by Carmen Amato
“No,” Clark said.
“Mr. Conway?” Emilia prompted, ignoring Clark.
Conway shook his head.
“Are you sure?” Emilia pressed. “No one came up to you at the restaurant? Near your car? Ask you for money? Ask any of your employees?”
“If they did, no one told me,” Conway said. Sweat now stained the neck of his expensive tee shirt. Emilia decided it was silk.
“Just to make sure I get this all down,” Emilia said. She glanced at the timeline in her notebook as Silvio turned over the notice in its plastic bag. “You hired a new bartender who had previously worked at the Polo Club?”
Conway nodded and his leg pumped furiously again. “Hector Roque.”
“About how long between Hector coming to work for you and getting the tax notice?”
Zeledón whispered something to Conway, who had to bend sideways to hear the shorter man. Conway whispered something back and Zeledón nodded.
“Maybe two weeks,” Conway said.
“Why did you think the message was a joke?” Silvio leaned forward.
“Surely you can see what an amateur effort it is,” Zeledón said, indicating the plastic bag.
“But he took it seriously enough to hire a lot of new security.” Silvio rapped on the table for emphasis, his fist as big as the crystal globe. “Maybe there are a few details he’s left out?”
“Anything about the person who left this message would be very helpful,” Emilia added. “I’m sure Mr. Conway wants whoever set fire to the Luna Loca to be found.”
Clark stood up. “That’s all Mr. Conway has. We’re sorry we can’t be more helpful.”
Both detectives stayed in their seats.
“We’ll need a copy of this notice,” Emilia said.
☼
“That’s all Mr. Conway has,” Emilia repeated as Silvio started the car. “Oddly enough, I think it’s true. Conway strikes me as a rich little boy who until Saturday night was having a pretty good time drinking and partying down here in Acapulco.”
“Rayos,” Silvio swore. “He probably had half a kilo of coca up his nose.”
“What was so interesting on the back of the notice?” Emilia asked.
“The Luna Loca’s address.” Silvio put on his sunglasses and backed the car out of the space in front of the SPA building. “Small printing. Pencil.”
“You think somebody printed off a bunch of these flyers and labeled them with the addresses of where they were supposed to go?”
“Places that could afford to pay an army tax,” Silvio said.
“Think the Polo Club connection means anything?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Emilia let her head fall back against the seat as she mulled over this new development. An army tax, but as the lawyer had pointed out, done in such an amateurish way.
Yesterday’s conversation with Ernesto came back to her. Whoever wasn’t getting their fair share. “Simple extortion,” she said out loud. “Everybody knows that most decent restaurants in Acapulco coin money, and the ones that don’t launder cash for the drug cartels. Haven’t heard Murillo say yet that campo militar’s armory is airtight. Maybe a couple of soldiers simply pocketed a couple of grenades and decided to set up a little extortion business.”
“What’s that got to do with Carlota?” Silvio asked. “Or Torrez?”
“Nothing,” Emilia admitted.
“So you’re saying we have a serial arson and extortion ring,” Silvio grumbled.
“Maybe,” Emilia said. “But think about this angle. Los Matas Ejercito. They haven’t done anything besides make videos. But what if they know something we don’t?”
“They are army types, too,” Silvio suggested. “Pissed that their buddies didn’t let them in for a cut.”
“And get it on social media where all the kids live these days,” Emilia said.
“They’re better bad press than the usual,” Silvio said thoughtfully. “You know, most of the time the army is being rightly accused of one atrocity or another. Rapes, drug deals, random shootings. A news story comes out and people scream. Federales say there will be an investigation. Nothing happens. This is different. These guys are making a big splash with their videos and those ninja costumes.”
“Creating more pressure for action than usual.” Emilia pulled out her notebook and scribbled down their ideas. “When I came in this morning, Lt. Rufino asked how I was feeling, said you’d told him I called in sick because of my hand.”
