Hat Dance (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 2)

by Carmen Amato

  “Did you want more children?” It was a rare event to talk to her mother as one adult to another.

  “No.” Sophia gave Emilia an embarrassed smile. “I had my wonderful smart girl. And now I have Ernesto back, too.”

  “Mama,” Emilia said. “I’m glad you’re happy but we need to talk about Ernesto.”

  Red-faced, Sophia wiped her hands on her apron and pulled an envelope from her apron pocket. “This came today.”

  Emilia took the envelope and opened it to find 300 pesos in well-fingered bills and a short note written on lined school paper. It was brief, just saying that Ernesto should come back to Mexico City and that the money was bus fare. There was no expression of love or missing him, just three sentences of instruction and a printed signature. Beatriz Lopez de Cruz.

  “She’s his real wife, Mama,” Emilia said sadly. “She wants him to come home.”

  Sophia shook her head. “I’m his wife now.”

  “Mama, stop.”

  “I want him to stay,” Sophia insisted. “He feels good here. Like he belongs.”

  “Is that why you keep introducing him at church?” Emilia asked.

  Sophia busied herself at the counter, pulling cloves of garlic off a fresh bulb, checking to see if the ancho chilies had softened in their bath of hot water. “I shouldn’t have showed it to you.”

  “Mama, it has to be his decision,” Emilia said. “You can’t just say ‘stay’ and trap him here because he feels sorry for you.”

  “I want to stay with Sophia.” Ernesto’s voice was plaintive.

  Emilia hadn’t paid attention to the halt of the grinding wheel or heard Ernesto come in. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen wiping his hands on a rag.

  “With Sophia,” Ernesto repeated.

  Sophia crossed in front of her daughter, eyes straight ahead as she got Ernesto a beer out of the refrigerator. He sat at the table with it. Emilia grabbed her own beer and sat across from him.

  “You are married to Beatriz,” Emilia said. “She sent you money to come home.”

  “I’m married to Sophia now,” Ernesto said, more firmly than usual.

  “You’re not really married to my mother.” Emilia rubbed her eyes as Sophia started to mince the garlic with exaggerated force, thumping the knife on the chopping board. “You can’t be married to two women at the same time.”

  “Sophia?” he asked.

  Emilia’s mother scooped the garlic into the bowl with the cilantro. “You’re my husband now. You should stay here.”

  Emilia closed her eyes and drank some beer. Life isn’t that simple, Mama, she wanted to say.

  Ernesto dug into a pocket and put a handful of wrinkled peso bills on the table. He pushed them across to Emilia. “Send her this to pay for a divorce. Plus what she sent.”

  Emilia turned to look at her mother. Sophia smiled and started deveining the shrimp with a small knife.

  “That’s it?” Emilia asked into the silence. “Ernesto wants to stay and that’s the end of this?”

  Her phone rang. Emilia plucked it out of the back pocket of her shorts. Silvio. Possibly the last person in the world she wanted to talk to right now.

  She walked out of the house before she hit the connect button on the phone. “Bueno?”

  “Macias says you never showed up in the office this afternoon,” Silvio said by way of a greeting. “Where the fuck were you?”

  “You’re the one who keeps disappearing,” Emilia tossed back at him. “Where were you?”

  “Answer my question, Cruz.”

  “Well, Franco,” Emilia said, in as snide a voice as she could manage. “I took personal time. You know, just like you.”

  “I’ve been working the Los Matas Ejercito videos.”

  Emilia clicked her tongue as if impressed. “Tracking down everybody in town with a video camera?”

  “No.” Silvio’s voice was tight. “All shot with a cell phone. Whoever uploaded to YouTube isn’t very tech savvy, either. Plus they uploaded a test video. A couple of seconds of a street scene. Couple of cars going by. Hard to know where that is.”

  “Oh.” Emilia fought a wave of guilt. He’d actually been doing real work, despite the fact that he thought the assignment was a waste of time.

  “I talked to Murillo, too,” Silvio went on. “Only needs one more approval to get inside campo militar. We can go with him, ask some questions, see if Los Matas Ejercito has made any direct threats.”

