Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  Nina picked a fragment of a leaf, a fragile piece of filigree, out of her coffee cup. "Don't you imagine he's already been questioned?"

  "I should think so, but the only connections to him they know about are the obvious ones, the ones in the newspapers. He's going to be ready with responses to questions about those."

  "So you're going to ask him about Arizpe?"

  Haydon nodded. "I'll need to talk to him anyway. He's really the only lead I've got."

  "Because he deals directly with the tecos in Mexico."

  "Well, that's a good working assumption. But there could have been an intermediary. Cordero might not have dealt with them at all. And even if he did have direct contact, we can't assume he knew anything about the death squad here. They might have kept him in the dark about that. Sometimes it's a lot cleaner for them that way, in the event a lawyer's legal services are ever needed for criminal defense."

  Nina closed her book and laid it aside.

  "So what do you think?" she asked.

  Haydon drank the last of his coffee. "I think it looks bad," he said. "I think Gamboa's going to be assassinated no matter what any of us do."

  Nina's eyes flared in surprise, and then she frowned. "Why are you so pessimistic?"

  He shook his head and was aware of a trace, a slight mist, of perspiration on his upper lip.

  "Because we're dealing with the wrong side of the coin," he said. "The FBI's got informants in all sorts of foreign dissident groups operating in the states, but Mexicans are not seen as that kind of a threat. Mexico is a staging ground, yes. A number of radical groups work from there. It's a kind of out-of-bounds territory. The FBI has thwarted numerous terrorist missions which were being planned in Mexico but were to have been executed in the States." He stared at a tiny yellow stamen he was rolling between his fingers. "But the Mexicans themselves have never been seen as the source of political terrorism. Up to now their political dissidents have been regarded as a relatively benign sector. Activists in name only. That is, if you're talking about the left wing. But this business is coming from the political right, 'our' people down there. We're simply not going to be ready for it."

  Haydon stood and gathered what was left of the migas, got a fresh cup of coffee, and walked down to the bathhouse. Cinco had been dozing, but either heard or smelled Haydon before he rounded the corner of latticework to the open-air shower. He was struggling to a sitting position, his ragged old tail making a flopping effort at a wag. Haydon sat down on the bricks beside him and scratched his ears, holding the bowl of migas on the bricks so it wouldn't scoot away while Cinco ate. Gabriela had as much affection for the old collie as did Haydon, and every meal she prepared now was prepared for four.

  Haydon watched Cinco eat. He thought of the numbers of hours they had spent like this, sitting together in summer shade or winter sunshine, each following his own thoughts, and neither having the remotest idea what preoccupied the mind of the other. They had nothing in common but the unexplained pleasure of the other's company. When the old collie finished, he glanced at Haydon from under his hoary eyebrows, then sat blinking lazily a few minutes. After a while he lay down again and closed his eyes. Slowly he moved a front paw on the bricks until he touched Haydon's leg. He pressed against it in a feeble stretch, and left it there with a sigh. His breathing became rhythmic and content. Haydon didn't have the heart to move for a long time, and finally, when he did, Cinco was asleep.

  Chapter 26

  HAYDON'S main concern was that he not get to Enrique Cordero Rulfo before the other detectives. The last thing he wanted was for them to run across his trail the first morning after he had taken a leave of absence. He didn't have to worry. Dystal had come out of the chute running. The first thing Cordero said was, "What's the deal here? I just went through this with HPD detectives not two hours ago."

  "I'm sorry," Haydon said, putting his shield back into his pocket. "But the administration decided to handle the incidents as separate but parallel investigations. There's no proof they are related, so they're taking this approach initially, hoping the double-teaming will give us a break."

  Cordero looked at Haydon from his high-back chair behind his desk and nodded skeptically. The office was a little warm, despite the fact the red miniblinds were screwed down tight to block out the glare that came off the traffic whining past on the Southwest Freeway outside the window. Cordero's office was in a business park complex, and was flanked by a computer software company on one side and a beauty supply company on the other.

  "God." Cordero rolled his eyes impatiently. "I don't know what I could tell you I didn't tell them."

