Midnight Guardians (11 page)

“Yeah, I heard Jimmy the Fuckup did it.”

“No way, Jimmy the Loser? That kid who’s always stealin’ cars when he’s fuckin’ high?”

“Yeah, Petey the Prick said he was doin’ forties with Jimmy and he told him he was all fucked up and drivin’ an old boosted Chevy and smacked ass into the back of somebody on the freeway and pinched that cop and just got out and boogied.”

“No shit. Did Petey turn him in, man? There’s a big fucking reward out for anyone rats the dude out. If Petey didn’t, I sure as hell will.”

Which is why you gotta be even more pissed—I mean, come on! The sheriff’s office put a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information out there a week after it happened, and they haven’t gotten a single lead worth a damn? Fuckups talk when something like that goes down. Somebody’s gotta hear something—unless it wasn’t just some fuckup.

I mean, you have to wonder about the forensics on the thing. When the so-called detectives who are working the case come to you and say they couldn’t lift a single usable print off the inside of the car that almost killed you? A screwup like some Jimmy the Loser doesn’t go to the trouble of wearing surgical gloves and wiping down the interior of the car he’s joyriding in for the night. They couldn’t find any hair? No fibers? No empty Buds in the back seat with DNA all over the mouth of the bottles? Come on, man!

All right, all right, Marty, calm yourself; you’re a real cop. You know that CSI television is bullshit. But you gotta wonder, don’t you? Yeah, you listened to the shrinks talk on and on about the anger and frustration that’s normal after an amputation, the anxiety and all that shit— and how this is all an ongoing gradual process. But what about those guys at the gym? What happened there? What? They don’t want to associate with a gimp wheelie? You were tight with those guys, and now they are definitely pulling away. Yeah, you know things were getting a little hinky about the other thing. But shit, they were your boys, liftin’ and studdin’ over at Marbury’s together, man. Maybe you were getting a little away from the drugs and stuff, but you weren’t gonna spoil it for the rest of them. They understood that, didn’t they—all except that asshole McKenzie, anyway.

Ha! McKenzie. Wasn’t that a kick when that Richards broad came in and showed that fucker up on the dip bars? Little prick turning red in the face, blowing like some kinda wounded cow, while she just kept on kicking out the reps. Man, the woman was impressive. But what was up with that anyway, her coming down to shoot the shit? You knew the department shrinks would get around to it sooner or later, trying to find a way to dig inside your head and get you to “accept.” You were all ready to blow her off, too, but there was something about her, and not just because she’s a wheelie like you. When you were talking at the café, man, it wasn’t like she was trying to psychoanalyze you. It was more like she was asking questions that she needed some answers, too, you know. I mean, you ain’t stupid. You know they sent her in. But she ain’t bad to look at, and with that display on McKenzie, you gotta respect the lady’s workout ethic, right? And everybody’s heard about that time she put a 9 mm in that serial killer dude’s face. Righteous shoot. You gotta like a girl like that.

But you also gotta watch it. They tried to get a lot of internal affairs guys into the gym before, and we always smelled them out. What makes her different—because she’s missing a leg? You gotta be careful, man. And you were, right? All you talked about at the café was that stuff about the forensics, and why the hell they hadn’t found the guy who fucking rammed you. And she said she’d ask around. That can’t hurt, her being a detective and all.

So you make a date, right? She gave you her cell. Meet her at the café again. Why not?

T
O SAY THAT Billy Manchester and I were rolling down an asphalt lane through a decrepit mobile home park at dawn in Billy’s Lexus is enough to say that this case had become unique. The sun had not yet surfaced from the edge of the Atlantic Ocean when I met Billy, on his insistence, at his building. He’d called at the uncharacteristic hour of five in the morning:

“Max, I need you to get here as soon as possible. We have a seven A.M. appointment with Ms. Carmen and her brother.”

Billy does not do this kind of thing—I do. It’s what PIs do: Meet with the scumbags, hook up in the alleys, and sit with coffee for hours on surveillances. The attorneys don’t do this, especially Billy. Just look at him: He’s dressed down this morning in a light, camel-hair sport coat and tailored poplin trousers. His white shirt is impeccably pressed. He deigned to leave the tie at home.

