Burning Midnight (29 page)

“Who would ever want to go pro?”

“You'd be surprised. The health plan sucks, but you can't beat the hours.”

She hugged herself. If anything the room was overheated. You never know when shock will hit or what form it will take. I had to keep my hands in my pockets to stop them from shaking. “I love these people,” she said.

“They love you back. We'll know how much when they total up the Sister Delia Defense Fund.”

“What good will that do them?”

“Not a damn thing, except make them feel good.”

“What will happen to them?”

“Somebody else will come along. Maybe another you, only more patient. Maybe a scam artist.”

“Encouraging.”

“You want a pep talk, don't call a detective.”

We stopped talking for a while. Somewhere in the building someone was watching a movie, a romantic comedy, from the tired oldies on the soundtrack. It was dark outside the window. From my angle the lights of the city made soft colors against the frosted glass, like tethered balloons. As if a party balloon stood a chance in Detroit. I heard a siren, frowned; I'd expected discretion, if not mercy. The noise swelled as it passed under the window, brazen and hollow at the same time, and receded behind the wall of a building on the corner; subsided, like a bad headache. It belonged to someone else's tragedy.

When I looked back at her she was smiling faintly, like a ghost remembering. “I'd do it again, you know.”

“I know. Have another drink.”

 

TWENTY-NINE

Roscoe Berdoo and the
mestizo
known only as Django found local fame, however briefly, after their encounter with Antonio Molina; the “Berdoo-Django murders” had a wizard cadence that rang solidly in headlines and TV news teasers for a week or so before Molina's death kicked it to the other side of sports and weather.

The suspect's deathbed delirium gave the cops the name of a small-time operator from Tijuana (“You want to meet my seester?”) who moonlighted behind the wheel and on impromptu loading docks for the Colombian/Mexican drug cartel and who was just the kind of monkey who'd drive a Wonder Bread truck and load it with caged roosters while Molina took care of the personnel inside the warehouse. His description and mug shot from an old arrest for solicitation were faxed to the U.S. Border Patrol and officers on both sides of the border, but when he didn't turn up after two weeks it was assumed he'd slipped across before the bulletin went out.

“Depend on it,” Alderdyce said, “a constable in some village made up of a gas station and three house trailers up on blocks will shoot him driving away a stolen car without paying for his gas.
La Ley de la Fuga
, they call it down there: the Law of Flight.”

“Think it'll be that random?” I asked.

“I have to believe there's
one
honest man in a uniform there.”

But the man never got that far. A day or two later, morel hunters prowling a swamp in Macomb County found a badly decomposed corpse tangled in rushes; for a while it was thought to belong to a father of three who'd disappeared weeks earlier after being diagnosed with severe clinical depression. On that theory, the fact that ligaments had been severed in the man's throat suggested suicide with a knife or razor. Then a medical examiner with time on his hands became curious about the dental work, and traced a number of mercury fillings banned from the United States for years to a dental college in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, whose students practiced on inmates in the local jail. Records were examined. The dead man was Molina's partner, who'd drifted away from the bread truck after Molina sank it in the swamp with him inside.

“Right back where we started,” Alderdyce said. “Worse: It'll take three rolls of the dice just to get to Square One. We know even less than we thought we knew when this thing started to go down.”

“It's not that bad,” I said, bracing myself against the dash. We were driving to Beverly Hills, the inspector at the wheel of an unmarked car he'd signed out from 1300. He drove like a cop, as if the laws of Man and Nature didn't apply to him. The ice storm had turned trees into fine crystal and the asphalt into a sheet of polished black ceramic. Turning a corner involved both lanes and a piece of the curb on the opposite side of the street. “We didn't know the original Zapatistas were involved when it first went down.”

“We don't know it now. We
know
it, but not to count on INS and DEA and the FBI. They don't make a move without solid evidence, and we don't have the budget.”

