by Carmen Amato
“Rasp,” Kurt said and held up the tool. “Could be used for filing bones.” He set it on the counter and selected another. “Coping saw. Useful to get the bones small enough to fit inside glass cases. Wire cutters. Organ harvesting tools, if you ask me.” His voice was deliberately loud enough to rise above the usual patter of shoppers and vendors. His blonde hair and height made him stand out, as Emilia had opined that morning. Heads swiveled.
“Stop it, stop it,” Juan Fabio whispered urgently. “Those tools are my fortune.”
“And for display purposes.” Kurt held up a big nail, as big as the one that Prade had shown Emilia in his office.
One of the stall owners, whom Emilia had seen before, sidled up to the stall. “You need tools, señor?” he asked Kurt. “If Juan Fabio doesn’t have what you need, you come find Jorge.”
Kurt slid a small pliers out of its flannel pocket. “I think Juan Fabio has everything I want.”
As Jorge ambled back across the aisle, Juan Fabio rushed back to the desk, snatched up the tools and began replacing them in their flannel pockets. “I make crosses. Display cases,” he whispered furiously. “I don’t sell body parts.”
“Sounds to me like you do,” Kurt said and swiftly twisted a fist into the man’s shirt, raising the smaller man to his toes.
The rasp fell with a clang onto the concrete floor. “No,” Juan Fabio sputtered.
“How many Padre Pro relics have you sold?” Kurt asked.
Juan Fabio looked at Emilia for help; a fly pinned by a spider. “Just the one finger. Once.”
“Sure,” Emilia said sarcastically.
“I swear.” Juan Fabio gave a desperate look over Kurt’s shoulder at the busy aisle. “Gloria brought it to me. I made the relic and got the letters. Señor Blandón Hernandez bought it.”
“I already know about the relic and Señor Blandon Hernandez,” Emilia warned. “Tell me about the finger.”
“I got it from Gloria,” Juan Fabio said. “Gloria Sandino Rosas. She also venerates Padre Pro. She was the one who said it could be a sainted relic.”
Kurt gave him a shake. “Where do we find her? Where does she live?
Juan Fabio tried to reach one of the tools on the desk and Kurt yanked him away. “I don’t know where she lives.” The junkman swallowed hard. “I only know she runs a food stall during the week. Near the construction site a few blocks away. On the weekends she goes home. To her mother. Somewhere in the mountains. Not Acapulco. That’s all I know. She’s always at her stall again on Tuesdays.”
“Where did she get it?”
“She said she bought it. She came to me on a Tuesday, the day she’s always back.”
Emilia nodded. Kurt let go. Juan Fabio sagged against the desk.
“Why you?” Emilia pressed. “Why did Gloria come to you with the finger? Because you’ve done this before?”
“No.” Juan Fabio kept a wary eye on Kurt. “Gloria only thought of me because I buy things and make them into other things. And because of Padre Pro.”
“Leave Padre Pro out of this,” Emilia snapped. The junkman and his friend had used Padre Pro simply to make money off the finger. What they’d done was both a sin and a sacrilege. “You bought it from her? How much did you pay her for it?”
“I paid her 50 pesos and a grill.”
“Madre de Dios,” Emilia breathed. Fifty pesos for a human finger. Fifty pesos was nothing.
“How much did you get from Blandón Hernandez for the relic?” Kurt demanded.
Juan Fabio shrank back and Emilia suddenly saw Kurt through the smaller man’s eyes. An angry and muscular gringo in a black tee shirt. The confidence that Kurt so easily projected was now accompanied by physical anger and the promise of volatility.
“I made the case,” Juan Fabio said. “Arranged for the letters. He paid me made 700 pesos.”
They left the market. The car felt like a refuge. Emilia and Kurt were almost back to Punta Diamante when she emerged from her fog of thought and put her hand on Kurt’s leg. “Thanks for helping back there,” she said. “Between last night and today, I guess you’re not just another pretty face.”
“Thanks.” Kurt took his right hand off the wheel and laced his fingers with hers. “How much do you think that crook Blandón Hernandez made off that so-called relic when he sold it to Villa de Refugio?”
