Even a kid could recognize her own coloring and its similarity to that of another man in town who was not her mother’s ex and whom her mother avoided like vermin.
Still, it was on those drunken nights that Rae would kiss her mother’s closed eyes. It was Rae who had mistaken the smell of whiskey for perfume until she was ten and went to the bar herself one night to find her mother and recognized the odor being wiped off the counter. It was Rae who knew what was going to happen before it happened. Even then. Even now.
Do I want to touch her belly? Christ no!
Do you remember when your wife was pregnant? Jesus!
And Rae led the woman back to the bed, spun her, and shoved her, a little harder maybe than she’d meant to.
Could I at least cut her hands loose so she could feel her own belly? Anything else, Prisoner? What, you wanna go for a jog around the yard? Do a few bench presses with the skinheads in the barbell club? Rae stood speechless in front of the bed. Says she’s a fat, pregnant woman, what’s she going to do? Well, true there. Rae knew that Geronimo would be pissed. She knew she was breaking the rules. Maybe even Danny would be pissed, but fuck it. Look at this pathetic woman lying there with a bag over her head.
Rae reached into the spot where she’d hidden the small razor blade, the same place she’d hidden her thin cell phone, the place where the old northern Michigan cops were too prudish or even too scared to search you when they booked you into county for some stupid-ass violation. She took the fold of cardboard off the blade and rolled the woman on her side and sliced through the flex-cuffs, freeing her hands.
Then she took a step back and watched. Go ahead and try something, she thought, not letting the act of kindness weaken her—I’ll kick your ass.
Chapter 21
When I pulled up to the curb in the Dunbar Village housing project, Mrs. Quarles was nowhere in sight. That she was watching through the lace curtains of her tiny living room would be a solid assumption. When I got out of the Gran Fury and walked toward the basketball court where I could see her son repetitively shooting free throws, I stopped in front of her porch for a single second, a moment of respect and a soundless request for permission before moving on. The court was empty. CQ, ballplayer with eyes in the back of his head, did not turn until I was two paces behind him. “Thirty-nine,” he said, as the ball left his fingertips with an exaggerated backspin, arced through the warm humid air, went cleanly through the hoop, and as he planned, bounced back as if on command into his waiting hands. “Forty,” he said, repeating the exact movements and formula again. Only then did he turn to me, a look of seriousness on his handsome face. “Mr. Freeman,” he said, cradling the ball in the crook of his elbow and gesturing to the paint-chipped iron bench on the sideline. “Shall we adjourn to my office?” I couldn’t help myself. The juxtaposition of the venue and the young man’s pantomime of corporate cant made me grin. “After you, sir,” I said, extending my hand toward the bench. We sat and let silence hang for a full minute, maybe two. I didn’t think he was second-guessing his decision as much as he was letting the quiet act as a cleansing that moved him from one activity to another; the two should never overlap. “Look, CQ,” I started, “if you don’t want to get involved …”
“No, no,” he stopped me. “I made some calls, talked with some fellas. Got some info … but I’ll tell you up front, Mr. Freeman, this tip isn’t about drugs. If you think it might be a dead end, it’s up to you. OK?”
Now it was my turn to be silent.
“I understand, Mr. Freeman,” CQ said. “I read the newspapers. I know Ms. Manchester was the judge in the Escalante case and that everyone thinks that his cartel and their connections here on the street could have their fingers in it.” He was looking out over the empty court now, not into my eyes.
“And it makes sense you’d want to find out if there was word on the streets. So you come to my neighborhood to find out what might be hummin’ out here, you know?”
“I wasn’t judging, CQ,” I said. “Leads are leads, chances, opportunities.”
After another few seconds of silence, he dug into his pocket and came out with the burner, the toss-away cell phone I’d given him.
“I ain’t judgin’ you, neither,” he said. “Number on there for a dude name of Dez, jack-a-all-trades kinda guy who has some stuff to tell about a chop shop down Delray way where some odd shit been going on last couple of days.”
