Endangered Species (19 page)

T
he street Adelina lived on had settled down for the evening. Everyone was in for the night. Cars were tucked into their driveways. In the houses, lights were on and curtains were down. Scraps of canned TV laughter lingered in the air, remnants of programs that promise a world where no one is ever unhappy. I watched sleet falling under the streetlamps. It came down desultorily, as if it was too tired to make the effort. Across the way, a white cat crept under a porch.

Manuel and I were parked midway down Adelina's block, watching her house. It was lit up like a Christmas tree. I could see the shadows of people walking back and forth through the curtains. We'd gotten here half an hour ago and had been arguing ever since about what we were going to do to get her outside, a fact that was not improving my mood, which was piss-poor to begin with.

“Why don't you just walk up there and knock on her door?” Manuel suggested for what must have been the hundredth time.

“Why don't
you?”
I replied, thinking of our last encounter.

“Are you afraid of her mother?” he taunted.

“Absolutely.” I turned on the wipers to clear the windshield. They made a squeaking sound as they went over the glass. “Aren't you?”

Instead of answering, Manuel slouched down lower in the seat. “Well, we can't stay here forever waiting for her to come out,” he groused.

“Detectives spend hours watching houses,” I felt the need to point out. I'm not sure why.

“Good for them.” Manuel flicked a piece of lint off his jacket.

“Sometimes eight hours at a stretch without leaving the car.”

“What do they do about peeing?”

“They use a bottle.”

Manuel made a face. “That's disgusting.” He ran a finger down his jacket zipper. “Anyway, we don't even know she's in there.”

“Are you saying Myra lied to us?”

“No, I'm not saying that,” Manuel replied. “I'm just saying she could have gone out again.”

“Let's assume that she hasn't.” That was a possibility I wasn't prepared to entertain yet.

“Why should we assume that?”

“Because I say so.” And I picked up my backpack and began searching around in it for my pack of cigarettes.

“Good reason.” Manuel rolled his eyes, a gesture I particularly dislike. “Seriously, Robin,” he said, “how long are we going to sit here like this?”

“As long as we have to.” I kept on looking for my cigarettes. They weren't there. Then I remembered I'd left them on the table at the food court.

“My knees are locking,” Manuel whined. “It's hot in here.”

“Then roll down the window,” I snapped. “For heaven's sake, we've only been here for half an hour.”

“It feels like three.”

“Too bad.” Now that I'd found Adelina, I was damned if I was going to move from this spot and take the chance of letting her get away from me again.

Unfortunately, Manuel was right. We couldn't sit and wait. Time wasn't on our side in this case. Aside from the fact that I needed to buy cigarettes, someone was sure to notice us and call the police. It's hard to stay hidden for long when there isn't any traffic and everyone knows everyone else's car.

Manuel sighed loudly. He began tapping his fingers on the dashboard. “We could always call and tell Adelina's mother there's a gas leak and she has to get everyone outside.”

“Somehow I don't think that would work.”

“Why not?”

“Because she'll wonder where the trucks are.”

“We'll tell her they're on their way.”

I didn't bother to reply. But Manuel's suggestion had given me an idea. “Do you have your cell phone?” I asked him.

“Yeah.” He patted his parka pocket. “Right here.”

“Good. I want you to make a call for me.”

“To who?”

“To Adelina's mother.”

He sat up straighter and smiled. “You go, girl. What am I going to say?”

“Tell her there's been an emergency and she's needed back at work right away.”

For once Manuel played it straight and did what I asked. Maybe it was the prospect of peeing in a bottle that did it. Fifteen minutes later, I watched the front door of Adelina's house open. Her mother came out, got into her car, and drove away. I calculated it would take Donna fifteen minutes to get to the Jewish old age home, another fifteen minutes to drive back, and ten to check with the supervisor and realize she'd been had. Which meant we had forty minutes, at most, to do our business before she returned.

