Mission Road (4 page)

NOVEMBER 24, 1965

IF SHE’D LEFT FIVE MINUTES EARLIER,
she wouldn’t have been his first victim.

But she stayed for one last drink, trying to drown the bitterness of her day.

Above the bar, a black-and-white television played something she’d never seen before—a “Vietnam report.” Ninety thousand American troops had just arrived in this place, halfway around the world. The reporter didn’t explain why.

Around her, working-class
cholos
showed off for her sake—talking loud, drinking too much, swatting each other with pool cues. The men all looked the same to her with their blue work shirts and their hair like polished wood. They smelled of mechanic’s grease and unfiltered Mexican cigarettes. Their eyes hovered over her like mosquitoes—always there, taking bites when she wasn’t looking.

She shouldn’t have been in the bar. She was old enough to drink, but just barely. She was out of place in her college clothes—her wool skirt and pantyhose, her white blouse. She nursed her fourth beer, thinking about her professor, getting angrier as she got drunker.

That’s when the gringo came in.

Conversation in the barroom died.

The newcomer looked even more out of place than she. He wore a beige Italian suit, a loosened silk tie, a felt hat cocked back on his forehead. A blond Sinatra, she thought—someone straight out of her parents’ record collection.

The regular
cholos
studied him apprehensively, then went back to their conversations. The way they turned from him, making an effort to pretend he was invisible, made her wonder if the gringo had been here before.

He walked to the bar, ignoring the uneasy stir he’d caused. Men moved out of his way.

He gave no indication of having seen her, but he slid onto a bar stool next to her, placed his hat on the counter. He shook loose a Pall Mall, offered her one.

“I don’t smoke,” she told him.

She did, of course. She wasn’t sure why she’d lied.

He lit his cigarette.

“You drink,” he noticed. Then to the bartender:
“Jorge, dos cervezas, por favor.”

The bartender didn’t look surprised to be called by name. He dipped his head deferentially, brought out two ice-cold Lone Stars.

“No thanks,” she said.

The gringo finally looked at her, and she caught her breath. His eyes were startlingly blue, beautiful and distant like stained glass.

“Lady comes to a bar,” he said. “If she isn’t here to smoke or drink, there’s only one other possibility.”

She braced for the inevitable proposition, but he surprised her.

“You got a problem,” he said, “and you need somebody to talk to.”

She studied his face.

How old was he? Mid-thirties, at least. As old as her professor. But so different. He had an aura about him, as if he owned this bar and everyone in it. He was important. Powerful. No man in the bar dared look him in the eye.

He pulled a clip of money from his jacket pocket—a thick wad of twenties—peeled one off carelessly and tucked it under the beer glass.

She couldn’t help feeling impressed. She felt like she was caught in a riptide. An irresistible force was surging around her legs, pulling her toward deeper water.

“You want to tell me about it?” he asked.

“I don’t even know you.”

He grinned. “We can fix that.”

•                           •                           •

HIS CAR WAS A NEW MERCEDES
230SL, a hardtop two-seater gleaming white. Red leather interior, radio, air-conditioning. The dashboard glowed like hot caramel. She’d never seen a car like this, much less driven in one.

They glided along the dark streets, cutting through neighborhoods she knew well, but from inside the Mercedes everything looked different—insubstantial. She felt as if they could go anywhere. They could turn and drive straight through her old high school and they’d pass through it like a mirage. Nothing could stop them.

“Where are we going?” she asked him.

She tried to sound suspicious. She knew she shouldn’t have gotten into a stranger’s car any more than she should’ve gone to that bar. But something about this rich gringo . . . He treated her presence as a given. As if she deserved to be next to him. As if there were nothing strange about the two of them riding through the South Side in a car that cost more than the houses they were passing.

“You’re the boss,” he told her. “I don’t know this area. Show me around.”

That threw her off guard.
She was the boss.

She guided him past the drugstore her grandfather had started in the thirties, the shack where Mrs. Longoria sold tortillas off the griddle, the homes of her childhood friends. She told him stories—her first broken arm from that tree, her first boyfriend lived there. They passed within a block of her house, but she didn’t show him where she lived. He didn’t ask.

“Where would you go for a quiet talk?” he asked.

Her heart trembled. This was dangerous. Her parents, her friends would not approve. They were always protecting her, reminding her how fragile she was, how unpractical her dreams were.

“I’ll show you,” she decided.

She directed him down South Alamo, then onto a stretch of dark rural road where her friends and she used to stargaze. It was a desolate spot—perfect for ghost stories and underage drinking. At night, the fields and woods were so black she always felt she was at the edge of an enormous sea.

The gringo pulled his Mercedes next to a stand of live oaks and cut the headlights.

“Perfect,” he said.

An orange November moon shone through the tree branches, making shadow scars across his face.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Guy. Guy White.”

