by Carmen Amato
Silvio pulled out his cell phone. “Ten to one we get told to get fucked.”
Bonilla crowded in next to Emilia as Silvio started speaking into his phone. “Is there anything you need from the crew, Detective?”
Emilia gave him a hard look and stepped forward, forcing Bonilla to move away from Silvio. “Not right now,” she said.
Bonilla gave her a tight-lipped smile. “We’re ready to give the Acapulco police force every assistance.”
“Good to know.” If Emilia wasn’t mistaken, Bonilla was actually straining to hear Silvio’s phone conversation. “We’ll need a list of everyone who left the ship today and what time they come back. We’ll need to know as soon as possible anyone who doesn’t return to the ship.”
“Of course,” Bonilla said.
“We appreciate the cooperation,” Emilia said. They were evenly matched in a battle of fake sincerity, but there was something in Bonilla’s tone Emilia couldn’t quite identify. Disdain, perhaps. Or incredulity. Not at the body bag being wrangled by a team of body collectors from the morgue, but at her and Silvio. “I’m sure you’re worried about the reputation of your ship.”
Bonilla gave her that brittle smile again. “The Pacific Grandeur--.”
“We’ll need to tape off this entire corridor,” the senior tech announced. He unfurled a length of yellow PROHIBIDO EL PASO tape and cordoned off the end of the hallway near the freezer.
Bonilla broke off eye contact with Emilia and practically ran to the freezer door, the two security officers at his heels. “No,” he exclaimed. “That’s not possible.”
“It’s a murder scene,” Emilia said, not moving.
Bonilla swung his gaze between Emilia near the stairs and the techs by the freezer. They had plastered the door with tape. “We have to have access to this space,” he said impatiently. “Ship’s stores have to be loaded before departure on Wednesday. These are longstanding arrangements. Contracts.”
Silvio ended the phone conversation and joined Emilia. “Señor Bonilla, can you please inform your security team that the Acapulco police will be searching the ship. A support team will be arriving shortly to assist.”
The techs unfurled more yellow tape, effectively closing off the end of the corridor.
“We’ve already searched the ship,” Bonilla said.
“Your captain called the police,” Silvio said. “We want to be as thorough as possible.”
“You will not be allowed to violate passenger quarters,” Bonilla argued, his face tight with anger as he looked at the ribbons of crime scene tape.
“Please notify your laundry not to touch clothing or rags with possible bloodstains.” Silvio rolled. “We’ll be questioning your crew while we wait for backup to start the search.”
Before Bonilla could protest, the crime scene techs shoved by on their way out. “We’ll take a look at what we got,” the senior tech said to Silvio. He checked his watch. “Need a couple of hours.” Emilia knew they’d probably do the same thing at a dozen more crime scenes throughout the city that day and there’d be a dozen more scenes that weren’t high enough priority to send out the overworked techs. This one was only a high priority because of the connection to the tourism industry.
The techs left, grappling their bulky equipment boxes and escorted by one of the ship’s security officers, as the morgue guys finally strapped the body onto a stretcher.
“We’re not going to wrestle him up those stairs,” one of the morgue workers said. “You got another way out of this ship?”
Bonilla’s anger had boiled off and his brittle cruise ship smile was back in place. “The loading hatch opens right onto the dock,” he said. “It’s how the ship’s stores for this deck come in.”
“That should work,” Silvio said.
Bonilla murmured something into a radio clipped to his shirt. Several crew members in white shirts and denim pants appeared a minute later and went through an elaborate procedure to open a vast loading hatch and lay a second gangplank onto the dock. Emilia saw Silvio watching carefully. The loading hatch was wide enough to accept bulk deliveries, which made sense. No one loaded that amount of food on board a ship of this size by carrying boxes of vegetables and ice cream and flour down the narrow stairs. Not to mention the contents of a butcher shop.
She tried the handle of the door closest to the blood on the wall. An enamel sign on the door read “Dry Goods. Kitchen 4. Inventory Control:” A hand lettered placard reading “Whitley” had been inserted into a label holder. The door was locked.
