Lonesome Point Read online

  LONESOME POINT

  Also by Ian Vasquez

  IN THE HEAT

  Ian Vasquez

  LONESOME

  POINT

  MINOTAUR BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LONESOME POINT. Copyright © 2009 by Ian Vasquez. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  [http://www.minotaurbooks.com] www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vasquez, Ian, 1966–

  Lonesome point / Ian Vasquez. —1st ed.

  p.cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37810-3

  ISBN-10: 0-312-37810-6

  1. Brothers—Fiction.2. Florida—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3622.A828L66 2009

  813’.6 —dc22

  2009004514

  First Edition: June 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Pamela,

  of course

  Acknowledgments

  The talents and patience of others helped to give this story its final shape. Immense gratitude and much respect to my agent, Markus Hoffmann, for his close readings and honest feedback; my editor, Kelley Ragland, for her timely insight; and my copy editor, Dave Cole, for smoothing the story’s rough edges.

  EARLY IN THE MORNING under a daylight moon, they saw the Reverend facedown in the shallows, black hair afloat, arms outstretched like a Jesus. They pulled him out of the seaweeds and flopped him onto his back, the man big-bellied and naked from the waist down. The crowd of onlookers surged forward for a closer view, a few boys in prom suits hopping onto car hoods and peering over heads. Another Belize City Police Land Rover drove up and two more cops got out and walked over to the group standing around the body.

  Across the clearing on a small rise, Leo Varela sat behind the wheel of his father’s BMW in a rumpled gray suit, a wilted carnation stuck in a buttonhole. He watched the cops talking, occasionally pointing. His eyes were bleary and he reeked of rum and Cokes. Patrick, his older brother, was in pajamas in the other front seat, exhaling morning breath through the open window. Freddy Robinson was in the back rolling a joint, glancing up every ten seconds and asking them for the play-by-play.

  All around, St. John’s boys in prom suits sat or stood on car hoods watching. Most of them had taken their dates home hours ago, then had flocked to Lonesome Point after they heard.

  One of the policemen turned and studied the swarm of cars. He spoke to another cop, a tall black man, and within seconds they were marching across the clearing ordering everybody to leave, roll out. Boys stood up with defiant slowness and ambled around to get into their cars, start them up. The tall black cop sauntered up the rise to the BMW—Alfonso Robinson, Freddy’s cousin. Strolling over to Patrick’s window now. He put his hands on the roof, ducked down. “Time to go home to Mommy.”

  Patrick said, “Hey, man, Leo woke me, told me what happened. It’s really the Rev?”

  “Indeed. Ugly scene.” The cop twisted around to face it.

  Leo leaned across his brother’s lap. “What happened to him, Fonso?”

  “Got shot. Took one in the skull, two in the back.” Fonso shook his head. “Man had no drawers on or nothin’.”

  Cars filled with St. John’s boys drove past, some of the boys throwing up waves to Leo and Freddy.

  “So tell me,” Patrick said, “where’s the Rev’s car?”

  Fonso said, “Well,” and spat off to the side. “Assuming the Rev came here in his car, looks like somebody stole it.”

  Leo gazed across the clearing to the cops standing around the body, silty waves washing up on the hard sand. Seaweed and pebbles and driftwood littered the beach to where it turned west and petered out near a bank of mangroves. It was beginning to sink in: The Reverend was dead, a family friend, a man he’d known nearly all his life.

  Fonso said, “You guys best get on outta here.” He tilted his head to the rear. “Before the inspector starts crawling up my ass.”

  They drove away through the open barbed-wire gate, the grand entrance to this ragged beach people had used for years for every illicit plea sure imaginable. In the eighties, a developer had cleared this land, eight miles up the Northern Highway, dredged canals, and started building concrete homes. Then he went broke or was in prison for embezzlement in Panama, Leo forgot which, and now the land was the public’s to enjoy despite a gigantic no trespassing sign out front.