“I don’t know. A lot.” Emilia sighed. “I’d still like to know if the store owner warned him off.”
Instead of agreeing, Kurt grinned. “Not feeling so bad about stealing those chocolate coins now, are we?”
Emilia wondered if she’d ever tell him the truth.
Chapter 21
The whole day was going to be like this, Emilia thought on Monday afternoon as she waited for the police intranet to load. Blandón Hernandez’s office was still closed. Nothing new had happened related to Customs or any aspect of the Ora Ciega case. The Salva Diablo body was still missing from the morgue, Yolanda Lata’s phone was still missing, and Organized Crime hadn’t shared a peso’s worth of information. She had to wait another day before finding Gloria, the woman who’d sold the finger to Juan Fabio.
To make matters worse, whoever was pedaling the generator that ran the system was tired, and everything was running at half speed. That wasn’t good, because Emilia planned to tackle the load of old case reports that were due. Normally, Silvio would have done half. Now she had to do them all and she wanted to put a dent in the pile before trying to find Gloria tomorrow.
The squadroom was quiet, almost as if it had surrendered. Macias and Sandor were still in training, Castro and Gomez had taken the day’s assignments, and Silvio and Ibarra were over at the central administration building. She had texted Silvio the crux of what she’d found out Saturday, but there had been no time to talk.
Loyola had left right after the morning meeting.
That left her and Flores alone in the squadroom. He was working on another online class. This one was online computer security training. It was mandatory every year but virtually worthless, given that the squadroom had only one computer with an internet connection yet every cop could access social networks on their phone.
The intranet finally blinked and loaded. Emilia logged in and navigated to the national cédula database. She entered the name on the business card. A little circle started spinning to let her know that the database was searching.
The card was printed with the blue logo of a well-known national insurance company and their catchy bilingual slogan. Su casa protected es mi casa protected. The company website and a national toll free telephone number were listed below the slogan.
The man’s name was printed in the center of the card, but there was no personal phone number or email address.
Periliano Roa Fuentes.
According to Emilia’s landlady, Señora Navarro, Roa Fuentes had come to her office to verify the insurance coverage on all the houses that the woman owned and leased out. He was a new representative from the company, he’d said, and wanted to confirm facts. He asked her questions like how many people lived in each house. He’d insisted that three people, not two, lived in the house rented by Emilia. Señora Navarro came to see for herself.
The circle spun faster and the database screen winked out, to be replaced by a “Page Not found” message. Emilia gritted her teeth, knowing the database had timed out due to the intranet’s slow speed. She started the process all over again.
The dark screen reflected her face back at her. Her hair was back to normal, thanks to a visit on Sunday to the salon in the Palacio Réal.
Her meeting that morning to see Señora Navarro had gone about as well as the database search. The woman had been infuriatingly slow to grasp that Emilia was more interested in who had been asking about her than she was in Señora Navarro’s concern that there were now three people living in the house. Neither had Señora Navarro been able to remember what color car the man had driven. In the end, Emilia got the man’s name but her rent went up by 300 pes
os a month.
The circle spun again, the database flickered, and a list of hits came up.
There was only one cédula registered to a Periliano Roa Fuentes.
He’d died in Guadalajara three years ago.
Chapter 22
Gloria was the sort of woman Emilia had seen a thousand times, and was nearly a twin of Lila Jimenez Lata’s grandmother, Berta. She was stocky and ample and work-hardened; any age between 30 and 60. She wore a navy skirt and a faded tee shirt that fit snugly over her midsection’s rolls. Both items of clothing were partially hidden by a smock-like floral apron on which she frequently wiped her hands.
Her food stall was on the edge of a parking lot serving a strip of stores on one side and a construction site promising a new run of shops on the other. Pretty soon Acapulco would just be stores and hotels, Emilia thought as she parked the Suburban. Gloria had rigged up a blue and white beach umbrella to protect herself from the sun and attract customers’ attention. Under the umbrella was a small grill, two coolers, and a small metal folding table.