“The storerooms stay locked.” Bonilla was suddenly next to her. “The chefs and their assistants have the keys to the areas that are stocked specifically for their kitchens. The signs show who is in charge of that storeroom.”
“What about the cold storage units?” Silvio asked. “Locked as well?”
Bonilla shook his head. “No. That is so no one ever gets trapped inside. There are telephones in the storerooms, but not inside a refrigerator.”
Still radiating anger, Bonilla made a show of producing a key and unlocking the storeroom doors. There were ten storerooms for dry goods. The layout of each was the same; boxes and big plastic containers, all clearly labeled, rested on wire shelves. Clipboards attached to each shelving run listed the inventory. Every time an item was taken out of the storeroom it was noted on the inventory clipboard, with someone initializing the transaction and marking the date.
“We’ll need copies of the lists to see who has been down here,” Emilia told Bonilla.
Silvio threw her a disgusted look and she knew why. The inventory lists were a long shot, as if the killer would have neatly recorded taking a kilo of sugar from the appropriate storeroom before shooting a stowaway in the shadows under a narrow metal staircase.
The storage spaces were clean, well-lit, and an efficient air handling system kept them smelling fresh. But somehow the stink of the meat hanging in the refrigeration unit clung to Emilia’s clothes and hair. Or maybe it was the image of the folded body, stuffed in with the animal carcasses, that made her think she smelled like dead meat.
☼
The discovery of the body had been around 8:00 am. Chef Werner Blom, who had worked more than two dozen cruises aboard the Pacific Grandeur, went down to take inventory before the ship restocked in Acapulco. Heading off a rant about how the meat currently on the ship was now tainted and would have to be disposed of, Emilia walked him through the morning’s events as she scribbled a timeline in her notebook.
Blom had used the phone in the corridor to call the security team and got the man on duty, who in turn called Ramos. He and another security officer named Porter, who did not speak Spanish, met up with Blom and verified that there was indeed a dead body in the meat locker. Ramos notified the captain. After a search of the ship, in case the murderer was still on board, the captain had made the decision to inform the Acapulco police.
By 4:00 pm, Emilia felt that the Pacific Grandeur was sucking the life out of her. She had another cup of excellent coffee and silently vowed never to go on a cruise.
The assistance they’d received consisted of two uniformed cops who were on the second half of a double shift. Both looked shot to hell and acted like zombies. The ship’s captain refused to give the police access to passenger cabins, just as Bonilla had predicted, and so the zombie brothers sleep-walked through the crew’s quarters. They searched about half of the cabins and found nothing.
The crew interviews were equally useless. Bonilla insisted that both he and Ramos be present as Emilia and Silvio questioned members of the kitchen and security staffs. Emilia felt Silvio grow progressively more angry as each questioning session slowly turned into a farce. Starting with the head chef, it was clear that someone--almost certainly Ramos--had coached each person. No, they hadn’t been down to the stockroom area the previous evening. No, they hadn’t seen the man in question on the ship. No, they hadn’t known anything about a body in the meat locker until the head chef had told Ramos. No, th
ey had never seen anyone with a gun aboard ship.
None of the security team had anything to add. Each opined that the man was a stowaway. No one would hazard a guess as to how the man would have gotten on the ship or who could have killed him.
After the interviews, Ramos showed Emilia and Silvio where the ship’s weapons were kept. Only members of the security detail had the keys to the lockers. A notice was sent to the ship’s computer whenever a locker was opened. He showed them the records; none of the lockers had been opened since the ship left Los Angeles five days ago. Emilia wondered how easy it would be to hack into the program and erase an entry.
Bonilla joined them for a tour of the weapons lockers. A cabinet on the bridge deck held 9mm automatic handguns with the ammunition clips stored separately. Other gun lockers were located in crew areas, but camouflaged so as not to worry passengers. Those contained long guns and were only to be used in the case of pirate attacks.
“Lot of pirates here in Acapulco,” Silvio said.
