Are you ready for some smart, sexy, stylish, hard-boiled fun?
Wisecracking San Francisco PI August Riordan parlays a run-in with a machine-gun-toting cable-car brakeman into a guided tour of the city’s cemeteries, hunting for … wait for it … Evita Peron’s perfectly preserved corpse. His deadly cat-and-mouse game involves surviving both the murderous intentions of some shady members of Argentina’s ruling class and the seductive advances of several beautiful Latin American women.
By Stephen Windwalker
Editor, Kindle Nation Daily
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011
Do you miss the late Robert B. Parker and his Spenser novels?
Me, too. In fact, if you’re like me, you may not be above going back and reading some of the best Spensers a second or third time. There’s no shame in that, really.
But sooner or later we have to move on, and I’m here to propose what the helping professions sometimes call a geographical cure.
How about a trip across the country?
Fly first class, and it will only cost you $2.99 a trip. Because I’m going to introduce you to a new friend, August Riordan, a San Francisco Shamus who is every bit as funny, as august, and as tough an Everyman PI as his Boston counterpart Spenser.
Where to begin? Novelist Mark Coggins makes it easy for us by providing an action-packed 13,000-word free excerpt for us right from the beginning of The Big Wake-Up, the fifth book in the Riordan series.
If you’re enough of a suspense fiction fan to begin reading the free excerpt, I’m pretty sure you’ll keep going right to the end of this novel, and then it’s up to you. You can go 5-4-3-2-1, or you can go 5-1-2-3-4, it doesn’t matter.
But don’t be surprised if by the time you finish all five you’ll be asking me for Coggins’ email address so you can write to him begging him to put on some speed in delivering #6….
Here’s the set-up:
The odyssey of María Eva Duarte de Perón–the Argentine first lady made famous in the play and the movie Evita–was as remarkable in death as it was in life. A few years after she succumbed to cervical cancer, her specially preserved body was taken by the military dictatorship that succeeded her deposed husband Juan. Hidden for sixteen years in Italy in a crypt under a false name, she was eventually exhumed and returned to Buenos Aires to be buried in an underground tomb said to be secure enough to withstand a nuclear attack.
Or was she?
When San Francisco private eye August Riordan engages in a flirtation with a beautiful university student from Buenos Aires, he witnesses her death in a tragic shooting and is drawn into mad hunt for Evita’s remains. He needs all of his wits, his network of friends and associates, and an unexpected legacy from the dead father he has never known to help him survive the deadly intrigue between powerful Argentine movers and shakers, ex-military men, and a mysterious woman named Isis who is expert in ancient techniques of mummification.
The fifth novel in the August Riordan series, The Big Wake-Up plunges everyman PI Riordan and his sidekick Chris Duckworth into their most terrifying and anguishing case ever.
From Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review):
Coggins’s outstanding fifth mystery to feature San Francisco PI August Riordan (after 2007’s Runoff) successfully blends an over-the-top premise with an unrelentingly grim plot. Soon after flirting with an attractive young woman in a Laundromat, Riordan watches in horror as an apparently deranged cable car operator guns her and an older woman down at a cable car stop. Riordan pursues the killer and stops his bloody rampage. The Argentine family of the first victim, 23-year-old Araceli Rivero, hires him to investigate an unrelated matter, the location of Araceli’s dead aunt, whose body was transferred from a Milan cemetery to somewhere in the Bay Area. After quickly getting a promising lead, Riordan learns that his clients have been less than straight with him-the missing corpse is actually that of Evita Perón. Coggins pulls no punches as the suspenseful action builds to a violent act of vigilantism.
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
(UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download The Big Wake-up)
Six for the Kindle by Mark Coggins
6.
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Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 10, 2011
An Excerpt from
The Big Wake-Up
“An August Riordan Mystery”
by Mark Coggins
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Coggins and published here with his permission
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Cable Car CrunchARE YOU HOPING FOR A SOUVENIR or checking to see if they’re your size?”
The woman doing the talking was holding a towering stack of pastel-colored panties. We were the only two in the Missing Sock Laundromat. I was there because doing my own laundry in the middle of the workday seemed the best investment I could make in my flagging private eye business. She was there-apparently-because even Victoria Secret underwear models have to do the wash.
