Holy Guacamole! (16 page)

“So who do you think killed him?” I snapped.

He kept his eye on Carolyn, ignoring me. “So you like opera? What Russian opera you like?”

“
Eugene Onegin,
” she said promptly. “The duel scene with Lenski’s aria and the beautiful duet. Prince Gremin’s aria. Did you know Caruso once sang it when the bass lost his voice?”

Obviously you only had to mention opera to get her to forget about the subject at hand.

“And the end when Onegin realizes he’s lost Tatiana forever.” She beamed.

Jesus Christ! Did she really think that Boris cared about opera? He was just stalling. Pulling my chain maybe. “Ignatenko, do I have to call friends in Vice and have them toss your place and hassle your customers to get a name out of you? If you didn’t kill him, and don’t think I won’t check that out, then who do you think did?”

“Why you care if you no more cop, now running around with an opera lady. Very rude, Vallejo. Interrupting we have opera conversation.”

“Bullshit. You wouldn’t know opera from rap.”

Boris sighed dramatically, as if anyone would feel sorry for a ghoul like him. “Excuse this woman, Mrs.” This was to Carolyn and about me. I could have kicked him. Then to me he said, “Vladik liking three things best: women, opera, and gambling. He is doing very good with women and opera. With gambling, he is losing pants.”

“Shirt,” said Carolyn. “The English idiom is Losing one’s shirt.”

“So shirt,” said Boris agreeably. “You want a name, used-to-be-lieutenant. Salvador Barrientos. Is called Palomino. Lives in Juarez. Vladik owe him maybe forty, fifty thousand. Could be Barrientos get tired waiting for money.”

“Your friend Vladik have other business across the river besides gambling?” I asked.

“Why? You know Barrientos?”

I shrugged.

“Me, I don’t know this Barrientos. Only what Vladik tell me. Go bother him. I am not killing my friend. I am sleeping. With—Carmen, maybe. You ask her. Maybe she remember she warm my bed Saturday.” Then he turned back to Carolyn. “Nice to meet you, lady. Better you find other friends. Lieutenant here is mean woman. No one like her in my world.”

“Who’s Prissy?”

O
nce we were
safely back in the car, I breathed a sigh of relief and turned the key in the ignition. I couldn’t get away from Brazen Babes fast enough. And I
had
to rescue those two poor girls. “Did you recognize the name he gave us?” I asked Luz. “Salvador . . .” I couldn’t remember the rest.

“Barrientos,” she supplied. “Yeah, I know the name. I just didn’t know he was into gambling, but if your Russian opera guy owed the Palomino money and wasn’t paying off, well, Barrientos might have killed him and never given it a second thought.”

“So what do we do now?” I pulled out of the lot and turned left.

“Turn back,” she said. “You’re going the wrong way.”

I had to drive a half mile before I found a place where it was safe to turn around. “You could have stopped me
before
I turned the wrong way,” I said, peeved.

“Hey, I got you out here. I figured you’d remember the way back.”

“I don’t know why you’d think that. It’s dark. Everything looks the same,” I muttered. “Now, tell me the next time I have to turn, and please do it in plenty of time.”

“You’re only driving about twenty miles an hour. Speed up a little, will you? At this rate, I won’t be able to walk without a cane by the time you get me home.”

I wondered exactly what she meant by that. Maybe that she’d be old by the time we got home. But I had noticed that sometimes she limped. I wanted to ask about the limp, but that wouldn’t be very polite. My mother wouldn’t have approved.

Luz broke into my thoughts. “I have to hand it to you. You may be prissy, but you’ve got the courage of your convictions.”

“Who’s prissy?” I demanded angrily. Here I’d come out to this disgusting place, got out alive while she was threatening everyone in sight and scaring me to death, and now she was calling me names.

“
You
are. Every time you hear a word you don’t approve of, you wince. Makes me want to swear just to see you do it.”

“How charming!” I snapped. She was really very rude. Boris Ignatenko had that right.

“I was paying you a compliment. When you slapped that guy who put his hand on your friend’s leg—well, that was pretty cool. I’ll bet he won’t forget that any time soon. Comes to a skin bar looking for a hard-on, and some prissy woman walks up, says ‘Shame on you,’ and slaps his hand. Bastard probably thought his mother had caught up with him.”

