by Louisa Luna
She was almost there, thought Vega. Saying to herself, This is something I can take care of, take a load off his tense shoulders. Which meant she, the girl, thought of other people before herself, at least sometimes. So make it easy for her. No big deal.
“Taxes,” said Vega. “One of his past employers may not have paid all their taxes. We’re questioning all the employees, see if they have any knowledge of it either way.” Vega shrugged. “Just standard procedure.”
The girl nodded, seemed pleased at how standard it sounded. She opened the door and let Vega in. The furniture was nice enough but not a lot of it. Suede couch, low table with unopened mail, flat screen, handheld Nintendo. Clean beige carpet. Blank walls except for a big framed watercolor of the ocean crashing onto a beach. Blurry blue swirls on a tan swath.
The girl sat on the couch, and Vega stood, staring at the painting. The girl glanced at a vape pipe on the table, a small pink bottle next to it. She seemed self-conscious, maybe embarrassed about vaping in front of someone official.
“You can, um, sit,” she said. “Do you want a Diet Coke?”
Vega shook her head and sat, pulled out her phone and scrolled through her emails, pretending to read and remember things.
“So let’s see,” she said. “Your name, please.”
“Sarita Guerra.”
“Ms. Guerra. You’ve been living with Mr. LoSanto how long?”
“Oh, I don’t live here,” she said emphatically. “We’re just boyfriend-girlfriend.”
“Okay,” said Vega. “That makes sense.”
She kept scrolling down the screen, squinting. She took the pen from her inside pocket and clicked it. She had a feeling Sarita wouldn’t notice she didn’t have anything to write on. Nervous respondents just want to talk and defend themselves; they are not noticing details.
“So did you, were you together with Mr. LoSanto when he worked at Bay Free Health Clinic over on Mission?”
“Yeah,” Sarita said. “Well, we met, like, six months ago, so I didn’t know him when he started that job but I knew him when he quit.”
She nodded along with her own memory. Truth, thought Vega.
“Okay,” said Vega. “And do you remember when he left that job?”
“Yeah, it was like, right before Easter, so April, I guess?” Sarita said, ending with a question to herself perhaps.
“April, okay,” said Vega.
Then she looked up, cocked her head to one side, and feigned confusion.
“Why did he leave?” Vega said.
Sarita stared at her blankly.
“Seems like a good cause and everything,” Vega added with a shrug.
“I don’t think they gave him enough hours?” Sarita asked again.
Vega nodded, in case the girl was asking her if that was a sufficient answer.
Sarita went on: “He just bought this place and wanted to pay some of it off, and he was only part-time at the clinic, I think.”
Vega tapped the pen on her phone, gave the girl time to think about it.
“He really didn’t say,” added Sarita.
“And he didn’t mention anything strange he noticed when he worked there?”
Sarita shook her head, crimped ponytail swinging.
“No, I don’t think so. He liked some of the people he worked with. It just seemed like regular…”
She paused, searching for the right word.
Finally: “Um, work.”
Vega’s eyes drifted up to the watercolor above Sarita’s head. Sarita kept chattering nervously.
“He works hard, you know?”
The painting was big, probably three by three and a half feet, and set squarely in the middle of the wall.
“Now he can get a double shift if he wants overtime,” she went on.
“And where’s that?” Vega asked, still staring at the painting.
“Kenner Orthopedic?” said Sarita. “It’s in La Jolla.”
“Uh-huh,” said Vega. “Can I use your restroom?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sarita. “It’s, uh, down there,” she said, pointing to a small hallway off the living room.
Vega nodded and left, eyes combing the off-white walls as she went. At the end of the hall were the bathroom and the bedroom, side by side, both doors wide open. She stayed in the hall and peeked inside the bathroom, where it was peach and beige and relatively clean. She left the door open a crack and peered toward the living room, unable to see Sarita, which meant Sarita could no longer see her.
