Coyote (23 page)

“The women at the factory, they say Manuela sleeps with somebody to get her card, and then she goes off because she doesn't have to stay in such a bad place to work for so little money. But Manuela, she is so smart. She knows something. And the four of us, we think she will send for us, she will get us the green cards because she says she will, and she is not a woman who forgets.

“We wait for her, but we don't hear. Aurelia is the bravest of us—”

“Aurelia Gaitan,” Mooney murmured.

“
Sí
. And she goes finally to the coyote after we wait many weeks. I think she maybe knows what Manuela knew, but she doesn't tell us. Maybe because another girl moves into the apartment and we don't know her so well, maybe—I don't know why. But soon the boss at the factory tells us he has a green card for Aurelia, and she has gone also, with Manuela, to work somewhere wonderful, to California where it's warm always, and we are happy for her, but sad, puzzled she did not say good-bye.

“We wish, the three of us, very much that Manuela had told us the secret that buys the green cards, and at home when the new girls are out, we decide to look everywhere in the apartment because Manuela is tricky and maybe she hides things and that is how Aurelia knows how to get her papers and be North American and free.”

Her coffee cup was empty. Mendez went out and got her a refill. She sipped it gratefully.

“In the mattress of Manuela's bed, where a new girl is sleeping, we find it. The card you show me, Manuela's green card, and much money, and suddenly everything is upside down. Because why would Manuela go away to work in California and leave her green card, which she is so happy about and so proud, and she will need wherever she goes in this country? Why would she leave this money, and where does this money come from? I am very afraid she is in jail.

“Delores says she will ask the man, the coyote, about the card. Maybe, she thinks, there are two cards, one—
¿cómo se dice?
—temporary, one for real.”

“And Delores went away,” I said. And of course the other two couldn't go to the police, wouldn't dream of it. Where do you turn when you grow up in a country where uniformed men haul people away in the dead of night? When any cry for help in your new country could boomerang and bring deportation?

Ana nodded bleakly and rubbed her arms, as if she were suddenly chilled. “That leaves only Amalia and myself. We are younger than the others. We decide that we do nothing until we hear from one of the women. They will not leave us without a word. We go to work, we are very quiet, we don't complain, even when they have us work more hours. We have no secret to tell, so we don't complain. We have no place to go and our friends are gone. And then two things happen quick together.

“We hear about you.” She nodded in my direction. “Someone who is not the police, a woman like us, and then we hear a woman talk about Manuela and how they find her dead. It's so long, you understand, months, and in our hearts we see Manuela in California, working somewhere nice, selling dresses, maybe, with a boyfriend, maybe, and we don't know what is true. And Amalia buys a newspaper and has someone read her the story, and we don't know how to find out what really happened and we want the green card back, Manuela's green card, because we think maybe that is what Manuela hid for us, the thing that is so valuable. Maybe we … I don't know what we thought. Amalia is smarter than me. She says she will go to you. She will take the money we find with the green card—”

I broke in. “Why would Amalia tell me she was Manuela?”

“Because then you will get the card and ask no questions.”

“But the picture—” I said.

“Manuela is her
prima
, her cousin. She looks a little like Manuela.”

“But didn't you want to know who the dead woman was?”

“No,” Ana said forcefully. “No. We know our friends are in California. Our friends. My friends …”

She started to cry in earnest now. “And then Amalia is gone and the boss at the factory says to me, don't worry, the ones who leave get their green cards, and I must move to a new apartment because the officials find the other place and they know the girls who stay there have no papers, but I don't know anymore, and I move in with somebody else and I do my work and I leave and walk around and I don't go near the boss and I'm afraid the next time the coyote comes back, he'll know that we went for help, that Amalia talked to this lady. And I think if I look some more in the old apartment, maybe Manuela left something else there, maybe deeper in the mattress. And I go. I am so stupid, I go. And instead a policeman is there.”

She came to an abrupt halt and buried her face in her hands.

