Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) (11 page)

“Over there,” I said, loudly, to Toni.

Dressed as she was in dark jeans and boots, and with her dark hair, and tats on conspicuous display, Toni fit in much better than I. From behind, anyway, she could even pass for Latino. My Hawaiian shirt, on the other hand, was probably not the best choice if one wanted to be incognito at Ramon’s Cantina. People looked at Toni as we passed, most in appreciation. They looked at me, and most seemed pissed.
Wonderful.

The female bartender on our side was pretty and had a nice figure. She wore a white long-sleeved shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, and a black vest. She wore heavy silver-blue eye makeup and bright red lipstick. Her long dark hair was pulled straight back. “What can I bring you, amigos,” she said, nearly yelling to be heard over the music.

“Do you have Mac & Jack’s?” I asked.

She didn’t even answer—she just made this little grimace thing with her mouth and stared at me like I’d just asked for a glass of chocolate milk. I guess she thought the question was so stupid it didn’t warrant an answer.

“Bohemia for me,” Toni said.

“Same for me,” I said.

“Dos Bohemias,” the bartender replied, with a bit of condescension in her voice.

She brought us our beers.

“Eight dollars,” she said.

I thanked her and put a twenty-dollar bill out. I noticed she had a tattoo of a butterfly just above her left wrist, barely visible beneath her sleeve.

I nodded at it. “I like your butterfly,” I said. “Mariposa, right?”

“Sí,” she answered, her voice sharp.

“What’s your name?” I asked. I needed to soften her up.

“Rita,” she answered. “You can call me Rita.”

“Good to meet you, Rita,” I said. “I’m Danny. This is Toni. It’s loud in here!”

She nodded but didn’t say anything. She didn’t smile, either. So much for softening her up.

“I wonder if you might be able to help us out with a couple of questions.” May as well get down to business. I put the group photo on the bar in front of her.

“You know any of these people?” I asked.

Rita looked at the photo for a second; then she looked back at me.

“You guys cops?” she asked.

“Now, Rita,” I said, “do we look like cops?” I looked at her with my most non-cop-like smile. I shook my head. “We’re not cops.”

She wasn’t impressed. “Good,” she said. She looked back at the photo, then back at me. “In that case, since you’re not cops, maybe you’d better get your gringo asses the fuck out of here.”

That was surprising. “Rita, that’s pretty rude. We just got here,” I said, a little condescension in my own voice. “What about our beers?”

“I’ll give you a to-go cup. Take them with you. It’s for your own good.”

I tilted my head—a habit I have when I hear something I don’t like. “That’s starting to sound like a threat. Is that a threat?” I stared at her.

She stared back without speaking.

After a few seconds, I raised my left hand and said, “Okay. Alright. You don’t want to help us. I get it.” I shrugged and nodded that I understood. “You’re scared. Fine. How about you call your manager and tell him you’ve got a problem and you need his help. Maybe he’ll answer a question or two.”

“Besa mi culo,” she said, nearly spitting the words at me. Kiss my ass.

I like a succinct answer, but not that one. Fortunately, the place was so loud that no one could overhear us.

I smiled. “Rita, there you go again,” I said. I paused and the smile left. I stared at her a second, then said, “Look, you don’t need this trouble, and I sure as hell don’t want it, but we really need to get some questions answered. If not from you, then we need to talk to your boss. And Rita, if you don’t call him out here—right fucking now!”—this part I said plenty loud enough for people around us to stop what they were doing and look. I quieted down and pulled out my cell phone—“then I’m going to put in a phone call to my friends out there in the parking lot. What if we are cops? What then? My friends are going to come inside here and start busting this place up, taking people down and ruining your whole goddamned night. Is that what you want? Or would you rather just call your boss?”

Rita stared at me for a few seconds, her eyes firing daggers. Then she turned and picked up a telephone. She spoke into the phone, and then hung up and walked ten feet or so away. Less than a minute later, a middle-aged man in slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt hurried out to meet us.

“Amigos,” he said with a smile as he opened his arms, “Please—come join me in my office.”

