by Jeff Shelby
“I’m not talking to you,” he said, trying to regain his composure.
I slipped my gun out of the back of my shorts and held it casually in front of me. “Then I’m going to shoot you.”
He took another step back, but I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him toward me, jamming the barrel of the gun into his stomach.
“Choose,” I said, our faces inches apart. “Right now. Talk or get shot.”
Randall was a big guy who I’d managed to reduce to a little puddle of fear. I hated him for it.
“Okay,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “Talk. I’ll talk.”
I slipped the gun back into my waistband, and we walked into the hotel and took the elevator up to his room. He pressed himself up against the far wall of the enclosed space as we rode. I stared at him.
His room was at the top, a magnificent view of the ocean out his window and balcony. The room was bright and large. A wet bar stood in one corner, and Randall went over to it.
“Drink?” he asked.
“No,” I said, standing in front of the doors to the balcony in case he wanted to throw himself over it. If he got any wild ideas, like trying to charge at me, I knew I had enough space between us to draw my gun.
He dropped some ice cubes into a glass and poured four fingers of Scotch over the ice. He sucked half of it down immediately, then took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Why did Kate take the hit for you?” I asked.
He swirled the ice and alcohol in his glass. “What hit?”
I grabbed the small digital clock off the nightstand, ripped the plug out of the wall, and fired it at him.
He ducked and it sailed over his left shoulder, smashing against the wall.
He came up, flushed. “Jesus!”
“I talked to Ken,” I said, the anger and frustration pouring out of me. “He explained to me exactly what kind of piece of shit you are.” I walked toward him. “You wanna drag this out? Fine. I will keep throwing things at you until you tell me what the hell was going on.”
He took a step back and bumped into the counter behind him. His eyes were twitchy and he looked like he was trying to make a decision.
He set his drink down. “Kate covered for me.”
“I know that. Why?”
“Because I made her.”
We stood there, staring at one another, his words hanging in the air between us.
“How?” I asked, resisting the urge to hit Randall as hard as I could.
Randall took a deep breath, looking nervous and pale. “I’d already had a run-in with…the police. I couldn’t afford another. I’m sure Ken told you that.”
I didn’t say anything.
“She was using again,” he said, shifting his weight from his right foot to his left. “Not enough for others to catch on, but just enough to stay in the groove. I told her if she didn’t cover for me, I’d tell Ken and Marilyn that she was off the wagon.”
I just looked at him, wondering what Kate had ever seen in him.
“She didn’t want them to know,” he said. “Disappointing them was always her biggest fear.” He smirked over the glass at me. “I think you learned that firsthand, though, didn’t you?”
I took another step forward and Randall nearly dropped his glass. It wasn’t as good as punching him, but it would have to do for the moment.
“She knew they’d insist on rehab again and there was no way she was gonna do that crap again,” Randall said after a moment, his cocky bravado still there, but toned down a bit. “It was either help me or deal with her parents. I knew she’d choose me.”
“So you blackmailed her,” I said.
He shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as taking advantage of the situation, but you’re probably right.” Randall emptied his drink and poured another. “She always helped me out of my problems.”
I tried to stay under control. “She didn’t at the hospital.”
He smiled at the glass. “No, that was one she couldn’t fix. That was all mine.”
I stayed quiet, not letting him off the hook.
“I went to the hospital, coming off a weekend binge,” he said, settling back against the counter. “It was a mistake. We’d been high all weekend. Almost operated on a patient before somebody stepped in.”
“Shouldn’t you have been arrested?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “No doubt. At the very least, fired. But I have a great attorney. Hospitals and insurance groups are very frightened of good attorneys.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that it couldn’t have been a lie.
“I was admonished,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Written up. Warned that if it happened again, I was done.” He paused, looking like he was trying to remember the scene. “When she got stopped, she didn’t know it was in the car. So I gave her the choice. Take the blame and tell your parents the truth, that it was mine. Or tell the cops the truth and deal with everything I would tell Ken and Marilyn.”
I tried to picture Kate and what she might’ve been thinking. Maybe it was a last-ditch attempt to save her marriage, no matter how perverse in its thinking. As I stood in the room with her husband, I became certain that he was nowhere near worth the effort she had made.
Or perhaps she simply couldn’t stomach the thought of disappointing her parents again.
“Ken set the deal up,” he continued. “I wasn’t implicated. It seemed like it would work out fine.”
“Sending your wife into a foreign country with the guy who controls the drug corridors between the U.S. and Mexico seemed fine?” I asked, my voice rising. “You seriously thought that?”
He finished off the second drink and set the empty glass on the counter. “They assured us she would be completely protected. The DA, the police, the DEA agents all told us that she wouldn’t be in any danger.”
“Famous last words.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “They made it sound like she’d never be alone, never without protection.” He paused. “Kate wasn’t afraid.”
That I believed. The Kate I had known was fearless. Try anything once. Live for the moment.
