Falling Down (14 page)

M
y cell rang at four in the morning. Thickened with sleep, I'd taken two Dolmaines, but jolted awake so fast I remembered I'd been dreaming of Nathan and as much as I wanted to just sleep, I had to answer. It might be him.

“Nathan?” I mumbled. “Sweetie?”

“It's Ken.”

“Uhhh?”

“Ken Charvoz.”

“Ken?” I mumbled. Not Nathan, only Ken.

“Uh…what?”

“About that gardener,” he said.

“Gardener?

“The part-time gardener. At the park.”

“The gardener?” I said. It's no metaphor, having a voice thick with sleep. I could barely understand my croak.

“Well, ground staff.”

“Ken. What the hell are you talking about?”

“When your people looked at my computer so see who was logging into that gambling site. It was a gardener.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Except at the park, we call them ground staff. Even if they work on plants, or in the nursery, or whatever, we don't call them gardeners. They're ground staff.”

“Yeah, uh…yeah?”

“He's been found.”

“Okay. I'll talk to him in the morning.”

“Laura. He's dead.”

“Dead?”

“Murdered.”

“So?”

“I thought you'd want to know.”

I yawned.

“I thought…” Ken said. “Well, I thought you wanted to know, I guess I thought you wanted to be involved.”

“I don't want to be involved with you, Ken.”

“Are you all right?”

“No.”

“You sound…are you drunk?”

“No.”

“What did you mean, not being involved with me? This isn't about me.”

“Uh,” I said. “Right. Wrong.”

“Look, just forget it, okay?”

“No,” I said, fighting up to consciousness, the sleeping pills holding me down, I felt like I was talking underwater, like I had to really concentrate on every word. “No, I'm sorry…Ken? I'm sorry. I want to help Mary.”

“You really sound like you're drunk.”

“Where are you?”

“I'm at the crime scene,” Ken said. “It's in a vacant lot. Not far from the park. You should, well, Laura, I really think you should come here.”

I turned on the light, read the clock, rubbed gum from my eyes.

He waited through my silence, then gave me directions when I said I'd come to the scene. He hung up without telling me any more and this was it, this was the time to make my decisions.

“B
odies,” I said to myself. “More bodies.”

“Didn't get you here to look at a body,” Ken said.

Four TPD patrol units at the scene, turquoise and cherry lights still flashing, two unmarked detective's cars. Several battery-powered lights about fifty feet into the vacant lot, no trees or landscaping, just scrub desert bushes limping low over the hardpan caliche ground. Under the lights, I saw Christopher Kyle maneuvering around on his arm crutches.

“I've seen bodies,” I said.

“All right.”

Ken ducked under the yellow tape and had me sign the entry log.

“If we're lucky, we'll be out of here before Kligerman arrives.”

Crunching along slowly and uncertainly on the desert floor, using the floodlights to illuminate where we walked, we neared what looked like a jerry-rigged barbeque pit, nothing more than odd stones and a few bricks in a three-foot-wide irregular circle.

Kyle saw us coming, shielded his eyes from the lighting glare, came forward a bit.

“Ken. Laura. This is bad. You really want to see it?”

“Sure,” I said.

Several officers were already pouring fixative into molds of shoeprints. All kinds of debris around the bar
beque pit, plastic wrappers from junk foods, used condoms, a typical lowlife hangout, typical debris belonging to nobody known.

“Not a chance for a usable footprint,” Kyle said. “But we're taking them all. All we know is that sometime after two o'clock, somebody brought the vic out here, smashed his head apart, arranged ignitable materials in the pit, dragged the vic so his head lay in the pit. Set him on fire.”

“After two?” Ken said.

“Teenagers had a party here, they left about that time. One of them was coming back with a case of beer, he got delayed, showed up with the guy on fire, was too drunk to just run, so he dialed nine-one-one. You don't have to look, Laura. Except, there's something not right.”

“After that house yesterday, after that dead child…”

I went to the far side of the pit and bent over and almost vomited.

A brutally disfigured body, its face battered beyond recognition, both arms and legs badly broken, like drumsticks and chicken wings, and the face and hands burned in the pit.

“Torture?” Ken said.