I nudged Manuel. “Let's go.”

We walked to Adelina's house. The snow, which had almost stopped, had left a glistening residue of water on the pavement. I stood off in the shadows as Manuel climbed the porch steps. When he got to the front door, he turned and looked at me. I gave a little nod and he rang the doorbell. A moment later, someone answered.

“Yes?” I heard a small girl's voice say through the closed door.

“Can I speak to Adelina?” Manuel asked.

“She's not home,” the little girl lisped.

Manuel resettled his baseball cap on his head. “This is very important.” He dropped his voice to a gentle semiwhisper. It always surprised me that Manuel was good with children, but it shouldn't have. He had enough experience with his younger brothers and sisters. “Tell your sister, Eli's cousin is outside. Tell her he has to speak to her about the suitcase.”

“She said not to tell anyone she's here. She'll be mad at me if I do that,” the little girl protested.

“No she won't. I promise.”

“She will,” the little girl insisted.

Manuel spent another few minutes coaxing her. Finally I heard a tremulous okay.

I jammed my hands in my pockets and rocked back and forth on my heels, while Manuel stamped his feet and cracked his knuckles. A minute later, the overhead porch light flicked on, bathing everything in a dim light. The window curtain was drawn back a trifle. An older, harder voice took up where the little girl had left off.

“How did you know I was here?” Adelina asked.

“Myra told me.”

“Stupid bitch,” Adelina spat out. She said something in Spanish I couldn't understand, then I heard, “What do you want?”

“I need to come in.”

“Why?”

Manuel recited the lines we'd agreed on. “Because I need to show you something Nestor left for you.”

“Like what?” Her tone was hard.

“You have to see.”

I held my breath. This was the moment I was waiting for. If Adelina didn't open the door, I was out of luck.

“This had better be good,” she said.

I heard the chain rattle as Adelina took it off its catch. Then she opened the door a crack. “Show it to me,” she demanded.

“Here.” Manuel pretended to reach into his pocket as I scrambled onto the porch.

I hit the door with my shoulder. It flew open, smashing against the interior wall. Adelina fell back. The gun I hadn't known she'd been holding clattered to the floor. She dove for it, but I got there first and picked it up. As I pointed it at her, I wondered if this was the gun that had shot Nestor.

“You okay?” Manuel asked me.

“Fine.” I motioned for him to close the door behind me.

“Interesting toy,” I said to Adelina when I got my breath back. “Who were you expecting? I mean, I heard this is a bad neighborhood. I didn't know it was that bad.”

She scowled.

“Did you kill Nestor with this?” I lifted my hand with the 9mm up slightly.

“You're an idiot,” she told me disdainfully.

I smiled equably. “So people keep telling me.”

“It's true. You don't know nothing.”

“I know enough to have found you,” I couldn't resist pointing out.

Then, before I could say anything else, her sisters and brother came out from the kitchen to see what had happened. They moved slowly, the brother tightly holding the hand of his younger sister as they hugged the walls. I guessed from the furious expression on Adelina's face when she caught sight of them that she'd told them to stay put, but they hadn't been able to stand the wait anymore and disobeyed. Their eyes widened when they saw me. I lowered the automatic, ejected the clip, and slipped it into my jacket pocket. I didn't want to take the chance of having an accident happen in here.

“Everything's fine,” Adelina said, trying to assure them, and she smiled a tight little smile that faded on her lips as fast as it had come on.

The children didn't look as if they believed her. The little girl certainly didn't, because she ran over to me and began beating my legs with her fists.

“You leave my sister alone,” she cried.

I put out a hand to fend her off and accidentally pulled off one of the ribbons on her braids. “Stop that,” I ordered.

“No. I won't.” She kept pounding on my leg even though her lower lip was trembling and her eyes were scrunched up. It was surprising how annoying it was. Finally I reached down and scooped her up. She burst into tears and began to wail.

Adelina's eyes flared. “Give her to me,” she demanded, reaching out.

