Diablo Nights (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 3)

by Carmen Amato

  She’d told Flores the story of Lila Jimenez Lata on the way over to the area by the Fuerte San Diego. Parking was hard to find, so she left the car at Sanborn’s, one of her favorite stores, and they strolled toward the pedestrian walkway leading into the pentagon-shaped fort’s maze of massive walls and museum displays. Flores listened attentively and asked a few questions. He’d lost Monday’s tone of defensive bravado; Emilia figured his day with Silvio had done the young cop some good.

  They’d found Chavito loitering about half a block from the entrance to the fort, by the intersection of Hornitos and Morelos, handing out flyers for “Acapulco’s Top Models.” The pimp had recognized Emilia and hooted at her hair. Flores had been discomfited when Chavito extended his hand, but shook it anyway.

  “Okay, Lata,” Emilia confirmed.

  Chavito smirked and mimed opening a can of soda. “Lata. Because no matter what the customer wanted, she’d always pop her top.”

  Flores caught his breath.

  “She’s dead,” Emilia said with ice in her voice.

  Chavito nodded. “Overdose.”

  “How long did she work for you?” Flores asked. He had a faint bruise on his jaw and was wearing the black jacket again.

  Chavito squinted up at Flores. “I don’t have such a good memory any more, you know?”

  “He wants money,” Flores said to Emilia.

  Of course he wants money, you idiot. Emilia knew her temper was balanced on the knife edge. She grabbed Chavito by the collar and swung him down the street. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Hey, hey.” Chavito clawed at her hand. “I’m remembering. Lata was around a long time. Six years, maybe more. Sometimes she found other gigs but she always came back.”

  Emilia shoved Chavito against a wall, then jammed Flores in front of the pimp, blocking his escape. For good measure she stepped on Chavito’s foot. “Next question,” she said. “Lata came to you about two weeks ago. A Sunday night. Said she needed a hit.”

  “You know I don’t sell shit,” Chavito said, his words punctuated with indignation. He held up the flyers. “I run an introduction service.”

  “Sure,” Emilia said. “Who did you introduce Lata to?”

  “If her husband gave her money from his panty-assed beauty school she wouldn’t need to pull tricks.” Chavito leaned forward, eyebrows raised, ringlets quivering around his ears. “But I’ll tell you a secret. Lata loved the tricks. Never saw a girl who loved it more. I thought when she hitched up with Trinidad she’d disappear. But she always came back and I always set her up real good.”

  Emilia thought of Pedro. He’d known his mother well. “So tell me about her last set up. What happened?”

  Chavito tried to squirm his foot out from under Emilia’s. “I don’t know. He paid, they went to the hotel. El Lago. Two streets over. I assumed Lata got her fix, went home to her husband. Next thing I hear, Lata’s been found dead a block from the hotel. I put the word out but nobody’s seen the guy.”

  “When you saw Lata,” Emilia asked, stamping harder. “Did she have her phone with her?”

  “Sure.” Chavito nodded and stopped trying to free his foot. “Big pink thing with her initial on it. She probably fucked that phone, too, she loved it so much.”

  “I need to find it,” Emilia said.

  “Why?” Chavito looked at her with suspicion.

  Emilia could follow the pimp’s train of thought. If there was anything in Yolanda’s phone liable to get someone from the street in trouble, Chavito would be blamed for helping. She dug out the photo strip of Yolanda and Lila and showed it to him. “I’m looking for Lata’s daughter. Have you seen her?”

  Chavito studied the picture. “No, but I’ll run her if she needs a job.”

  “No, you won’t,” Flores said.

  Chavito rolled his eyes.

  “I need Lata’s phone,” Emilia said. “The girl’s number is probably in it. Any idea who took it?”

  The dwarf shrugged. “I figure her last john.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Plain. Young.” Chavito pointed at Flores. “Older than him. Dark blue jacket with a zipper.”

  “Scars? Tattoos?”

  “No.”

  “Tall? Short?”

  Chavito shook his head. “You people all look the same height to me.”