“A standard precaution,” Ramos said.
“None of these weapons appear to be the same small caliber that killed our victim,” Emilia said. “Of course we’ll know better after the autopsy.”
Emilia and Silvio were the last cops to leave the ship, as Bonilla and Ramos wound up the tour of the weapons locker at the head of the gangplank leading to the city docks.
“Perhaps this was a suicide,” Ramos suggested.
Emilia stopped in surprise. “You realize--,” she started.
“The ship will be detained in port until further notice,” Silvio interrupted with a deadpan look.
Bonilla drew himself up. “I will notify the captain,” he said. “But the ship has a timetable. Any delay will result in a demarche to the Acapulco authorities.”
“We are the authorities,” Silvio said. “And we’ll be back tomorrow.”
☼
Emilia nearly snorted. “Man wanders onto cruise ship, shoots himself twice in the head, crawls ten meters to a freezer, goes inside and tries to hide behind a side of beef. Yes, excellent theory.”
“Ramos mostly played it cool,” Silvio said. He leaned against the side of the car and stared across the parking lot at the massive white ship. “But he couldn’t keep it up.”
“You think he did it?”
“Him or Bonilla,” Silvio said. “The other one knows it and is trying to protect him. Both are fucking amateurs.”
Emilia popped the top on a soda from the vendor on the corner and watched the tourists stream back to the ship. Most were laden with bags and bundles from Acapulco’s markets. “So who was this guy?” she mused. “Stowaway? Dealer looking to sell a little weed or coke to the passengers? Or a thief who came on planning to rob a couple of staterooms?”
“Either way, Ramos or Bonilla finds him.” Silvio picked up the thread after a long pull at his own can of soda. “Gets a little overexcited, shoots him with a personal weapon he’s not supposed to have on board.”
“Tells his best buddy,” Emilia continued. “If the captain finds out about the personal weapon he’ll get fired. So they shove the guy into the meat locker and dump the murder weapon overboard.”
“Why the meat locker?” Silvio often played the devil’s advocate during their brainstorming sessions.
“Easier than trying to carry him up those stairs,” Emilia reasoned. “And opening that hatch is a big deal. They’d need help.”
“Okay,” Silvio said and burped. “Sounds like we got a working theory but it’s mostly based on the fact that Bonilla and Ramos acted like stooges. Say it’s them. Now they’ve had some time to regroup. Make sure the crew stories are consistent.”
Emilia finished her soda. “Maybe we’ll get some prints. We find out who the victim was. Find his friends. Family. Keep asking questions until we find somebody who saw him come on board.”
“Get enough on him to make Bonilla and Ramos break.” Silvio crushed his empty can in one hand.
“Maybe the crew won’t give us anything, but the docks are always crawling with people.” Emilia waved at the infrastructure supporting the cruise ship docks. “Customs, street vendors, hookers. No matter what time this guy was wandering around, there would be somebody here.”
Silvio’s cell phone rang. As he answered, Emilia walked to a metal trash can affixed to a stanchion reading Keep Acapulco Clean! and threw away her empty can. The call was brief. “Loyola needs us back at the station,” he said.
Emilia slid into the passenger seat, Silvio started the car, and they left the lot in front of the docks.
“You’re Catholic,” Emilia said as the car turned onto the Costera Miguel Alemán boulevard. The coastal route was generally referred to as the Costera. “Do you believe that a saint’s body doesn’t decay after death?”
Silvio glanced at her in exasperation “We’ve been partners for how long, Cruz?”
It had been about six months. “Too long,” Emilia replied.
“Yet I’m still surprised when you talk shit.”
“Answer the question, pendejo,” Emilia said. She cranked down the car window. The wind off the water was salty and crisp, cutting through the butcher shop reek of their clothes. “Do you believe that saints are so holy that their dead bodies don’t decay?”
“That stiff on the ship is no saint.”
“I’m not talking about him,” Emilia said. “I think I found one yesterday.”
“A saint?”
“Yes.”
Silvio signaled a left turn. “Hollywood’s that good, is he?”
