Day of the Dead

I have to accept it, she told herself.

‘Something to drink?’ the waiter asked. ‘Something special? Since this is your last day here.’

She’d had far too much to drink on this trip already. But it was her last day. Quite possibly the last time she’d ever be here, on this beach.

‘Just a margarita, I think.’

He brought her a double, and later he came by and topped it off.

I’ll have to get a job, Michelle thought. But it had been years since she’d worked. She’d stopped shortly after marrying Tom, not that the photo gallery had paid much in any case. ‘Look, I’m making plenty for both of us,’ he’d said. ‘Why don’t you spend your time doing things you enjoy?’

Funny, that.

He’d meant it kindly, for the most part. But not working meant she ran the house. Chose the furniture, the appliances. Hung the right paintings on the walls. Made sure the gifts Tom sent were personalized and appropriate. Picked their charities and arranged for their attendance at the banquets.

And she’d kept herself in shape for all that. Yoga, Pilates, spin classes. She looked good, and not like one of those Brentwood plastic-surgery victims either.

‘Michelle, you’re so creative! Love the way you dress! Love your house!’

That was what everyone said about her.

How much had she actually enjoyed it?

She’d almost reached the end of the book about the woman who found redemption through baked goods. She thumbed through to the last pages. Sure enough, the heroine ended up with the cultured, overeducated woodworker. Why did people even read things like this, she wondered, where you know how it will end almost as soon as it starts?

Maybe they liked the certainty. The reassurance that things worked out all right in the end.

At three-fifteen she went upstairs, showered, changed, and finished her packing. At four she retrieved her valuables from the hotel safe and said good-bye to the woman behind the front counter.

‘Alejandra,’ the woman said, extending a slender hand. ‘I hope you come back to see us again. It isn’t right, what happened to you and your friend. We hope we can make it up to you.’

The cab arrived a few minutes later; the driver took her wheeled bag and put it in the trunk. Michelle climbed into the back, and as the cab pulled away, Alejandra and one of the hotel workers waved good-bye. Michelle returned the wave. She supposed it was simply good business, that after the attack the hotel workers wanted to do whatever they could to mitigate the bad publicity by being extra attentive.

Still, they were nice people.

The taxi chugged up the hill, heading in the opposite direction of the airport at first, then around a tight curve that straightened into a road heading north, condos at the crest of the hill, morphing into colonias as they descended. The road widened, dirt shoulders on either side, concrete shoring up the hillsides, covered with graffiti and political posters, mostly for PRI and PAN. Michelle couldn’t remember what the parties stood for here, though she thought that pan might be Spanish for ‘bread.’

She leaned against the backseat, eyes half closed. She had the beginnings of a headache. I shouldn’t have had those drinks, she thought. Soon as I get home, it’s back to the regimen: the workout routine, the yoga, the raw food and greens. Definitely no margaritas. The calories in one were staggering.

The taxi driver muttered something under his breath that sounded like a curse, put his foot on the brake, and pulled over onto the dirt shoulder.

‘What’s wrong?’

The driver jerked his thumb behind them. ‘Policía.’

She turned and looked out the rear window. A squad car, black and white, compact, a little battered, light bar flashing blue and red.

Great, Michelle thought. Had the driver been speeding? Was a taillight out? She’d tried to leave plenty of time to get to the airport, but she’d heard that things with the police could turn complicated here.

Well, there was no point in panicking.

The policeman approached the driver’s-side door. Best not to get involved, Michelle decided. She stared out the passenger window.

They’d parked at the edge of a lot that looked like an ad hoc body shop, with cars in various states of assembly, stacked sidepanels, bumpers, and doors. A tin roof propped up on poles was the only indication of any permanency. Odd, she thought. What would stop someone from coming in at night and stealing parts? Maybe the workers slept here. Maybe the whole operation was somehow magically packed up at dusk and reassembled the next day.

She could hear the policeman and the driver exchange a few low words. ‘Aeropuerto’ was one she caught.

The policeman rapped his knuckles on the backseat window. ‘Señora.’

‘What? Excuse me?’

The policeman gestured for her to open the door. She did.

‘Su bolsa.’

‘My … ?’

‘Purse.’

She could feel her heart pound in her throat. Was this some kind of shakedown? A robbery in the guise of a traffic stop? What was she supposed to do?

She handed him her purse.

The policeman opened it, rifling through the main compartment, opening the interior zip, then moving to the exterior pockets. It was a Marc Jacobs hobo, and there were a lot of them.

The policeman extracted a brown paper packet. Folded. A square the size of a lopped-off business card. He opened it.

‘Come out of the car.’

‘What?’

‘Out of the car.’

‘What is that?’ Michelle asked. ‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘Now.’

‘That’s not mine!’

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him.

CHAPTER SIX

Lawyer. How did you say ‘lawyer’? The only word Michelle could come up with was albóndigas, and that, she was fairly sure, meant ‘meatballs.’

Sitting in the back of the squad car seemed so unreal that she couldn’t process it. The seat smelled like beer-scented puke. The policeman had cuffed her, hands behind her back and tight enough to hurt. Taken her luggage out of the taxi and thrown it next to her. Was he even a real policeman? He looked like one, she thought – a big man with a big belly and a mustache and aviator sunglasses. His uniform looked real. The squad car looked credible too. Now and again the radio squawked and broadcast chatter.

‘¿Dónde vamos?’ she managed.