Sugarland - Chapters 1-5 - Page 15

     She wore no jewelry. Thin makeup, or none at all. Long lashes, elevated cheeks, a delicate chin. The kind of face that must inspire those Mexican songs about love and passion and blood. A beautiful girl, huh? But those eyes, disturbing, disturbed, as if some dark memory had roosted within her at the instant of the shutter's click.

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Precy Sanchez closed the door when she saw it was me. She wouldn't open it again. When she heard my voice on the phone, she hung up and didn't answer it anymore.

     Collins was supposed to leave on Wednesday. Early Monday morning I parked across the street from her apartment, but she must have gone out the back when she left for work. The switchboard at Magnin's put me through—she worked in accounting, they said—but when I spoke to her, the line went dead, and when I tried again they wouldn't connect me.

     At four-thirty I went down to Union Square, stood outside Magnin's and watched the front door. The sidewalk got busy. I lost sight of the door more than once, and when I spotted her she was already standing in line at a bus stop.

     The bus chuffed in as I worked my way across the grain of the crowd.

     “Precy,” I said. I touched her elbow.

     “Go away,” she said. She yanked her arm free and turned away from me.

     “We are going all the way on this one,” I said to the back of her head. “No free pass this time. We're going to pull him down, and when he falls, you fall too.”