  “Very funny. What else did he have on besides the jacket?”

  “Nice shoes,” Chavito said thoughtfully. “Basketball high tops, you know. LeBron or something like that. Expensive.”

  Emilia almost heard a click as things fell into place. “What else?”

  “Backpack. Real possessive of it, too. I figured that’s where he had his stash.”

  “He was a dealer? Local?”

  “Not from around here,” Chavito said. “I know all of them.”

  “What else?”

  “He didn’t argue over the price,” Chavito said. “He paid cash for Lata and promised her a high, too. You know, in return for something special.”

  “You let her go to work high?” Flores asked.

  Madre de Dios. Flores had incredulity all over his face. Emilia wondered if he realized that Yolanda’s “work” would have been to take her customer to some dirty pay-by-the hour hotel and have whatever sexual encounter the man wanted. There would not have been any condom or way to check for disease.

  Chavito smirked and Emilia knew the pimp could tell that Flores was a rookie.

  “You said he wasn’t local,” she said. “Take a guess. Where was he from?”

  “Out of town. Talked funny.”

  “What do you mean, funny?” Emilia pressed. “Speech impediment? Lisp? Cleft palate?”

  “Hey, no.” Chavito bristled at her barrage. “A funny accent. Like maybe he wasn’t Mexican.”

  “You ever meet anybody from Honduras?” Emilia asked.

  “No.” Chavito eyed the sidewalk behind Flores. Two women in short skirts and high heels, obviously his girls, loitered halfway down the street. The pimp nodded and they disappeared around the corner.

  Emilia snapped her fingers to get his attention back. “Did you get a name?”

  Chavito clicked his tongue. “Who has names in this business?”

  “Did anybody around here know him? How did he find you?”

  “He was hanging around,” Chavito recalled. “Said he was waiting for his friends. Said he might as well have a good time until they got there. Made it sound like they were all going to party later.”

  “Did the friends show up? Anybody looking for him since that night?”

  “No.” Chavito shook his head and Emilia knew he’d thought enough of Yolanda to ask around on her behalf. “I figured he was lying. Playing the big shot.”

  Dark blue jacket with a zipper. Nice shoes. Not Mexican. Had a stash.

  Looking for friends.

  Emilia dug out her phone and found the picture she’d taken of the Salva Diablo gang member lying in the morgue. “Is that him?”

  “Maybe.” Chavito looked from the cell phone to Emilia. “But that guy is dead, right?”

  She gave Chavito 200 pesos and they walked away.

  Emilia drove toward the center of the city, until she found a place to park close enough to smell the clean air breezing off the bay. Flores looked at her curiously as she found a number in her cell phone.

  “This is Emilia,” she said when Prade came on the line. “Did you keep any blood samples from Yolanda Lata? Yola de Trinidad, I mean. Can you test them for Ora Ciega?”

  Chapter 17

  “Doing a little personnel reshuffling,” Loyola said, staring at a point between Emilia and Silvio as they sat in the chairs fronting his desk.

  “What kind of reshuffling?” Silvio asked suspiciously.

  Thursday after the morning meeting, Loyola had asked both detectives to come into his office. The acting lieutenant made a show out of looking through the papers on his desk, mumbled something about best use of resources. “We got too m
any cases,” he said. “Need to spread out more. So, Silvio, you’ll be riding with Ibarra. Cruz can handle Flores and his training on her own.”

  “No,” Emilia said. It was an automatic, reflexive reaction.

  “Why not put Flores with Ibarra?” Silvio asked at the same time.

  “Flores would prefer it this way,” Loyola said primly.

  “Since when does a rookie get to decide shit?” the senior detective demanded.

  Loyola continued to stare at nothing. “It’s my decision. Flores needs to take his time settling in.”

  “Jesu Cristo,” Silvio exploded. “That kid needs to get his ass chewed at the police academy. Then spend a couple of years on the streets, learning about real life.”

  “He’s catching on,” Loyola said. “I’ve been watching him.”

  “You haven’t been on the street with him,” Emilia jumped in. “Flores doesn’t have any idea how things work in real life. He must have grown up in a bubble.”

