by J A Kellman
The blotter-calendar, still displaying the last month of his life, was more interesting, since he seemed to use it as a diary. “Monday, call Wilson’s Heating and Plumbing about rectory furnace. Tuesday make appointment with provincial’s office. Wednesday, homily.”
On his final day, the fourth of December, “Chicago early, back late afternoon,” was written in hasty black ballpoint.
He drives to Chicago, comes home, then he’s killed. Was there a connection between the trip and his death? It was an interesting coincidence—was it accidental or something else?
The top-right drawer contained office supplies. The bottom drawer was a small hanging file, with at least two dozen dark green folders dangling from its metal structure. I’d go through it after I developed a sense of his other materials. The left side of the desk was similarly business like.
Maybe the file behind his desk will hold something of greater import, I thought, swiveling to face it, jiggling a tiny key into the top drawer’s lock.
The drawer was jammed with manila files, bristling with paper that made it hard to pull open—a lifetime’s worth of homilies, as far as I could tell after a cursory inspection. The bottom drawer was only half full. It contained letters regarding parish business over the span of Father Diego’s tenure at St. Patrick’s, articles from periodicals that had caught his eye, and in a file by itself at the front, lists of large donors and the amounts they had contributed over several years.
I looked at that first. Half way down the inventory, I spotted Eduardo Guzmán, former owner of Cinco Gallos, member of the Sinaloa cartel, and one of Kan’s temple sacrifices, according to the local news. I could still hear Guzmán shrieking about tacos as they hauled him up the temple stairs. I shuddered.
It was odd to find that man’s name here in Father Diego’s office as an important church contributor. He didn’t seem the type—more a drug lord and cartel boss sort, according to the Mexican police—but maybe Guzmán was trying to make restitution for his sins. Since his restaurant was only two blocks away, it would be easy for him to seek solace at St. Patrick’s.
I leaned back in his chair to think. What did I know: first, someone murdered Father Diego—a professional hit from the look of it, though the police weren’t saying; second, he and Guzmán were connected, at least through the church; and third, both Father Diego and Ruston frequented Cinco Gallos and smoked expensive cigars on not too generous salaries. Were there other connections between the two, besides both being murdered, that tied them to the rest of the story, or did they both just like Mesoamerican food, fancy smokes, and have lousy luck?
There was something else, too, though—the truck full of drugs that burned behind Cinco Gallo. Not that the accident was connected to Guzmán just because it was in his backyard, but it was interesting, and what the hell was that truck doing cruising off the interstate into the St. Patrick/Cinco Gallos neighborhood?
And there was Father Diego’s fast trip to Chicago on the day he was killed. What the devil was that about? The extravagant contributions from Guzmán to the church were curious, too. Still from what I could tell, the priest didn’t sound like the type to be in trouble with the cartels or drugs, either, but that didn’t mean anything. A priest would be a perfect addition to the ranks.
Get a grip. This isn’t an investigation; it’s archiving. Pack, don’t pry, I thought as I began to arrange the files of homilies from the file cabinet by date in a banker’s box. I picked up the partial sermon from the desk tray to add to the collection.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but in the wooden receptacle between the homily and the rough draft of the funding campaign letter, was a dog-eared pocket-sized notebook from a local auto dealer titled, “Oil Changes, Mileage, and Maintenance.” I flipped it open to check it out before I decided where it belonged. The oil change and service records were blank, but those headed mileage and gas were filled with notations.
According to the entries, beginning last September, Father Diego drove to Chicago and back in a single day once or twice a week. Before that, nothing. What the hell was he doing? The last trip, the day he was killed, hadn’t been entered.
I needed time to think. I slipped the notebook into a Ziploc, then into my purse. I’d scan it into my computer and return it when I wrapped up the job.
A couple of hours later, I stopped in the church office to drop off the keys before I left for the day. Irma, hard at work on the church bulletin, was glad to take a break.
“Mind if I ask about Father Diego?” I asked, unable to completely contain my inquisitiveness.
