Silver Nitrate(62)

“Tristán—”

“Momo, our friend is dead.”

“I know. I found his corpse,” she said, her voice growing harsher in response to his. “And the reason why I’m telling you all of this is because I want to know what happened to him, not because I’m trying to spook you. I’m trying to understand. Don’t you want to understand?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

Montserrat let out a loud grunt and tugged at the phone cord. She lay back on the couch with the phone resting on her stomach.

“Momo? You there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, pressing the phone against her ear.

Tristán sighed. “Look, I said I’d help you find Alma Montero and I will. But that doesn’t mean I want to discuss spells after midnight. I’ll never go to sleep like this.”

“Would seven a.m. work better for you?”

“Haha. Very funny.”

“Tristán, I don’t think he was mugged.”

“Huh?”

“Abel said what happened to Ewers was bad luck. He was killed before his project could be completed. But that sounds like a big coincidence to me. What if someone wanted him gone before the spell was cast? What if that same person killed Abel, fearing Ewers would come back from the dead?”

“That would be who, Alma?”

“Maybe.”

“She would be in a wheelchair by now.”

“You can cast spells in a wheelchair.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Tristán—”

“I’m asleep,” he said. His voice had lost its edge and was growing drowsily pleasant. He sounded quite lovely when he spoke like that; no wonder he had nabbed several dubbing gigs. No wonder, too, that soap opera viewers had once been thrilled when he uttered his hammy lines. Hooked, from the very first scene.

“Jerk.”

“I do have to go to sleep.”

“Go to bed. I’ll be fine,” she said, picking at a loose thread from her sweater.

The silence on the line was velvet soft, and she pictured him licking his lips, which he did much too often when he was nervous.

“I’m sorry you had to find Abel on your own. I should have been with you. Are you okay?”

She was tired and she was stressed, and when that happened her old leg acted up, but all things considered she figured she was doing fine. The eyes of vampires and monsters watched Montserrat from the posters on the walls. The garish artwork comforted her. She stretched a hand and set it beneath her head.

“Nothing an aspirin won’t fix,” she said.

“I won’t leave you alone again. I’ll keep the pager clipped on. I’ll return any phone calls.”

“You’ll check on me before bedtime.”

“I am checking on you. Keep me informed.”

“I know. Thanks.”

She hung up. The TV in the living room beckoned her to explore its late-night programming. There would be cheap thrillers on Cinemax or perhaps she might catch the last half hour of a colorized, bastardized classic on a channel showing classics. Cable offered many more delights than the TV set with the rabbit antenna had provided in their childhood. But the day had been long and she felt wrung out. She placed the album, the book, and the letter in her office and went to bed.





15


When Tristán desired something badly enough, he usually obtained it. The only problem was that he easily lost his impetus. Determination and steadiness were Montserrat’s tools. He relied on charm. And charm he did during the next couple days, swiftly going through his address book and calling friends and associates and anyone he could think of until he managed to jot down Alma Montero’s number.

He spoke to the old lady’s niece, who was her caretaker these days, and told her that he and a friend were working on a documentary piece on Abel Urueta and wanted to discuss his unfinished film. Although the niece requested that any questions be submitted beforehand, Alma Montero was willing to talk to them without delay.

Alma lived in a six-story apartment building near Parque México. The earthquake of ’85 hadn’t leveled it, unlike many other ancient buildings that were condemned or razed, and it stood proud and elegant, the touches of Art Deco in its fa?ade giving it the alluring air of a grand dame slowly going to seed.

The dim lobby of the building had two rows of brass mailboxes and an ancient elevator the size of a coffin that creaked when it began its slow ascent and outright rattled when the doors slid apart and they stepped out onto the hallway leading to Montero’s penthouse apartment.

A maid opened the door and guided them to the living room. The furniture was mid-century modern, all teak and rosewood of a deep golden brown with curved, streamlined shapes. It bore no comparison to Abel’s packrat surroundings. Abel’s home had been a shrine to the past. Alma’s apartment evidenced a fondness for a décor of decades gone by, but it was not a chaotic jumble of memorabilia. It was as if she had culled all the unnecessary frills and kept only the treasures of a long life. For example, the green tweed armchair on which a woman lounged, artfully balancing a glass against her knee.

When they walked in, she stood up and shook their hands.

“I’m Marisa Montero,” she said. “Alma’s niece.”