by Rex Burns
A few minutes later, the door opened and a pale plastic sack of trash thumped onto the pavement. Another followed, and a female shape stepped into the darkness and dragged one of the bags toward a Dumpster at the corner of the building. The shape wrestled it in and turned and saw me against the wall.
“Aiii!”
“iShhhh—cuidado! La otra mujer quiere hablar conmigo.”
“iDios mío, señorl iUsted me asustó!”
She went inside quickly, and a moment later, the other woman came out, carrying a half-empty bag of trash.
“You’ve seen those people in the photographs?” I whispered in Spanish.
“No, senor. I’m sorry. I don’t even know them. But you’re looking for them to help them, yes?”
“Yes. Their relatives hired me to find them.”
“Hired you? Ah … .”
“What’s wrong?”
“I have no money.”
“Does that mean you want me to find someone?”
She spoke quickly before I might say I wouldn’t help. “Felicidad de Silva. My friend. She’s gone—disappeared.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” The woman stopped suddenly and listened. From inside the shop the man’s voice called “iCatalina!”
“iMomentito! she called back. “Here.” She fumbled inside her brassiere and handed me a folded piece of paper, warm from her flesh. “This is Felicidad’s boyfriend’s name. Can you help me? I don’t have any money now, but I will pay when I can—I promise!”
“iCatalina—vamos ahora!” the voice called again.
“Go on in—I’ll toss the trash.” I shoved the paper into a pocket and hoisted the last bag over to the Dumpster. The door shut behind her, and the silhouette of a man’s head filled the small wire-glass window as he peered suspiciously into the dark. I waited, motionless against the bulk of shadow that was the Dumpster, until the silhouette disappeared and the light clicked off.
Bunch was leaning against the Bronco’s fender when I reached the end of the alley. “I thought you were going to back me up.”
“You told me to suit myself, Dev. It suited me to wait here.” He slammed the door and started the car. “I sure as hell don’t want to be where I’m not wanted, old buddy, and as bitchy as you’ve been these last few days, I’m not sure I want to be anywhere around you.”
I had heard my own words on occasion lately and noted the irritability behind them. What’s worse, I’d even been aware of a carelessness about how my words hit people. It was as if I were trying to provoke and anger all those around me, and I didn’t seem to mind that I did. Some of it might have been the soreness in my shoulder and head. A lot of it, I decided, was because neither case seemed to be going anywhere. But none of it was because of Bunch. “I’m sorry, Bunch. I guess I’m stewing about the business. And that call from Costello—it still hasn’t come through.”
“Hey, no problem. Just give me a raise and all is forgiven.”
I lifted a middle finger. “Here it is.”
“I take it that’s a no?”
“And screw Senora Gutierrez and her cousin Nestor, too.”
“Uh-oh. Another lead gone sour.”
“Worse.” I pulled the slip of paper from my pocket. “There’s another illegal missing: Felicidad de Silva. She’s a friend of one of those women. She asked me to look for her.”
“Another one? Holy shit! This keeps up, INS won’t have to worry about illegals at all.”
I read the name on the paper—Rafael Garcia—and a telephone number. “This is her boyfriend. I told the woman I’d look into it for her.”
“For free?”
“Why not? That’s our going rate.” I added, “She said she’d pay later.”
“And you believed that? An old moneygrubber like you?”
“That promise is more than we got from the other two.”
Bunch pulled onto the apron of a gas station and coasted to the phone hood. “We’re building up points in heaven, Dev. Think of it that way.”
“Yeah. No good deed goes unpunished.”
The man’s worried voice gave me directions. His apartment was in one of those brick boxes that nestle between private homes over on the east side, the kind called “garden level” because the shrubbery comes in the windows.
“Rafael Garcia?”
