When it was time to get ready to go to Melissa’s for dinner he checked his cell phone, which had been turned off, for messages. Mona had called, sounding effervescent, to say that Carla had been busted for a pound of weed in her apartment and a dozen cartons of unstamped cigarettes. Out on bail Carla had screamed at Mona on the phone detecting the trail of her bust. Sunderson grinned. Something had worked. He also felt a trace of rejuvenation in the shower but was less than enthused about the upcoming dinner. Typical of his age he had not yet regenerated from the previous day’s sex. This was a case where the tired fountain does not overflow.
Melissa had a smallish stucco house in a semigated community that wasn’t guarded. There was, however, a very large man sitting on her porch whom Sunderson recognized as being near the front door that evening at Las Vigas. The man’s heavy eyelids made it look as if his eyes were closed.
“Senor Sunderson, of course,” he said not getting up from his chair.
Sunderson sat with Melissa in a wildly flowered backyard drinking a margarita she had made fresh with tiny limes and a tequila that cost fifty bucks he had seen in the liquor store. She seemed scattered and a little cool, glancing at Josefina in the corner of the yard playing on a swing set with a nanny. He was wondering if she regretted making love to him the day before. When she had welcomed him at the door and guided him through the utterly elegant living room with its burnished copper walls and antique furniture he had thought again that nothing down here is what it seems to be.
“What are you going to do?” She wasn’t looking at him.
“I don’t know for sure. I’m thinking about moving over to Willcox or the Dos Cabezas to be closer to my enemy.”
“If you don’t have a pistol I have an extra.” Now she was looking at him as if he were incompetent.
“I have one.”
“But I can tell you’re not wearing it. What good is a pistol if you don’t have it with you?” She kept checking her watch and then led him into the house. They sat down at the dining room table and Sunderson was disappointed to note that the table was set for four. Looking at her in her short green skirt had warmed him up after all. She explained the platter of ceviche, a Mexican fish dish pickled with lime juice and hot chilies. He loved the ceviche because it reminded him of the pickled herring of home.
“You’re very nice but I worry that you will be killed like my husband,” she said furtively as the front door opened and Xavier arrived with an attractive young thing who looked 99 percent female but her Adam’s apple told Sunderson that she was likely a transvestite. Will wonders never cease? Melissa rose to kiss her brother but refused to acknowledge his girlfriend, or boyfriend, or whatever. Xavier was ebullient and placed three cell phones near his plate.
“I keep one for Melissa but I have two new cell phones every day for my business. Sorry we’re late but I must make love after work every day to remind me that I’m human.”
“Please,” Melissa said, blushing.
“I have solved your mystery,” Xavier said, looking at Sunderson and pouring a white wine that Sunderson recognized as Diane’s favorite, Meursault. “My problem was that I said to myself, what are two men from Marquette, Michigan, doing in my area? One has the other nearly killed. They must be quarreling about money. Then I learned a lot of information about you. You are studying this man’s cult. I know you have a pension of thirty-two thousand a year, which is not enough. I know you take Norvasc for high blood pressure and Levoxyl for a deficient thyroid and your wife left you three years ago. And now you have moved to Patagonia. I thought you were snooping about me through my sister but now I think you are just another horny old man. Your enemy is camped on what I think of as my land with a hundred of his followers. Today I had him brought to me in Nogales for a conversation. He wasn’t very happy. I have been forced to tell him that he and his people must leave by Christmas. Why, I must ask you, are you fascinated by this lunatic?”
Sunderson was unnerved by Xavier’s high metallic laughter. Melissa stared at Sunderson harshly as if to say, “You are imperiled. Be honest.”
“My hobby has always been history,” Sunderson began slowly. “I became interested in the relationship between religion, money, and sex.”
“Well, you are a fool or a scholar or both. They are one. They can’t be separated,” Xavier interrupted.
“Perhaps, but this enemy was in my area, as you say. I didn’t like what he was doing to people.” Sunderson was developing a case of ice cubes in the guts.
“I mean you can’t think of sex, religion, and money as individual building blocks. They have bled into each other until they are a huge unruly animal, quite vicious, really.” Xavier was enthused about the conversation as if he were taking part in a college debate.
