Dr. Brinkley's Tower Read online

  Also by Robert Hough

  The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

  The Stowaway

  The Culprits

  Copyright © 2013 by Robert Hough

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  First published in Canada in 2012 by House of Anansi Press, Inc.

  For information about permission to reproduce

  selections from this book, write to:

  Steerforth Press L.L.C., 45 Lyme Road, Suite 208,

  Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

  eISBN: 978-1-58642-204-2

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  As always, to Suzie, Sally and Ella

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Uno

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Dos

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Tres

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  { UNO }

  { 1 }

  FRANCISCO RAMIREZ STOOD FRETTING BEFORE AN antique full-length mirror framed in strips of shellacked mesquite. It was a fine piece of craftsmanship, hand-built and intricate with detail; if you looked closely, you could see deer heads carved into the frame, each one gazing bemusedly in a different direction. The mirror, one of the family’s few notable possessions, had come to the Ramirez clan almost a century ago, when Francisco’s great-great-great-grandfather presented it to his reddening fourteen-year-old bride on their wedding night. Mi querida, he’d reportedly told her, you are growing lovelier each and every day. Now you can watch it happen as well.

  It was now 1931, the long, bloody years of the revolution still a fresh wound. The mirror, meanwhile, had been put to daily use by five generations of the family. While it had generally been well cared for, the passage of time had nevertheless taken a toll. There was a spidery hairline crack near the bottom, the result of its having been dropped during one of its many relocations, and the surface was beginning to undulate slightly, not unlike the Coahuilan desert itself. The glass had also started to acquire a dull copper patina, such that it now cast reflections of a slightly seaweed hue. As a result, more than one Ramirez had looked at his or her reflection and erroneously concluded that the carne seca served at dinner had somehow been tainted.

  The mirror’s real dissolution had occurred during the revolution, when government soldiers were continually requisitioning goods for the war effort, only to spend the proceeds in houses of ill repute. In an attempt to save the mirror, Francisco’s father had placed it in an old municipal grain hopper, where it was hidden beneath a mound of wheat that had been deliberately left to ferment, thus repelling tax collectors with its ammonia reek. When the family finally retrieved their cherished artifact, the wood had permanently absorbed the aroma. No amount of scrubbing, they soon discovered, could stop it from emitting the sour, vinegary odour of a gringo scouring product.

  Given these shortcomings, the mirror had been relegated to the bedroom used by Francisco, who was now assessing himself in the turbulent, hypercritical way of all adolescents. It was mid-afternoon, and the thin chambray curtains over his bedroom window, drawn to keep out the brutalizing heat, glowed orange.

  The problem, as he saw it, was his nose. Three years ago, in a game played on the municipal pitch out by the old Spanish mission, Francisco had inadvertently used it to stop a drive by a muchacho known for the lethality of his right foot. While doubled over in a pained, breathless silence, Francisco had grabbed the appendage, which now extended laterally from his face, and instinctively pushed it back into place. The other players looked on, amazed that he was still on his feet.

  The accident had rendered the bridge of his nose somewhat lumpy in appearance, not unlike the backbone of a spiny armadillo. It was the mildest of disfigurements, and one that had not bothered him in the ensuing years. (In fact, if you asked the majority of the town’s young women, they would tell you that the accident had only added to Francisco’s rugged appeal.) In recent months, however, the equanimity with which he regarded his appearance had vanished, along with his ability to concentrate, sleep soundly, or generate anything resembling an appetite.

  Ay, he thought to himself. You need the help of an expert.

  He took a deep breath, crossed the room, and left the dank, crumbling row house in which he lived with his father, his grandmother, and his two young brothers. Walking with his head down, a means of avoiding the many pits and chasms in the street, he moved along Avenida Hidalgo, which formed the southern border of his native town, Corazón de la Fuente. He then bisected the town’s arid main plaza, causing several neighbouring busybodies to wonder where Francisco Ramirez might be heading. Upon reaching the east side of the plaza, just beyond the town’s pitiful church, he entered a narrow side street that led to Corazón’s second, smaller plaza. Little more than a mounding of dry, sun-baked earth, it was surrounded by a traffic circle that serviced a trio of similarly dry and sun-baked laneways.