He was a thin, nervous man, around thirty, with a trimmed mustache that emphasized the width of his mouth and its narrow lips, and reminded me vaguely of some Hispanic movie star who always smoked thin cigars. “I don’t know what happened to Felicidad. One day she just didn’t show up no more. We had it all set for a date, you know? She and Catalina and Maria Linda, they were all going to the movies. Only Felicidad was coming over here, you know? That’s the way we had to do it because of the old bat.”
“Mrs. Chiquichano?”
“Yeah. Her. She didn’t want any of the girls to make friends with nobody up here. Not until they worked their—” He stopped suddenly. “You guys with immigration? If you are, I got my green card. I’m legal, man.”
“We’re not with immigration. We’re looking for some illegals who have disappeared.”
“Some?”
“Felicidad is the third, so far.” I showed him Nestor’s picture. “You ever see this man?”
He looked at it and shook his head. “It happens all the time, man—they get picked up, you know? Pffft, they’re gone, like that.”
“We don’t think immigration got them.”
He scratched under his bony chin, long, ragged fingernails loud against the whiskers, and his eyebrows pinched together in a frown. “Immigration didn’t get them?”
“You weren’t surprised when your girlfriend disappeared?”
“Well, sure. But I thought la migra grabbed her. I figured one day she’d show up again when she came back across.” He shrugged, his plaid shirt bagging loosely on his frame. “It’s not like I could do nothing about it, you know? Who am I supposed to ask, immigration? The rinches? Who?”
“What’s ‘rinches’?” asked Bunch.
“Cops,” I said. “Border slang. Are you Mexican?”
He nodded. “From B.C. Sur—near Las Cruces.”
“You met Felicidad here in Denver?”
“Yeah. At the movies.”
“How long ago was that?” asked Bunch.
“A year, I guess. A little more, maybe. Why?” He edged away from a hovering Bunch.
“You seem a bit nervous, Rafael,” I said. “Are you nervous?”
“No! Well, a little, maybe. I don’t know who you are, do I?”
“All we’re doing is asking some questions,” Bunch said, smiling. “Don’t you want your girlfriend found?”
“Sure—yeah.”
“Then why don’t you tell us everything you remember about Felicidad—when you met her, what she told you about herself, the last time you saw her. Everything.”
He did, slowly at first and then filling in the details when he saw that it really was Felicidad we were interested in. And that we weren’t in much of a hurry to leave until he was through talking. He first sat beside Maria Linda in the movie—”She’s really hot-looking, you know? Big chichis, muy culona, a real buenota”—but Maria Linda wouldn’t even look at him, let alone talk. She was too scared—Mrs. Chiquichano had them all too scared to talk to anybody. He didn’t know that at the time; he just thought they were stuck up, which was kind of funny because he knew they were country types—real bembas—who wouldn’t know what to do with a real man if they had one between their legs. He saw them again next week and, just for a joke and because he thought they were stuck up, zeroed in on Felicidad. By the end of the movie, he had her eating out of his hand—literally: he was feeding her popcorn, which none of them had ever tasted because they only had enough money for the movie. Felicidad started telling him a little about herself, and they would meet once a week at the movies. P
retty soon the other two would go in to the film, and Felicidad would go with Rafael to his apartment. “That woman she works for, that zoquete, she owns Felicidad, man. And all the others, too. Brought them up from the south and owns them like slaves, man!”
“What do you know about Mrs. Chiquichano’s apartment house?”
“Her what?”
Bunch leaned toward him. “Her apartment house. And the people who live there.”
“Nothing, man! I never heard of it. We never talked about nothing like that.”
“Did Felicidad tell you much about Mrs. Chiquichano?” I asked.
“Said she’s a real bitch. Was real nice to her when she met her in El Sal, but once she had Felicidad up here, man, she turned.” The thin shoulders rose and fell. “I told Felicidad she was stupid to be a slave like that. She should move out, I told her.”
“Do you think that’s what happened?”
The fingernails rasped again. “Maybe. But I don’t think so. I mean, she would let me know.” He shrugged. “I mean, she’s hot for me, you know? She would tell me if she had her own place now.”