The knock on the door startled all of us. It made Ana cry out. Dave walked in and handed Mooney Clinton's ID folder. “A few partials,” he said. “Should I have her take a look at it?”

“No!” Mooney said quickly. “Lift the photo out and get five more like it—cop photos, perps, whatever. We let her pick hurt out. We're doing this by the book. This bastard's not going to walk.”

Ana picked him out of a group of six with no hesitation.

Son of a dog, she called him, and she spat.

37

Harrison Clinton, I said to myself as I piloted my car home from the station. Was I surprised? Numb? Shocked? Angry? Angry, yes, because I'd believed a man who had a set of credentials, a deferential drawl, a face and body that stood up to close scrutiny. Had attraction made me blind? Shouldn't I have questioned his distrust of Jamieson? Instead my own dislike of Jamieson made Clinton seem more reasonable.

Good old Harry Clinton. A man whose work might take him from Boston to Texas to Boston again, with no one asking too many questions about his comings and goings.… A man with access to any one of the boxy neutral sedans, the Aries, Reliants, and low-cost Chevys the INS kept as agency cars. A man who lied as easily as he breathed. “If I'd been tailing you, you wouldn't have known it, ma'am.” I'd believed him.

A man who'd kissed me. To be honest, a man I'd kissed. A man I'd almost invited to bed. A man who extorted and raped and killed. I sucked in air and sped through the tail end of a yellow light.

I should have—I stopped myself on the edge of a pit of self-recrimination. I know it's useless, but the habit clings.

The Toyota made the turn into my driveway of its own accord. I rummaged in my handbag for keys. It took all my concentration to fit the key into the lock and make the door work.

I hollered for Roz, but there was no answering yell. Still out looking for Paolina. I thought about joining the search, but I knew damn well I needed a couple hours with the covers over my head before I could function.

I wrote Roz a note in bold red Magic Marker: “If you hear from Harry Clinton, wake me immediately! Don't trust him!”

I thought about adding another brief sentence. “He's a killer.” Then I tried “He's a murderer.” Either way Roz wouldn't believe me.

There was a note on the fridge reminding me not to miss tomorrow's volleyball practice. Biggest game of the season coming up. I took the note down and replaced it with my larger red warning. Then I checked the meager contents of the refrigerator, yanked out a carton of orange juice, and stood in the chill of the open door, gulping it down.

T. C. came yowling into the room, and I wondered when I'd last fed him. I fetched a can of his favorite FancyFeast and tried to make amends. He sneered at me, but he gobbled like a starved alley-cat.

Barely managing to negotiate the stairs and kick my sneakers off, I fell asleep fully dressed, sprawled across the bedclothes. I woke a seeming instant later to the shrill demand of the telephone. My mouth felt dry as bone.

The voice was a familiar Texas drawl. I sat up in bed, suddenly alert and focused. My hand tightened on the receiver.

“Uh, hi,” I said, willing my voice deliberately casual.

“I'm calling about Saturday night.”

“Uh, yeah,” I managed.

“Think you can make it? Dinner?”

“Sure,” I said evenly. “Glad you remembered. Looking forward to it.”

There was a long pause. I could hear him breathing. He gave a snort that might have been a laugh. “You know, you're good. Real good. Almost good enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I know,” he said. His voice was different, colder. The words came faster and the good-old-boy accent had diminished.

“What do you know?”

“You're the bitch who screwed it up. She'd never have gone to the cops on her own.”

“Where are you?” I said.

The voice got lazy again. “You knew about me, didn't you? That's why you put me off. Otherwise we'd have gone upstairs and fucked, right? I never have trouble with women. I mean, I don't have to buy it or beg for it, you know.”

I tried to picture Harry Clinton. This man on the phone had his voice, but it seemed to me, listening to him, that his appearance must have changed. How I hate it that monsters look normal. The deception of that outward normality prickled up my spine as I listened to him rant.