I nodded and let CQ continue.
“Says he got a piece of a Ford van that has a vehicle ID number on it might interest you.”
I could feel that interest materialize as a physical tingle up my hairline, an ember of hope that I had to contain immediately lest I give it more importance than it deserved.
“Of course, he also has a monetary interest of his own,” CQ said, handing me the cell, his voice going an octave lower, putting on the Boston University vernacular again. “So you two will have to negotiate that on your own. He’ll know your call is legitimate if it comes through this line.”
The way the kid kept doing the linguistic two-step did not confuse the message. Street smart, business smart, cover-your-ass smart: Billy’s friend the teacher had chosen his protégé well. I started to go to my own pocket to pay for his help, but CQ cut me off again.
“I gave Dez your two thousand up front,” he said, raising his palms, refusing any money. “I hope what information he has will help Ms. Manchester. If I obtain any more, uh, leads, I’ll purchase another untraceable phone and call you.”
“Agreed,” I said, and offered my hand to be swallowed by his once again. “And thank you, CQ.”
The voice on the cell gave me the address of a bodega in eastern Delray Beach called La Preferiola. CQ had given me the guy’s name as Dez, but no last name. “And if he gives you a last name, it won’t be his real one,” CQ said. “But the dude’s got an ear on everything, and I mean everything. So you have to take his info on face value—but take it seriously because when it comes to the streets, this guy is plugged in.”
I was taking it at face value, but when I reached Dez on the phone—young-sounding voice, no detectible accent, clipped and direct—he led me to a neighborhood of shops and garages and little groceries where the signage is overwhelmingly in Spanish. So I was putting a face on the “dude” ahead of time.
Here I was with cash money to pay for information about a particularly high-profile crime that might have involved drug dealers tied to one of the nearly mythic figures in the trade: it was hard for me not to start projecting. I’m figuring Dez must be Latin and wants to meet me in a place where he’s comfortable and may have his own brand of backup among the locals.
I know this gig. I had more than a few informants when I was a beat cop in Philadelphia and during my short stint as a detective. We talked on untraceable lines. We met in places where the informant was unlikely to be recognized with a stranger who looks like a cop. We made the meetings short and sweet. The promise was given that real names never went into documents.
I would soon find out that a lot of those rules were going out the window on this one.
If Dez was as street smart as CQ made him out to be, he was going to be careful. And so was I. Already I had my handgun out of the trunk and felt it bite into the small of my back as I got out of the Fury. I’d thought twice about switching my car and driving my F-150, not to be so obvious, but now realized it would have been a useless move.
La Preferiola was a squat, one-story business in the middle of the block on Southwest 18th Avenue. The store’s front windows were filled with advertisements in Spanish for COCINA LATINA, ULTAMAR SERVICIOS TELEFONICOS, and C.A.M., a money-transfer service providing a link to the Caribbean and South America and available in a thousand shops in South Florida. There was even a sign for overseas Internet availability for a price per minute.
It was one-stop shopping. You could come in and send money to your mom in
Ecuador, call your cousin in Brazil, and send an email to Cuba, all while having café con leche and churros. The joint next door sported a red and yellow JOYERIA EMPEÑOS sign identifying it as a jewelry and pawn shop. On the other side was what we’d call a mom-and-pop grocery in Philly, with the sign LA PREFERIOLA running across the awning.
I sat for a minute, assessing. The only visible signs in English were STOP and SPEED LIMIT 30. I was a gringo in a foreign country.
CQ told me that I wouldn’t have any trouble recognizing Dez. And he was right. When I walked into the store, the requisite tinkle of bells hanging on the doorframe announced my presence. A mixed odor of warm spice, cooking meat, and some undetermined whiff of cleaning agent greeted me. To my immediate right was a glass-covered warming counter with an array of rice dishes, stews, sliced pork, braised chicken, and mixed vegetables steaming in stainless trays. To the left was a counter stacked with paper directories, lists of dollar, peso, real, gourde, and Cordoba exchange rates, and a clerk streaming a litany of questions to a customer in Spanish so fast that I didn’t have a chance to glean the conversation.
