The Newsmakers Page 13

“So bring me up to the minute on the Barrish story,” Moira says.

  “The caterer has been cleared. Arturo Yanez, her apprentice, had only been working with her for a couple of weeks, but she swears by his character. Well and good, but . . . she took her dog out for a walk and left Arturo alone in her kitchen for twenty minutes. A trace of cyanide powder was found on the kitchen backsplash in the exact spot where he made the tamale pies. Then he disappears the same night. The math ain’t tough.”

  “So finding Yanez is the next step.”

  “Yes. I’m not optimistic about the prospects. Alive, at least.”

  “This whole town, the whole state really, is in shock. That woman was loved.”

  “I’m obsessed with solving this, Moy.”

  “Don’t get too obsessed, Erica,” Moira says, a cautionary note in her voice.

  “Thanks. I’m feeling pretty solid these days.”

  “You know where I live.”

  “What about you? Work life? Love life?”

  “Work is great. I’m no Erica Sparks, but we’ve known that for a while. As for a man—affirmative. We’re having fun but it’s too soon to tell. And you?”

  “I’ve been seeing a little of Greg Underwood.”

  “Eri-ca, mixing business and pleasure is a recipe for combustible.”

  “I’m taking it very slow.”

  “Listen, you’ve gotten very famous very fast. Mostly good. Mostly fabulous. Entirely deserved. But . . . people are going to want a piece of you now. I’m serious about this. Fame buffers you from reality. I see it in this town all the time. I want you to take everything slow.”

  There’s a knock on Moira’s front door.

  “My pod has arrived. Duty calls.”

  Moira reaches across the table and squeezes Erica hand. “You have me on speed dial.”

  “I love you, Moira.”

  “Oh shut up and get to work.”

  CHAPTER 36

  “THIS IS ERICA SPARKS REPORTING live from outside the apartment building in East Los Angeles that was home to Arturo Yanez. Yanez is the seventeen-year-old high school student who is suspected of serving Kay Barrish the cyanide-laced food that killed her last Saturday. Yanez did not return here after leaving Governor Barrish’s house that night. His current whereabouts are unknown. Yanez, who is an undocumented immigrant from Juarez, Mexico, shared a one-bedroom apartment with three cousins and two unrelated persons.” The camera pulls back. “Standing next to me is one of his cousins, Felipe Munoz. What can you tell us about your cousin?”

  “Arturo was worry for long time. Very worry.”

  “What was he so worried about?”

  “His mother. In Juarez. She’s sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “Cancer. In her stomach.”

  “Has he been back to visit her?”

  “No, Arturo is afraid to go. If he goes, he maybe not get back into States. He wants to stay here. Work in a restaurant. He’s a good cook. He feeds all of us.”

  “Did he have any unusual visitors? Any meetings? Did you notice any change in his behavior recently?”

  “He’s happy to be with Recipe for Success. But he worries. So much worry for his mother.”

  Lesli, Erica’s producer, is standing behind the camera. Her phone vibrates. She steps out of earshot and answers it.

  “Have you spoken to Yanez’s mother?”

  “I call her. But she is very sick. Too sick to talk.”

  Lesli, still on the phone, listening intently, motions Erica to wrap it up, fast.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Munoz. And now we’ll go back to GNN headquarters in New York.”

  The camera and lights are turned off. Lesli rushes up to Erica. “I just got word from the LAPD. A hiker came across a dead body out in the desert near Joshua Tree. Hispanic teenager. Description sounds like a match for Yanez.”

  “Let’s head out there.” Erica helps her pod load the van. As soon as they’re on the road, she turns to Lesli and says, “Book us a flight to Juarez.”

  CHAPTER 37

  THE CALIFORNIA DESERT IS AN alien landscape to Erica. They leave teeming Los Angeles behind and head southeast, driving through a barren pass lined with hundreds of slowly spinning windmills—they look futuristic, surreal. As the city recedes and they get further into the desert, there are giant rock formations, cactuses, and spiny-leafed Joshua trees.

