He could feel her jaw moving with her words, his little finger slipping into a cusp.
“You said something else.” Klinsman assessed the sheaf of black he had managed to bring under control, two fistfuls. “To that other guy. The one dressed like a waiter.”
“I didn’t see another guy. Just the mozos. Everything at the mozos.”
“No. You glanced at that other guy, too. Twice. You knifed him twice. With words the second time. Something I couldn’t quite understand. Something like … maybe like, ‘eyes away, salamandro.’‘Eyes’ you said for sure. That I could tell for sure.”
“You watch me too much, Aaron,” she said, keeping her eyes closed, her head almost back to his chest as he attempted the impossible, to set the amber clasp into her hair.
The trolley slowed as it neared the border stop, like something easing into its collapsed state. Rita sat neatly, her hair gathered, her expression smooth. They passed above Mt. Carmel, where Klinsman had gone to school. The asphalt playground formed a dark patch in the San Ysidro lights.
“You like riding this trolley down here because it puts you above everything,” Rita told him, following his gaze out the window. “Everything you know.”
“Everything I know is buried under lights and condos,” he replied. “Save for a few things. That schoolyard. That smokehouse over there. That church.”
“And the motel we’re going to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play me,” she said. “You told me once. You owned that motel once. You inherited it.”
“Only for a month, Rita. As a kid. My father sold it for me. He used the money for my college. I never went to it. Except once after, with a date.”
“Why are we going there?” she asked.
“I was sent there. This evening, on a damned beat call. I thought we stopped doing those. But it popped up on my billet. Just as I was heading out to the Luchador assignment. I haven’t had to do a beat call in three years. I figured Gina was trying to jab me one more time. Before we’re done.”
“Gina sent you.”
“It was just from the office. Gina’s still gone. I tried calling her twice today. I don’t think she’s coming back. I think she’s just going to wind it all up from wherever she’s gone. Up north. Whichever job she picked up there. Typical of her to disappear on us like that.”
“There’s nothing typical about Gina,” said Rita.
He told her about room 9, about the light, the tape, the covered mirrors, and the imprint of the woman on the bed. All he learned from the evening clerk was that two officers had dropped by before him, had seen nothing unusual for an empty motel room, and had assumed they’d received either a prank call or misinformation. The clerk wouldn’t give Klinsman the name of the person checked into the room but did say that person was still checked in for the night. So Klinsman called the desk sergeant and used Gina’s currency. Gina always made sure to portray the cops as weary but willing and bemused in the Review’s crime blotter.
The name Klinsman got was Marta Ruiz. No Marta Ruiz had been reported missing in San Diego or Los Angeles. Thirty-seven had been reported missing in Tijuana. Klinsman remembered two from grade school, three from high school, and two more from college. He had known none of them well enough to receive anything from them fourteen years later.
“But the room was open when I got there,” he told Rita as they walked across the motel parking lot.
“Thirty-seven,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the light-draped mesas of Tijuana. The neon sign shone on her lips like a prayer.
6.
The door was exactly as he had left it. They knocked anyway, and after no response from inside, they gently pushed it open. He let Rita try the wall switch, then watched as she fished a grip light from her lens pouch and filled the room with an undersea glow. She had Klinsman reach up and clamp it to one of the overhead fan blades. She gazed at the room, brow flexed, seemingly unsure if there were really anything to see. He gently stayed her from absentmindedly sitting on the bed.
“No,” he told her, then, motioning to the imprint on the milk-skin bed cover, “look.”
The swirled form confused her further, lured her into bending over the bed, tiptoe, keeping her knees from brushing the cover. She looked as though she were about to dive in.
The grip light toplit everything, kept black the walls and floor, put Klinsman and Rita and everything in the motel room under a kind of bathyspheric probe.
“Put me on your shoulders,” she told him.
He knelt and from behind put his head between her legs. He braced the tops of her thighs with his hands and stood, taking her weight as she clenched herself about his head. He felt her leg muscles like bands across his ears, heard the cupped rush in a seashell, thought for a moment it was her blood flow. She hooked her boots behind his kidneys, expert at this, like a circus performer, with a photographer’s grace and objectivity.
“Hold still,” she chided. She spun the fan to slightly off-center the grip light over the bed. The swirled pattern of the woman became even more distinct, the shadows deeper, the peaks glowing.
Klinsman straightened a bit, startled. His neck pushed into the zipper of her jeans.
“Hold still, chingadero,” she whispered. She pressed her belly against the back of his head, leaned over, and took pictures of the imprint, no flash.
He tried to look up, inadvertently pushing his brow into her breasts. She tapped his throat.
“No. No. Still. I almost got it perfect.”
He braced himself, her.
“How strong are you?” she asked.
“Pretty strong,” he said. “Real strong.”
“There’s a lot of me up here.”
“No. You feel good up there.” He sensed what she was about to try. “Really.”
She ponied herself up, digging the toes of her boots into his lower back, hardening her thigh muscles against his ears, and leaned way over, bending him with her.
She managed two or three captures before he lost his balance and let her fall onto the bed. After the mattress stilled, she smoothed the loose strands of hair from her face, lifted her brow, and opened her mouth like a boxer testing her jaw. She scooted herself back on her elbows and took in the room once again, the little squares of black tape here and there, glinting shardlike under the gauzy wash of the grip light.
“You were right,” she said. “It’s like a crime scene. But for a crime that never happened.”
“Or one that hasn’t been invented yet.” He stretched out next to her, on elbows, shouldering her. He wanted to share her exact view of the room. He looked at the squares of tape. “They’re like markers, no? For staging. Perspective. I figured you could tell.”
“Yes,” she said. “They look like that.”
She removed her camera and lens pouch and placed them gently on the nightstand, rolling her hips away from him. She looked back over her shoulder at him, caught him looking, held still. He hooked his fingers about her hip and spun her to him, her softness tumbling up under him, her hair whipping in tails across his neck. They used their teeth to feel their way to a kiss, their tongues going into each other too fast, before first pressing lips.
She pulled away quickly and swung herself off the bed. He thought she was hurrying away, but she was only checking the door to make sure it was locked. Then