Mean Streets

myself as a long-dead man, Hector Purecete, who would not mind. At first I did it to be near Consuela and later, when they thought they'd killed me, to watch over my daughter.'

Bones and wings rustled in the darkness and a sigh of unearthly wind brought another ghost to the party.

'Papa.'

We all turned to look at the smaller spirit that had walked up to Hector Purecete's grave. She wouldn't have been very tall in life, but she had probably had her father's build. A gleaming, oil-black nimbus surrounded her, shivering off the white surface of her dress. The memory of her face was still strong, creating a translucent veil of phantom flesh and expression over the visible bones of her skull. So this was Maria-Luz Carmen Arbildo.

The dog jumped into the air and barked in joy, running to tangle under her feet.

The ghost woman laughed and patted the dog. Then she looked sharply at me. 'You brought him. But what happened? He should not be loose already.'

'The statue was broken at customs,' I answered. 'I think Guillermo Banda paid someone to do it.'

'That bastard… I hate him. More than I ever hated Jimenez for what he did.'

I opened my mouth to ask her how she'd known what Jimenez had done-though I thought I knew-but was cut off by a shriek of eldritch wind.

'Don't dare!'

'Dare what? To tell the truth?' Maria-Luz screamed, turning to the latest arrival.

This skeleton ghost was dressed in a suit-possibly the one he'd died in-much like Banda's suit. I guessed this must be Jimenez since he'd come when named, and he was royally pissed about it.

'Bruja. Your father knew what you were up to. We followed you for your own good!'

'Liar!' she shouted, smacking him across his grinning, naked jaw with her bone-claw hand. 'Leon Arbildo was not my father. That's why you followed me. That's why you spied on me and my real father. You said you were looking for him, but you weren't. You tried to hide him from me-you tried to take him from me when I was still a child. That's why you wrecked the boat, why you killed all those people. To get rid of my father!' So she had known about Jimenez, about Arbildo's sinking of the boat, and about the graves Jimenez had not reported to her. No wonder she'd been mad when he died.

'You don't know the truth, Luzita. The Dulcia sank because it was old.'

Still more ghosts flooded toward our little huddle of misery, perhaps a dozen, all drenched in seawater. I spotted Ernesto Santara, but he didn't look at me. He kept his empty gaze on the ghost of Jimenez. He was no longer a pleasant haunt, but an angry one. The drowned crew moved toward the dead lawyer and Iko stalked along with them, hackles raised, teeth bared.

'My dog!' Maria luiz screamed at me. 'Give me my dog!' I held up the bundle of hair and pot shards. 'This?' I asked.

Maria-Luz lunged at me. Mickey leapt to his feet but I'd already pulled a bit of the Grey between us and the furious woman's shade recoiled with a screech.

'Mickey, keep her back,' I said, in the calmest voice I could muster.

'Me? How?'

'Just like you kept Senora Acoa from dying. Just put out your hands and send that feeling toward Maria-Luz.'

Jimenez was backing away, starting to fade, but I grabbed him, sinking my fingers into the stinging electrical fire of his ghostly form.

'No, no. You have to face the music, Counselor,' I said.

Mickey was talking as fast as he could, crooning, and holding his hands between himself and Maria-Luz. The gold strings spun out from his fingertips, stroking over her, making her more solid, more alive-seeming. She began to cry.

Jimenez struggled in my grip. 'Let me go, puta local'

I waved the bundle of Iko's figurine at him. 'You want me to give this to her? You dodged this bullet before, but I can make sure it hits you this time.' I was guessing, but I knew Maria-Luz had not meant any comfort for Jimenez when she'd tried to have Iko sent to him before. Iko jumped and snapped at him, snarling.

Jimenez froze and the crew gathered tight around him. I let him go so they could hold him prisoner themselves. They muttered to him and the sound raised the hair on my arms.

Mickey shot me a panicked look over his shoulder and I stepped closer to him. Maria-Luz was still standing in front of him, looking almost solid, while Hector hovered just behind her, clucking and making the soothing noises people murmur to upset children.

'It's all right, Mickey. You can stop.' 'But-I-what-?' 'Ask Tio Munoz.'

Mickey jerked his gaze back and forth, searching for the bogeyman. We were creating a ruckus. The other partiers in the cemetery were beginning to look our way with curiosity.

I sat down on my stool and tried to act like there was nothing at all strange at our feast of souls. I bobbed my head and let my feet tap in time with the brass and strings of the mariachis nearby. I motioned to Maria-Luz, who wafted closer. Jimenez was still petrified in the circle of dead sailors.

