Red Man Down (22 page)

But finally he said, ‘All right, go for it. I’ll be in meetings again this afternoon.’ His frustration boiling over, he added briefly, ‘I told them today that this has got to be the last day. I was hired to do police work. But right now the city council is hell-bent on combining some patrol functions with the suburbs, and they think they can’t be deprived of my wisdom. But keep me informed, please. Text me if anything changes.’

The three of them came out of his office feeling moderately jazzed. But in a few steps Sarah remembered something and started to turn back.

‘What is it?’ Leo said, alarmed.

‘I meant to tell him that I think Tracy’s getting close to the message too, and ask if I can keep him till he finds it.’

Leo wrapped a long arm around her shoulders and held her close. ‘Work it out with Elsie,’ he said softly, into her ear. ‘Let the man eat his lunch; don’t pester him after you just won a round. Aren’t you ever going to learn boss management?’

The shop was ill-equipped and shabby, converted from a two-bay garage that had once had two gas pumps in front and been called a ‘filling station.’ It had been abandoned years ago by the corporation that now, in much larger and shinier venues, operated ‘convenience stores’ that sold gas out front and rows of noxious snacks in shiny wrappers inside.

The pumps were gone, and much of the glass that had fronted the station had been replaced with plywood panels. The mechanic who rented the site didn’t need much light inside, anyway; he mostly used the building to house the van where he kept all his tools. He did all his repair work in the weedy yard behind the building, in the shade of the mesquites that grew untrimmed around three sides of the lot. The street side of the lot featured a cracked driveway and a crumbling curb, and there was no sign that flaunted the name of the proprietor. The entire operation was amazingly close to clandestine, in plain sight in the bright city of Tucson but not, somehow, at all noticeable.

The sunshine was intermittent today, covered often by surly gray clouds left over from last week’s storm. Temps were hanging in the fifties, and a cold breeze occasionally gusted, throwing dirt against the windshield with a noise like sleet.

Leo had stayed behind with the money problem. Sarah and Jason had persuaded Oscar to join them on the hunt for the mechanic. ‘You’re the one who knows cars,’ Jason had said. ‘We need you for this, buddy.’ A kind of bond had formed between the two of them yesterday afternoon in what Jason was now calling ‘Chico’s Little Shop of Horrors.’

Sarah had not been able to find JR’s Auto Repair listed in any directory of Tucson services, so Jason and Oscar had done some free-form snooping around the neighborhood, using Jason’s recent experience in the bar on Flowing Wells as a paradigm. ‘Schmooze,’ he’d told Oscar. ‘Shuffle around grinning like a doofus. Talk about the weather.’

Sarah had agreed to circle the four-block area, looking for mechanics with no logos or waving detectives, whichever came first. On her third circuit Jason had broken off a conversation with a muscular hot-dog vendor in a hairnet and jumped in the Impala, looking cheerful.

‘Not many frills in this neighborhood, but there’s a lotta nice folks around here,’ he’d said. He’d learned the mechanic’s name, Juan Rodriguez, and his address. ‘My man here on the hot-dog wagon says he’s a good little guy, just trying to get along and feed a couple of kids.’

Oscar had been waiting for them in front of a strip mall that included a doughnut shop, a massage place, a wild bird store, a used bookstore and a unisex hair stylist. At the stylist, he said, he’d scored a nice chat with a beautician named Tammi.

‘You get any tips about your appearance?’ Jason had asked him. Alone among the male detectives in Homicide, Jason seemed amused by Oscar’s reputation as a devastating lover of women.

‘Tammi recommends a varsity side cut this year.’ After Oscar had expressed strong interest in the Mad Men styles she showed him, he’d asked her if she knew the mechanic working on a car in the weedy lot down the street.

‘Tammi says she’s known him for a while – his name is Juan and he’s a big favorite of the girls in the unisex shop. He’s very courteous when he comes in for haircuts. But he’s not making any moves or anything, she says. Apparently his wife doesn’t get her hair cut – she’s got about a yard of beautiful hair in a long braid. “You should see them in the store when they go shopping for groceries,” she said. “He treats her like a queen.”’

‘Well, shit, then,’ Jason had replied quickly. ‘Why don’t we just kick his door down and kidnap the wife till he gives up the skinny?’

