Cool in Tucson (34 page)

Did Denny say his name was—well, but it can’t be
— “No.”

“Local boy.  Phil and I were dubious about him but Doug felt he could control him and he said a runner from the neighborhood helped his cred.  Now I wonder.”

“Hector Rodriguez?  Usual spelling?”  She looked up from writing.  “What have you got on him?”

“Um, a stretch in juvie for car theft that won’t come up on your records, but you can get it, of course, if you have the name and a …never mind, I’ll fax it to you.  We’re very anxious to find him, but he hasn’t been home.  Will you let me know if you come across anything on him?  There might be something, another address or a phone number, in Doug’s laptop.  You did find that, I hope?”

“Yes.  We’ll take another look.”

Cruz came down the hall looking for him, and Morrell asked him, “Was that—?”

“Yup.  The next load.”  Sarah became aware of a great deal of foot traffic, doors being opened and closed, voices.

“I guess,” Mark Morrell said apologetically, “that I have to cut this short for now, Sarah.  There’s a lot going on here today.  Did I give you my card?  Good.  We’ll be in touch, hmm?  You think you can find your way out?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, “I’m sure I can manage that.”

His smile acknowledged the irony.  His handshake was firm but not overpowering  as he said, “We’re really grateful to you, Sarah.” 

Mark Morrell, she decided, probably had calibrated handshakes for men, women and children, and good-bye smiles graded precisely by degree of warmth.  He kept his seamless cool while he was facing her but as soon as he turned away he asked Phil Cruz anxiously, “Which rooms—” She could see, as he walked away, that he had already forgotten her.   

A door had opened beyond him, at the back of the building.  Three men were briefly silhouetted there, against the light, two officers with a prisoner between them.  Something about the silhouette of the officer on the left held her attention, and as the door closed and the overhead lights revealed his features she saw that the man was Will Dietz. 

Surprised once too often in a single day, Sarah felt hot blood surge into her face.  She remembered his words in her driveway this morning, “… skej is kind of crazy right now.  Lot of people sick I guess.” 
Kissed me and lied to my face.
  As the whole crazy week’s frustrations found a focus point, unreasoning rage flooded her brain. 
Everybody I care about jerks me around.
 

Dietz looked past Morrell at that instant and met her blazing eyes.  He recognized her anger at once, and lifted one hand in a pleading motion just as she turned away. 

Sarah walked steadily, not allowing herself to look back, along the carpeted hall to the high desk by the window.  She signed out in the ledger, her hand shaking a little from the pressure of blood roaring in her ears.  The girl in the red dress was very busy with the phones now, and the whole building had a beehive feel, quiet scurrying going on all over it.  There was a distant hum of many motors at the rear of the building, and once an outburst of loud talk cut off by a closing door.

The lot in front was empty of parked cars but not quiet.  One after another, vehicles turned into the driveway with shackled passengers in the backseat, and disappeared behind the building.  Sarah sat in her car with the door open, letting the fans blow hot air out, wishing she had something to break. 

  Her phone rang. 

CHAPTER THIRTY

Rudy watched them cross the street, step onto the parking lot and stand a moment, scanning the signs in the front windows of the tire store.  The uniformed patrolman was from the South Tucson Police Department, what was his name?  Manuel Torres.  His uncle was an old friend, Raymundo Torres, but in one electric oh-shit instant Rudy knew that family connections would not help today. 

The two plain clothes detectives with Torres had pared down bodies and eyes like one-way windows. They wore that air of carrying powerful secrets that he associated with federal officers.  He knew without looking that there would be backup somewhere nearby.

His mind had always accepted that arrest and conviction were possible components of drug-trafficking.  Most of the dealers went to prison sooner or later, it was reasonable to assume that his day would come.  He had watched plenty of dealers go in and come out and start over.  It didn’t seem too hard.  Cost of doing business, they said with mingled contempt and humor. 

But this morning as he saw the threat closing in, he learned that what his mind had accepted, his gut could not abide.  His grandfather’s battered old tire store, Sunday dinners at the dog track with Camille, even the silly clatter of the crowd of young relatives hanging out at his house grew in importance as the officers approached his shop, reminding him that he had status in this community, long-standing ties of great merit.  A stone grew in his chest. 

He forgot that he had made careful plans to abandon Camille and go traveling with a high-spirited pole dancer.  The bank accounts in the Caymans, and the plans for travel and frolic in faraway lands with Steffi, that part of his dream was easy enough to let go, he admitted now.  But what he had in Tucson was real, and in a hot sweat of shame he imagined he saw his wife’s eyes demanding, Get it back.

They’ll take the house
.  He knew how these things worked.  Once they made the case they took everything they could lay their hands on, all the businesses, houses and cars and boats, bank accounts and jewelry, even the house you were living in.  They took as much as they could find and they split it with the local police departments, to pay back the community, they said, for the terrible expense of making the case against you.