  Facing this plazita was the home and business of an eighty-eight-year-old Casanova named Roberto Pántelas. For decades he had made his living by grinding corn, wheat, and coffee beans, and for this reason was referred to by most as the molinero. Yet he was best-known for his understanding of the fairer sex, having bedded somewhere between seven and eight thousand specimens during his long, virile life. Francisco found him sitting on a low wooden bench. Feeling the cool thrown by Francisco’s shadow, the molinero lifted his craggy, age-weathered face.

  — Francisco Ramirez, he croaked. — My young compadre. You startled me.

  — Hola, Señor Pántelas.

  — Please, sit down. Keep an old man company.

  Francisco lowered himself, a comfortable silence settling between the two. Finally, Francisco felt compelled to speak.

  — Señor … I was wondering if you might help me.

  The molinero slowly looked in the teenager’s direction.

  — Help you? How?

  — Could you tell me … How do I … win the affection of a young woman? A young woman who is showing no signs of interest?

  The old man thought for a moment. — By any chance, are we talking about the lovely and serious-minded Violeta Cruz?

  Francisco nodded, for some reason feeling foolish. In a town with only eight hundred or so residents, all it had taken was a few indiscreet glances, along with an ill-timed blush or two at the mention of her name, and the understand
ing that Francisco Ramirez was yet another young man who had fallen for Violeta Cruz now followed him wherever he went.

  — Sí, he answered dejectedly.

  The molinero chuckled warmly. — Nothing like setting your sights high. She’ll be a tough nut to crack, that one. Of course, if my old eyes are still working as they should, it’ll be worth the effort.

  Francisco couldn’t help himself. He grinned and nodded.

  The molinero pondered, his milky eyes gazing into the middle distance, his spotted hands quivering in his lap. His breath slowed so considerably that Francisco feared the old man had chosen that moment to enjoy one of his several daily siestas. Yet just as Francisco was about to touch the molinero on the shoulder, he turned slightly and began to speak.

  — Why not invite her to tomorrow’s festivities?

  — I was thinking of that. You think she might accept?

  The molinero shrugged his shoulders and grinned. — Ay, Francisco, she’s a woman. How would I know? They’re as unpredictable as desert fire. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be worth the bother.

  Francisco chuckled, thanked the old man, and prepared to take his leave. Just as he was rising to his feet, the molinero spoke up.

  — There is one other thing you could try.

  — And what is that?

  — A little prayer wouldn’t hurt.

  { 2 }

  THAT NIGHT, A BAND OF DRY HEAT, ORIGINATING somewhere in the saguaro fields of central Arizona, settled like a tarp over Corazón de la Fuente. During the hour or two before dawn, the town’s pink and blue adobe houses began to warm up prematurely, causing many of the residents to rise early. Francisco awoke in darkness and lay motionless in the thick, gloomy air. He finally rose and splashed water on his puffy face. He then swept the stoop, started a low fire with dried huizache branches, and treated the family pig to a slop of fruit peel and millet. Shortly afterwards the sun rose, blazing. By nine in the morning the local crows had all taken refuge in nests made of pirated string, the desert vultures had stopped looking for carcasses, and even the crickets, normally lovers of incinerating heat, had become too listless to convincingly rub their hind legs together. This pitched the town into a dense, ominous silence. Everything stilled, and waves of heat rose from the dusty, pitted laneways. The breeze vanished as though it had never existed, causing the palo verde trees lining the central plaza to cease rustling and turn quiet.