He said it as if it were a private joke—as if, with his luminous car, his Nordic features, his milky clothes, he were
the
gringo. The essence of everything her life was not, would never be.

“They want me to become a secretary,” she told him, blurting it out.

“Who does?”

“My college advisor. He wouldn’t write a recommendation for UT. He said I should stick with typing. Stenography at best. Because I’m a woman.”

“You don’t like that.”

“I can do better. I want to study law.”

“A lawyer.” He smiled. “Perfect.”

His tone made her angry. He said it like he was watching the end of a movie—some momentary amusement that would mean nothing tomorrow.

“I can do anything,” she insisted.

“Can you?” He rested a hand on her shoulder.

Outside, the darkness seemed closer, thicker. Tangled in the live oak branches, the moon looked like a blind man’s eye, webbed with cataracts.

Why had she brought him here?

Even as a child, this road had scared her. Walking to church as a little girl, she’d imagined hearing whispers in the wind through the grass. Her father had kept his eyes on the ground, picking up grim pieces of history to show her—arrowheads a thousand years old, a lead musket ball from Santa Anna’s army, tiny flecks of stone her father said were fossilized scales of prehistoric fish, back when Texas was an ocean for dinosaurs. The place was layered with ghosts, yet it electrified her. It made her feel alive.

She brushed the gringo’s hand away. “Take me back, please.”

“I could help you,” he said. “I could do so much for you.”

He stroked a wisp of hair behind her ear, and she noticed the pale skin on his finger, where a ring would be worn.

“You’re married,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “We’re expecting our first baby.”

“What are you
doing
here?” She scooted to the edge of the seat, pushed his hand away again. “I want to leave. Now.”

“You said you could do anything,” he chided. “Show me. What are you going to do about me?”

She yanked at the door handle. It was locked.

He slid next to her, blocking her fists as she tried to pummel him. The car was too cramped. She tried to kick him, but he pressed against her, a wave of cologne and muscle and white cloth, pushing her down, pinning her arms.

He was strong—much stronger than she’d realized. She screamed, but there was no one to hear. The car windows were well insulated. Nothing that happened in this expensive box of leather and glass would register in the outside world.

She struggled as he straddled her, pushed back her wrists.

“Do something,” White coaxed. “You won’t get anywhere if you can’t even fight me.”

Above her, the moon shone through the window. She wanted it to eclipse, to hide her in darkness, but it kept glowing through the car window, watching as she withered inside.

MAIA LEE ARRIVED AT SAPD HOMICIDE SATURDAY MORNING, JUST IN
time to watch two detectives and a uniformed cop subduing one of Santa’s elves.

“Serial murderer-rapist,” Lieutenant Hernandez explained, ushering her past. “Seven warrants in Missouri. Department store actually did a background check for once.”

The elf was doing pretty well for himself. His green felt sleeves were torn and his green tights were rolled up to his knees. A broken plastic handcuff dangled off one wrist. The uniformed cop had his legs and the detectives had his arms, but the elf was still managing to scream obscenities, spit, occasionally bite.

His mean little eyes locked onto Maia as she passed, but she’d been ogled by too many incarcerated sociopaths to feel bothered. She had worse problems.

She followed Hernandez through the cubicle jungle.

“Sergeant DeLeon’s office.” Hernandez pointed toward a glass door at the back of the room. “Quietest place to talk.”

Inside, a big Anglo detective was sitting at the desk, flipping through files.

Before Maia could go in, Hernandez caught her arm. “I won’t be going in, Miss Lee. But just so you know, I’ve already done as much for you as I can.”

Hernandez had aged in the last few years.

Maia had met him several times before, thanks to Tres’ incredible luck getting tangled in murder cases. She liked the lieutenant’s calm manner, his quiet professionalism. He was one of those men who had never been a father, but had clearly missed his calling.

He was still handsome, impeccably dressed, but his hair had turned the color of wet porcelain. He’d lost too much weight. The lines had deepened around his eyes.

People didn’t age incrementally, Maia decided. They went along fine for years, then hit some invisible dip and
boom
: a decade caught up with them overnight.

“I’m not asking for help,” she said. “Just an open mind until we locate Tres.”

“That may be difficult. Your boyfriend—”

“My client.”

“—your
client
made the wrong choice at exactly the wrong time. My best sergeant is in the hospital dying. The prime suspect is on the loose. Navarre is aiding and abetting.”

“Supposition. You never saw them together.”

A shout went up across the room. One of the detectives got a pointy-toed elf shoe in his face. His gun rattled loose in his shoulder holster.

“Miss Lee,” Hernandez continued, “you know Sam Barrera, the old man—”

“I know Sam.”

