Chapters (16)
Which fit a pattern: whenever Vilcapampa Senior seemed on the verge of being in the public eye, the shell companies would retreat and he would move on to something else. But he rarely parted with the properties, clearly preferring they lie derelict than be sold to anyone else. In 2007, perhaps at Silvina’s initiative, a lot of money had been sunk into trying to create a second storage palace farther up the mountain, and they’d even broken ground. Perhaps to salvage the initial investment. But then the 2008 recession hit, and Silvina or her father had decided to abandon the idea. Leaving just a storage unit business in the foothills that dipped in and out of the red. Tax shelter?
Shortly thereafter, it felt as if her father had lost his last scrap of patience with Silvina. Or he’d discovered the money she’d stolen from him. I couldn’t tell which came first. Or if the company had recovered the funds. Nor even how much money Silvina had stolen. It must have been a lot, because from then on she had to provide for herself.
I also found an apartment that she’d owned until a year before and then sold. Occupied. Had been rented by Silvina to a series of what looked like college students. No clues there.
But: where had Silvina lived while surveilling me? No record of it.
After another drink, another thought: that she could have been watching the house. That she could have known all kinds of facts about my family.
The veering, the drift—it told me I was rattled. I bore down, there at the bar, holding court with my fourth drink. Ten in the end. Ten companies I could find with connections to Vilcapampa. Thirty properties. I scanned the lists trying to visualize the parts of town. The neighborhoods. The purpose of each. Some were leased as gas stations or hardware stores. Others as restaurants. A fair amount of commercial property. But also apartment complexes.
It wasn’t until I wrote the addresses down, until I looked at the full list, that it hit me.
The numbers. From behind the hummingbird’s eyes: 23 and 51.
And right in the middle of Silvina’s properties: 3215 Avalon Boulevard.
That had to mean something.
Registered to a tenant that didn’t exist. Alexander Humboldt. Clever, but not clever.
It wasn’t that I suddenly became sober. It was that I was exuberantly, profoundly drunk. Maybe because it made me forget about Fusk. Maybe because it felt manageable: checking out an apartment in my hometown.
I felt like I’d won the lottery.
But, really, it was what Silvina wanted me to find.