The business had grown even more over the last few years. Right around the time Klein was promoted to principal of School 5. Instead of expelling or even suspending the handful of students that possessed drugs or drug paraphernalia on school grounds, Klein once again saw opportunity. After interrogating them to find out who their suppliers were he began persuading his elementary students to become his new local runners. What a genius idea. Older teenage adolescents are easy targets for the cops in Paterson, especially during the late evening hours. Why not recruit young, innocent, naïve ten- eleven- year old elementary boys to deliver his merchandise? Aside from a higher unlikelihood of being picked up by the cops, they were cheaper labor. And cheap labor meant more profit for him.
THIRTY SIX
Klein tried to get information out of his young prisoner but was unsuccessful. Esteban’s impulsive aggression had resurfaced the minute Klein had attempted to put the clamps on him. Klein didn’t want to resort to using physical violence on a young, fragile boy despite how much of a monster the kid was considered to be. He left that to one of his lackeys. The one called “Source” had backhanded Esteban across the cheek a few times until Source realized it was backfiring and only causing Esteban to shut down and refuse to talk even more.
Klein wanted information and when Klein wanted information he got it- at any cost. With adults, Klein would immediately pull out his gun, press it to the temple or under the left eye of his victim and threaten their lives for the information, money, or stolen drugs he wanted returned. He’d even shot a guy in the eye just to prove a point- even after Klein found out one of his runners was a police informant. It was more of a point to himself that he could actually do it.
Source spent the night in the storage unit to keep an eye on Esteban and periodically press Esteban for information on Jamal. On the hour, Source would grab Esteban under the chin from behind and pull his head back until his shoulders were stretched over the back of the chair. Each hour he would pull harder and further to make it hurt that much more. By three in the morning Source was given permission to ‘bump it up a notch.’ Source knew what that meant. He had taken Esteban out of the seat with his hands still tied behind his back.
“You fucking with the wrong dude,” Source said.
“I don’t care,” Esteban said.
“Don’t make me hurt you even more than I already have.”
“I don’t care.”
“That punk Jamal is only gonna keep shortchanging you, but if you think what he’s paying you is enough then you keep right on being all loyal and shit to him. We’ll find him either way,” Source said.
“Okay,” Esteban said.
“You a little bitch,” Source told Esteban on a number of occasions. The sun had recently angled its way around the sky on the outside and was providing a smidge of natural sunlight through the open door but on the inside the fluorescent glow of the single light bulb remained a constant. Esteban just stared, trying to keep up the tough façade. “You know he’s gonna kill you,” Source added, talking about Klein. “The Chooch don’t fuck around with this shit.”
Esteban nodded. “I don’t know shit about Jamal. That’s what I told you all night and I told him yesterday,” he said. He spit on the cement floor.
“The Chooch thinks you know how he rolls. The Chooch don’t like nobody messin’ with his shit,” Source said. He was walking slow circles around Esteban’s chair. “The Chooch seen you around. Runnin’ Jamal’s shit. He gonna wanna know where Jamal works and who he works with.” Esteban was beginning to grow frustrated at the mention of The Chooch over and over again.
Klein showed up at around four in the afternoon, on his way home from work. “Let’s try this again. Shall we?” He removed his suit jacket, handed it to Source, and began rolling up his sleeves just beyond the forearms. “What can you tell me about Jamal?”
“He keep sayin’ he don’t know shit,” Source said before Esteban could answer. Klein shook his head.
“That’s not what I wanted to hear. My guys have been watching you for a few weeks. They see you making runs for him. I want to know what he’s pushing. Who he’s pushing it to and what territory he works,” Klein said. “I got an idea on the territories but the what and the who are most important,” he added.
Esteban looked up at Klein, who was standing directly over him. “I told you yesterday and I told him all night that I don’t know nothing,” he said. “Alls I do is take his packages, drop them off, get the money, and bring it back to him,” Esteban added, referring to his runs for Jamal.
“You never once got a little curious on your runs. Get a little whiff. Sneak a little peak. Swipe a little taste,” Klein said.
