At What Cost

by James L'Etoile

  “He called you at work this morning?” John asked.

  Guzman looked up. “Yeah, how did you—never mind. Yeah, dude called me and said I had thirty minutes to take care of it. He must have figured out me and Danny peeked into those shipping cases.”

  “Who did you dump in the river?” Paula asked.

  “I don’t know. I went to where he told me to go and picked him up. Man, it was unnatural. Dude’s legs were folded back behind him, and he was tied up with some wire or something. It was sick.”

  “Why did you bring a wheelbarrow from work?” John asked.

  “He told me to.”

  “Where did you find the body?”

  “Parking garage in Old Sacramento. The package, which is what he called it, was supposed to be on the top level, behind some construction material. It was right where he said it would be, under some black plastic.”

  “See anyone around?” Paula asked.

  “Nobody. The top level only had a couple of cars parked there. I didn’t see nobody in them, and I looked to make sure no one was gonna see me load the body.”

  “So what next?” John said.

  “I parked next to the construction pile, dropped the wheelbarrow from the truck, and loaded the body into the wheelbarrow. It was so cold, and that smell, I remember that. And it was lighter than I thought it would be. I grabbed some of the plastic and covered the dude so he wasn’t lookin’ at me.”

  “Why dump him in the river?”

  “The dude told me to leave my truck parked in the garage and wheel the package to the riverboat. I was running out of time, so I did it pretty quick. Ran the wheelbarrow right off the pier near the back end of the boat. I think I might have hit the side. I saw the wheelbarrow sink, and the plastic floated away, and that dude’s eye holes was starin’ at me as he hit the water.” Guzman shivered.

  “You never saw the guy, you only talked to him on the phone, is that right?” John prodded.

  Guzman nodded.

  “What do you remember about his voice?” John continued.

  “Cold. What I remember is that the dude was dead-calm cold about what he needed me to do. And what would happen to my family if I didn’t do exactly as he said.”

  “Where is your family?” Paula asked.

  Guzman looked up at the mention of his family, eyes glazed slightly. “They’re safe. I’m not saying more than that. I can’t trust no one when it comes to them.”

  “Fair enough,” she said.

  “Why did he call you?” John asked.

  “Danny and me, we broke his rules. We looked at what was being shipped, and then I went and talked to you guys. He knew I talked to you.”

  “You ever see where the containers were getting shipped off to?”

  “No. It’s not like they had labels or shit. That was worked out with the cargo terminal in advance. The guy, the one who Danny met at the airport, always acted like he expected us. He’d direct us where to park, where to unload—stuff like that.”

  “You sure you never got a look at the guy Danny worked for? You ever get a name?”

  “No, not me. Danny handled that. The only guy I ever saw was at the airport when we dropped the shit off. It was always the same dude. Long black hair, pulled back in a ponytail. Asian, maybe.”

  “All right. You want to call your family before we take you in?”

  Guzman’s face brightened. “You’d let me do that?”

  John fished his cell phone out and said, “What’s the number?”

  Guzman gave John his wife’s cell number, and he tapped the keys on the phone to connect the call. He held the phone to the gangbanger’s ear.

  “Hey, baby, it’s me. You get to that place we talked about? You get there and stay put till I call again, okay?” He listened for a moment, looked at John, and then said, “She wants to talk to you.”

  John pulled the phone back from Guzman and held it to his own ear. “This is Detective Penley.” After a moment, he said, “Yes, Mrs. Guzman, your husband is fine. He got himself into a bit of trouble that we are trying to sort out right now.”

  John listened to the excited woman on the other end of the connection and tried to calm her. “Mrs. Guzman, please do as your husband asked. He only wants you to be safe. Are you certain that no one followed you?”

  The handcuffed gangster tensed in the chair as he waited for a response.

  John shook his head. “You keep to yourself and call me if you get the feeling that someone is watching you, understand?” He gave her his cell number and let Guzman say a few words before he disconnected the call.

