Drowning Tucson (37 page)

His speech closed the deal. The girl nodded and said I just have to ask my mommy. Octavio felt a surge of adrenaline. No, no. I already asked her this morning, and she said as long as you’re home by lunch, you can come. We’ll just be around the neighborhood so she can find us if she needs you. Her mom had said those same words not ten minutes earlier. Be home by lunch, and call me when you get to Hannah’s house so I know where you are. It was close enough, so she giggled and said okay.

Octavio went back to the driver’s seat and looked around. Not a person in sight. He checked the mirrors. A half a block behind him some boys were running toward the van and waving their hands. He ignored them and shifted into drive, turned onto Veteran’s Boulevard, and sped south, easing the volume down on the speaker and telling the girl Lavinía, honey, come up here and buckle in so you don’t get hurt. She climbed into the seat but couldn’t get the seatbelt buckled, it was too clunky, so he slowed the van and helped her.

They drove out of the neighborhood. He knew just the place to take her. She’d love the 4th Avenue Street Fair. It was like a circus, and he told her she’d love watching all the people and their colorful clothes. The clowns walking on stilts. The jugglers and the street musicians. The magicians and the crafts for sale. With every description he gave, the little girl grew more and more restless with anticipation.

When they reached the fair, he slowed down and pulled to the side of the road. Okay, come here, Lavinía—my name’s Samantha—let me show you how to work the music, and the lights, and the stop sign. He pulled the lever that activated the sign and the lights. He showed her the
knob that started the music. Samantha cranked it and squealed with delight when the cheerful ice cream song blasted from the speaker atop the van. Octavio took the white paper hat off his head and gave it to the girl. There you go, Lavinía—my name’s Samantha—this makes you my official helper. A real live ice cream girl. Her back straightened with the seriousness of the title, and she gave the knob a little extra turn to make the pretty music just a little bit louder.

They cruised up and down the side streets of the fair, and every few yards Octavio brought the van to a stop and Samantha pulled the lever to activate the stop sign and then they walked hand in hand—Octavio crouching to avoid hitting his head, and the girl copying his actions—to the side window and took orders. He grabbed the ice cream from the cooler, placed it in her hand, and whispered the price in her ear, savoring the sound of her voice when she repeated the price back to the hippie chicks with their ratty hair.

After each sale he told her you’re doing a good job, relishing the happiness on her face.

Lunchtime passed.

She mentioned it once or twice, but he distracted her each time by offering her ice cream, walking her back to the cooler and telling her try something new this time. Think about it. How many times in your life will you ever get to do this again?

After lunchtime her belly began churning grossly, trying to warn her to not eat any more ice cream or you might get sick, but she couldn’t help herself, she had to reach into the cooler and pull out a Nestlé Crunch ice cream bar, and Octavio patted her head and said that’s it, that’s a good girl, then he sat her on his lap as he had each time she chose a new treat, which didn’t seem to bother her as long as she had ice cream to eat, so he pulled her close and helped tear open the wrapper on her Nestlé bar, and while she ate he made up stories of being a brave ice cream man who helped children who got picked on in school, or rescued animals hit by cars or mistreated by the neighborhood boys, and when the ice cream got warm enough and started dripping down her Popsicle stick, he laughed and said let me get that for you, grabbing the Nestlé bar from her and bringing her hand up to his mouth so he could lick the
sticky and cold sugary milk from between her fingers and from the back of her hand and her wrist where the ice cream had crept, and she tasted so sweet, so much sweeter and softer than the melting ice cream, he could hardly stand letting the girl up from his lap, where she felt so good, as if his lap and her body were a perfect match and should stay together forever, but it was broad daylight still and someone could come to the window any minute, so he handed Samantha’s bar back to her and waved her to her seat, biting the inside of his cheeks hard enough to forget the longing in his lap, his molars grinding deep gashes into the soft, gummy flesh.

After a minute of waiting, he stood and walked, crouched over, back to the driver’s seat. He turned the engine over and Samantha turned on the music and bounced up and down as it streamed from the speakers. He was astonished at the way each and every time she started the music she carried on like it was the best thing that had ever happened to her in her short life.

Of course it was. Samantha could barely contain her happiness over the ice cream man inviting her to spend the day with him, almost weeping with joy at her good luck—this was exactly what she might have wished for if one of the many times she had rubbed an empty Coke or beer bottle a genie had actually appeared and granted her a wish—at getting unlimited ice cream and also making her friends jealous because she got to be inside an ice cream truck. Plus, the ice cream man loved her. It was obvious because he liked to fix her hair, and he kept her clean, and all the same stuff her mommy did—sitting on their laps and all that. And everything was so perfect it didn’t bother her that he kept forgetting her name.

Instead she ate and ate and ate until her tummy got sore and she didn’t feel good at all anymore and the sun was starting to go down and that meant it’s past lunchtime and I’m going to get in trouble, and she felt so yucky and sad and scared she didn’t notice that Octavio had slowly turned down the music and she slumped down in her seat and held her belly and it hurt like someone had kicked her and it was too full of sweets and felt like it was going to explode, she just knew it, and it grumbled and growled and churned and she opened up her mouth to
complain to the ice cream man about the pain and instead of her voice coming out she heard a splashy sound and her sides and stomach hurt and heaved and she couldn’t breathe because she couldn’t close her mouth against the push of the sweet chunks flying out of her and scratching her throat, it burned so bad, and then it stopped for a second and just when she started to catch her breath her mouth flew open again and she tried throwing her hand over her mouth but the stuff shot out between her fingers and she felt the warm splash of it in her lap and burning her arms and legs, and when it stopped again she sat gasping for breath and reached out to the ice cream man, hoping he wasn’t mad at her and that he would help her, can I just go back to my mommy, please can you take me back please? and he held her hand and said yes, we can go right now, and she tried to say thank you but her mouth filled with warm chunky sweetness and she opened her lips and let the mixture ooze from between her lips and down the front of her shirt and she just wanted to cry and wanted it to stop and wanted her mommy but the ice cream man pulled the van over and undid her seatbelt and carried her trembling body to the back of his van and said first we have to get you cleaned up and out of these clothes or your mommy will get really mad, and she knew that he was right but that he was also wrong because out of the van’s back window she saw that it was dark and she mistook the city lights for stars and knew that if it was late enough to see the stars then she was already in big, big trouble, young lady.