“No, señora,” Irma shook her head.
“I found Father Diego’s mileage record for several months before he died, and I wondered, had he always gone to Chicago regularly? It’s a couple of hours each way, so it must have been something important for him make the trip so often.”
Irma thought for a moment. “He started going last autumn, sometimes a couple of times a week…just day trips.”
“I know it isn’t my business, but I’m curious. That’s a lot of driving. Was it for the church?”
“I don’t know what Father was doing. I didn’t ask. I just imagined it had something to do with the parish, but now, with his death—He’d leave early, but be back in time for Mass.” Irma nibbled thoughtfully on the side of her thumb.
I might as well push for details, I thought, as I plunged on. “Did he go by himself? Take anything with him? His briefcase, computer, anything?”
Irma frowned as she considered. “Usually he left his briefcase and computer here. Odd, when you think about it, if it was a church matter. I know once he dropped off a suitcase in Pilsen, the old Mexican neighborhood, for Eduardo Guzmán, the guy who owned Cinco Gallos. I saw Father carry it to his car. Said a relative had accidently left it in Big Grove after a visit.”
Well that was something. Guzmán was involved in one visit at least and probably more. Clearly he knew about Father’s trips if he asked him to deliver a suitcase in the city.
I placed the mileage record in front of Irma so she could see what it included. “Do you mind if I copy this and bring it back later this week? I’d like to take a closer look at the dates, see it they fit into any sort of pattern. I keep thinking there is a connection between Father’s trips and something in Big Grove.”
“Go ahead. It isn’t like he is here to worry about his privacy.” Irma shifted in her chair, gathering her thoughts.
“I know she may have nothing to add, but would his housekeeper know anything?”
“She probably wouldn’t know much. They’d communicate through notes on the kitchen table. Luz’d clean, cook, leave. She wouldn’t see him for days.
“Luz and I didn’t have much time to talk, either, but she did mention that Father began going to Cinco Gallos pretty regularly. Must have been a year and a half or so ago.” Irma carefully worked on her thumb as she considered Luz’s information.
“How’d she know if they didn’t talk?”
“He’d leave a note telling her he didn’t need dinner; he was going out. He also mentioned something about Cinco Gallos a couple of times; once, when they ran into one another, he said he liked the food.
“Oh, she said he’d started to smoke cigars then, too. The rectory smelled like a men’s club, she said. It was hard to air out.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing really big.” Irma paused. “But he’d been really happy, on top if the world, until he started his Chicago trips, then he got moody, distracted, like he had something on his mind. Didn’t even joke much with the kids. I thought maybe he was having a hard time with the new bishop in Springfield, but I didn’t pry.”
I felt like I was near the end of what Irma knew. I took one last stab. “Did he have health concerns? Anything going on the parish—financial difficulties, issues with parishioners?”
“I can’t think of anything,” Irma said, handing me the notebook, “but if I do, I’ll let you know.”
Well, that’
s something, I thought as I headed for the parking lot. I’ll bet anything Guzmán treated him to dinner and cigars at Cinco Gallo. Maybe the Chicago trips had something to do with Guzmán’s previous generosity. It would make sense. Maybe the drug business is part of the picture.
I slid into the RAV4 and wondered what else was part of the situation. After all, Guzmán had ties to Big Grove, Tikal, the cartels, and now the priest. It was odd.
Once I had everything ready to send to the provincial’s office on Thursday, I’d talk with Luz. Maybe she could remember something that would help me sort things out.
~ * ~
By the end of the week, I’d gotten both offices cataloged and packed and had something to talk about during our cocktail hour on Friday besides Tikal—the apparent link between Guzmán and the priest and the details I’d dug up since I started work at St. Patrick’s.
“It’s curious,” I said. “Guzmán contributed thousands of dollars to St. Patrick’s. Had he suddenly returned to the church? Was he expiating his sins?
“When I spoke with Luz, Father Diego’s housekeeper, she didn’t have too much new to add to what Irma already told me, except she did say he did begin to have dinner regularly at Cinco Gallos last fall and the booze and cigars started then, too. She would know. She had to deal with the stale smoke and empty the recycle bin.