“With pleasure.” I handed the little girl over to her sister.

“Maria, it's fine,” Adelina assured her, stroking her hair. “Don't worry. I'm not mad at you.”

Maria kept crying.

“I just need to get something your sister has,” I found myself explaining to her. “That's all. I promise.”

“It's true,
niña.
”And Adelina put her mouth to Maria's ear and whispered something in it.

Maria's face relaxed. She stopped crying. Adelina whispered something else to her and tickled her tummy. Maria laughed and buried her head in Adelina's shoulder.

As I watched her, I reflected that George had been right about people's appearances changing. Adelina didn't look at all like her photograph. For openers, she'd lost weight, bleached her hair blond and cut it, but those weren't the only things that accounted for the discrepancy. Her mouth seemed smaller, her eyes a little more closely set together, and she had a large scar on the side of her neck that the picture hadn't shown. She was wearing a tight white sweater, tight black pants, and platform boots. Her jewelry, large gold hoop earrings, a wide gold herringbone chain and a matching gold bracelet, all looked real. She appeared old for her years. I was thinking about the fact that I would have pegged her for midthirties if I'd seen her in the street, when her brother tapped my arm. I looked over.

He pointed to the gun I was still holding in my hand. “Is that yours?” he asked.

“No,” I told him, ignoring Adelina's glare. “It's your sister's.”

“Really.” He gave his sister an appraising look before turning back to me. “Can I see it?”

“No, you can't,” Adelina and I both said at the same time.

He put his hands on his hips. “But the clip's out.”

“No,” Adelina repeated.

“I've seen them before,” he protested.

“All the worse for you,” his sister answered.

“Then how come you have one?”

“She shouldn't,” I replied, and put the gun in my pocket, thereby settling the argument. “No one should.”

“But everyone does.”

“That's not the issue.”

He sighed a long sigh that bemoaned the idiocy of adults and walked into the living room. The older sister went with him. I nodded to Manuel and he followed. At least that way I didn't have to worry about them getting on the phone.

A
delina, walked into the kitchen carrying her baby sister on her hip. “What do you want?” she asked me as she took a glass out of the cabinet, filled it with water, and handed it to Maria. The little girl grasped it with both hands and gulped the liquid down.

“I want the suitcase.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Adelina replied, though the crack in her voice told a different story.

It was a lie I'd been hearing a lot lately and I was growing tired of it. “Then why did Chapman ask me to look for you?” I asked.

“Chapman?” she said, widening her eyes to play the innocent, but all the gesture did was draw attention to the large quantity of eye liner she was using.

“Oh, please.” I made a rude noise.

She gave me a defiant stare. “Well, the name isn't familiar.”

“He's the man whose property Nestor stole. He really isn't very nice. But then, you know that, don't you?” I watched Adelina's face as I was talking. She was trying to make it a blank slate, but she wasn't succeeding very well. She looked scared. A vein under her eye was twitching. “I'd hate to think of him coming to your house,” I continued. “I'm positive he wouldn't be nearly as nice to your sisters and brother as I am. Did you know he's a Federal agent?”

Adelina absentmindedly took the glass Maria was holding out and put it in the sink.

I moved a pile of papers off a kitchen chair onto the table and sat down. “He really wants that suitcase very badly. Nestor made a big mistake. He should have stolen from someone else.”

“He didn't know,” Adelina whispered. For a second she looked on the verge of tears. “He never would have done it if he had known.” She put Maria down. The little girl clasped her arms around her sister's legs and lifted her face toward her sister. “Pick me up,” she piped.

Adelina smoothed her sister's hair down. “In a minute,
querida.
”

“The best thing for you to do would be to give it to me so I can give it to Chapman.”

Adelina bit her lip. “But I don't have it. I think Eli does.”

I riffled through the pile of papers I'd moved from the chair to the table. On top was a brochure for Disneyland and another one for Universal Studios. I picked them up.

