Cliff Diver (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1) (18 page)

“Unlock the door,
Gomez,” Emilia repeated. He was between her and the exit and she knew from the
look in his eye he wasn’t going to let her get past him.

“You were supposed
to be with me,” Gomez said.

Emilia gestured at
the door panels on the floor. “Did you do this?”

“You’re supposed
to be my woman.”

“Your woman?”
Emilia repeated. He’d watched her head-butt Castro in that same bathroom. Since
then he’d barely ever acknowledged her presence. “What are you talking about?”

“I was going to
make my move,” Gomez said. He stepped past the sink and Emilia backed up to the
last urinal. “Make my move on you and then Castro fucked up everything. So I
waited. And now this shit about you being acting lieutenant.”

“You took down the
doors because you don’t like me being acting lieutenant?” Emilia rubbed sweaty
palms on the thighs of her jeans. “Sorry. Talk to Obregon.”

“You’ve known all
along I was waiting for you.” Gomez gestured to the door panels behind her. “
El
teniente
could look at you in the bathroom but not me? I don’t think so.”

“Look, Gomez.”
Emilia couldn’t back up any further without tripping on the pile of hollow
metal planks. “We’ll just get somebody to fix the doors and we’ll forget this
conversation ever happened.”

“It’s not about
the doors, Cruz.”

Gomez reached out
and Emilia tried to skip around the jagged edges of the pile of partitions. But
Gomez was quick and the space was small and he grabbed her by the ponytail, wrenching
her head around toward his. As he jammed his face against hers Emilia got her
knee up but Gomez was ready and twisted his hip so she didn’t get him in the
balls but instead knocked him in the pelvis with enough force to carry both of
them into the wall. He overbalanced and went down, his hand still clenched in
her hair. Emilia fell with him, crashing into the metal partitions. The
clattering din echoed off the tile walls.

Her head banged
into metal and Gomez rolled on top of Emilia and she felt panic rise. He tried
to pin down her arms but she fought hard, gouging at his eyes and avoiding his
hands. Gomez’s breath was curiously minty as they battered each other across
the floor. When he managed to get one knee on top of her left arm Emilia brought
her free hand down onto the bridge of his nose, hard enough to hear something
crack. Gomez gasped and put a hand to his face, momentarily blinded with tears.
Emilia shoved hard and got out from under him.

She got to one
knee but stumbled on the metal partitions and fell. The shoulder of her tee
shirt tore away, caught on something sharp, and Gomez pinned her legs with his
and his mouth worked as he fumbled with the button on her jeans. Emilia groped
for a weapon, anything to balance out the weight difference. Her flailing hands
closed around one of the loose partitions. The long piece of hollow metal was
heavy and awkward and Emilia strained to raise it. Gomez got her zipper down
and the adrenaline surged and Emilia raked the door panel through the air. The edge
of it connected with Gomez’s skull with a dull thunk.

Gomez jerked and
blinked and Emilia used the door as a lever to scramble away. She managed to
get to her feet and he grabbed the edge of the panel. Emilia wrestled it free
and hit him again, using the panel like a club. The edge caught him in the
temple and opened a deep gash. Gomez rolled away and she hit his face again and
again with the flat of the door panel until the underside was smeared with
blood.

Emilia dropped the
heavy panel. Gomez lay spread-eagled on the floor, head near the pile of stall
doors. His face was a bloody pulp but he was breathing.

She refastened her
jeans and took inventory. Her black tee was smeared with white concrete dust
and one sleeve was mostly torn off. A welt was puffing under one eye although
she didn’t remember him hitting her there. When she touched her forehead her
hand came away bloody.

Gomez didn’t move
as she washed her face and examined the cut on her head. It was deep and
bleeding like a stuck pig. She pressed a wet paper towel to it, the anger
welling, and she spun around and kicked Gomez in the ribs as hard as she could.

He caught her
foot.

Emilia gasped and
swayed. Gomez clung to her ankle with one hand and clawed up her leg with the
other, his torso rising from the floor. His eyes opened in time to see Emilia’s
fist dive at his face. His head smacked back against the concrete floor, his
hands relaxed and Emilia stumbled backward into the cracked middle urinal.