“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing—Ruston, cartels, the restaurant, Father Diego, the Nuevo—”
Pat nodded in agreement as she handed me a platter of celery with dip.
“Then the priest’s trips to Chicago started a year later. Guzmán’s cousin’s suitcase appeared on one of those jaunts then, too, so we know for certain there was a connection between Guzmán and Chicago at that point. The whole thing seems unusual to me, as if Guzmán and the priest had an arrangement.
“I xeroxed the list of contributions. Maybe it will suggest something, if I look at it long enough.”
“Too bad you don’t have his appointment calendar, too,” Bill said, spitting crumbs as he talked through a mouthful of cracker and cheese. “It would be interesting to cross check the dates of contributions and dinners, see how the Chicago trips fit into the pattern.”
I worried a piece of celery. “I know this isn’t part of my work for the parish, but the cast of characters seem to overlap with what went on earlier—here and in Tikal—and violence crops up in both places as well. Maybe there’s even a connection to Ruston.”
Pat put down her wine. “You know, it sounds as if Guzmán had been grooming Father Diego that first autumn—dinners, cigars, alcohol, contributions, and who knows what else—then this year began using the priest in some way, maybe as a courier. I mean think about it. What else makes sense? A priest would be perfect in that role. Who would suspect him of being a cartel flunky?”
“I’d love to get my hands on his computer—see if his schedule is there—but Irma said the police still have it. Can’t they give it back to the parish?” I asked, turning to Bill. “Surely there isn’t any reason for them to hang onto it.”
“I’ll ask the guys at the gym. Find out what’s going on. If they haven’t learned anything from it by now, they aren’t going to discover something in the future, either. I’ll tell ’em the church needs it.”
The week’s other big news was that after much coaxing, Ochoa and Esperanza, according to their most recent email to Pat, had finally set a date for their visit to Big Grove.
“They’re packing. They’ve applied for visas. Once those come through, they’ll buy tickets. Right now, they’re thinking it will be the second week in June.”
“Ha! It will be just like before—Ochoa, cartels, murder,” Bill said, grinning happily.
“I wouldn’t say that to Esperanza,” I said, finishing my scotch. “She’ll cancel the trip.”
Thirty-six
Big Grove, Second Week in June
The morning after Esperanza’s and Ochoa’s arrival, the sky, pale blue as Persian turquois, was clear, scrubbed clean of clouds by last night’s wind. Everything was reassuringly familiar outside my kitchen window. The man in the small brick house across the street from Burr Oaks was watering this spring’s basket of pink impatiens hanging from his front porch roof. His elderly neighbor fussed with boxes of red geraniums lining her railings.
Burr Oaks’ gardeners had set out the white metal lawn furniture and sun umbrellas behind the buildings. Residents had dragged out their barbeque grills and parked them along the back of the garage facing the condos.
The cardinals nesting in the spirea below my window flew in and out of their hiding place, their bodies carmine in the morning sun. Maybe the pair that lived in the shrub last year, I thought pouring a second cup of coffee, or maybe one of their children is starting a family.
I took my coffee and the morning newspaper into the living room and settled into the recliner. Rosie was stretched out, asleep on her carpeted window perch, basking in the morning sun that slanted through the corner window behind my chair.
Not much had changed in Big Grove since we’d left, but the lead article in the business section caught my eye. “Cinco Gallos Has New Owner,” the headline read. “Oscar Olivera, Chicago businessman, replaces Eduardo Guzmán at the helm of the popular Guatemalan restaurant in northwest Big Grove,” the article began.
“The menu is more or less the same with a few additions that will change throughout the year,” Olivera said when asked. “We’ll try to explore cooking from various parts of Mesoamerica, treat them as specials.
“I bought Cinco Gallos from Eduardo Guzmán’s widow, but since I still have businesses in Chicago, I’ll only be here part time after we get things rolling.”