She stuck her head into the bedroom—standard queen bed, white sheets, turned down and messy. Small bedside table with just an alarm clock. Dresser with a lamp on top.
Nothing on the walls.
Vega walked on the balls of her feet back to the bathroom, stepped inside and flushed the toilet, ran the water in the sink for a few seconds. Then she went back to the living room to ask Sarita one more question.
Sarita still sat on the couch, sucking on the vape pipe. She pulled it from her mouth as soon as Vega emerged, like she’d been caught in the stall in high school.
“I’ll get out of your way,” said Vega.
Sarita stood up and smoothed out the legs of her pink sweatpants.
“Can you tell me, though, how long he’s had that painting?”
Sarita corkscrewed her body around to look at the watercolor. Then she turned back to Vega.
“Um, I’m not sure?” she said.
“Take a second,” said Vega, brisker than before. No need for the IRS taxman act anymore.
Sarita looked at the painting again for clues.
“Maybe a few months ago?” she said.
“Maybe around April, when he quit the clinic?” offered Vega.
“Oh yeah, I think so,” said Sarita, remembering. “He said he was tired of staring at the wall.”
Vega came closer so she stood next to Sarita, the couch between them and the wall. Vega glanced at the girl for only a moment, and Sarita backed away, a flicker of fear passing through her eyes.
Then Vega removed her gun from the holster, kept her eyes on the painting.
“Wait,” said Sarita, breath catching in her throat.
Vega ignored her and flipped the gun in her hand so the nose pointed down, grip up. She stepped onto the couch, the cushions depressing under her weight, wound her arm back, and brought it forward hard like she was pitching a ball, cracking the butt of the gun on the glass of the painting. The sound was not loud but blunt; Vega could feel resistance from the other side. The canvas was not hollow.
Sarita let out a small scream and covered her mouth right away.
The glass had cracked, not shattered, a ring of crumbled bits and spiderweb threads splintering out from the center.
“What, what are you doing?” said Sarita, voice shaking.
Vega continued to ignore her and put the gun back in the holster. She grasped the sides of the frame and carefully lifted it off the wall, stepped down from the couch, and laid the painting down, back side up, on the table.
The back of the painting was covered with brown paper and crisscrossed with packing tape. Vega ran her fingers over the paper and pressed lightly along the edges.
“Do you have any scissors?” she asked Sarita.
Sarita was in a state of stun, her hands in a knot under her chin.
“Sarita, scissors,” said Vega. “Could you get some?”
“Yeah,” said the girl, and she hurried into the kitchen, running into the counter on the way.
Vega heard her opening drawers and rummaging. Then Sarita started to run back, scissors in hand.
“Don’t run,” said Vega softly.
Sarita took the order and stumbled to a walk. She held out the scissors to Vega, handle first. Vega took them and held them over the painting, poin
ting the blades near the top left corner. She punctured the paper with a quick stab.
Sarita made a squeak but didn’t move, rapt.
Vega sliced the paper at the top of the canvas, then a few inches down either side and peeled back the paper.
There was money there, twenty or twenty-five stacks, small denominations, wrinkled, bound by rubber bands. Vega continued to tear the paper off, saw that the stacks took up about three quarters of the canvas hollow. When she was done she stood with the paper shreds at her feet and what she estimated to be a few thousand dollars in dirty bills in front of her.
Sarita’s face appeared to expand, her eyes and mouth opening up in disbelief.
Vega paused before telling her this was probably a good enough reason to bother her boyfriend at work. Might as well let her have a minute to come up with it on her own.
* * *
—
It had been a while since Cap had been on a stakeout. It was dark now, the temperature down a few degrees, the air smelling sweeter and feeling somehow even more pleasant on his face than it had been during daylight. Cap sat in his car with the window open across the street from the house of the former clinic doctor, which was similar to every other house on the upper-middle-class block, two floors, ivory façades with sandy red roofs. The houses on either side of the doctor’s had cars in the driveways, lights on inside, but the doctor’s was dark, driveway empty.