  Francisco spent that morning at home, attempting to move as little as possible. After a lunch of chicken soup and tortilla, he turned in for a siesta, only to find that his heart would not permit the arrival of sleep. He lay looking up at the ceiling, spotting shapes in the swirls of lime wash, listening to his little brothers snore like hamsters in the bed next to his. Gradually he surrendered to the lightest form of sleep, whereby the mind, although still conscious, creates the most addled of thoughts.

  Around five o’clock that afternoon, a light breeze arose and downgraded the day’s intolerable heat to one that was merely sweltering. Though movement was now possible, it was accompanied by a sprouting of moisture on the brow, beneath the arms, and in the hollows behind the knees. Francisco dressed, washed his face with basin water, and combed his hair. He then nodded a goodbye to his father, kissed the portrait of his mother adorning the sill of the living room window, and stepped into the dusty street.

  He paused and watched the village slowly come to life. If he wasn’t mistaken, there was a cautious expectation in the air, a simmering anticipation that had not been felt for years. Whereas Saturday-night fiestas had once been part of the municipal routine, one had not been enjoyed since the outbreak of fighting, a date so long ago that many of Corazón’s children had no idea that such a tradition existed. Yet tonight, thanks to the efforts of twin brothers named Luis and Alfonso Reyes, the town would gather on the most festive night of the week, the men dressed in clean white shirts, the women in ruffled, clinging dresses. Already families were making their way towards the centre of the village, clouds of hot white dust rising into the air as they walked.

  Yet there was another, more germane reason why those walking towards the plaza exhibited a certain spryness in their step. About six months earlier, a wealthy American businessperson had contacted both the town’s mayor and, apparently, the governor of the state of Coahuila. The gringo’s name was Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, and he was planning to start his own radio station just over the border, in the town of Del Rio, Texas. To achieve his broadcasting aims he intended to build an immense radio tower in a field just outside Corazón de la Fuente, so that the strength of his signal would not be compromised by what he felt were limiting, small-minded American broadcast regulations. (Here is where the information strayed into the territory of rumour, rumour so juicy and salacious that the old women of the town couldn’t repeat it without girlishly tittering: it seemed that Dr. Brinkley had grown rich performing some sort of operation that treated the most humiliating problem a red-blooded Mexican hombre could experience.)

  Francisco walked west along Avenida Hidalgo until he reached a small street running northward. Midway along this block was the tiny two-room house occupied by Violeta Cruz and her widowed mother, Malfil. Like every home in Corazón, it was not in good repair. Chunks of adobe were falling from the facade and ceramic tiles were missing in the roof, such that when it rained, the floor had to be decorated with buckets and large basins. Adjacent to the house was a tiny dead-end street called the Callejón de Perros, so named because the town’s stray dogs all gathered there after a long day of rooting through garbage and spreading canine-borne infections. Ordinarily they slept so tightly clumped that, in the dark, the laneway looked as though it were surfaced with a lumpy burlap matting. On this afternoon, however, the alley was empty, the dogs already at the central plaza, awaiting the scraps and litter that the crowd would surely leave behind.

  He knocked.

  Violeta answered. — Francisco, she said. — What brings you here?

  — Violeta … I was just heading to the plaza, and I was wondering if you’d come with me.

  As Francisco awaited an answer, his world gained a hallucinatory glimmer, with small movements magnifying in scope, intensity, and colour: Violeta sweeping a lock of jet-black hair off her face, Violeta taking a portion of ruby lip between her white teeth, Violeta turning to see if her mother was watching. Time slowed, and the air around him grew thin.

  — Ay, Francisco. It’s just that …

  — That’s all right, he interrupted. — I understand.

  She peered at him for a moment or two. — No, she finally said. — I mean that I just have to get my shawl.