“I am not prissy,” I mumbled, but still I was pleased. She’d said I was
cool.
Of course it had been a foolhardy thing to do, which I’d realized when the dreadful doorman came over, but still, it was
cool.
I’d have enjoyed telling Jason about my compliment from the grudging, tough-talking Luz Vallejo, but of course that would mean telling him about the visit to Brazen Babes. The chances that he’d think
that
was cool were minimal. Then I wondered if Luz was really carrying a gun. If so, where? In the pocket of her jacket? Could you just drop a firearm into your pocket? What if your pocket were picked. She probably had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Texas issues those. Or maybe she didn’t need a permit since she’d been a police person.

“As for Barrientos, I’ m going to make a few calls. See what he’s up to these days. Used to be drugs. Signal for a left. You gotta turn at the next light.”

I was so shocked at the mention of narcotics that I missed the turn. She swore, but under her breath. I turned around as soon as I could and went back to make the turn. “What did you mean about needing a cane before we get back?” I asked. That wasn’t as bad mannered as asking about her limp.

“My knee is aching like a son of a bitch, and it’s not getting any better. I need to rub some chile glop on it and go to bed,” she replied, her tone rancorous.

“Is it an injury from your days as a police person?” I asked.

“You mean did I get shot in the knee? Or kicked? Well, I did get kicked. More than once. But this is arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis.”

“Oh dear,” I said, remembering Connie French, a friend at our last school. “I knew a woman who got it in her thirties. She had a terrible time. But I’ve read that the medications are much better now.”

“They are, and they’re much more expensive.”

“Is that why you retired?” I asked, unable to suppress my curiosity.

“That’s why I retired, and no one was more pissed off than me. I thought I was on the fast track to being the first woman chief in El Paso. Instead I was on the fast track to being a cripple. Of all the crappy luck!”

“No one in your family had rheumatoid arthritis?” I asked matter-of-factly. I doubted that she’d appreciate any overt sympathy for her plight.

“Not a soul. Diabetes, sure. Heart disease. Hepatitis.”

“Good grief!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “At least the arthritis won’t kill you.’

“No, but the meds may. Turn at the next light. Left. There’s an arrow.”

“Thank you.” I made the turn. I was beginning to recognize the area and felt relieved. Now if I could just find my way up the mountain to the gates of her condo community. The streets twist around because of the arroyos that run down the mountain. They carry off the water when it rains farther up. If there isn’t an arroyo handy for that purpose, the water rushes down the streets, sometimes in torrents, sometimes carrying cars away and drowning people. Not that any such thing had happened since we’d been here. The whole Southwest was suffering a drought with tighter water rationing and a good deal of public grumbling about it. Fortunately, since our house is fairly new, we have desert vegetation and underground drip irrigation in the yard.

“You want to go right, left, right,” she ordered after we got off the main street and headed up.

I managed it.

“About Barrientos, like I said, I’ll ask around. Be interesting if your Russian was in the drug trade as well as the white-slave trade.”

“He’s not my Russian,” I protested. “My husband just served on a committee with him. And Mr. Ignatenko said the connection was a gambling debt.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was a drug debt. Barrientos supplied the product, and Gubenko saw that it got onto the streets.”

I started to protest, but she said, “I don’t mean he was out on street corner peddling coke. I just mean maybe he had students selling for him.”

What a horrible idea. If it turned out to be true, I’d have to tell Dr. Tigranian, who would have a temper tantrum, shouting the news so everyone in Fine Arts heard.

“Turn right,” said Luz. “You can pull into my driveway.”

I insisted, against her wishes, on walking her to the door, and as much as she protested, she did lean on my shoulder, which meant her knee must have, indeed, been painful. And she thanked me for the help.
Maybe we’re becoming friends,
I thought as I drove home.

Once in bed, and thinking back over the evening, I had to admit that it had been interesting. An adventure. Had Jason ever been to a place like that? He certainly hadn’t wanted to take me into the New Orleans club with the tassel-twirler from New Jersey. The tassels had been on surprising parts of her body, and the fact that she could make them twirl was truly amazing. Obviously some women are able to develop muscles that rest of us never even know we have. Not that I’d want to do that.

