by Carmen Amato
The uniformed officer on guard duty by the holding cells walked into the hall as Lt. Rufino passed. There was a funny look on the guard’s face as he looked at the open door and saw Emilia. She shot him with her thumb and forefinger, like she always did, as if to say no worries. He shot her back and went back to the holding desk. Emilia stepped inside the interview room and closed the door.
“Congratulations, Cruz,” Sandor said. “He knows your name.”
Emilia sagged into her chair. “So what do we do?”
“We can’t arrest Conway or Serverio,” Macias said. “There’s no justification. We can check into the insurance angle, but it’ll be a waste of time.”
“I meant about the arsonists,” Emilia said. “Extortionists. The tax collectors.”
“What about Torrez?” This from Macias. “Are we saying that we got the wrong guy?”
Emilia remembered what Silvio had told her and suppressed a shiver. Of course she’d assumed that Macias and Sandor had something going on; most cops did. It was one of the reasons she’d liked working with Rico; he was one of the few cops she’d met who wasn’t on the take, didn’t have something shady on the side like Silvio’s bookie thing. But she had never tried to find out who the other detectives might be aligned with and until now that policy had worked fairly well.
“He still hasn’t come up with an alibi,” Silvio reminded them.
“Well, he’s not going to give it to us,” Macias said. “Salazar’s people hauled him out to the Cereso de Acapulco.”
“Rayos,” Silvio muttered.
Emilia closed her notebook. The Cereso was the federal prison outside Acapulco.
Everything about this case had a ragged edge. Torrez hadn’t lit the second fire but still didn’t have an alibi for the first. She wondered if Chief Salazar’s office was keeping information from them, maybe to do a favor for Carlota. Or Obregon. At any rate, if Torrez was at the federal prison, it meant that it would be virtually impossible to have access to him without Chief Salazar’s staff being notified.
“Emilia’s extortion theory is your best bet,” Murillo said. “The question is whether it’s really army or somebody pretending to be army with black market explosives and cammo.”
“Maybe Serverio will give us a face tomorrow,” Emilia said.
“Even if he does, what do we do?” Sandor huffed. “Talk to every restaurant in Acapulco? See who’s gotten one of those tax notices?”
Murillo nodded. “You’ll need to do it before they hit someplace else next Saturday. We’ve seen it before. Arsonists who establish a pattern treat it like a ritual.”
“Maybe folks are starting to pay up,” Emilia said. “Maybe they won’t have to set another fire.”
“Or they’ve discovered that the fires let them demand more money,” Silvio said.
“Wait a minute,” Macias exclaimed. “There’s no way we can interview every restaurant owner in Acapulco before Saturday.”
“Madre de Dios,” Emilia murmured. There were hundreds of restaurants in Acapulco, and they couldn’t just call. If the owners were as scared as Serverio, it would be very easy to deny it over the phone. “Can we get the beat cops to help? Get them to go into some of the places on their street and ask?”
“Worth a shot,” Macias said.
“We’ll tell el teniente later,” Silvio said. He silently locked eyes with each detective in turn.
“I’m in,” said Macias.
“Me, too,” said Sandor.
“Right,” Emilia said softly.
“Let me know how I can help,” Murillo said, looking at Emilia.
☼
It was around 9:00 p.m. and dark when Emilia finally left the squadroom. Silvio was the last one there, but he was closing down his computer as she unlocked her desk, got out her bag, and tiredly told him she’d see him tomorrow. After Lt. Rufino had left two hours earlier, they’d pulled together a huge list of restaurants from the online yellow pages. It put the truck list to shame, and they hadn’t even finished that yet. They divided it up by neighborhood, but it was so vast Emilia knew they had little chance of completing the interviews before Saturday.
As she crossed the police parking lot and approached the Suburban, a slim figure materialized out of the shadows and approached her.
“Hi.” The speaker was a wiry man about her age wearing jeans and a slouchy nylon jacket, his hair slicked back into a ponytail. Despite the late hour, he wore gradient-tinted sunglasses. A police badge dangled from a lanyard around his neck. “Are you Cruz?” he asked.
