by Tracy Clark
I repositioned my legs, trying to find a good spot. “You made yourself perfectly clear in the garage the other day. You said I’d get no help from you. Did I miss something?”
Hector sat slumped in baggy jeans and a black jacket, the logo of some band I’d never heard of emblazoned on the front, an unsmoked cigarette tucked behind his right ear. He was wearing sunglasses, though the sun was outside, not here in the church hall. He sat up in his tiny chair and offered a sly grin, as though he knew the secret to life itself and was bent on withholding it until the oceans ran dry.
Mrs. Luna watched him closely, hopeful, but sad. Maybe Hector would tell her something that would give her peace, maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, her son was gone forever. She’d gain little when it was all said and done.
I leaned forward as much as I could without my knees folding up under me. “Would you mind taking the sunglasses off, please? I like to see who I’m talking to.”
Hector smirked. “You don’t see me sitting here?”
“Your eyes. I’d like to see them.”
He turned to Mrs. Luna, as if to protest, but she nodded almost imperceptibly, and he reached up and slipped the glasses off.
“Better. Now, tell me why I’m here.”
“I’m here to offer you a deal.” He shrugged. “Something for you. Something for me.”
I said nothing, just watched. It wasn’t often you were offered a devil’s deal by an actual devil.
“What’s for me?” I asked warily.
He shook his head. “Information.”
“And what’s for you?”
We stared at each other. “Cesar was my hermano. Some asshole offed him. It wasn’t none of us, and it wasn’t none of them . . . you know the them I mean.” He slapped an angry palm down on the table. “I want the guy. Blood for blood. No one offs un Escorpión and gets away.” He leaned back, satisfied he’d made his point. “So we make a working arrangement. I give you information, you find the guy, you give the guy to me. I get what I want, you get what you want, and it’s all good for everybody.”
Mrs. Luna caressed the gold cross hanging from a chain around her neck, her expression pained, her mouth a thin, tight line. “When did you lose sight of God, of goodness?”
For a split second, I thought I saw a glimmer of shame in Hector’s eyes, but whatever I’d seen was quickly gone. He’d lost the battle for his soul a long time ago. He’d die as he lived, lost. “This is how the world works,” he barked. “This is how it’s done.”
“You and your boys went out looking and came up empty,” I said. “Now you need what I know, so you can do what it is you do.”
Hector grinned. “Something like that.”
I scanned the room, the overhead fluorescents, the cheaply tiled floor, the petrified priest in the corner. There would be no working arrangement, of course. It was justice I wanted, not revenge, not blood. It would cost me whatever information Hector claimed to have, but it’d just have to be that way. Justice for Pop and Cesar would be a hard-fought battle, but I’d fight it in the light, not in the dark.
I let out a slow, even breath. The meeting was over, as far as I was concerned. I moved to stand. “I don’t think I actually need to say the words, but I will, just so I make myself clear. No deal.”
Hector stopped smiling, his eyes went colder and harder than I’d ever seen them. “That’s a mistake.”
I could see Ignacio and his pal start to get jittery at the door. My gun was in my pocket, my hand close to it. “I’m sure it won’t be my last.”
Hector nodded, an oily grin on his mean face. He was furious. He’d likely expected me to jump at the deal. “Then we do this the hard way.”
Mrs. Luna shot up from her chair. “Stop.” She turned to Hector, pain and fury in her eyes. “The information. For me.” She beat her fists against her chest. “For me! For me!”
Hector flicked a look toward the door. I stayed quiet, my eyes holding his. I watched as he swallowed hard, and thought things through. If he had the resources or the skill to find Cesar’s killer, he’d have done it already. He needed me, but with me he wouldn’t get the revenge he wanted. He’d have to decide if he could live with that.
“She steps out, you stay,” he said to me finally. Mrs. Luna opened her mouth to object, but Hector nodded. “What I got, she doesn’t hear from me. That’s it.”
I turned to Mrs. Luna and nodded for her to leave the table. I sat down again when she reluctantly stepped out of the hall.