  They reach an unmarked track and turn onto it. They drive deeper into the desert and within minutes civilization seems like a distant dream. As far as the eye can see, it’s sand and sun, sun and sand, broken only by the huge rocks looming up from the desert floor—all of it shimmering and wavy in the heat. It’s stunning, but so bleak and forbidding. Erica wonders how anything—or anyone—could survive out here.

  And then, in the distance ahead of them, looking at first like a mirage, are the red lights of police cars and an ambulance. As they get closer, they see police tape forming a rough circle, and inside the circle a lifeless body lies on the ground.

  They park and Erica gets out of the van. The air is like a furnace, a searing, dry heat she has never felt before. A masculine Asian woman in a dark pantsuit with a detective badge on her belt seems to be in charge. Erica walks up to her.

  “The first vulture is here,” the woman cracks. She has short black hair and a tough face with a turned-down mouth and darting dark eyes.

  “Happy birthday to you too,” Erica says. “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “As long as you don’t interfere with mine.”

  “How about we cooperate?”

  “I’ve had investigations compromised by sloppy reporting.”

  “Thanks for the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to do whatever I can to find the people behind Barrish’s murder. You want to stand in my way or help me?”

  The woman narrows her eyes and looks at Erica, softens a little, kicks at the sand. “Detective Sergeant Betsy Takahashi, California State Police. And I know who you are.”

  Erica looks over at the body—it’s sprawled facedown, with a single gaping bullet hole in the back of the head. “Where do things stand?”

  Takahashi points to a somber Hispanic man who is speaking to another detective. “That’s Martin Alvarez, the head of Recipe for Success. He just identified the deceased as Arturo Yanez.”

  “How long has the body been here?”

  “Approximately seventy-two hours. He was killed elsewhere and dumped here.”

  “Any leads?”

  “Not so far. We’ll be removing the body shortly and taking it to the lab for a complete forensic analysis. Dead bodies have a way of giving up information.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That this was a contract killing. Someone persuaded Yanez to poison Barrish. The persuasion probably came in the form of hundred-dollar bills. But once he had done his job, he had to go.”

  “But would Yanez kill Kay Barrish, or anyone for that matter? He seemed like such a nice kid. I thought he was doing well.”

  “Doing well? He was an unpaid intern at Recipe for Success. He was an illegal, living on the edge, picking up day work, trying to survive. Desperate people do desperate things.” Takahashi blows out air and kicks at the sand again. “This is a tough one. I met Kay Barrish a couple of times, I saw her in action. She treated everybody from a senator to a cleaning woman with the same respect.”

  Erica nods. Finding Barrish’s killer transcends her journalistic instincts. It reaches right into her heart and soul. Erica believes deeply in
democracy and, like Barrish, is profoundly troubled by ideologues who cast compromise as a bad thing. Compromise builds unity, and unity is strength. A house divided will not stand. We’re all in this together. Barrish was America’s best hope—and she died in Erica’s arms.

  “Can I get a statement from you?” she asks Takahashi.

  “Keep it short. I’ve got work to do.”

  Erica’s pod only takes a couple of minutes to get ready. Lesli calls New York and Erica goes live. Takahashi sticks to the facts and so does she. The sun is starting to set and Erica—a small speck in the vast, unforgiving landscape—closes by stressing that the discovery of the body raises more questions than it answers.

  CHAPTER 38

  LESLI BOOKED THEM A FLIGHT from Palm Springs to El Paso. As the plane begins its descent, Erica looks out the window at the glittering nighttime sprawl of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico—separated only by the shimmering black ribbon of the Rio Grande. The plane lands and they head to an airport hotel, where Erica falls into a deep sleep.