“Going somewhere?” I asked.

“We were.” Adelina gave me a reproachful glance and patted her sister on the head.

I put them down and studied the drawing that had been under them. It was a crayon drawing by Maria, the kind that mothers tack on their refrigerators. It showed a pink house with four windows, each one in a different color, and green smoke curling out of the chimney. Someone, I presume a teacher, had printed “Maria's house” underneath in big bold letters.

I held up the drawing. “If you don't give the suitcase to me, Maria may not have her house much longer.”

“Stop it,” Adelina cried. “Just stop it.” The corners of her mouth quivered. She sniffed. “I'm telling the truth about Eli. He has to have the suitcase. Nestor left with it. He told me to call Eli and tell him to meet him there.”

I stopped looking at the drawing. At least that part of Adelina's story checked out. Eli had told me the same thing.

“So why did Nestor do that? Why go to all that trouble for nothing?”

“Because he was getting scared.” Adelina took out the other ribbon in Maria's hair and draped it around her neck. “I told him we should go away.”

“To Disneyland?” I ran my finger around the rim of a pink plastic mug decorated with little hearts.

“Yes.”

“Were you taking the suitcase with you? Or were you going to sell the tortoises here?”

“We weren't going to do either. I told him we should give them back, because if we didn't, we'd always be worrying about Chapman.”

“What did Nestor say?”

“He said it was a good idea.” Adelina swallowed.

Maria was jumping up and down now in a frenzy of impatience. Adelina told her to stop. She didn't listen.

“He was willing to give up all that money?” I asked Adelina over Maria's wailed, “you promised.”

“There are some things that are more important.”

“True.” I looked at the gold she was wearing. “That's what some people say.” The problem was, I didn't know if Adelina was one of those people.

She opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind, and closed it again. I went on.

“Only now Nestor's dead and the suitcase is missing.”

“Sulfin.” Adelina reached down and picked Maria up and sat her on the counter.

“Pardon?” I wasn't sure I'd heard Adelina correctly.

“You should talk to Sulfin. He was always carrying on about how he was going to kill Nestor for taking me away from him.” Her voice had grown more decisive.

I got up. “It must be nice to be the object of such affection.”

Adelina threw me a nasty look.

“Really,” I said. “I'm not kidding. Where'd you get the gun?”

“A friend gave it to me.”

“How convenient.” It appeared as if everyone had friends. Manuel. Myra. Adelina. Of course none of those friends had names. But that would have been expecting too much.

I found myself chewing on the inside of my cheek. My gut told me Adelina was lying. One hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money to someone like her, enough to take a considerable risk for, but, if I was reading her correctly, not enough to put her family in danger. After speaking to her, I was almost positive she still had the suitcase. I was equally positive that it wasn't here. I asked if I could look around anyway. Just to be on the safe side.

“Go ahead,” Adelina replied.

She and Maria trailed behind me as I went through the attic and the basement and opened closet doors and looked under beds and in bathrooms.

“Satisfied?” she said when I was done. She had her sister clasped to her breast like a shield. Her look dared me to do anything to make her cry.

“Yes. I guess I was wrong.” I walked into the living room. Manuel and Adelina's brother and sister were sitting on the sofa. They all looked up.

“We're going,” I announced to Manuel.

He put the bowl of popcorn he was holding down on the coffee table. “Did you find it?”

“No. I made a mistake.”

“A mistake?” His voice rose. “Gee. Thanks a lot. You made me miss the end of Godzilla for this?”

“I'll rent it for you.”

“Now?” He stood up. “A two-day rental?”

I nodded. We went outside. As we walked down the porch steps, I heard Adelina locking the door behind us. The snow had almost stopped. The wind had blown most of the clouds away. The sky was dearer now. I stopped and studied the thin sliver of the new moon hanging in the sky.

“Let's go.” Manuel nodded toward the cab. “I want to get to the video store before it closes.”