“Why didn’t she move out?”
“Scared. Scared if she did, the old bat would turn her in. And the others, too. That’s what she told them—they were all responsible for each other. If one of them screwed up, she’d turn in the whole bunch to la fucking migra.”
“Did she say where Mrs. Chiquichano got her money?”
“She didn’t have to, man—five years Felicidad promised to work for nothing. Room and board and that’s it. That’s where that coda gets her money.”
“Did Felicidad talk about moving in with you when her time was up?”
He looked uncomfortable and then shrugged again. “I’m married, man. I got a wife and kids in Las Cruces.”
“Felicidad knew about this?” Bunch asked.
“Yeah. I told her. After a while.”
“Just before she disappeared?”
“Naw. Nothing like that. Maybe six months ago. I had to go home for a while, so I told her.”
“She didn’t mind?”
“Sure she did. Cried like hell. But she came back, you know?” The mustache stretched a bit. “Women are like that with me.”
“Was she acting worried or afraid or in any way different before she disappeared?”
He didn’t answer, and I settled back in the fake leather chair to wait. Finally, he heaved a sigh. “A little, yeah.”
“What about?”
“She got herself pregnant, man.” He went on quickly, “I told her I’d pay for an abortion, but she didn’t want one. She said it was too far along.”
“What was she going to do?”
“I don’t know—she didn’t know. I told her I’d give her money—she could go somewhere else—whatever.” He looked up at Bunch. “Hell, man, I couldn’t do much for her, could I? All I got’s a green card. Immigration finds out I’m helping some illegal, I’m shit out of luck, right?”
“She was what, three months, four months, when she disappeared?”
“Almost six.”
“And,” said Bunch, “you were glad to see her go.”
“What the hell could I do, man? I offered to pay for an abortion—I even started looking for un matasanos.”
“But,” repeated Bunch, “you were glad to see Felicidad go.”
“What you mean, man?”
“Maybe you were so glad to see her go, you helped her along.”
“No, man! No way! She just stopped showing up, that’s all! Ask Maria Linda—ask Catalina. She just wasn’t there one morning. I mean, I asked, you know? I looked for her—hell, I was worried about her. I still am! I asked Maria Linda and she said Felicidad was just gone one morning. They came down for breakfast in la puta’s house and Felicidad wasn’t there. She wasn’t in her bed, she wasn’t anywhere. Just gone!”
CHAPTER 8
“DEV, SOMEBODY WOULD find something. Unless you’re a goddamn undertaker and can handle bodies wholesale, somebody is going to find something.”
We sat in the quiet office discussing the difficulties of making corpses disappear, even those that had no official existence or relatives to ask embarrassing questions.
“And why the hell would anybody kill them? What’s the motive?”
We’d gone over that, too: they had nothing to steal, they made no enemies, they were too frightened to be a threat to anyone. And alive, they were a good source of income for the Mother Superior, as Bunch began to call Mrs. Chiquichano. Alive, they were the ideal citizens of the republic; dead, they weren’t worth anything. There was no reason for them to be dead, but there was no place they seemed to disappear to. Agent Roybal of USINS said he had absolutely no records for any of the three—and he was very curious as to why we should be asking and how much we might know about other illegals. The hospitals, morgues, jails, and sheriff’s departments responded negatively to Denver police inquiries made by Bunch’s friend Sergeant Llewellen. Since the three didn’t vote or own property or buy anything on credit, there were no leads from those sources, and since they were born out of the country and used fictitious Social Security numbers and home addresses, those avenues were closed too. And Mrs. Chiquichano refused to answer our telephone calls or to reply to questions when we went by her house or office. Three disappearances, all linked to a woman who didn’t want to admit anything about them.
“She’d have to say she was harboring and exploiting illegals, Bunch. That’s a real good reason for not wanting to be tied to them.”
“She knows we’re not INS or the police.”
“Maybe she doesn’t believe us.”