“He wasn’t easy to interview. Kept talking about a man with a bloody shirt in the kitchen. Kept asking if ‘the agent’ was okay. Finally we showed him some photographs. He ID’d Ralph Arguello.”

“You’re proceeding on the testimony of an Alzheimer’s sufferer?”

“It was enough for a warrant, Miss Lee. We searched your friend’s house, found a .357 and a bloody shirt stashed behind the laundry room wall. By lunchtime, forensics will have those items matched to Ralph Arguello.”

Maia bit back a curse. She wanted to strangle Tres, which in itself was not an unusual feeling, but damn it. Damn it.

She felt her blood pressure rising. A black oily ball started rolling around in her stomach.

Not now,
she told herself.

The last few days, it had gotten worse. It struck at the most inconvenient times—left her curled on the bathroom floor or hunched over the steering wheel on the side of the highway. The doctors had promised her it would not get this bad so soon.

“Miss Lee?” Hernandez said.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Hernandez said. “Do you want some water?”

“No . . . thank you.”

In Ana DeLeon’s office, the big Anglo detective was still sitting behind the desk, poring through paperwork. He had a buzz of rust brown hair, a rumpled dress shirt, a brutish face. Queasily, Maia tried to remember where she’d met him before.

“Kelsey,” Hernandez offered. “Lead investigator on the shooting.”

Maia willed herself to stay upright. “Ana’s old partner.”

“Yes.” Hernandez said it without enthusiasm. “He’s a good cop.”

“He hates Tres.”

Hernandez held her eyes, trying to send a message she couldn’t decipher. “As I said, Miss Lee, the help I can offer in this situation is limited.”

“You run the department.”

“For three more weeks. I retire at the end of December. In the meantime, the brass want this case resolved decisively. An officer has been shot. It’s a miracle she lived the night and not at all certain she’ll survive. Ralph Arguello is our prime suspect. Your friend Mr. Navarre just threw himself into our line of fire.”

“You’re telling me not to expect justice?”

“I’m telling you nothing of the sort, Miss Lee. Just listen to Kelsey. Take his warning seriously. And realize that whatever breathing room I can give you, I already have.”

Hernandez turned and made his way through the rows of cubicles.

The rabid elf, now on the ground with a cop foot against his neck, spat at the lieutenant’s polished black shoes as he passed.

•                           •                           •

EXCEPT FOR THE MAJOR EYESORE NAMED
Detective Kelsey, Sergeant Ana DeLeon’s office was a nice workspace. Mahogany desk. Two cushy chairs. Walls painted a cool shade of avocado. Her corkboard was pleasantly cluttered with family photos, department memos and silver
milagro
prayer charms.

Definitely a woman’s office.

Maia was impressed it could maintain that aura considering the amount of testosterone that must burn through here every day.

Kelsey sat behind DeLeon’s desk with his feet propped up. He had files stacked high all around him, desk drawers overturned on the carpet nearby. He was reading through a homicide casebook. The fingers on both his hands were laced with faded white scars, as if he’d long ago lost a fight with a wildcat. “Sit down, Miss Lee.”

“Making yourself at home?”

Kelsey raised an eyebrow. “I’m doing my job.”

Maia nodded toward the stacks of files. “What were you searching for?”

“Just being thorough.”

“
Very
thorough, it looks like.”

Kelsey flipped a page in the homicide book. He chose a photo and slid it across the desk. “Franklin Muriel White. Nineteen eighty-seven. Twenty-one years old when he got turned into that.”

The photo was a black-and-white autopsy head shot. The face, badly mutilated, had once belonged to a blond Anglo. Beyond that, Maia couldn’t tell much. Savage blows had destroyed the features. Maia had seen worse, but not many times.

“A tire iron,” Kelsey told her. “First hit laid him out cold. Back of the head, just above the left ear. Probably would’ve been enough to kill him. The other six to the face—those were just dessert.”

Kelsey watched her for a reaction. His eyes reminded Maia of a rich man’s son she’d once defended in court—a boy who liked to set sleeping derelicts on fire.

“Eighteen years ago,” she said. “What were the leads?”

“Forensics got a DNA sample—blood under the victim’s fingernails. Probably the killer’s. Unfortunately all they had in ’87 was RFLP testing. You needed a big sample to work with. There wasn’t enough blood.”

“And now you’ve got PCR,” Maia said. “So as time permits, you rotate your detectives through the cold case squad looking for old evidence in storage that you can retest.”

“Hernandez tell you that?”

“It’s standard practice, Detective. Every department in the country is doing the same thing. Why
this
case, and why did it get DeLeon shot?”

Kelsey studied her impassively, then tossed her another piece of paper from the murder book—an old-fashioned carbon copy of a patrol officer’s report.

A brief handwritten paragraph described the first response to a motorist’s 911 about a body on the side of a rural South Side road, just after 10:00
P.M.,
July 14, 1987.

