DECKER SAT IN his motel room staring at his laptop.
He had typed one word in and was checking the search results. Most people faced with pages of information tended to skim. Decker did not skim. He read it all thoroughly. And down near the bottom of the third page he found something of interest.
This took him to another search, and he read down these pages.
This, in turn, had led him to something of greater interest.
Then he sat back and drank from the glass of water next to his elbow as he listened to the rain beating down outside. He had heard that Texas had been in a prolonged drought. Well, they might just be coming out of it. He had never seen this much rain before, even in Ohio, where the weather could go through long stretches of inclemency.
He put the glass of water down, lining up the water ring precisely, though his thoughts were not nearly as aligned.
Chocha did mean “prostitute” in Spanish. And Decker had learned that the “female anatomy” that Mars had refused to say out loud under hypnosis was “vagina.” But chocha also meant something else in another regional dialect of Spanish. In a country other than Spain or Mexico. And that something else might be both informative and problematic.
And Decker didn’t know how to deal with the problematic part, at least right now.
Lucinda had said the word, not Mars’s father.
Yes, problematic.
A couple minutes later he was knocking on Mars’s door after speaking to the FBI agent standing guard there.
“I can tell from the look on your face you got more questions,” said Mars wearily when he opened it.
“I do.”
“You never get tired?”
“I get tired all the time. I’m fat and in crappy shape.”
“You’re not as fat as you were, Decker. You want to start working out with me?”
“I’d be dead in five minutes.”
“I’ll start off slow.”
“Maybe. Let me ask you something.”
Mars sighed and motioned him in. They sat in chairs next to the bed.
Decker said, “Did your mother have any family heirlooms?”
Mars laughed out loud. “Heirlooms? Shit, Decker. What, you think she had a pot of gold or something? You think we’d have been living like we were if she’d had damn heirlooms?”
Decker was unperturbed. “Maybe not gold. But how about silver?”
Mars looked like he was going to laugh again, but then he abruptly stopped. “Damn.”
“What?”
“She had a silver teapot.”
“Where did she say it came from?”
“Like her great-grandmother or something.”
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know. She kept it in the bedroom in her closet.”
“Did she polish it?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“How did she polish it?”
“What do you mean?”
“With a cloth?”
“Yeah.” He paused and concentrated, evidently thinking back. “But she would finish off the polishing with her—”
“With her fingers?” Decker interjected.
“How’d you know that?”
“You finish off polishing fine silver with your fingers. At least well-trained servants do. Or used to do.”
“Servant?”
“House cleaner, expert seamstress, silver polisher, professional clothes presser? Those are all skills of someone working as a servant in a very wealthy household. And that may be where the silver teapot came from.”
“Where would my mom have been a servant in a wealthy household? I mean, you’re talking like British royalty stuff.”
“Actually, you’d be surprised. And maybe it was also the place where she learned Spanish.”
“You think rich folks would’ve just given her a silver teapot?”
“No. I think she probably stole it.”
Mars rose and looked down at Decker. “My mother was no thief.”
“I’m not saying she was.”
“Then what the hell are you saying?”
“She might have been a slave in that household.”
“A slave. Are you serious? Where?”
“Did your mother use foul language?”
“Never. She was very proper in that way.”
“But she used the word chocha? Which could translate to ‘whore’ or ‘vagina’? That doesn’t seem very proper.”
Mars sat back down, looking confused. “Yeah, but she was upset. I told you that.”
“But it doesn’t fit the context of the argument she was having with your father. Where would a whore come in? Was she accusing your father of using a hooker or of being some kind of pussy?”
“No, my old man would never have cheated on her. And I don’t think anyone would call my father a pussy. And it wasn’t like she was angry at him. She was more scared than angry, really.”
“Which reinforces my point that the word doesn’t make sense. If you were using the typical Spanish translation,” he added.
“Is there an atypical one?” asked Mars warily.
“Spanish is obviously spoken in many countries. And other countries and other regions of other countries sometimes have very different translations for the same word.”
“And did you find one for chocha?”
“I did.”
“What country?”
“Colombia. More specifically the Cali region. That location is the basis for the theory I’ve come up with.”
“Wait, you’re saying my mom was from Colombia?”
“I’m not saying she was from there for certain, but at some point in her life I think she ended up there. Maybe against her will. Which is where the slave thing comes in.”
“Who the hell in Colombia was in the slave trade?”
“The drug cartels in Cali. I did some research. Back when the cocaine trafficking was centered in Colombia, drug czars would threaten the families of people and use that as leverage to keep them in harness. Or they would kidnap people, especially women, and use them as servants in their households. They took people from other countries, including the United States. I think your mom might have been one, but I think she escaped. And she took that silver teapot with her as partial repayment for what they did to her. It really was a shot in the dark on my part, and I could have been wrong. But I thought she might have taken something with her, just to get back at whoever was holding her.”
“And you’re sure it was Colombia? But how can you be?”
“Because of the translation. Apparently it’s particular only to the Cali area.”
“But you haven’t told me what the translation was.”
“Chocha in the Valluno dialect means ‘possum.’”
Mars stared blankly at him. “And why would a possum make any more sense than the other translations?”
Decker drew a long breath and then just said it.
“Principally, Melvin, because possums can play dead. Which seems to be exactly what your father did.”