  “Okay.” Emilia leaned against the fender of the Suburban. “I talked to Salinas at the state attorney general’s office. He says the evidence they received isn’t enough to do anything except give the El Pharaoh people a lecture for receiving counterfeit.”

  “We knew that was going to happen,” Silvio said. “Leave that shit at home and get your ass into the office tomorrow morning. We got to talk to Vega after the morning meeting.”

  The line went dead.

  “You pendejo,” Emilia said to the phone.

  They’d get through the immediate crisis and when things were calm she’d talk to Lt. Rufino about getting a new partner. If he wouldn’t let her and Silvio go their separate ways, maybe she’d talk to Alvaro, see what opportunities there would be if she went back in uniform. She’d suffer a big pay cut, but it would be worth it not to deal with Silvio again.

  She pocketed the phone and went back into the house. Ernesto was still at the table drinking his beer. The money was on the counter. Emilia pulled open the refrigerator door and got another bottle of beer. Maybe tonight was a good night to get drunk. After all, how much worse could things get?

  Sophia had mixed the spices and the chopped shrimp. She dropped balls of the mixture into a pan of sizzling oil, and once again Emilia was struck by the smell of home and normality: tomatoes, garlic, rice, seafood. Ernesto got up and put the pickled vegetables that went so well with albondigas de camarónes into a small earthenware bowl. Silverware and napkins were already on the table.

  Emilia slowly put the beer back in the refrigerator. A second beer wouldn’t make her drunk like Lt. Rufino, but it wouldn’t fix any of her problems, either.

  ☼

  “Are you jealous of your mother’s happiness?” the priest asked.

  They were in the rectory kitchen with cups of manzanilla tea that he’d prepared. As the ladies of the parish continually brought Padre Ricardo food, Emilia was pretty sure tea was the only thing the priest knew how to make. But his recipe was based on frugality. The tea bag had obviously been used before. He’d dunked it briefly into both cups and set it in a saucer for the next time.

  “I just think it’s odd that he left this Beatriz with no warning.” Emilia warmed her hands over the hot cup. “But Mama thinks he’ll stay with her just because she asks him. What if he leaves her, too?”

  “She’ll have known love for a while at least,” Padre Ricardo said.

  “She’s not strong,” Emilia countered. “Mentally. You know that. She barely survived my father’s death and half the time she thinks I’m still in school.”

  “It’s her coping mechanism, Emilia,” Padre Ricardo said.

  Emilia sipped the pale yellow liquid in her cup. It was really just hot water with a grassy aftertaste. “I thought priests were against divorce,” she grumbled.

  “He’s trying to do the right thing, Emilia,” Padre Ricardo said. “Give me the address and the money and I’ll wire it to his wife.”

  She gave it all to the priest and couldn’t suppress a shiver of relief. If Padre Ricardo was able to accept Sophia’s relationship with Ernesto, maybe she should, too.

  But his question about jealousy had struck home. It wasn’t that Emilia was jealous of her mother’s happiness, it was that she was resentful of the way Sophia could so easily say what she wanted, like a child who wasn’t aware of consequences.

  Padre Ricardo put his own cup down on its saucer. He’d evidently enjoyed his tea. “Berta asked about you the other day.”

  Emilia shook her head. “I
don’t have good news for her.”

  “Lila is dead.” It was a statement rather than a question.

  “I don’t know.” Emilia told the priest everything she’d turned up so far about Lila, the whole sad story of Yolanda, Pedro, the girl’s trip to Mami’s, and Sergio the virgin-chasing luchador. “I’ll try to find him, too,” Emilia said. “Either at this gym or at the fights on Saturday.”

  “You let me know when you’re ready to talk to Berta,” Padre Ricardo said. “I’ll come with you.”

  “That’s the first good news I’ve had all day,” Emilia said.

  Chapter 31

  “They’re still talking about the fire at the El Tigre being an assassination attempt on Carlota,” Emilia said.

  “Yeah.” Silvio started the car. “Vega made it sound as if he was more concerned about the demonstrations in front of the alcaldía and out at campo militar than some extortion story.”