At the bottom, the signatures of the first two officers at the scene: Herberto Hernandez, Lucia DeLeon.

Maia looked up. “Ana’s mother?”

“First female class of cadets,” Kelsey said. “Twenty-seven years on the force. There’s a plaque with her name in the main hallway.”

“Hernandez was her partner. That’s why he’s distancing himself from the case?”

Kelsey seemed to think about that. He looked like he was about to say something, then changed his mind.

“Ten days ago,” he told her, “Ana was rotated to cold case duty. She could’ve picked any file she wanted, but she saw her mom’s name on that report . . . sentimental bullshit. She decided to poke around in it. Hernandez and I both warned her she’d get more than she bargained for.”

“Meaning?”

Kelsey creaked back in the chair. “Ana started asking around, found out Franklin White had been arguing with a young . . . ah, business associate right before he got whacked. Wasn’t common knowledge, but the two guys had acquired some pawnshops together. This friend was the front man, Franklin was the money. The friend stood to gain if he could get Franklin out of the picture. Franklin got whacked. Within six months, his former business associate was the number one owner of pawnshops in San Antonio.”

“Ralph Arguello.”

“Jackpot.”

Maia felt her dizziness getting worse. She’d be damned if she’d give Kelsey the satisfaction of seeing her pass out. “If that’s true—”

“If?”

“Why didn’t anybody put Arguello and the victim together sooner?”

“He and White were real careful not to advertise their business relationship. Still, Arguello was one bold SOB, starting his career by whacking Franklin White. Dangerous game, considering Franklin’s dad.”

“Who’s his dad?”

Kelsey stared at her. “I forgot you’re an out-of-towner. Maybe this doesn’t mean anything to you. Franklin’s dad is Guy White.”

Maia’s heart fluttered. She had a flashback to several years ago—Tres taking her on a case to a mansion where even the butler carried a gun.

“Guy White,” she said, “the most powerful mobster in South Texas.”

“Please, Miss Lee.
Private businessman.
Mr. White donates to orphanages and shit. Just because his enemies for the last thirty years have all turned up in the river—”

“Guy White’s son was beaten to death in 1987 . . . his only child?”

“Only son. Got a younger daughter, but Frankie was the golden boy.”

“And the case was never solved.”

Kelsey smiled. “Well, see, you got a mob boss with lots of enemies. Somebody whacks his son. You think the detectives at the time were going to bend over backward trying to figure out what happened? Best guess, White’s big rival in town, Johnny Zapata, ordered the hit. Zapata controlled most of the Latino side of town. White was muscling in. Anyway, White blamed Zapata for the hit. After Frankie died, San Antonio saw its biggest gang war ever. The homicide rate spiked by thirty-five percent. If you’re the police, you’re not going to go out of your way to find another scapegoat for Frankie’s murder. Unless, of course, you’re Ana DeLeon, and you can’t stand loose ends . . .”

“The DNA under the victim’s fingernails?”

“Results came back two days ago. Positive on Ralph Arguello. Ninety-nine point nine percent.”

Maia looked around the room for something to concentrate on besides Kelsey’s smirk.

She hated hopeless cases.

For years, she’d known that Ralph Arguello was bad news. She had never understood how a woman like Ana DeLeon could get involved with him. And she’d been secretly relieved when Tres and he had started to drift apart.

She focused on DeLeon’s corkboard—a picture of Ralph and Ana with their baby girl standing in front of a bronze elephant at the zoo.

She felt horrible for that poor child. Her mother dying in the hospital. Her father a fugitive.

But she couldn’t get drawn into that.

She didn’t care why Ralph Arguello had bludgeoned a mobster’s son eighteen years ago.

The question was how to extract Tres—how to get him untangled when the fool kept throwing himself into the most dangerous situations he could find, to help a friend who shouldn’t have been his friend in the first place.

“Miss Lee?” Kelsey asked.

On the corkboard just above Kelsey’s head was another photo, circa the Seventies, of a woman in patrol uniform, obviously DeLeon’s mother, Lucia. She was standing next to another patrolman—a much younger Lieutenant Hernandez.

Maia hated this town. Everything was connected. Everybody was somebody’s cousin or childhood friend. A city of a million-plus people, and they still operated like a little country town.

There was a sticky note attached to the photo—the name
White,
then
Timing is wrong,
and a few more words Maia couldn’t read from where she sat.

Why hadn’t Kelsey taken that note down?

“Miss Lee?” he asked again. “Are you going to help us out?”

The back of Maia’s neck tingled. She suddenly doubted Kelsey had even seen the note. He wouldn’t bother looking at DeLeon’s family pictures. It would not occur to him that anything of value could be there.
Sentimental bullshit.

She forced her eyes back to him. “How is it that you expect me to help?”