Cap sipped an iced coffee, cracked his neck both ways, remembered he used to listen to Books on Tape in the old days when he’d stake out skips and cheaters. Nonfiction mostly, American history—civil war, lives of presidents. All about little decisions and big mistakes.
He wiped the condensation from his drink on his pant leg and wrote a text to Nell:
“Hope you’re asleep already but if not good night!”
He sent it, and immediately the three dots flickered back.
Then, her response: “Almost. What’s happening with the case?”
Cap smiled. He couldn’t help having pride in a girl he’d raised to ask infinite questions even if sometimes those questions made him want to stab himself in the eye with a number 2 pencil.
“Nothing yet. On a stakeout. Boring,” he sent back.
He glanced up at the house and the quiet street. Heard crickets and a strange bird. The phone buzzed in his palm.
“How’s Alice?”
He typed and sent: “Good. The same.”
The three dots flickered for only a moment, and her response came back:
♥
If that was meant as a sentiment from Nell to him directly, or as a reaction to him describing Vega, he didn’t know. He decided to change the subject.
“Hey—is ‘emoji’ plural?”
A brief pause, then, “Good night, dad. xoxo.”
Cap grinned and set his phone down in the cup holder under the HVAC knobs. He waited. Every once in a while a car cruised by, and he ducked his head. It seemed like the type of neighborhood where a strange guy waiting in a parked car might get noticed.
Around ten he saw a dark SUV approaching in his side mirror. There was a reflective sunshade covering the windshield—odd at night, he thought. He started to slide down in his seat but quickly realized whoever was driving would easily see him if he was looking. So Plan B—Cap brought up Google Maps on his phone, put on a brow furrow like Bert from Sesame Street, and made like a lost tourist.
The SUV passed, and Cap watched it turn the corner up ahead. Then he waited some more.
Nine became ten, which was 1:00 a.m. on the East Coast, and Cap felt it in every muscle and joint. He sucked whatever moisture was left on the bottom of the iced coffee cup and rubbed his face up and down with his open palm.
His phone read 10:11. He opened up the CNN app and attempted to read. The letters crowded one another, and the glare from the screen stung his eyes. His reading glasses lay in their case on the bed back at the Hampton Inn.
He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, tears beading at the corners of his lids, and his mind wandered quickly, breathing in the fragrant air nice and deep, thinking about how loud those crickets were, strange that he could hear them from his bed at home in Denville, window closed and the AC whirring. How he’d finally managed to hit the perfect temperature with the central air he had no idea—not too cold, not too hot, gentle fanning breeze on his face. Was that Nell on the phone in the next room, whispering, upset?
Cap shook himself awake.
The doctor was home.
Cap sat up straight and leaned back, staying hidden. The doctor, wearing a dark suit, and a woman in a blue evening gown with her hair pinned up in a delicate twist stood on either side of a silver Audi, doors open. It was the woman (the doctor’s wife, Cap assumed) whose voice had spilled into Cap’s half dream. She was whispering, but her voice was raised and strained. Instinctively, Cap pulled his pocket DVR from his jacket and rested it on the window runner. It was a holdover from his older PI days of tracking cheaters—always have tape. He considered himself old-fashioned, didn’t want to rely solely on his phone.
The doctor tried to take his wife’s arm as they walked up their driveway, but she yanked it away and stumbled. Cap couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying, but he pulled the focus on their faces as tight as it would go, figuring later he could read her lips and jack up the sound. He wasn’t sure but he thought the end of her sentence was “Trust you.”
Now this really did remind him of the old days. Lovers’ spat, faithless spouses, cuckolds, and “How dare you make a fool out of me.” That always surprised Cap—when he broke the news Hubs or Sweetums was cheating, how the sharpest sting for the cheated-on was not actually being cheated on but the embarrassment, the shame, feeling stupid, silly, old.
