Damned If I Do Part 10

"This is Officer Becker."

Mrs. Marotta smiled at Lem, then turned her attention again to Fragua. "What is wrong?"

"Where is Mr. Marotta?"

"He's at my mother's house. I just talked to him a couple of minutes ago."

"It's Jose," Fragua said.

Mrs. Marotta sat on the sofa. Lem looked up to see the young woman in the doorway of the kitchen. Fragua sat down beside the boy's mother.

"I called the police this morning because he didn't come home for two nights. He's never been gone for two nights," Mrs. Marotta said. "You have him in jail?" She shook her head. "What has he done now?"

Fragua rubbed his temple, then took the woman's hand. The young woman in the kitchen doorway gasped audibly and disappeared. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Marotta, but there's been an accident."

"Dios mio," the woman said and tears were already finding her cheeks.

"Jose is dead."

The woman crumpled into Fragua's arms, sobbing. Sobbing came from the kitchen. Here, someone had had time to consider how they were going to break the worst of news and the result was no different than when he had done it clumsily.

A man came in through the back door and entered the living room through the kitchen. He was very confused, on the verge of being angry, beginning to pace. "Que le ocurre?" the man asked his wife.

The old woman just sobbed more.

Fragua stood and took the man's hand. "Jose is dead, Mr. Marotta."

The man's face went blank. He went to an overstuffed chair and sat, looking straight ahead.

Lem knew that they weren't going to get anywhere asking questions tonight. They'd have to come back tomorrow.

"What happened?" Mr. Marotta asked.

"As far as we can tell," Fragua said, "Jose was with three other men in a van and they were trying to keep warm with a stove and they smothered themselves."

The old woman howled.

Mr. Marotta went to his wife and held her. The young woman ran in from the kitchen and sat on the sofa, too, pressing up against her father.

Fragua looked at Lem who nodded. "We'll talk again in the morning. Officer Becker and I have some questions we need to ask."

The deputies left.

Lem and Fragua didn't speak on their way back to the station. Lem just let the other man out.

Lem walked into his house and looked at his walls, funky furniture, and unwashed dishes in the sink and breathed easier. He peeled off his hat and coat, went to the gas heater and turned it to high. His shoes off, he slipped into the moose-hide moccasins his mother had given him last Christmas. He looked at the collection of feathers and patches of hair and spools of thread on his desk.

He went to the kitchen, poured himself a tall gla.s.s of orange juice, then returned to sit behind the vise clamped to his desktop. He secured a size 10 hook and imagined a trout on the Henry's Fork River in Idaho rising for the Green Drake he was about to tie. He recalled watching his father spending the cold winter nights reading and tying flies for the next season. Lem finally asked his father to teach him to tie, not because he wanted to catch fish so much, but because he thought the flies were beautiful. He was ten at the time and he could still remember watching his first colorful streamer develop in the vise in front of him, and the way it felt to trim the deer hair on his first gra.s.shopper, the pieces of feathers floating, how much fun it was to dub the muskrat fur onto the thread with his thumb and index finger. He laughed at himself. He hadn't even put the first winds of thread on the hook and he was already feeling better.

As he dubbed a mixture of yellow rabbit and tan-red fox fur onto the olive thread he recalled his father. He no longer felt sad when he thought of him. In fact, thinking of him made Lem relax. They had been close, for some reason they never had the conflicts his friends did with their fathers. He wondered if his present profession would have caused a problem between them. He wondered himself why he did it. Somehow he felt out of touch with his time; that was how he put it. He didn't feel like people his age. He wanted to be a part of another generation. He shook his head now as he played it over in his brain. He wasn't like a lot of people who became policemen, didn't want to be like them, but then most of the lawmen in those parts weren't like that, not tough, not hard, but doing a job that made them feel pretty good. He worked the grizzly hackle around the body and turned his mind again to trout.

The morning that came was as quiet as sleep, the layer of snow smothering the sounds of daybreak. He sat now at the edge of his mattress, his brain still tethered to the remnants of a dream. He was chasing another man on a dirt bike. It was a kind of game, he thought, since they were both laughing. They were riding over rough terrain, bouncing high and sliding, but there were buildings there. Finally, Lem stopped and the other man came back to him and together they observed Lem's badly warped front wheel. It seemed a common thing, no surprise to either of them, and so Lem lifted the bike and carried it. The logic of the dream began to disintegrate as his eyes opened more fully.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked out the window at the foot of snow. The sky was clear of any promise of more bad weather, a brilliant cobalt blue that lifted his spirits and also told him that the hour was late. He found his watch on the stand by his bed. It was nearly eight.