  “Thank you for that,” Guzman said.

  “No problem.”

  John lifted the man out of the chair and motioned to the battered front-door frame. Guzman took a few steps, stopped, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I shouldn’t have shot at you. I was scared for my family.”

  “When someone comes between you and your family, you do what you gotta do,” John said.

  Guzman walked to the sedan unassisted but flanked by Paula and John. A group of neighbors and curiosity seekers, drawn by the sound of gunfire, was assembled on the far sidewalk. John opened the rear door, placed his prisoner inside, and looked across the roof at the gathering crowd.

  “Hey, Mario? Anybody over there you don’t know?”

  Guzman looked. “They’re all locals. Wait, that dude on the right, the one with the black baseball cap, he’s not from around here. I’ve seen him when I was with Danny. At the warehouse! He gave Danny a key to the warehouse on R Street!”

  The man with the ball cap held his head so that the visor angled downward, obscuring his facial features. He wore a dark-blue canvas jacket, much too warm for the weather, and had his hands shoved deep in the pockets.

  “I got him,” Paula said as she stepped over the curb into the street.

  The man in the cap backed into the crowd, and by the time Paula reached the middle of the street, he vanished, concealed by the noise and movement. She rose up on her toes but couldn’t locate him. The onlookers seemed to have swallowed him. A bottle shattered in the street, and stale beer spilled on her pant leg. The gathering turned malignant.

  From deep in the crowd, a gunshot sounded. Panic spread and bystanders ran in all directions, anticipating more gunfire. “The cops are shooting,” one fleeing man called out. Paula crouched against a car parked on the street after the shot went off. It was close, and she could smell the burnt gunpowder. She glanced over her shoulder and saw John tucked behind their sedan, gun drawn.

  The sidewalk cleared in seconds and left nothing behind except for shards of another broken bottle like the one tossed at Paula. The man in the ball cap had disappeared in the panic and confusion.

  Paula peeked from her spot behind the parked car and found nothing, no bullet-riddled body, no blood trail, not even a shell casing—nothing. She stood and holstered her weapon.

  John did the same and stepped into the street toward his partner. He pointed to the far street corner.

  Paula sorted out the fleeing bystanders and started in their direction on foot, peering in open doorways and windows.

  With Guzman secure in the rear seat, John pulled the sedan around the block and met Paula when she emerged around the corner. “You sure about that guy? He gave you a key to the warehouse?” she asked Guzman.

  “Not me. He gave it to Danny. It was him. The way he moved, kind of like a boxer, you know? Always moving, staying in front of Danny. I’m sure of it.”

  Paula started to the passenger door and stopped midstride. “Hang on for a sec.”

  “What ya got?” John said.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, Paula went to a line of dumpsters behind a nearby restaurant. Discarded sesame-chicken scraps attracted black flies from all of Northern California. The three blue waste containers were arranged against the cinderblock wall, and the insects swarmed around the bins. All three bins were identical, and Paula s
watted flies from her path to the centermost container.

  “This one’s been disturbed,” she said.

  John stood at the driver’s door, pulled his weapon, and covered his partner. “What are you, the dumpster whisperer?”

  She took her weapon from its holster without a sound, crept to the side of the dumpster, and with her free hand, shoved the lid up. The metal clanged off the cinderblock, and Paula peered over the rim behind the muzzle of her weapon. She paused a moment, then holstered her gun.

  “That would have been too easy,” John said.

  Paula pulled on a pair of latex gloves, stepped up on one of the exposed ribs on the side of the dumpster, and threw her leg over. Her head bobbed below the rim of the trash container, and she surfaced with a large, paper Chinese takeout container.

  “I would have stopped for lunch,” John said, holstering his weapon.

  “They weren’t serving .38-caliber Smith & Wessons at my usual place.” Paula held the container higher and displayed the wooden grip of a revolver covered in leftover rice noodles.

