Faye Kellerman

by Street Dreams

  He glanced at me. “Do you mean it?”

  “Mean what? Spending the rest of my life with you or killing you if you hurt me? I mean both.”

  At last his smile was large and genuine. “Now that sounds like the Cynthia I know and love.” He broke into musical laughter. “Now I feel so good.”

  I continued to caress his thigh. “These stupid people … it wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

  He shrugged. Light had returned to his eyes. “So we learn to live with ignorance.”

  “Exactly. And let’s be happy it’s now and not fifty years ago. What the heck? Every relationship has sticky points.”

  “Even relationships with God. Like Avraham Avinu and his ten trials.”

  “Sorry,” I told him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Abraham. His faith in God was tested by ten trials.”

  “Oh, like Hercules?”

  “Who is Hercules?”

  “He also had trials.”

  “He was Jewish?”

  “Greek. Anyway, go on. What happened to Abraham?”

  “Avraham lived when Nimrod was the leader of the civilized world. A sound ruler, but a cruel man. He did avodah zarah … idol worship. Avraham believed only in Hashem. Nimrod put Avraham through ten trials to test his faith in God. I forget all of them, only each one grew in severity, and the last was trial by fire. Nimrod threw Avraham into a furnace.”

  He stopped talking.

  I said, “And I take it that God saved him.”

  “Naturally. Otherwise there is no Bible.”

  I waited for him to continue. But he didn’t. I giggled. “Is this a shaggy-dog story?”

  “A what?”

  “A shaggy-dog story—a story without a punch line.”

  “No, not at all. I’m saying that if a relationship is strong, it survives anything. I think that is you and me.”

  My hand was still resting on his knee. “I think so, too.” I moved my fingers to between his legs.

  He gasped. “If you do that, I will crash the car. Already your father looks for a reason to shoot me. This will be his excuse.”

  “Stop that! He loves you!”

  “Nonsense! I have sex with his daughter: He wants to shoot me.”

  I smiled, noticing he made no effort to pull my hand away. By now, he was hard: I loved making him hard. Then I retracted my hand and sat back up in my seat.

  He groaned. “You are so cruel.”

  “Koby, do you have any idea where we are?”

  “No, it is all unfamiliar. But if we find a motel, I think we should stop.”

  I smiled.“I think we took a wrong turn.”

  “In a metaphysical sense, there is no wrong turn.”

  “Yeah, but we’re in a physical world, so how about we retrace our steps.”

  He smiled, but then his eyes narrowed. I was attuned enough to his nuances to recognize residual resentment. He was still smoldering. He said, “You know, in Israel, there aren’t these racial problems.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not in Israel, we’re in America. Welcome to the melting pot!”

  42

  If a chemist combined 115 degrees Fahrenheit with the accommodations of steerage, the result would be Cochise Penitentiary—a medium-security installation deep in the desert where the sands of the Mojave sank below sea level. The site was as fiery as the bowels of the earth, the surrounding terrain flat, bleak, and tan, broken up by occasional spindly cacti and roadkill. Brill and I had the luxury of doing most of the trip in an air-conditioned Ford Escort, but then the temperature needle started nudging the red zone. Since we weren’t on a survival show and there was no million-dollar check waiting, the idea of being marooned in this godforsaken land wasn’t at all pleasant. Brill turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows.

  Immediately, we were sandblasted by scorching air and grit. Brill went profane, pounding his fist on the dash. “Asshole couldn’t have waited a couple months before he fucked up?”

  “Asshole” was Joseph Nicholas Fedek. Like all rotten apples, he eventually made it to the compost pile, picked up on a B-and-E charge in Rampart Division, home of scandal and Dodger Stadium. And Brill had a point. The Inland Valley area in late August was hell.

  “Look on the bright side,” I said cheerfully. “Germando El Paso would probably give up a nut to get out of Cochise early. That gives us real bargaining power.”

  “What a dumb shit! All he had to do was stay clean for six weeks on a stupid traffic bust. The jerk plays hotshot dealing X from his County cell, then buys himself a year and a half of misery in this inferno.”

