That sharpness was probably why my response was inappropriately flippant: "No. It's a dog," I said.
One really shouldn't joke with security people of any kind while they are on the job; most have had to leave their sense of humor in their locker with their civilian clothes. He raised his eyebrow and opened the box, rooting inside with his blue-gloved hand—every employee at airport security looks like they're about to play doctor in some very unpleasant way these days. He snorted in surprise and jerked his hand out with the figurine not quite gripped in his sweat-sticky glove. You'd have thought the little dog had bitten him from the way he moved. His hand yanked back, jerking upward a little as the statuette cleared the edge of the box. The black object moved up, popping out of his loose grip, and arced into the air, ripping a slice of glove with one pointed ear as it went. It was like slow-motion film, watching it rise from safety and crash to the hard linoleum beneath our feet.
As it hit the floor, it flashed a panic-bolt of silver white into the Grey. The little clay dog shattered, a tiny bundle of dark fibers bouncing onto the floor amid the terra-cotta shards. With a silvery gasp, the flash rushed back toward the broken figurine and coalesced into the ghost of a dog.
The ghost dog looked around, then looked at me, and whined piteously. It was a rangy, mongrel beast with the shape of a stunted greyhound and the coat of a shaggy pony. It sidled up to me and leaned against my legs and I felt its cold Grey shape press against me with its memory of weight.
The customs agent looked at the smashed figurine and bent to pick the tiny knot from the wreckage. "Eh?" he mumbled. "What is this?"
I shrugged. "Hair?" I guessed.
He looked at it, rubbed it between his fingers, sniffed it. Then he motioned to one of his coworkers, who walked over and rubbed a small cloth swab over the little bundle. He put the swab into a machine while the first man moved me and my bags to another table deeper inside the security zone. Someone else swept up the bits of clay and put them in a plastic bag. The dog stuck to me like a shy toddler.
"Nada," said the man with the machine. "Este es pelo."
They put a little of the clay dust from the broken figurine into the machine, but that also yielded "nada." The customs agent looked sad as he finished inspecting my bag and closed it up, handing it and the bag of shards back to me with what almost looked like a contrite bow, and an apology for breaking my dog.
"De nada," I replied. Then I asked for the knot of fluff back, which he thought was odd, but he dug into the trash and retrieved it for me anyhow. I dropped it into the bag of broken ceramic—it wasn’t intact anymore, but better to keep it all together, just in case, I thought.
He handed me a claim form to fill out if the dog had been insured, and I took it, even though I doubted the figurine was valuable. I was sure it was the ghost that was the important thing.
The spirits of Mexico hummed and roared. The ghost dog pasted itself to my heels and shadowed me around the halls of the Mexico City airport as I tried to find a place to put down my bags and make a phone call. Of course, the place I found was a bar.
I threw myself and my bags down and ordered a beer while I called Nan on my cell phone. Seattle being close to the other border, I'd had international calling added to my service long ago. Sometimes I wondered how I'd managed without a cell phone so long. Other times I wished I still had my pager. It took a few minutes to get connected to Nan.
"Hello, Harper."
"Hello, Nan. Mexican customs broke the dog."
"Is it reparable?"
"No. But I have a major part of it," I added, looking at the cowering ghost at my ankles.
"Where are you?"
"Mexico City airport."
"Banda is located there. He may have instructions for that contingency."
She gave me his number. I wrote it on my cocktail napkin, as is traditional in that sort of situation. "If I call this guy, I may miss my connection to Oaxaca," I warned her. "I'm already running tight because of the mess at customs."
"I'll have Cathy reschedule you to a later flight and call you back with the information. Is there anything else?"
"No. I'll let Cathy know if anything is still out of whack when she calls."
"Good. Stay in touch." And she was off the phone as fast as that.
I finished my Negra Modelo and called the number on the napkin. I felt itchy from annoyance and lack of sleep—I don't get more than a fitful doze on planes, since my long legs end up cramped and headrests are never in the right place for me. I always longed to upgrade to first class, but the PI business usually comes with a tourist-class budget.
Guillermo Banda answered his own phone. He spoke English like a New Yorker as soon as he heard how bad my Spanish was.
"Miss Blaine! You're here! This is excellent! How is the perrito? The little dog?"
"Customs broke it."
"Fuck! Pardon me. My client would be very upset to hear it. If she weren't dead."
"Which is why I'm here at all." Talking to this guy was like talking to Lou Costello, and I was afraid I might start laughing. "I do have part of the dog and I could take that up to Oaxaca, if you think that would be in the spirit intended."
"I don't know…." There were noises in the background and he muttered away from the receiver something about Puerto Vallarta, which was rejoined by a feminine giggle.
I tried to keep him on track. "Well, if you could tell me what it was your client had in mind with this condition, I'm sure we can figure out a way to satisfy the spirit, if not the letter, of her request."
"That I also don't know. Miss Arbildo wasn't very… forthcoming."
"How long had she been your client, Mr. Banda?"
"Oh, years! Years and years! But we never spoke. She came in to update her will last year and before that we'd only seen each other twice. I inherited her account from my partner, who died a few years back in a plane crash. Horrible."
"Did your firm do any work for her aside from the will?"
"Well, the specifics are confidential, but yes. We did a little background investigative work for her and for her father—mostly routine checks. We managed her estate—her father's estate—and of course we'd been doing work for his company for many years. We work primarily with international and maritime law and his company was involved in quite a bit of international shipping. Handling Miss Arbildo's will and so on was more in line of a… courtesy."
"I see. Do you have any idea what her relationship was to Hector Purecete? The guy on whose grave the dog was supposed to be put."
"None at all."
"Damn. I wish I knew what she expected. This is kind of a pain in the butt. You don't have any idea what her intentions were in the will instruction?"
"No. Like I said, the woman was very strange."
I sighed. "Maybe if I could see the will itself we could figure this out. May I come to your office?"
"Oh, no," he said. "You'd never get here and back before your flight."
"I've already called Nan to change it."
"No, no… you don't understand—the traffic. Here's what I'll do. I'll bring it to you at the airport, if you have time."
"I'll make the time." I told him where I was and that he- should bring as much of the paperwork as he bad. He said it would take him an hour to get to the bar and I said that was fine. After all, I was still waiting for Nan's secretary to call me back.
I was thinking about ordering food when the phone went off, showing me Nan's office number on the ID. It was Cathy with my flight change and some additional information.