Silver Nitrate(65)

Tristán felt a shiver go down his spine. He remembered an empty lot near his apartment, surrounded by a tall wooden fence that was plastered with posters for concerts, boxing matches, and even pornographic movies. Sometimes, the posters were covered with graffiti before another wave of posters camouflaged the scribblings. He wondered if, underneath layers of cheap paper and colorful ink, there were symbols of old magic, like corpses bricked into walls.

“Would your aunt have contact information for Clarimonde and José?” Montserrat asked.

“No, she wouldn’t. Clarimonde married and I think remarried, but that must have been a long time ago.”

“And she became a publisher?”

“Sure, I suppose. She was certainly not going to make it as an actress,” Marisa said scornfully. “Not that she tried to stick to it after Ewers died. José kept writing, but I’m certain he hasn’t had any credits in ages.”

“He was a writer? What did he work on?”

Marisa seemed surprised. “Why…on Beyond the Yellow Door, of course. He co-wrote it. Abel and he were friends, they’d worked together.”

“José López is Romeo Donderis?” Montserrat asked. Now it was her turn to sound surprised.

“You didn’t know?”

Abel never specified what José López did for a living, only that he worked on the film. Montserrat looked thoughtful. “Abel said your aunt gave him money one time when he needed it. She might have his contact information, after all.”

“No, she would not. She does not wish to talk about those days. Spells? Cults? You understand why I asked that this all be background? And why you can’t tell anyone that I was the one who mentioned these things?” Marisa said. Her words were calm, but her eyes flitted quickly from Montserrat to Tristán. “Anyway, I’m busy, and I do have another appointment.”

“We understand. But could we ask you one more question? And, if necessary, could you relay this question to your aunt? We can leave you a number to call back.”

“It would be awfully kind,” Tristán added, the implication in his tone being that he would write down his phone number.

“Very well.”

“What do you know about Ewers’s death?”

“Nothing. They said he was mugged.”

“That’s not nothing.”

“That’s not anything, either,” Marisa said. She looked at her wrist and tapped at her watch with her perfectly manicured nail, as if indicating, not so subtly, that this conversation was at an end. “You’ll forgive me, I have to go.”

“No problem. We’ll throw nails behind our steps when we leave,” Montserrat said.

He didn’t know what she meant by that, but Marisa clenched her hands together. She smiled as she stood, but the smile looked a little crooked, like she was trying too hard.

They shook hands. Tristán did indeed scribble his pager number on a piece of paper and then pocketed his tape recorder. He gave Marisa a big grin, for the hell of it, and she responded with an interested motion of the head. Tristán still had it. He suspected that, had he been alone conducting the interview, she might have revealed more. When it came to good cop, bad cop, Montserrat steered toward the “beat the suspect until they confess” end of the spectrum. He mentioned this as they waited for the elevator, observing the needle on the brass indicator.

“You mean to say you would have fucked the answers out of her,” Montserrat replied.

“No, but older ladies adore me.”

“You would have gotten distracted without me, and you would have chickened out. You would have fumbled it.”

“That’s a great opinion you have of me.”

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped in. Tristán jabbed the lobby button, and the elevator began its slow descent.

“When we went to the corner store to steal candy, it was me who did the actual stealing,” she said. “You never could.”

She could run faster if they stole, too. The limp didn’t matter. Montserrat was always two steps ahead of Tristán.

“Stealing and talking are two different things. I’m fine with talking. Hey, what was that about nails, by the way?”

“A spell. I don’t have nails. I wanted to see how she’d react.”

“And?”

“She’s nervous.”

“So am I. What do you want to do now?”

“Keep digging. There was something wrong with Marisa.”

“Wrong how?”

“I don’t know. Something…crooked,” Montserrat said.

They stepped out of the elevator and exited the building. Montserrat walked with her hands in her pockets and a determined, stiff strut. The conversation with Marisa had left him wishing for both a cigarette and a drink. He could have neither, not with Montserrat by his side. She’d give him another sermon on throat cancer. He ought to quit the tobacco, he knew that, but a fresh pack of Dunhills seemed awfully enticing.

“That lady said Ewers’s old friends are still up to their magic tricks. They could have murdered Abel,” he said, slipping a hand into his jacket pocket and putting on his sunglasses.

“Maybe. But she also clammed up right when I asked about Ewers’s death. And why would Ewers’s followers kill him?”