“That. Or revenge. We've got some ID,” Kyle said, leaning on his canes, holding up a wallet. “Why I called you. A green card. Probably phony, made out to Carlos Cañas. Plus a card saying he was employed by Tohono Chul Park. Is this the guy? Carlos…Carlos Cañas?”

“Jesus,” Ken said. “How would I know? His face is unrecognizable, not that I'd know him anyway. The curator of plants would know. Probably no fingerprints on file. No known address, but I can get it from park records. You said, something's not right?”

“Burned fingertips, smashed-in dentals,” I said. “Almost as though somebody wanted to make sure we couldn't be really sure who it is.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “A little too funky. But. A dead end. I've got seven open homicides this month, my captain will never let me work this case.”

“Nothing else in the wallet? In his pockets?”

“Front right jeans pocket, a business card of some kind.”

Handing the card, in a plastic evidence bag, over to Ken.

“Chicken feed?” I said.

“You mean, this is crap?”

“No. I meant it literally. Do they sell chicken feed?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Saw me biting my upper lip. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said.

A little too quickly, both men noticed.

“You're thinking,” Kyle said, “you're thinking rooster food? Cockfight stuff, are you on that again?”

“Cockfights?” Ken said.

“That's a dead end, Laura.” Kyle snorted, shook his head. “Walk away from this stuff. It's just too random.”

“Ken,” I said. “We need to talk.”

“Hey,” Kyle said. “Hey hey hey, don't be a stranger. What have you got?”

“Nothing,” I said again. “Really, it's more personal, not related. Can we stay until you wrap the scene?”

“Sure. Okay. Coroner's on his way, meat wagon probably will take the body within the hour. You're sure? You don't have something for me?”

“Just too many bodies,” I said. “And too early in the morning. Once I've had coffee, I'll be more alert.”

“Got a readable tattoo here,” a CSU tech called.

“Readable?” I said.

“Most of them have either been lasered off, like the guy didn't want them to be seen any more. But on his lower back, there's a number. Letter E. Numbers two ten.”

“Is that another
maras
tattoo?” I said. Kyle didn't hear me, bending over to look at the tattoo himself, shaking his head. The assistant medical examiner rolled the body over.

“Yo, yes sir,” the CSU tech said. “Got a death card here.”

“
No me jodas,
” Kyle said. He looked at me. “Don't fuck with this, Laura.”

Another unmarked unit screeched onto the street, bumped over the curb, and parked adjacent to the scene. Kligerman got out slowly, dressed as though it were nine in the morning instead of five. He walked around the back of the scene, careful not to intrude without permission.

“Anything?” he called to Kyle.

“I'll brief you.”

Kligerman approached the back side of the scene, and Kyle ran quickly down what he knew.

“Laura,” Kligerman said. Came around the pit, not getting close to the body. “Seeing you here, I'm enthused that maybe you'll join the department?”

“I haven't decided yet,” I said.

“Well. I've called the team together for tomorrow afternoon. If you can spare us an hour, even less. I'll run through the personnel, show you the routines, outline what we need you to teach us.”

“Don't push her,” Ken said.

“And you are? Oh, my
god
. It's
Char
voz. You've been retired, Charvoz. You've got no business at a TPD crime scene.”

“I invited him,” Kyle said. “The vic works for him.”

“Meaning?”

“I manage the part-time volunteers at Tohono Chul Park,” Ken said. “This vic has a name. Carlos Cañas was a staff member. Part-time, actually.”

“A staff member. At the park.”

“Ground staff. I've personally met the man two, three times.”

“And you brought
Char
voz along, Laura?”

“Actually, he called me,” I said.

“Quite a happy family. All right. I've got to leave, but Laura? See you tomorrow, I hope?” Smiling, not smiling, he went back to his car and sat in the front seat, flipping through a yellow pad.

“What was that?” Kyle said. “See you tomorrow, he said.”

“In his dreams,” Ken said. “Want some coffee?”

“What happens next?” I said. “I mean, what happens here?”

“Not much. They'll run the guy's name through databases, check with TPD narc detectives, check with DEA and NCIC. They won't find anything.”

“Let me buy you breakfast,” I said.