There’s no question I’d been staring at her. I don’t usually associate tweed with sexy, but she’d shoehorned her extravagant curves into a vest and jacket made of the stuff and on her it was positively prurient. The jacket just came over her hips and then a pair of clingy jeans took charge and traveled the length of her long-stemmed legs to some pointy brown boots. Given the alternative between watching my Fantastic Four bedsheets go through the spin cycle and taking her in while she folded and stacked her unmentionables, the question of eyeball allegiance was never in doubt.
I sat up straighter in the plastic lawn chair I’d been camped in. “Doesn’t matter what size they are. They’re not my color.”
A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth and she leaned down to put the stack of panties in the nylon duffel bag at her feet. When she had them situated just so, she yanked the draw string closed and swung the bag over her shoulder. She flipped back apricot blond hair, then reached into the open dryer.
Mirth and green light shone in her eyes. She gestured for me to hold out my hand and pressed something warm and spongy into it. “Well, here’s your souvenir, then.”
A fabric softener sheet.
I laughed and watched as she plopped a tweed newsboy cap onto her head, collected an oversize umbrella from near the door and went out onto Hyde Street and a driving San Francisco rainstorm. She gave me a two-fingered wave through the plate glass and then jogged across the street to stand with an older woman at the cable car stop on the corner at Union in front of the Swensen’s ice cream parlor.
That particular Swensen’s was the original-opened in 1948 by Earle Swensen himself-and the promise of a couple of scoops of Cable Car Crunch after I finished my laundry was the main reason I picked this place over the laundromat in my apartment building. The pantie girl had been an unexpected plus.
Sighing, I pocketed the fabric softener sheet and let my gaze return to the bank of Speed Queens in front of me. The machine on the end was shaking violently due to my decision to throw a pair of dirty Converse Chuck Taylors in with my sheets. I moved to rebalance the load, then heard the deep, coffee grinder rumble of an approaching cable car. It pulled in front of the ice cream parlor, blocking my view of the girl and the older woman. It looked completely devoid of passengers and I thought how lucky the girl had been to catch an empty car so quickly.
I’ve never been more wrong in my life.
On sleepless nights, I can still see the next five seconds replay when I press my face into the pillow. The cable car seemed to pause on its tracks, there was a harsh unzippering noise synced to lightning flashes, and the car accelerated from the corner. By the time I thought to look to the gripman, his face was turned away from me, but I could just make out two pug-ugly Uzi machine guns dangling from leather straps that crisscrossed his chest. I yelled something inarticulate and plunged across the room to the door.
It was a short, drenching sprint to the cable car stop. The girl and the woman lay in a jumble with packages and bags in the gutter, their open umbrellas twitching and rocking in the rain like things possessed. There was no question of either being alive. The 9mm slugs had stitched a slashing line across faces and chests, and although there was relatively little bleeding, the damage was horrific. The older woman, in particular, simply had no forehead. The pantie girl had less damage to her face, but the tweed fabric of her vest was chewed to shreds and bright red arterial blood welled in shallow pools across her throat, sternum and breast. Both women peered up into the downpour with unblinking eyes.
The awful transformation from teasing, flirtatious girl to broken rag doll left me vapor locked. I didn’t know what to do. I sat on my haunches in the street, my hair plastered to my scalp, my fingers squeezed against my kneecaps, swaying from side to side. I might still be there if an aproned teenager hadn’t poked her head out the door of Swensen’s and let off a strangled scream.
I blinked, then blinked again. I squeegeed hair and water off my face with my palm and reached across to close the eyes of the dead women. By the time I stood up, the teenager had retreated into the store. She tried to block me from entering, but I bulled my way through to stand dripping on the tiled floor while she scampered back behind the ice cream freezer. “Go away,” she squeaked.
“Call 911,” I said. “Tell them that a gripman on the Hyde cable car line is shooting people with machine guns.”
Whatever response she made to that was lost in the sound of me flinging open the door again with the little bell attached to it caroming wildly off the glass. I ran across Hyde to the alley that bordered the laundromat. I had parked my 1968 Ford Galaxie 500 halfway on the sidewalk in an illegal spot near the corner. I dove onto the bench seat, shoved the key in the ignition and cranked the starter while I worked the gas pedal. The car shook while the starter turned, but the engine didn’t catch-an all too common occurrence with the Galaxie. I wrung the steering wheel in frustration, pumped the pedal some more and forced the starter into an extended series of arias. The engine still didn’t join the performance.