  “How did El Paso get the bag into County?”

  “Rumor says his girlfriend sneaked it in way up in dark places.”

  “Didn’t someone pat her down?”

  “You take a peek; you don’t fist fuck her. I can’t believe I gave up my Saturday for this!”

  “At least you’re getting paid.”

  “Yeah, time-and-a-half along with a bad case of crotch rot.”

  He adjusted his butt in the seat. He wore a pair of ecru linen pants and a short-sleeved white shirt, both articles of clothing darkened with sweat stains. I had on a white blouse and a dark blue cotton skirt that fell below my knees. My hair was tied back, knotted into a tight braid. I looked like a parochial-school girl.

  “That’s the turnoff.” I pointed to the sign.

  Brill took a swig from his water bottle. We had two cases sitting on dry ice in the back. “I see, I see.”

  It took us another twenty minutes to arrive at the institution—a three-story cinder-block edifice surrounded by six guard towers and a sea of barbed wire. Cochise wasn’t very big, and it didn’t house the more violent criminals. It had an infirmary but no hospital and it didn’t have a psycho ward. Whenever someone freaked, he was immediately transferred out to San Quentin or some other maximum-security facility.

  We checked in with the parking-booth guard, who assigned Brill’s Escort a space in a sizzling lot of dirt and pebbles. Asphalt in this heat would have been a tar pit.

  “Keep the windows down,” Brill told me. “Just remind me not to touch the steering wheel when we come back.”

  It took us about a half hour to go through all the sign-in procedures. We checked our weapons into a gun locker and walked through a double-door sally port into the main facilities. There was some minimal air-conditioning, but inside was still hot and dry and smelled of sweat, piss, and barely controlled fury. The cell doors were open, but the hallways were almost entirely empty. Most of the blue-shirted inmates lazed on their cots, staring at the ceiling, listening to the ball game, or playing a torpid game of solitaire.

  Rest time, the guard explained.

  He led us into the interview cell—hot and smelly—with a wall clock and a barred window showing a view of heat waves rising off the sand. The area had the requisite metal table and chairs, the furniture bolted into place. We sat and waited and drank tepid water.

  Germando came in around ten minutes later, dressed in prison blues—a uniform not a lot different from Koby’s blue scrubs, reminding me once again that it was all context. Sweat coated his face, and the tiger tattoo on his neck looked as if it were stalking prey in the humid jungles of Southeast Asia. El Paso’s expression was one of contempt. He still had his dinky mustache and a plug of beard under his lower lip. He slouched in one of the metal chairs.

  Brill gave him a cup of water.

  El Paso didn’t drink.

  Brill rubbed his eyes. “This is the story. We picked up Juice Fedek, got him on a solid B-and-E, so he’s going to do time. We’re in the process of getting a warrant for his place. And when we do, we’re going to find his gun. And then that means Juice is going to do lots of time and not in Cochise. He’s going upstate to San Quentin. Because once we find the gun—and we will find the gun—we’re going to connect it to an attempted-murder indictment. He’s going away for a long time because the idiot was pop
ping lead at a cop. And anyone associated with him is going away for a long time.”

  El Paso shrugged. “Wha’ this have to do with me? I been here for the last two months.”

  It was my turn. “I was shot at by that bastard because he didn’t want me looking into the Sarah Sanders rape. There was only one person who could have told him about my investigation. And that same person told Fedek what car to look out for.”

  A smile spread across El Paso’s lips. “I don’ know what you talk about.”

  “Then I’ll make it clear. When I arrested you, you saw my friend drive away in his car. You noted the make and model. You told Fedek, your stepbrother, that I was investigating Sarah Sanders’s rape and you told him what car to look for. You set me up!”

  A smirk. “You es crazy. I thin’ the heat is too much for your head.”

  “This is the thing, Germando.” I gave him a venal smile. “Fedek is going to take you down. You know how I know this? Because I’m going to offer him a deal: immunity in the Sarah Sanders rape case to testify against you. That means, Germando, you’re not going to serve your five to seven here in Cochise, which is primarily for drug dealers. You’re going to the big-time asshole reamers.”