'All right,' I started. 'You tried to give the dog to Jimenez before, then you decided to give it to Hector, and then you gave it to me to give to Hector. Why?'

She hung her head. 'At first, I was angry. Iko never liked those lawyers-'

'A good judge of character,' Hector injected. 'Iko was all I had after Papa-went away. And when Iko died, that was all I knew how to do, all I could think of to keep him for a little longer-to take me to Mictlan someday.'

'Some people think this is a very bad kind of magic.' 'It's not. It's just… the dark kind. The death magic. What is death but part of life? And my dog was dead. I had done bad things with the magic when I was angry at that… man who called himself my father,' she spat, 'but I never meant harm with keeping Iko. But I found out Jimenez had lied to me. He had never tried to find out what happened to my father. He spied on me and he took the information to Leon and they tried to kill my father a third time so he had to run here and hide. I was so angry when I found out what he had done, I wanted to punish him! I thought Iko would keep him from Mictlan. Keep him in limbo and torment, forgotten but never released to the third death, wandering the way he had done to the sailors on the Dulcia.'

'Tell the rest, pequena' Hector urged.

She sobbed for a moment. Mickey sat next to me, wide-eyed and still, watching the ghostly woman weep until she raised her head and looked at him. 'You understand the magic, you know how hard it is… to be good. It was so hard, but I thought I should do a better thing. I changed my will so Iko would go to my father, to help him find the road, and I gave all the money for the families of the sailors. Leon and the insurance company gave them nothing. I thought I could repair the wrong, even if the magic was a little… dark.'

'But the will I saw doesn't give the money to the families of the Dulcia's crew.'

'No.' She hung her head, ashamed. 'Banda changed it. I don't know why I thought he was different than Jimenez. They were both charming liars…' 'Banda forged your will.'

She nodded. 'He is my father's man, even after death. Just like that pig,' she added, spitting in Jimenez's direction. Her spittle hissed and raised a red spark on the ground where it hit. Jimenez recoiled, but kept silent. Hector tapped her again and motioned her on. Maria-Luz sighed the smell of earth and copal. 'The spirits told me of you. I was sick with the cancer that killed me, but they came when I called and they said you could fix the horrible mess of this. I believed them. I told Banda to give the dog to you. 1 thought you could solve my puzzle of the graves, find out what had happened and make it right. And my papa and Iko could be together again.'

'So… this bit of junk controls Iko's soul…'

Maria-Luz and Hector nodded together.

I studied the bit of hair and thread. I glanced at Mickey.

'What do you think? Eternal torment for Jimenez? Or can we do something else with this?'

The boy was trembling. 'Why are you asking me?' he demanded.

'Because you have the magic. And Maria-Luz doesn't anymore. She's dead, Mickey. She can't change the things she did.'

'I don't have any magic! Just the ghosts! That's why I read up on the Santisima Muerte-so I could use the ghosts for magic,' he finished in a harsh whisper.

'You already have the magic. You do. Look at your hands.'

'They're just hands!'

'Look at them the way you look at the ghosts-sideways, through the worms and lights and crazy mist. Look softly.'

He stared down at his gangling, oversized paws, flexing them slowly in and out of fists and turning his head side to side. Tears began to well and fall over his lower lids as he stared without blinking. 'It's-there's something on my fingers…'

'Yeah. That's it. That glowy stuff. Real magic, brat-boy. Live magic.'

He stared at me. 'Do you-?'

I shook my head. 'No. I don't have anything like that. I just see ghosts.' That wasn't strictly true, but that wasn't the time for messy little details. 'But I can tell you that's life magic, not death magic. If you die, it goes away. That's what's happened to Maria-Luz.'

He glanced all around the panteon, taking note of the ghosts, the living, the dead… and Tio Munoz, who sat on the ground among the tombs of the Arbildos and smiled at us, glimmering with a golden sheen.

'What do you think?' I asked again. 'Should we sic Iko on Jimenez for eternity? Poor old Iko, faithful unto death and beyond. I'm not sure he deserves an eternity spent snapping at the heels of this scum.'

'No,' the lawyer agreed, and was silenced again by the drowned crew that surrounded him.

Maria-Luz and Hector hung on the moment, watching Mickey.

'What… what about the other one? The guy who faked the will?'

'Banda,' I supplied. 'Yeah, he's a piece of work.'

'Can you-?'