The Janes

by Louisa Luna

  “Maybe later,” said Vega. “I’m actually looking for girls a little younger than that.”

  Guerra’s smile shrank, and he went back to texting.

  “You’re outta luck. We don’t hire under eighteen.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Vega. “You know anyone who does?”

  Guerra pulled his sunglasses off and set them on the bar.

  “I told you we don’t hire under eighteen.”

  “Yeah, I heard that part,” said Vega, moving onto the seat next to him. Then she said slowly, “And I asked you if you know anyone who does.”

  Guerra sighed through his nose and pointed to a sign behind the bar.

  “You read that? Right to refuse anyone service, just ’cause we feel like it. In about a minute I’m-a feel like it with you, girl.”

  “Then I got a whole minute to tell you what I know and what I think, Joe Guerra,” said Vega, watching him rear back in surprise. He began to stand. “Don’t stand,” she said. “Sarita told me where to find you. And I know how to find her.”

  Guerra’s eyes flashed as he hovered over his chair.

  “You don’t know shit,” he mumbled.

  “Sit down,” Vega said gently.

  He sat.

  “There you go,” said Vega. “Now I’m going to tell you what I think. I think someone offered you some money to find some off-market birth control, and you hooked him up with your sister’s boyfriend. I think you may have done other sorts of favors and jobs for someone. I think someone’s advantage in using you is he doesn’t have to show his face. But like I said, now I know your face.”

  Guerra returned to texting and said with a sneer, “You a cop or what?”

  “Or what,” said Vega. She sipped her club soda. “Oh yeah, something else I know,” she said, tapping her temple. “I know I need someone’s name, and I know you can give that to me. And I know if you don’t, I can have some police here pretty quickly.”

  Guerra pushed off the bar and stood so he stared right down into Vega’s eyes.

  “And I know me and my boys can do a little damage to your man over there before any cop can get here.”

  Vega let her gaze shift to Cap, who drank a bottle of light beer and watched the girls distractedly. She imagined her arms being pinned back while watching Guerra and the bouncer take turns cracking his ribs and jaw with their fists.

  “It won’t be his first body hit today,” she said, shrugging. “You do you,” she added, ambivalent.

  Then Guerra’s phone began to ring and buzz simultaneously. He didn’t look at it, kept staring Vega down.

  “You better get that,” said Vega, not looking at the phone either. “It’s your sister.”

  Guerra snapped his head back to check and then grabbed it, answered.

  “Rita,” he said.

  He kept his eyes on Vega while he listened to his sister. Vega moved the straw in her drink in circles. She watched his face change, his eyes finally breaking away from the stare and skipping scattershot around the room, which Vega thought must mean he was taking in a lot of information, fast and urgent.

  “Alice Vega,” he said aloud, repeating. “Yeah, I got it. Don’t worry, girl. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He hit the red button on the screen of his phone and dropped it on the bar.

  “How’s she doing?” said Vega, staring into her drink.

  “She said you told her to call me. You’re Vega?” he said.

  “Yep,” she said. “She say anything else?”

  “That you came to see her where she works and you’re helping her.”

  “She’s right,” said Vega, looking up at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, lit from beneath with a blue LED strip. “I’m helping her avoid getting arrested as an accomplice to grand theft.”

  She sensed Guerra tensing up, even as he backed away from her.

  “Or as an accomplice to whatever kind of mess you’re into.”

  In the mirror she could see him sit down. She picked up her phone and waved it at him a little bit.

  “So this is an email to the cop working the case for SDPD. It’s all about how your sister introduced you to her boyfriend for the purpose of you all illegally moving birth control.”

  Vega lifted one shoulder, scratching her chin.

  “Between you and me, I don’t believe that. But I think I could convince some people of it,” she said, placing the phone on the bar carefully. “I have a guy on the outside who’s going to send it on my behalf in about…” She checked her watch. “Ten minutes, unless he hears from me.”

  Guerra clenched his jaw and looked at his own reflection in the blue light.

  “What makes you think I give a shit what happens to my sister?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “But she seems like a nice kid and genuinely doesn’t know that her boyfriend and her brother could put her in a state penitentiary for eighteen months or so because of their bullshit.”

  Guerra flipped his phone around in his hands, appearing to consider his options.

  “You got about eight minutes, Joe,” said Vega. She stood up, smoothed out her pant legs.

  She took a step toward him and leaned down. She was not exactly whispering in his ear but she could still feel the heat of her breath bounce back from his skin to her lips. Close enough.

  “You want to be smart, you’ll answer my questions. You want to keep on being dumb, you go right the fuck ahead. I’ll be over there with my partner if you want to have a conversation.”

  She walked away, felt him watching. She couldn’t help but feel a rush, not sexual necessarily, but it was usually all mixed up for her anyway—adrenaline and control and desire and knowing she had such a big tough guy in a tiny bubble between her thumb and forefinger.

  * * *

  —

  “So you want to interrogate him in the back of a car like the mafia or something?” said Cap in the parking lot of Rare Strip, after Guerra had obediently gone into the backseat. “When we have a nicely appointed police station we can bring him to?”

  Vega glared at him.