  Back on the Northern, Leo kept his mind on the Reverend lying there with no pants, his skin looking like rubber. Freddy pulled out his Bic to spark the joint, but Patrick turned around and glared. “Not in the car, dude.” In the rearview, Leo saw Freddy tuck the joint behind his ear.

  They were approaching the turn to Independence Park, Freddy’s neighborhood, and Leo sped toward it, his eyelids getting heavy, the long night catching up to him. He turned right onto the dirt street, steered around rain puddles and deep potholes. High grass crowded both sides, ramshackle wooden houses set back in weedy yards.

  “Drop me off here by these brothas,” Freddy said.

  A small group of teens was hanging out in front of a corner store, a couple of them leaning on bicycles. They watched with surly cool as the car pulled up.

  Freddy got out and slammed the door shut, maybe a touch too hard for Patrick’s liking. “Yo, listen, Lee,” bending at the waist to look through Patrick’s window. “We’ll party again soon?”

  “Course. I don’t leave for another two weeks.”

  Freddy grinned. “My boy. Off to fuckin’ college and shit. Somebody pinch my black ass.”

  “What can I say, accidents happen.”

  Freddy reached in across Patrick and bumped fists with Leo. He pulled out and looked at Patrick. “Nice jammies. Got any with fire engines on them? That’d look cute. Or Superman?”

  Patrick turned his face to the windshield, hit the button and the car window slid up.

  A minute later, Patrick said, “You really should be happy you’re leaving, know that?”

  “How so?”

  Patrick sighed. “Well, for one, just that you couldn’t do any worse than hanging around that loser.”

  Leo opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it. He and Patrick would probably never understand each other.

  Near the city, Leo thought again about the Reverend and got his mind off that by thinking about Celina instead.

  Remembering her look of surprise when he’d shown her his old notebook full of long prose poems. How he smiled when she said, I didn’t know this about you. Then, last night, kissing her by the Fort George Hotel pool when the prom was winding down. The taste of her tongue, like rum and Coke, only more intense and sweeter. Her shiny black hair like a curtain that hid their kisses.

  He pushed the car up to sixty-five, seventy. They tore down the road, only a couple of cars heading the other way so early in the morning. They flashed by the toilet paper factory and the truck depot. Flew by the propane gas plant and the old Texaco station, and coming up now on the left was Varela & Sons. The largest used car dealership in the country. Whenever his father bragged about that, Leo would think, Yeah, Dad, that’s because most of those cars jammed in that clay yard behind that high chain-link, beside that three-story glass building that doesn’t really suit third-world Belize—most of those cars are stolen; and everybody knows.

  And that’s why Leo would be content never to see Varela & Sons again.

  They were coming into the city, curving around the circular onto Princess Margaret Dri
ve, and Leo felt relieved that he was almost home and just days away from leaving home, setting out on his own. His shoulders relaxed. He lifted his foot off the gas and cruised. “You going to tell Dad?”

  When Patrick made no reply, Leo turned his head to look at him.

  His brother had gone ghost-white. Hunched over, hugging himself.

  Leo looked away.

  Yeah, it must be hitting Patrick now, the cold shock that somebody had murdered the Reverend. Their father’s right-hand man.

  THE

  KILLING

  BOOK I

  1

  WALKING DOWN A PSYCH WARD HALLWAY in Miami, Leo Varela discovered the meaning of life, but by the time he reached the door leading out, he had forgotten what it was.

  He recently started telling people this to watch their reaction, especially someone he didn’t know well. He’d say it usually at a bar, or a party whenever the conversation turned faintly philosophical, say it with a straight face. There’d be a pause, and then he’d smile to let them know he was only joking. But he relished that second of silence, the curiosity on their faces.

  What Leo didn’t say: He worked the night shift on the third floor of Jefferson Memorial Hospital’s mental health annex, and several times a night he walked the floor doing rounds and a couple of times truly enlightening ideas had revealed themselves, but when he hit the door at the end of the long hall, he’d forgotten them. That’s what happens when you’re stoned.