“You might want to pull your foot out of the firewall. This is a school zone.” We were approaching Chata Pasada's neighborhood and the home of Alderdyce's son and Nesto.

He maintained speed for a hundred yards, then let up on the accelerator as if it were his idea. The tires continued to turn at the same rate of speed for fifty yards after that. There was no friction. “This whole Zap thing's got my gut tied up in knots.”

“You? You're the loosest guy I know.”

“Thank you and go to hell. They're a big-time operation down there. I mean the drug smugglers, not the revolutionaries whose name they stole: Al-Qaeda and the Mafia wish they were as well-organized as this outfit. But to make a move this far north needs financing.”

“They blow their noses in hundred-dollar bills.”

“That's the problem. They deal strictly in cash, bales of it, truckloads of it, and spread it around thick enough to buy the Vatican; it's no wonder even a Mexican cop with delusions of honesty won't move against them when everyone's involved from his sergeant on up. It's got to be cash, and up here the supply line's too long. Anything can happen to a shipment of untraceable bills between here and the border. They need someone local with the connections to make it portable.”

“Someone like who?”

“Someone with the organization in place to launder money, turn it into stock certificates and municipal bonds, merchandise you can move overnight by the warehouse load, and squeeze juice back out of it in the form of clean cash. Pick up a phone, send an e-mail, and arrange to have it delivered by Brink's, washed in the blood of the lamb. Not just make it
look
legit. Turn it into the real thing.”

“That's way out of Luís Guerrera's league,” I said. “Zorborón in his prime couldn't swing it.”

“We have to look outside Mexicantown, and probably outside Mexico. Bribe and kill, that's all the Zaps know. They haven't needed to know anything else until now, and they're not patient learners.”

“It needs Wall Street.”

“It needs someone who can work Wall Street. Personally I don't think the Suspender Boys have got the balls for it.

“Normally it wouldn't bother me,” he said, “except for this itch I get between the shoulder blades that tells me it's in my jurisdiction.”

We pulled into the driveway. The garage door was open, with two vehicles inside. His son was home.

Chata was expecting us; Alderdyce had called before picking me up at my office. She wore a plain blouse tucked into a dark wool skirt and her hair was loose to her shoulders. She led us into the living room, where her brother was sitting on the sofa in a crisp white T-shirt and clean jeans. He'd had a haircut. He looked oddly younger without the curls; with that slight build he could pass for fourteen. I saw Rafael Buho's hand in that. The boy was leaning forward with his hands folded and dangling between his knees. They looked large and clumsy at the end of his slender wrists. His growth spurts would be worth watching in stop-motion photography: first the feet, then the hands, then the head, then the feet again.

His sister sat close to him. We sat in the other chairs. Alderdyce said, “Just because Zorborón isn't here to press charges doesn't mean you don't have to answer for setting that fire. There was a mechanic working late that night. If the fire had turned into anything, this conversation would be taking place in court.”

Nesto said something too low to catch. The inspector told him to speak up.

“It was just trash.”

“Not the point.”

“He wasn't trying to hurt anyone,” Chata said.

“A judge will understand that, or he won't.” He kept his eyes on the boy. “It's your job to convince him. That tattoo won't help. It's a red flag downtown.”

Nesto rubbed the hand where the tarantula had healed.

She said, “We'll have it removed.”

“Good. A long painful procedure should prepare him for what's coming.”

“What do
you
say?” Nesto was looking at me.

“I'm just here for the ride.”

Chata said, “Please.”

“I'd feel better if your husband were in on this conversation. Where is he?”

“He's sitting at the table in the backyard.”

Alderdyce said, “Drinking?”

“No. That isn't his problem. You didn't see him at his best the other day. I'll get him.”

I waited until she was gone, then leaned forward and looked at Nesto. “You'd have saved two lives if you'd given the cops a description of Antonio Molina at the chicken coop.”

He straightened suddenly, drawing his hands onto his knees. “I told you I didn't see anyone.”