“Who are you?” Emilia responded.
“Castro,” he said. “Vice.”
It took Emilia a moment to realize that he’d extended his left hand, not his right, and in that single heartbeat of incomprehension, he grabbed her by the neck with his right hand and slammed her head against the side of the Suburban. “Word has it you were nosing around at Mami’s last night,” he snarled, his face close to hers.
“I was looking for a disappeared girl,” Emilia managed. The inside of her head was ringing like a bell, her vision was blurry, and it was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling.
“You stay away from Mami’s,” the Vice cop said. “That’s my meat wagon now and everybody on the street knows it. I’m not having some puta who thinks she’s a detective trying to move in on me.” He rapped her head against metal again, making Emilia see stars. “You’re not looking for lost girls who might be at Mami’s. Not talking to none of the girls from Mami’s. You’re not even walking on the same side of the street as Mami’s. You got that?”
Emilia brought up both fists in a crosswise motion and broke his hold on her throat. The force of the break made Castro stumble back a step.
“Who’s your friend, Cruz?”
Silvio came around the rear of the Suburban and stood next to her. Castro evidently recognized the senior detective because he raised both palms in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, Silvio, good to see you again.”
“Castro,” Silvio acknowledged the other man.
“Just talking to your girl here,” Castro said affably. “Letting her know which streets might be a little dangerous these days. We gotta take care of our own, right?”
Silvio didn’t move away from Emilia’s side as they watched Castro walk through the parking lot. He saluted the guard, the big metal rolling gate slid open, and Castro strolled out as if he had all the time in the world. The gate clanged shut behind him.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Silvio asked.
Emilia slid down the side of the Suburban and landed on her rump. She hauled in air and the silver sparklers in front of her eyes slowly winked out. “You know that place Julieta Rubia used to run? Mami’s?”
“Yeah.” Silvio looked down at her, a frown creasing his forehead. “I heard there’s new management now.”
“Bitch named Olga who looks like somebody took a hatchet to her face.” Emilia rubbed her throat where Castro’s fingers had dug into her windpipe. “I was there yesterday. Looking for a girl from my neighborhood last seen asking for directions to the place.”
“Let me guess,” Silvio said. “Castro thought you were moving in on his action, and this was a gentle warning to stay clear.”
“How do you know him?”
“He’s our Castro’s brother.” Silvio reached down and pulled Emilia to her feet.
“Is he really Vice?” Emilia asked. Her head pounded but she was pretty sure she didn’t have a concussion. “I thought they were deep undercover. How could he risk being seen walking into a police compound?”
“My guess is that every outfit in town that falls under Vice’s jurisdiction is paying Castro or one of his buddies for the pleasure of staying in business. And they know damn well who he is.”
“Fuck,” Emilia said, suddenly close to tears. Everything was always so fucked up. “This girl’s been gone over a month now. Mami’s was my best lead.”
“Rayos, Cruz,” Silvio swore. “Try n
ot to get yourself killed before we catch the firebug.”
Chapter 22
Serverio never showed up Wednesday morning. By 10:00 a.m. Emilia and Silvio had learned that he and his wife had paid their housemaids a generous severance last night before getting into an airport limousine. They were probably in Spain by now. Getting an extradition order would take weeks; Acapulco would be an ash heap by the time they got him back.
Silvio cursed steadily as they left Serverio’s home and headed out to the first restaurant on their list, copies of the army tax message in hand. By noon they’d asked six different restaurant managers if they’d seen the notice and received the same frightened denial each time.
“This isn’t going to work,” Emilia said as she paid for two coffees at an outdoor café near the eastern edge of the big Parque Altamirano and picked up that month’s free edition of Que Paso Acapulco. “There are too many restaurants and all we’re going to do is start a panic.”
“Hijo de puta,” Silvio swore. “I know.”
