A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (21 page)

If I could have, I would have hid my face in the crook of her neck for the next few hours, waited for her to fall asleep, and tried to sneak out. That wasn’t much of a plan, though.

I lifted my head, looked at her, and saw nothing but pleasant contentment and compassion in her eyes.

“Could you excuse me for a second?”

I fumbled my way into her bathroom, turned on the light, closed the door, and stared at the dark, wet spot in the crotch of my pants, wishing I’d worn my black suit.

After cleaning myself up the best I could, I sat on the toilet and tried to think of something to say to Julia. I thought about calling Jen and asking for advice. I thought about faking a murder callout from the watch commander. I thought about drowning myself in the bathtub. The process of elimination must have taken longer than I realized, because she surprised me by tapping gently on the door and saying, “You okay?”

“Yes,” I answered too quickly. “I’ll be right out.”

I stood up, looked at my withered face in the mirror, ran a hand through my hair trying to make it look a little bit less stupid, and decided what to do. We were both grown-ups. She was a generous and kind woman. We would sit back down on the couch and talk. We would finish our wine and before long we’d be comfortable and laughing and enjoying ourselves. It wouldn’t be awkward or embarrassing at all. It wouldn’t.

She was still standing by the couch, waiting for me to join her, with what might have been the kindest expression I’d ever seen and her hand held out for me.

All I had to do was cross the room and take her hand.

“I should probably go,” I said.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

When I didn’t answer, she came to me.

“I had a nice time tonight,” I said.

Her eyes locked on mine, and in the second before I looked away, I thought I saw her make the decision not to try to change my mind.

“So did I.” She smiled and seemed resigned to my need to say goodnight. “I really hope we can do this again.” She put her hands on my arms and kissed me and I tried to kiss her back.

“You’re shaking,” she said.

“It was a little cold in the bathroom.”

As I went out the door, she caught my hand in hers and I looked back. Her eyes were green with little golden-brown flecks.

Maybe I shouldn’t have let go.

In the car on the way home, the midnight British people on KPCC were talking to the tallest man in the world. He was getting married.

20

F
LEECE KNIT CAP
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NO LABEL OR LOGO
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DARK GREEN
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“Did you ask him about the prepaid cell number?” I said. Patrick and Marty were filling me in on Medina’s interrogation. A dangerous-warrant team had picked him up at his home address while I’d been out with Julia the night before.

“No,” Patrick said. “He was stonewalling on everything. I figured why risk it. If we tipped him off that we knew the number, he’d get word out.”

“Good thinking,” I said. “Maybe we can keep the number in play. He give up anything?”

“No,” Marty said. “He lawyered up.”

I thought about that. “Who’s schooling these guys?” Anybody who’s ever seen a cop show knows the smart thing to do when you’re arrested on a murder charge is to invoke your right to counsel. It’s surprising, though, the number of suspects who don’t. They think they’re smarter than we are, or that asking for an attorney will make them look guilty, or that we can’t possibly know what we know. We question a lot of innocent people, but we don’t arrest too many. If we bring someone in on a murder beef, we’ve got cause. Most suspects, guilty or innocent, talk to us. But first Omar and now Medina had lawyers, and even Francisco and Pedro had kept their mouths closed. Whoever was pulling their strings was smart enough to plan ahead and to make sure his button men were more afraid of him than they were of us.

“I don’t know,” Marty said.

Patrick looked at me. “You think it could be Benny War?”

“The only connections so far are his family link to Omar and the fact that Siguenza is his golfing buddy.”

“Who’s that?” Marty asked.

“That’s the guy representing the kids who killed Bishop.”

“Send me everything you have on Benny,” Patrick said to me.

“What do you mean ‘everything’?”

“Contact info, phone numbers, addresses, interview reports, everything.”

“Think you can link him to the mystery phone?” I asked.

“I’ve got all the metadata, calls, texts, locations, all of it. If we can put the phone in the same place as Benny, even once, we’ve got something.”

“Watch your step,” Marty said. “You could be getting into dicey territory with privileged attorney-client communications.”

“As long as we start with the mystery number and trace direct connections from it to other numbers, we’re good,” Patrick said. “The warrant clears us for that.”

“But isn’t it a problem to start with Benny’s number and check it against the phone records?”

“It all depends on how I set up the search. If I only search for the mystery number and not Benny’s, we should be okay. Same justification the NSA spies on us. Not allowed to look directly, but if they make a connection from a valid source, then it’s fair game.”

“Really?” Marty said. “You sure about that?”

“This week,” Patrick said, “I’m sure. Who knows what will be legal next week?”

He was right. The laws regarding access to digital information were changing every week. The NSA scandal hadn’t helped us any either. We had to watch our steps more carefully than ever. Metadata was big news, and that meant that every defense attorney and suspect who’d ever logged on to CNET was taking a shot at a Fourth-Amendment defense.

When we had the squad room to ourselves, Jen turned to me and said, “So how did it go?”

For a second I thought she was referring to something work related. “How’d what go?”

“Come on,” she said. “Don’t give me that.”

By that time I had figured out what she was asking about. “It was okay,” I said. “We just went for coffee. In the East Village.”