  “Nice find,” John said. “Think it belonged to our shooter?”

  “Smells like it. Fresh-burnt powder.”

  Paula fished an evidence bag out of the car and sealed the gun and chicken chow fun inside.

  “Seriously, how did you know what dumpster to look in?”

  “The flies.”

  “Yeah, what about ’em?”

  “There were more flies buzzing around that center dumpster than the other two. Something stirred them up. Had to be our guy.”

  She got back in the car, rested the evidence bag between her feet, and buckled up. A smirk creased her face.

  John shook his head. “My partner is lord of the flies.”

  A midday booking at the Sacramento County Main Jail generally took an hour. Guzman was a cooperative, frequent guest at the inn, so the sheriff’s personnel were able to strip him out, inventory and store his personal property—which consisted of blue jeans, a wife-beater undershirt, boxers, socks, and work boots—without delay. Guzman had nothing in his pockets; he’d kept no wallet, keys, or cash with him. It was as if he’d expected to end up in the jail’s receiving and release holding cells. Or the morgue.

  Some gang members routinely gave false names and phony information during booking, a game played for the sole purpose of messing with the jail staff, causing more work for them when live-scan fingerprints revealed outstanding warrants. Guzman willingly gave them all the updated information on his address and next of kin—except where his next of kin could be found.

  John asked that Guzman be housed in a single cell. He told the booking officer that Guzman was on the outs with the West Block Norteños and needed segregated housing for protection. Guzman started to protest placement in a cell that might get him labeled as a protective-custody case.

  “I’m no snitch,” he said.

  John stepped close and said, “No, but we need to keep you safe, and I don’t know how this killer is targeting his gang member victims.” He didn’t mention that the killer seemed to know every step of their investigation and had left a gift-wrapped kidney for him.

  Guzman sat on the wooden bench in his holding cell and leaned against the cold block wall. His shoulders sagged, head held down, and he let loose a long exhale, a man deflated, trapped. “If he’s half as powerful as Danny thought he was, it won’t matter where you put me. I’m a dead man.”

  Paula, as the junior detective, finished the last of the booking paperwork and joined John at the holding tank as two jail officers escorted Guzman out of the intake area to one of the housing units in the multistory downtown jail.

  “You think Guzman’s right, don’t you? The killer can reach out and touch him, even in here?” she said.

  “He was sitting right outside Guzman’s place. If we hadn’t gotten to him first . . .”

  “We should let the techies work over the gun. Maybe they’ll be able to pull a print out of that mess.”

  John grabbed at his belt before he had a chance to respond. The vibration surprised him. He felt the source—the pager issued by the transplant center.

  He snatched the pager from his belt, nearly ripping it from his pants. The familiar black phone number stretched across the screen, a numeric cocktail of hope and frustration.

  “It’s the transplant center.”

  John’s cell phone rang, and the caller ID marked the incoming call from Melissa.

  John couldn’t make his hand move fast enough. He fumbled with the keys on the phone and pressed the green connect button.

  “Mel, I just got . . . when? You’ll pick up Tommy? I’ll meet you there.”

  “What’s going on?” Paula asked.

  “Melissa got a call from Tommy’s doctor. They have a kidney, and the surgical team is scheduling Tommy for surgery. I gotta go. It’s happening! Melissa and Tommy are on their way.”

  John shoved the phone and pager in his pants pocket and bolted for the door out of the booking area. The lock for the door was electronic and operated by an officer in central control. A square, perforated steel panel covered the intercom system, and a worn button stuck through a hole in the panel. John hit the button with his fist, faced left for a closed-circuit television camera, and spoke, “Detectives Newberry and Penley, sally-port door.”

  “Have a good day, Detectives,” a voice sounded over the speaker. The door pulled back along its track, and John squeezed through sideways when the door parted enough. Paula followed into a rectangular hallway where arresting officers secured their weapons before entering the main jail. John had experienced long delays in the sally port when shift changes occurred, when disturbances in another part of the jail diverted staff, or when the officer in central control had something to prove to city cops. He let out a sigh of relief that this wasn’t one of those occasions.