“Can't leave right now,” Kyle said. Knowing I'd asked Ken, not him.

“Okay,” Ken said. “I'm riding that Harley, the one with the red tank and fenders. This would be the weekend I put my pickup on blocks. A Dodge crew cab. Diesel, a rod is loose and clanging a bit. I need to get the engine out, do an overhaul, but don't have spare time.”

“What's wrong?” I said. “Why are you telling me about a truck engine?”

He thrust out his right hand, the fingers trembling. “I thought I'd left all this behind, Laura. I haven't been to a crime scene in years, haven't seen a dead man in years. I don't know what this is all about, but one look at your face right now, I know it's something really hairy. I don't know if I want breakfast or a drink, I don't drink in the mornings at all, but this…this…”

“Let's have breakfast,” I said. Wrapped his trembling fingers in mine.

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay, yeah, just follow me.”

“Where we going?”

“Chuy's,” he said. “On Ina, near OldFather. My treat.”

C
huy's. A lower-end Mexican food restaurant chain. I'd never been to a Chuy's, couldn't imagine a place like this already crowded with people stacked up in three lines at the order counter.

“You want coffee? Or some breakfast?” Ken said.

“Sure. Why not? Get me, whatever.”

“I'll get you the usual.”

“Usual what?”

“What I have, three, four mornings a week. Here's an empty booth.”

We slid into the booth just as the waitress flung a damp rag across the laminated counter, mainly wiping up spills and sweeping bits and crusts of food into a black plastic trash bag. Ken went off to order and I looked at where the other half ate.

The Chuy's on Ina had a very tall, vaulted ceiling, where all kinds of surfing and water stuff hung between fishnets and other water stuff. To order, you stood around a curved central order station, you got your beer or soft drinks or coffee there, but when you placed an order, the order-taker handed you this inflated sea creature. We got a whale, but I saw a porpoise and a shark and half a dozen other unrecognizable inflatables.

Ken slid gingerly into the booth, trying to find a comfortable position. Our booth had totally flat-back wooden benches, no curves of any kind.

“Bad back,” he said. “Bad, bad back.”

“That why you retired?”

“Didn't retire so much as they booted me out with a medical disability. My back locked up, one night. It's quite a story, but I knew the next week I'd seen the last of being a detective.”

“What happened?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah. Unless the food's coming right away.”

Ken studied the action in what we could see of the kitchen.

“My guess, since I'm a regular and know the process, we've got at least fifteen minutes.”

He knew I didn't want to talk about anything remotely personal, anything at all about reality. Nor did he. Small talk. First order of the day, before breakfast.

“How do they serve food here?”

“When your order is ready, the waitron just looks around the room for the inflatable, they're all about two feet long, like this guy sitting right here on our table. When the order comes over, the waitron takes away the inflatable. And here's Angelina with coffee and water.

“You don't want to hear cop stories,” Ken said to me. After Angelina set down two heavy china mugs and plastic glasses of water with straws.

“Try me.”

“Okay,” he said. “Most of my really good cop stories are about one of two things. My body, or my gun. So. There was this Russian immigrant nutcase. He'd been tortured by the secret police, whatever alphabet-soup secret police were around in Moscow. This guy, he also liked to abuse kids. Not just slapping, but, like, kicking them. Dennise was my partner at the time. She's also my longtime friend and cohort, now, you
really
want to hear stories about me, she could tell you things I've forgotten. Anyway. This Russian guy. We went to arrest him and he tried to slam the door on us. Dennise blocked it with her foot, and when he looked around the door to see
what was blocking it, I stuck a can of pepper spray in his face and soaked him down. He was a little startled by that, judging from the scream, and he backed away enough for us to knock the door open and get in. We were there because of a call about his nine-year-old son. Dennise kept trying to get the kid out of the house, and to keep him out, but the fight was on between him and me, with Dennise helping when she could. We were all gagging, snotting, and crying from the pepper spray. That stuff gets everywhere. Anyway, I slugged it out with him, breaking his nose, closing one eye, and finally knocking some teeth out. When he got a little woozy for a second, we managed to get cuffs on him. We were all covered with blood and sweat and goo. It didn't take long for him to recover. The backup units that came ended up having to suitcase him. That's when you tie the feet together, lay them on their stomach, and tie the feet to the handcuffs behind the back. It's also how a few suspects have developed serious and fatal breathing problems after the extreme exertion and stress.”