  “He’s ours right now. The second he walks through the doors he’s theirs. Their questions, their strategy,” she said, pausing to rub her chin. “Their rules.”

  “Okay, I’m not trying to be the cockblocker here, but it wouldn’t be bad to have their rules with a guy like this, with whomever he’s associated, if we need to elevate the level of, say, security, manpower, backup, things of that nature. And McTiernan seems to know his way around.”

  He gestured with his hands as he spoke, like a lawyer making a case to the judge.

  “What do you think?” he said, when she hadn’t said anything.

  “I think it’s a pretty cockblocky thing to say,” she said, putting her sunglasses on. “But not untrue.” She tilted her head to one side and took a fast breath in, thinking about it. “Okay. We’ll try it. Can you text McTiernan, tell him we’re coming?”

  Cap grinned broadly, said, “Anything for you, Miss Vega.”

  Vega shook her head at him, rolled her eyes under her sunglasses.

  * * *

  —

  McTiernan was smarter than he looked, Cap thought.

  Not that he was dumb, but he looked like a cop. And not that cops were dumb, but cops had a way of thinking like doctors checking boxes off a list. Science, not art. It was a little like the old game of Clue that he used to play with Nell. Eliminating each person, each weapon, each place. Except in police work there were a hell of a lot more suspects, objects, locations, and then the thing that connected all of them or split them all apart—motive. It was murky, messy, and tangled, and rarely ended with three cards folded neatly inside a tiny brown envelope.

  When Cap and Vega showed up at the impeccably clean police station with Joe Guerra
following them voluntarily, McTiernan shook his hand politely and welcomed him like Guerra was someone he was expecting and was glad finally to meet. McTiernan took them all to a small conference room and told Guerra to make himself comfortable, offered him a selection of beverages—coffee, water, soda. Guerra accepted a chilled bottled water, and then McTiernan shut the door on Guerra and stood with Cap and Vega in the hallway.

  “How is he connected?” he asked them, crossing his arms.

  Vega told him the truth.

  McTiernan took it in, pushed his glasses firmer back on the bridge of his nose.

  “So LoSanto did have a girlfriend,” he said, not quite like a reprimand.

  “I met her before,” said Vega. “She knows me. I knew I was more likely to get something out of her than if we brought her in here.”

  “That’s fine,” said McTiernan, plainly unoffended. “We got him here right now. How do you think we should do this?”

  Vega hesitated, so Cap spoke up.

  “We told him it’s him or his sister, so I think he’ll tell us—we didn’t ask him anything yet. We wanted it to take place here, on the record with you.”

  “And I appreciate it,” he said. “Comm will feel more comfortable if I’m in there. One of you want to come in with me; the other one want to watch from behind the double-side, I’m good with it.”

  “Wait,” said Cap. “That’s your interrogation room?”

  “One of them,” said McTiernan. “It’s for this particular type of suspect. We want him relaxed because he’s coming in willingly, but we still want to observe and get what we can get.”

  “There’s a ficus in there,” said Cap incredulously. “I’m sorry, it’s just the nicest interrogation room I’ve ever seen.”

  “But there’s no mirror,” said Vega.

  McTiernan beckoned them with his finger.

  “Follow me a sec,” he said.

  They followed him into the room adjacent to the conference room. It was about the same size and had no windows to the outside, with a clear glass pane about two by two feet. There was Guerra, slumped in his chair, staring at his phone screen.

  “The picture,” said Vega.

  “Yeah,” said McTiernan. “The photo of the boat on the wall—it’s a double-side.”

  “No shit,” said Cap in awe, turning to peer through the glass.

  McTiernan smiled and said, “So, one of you want to come in?”

  “Yeah, she will,” said Cap, running his finger along the pane. “I’ll watch from in here. You have a camera or some other recording device?”

  “We got cameras in the light fixtures,” said McTiernan, pointing toward the ceiling in the conference room. “They’re voice-activated—as soon as we start talking they’ll start recording.”

  “Come. On,” said Cap.

  “Truth,” said McTiernan, chuckling. “Where’d you say you’re from, Cap?”

  “Nineteen fifty-six, apparently,” said Cap.

  “You ready?” Vega said to McTiernan, done listening to the banter.

  “Well, yeah,” he said congenially. “You have a way you like to do this?”

  “I can ask what I need to ask, then you can jump in if I don’t cover what you need,” said Vega.

  “That works,” said McTiernan. “After you.”

  Vega headed for the door, tapping out a quick text before leaving the room. McTiernan followed her, and then Cap was alone. He watched them walk into the interrogation room, watched Joe Guerra remain seated as McTiernan did a little spiel about rights and lawyers. Guerra didn’t appear to care less about his rights, Cap suspected because he knew Vega would hold his sister under the water like a runt kitten if Guerra didn’t talk. Cap’s phone buzzed. It was the text Vega had sent on her way out.

  It read “Keep eye out for Otero.”

  * * *

  —

  They all set their phones aside.

  Guerra’s upper body was much wider than the chair. He’d removed his hoodie, revealing two full sleeves of tattoos—dragons and tigers. He sat with one arm hooked around the back of the chair. Vega could see him as a kid in junior high, throwing paper airplanes at girls.

