BULLETS (13 page)

T
hey approached a
group of Mexican laborers sweating under the hot sun. Camilla showed a man her ID and asked him, in Spanish, if he could tell her which one of the workers was Sergio. He shook his head, put down his wheelbarrow and walked away.

The rest of the workers also put down their tools and slid away, all refusing her questions and wanting nothing to do with her. Before they all disappeared, Slick touched one of the men on the arm.

“
We’re here as friends of Pedro
,” Slick said in slow Spanish. “
You recognize me?
You know who I am? We’re here to help him.
”

“
Pedro’s dead,
” the man replied simply.

“
But he’s no murderer. We want to prove that. That’s why we want to talk to his friend Sergio. Please, just tell him we only want to help Pedro.
”

The man hesitated at that, as did some of his coworkers. Before the man could speak further, however, a profane bellow echoed out over the site.

“What the fuck is going on over here? What’s all this standing around shit?” A construction foreman barreled over. Camilla stepped forward, her ID out.

“Camilla Leon, District Attorney’s office. We’re here to talk to one of your workers on an official matter.”

“Well, he’s not here and you shouldn’t be either. Get off my site!”

The foreman was a burly guy in his fifties with a substantial gut and sideburns. He pushed forward but Camilla stood her ground.

“You don’t even know WHO we want to talk to, so how do you know he’s not here?” she asked him.

“It doesn’t matter who it is, he ain’t here. You ain’t talking to nobody on my crew,” he said. He turned to the workers. “Anybody says word one to this bitch, you’re done and never working for me ever again, understand?”

“Bitch?” Camilla’s eyes narrowed. “I could shut this whole site down and have you arrested for obstruction.”

“Go ahead, doll, do it. I’ll be out by the afternoon and the charges dismissed. Shut the site down, it’ll be going again by morning. Arrest this whole bunch and send ’em back to Mexico where they came from and I’ll have another crew in their place faster than you can say wetback. I know who you are. I have friends who are a lot more important than you. Now, either you take your tamale-eating ass off my site or I’ll have you escorted off. Randy! Tommy! Move these two out of here!”

Two big white men stepped out from behind the foreman, grinning. Camilla reached for her cell phone, furious. Slick put a hand on her arm.

“No need to call the police. The man we’re looking for isn’t here and it’s obvious none of the men even know who he is,” he told her. “Just let it go.”

“Yeah, listen to your buddy Kunta Kinte and scram,” the foreman said.

“Oh, we’re not leaving yet,” Slick said. “I think I want to know what goes into building a department store, so I’ve decided to hang around for a while, take some pictures of you all at work, do the tourist thing, you know. I bet I can catch some good images on my camera of this construction process, maybe even post it on Facebook. Of course, if you’re cutting corners or breaking OSHA regulations, that’ll get out, but—”

“You ain’t taking pictures of nothing and you ain’t spending one minute more here.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I am,” Slick said. “Free country and all that jazz.”

“People get hurt at worksites like this all the time, boy. You hang around here, you’re gonna get hurt,” the foreman said.

“I’ll take my chances, friend.”

The foreman glanced at Randy and Tommy and nodded. The two men stepped forward, rolling their shoulders. Slick shot a look at the Mexican laborers, who stopped dispersing and drifted back for the show.

“This isn’t necessary,” Camilla said. “We can go.”

“Sure we’ll go,” Slick said. “But when we’re damn good and ready to go and not one second sooner.”

Slick clocked the two white men, both of whom had meaty forearms, barrel chests and obviously spent most of their time working outdoors and lifting heavy objects. Tommy had his own name tattooed across his chest, a handlebar mustache and a shaved head. Slick would bet good money that he’d driven to work on a Harley.

Randy had long hair pulled back into a ponytail and a beard, but what Slick was most concerned about was the clip on his belt that held a work knife. If Randy pulled that knife out, this could possibly get a lot uglier than it needed to be.

“You guys get good benefits through this gig, health insurance, workman’s comp?” Slick asked as they circled him. “Because if either one of you puts a hand on me, I guarantee you’re going to need both.”

