Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  “I’ve never fully thanked you for saving me.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “My I sit? Unless you object to speaking with someone like me.”

  “Talking to people like you is how we detectives gain insight into workings of the criminal mind. Pull out a chair.”

  “My date should arrive shortly.” Thornton moved slowly when she let go of the cane. It remained upright on its three feet. She settled into her seat and turned to Lewis. “Detective Lewis, good evening.”

  He nodded and drank beer so he didn’t have to say anything.

  “What I want to say”—Thornton now giving all her attention to Aragon—“is I never should have confronted the Silvas alone about their extortion of Judge Diaz. That was insanely foolish. When I learned what was going on, I should have gone directly to the police instead of trading calls with very evil men.”

  Aragon said, “Start over. You were confronting Benny and Rigo Silva. That’s what you call hanging by your wrists over a vat of flesh-eating soup?”

  “I’m sorry about your face. It makes you look tougher, scars on the outside to match those on the inside.”

  “I was enjoying my meal here.”

  “We understand much about each other, don’t we? I was going to say, Judy Diaz came to me for advice on how to handle the blackmail attempt. I told her, don’t give in. Once you do, they own you. I believed since I’ve represented so many individuals like the Silvas, I could convince them they were headed for more trouble than their scheme was worth. I’d suspected, but not until Benny Silva told me did I know, that Lily Montclaire had been working for them, setting us up. She told us Andrea, Cassandra Baca, was a friend, well, lover, attending community college.”

  Aragon and Lewis stopped eating, Thornton talking now to the space between them, not making eye contact.

  “She showed us an ID once. A community college student card. I wanted to be assured she was old enough to drink legally. I suppose that fake ID is with her clothes, whatever happened to them.”

  Aragon folded her arms and leaned back in her chair.

  “I get it. You’re breaking radio silence. We’re getting a preview of what we’ll hear in your lawyer’s opening statement.”

  “Oh, you’ll hear it tonight if you watch the news. I was saying, on the Griego case, the one with the misguided young men facing each other with bullet-proof vests and those little guns. I forget what drug they were using.”

  “PCP.” It was Lewis, beer glass out of his hand. Balled fists on the table.

  “Thank you. Lily brought the two guns to me, and insisted I hold one. She told me, press that black button, look how the barrel pops up.”

  “Why weren’t her fingerprints on the gun?”

  “I’ve thought about that. I remember she put it on my desk in a plastic bag. I took it out. I don’t remember seeing her handle the gun with bare hands.”

  “Where were the guns all this time?”

  “I presume in Lily’s house. I’d instructed her to return the weapons. It wasn’t our job to warehouse weapons for clients. That could be misconstrued as obstruction of justice.”

  “Sure you did,” Lewis said.

  “She ignored my instructions.”

  “So you were being a hero?” Aragon rocked in her chair. “That’s the story you’ve cooked up these past months?”

  “No, you were the hero, detective. I was the fool. Arrogant, naïve, believing my status as an officer of the court meant anything to Benny and Rigo Silva. I think my only heroic moment was when I used my last ounce of strength and willpower to overcome the pain. When I told you I had short legs. I couldn’t finish the sentence. I used the Durango once, after Lily. The seat was way back. I’m glad you discerned what I was trying to explain under severe duress.”

  “You could have told us when you were recovering in the hospital.”

  “By then I was a criminal defendant. My advice to clients is never talk to the police. You’re never helping yourself.”

  “You’re talking now. You’ve worked out your script.”

  “The heart of all the charges against me, state and federal, is Lily Montclaire, who will disappoint everybody but me when she takes the Fifth. For now I’m enjoying my suspension from the active practice of law, for which I should thank Walter Fager. He and his gang of bitter losers gave me the vacation I would never give myself. All I have to do is report to a supervising attorney and pay my bar dues.” She waved across the room, silver and turquoise bands jangling on her wrist. “There’s my date. Let me introduce you. Fred!”

  A portly man, silver hair swept back on his head, white pants under a navy blue blazer, returned her wave. He wore one of those dress shirts with a solid white collar, though the rest was striped in tones of blue.

  Thornton struggled to get up. Aragon and Lewis didn’t move to help her. Fred came to the table and steadied her with a hand under her arm until she found her balance with the cane. She introduced him, Fred Norman, her supervising attorney.

  “My probation officer.” She beamed, and he beamed back.

  Norman stuck out a pudgy, pink hand, French cuffs at the end of his sleeve, a blue stone in the cuff link.

  “You were the detective who rescued Ms. Thornton. I’m honored. She’s looking terrific, isn’t she?”

  Aragon eyed Thornton’s black leather boots, a fake foot and calf in there, the tight leather pants showing off her thighs. “Not bad. But I bet she holds up the line passing through courthouse security.”

  Aragon and Lewis watched them take a table against the wall, the most secluded spot on the floor.

  “He’s banging her,” Lewis said.

  Norman pulled out a chair and helped Thornton sit. As he was pushing her in, his hand trailed along her upper arm.

  Aragon looked at her steak, now cool, in a shallow pond of blood. “Let’s get out of here, grab some beer in cans. And find somewhere with a better view.”

  It took some talking to get Javier and Serena out of the mountains for the 305th Santa Fe Fiesta. She’d tried the “C’mon, it’ll be a blast” approach, saying their children could march in the Desfiles de los Niños, dress up however they wanted, bring any kind of animal, see what Santa Fe kids were like. She took a run at family pride, reminding Javier the Aragons had entered New Mexico in 1598 with Don Juan de Oñate, his full name ending in “y Salazar,” something she’d learned from Benny Silva.