  “Could you tell us your name?” Vega said.

  “Jose Ramon Guerra.”

  “Could you tell us how you know Antonio LoSanto?”

  “He’s my sister’s boyfriend.”

  “Did you broker a deal between LoSanto and another party to exchange money for IUD birth control units?”

  Guerra ran his tongue over his top row of teeth, maybe wrestling one last time with offering the confession, Vega thought.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Vega paused, thinking he might add something without being prompted. He rolled his shoulders back in a small stretch, didn’t speak.

  “Who is the other party?” said Vega.

  “Guy named Coyote Ben,” said Guerra.

  “Last name?”

  Guerra sighed. “Davis. Like the pants, you know?”

  “He’s Caucasian?” said Vega.

  Guerra nodded.

  “Could you say yes or no?”

  “Yeah. How you know that?”

  “Coyote’s what they call white guys who bring people over the border, right?” said Vega.

  Now Guerra shrugged.

  “If you say so.”

  “How did you first meet him?”

  Guerra leaned forward, glanced quickly over his shoulder, not consciously looking for someone, Vega thought, but just out of habit.

  “He brought me a girl. I knew she was too young. We don’t hire underage,” he said to McTiernan. “He said she was his cousin who just moved from Tijuana and needed a job.”

  “Did you believe that?” said Vega.

  “Hell nah,” said Guerra. “He tried to convince me she was eighteen. Girl had, like, baby fat in her face.” Guerra tapped under his chin with the top of his hand.

  “So who do you think she was?” said Vega.

  Guerra regarded Vega like there was something she wasn’t grasping. “Some girl he got sold,” said Guerra. “There’s all kinds of these girls from down south; their family sends them up, they just get sold.”

  “Coyote Ben gifted in that area?” said Vega. “Selling girls?”

  “Hey,” said Joe, coming off the back of the chair. “My place is all legal. All of it. Check the paperwork. Check the taxes. I don’t got a thing to do with what Coyote Ben does for work.”

  “Right,” said Vega. “What’d he say next?”

  Joe breathed big through his nose, nostrils expanding to catch all the air he could get out of the room.

  “He said if I didn’t want that girl, the baby face, he had others that could bring in more cash,” he said. “I told him, Shit, Flaco, you got a lotta cousins.”

  “But you still told him no?” said Vega.

  “Yeah, no,” he said, then reflecting on the confusing sound of it, added, “Correct, I said no fucking way.”

  “So how’d it happen he get to asking you about black-market birth control?” said Vega.

  “The guy asked for it.”

  “He just asked for that specific thing, outright? IUDs,” said Vega.

  Guerra flattened his lips, straining to remember.

  “Nah, we’re sitting in the office, I’m telling him we don’t take underage girls. He just starts talking about ways a guy could make extra cash, says he needs a way to keep girls from getting pregnant, asks do I talk to my girls about shit like that.”

  “Do you?” said Vega.

  “Hell, no,” said Guerra, rearing his head. “I ain’t their daddy. I told him I don’t know shit about that.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked if I knew anyone who could get prescription birth control. Equi
pment, not pills.”

  Vega didn’t follow up with another question right away. Guerra glanced at McTiernan, who didn’t make a move to speak either.

  “Then I thought of Tony,” said Guerra, filling in the space. “I knew he worked at a clinic. Thought he could use the money, buy my sister something.”

  Vega stared at him and thought. After she didn’t speak for a minute, Guerra added, “I didn’t think it was so big. Not like knocking off a gas station.”

  Vega stood suddenly and Guerra appeared to brace himself, hunching shoulders forward, hands not quite forming fists but fingers extended in his lap.

  “Joe. Detective,” Vega said to McTiernan. “I need to step out. Excuse me.”

  Guerra returned to the more relaxed posture, sitting back in the chair. McTiernan nodded and asked Guerra, “Did you think about why someone would request birth control for a group of teenage girls?”

  Guerra started talking, his tone defensive, while Vega left the conference room and went next door.

  “Hey,” Cap said, leaning against the wall next to the double-side. “Why’d you leave? It’s just getting good.”

  Vega wandered up to the glass and stood about an inch away.

  “Something’s not square,” she said.

  “With Guerra?” said Cap. “I think I believe him.”

  “Yeah,” said Vega airily. Then she tapped the glass lightly, as if she were pointing to a fish she liked, but not trying to get its attention. “I think I do, too.”

  She shut her eyes briefly and saw doors. Car doors, hotel room doors, sliding glass doors, mechanical garage doors. It was not an unfamiliar image, nor was the instinctual reaction that closed doors elicited (frustration, anger), but there was a different thing here. Vega’s fingers twitched, and she knew—the doors were shut but they were unlocked. Just like Dylan Duffy’s car.

  She opened her eyes and said, “Guerra doesn’t have anything to do with it. There’s someone else—someone bigger.”

  Vega felt her phone buzz continuously and aggressively, like it did when there was a flood or fire warning. As she pulled it from her pocket she saw McTiernan through the glass doing the same thing. Cap noticed it too, looking from one to the other, his own phone silent.