What a hell of a shitty way to go.
Slade was hunched into a booth along the street, where the windows looked out on the busy sidewalk and, past that, a wide intersection with decent foot and car traffic—most of it for the transit station a half block north. I slid in across from Slade and waved at the waitress for a cup of coffee. I noticed Slade had something between his arms and, when he looked up at me, I saw it was a newspaper folded to show one half, length-wise. I noticed his eyes were red-rimmed and knew Slade didn’t get much sleep. If any sleep at all.
He sucked air through his teeth and crossed his arms. “You and me are fucked, Frank.”
I reached across the table and slid the newspaper to where I could read the headline: “Drug Slayings Confound Homicide Unit.” It didn’t lead the front page, but it had a prominent spot alongside the main story about the upcoming elections, including a bit about the county DA slot. “How in the fuck did this happen? Was this you, Slade? Your little piece of—”
“You know goddamn well it wasn’t me, Frank.”
The waitress slammed a coffee mug down in front of me. Black liquid splashed onto the table. She jogged off without cleaning it. I picked up the mug, flipped the newspaper into the puddle of spilled coffee. Brown wetness soaked through the newsprint.
“You’re not going to read it?”
“Nope,” I said. “Today’s the first day in a week I haven’t thrown up in the morning. I want to keep it that way.”
Slade looked at this watch. “It’s half past noon. You can throw up any time.”
“How about you just tell me if they have everything.” I sipped my coffee and watched people pass outside on the street. It was the regular Mid-City weekend crowd.
Skateboards and beach cruisers and a bum or three shuffling like zombies. A police cruiser sped past, lit up an old Toyota with expired registration.
“It wasn’t my lady,” Slade said. “But whoever it was, they have almost everything. They left Applewhite out of it, of course. Decassin, too. But they give the Castanedas and say that, in essence, you and me are shit birds who couldn’t solve a third-grade crossword puzzle.”
“It’s just a hit job on us two?”
Slade sipped coffee, coughed hard into his fist. He scratched his unshaven face. “That and a whole section about the drug war, how the violence is spreading and—you know what it is—here we are letting it spread like so much cancer. Point is, Jackson’s going to shit himself.”
“Might take us off the Castanedas then,” I said. “You get a call from the reporter? Nobody called me. I mean, shit, usually they do that much for us. Let us get our say in on the thing.”
“My phone died last night after I dropped you off. Woke up this morning to a message about the late deadline and how they were going to run with what they had. Unless I called them back.”
“Yeah—that is a fucking hit job.”
Slade shook his head.
“You ask girly-girl about it?”
“She thinks they want to put pressure on the chief for some reason. Maybe about some other thing going on. Gave me the old reporter’s bail out—can’t talk about sources.”
I thought about that for a moment. My first headache of the day started to prod at my forehead. I felt the plump part of my face with my index finger, fished out some aspirin from my coat. I slung them into my mouth and chewed, swallowed, chased everything with coffee. “Okay, so they want the brass to talk to them about something, probably some bullshit budgetary concern. Nobody answers their calls, so they—”
“Punch us in the dick,” Slade said. “Frank, I swear to God, if I spend another couple years with you, I’m going to be punch-drunk and living out of a Walmart tent down on skid row.”
“It’s not so bad,” I said. “They got tents can withstand hurricane force winds. We’ll get you one.”
“Bull-fucking-shit.”
We sat there for a few minutes wondering how to avoid Jackson. It went without saying that we’d skip the office. Slade had a beaten look to him—he looked like I felt. The aspirin kicked in a little and I felt better. We ordered more coffee and I had some toast with butter. A big part of me wanted to go down to the newspaper and shoot the place up. That might seem extreme, but when you’re doing something for the good of others and you get whacked, your sense of proper and improper misfires. After a few more minutes, I said, “What about the man’s boots?”
“Who’s that?”