  Leo wasn’t stoned at the moment. Just a little buzzed. Three pulls on a roach at the start of the shift, nothing more than that. He felt mellow strolling the dark hallway, closing the room doors, telling the new patient in Room 307—checking his clipboard quickly—Turn off the lights, please, Mrs. Delgado, it’s time to go to sleep.

  A fat, naked Haitian woman trudged out of the women’s bathroom, a towel wrapped around her head. She stopped to slurp water from the fountain.

  Leo raised his voice down the hall, “Hey, Adelia, put some clothes on, please. Or go to your room, whichever. You know you shouldn’t be walking ’round here like that.”

  Adelia looked up, bent down to slurp some more.

  Leo walked past her, writing on the rounds board. When he turned around she was crossing to her room, and he was grateful the lights were out. No need to lose his appetite for a midnight snack. He visited the women’s bathroom, that and the men’s being the only patient areas lit at night. He picked towels off the floor, dumped them in the clothes hamper. Looked behind the curtains of the shower stalls. Nobody sleeping there.

  He scanned the rounds board. Nineteen patients, nearly a full house. One in seclusion, the rest in their rooms, except for Adelia. He jotted H next to her name (hallway), A next to Mrs. Delgado’s name (awake), SR for Herman Massani (seclusion room), and for the sixteen others an S (for what he wished he was at home doing).

  In the nurses’ station, Rose, the night nurse, asked him, “What break do you want? I’m down for the first, if nobody minds.”

  Leo said, “The second.” He turned to Martin, the other mental health technician. “Unless you want the second… .”

  “I’ll take the last. I had a good rest today.” Martin was at the desk preparing patients’ charts for the next day. Mindless work: filling the charts with paperwork, checking off boxes, signing your name, over and over. Martin was new on staff, so Leo happily gave him the practice.

  Leo wheeled the geriatric chair from the TV room into the hallway, parked it a couple of feet from the nurses’ station and covered it with a sheet. He slipped his sweatshirt on. The floor was kept freezing at night under the belief that it encouraged patients to sleep. Leo cracked back the gerri chair; with feet up and his writing pad in hand he could relax and maintain a watch on both the men’s and the women’s sides of the floor. Oh, how rough the night shift could be.

  He’d gotten nowhere with his latest poem. He stared at the line he’d written almost two days before and hadn’t the foggiest what would come next. Moments like this made him wonder if he was a phony, how a handful of published poems didn’t mean jack when you sat down to write again. You’re not a poet and you don’t know it. Or maybe he did know. He’d not published in almost two years, couldn’t even place a poem in one of those obscure literary journals that paid in free copies. At least he wasn’t writing about Belize anymore and the mistakes he’d made and all that mess he’d said farewell to years ago. At least he could count that as a success.

  Time to look for some inspiration. He turned to the door. “Hey, Martin, I’m heading out for a quick cigarette.”

  Martin came to take his place in the chair.

  Leo headed down the hall to the women’s side, opened the door with a key and stepped out into the warm stairwell. He trotted up to the fifth floor, where a plastic chair waited by the window. The fifth-floor ward had closed down a couple of years back so there was nobody around to spy on him. Leo took a plastic baggie from his pocket, and from the baggie he removed a book of matches and a roach. He sparked it. Sucked deep and held that potent smoke in his lungs. Repeated the process, then blotted the stub against the window frame, smoke curling from his lips.

  Man, it was a warm night. Middle of February and the heat wouldn’t let up. But he was beginning to feel comfortable, all sweet inside. He turned a lazy gaze out the window to the parking lot below. He watched the gate rise and two cars pull out and head up Twelfth Avenue, probably evening-shift nurses going home. Where he wanted to be. In bed with Tessa… . He sat back, let his thoughts wander.