  “He seems smart enough.” Loyola fooled again with some papers on his desk. “Maybe he doesn’t know how things work because you haven’t done a good enough job of showing him.”

  “Are you really going to let some kid make decisions for you?” Silvio leaned forward and planted his hands on the desk.

  Loyola took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He’d aged in the few months he’d been acting lieutenant; his skin had taken on a gray tinge and his eyes were perpetually bloodshot. Even his hair seemed to lie limp against his head. If it had been Silvio behind the desk he would have reveled in the authority, popping with muscular energy, barking out directions. The vibe would have been contagious and the squadroom would have been bubbling. Instead, the pall created by Loyola’s nervousness in the job seemed to grow thicker every day.

  “Lay off, Silvio,” Loyola said. “This is from Chief Salazar’s office.”

  “So not your decision.” Silvio’s voice was thick with contempt.

  “You should be happy,” Loyola countered. “You didn’t want to ride with Flores in the first place.”

  “That’s not the point.” Silvio stood up, looming over the desk. “I’m talking about the integrity of the squadroom. Tell Salazar no. You’re acting lieutenant, you make the personnel decisions around here.”

  “Don’t you talk to me about integrity, Franco!” Loyola exclaimed. His desk chair shot out as he got to his feet.

  “What do you mean by that?” Silvio’s fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.

  “You got a problem, take it to Alma,” Loyola snapped.

  “Hey, hey.” Emilia stood up, too, and smacked her hand on the desk top to break the angry electricity humming between the two men. Talking about an Internal Affairs investigation was going too far; no career ever survived. “Let’s figure out what to do that’s best for Flores. We’re stuck with him and somebody expects us to turn him into a cop.”

  “Cruz and Flores keep the kidnapping case,” Loyola said to Silvio, as if Emilia hadn’t spoken. “You’ll work Ibarra’s cases and whatever would have been assigned to Macias and Sandor.”

  “No,” Emilia objected. She needed Silvio on the Pacific Grandeur murder case, or the Irma case, or the Ora Ciega smuggling case. Whatever it was now. Plus, they always had a backlog of loose ends, unsolved cases, reports to write. “Silvio can’t just walk off the rest of our cases. Flores is no help.”

  “Cruz is right. What about the rest of our work?” Silvio was still furious. “You expect me to dump it all on that kid?”

  “You’ll have to retire a couple of things. Won’t be the first time we couldn’t work a case.” Loyola sat down again, his anger spent. “If we don’t reshuffle we’re all out of a job.”

  “Who says so?” Silvio asked skeptically.

  “Chief Salazar.”

  “You misheard,” Emilia protested.

  “Exact words,” Loyola said. “Called me at home last night.”

  “We’ll go to the union,” Emilia said.

  Neither man replied.

  “So who’s the kid’s patron?” Silvio asked the ceiling at length. “Chief Salazar or Obregon?”

  Victor Obregon Sosa, the union chief for the state of Guerrero was an enigmatic man named. All three detectives knew he played whichever side was most advantageous to him. And he kept score.

  Obregon’s relationship to Chief Salazar was a mystery. They might be allies or they might be enemies and Emilia had no way of knowing. But she did know that Obregon and Silvio were enemies, to the point where Obregon had once tried to frame Silvio for a dirty cop’s murder.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Loyola looked like he’d had enough. “Cruz, you’ll ride with Flores. Silvio, you’re with Ibarra. I’ve already briefed him.”

  “If this kid is getting to call the shots,” Silvio said tightly. “We are all seriously fucked.”

  He stormed out, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.

  Loyola passed a hand over his face. “So what’s wrong with the kid?”

  Emilia closed the door and returned to her chair. “Flores is,” she said. “He’s . . . he’s . . . immature.”

  Loyola shrugged. “He’s young. Time and experience will take care of it.”