She waited for me to go on, and when I didn’t, she said, “Tell me about it.”

“We just talked, got to know each other a little bit.”

There was another pause. I wondered if she felt awkward too, or if she was just aware of my discomfort and intentionally drawing out the silences. Probably the latter.

“Do you like her?”

“What? Are we in high school?”

“I’m not. You? Who knows?”

I thought about the way the date ended, and a sudden flush of embarrassment came over me.

Jen saw it. “Uh oh. What?”

“Nothing,” I said, too quickly. “We had a nice time.”

She studied me. It didn’t take her long to figure out something had gone badly and left me flustered and too uncomfortable to talk about it. I knew she’d narrow it down to a few likely possibilities, each as disconcerting as the others.

Her tone softened. “You going to see her again?”

“I don’t know.” Honestly, I’d been so busy all day that I hadn’t thought much about it. Would I see her again? Would she even want to see me? The questions bouncing around in my head made my stomach churn.

That afternoon, Jesús texted me.

im worried

What’s wrong?

theres a guy at jackntehbox. think hes watching me

Are you by yourself?

yea

Are there other people there?

yea

Stay there. Is he staring at you?

no. looked a couple times. i could see his reflection in the window.

Does he know you know he’s watching you?

i dont think so.

Good. Keep looking at your phone. Can you describe him without looking at him again?

yea. big, realy big. old. mexican i think

Does he have a mustache? Hair?

no mustache just fuzz on top

Anything else?

got a tatoo on neck

Mother fucker. Jesús was looking at the man who killed his father. He’d obviously shaved and started letting his hair grow back. Ruiz’s office door was closed. I didn’t bother knocking. He looked up and scowled at me, but his expression changed as soon as he saw mine.

“Solano’s killer is tailing Jesús.”

“In Oceanside?”

“Yeah. They’re both sitting in a Jack in the Box right now.”

“Got an address?”

Where are you?
Address or cross streets?

vista by town sight

Town Sight’s a street?

yea

I told Ruiz and he picked up his phone and dialed. He identified himself and told the operator it was an emergency. He was being transferred to the watch commander when I got back to Jesús.

Stay where you are and just keep staring at your phone, okay? Somebody’s going to be there soon to help you out.

ok

Don’t worry. It might not be anything at all. And nothing will happen as long as you’re with other people. It’s going to be okay.

im scared

Don’t be. I’m here and help is on the way. Have you ever seen this guy before?

i dont think so is he somebody you know

I doubt it. You eating?

i was. not hungry now

You get tacos? I love their tacos.

those arent tacos!!!

Maybe not, but they’re really good.

you never had a real taco?

Where do you get real tacos?

all over its long beach

When you get back, you show me, ok? I’ll buy us both tacos.

hes getting up

Dont look at him

watching reflection threw his trash away going out

Just let him go.

got in a white mustang

Can you see the license plate?

6fgr274

I told Ruiz the make and tag number. He relayed it to the watch commander in Oceanside.

That’s good. Is he gone?

yea

I went to my recent calls and tapped Jesús’s name on the screen. He picked up before I even heard the ring. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I overreacted. He just got up and left. Maybe he wasn’t really watching me.”

“Probably not,” I said, wondering how much I should tell him. “He was probably just some guy. But it’s good you texted me.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Definitely.”

Ruiz was watching. I nodded and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

“There’s a cop car in front,” Jesús said.

“Go meet them, but don’t hang up.”

“Okay.”

There was a rustling static on the other end of the line, and then a woman’s voice. “Who is this?” she asked.

“Detective Danny Beckett, Long Beach PD.” I gave her a brief rundown of the situation. “My lieutenant’s talking to your sergeant now. They’re going to be looking for the suspect, but could you stay with Jesús?”

“Of course,” she said. I thought I could hear a bit of disappointment in her voice. There was a murderer in the vicinity and she had to babysit.

“Maybe take him back to his aunt’s house?”

“Let me just clear it with my supervisor.”

She gave the phone back to Jesús.

“She okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “But I think I like Detective Tanaka better.”

I laughed. “We all do,” I said.

The Oceanside PD issued a BOLO and had four cars in the area searching for the Mustang. Within fifteen minutes they found it abandoned in a neighborhood a little under a mile away from the Jack in the Box where Jesús saw the man who’d killed his father. It took another half hour for them to determine the car had been stolen from the lot of an industrial park two hours before Jesús texted me. The neck tattoo didn’t leave prints or any other evidence behind.

“Can we get protection for him now?” I asked Ruiz.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Jen, Patrick, and Marty were all back in the squad room by then. After I brought them up to speed, Jen asked, “What now?”

“The lieutenant’s going to move him,” I said.

“Where to?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“They must have found him through the aunt,” Marty said.

“Yeah,” I said. “How else could they have?”

Patrick said, “You kept his phone, right?”

I nodded.

“He have any other electronics?”

“No, and he stayed offline, too.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“And you trust him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

Patrick thought for a few seconds. “We thought he might have found Jesús’s father by tracking his calls. But there was no way he could have tracked him to Oceanside, because you gave him the burner.”

I nodded again.

“So was it just a coincidence that he killed Solano on the same day his son called him for the first time in years?”

“What are you thinking?”