“Jamal said he’d kill me if he ever found out I did any of that shit. I wasn’t doing it for the drugs; I was doing it for the money.”
“Well, isn’t that nice. Quite the Good Samaritan you are helping out the community like that.” Klein turned his back to Esteban and paced a few steps in front of him.
Esteban watched Klein reach behind and pull something out of the back of his waistband. Then he heard the click.
Klein turned around, raised his Glock to shoulder height, aiming it at Esteban’s forehead, and said, “Now tell me the truth.”
THIRTY SEVEN
It had been almost a full week into my private investigation career and it felt like an hour. I still didn’t have anything major to work with but it somehow felt progress was being made. I was still waiting on Fitzgerald to get back to me with the information I requested on Esteban’s older brother and any other useful information he could dig up on Klein. I guess I was now second rate as far as pertinent information requests went. If I were still with the department I’d probably get the information within a few hours, if not a few minutes. My detective instincts weren’t fully sharpened yet but they were getting there. I just had to keep telling myself that I had to think like a cop and the rest would fall into place.
Remember what happened the last time you thought like a cop?
Even in the late afternoon hours, Esteban’s paperwork continued to stare at me. It was strewn about across the kitchen table. After putting on a long- sleeve t- shirt and a pair of jeans I set out to hit the bricks again. I thought about paying Esteban’s mother another visit to ask some follow- up questions and have another look around. As frightened as I might have been after my first visit I knew I had to go back. Isn’t that what investigators are supposed to do, follow- up? Something was going to be there, whether it be in Esteban’s room, the basement, or the kitchen. It was going to be something that led me to find out where Esteban was and what happened to him. I could feel it.
Before I left, I found Esteban’s father’s cell phone number and gave it another try. No answer. No voicemail.
Esteban’s father was quickly moving up my list of suspected people to have something to do with his son’s disappearance. A requested look into Esteban’s father was a rapidly growing possibility. The recent turn of events, or lack thereof, with Esteban gone missing, shouldn’t his father be at home with his family? Trying to protect his wife, or baby mama or whatever the hell she was, from any of the other family members possibly disappearing as well. That’s certainly what I’d be doing if I were in Mr. Machado’s situation.
Nah, that’s too simple for you. You don’t protect, you just let them die.
I parked in the same spot on the street as my last visit. I took out my iPhone and snapped a few pictures of the exterior. For what reason, I have no idea. It just felt like something I should do. Something a private investigator should do. Maybe something for my scrapbook.
Ms. Cruz answered the door on my first knock. She was holding one of the babies in her arm with a dishrag over her shoulder. I was invited in and wasn’t sure where she wanted me to sit. Not thinking it was possible, the place appeared messier than my last visit. Bigger piles of clothes on the floor. Noisier toys to trip over in the hallway. Higher stacks of newspapers covering the couch cushions. L
ouder television in the background somewhere. I followed Ms. Cruz down the center corridor to the back of the house. If the main floor looked like this I could only imagine what the basement was like.
“What can I do for you now, Mr. Barnes?” I couldn’t tell if she sounded annoyed by my visit or stressed by the routines of being a mom to too many kids. “Any new updates on Esteban?” I immediately picked up on the lack of concern for her missing child. It was as if his disappearance was not a major worry. Like choosing Corn Flakes over Cheerios was more important than locating her son. As if his disappearing act was a regular thing in the Machado/Cruz household.
Other missing kids cases that came through in my time as a cop usually resulted in a frantic parent or guardian wanting to conquer the world during the duration of the child’s disappearance. Emotions frantically consuming their conscience and acting hysterically and irrationally, trying to overpower the authority of the police. Trying to conquer the world with an army of one. This situation struck me as odd and I was determined to find out why.
