Salvation Boulevard (24 page)

But he stopped me. He held up his hand and said, “Wait.”

“What?”

He sat quietly for a moment.

“If you come to me in friendship, asking my hospitality, I would give you that. With all that it means. You would come under my protection, which is what you want. But that's not what you ask. Because you don't want to incur an unknown obligation. Which is businesslike, and I respect that. But I don't want unknowns either. I need to know what I'm getting into. Who is trying to kill you? And why?”

“I don't really know,” I said.

“This man, you don't know him?”

I told Jorge where I'd seen him before. And how a blue Explorer, probably the same car, had followed me and Manny after we'd left the state prison.

“So this has to do with Ahmad Nazami?”

“It seems like it has to, but I don't see how,” I said. “It was Manny's case. I was working for Manny. His law firm has dropped it. So I'm not working for anyone, so I should be out of it.”

“That's your only connection to these people?”

“All that I know of.”

He looked at me coolly and thoughtfully, as if he was certain that there were things I wasn't telling him. The music changed to a piano piece, elegant and soothing. Eventually Jorge said, “So we get back to my original question. Why me?”

“Like I said . . . ”

“Carl, you have many friends in the police. You have many friends at that Cathedral of yours, and they are always telling how you are a community and help each other out. And there are many, many
policia
there. In fact, they are like a secret organization inside all the other police. The born-again squads.

“Yet, you don't go to any of them. You come to me.” He looked at me and waited for a moment so I could answer if I wanted to. But I didn't. “It has to be because you don't trust them. So this has to do with the police—”

“I told you these guys are supposed to be Homeland Security.”

“And,” Jorge said, “with people at your church.”

He waited again. Finally I said, “It might. But I didn't want to say so because I have nothing to prove it. It might not be true.”

He nodded. His expression said that he thought my excuse for not coming clean with him was pretty thin, but he would accept it anyway. He thought some more. “You are afraid one of them might betray you. I see.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Alright. Now I know. Let us make a deal.”

“The thing with Domingo . . . , ” I said, beginning to explain it.

“No,” he said flatly. With a gesture as negligently dismissive as tossing away a soiled tissue, he added, “He's a gangster.” Then he leaned in. “I have a different deal. I have a job for you. For which I will pay you your regular rate. It's a business investigation. I was watching your pastor's TV show on Sunday.”

“But aren't you . . . ”

“Catholic? Yes. But . . . whatever . . . I was watching. There he was, and he said he was going to build a city. An entire city. Hundreds of millions of dollars, even
billions,
he said, and he said he has the financing.

“Find out about this for me, what the plans are, where the money is coming from.”

“What's your interest?”

“Roads, houses, office buildings. I build things. I develop. I invest.”

“I'll find out what I can for you, but . . . ”

“But what?”

“You may be wasting your time. I don't know if they'll work with you.”

“Because I'm Mexican? Or because they think I'm associated with criminals?”

“The whole idea,” I said, trying to explain, “is that Plowright wants to build a
Christian
community.”

“And?”

“And you're Catholic.”

“You have something against Catholics?”

“Wait a minute, no . . . ” I had a sense of what Plowright wanted, a feeling for it, though I'd never thought it out in detail. I never thought about it excluding people. It was meant to bring people together, a particular kind of people, so we could support each other and be comfortable, more than comfortable, joyous and enthusiastic in our choices, but yes, it was meant to leave other people out, leave them behind. An earthly, practical, here-and-now version of the Rapture, the good Christians levitating to the City of God, while the unbelievers, infidels, apostates, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, agnostics, and atheists crashed and smashed in the hellish plains below.

“Look,” I said, “what you're asking me is to find out what his plan is in terms of what'll work for you, right? So, I'm starting here and now. It's not about you and me. What he has in mind—that's what you want to know, right?—is Christians having their own place without really anyone else. All Christians living there, doing all the business.”

“And a Catholic isn't a Christian?”

“In the minds of”—I couldn't bring myself to say “my people” or “my religion”—“a lot of the people up there, a significant number of them, and, I would guess, including Plowright, the answer is no.”

“What are we then?”

The things people say among their own, in the routine way that cops use ethnic slurs, often won't bear repeating when we're facing outward. I've heard Catholicism called many things, sometimes as off-hand, casual remarks, and sometimes seriously, to explain how we differ from them. To some of us, Roman papism is a cult masquerading as Christianity, a pagan cult, the apostate megacult, a cult of idolatry, and Rome, as shorthand for that church, is called the Great Whore, mother of harlots and abominations. The pope's chair is called Satan's throne, and there are people who will make the case that the pope—not any particular one, but whoever is there—is the Antichrist.

“I'd say they'd call it a cult. Like Mormons or Jehovahs.”

“Is that what you think?” he asked with black-eyed anger. “Is that what you think of the Holy Mother Church?”

“Jorge, this isn't about what I think. It's about whether you can do business with CTM.”

“You're right. You are completely right,” he said, his anger doing a fast fade, like the filament in a bulb. Just as quickly, he switched over to self-satisfied enthusiasm. “I knew you were the right person for this. So, the real job is to find out what will get those people to overcome their prejudices and do business with this particular ‘member of a cult.' Find me the hook, the angle.”

“You could go get saved,” I said. “That's the easiest way in.”

“Are you joking?”

“I'm sixty an hour.”

“That's high for a PI.”

“That's what I charged Manny because he wanted the best.”