It was cool and breezy as they took a break on a bench. The whole of Acapulco Bay stretched in front of them, and for a minute Emilia felt like an explorer, the first person to discover this sweeping curve of land and the jeweled waters swaying inside. If she looked south, toward the curved peninsula that protected the western side of the bay, she could see a huge white cruise ship, bigger than several of the nearby hotels. Its decks looked clean and deserted as it lay nestled against the relatively new terminal, safeguarded between the peninsula and the rugged Fuerte San Diego on the mainland. The other side of the bay stretched upwards; the mountains in the distance behind the ring of hotels and condos were tinged with blue as if reflecting the water they guarded. She couldn’t see all the way to the Palacio Réal; its location on the tip of Punta Diamante was obscured by the closer and larger triangle of mountain that narrowed down to Punta Bruja.
The explorer feeling faded and reality set in. The reality of not knowing what to do next and being too tired to figure it out.
“It’s not shit.”
“What?”
“It’s not shit.” Silvio waved a hand at the sparkling view as a man pushed an ice cream cart past them, the bell on the handle tinkling faintly. “Up close you see too much of the dirt. But this isn’t shit.”
“Madre de Dios, Franco, you’re a poet.” Emilia drank some more coffee and mentally thanked the Virgin for inventing the stuff. She’d hardly slept the past few nights and needed to get her head together. First she’d panicked at the demonstration, then she’d let that pendejo of a Vice cop get the drop on her. This investigation was all over the place, there were too many stray bits and pieces, and until she found Lila Jimenez Lata, only half her attention was going to be in the squadroom.
But mostly she missed Kurt. Badly. How many times since they’d met had she discovered a new angle, a new approach to a difficult case after talking it over with him? Felt her batteries recharge as she lay with him? She was going to lose so much when he left Acapulco.
She reluctantly pulled her thoughts to the case at hand. They’d been disappointed but not terribly surprised at Serverio’s flight; the man and his wife had been terrified by what had happened. Torrez still hadn’t produced an alibi, but neither had he been released. His arrest had finally made the news with speculation that he had set the first fire and unnamed cohorts had lit the second. Macario Urbina had denied that he had anything to do with the arson attacks. Nonetheless, Emilia figured that Carlota’s staff was working hard to dig up something that would tie the big landowner and opposition politician to at least the El Tigre fire.
None of that, however, was as sensational as the videos from Los Matas Ejercito. They had become the top news story, buoyed by the ongoing demonstrations at the alcaldía and campo militar and repeated media references to men in camouflage at the first fire. General Hernandez was taking the threat of retaliation seriously, and so the local army presence was now constantly in riot gear, including Plexiglas shields and helmets. As if to keep Hernandez on the defense, Carlota had declared publicly that the army was scaring away tourists and crippling the city’s economy. Emilia was waiting to see if Carlota would go to the funeral for Hector Roque and the other man who’d died at the Luna Loca the same way she’d gone to the El Tigre funerals. Somehow she doubted that Carlota would fit it into her busy schedule.
She flipped idly through Que Paso Acapulco while Silvio slurped noisily at his hot coffee. There was an article about the cruise ship docking and another about how to pick the perfect bikini and matching pareo. Women who stayed at the Palacio Réal read stuff like that.
Silvio’s phone rang. He answered with his usual gruff “Bueno?” He listened, said, “On our way,” broke the connection, and stood up.
“What’s going on?” Emilia stuffed the magazine into her bag.
“They got a video of the extortionists.”
☼
The quality was grainy and there was no sound. Obviously intended to watch employees and make sure they weren’t stealing out of the till, the camera was angled to show the cash register rather than the patrons behind the bar. All that could be seen of the two men in camouflage jackets were their hands and the middle parts of their torsos.
But just from the size of their hands on the counter next to a row of glasses, it was clear they were both big, as Serverio had said.
“What’s he holding?” Silvio squinted at the screen.
The clip was from Casa Casa, a trendy restaurant a few blocks away from Planet Hollywood’s red awning and giant globe entrance. Emilia had been to Casa Casa once with Kurt and knew that it attracted the same well-heeled crowd but offered a quieter, less touristy atmosphere.
