She frowned, looking at her half-empty glass as though blaming it. “Yes. Well, in a manner of speaking, she is a character I invented.” Her frown went away and she smiled, but without warmth. “If you had known me fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t have recognized me. I was . . . she was . . .” Cecilia Garza looked at Fisk sharply. A sudden change had come over her, a stiffness, a defensiveness, like the armor was suddenly clanking into place again. “I don’t like this conversation.”
Fisk could see what it was that angered her. There were two versions of this woman hiding inside one body. She and Fisk might have shared similarly unusual cop biographies. But they weren’t the same. Fisk had never really felt the way she obviously did. Had he avoided certain topics of conversation once he joined the force? Had he concealed the fact that his father had left him a trust fund—however modest it was? Had he been slow to parade his ability to speak five languages in front of other cops? Sure. There were things he didn’t talk about when he went out for a drink with the guys. He skipped the stories about vacations in the south of France when he was a kid. But he’d never felt like Jeremy Fisk was an invented character. Quite the reverse. In a lot of ways he felt like he’d only discovered the true Jeremy Fisk when he’d left the world of Ivy Leaguers and jet-setters.
It must have been very difficult to be Cecilia Garza.
She drew herself up very straight in her chair. Suddenly she seemed distant. “Look, perhaps this was a mistake, Detective. Virgilio is gone, and . . . here I am, drinking wine. With you.”
Fisk said, “That doesn’t seem like a bad thing, necessarily. We’re not going out dancing.”
Garza shook her head, as though to say, This is not what I do. “Again, I want to apologize for my rudeness earlier. It was uncalled for.”
Not only had her words gone formal, her voice had gotten hard. Even her accent had gotten stronger, as though her entire being were drifting back toward Mexico.
She pushed back her chair and stood.
“It’s getting late, Detective.”
Fisk extended his hand, motioning for her to stop. He almost pulled it back again, once he realized that . . . he did not want her to go.
“Don’t rush off,” he said. “Finish your wine, at least.”
She dug into her handbag, pulling out a twenty-dollar bill.
Fisk said, “You better not leave that here.”
She started to, then put it back inside her bag.
He said, “I think you’re running away, not walking.”
Her face grew masklike. “Is that therapy talk?”
“It’s real talk.”
“Good night.”
CHAPTER 49
Cecilia Garza was so angry, she was trembling.
Standing there, waiting for the elevator, not even remembering what floor her room was on. Tasting the Malbec on her tongue.
For a moment there, she’d thought that he was different. For a moment, she’d thought that they shared something. Two cops. Two people with similar burdens. Two people on opposite sides of the same border.
And then there had been the expression in his eyes. It was as though he was looking through the surface of her skin, like her face was made of glass and he was seeing right through it, seeing deeper, seeing the real Cecilia Garza.
She was no fool. She knew how men looked at her—how they had always looked. Women, too. The thing that made men gravitate toward her, she had found a way to make it useful. To counteract their hunger with starvation. To give them nothing and make them accept it.
One of the great reliefs of being in the PF was that once you were geared up—vest, helmet, mask, gun, boots—everyone looked the same. Inside the helmet and the mask, she was just a cop.
So she never took it off.
Not even when she saw Virgilio’s body floating facedown in that wretched cemetery pond.
She felt a tear reach the corner of her eye. She pushed the elevator button frantically.
Virgilio was dead. The man in the New York Yankees cap, the one on the cell phone: it was Chuparosa. He was near. She was close.
The elevator car arrived and she darted inside, waiting for the doors to close again. As soon as they did, she let out all her breath, trying to remember which floor number to press.
What had gotten into her with Fisk? Normally she did not allow herself the luxury of regretting that she had offended people. She never cared.
And now she felt she had offended him again.
Those dark, intent eyes . . . listening, actually listening, to every word she said. For years she had told herself that she was looking for a man who could look past her face, who could see the real Cecilia Garza. Not the Ice Queen. Not the cop. Not the beautiful woman. Past all of that.
And here he was. He’d looked past all of that, probed down into something underneath. And what had she done?
Thrown dirt in his face. Squandered it. Sabotaged herself.
Maybe the sad truth was that she truly did not want anyone looking into her soul. Maybe it was too late.
CHAPTER 50
Fisk sat there looking at Garza’s half-empty glass, finishing his own, and trying to find the server so he could get the hell out of there. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Okay,” said Garza, her hand leaving his shoulder as she settled back into her chair. “I’ll tell you how it really happened.”
It was impossible to say what the difference was, but the woman sitting across from him now barely resembled the woman who had left. She seemed younger, softer, less certain. It was still Cecilia Garza, still the same slim neck, the same high cheekbones, the same glossy black hair. But there seemed nothing of the comandante left in her.
Fisk shook his head. “How what happened?”
She drank another sip of wine. “My father was a very stern, practical man. He indulged me in certain ways, the way rich men do when they have a daughter. He was proud, but that pride came out in such a way that I believe he wanted a daughter who was . . . what? . . . an ornament? I don’t want to be cruel. But that was what was expected of the girls I knew back then. Grow up and be respectable, pretty, marry a guy whose dad owns a bank or a telecom company. Have multiple children. Put on nice parties.”
She shrugged, as though gesturing, Here I am.
“I never quite fit the mold. I tried to please him at first. I was a good student, didn’t drop out of school and smoke pot with American dopers or anything. But I started getting in trouble because I wouldn’t shut my mouth, drinking, staying out too late, jumping in the swimming pool naked.”
“Really,” said Fisk.
“Believe it or not. My father had a place in the country, and when we would go out there I would ride dirt bikes and shoot guns and climb rocks, or steal the Jeep and ride off-road. I broke my leg once. I was always smashing something I wasn’t supposed to or generally scaring the hell out of my parents. I was acting out, I suppose. I was an adrenaline junkie. Still am.
“Anyway, I felt like I spent my entire childhood trying to fight my way out of this correct little box that my mother and father had built for me. I always enjoyed drawing. So when I went to university, I thought I would be a painter. You know, I read all the books about Frida Kahlo and I thought I’d be this rebel artist genius fighting the conventions of society and . . .”
She sighed.
“As I said, I loved the ideal of the artist. The life! Sitting around in cafés, running counter to the prevailing culture, nobody to tell you how to live or how to dress or what to do. But that’s not reality. Reality is, you have to paint pictures. You have to make something profound and beautiful, not just nice and interesting. And after a few years of painting pictures, I could see in the eyes of my teachers . . . that they were not excited by my work. They weren’t even very stimulated. My goal was to set the world on fire with my art, not be a mere candle on a cake.