  “He’s having a hard time understanding the concept of professional relationships,” Emilia said carefully. She didn’t want to say that Flores had a crush on her; Loyola could well have the same first reaction as Silvio. But she had to convince Loyola that the kid wasn’t ready for street work. “Also he has trouble with the concept of a plan. He’s not reliable. He could really get himself in trouble.”

  “Cruz, just deal with the kid, okay?”

  “This isn’t something you can snap your fingers and fix,” Emilia said with heat. “He doesn’t understand what it’s like on the streets. Frankly, I don’t think he understands danger. For himself or anybody else. He’s incredibly immature. I didn’t want to say anything in the morning meeting, but he messed up big time when we met with the forgers.”

  “He couldn’t have bungled it too bad. You got a name.” Loyola turned to his computer, hit some keys.

  The printer next to his computer chugged into life.

  Emilia stood up, shoved her hand on the printer button, and turned it off. The paper jammed and the machine let out an electronic death rattle.

  “What the fuck, Cruz?” Loyola swore.

  “This is not going to end well,” Emilia said. “He’s got no experience or natural instincts. He’s a rich kid who managed to buy his way into the job because when he was five it sounded cool to be a cop.”

  “We all have to suck it up sometimes, Cruz,” Loyola said.

  “Let Ibarra suck it up,” Emilia said. “You said sticking him with the new kid meant nobody would have his back, but you don’t seem so worried on my behalf. Let Cruz take a fall, is that it? Protect your partner but not me.”

  Loyola turned the printer back on and it flashed a red warning light. He jabbed ineffectually at the machine’s array of buttons. “Salazar said he wants the kid to be happy and happy means riding with you.”

  “So he buys his way into the squadroom and gets to say who his partner is, too?” Emilia felt her blood pressure rise as she paced in front of the desk. “Silvio is right. We’re all fucked.”

  “Maybe he’s in love.” Loyola stood to remove the printer’s cover. He tried to work the paper out of the feeder. “You’re still driving that Suburban. It’s bigger than some people’s houses. Give the kid a blow job in the back seat now and then. Everybody stays happy and nobody gets fired.”

  “What the hell, Loyola!” Emilia exclaimed. She stopped pacing.

  “Give me a break, Cruz.” Loyola looked up from the internal workings of the printer. The light still pulsed a red warning. “You owe this squadroom. Here’s your chance to pay everybody back.”

  “I owe the squadroom,” Emilia repeated.

  “We both know you’re a looker,” Loyola said. “You could have had a lot more of us m
aking life tough for you than just Gomez and Castro being estupidos.”

  Emilia took an involuntary step backwards. “So I blow Flores to thank you all for keeping it in your pants?”

  Loyola shrugged. “If it works out with him, you can thank the rest of us personal-like, too.”

  Blood thundered in her head. “Let me help you with that printer,” Emilia heard herself say. She came around the side of the desk. Loyola stepped back to give her room and she nailed him in the groin with her knee.

  Loyola doubled up. Emilia left him on the floor behind the desk, gasping into the linoleum.

  ☼

  Emilia spent the afternoon in the comparative safety of the central police administration building, grimly marching Flores around to every department she could think of. He got the Records orientation briefing and a walk through the crime labs. For their last stop, she took him down to the police evidence locker run by her cousin Alvaro.

  It was clear that Flores had never been anywhere with the gritty impact of the locker. His expression was a mix of awe and uneasiness as Emilia saw the immense windowless vault in the building’s basement through his eyes.

  A tall counter ran the width of the apparently endless space and a thick shield of bulletproof glass ran between the counter and the ceiling. The immediate impression was of denial of access; the glass was so thick that a diagonal glance distorted the view. The next impression was that the space was so long that a person seeking the end could be lost in the gray vastness, swallowed up by the color of bureaucracy.

  Beyond the counter and bulletproof glass, there was space for three desks. In back of the desks, an enormous wire cage held a shopping mall’s worth of automatic weapons, technical gadgets, and a million other items seized by the Acapulco police. Everything was packaged in plastic bags or steel bins and shelved according to some unique filing system known only to the wizard of the evidence locker--her cousin Sergeant Alvaro Cruz Ochoa--and his minions.