Her breath was
gone and Emilia sucked in nothing, her lungs wheezing. When air rushed in it
was too much. She bent over, coughing. As the hacking eased, she found she
could breathe again and pulled herself upright.

Gomez stayed
splayed out on the floor, a bloody river traced across his face.

Emilia pressed
another damp paper towel to her head, slung her bag onto her shoulder, and
hoisted up the bloody partition. Gomez remained unmoving. Emilia hesitated,
then leaned the partition against a sink, rolled Gomez onto his face and rifled
his back pockets. They yielded a thick wad of peso notes and the same kind of
tool Castro had used to open Lt. Inocente’s desk drawers. She stuffed it all
into her shoulder bag, grabbed up the partition again, and walked down the hall
to the squadroom.

She dumped the
bloody partition on Gomez’s desk. The clang of metal on metal was loud.

The room went
silent. Most of the detectives were there, clustered around the murder board.
Rico dropped a mug. It shattered at his feet.

He caught up with
her in the parking lot. Emilia wordlessly held out the keys to the white
Suburban and he drove her to the clinic.

☼

With three
stitches in her head and a tidy bandage, Emilia made it to Personnel in the
main administration building a bare hour before the department closed. Obregon
had done magic and the files were waiting for her. She settled into a small
alcove set aside for the file clerks.

Lt. Inocente’s
personnel file was fat, but not quite as fat as Silvio’s. The files for the
rest of the detectives were appreciably thinner.

Fausto Inocente
had been 38 years old. He’d been a police officer for six years. He never wore
a uniform, but had joined as a detective and been promoted to lieutenant within
two years. He was a college graduate, and Emilia assumed that gave him the
right to bypass street work. Few police officers went to college.

His correct home
address was listed, along with his awards, citations, and qualifications. He’d
been an average cop and there was little in the file to suggest that he should
have been promoted so fast. Emilia scanned the file, looking to see if he’d
been brought along by anyone in particular but she couldn’t find any trends.
Like so many who’d done nothing spectacular, his rise was no doubt due to
kickbacks or favors to more senior officers. According to the file, he’d never
been caught gambling, run up big debts or been to Flagstaff, Arizona.

The back of the
file held his application to join the force, his processing papers, and his
identification photo and fingerprint card. Emilia stared at the photo for a
long minute. Fausto Inocente looked handsome and relaxed, as if he knew he was
going to rise quickly. She pulled it out of the file and stuck it in her bag.

The other files
gave tidbits about the other detectives. Franklin Ibarra Olivas had been born
in Spain. Luis Gomez had taken the detective exam twice. Both times his scores
were extremely low; Emilia could only guess how he’d paid his way into the
squadroom. Five years ago Castro had scored surprisingly well. Macias and
Sandor both had been to college at UNAM in Mexico City, but there was no
graduation information for either of them.

Rogelio Fuentes
Furtado had only been a cop for four years, but he was a college graduate and
had scored the highest on the detective examination last year. There was a note
in his file from none other than Victor Obregon Sosa himself citing his
outstanding achievement. Emilia leafed through her own file to see if there was
a similar letter when she’d scored the highest on the examination the year
before. There wasn’t.

Emilia turned to
Silvio’s file. He’d been a cop for nearly 20 years. Like her, he had finished
secondary school, taken a certificate at a private security academy that taught
teens how to hit with a nightstick and shoot a gun, and tested high enough on the
municipal police exam to be hired as a uniform. He’d worked in just about every
police station. A detective for eight years. Never been shot although he’d
worked some of the worst areas of Acapulco.

Silvio had beaten
the odds for cops. He was a survivor.

She turned a few
pages and read the account of his former partner. Franco Silvio and Manuel
Garcia Diaz had been partners for five years when Garcia was killed in the line
of duty. Lt. Inocente was already head of detectives. It was the year before Emilia
had joined the force, when she was walking la Costera in uniform and a
bulletproof vest, hauling drunk tourists out of trashed hotel rooms and shaking
up kids who tried to jump the turnstiles at the CICI waterpark.