Still, he took his time showering, enjoying the steaming spray. There were a lot of things wrong with his small house, but the shower was not one of them. The water was good and hot and the pressure was strong, like in some gym locker rooms, the droplets of water seeming to pierce the skin like tiny darts. He dried off, got dressed, and went into the kitchen where he fried himself some bacon and a couple of eggs. He appreciated these early hours alone, wanted them to last, but they wouldn't, they couldn't. When he was finished eating, he readied himself for the cold and went out to free his car from the snow.

As he cleared the ice from the windshield he thought of his business that morning. He had to go question the Marottas and go through the kid's room. That wouldn't be pleasant, but at least Warren Fragua would be with him.

The incompetent highway crews had done a good job of transforming the hazardous roads into deadly sheets of ice. They had also done a beautiful job of dumping endless strands of salt and sand down along the center line where no one's tires would ever touch it. He parked in front of the station and entered just behind Fragua.

Once inside he was shoulder to shoulder with Fragua, staring at the chubby finger Sheriff Bucky Paz was pointing at them. "I want the two of you to go to Fonda's Funeral Home right now."

"What's the problem?"

"Somebody broke in there last night and walked away with Jose Marotta."

"Stole his body?" Fragua said.

"Apparently. All I know is Fonda got there this morning and the boy was gone. By the way, that truck last night was stolen from Taos, reported five days ago. Now, go."

Lem drove. The acquisition of so many dead bodies was unusual for the Plata Sheriff's Department and the only place to put them was the same place a single body would have been put, Fonda's Funeral Home. From there the bodies were to go to the forensic pathologist in Santa Fe for autopsies.

"I'll bet Fonda just misplaced him," Fragua said.

"Why would anyone take a dead body?" Lem wondered aloud. "Maybe the kid swallowed a bunch of dope in balloons and the bad guys want it back."

"You've been watching television again. I told you, just tie every night and your mind won't get polluted."

"You watch television all the time," Lem said.

"So, I ought to know, right?"

Lem slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a pickup that skidded through a stop sign.

Fragua braced himself with a hand against the dash. "Don't think about it. Let it happen. That's what my daughter says. 'Let it happen.' And I tell her she better not let it happen. You know what I mean."

Lem smiled.

"It's like tying flies," the Indian said.

"Everything for you is like tying flies."

"True. But listen. You've got to tie things down in the right order or it won't work. You can't go tying down the tinsel after the body or tie the tail on last and expect it to look right. Everything works in the same way, one step at a time, but the right step."

"I never knew you were such a philosopher."

Fonda was a square man, not very tall, but wide-shouldered with large features, huge eyes and nose, and big hands and, like so many morticians, Lem thought, drained of all blood and body heat. He was mad, but like the funeral director he was, he wasn't unsettled. "What can I tell you?" he said. "I came in this morning and the boy was gone."

"Is there any sign of forced entry?" Lem asked, following Fonda into the back room with three tables with bodies and one without.

"Forced entry?" the man said, almost a giggle in his voice. "It's a robbery, not a rape." He laughed.

Lem sighed and caught his eyes. "That's not funny," Lem said.

"Excuse me," Fonda said sarcastically.

"Forced entry?"

"I don't know," Fonda said. "This place has a hundred windows. This is a funeral home. I never expected break-ins. All I know is that he didn't get up and walk away.

"So, get your clues and get out. It's bad for business to have you seen here."

"How do you figure that?" Fragua asked.

"Cops are bad for any business," Fonda said. "Unless you own a doughnut shop." He laughed again.

Lem watched as Fragua walked past the bodies to the empty table. "Mr. Fonda, you're the only undertaker in this town. I doubt our presence will affect your good work."

"Just do what you have to do and get out." He started out of the room.

"Was anybody working here last night?" Fragua asked.

Exasperated, Fonda answered, "No."

"Emilio still work for you?" Lem asked. "What's his last name?"

"Vilas. And yes, he still works for me."

"When will he be in?" Lem didn't like being in the room with the dead and he was beginning to get jumpy. He tried to breathe slowly and deeply.

"He's not coming in today. I usually call him when I need him. Now, if that's all?" He turned and walked through the doorway and out of sight.

"Man, he's a real charmer, isn't he?" Lem said.

Fragua ran his finger along the edge of the table. "Well, do we look at the 'hundred' windows?"

"If it's that easy to get in, why bother? They probably came in through the front door." Lem looked around the room, at the covered forms and, aside from the obvious, something wasn't right.

"You know they say Fonda's funny," Fragua said in a hushed voice.

"You mean funny-ha-ha or funny-peculiar?"

"You never heard anybody say, 'Fonda's fonda boys?'"

