Finnegan's Week (1993)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  While gazing at the observation tower on the very top of the old hotel, Willis Ross said, "With all the hell being raised over not having adequate safeguards for us from their pollution, can you imagine the political outcry if it turned out that a Mexican citizen died because of the criminal acts of U. S. citizens? I think the D. A. or the U. S. attorney, or both, would file big-time charges against your friend."

  "I see," Jules said. "Well, this is all hypothetical. Nobody knows yet if an illegal dumping really occurred, or if anyone suffered as a result."

  The lawyer, who was used to friends offering all sorts of "hypotheticals" about dilemmas that might occur, took a business card from his wallet and looked Jules squarely in the eye. "Give him my name and phone number," Willis Ross said. "Your friend needs representation, my friend."

  An accented female telephone voice said, "Mees Salter? Ees thees Mees Salter?"

  "Yes, this is Nell Salter." Then the voice said something in Spanish and Nell heard a familiar male voice on the line.

  "This is Doctor Velasquez, Ms. Salter," he said.

  "Yes, Doctor, do you have news for me?"

  "I have," he said. "We are certain that our patients were exposed to something very much like Guthion. And we have been able to talk to the younger boy, Luis Zuniga, age nine years."

  "Good!" Nell said. "Then you know how it happened?"

  "Yes, they found the drums on the ground behind a truck on a dirt road in Colonia Libertad. That is a very poor colonia by The Soccer Field."

  "Yes?"

  "The boys accidentally overturned the drum when they were prying it open and they were both soaked with the liquid. The older boy, Jaime Cisneros, age ten, had a history of asthma, so the material had a devastating effect on him."

  "Is he still in a coma?"

  "I am sorry to say that he died last evening just before midnight. He did not emerge from the coma."

  "Oh, Christ!" Nell said.

  "We expect Luis Zuniga to recover. He is a strong little boy." "Christ!"

  "Yes, I am afraid that too many of the children in the poor colonias do not survive to become adults."

  "About the drums of hazardous waste, have you . . ."

  "The authorities were alerted, and I have personally been advised that the drums are no longer where the boys found them, although there is evidence of the spill."

  "Can we assume that the empty drums're being used by the local people?"

  "Of course," Doctor Velasquez said. "Steel drums have many uses."

  "Even drums with a skull and crossbones painted on the side?"

  "These people, Ms. Salter, face far greater dangers than that in their everyday lives. That is what they would say."

  "I hope I can find out if anyone besides the dead truck thief had a hand in this," Nell said.

  "I hope so," he said. "Good luck."

  "If I do I promise I'll try to have him prosecuted for causing the death of that child."

  The line was quiet for a moment, then Doctor Velasquez said, "I do not want to sound cynical, but down here we do not believe that the American courts would care that much about a dead child. A dead Mexican child."

  "If someone else was involved I'll get him into court. I swear."

  "Yes, that is a good thought to keep," said Doctor Velasquez.

  After hanging up the phone, Nell stared at her copy of the police report detailing the truck theft. Then she called Fin and told him that now she intended to take this investigation very seriously.

  That afternoon, while Jules Temple was on his booze cruise in San Diego Harbor, Abel Durazo was licking the ear of the pregnant secretary at Green Earth Hauling and Disposal.

  "Stop that!" she said, but didn't pull away.

  "Okay, Mary," Abel said. "Where else can I leeck?"

  "You little brat!" she said. "You're terrible!"

  "We got time," he said. "One more months, then no more to make love. But we okay for now." He reached down and patted her belly.

  "You really are terrible." She smiled when he nuzzled and kissed her neck.

  "I need to make call to T. J.," he said. "Okay?"

  "You're lucky Mister Temple doesn't check the phone bills," she said. "Or maybe I'm the lucky one. He'd fire me for all your toll calls."

  "One more. Please?"

  Mary was a plain dumpling even before the pregnancy, and she'd never been able to resist this handsome young hauler who might well be the father of her baby, for all she knew.

