It Came From Del Rio: Part One of the Bunnyhead Chronicles (17 page)

“I don’t know anything about any ammunition boxes, sir.”

“Do you know this pharmacist, though?”

“What if I do?”

“Well that would be a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

“Let me guess. His name is Juan. Or Jorge. Or Manuel. And his last name has a z in it
...”

“You do know him.”

“I get my prescriptions filled in town, sir. Here, America.”

“You haven’t even asked me why this would be a coincidence, Romo.”

“Listen, not to be rude here, sir. But unless you’ve got a new directive for me here, I’m glassing that little stand of chinaberry just past the old Maybelline sign.”

For a long time then, nothing. Then, finally:

“The one with the red lipstick?”

“Affirmative.”

“Somebody should just burn those trees down some time.”

“Is this an order, sir?”

Again the laugh, but this time he cut it off halfway through.

“Don’t guess you’re in your car, are you?”

“You called me. On the radio.”

He was asking because one of his favorite tricks to lure illegals up from some low place by the highway was to pretend your car had broken down. All you have to do is stand there with the hood up. After a few minutes, one of them will ease up at right angles, shrugging the whole way, his hair falling into his eyes.

When you can’t speak his Spanish, then he’ll wave his wife or sister or aunt up — it’s always a blood relation, like that’s going to be the thing that convinces you — and then, with her translating, he’ll use a water balloon and a beer can to get your car started. Or whatever else he can find in the ditch. And then he’ll probably hit you up for a ride.

What he’ll smell like is river sediment and cigarettes and sweat and sun and hope, so that it burns your eyes a little and you have to look away.

It’s not a trick I like.

“Just saying, Laurie. You should use what the good lord gave you, that’s all.”

I decided right then and there that, even if this group came out of the trees in a kick line, wearing glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary shirts and Christmas light sombreros, I was going to let them pass. Maybe even buy them some fountain drinks.

“I can fix my own vehicle, sir.”

“Yeah, well. Catch a lot more flies with honey, y’know?”

“I’m doing just fine now, thanks.”

“You mean they’re —?”

“I think I’m attracting plenty of shit-eaters already, sir.”

Because this was being shuttled through the switchboard, everybody on our band had heard that. And we both knew it.

What followed was a long, deliberate silence. Just the crackling of distance.

“If I need to go down to Zaragoza, Agent Romo, I’ll let you know. Roger?”

“I’m sure it’s changed a lot, sir. But if you need me.”

“Not tonight, but thanks anyway.”

On purpose — and this is for the record — he said that with a cute little half-laugh, like an in-joke. He was playing for the audience, for everybody else out there on patrol.

He was still the boss, yes.

Alone in my cab, I made myself grin.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll just have to keep trying, I guess. Now, unless there’s anything else, tell Manual something nice from me, maybe —”

“So you do know him.”

“Or Juan, or Jorge
...”

When he clicked off this time, I thought it was for good, but then he was back again:

“I’ll just tell him Laurie says hey, how’s that?”

“Wonderful. Thank you.”

“He does still remember you, you know.”

“He’s thinking of somebody else, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know. He seems —”

“I think my crew’s about to rabbit here, sir. So, unless you’re retasking me —”

“Now that you mention it, Agent Romo. Evidently you’re needed over in Del Rio. Special request or something.”

I left him room to snicker, but he held back somehow.

“Del Rio, you say?”

“They need you there by six, it sounds like.”

And you know the rest of how it went.

I’d never seen a body in a closed room before. Or fresh.

On patrol, of course, I’d found my share, like everybody else. But out in the scrub, people turned to mummies in the space of a month. You could pretend you were on
National Geographic
or something, just exploring another tomb. Unless the coyotes had been at them already.

But we weren’t to touch them anyway, out in the field. Just call them in then take some pictures. Secure anything that might be about to blow away. Leave your headlights on all night if you have to, so the other trucks can find you. It’s not the best part of the job, but people do deserve a better burial. It’s not their fault, I mean.

If I were stuck in Mexico, I’d probably be building all manner of hang gliders and tunneling machines. If I hadn’t been seven, I mean.

But I don’t want to talk about that yet.