  “This is what she wants,” Brill said. “I got other ideas. You interested in hearing about them?”

  El Paso was silent. But his jumpy eyes told the story.

  “Guess not,” Brill said.

  We both got up at the same time.

  El Paso didn’t move or speak.

  We waited. Finally, I called out for the guard.

  Still nothing.

  The guard came.

  Germando waited until the key was actually in the lock, the guard about to let us out, before he caved in. He said, “Wait a min … I listen.”

  My voice dripped contempt. “You had your chance, Germando. You blew it!”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” He bolted up. “I listen now!”

  “Sit down!” Brill ordered.

  El Paso sat. “I listen now,” he repeated. Chastened to the core.

  Brill blew out air and looked at me. “What do you think?”

  “I think we should leave! I didn’t want to come here in the first place.”

  “Well, we’re here,” Brill said. “Might as well talk to him.” He looked at the guard. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No problem.” The khaki-uniformed guard walked away.

  We took up our seats at the table, all of us sipping what tasted like slag water. Brill turned to me. “Go.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Okay,” I said, “there was once this retarded girl—”

  “I don’ do nothin’.”

  “You gonna let me finish?”

  He was silent.

  “There was once this retarded girl,” I told him. “She was gang-raped and her retarded boyfriend was beaten up and left in a garbage can for trash collection.” I leaned over. “If the DA offers Fedek a chance to drop a charge of attempted murder on a cop in exchange for a single count of rape and testimony about the others who were there, guess what Fedek’s going to do?”

  “I no touch her!”

  “So this is what I want you to do,” I said. “I want you to tell us about the rape.”

  “What do I get?”

  “First we have to hear your story,” Brill said. “But before we hear you, we’ve got to let you know that you can have an attorney present because we will use whatever we want to use from your statement. But once you get your attorney, the control factor moves from us to your lawyer. Then things start slipping away because that means we’ve got to bring in our lawyers. Then it’s the lawyers talking to lawyers instead of us talking to you.”

  “I don’ need no lawyer. Look what happen when I have a lawyer.”

  “A very good point,” I told him. “You’re here and he isn’t.”

  Brill said, “So if you talk to us, you’ve got to sign this paper saying that we told you about your rights in English and you read your rights in English and Spanish and agree to waive them.”

  “Wha’ paper?”

  “This paper.” Brill showed him the card. “You’ve got to sign it right here. That says you agree to talk to us without an attorney. And you also understand that what you tell us could be used against you in court.”

  “And it also says that if you want an attorney, you can ask for one at any time,” I said. “But like Detective Brill told you, once you’ve asked for an attorney, it’s out of our hands.”

  “I don’ need no lawyer,” El Paso said.

  Brill took out a pen. “Sign here.”

  El Paso signed the waiver card.

  “Germando, I need the pen back.”

  El Paso returned the pen, unhappy because he’d lost a potential weapon. Brill pocketed the card. “What happened with Sarah Sanders?”

  “The retard muchacha.”

  “Yes,” I said. “What’d you do to her?”

  “I don’ touch dat muchacha. Juice do her, I no do her.”

  “Who else?” Brill said.

  “Leo.”

  “Leo who?”

  “Leo dat’s Juice’s friend.”

  “Last name?” I asked.

  El Paso shrugged.

  “Do better,” I told him.

  “Leo Shithead … I call him dat.”

  Leo’s last name was Chatlin. I let it go. “Who else?”

  “Pepe Renaldes.”

  “I don’t think so. Try again.”

  “Wha’?” El Paso said. “Wha’ you mean?”

  Brill looked at me with confusion. I raised my eyebrows, feeling my heart take off. I had met El Paso and I had met Pepe Renaldes and I knew in my gut who was the rapist and who was the lookout. I was taking a tremendous chance, because I hadn’t cleared any of this with Brill for obvious reasons. I couldn’t tell him that I’d met with Renaldes behind his back. I said, “One more time. Who raped her?”

  “Dat’s wha’ I say,” El Paso replied. “Joey Fedek, Leo Shithead, and Pepe Renald—”

  “No, no, no,” I said louder. “If you’re going to give me bullshit, El Paso, I’m going to walk from this.”

