New River Blues (27 page)

Tobin walked past her workspace, carrying his jacket. ‘Pauly's mother,' she asked him, following him to his space, ‘did she show up to ID the body?'

‘Sure did.'

‘What's she like?'

‘Small tired-looking woman. Used to be pretty, I'd guess. She did some big-time screaming and crying when I explained why I couldn't show her his face. But . . . she's been through a lot, she didn't stay hysterical long.' He rubbed his face, looking weary. ‘Families are the hard part of this job, aren't they? You never know what to expect. Soon as she quit crying over her son's mutilated body she started mooning over his tacky old ring. It was her father's, she said. She gave it to him on his thirteenth birthday. Couldn't afford to have the stone replaced, but she told him, “When you make it big you can have a ruby put in there.”' Tobin rolled his eyes up. ‘“When you make it big.” They always say that, don't they? The losers. She wants the ring back before he's cremated.'

‘OK. Did she see anything else that looked familiar?'

‘Yeah, she showed me his hammer toes, one on each foot, just like hers. And there's a crescent-shaped scar on his knee, from the time he fell off the roof when he was nine.' He shrugged. ‘No problem with the ID, he's her son all right. But I think that one drug bust is all we're ever going to find on Paul Eckhardt. She calls him Pauly too, by the way, says she always did. He'd only been gone from home a few months more than he served in Yuma, and for at least the first three months after he left home she's sure he was washing dishes in a café in Benson. So I don't think he had time to get into much more than we know about, Sarah.'

‘She know anything about the people he was hanging with here?'

‘No – he never contacted her from Tucson. She cried some more when she found out he'd been right here for weeks before he died. “My second husband never liked him,” she said, “but I could have figured out some way to see him.”' Tobin sat down at his desk, looked at the ceiling and said, ‘Twenty-seven years next month, I been listening to women cry over things I can't fix. I am so not going to miss it.'

‘What, you're going to retire?'

‘Well, not today. I can do my thirty like everybody else. But when I do move on, I promise you it's going to be to something that makes women smile.' He sat forward and fussed with his desk, straightened the desk blotter, and picked up some paper clips. ‘I think Pauly Eckhardt was just in that house at the wrong time. I don't believe the shooter was after him.'

‘I always do it the same way,' Arturo Espinosa said. The sheriff of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, must not be many generations removed from his homeland, Sarah thought. His Spanish vowels were still impeccable. The way he said Dough-nyah Ah-nah made her want to drive over to Hatch right away and take lessons.
Be worth the trip just to hear him roll his r's.

‘I tell my deputies, you find them wanted guys by being systematic. I look up that Need to Locate list every morning and check it against arrest notices and hospital admissions and welfare applications all over the state. If none of that pans out, I pull up the new hires from the employment offices. Lotta guys on the run, they get fake green cards and hide out in the fields a while. I got the best record in the state for nailin' them guys.' Sheriff Espinosa spoke the Spanish of kings and the English of roustabouts.

‘That's how I found this Giardelli guy, on a list of new hires out at Utley's farm. They gotta send 'em in now for the Homeland Security.' He made a small whistling noise. ‘Ain't that a rip?'

‘You found him on a list? You haven't actually seen him yet?'

‘Thought I'd check with you first, make sure you still want him before I drive all the way out there. You want him, I'll go get him.'

‘Yes, please. And hey, I owe you one.'

‘No problem. Tell you what, I was gonna run down to Lordsburg some time this week anyway. If I call you when I got this suspect in the car, you can send somebody to meet me there, OK?'

Nino's back was already killing him by ten o'clock in the morning. He wondered how long it would take to get himself toughened up like Juan, who looked stunted and starved but seemed to be able to drudge on hour after hour without complaint. Was he immune to the pain, Nino wondered, or had he just learned to ignore it like all the other things he couldn't change? Juan's default reaction to most of life seemed to be a shrug.
I don't know if I even want to get that tough.
Instinct told him the only way to get like Juan was to take a hell of a beating for a long time.