Tommy just grinned, reached forward and grabbed Slick by the arm to drag him away. Slick reversed it, snatched Tommy’s hand, stepped inside and twisted it up in a very neat jiu-jitsu move, putting Tommy on his knees and making him yelp in pain.

Randy leaped in to help his buddy, and as he did, Slick met him with a head butt right on the larger man’s nose, breaking it. Randy howled and went to his knees, holding his nose in pain.

Tommy tried to punch up with his free hand. Slick responded with a kick to Tommy’s groin. The air went out of the bigger man and Slick followed that up with an elbow to the back of Tommy’s head that put him down and out for good.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Camilla said. “Stop this!”

By then Randy had come back to his senses, roared in anger and charged. He dove for a leg and attempted a tackle, but Slick stuffed it without a problem by sprawling. He reached over Randy’s back, grabbed the man’s belt and, with his leg hooked on the inside of the white man’s knee, sat back on his ass and rolled, tossing the bigger man over his head, putting him on his back and Slick in full mount on top.

Slick punched Randy in the nose again, but before he could follow it up with more combinations, the fat foreman jumped on his back and wrenched him off. Slick twisted out of the large man’s grip and, in the same motion, hooked a punch into the foreman’s ample gut. Two more blows followed in quick succession, to the man’s belly and jaw, knocking him down to the ground on his ass.

“I said THAT’S ENOUGH!” Camilla said. “I’m leaving.”

Slick took a breath, let it out and wiped his brow. “That’s okay. We’re done.”

Randy and Tommy were out cold. The fat foreman tried unsuccessfully to get to his feet, wobbly and wheezy.

“I’m gonna … call the cops on you…” he said, gasping.

Camilla spun on him. “And tell them WHAT? Who do you think I am? Who do you think I work for? Go ahead, call Ted and his buddies, TRY to press charges. I’m an ADA, I’ll go to the judge and get it all on record as a witness! Your men attacked us, that’s exactly what I’ll tell the judge and jury. You think the color of your skin will get you past ME once I testify? I’m an officer of the court! I am the law! Who do you think they’ll believe in the end?”

She let that hang in the air for a moment. “Maybe your friends aren’t as important as you think they are, or you to them. I’m going back to my office to think about whether or not I want to toss your fat butt in jail. I’ll make a decision when I’m finished being furious, which may take quite a while, but if my office gets any frivolous bullshit calls from you while I’m mulling it over, that will be the tipping point and you’ll go to jail for obstruction, assault and as many other reasons as I can think of. And if they DO let you out, I’ll be back again the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that and you’ll find out just how big of a BITCH I can be. Do you understand me?”

Camilla waited until the man finally nodded then she turned and stalked away. Slick kneeled down next to the fat foreman, stared at him for a moment.

“And my name,” Slick said, “ain’t Kunte Kinte.”

S
lick had to
jog a bit to catch up to Camilla as she stalked off the work site.

“Nice speech. Remind me not to get you mad at me,” he said once he got close enough.

“You’re too late. I’m just as angry at you as I am at them.”

“Me? What for?”

She stopped and wheeled around. “Are you PROUD of the show you put on? Who do you think you were impressing with that tough guy act? Did you think that beating those men up would make me swoon? I hate that male macho bullshit!”

Slick smiled and walked on past her, toward her car.

“Two things. One, I am proud, yes. And two, it wasn’t for you.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t for me?”

“The show, it wasn’t for you. It was for them. The workers. I wanted to demonstrate we were most definitely not on the side of management. I wanted to earn their trust. And look at this, it seems to have worked.”

There was a tiny slip of paper tucked under the windshield wiper of her car. Slick snatched it quick and palmed it.

“Give me that—”

“Not here. In the car, once we’re out and away from prying eyes.”

She didn’t say anything else, just unlocked the car and climbed in. Slick smiled and followed suit. He could sense she was still steaming but working hard to readjust and adapt. He kept talking as she started the engine and pulled out of the lot.

