by John Lansing
Margaret sat perfectly still. She worried that if she reached out and touched Arturo Delgado’s face, her hands would blister.
—
The Alfaro house was painted a bright pastel blue with a black slate roof, an upper-middle-class California ranch. The garden had so many flowering annuals in bloom that it looked like a commercial for a garden center.
Jack sat uncomfortably on a blue Adirondack chair that matched the color of the house, with James Alfaro seated next to him. He had brought the tortillas as a gift, and the man gratefully received them.
“It’s not my shop anymore, so I don’t go back all that often. A man can do only so many victory laps.”
“I know what you mean,” Jack said, hoping to expedite the interview but not wanting to offend.
“I liked golf, but it didn’t like me back, so the garden won.” Alfaro’s face broke into a deep craggy smile that showed off straight teeth the color of aged ivory. His hair was astonishingly white and offset his dark brown skin, which had seen more that its share of sun.
“Looks like a piece of heaven,” Jack commented. “Now, what I’m interested in,” he said, trying to steer the conversation, “is anything you can tell me about an employee who worked for you back in the late nineties till about two thousand three. Name’s Hector Lopez.”
Jack knew that he was on to something as soon as the name passed his lips. Alfaro’s expression darkened.
“Funny thing about that,” he said.
“How so?”
“I remember Lopez very well. He was a good man. Hard worker. Loved America. He was a citizen and proud of it. Never missed a day of work and then one day he picked up and left without a word. No thank you, no good-bye, no nothing. Wasn’t right.”
“What do you think happened?”
“A man doesn’t leave a wife, a son, and a high-paying job to move back to Mexico. People are dropping dead crossing the desert to come in illegally.”
Obviously, the man had spent some time worrying over this.
“Any ideas?”
“I went over to the Lopez home after a couple of days of not hearing word one. Thought there might have been a family emergency or something. Maybe he had a heart attack. Something.”
“Who did you speak to?”
“I spoke with Hector Junior. Or tried to.”
Alfaro looked like he was struggling with the memory, and Jack didn’t want him to get lost and lose his train of thought.
“What was the problem with the boy?”
James’s brow furrowed, and then he made a mental decision and continued. “He was off somehow.”
Jack had used the same description when he’d met with Joan Sternhagen, the guidance counselor. He sat up a little straighter.
“Off how, Mr. Alfaro?”
“It was something about his eyes. Like he was challenging me. Said his father was homesick and went back to Mexico to visit his family. But I remembered very clearly that both of Lopez’s parents had passed away the previous year, within a month of each other. Father first, mother died of a broken heart soon after. We had discussed it, you see. And I approved a two-week paid vacation so he could go back to—”
“Guadalajara,” Jack interjected.
“That sounds about right, to handle the arrangements,” the older man said in almost a musing tone. “I asked the boy if I could speak with his mother and was told she wasn’t at home. Again, it was more a challenge than a statement. You know,” he went on, “I had the strangest feeling that she was in the living room, listening to our conversation, but I didn’t push it. I asked the kid to have his father give me a call when he spoke with him, and I left. What could I do?”
Jack hiked up his shoulders by way of an answer, not wanting to stop the flow.
“I looked back at their house as soon as I got into my car and watched the boy close the door. Big kid, built like a bull. He had the strangest smile on his face. It was . . . unnatural somehow. Made me feel bad, you know, in my stomach.”
“And you never spoke with Mr. Lopez again?” Jack asked.
“Never. Not a word. I spoke with my wife about it and then filed a police report the following week. But, well, you know how it is. Cops—oh, excuse me, the police—couldn’t spare the time. A wetback gone home. End of story.”
Jack had butted heads with racism in his career. Hell, the old Irish guard had never been fond of the Italians. Some things never changed.
“I’ll look into it,” Jack said, “let you know if I discover anything of interest.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Alfaro said before he turned thoughtful again. “Didn’t seem right . . . good pay . . . benefits . . . great butcher . . .”
“Lopez was a butcher?”
Jack got that familiar itch on the back of his neck—like an electric current—when a case was about to break, or when a piece of a puzzle fit snugly onto the game board.
“Talented man. Up for a promotion to run the entire department.”
Jack and Mr. Alfaro stood at the same time. Both men grunted in unison. Jack stretched his back. There was a storm front moving in, and the clouds blowing over the San Bernardino Mountains were taking on an ominous gray hue.
A butcher. A butcher’s knot. Jack didn’t believe in coincidences.
33
The sky opened up, and the Mustang’s windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the rain.
Jack wondered why Hector’s name hadn’t come up on any of the gang lists. He wasn’t even sure he was an 18th Street Angel but decided to find out before moving forward with the investigation.
He also wanted to talk with Hector’s mother before confronting her son. If he was his man, Jack didn’t want to spook him. If his father was in Guadalajara, that’s where Hector would jackrabbit to if pressed.
The physical description, the father’s occupation, the connection to the knot used to hang up the last victim made Hector Junior a compelling lead. But that was all he was at this point. He knew better than anyone to never jump to conclusions.