The smell of raw gasoline wafted into the car: flooded. Hissing a rosary of curses, I laid my hand flat on the dashboard in a kind of anti-blessing, pressed the gas peddle all the way to the floor and twisted the key. The Galaxie shimmied in an off-kilter rhythm, fired once, missed a beat, then fired again. Finally all the cylinders caught and the engine rumbled to life. A cloud of blue gray smoke that not even the driving rain could knock down billowed up behind me. I yanked the transmission into gear and jolted off the sidewalk in a squealing left turn onto Hyde.
The maximum speed of a cable car is ten miles per hour. That was still enough for the car I was chasing to travel six blocks to Washington where the tracks turned left to go down the hill to Powell. It was just making the turn as I gave the Galaxie all the gas I dared, winding the car up to 50 miles per hour by the time I hit the depression in the roadway where Hyde roofed the Broadway tunnel. The Galaxie bottomed out, scraping up yards of asphalt and swamping the aged shocks. We bucked in a seesaw oscillation that, combined with the fogged front windshield and the wheels slipping on the slickened steel of the cable car tracks, made controlling the car an iffy proposition at best.
The turn at Washington proved the point. I pressed the brakes to slow for it, but hydroplaned on the tracks. I torqued the wheel over anyway, provoking a skid that snapped the rear end wide and knocked over a scooter that was parked at the corner. I turned into the skid to regain control and side swiped two more autos. By the time I had fishtailed into the middle of Washington, the cable car had crossed Levenworth and was approaching the crest of the hill at Jones.
Then came the bullets. I had hoped the gripman would be unaware of my pursuit but the orchestra of crashes accompanying my turn must have alerted him. He swung wide out of the cable car, clinging to a white pole on the side while squeezing off a long, stuttering round from one of the Uzis. The slugs tattooed the hood of the Galaxie, then flew up into the windshield, chiseling a constellation of starburts in the glass. I tried to crawl into the dashboard ashtray, but flying glass sliced my right cheek before I could take cover.
The cable car rolled over the edge of the hill and the gripman lost his sight line. He swung back inside the car just as it slid from view.
Up until that point, the Galaxie had had little to recommend it as a pursuit vehicle. It was old, mechanically unreliable, hard to control and not particularly fast. All of that changed now. A two-ton hunk of 1960s Detroit iron makes an excellent guided missile.
I slapped the gearshift into low and tromped hard on the gas pedal. The rear wheels chirped and the car shot forward with a jolt that knocked more of the fractured glass from the windshield. In an instant, I was at the top of the hill. In another, I was sailing over it.
Any worry about how the shocks would handle another hard landing was misplaced. The Galaxie pancaked onto the back of the cable car-flattening the panel with the car number and the Rice-A-Roni ad-and firmly embedding the front end at a height that didn’t permit the wheels to touch the ground. My forehead punished the steering wheel, and by the time I unstuck my frontal lobe from the inside of my skull, we were barreling down Washington as a conjoined unit at a speed much greater than the nineteenth-century cable car designers had contemplated.
Not that the gripman wasn’t doing his damnedest to stop us. Plumes of sparks flew up from beneath the car where he’d employed the emergency break-basically a steel wedge that is crammed into the slot between the tracks-and I could smell and almost taste the acrid wood smoke coming off the old fashioned wooden track brakes. When the brakes didn’t seem to be working he resorted to the Uzi. Bullets nickered overhead, but I put a stop to that by tromping even harder on the gas.
We shot past Taylor and then Mason. I realized I had a death squeeze on the steering wheel even though there was no steering to be done and I was screaming at the top of my lungs. The tracks turned right abruptly at the next street-Powell-but I didn’t think we would be joining them.
There was a hard jolt at the intersection and I felt the cable car wrenching away from the Galaxie. My front wheels bounded onto the ground. The last thing I registered before slamming on the brakes and bracing myself for the inevitable was the cable car heeling over like a yacht-the grip beneath the car still attached to the cable, which was being pulled from its slot like a gigantic rubber band.
The back end of the Galaxie spun around to the left and I skidded kitty-corner across the intersection to broadside a street lamp, and when that didn’t hold, the storefront of a Chinese market. I heard the light pole crashing down, glass from the storefront shattering, and above it all, a tremendous snap and an awful whipping sound.
I rattled around the interior of the car like a bean in a rumba shaker. I must have lost consciousness for a moment because the next thing I remembered was the near zen-like sound of rain water dripping through the broken windshield onto the dash. Then a whispered, “Are you okay?”