  "Oh, all right," she said, "but hurry up. Mister Temple might come back."

  Mary resumed her bookkeeping, not able to understand a single word of the angry telephone conversation that Abel had in Spanish with an employee of Soltero. But when he hung up he was smiling.

  "I go to T. J. tomorrow," he said. "Maybe breeng back some perfume."

  He slipped his hand inside the neckline of her maternity smock but withdrew it when there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  "Get outta here!" she said, and Abel scurried toward the back staircase. He turned in time to see a man and woman enter Mary's office. The man looked familiar.

  "What'd you find out?" the ox wanted to know when Abel trotted across the yard with a lottery winner's grin.

  "Soltero got money, Buey," Abel said. "Tomorrow he pay."

  "What time we gonna meet him?"

  "Like joo tell me, I say early. Hees man say we meet late. I say no, my companero, he scared of the dark."

  "You little dickhead!" Shelby took a playful swing at Abel, who ducked, and feinted with a left hook of his own.

  Then Abel said, "I say we go to hees house. Thees guy say no, we meet at Bongo Room, Avenida Revolution, fi' thirty."

  "Five-thirty? Yeah, that's okay, I guess. In a bar, huh? That's cool. We ain't goin to no outta-the-way place. Not when we're collectin six grand from a crook."

  "After we get money, we go all over T. J.," Abel said. "We get some tequila, some food."

  "Some pussy?"

  "Okay, no problem."

  Shelby was wondering if he should score some meth down there or should he bring his own, when Mary opened the window of her office and yelled, "Abel! You and Shelby come up here! There's people here to talk to you!"

  Fin Finnegan and Nell Salter were waiting in the office when the truckers entered by way of the back stairway.

  Abel remembered where he'd seen the man as soon as the ox whispered, "The cop/"

  Shelby Pate felt his anxiety level rising. These were older cops, real cops, not some little navy cop with cute tits and freckles on her nose.

  "Can we use this office?" Nell asked the secretary.

  "That's Mister Temple's office," she said, "but I guess it's okay."

  Fin held the door and closed it after all four of them were inside.

  Nell motioned them to the client chairs and she sat on the corner of the desk.

  Shelby Pate admired her long legs, and thought that the bent nose made her look sexy, like a biker momma.

  Abel wasn't looking at her legs. He was plainly worried, when Fin said, "This is Investigator Salter from the D. A.'s Office. She's helping me look into the truck theft. We were wondering, now that you've had time to think about it, could you tell us a little more about that afternoon at Angel's?"

  "Like what?" Shelby asked.

  "We tol' everytheeng," Abel said.

  "Did you see anybody at Angel's," Nell asked, "anybody that you knew or had seen before? Maybe some out-of-work hauler? A lotta truckers hang around there."

  Fin said, "Maybe you saw somebody there who mighta seen somebody else that was suspicious. Some trucker who'd already left by the time you'd finished your meal? Think about it."

  Abel and Shelby each did an impression of honest truckers trying to think. Shelby actually started stroking his unshaven chin. His blue T-shirt was emblazoned in white with PUBLIC ENEMY.

  Finally the ox said, "Naw, I can't think a nobody. How 'bout you, Flaco? Did you see somebody there that we knew?"

/>   "Nobody," the Mexican said, shaking his head. "They all strangers that day."

  "This is important," Nell said. "This is about a lot more than the theft of the truck."

  Shelby felt his adrenaline surge. The shoes! They'd talked to that little navy bitch about the shoes! "Whaddaya mean?" he asked.

  "We can say for sure now," Fin informed them, "that the man driving your truck died as a result of being exposed to the Guthion from your load."

  "The thief, he die?" Abel asked.

  "He may've been the truck thief," Fin said. "All we know for sure is he was driving a load of pottery from T. J. to San Diego and it cost him his life."

  Enormously relieved that they weren't there to talk about shoes, Shelby bared his gap-tooth grin and said, "He kicked the pot instead a the bucket!"

  Everyone looked at him but nobody laughed.