“That's it?” I said. “You got a bad back from too much Mace?”

“Uhhhh, well, not really. So. I went to get some stuff out of my trunk. I could barely see and thought my face was on fire, so I wasn't paying much attention to this little Russian dude. Except, like, he's handcuffed behind his back, he throws off the officers, who can't stop him from storming down the sidewalk, dragging one of the backup officers behind him. That's when
I
got the Samsonite treatment, he's on top of me, a backup officer is below me, I'm jammed up totally. My back was never right again. Almost totally wack because of that Russian. But not totally.”

“You can still do…uh…”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sex is good for me. Anyway. Some time later, after physical therapy and I'm finally getting back to the street, I had to tackle another guy, a loser who hit a woman's car and took off. We stopped him
and as I was standing next to his driver's window, he decided to leave. I grabbed his keys from the ignition, he shoved the door open and took off running. I knocked him down twice, finally cuffed him. A little while later, at the station, my back locked up completely. I mean, I could barely breathe. It was the last day I ever spent on the street. I gotta go to the john. Sorry.”

Waiting for our order, watching people crowding in the front door. I saw a “Golden Tee” golf pinball machine against a back wall, more like a video game. It couldn't be very popular, since across the top electronic message board, those things where words flow from right to left describing the wonder of the experience you'd enjoy if only you popped money into the slot, at the end of this message it read, “Last updated on 12-11-2002.” I guess golf isn't too popular, probably because kids can't shoot and kill a host of video monsters.

Ken came back and sat down just as our order arrived and the waitron took away our whale.

“What is this?” I said.

“Fish tacos. They're great.”

“For breakfast?”

“Hey, I read that the favorite food for undergrad college kids and Wall Street yuppies is the same thing. Cereal. Sugar-sweetened cold cereal. Let 'em have their regulation breakfast. I'll eat these.”

While I ate the fish tacos, Ken insisting between mouthfuls they were excellent, I kept hearing a hissing sound behind me, so when I finally looked I saw it was a helium tank and balloons were being filled for kids of all ages.

I picked at the food, ignored the truly weird tortillas under the fish, ate the salad and some rice and beans. Finished, Ken scrunched this way and that, trying to ease the pains of all his police-related injuries, and finally he just said, “I'm dying here. You done?”

“Yes,” I said. “What now?”

“Don't think I'm an alcoholic. I'm not. But I've not
seen a mutilated body for years, and I'm kinda freaked by that guy in the barbeque pit.”

“I just saw mutilated bodies this week, but I'm still freaked out.”

“Okay. If we're going to talk about it, I really need a drink.”

“More coffee?”

“Margaritas.”

“If that's what you need,” I said. “Where we going, who serves alcohol so early in the morning?”

“There's this bar a few blocks away, you just sink into these leather booths. Or naugahyde, you know, it's like sitting on an air mattress that cuddles your body.”

 

The booths were comfortable. It wasn't leather. “Don't you wonder,” I said, “how many naugas died just for this one booth?”

He didn't get the joke, but it wasn't worth explaining and I didn't feel hilarious anyway, I couldn't even giggle.

“I saw you eying that business card,” he said.

Licking some salt from the lip of the margarita glass, not finding enough salt so he curled his left fingers as though they were holding a beer bottle, poured salt into the small valley between thumb and index finger. Licked it, finished the margarita, and ordered another.

“Agricultural supplies?”

“Yeah. Want to tell me why you were curious?” he said.

“You ever been to a cockfight?” I said. Nursing my iced tea.

“A few. When I worked undercover.”

“Ever play a video game?”

“Where you going with this?”

I told him everything I knew.

Mary Emich's fear of the
maras.

“It's a stretch,” he said finally. “Connecting the gardener with cockfights, just because of a business card for a place selling agricultural products. Connecting what looks like a random computer visit to the casino with
maras
.”