“Sure. That’s why she threatened to call the cops if we went to her office one more time.” He shook his head. “She just doesn’t want anybody looking for them. Why?”
We had an answer for that question: because she had something to hide. But no answers to what she had to hide. So we turned to things we might get answers for.
“Lou got a lab report on that slug Archy found in the Healey, Dev. He says it’s a .357-caliber rifle round, probably an H and H Magnum. Son of a bitch can stop an elephant with one round. No wonder it went through almost the whole damned car.”
“A Magnum rifle load? That’s a pro’s weapon.”
“Not your average squirrel shooter’s rifle.”
“It has to be the bikers.”
“Yeah. What we figured. But he fired high on the first shot, and that’s an amateur’s mistake.”
“For which I’m grateful.”
“I don’t know,” said Bunch. “I hate to see incompetence in anything.”
“Thanks. Speaking of incompetence, I don’t suppose you’ve found out who owns the house that Mrs. Chiquichano’s office is in?”
“Armoor Investments.” Bunch cranked open the vent panel in the office’s arched window for the cool night breeze, and a whiff of chemical fumes tinged the air. “Christ, I don’t know which is worse, the piano player that used to be up there or the painter.”
“She’s a sculptor. She makes epoxy creations.”
“She breathes that crap much longer, she’ll be an epoxy creation. And, no, I haven’t found out who Armoor Investments is. The licensing bureau lists an S. Evangelou as the president, and they’re licensed to do any legal business, which doesn’t tell us dink.”
“Anything on Mr. Evangelou?”
“Mrs. No record, no Better Business Bureau complaints, no licensing problems. A four-square citizen.”
“There’s something in all this, Bunch. Damn it, I feel it—there has to be something we’re looking right at and not seeing.”
“We’ll have to keep looking until we do, then.” Bunch yawned mightily and said it was time to head for the barn.
“How’s your leg?”
“Fine. Muscles’re still a little sore, but it’s fine.”
“Tomorrow’s the day.”
“For what?”
“For when your rabies start to pop out.”
/>
“I don’t have rabies.”
“I don’t want you to bite me, Bunch.”
“I said I don’t have fucking rabies!”
“I’d feel safer if we had the dog.”
“And I told you I’m working on it, all right? I’m working on it—I got a dog trainer I’m talking to and she’s come up with an idea, all right?” He swung the door shut behind us and clumped down the stairs. “Jesus, you get something in your skull and you just keep after it, don’t you?”
“I don’t want you biting the customers either. It’s bad press for the business. Look what happened to Count Dracula.”
“Maybe that explains my sudden hunger for raw hamburger. Good night, Dev.”
I had a hunger too, but it wasn’t sudden. It was the continual gnawing that I should see something about Nestor and Chiquichano and the others. On the way home, I swung through the north end of the city and stopped at the sagging apartment house to knock on a few doors and ask a few more questions.
But it was no good; none of them would say anything about Nestor or the Frentaneses or de Silva. Even Senor Medina, who, according to Mrs. Gutierrez, sometimes played cards with Nestor, only shook his head.
“I know nothing, senor. Lo siento.”
“You’ve heard about Felix Frentanes being picked up?”
A worried silence that answered the question.
“La patrona made sure that everybody in the apartment’s heard about it, right?”
“Senor—”
“Okay, okay.” I should have known it would be a waste of time; you could feel the terror in the chill air of the dim hallways, in the tense silences behind each door. “There are people disappearing from this place and nobody knows what’s happening to them. You should at least try to look after each other.”
Medina, cropped hair showing a mix of black and silver, stared down at the strip of thin carpeting just inside the door. His lips were a tight line against his feelings as I pulled the door closed.
At home, my feet up on the cold fireplace and a mug of ale at my elbow, I thought of one more thing to try if it wasn’t too late for a phone call. Jerry Kagan, one of my classmates who elected medical school rather than law school after graduation, was setting up as a pediatrician; he was used to calls at night.