  Well fuck them, he thought.

  "Do you know about Guthion?" Nell asked.

  Shelby said, "All we know is it's all bad shit."

  Methyl-ethyl bad-shit, Nell thought. Even the people who handled hazardous waste didn't know much about it.

  "All we do, we peek up stuff and breeng here to yard," Abel said.

  "Take my word that it's very hazardous," Nell said. "That's why it was manifested for a disposal site out of state."

  "Anyway," Fin said, "when you came out, the truck was gone. But was anybody else gone? Anybody who was there in the parking lot when you went inside?"

  "There was lots a truckers around," Shelby said, looking at Abel.

  In order to get a reaction about the missing cash, which anyone smarter than a Rottweiler would know these two had stolen from their boss, Fin asked, "And the five hundred bucks in cash that you got from your last pickup was in the glove compartment?"

  "Een glove box, yes," Abel said to Nell Salter, who was looking at Shelby Pate.

  "We thought it was safe there," Shelby said. "We jist wrapped the envelope full a money inside the two manifests and stuck the whole package in the glove box."

  "And lock eet," Abel informed them.

  "Naturally we locked it," Shelby said. "We thought that was safer than walkin around with five hunnerd bucks in our jeans."

  "Keep thinking about that lunch break at Angel's," Nell said, giving her business card to each young man. "Maybe you'll think of somebody you saw there. You see, this is much more important than a truck theft or even the fact that a suspect died driving that truck. Somebody else was exposed to that Guthion you were hauling."

  That got their attention. Shelby Pate lost his innocent gap-tooth smile. Abel Durazo's jaw muscles started working.

  "Who?" Shelby asked.

  "Two little boys," Nell said. "They lived in a barrio in Tijuana called Colonia Libertad. One is nine. The other was ten."

  "Whaddaya mean was?" Shelby Pate asked, heaving his bulk forward in the chair.

  "The nine-year-old boy is expected to recover, but a ten-year-old named Jaime Cisneros is dead from spilling that drum full of waste all over himself."

  "Dead?" Abel Durazo was stunned.

  "He was a sickly boy," Nell said. "He had asthma, and his body wasn't able to fight off the toxicity. He died last night."

  There was silence and then Shelby cried out, "This sucks, man!"

  Both Nell and Fin were astonished to see his eyes fill!

  Abel looked alarmed then. He said, "Our truck! Our poison! We feel bad! Real bad, don' we, Buey?"

  "This sucks!" the ox repeated, taking off his hard hat and running his fingers through his lank, straw-colored hair.

  "We feel bad, lady!" Abel said earnestly. "Maybe we worry now that we deed no' lock truck! Boy dead! We feel bad, lady!"

  "Did you lock it or not?" Fin asked.

  "I lock eet," Abel said. "I lock eet, I theenk. But now we upset!"

  "I can understand that," Fin said, glancing at Nell. "Maybe you'll think of something since you know how important this is."

  Shelby Pate asked Nell, "How old did you say the dead kid was? The one with ringworm?"

  "Ringworm? I said asthma. He coulda had ringworm too for all I know. He was ten years old."

  Shelby said, "This sucks, man! This really sucks!"

  No one spoke for several seconds and then Fin said, "Is there anything else you'd like to ask us?"

  "No, sir," Abel said.

  Shelby Pate just sat staring at the wall and shook his head silently.

  "You have my card," Nell said. "Call me if you remember anything. Anything at all."

  Mary stared at Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate when they somberly trudged past her and disappeared down the back stairway. Abel didn't smile, wink, or even acknowledge her quizzical look.

  When Fin and Nell emerged, Fin said to Mary, "You can tell Mister Temple that we've definitely ascertained that the drum of Guthion was responsible for the death of the man who was driving the truck, and at least one more person. A resident of Tijuana. He was ten years old."

  Chapter 18

  After leaving Green Earth, Nell found herself following Fin's city car to the Mexican restaurant on Palm Avenue. He'd done it to her again. When she said she had to go back to the office, he said they had to talk about the case. When she said they could talk later, he said it was important that they talk now. When he suggested they have a business lunch, she said she still wasn't feeling well from the night before.