Okay I was not. I sat up in the seat and immediately discovered about ten places where I hurt, including a stinger to my neck that made my left arm feel like it was on fire. Outside the driver’s side window, next to a store display of ceramic figurines, was the person inquiring about my health: an old Chinese man in a sweat suit and a Cal Berkeley baseball cap. The way out to the left was blocked, so I crawled across the seat, encrusting my knees with a mosaic of broken glass and ceramics as I went, and pushed open the passenger door. I lumbered out and stood on trembling legs by the base of the felled street light, transfixed by what I saw across the way.
“Hey,” said the Chinese guy, no longer whispering. “You smashed my store.”
I didn’t answer him because I had already broken into a shuffling, windmilling trot to get to the far corner. The cable car was flipped over on its side, part on the roadway and part on the sidewalk. The gripman was on his back in the street, lying parallel to the overturned car. As I got closer, I could see that he was alive and conscious, but given his injuries, I doubted he wanted to be either.
This was my first good look at him. He was young, red-haired, and probably had a last name that started with O’. He had a bandanna tied around his head that matched his brown SF Municipal Railway uniform, with a special cable car division insignia embroidered over his chest. I reluctantly abandoned my theory that he was a random crackpot who hijacked the car.
It was no theory that he was suffering. The skin on his face was so pale and so wet that it appeared almost translucent. His eyes were marbles of agony. He watched as I approached, then gasped, “I can’t feel my feet.”
I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. “That’s because you don’t have any.”
He nodded like I’d passed along a ball score, then closed his eyes. “The cable,” he mumbled.
“Yeah. The cable. But you won’t need your feet for the gurney ride to the lethal injection chamber. Now shut up while I save your miserable life.”
I yanked off my belt and leaned down to cinch it above his left knee as a makeshift tourniquet. The first cop car showed up as I was tugging at his belt for the other leg, my fingers slippery with blood.
A Universe of Stars, a Galaxie of DentsTHE GRIPMAN TURNED OUT TO BE A GUY named Darragh Finnegan, which is about as Irish a name as you can get without starting the last part with O’. He had been caught up in a sting involving undercover security guards who were put on cable cars to find crews pocketing fares from tourists. Finnegan and the conductor from his crew had been suspended for allegedly skimming over $25,000, his girlfriend had dumped him and-thanks to his high profile from press coverage-he was also under investigation by the INS for being in the country illegally. And he was pissed.
On the day of the shooting he donned his Muni uniform and met his old cable car at the second stop up from the turnaround at Beach Street. He shot and killed the replacement crew and three passengers who had waited in the rain to ride a cable car on a miserable February afternoon. Two of the three were tourists from Germany and the other was the undercover security guard who caught him skimming fares. Finnegan then rode the car to the stop across from Lombard-the “crookedest street in the world”-and critically wounded another tourist from Lawrence, Kansas. The next stop was the one in front of Swensen’s, where the two women waited.
The pantie girl’s name was Araceli Rivero. She was twenty-three, a native of Argentina, and was in the U.S. on a visa to study pharmacology at UCSF. The older woman was the organist at the New Korean Methodist Church and was known to her friends as “Snowflake.”
The only thing that wasn’t known was where exactly Finnegan managed to get hold of the machine guns. There were dark rumors about connections to the Irish Republican Army, but since Finnegan wasn’t talking the rumors came to naught.
That left yours truly. The cops weren’t exactly ready to pin any medals on me-I caused an estimated $100,000 worth of personal and municipal property damage for starters-but there was no denying that things would have been a whole lot worse if I hadn’t shown up. The cable car was due to pass through the popular Union Square shopping district, and rain or no rain, there were plenty more people in the line of fire. Finnegan was ready for them, too. A duffel bag full of loaded magazines was found dangling from one of the control levers of the wrecked car.
I got kicked loose from the Bryant Street station well after midnight. One of my few friends in the department-a lesbian beat cop-helped me sneak out the employee exit to avoid the feverish piranha school of reporters who were waiting to interview the only guy who could add a little color-if more color was needed-to tomorrow’s lead story: “SF Muni Gripman Goes Postal; Hijacks Cable Car for Death Tour.”
I shared a cab with a released prostitute who wanted to be dropped off on Polk near California. After the driver and I both politely declined to join her in a nearby alley for reduced cost favors, we continued to my apartment at the corner of Post and Hyde, where I promptly hid under the covers of my unmade bed and remained there for three days, not answering the phone or the door buzzer, or paying attention to the TV, the radio or the transmissions from Alpha Centauri that I sometimes received from the fillings on my back molars.