It was almost a relief, a few minutes later, to look up and see the sheriff's car parking on the dirt road beside the field. It was going to feel so damn good to throw that basket off his shoulder. And even though he was stiff he knew he could outrun the fat man in the tan uniform who got out of the car and stood talking to Carlos.

Nino began looking around for the best escape route. Dodge through the tall vines to the far side of the field, he decided. The man wouldn't fire his weapon into a field full of workers. Then down into that little wash, probably, and through the culvert. His eyes, scanning, met Juan's. His new partner was watching him anxiously out of his bony brown face.

‘Que pasa, amigo?' he said.

‘Looks like I'm gonna hafta run for it,' Nino said.

Juan, not understanding a word but liking Nino's confidential tone, said, ‘Estados Unidos, no?' and gave him a big, conspiratorial smile.

And something about the way he said that, so happy and friendly, and the fact that Nino had been feeling better about himself ever since his flashback . . . he couldn't explain it exactly, but he didn't want to run with Juan there watching.
Wait it out, he might be after somebody else.
Then Carlos walked over to his row and beckoned, and Nino decided,
What the hell, I didn't do it, there must be some way.

He turned to Juan and said, ‘I didn't do it, amigo,' and shook hands, and walked to the end of the row.

As he had expected, it felt very good to take the basket off his shoulder.

Jason Peete toured the downtown lofts first, and by mid-morning Thursday was idling his motor in front of a billboard that read ‘Quail Run,' at the entrance to a development in suburban south-east Tucson. The sign featured a beaming family in front of a house, with Day-Glo messages emphasizing family-friendly features: POOL! PLAYGROUND! LOW DOWN-PAYMENT!

Beyond the entrance were newly paved streets fronting single-family houses in various stages of construction. All the streets meandered in a curving pattern that afforded maximum privacy and many cul-de-sacs. They ended abruptly in an empty field of dirt that had been ditched, heaped, raked, and staked in preparation for the next batch of houses. An earth-mover was working on the far side of the farthest mound. Otherwise, work on this neighborhood seemed to be at a standstill.

Jason locked his car and wandered down a street of mostly finished houses, only two of which appeared to be occupied. He was peering in through a still-taped window into an empty living-and-kitchen space when a voice behind his left ear said, ‘You looking for somebody, fella?'

Jason turned with his badge in his hand, said, ‘Detective Peete,' and smiled. He had, when he wanted to have, an engaging smile and a firm baritone voice that usually kept him out of bar fights and angry confrontations with guys in hard hats.

This one hesitated two seconds before he stuck out his hand and said, ‘Dan Bird.'

He was probably close to fifty, taut and wiry, with close-cut sandy hair sprinkled with grey. Clean-shaven except for an almost-white soul patch, he wore jeans and a T-shirt, sturdy boots, and tiny diamond earrings, an incongruous touch with his beginning dewlaps.
A hip grandpa. Pretty cool for a white guy.

Bird cocked his head curiously and said, ‘This an official enquiry or you thinking of taking advantage of our newly lowered price range?'

Jason debated going for the sleazy explanation Bird had just offered him. Pretend to be blowing off some city hours shopping for bargains, maybe he'd get the full tour. But he couldn't allow the implication that he might be malingering to pass unchallenged. Let Whitey get by with one of those attitudes, next he'd be asking if you wanted some watermelon.

‘I work in the Homicide division,' he said. ‘We're investigating the traumatic death of Mrs Henderson.'

‘Uh-huh.' Bird did some thoughtful nodding. ‘Sure is a sad thing.'

‘Yes. We're all very sorry for Mr Henderson's loss.'

‘Yeah. I still don't exactly see what it has to do with Hen-Trax houses.'

‘At the beginning of a homicide investigation, we pretty much have to verify everything anybody says. Man says he's a builder, we gotta go see what he's building.' He looked straight at Bird without blinking, but he knew it sounded lame.

Bird gave a derisive snort. ‘Not much doubt Hen-Trax is building houses, is there? We're one of the biggest developers in Pima County, getting bigger all the time . . . just finished that Rio Nuevo loft thing downtown, have you looked at that?'