He pictured Camille’s face the day they told her that she would have to leave the nice house on Thirty-Second Street, the High Resolution TV and the shining kitchen with every gadget ever invented for the care and feeding of relatives.  Conveniently disinterested in the bars and body shops that were the ostensible source of his wealth now, Camille concerned herself entirely with the life in her comfortable house, the barbeque out back and the walk-in closet that held her fifty-odd pairs of shoes.  For a crazy moment Rudy longed to put his arm over her soft shoulders and tell her, “I’m sure they won’t take your shoes.”  It seemed to him he was tough enough to take whatever was coming to him except the shame of what this would do to his wife.

So as he watched the men with the closed faces come through the door, he began to wonder what he had that he could trade them, to let Camille keep the house.

He had heard other dealers’ stories, he knew what the narcs would say—that they had all the proof they needed, he had better just cooperate and hope it would help him with the judge.  But he knew they could not have found everything he had, and that cops always had lawyers on their backs, yelling for more evidence.    

He should probably call his own lawyer soon, but not right away. 
Might want to play the dumb Mexican for a while yet.
 

He watched them pull their shields out, getting ready to show him they had every right to take away his restaurants and bars, the eight cars he had bought from Pappy Grimes and the old farmhouse down by Three Points crammed to the ceiling with Mexican Gold and Blue Thunder.  In his mind he moved away a little, put some distance between himself and the store’s clamor.  He got as cool as he could inside his personal oasis, set his priorities, and faced the ominous assurance of the feds.

They don’t know the name of my boca.  He ought to be worth a house.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Sarah saw her home number in the caller ID window and answered while she closed up her car.  “Hi, Mother, how are you doing?”

“Well, just fine.  But I don’t know what to think about Janine.”

“Oh?  Why?”

“Well, I waited till eleven-thirty—I know she was bent out of shape last night but I expected her to call here as soon as she woke up.  But she never did, so I called her.  Her phone rang once, and she picked it up so I know she was there, but she didn’t answer and in a couple of seconds the line went dead.  Since then I’ve called three times and never got an answer.”

“Huh.  Funny.” 
I don’t have time for Janine right now.

“Where do you suppose she’d go?”

“She can’t go any place.  She doesn’t have a car.”

“Oh, that’s right.  Well, then…why doesn’t she answer the phone?”

“Mother, how could I possibly know that?”  Her answer came out sharper than she intended and elicited total silence at the other end.  She couldn’t even hear breathing. Had Aggie fainted, had a stroke? 
Damn, she doesn’t even have to talk to pull my
string. 
 “Look, I never got a lunch break, I’ll take one now and swing by there.”

“Oh, Honey, could you?”

“Sure.  How’s Denny doing?”

“Quite well, I think.  She slept till almost ten o’clock. Since then we’ve had scrambled eggs and cocoa with marshmallows and an apple and a couple of cookies.”

“Okay.  You two stick to your diets and I’ll get back to you.”  

Out of dubious-cop habit she dialed Janine’s number herself as she turned south on Hemisphere Loop.  After five rings she closed the phone and turned east on Valencia.  Overhead, clusters of sleek jet fighters augmented the hot urban commotion, making tight co-ordinated turns at breathtaking speeds and shooting touch-and-go landings at Davis-Monthan airbase to get ready for the real deal over Iraq.  Sarah turned up the radio and took Kolb north, squinting into afternoon brightness.

Turning onto Lurlene Street, she was almost wiped out by an old red Subaru Brat that cut the corner so short he left her no place to go but the curb.  Ordinarily she would have hit the siren and arrested his ass; she had no mercy for reckless drivers.  Today she had too much else on her mind; she hid out in the anonymity of her unmarked vehicle and let him go. 

Lurline Street
looked empty, everybody at work or school.  Sarah drove past Janine’s house to the end of the block, hung a U-ey and came back to park a couple of doors to the west, facing east with a good view of the street all the way to the corner.  Visiting Janine lately, you just never knew─the man who left that message on her table could have come back. 

She walked silently on the weedy grass next to the sidewalk.  Two strides on tiptoe took her from the sidewalk to the front door, where she flattened herself against the stucco wall.

Janine’s house had a sidelight as tall as the door and a foot wide.  It was covered by an old lace curtain on stretchers, supposed to provide privacy for the people inside but limp with age now and hanging a little crooked.  Peering in along the right-hand edge, Sarah could see most of the front room. 

Janine was sitting in there, on a scuffed wooden chair, close to her round dining table but facing the front door.  Her arms were tied to the chair with striped cotton dishtowels.  A leather belt held her left leg tight against the leg of the table, and she had a gag in her mouth.

Sarah took one step across the door and tried the door handle with her left hand.  It turned.  She pushed the door open and stepped inside with her weapon braced at shoulder height, expecting to confront whoever had tied her sister to the chair. 

There was nobody in sight but Janine, who began making frantic sounds through the gag.  With her eyebrows raised, Sarah nodded her head toward the bedrooms.  Janine shook her head vehemently and made more get-me-out noises through the towel.