“I’m listening,” I said.
Slowly, Hector reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Ruger .22 semiautomatic, placing it on the table where it landed with a chilling thud. He then slid it toward me, fingertips only. I turned to watch the priest. I could see his knees shaking. I eyed the gun, then Hector. I was as alert now as I’d ever been in my entire life.
Hector frowned. He’d lost his gambit, done in by a mother’s grief. “Cesar’s. He never went nowhere without it, till he got jumped out. He left it with me saying he wouldn’t need it no more.”
I picked up the gun, hit the magazine release, and let the magazine drop into my hand.
“It’s empty,” Hector said. “Do I look like a fool to you?”
I looked over at him, but kept my mouth shut. It was a loaded question, which I wisely ignored. Instead, I concentrated on the Ruger. I slipped the magazine into my pocket, then racked back the slide. No rounds flew out, but I eyeballed the chamber and the magazine well, anyway. Satisfied the gun was unloaded, I set it back down on the table, away from Hector. The gun likely in his pocket, I couldn’t do much about.
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t have another,” I said.
Hector shook his head, pointed at the gun. “You’re not getting me, lady detective. This was Cesar’s one and only. His signature, right? See the pearl grip? The initials in silver? His father’s.”
“This didn’t require a car ride or a face-to-face. If you have more, I need it now. Not in dribs and drabs, all of it. Now, or I walk, and I won’t be back.”
I could hear his foot tapping under the table. “I knew about the girl, okay? Cesar told me. She’s why he wanted out. They were planning on running off. I told him he was loco, but he wouldn’t listen. There’s a baby coming. That’s not something his Moms needs to hear right now, you feel me? I know her name. I’ve seen her, okay?”
I pulled the photo of the girl out of my pocket, slid it across the table to him. “This girl? The girl I asked you about that you swore you’d never heard of?”
Hector didn’t look at the photo, didn’t need to. I felt like lunging over the table and slapping the crap out of him. He’d cost me days of searching and coming up empty. He shrugged, slid the photo back across the table. “He was sneaking around. That wasn’t like Cesar, so I followed him. He was with her in front of some community place. She’s with some group, or something.”
“What group?”
“How the fuck should I know? Some do-gooder group. They bus them in from all over to hook little brown kids into going to church, learn to read, and shit. The place is way out of the neighborhood, which is why Cesar thought I wouldn’t scope him.”
I flicked a look toward the door. How would Mrs. Luna handle learning she had a grandchild on the way? Would it make Cesar’s loss easier or more difficult? “Where’s this center?”
Hector paused.
“You’re either all in, or you’re not,” I said.
He scowled. “By the Ford plant. On Torrence. The sign had some kind of bird on it.”
“And you said nothing to Cesar about following him, and seeing this girl?”
Hector harrumphed. “Said a lot of things, but he wasn’t hearing none of it. The girl’s family’s not the kind that’d want a gangbanger at the table. Her Pops was a real prick, Cesar said. All over her like a cheap suit, like he was scared she’d get dirty, or something. Real Romeo and Juliet shit. I said, ‘Hey, Cesar, for old times, let me go over there and break his neck for you.
’ But he said he had somebody else working the old man, and before you ask, he didn’t tell me who. He just said it was somebody he listened to, somebody he met while he was stepping out on us.”
Somebody he listened to, somebody he knew? Pop? “What’s her name?” Hector hesitated, as though reluctant to play his last card, even though he’d offered it. “Hector?”
“Deanna. He called her Dee Dee. He should have stuck to his own. Maybe he wouldn’t be dead now.”
I sat back in the tiny chair. Finally. Deanna.
* * *
The Ford assembly plant was in Hegewisch, a tough, blue-collar neighborhood built on a foundation of wetlands, sand, and immigrant grit. It wasn’t that far off Cesar’s turf, but far enough that he could avoid running into people he knew. I idled at the corner of 130th and Torrence, at the plant’s gate, scanning the sprawling complex, its blue Ford sign looming. Other factories had dried up and blown away long ago, taking with them secure jobs and good pay, but Ford stayed put, its line still moving, union workers now rolling out Explorers in place of the Model T’s the company started with.