Silvio braked for a red light and looked at her over the top of his sunglasses. “He didn’t remember a thing about Saturday night. I don’t think you have to worry about that suspension going on your record.”
“Well.” Emilia decided to see that as a positive development.
Five minutes later, Silvio turned into the road leading to the gates of the Polo Club and slowed as the guard held up a hand.
Chapter 20
“I gave them the money the first time,” Jorge Serverio said, looking close to tears. “But when they came back, they asked for 20,000 pesos. We simply didn’t have it. I said we could give it to them here.”
Serverio and his wife had been eating their lunch when the two detectives came in to the Polo Club. The restauranteur looked as if he’d aged 10 years since they’d spoken to him last. Lines of pain and worry were etched into his face. His wife was a well-kept woman in a simple but expensive tan suit and heavy silver jewelry. Her hand shook as she set down her fork and knife. He’d introduced her to the two detectives as Vanessa de Serverio.
“That’s why you were here in the Polo Club all evening,” Emilia said to Vanessa.
The woman nodded. “But they never came,” she said.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” Silvio said. “You got the same notice? How?”
The copy of the message Conway had received lay on the table. Serverio gingerly touched it with a fingertip as if it could hurt him. “One of the kitchen staff brought it to me. Said a man delivered it to the back gate.”
“How long ago was this?”
“I’m not sure.” Serverio curled his hand into a fist. “At first, I thought it was legitimate. After all, the army has been very much in evidence here in Acapulco over the past year. If you watch the news, you know how expensive it is to keep them deployed all the time, on guard in front of the hotels and public spaces. I was going to discuss it with Kurt. Maybe some of the others on the Acapulco hotel board knew about it. But things got busy. I had trouble with a supplier and some staff quit.”
“What about Hector Roque?” Silvio asked. “He used to work here, didn’t he?”
“We heard he died at Luna Loca,” Serverio said.
“Why did he quit?”
“He got a better offer,” Serverio hazarded. The look on his face said he didn’t know why and didn’t think it was important. “There were no hard feelings. Good bartenders and wait staff generally have a lot of options in Acapulco.”
The bartender was a dead end, Emilia decided. She made a subtle rolling motion with her hand at Silvio.
“So you decided the tax was legit and that you’d pay,” Silvio prompted.
“Maybe two, three days later.” Serverio’s mouth trembled. “Two big men, wearing army jackets, came in and asked for the tax money. They took it, thanked me, and left.”
“This was at the El Tigre?”
“Yes.” Serverio sipped some mineral water. Neither he nor his wife had finished their meal of seafood paella. Emilia felt her stomach rumble at the rich smell of saffron and shrimp. Maybe after they left here, she and Silvio could get some pizza.
“When did they ask for another tax payment?” Emilia asked.
“Two days before the fire.” Serverio’s wife laid a hand on her husband’s arm and answered for him. “That’s when we realized that it hadn’t been a real tax.”
“Did they say if you didn’t pay they’d burn down the restaurant?”
“They talked about consequences,
” Serverio said. “We thought they meant kidnapping.”
“But you declined to pay?”
Vanessa again took up the story. “We said we would, but we never kept much cash at the El Tigre, being so close to the plaza with all those pickpockets and all. Everyone always paid with a credit card.” A tear ran down her face. “I had the money with me here, but they never came.”
Emilia could well picture her sitting alone with a bag of money, terrified at the exchange she would have with the extortionists, drinking to calm her nerves. No wonder the bartender thought the Serverios had quarreled. She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook. “Tell us a bit more about who talked to you.”
Serverio twisted his hands together as his wife dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “Big types. Both of them.”
“Bigger than me?” Silvio asked.
Serverio nodded. “About your size. Tall, heavyset. Clean shaven.”
“Mestizo?”
“Yes.”
“Were they wearing uniforms?”
“Military jackets. And hats. I remember thinking that they were so big their uniforms barely fit them.” He wiped his eyes with his index finger.