The doctor got ahold of the wife’s arm at the elbow. Cap couldn’t quite read the expression on his face. It was blanker than he would’ve expected, like this was something rote. Business as usual.
The wife tilted back on her heels and then steadied herself. She struggled against the doctor for a moment but then didn’t fight, allowed him to guide her. Motion lights flicked on at their feet as they proceeded up the path to the house. The doctor unlocked the front door, and in they went.
Cap tapped Pause on the DVR and checked his phone. 11:09 p.m. But also a text from Vega, which had come through twenty minutes earlier, when he’d been dozing.
“Brake on the doc. Got something here.”
There was a photo. It appeared to be a box or a bag ripped open with a bunch of money inside. Cap chuckled to himself.
He wrote back: “That is something. You need backup?”
Her answer shot back quickly.
“No. Get some sleep.”
Cap tapped the screen. Miss Vega doesn’t need your help, thanks for asking. He stretched out his arms and legs quickly, like an oversize starfish, and released. Slapped his cheeks a little bit to get the blood flowing and started the car, turned on the GPS audio, and let the nice lady tell him how to get back to the hotel. He sped down the empty streets and spare freeways, his rental cutting through the warm air like a skiff on a river.
* * *
—
Sarita sat on the couch vaping sadly, wiping away the occasional tear. Vega stood with her back flush against the kitchen counter. Both of them stared at the money. Sarita had stopped speaking about a half hour before, after furiously texting and leaving multiple messages for LoSanto.
And then the shine of headlights flashed through the sliding glass doors. Sarita sat up at attention.
“That’s him,” she said.
Vega nodded and kept her eyes fixed on the front door. She heard a car door slam outside, then running steps, and then the door flew open.
Antonio LoSanto came inside, short and stocky with a buzz cut, dressed in navy blue scrubs. He was breat
hing heavily, his eyes bouncing from Vega to the money to Sarita, who didn’t move.
“Sarita,” he said between gasps. “Go in the other room.”
Sarita stood and walked past Vega to leave the room. She peeked at Vega once, and then her head dipped down as she hurried away. You don’t have to do everything he says, girl, Vega tried to tell her in the second their eyes met. But then she was gone.
Vega heard the bedroom door shut, and then she and LoSanto stood looking at each other some more. The scent of cotton candy stayed in the air. LoSanto’s breathing slowed down, and he ran a hand over the back of his neck.
“You have a warrant, I’d like to see it,” he said finally.
“I don’t need a warrant. I’m not a cop,” said Vega.
LoSanto moved his hands to his hips, stood up a little straighter. Gonna get tough now, thought Vega.
“Then I could call the cops right now. You’re trespassing.”
“Your girlfriend invited me in and offered me a Diet Coke,” said Vega.
LoSanto didn’t flinch.
“Who are you, then?” he said.
“Name’s Vega.”
“What do you want, Vega?” he asked, eyes drifting.
Vega followed his gaze to the money.
“I’m a private investigator working with the police,” she said.
LoSanto sneered, bristling at his options.
“Then I could call the police right now and tell them you conned your way into my house, they gonna know all about you?”
Vega waited a second before answering.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I don’t have to tell you a damn thing,” he said, as if he were convincing himself of the truth of the statement.
“Sure,” said Vega. “You don’t have to talk to me or the police or a lawyer or a judge.” She nodded to the rows of money in the cut-up canvas on the table and continued: “You let the prints and serial numbers on those dirty dollars do the talking, and you can keep quiet when you’re in Lompoc and the boys are arm-wrestling over who gets a shy flower like yourself first.”
LoSanto froze, and he unlocked his gaze from Vega’s. She sensed the intensity in the room siphoning out like a tire’s slow leak. LoSanto ran his hands over his hair and sighed. His limbs seemed to loosen up as well, and Vega knew he was about to start talking. Sometimes all it took was a little hit of truth.