  “I don’ know wha’ you want!” El Paso yelled. “I tell you the truth!”

  “Let’s start from the beginning,” I tried again.

  Brill said, “A word with you, Decker?”

  “In a minute,” I told him. My heart was pumping out of my throat. Abruptly, I pounded the table. “You think I’m dumb, Ger-mando? You think I don’t do my homework? You think I don’t talk to other people including you-know-who to get their side of the story before I come up here to this hellhole?” I was trying to avoid Brill’s burning eyes. “One more time, El Paso, and this time I want the truth. It’s going to come down to that if you want a deal. I want to know who raped Sarah Sanders.”

  I locked the man in eye-to-eye combat. He finally got the point. He rubbed his forehead and sat back in his chair. “I don’ say nothin’.”

  I said, “Then you’ll go down for rape, bud.”

  His head sprang up. “And if I say things?”

  “We talk to the DA,” I told him. “Maybe we can swing a lesser charge of sexual molestation, maybe add another twelve months here in Cochise. That’s a lot better than five-plus in San Quentin.”

  Germando stroked his chin, eyes moving between Justice and me. I think he misinterpreted Justice’s fury—directed at me—as being meant for him. “Hokay. It was Juice, Leo, and me dat did her. Pepe was lookout.”

  “Much better.” I didn’t dare so much as glance at Brill. I couldn’t face him. “Tell us the story.”

  “Nothin’ to tell. First Leo and me hold the boy, an’ Juice does her. Then we get tired of him because he screams. So Juice beat the shit outta him and dump him in de trash. Then I do the girl. Then Leo do the girl. Then we leave.” He shrugged. “Dat’s it.”

  I finally screwed up the nerve to turn to Brill. “A word.”


  Brill was livid. If I had had any hopes of his recommending me for the Detectives squad, they were squashed by now. We asked for the guard.

  “Wha’ you doing?” El Paso bolted up.

  “We’ll be back,” I told him.

  The guard let us out. We spoke in a private interview room as hot as a sauna because it had walls instead of bars. Brill wiped sweat off his face with a towel, trying to find the right words. “What did you just pull?”

  I said, “I think I can get Pepe Renaldes to corroborate the story.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out, Decker. You went and talked to Renaldes without telling me—”

  “I never mentioned Sarah Sanders to him.”

  “I told you not to talk to him. Stone told you not to talk to him. The DA told you not to talk to him.”

  “Actually, it was just implied that I shouldn’t talk to him.”

  Brill almost spat at me. “I just drove down here for nothing because you just fucked up the case.”

  “I didn’t want Renaldes to go down for a rape he didn’t commit.”

  “You fucked up everything!” His eyes tore into mine. “Do you have a single brain cell in your head, Decker?”

  I crossed my arms, my eyes slicing into Justice’s orbs. My voice was low and menacing. “Someone shot at me, Brill. You think I’m going to wait around and let some dickhead DA call the moves when it’s my life on the line? So yeah, I went and talked to Renaldes. I wanted to know who was using me for target practice. And if he couldn’t tell me that, at least maybe he’d lead me to the Nova. Which he did.”

  “You’re an idiot!”

  “You say idiot, I say survivor. The tag line here is I’m pretty sure I can get Renaldes to roll against Fedek and Chatlin. If we get Renaldes and El Paso telling the same story, we can probably lock up Fedek and Chatlin for a very long time with charges of rape and attempted murder of a police officer, and that’s what I want because one or both of those assholes tried to kill me!”

  I was covered in ripe sweat. Brill was still glaring at me, but the intensity was gone. He said, “So what do we do with the DA?”

  “We tell him that we got El Paso to confess and name names. Then we tell him that we’re going to visit Renaldes and bring him on board. We know he’ll cooperate because he didn’t participate in the rape. So that means we’ve got El Paso’s and Renaldes’s testimonies against Fedek and Chatlin. And we can tell the DA that we found out about Renaldes because El Paso gave him up. That’s it! Done! Okay?”