Emilia nodded to Flores and they both got out of the vehicle. Gloria had two customers from the nearby construction site. Emilia watched as the woman deftly shoveled chopped meat from the smoking comal into two irregularly shaped tortillas. She gave each a squirt of cream sauce from a plastic bottle, then wrapped them in foil for the two construction workers who gave her some coins in return.
The men left. Gloria reached into one of the coolers, drew out a bag of masa dough, pinched off a fistful and began slapping it flat. She looked up when the two detectives approached.
“Hungry this morning, chica?” she asked.
“Sure,” Emilia said.
“Two?”
“Yes.” Emilia jingled the coins in her jeans pocket. “Juan Fabio from the mercado says you have the best tacos in Acapulco.”
Gloria gave a brief smile, revealing a significant gap in her upper row of teeth. It was an automatic smile at a customer, not one of recognition.
“Juan Fabio,” Emilia repeated. “The junkman from the Mercado Municipal.”
Gloria went on slapping her piece of masa dough. “Yes, he loves Gloria’s tacos.” She flipped the flattened dough onto the comal and the sweet charcoal scent of cooking corn rose in the air.
“He prays to Padre Pro,” Emilia said leadingly.
“Ah, Padre Pro.” Gloria flipped the tortilla using the well calloused tips of her thumb and forefinger. A wooden spatula was produced from her apron pocket to stir the shredded meat sizzling next to the tortilla. Emilia wasn’t sure if the meat was pork or chicken.
“I bought a very special relic of Padre Pro,” she said.
Gloria looked up. “You are a blessed woman, then.” She made the first taco, twisted it inside foil and handed it to Emilia. “Padre Pro will protect you always.”
“The relic is supposed to be Padre Pro’s finger,” Emilia said. “But it’s somebody’s else’s finger. The finger you sold to Juan Fabio.”
The practiced movements over the comal continued. Gloria scooped up the meat and dumped it into the second tortilla. Emilia had a horrifying thought that the unidentified meat could be the rest of some fingerless woman’s body.
“I don’t understand you, señora,” Gloria said. She handed Flores his taco with one hand and thrust out the other for payment. Her face was blank; the friendly smile was gone.
“You sold a finger to Juan Fabio,” Emilia said. She jingled the coins in her pocket but didn’t yet pay for the taco. “He made it into a false relic of Padre Pro that ended up in a fancy store in El Centro.”
“No,” Gloria looked past Emilia and frown lines appeared between her eyes. “I don’t know anything about places like that.”
“You know Juan Fabio from the Friends of Padre Pro.”
“Padre Pro makes miracles,” Gloria said as if to steer the conversation back to safer ground.
“I’m not asking about Padre Pro,” Emilia said. “I’m asking where you got the finger.”
Gloria shook her head, opened the second cooler and made a show of rummaging around in it.
Still holding his taco, Flores suddenly kicked over the comal in a shower of sparks and sizzling meat. “Where did you get the finger, old woman?” he shouted “Or do you want to go to jail for selling body parts?”
Gloria stumbled backwards and came up against the post of the beach umbrella. She stared at Flores. “Police,” she said, her voice full of resentment.
“We don’t want to arrest you,” Emilia said quietly, her hand on Flores’s arm. The young detective was red-faced and over-excited and unsure what to do next. “Just tell us where you got the finger.”
“There’s a man who lives by my mother in Gallo Pinto,” Gloria said. Her voice registered nothing but disgust.
Flores looked blankly at Emilia but she knew where Gallo Pinto was. It was one of a clutch of small villages in the Costa Chica region south of Acapulco, where the coast now slammed up against the mountains courtesy of Hurricane Miguel. There was no room for beaches but plenty for the poverty that hemorrhaged people to Acapulco to find work. There was little civil authority in some areas and the state government of Guerrero had recently “partnered” with local vigilante groups in order to push the murderous Knights Templar drug cartel out of the area.