  Ten minutes later, Francisco and Violeta entered the central plaza, the site of so many roving gun battles during the throes of the revolution. Many of the houses ringing the plaza were still marred by bullet holes, and the remaining trees in the square all had a grey, denuded quality, their trunks perforated with shrapnel. The town hall, which occupied an entire block along the north of the plaza, was still aerated by the cannon fire directed towards it during a battle between government forces and a splinter group composed of Villistas, anarchists, and American-born mercenaries. But the worst off was the town’s church, lovingly erected by the Spanish in the mid-1600s. During that same skirmish, a grenade had landed in an open window of the spire, causing the tall conical structure to fall away from the rest of the building and land in ruined, tamale-sized fragments. The spire had not yet been rebuilt, the townsfolk reasoning that at any moment the lingering embers of the revolution could reignite and their beloved town church might yet again become a magnet for lobbed explosives. Of course, this reluctance was compounded by another, withering fact: nobody had any money for bricks.

  As Francisco and Violeta neared the bandstand in the centre of the plaza, they saw that someone had wrapped scissored paper around the four wrought-iron columns that marked the corners of the elevated stage. In this way the stand was transformed into an ersatz wrestling ring, the lab
oriously produced papel picado taking the place of ropes.

  Already spectators were beginning to seat themselves according to their status in the town. Occupying the black wrought-iron benches nearest the bandstand were the town’s most important persons, a roster that included the mayor, the village priest, the town’s wealthiest man, and, it goes without saying, the owner of the local cantina. On the next row of decorative benches sat the town madam and her working girls, a privilege honouring their status as the town’s most significant businesspersons. While every member of Madam’s infamous stable was named Maria, each had a different surname, selected by Madam Félix herself. These included Maria del Sol, Maria de las Rosas, Maria de los Flores, Maria de los Sueños, Maria de la Mañana, Maria del Mampo (who happened to be a transvestite from the state of Oaxaca), Maria de las Montañas (a name earned because she was blonde and angelic, as though descended from the most altitudinous tips of the Sierra Madres), and last but not least, Maria de la Noche (who, due to the suggestiveness of her name and the sinful burst of her hips, was a favourite amongst Madam’s gringo clients).

  Behind them were the town’s rank and file: women, mostly, their men lost to armies raised by both the rebel Pancho Villa and the dictator Porfirio Díaz. Though many of them were still young, the collective impression they gave was one of age; mourning had caused their shoulders to hunch, the corners of their mouths to point downwards, and their once olive skin to turn ashen. Their sadness was so ample, in fact, that it was not adequately contained by their individual selves but seemed to emanate from their bodies like the glow of a kerosene flame, infecting the tenor of the entire town. Seated with them, however, were the promises of the future: sons and daughters who had been too young to fight and who, unlike many of the adults, possessed all their limbs and the whole of their sanity. These included Francisco and Violeta, who were moving towards a pair of unoccupied seats.

  The last row contained the town’s impoverished, most of whom lived in a collectivized settlement called an ejido in the east end of the town; squat and dark-skinned, they were mostly of Indian descent, with wrinkles so deeply etched into their faces they looked like devices intended to collect rainwater. Finally, at the very back of the gathering, standing on an overturned crate, was a wrinkled gnome of a woman whom the fine people of Corazón de la Fuente referred to as either Señora Azula or, more commonly, and with a slight derision in their voices, the curandera. While she was generally feared — there were those who believed she had mated with the devil, producing a demon child who had gone on to become one of Villa’s most psychopathic lieutenants — she nonetheless played a key role in Corazón’s antiquated and otherwise non-existent medical system. Those suffering from maladies not associated with embarrassment — colds, stomach disorders, broken limbs, vaporous infections — donned their Sunday best and crossed the border into Texas, where they consulted one of the doctors in the town of Del Rio. Those suffering, however, from venereal disease, unwanted pregnancy, emotional illness, alcohol addiction, or any brand of genital sore would, under cloak of darkness, sneak to the cottage of the curandera, who kept hours befitting an owl. Distrustful of money, she accepted chickens, bolts of cloth, and root vegetables in return for a consultation.