“Thank you.” I said. I took the ten-dollar bill from the stack of change. “Rita—keep the change,” I called out. From the scowl I got in return, a wild guess told me that Rita was not happy with me. Also the extended middle finger helped clear up any confusion I might have had.

~~~~

“I am Jorge Sanchez, owner of this establishment,” the man said as we entered his office. He pointed to two vinyl-covered diner’s chairs in front of a desk buried in papers.

The little office was crammed with file cabinets. The walls were covered with State of Washington posters with clever little sayings like “Employees—Know Your Rights!” and the like, conveniently printed in Spanish as well as English.

“I thought this place was Ramon’s Cantina,” I said. “Where’s Ramon?”

“Ah,” Jorge said, smiling, “there never was a Ramon. When I started this bar, Ramon’s Cantina sounded better than Jorge’s Cantina. You know what I mean?”

“Interesting,” I said. “I suppose.”

I looked at Toni. She weighed the two names. “Ramon’s, Jorge’s—I think he’s right,” she said.

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“I’m told you are looking for some people,” Jorge said. “I’ll tell you what I know, because I want no trouble with the police.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, choosing not to tell him we weren’t the police, “but no offense, this place doesn’t exactly have a reputation as being a family joint—one where you go to avoid trouble.”

“Alas, to remain profitable, we have been forced to cultivate a certain public image to attract a certain type of clientele,” Jorge said. “It’s part of our marketing efforts. Some of these customers are rough characters—rougher than we’d like. But they pay well. Besides, we don’t usually know about that until they’ve created a problem, and then it’s too late. Meanwhile, I try to keep things in balance as long as they behave themselves here. But, you should know that the bar itself—behind the scenes, we always cooperate with the authorities. We’re squeaky clean. I went to U-Dub, you know. MBA.”

“Really?” Toni said, smiling. “I’m impressed. We both went to U-Dub as well. Good to see a fellow alum.”

“Yeah, it is. I can switch from barrio-speak to banker-talk on a dime in three different languages—all depends on the audience,” Jorge said, smiling. “But the important thing is I wanted you to know that I know how to run my business the right way. I play by the rules.”

“Maybe with the possible exception of the lovely Rita out there,” I answered. “She seemed a little agitated.”

Jorge cringed. “For that, I apologize,” he said. “I will speak to her.”

“No need,” I answered. “It’s over. Besides, she already hates me. No need to get her even more upset. She might blow a fuse.”

I laid out the photo of Gina on Jorge’s desk, along with the group photo. “This girl here is Gina Fiore—you may have seen her on TV. She’s gone missing. We’ve been hired by her family to help the police find her. It’s been reported to us that she frequents your bar in the company of this man here—we think his name is Eddie.” I laid the next photo down. “And this girl here, probably named Karen or Carolyn or something along those lines.” I laid down the last photo. “We are trying to identify these two people so we can see if they might help us find Gina.”

“His name might be Edward, Eduardo, something like that, as well,” Toni said.

“I recognize him,” Jorge said. “His name is Eduardo Salazar.” He’d suddenly become very serious. “He is a real chingón—a badass. And he has very bad friends.”

I wrote his name down in my notebook. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

“I’d prefer not to say,” he said, the fear in his eyes obvious. “My information is all second-hand, anyway. Trust me, amigo. From what I hear, he is a dangerous man. One of those rough characters I referred to. Between you and me, if he chose another cantina, I’d be happy. Let’s just leave it at that.”

I nodded. “Okay. When did you see him last?”

“I haven’t seen him for a week or so. Like I said, if I don’t see him anymore around here, that’s okay. I want no trouble with anybody, including the police.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“No, but if I did, I could not tell you. Not out of disrespect, but because of who he is and who his friends are.”

I nodded. “Alright. I understand.”

“Do you know who this girl is?” Toni asked, pointing to the unknown woman.

“I think I may have seen her,” he said slowly as he studied the photo. “I might recognize her, I’m not sure.” He studied the other photos. “I’ve definitely seen this one,” he said quickly, pointing to the picture of Gina. “She’s been in often. Several times I’ve seen her with Eduardo Salazar.”

“Is that right?” I asked. “Is it possible any of your employees might know this girl or might be able to shed some more light on Eduardo Salazar?”

“Probably not. If I ask anybody around here to talk to you about Eduardo Salazar, they’ll likely quit right on the spot. They might talk to you about the girl, if they know her. But not if you start talking about Eduardo Salazar first. If you ask about him—even show his picture—they’ll clam up. They won’t answer any questions. I can ask around about the girl separately if you’d like, tell them her parents are looking for her, or something like that.”

“That would be helpful,” I said, handing him the photo of the mystery girl along with one of our business cards.

“We understand about the problem with you-know-who,” Toni said. “It’d probably be better if we’d never even visited.”

“I can handle my business,” Jorge answered confidently. “If asked, I’ll tell them I sent you away empty-handed.”

The room was quiet for a moment, then Toni suddenly stood up, smiled, and said, “Mr. Sanchez, you’ve been absolutely no help at all.”

“Good!” Jorge said, smiling broadly as he stood.

I looked from one to the other for a second before I saw what Toni was doing. I stood up and said, “I’m certain your name or your establishment will never come up in the course of this investigation.”

“Good!” he said again, beaming.

“We’re very sorry to have bothered you, sir,” I added. “We didn’t mention any names at the bar. Tell anyone who asks that we’re looking for the girl.”

“Excellent!” he said, still smiling. “Thanks for coming. And don’t come back!”