The narrow single room extended back past a booth supplied with one outdated laptop and into a four-table dining area. The floors were mopped clean, but I could tell that if you bumped one piece of furniture from its spot the grime would be thick.
At a small two-top in the far corner sat a man with his back against the wall, a hoodie pulled over his head and shadowing his eyes. I walked up within a couple of feet and stood silently.
“Mr. Freeman, I presume,” a voice said from under the hood.
“Dez.”
“Please. Sit.”
The voice, again absent any discernible accent, was accompanied by the wave of a pale palm to the seat in front of him. I deferred and instead sat in the chair directly to his right where I had a wall to my own back. It was a chess move and we both knew it.
“My understanding is that you have something for me,” I said.
“I think I do.”
Again, the hand came up, this time holding a small strip of metal, probably a quarter-inch wide and three inches long, and stamped with a series of letters and numbers. Dez placed it on the tabletop and slid it toward me. I recognized it immediately as a VIN tag. It still had the rivet heads on either end from where it had been ripped from the dash of a vehicle. I spun the strip with my fingernail on one edge so I could read it. Then I took my cell phone from my pocket and dialed Billy’s number. I needed his help. I’d read the preliminary police reports on the stolen van, but I’ve never been good at recalling numbers, and at times can still be befuddled when being asked for my own Social Security number.
While I waited for the line to ring through, Dez slid an Especiales menu over to me. Chuleta de puerco, churrasco, sopa de pollo.
“The chicken soup is great,” he said.
When Billy answered, I read off the VIN without any preamble.
“It’s the correct number for the stolen van,” he said. “Where are you, Max?”
“I’ll get back to you,” I said, and thumbed the cell off.
I turned the VIN tag around with my fingernail and stayed silent for a few long seconds.
“True?” Dez said.
“Can you tell me where you got this?”
“I could.”
When nothing else was offered, I reached into the right pocket of my cargo pants and brought out a brick of twenty-dollar bills in a way that only my lunch companion could see.
“Two thousand more,” I said.
Dez did not reach for the payment but instead pulled back the hoodie to reveal his face. His eyes were gray and flat but gave no indication of menace as they met mine, unblinking. They showed no sign of being under the influence. His hair was short and naturally ash blond. He was clean-cut and owned an unblemished complexion that was, like his hands, light-colored, but what the Florida sun might supply as tan. He was a white Anglo kid in a bodega. I guessed his age to be early to mid-twenties.
“Four and I’ll give you the address of the warehouse it came from … and an eyewitness.”
“Four it is,” I said, and reached into my pocket for another brick.
Dez nodded. He liked this way of dealing. No bullshit. No haggling. Easy money for him, and fine by me as well. I didn’t like dealing with the black-market element, but there was nothing overtly illegal in our trade. He had something I needed. I had money to pay him. And time was of the essence.
He recited the address from memory: “2742 Northwest 60th Street, old area of Pompano Beach. Light industry, but used to have a lot of chop shops back in the day—mostly abandoned now. I’m thinking whoever chopped this one up is from out of town, because we don’t usually handle it that way down here.”
I looked up into his light-colored eyes at the word we, but didn’t press.
“Carjackers who want to get rid of a car down here just drive it out west and run it into a canal. They’ve got dredging programs these days, but an entire car can sit underwater for decades.”
I knew this to be true and let Dez go on. It was, after all, my money.
“Like I told CQ, these guys have something to hide rather than sell.”
“You get any eyeballs on these out-of-towners?”
“Not personally.” The young man’s voice was all business.
I admit I couldn’t hang a sign on him. Shyster? Thief? Entrepreneur?