Oscar had raised his eyebrows and looked at Sarah, who’d said, ‘Jason’s having a little trouble accepting reality today.’

Parked at the crumbling curb in front of JR’s place, they watched the mechanic raise the hood on a sunburned Dodge pickup and lean in for a look.

Jason stared through the windshield a few beats and said, ‘I’m already starting to not like this caper.’

‘We’re not going to hurt him,’ Sarah said.

‘Uh-huh. Just threaten is all.’

‘If he’s as close to the edge as this place looks, we won’t even have to do much of that.’

‘It still smells like police brutality to me if it scares him enough to make him run.’

‘You do remember we’re chasing a murderer?’

‘We haven’t even proven that yet.’

‘We will.’ She turned some of his own ammo on him. ‘Trust me.’

They agreed on a simple plan, agreeing it was subject to revision at any moment.

‘I’d like to do this as easy as we can,’ Sarah said. ‘Do you mind starting the conversation in Spanish?’

‘Not a bit,’ Oscar said. ‘Good idea.’

When they were ready they walked together across the lot and introduced themselves to Juan Rodriguez, whose eyes took on the opacity of chunks of coal as they showed him their badges.

‘The people in this neighborhood speak very highly of your skill and your honesty, Juan,’ Oscar said, in Spanish. ‘Do you speak English?’

‘
Un poco
,’ he said, and then in English, ‘If you go slow?’

‘
Bueno
.’ Oscar switched between English and Spanish and translated Juan’s answers so both sides understood the conversation. ‘We have come to ask you about a certain car,
un auto
particular, entiendo
? We do not wish to harm your business. If we can get some information about this car, we’ll be gone.’ He gestured, and Jason showed him a picture of the Camry. He studied it briefly, and nodded. ‘You recognize it?’

‘
Es possible
. It looks … familiar?’

‘Juan, have you worked on this car in your shop?’

‘Perhaps. I work on many cars.’

A sudden gust picked up sand and threw it in their faces. Sarah said, ‘Could we buy you a coffee,
Señor
? Is there someplace nearby where we can talk comfortably out of this wind?’

‘You want to talk? Only that?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I have no one to leave here,’ he said. ‘Can we just talk in the shop?’

He had only one chair, which he offered to Sarah. The three men perched around her in the gloom on sawhorses and a workbench. Jason, Sarah saw, had already begun to temper his sympathy for Juan somewhat, because of his dread of the dust in the shop. He touched the surface of the bench he’d been offered, looked at his fingertips and leaned carefully on the edge while he put the picture of Joey’s old Toyota back in the envelope and read out the license number.

‘
Momento
,’ Juan said, and stepped to a row of plastic file boxes on a rickety shelf. No computers in this garage, but he kept neat records; he found it right away. ‘Yes, I know …’ He scrunched his eyes in concentration and came up with some words, ‘I have … to work … on it.’

Sarah said, ‘And is this the person who brings this car to you?’ Jason slid a mug shot of Joey out of the envelope.

Juan’s eyes registered momentary surprise when he saw the telltale gray drape around the shoulders that guaranteed equal status to all arrestees. But his face never changed from expressionless as he said, ‘Yes.’

‘You understand,’ Sarah said, ‘we are Tucson city police.’ They had agreed not to mention Homicide yet. ‘We have no interest in your documentation and the license under which you operate here.’ She paused, aware that her denial conveyed a powerful threat. ‘We only need to know how long you have been servicing this car and what maintenance you do on it.’

The interrogation that followed was conducted almost entirely by Oscar, who besides being bilingual was a car buff and had spent years in Auto Theft. In alternating Spanish and English, with pauses, he teased out the details of the work that kept Joey’s old car on the road, and translated it for his team, with Juan himself interjecting at points in shaky English.

‘He has no interest in how the car looks, as you have seen,’ Juan said, ‘and he does not have much money of his own. But the person he works for requires him to make occasional trips out of town, so he puts hundreds of miles on the car each month. He comes to me for basic maintenance, so he won’t break down out there on the road.’ As he grew more relaxed, Juan’s English, somewhat suspiciously, seemed to improve.

‘I noticed that the car looks better under the hood than anyplace else.’