I drifted into sleep and dreamed that I was teaching Polya and Irina to tassel-twirl. They said they were learning so many new things in America and thanked me for the lesson and asked if we could go out to lunch afterward and if I had any more pretty glass fish for them. They cried when I didn’t. What a silly dream.

Calling Around

I
t must have
been the tequila. I woke up that morning with no pain at all. What a great feeling! Euphoria. I made myself an egg and chorizo burrito while I thought about who to call for recent info on Salvador Barrientos. He used to be muscle for the drug cartel. Both sides of the border. His friends called him Palomino because he liked to bleach a blond streak in his hair, but in the department we called him Piss-for-Brains Barrientos.

He was picked up by a cop from the Downtown Regional Command for pissing on a wall in Segundo Barrio. The kid was going to issue him a citation for public nuisance or something, when Barrientos said, “You know who I am? I got big-time friends,” and so forth. So the beat cop called him in and found out he had a warrant on him for assault. Barrientos had a good lawyer who got him pled down to a misdemeanor; in those days we didn’t have room in the jail for all the people we arrested. But on the job we called him Piss-for-Brains after that.

By my second cup of coffee, I’d decided on a narc sergeant named Chuy, Chuy Mendoza. We went to the academy together back in the old days. Chuy was glad to hear from me and said, “¿
Qué pasa,
Vallejo?” which means
what’s going on?

“Having a good day,” I told him.“Turns out tequila is better for what ails me than all that damn medication.”

“Well, hell, I coulda told you that. So what’s up? Wanna go out boozin’? My old lady wouldn’t approve, you being such a hot
chica
, but what’s a marriage when it comes to getting drunk with an old partner. Hell, I knew you before I knew her.”

“Yeah, Chuy. Say hi to Angie for me. As for being a hot chica, that’s only if women with gray streaks and a limp turn you on. I think Angie can rest easy.”

“Angie’s gonna say hi back. So what can I do for you?”

“Tell me about Salvador Barrientos. What’s he up to these days? Still taking his knife to enemies of the drug culture? And where’s he living? Whatever you know would help.”

“He’s come up in the world. I hear he has a house across the river in the country-club district, and he’s a lieutenant now in charge of sneakin’ product across the river. You can tell that because we’re bustin’ so many mules. Still Piss-for-Brains. You hear about the two guys with bulgin’ crotches who got caught at the border. Now who’d wanna buy an ecstasy pill that had been hangin’ off some sweaty dumbfuck’s balls?”

I had to laugh. “Yeah, I read about that. Should put a dent in the drug market at raves around town—or was it headed north?”

“Who knows, but we don’t like to see it comin’ over from Mexico. Just one more thing to worry about. But for sure the idea was Barrientos’s.”

“He hang out over here anywhere particular?” I asked.

“Ain’t been across the border in three, four months that I heard. Got some heavy warrants on him these days. We get our hands on him, no one’s gonna let him plead down on nothin’.”

“You hear he’s taking bets on sports? Anything like that?” I asked.

“Not my thing, but I haven’t heard. Did hear he may be doin’ some people smugglin’. Got some coyotes in his stable maybe. Just gossip so far. If he is, his bosses ain’t gonna like him branchin’ out.”

“Maybe he’s a lieutenant in that too.” People smuggling? That sent a little tingle up my spine. Could Gubenko have been smuggling girls in through Mexico to dance in the clubs and service the local johns?

“What’s your interest in Barrientos, Vallejo? You thinkin’ about another bounty-huntin’ run?”

“Is there a bounty on him?” I asked. Now that would be an added incentive.

“Damn if I know. If there is, it would be through the feds. Nothin’ from Crime Stoppers.”

“Well, it’s no big deal,” I said. “A neighbor of mine died. I found the body, and I think he was murdered. Art Guevara, that lazy prick, caught the case and thinks it’s food poisoning.”

“So you’re gonna make an ass of Guevara? Sounds good to me, Vallejo. Need any inside help, let me know.”

“Yeah, thanks, Chuy.”

“
De nada.
”