“You also said you didn't see a truck. I'm getting so I don't even bother to listen to your first answer.

“You were afraid,” I said. “I knew at the time it was a stall, but I didn't press it. I gave you a few days to put it all in perspective. That was a mistake.”

“It sure was.” Alderdyce looked stonier than usual, and usually he could outstare the
Thinker.
“I don't give a rat's ass about Molina and his junior partner, but if I'd had to write a letter to a cop's widow after that standoff later, I'd've made you deliver it in person.”

“But I didn't—”

“Stop it,” I said. “The clock's against you. Those guys were experienced crooks, small-time or no. You might have ducked out without being seen by one, but there were two, and they were using that door to move out the fighting cocks and looking over their shoulders expecting an official visit. There was only one time they might have been distracted long enough for you to chance it. That was when Molina was busy killing Django and Berdoo. Even if they weren't, there wasn't a fear in the world that would keep you in the building after that.”

Alderdyce said, “I'm not turning you in for withholding evidence. What's the point? The killer's dead. I'm turning you in for malicious destruction of property.”

Nesto started. But Jerry's father went on before he could say anything.

“It'd be better if you went in voluntarily. You'll have your community service in before summer vacation.”

“But there's no point in that either!”

“You might change your mind about that sometime. If you don't, the hell with you.”

The boy slumped back into his earlier position. He looked at the floor, said something I didn't catch.

“Speak up!” Alderdyce barked.

“I said okay.”

The back door shut with a bang, bringing a harplike tinkle of icicles tumbling from the eaves. I stood.

“There's a burned-over lot across from Holy Redeemer needs a building for charity to work out of,” I said. “Know where we can find a carpenter who works for nothing?”

Nesto's head came up with a grin on the front.

Alderdyce looked up at me from his seat. “Where are you going?”

“Out for a smoke. Your son's coming in.”

I never knew what they talked about. The inspector didn't volunteer anything and I didn't ask. They weren't alone together long enough to work out a lifetime of friction, so maybe it was just a cold polite conversation with nothing to show for it. Anyway I never saw any of them again. Except Alderdyce, of course.

 

THIRTY

A week or so later, with the weather warming up, I prised open the window to stir the sludgy air around the office and picked up the phone. I'd had my arms to the elbows in stale files all day. I was happy for the interruption and answered cheerfully.

“I've caught you in a good mood.”

It was a husky velvet voice, a female contralto, without an accent, not even American. I caught a chill from the window just then and swiveled my chair to turn my back to it. Then I decided having my back to a window wasn't a good idea while I was talking to the person who owned that voice, and rolled out of the line of sight.

I said nothing.

“You've cost me a great deal,” the woman said. “I had time and money invested in Mexicantown. It isn't as if I can write it off my taxes.”

I found my voice. “Where are you calling from?” The connection was too clear for comfort; none of the hisses and gurgles of a trunk call from overseas. We might have been in the same room. Even the same country was too close.

“I think something may have to be done about you, Mr. Walker. Not now; now's officially then, thanks to you. But next time maybe.”

“I'm open to a retirement package.”

“Not you. A very disagreeable man I did business with once had a favorite aphorism: ‘If you can't bribe him, kill him. If you can't kill him, promote him.' Meaning kick him upstairs out of the way. The man died in a Death Row infirmary, but the principle was sound. You won't bribe, and you're in a profession with no hope of advancement.”

“I'll remember the advice,” I said.

“I felt sure you would. Good-bye, Mr. Walker.”

“Good-bye, Madame Sing.”

I could still hear that voice purring in my ear after the line went dead.

Charlotte Sing was an international criminal; but anyone who picked pockets in Detroit and Windsor could claim to be one. She was wanted on three continents, all capital crimes, and a couple of them had pulled me out of my orbit into hers. But three times doesn't make you a pro, it just reduces your odds of survival by 30 percent—more in her case, because she didn't live by the law of averages any more than she did all the others.