“All right,” he said. No more bargaining. He would pay for the best. “And on top of that, you find me what I need, a bonus, a big bonus. This could be huge.”

He held out his hand. I took it. We shook on it.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “Would you like something to eat or to drink, some coffee perhaps. My mother will be very
pleased if you have something. I know her. It is already bothering her that you haven't.”

“Coffee would be fine.”

“You know,” he said, “I am still thinking about why you came to me. I think it is not that you fear you will be betrayed but that you already have been. Yes,” he suddenly smiled, “you are very lucky, my friend.”

A line from an old song whispered through my mind: “a friend of the devil is a friend of mine.” I asked, “Why's that?”

“Because I am an expert in treachery,” he said with what sounded like the pride we have in having survived old and bitter trials. “I will even tell you,” he said, leaning toward me, “who it was who betrayed you.”

“Yeah?” I said, trying to sound skeptical, but it came out rasping, like there was desert sand in my throat.

“It's the person who is closest to you. The one you trust the most. It always is.”

Gwen. I knew that.

Luisa showed us out to her cottage.

It was quite feminine, of course, but not overbearingly so. It was well built and immaculately maintained, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and its own little kitchen. I couldn't help but contrast it with my own home, built with lower-grade materials, put together with less care, showing wear, and in constant need of small attentions.

When Luisa was gone, I left Angie in the bigger bedroom to watch TV or do whatever she wanted.

Then I went into the smaller one, closed the door, and prayed.

Alone and on my knees.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Matthew 7:7–8.

I had asked, and it had been given. I had been seeking, and I had found. Be careful what you ask for. Now, on my knees, I asked what was I to do about it?

“It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,” a voice said. Acts 9:5, if I remembered my Bible study right. But I'd never heard it said quite that way before, with a touch of sarcasm, emphasizing the word “pricks” for the puns in it.

“Will you go away,” I said to Manny, who was standing just at the edge of my peripheral vision.

“Now you want a choice, not just any dead Jew?”

“You got me into this mess in the first place. Will you please stop.”

“There's something I want to talk to you about,” he said in a tone of mild chastisement.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “For the way I thought about Susan. I—”

“Don't be ridiculous. Who cares?”

“The Ninth Commandment,” I said. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.

“This is America,” he said. “That would be a thought crime. Didn't we argue once about the Commandments not being the basis of our legal system?”

“Yes,” I said. “Now, would you tell me what you want and then leave me alone.”

“Alright. It's my cell phone.”

“What?”

“You picked it up when I was shot, and you never returned it.”

“You came for”—I turned, incredulous, to look at him directly—“that?” And, of course, he was gone.

Yes, I had his damn cell phone. It was still in my car. His cell phone. The day we'd met with Ahmad Nazami, Manny had used it to take pictures of the two men who were supposed to be from Homeland Security.

The Internet is an amazing thing.

After I recharged Manny's phone—courtesy of Jorge, who had a drawer full of phones and chargers—I uploaded the pictures onto one of the computers in Jorge's home office, then sent them out by e-mail to a couple of associations of private investigators that I belong to. They sent out an automatic blast to the members, asking if anyone could identify the two men. Within an hour I had their names.

Eduardo Alvarez and Daniel “Beef” Polasky.

From there, I was able to get credit reports, job histories, current and past addresses, and the cars they drove. Both of them lived over in Arizona, about an hour and a half away. Eduardo was married and owned a condo. Polasky was single and rented. And he owned a three-year-old blue Ford Explorer.

Alvarez had been with the DEA until five years ago, then worked for two private security companies. Then he went to Iraq for eighteen months with a private contractor called Custer Battles whose motto is “Turning risk into opportunity.” He'd been back a little over a year.

Polasky had been with CBP, Customs and Border Patrol, which is part of Homeland Security, but he left them two years ago. He too went to Iraq, also with Custer Battles, and returned to the land of malls and SUVs at about the same time as Polasky.

Both of them currently worked for a firm called FOB Security, Ltd. The trail stopped there. Its address was a P.O. box address in Delaware, and it had no listed phone number. A funny way to run a business.

Jorge wandered in and out during the process, constantly making and taking phone calls. I didn't realize it—and I hadn't asked for his help—but he was checking his own sources. They had the gossip that colored in the outlines.

Alvarez had worked with the DEA in the Ramparts section of LA, where he'd gotten into the rip-off and resale business. Word was, he had resigned before the rumors snapped around his wrists.

Polasky had been palling around in Brownsville with a group of National Guard and army recruiters who were smuggling drugs. He was the man at the gate and let shipments through. The military types escorted them north and east, using their Federal IDs to keep from being searched. A couple of sergeants and a guardsman had gone down in an FBI sting. Either there was no direct evidence against Polasky and they dropped the charges against him, provided that he quietly resigned, or he earned his hall pass by testifying. Nobody was sure. Since the only folks who went down were Anglo amateurs, the
narcotrafficante
hardcores hadn't cared enough to find out—or do anything about it.

“You going to go after them?” Jorge asked after he told me all that.

“Yeah,” I said, and he nodded. “But I haven't figured out how yet. Maybe I can get something on one of them, and turn him.”

He made an impatient gesture, then mimicked a scissor with his middle and forefinger—“
Los albondigas
,” their balls—then added his tactical opinion in a thoughtful and considered way. “I'd go for the muscle man. He won't want to lose his beauty.”

I just looked at him, letting him know that I wasn't about to cut peoples' body parts off.