Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

The morning Brodie Bancroft was scheduled to report to begin his incarceration, his attorney found the astronaut’s body in his Mercedes SL 450 Roadster. The suicide note read simply: I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t have an affair with that woman. I will not go to prison. Ainsworth heard about it from his buddy in homicide.

He drove to a convenience store and bought a Houston Chronicle . Back at his office, he read the details of the suicide. After a few minutes of contemplation, Ainsworth called Curtis and asked him to drop by the office.

When the introverted accountant entered the room, he held out his hand in greeting, just as he had the first time the two men met. Again, Ainsworth ignored the outstretched hand and told Curtis to have a seat. Then he began.

“I know what you did, Curtis. You shot your wife with the pistol she bought from Bancroft.”

It was impossible to detect any reaction. Curtis’s body shrank into the seat as if he were trying to hide, but that was how he’d always sat. “Mr. Ainsworth, I’m surprised you would think such a thing. What would make you believe that?”

Ainsworth noticed, then, just a hint of a smile on Curtis’s lips. Or was it a smirk? It was accompanied by a vague sense of self-confidence the detective had barely seen in any of their previous meetings.

Curtis continued: “You have no proof of anything. I will concede to you and only you that I suggested Jennifer needed a weapon for self-protection and showed her an ad in the newspaper. But your accusations are just that. And, of course, I would deny even this conversation, if asked.”

Smiling broadly now, the accountant stood, nodded his head at Ainsworth, and walked toward the door. He paused, turned back, and added, “You know, I shouldn’t have had to suggest you look at the murder scene. You should have gone there the day I hired you.” With that, he was out the door.

Ainsworth walked to his makeshift home at the back of the office and reached into the cardboard-box liquor cabinet.

He’d never regretted killing the abusive pedophile, though it had cost him his career. The little girl’s face had been with him every day since. Now, it would be replaced by that of a swashbuckling astronaut.

He poured a full cocktail glass of Scotch, and thus began the rest of Donovan Ainsworth’s miserable life.

Spring

Xitlali leans on the bar at her other job as a Mexican restaurant waitress, five hours into her shift, feeling the bags under her eyes deepen. A customer waves her over to his table, to pay the tab for four margaritas and three cervezas, drunk and alone on a Tuesday at five p.m. He has a sad aura about him, thick and gloomy-colored like cough syrup.

“Ah-kee ten-go el dee-naro.”

“I speak English, sir,” Xitlali says.

He hands over cash and barely leaves a tip. Xitlali yawns and doesn’t bother to offer a blessing, as much as it seems he could use one. Dios mío , she thinks, prayers and alcohol are the two most abused inventions in human history. Any method to not completely accept this reality will do. That’s when the phone in her pocket vibrates. She walks outside and answers.

“Curandera Zaragoza, we have an assignment for you. Es urgente.”

“It can’t wait?”

“We tried calling other curanderas, Xitlali. No one else wants to touch this.”

“Why is that?” Xitlali asks, leaning against the brick exterior of the Mexican restaurant and watching out for her coworkers.

“This client is gay. The other curanderas say they cannot save a sinner from himself. We know it’s short notice, but can you take it?”

“Ay, pues... of course. If evil does not discriminate, why would I?” Xitlali says as she pulls her notepad from her back pocket. Desgraciadas. “Digame.”

“Jose Benavidez has been experiencing a haunting. Says that every night, while walking home from work, there’s a presence that follows him. Won’t say what exactly. Says he might encounter it again tonight.”

“Has there been physical interaction?”

“No.”

“Bien,” Xitlali mutters, scribbling onto her notepad. She can sense his energy already, tense yet weakened by anxiety. Pobrecito. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Bien, bien, bien. Mira, the code is 1448 to get into the gate. Complex is called Cherry Pointe. Apartment 13.”

“Gracias. Que Dios le bendiga.”

“Que Dios le bendiga, Curandera Zaragoza.”

After closing all her tabs and sneaking out of the restaurant an hour early, Xitlali jumps into her 2004 Ford Taurus with over 138,000 miles on the engine and leaves for the complex, fifteen minutes away. The air is thick with blaring lights like cheap knockoff suns. Every stoplight turns red, as though trying to slow her reaching Jose Benavidez. Xitlali uses these short pauses to turn and sort through her messy backseat, littered with clothes, various documents, and crumbs from the many dried herbs she uses day to day. I gotta make time to sort through all this shit. Always something. Juan Gabriel sings sadly through the radio.

As Xitlali pulls up to the apartment complex’s box to enter the code, she can feel music and taste food grilling. She’s so hungry she can’t think of the code. Notepad out, she looks for the page, flipping through scribbles on other cases she’s solved.

Mayra Montevideo — Heights

Curse from a lover

Space purified with Sage, Oracion

Salvador Trujillo — Midtown

Rashes from bad energy

Recommended oils and scents

Referred to Curandera Gabriela Herrera who specializes in herberia, Oracion

Muriel Falfurrias — East End

Fevers

Blessed her belongings & space, Oracion

Xitlali gains some confidence, remembering she helped solve these cases and many more in her other notepads. This will be no different ... but I have a bad feeling .

As she parks, she sees where the sounds and smells are coming from. In the apartment complex clubhouse a quinceañera is underway. Xitlali can tell from the strobe lights, cumbia pounding out from speakers, the drunk uncle standing before a grill loaded with carne asada, and a young woman in a light-blue dress with rhinestones lined vertically on the bustier, sequins and pearls in a swirl design on her belly, the gown raining down the rest of her body like thin tissue. Her silver crown peeks out of her hair, styled in a bouffant. She’s gorgeous .

A grand sadness yearns out of her heart. Xitlali hasn’t spoken to her own daughter in twelve years. She tries not to think about it. There used to be a picture of her daughter on her dashboard, but Xitlali took it down awhile ago, so as not to be reminded. Bad energy for the job . She looks at the spot where it was, a patch of plastic darker than the rest of the dashboard. Twelve years. Not a word. I can’t do anything about it right now. Twelve years, carajo . Her tire bumps into the curb, waking her from her trance.

Xitlali gears up: three vials on a chain around her neck (one full of sage, one of holy water, and one with a tiny doll made of wire and various colors of string), ajo in her pocket, and a case of tools and containers with crystals, holy water, and herbs.

What makes Xitlali special is that she goes deeper than most curanderas. Rather than just addressing the symptoms of a haunting or bad energy, she investigates what caused the problem. Her clients love this about her.

She finds apartment 13 and knocks. She can feel a headache coming on from hunger, and her ankles are swollen from standing around all day.