The thing that finally roused me was a pounding that sounded like someone using my apartment door for serve and volley practice. Theoretically it could only be a neighbor or the apartment manager since the lobby door was on a buzzer system, but the occasional wastrel had been known to make it through. I padded up to the door in my bathrobe and looked through the peep hole. I nodded to myself. It was one of the biggest wastrels I knew: Chris Duckworth.
Duckworth and I had met on a case several years ago, and although it surprised me to admit it, he had probably become my best friend. It surprised me because I doubted that in a hypothetical survey of our eHarmony “29 dimensions of compatibility” we would come up with a single match. Not that Chris would be allowed to use the service in the first place since, to quote one of the many pithy expressions he used to convey his sexual preference, he was “gay as a fondue fork.”
I slipped off the security chain, undid the locks and pulled open the door. He stood in the hallway with two packages carefully wrapped with butcher paper and string. He was slight man-barely five foot and a half-and the packages came up nearly to his chin. But to the casual observer, details about height and what he was carrying would hardly have rated a mention. What could not have gone unremarked was the fact that he was dressed as a French maid-a very sexy and convincingly female French maid.
“I didn’t ring for service,” I said with mock severity.
“There’s no service in this dump, much less a place to ring for it. I’m doing the early show at Aunt Charlie’s.”
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge had a drag queen revue where Chris sang torch songs under the stage name of Cassandra. I often played bass in the band that accompanied him. “Why are you here then?”
“I’m just checking to see if you’ve grown out your fingernails or started collecting your urine in jars.”
“Fingernails take time, but I’ve been doing the urine thing for years. It’s best to go with pickle jars because of the wide-“
“Spare me.”
“You started it. What’s in the packages?”
Chris sauntered into the room and dumped the packages on the folding card table I use for dining (if consuming TV dinners and burritos could properly be referred to as dining). He pulled off a cashmere top coat, folded it carefully and set it down on the arm of my ratty sofa. After brushing a few Oreo cookie crumbs from a cushion, he perched on the edge of it and surveyed the room. “I like how you’ve remained true to your original artistic vision. The bowling pin lamp, for instance, is a nice touch.”
“Yeah, well, the lava one fell off the cinder block.” I shoved the door closed and walked over to the card table. “So, what’s in the packages?”
“See for yourself.”
I yanked the cord off the top one and tore open the paper. A pair of Converse Chuck Taylors with new white laces were inside. My Chuck Taylors. The bottom one had my sheets and towels from the laundromat neatly folded and pressed. “Wow. You didn’t have to do that, Chris-but thank you. How’d you even know where to find them?”
He reached up to resettle the headpiece of his costume atop his blond wig. “Well, while you’ve been playing the Howard Hughes recluse, the rest of the world has been busy broadcasting stories about the ‘Cable Car Hero’-meaning you. Most of them mentioned that you were doing your laundry when the whole thing started. I found everything in a big pile on the folding table.” He looked down at his hands. “Did you really see those two women get killed?”
I slumped into one of the rickety chairs that went with the table and pushed the laundry to one side. “I couldn’t actually see it. The cable car was in the way. But it was certainly one of the worst experiences of my life. One second they were there, and the next they were lying on the ground. The arbitrariness of it was what got me. It reminded me of the Flitcraft story-only with a bad ending.”
“The Flitcraft story?”
“It’s a sort of parable from The Maltese Falcon. The point is that there is no master plan in the world. No karma. Your actions on this earth have no bearing on what happens to you.”
“Jeez, August, I didn’t realize we were going to be diving into metaphysics here. Is that why you’ve been holed up for the past three days?”
I picked at the wrapping paper from one of the packages, then forced a grin onto my face. “That, and I was waiting for the maid to bring me my damn laundry.”
Chris smiled back at me-more, I suspected, from relief at having the subject changed than amusement. “Well, it wasn’t just your laundry you abandoned, you know. And this maid can’t help you with it. You need a wrecker.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your car-or what’s left of it. They’ve got it at the impound lot. Gretchen told me they’re towing it to the junk yard unless you claim it by this afternoon. I didn’t think you’d care, but-“
I jumped up from the table. Gretchen was my admin, so they must have called my office when they didn’t get hold of me here. “Did you drive?”
“Y-e-s. I checked out one of those car share Priuses. Why?”