“Freddie Castaneda,” I said. “Where you think he got those cowboy boots?” The boots bothered me. Had been on my mind—though a low priority—since I first saw them. I knew by the look they were expensive. And the previous night, before I fell asleep, I remembered that Chato wore boots, too. When he came to identify his brother. Different material, sure. Alligator skin, I’d thought.
But expensive and…distinct.
Slade rubbed his forehead. “You’re saying we get the brand name and work backwards to some stores in the area? That’s some painstaking shit, Frank.”
“I don’t know, Skinny. What else is there?”
He slid the newspaper back to his side of the table, unfolded it and started reading the opinion pieces. The black coffee stain covered most of the words, but I figured Slade would rather read wet coffee trails than a few thousand words of righteous bullshit.
I remembered I’d done a similar thing on another murder case. It involved a sixteen-year-old girl who went missing. We found a bracelet in her boyfriend’s car—tucked between the center console and the passenger seat. He was eighteen and he had a solid alibi. His boss put him out working a construction site on the evening the girl went missing. I followed up on the bracelet because I didn’t have shit else. Didn’t even have the girl’s body yet. Next thing I know, I’m looking at surveillance footage in a little jewelry shop downtown, watching the girl and her boyfriend purchase a gold bracelet. Go figure, it was dated the same night she disappeared. Lot of people don’t think this, but a decent lawyer can make something like that seem coincidental, meaningless. It might not matter in a murder trial. Or, maybe it would—there’s no guarantee. But a dumbfuck eighteen-year-old doesn’t know that. And when you show it to him while he’s got his hands cuffed behind his back and a chain wrapped around his ankles, you can bet he’s going to do whatever he can to save his ass. All said and done, I doubted his ass was getting saved much up in Pelican Bay.
Maybe, I thought, the boots are like the bracelet.
Probably not. But maybe.
I pulled out my cell and dialed the coroner’s office. I had to wait on hold for a few minutes, but I got a newer lab assistant on the line. Not yet weighted down with the cynical humor of a career built on death.
“I’m looking for someone to take a peek at some evidence for me,” I said.
“Is it about the drug slayings?”
“Jesus, whoever said these were drug slayings?”
She grunted and said, “It doesn’t take Encyclopedia Brown to figure it out.”
I asked her to examine the boots worn by both Chato and Freddy Castaneda. She didn’t even need to look—the answer burned across her lips. “It’s a rare kind of boot. They call them ‘El General.’ Not crazy expensive, mind you, but pretty hard to find. Here in the US, at least. They could have picked them up in Mexico, though.”
“You get all that from Google?”
She said, “Got it before you.”
“Thanks for the info.” I hung up and tapped Slade’s newspaper. “El General boots,” I said. “Rare as hog shit in a gold mine. All we have to do is find a local dealer.”
Slade folded the newspaper, looked up at me—the man was as tired as I’d ever seen him. “You can drive, Frank. I’m sick of pretending I have control of shit.”
“About time you let loose, Skinny. Maybe now we can have some fun.”
Chapter 27
The third boot shop we walked into was a place called Zona Vaquero de Mito. We spo
tted the tiny storefront and parked illegally in a red zone along the street. The sign above the shop’s big dusty window was hand-painted in red and blue. Not very professional. The neighborhood was just south of where Chato was murdered and I figured the location for a place the Castaneda brothers knew. There was a taco shop on one corner, a couple other places selling Quinceañera dresses and piñatas. The boot shop was on the corner, next to Zona Fruta, a local grocery. Slade protested about my parking choice, but I waved him off. Meter maids only drive around the nicer neighborhoods. Maybe Slade was worried about the fire hydrant access.
I opened the door for him and followed into the shop. It smelled of boot black and worn leather. A radio played at low volume behind the front counter—Mariachi—and the boot selection was displayed along the back wall. The array of choices spread from floor to ceiling, one boot displayed from each set. I imagined a back room piled high with solitary boots, all of them longing for their missing twin.