"I never heard that," Lem said, checking the doorway, "but I heard 'Fonda dead bodies.'" Lem felt badly for talking about the man. "You know, if you're the only undertaker in town, people are bound to talk and make up stuff." Lem turned his attention back to the empty table. "Jose didn't get up and walk out. Think we should get the kit and dust for prints?"

"I don't think we're going to find anything."

"Yeah, I agree." Lem blew out a breath, almost a whistle. "We've got to tell the boy's parents."

"s.h.i.t."

"This sucks," Lem said, rubbing his forehead.

"You thought she freaked out last night," Fragua said. "You wait until that good Catholic woman finds out her boy's not going to get a Christian burial. You wait until she finds out that some devils have stolen him."

They didn't tell Fonda they were leaving.

To keep his mind from the unpleasant business of talking with the Marottas and later having to fill out the case reports that he had let pile up the last few days, Lem imagined the life of Armand Fonda. He knew where the man lived, in a very nice and sprawling adobe north of town, a Cyclone fence looking out of place surrounding it. He remembered another musing of his father, that it seemed Cyclone fences did little to keep out cyclones. He laughed in his head, thinking that Fonda's fence worked. No cyclone had touched his house since he put up the barrier. Fonda got up, he thought, had a nice grapefruit half with one of those special spoons that Lem's mother owned but never used; it sat in her drawer full of odd and useless gadgets, like the plastic box that shaped boiled eggs into cubes. Fonda talked to his little dog, a Pekingese or something, cooed to it like it was his little boy. Then he imagined that the man had all sorts of funereal trade journals around, about caskets and embalming, Mortician's Monthly and maybe Fluid Facts. Death was a strange thing to choose to be around.

Lem shook his head clear and viewed the neighborhood of the Marottas in the daylight. Small poorly maintained adobes stood in a row, awkward wood-framed additions poking out of most, testimony to their disregard for family planning. Sheep and chickens wandered yards and an occasional horse stood under a rough shed. The other side of the road was open, an arroyo splitting it about thirty yards in. There was a wreath on the front door of the Marotta house. The snow made it all so peaceful, so soft, gentle, and so, sadder.

Fragua knocked. Mrs. Marotta came to the door, her eyes red from crying and lack of sleep, but less confused after a night of praying. She was expecting the visit from the police so she was not thrown by it. She let them into the living room and asked them to sit, offered them coffee, which they declined.

Fragua sat, but Lem wandered off to stand by the window and look out at the field across the road and the hills rising beyond it.

"Please," Fragua said, gesturing that the woman sit by him on the sofa.

Mrs. Marotta looked even smaller today, Lem thought, viewing her from behind, her narrow shoulders slumping toward her heart.

"Mrs. Marotta, Jose is gone."

The woman took Fragua's hand and patted it as if consoling him. "Yes, my son is dead." She a.s.sured him that her feet were planted firmly on real ground.

"Mrs. Marotta, I don't know how to tell you this. I'm really sorry." These words were coming harder than the ones last night delivering news of the boy's death. "Someone broke into Fonda's Funeral Home last night and they took Jose's body."

The woman's head turned so that she could take the deputy in fully. Then she shook her head. She looked as if she just couldn't make the words have meaning.

"Jose is gone. His body was stolen and we don't know where it is."

The woman crumpled, fainted, fell over away from Fragua onto the sofa as if she'd been shot.

"Christ!" Lem said.

The daughter came running from another room and let out a short scream. Fragua lifted the woman's head in his hands, stroked dark hair from her face. Lem went to the phone to dial the paramedics. "Mama, mama," the girl pleaded with her mother to regain consciousness. Fragua told the girl to go get a gla.s.s of water.

Lem put down the phone. "They're on their way. Is she all right?"

"I think so. She's breathing okay."

The girl came back with the water and a damp rag. Fragua took the rag and let her hold the gla.s.s while he wiped the woman's face. Lem watched the girl tremble as she watched the still and silenced face of her mother. This was why he worked this job, to see this, to learn something about life, but he had learned nothing, was learning nothing. Life was empty here in this house where this woman kept things so clean, so tidy, and her G.o.d was not here for her, he believed this. Then on the wall he saw it. He hadn't noticed it last night, but there it was, a crucifix affixed to the plaster and a bare-chested Jesus Christ wrapped in a skirt. These people were Penitentes. The Penitentes were a secret order of Catholics who practiced rather severe bodily penance and recondite burials of their dead. Not having a body to put into the earth was going to be a very big deal for the Marottas. Lem felt close to crying as he watched the old woman begin to come around. He heard the paramedics' truck squeal to a halt outside. He went to the door and let them in with a blast of cold air that he was certain would aid in the woman's revival. Fragua stood away and let the medics work.

Lem went to the girl. "Are you okay?"

She nodded.

He pulled strands of her long dark hair from her face. "My name is Lem. What's yours?"