  Something across the street caught his attention, somebody standing under the lamppost, a black guy in a suit, staring up at the building. Leo observed him awhile. The man glanced at his watch and glided on, until he was out of sight. Odd. Jefferson Memorial smack in a rough neighborhood like this and a guy in a suit strolling the streets so late?

  The intercom crackled, and Leo thought, Shit, here we go.

  “Stat team to Crisis. Stat team to Crisis.”

  Leo sighed, gathered himself, popped a Dentyne into his mouth. Last thing he wanted to do right now was deal with some wacko the cops were bringing in fresh off the street.

  Martin was already slipping on latex gloves when Leo reached the nurses’ station.

  Leo said, “You got this one?”

  Rose said, “I’d prefer if you go with him. Since he’s new.”

  Leo said, “You sure?” Knowing hospital policy required at least two staff members on the floor at all times.

  Rose nodded and said to Martin, “For now just stand back and watch the other techs, okay? Only get involved if they need you. See how they do it first.”

  “It’s highly complex,” Leo said. “One must employ keen observation.”

  Rose rolled her eyes and swiveled the chair back to the desk.

  Going out the door, Leo told Martin, “Every call from Crisis Intervention is considered a red code. Been on a red yet?”

  “A couple blues only.”

  “Expect anything on a red. Like they told you in training.”

  Out in the lobby they waited for the elevator. The door behind them had a small window with iron mesh inside the glass, and beside it was a red phone with no dial or buttons. Above it was a sign:

  Visitors must pick up the telephone.

  Wait for staff to open door.

  Please watch for patients trying to elope.

  Leo jabbed the down arrow two more times. “Probably giving trouble again. We might have to take the stairs.” Or so he hoped. Then the door slid open and he braced himself before they entered. The door closed, the elevator jerked and started down, and Leo’s mouth went dry.

  For years he’d been working on his claustrophobia and just couldn’t beat it. He’d improved his ability to manage it, but the fear never went away completely. He stared at the floor. And this was the elevator that gave trouble, too. Martin asked him a question, but he couldn’t answer. Until he stepped out into the cold, sweet air of the ground-floor lobby.
r />   “No, I’ve never been hurt on a call.” He swallowed, inhaled deeply. “I mean, except for a sprained finger or a couple bruises, I haven’t been injured or anything. Guy on the fourth floor, day-shift nurse? Patient broke his jaw a few weeks back.”

  “I heard about that. Hey, you okay?”

  They walked around the corner, past a few despondent-looking souls slumped in chairs. “Yeah, why?”

  Martin shrugged. “You look … kinda pale. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Course I’m sure,” an edge to his voice. He opened the door to Crisis Intervention. “After you,” leveling his tone. They went in, a few disheveled people watching the TV in a high corner, or gazing into space. Leo lowered his voice. “People here, people outside, they’re waiting to see the triage nurse.” He pointed to an empty Plexiglas booth set diagonally in one corner. “That’s triage. The nurse is away from the desk right now but she’s the person who interviews them, sees if they require hospitalization. Now, this door here, we don’t have a key for it. We’ve got keys for all other entrances but not for Crisis.” He hit a button on the wall, and a few seconds later a tech in green scrubs opened one side of the double doors.

  At the end of the bright hallway two uniformed cops with empty holsters stood next to a bare-chested Hispanic man with hands cuffed behind him. Leo led Martin past the nurses’ station and conference rooms. Two techs from Crisis joined them and by the time they reached the cops, techs from other floors were streaming in, tugging on latex gloves.

  “The goon squad,” one of the cops said, smiling at them.

  Nobody smiled back. Pablo, the Crisis night-shift head nurse, asked him, “So who do we have here?”

  “This here is Reynaldo Rivera. Reynaldo was dashing across 1-95 traffic, no shoes, dressed like this. Said he was just waiting for a cab, isn’t that right, Reynaldo?”

  The bare-chested man grunted. His feet were filthy and he smelled swampish.