Chapter 13: Halloween at the Yard

The goddaughter arrived on the Thursday before Halloween with three suitcases and a ring light.

I met her on Friday at the equipment yard, in a witch hat, holding a bucket of candy.

Every year the company threw a Halloween party for the crews' kids behind the office on San Bernardo.

Abuelo started it in 1988, when one of his welders couldn't afford a costume for his daughter.

Now there were hay bales, a bounce house, and a dump truck the kids could climb into with a flashlight.

My job was the candy table.

I had been doing the candy table since I was eleven.

"Trick or treat," said a very small Spider-Man.

"Take two," I said. "Don't tell your sister."

He took five.

Thirteen days.

That was how long it had been since Iturbide Street.

The silver sedan sat on my street every night now, under the neighbor's pecan tree, with the engine off.

The old man with the hose had started bringing the investigator coffee, to annoy him.

Mateo hadn't come to my door again.

He couldn't.

He'd come back from his mother's that Sunday with a face.

"She put the picture in a folder," was all he said. "She said December."

Since then he'd been Ibarra at work and a chair across the table on Sundays.

At six the black pickup pulled into the yard.

Mateo got out.

So did she.

She was tall and glossy, in a black catsuit and little cat ears, with a laugh you could hear over the generator.

She took his arm.

Lupe appeared beside me in a hi-vis vest and a plastic tiara.

"What are you?" I asked.

"A princess who operates heavy machinery." She took a Snickers out of my bucket. "What's she?"

"A cat."

"A cat with very straight teeth." Lupe chewed. "Orthodontist. Of course she is. Look at that smile. That's a smile she sells."

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