I headed south first, rumbling over bumpy railroad tracks, driving slowly, the stench of diesel fuel hanging heavy in the air. Torrence was four long, straight lanes of even road, a street-racer’s dream. When cops were elsewhere, drunken lead foots, tumbling out of the bars at closing, raced the road, cocksure they could beat it. I passed quite a few candles, stuffed bears, and white crosses set out along the scraggly berm, memorials to the ones who’d lost the bet and ended up dead. There would be more crosses, more bears. The road always won.
I drove all the way to 159th, past the nature preserve, on the off chance Hector had no sense of direction, but I found nothing but burger joints, liquor stores, and auto garages. I turned north next, driving miles, finding the same. It wasn’t until I rattled over the steel bridge spanning a narrow ribbon of the Little Calumet River that I spotted the bird, a white dove, attached to a hand-lettered sign outside the Gentle Peace Outreach Center. The small storefront wasn’t much to look at; I’d have driven right past it were it not for the dove. What caught my attention, what tugged at my gut and gave me a sick feeling of déjà vu, was the old man out in front sweeping up shards of plate glass, the handful of teens helping him do it, and the gaping hole in the front windowpane where, I assumed, the shattered glass used to reside. I pulled into the lot and got out.
“Help you?” the man asked cautiously as he peered through thick lenses, his guard immediately up. This wasn’t the neighborhood for curious strangers stopping to pass the time, and it didn’t look as though the smashed window had put him in a trusting mood. The kids ignored me. Instead they chattered away, brooms in hand, listening to music from an iPhone and speaker someone had propped up on an upturned garbage cart, oblivious to the adult world around them.
I eyed the glass. “You’ve had some trouble.”
The old man leaned on his push broom, his bald head gleaming. He’d passed his sixties a good decade ago and stood a bit unsteady, favoring his right side, as though he were in pain. Bad knees or bad feet, I figured. Either way, sweeping was probably something he shouldn’t have been doing. “They busted clean through the front and ransacked the place last night.”
I felt his pain. My office toss had taken four people to set straight. I peered inside the center at a wide room painted in primary colors. School desks, tables and bookshelves were tossed about, books thrown to the floor and trampled over. “What’d they get?”
“A computer. We had two. I don’t know why they didn’t take them both, but I confess I don’t understand the criminal element.” He squinted up at me. “But I told the lady all that over the phone. You’re with the insurance company, aren’t you?”
“Sorry. No. I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for a girl who might be a volunteer here.” I held out a hand for him to shake, though he seemed reluctant to at first. “Cass Raines.”
He stood fastened to the spot, the push broom between us, but I could almost feel him retreat. I glanced down and noticed the outline of a brace underneath his pant leg. I’d been right. Bad knee. “Reverend Ellis Crowell,” he offered. “I thought you were from State Farm. Detective, you said? Who’re you looking for?”
I dug the photograph out of my pocket. “Her name’s Deanna. I’m hoping someone here can tell me more about her. Her last name for starters, or where I might find her.”
Crowell ignored the photo, his eyes never left mine. He didn’t look like an easy one to pull something over on, bad knee or no bad knee. I could tell he was going to make me work for it.
Chapter 28
Reverend Crowell went back to his sweeping. “I don’t have time to talk. I got to get this up before somebody cuts themselves.”
I looked around and saw another broom leaning against the front door. I grabbed it and went to work forming my own pile of shattered glass.
Crowell turned. “What’s this?”
“One more broom can’t hurt,” I said. “Maybe while we’re sweeping we could talk a little.”
His rheumy eyes held mine. He didn’t know what to make of me, I could tell. “You’re hoping to soften me up with a good deed, that it?”
I stopped sweeping. “I don’t think you soften up that easily.”
His eyes widened in surprise, and he began to laugh. “You seem like good people, and I thank you for the help.”