“How did they get to the restaurant?” Silvio asked next. “Did you see a vehicle?”
“No. I was in my office and they just walked in.”
Silvio pumped Serverio for every detail, from what time the men had come in to collect the money to insights as to their mode of speech. His wife sat next to him, crying silently until she suddenly slammed her hands on the table.
“Why didn’t they just come and take the money?” she burst out. “We would have given it to them. Why did they have to kill so many people? Destroy such a beautiful place?”
Serverio put his arm around his wife. Emilia felt horribly sad. These were good people running a decent business in Acapulco.
“They couldn’t risk coming through the gate here at the Polo Club,” Silvio said matter-of-factly, completely without emotion. “That’s why they torched the El Tigre. Thought you were setting a trap.”
Both Serverio and his wife gazed open-mouthed at the stolid detective. They were shattered, and Emilia felt like slapping him on their behalf. What he’d said was almost certainly true, but he could have delivered the message in a less harsh manner.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the day to think about things,” she suggested, and their pained expressions turned to her. “But first thing tomorrow we’d like you to come to the station, look through some pictures, see if we can’t build some sketches of what these men looked like.”
“Of course,” Serverio said.
Chapter 21
“Two well-known restaurants,” Emilia started off. “Two Saturday nights.”
“Fires about the same time,” Sandor added. “The hour before midnight.”
“How about Serverio and Conway in this together to collect insurance money?” Silvio interjected.
“Got tired of dishing up ceviche and decided to burn down their places?” Sandor asked.
“Hired some army types to do it for them?” Macias threw out.
Silvio started writing on a white board that had been used so many times it no longer came clean. His handwriting was hard to pick out from the faded blue and black print still clinging to the thing.
“No,” Emilia said. “Don’t even bother with that one. Conway is so scared he’s living with his private security company, and the Serverios are in shock.”
Maintenance was working on the air conditioning in the squadroom and nearly everybody had found somewhere else to be. The four detectives had decided to brainstorm in the largest interrogation room near the holding cells. Murillo and Lt. Rufino were there as well. El teniente sat silently at the table, his steel travel mug held close to his mouth.
Silvio had divided the board into two halves, one labeled El Tigre and the other Luna Loca, and was lining up the facts in each column. “Let’s keep going. What else do we have?”
“Okay.” Emilia flipped open her notebook. “Same employee once worked for both Serverio and Conway. Hector Roque. Bartender. Worked at the Polo Club, left a few months ago to work for Conway at the Luna Loca. One of the victims of the fire.”
Silvio wrote it down and she went on. “Club cab truck seen at both locations either shortly before or shortly after the fire. Army types seen in the truck.”
“Don’t know they’re army,” Silvio corrected her. “Only that they were wearing army camouflage.”
“Okay.” Emilia conceded the point. “The maroon truck at the second location didn’t have plates and makes a suspicious getaway.”
Rufino made a snorting sound. When Emilia looked at him, his eyes were closed. The mug, however, was still held close to his mouth.
“Did the truck at the first fire have plates?” Murillo asked.
“We don’t know,” Emilia said. With six people in the room, it was warm and stuffy. “The witness didn’t see any, but she wasn’t looking for them, either.”
“So.” Silvio wrote in a question mark after the word placas on the El Tigre side of the board. He looked incongruous with the slim marker in his big hand, shoulder holster keeping his automatic tight under his left arm, white tee shirt stained with sweat. “What else?”
“Same army tax message delivered to both,” Emilia supplied. “One payment from the owners of the El Tigre. A bigger payment promised but never picked up.”
“Same type of grenade used at both fires,” Murillo added.
“Both grenades and camouflage support the army theory,” Sandor said. “I say we shake campo militar and see what falls out.”
Murillo shook his head. “Both grenades and uniforms can be bought on the black market.”
“Was there ever a robbery at campo militar?” Emilia asked.