~~~~

“Strange,” Toni said as we left the bar.

“You got that right,” I agreed. “Jorge was petrified by this Eduardo Salazar character.”

“No shit. He seemed more afraid of him than of the police, of us, or of anything we could possibly do to him. Who scares a guy that much?”

“Someone with a nasty rep,” I answered.

“True. At least we got a name,” Toni said.

We rounded the corner of the building, headed toward the back parking lot and saw three Mexican men standing near my Jeep. When they saw us, they began slowly walking toward us. One of the men split off from the others and started circling to our right in a not-so-subtle attempt to flank us. All three men were probably in their mid- to late twenties. All wore some sort of outer garment—either vest or denim jacket.
Great
, I thought—the better to hide the automatic weapons under. I focused on the two men in front of us while Toni concentrated on the guy circling to our side. One of my guys was tall and looked like a body builder. He was bald and completely covered with prison tattoos. The other guy was shorter and more round, but no less bald. He did have a mustache. He wore a vest over a white T-shirt. His arms were also covered with prison ink.

“Look confident and mean,” I whispered to Toni, trying not to move my lips.

We approached to within about ten feet, and then stopped. They stopped as well. “What’s up?” I called out. “Going inside?”

“Maybe in a minute, esse,” Mr. Short and Round said quietly.

“We were just leaving,” I said. “Nice place. Ask for Rita. She’s a hoot.”

“Yeah, real nice,” he said. He gave me a mean glare for maybe ten seconds—long enough for Mr. Scout to reach a decent flanking position. Toni had turned completely around to stare the bastard down, her back to mine.

Mr. Short and Round said, “We hear you’re looking for a friend of ours.”

I was ready. “Really? Maybe you can help us,” I said. “You know this girl?” I walked forward with the photo of Gina in my left hand, extended. My right hand I kept straight down to my side, ready to go for my Les Baer Thunder Ranch 1911 handgun, .45 caliber. I’d have no cover, but I was a damned quick draw. And I was 100 percent confident that by now Toni had her hand on her Glock and had already determined where her closest cover was.

I handed the photo to Mr. Short and Round. He looked at it for a few seconds, then looked back at me.

“I don’t know her,” he said, confused and maybe a little disappointed. “This who you’re looking for?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Who’d you think?”

He looked at the photo, and then at me, but didn’t answer

“You probably saw her on TV,” I said, continuing my story. “She’s gone missing. Her family hired us to help try and find her.”

He handed the photo to Mr. Big and Tall, who stared at it a moment. I could see that he recognized her immediately. He fired off a string of rapid Spanish to Mr. Short and Round, all the while nodding his head.

“He’s seen her?” I asked.

“On TV,” Short and Round replied. He seemed confused. “You got other pictures?” he asked.

I figured that Rita, our clever little bartender, had phoned these guys while we were talking to Jorge and told them we were snooping around with pictures of Eduardo Salazar—thus the greeting committee. Short and Round expected us to be looking for Salazar and, therefore, he expected me to present photos of Salazar. Presenting photos of Gina instead had caught him by surprise, as I’d hoped it would. I hoped Rita hadn’t been very specific about what type of photo we had. The head shot of Salazar might make it seem more like we were looking for him by virtue of the fact that he’d been singled out. The group photo might allow my story that we were focusing on Gina, not Eduardo, to continue. So I handed him the group photo.