Huh. I wonder what the cartel has to do with this? What is going to turn up on its list of new offerings?
~ * ~
Since I was free to poke around while Zoila and Luis spent the day showing Esperanza and Ochoa Big Grove and the nearby countryside, lunch at Cinco Gallos seemed in order. I might as well check things out. As usual, the parking lot was crowded. People and vehicles struggled to avoid one another in the narrow space between the restaurant and the tall wooden fence that surrounded the property.
On the way to the front entrance, I spotted what I’d bet was Olivera’s car, a black Jeep Cherokee with smoked windows, parked near the back door. It gave me the willies, considering what had happened to Polop.
The tiny entry was packed. The crowd milled, waiting for tables: I could barely wiggle my way into the surging mass. There didn’t seem to be any alterations in the lobby that I could see, new owner or not—even the posters on the front desk were the ones that had been there for as long as I could remember, but maybe they hadn’t had time to redecorate.
I had a better chance to look around once I was seated. Nothing had changed in the dining room, either—same décor and staff, even the menus were the old well-worn editions except a piece of paper had been inserted into the front announcing daily specials. My sopa, when it arrived, was familiar, too—hot chicken broth with rice, greens, and fragments of egg and a plate of sliced avocado and lettuce to add to the bowl.
Maybe modifications will come later, I thought, as I spooned up the sopa, but I hope they leave the food alone.
Later, on the way home to Burr Oaks, I considered what I’d seen. It wasn’t much. There were no real changes at Cinco Gallos...yet, except for a new owner and his creepy car, but that suggested something else—it was probably business as usual and that business likely included drugs.
~ * ~
The following night, Zoila and Luis gave an official welcome dinner for Esperanza and Ochoa. Zoila had gone all out—roast turkey, tamales, a huge fruit plate with slices of papaya, mango, pineapple, and magenta-colored pitajaya.
“My friend Rosa and her family made the tamales,” Zoila said later as she refilled the serving dish for the third time. “I’d still be in the kitchen if I’d tried to do it.”
It was a night of nourishment of all
sorts—friends, food, laughter—a rich mixture of companionship and pleasure. “How has your first day been?” Pat asked our guests once we’d all begun to slow down on our feasting.
“Luis and Zoila took us everywhere…I can’t remember it all, but I took plenty of pictures,” Ochoa said as he took another tamale. “The countryside is astonishing: huge, flat, like a savanna, and countless squirrels in town. Never have I seen so many squirrels. My brother and I would have counted it a miracle if we had seen half as many when we were hunting as boys.”
“The thing that amazed me was the size of everything,” Esperanza said. “Fields larger than the main plaza in Guatemala City, farms that go on forever. And the university! It’s a city!”
Conversation threaded its way from their visit to the clearance sale at Bill’s sports shop, and the mob of children and mothers that had descended on the library while Pat was working, and finally the cave. Even Polop, despite his recent kidnapping, was interested.
“Not much new there,” Ochoa said, “except we’ve put a fence around the area and the water in the reservoir has drained back to its former level. The geologists will be arriving next week to see whether it is safe to go in. Who knows what is left of the artifacts after that collapse and flood, but we’ve got to find out. Gracias a Dios we have those pictures.”
I didn’t have anything, so I told the story of my lunch at Cinco Gallos. “Not a lot to say about the place, except there is a black Jeep Cherokee behind the building. Otherwise, everything looks like it did when Guzmán owned it. I find it hard to believe Father Diego might have got himself killed just frequenting a restaurant full of students and families.”
“The murdered priest?” Ochoa asked, clearly interested. “Anything new there?”
Esperanza gave her husband a bleak stare. “This is our vacation, Miguel. You promised not to talk police work, no matter what.”
Pat kicked me under the table.
Even though Pat was scowling, after a little prodding from Ochoa, I related the story of Father Diego, his murder outside his church moments before five o’clock Mass, and the fact that his death was still unsolved. What else could I do? Ochoa wasn’t going to give up. A murder was all it took to get him asking questions.