  And then he said, "Menudo! Carmen makes the best menudo in the world. You can't have a hangover with a bowl of her menudo in your tummy."

  "No," she said.

  "I've got ideas about the case," he said. "It's important, Nell."

  And she found herself wheeling into the restaurant parking lot, pulling next to Fin, who was parked next to a San Diego County Sheriffs car which was parked next to a Border Patrol four-wheel drive which was next to a San Diego P. D. patrol unit.

  "Lineup," Fin said, indicating the police cars. "Answer when your name is called."

  After they'd got seated and had ordered, Nell tasted a tortilla chip with fresh salsa. The very first taste burned the tip of her tongue, but not unpleasantly.

  "So what's your idea?" she asked, sipping her soda pop.

  "That those guys know something about the dumping of the hazardous waste."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "Did you see the reaction to the news about the kid? Suddenly those truckers were giving off about as much eye contact as browsers in a dirty bookstore."

  "Of course I saw it," she said. "But it could just be guilt from maybe having left their truck unlocked."

  "Yeah, they coulda left it unlocked and be scared to admit it now."

  "And feel guilty about it. You know about guilt. You laid some on me to get me down here."

  "I really do care about this case, Nell."

  "Of course they stole their boss's five hundred bucks," she said.

  "That goes without saying."

  "So maybe they just left their truck unlocked and they're scared, especially now that a kid's died."

  "But I think I was looking at big-time guilt," Fin said. "Especially in Pate."

  "I gotta admit, I sorta felt the same way."

  "Yeah?"

  "But it doesn't make sense."

  "Why not?"

  "What could they gain from dumping their load of waste in T. J.?"

  "To get rid of it," Fin said.

  "Why?"

  "What if they . . . sold their truck down there?"

  "Sold it?"

  "Yeah, for, say, a couple thousand. They're gonna be outta work. What if they took the van down where Durazo is connected and just sold it to somebody who needed to haul pottery north?"

  "And then made a phony police report claiming it was stolen from Angel's?"

  "Right," Fin said.

  "It's possible."

  "Sure it is."

  "Why didn't they dump the load on our side of the border?"

  "That's easy," Fin said. "They figured that down there, there'd never be
a follow-up investigation that might nail them. They got so much mutant-producing waste down there that even one-cell animals can ride bicycles."

  "I guess it's the only thing that makes sense if what we saw was a guilt reaction," Nell said.

  "They dumped the drums in Colonia Libertad and they sold the truck to Pepe Palmera or to the pottery maker. When I met them on Friday night they claimed they took a taxi down to Southern to make the report. It sounded like bullshit at the time. Now I understand. They'd walked across the border."

  "Okay, so now what?"

  "I don't know, except the big guy might get the guilts so bad he'll phone us up," Fin said.

  "Care to bet?"

  "I don't think so. On another subject, how about dinner tonight?"

  "The menudo'll see me through," she said.

  "How about tomorrow night? I'm cooking pasta and watching a Ross Perot infomational."

  "A Perot-ista! I mighta known. You weird little guys stick together."

  "Can you make it?"

  "Call me tomorrow. I'll see if I'm well."

  "Okay," he said. "And maybe I can talk you into voting for Ross. He's the only thing that can save our country."

  "You think America's that desperate, huh?"

  "Absolutely," Fin said. "The watershed event that signaled the imminent collapse of American civilization was the colorization of The Maltese Falcon."

  Fin always felt particularly lonely for a few days after he didn't get a job that he'd read for. He talked about it with other failed actors. It was more than the sting of rejection that successful actors could attribute to the vagaries of the business, or to the artistic decline in the popular arts, or to the dietary habits of casting agents and producers who'd consumed too much arugula in recent years. The intense loneliness really stemmed from the fact that all failed actors had denial-free moments when they thought that all those schmucks might be right!