“But there is someone who kinda lives in the area who sees everything that happens and is susceptible, so to speak, to questions,” he said, with a nod to the money still in my hand.
I passed him the cash.
“Dude lives up on the roof across the street from that address,” Dez elaborated. “Spooky guy. Be careful going up there. He doesn’t like visitors, but if you knock with this,” he said, slapping the bills lightly on the underside of the table, “he’ll be cool.”
I slid out of the chair and stood to leave.
“Hey,” Dez said, and I turned back to him. “Good luck.”
I was dialing Billy’s number as I climbed into the Fury. He answered on the first ring.
“What do you have, Max?”
“An address and a possible witness,” I said. There was a moment of silence. It was the first positive news since his wife had been scooped off the streets.
“Give me the address, and I’ll run everything I can through the computer before I meet you there, Max. If it’s an old building, I won’t be able to get blueprints online, but I have a contact at the county planner’s office who might be able to pull the file and give us a description.”
Billy and his contacts. I read him the warehouse number.
“And the witness’s name?”
“No name yet, Billy. But he apparently keeps a close eye on all the comings and goings in that neighborhood. I’d like to get a chance to talk with him before the feds show up and spook the hell out of him.”
“We’ll have to bring them in,” Billy said, still hanging on to his legitimacy as an attorney even though he may have committed a dozen crimes stripping his wife’s computer, bugging her office, and downloading the entire collection of files from the courthouse database.
“Give me an hour lead-time before you call them and I’ll meet you there. It’ll take them some time to get their team together anyway.”
“OK, Max. Your call,” Billy said, and hung up.
My friend trusted me, even with his wife’s life potentially on the line. I was grateful. I knew that if the tip on the witness—described as kinda spooky—was good, then he was likely to give me some information for a bundle of cash a lot quicker than he would if there was a phalanx of federal agents swarming all over the block. And I had no doubt there would be a swarm. The Marshal’s Service and the FBI had been shut out of all potential leads and would be itching for anything they could move on. Th
ey’d come in heavy, and that was never a way to get good info from a marginal guy who “lives up on the roof.” I’d need to do that on my own.
I found the street in less than twenty minutes. I don’t use a GPS, but have roamed South Florida’s lesser-known neighborhoods for years while working cases for Billy, so I’m decent at tracking down addresses that you’ll never find on the tourist brochures.
The building was in a row of warehouses of the old brick-and-mortar variety, different than the cheap aluminum-sided storage structures that entrepreneurs put up in the 1980s and 1990s. These places were built to last—though from the looks of the boarded windows, graffiti-marked walls, and trash-strewn streets and alleyways, they’d seen better times. The overall feeling was gray, sun-bleached surfaces gone chalky from too much heat and neglect.
I rolled the Gran Fury around a two-block perimeter and noted a couple of junk cars up on blocks as well as a newer step van with the license tag removed. In one open bay door, a couple of guys dressed in greasy overalls and carrying tools gave me the once-over as I cruised by. This was not a place you came if you didn’t have business. But it was also a place where you might hide, and no one would really care.
Given that numbers on the buildings were in short supply, when I parked at the corner of the street Dez had given me, I had to extrapolate. I picked out the two-story building that had to be 2742. The garage-style roll-down door was dull galvanized metal—and closed. Next to it was an unmarked doorway entrance with only a small, head-high window with crosshatched reinforcing wire in the glass, so that you couldn’t see through to the inside. To the south of the garage door was a big Dumpster, the kind a trash-service truck would spear with its forks and lift overhead and dump.
The pocked macadam street wasn’t going to yield much in tire tracks, and a scan of the row of buildings showed no security cameras and only a few outdoor lights that vandals hadn’t turned into blossoms of jagged glass. It was nearing evening and there wasn’t a person in sight. I calculated that the building across the street to the west was where Dez had told me the spooky guy’s roof nest must be, and I worked my way down the alley.
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