It was getting late, and Jack didn’t want to get caught sitting in the parking lot called the I-10 in rush-hour traffic, but he was on a roll. He cross-referenced the GPS map with his list, and saw that the last known address for Johnny Rodriguez was his mother’s house. It was only two miles away and closer than the Lopez house.
When Jack arrived, an attractive twenty-something woman stood on the other side of the open doorway holding a chubby baby boy on her dungaree-clad hip. The baby, who couldn’t have been more than six months old, held on to her white peasant blouse with bunched-up, dimpled fists.
The woman tossed back her shoulder-length brown hair, and her clear brown eyes eyed Jack suspiciously and then with fear.
“Is Johnny dead?” she asked. The first words out of her mouth.
She tightened her grip on the boy, who picked up on his mother’s emotions and erupted, from serene to wailing in an instant.
Jack stood on the covered porch and wiped the rain that was dripping off his nose with the back of his hand. The brown-shingled house was welcoming, even in the rain, with green fabric-covered patio furniture and flower boxes filled with purple pansies. The woman shifted the boy onto her shoulder and rocked him.
“Why would he be dead?” Jack asked gently.
It didn’t work.
“Who are you?” she asked accusingly. She glanced beyond Jack and could see the silver Mustang parked in front of the house. “You’re not a cop.”
“My name’s Jack Bertolino. I came to ask about one of Johnny’s friends in the 18th Street Angels. Hector Lopez. Do you know him?”
“Johnny’s all right?”
“As far as I know. Is he in any trouble?”
“He’s nothing but trouble,” she said bitterly.
Jack would delve into Johnny�
�s story later.
“What can you tell me about Hector?”
“Who are you?” she repeated.
The baby turned on a dime again and started cooing. One fist in his mouth, the other gripping his mother’s neck.
“I’m a private investigator,” Jack said and pulled out his license, flipping it open for her to read.
There’s a first time for everything, Jack thought.
“Why are you looking for Hector?”
“His father and Hector are estranged. Hector Senior hired me to make sure his son was all right. I’m just doing research for the preliminary report.”
Jack didn’t particularly like lying, but sometimes it was the only way to get information. Especially when he wasn’t standing behind the power of a shield.
“I thought his father was dead,” she said, puzzled.
“What makes you say that?” Jack asked, pretending to be amused by the notion.
“Just something I heard back in high school. So you’re a private investigator?”
“Guilty.”
“I’m Diane.”
Jack extended his hand; Diane held the baby with one arm and gave Jack a firm handshake.
“I was a production assistant at Sony Studios. I got downsized as soon as I ballooned two dress sizes and they discovered I was pregnant.”
“Doesn’t seem right,” Jack said, feeling a slight thaw in the ice flow.
“Johnny,” she said wistfully. “He could have been anything he wanted to be. My brother had it all. Looks, brains, personality—and then he met Hector.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“I don’t know a thing about him except that he ruined my brother’s life. He got Johnny involved in the gang.”
“Hector’s a member of the Angels?”
“For sure. Nobody would even talk about Hector at John Burroughs, and he had dropped out by the time I moved over from middle school. Kids were afraid of him. I mean really terrified.”
“Why?”
Master of interrogation, he mused.
“Just teenage stuff mostly. Rumors, you know?”
“Humor me,” Jack smiled, laying on the charm.
“They said he killed someone.”
She let that hang in the air for a moment and stroked her baby’s fine blond hair. “Doesn’t sound like much now with everything that’s going on, but they were only fifteen.”
“Any ideas?” Jack asked, prompting.
“It doesn’t make any sense now, I mean, after what you’ve told me, but at the time his father had walked out on the family . . . or he hadn’t.”
Interesting, Jack thought, hoping there was more.
“That’s all I know. Johnny’s breaking Mom’s heart, but at this point there’s nothing we can do. We talked about an intervention, but he won’t listen to reason.”
“What does your brother do for a living, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Gang business, whatever that entails, and cars. My mother calls him a grease monkey. It’s killing her. He could have been a lawyer, or whatever, now he works on cars,” she said like a question. “The Angels used to be a car club is what I hear.”
“Does he live here?”
Diane shook her head and shifted the boy to her other hip.
“Johnny moves around a lot. We don’t even have an address for him. He calls us when he feels like it or needs his laundry done or wants a hot meal.”
“Would you be willing to give me his phone number?”
That got an instant shutdown. “No. He’s still my brother.”
Jack liked this young woman. He even respected her misplaced loyalty.
“Listen, Diane. If you hear from Johnny or hear anything regarding Hector, you can call me day or night at this number. It’s my cell. If Johnny needs help in any way, you can give him my number. I have some friends. I’ll do what I can.”
“Why would you help?”
Jack looked beyond her into the living room and saw the pride Diane’s mother took in the house. He observed the loving way Diane held her son, the pain she felt for her brother.
“He comes from solid people. He might be looking for a way out of a bad situation. Sometimes we make decisions early on in our lives that we’d change if given the opportunity.”