“I’ve been talking to a few people and working on a few things that I’m waiting to pan out,” I said. In other words: ‘I don’t have shit.’ I casually wandered from the kitchen into a back room designed like a den. Another dilapidated couch. Run down coffee and end tables. Thrift shop lounge chairs. But the television was a brand new fifty- plus inch flat screen Panasonic. It always amazes me what people consider to be priorities. Not enough money to put clothes on their children and ample amounts of food on the table but just enough to make sure the television screen is big enough to watch the latest trashy reality shows from across the street.
“Then why are you here?” Ms. Cruz asked. Now I could sense the sincere strain in her voice.
“I wanted to ask you a few more questions then have a look around his bedroom again. With your permission, of course,” I said.
“Whatever you want.” I watched her drop one of the kids into a kitchen chair. I noticed there was a different potted plant on the table this time. I couldn’t remember which kid Ms. Cruz back- handed last time for breaking the other pot.
“How was Esteban in school?” I asked, knowing the response I’d get. Ms. Cruz gave me an ‘are- you- for- real?’ side glance, rolling her eyes in my direction and squeezing her lips together so tightly I thought she’d just eaten an entire lemon. She lit a cigarette.
“Oh, lord. He is a pain in the ass. Always getting in trouble. Mouthing off to the teachers. Fighting and thinking he’s a bad- ass bully,” she said, while releasing the smoke of her freshly lit cigarette.
I noticed she wasn’t conscious or cautious of keeping her cigarette smoke out of her children’s clean air. “You know, I sometimes think he should get a good ass- whoopin’ from one of them bigger kids at school or on the street to teach him a lesson. He sure as shit don’t listen to no one around here.”
“Was he liked by his teachers or the principal?” I asked, trying to work what Lindsey told me about Esteban always getting to be the special helper versus what I had gotten out of Garvey, which was the polar opposite.
“I don’t know. He never told me shit about his school day. He was supposed to bring home these papers for me to sign every day telling me how he did that day but he’d lose them somehow on the bus ride home,” Ms. Cruz said. She was talking about the daily communication sheets that the teachers at Right Step were required to send home, which the parents were to sign and return to ensure they were informed on how well, or not so well, their child did that day. I picked up on the fact that she was referring to her missing child in the past tense- ‘he never told me…,’ ‘he was supposed to…’ Was that to be taken as a sign that Esteban’s own mother knew something about her own son’s disappearance? Was this all some kind of ploy or scam?
The kids got up from the table and ran to watch television with their grandmother.
“Who did he hang out with outside of school?” I asked.
I watched her think.
She finally said, “His best friend is Joey. Joey Alvarez. He lives by the school. I think he’s just as bad as Esteban be when they on the street. I know that’s who he sneaks out to see. There’s an older boy named Felix. Felix Cabrera. He’s in high school. I don’t like Esteban hanging out with no high school kids but he don’t listen to me. He listens to his father even less.” I wrote the names down on a pad and made notes next to each one. Ms. Cruz knew the street names of where Joey and Felix lived but not the house numbers. I’d have Fitzgerald look into it for me. Anything I needed, right? Isn’t that what Fitzgerald told me when he kicked me to the curb?
“You said Esteban was on Facebook a lot, right?”
Facebook. The root of all adolescent evil. There have been more bullying cases among adolescents since the inception of the social media’s ultimate giant. More and more teenage suicides are somehow rooted around the comments shared on Facebook amongst other social media. Facebook is somehow always intertwined into the cause. Videos, photos, and comments have led hundreds of students to feel like they are inferior and their life really is not worth living. Just as some booze hounds become stronger and develop ‘beer muscles’ the more they drink, teenagers are developing their ‘tech muscles’ with the unlimited amount of freedom and built up barriers between them and their devices. We are ready to jump on the parents and blame them for their lack of supervision and rules against social media, which is true to an extent. At what point are the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world made responsible for what their invention has done to a child’s chance to enjoy being just that? Innocent adolescent freedoms stripped away just so some tech nerd can have his face plastered on the cover of another magazine.
“Esteban’s always on Facebook. I have to go into his room every night to get him off that damn computer. He be talking to friends, tagging photos, and playing games,” Ms. Cruz said. Didn’t seem too out of the ordinary. Seemed to be the same thing that I did whenever I went on Facebook. I know, I’m a hypocrite.