“I was able to reach Ms. Carmen late last night, and told her that if she had any way to contact her brother, she should do it. At four this morning, she called and said she was meeting with him here, and begged me to come,” Billy said, looking out beyond the headlights in the still neighborhood.

I knew he was concentrating. He rarely drives. Hell, he rarely leaves his apartment unless he’s in court or walking to lunch along Clematis Boulevard in downtown West Palm Beach. His eyes were focused. When he’s concentrating, he can lose the stutter in someone’s presence. Even I take note, because it’s as if you weren’t even there. But I don’t take it personally.

“Now I fear he’s put his s-sister in harm’s way,” Billy said.

I looked at the side of his face but withheld my urge to respond: “Duh, you think so?”

“It is an enduring tragedy to see what family will do to one another,” he said. Having an intimate knowledge of Billy’s upbringing, I kept my mouth shut.

We’d slowed to a near crawl as Billy’s GPS system announced, “Destination two hundred feet, at 320 Harriett Street.” The pleasant computer voice was highly inappropriate for the milieu of sagging, broke-back trailers, autos up on cinder blocks, rotting fences failing in their attempt to offer some privacy from the trailer next door, and the ubiquitous scarred picnic table set out on a grassless strip of yard as a respite from what it must be like inside each home.

“There’s her car,” I said to Billy when I spotted Luz Carmen’s little red Toyota in the driveway ahead. He pulled perpendicular to her car, with just enough room to open his driver’s door. She would not be leaving before we did. Billy turned his car alarm on manually before getting out, thus foregoing the bleeping sound of doing it with his remote. When I joined him at the side of Carmen’s car, there was just enough sunlight to see the address of the trailer spray-painted on a piece of plywood covering the front windows. It had been a year since the last hurricane. Most people took down even their minimal barricades against the storm to let the light in and reconnect with the view. But when I surveyed the trash-strewn landscape around us, I figured even that act of procrastination might have made sense in this case.

There were no obvious lights in three windows on our side of the trailer. I’d been in a few of these tin cans before and worked the layout in my head: kitchen at the south end where plywood covered the small front bow of paned glass, living area behind the entrance door, bedroom or bedrooms at the north end. Billy stepped up onto the cinder blocks that formed a stairway to the base of the door. Before he could raise his hand to knock, I heard a low roll of guttural vocal cord, vibrating just enough to be audible. Both of us looked to our left and saw the muddy yellow-brown eyes of a pit bull watching us from the inside of a low fence.

Even in the low light, I could see the whitened slashes of scar tissue across the mutt’s face, but also the ripple of muscle in its neck and front quarters. The dog turned its head just so, with the kind of curious look you find endearing in some species. But in this one, it seemed more like that of a beast assessing which mouth-size chunk of human calf it’d like to chew into first. There would be no advanced warning of a bark or howl that would spoil its inherent surprise. This was the kind of dog that comes up in silence and buries its teeth deeply before you realize it. Billy looked at me and then rapped lightly on the metal door.

On the third try, Luz Carmen opened just wide enough to let in a sliver of sunrise that illuminated her face. Once she was sure we weren’t a SWAT team or warrant servers, she stepped back. As we entered, the smell was the first thing that slapped me.

If there is an odor of unfettered and decadent despair, this was it: the ripeness of soiled fabric, the sweat of unwashed bodies, the fetid smell of spoiled food, and the sweet cut of marijuana smoke, all muddled by a cloying overlay of burning incense. The room was lit only by the glow of a big-screen television and shards of the sunrise leaking in through the kitchen windows. On a worn couch, a kid about fourteen worked an Xbox remote. He was thin and dark. Though I thought his head was wet, later I realized that the long black locks were simply greasy.

He did not look up, at first, as we shuffled into the limited space, his eyes intent on the television screen, his fingers moving precisely on the control buttons. Luz Carmen did not bother to introduce us, and instead stepped back into the kitchen area, drawing us with her. I cut my eyes to the hallway to the left, watching for movement, for the brother, for any sign of threat. The far-too-confining space inside the trailer put me on edge.