“You got to figure that these workers have even less reason to trust you than the priest did, right? And me, while it’s known that I paid for the lawyer, I’m still considered an outsider. So I wanted to make it clear, in no uncertain terms, where we stood in terms of Pedro. I did that, and so did you at the end. You tore that fat boy a new asshole, and you can bet even the workers who didn’t speak English understood exactly what you were doing in no uncertain terms. It played well, and it got us something.”

He held up the slip of paper and opened it. She snatched it out of his hand before he could read it. He held his tongue, letting her read it as she drove. She folded it back up and tucked it away.

“Well?”

“It says to be at Barrios, which is a Mexican bar downtown, well off the beaten track, tonight at nine.”

“And that’s it?”

“I try to tell you that’s all it says and you’ll look at me and tell me I’m lying, right? No, that’s not all, it says only the black man should be there, not the
puerco
.”

“Pork? Pig, ah, I get it, they still view you as a cop.”

“Barrios is a rough place. I know of it, there’ve been people killed there and it’s been shut down three times and it always finds a way to open again. You shouldn’t go there alone.”

“Note says it has to be just me that shows up, right? If that’s what it says, that’s what we have to do to find Sergio.”

“It’ll be dangerous.”

Slick just grinned at her. She shook her head. “Did you miss the part where I said I hate male macho bullshit?”

“Did you miss the fact that I am, at my essence, the walking personification of a bullshit macho male?”

“No, you’re not, because if you were …” she trailed off.

“If I were, what?”

“Nothing.”

She nearly smiled in spite of herself and then bit it back. Slick smiled, too. He knew the last half of what she nearly said was that, if he were that, then she wouldn’t like him as much as she did, and that made him very glad.

“I can’t allow you to do this alone, you’re a civilian. If something happens to you—”

“It won’t. Or rather, if something does, it won’t be from Sergio and his friends. They know something, I can feel it. They’re not the problem. The biggest threat is Ted and his friends, they are probably none-too-happy that I’m poking around.”

“All the more reason you need me with you—”

“It has to be me, alone. I’ll call you right afterward and tell you what I found out.”

“No, that’s not the deal. We’re in this together. You take me with you or I’ll go there by myself. I have to prove to this community that I’m worth trusting at some point.”

“We could lose the lead—”

“We won’t. Whatever it is this Sergio knows, he wants to tell us. He just needs a reason to trust us. No one at Barrios is going to be scared off by me. They don’t like me, but no one is afraid of me, anymore than that fat foreman was. To them, I’m just an empty suit, I’m window dressing and nothing more. I’m going to show them what I really stand for and in order to do that, I have to be there.”

Slick thought about that and had to finally nod in agreement.

“Well, I guess that’s the play, then. There’s something else, and I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t even think of it until this morning,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“If Pedro didn’t kill Roger Carlson, and nobody I know with any sense believes that he did, then the question is who did and why?”

Camilla thought about that. “He was pretty well liked in the community. I’ve met him many times, both he and his wife. Roger was very active in local politics and the community. His politics weren’t popular, to say the least, but there isn’t a man or a woman who’d spent any time with him who didn’t like him, he was very genial and good-natured, could get along with anyone.”

“Yet someone disliked him enough to kill him with Pedro’s shovel.”

“And Pedro, according to everything we’ve heard thus far, was basically a saint who didn’t drink, swear or even spit on the sidewalk.”

“He wasn’t a killer, but no one’s a saint.”

“No one?”

“Not even saints are saints. That’s my credo, I stand by it.”

“Not even you?”

“Especially not me.”

“Yet here you are, risking life and limb for an undocumented Mexican you just happened to sit next to at a diner and did not know.”

“I’m not doing that because I’m a saint. I’m doing that because it’s hard for me to let stupid racist shit go. And I’m a big believer in karma.”

“Karma? Wasn’t the Buddha a saint?”

“He didn’t think so. He considered himself to be just a teacher and, according to a Zen Buddhist buddy of mine, often said, ‘If you ever meet a man who CLAIMS to be a Buddha, kill him, because he’s NOT the Buddha.’ The idea being that anyone egotistical enough to make that claim is obviously disillusioned or dishonest and therefore can’t be.”

She smiled at that, smiled for first time since she’d gotten back into the car, and that made Slick feel all warm inside. Evidently he was forgiven.