Jack handed Diane his card, another first.
“I still don’t understand,” she said.
“Payback,” he informed her. “I had people in my life who lent a hand to help me. Simple as that.”
Diane remained skeptical, but Jack had given her something to think about.
“Let me give you my number in case you hear anything,” she offered.
She ripped off a piece of a junk mail envelope from the front table and scribbled a number with one hand while expertly juggling the baby on her hip with the other.
“Do you know if Hector still lives at his mother’s address?” Jack asked.
“I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t think so. He’s a little old for that. It’d be queer. I don’t even know where the house is. Other side of the tracks, if you know what I mean. I only know that he exists because he turned my brother’s life to shit.”
That set the baby off again. Jack hadn’t heard a set of lungs like that on a kid since his son, Chris, was born.
—
The rain didn’t bother Hector. Nothing bothered him when he was behind the wheel of his blue Impala. He liked the thundering sound the heavy car produced under the floorboards as it powered through the flooded intersections, and the rooster tails his tires created that splashed oncoming cars and the occasional unlucky pedestrian.
Johnny was more moody than normal, Hector thought, and getting on his nerves. He should just make up with that cunt of a girlfriend of his and get on with it. They were building something large. No time for the weak.
The men had made a drop-off in Colton and now in Fontana, the last of the night.
Hector put on his right-turn signal and appreciated the click, click, rhythmic clicking sound it made as he pulled into the Speedway Garage on Eighteenth Street. He turned off the windshield wipers, shut the car down, and he and Johnny climbed out. “Yo, Hector, Johnny, como está, bros?”
The three men did sharp fist pops, and Frankie stood back and admired Hector’s ride.
“You ever sell, you sell to me.”
“Right, I’ll keep that in mind, ese,” Hector said, meaning over his dead body.
Frankie’s wiry frame was tattooed from the neck down. His thin bare arms were two solid sleeves of colored ink. He was one of the best mechanics in this part of the state. He worked on the dragsters that frequented the NHRA-sanctioned Fontana Auto Club Speedway, a NASCAR track, and a drag racer’s paradise.
There were two hydraulic lifts in the shop, which was designed like a man-cave garage. Spotless red enamel floors, every tool on the planet in custom-made shelving, surround sound stereo, three wide-screen televisions, a wet bar, rolled-and-tucked black leather couches, and large framed posters of drag-racing heroes of the past.
Hector loved to get loaded and watch the nitro funny cars spew flames out of their exhaust systems, like medieval dragons, hitting speeds of up to three hundred miles an hour. The smell of the spinning, smoking, burning rubber tires mixed with the nitrous oxide fumes, and then the launch of the twin rear-end parachutes—as the insane cars rocketed across the finish line at the end of the eighth-mile race—was like being in church. Not that Hector had many memories of church.
“Hey, they finally got that crazy Bin Laden fuck,” Frankie said, overly animated. He’d been dipping into his own product.
“Someone killed your father?” Johnny joked.
“Not funny.” Frankie was a vet and had done two tours of duty, one in Iraq, and then in Afghanistan, running the motor pool, and wa
s no one to fuck with. He had come back to the States a full-blown drug addict. “Asshole wasn’t waiting for any twenty-seven virgins. He was hooked into the same shit we were banging in Kabul.” He pronounced Kabul like “Kabool.”
Johnny laughed, knowing Frankie was referencing the pornography the Seals reportedly had found in the upper-floor room where Bin Laden had been killed.
Hector did a complete recon of the shop, making sure it was empty, and that the bathroom was clear, before he opened up the driver’s-side door of the Impala. He turned over the engine and then inserted a special key under the dashboard.
The metal grille of the radio speaker rose up from the dash like a periscope, exposing the trap, and he pulled out a kilo brick of cocaine wrapped in green cellophane.
Frankie grabbed a brown paper bag from one of his red-enameled Craftsman toolboxes on wheels, and handed over sixteen thousand dollars in rubber-banded hundreds. No need to taste the drugs or count the money. The rules were clearly delineated. Death would follow a fuckup.
Hector added the bag to the rest of the cash in the trap, turned the key in the opposite direction, and watched with pride as it disappeared back down into the dash. Even if the cops stopped them—unless they knew the compartment was there—nobody would find the drugs or the money.
“I need quantity,” Frankie said, the businessman now. “I can triple sales. I’m controlling four colleges, and they’ve got the hunger and the means. I’m glad you’re moving out of the crystal.”
“We’ve got something big in the works. Give us a few days, we’ll change your life,” Johnny said.
Hector nodded to Johnny: enough said, let’s fuckin’ book.
And then a cell phone chirped and all three men reached down. It was Johnny’s. He pulled it off his belt, checked the incoming number, walked to the far end of the shop, and answered.
He talked in hushed tones, longer than was comfortable in the present circumstance, and then clicked off. He could feel the two men burning holes in his back before he turned abruptly and caught them staring and wondering who was on the other end of the line. Fuck ’em. They couldn’t read the growing panic he felt behind his mirrored sunglasses.