“I'm stretching it so hard it'll break, snap in my face. It's instinct.”

“Yeah. Instinct. Twelve years in undercover, I got the nose for instinct. Saved my partner's life once. But I don't see where you'd go with this.”

“How well do you know Mary?”

Salt, lots of salt, smiling into his fist while his tongue dabbed at the salt.

“She's a very close friend,” Ken said finally. “One time, I thought I was in love with her. Probably was. But she was still married, really happily married.”

“What happened?”

“Husband died in Iraq, killed by friendly fire. Sometimes Mary says she lost her husband years before that, lost him to the army. They were high school sweethearts who married very young, had no children.”

“What was his name?”

“Jim. Jim Coyne. Helluva nice guy. Anyway, Jim wanted a career in the Army, after fourteen years of it had been away from home three times as long as he was with Mary. He rose to the rank of captain in the Army Nursing Corps, was in civvies helping wounded Iraqis, and during a heavy night firefight was killed by a young sniper. An American Marine. Broke the Marine's heart, he never could pull a trigger again. Broke Mary's spirit for a whole year.”

“She seems happy now. She laughs, she smiles a lot.”

“Yeah. Her smile, yeah. It's beautiful, but sometimes…she smiles on the outside, it's just a physical thing. You know? She's beautiful. You're beautiful,
Laura. But she's got honor. I'd say it was honor. To protect her girl, this girl, and I've gotta tell you, I have
no
idea where this girl came from. She just showed up one day. Mary brought her to work, didn't want to let her out of her sight for about three months. Mary would do anything to protect the girl.”

“She said she'd kill if she had to.”

“Yeah. She'd kill. Knowing the penalties, religious, personal, yeah, she'd kill. To protect that girl. As a cop, I guess, I'd kill if I had to protect myself. Protect somebody. I don't know, it never really got that far. But to save a child? I ask myself, would I kill to protect something? Somebody?”

I didn't know what he wanted me to say. Said nothing.

“You don't know her well.”

“Well enough,” I said. “For a client.”

“A client.”

“A client. As a client, she's direct, she's self-confident, honest.”

“Honest?”

“Yes. Honest. She said she'd do anything to protect her child.”

“Mary is profoundly against violence. She's a pacifist, she can't stomach violence, senseless violence. She can't fathom it. But what a profound thing, that this woman would kill to protect her daughter. Do you truly realize what a profound thing that would be?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.

“Sure. Just do it quick.” He'd finished the second margarita, ordered a third, and sat with his head lowered, eyes flicking up to me and down to the glass.

“What happened to
your
marriage?”

His eyes moved instantly to a pale band of flesh on his left ring finger, the rest of the hand deeply tanned.

“Cop's life. She couldn't take it. Her second marriage. My third.”

“You watch a lot of movies?” Ken asked. Changing the subject.

“Yeah,” I said. What I
was
n't going to say was that I felt that Ken was becoming something more than a movie trailer, more than a coming attraction, it almost felt like the first time I believed that a man's true love was the main feature.

“So? I catch a movie whenever I can. What do you like?”

“Easier if you just tell me what you last saw.”

“The second Charlie's Angels movie?
Kill Bill, volume two
, but I liked the first one better. What?” he said. I pretended to stick four fingers down my throat.

“I like
good
movies,” I said.

“Okay, how about music?”

“Sure. But let me guess. Country Western?”

“Dixie Chicks, sure. But I like this weird stuff. I listen to this program from San Francisco. Music From the Hearts of Space. Before there was ‘new age' music, this program had the best. Terry Reilly, Phillip Glass, Tangerine Dream, Eno. They were also one of the live broadcasts of the group hum.”

“The…hum? Humming in a group?”

“A few NPR stations across the country,” Ken said. “They fill an auditorium, they schedule everybody on the air at the same time. They strike a specific note. People hum.”

“You mean, like, a song?”

“No. Just a note.”

“They hum a note? On the radio?”

“It sounds weird,” Ken said. “When I was a kid, living in some Yaqui village somewhere, I don't even know where, for different reasons there were different songs.”

“Like the Navajo singers,” I said. “Like a Blessing Way.”

“But now, the closest I get is to take part in a group hum.”