“You’re taking me to the impound lot. Hold on while I get changed.”
Chris started to say something about missing his rehearsal, but I closed the bedroom door on him before he could finish.
–
WE GOT TO THE IMPOUND lot just as the “Pick Your Part” tow truck was hooking up the Galaxie. I told the driver he wouldn’t be picking any of my parts and sent him and the Galaxie to Cesar’s Garage on Turk instead.
Cesar did a brisk business in fixing German makes that were out of warranty or whose owners refused to pay full boat for dealer repair. He’d arrived in San Francisco from Ecuador in 1971, penniless with almost no friends, but thanks to a burning sense of entrepreneurship, had worked his way up from a tiny two-man car repair shop to a multi-story garage that now occupied the whole block in the admittedly seedy Tenderloin neighborhood. Since my own apartment was right on the fringes of that same neighborhood, I rented a parking spot from him and used him for the limited amount of maintenance I saw fit to underwrite on the Galaxie.
It was late in the day and no one was at the customer entrance of the garage when we arrived. Chris barely managed a full stop, hustling me out of the Prius and humming the opening bars of “Falling in Love Again” under his breath before he yanked the door closed and sped off to Charlie’s.
The tow truck driver just chuckled as he lowered the Galaxie onto the concrete ramp. Both doors and both quarter panels on the left side were smashed, the hood was crumpled and the bumper was tied on with rope. The capper came when the front end hit the ground and the left wheel canted out thirty degrees. “Good luck, chief,” said the driver, and drove off whistling an out of tune rendition of “Turkey in the Straw.”
I heard steps echoing down the ramp from upstairs and gradually Cesar came into view. He was dressed in the garage uniform of navy blue pants and shirt, both of which were spotless and crisply pressed in spite of the hour. His shoes were shined to a high gloss and his jet black hair was combed back, accentuating the gray wings at his temples. Give him a corn cob pipe and a few inches and he could have been the MacArthur of garage mechanics. “Your parking space is downstairs, Señor,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. The thing is, I’m having a little trouble making it there.”
He grinned at me. “Did you run out of gas?
“I might have, but there seem to be contributing factors.”
He made a slow circuit around the car, touching dents here and there and finally stopping in front of the hood. He laid a pair of latex-gloved hands on one of the few uncumpled spots and pressed down. The car yielded only an inch or so, making a terrible grating noise as it moved. “That will be your tie rods or your axle or both.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I’ve seen the news stories about the cable car, Señor. What you did was very brave.”
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. Cesar and I rarely exchanged words-and most of those were taken up by the good-natured jokes he and the other mechanics made about my car. I wasn’t exactly comfortable incorporating hero worship into the relationship at this point. I made a show of straightening the radio antenna. It didn’t straighten worth beans. “You would have done the same,” I said finally.
“I don’t know. I think that is one of those things you can only know when it happens.” He peeled off his gloves and put them in his back pocket. “The car is totaled, Señor. There is no point in repairing it. Get a new one. I have a nice Mercedes I can give you a good price on.”
“Totaled just means it costs more to fix than the car is worth for resale. By that measure it was probably totaled before the crash. But as much as I’d like a Mercedes, this car has sentimental value to me. I want to repair it.”
“Even if I fixed the front end and all the body damage, it still has a forty-year-old drive train. I’ve seen the exhaust rolling out of this thing. Every time you came out of the garage, you nearly gassed us to death. I’d be surprised if half the cylinders have compression.”
“Then rebuild the engine-and the transmission if you have to.”
He shook his head. “That is silly. If you really want to drive around in a 1968 Galaxie 500, you should buy one that has already been restored. It will be much cheaper.”
“Are you saying you won’t do it even if I pay you the money?”
“No, I’m saying that it doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you are a little rattled from the-from the accident. Anyone would be.”
My hand closed around the Saint Apollonia medal I carried in my pocket and I squeezed. I strained to keep my voice level. “Look, this was my father’s car. It’s the only thing I have from him. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Oh. That is different. Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did.”
He nodded like someone trying to be reasonable when the other party wasn’t. “I’ll run an estimate and call you tomorrow. But I have to close now.” He came up to where I was standing and reached over to touch my shoulder. “You know the girl, Araceli Rivero?”
My mouth went dry. “Yes?”
“She was a member of our church, Mission Dolores. There are many people from Central and South America in the congregation. They are holding a vigil for her this evening. I think you should come.”