  John quickened his step toward their car and unlocked the doors.

  “Give me the keys. I’ll drive you,” Paula said.

  The keys in his hand jangled from a slight tremor. He tossed the keys to Paula and jogged around to the passenger side.

  She started the motor, navigated through the last electronic jail gate, and turned onto H Street. She activated the undercover sedan’s red lights mounted in the grill and sped through the traffic down Fifth Street, toward Broadway. Paula hit the gas on Broadway and pushed toward the hospital.

  “You’ve got to be excited, right? Tommy’s getting his transplant after all this time.”

  John gripped his knees with his hands, knuckles white. “I’d like to get there alive to see it.”

  Paula shot a glance at the speedometer; the needle hovered around seventy. She let off the gas and no longer threatened the inner-city land-speed record.

  “This day,” John said. “We’ve waited for this day for a long time. I’m still worried. There is so much that can go wrong—complications, drug interaction, delayed graft function, and rejection. Now we have a whole new set of fears.”

  “New fears means Tommy has a fighting chance.”

  The tan facade of Central Valley Hospital loomed ahead, and Paula swooped across oncoming traffic and bounded into the parking lot. She turned off the red lights and circled to the patient-loading zone.

  Before the sedan stopped, John had the door open and one foot on the pavement. He hopped out, ducked his head back inside, and said, “Thanks. I’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as we know anything. And don’t do anything if you get a pop on the gun.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  John sat back in the car. “Stay cool for now.” John’s face was grim and ashen.

  “You don’t think this has anything to do with Tommy’s transplant?” Paula held the evidence bag.

  “I don’t know what to think. But I don’t like the setup, either.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  John got out of the car once more and said, “Whatever I have to do to keep Tommy safe.” He turned and jogged ins
ide the hospital’s lobby.

  TWENTY

  John spotted Melissa across the lobby. She clutched Tommy close, a protective gesture and one that comforted her as much as her son. Tommy had his hospital backpack, crammed with books, video games, and personal things meant to keep him occupied and comfortable. Melissa stood when she saw her husband across the vast waiting room. She waved. Instead of the relief that the day was finally here for their son, Melissa’s face betrayed something more, a mix of fear and anxiety.

  John spotted Melissa with Trisha Woods, who had complained earlier about John’s attempts to access transplant records. Was she here to spoil this, too?

  Melissa hugged John as soon as he was within range. She felt stiff and pulled away from his embrace. Tommy glanced up from the seat and quickly refocused on the video game in his hands.

  “Where’s Kari?” John asked.

  “She’s with Andrea,” Melissa said. Andrea was Melissa’s younger sister, whom Kari thought was the coolest person on earth.

  Trisha took out her clipboard and pen, tapping it on a form. “Now, on to Tommy’s medications. When were the last doses of Tacrolimus and prednisone?”

  “Noon today,” Melissa said.

  “I didn’t take the Tacrolimus. That’s the tan-and-white capsule, right?” Tommy asked.

  A quicksilver ball formed in John’s chest. The prescription bottles that had spilled in his car when he transported the Cardozo girl. Was Tommy’s Tacrolimus among them?

  “What? Why didn’t you take it?” Melissa asked.

  “It gives me the shakes. I can’t play my video games without screwing up. The guys at school make fun of me when I take it.”

  Trisha got on one knee in front of the boy and asked, “When was the last time you took it?”

  Tommy’s eyes flicked up to his mother. “Maybe a week.”

  “Tommy! Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I knew you’d get mad.”

  Melissa sat on the sofa next to her son and placed an arm around him. The small tear she noticed in his eye caused one of her own. “Honey, I’m not mad. I’m surprised, I guess. Dr. Anderson told us that all your medications were important.”