  “Denise,” Javier said, “it’ll take more than ancient history to get me into Santa Fe.”

  And Serena was still angry. She was an Armijo. They’d arrived on the Camino Royal when New Mexico was a US territory. If her kids wanted history, she’d take them to the Alamo.

  “You can advertise.” That earned quiet on the other end of the line, Javier waiting for her to explain. “Bring your mules, your rifles, a banner saying ‘Loco Lobo Outfitters.’ Plumbers do it. Politicians out the kazoo.”

  That worked. They came from the mountains towing a horse trailer, inside mules for everyone. Javier dressed as a settler, an axe over his shoulder, muzzleloader in the crook of an arm, old bear traps lashed to the pommel. Serena wore a tiara in her black hair. The camo gown she’d sewed for herself was a nice touch. The kids wore buckskins and sneakers and held between them a banner with the family business name.

  They joined the Historical/Hysterical Parade forming up at the DeVargas Center. A man in a lined cape with high velvet collar, sweat pouring down sagging cheeks, told them to get in behind a float with women in bikinis wearing Day of the Dead masks—wrong festival, but nobody seemed to mind. Behind the Loco Lobo ensemble came the National Guard Humvee.

  Aragon walked the route as a conquistador, sweating as her father had under the same mail corset and morion, the foot soldier’s metal helmet, the hammered tin a dome over the head with a crescent brim swooping to a sharp point over her
face. She wore cross-trainers; the route was too long for authentic hob-nailed boots.

  It had felt good pulling the armor from her closet, so many years since anyone in her family had last marched.

  “Nice sword,” she heard from a caballero on a grand horse, decked out in red cape and shiny boots, his own sword in a scabbard along the horse’s flank. She could see his was fake, with a rubber handle to make it easier to hold. Hers was real and it weighed a ton. The blade alone was over four feet long. With the hilt, the two-handed sword was almost as long as she was tall.

  The parade got under way. Serena and the girls tossed elk jerky strips into the crowd. Javier and his mule were the largest living things moving. She could imagine how pueblo people felt looking up at terrifying giants with thick black beards on strange animals they’d never seen before. She marched in front of the mules, keeping the blade straight up, aimed at a blue sky, the smoke gone, aspen on the high peaks turning gold. Her wounded hand hurt but she held on. She pressed her elbows against her ribs to help steady the weight.

  People cheered. She saw cops she knew. They cheered even louder when they recognized her inside the armor. The sun on her face irritated the new skin over her burns. She ignored it and marched past the Basilica of St. Francis and out along the route following what had been the city’s early fortifications.

  At the end, she fell out and accepted a cold drink from Spanish grandmothers. Javier and Serena, their girls capable of handling their own animals, stopped to say they were heading back to the horse trailer.

  “Before you go—” Aragon dug into the pocket of the vest and withdrew a folded slip of paper and set of keys. “This is for you. A double-wide to replace the one I got shot up. I can’t say I’m sorry any other way. This is the address where you can see the model. They’ll deliver. It’s all taken care of.”

  They argued until she walked to Serena’s mule and shoved the keys and paper into a saddle bag. She left them before they could say any more and moved through the crowd, the sword resting on her shoulder, seeing another side of the city she loved. Boys who looked so much like Miguel, dozens of them, dressed as young colonial soldiers. Beautiful girls in colorful, flowing dresses, their shining black hair combed for hours into perfection.

  “That’s the real thing isn’t it?” It was the horseman in the red cape, now dismounted, the top buttons of his uniform open, perspiration beaded on dark chest hairs. “Can I hold it?”

  “Careful, it’s sharp.”

  He got a grip then raised it above his head. She stepped back and checked around them. Kids were too close.

  “How’d you carry this for the whole parade?” The blade wavered above his head. “It’s like a piece of train track.”

  “Fun’s over.” She stepped right into him and held his wrists, easing the sword down and into her own hands.

  He dug a smartphone from his costume.

  “Lift it up high.” He stepped back to take a photograph. The crowd parted, people watching, pulling out phones to take their own photos of the short, powerful woman in ancient armor with the enormous sword. “Yeah, like that. With one hand even. Damn, girl, look at you. The last conquistador.”

  Acknowledgments

  Is it beyond strange to feel gratitude toward a character of one’s own imagination? Is it vanity to say I really admire Denise Aragon, a fictional character whose life I control? Yet that is the truth. I am quite interested in this woman and I find she takes me on unexpected journeys through a Santa Fe you don’t find in tourist magazines. What the heck: thanks, Denise. It’s always a blast.

  Of course, my deepest-felt thanks go to the real people in my life. First and forever, I owe so much to my wife, Kara. She reads the initial draft of every book. If the stories are good and true, it is because her insights kept me from running off the rails.

  Thanks to my agent, Elizabeth Kracht of Kimberley Cameron & Associates, for always cheering me on. Thanks also to my editors at Midnight Ink, Terri Bischoff and Sandy Sullivan.

  Last, many, many thanks to my readers. The way you have talked about Denise Aragon when we correspond or meet at book signings reassures me she is every bit the powerful, determined, irreverent, and fearless woman I encounter every time I sit down to write her story.

  © Deja View Photography

  About the Author

  James R. Scarantino (Port Townsend, WA) is a prosecutor, defense attorney, investigative reporter, and award-winning author. He lived in New Mexico for thirty years before trading high desert for Pacific Northwest rain. His novel Cooney County was named best mystery/crime novel in the SouthWest Writers Workshop International Writing Competition.