NecrophobiaTHE LAST TIME I ATTENDED A VIGIL OR WAKE was when my great aunt died when I was five. They put her coffin on a big table in the darkened living room of her gingerbread bungalow, lit candles, turned the mirrors to the wall, and lifted me up over the satin-quilted maw of the box and made me kiss her goodbye. Afterwards I locked myself in the bathroom and used a bar of Boraxo I found under the sink to eradicate the pink powdery taste of her. I quit scrubbing only after my lips were skinned and bloodied-and have suffered from an irrational fear of embalmed bodies ever since.
The vigil for Araceli Rivero wasn’t held in a gingerbread bungalow or even a church, but in the “visitation” room of Pietro Palermo & Co. Funeral Directors. I had gone back to my apartment to change into the only black suit I owned, and by the time I pulled open the heavy, iron-bound door to the room, it was approaching 8:00 p.m. The casket was at the front in a niche lit by a pair of art deco torche lamps and two candles in tall brass holders. A life-sized crucifix yawned out from the wall above an oak and green velvet kneeler situated in front.
Clumps of people sat on pews with heads bowed or stood together holding whispered conversations. There wasn’t a priest, nor was there anybody I could pick out as family. But Cesar I spotted immediately. He was bent over the kneeler, his fingers moving ponderously through the beads of a rosary, his slicked back hair glistening under the light.
An obvious funeral parlor employee stood by the door near a podium with a sign-in book. As I came up, he handed me a memorial card with a picture of Jesus blessing a young woman. “The family appreciates your attendance. Would you sign the mourner’s register, please?”
I looked down at the book. There were spaces for name, address and an unlabeled column that people had used to write things like, “God bless Araceli” and “There is hope in Christ’s resurrection and glory.” I felt like a fraud and intruder and wished for the hundredth time that I hadn’t let Cesar guilt me into going.
“I don’t know-” I started.
The funeral parlor guy arranged his face into a look of professional concern and held out a silver fountain pen. I sighed and took the fancy writing implement from his hand, scratching out my name and address in what I hoped would be an illegible jumble. I left the final column blank.
Pietro Palermo & Co’s man leaned over the book to inspect what I’d written, and frowning slightly, relieved me of the pen. “Thank you, sir. If you’re not familiar with the custom, may I suggest that you take a seat in the pews until you have the opportunity to go up to the departed.”
I nodded like I appreciated the advice and took a seat in the pew closest to the exit, resolving to slip out the door as soon as he was distracted. To avoid catching anyone’s eye in the meantime, I made a close inspection of the card he had given me. The side without Jesus had Araceli’s full name and a birthday of December 2nd, twenty-three years ago. Her “heavenly birth date”-that is, the day she was killed-was printed below it. At the bottom came a short prayer titled “Eternal Rest” that I recognized from my Catholic upbringing. It was given in three languages: Latin, Spanish and English.
I heard the door open again and I turned back to watch the funeral parlor employee give his spiel to a pair of young women who had to be classmates of Araceli’s at UCSF. The first one had barely taken hold of the pen before her lip started trembling and she sobbed out loud. As her companion reached over to hug her, I felt a tap on my arm.
“I’m glad that you came, Señor.” Cesar stood in the aisle beside me wearing a black suit that probably cost twice as much as mine, but somehow didn’t make him look any more dressy than his smart garage uniform.
“That makes one of us,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, the family and Araceli will appreciate it, too. “
“The family maybe-and maybe for the wrong reasons. But you’re making an assumption about dead people that I can’t share.”
“Please. Now is not the time to debate the existence of the afterlife. You must do the expected thing-if only to comfort the family. Go up and say goodbye to her, and on the off chance you are wrong about God, pray for her soul.”
“I don’t even see anyone from-“
“Please.”
His hand found its way around my wrist and tugged. I gave into the inevitable. I stood like a zombie and tottered down the aisle towards the niche. The memory of my great aunt sent my heartbeat past redline and my vision darkened and narrowed. My extremities tingled. Then I caught sight of Araceli over the edge of the polished mahogany and all the anxiety seemed to lift. It’s going too far to say she looked angelic, but for the first time I appreciated why someone would ever leave a casket open.
She lay in ivory satin in an ivory satin dress with a silver-beaded rosary clasped in her hands. Her apricot blond hair was arranged carefully on the pillow and her expression was serene and composed. She wore modest silver earrings and a plain silver bracelet. Her skin was a vibrant rose-petal pink, and there was no trace of wounds, bullets or madmen who hijack cable cars. But neither was there much of the flirtatious girl from the laundromat. She’d been transformed into a sort of virginal madonna.