“You wouldn’t happen to know his password to log on, right?” I asked.
“I have no idea. You can help yourself to look around his room and find whatever you find,” she replied. So I did.
THIRTY EIGHT
Esteban’s bedroom, which he shared with his younger brothers, was designed like any adolescent boy’s bedroom. Clothes everywhere but the hamper and the closet. Skateboarding pictures and posters plastered the walls along with magazine photos of various musicians and teeny- bopper actors and actresses. There were two twin beds pushed into each of the far corners of the room. One bed was made while the other looked like a rhino had a dance party on the mattress. Two beds for three boys? What the hell did the third sleep on? A variety of magazines were sloppily stacked on the floor near the bed on the left. Adjacent to each of the beds were two IKEA- styled desks with folding chairs used as computer chairs.
Go ahead! Get in the room and find something! Something that will lead you to Esteban and maybe you can let him die! You’re good at that.
I found myself standing in the doorway of Esteban’s room. The sudden hesitation brought on an onslaught of inexplicable images of the night Jake died. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again- Jake and Esteban are two different people with two very different life experiences. I felt a tingling headache quickly ensue. Then I heard a voice from behind. I jumped.
“I know it’s a mess,” Ms. Cruz said. “I gotta put this one down for a nap. Let me know if you need anything else.” I thanked her and I watched her carry the young child to another room down the hall. I leapt over the threshold and felt like I was walking into hell.
Before she disappeared into the other bedroom, I asked, “One more thing, Ms. Cruz. Does Esteban have a cell phone?” She told me he did. A new iPhone 5 that his father bought him against her will. There was no reason, she told me, for a teenager to have such a phone, if a phone at all. I never thought I’d say this about Ms. Cruz but I had to agree with her. She gave me his phone numbe
r.
After the initial sweating subsided and a few deep breaths to suppress the vomit I could taste, I took a baby step inside. My mind drifted to a different time and place. The images, if you wanted to call them that, were blurry. Was that a malfunction of my mind or a subconscious refusal to really picture what my mind wanted me to see? I had to sit down before I fell.
You can think of Jake all you want you son of a bitch but remember he’s not coming back!
Catching a glance of Esteban’s computer brought me back to the task at hand. Feeling like I was gliding on ice skates I found myself sitting in front of Esteban’s desktop computer after high- stepping a few piles of clothes and magazines. I moved the mouse and the screen woke up. While the hard drive was loading I scanned the rest of the desk to possibly find Esteban’s Facebook password magically written on a brightly colored slip of paper. I rummaged through the desk drawers only to see each just as neatly organized as Esteban’s closet. The bottom drawer was sloppily filled with more car and skateboard magazines. The middle drawer required an extra tug to get it open. I found Xbox video game cases and various controllers. The top, thinner drawer held loose photos, which didn’t seem useful after thumbing through them. I was about to shove the drawer shut when something towards the back caught my eye. It was a poorly folded slip of paper. The writing in blue marker was what caught my eye. I removed the slip of paper and unfolded it to read. There was a phone number written on it. It was a local area code. I wasn’t sure if it would be useful. It could have belonged to a cousin, an uncle, or a friend but I figured I’d hang on to it to have Fitzgerald trace it just in case. When I unfolded the rest of the paper I saw the name written above the number in a graffiti- style handwriting belonged to someone named Jamal.
THIRTY NINE
I put the phone number in my back pocket and returned my attention to the computer. Esteban had a few things minimized. His iTunes library, an Internet Explorer page opened to YouTube, and another Internet Explorer page opened to the Google search engine. The YouTube page was open to a paused video of some apparently well- known skateboarder. I turned my attention to the Google page, which appeared to be freshly opened but left unused. I checked the search history and found the majority to be skateboard and other asinine adolescent videos that they only seemed to understand and find humorous.
The Incident (Chase Barnes Series Book 1) Page 11