“After the first time, we relaxed,” he said, his voice straining a bit. “She said it was fairly easy. Everyone was friendly. There were guns, but she said it was like being in a bank. A little security, but very professional.”
“What did she say about Costilla?” I asked.
“Not much. Polite, friendly, somewhat intimidating, but nothing like what she expected. She said he looked like a rich businessman.”
I remembered Costilla in the empty storefront in San Ysidro. Until the shooting started, I probably could have agreed with that description.
“When did you realize she was missing?” I asked.
“When the DEA called me,” Randall said, his face sagging slightly. “They thought she might be with me.” He stopped and rubbed his chin. “Obviously, she wasn’t.”
“Obviously?” I asked.
He refocused on me. “What?”
“You didn’t see her after she disappeared?”
A fire started to burn in his eyes. “No, I didn’t see her. And I don’t think I like the implication.”
I laughed. I had to. The way rich people talk can be amusing. I’m not sure that I had ever used the word “implication” in a sentence before.
“You don’t, huh?” I said. “Well, let me tell you what I don’t like. I don’t like the fact that you are a junkie. I don’t like the fact that you pulled Kate into that life with you.”
“Now wait a second…” he said, trying to defend himself.
“I don’t like the fact that you cheated on Kate,” I continued, ignoring him. “I don’t like the fact that you hung her out to dry because you were too much of a pussy to face it yourself. I don’t like the fact that I found Kate in a car trunk. And what I really don’t like, Randall, is that all of this, all of this shit, keeps curling back to you.”
He stood there, his jaw set, unsure of wha
t to say. He walked around to the bar and over to the balcony. I didn’t move and he had to turn to the side to slide by me.
I turned around and watched him stand there for a moment, looking out the window. Part of me wished he would jump.
“I didn’t kill Kate,” he said quietly.
My head hurt. I didn’t know who to believe. Randall was a manipulator and no matter how much of what he’d told me was true, I would never trust him. He’d given me no reason to.
“When Marilyn said she was hiring you,” he said, turning around to face me, “she said you’d find her. She had no doubt.”
“Why’s that?”
A thin smile creased his lips. “She said you’d probably never gotten over her and that you’d jump at a chance to get back in touch with her.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Jump was a strong word. I had tried to resist taking the job, knowing that working for the Criers was something that would complicate my life. But, in the end, the chance to possibly see Kate again had been enough to coerce me. I hated the fact that Marilyn had been right.
“I guess this isn’t what you expected,” Randall said, shaking his head.
“No, it isn’t,” I said, clenching my teeth.
I snapped my fist into his jaw, watched him sag to the floor, and left.
31
I knew Carter would still be in surgery, and since I couldn’t think of any valid reason to avoid talking to Liz, I headed downtown.
My new best friend was waiting at the elevators to go up when I arrived.
“Detective,” I said, resisting the urge to pat him on the head.
John Wellton, white dress shirt, red tie, gray slacks, glanced in my direction, did half a double take and scowled. “About damn time.”
“For what?”
“For you to get your ass in here and do the report,” he growled.
The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and we stepped in. I pushed three and he looked at me.
“How’s your pal?” he asked.
“In surgery.”
We stared up at the changing lights that illuminated the floor numbers. The wheels and cables hummed, and we slowed down as we approached the third floor.
“Liz is out right now,” he said, stepping off.
“Should I come back?” I asked, knowing the answer.
He grinned, shook his head, and motioned for me to follow him.
His office was across the hall from Liz’s, exactly the same except that he didn’t even have the calendar on the wall. He pointed to the empty chair opposite his desk. I refrained from asking if he needed a booster seat.
Wellton shuffled some papers on the desktop, then looked at me. “Liz says you’re a pain in the ass, but that you’ll be pretty straight up.”
“I’ve heard that about me,” I said.
He shook his head, unamused. “You’re not nearly as funny as you think are. Most people aren’t. Whatever. Tell me what happened.”
I told him what happened. He listened intently, making a few notes every minute or so. No head nods or shakes, just sat still, listening.
“You hadn’t seen the shooters before?” he asked, when I’d finished.
“No.”
“Not at San Ysidro?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair. “Fine. Off the record.”
“No, they weren’t there. These guys didn’t look like part of Costilla’s regular hitters.”
He picked up a pencil and clenched it in his fist. “I’m gonna assume your friend will tell us the same story.”
“Don’t see why he wouldn’t. It’s the truth.”
Wellton nodded. “Sure. Wanna know what I think?”
“Not really.”
“I think Costilla’s gonna kill you, Braddock,” he said. “Each time you scamper away from him, you make him look bad. And he gets more pissed. You shot up his guys twice now. No way he’s gonna forget you.”
I let that sit in my stomach for a moment. It didn’t feel good. But I knew he was right.
“That’s not enough to get you off all this?” he asked, raising a dark eyebrow. “To just walk away?”
I knew it was a rhetorical question, but I answered anyway. “No, not now.”
“Now?” he asked. “Why now?”