  Lesli has arranged for a van and a Spanish-speaking driver to take them across into Mexico, and they set out early the next morning. The little bit of El Paso Erica sees looks poor and scruffy, but nothing prepares her for Juarez. As soon as they cross the border, any semblance of order disappears. The traffic is dizzying—cars, bicycles, and scooters dart in and out, cut each other off, fill the air with honks and curses. Shops seem to be exploding out of their storefronts, the sidewalks are filled with multicolor displays of everything from fruits to dresses to toys to electronics, music blares from tinny speakers. There are shaved-ice carts, tortilla stands, and stray dogs by the dozen.

  They drive through town and soon they’re in a vast slum that stretches as far as the eye can see. Thousands and thousands of shack-like houses jammed together, their walls leaning in ominous indecision, windowless, waterless. Wires carrying pirated electricity, barefoot children, smoke from ten thousand cookstoves mixing with the dust and sand to haze the air and—coupled with the filth—assault the nostrils.

  Children run alongside the van with their hands out, shouting for money. Adults stare warily as they pass. The driver turns down a narrow street, so tight it feels as if the van could knock against one of the houses and set off a domino reaction that would level half the slum. Then he stops. “This is it.”

  Erica and the driver get out. The house they are in front of looks just a little bit nicer than its neighbors. The outside is freshly painted, there’s a flowerpot beside the door, the curtains in the window look new. Erica knocks on the door, and an older teenage girl opens it. She looks smart and hard. The driver asks her name and she says, “Dolores.” Then he begins to explain in Spanish who they are and why they’re there.

  She cuts him off. “I speak English.” Then she turns to Erica. “And I know who you are. Arturo is my brother.”

  “Do you know . . .?”

  “That he’s dead? Yes, of course I know. It’s been all over television, all over the neighborhood. Thanks to you. What do you want? Why did you come here?”

  Erica motions to the driver and he returns to the van. “I’m very sorry,” she says.

  “No, you’re not. People like you play games with people like us. You get famous, you get rich. We die.”

  “I want to find out who killed your brother.”

  “I told him not to go to the States. I told him! Idiota! Estupido idiota! Estupido! Estupido Arturo!” Dolores clenches her fists and for a moment Erica is afraid the girl will hit her—but then her shoulders slump and her mouth opens and tears pour from her eyes. “Arturo, mi Arturo, mi hermano Arturo . . .”

  In that moment Erica hates her job, hates the voyeurism, the intrusion onto private sorrow. Is Detective Takahashi right, are we all vultures? She wants to put her arms around this girl, wants to bring her solace, wants to bring her brother back. But she can’t bring him back. And she didn’t kill Barrish or Yanez. In fact, she’s trying to find out who did. She takes a deep breath. She has a job to do.

  Dolores slowly pulls herself together—clearly this isn’t her young life’s first sorrow. She reaches into her jeans and takes out a tissue, blots her eyes and blows her nose. “Do you want to know why my brother is dead?” she asks in a remarkably matter-of-fact voice.

  Erica nods. Dolores leads her into the house. It’s just two small rooms, with a curtain over the doorway that leads to the back room. The front room has a rudimentary kitchen, several daybeds, and a flat-screen TV.

  Dolores pulls back the curtain. A woman who is probably forty-five but looks ninety is on the bed, skeletal, unconscious, near death. “This is our mother. Cancer is eating her alive. It is over. But a month ago she was still getting up, still eating. We had hope. Stupid us. There is a doctor who says he can cure cancer, but he wants twenty thousand dollars. Arturo sent ten thousand and said the other half would be coming soon. The doctor took the ten thousand and gave Mama some stupid blood treatment. But Arturo was so proud. He thought he bought Mama life.” She laughs bitterly. “But he bought himself death.”

  “Did he say where he got the money?”

  “He told me he won it gambling, but Arturo could never lie to me.” Dolores walks over to the bed and strokes her mother’s forehead.

  “So that’s all he said, he gave no hint of who paid him?”

  Dolores shakes her head.