Octavio laughed about it later, but when the little girl first started vomiting all over the van, his only thought had been how the hell he could get her cleaned up before he took her home. He was genuinely horrified when he saw the bright bile of melted ice cream covering the front of her outfit, and he worried how to explain the puke-stained clothes to her mother. It wasn’t until he had her in the back of the van, parked atop A Mountain, that he realized he couldn’t take her back home even if he wanted to. He was in too deep. Several days later, when the cops were beating down his door in the middle of the night, he supposed the decision had already been made—though he hadn’t realized it—when he drove away from Veteran’s Boulevard with someone else’s kid. But when he first drove to the top of A Mountain with a sick child
in the passenger seat, he’d only planned on showing her the view of Tucson at night, then maybe taking her to dinner before going home and tucking her into bed.

He didn’t think about what he was saying when he carried her to the back of the van, only said what came naturally, that yes, he’d take her back to her mommy—no, I won’t, I CAN’T—and then placed her fragile body on the floor of his van and knelt over her. We have to get you cleaned up. The girl tried to nod, but she was afraid to move her head and get sick again. I’m just going to take off your clothes and rinse them out. She let him pull her sticky shirt over her head, and she was happy he kept his hand between her head and the floor of the van the whole time because his hand was so much softer than the floor. Your shorts are sticky too, honey. He pulled her shorts down her legs and over her socks and shoes. You’re covered in it. Let me rinse you off. He uncapped a gallon jug of water he kept for emergencies such as overheating and told her to stand up for a minute. She tried, but it was so hard. She had to lean on him and wrap her arms around his neck. Sweetie, you’ll get us both wet. You don’t want wet shoes, right? She shook her head. The shoes came off. Then the socks. And you want dry panties, too? She nodded and stepped out of them when he pulled them down to her ankles. Now stand up. She couldn’t. She wanted to lie down so bad. He poured the water down her front and rubbed his hands over her skin to get the stickiness off. I’m gonna take off my shirt because you’re getting me all wet too. His shirt came off. His pants came off. She didn’t notice his nakedness. He sat on the floor of the van and the cold surprised him for a moment. He didn’t care.

He pulled Samantha over to him and sat her down on his lap, relishing the feeling of her wet body naked against his, and he poured the water over both of them and worked his hands softly over the girl’s body, through her hair, down her legs, while she laid against his chest and wished for home. She was too sick to feel his hands touching her in a bad way because the water made her feel better, and she didn’t mind him kissing her forehead and holding her close because she was too worried about her belly and how yucky it felt until he touched her
there
and her eyes shot open and she let out a scream and then felt his hand clasping
over her mouth and it tasted like the battery she licked once that shocked her and made her run crying to her mommy.

Governor Babbit scratched at a pimple on the back of his scalp, parting a small section of hair with his middle finger and thumb, trying to scrape the head off with his fingernail. If I could just get my hand on that bastard for starting this whole thing, he thought. He glared across the black walnut conference table at the members of the emergency cabinet he’d summoned when the news of the Tucson murders reached his mansion.

That little cunt has opened up Pandora’s box down there. Anyone have a brilliant proposal about how to handle this?

The cabinet members fidgeted in their leather chairs and tried to think of possible solutions to the disastrous scene developing at the Pima County Courthouse. Surveillance photos were strewn across the table. The helicopter shots showed thousands of people crowded into the courthouse plaza, pressing toward the dome, holding signs and shaking their fists. The front pages of the
Arizona Daily Star
and the
Tucson Citizen
had close-ups of snarling faces, weeping mothers, bewildered children.

LOOK at those goddam pictures and tell me how I’m supposed to disperse a crowd of pissed-off parents, all law-abiding voters, rallying around a man who blatantly murdered someone in OUR courthouse. This, in case you don’t know why the fuck I brought you here, is what we call a no-win situation. Should I order riot police out to beat down a swarm of soccer moms and PTA members? These are our constituents. Any ideas?

Erect barricades?

Erect barricades where?
Around
the crowd? They’re already there, camped out and practically storming the doors. News cameras are out there filming mothers and children, playing to the emotions of anyone who watches the damn TV. Fathers are foaming at the mouth, and you want me to ask them to please move back and let us bring order to a trial that will take months, or, god forbid, YEARS?

The governor swiveled around in his seat and faced the picture window overlooking his browning lawn. The Beat the Peak campaign to
conserve water was making his yard unsightly, but it was his campaign so it’d be foolish not to abide by the same rules. Besides, throw the Tempe hippies a stupid bone like saving water and that freed up a little pressure to do some behind-the-scenes scheming.

Governor Babbit? The governor swiveled back around and nodded to the lieutenant governor. Why don’t we just send in some National Guardsmen and have them barricade the courthouse doors and keep traffic flowing downtown while we hash out what to do with this Santiago guy? It’s not the soccer moms and Boy Scout dads that we have to worry about. We have to maintain commerce or all hell’ll break loose.