“Don’t call him Hollywood,” Emilia said automatically. Silvio and Kurt had met a few months ago, and to Emilia’s surprise, got along well. She knew that Silvio only referred to Kurt as Hollywood to needle her, the same way she couldn’t resist annoying Silvio by using his first name. But despite their often adversarial relationship, Silvio had been the first person she’d told that she was staying at the Palacio Réal on the weekends. After all, they were partners. “I’m asking because we ran across a relic that’s supposed to be a finger of Padre Pro, the Cristero War martyr.”
“A real finger?”
“A relic of the martyr Padre Pro,” Emilia repeated.
“I got that part,” Silvio said. “Where’d you find it?”
“Villa de Refugio,” Emilia said. “That fancy Catholic store in El Centro. They had it in a special case with letters of authentication.”
“You think they’re dealing body parts?” Silvio’s scowl deepened as he turned north onto a narrow street flanked by mid-rise buildings and palm trees that would take them up to Avenida Cuauhtémoc.
“Do you ever listen to me?” Emilia said with a flash of exasperation. “It’s the relic of a famous Catholic martyr.”
“Sure it is,” Silvio snorted. “If Padre Pro’s finger was floating around, it would have floated right over to the Vatican. Take it over to Prade at the morgue and get it tested.”
“That’s what Kurt wants me to do,” Emilia admitted.
Kurt had paid an enormous amount of money for the relic, not as a gift for her mother and Ernesto, but on the condition that Emilia take it to Acapulco’s medical examiner. Back at the penthouse last night they’d looked through the letters and then argued fiercely over the relic’s authenticity. She’d left that morning after a quick cup of coffee and a terse goodbye, with the relic in a hotel cooler.
“Never said Hollywood was stupid,” Silvio said. “Just too pretty.”
“Why don’t you believe it?” Emilia asked, nettled by the thought that both Kurt and Silvio were skeptical that the relic was genuine. “Everybody knows that saints never decompose like real people. Why can’t this finger be like that? Evidence that Padre Pro is a saint?”
Silvio looked over at Emilia in disgust. “You’re not seriously going to whine like a woman that this could be some Church miracle crap. If Pro’s body never decomposed, where is the rest of it?”
“He was executed by the government,” Emilia
countered. “The letters that came with the relic say that the finger was amputated and hidden by his mother before he was buried. It got passed on to churches, but never talked about because people were afraid the government would confiscate it.”
“So if this is his finger, that proves he’s a saint?” Silvio asked, his voice larded with skepticism. “You could dig him up and there’d he’d be, bullets and all, still nice and fresh.”
Emilia knew it was a long shot, but she couldn’t deny she wanted the relic to be real. Padre Pro’s finger could be the miracle they needed in order to survive the cartel drugs and violence that had become all too common in Acapulco. It could be her miracle, her sign of forgiveness. “In theory, yes,” she said.
Silvio guffawed. “Tell you what, Cruz. Get the finger tested over at the morgue. If it turns out to be the priest’s I’ll help you dig him up.”
Chapter 3
There was a handsome young man wearing a faultlessly tailored gray suit sitting at Silvio’s desk when the two detectives walked into the squadroom. A cord ran from a pair of hi-tech earphones into the breast pocket of his jacket. The young man’s eyes were closed, his mouth wore a slack smile, and his heels were propped on the desk top dangerously close to Silvio’s favorite coffee mug.
“Who the hell are you?” Silvio thundered. He swatted the polished shoes off the desk, causing the young man to spill out of the chair.
“I’m waiting for Detectives Cruz and Silvio,” the young man said breathlessly, recovering his balance.
“Get your ass the hell away from my desk.” Silvio shoved the chair, sending it careening into the side of a nearby filing cabinet.
The young man removed his headphones, folded them flat and slipped them into the pocket along with the rest of the cord. “I was told that it could be my desk if I wanted it,” he said.
Silvio stepped forward until the young man was pinned and their noses nearly touched. “What the fuck did you say?”