I stood over her, fingering the fabric softener sheet she’d given me in my pocket. I had brought it on a whim with the idea that I might return it to her, but I realized now it would be wildly inappropriate. After an awkward interlude, I sank to my knees, put my elbows on the rail and bowed my head, but I was just marking time to make it look right. Whatever small connection I had with her seemed to be lost. I had been her avenger, but I didn’t really know her. And I was hardly the one to make a case for her soul if she-or any of us-had one.
My eyes were closed, but through the sound of rustling fabric and little fidgeting movements, I became aware of someone standing off to the left. I stayed on the kneeler for another long minute, then stood and stepped back-and because I figured it had to be family-made a clumsy attempt at crossing myself.
“Mr. Riordan?” came the expected request.
It was family all right, but not the sort I expected. A taller, lither version of Araceli stood waiting: more ballerina than underwear model, but with the same hair, green eyes and cheek bones. She wore a simple black dress and plain silver jewelry that seemed to match Araceli’s.
“I’m August Riordan,” I agreed in a too loud voice.
“Melina Rivero. Araceli was my sister.”
I took her extended hand and managed to get something across about how sorry I was. Then, feeling the need to account for my presence, I blurted, “I hope you don’t mind my attending. My friend Cesar is a member of your church, and since I was-since I was involved, he encouraged me to pay my respects.”
“Did you know Araceli, Mr. Riordan?”
“I didn’t. We had just met that day. At the laundromat.”
“That is what the newspaper said, but we wondered if it could be true. We are very grateful for what you did.”
I looked down at my feet, then forced myself to meet her gaze again. “I’m afraid what I did was more of a postscript. It doesn’t change…” I gestured over to the niche.
“No, it does not change that.” Her eyes strayed to the coffin and she seemed to go away for a moment. Then she twitched her head sharply and brought her arms up to hug herself. “My father and brother are in the director’s office. When they heard you were here, they asked that I bring you back to meet them. They want to thank you and they have a question.”
“A question?”
“I am sorry. English is a second language. A better way to express it is they have a job. A job they wish to offer you.”
Cementerio de la RecoletaTHE FUNERAL DIRECTOR’S OFFICE WAS BIG, cold and Gothic-looking, and didn’t exactly convey a feeling of sympathy or desire to help you through troubled times. The ceiling was vaulted with massive oak beams running beneath it, and light came from a single lancet window and a couple of heavy plaster wall sconces that you could have fried turkeys in. Melina Rivero’s heels clicked across the stone floor as she led me to the corner of the room where a bald man with a Jimmy Durante nose and large, square-rimmed glasses waited behind a carved desk. To his left was a younger version of the same model-including the eggplant-shaped shnoz-but with more iron-gray hair remaining on top of his head. Given Melina and Araceli’s appearance, I decided Mrs. Rivero had to be a real looker because dad was watering down the handsome genes something fierce.
Both men stood, barrel-chested and stolid, and Melina introduced us. Senior was named Reynaldo and compensated for his plain looks with a grip like a crimping tool. Junior was named Orlando and reached across with his left to give me a backhanded shake. As he sat down, I noticed his right arm hung limp at his side.
There was only one other chair by the desk and Rivero senior made it clear that it would just be us boys talking when he said, “Melina, I expect you are needed in the chapel.”
She said, “Yes, father,” and pausing only to give my bicep a reassuring squeeze, turned and walked out.
Rivero didn’t waste any time. “Tell me how you knew Araceli,” he said after he nodded me into the remaining chair. His speech was clipped and precise, and like everyone else I’d met in the family, carried a trace of that not quite familiar Latin accent.
“Melina asked about that, too. We didn’t know each other. We had just met at the laundromat.”
“I don’t understand that. She had no need to wash her clothes in a public laundry, especially her intimate clothing. It seems to me that could only invite unwanted attention.”
I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about Araceli’s big stack of panties and our exchange about souvenirs. I licked my lips and hoped I didn’t look like a complete pervert. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
“Why did you risk your life to stop the gunman?”
I shifted in my chair. I’d been off-balance and uncomfortable since I walked in the funeral parlor, playing a part that I didn’t believe, but not wanting to offend or show disrespect. I was done with all that now. “I did it for the reward,” I said snidely.
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