‘Yes. It’s an old car but a standard make, you know, so I can always get parts. I keep the gears lubricated, the brakes tight. I keep the engine clean and the oil fresh. Also, I rotate the tires and keep them balanced, and I recently replaced the whole set.’

‘I noticed that too. You ordered and installed them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where does he go, do you know?’

Juan shrugged. ‘Not exactly. Somewhere near Phoenix, it must be. Sometimes I have to dig out the front floor, just enough so I can work. That guy, he is a pig, you know? The trash in the car is all food – candy wrappers and fast food bags. But the receipts are from Chandler or Mesa.’

‘Does he pay you each time you service the car, or—’

‘Not exactly. He brought money along the first time he came to me, and then he wanted to run a …’ He looked at Oscar and said a Spanish phrase.

‘A charge? A tab?’

‘
Si
, a tab. He said that his employer wanted to see the charge. But I said that I cannot run a tab, I deal only in cash. So now he brings a deposit every two or three months, and when I work on the car I give him a bill and show him how much credit he has left. When it gets down to around fifty dollars I show him and he brings more money.’

‘The deposits, Juan.’ All the detectives leaned forward as Oscar asked the next question. ‘Are they cash or a check?’

‘Cash.’

‘And when you replaced the tires? Did you order those?’

‘Yes. After they paid a deposit.’

‘They?’

‘Well.’ Juan licked his lips. ‘He says someone else is paying.’

‘But you haven’t seen that person?’

‘No.’

Sarah said, ‘And so far you haven’t lost on the deal? He’s paid for everything he’s used?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded, gratified by this indication that someone understood his greatest anxiety. ‘But each time I hold my breath a little, because the arrangement seems a little … irregular.’

‘But on the other hand they’re good business, huh?’

‘Yes.’ A tiny shrug, balanced between resignation and fear, and then he tried to put a Chamber of Commerce spin on his risky life. ‘All my customers are good business. Good people here!’ He smiled the ghost of a boosterish smile, and then went back to watching them carefully.

Driving back to the station, the three of them batted the question around – who’s the ‘employer’ who pays the bills on the car?

‘You think maybe it was Angela who got the money after all?’ Sarah said, turned sideways in the passenger seat while Jason drove. ‘But why would she “employ” Joey?’

‘And if Joey then killed
her
and took the money, why was he doing a home invasion just to score a couple of cameras and an iPad?’

‘But if he doesn’t have the money,’ Oscar said, ‘what’s all the travel about?’

‘And if he does have the money,’ Jason said, ‘who’s his employer now that Angela’s gone?’

‘Maybe there is no employer,’ Sarah said. ‘Maybe it’s one more dodge for him to hide behind. Have you noticed how fast everything Joey touches slides out of control?’

They went back and clustered around Leo’s desk, telling him about their interview with Juan and what they’d learned about the wildcat auto-repair shop.

Leo couldn’t seem to stay focused on what they were saying. Presently Sarah realized he was just waiting for them to stop talking so he could tell them about his afternoon. The bank examiners had finally given him a full explanation of how they thought the theft was done. As he talked, Sarah realized it still wasn’t really settled.

‘The truth is there’s still some question about how much money is missing. Nobody’s ever been able to prove exactly how much he took because they’ve never been able to find out where he put any of it.’

‘Then how do they know he took any?’ Sarah said.

‘Well, because the three charities he was banking for all tell the same story: Frank always picked up the money after one of the events – the bake sales, the ball games, the Thursday night bingo games – and took it to the credit union and made the deposit. It was very casual, a system left over from years ago when Tucson was smaller and so were all these organizations. Not proper procedure but he’d been doing these crummy little jobs for so long, all the things nobody else wanted to do, and he did so many favors for so many people, they just took it for granted.

‘Then one day the new bank examiners for the whole state came in and looked over the accounts and said, “This isn’t right, you shouldn’t be handling these little two-bit accounts in the first place. And besides, there should be at least two people counting and signing off on everything.” So Frank got kicked upstairs, as it were, to work at being the comptroller his title had been saying he was all along. And two members each from the food bank, the Kiwanis, and the Royal Order of Elks had to take on the job of depositing the money from their special events.