They were watching the clip, which the manager had transferred onto a CD for Macias and Sandor, on the open Internet computer in the front of the squadroom. It was the only machine with drives for portable media.
Macias stopped the video and tapped the screen. “What’s in his hand?”
“It’s a copy of Que Paso Acapulco,” Emilia said immediately. The hand on the screen sported a thin wedding band and carried a rolled-up glossy magazine. It was the same magazine she’d been looking at less than an hour ago. “This month’s edition.”
“Planning how to spend the army tax?” Sandor quipped.
“It’s full of advertising.” Emilia wanted to dance like a loca. She rushed back to her desk, fetched the magazine, and showed it to the others. “Both the El Tigre and Luna Loca are just the sort of high-end places that advertise in it. So is Casa Casa.”
“You think they’re picking restaurants out of there?” Silvio asked.
Emilia heard Lt. Rufino’s phone ring through his closed office door as she flipped to the index of advertisers. Luna Loca’s ad was on page 3, a big splashy graphic featuring a girl holding a margarita glass. The ad for the El Tigre was more elegant, with a picture that was a sad reminder of what the place had once been. “They’re both in here,” she said. “It would have been printed before the fires started.”
“That would really narrow the list,” Sandor observed.
Macias got the video rolling again. The man who wasn’t holding the magazine pushed a copy of the army tax message across the bar. The person behind the bar didn’t touch it. The magazine holder leaned over the bar as if to intimidate, and more of his camouflage jacket came into the shot.
“Stop it again,” Silvio ordered. Macias hit the button. Silvio bent toward the screen. “Look at his jacket. There’s a name.”
“He’s wearing an ID tag,” Emilia exclaimed. “Guetta.” She spelled it out.
The camouflage-clad men backed out of view and the video ended. The detectives looked at each other.
“This has got nothing to do with the mayor,” Emilia declared.
“Carlota,” Macias intoned. “We’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
“All that wasted time,” Sandor said disgustedly.
Silvio smiled grimly. “Okay.
We’re moving on. We’re getting someplace. Two big soldiers picking places out of a magazine, telling them to pay a tax and using grenades to punish the ones that don’t pay.”
“You think they’re real army?” Emilia asked.
“Doesn’t matter. We don’t need to work it from that angle,” Silvio said. “We work it from the victims’ side. All the advertisers in the magazine need to be contacted. See if they’ve gotten a visit from Guetta and friend. Find out if they have security cameras. Get their footage and have them refocus the cameras so we see who is coming in, instead of looking at the cash register. We’ll go over the truck list again, too. Check for the name Guetta. Buyers plus anyone who has brought in a damaged truck to be repaired.”
Lt. Rufino’s office door opened and he walked into the squadroom. If he was surprised to see a group huddled around the computer, he didn’t show it.
“Cruz,” he said without preamble. “I’m assigning you to the El Pharaoh case for the rest of the week. Castro and Gomez need to handle a body down by the docks.”
“Teniente?” Emilia had a hard time changing gears. The connection to Que Paso Acapulco, the fact that they had a name.
“You heard me.” Lt. Rufino drank from his travel mug. “Silvio hardly needs you to help arrest Conway and Serverio.” He jerked his chin at Silvio. “Take some uniforms and let’s make this quick. Torrez still hasn’t confessed, and the mayor needs to see some action now. I want both of those restaurant owners in an interrogation room within two hours, implicating him and his truck. And where’s my report on the copycat at the second fire? I asked for that days ago.”
He made a big looping gesture with his travel mug. It wasn’t clear if he was expressing frustration or telling them to get to work.
Teniente, there have been some developments in the case. Emilia knew something needed to be said. She widened her eyes at Silvio.
The senior detective rubbed his jaw. “Teniente,” Silvio said. “We just got a real break in the arson case and it looks like we’ll be going in a different direction. A security video from one of the restaurants that received the extortion notice.”