“I may have gotten his guys twice,” I said, “but he put one friend in the hospital and I think he put another in the trunk of her car.”
Wellton stared at me for a minute. “I guess. With your buddy in the hospital, you got others to hang with?”
I knew that he was asking if I had some other protection. “I’ll be alright,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Okay. But Liz’s rules are still on the table. You fuck it up, we’re gonna bring you in.”
I stood up. “We’ll see.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I’m sure we will.”
I turned to go.
“Braddock.”
I turned around.
“Last night,” he said, leaning forward, looking uncomfortable. “I didn’t need to get all over you like I did, with your friend and everything.”
His remark caught me off guard. “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
A flicker of a smile danced at the corner of his mouth. “But I don’t trust tall suckers like you.”
I didn’t want to reward him with a laugh, but it was tough keeping it out of my voice. “And I’m not comfortable with anyone looking me right in the knee.”
He raised his middle finger, and I waved good-bye.
32
I knew that I still wouldn’t be able to see Carter, which left me pondering a move that I wasn’t at all thrilled with. Everything continued to point in Costilla’s direction, no matter where the information came from. If I was going to truly make any progress, I was going to have to have another conversation with Alejandro Costilla.
I resisted the urge to head home and into the comfort of the waves, instead taking the long way out of downtown. I pointed the Blazer south down Harbor Drive along San Diego Bay, past the convention center, Petco Park, and the naval shipyards before making up my mind to head farther south into Chula Vista on I-5.
Yuppie suburbs were popping up in the hills of Bonita and the eastern end of Chula Vista and Otay Mesa. Million-dollar homes were the result of immense population growth in the nineties. The United States Olympic Committee had even seen fit to build a new, state-of-the-art training center in an area adjacent to Lower Otay Lake.
But the western side of Chula Vista hadn’t benefited from the influx of money and people and had remained what it had always been when I was growing up—a dangerous place.
I exited at E Street and went east. Single-story box homes lined the streets, iron bars on the windows signifying the presence of the gangs that ruled the area. Some of the billboards advertised in Spanish, the cars rode lower to the ground, and the stares of the people on the sidewalks became longer and uglier.
The Enrique Camarena Recreation Center was just south of Eucalyptus Park at 4th and C and stood out like a lost child in a shopping mall. Built in honor of the slain DEA agent, the center was only about six years old, its newer brick and glass clashing with the crumbling stucco and concrete of the neighborhood that surrounded it. I parked in the lot and went inside.
An older Hispanic lady sat behind the front desk. Thick gray hair bundled on top of her head, deep lines around tired eyes, and overweight arms poking out of a purple tank top she had no business wearing.
“Help you?” she asked, her eyes barely leaving the magazine in front of her.
“Looking for Ernie,” I said.
She lifted her chin in a direction that I took meant down the hall. “Second door on your right.”
As I walked toward Ernie’s office, I heard the squeaking of sneakers on a clean hardwood floor, along with shouts and the bouncing of a ball. I stopped at the second door and knocked.
“Yo,” a voice called from behind.
“Come in.”
I stepped in and Ernie Romario looked at me. “You lost, Braddock?”
“Just checking up on you,” I said, smiling.
“Bullshit,” he said.
He stood and extended his arm across the desk. He wore white athletic shorts and a tight gray tank top that exposed lean, tattooed arms. Faces of women mostly, a couple of crosses thrown in for good measure. The black hair on his scalp was shaved down, and a barely visible goatee encircled his mouth.
We shook hands.
“Sit,” he said.
The office was small. A tiny metal desk, with a chair on either side. The walls were covered with photos and articles detailing the accomplishments of the Camarena Center. Most featured kids that had used the Center as a place to hang out and then gone on to bigger and better things. Most of the photos featured those kids with Ernie and his staff.
I pointed to the pictures. “Still famous.”
He shrugged his shoulders, the tattoo of an angel on his left one dancing. “The kids, brother. The kids are the famous ones.”
Ernie had gone to high school with Carter, Liz, Kate, and me. His parents had gotten him transferred out of the South Bay to avoid the gangs and violence that permeated the high schools where they lived. He’d played football with Carter and me, a nasty little defensive back with a chip on his shoulder. He knew he didn’t fit in at our school and that was okay. During football season, he hung with us, but when it was over, he kept to himself. He avoided the gangs in Chula Vista and San Ysidro, but didn’t abandon his friends from the neighborhood. I’d always surmised that was why he decorated his body with the ink, to prove to the homies that he was still one of them, even if he wasn’t.
He’d gone to State with me, majored in recreation and education, and was the first and only director that the Camarena Center had hired. He made sure that everyone was welcome, but that the violence and crap that littered the streets around the building stayed outside. Being a local, the violent little thugs that ran the neighborhood respected Ernie and what he was doing. They stayed away from the building and didn’t bother those entering it.
“Don’t tell me you were in the neighborhood,” Ernie said, a sly grin creeping onto his face. “I know better.”