  "May I sit down?" Haydon asked.

  "Yeah, go ahead," Cordero said with resignation. He jammed the plastic top on a Bic pen and tossed it onto the desk with a pile of papers.

  "Maybe I won't ask the same questions," Haydon said.

  Cordero tilted his head to one side and smirked. He was in his mid-thirties, a little on the chunky side, with a clean haircut and a fat neck that ran over the collar of his white shirt. His eyes were slightly bulbous and his mouth was cherubic, as if someone had squeezed his cheeks together and told him to say "chubby bunny." His olive complexion had an underlying tone of copper.

  Haydon tried to put himself in Cordero's position. According to the Teco Corporation charter, Cordero had been the registering agent four years ago, which must have put him in his middle to late twenties. The corporation was formed by wealthy and formidable businessmen. They could have asked any of the city's larger firms to represent them. Instead, they got this young man whose "firm" must have been in a far less substantial position then than it was now, and it certainly wasn't impressive now. Haydon was willing to wager that he was a relative of someone on the board. A nephew. Not, perhaps, a brilliant nephew, but one who had graduated from one of the lesser law schools on either side of the border, and could be depended upon to fill out forms correctly, to file the annual franchise tax report correctly—which was probably a negligible effort, since the corporation didn't actually function as a business—and to conduct essential errand-boy business on this side of the border.

  Haydon reflected on all this as he looked at Cordero's chubby-bunny smirk. He decided he would not begin with a question, but with a sobering bit of advice that would go a long way in cutting through the bullshit Cordero was obviously ready to dish out.

  "One of your clients is going to require a change in legal counsel," Haydon said. "He's up to his neck in the kind of trouble that's way out of your league, Mr. Cordero." He paused. "You tell Rubio Arizpe he's going to need a new lawyer."

  Cordero looked as if a glass of ice water had just been dumped on his crotch and he was trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore it. Using his elbows on the armrests, he scooted up in his black vinyl junior executive chair and raised one leg a little as if he wanted to break wind. He didn't respond, perhaps couldn't.

  Haydon arched his eyebrows expectantly, but Cordero didn't say a word. He only twisted his blocky head on his spongy neck. The smirk had been jolted into an expression of apprehensive discomfort. Cordero's swagger had been pitifully superficial. There could be no doubt about his reaction to Arizpe's name.

  Haydon promised himself he would try only one more risky shot. He knew Lapierre's tactic would be orderly and correct, concerned as much with protecting the integrity of the evidence against inadmissibility in court as with obtaining the evidence in the first place. There would be no "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine applied to evidence in Lapierre's cases, especially this one. The disadvantage to that approach in this instance was that it was slow. Haydon had no doubt that Lapierre's men would return within hours with a search warrant to go through Cordero's files, that Cordero hadn't been told this, and that before this morning's visit he hadn't anticipated it. Haydon also had no doubt that Cordero was alerted to the possibility now, and that between now and the time the detectives returned, Cordero would purge his office of most, if not all, potentially incriminating
or informative documents.

  "You understand what's coming down, don't you, Mr. Cordero?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've seen the news, you've been through the interviews?"

  Cordero nodded, trying to seem smug, but not really being successful, because it was all over his face that he didn't see where Haydon was taking this.

  It was a legitimate concern, because until this moment Haydon himself didn't know what he was going to do. Suddenly it was apparent to him that talking to Cordero was not what he wanted, because Cordero was not going to tell Haydon what he needed to know. Cordero might be a little thick intellectually, but he definitely wasn't suicidal. And besides, there was no assurance he even knew what Haydon needed to know. What Haydon wanted was what Cordero had.

  "I'm going to be honest with you, Mr. Cordero," Haydon said, standing and leaning on Cordero's desk. "If I were you I'd be nervous. You're fronting for an organization that has killed seven people in the last forty-eight hours. One of them a policeman. The FBI is going to be all over you. We're going to be all over you, and—if it hasn't occurred to you before, now's the time to give it some thought—you are our only contact with the tecos. You're in a tight spot and we're going to bring to bear every conceivable pressure to make it tighter."