“You'll have to take a rain check.”

“What do you mean?” Manuel yelped. “You just promised.”

“And I'll do it. I'm just not doing it now. We're going back to the car and wait.”

“Why?”

“Because I think Adelina still has the suitcase. I think she's hidden it someplace and I think she's rattled enough now so that she's going to get it when her mother comes back.”

“How do you know?” he demanded.

“Gut feeling.” I almost tripped on a crack in the sidewalk where the pavement had heaved up.

“Gut feeling. Great.” Manuel rolled his eyes again. “I'm supposed to freeze my ass off because you have a gut feeling.”

“Exactly.” We got to the cab.

“Have you considered that maybe you're wrong? That maybe she sold it already?”

“I don't think she'd be here if she had, but if I'm wrong we're out of luck.” I opened the cab door and got in. “We'll know soon enough,” I told Manuel after he closed the door on his side. I consulted my watch. “Her mother is going to be back in another ten minutes at the latest.”

“I hope so.” And Manuel crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back in the seat, and sulked.

While he did that, I sat and brooded about Zsa Zsa. The more I thought about her, the more nervous I got. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

I turned to Manuel. “Give me your cell phone.”

“Why?”

“Because I need it.”

He handed it over reluctantly. “You make any long distance calls, you pay for them,” he said.

I shushed him, while I powered up and dialed the store's number. I wanted to make sure Joan had picked up Zsa Zsa. She had.

“Was she okay with her?” I asked Tim.

“Why shouldn't she be?”

“I just expected ...”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Reluctance,” Tim asked.

“Maybe a little,” I admitted, feeling like a fool. I hung up and called George.

“I found out where Chapman lives,” George said without waiting to be asked. “He's renting an apartment over at the Hilton on Genesee Street.” The rme was full of static and it was hard to hear him. His voice kept fading in and out. “I'm losing my touch. When I was on the Force I would have had that figured out.”

I didn't say anything, but George was right. It was the logical place for Chapman to be staying. The Hilton had two parts. It had its regular hotel rooms and it had its furnished apartments that the management rented out by the week or month. I'd been in one of them once. The walls in the hallway had been a drab ochre, the floor had been tiled, and the apartment looked as if it hadn't been touched since the forties.

“Mike just looked it up for me. He's made himself known around the building and I don't mean in a favorable way.”

“Didn't Mike want to know why you were asking?”

“I told Mike I had to speak to him about you. I think he figured I was going to tell him to back off. Which, I also think, he would be happy to have happen.”

“He doesn't like him very much, I gather.”

“The general consensus is, the man's an asshole.” George's voice dissolved in a burst of static then came back. “That no one will be sorry to see him rolling around on the floor with the pigs.”

“That's good for us.” There was another burst of static.

“Well, let's just say that no one's going to go out of their way for him. Also, he's gone out to the casino a couple of times. Mike thinks he didn't do too well out there.” George's voice faded out.

“I can't hear you!” I yelled.

“I know.” George sounded as if he was calling from New Zealand. “I'll call later.” He hung up.

I powered down and tossed the cell phone back to Manuel.

“What was that all about?”

“Nothing.” I started biting my cuticles.

“Why do you want to know where Chapman lives?”

“I'm not sure yet. I just do.”

Manuel's face lit up. “Are you going to surprise him and beat the shit out of him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it wouldn't be a smart thing to do.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

“I do. The guy is a Federal agent, even if he is Fish and Wildlife. You don't beat people like that up. The courts tend to frown on that type of behavior. Unless, of course, you like the idea of spending many years in jail.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I don't know.” I was rubbing my eyes when Manuel tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. Adelina's mother was pulling into the driveway.

“Now we're going to see,” he muttered.

I held my breath. A few minutes later, the door opened again and Adelina came out, jumped into the car, and started it up.

“I was right,” I crowed at Manuel. “Now we can wrap this up and go home.”

And I took off after her.