  “We’ll find out who is behind all this. I promise.”

  Dolores sits on the side of the bed, takes her mother’s hand and kisses it, holds it to her cheek. “No matter what you do, it won’t bring Mama back. Or Arturo.”

  Erica heads out to the van and her flight back to New York. As she sits in her window seat looking down at the endless brown expanse of southern Texas, she feels frustrated but determined—the trip to Juarez didn’t bring her any closer to knowing who hired Yanez, but she’ll get there, yes she will.

  CHAPTER 39

  THE FIRST THING ERICA DOES the next morning is call Dirk.

  “Hi, Erica,” he says, antipathy dripping off the two words. He would never come out and admit it, but he’s jealous of her success. Erica knows she has to tread lightly.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Jenny’s birthday.”

  “We’re taking her on a whale watch tour. That’s what she wants.”

  “Our daughter, the marine biologist.” No response. “That sounds wonderful. Do you think she would enjoy coming down to New York and seeing where I work?”

  Dirk sighs. “It would be difficult logistically. I’m not just going to put her on a train by herself.”

  “Of course not. I’ll send a car and driver to come up and get her.”

  “ ‘Send a car and driver’? Honestly, Erica, success is ruining you.”

  Former husbands can be such a-holes.

  “I guess I flourished in failure.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she knows they’re a mistake.

  “I can live without your sarcasm. And I don’t think it’s in Jenny’s best interests to go down there. She’s finally settling down in school.

  Linda is a steadying influence. Being exposed to all that New York razzle-dazzle could easily throw her off.”

  “Linda is a steadying influence.” Which means one thing: Erica is an unsteadying influence. Here comes that mocking voice in her head: bad mother, bad mother, bad mother. Yes, she has been a bad mother, but that’s in the past. Today is today.

  “It’s just one day, Dirk, and the party is going to be small and low-key.”

  He sighs again, but this one sounds like surrender. Then there’s a long pause before, “Erica, I can’t provide for Jenny the way you can. She’ll
come home and see me as a disappointment.”

  Erica appreciates his honesty. Dirk is a high school history teacher. He’s basically a well-meaning guy. When they first met, Erica was attracted to his passion for history and his idealism about teaching. These days he’s in mid-burnout and he takes out his frustrations on Erica.

  “On the other hand, Dirk, she may spend one day here and say, ‘No thanks to that stress fest.’ ”

  Dirk chuckles. It’s a nice sound. Erica flashes back on a weekend camping trip they took in Vermont’s Green Mountains early in their courtship. Erica had never been camping but wanted to be a good sport. The first day out—after a dinner of slimy, lukewarm ramen noodles—they spent an unromantic night shivering on lumpy ground in a flimsy tent surrounded by animal noises that to Erica sounded like hungry bears licking their chops. She learned a valuable life lesson that night: man invented houses for a good reason. In the morning Erica pleaded with Dirk to head back to civilization. He chuckled—that sweet, indulgent chuckle of his—and packed up the tent.

  “Erica, are you on the beam with the drinking?” he asks, suddenly deadly serious.

  She wants to say, Do you really think I could function at this level and drink? But she holds her tongue. It’s a legitimate question. “I am, yes.”

  “All right then. Jenny can come. But just for the day.”

  Erica hangs up. So Jenny is coming down to see her next Monday. A birthday visit. How wonderful! Erica takes out her cards and deals a hand of solitaire, trying to convince herself that the visit doesn’t fill her with anxiety and dread.

  CHAPTER 40

  ERICA DUCKS INTO BETH ISRAEL Hospital. It’s a week since Mark was mugged, and she’s arranged to meet Dr. Kaminer in Mark’s room to discuss his progress. She’s wearing jeans, flats, and a cashmere pullover, and is hiding behind sunglasses and a scarf.

  She walks into Mark’s room. Chuck and Marie Benton are sitting at the foot of the bed, looking as if they haven’t moved in the week since he was attacked.