The vigilantes were called “community police” now, and their allegiance to state and federal law enforcement was tenuous. So far, however, Costa Chica hadn’t seen the murder rates and extreme violence of the neighboring state of Michoacán, where federal troops had tried to disarm large vigilante groups arrayed against the Knights Templar. When the disarmament failed, the federales had organized a truce and a so-called “contract” to align the vigilante groups with state and federal authority. No one was really sure how it would all work out and bets had been taken in the squadroom that the Michoacán vigilantes would become a government-backed organized crime syndicate. And a role model for Guerrero.
Gloria’s eyes darted to the fallen griddle but she didn’t attempt to pick it up. The hot coals shriveled the grass at the edge of the parking lot.
“This man in Gallo Pinto,” Emilia prompted. “How did he get the finger?”
“He’s not right in the head but my mother is nice to him.” Gloria stared at the meat in the grass. “He walks all day. Sometimes he brings her things he’s found. Glass from the beach. Sparkly candy wrappers. Things like that.” She trailed off and wiped her hands on her apron as if wiping away the image of the man.
“Go on,” Emilia said.
“He brought the finger to show her.” Gloria looked around the parking lot, at anything except the two detectives. “I was there. It was the weekend.”
“Where did he get it?”
“He said he found it growing on a hill.”
“Growing?” Emilia shook her head. “Did he know it was a finger?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. He’s not right in the head. When he came to show my mother what he found, I checked to make sure it wasn’t one of his.”
“What’s his name?”
Gloria finally looked at Emilia. “Pepe.
“Do you know where he lives?”
“In Gallo Pinto. Near my mother. Off a dirt road. Now pay me for the tacos and the meat and leave me alone.”
Emilia turned to Flores. “Pick up her grill.”
Flores gaped at her.
“You heard me.” Emilia took the taco he was holding and jerked her chin at a rag by the cooler.
Flores used the rag as a potholder to right the base of the grill and replace the comal on top, his face tight with embarrassment and anger. Gloria pulled the rag out of his hand and made a show of cleaning the greasy surface of the griddle.
Emilia didn’t like the way the construction workers continued to stare at the odd little group they made under Gloria’s umbrella. “How much did you pay for it?” she asked.
“Ten pesos.”
“Why?” Flores burst out. “Why wou
ld you buy a finger from him?”
Gloria looked sideways at him. “You can make money from everything, muchacho, if you’re smart.”
Emilia wanted to cry. A human finger for 10 pesos. Out of all the people who had passed along the woman’s finger, Gloria seemed the most dispassionate; the most detached from the humanity involved in the transaction, the one most able to see the small rubbery object as something separate from a human life. The finger was nothing more than a commodity to buy and sell.
“So you gave him 10 pesos for it,” Emilia said. “Because you knew you could sell it to Juan Fabio?”
“Sure.” Gloria rubbed her thumb and fingers together. “Juan Fabio is a good businessman. He knows how to make one peso into two.”
“He paid you 50 pesos and that grill,” Emilia said.
Gloria nodded. “That was a good deal,” she said. “I did well on that one.”
Flores caught his breath.
“This Pepe. The man who found the finger,” Emilia said to Gloria. “How much to take us to see him?”
Gloria sniffed. “Gallo Pinto is far. Three buses. That’s why I only go on weekends.”
“We have a car,” Emilia said. “We’ll take you.”
“Three buses to get back.” Gloria gave Emilia a sly sideways glance.
“We’ll bring you back.”
“I have food to sell.”
They’d paid El Flaco 1000 pesos for no more than a name. Gloria’s inventory was probably worth less than 200. “We’re hungry,” Emilia said.
☼
They loaded Gloria and all her gear into the Suburban. Flores looked downcast as Emilia said that Gloria had to sit in the front seat in order to navigate them to Gallo Pinto. As Emilia started the car she could feel the waves of hurt emanating from the younger detective.
But Gloria would need to trust one of them enough to get to Gallo Pinto and it was clear that Flores had closed that door when he kicked over the woman’s livelihood. Emilia didn’t know why he’d done that, maybe to show off some notion of machismo; or maybe because again, he couldn’t handle the adrenaline of a high pressure situation. Out of earshot of Gloria, Emilia had explained about the vigilante groups to him but the conversation had been quick and she wasn’t entirely sure he understood the situation.