Killer Swell (13 page)

I knew Carter would still be in surgery, and since I couldn't think of any valid reason to avoid talking to Liz, I headed downtown.

My new best friend was waiting at the elevators to go up when I arrived.

“Detective,” I said, resisting the urge to pat him on the head.

John Wellton, white dress shirt, red tie, gray slacks, glanced in my direction, did half a double take and scowled. “About damn time.”

“For what?”

“For you to get your ass in here and do the report,” he growled.

The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and we stepped in. I pushed three and he looked at me.

“How's your pal?” he asked.

“In surgery.”

We stared up at the changing lights that illuminated the floor numbers. The wheels and cables hummed, and we slowed down as we approached the third floor.

“Liz is out right now,” he said, stepping off.

“Should I come back?” I asked, knowing the answer.

He grinned, shook his head, and motioned for me to follow him.

His office was across the hall from Liz's, exactly the same except that he didn't even have the calendar on the wall. He pointed to the empty chair opposite his desk. I refrained from asking if he needed a booster seat.

Wellton shuffled some papers on the desktop, then looked at me. “Liz says you're a pain in the ass, but that you'll be pretty straight up.”

“I've heard that about me,” I said.

He shook his head, unamused. “You're not nearly as funny as you think are. Most people aren't. Whatever. Tell me what happened.”

I told him what happened. He listened intently, making a few notes every minute or so. No head nods or shakes, just sat still, listening.

“You hadn't seen the shooters before?” he asked, when I'd finished.

“No.”

“Not at San Ysidro?”

“Don't know what you're talking about, Detective,” I said.

He leaned back in his chair. “Fine. Off the record.”

“No, they weren't there. These guys didn't look like part of Costilla's regular hitters.”

He picked up a pencil and clenched it in his fist. “I'm gonna assume your friend will tell us the same story.”

“Don't see why he wouldn't. It's the truth.”

Wellton nodded. “Sure. Wanna know what I think?”

“Not really.”

“I think Costilla's gonna kill you, Braddock,” he said. “Each time you scamper away from him, you make him look bad. And he gets more pissed. You shot up his guys twice now. No way he's gonna forget you.”

I let that sit in my stomach for a moment. It didn't feel good. But I knew he was right.

“That's not enough to get you off all this?” he asked, raising a dark eyebrow. “To just walk away?”

I knew it was a rhetorical question, but I answered anyway. “No, not now.”

“Now?” he asked. “Why now?”

“I may have gotten his guys twice,” I said, “but he put one friend in the hospital and I think he put another in the trunk of her car.”

Wellton stared at me for a minute. “I guess. With your buddy in the hospital, you got others to hang with?”

I knew that he was asking if I had some other protection. “I'll be alright,” I told him.

He shrugged. “Okay. But Liz's rules are still on the table. You fuck it up, we're gonna bring you in.”

I stood up. “We'll see.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I'm sure we will.”

I turned to go.

“Braddock.”

I turned around.

“Last night,” he said, leaning forward, looking uncomfortable. “I didn't need to get all over you like I did, with your friend and everything.”

His remark caught me off guard. “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

A flicker of a smile danced at the corner of his mouth. “But I don't trust tall suckers like you.”

I didn't want to reward him with a laugh, but it was tough keeping it out of my voice. “And I'm not comfortable with anyone looking me right in the knee.”

He raised his middle finger, and I waved good-bye.

I knew that I still wouldn't be able to see Carter, which left me pondering a move that I wasn't at all thrilled with. Everything continued to point in Costilla's direction, no matter where the information came from. If I was going to truly make any progress, I was going to have to have another conversation with Alejandro Costilla.

I resisted the urge to head home and into the comfort of the waves, instead taking the long way out of downtown. I pointed the Blazer south down Harbor Drive along San Diego Bay, past the convention center, Petco Park, and the naval shipyards before making up my mind to head farther south into Chula Vista on I-5.

Yuppie suburbs were popping up in the hills of Bonita and the eastern end of Chula Vista and Otay Mesa. Million-dollar homes were the result of immense population growth in the nineties. The United States Olympic Committee had even seen fit to build a new, state-of-the-art training center in an area adjacent to Lower Otay Lake.

But the western side of Chula Vista hadn't benefited from the influx of money and people and had remained what it had always been when I was growing up—a dangerous place.

I exited at E Street and went east. Single-story box homes lined the streets, iron bars on the windows signifying the presence of the gangs that ruled the area. Some of the billboards advertised in Spanish, the cars rode lower to the ground, and the stares of the people on the sidewalks became longer and uglier.

The Enrique Camarena Recreation Center was just south of Eucalyptus Park at 4th and C and stood out like a lost child in a shopping mall. Built in honor of the slain DEA agent, the center was only about six years old, its newer brick and glass clashing with the crumbling stucco and concrete of the neighborhood that surrounded it. I parked in the lot and went inside.

An older Hispanic lady sat behind the front desk. Thick gray hair bundled on top of her head, deep lines around tired eyes, and overweight arms poking out of a purple tank top she had no business wearing.

“Help you?” she asked, her eyes barely leaving the magazine in front of her.

“Looking for Ernie,” I said.

She lifted her chin in a direction that I took meant down the hall. “Second door on your right.”