The front counter had a glass case with belts and buckles displayed inside. The cash register was outdated and analog. There were no customers or employees.
I said, “Hola. Anybody here?”
Slade wandered to the boot wall, stared up at it like a man deep inside a canyon. “Maybe I should buy some boots, Frank. What do you think they’d look like with slacks?”
“This ain’t the right city for that, Skinny. All the girls will laugh at you.”
He shrugged, lifted a suede turquoise-colored model off its shelf. I watched as he smelled the boot’s interior, inspected the sole.
A man in his late fifties limped out from the back room. He wore a white cowboy hat and a pair of black leather boots. These below frayed Levi’s and a light-colored guayabera. He was fat in the way of older men, not from food or drink, but rather from age and inactivity. He nodded at me, looked at Slade and squinted. “You want some boots, huh? I’ve been selling here for thirty years. Best boots you can find in the city.” He limped behind the cash register and stared at me. “You want some boots for yourself, gordo?”
I didn’t take offense. “Matter of fact, I’m looking for a pair of El General boots. Kind of rare.”
The man looked down at his case of belts and buckles. He rubbed his thin mustache with one hand. When he looked back at me, I knew he was going to lie. “We don’t carry them here in my shop. Too hard to get from Mexico.”
Slade came around the front of the counter, leaned on the glass case. He put his face in the boot seller’s sweaty-cheeked gaze. “But you know what they are, how to get them if we want them, right? We’re not talking regular shipping—all that NAFTA jazz. We’re talking how you get them over here for the narcos, amigo.”
I smiled—it took a lot for Slade to be so direct and leading. He was pissed, and I found myself thanking the nosy reporters who singed our asses in the morning paper.
The boot seller said, “I don’t sell to the narcos.”
I spun around and examined the shop. There was an exit sign above the door and few racks of leather jackets up front. The shop windows displayed a couple rows of boots. The other corners of the room looked clean. If there were security cameras, they’d be near the safe, in the back office. I sighed and moved toward the counter. The boot seller watched me with his sweaty face. I reached beneath my coat and removed my 9 mm. I laid the gun on the glass case. It made a funny hollow sound and the boot seller flinched. “Slade, you go ahead and show him the pictures. He can say what he wants about narcos, but we’re going to learn what we need to know. Isn’t that right, mister…”
“Domingo,” he said.
“Mr. Sunday,” I said. “Sweet name.” My gun felt good in my hand. I liked the warm heavy feel of it against the cold glass.
Slade slipped a printed page out onto the glass. It showed the Castaneda brothers. One image—the one of Chato—was a police mugshot. Enrico’s was blown up from his Arizona driver’s license. His was more grainy and pixelated.
Domingo didn’t swing his chin down to see the page. He looked at it from above his pudgy wet cheeks, with sharp-pointing black eyes. He didn’t say anything until I lifted my gun and rested it in my off hand.
“You’re a cop. You can’t shoot me.”
Of course, he was right. Instead, I lifted the gun and smacked him in the ear. It wasn’t a particularly violent blow, but I used the butt of the handgun and Domingo toppled backwards, caught himself on the counter. His cowboy hat landed upside down. He bumped into the small radio playing Mariachi music. It fell and shattered on the floor. The music stopped. “It’s true I can’t shoot you, Mr. Sunday. But I can give you a pretty nasty headache. Is that what you want?” Beside me, Slade was still. I was conscious of his labored breathing, but he knew what needed to happen now. We needed more information and that meant doing some things the law didn’t agree with me about.
Domingo straightened. He smoothed down his guayabera and touched his forehead with two fingers. He stood, left the cowboy hat on the floor. “I sometimes order boots for the gangsters, but it’s because they pay me like everybody else. They pay more, sabes?”
“I bet they do,” Slade said. “They always order El General boots?”
Domingo nodded. “The same maker, all the time.”
I slipped my nine back into my holster. “Who brings the boots to the shop?”