Luz Carmen folded her arms over her chest, gripping her elbows. “Mr. Manchester, please,” she began, looking down, unwilling to meet Billy’s eyes. “There are people after my brother. They want to kill him, and it is my fault. If I had not gone to you, this would not be happening. You have to help us.” Though her voice was raspy and wet, her words sounded less like a request than a demand.

I turned my eyes to watch the side of Billy’s face, deferring to his silence. Behind him, dirty dishes were stacked in the sink and the drain board. Open beer cans tumbled out of a yellow recycling bin on the floor near his polished loafers.

“No, I don’t have to help you,” Billy said in his own voice, the real thing compared to Carmen’s. “I d-don’t need to do anything, Ms. Carmen. I can walk out of here and l-let them kill you, your br-brother, and anyone else involved.”

Luz Carmen looked up; her eyes widened as if she’d been slapped.

“I can c-call the authorities, give them this address, and have you arrested for conspiracy to commit grand theft. And all of you are harboring a fugitive,” Billy said with the same conviction, hooking his thumb back toward the couch.

“Hey, what the hell, man,” the kid on the couch said, and started to get up.

I turned and pointed a finger at him. “Sit down and shut up.” He lowered himself back down and kept his hands on the remote. Under his breath, he said something that sounded like “fucking cop.” I let it go, but from then on I kept cutting my eyes to him to make sure his fingers never left the controller. I was unarmed and wanted to know that no one else in the place was, either.

“Ms. Carmen,” Billy continued. “You p-put yourself in danger. You p-put my investigator in danger. You did this by not telling m-me the depth of your brother’s involvement in all of this, and the m-methods by which he and his friends are running this operation.”

“They are not his friends,” Luz Carmen said, but in a smaller voice. Hers was a need to argue, to defend, to hang on to even a shard of the pride that had seen her through difficult times. But she was starting to break, and I knew that Billy would have to be careful not to take her over that line.

“Call your br-brother out here, Ms. Carmen, so we can tr-try to work something out,” Billy said.

Again she stared at the floor, but nodded her head, and then called out: “Andrés,
por favor
.”

He appeared out of the darkness of the hallway, a scarecrow of a boy barely taller than his sister. His hands were empty, and he approached with a limp. There was a bandage taped onto his forehead, and his left eye was circled by purpled and swollen skin. He still tried to carry some strut, with his lips pinched tight, and his eyes holding a ridiculous glare, considering his battered face.

I immediately assessed him as not presenting a threat. Up close, he looked impossibly young: The skin on his face that wasn’t bruised was smooth and clear, and his soft dark eyes matched his sister’s. He was actually dressed in one of those blue hospital scrub tops like the ones at the medical building, and his skinny arms hung from the short-sleeved armholes like sticks from a melting snowman. With his empty hands and injured gait, I figured I could drop him with a single punch. I tried to relax my face and posture, to become nonthreatening myself.

“Andrés, this is my lawyer, Mr. Manchester, and his employee,” Luz Carmen said, the commanding tone was gone from her voice. “We need to let them help us, Andrés.” The young man looked from her to Billy to me, the better eye focused for an extra beat on my face.

“You were the one in the pickup truck.”

“Yeah, I’m the one,” I said,—and couldn’t help myself—“the one who saved your life.”

W
E ENDED UP outside. The reeking claustrophobia outweighed any need to keep Andrés Carmen out of sight. Billy and I sat on one side of the picnic table, the Carmens on the other.

The house trailer belonged to Andrés’s girlfriend and her son, the teenager inside. Andrés had put his car in a storage garage on the other side of the airport where a friend of his did under-the-table auto work. He told us this as if he thought he was being slick. The thing that smart guys like him didn’t realize is that cop work doesn’t end like the sixty-minute police shows on TV. Real cops get paid by the hour, day after day. In a case like his, that be-on-the-lookout broadcast might stay on the daily rundown sheet for months, long after Andrés got desperate to use his car again.

Time was on the cop’s side; watching out for punks and dealers and fuckups was their living. For 99 percent of the people they were after, criminal activity was their living. Eventually, the bad guys have to come out of their hole and go back to work. If they came out, they’d get caught. If they stayed in hiding, they wouldn’t be committing their crimes. The cops won both ways.