  “I told him he should have teams staking out all the restaurant advertisers from the magazine,” Emilia said. “That we’d pinned down a pattern with the notes and timing. Plus how they’d gotten a first payment from Serverio at the El Tigre, then tried to get a lot more out of him a second time. Guetta and his buddy either decided he was an easy mark, or they suddenly needed a lot more money.”

  It was midday on Wednesday, and each detective had had an interview with Captain Vega about the arson investigation as part of the turnover of the case to Chief Salazar’s staff. Emilia had been amazed by the way Vega treated the whole thing. He’d barely listened to what she had to say and wrapped up with a lecture on how his staff had to start from the ground up because the detective unit had been so slow to develop any meaningful information.

  “I told him the same thing.” Silvio backed the car out of the parking space at the central administration building and waved a hand to the guard, who rolled back the gate for them to pass through. “My guess is that after three fires, Guetta can pretty much name his price now.”

  “So maybe there won’t be another fire on Saturday,” Emilia reasoned. “Everybody’s scared and paying whatever the asking price is today. Vega is going to have to catch them in the act as they get paid off by one of the restaurants.”

  “Vega can’t find his own dick without his wife’s help.”

  Dressed in plain black pants, a white blouse, and her reliable tan linen blazer for her interview at the central administration building, Emilia had stopped and bought a dozen designer doughnuts before appearing in the squadroom. Kurt always recommended food as a way of smoothing the way and his advice had worked before. It worked fairly well that morning, too. Macias and Sandor didn’t ask why she hadn’t come in when she said she would, and Silvio ate two after giving her a grunt which, if she was charitable, could be interpreted as I acknowledge you are alive. They’d been silent on the drive over to the central administration building. Now that the interviews were over, the tension had slackened to the point where they could be civil to each other.

  “Murillo has got a good theory about the fire at Toby Jones,” Silvio went on. “They’d been able to throw the grenades out of the bed of the truck for the first two fires. Stand up in the bed, pull the pin, throw hard from a distance. Accuracy and force resulted in big damage. When you shot up the truck they probably stashed it somewhere. Hit Toby Jones in a car. Best they could do was roll the grenade out the door and drive off.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Murillo’s coming in to talk to us around 3:00 p.m.,” Silvio said. “Before he heads back to Mexico City. Says he’s been recalled but he can pass on his permission to talk to somebody inside campo militar to us.”

  “You think Chief Salazar would be okay with that?”

  “We won’t be talking about arson and grenades. We’ll be talking about Los Matas Ejercito,” Silvio observed. “You heard el teniente. Chief Salazar wants the videos stopped.”

  “Fine line,” Emilia said.

  Silvio shrugged.

  “Drop me off on the corner,” Emilia said. “I’ll catch a taxi back to the station in time to talk to Murillo.”

  “Personal time?” Silvio asked without slowing down.

  “I got a lead on the Lila Jimenez Lata missing person case.” Emilia pointed to the next corner.

  “Hijo de puta, Cruz,” Silvio swore. “Did you go to Mami’s again?”

  “No. Julieta decided to talk to me.” Emilia waited for him to lose his temper, but the big detective just kept his eyes on the road.

  “What’s the deal?” he asked.

  “Lila hooked up with a luchador at Mami’s.” Emilia dropped her hands to her lap as the car kept going. “Julieta Rubia tarted her out to him. Apparently he pays big if he gets to break in the girls.”

  “Nice,” Silvio growled.

  “All I know is that he works out at a gym on Calle Zaragoza.”

  “Tinoco’s place,” Silvio said.

  “That’s right.” Emilia turned to him in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “Boxers work out there, too,” he said. “Once upon a time I trained with Tinoco. What’s this luchador’s name?”

  “He fights as Puro Sangre,” Emilia said.

  “With El Rey Demonio,” Silvio added. “I’ve heard of him. You got a real name?”

  “Sergio Diaz Centeno.” Emilia had checked the cédula database for the man. Julieta had been right; even in a grainy identification picture, Diaz Centeno was a handsome man. “His address is the same as the gym’s.”