‘Swung by there, yes. Came out here to this one you're supervising . . . that's what you do, right? You're the supervisor?'

‘Foreman's what they usually call me, but . . . you came out here why?'

‘Because I know a few folks in the building trades and they all told me this is an excellent example of what Hen-Trax does best, affordable housing that delivers value.'

‘Uh-
huh
.' His phone chirped and he answered, ‘Bird,' listened a minute and said, ‘I'm out there now. Got a detective here, says he's from Homicide.' His eyes were measuring Jason as he talked.
Five-eleven
, Jason wanted to tell him.
One eighty-five and I pump some iron.

But Bird seemed to be getting friendlier. He folded his phone and said, ‘The boss says show you around. Nothing secret about Quail Run, he says, which is sure as hell true. We got billboards up all over town, we're in the paper every Sunday—' His phone chirped again; he opened it, said, ‘Bird,' listened a few seconds and said, ‘No. No. Lock it up and leave it.' He folded the phone without saying goodbye.

‘I'm not the salesman, you understand, I'm just out here to check a couple of things. You want to hop in my chariot, I'll show you around.' Jason climbed up on to the wide bench seat of his pickup.

‘This front section here,' he waved his hand at one-story stucco houses with tile roofs, ‘is almost built out.' He showed Jason three dozen houses, most of them sold and occupied. ‘From here back,' he wheeled into a wide main thoroughfare that ran straight toward the Rincons, ‘forty-eight homes, about sixty percent complete. Back of that,' he waved at a vast space, ‘is ready to go when the demand is there.'

‘Little dip in demand right now?'

‘We hope it's little.'

‘The houses in the second section, are they all sold?'

‘Yyy . . . well.' Bird tapped the steering wheel with thin, freckled fingers, finally put the truck in reverse, and turned around. ‘Hell, I might as well show you that, too.' He drove back almost to the entrance and wheeled into a side street. ‘These houses are ready for the finishing touches – cabinets, doors, windows.

‘Last June, we had firm orders for almost all of these, and the boss was going crazy trying to find more window-framers and another crew of painters, everything was go, go, go. Then in July, August, people started coming back to us saying, “We thought we had our loan but now the bank is saying they have to have more security.” And these are working people that, you know, they've got their jobs and their cars, and that's about it. And they're saying, “Since when isn't that enough?” because that's what the subprime market was all about. You got a job? Sign here.' He shook his head and the earring nearest Jason caught the sun and twinkled.

‘Last spring the boss was kicking himself when he lost a bid on another project just like this one but half again as big, on the other side of town.' Bird sniffed. ‘Now when he thinks about that he says, “Thank you, Jesus.”'

‘I've read some of the stories in the paper,' Jason said. ‘I still don't understand what happened.'

‘You ask me,' Bird said, ‘that's part of the problem, stories in the paper. “A crisis in the subprime lending market!” So everybody goes apeshit, starts yelling for more money down. It's the same world it was six months ago, only not. Whole housing economy drops dead because some wise-ass bunch of suits in Switzerland has a cow over a balance sheet? What kind of sense does that make?'

‘Somebody told me it's some kind of bubble?'

‘Makes as much sense as anything else they're saying. Anyway, long as I'm sharing our troubles with you I'll show you the part that really makes you want to kill somebody.' He stopped with a suddenly stricken expression. ‘I didn't mean . . .'

‘I understand,' Jason said. ‘Just an expression.'

‘Well, right. Although if I catch a couple of these little rats I can't promise I won't put a bruise on 'em. Look at this.' He had stopped the truck in the middle of a section of oddly damaged houses – broken windows, a garage door hanging crooked.

‘What happened?'

‘Gangs of boys,' Bird said, ‘roam through here at night, break windows and spray graffiti on walls and kick out door locks. For fun. Nothing personal, we don't even know them. Somebody ran a car into that garage door – see how it's hanging? Hundreds of dollars down the tube in the blink of an eye. Safe game for them because there's nobody around to call the police. Even if somebody did, the sheriff's deputies in this part of the county have more than they can do already.'