“I don’t know,” Murillo said. “The request to give me access to their records is tied up somewhere between Acapulco and Mexico City.”
“Okay, so what do we have?” Silvio took charge of the conversation again. “Army or pretending to be army, we need a pattern to trace or a motivation that gets us close.”
“I say an army type who got kicked out of both restaurants,” Sandor said. “Maybe they overcharged him.”
“Most soldiers can’t afford to eat at those kinds of restaurants and they know it,” Emilia said.
“Cruz should know,” Macias quipped.
Emilia folded her arms. “It’s extortion. These two restaurants are the ones that didn’t pay. Or didn’t pay enough. That should be our starting point.”
“So the next question is how many other restaurants are paying some sort of protection money?” Sandor asked. “Excuse me. Army tax.”
Silvio scribbled on the board.
“There’s another issue here.” Emilia was amazed that no one was getting it. “Businesses would rather pay protection money to these thugs than report them to the police.”
“Come on, Cruz,” Silvio scoffed. “Most of the places getting this army tax notice probably think it’s the police asking for money and hiding behind the army’s bad reputation to do it.”
Rufino spoke up for the first time since they’d started the conversation. “In Mexico City, this would be a ridiculously simple case. I’m amazed how you have evaded the real facts.” He sipped from his mug. “I had no idea that Acapulco would be full of amateurs.”
Silvio’s face darkened. Murillo looked embarrassed. Sandor and Macias tried to mask their shock. Emilia bit her tongue.
Rufino went on. “The major factor here is the connection between the two owners. It is obviously a feud over staff. Conway’s bartender is poached and he attacks El Tigre over it. Serverio retaliates against Luna Loca. Both of them collaborated with Torrez Delgadillo, who had both means and motive to assist.” He gazed at the others in the room, his small moustache twitching in triumph. “In return for being able to carry out his assassination attempt on the mayor.”
“That’s an interesting theory, teniente,
” Silvio said. He tapped the information about the truck. “But Torrez being behind bars for the second fire makes it difficult to sustain.”
“You scratch Conway and Serverio and you’re going to find your connection.” Lt. Rufino planted his hands on the scratched tabletop. “Conway attacked El Tigre, and Serverio struck back.”
“Hector Roque worked for Serverio at the Polo Club first,” Silvio said. His tone was even, but the senior detective was nearly vermillion. “Then went over to the Luna Loca. Nothing connects Conway or Serverio to Torrez Delgadillo. None of them are behind the army tax notices.”
Rufino bolted to his feet, his chair overturning in back of him. “Detective Silvio, are you disrespecting me?” he shouted.
Silvio didn’t reply.
“I’ve solved this.” Lt. Rufino looked around the room. “Go arrest Conway and Serverio and charge them both with murder. Press them a little bit and they’ll implicate Torrez. Arrest the bartender, too. He started all this.”
He snatched up his notebook, which he hadn’t opened the entire time, shoved it under his arm, took his travel mug and marched to the door. There was a moment of juggling and he dropped the notebook. Bits of papers flew out and drifted under the table like dry leaves.
No one made a move to assist him. Emilia threw Silvio a questioning look. The man’s face was perfectly blank.
Murillo got out of his chair, picked up Lt. Rufino’s notebook, and handed it back. Lt. Rufino juggled the travel mug between his hands, finally taking the notebook with his left and tucking it under his right arm, only to switch it back to the left side. Murillo held the door open for him.
Ignoring the fire inspector, Lt. Rufino reached for the door and dropped the notebook again.
“Let me get that for you, teniente,” Emilia said and grabbed the notebook.
Lt. Rufino plucked it out of her hand and paused in the doorway. “Good job the other night identifying the truck, Cruz. Pity you couldn’t stop and apprehend.”
As Emilia watched, he marched down the hall, listing to the right, his stride very deliberate, knees lifting high with every step. His shoulder brushed the wall and he tacked to the left, continuing past the holding cells.