“I mean, I had to cut up Manuela, didn't I? Once I realized the stupid bitch didn't have the damned card on her. Somebody finds the card, matches it to the corpse, they're going to start checking Immigration files, right? Lead 'em to my little side business. You know, everything that happened, it's Manuela's damned fault. She stole my ID folder, stole it while she was doing me in the back room at Hunneman. Cutting her was bad, you know? She was okay, smart. Too smart. Like you. Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm listening.”

“I had to kill those other women too. Can you believe that Manuela, telling all those other bitches about me? About where I worked and what my real name was? Cutting them was bad, but I cleaned it all up. I can think rings around any cop. Jamieson, he up and asked me about phony green cards. Hell, it
wasn't
phony, just blank. I did the photo for Manuela, to gain a little time. The damn blackmailing bitch. You listening?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

“You're gonna help me get out of this. There's no real evidence against me. I cleaned everything up. There's just that damned woman, the one the police have, thanks to you. She can say it's me, convince a jury. Other than her word they'll never get squat. I want her, and you're going to deliver her.”

“Forget it. There's plenty of evidence. Once they start doing forensics with you in mind, they'll be able to—”

“Shut up. There's nothing a good lawyer can't knock down. I'm no moron. I'm a pro. I wanted to be a cop, you know that, but I got into this immigration stuff instead. I know all about forensics. But that woman, she gets all teary-eyed and a jury buys anything she says. Juries don't give a damn about fingerprints and expert testimony. But give 'em a victim, an eyewitness, and they slobber all over the floor. Hell, what am I talking trial for? There won't
be
a trial. I'm walking away from this. You're gonna help me. Help me get that Ana girl away from the cops. So listen.”

“I've been listening.”

“This part you might want to write down.”

“What?”

“My terms.”

“For giving yourself up?” I grabbed an old bank statement and a pencil from my bedside table while I spoke. I stared at my wristwatch, noted the time.

“Go ahead, play stupid. Go ahead. You don't need to understand. Just tell your cop friend I want to deal. I want that Spanish girl they've got in jail. I want her delivered to me today, this afternoon, at three o'clock. You'll escort her.”

“Where?”

“I'll call back in an hour.”

“The cops aren't going to go along with this stunt. Why the hell should they?”

“Well, I sure thought I was in trouble,” he said as if he hadn't heard my question. “Jamieson sniffing around, you out at Hunneman's. Thought I might be in too deep, but I guess I'm a lucky man.”

He made that noise again, the one that might have been a laugh. “I got me a guest in my office. You want to say hello to your baby sister? You hang on now, and I'll put her right on the line.”

“Paolina?” I could barely get the name out.

“Carlotta,” came her small, scared voice. “I'm sorry—”

“I'll be in touch,” drawled Clinton. And the line went dead. I kept jiggling the little button and repeating her name.

38

“Mooney,” I said urgently, moving forward in my seat until he had to meet my eyes or turn his face to avoid me, “I'm trusting you on this.”

“Carlotta, the bastard isn't giving us a hell of a lot to work with.” His voice was flat and lifeless. I remembered hearing it like that before, when he'd phoned the wife of a young cop wounded in action. His colorless monotone gave nothing away, surely not the deathbed gravity of the rookie's condition.

We were parked in an unmarked unit on Boston Common, outside the entryway to Park Street Station, largest and busiest of Boston's subway stations. Shoppers lined up for tokens at the outside booth; more swarmed down the steps to take places in another line inside. The newsstand vendors grabbed quarters and dispatched folded
Globes
and open tabloid
Heralds
. The Fens serial killer was still front-page stuff. Hot-dog and balloon men sold their wares to hordes of tourists. Mooney was behind the wheel. I rode shotgun. Ana was in the backseat, sandwiched between Joanne Triola and a scowling Walter Jamieson.

Harry Clinton's call had come an endless ten minutes late. By that time Mooney was seated next to me at the kitchen table, the phone was tapped, and a horde of headphoned technicians lurked outside in a phone-company truck, bent over high-tech consoles, trying to trace the call. It was a crazy long shot, but nobody wanted to let the chance to shake out the equipment go by.