  Fifteen minutes later the car dropped neatly into a space parallel to the street in front of a strip of shops that had seen better days. The places had once been colorful, but now the cement fronts were faded and peeling except where new advertising for instant coffee and packaged pastries had been painted directly onto the walls. Silvio pressed a buzzer next to a door bracketed with heavy iron bars and identified himself into a small speaker set in the wall, similar to the setup at Mercedes’s dance studio. A solenoid hummed, the door popped open, and Emilia followed him down a short hallway to the snapping rhythm of a speed bag.

  Silvio shoved open an inner door and they entered the gym. The place was worn and old-fashioned looking, and the canvas of the raised boxing ring that took up at least a quarter of the space was stained brown with age and blood. Three heavy bags hung from the ceiling across from the ring. A young man intently slapped one of two speed bags bolted to a rack. There weren’t any shiny weight machines like in the police gym, just a couple of benches and racks of rusty iron barbells. Heavy round free weights lay on the floor, waiting to be racked together for deadlifts and bench presses or held to the body for killer sit-ups. Doors at the far end of the gym probably led to a changing room and bathroom.

  “Franco Silvio!” An old man wearing a stained white singlet undershirt, threadbare khaki pants, and big white sneakers made his way around the side of the ring.

  “Hey, Tinoco.” Silvio actually smiled and embraced the old man. For a moment, the big detective shed years and was a hungry young boxer again. “Brought somebody to meet you. Emilia Cruz Encinos.”

  Tinoco looked Emilia over and smiled, revealing three missing lower teeth and a gold cap on top. His hair was still dark. “Franco, you got good taste.”

  Emilia grinned. Tinoco’s look wasn’t prurient, and she held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Tinoco, and no, Franco and I aren’t like that. He’s still married to Isabel.”

  Tinoco’s smile broadened as he shook Emilia’s hand, testing her strength. His knuckles were outsized knobs, the product of many broken bones, and his fingers were gnarled with arthritis.

  But Emilia didn’t let him get away with testing her and he nodded in satisfaction. “You a fighter, then, chica? I’ll put you in the ring. You’ll do good and look good at the same time. Maybe almost as good as Franco here.”

  “How good was Franco?” Emilia asked.

  “Ah.” Tinoco lifted both hands, palms out. “Franco was the best fighter I ever trained. The kind that
could take a beating and still come back with a knockout. No fear.” He thumped his chest. “All heart and legs and a right hook like murder. A champion. Look at him, he’s still got it. I could put him in the ring today and he’d still go the distance for me.”

  Silvio looked as if he’d swallowed a fly. Tinoco pulled Emilia over to a corner with a paper-strewn desk, a big bottled water dispenser, and baskets full of strips of cloth to wind around a fighter’s hands. Posters, some yellowed with age and curling away from the wall, announced both boxing matches and libre fights at the Coliseo. A plain set of shelves was laden with trophies and plaques. Tinoco pointed to the middle shelf and Emilia saw a bronze pair of miniature boxing gloves and the name FRANCO SILVIO engraved on a dusty plaque.

  “Rayos, Tinoco.” Silvio cleared his throat and avoided Emilia’s eye. “That was 15 years ago.”

  “There aren’t fighters like you around now, Franco,” Tinoco said.

  “You still got enough to keep you busy,” Silvio said, elbowing Emilia away from the trophy shelves. “I hear you’re training luchadores now.”

  Tinoco shrugged. “They’re all show. But I gotta make a living.”

  “You know a luchador goes by the name of Puro Sangre?”

  “Sergio?” The old man cocked his head at Emilia. “Is that what the girl’s about? The boy get her in trouble?”

  Silvio shook his head. “Not this one. Another girl. Over at Mami’s. Need to ask him a question about her.”

  It was clear that Tinoco knew that Silvio was now a cop. Emilia tried to look reassuring. “The girl ran away from home,” she said. “But she met up with Sergio a couple of weeks ago at Mami’s.”

  Tinoco sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of a big-knuckled hand. “The girls like him. He’s a good luchador. Big. Showy. You know what I mean?”

  “Do you know where we can find him?” Silvio asked. He took a 200-peso bill out of his pocket and laid it on the desk. “He lists your place as his address.”

  “A lot of the boys do that,” Tinoco said. “They live a couple days with this girl. A couple days later it’s another girl. Or the back of a bar. Hard to keep up with them.”