  Cordero shook his head abruptly, and his ample cheeks waggled. "Somebody's messed up," he said. "I do work for the Teco Corporation, sure. You know that, sure. But this man ... I don't know this man, this Rubio . . . Arizpe. Somebody's messed up about that."

  "No one's messed up, Mr. Cordero."

  "Somebody's messed up."

  "No," Haydon said."Sure as hell did." Cordero's voice was a little stronger as he tried to rally his position. He pushed himself up with his elbows again.

  Haydon pulled out one of his cards and wrote something on the back.

  "If you ever want to talk, off the record, here's my home telephone number. You could ease things on yourself considerably." He put the card on the edge of Cordero's desk. "I wouldn't wait too long," he added.

  He turned and walked out of Cordero's office, closing the door behind him. The front office was so small he had to turn immediately to see the nameplate on Cordero's secretary's desk. Linda Solis was as plump as Cordero, and had the highest-riding breasts Haydon had ever seen. They formed a tight cleft in the sharp V neck of her red dress, swelling proudly toward her little oval chin. He smiled, thanked her, and went out into a hallway.

  He walked quickly toward the next corridor, looking for a telephone. When he found it, he dialed home, then grabbed the telephone book that was hanging from a wire cable. He found what he wanted, talked to Nina a few minutes, and hung up. Not knowing how long he would have to wait, or where Cordero's car was parked, he returned to the main hallway and stood against the wall near the back door so he could see Cordero's office.

  He had to wait longer than he expected—nine minutes—before Cordero came churning out into the hall and exited through the front door. Haydon followed, and got to the glass door just in time to see Cordero ripping out of the parking lot in a new Oldsmobile, headed for the upramp to the expressway. He waited five minutes before he walked back into Cordero's office. It had been almost twenty minutes since he left.

  "Hello," he said to the secretary. "Back again. I got a call that Mr. Cordero wanted to see me."

  The secretary's eyes widened, and she tilted her head with its stiff bonnet of black hair. "Really?" She thought about it. "Well, I don't know. He just left," she said, her voice emphasizing the last word. Her expression made it clear the situation was unfathomable. Haydon guessed that Cordero didn't let Ms. Solis in on many of his business secrets.

  "When will he be back?"

  "He didn't say." She softly drummed the red humps of two false fingernails against the bottom of her chin as she looked at him.

  "Maybe I'd better wait a few minutes, in case there's been some mistake."

  "Well, that will be fine." She smiled. "I can't imagine."

  "May I borrow your telephone?" Haydon asked.

  "Oh, sure." She smiled and touched it, moving it an eighth of an inch toward him. She remained in her seat as Haydon stood over her and dialed. While he was waiting for it to ring, she cut her eyes up and caught him looking at her decolletage. She smiled and decorously placed the plump, tapered fingers of one hand over her bosom, but removed them a second later to shuffle some papers around on her desk.

  Speaking into the telephone, Haydon asked if there were any calls, said yes to a question, and then hung up. He thanked Ms. Solis, who sweetly said he was very welcome. He sat down in one of two chairs to wait and picked up an old copy of Private Pilot magazine. He thumbed through it, and then looked at the mailing label. It appeared that chubby bunny had a personal interest in flying. Ms. Solis received a call, and Haydon cut his eyes up from the magazine and watched her. She giggled at something, said she surely would tell Mr. Cordero, said goodbye very sweetly, and smiled to herself as she jotted down a message. Haydon returned to the magazine. Ms. Solis typed eight or ten characters on her red IBM Selectric and then stopped to get something out of her purse under the desk.

  She was digging in her red handbag when the telephone rang again. Haydon watched her, holding the magazine. She listened, her face changing to an expression of sobriety, then disbelief.