We smiled at each other and went back to work on the glass.
“Have you been broken into before?” I asked.
“This is a first. We don’t have anything anyone would want that badly.”
I smiled. “Except a computer?”
He snorted. “A very old computer, donated to us and loaded up with nothing more than reading games and math exercises.”
“No cash inside?”
“If we had cash, our computers wouldn’t be so old.” He stopped sweeping and turned to face me. “Whatever you think she did, she didn’t.”
I gathered a pile of glass onto a dustpan and lifted it into a nearby cart, glass shards landing at the bottom with a loud crash. “I just need to talk to her.”
“We have good kids here. They may come to us a little dented, but we straighten them out in good time, and we do it with love.”
“I believe you, but this is important. I’m asking for your help.”
Crowell’s gnarled hands steadied the broom handle. “I don’t like the idea of somebody looking for one of my kids, even a nice young woman like you. I’m here to protect them, to see they get what they need. Anybody wants to get at them has to go through me. Maybe you’re a detective, but you could just as easily be something else. I read the papers. I see what goes on.”
I smiled. He reminded me a lot of Pop. I put the broom down, pulled my PI’s license out of my back pocket. I’d anticipated the once-over. Crowell watched me as I did it, giving me a full-body scan, head to toe, as though he were committing me to memory in case he had to pick me out of a lineup later. I held up the license, close so he could read it through his thick lenses.
“Does this convince you?”
I waited while he read it through the laminated plastic. I couldn’t blame him for being distrustful, the world was crazy and people could be cruel, but that didn’t make the waiting easier.
“Could be fake,” he announced after taking forever with the fine print.
“You can verify it with the state. I have the number, if you’d like to call. I’ll wait.”
“What about a business card?”
I slid the license back, pulled a card free. If I could fake a license, I could fake a business card, I thought, but I was in no position to argue. If I pushed too hard, I’d get nothing. If I didn’t push, I’d get nothing. It was a delicate and slow dance. I watched as he scrutinized every embossed letter. He finally nodded and tucked the card into his pocket for safe keeping.
He smiled. “Guess that proves it. Can’t be too careful.”
“I understand. So, where can I find Deanna?”
Crowell shook his head. I was moving much too fast for him. “Wait a minute now. You still haven’t said what you want to talk to her about.”
I groaned inwardly. “She knows someone involved in a case I’m working on. I’d like to ask her about that.”
He took the photo from me, but again didn’t look at it. Plenty of time for that, apparently.
“Sounds like a lot of tap dancing to me. What’s the case?”
I sighed. “That’s all I can say. Sorry.”
Crowell pulled a face. “Wasn’t much.” No more smiles from my end. I was growing old, and Crowell had already beaten me to it. “Dangerous work for a woman, isn’t it? Traipsing all over looking for people. I’ve seen those shows, nothing but killers and drugs and such. Pardon me for saying, but you don’t look like the type that would go in for all that.”
I was a little curious to find out what type he thought I looked like, but decided it would only get him revved up and running down the wrong conversational track. I still had to find Yancy, if the police hadn’t already. I was buried neck deep under a pile of disparate bits of detail that were leading me in circles. I was literally drowning in nothing and everything and didn’t have time for small talk. I didn’t want to be rude; as my elder he was due my respect, but he was literally killing me.
My pile of glass was gone. Crowell still had half of his. I went to work on that, as he stepped aside to watch. “The work’s pretty routine,” I said. “A lot of paperwork, a lot of sitting, a lot of waiting for people to tell me things I need to know.” I looked up at him. He squinted over at me. He got that I was referring to him. He was old; he wasn’t a fool.
“And what if they don’t tell you?”
“Then questions go unanswered, and bad things are allowed to happen.”
Crowell pursed his lips, thought about it, then finally glanced down at the photo, taking time to study it. Slowly, his eyes shifted from idle curiosity to warm recognition. He shot me a doleful look and handed the photo back. “That’s Dee Dee.”