Silvio and Garcia
had been investigating reports of drug dealing out of a dry cleaning shop. A
shooting had gone down and Garcia was killed by the same caliber handgun that
Silvio carried. It was never proven that it was his gun. Nonetheless, charges
were brought against Silvio, accusing him of collaborating with the drug
operation and killing Garcia in order to protect the involvement. The formal
charges were dropped after a week, but the investigation ground on for three
months. In the end, Silvio was censored for poor judgment and forced to take a
six month suspension without pay.

There wasn’t
anything else in the personnel file; if Emilia wanted more she’d have to find
the Garcia investigation file, which was undoubtedly sealed. Obregon probably
could get it for her. Emilia mentally toted up what Obregon could say she owed
him and decided not to ask.

The stitches
throbbed but she didn’t want to take any of the painkillers the hospital had
given her. A new timeline was coming together and she had to keep a clear head.
Silvio’s suspension had been squarely within the three years between the sale
of Agua Pacifica and Lt. Inocente’s death. She could imagine a situation where
Silvio struggles to make ends meet while suspended without pay and Lt. Inocente
is disgruntled over his brother’s fast and minimally profitable sale of Agua
Pacifico to Lomas Bottling. He hatches up the plan to get more money out of
Morelos de Gama and identifies an ideal partner when a surly and impoverished
Silvio comes back to work.

Emilia pulled out
her notebook and wrote down the dates, then tossed down her pen. That theory
didn’t cover the sex. Or Silvio’s personality. It was hard to think of him and
Lt. Inocente doing anything together; their relationship had been one of mutual
tolerance, sometimes bordering on open dislike.

Her thoughts ran
up against Morelos de Gama as well. Whose idea was it to use counterfeit money
to pay the ransom? Had Inocente been both kidnaper and solicitous friend? Did
Inocente convince Morelos de Gama to pay a counterfeit ransom that he, Inocente,
would receive and then use to pay gambling debts?

But why take the
risk?

It all boiled down
to the money and who knew it had been counterfeit.

“We close up in 15
minutes.” The Personnel section manager was a tightlipped woman in a police
uniform that had fit well 10 pounds ago. Emilia promised she’d be done in time
and turned back to Silvio’s file. The personal information was routine. He was
married, no children. His home address was in a poor neighborhood, which
surprised her. Most cops lived in a better location.

She found the
paper that Obregon had given her with the address of Silvio’s gambling den. It
was the same as his home address.

☼

Obregon was
lounging against the fender of the Suburban when Emilia came out of the
administration building. She’d worked out at the gym in the basement before
leaving, despite being sore from the fight with Gomez, and her hair was still
wet from the shower. The gym had been empty that late and she’d worked off a
lot of stress and fear by skipping rope and pounding on the heavy bag. The
sight of the union boss, however, loaded it all back on.

The sun was
setting behind him, silhouetting his face as he cupped his hands around a
cigarette. She automatically looked around for Villahermosa. He was on the
other side of the visitor parking lot, in the driver’s seat of the same sedan
that had taken her to the meeting with the mayor.

Emilia pressed a
hand to her head near the bandage. She didn’t feel like engaging in whatever
game Obregon was playing tonight. All she wanted to do was to go home, not see
Ernesto Cruz, and crawl into bed.

Her feet slowed of
their own accord but Obregon had seen her coming and there was no way to avoid
him.

“Doing a little
homework on a Saturday night, Cruz?” He called it
tareas
, a word usually
reserved for children’s school work.

“Isn’t that what
acting lieutenants do?” Emilia said bitterly.

Obregon grinned
and exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke. “Carlota wants to talk to you over
breakfast on Monday. There will be a car for you at 10:00 am.”

Mercury lights
placed at intervals around the razor-wire enclosure blinked on as the sun
dropped lower. They made a faint hum and an occasional static noise when a bug
flew into the bulb.

“I need to make an
international phone call,” Emilia said.

“That’s Salazar’s
jurisdiction,” Obregon said.

“I’m asking you,”
Emilia replied. Even
el teniente
hadn’t been authorized to call outside
Mexico.