  "No ... no, I'm not married. A sister, yes. Yes, it's Juanita, no ... Juan-it-a. Are you sure? Are you sure! When was this? ... But she don't even drive! Yes. Oh, my God!" She did the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit over her straining cleavage. "Seventeen-seventeen Cord. No, no . . . C-o-r-d. Yes! Oh, my God!" She did the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with her humpy red fingernails. "I'll be right there. Tell her I'm coming, tell her I'm coming." She began to cry. Huge, generous tears sprang from her eyes as if from suddenly squeezed fruit. Mascara streaked her cheeks. "Yes! Yes, right now. Goodbye . . . bye!" She slammed down the telephone.

  "Is there a problem?" Haydon asked.

  Linda Solis frantically crammed everything back into her purse. Not looking at Haydon, she said, "That son of a bitch Roland has got my sister in a car wreck. I know it's that guy. Juanita don't even drive" A sob broke loose, and she grabbed a tissue from a flowery box beside her IBM Selectric. "I gotta go to Ben Taub. You tell Mr. Cordero where I am. I gotta go right now!"

  She hopped up from her chair, came around her desk, and headed for the door, digging in her handbag for her car keys. She stopped halfway out the door and gesticulated with a jangling wad of keys that would have made a janitor envious.

  "Lissen," she lectured. "If you have to leave, you flip this latch when you go out. Don't forget it. My God, I'll get fired." She wheeled around with a loud snuffle and pumped down the hallway toward the foyer door.

  Haydon waited until she was outside before he walked to the door and flipped the latch. He stepped over to the copying machine and turned it on, then went into Cordero's office. There were three filing cabinets. The drawers were marked alphabetically.

  CHAPTER 27

  ENRIQUE CORDERO followed the flow of traffic west on the Southwest Freeway, under the Almeda interchange, and off on the Elgin exit. When Cordero was nervous he chewed his fingernails like a dog gnawing a bone, and right now he was driving with his left hand and had his right elbow up in the air as he tried to get at an available piece of cuticle on the outside of his ring finger. He worked at it persistently, but his mind was far away as he turned into the streets near the University of Houston campus.

  He was surprised to see Ferretis standing under a tree at a collection of newspaper cages across the street from the little cafe where they were to meet. Cordero was sure Ferretis recognized his car, yet he didn't budge from his place on the sidewalk as Cordero pulled into the parking lot and drove to the back of the restaurant. He walked around front and saw that Ferretis was still there, concentrating on his newspaper. It was almost noon, and the kids from the university soon would be heading for the dozens of eating places around the c
ampus for lunch. Cordero went inside to get a booth. Ferretis wouldn't talk to him unless they had one of those high-backed booths. Ferretis was picky.

  He chose the last booth near the front, which meant there would be someone only on one side of them. He slid into the booth and noticed that from where he sat he could see Ferretis through the front window. He was acting strange. Cordero ordered a Mexican Corona, and told the waitress he was waiting for someone. He gnawed on a fingernail and watched Ferretis, who bought two more newspapers, perusing their major sections leisurely before he finally looked around, tucked them under his arm, and stepped off the curb to cross the street.

  When Professor Daniel Ferretis came inside behind a couple of girls who had made an indecorous rush for the door to get in front of him, it took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the tavernlike dimness of the little cafe. Finally he saw Cordero in the booth, staring at him. It had taken Ferretis six months just to train the stupid shit not to wave at him like an idiot. It had taken him a year to train him how to arrange a meeting by telephone without giving away what he was doing. Cordero had been the thorn in his flesh. The cafe's worn-out air conditioner was turned on high, and a greasy-smelling breeze was shoving its way among the tables and booths.

  Ferretis walked over to Cordero and sat down in the booth, tossing the newspapers into the seat next to him.

  "What were you doing out there?" Cordero asked.

  "You have shit for brains," Ferretis said. He put his forearms on the Formica table in front of him. "Were you followed?"

  Cordero looked at him quizzically. "No."

  " 'No.' " Ferretis shook his head, mocking Cordero's dull-wittedness, and a lock of his longish straight black hair which always seemed in need of washing fell over his eyes. He pushed it angrily out of his way and glared at Cordero through his heavy Cazal eyeglasses. "This is the first you've thought about it, isn't it?" Ferretis said. "Well, I thought of it. I was trying to find out if you'd led a parade down here."