“A woman from Tijuana. I don’t know her name. I call a number—a supplier—and she brings them in a truck. It’s official, okay? They come wrapped in plastic from the factory, in a box like the boots I get wholesale.”
“I bet they do,” Slade said again.
I pointed at the images. “These two do the ordering?”
Domingo placed a finger on Enrico’s face. “That one does it. I never saw the other one.”
Slade straightened and removed his notepad, started to jot things on the lined paper. “How many boots does this prized customer of yours order, say, weekly?”
Domingo gulped air, looked past us toward the shop windows and the busy street beyond.
I heard sirens somewhere close. “You already decided,” I said. “Don’t go all mentira on us now.”
“Once a week,” he said.
Slade made a sound against the roof of his mouth.
“That’s a lot of boots,” I said.
“This is what I do,” Domingo said. He lifted his hands as if surprised. “I’m selling boots to whoever wants a pair of boots.”
“How convenient,” Slade said as he jotted in his little notebook.
I turned around to look at the street. Two delivery trucks flashed past us. It surprised me to see them on a Saturday. “When’s the next delivery for these fancy boots?”
“Today,” Domingo said. “Lots of goods coming from Mexico delivered on Saturday. It’s a faster time crossing the border.”
I nodded and said, “Slade, me and you are going to hang out for a while. I think I want to get me a nice pair of boots.”
Slade cleared his throat. “That’s a great idea, Frank. Turns out I need a pair, too.”
We parked a half block from Mito’s and hunkered down to watch. The middle afternoon sun poured into the car and made us both sweat. I removed my tie and Slade—to my surprise—did the same. We sat there and complained.
“You and me can’t get an easy domestic murder, can we?” Slade used a toothpick to clean his teeth. He spat every now and then out the open passenger window. “I mean, shit, all I want is a quick murder rap for a distraught cuckold, okay? I want an open and shut motherfucker, none of this weird cartel shit. You and me hit a bad streak, Frank. All these fucking who-done-its…”
I sighed and rubbed my hand along the hot steering wheel. “You got your big swells and you got your big lulls. Right now, we’re looking at a big ass wave and it’s about to crash on our heads. We need to solve this motherfucker and—”
“Plural, Frank. Motherfuck-ers.”
“Yeah, but it’s all tied together. And we know
it’s Decassin.”
“But is it Applewhite?” Slade inhaled, breathed out with exasperation.
“It’s always Applewhite,” I said. “You look up and down the line, all these murders we’ve worked, back through the case files…It’s fucking Applewhite. Not him personally, fine, but it’s people like him. They’re out to get something, to take something. And to get there, they have to run through all these people, Slade. Regular fucking people.”
“I don’t believe that, Frank. You can’t just put every act of violence and murder on politicians. That’s the blanket theory to the utmost. It’s crazy.”
I chuckled. “You don’t get it, Skinny. You grew up all nice and got yourself a fancy law degree. Shit, you could go and join up with the biggest gang there is—the fucking lawyers.”
“Fuck you, fat man.”
A few cars crossed through the intersection. There was lots of foot traffic into the grocery beside the boot shop. I counted fifteen mothers with toddlers on their hips, a few construction workers off early, and your regular crowd of grandmothers in Mexican house dresses. No delivery truck yet. I shoved a finger into my mouth and rubbed my gums. Somehow, my face hurt to the teeth. I knew I’d see Johnny around, and I planned to make him pay for my pain.
I said, “It’s nothing against you, Skinny. It’s just that the whole world is run from the top down.”
“You saying a scumbag shoots a kid and it’s the president’s problem?”
“Fuck the president,” I said. “And the whores he rode in on.”
“You know what I mean.” Slade watched the store too, but he had a dead look in his eyes. I’d seen that look before: It was the Frank Pinson is a dumbass look.
“I’m saying,” I said, “that a lot of the shit we see—if not all—has to do with somebody somewhere getting rich. And everybody else getting left behind.”
To Bring My Shadow Page 14