As I walked toward Ernie's office, I heard the squeaking of sneakers on a clean hardwood floor, along with shouts and the bouncing of a ball. I stopped at the second door and knocked.

“Yo,” a voice called from behind. “Come in.”

I stepped in and Ernie Romario looked at me. “You lost, Braddock?”

“Just checking up on you,” I said, smiling.

“Bullshit,” he said.

He stood and extended his arm across the desk. He wore white athletic shorts and a tight gray tank top that exposed lean, tattooed arms. Faces of women mostly, a couple of crosses thrown in for good measure. The black hair on his scalp was shaved down, and a barely visible goatee encircled his mouth.

We shook hands.

“Sit,” he said.

The office was small. A tiny metal desk, with a chair on either side. The walls were covered with photos and articles detailing the accomplishments of the Camarena Center. Most featured kids that had used the Center as a place to hang out and then gone on to bigger and better things. Most of the photos featured those kids with Ernie and his staff.

I pointed to the pictures. “Still famous.”

He shrugged his shoulders, the tattoo of an angel on his left one dancing. “The kids, brother. The kids are the famous ones.”

Ernie had gone to high school with Carter, Liz, Kate, and me. His parents had gotten him transferred out of the South Bay to avoid the gangs and violence that permeated the high schools where they lived. He'd played football with Carter and me, a nasty little defensive back with a chip on his shoulder. He knew he didn't fit in at our school and that was okay. During football season, he hung with us, but when it was over, he kept to himself. He avoided the gangs in Chula Vista and San Ysidro, but didn't abandon his friends from the neighborhood. I'd always surmised that was why he decorated his body with the ink, to prove to the homies that he was still one of them, even if he wasn't.

He'd gone to State with me, majored in recreation and education, and was the first and only director that the Camarena Center had hired. He made sure that everyone was welcome, but that the violence and crap that littered the streets around the building stayed outside. Being a local, the violent little thugs that ran the neighborhood respected Ernie and what he was doing. They stayed away from the building and didn't bother those entering it.

“Don't tell me you were in the neighborhood,” Ernie said, a sly grin creeping onto his face. “I know better.”

“What? I can't come see my friend without reason?”

He nodded. “You could, yeah. But after what I heard about in San Ysidro, I figure you got a reason.”

I shifted in the chair. “San Ysidro?”

He rolled his dark eyes. “Please,
gringo
. Two white dudes shoot a couple of
hermanos,
plus they driving something out of the junkyard. Ain't nobody that could be but you and Carter.”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

Ernie leaned forward. “Maybe my ass. Dude, why are you messing with Alejandro Costilla?”

I told him about Kate and what had happened over the previous couple of days.

He tapped his fingers lightly on the desk when I was through. “Glad I'm not you.”

“I get that a lot.”

He nodded. “Carter gonna be alright?”

“Think so.”

Ernie laughed. “Course. Gonna have to kill him for him to not be alright.”

“Probably.”

A couple of voices yelled at one another from a distance down the hall, then dissolved into laughter.

I gestured over my shoulder. “This place always so happy?”

“Pretty much,” Ernie said after a moment. “Better than what's going on in their homes. If they got one.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.” Ernie laid his palms up on the desk. “Why you here, Noah?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I need to get with Costilla.”

Ernie raised both eyebrows. “Why? You want him to cut your head off?”

“I'd prefer that he not.”

“That's what he's gonna do, Noah,” he said. “No doubt about it.”

Ernie's voice had changed, much more tense now. Like he didn't want me in his office.

“I need to see him, Ernie,” I said.

He leaned back in his chair. “And you think I can get you to him?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Carter set it up before. He can't now, obviously.” I paused. “You were next on the list.”

He looked at me for a moment, his eyes studying me. Then he shook his head. “I don't wanna do that.”

“Just need you to get me in touch with him. I don't need you to be there.”

“That's good 'cause I ain't going anywhere near that man,” he said. Ernie chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “You know what happens if I help you?”

“Yeah. I get to meet with Costilla.”

“Yeah, and when you don't come back and they find your arms in TJ and your legs in Rosarito and your head in El Centro, then you know what?” He stared at me. “Then I'm responsible.”

“He's not gonna kill me,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.

A barking laugh burst out from Ernie's mouth. “Right. 'Cause Alejandro Costilla always makes friends. That's what the dude's all about, right? Probably just wanted to scare you guys, sending those bangers to catch you on the freeway.”

I didn't know what to say because I knew Ernie was right. He knew the world I was trying to get into much better than I did. That's why I'd come to him. And I didn't see a way to figure out the whole mess without seeing Costilla.

“Ernie, I don't have a choice,” I said. “He's got answers that I need. And he's gonna come after me anyway. Hell, he already has. I've got nothing to lose.”

“Except your life,” he said quietly.

We let that hang in the air between us for a couple of minutes. Ernie was being a friend, trying to protect me from myself, which I appreciated. The problem, though, was that I didn't need a friend. I needed a drug dealer.

“Call me tomorrow,” he said finally. “Here. Eight in the morning. I can't promise anything.”

I stood up. “Thanks.”

Ernie stood. “Don't thank me. You may think I'm doing you a favor, but I'm not.”

We shook hands.

“I know,” I said.

“I don't think you do, Noah,” he said. “I don't think you do.”