaze. Like Rafael, Ricardo Perez seemed to transform the small, dreary room with his entrance.

  Sandra recalled her first meeting with Rafael, the tremor that had run down her spine, the way her breath had lost its rhythm. Her response to Ricardo Perez was the same—and different. The same because her body sensed his presence in a visceral way. Different because while Rafael’s eyes blazed, Ricardo’s were icy.

  Commanding herself to remain calm, she extended her hand and in a surprisingly pleasant voice said, “How do you do? I’m Sandra Garcia from the Los Angeles Post.”

  He eyed her hand suspiciously. “You got any cigarettes?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  He scowled. His lips reminded her of Rafael’s, thin and sensual. The disdainful quirk at the corner of his mouth didn’t produce a dimple, though, and his voice was harsher, the rasp of a heavy smoker.

  The guard surprised her by pulling a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and tossing them onto the table. “You want me to stay?” he asked her.

  Sandra eyed the tall, hulking man in the prison-issue garb. If she asked the guard to stay, Ricardo would see her as weak. “No,” she said, refusing to shrink from Ricardo’s hard, angry stare.

  Neither she nor Ricardo spoke as the guard left the room, closing the door behind him. Shoring up her courage, she gestured toward the table. “Why don’t we sit?”

  Ricardo yanked out a chair and dropped onto it. He pulled a folder of matches from the pack, shook out a cigarette, lit it and tossed the match onto the cold concrete floor. Sandra observed the movements of his hands, as strong and graceful as Rafael’s. He had bony wrists, scarred knuckles. The tattoo of a snake writhed up his left forearm, gray-blue and foreboding.

  “Did they tell you why I’m here?” she asked.

  “You’re doing a story about Raf.” His lips barely moved, except to blow a jet of smoke at her.

  “I appreciate your willingness to talk to me.”

  “Beats pressing shirts.”

  She recalled the female warden implying that Ricardo worked in the laundry. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

  He slanted his eyes toward her tote and shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  She spent a few busy minutes setting up the recorder, opening her pad, clicking her pen. Once she’d run out of things to fuss with, she leaned back in her chair and gave him what she hoped was a friendly smile. “So, you and Rafael are brothers.”

  He said nothing.

  “Do you like his movies?”

  He laughed, a short, surly sound. “Oh, sure. They’re maravilloso.” Sarcasm dripped from each syllable. Obviously there was little love lost between Ricardo and Rafael.

  She was briefly tempted to defend Rafael. Ricardo had the right to be jealous of his successful brother, but not to disparage him. Then she re
minded herself that Rafael had denied the very existence of his brother. Ricardo’s dismissal of Rafael’s movies was trivial, compared to Rafael’s dismissal of Ricardo.

  “I want to be able to present a well-rounded picture of your brother,” she said, hoping Ricardo would take “well-rounded” to mean “warts and all.” “He’s pretty secretive about his past.”

  Ricardo laughed again, a sardonic growl. “No kidding,” he muttered, then shook another cigarette from the pack and used the glowing coal of the first to light the second. He ground the first out on the floor with the heel of his heavy work shoe.

  “He told me he got his strength from your mother.”

  Ricardo shrugged.

  “Can you tell me about her?”

  He studied the burning orange tip of his cigarette, the thread of blue smoke rising sinuously from it. He shrugged again. “What should I say? She made him strong.”

  “How about your father?”

  “What father? I haven’t got a father.”

  “You’re the Immaculate Conception, huh,” Sandra teased. She didn’t really feel comfortable with Ricardo, but she hoped a joke would loosen them both up a little.

  It worked. His chuckle sounded less caustic and his eyes warmed marginally, glowing with grudging respect. “My father used to beat my mother. So she packed us up and left him.”

  “I see.”

  “He could be still picking tomatoes in the Imperial Valley. Or he could have gone back to Hermosillo. Or he could be dead. I don’t know.”

  Sandra bowed over her pad, dutifully jotting notes even though she knew the recorder was preserving Ricardo’s every word. She needed to look away from him, to collect her thoughts. No wonder Rafael had seemed disdainful of her middle-class background and her private-school education. He’d been not only poor but fatherless—which might well have been a blessing, if his father was a violent man.

  “You grew up in East L.A., is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re the oldest?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lifting her gaze from her pad, she observed his hands, the thick, callused fingers pinching his cigarette, the square clean nails. The tattooed snake slithering beneath the wiry hair that covered his left forearm. “All right, Mr. Perez,” she said, deciding this chit-chat interview was moving too slowly. “You know what I want you to explain to me: how come your brother wound up a successful movie producer and you wound up in jail?”