At the Jomar, the
Omar
Inn, I had been delivered to a door fluttering with police tape. That nobody was making eye contact with me was a bad thing, I knew.

“What happened?” I said to a trooper I knew by sight.

He pointed with his chin, into the room.

“What didn’t?” somebody said after I’d turned away.

Suddenly the coroner was ducking out of the room. Not because he was tall and spindly and haunted like you expect a mortician to be, but because there was some yellow tape strung across the doorway, about level with the peephole. Instead of some nineteenth century black suit, complete with puffy tie and blood-stained cuffs, he was wearing an old concert t-shirt.

“Ms. Romo,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Dr. Carter. Just Carter.”

I shook, took my hand back, and he led me under the tape.

Over the next few days, I hear, everybody who came into that room, or the two rooms on either side — there’s no second story at the Jomar — had to wear bunny suits, like astronauts. We were stupid, though. Or innocent. There’s not much difference, I don’t think.

Inside, the room was set up like a thousand others: a wallowed-out queen bed taking up most of the floor. Opposite it and offset a little toward the door, a dresser with a bolted-down television set. Under the window, an air conditioner. On the opposite wall, a vanity, and the door to the bathroom.

“Why am I here?” I said. My voice was small. I was a little girl again.

Dr. Carter took my hand. I let him and then almost shook away just as fast. Through the bones of his arm and wrist, I could tell he was humming something. I could feel it the way you can when a cat you’re holdings winds up to a strong purr.

He stretched his lips out like he’d been caught. “Sorry. Usually it only shows on dictation. I’ve got choir in — well. Tonight.” I looked to him, as if for more. “It’s nothing inappropriate,” he added. “The tune.”

He was afraid he’d offended me. It’s what you say to a person who’s in a delicate frame of mind. It made me study the room some more, see the boots sticking out from the other side of the dresser.

This is the part where I identify my father’s body. That’s where I’m starting.

Only — I couldn’t.

Dr. Carter squeezed my hand tighter, maybe hummed a bit louder. To drown out the smell, maybe. Somehow. I pulled my hand back, churched it with my other one over my mouth and nose.

In the movies, this is what all the girls do, right before they start screaming. They also kind of curve their bodies away from whatever they’ve just walked up on. This is what it felt like, too: like I was in a movie.

Because this couldn’t really be happening.

Instead of identifying my father’s body, I identified his boots. You’d think a person who’s been kept inside, in air conditioning, out of the sun, just dead, he’d be pretty recognizable. But the air conditioner wasn’t working in that unit.

As for the boots, they were the only ones I’d ever seen him in. They were black, lace-up, vaguely military but shined and polished and abused for so many years that they were really just these thick socks that he tied on, and swore by.

Supposedly, the number of illegals he’d run down in those boots was into the thousands. He said they were going to go into the border patrol hall of fame someday, whenever they built one. Except that he wanted to be buried in them. His solution was a plexiglass casket in a special wing.

As a girl, him talking like that had scared me, but I understand now that he was just getting me ready for this motel room as best he could. Because he knew it was coming, I suppose. Or something like it. Carry around enough guilt, you find yourself scratching out your epigraph on stray napkins in donut shops.

That was my father.

He was sitting against the wall on the other side of the dresser like he’d been hiding from somebody sitting on the bed. Or talking to someone, maybe.

The reason they needed me to make the identification was that most of the skin had been burned from his face and arms. In places you could see where the blood had cauterized a blackish purple. His hair, which he’d been proud of never losing, it was only there in patches.

I wouldn’t have recognized him, I don’t think. I closed my eyes, opened them back.

“How long?” I said.

“I was supposed to be there five minutes ago,” the coroner said absently, glancing down at his watch.

I turned to face him. It was like he was talking a language I’d never even heard, much less understood.

But then it came: choir practice. Hymns. That other world.

“Him, I mean,” I said, nodding down.

The coroner smiled with the corners of his eyes. Had he been joking? Was he laughing at himself now, inside, or was this part of some disarming technique they taught at coroner school?

“Before I can release any information,” he said. “I need you to confirm his identity.”

“He’s my — you know. He’s my father, right? That’s why I’m here.”