Diablo Nights (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 3)

by Carmen Amato

Flores wasn’t listening. He whirled to face Almaprieto. “Tío, are you involved?” His voice cracked. “Are you the jefe we came to meet?”

  Almaprieto’s face betrayed nothing.

  “Madre de Dios,” Flores gasped, as realization dawned. “You’re part of it, aren’t you? The drugs. Those cut up bodies. You’re partners with this murderer.”

  “Orlando, calm down,” Emilia said. Her glance swung between Perez on one side and Valentino on the other.

  “Tell me it’s not true,” Flores shrieked at Almaprieto.

  Almaprieto stared unblinking at his nephew.

  “I thought you were in with your partner?” Perez said mockingly.

  “Tonight’s not a joke, is it?” Flores began to cry as he stumbled like a drunk toward his uncle. “You’ll be arrested. Emilia’s wearing a wire--.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Emilia saw Perez’s fluttering fingers disappear inside his leather jacket. She fought the zipper of her sweatshirt as she sought her own weapon but something smashed into the back of her right arm. Emilia pitched forward, pain erupting from shoulder to fingertips. The gun fell out of her nerveless hand and was lost to the darkness. Instinct made her roll away from the source of the shot and she found herself scrambling for cover behind the pyramid of cement sacks, her right arm lifeless and bloody.

  She heard Flores scream, followed by the sound of a slap and the thud of a falling body. The wind swirled around a steel pillar to her left. Emilia heard footsteps crunch over the grainy cement and a low curse as someone stumbled in the dark. Valentino. He was close.

  The pain in her arm was blinding and Emilia knew she didn’t have long. She edged away from the barrier, keeping it between her and the voice, groping for her gun. Instead of the pebbled handgrip, her fingers of her left hand closed around a length of rebar. She found the midpoint so that she could lift it without either end dragging noisily on the ground. It was at least 3 meters long, heavy and unwieldy as she crept back to the barrier.

  She hadn’t been quiet enough and a shot rang out. Emilia flinched as the round buried itself in a cement bag a handbreadth from her face.

  Valentino was right on the other side of the cement. Tucking one end of the rebar under her left armpit for balance, Emilia rose up and swung it as hard as she could, hoping to catch his hip. The rebar rammed into something solid and boomeranged away from her. She kept control, swung it again, and heard a crack.

  Darkness threatened to overcome Emilia as she and Valentino fought for control of the rebar, sawing the stippled metal rod between them. Her right arm hung by her side, useless and throbbing. As a last resort, Emilia pressed all her weight down, using the top row of sacks to cantilever the rebar. The opposite end of the rod soared upwards, only to stop abruptly, as if jammed. A howl tore the air.

  There was suddenly no pressure on the rod and it clattered away from her. Emilia looked over the cement bags to see Valentino splayed out on the ground, a gaping hole where the rebar had split his face from eye to mouth. Blood drained out of an empty eye socket. She scrambled over the barrier and pried his gun out of his hand.

  Perez appeared out of the gloom. “Cruz!” His shot hit her in the chest.

  Time stopped as Emilia spilled backwards. She landed flat like a fish out of water, gasping desperately for air around the painful compression of the bulletproof vest.

  The wind clawed at her and Emilia realized she was on the very lip of the tower, where a red elbow of steel formed an open triangle in the air. Far below, another steel joint was offset by a few degrees. The next rotated even more, as the spiral twisted down the half-made structure.

  Perez scrambled over the barrier and loomed over her, gun in both hands. Before Emilia could roll away he shot her again, sound like a thunderclap in her ear. Pain blanked her brain as her chest was crushed. Suddenly there was no more air in the night sky.

  Maybe it was the adrenaline or the thought of dying, but Emilia managed to raise her left hand from the cold cement. Valentino’s automatic was the same model as her own. The weight and heft was oddly familiar. She fired at the same time as Perez.

  As her vest absorbed yet another point-blank shot, Perez overbalanced. Emilia had a breathless glimpse of a face contorted against the stars and then he pitched over the edge.

  The next thing Emilia knew, a weight like an anchor was pulling her toward the abyss. Perez had both hands around her left ankle as the rest of his body swung free. His legs scissored, desperately trying to get a foothold on the elbow girder.

  Emilia felt her calves scrape against raw cement as the weight of Perez’s body dragged her down. She kicked feebly at his hands with her free foot. Pain radiated from her chest and blurred her vision. Her useless arm throbbed anew.

  Perez got a toehold on the corner of the girder and one hand found the cement floor. He managed to rise above Emilia and grabbed her sweatshirt. “Enjoy the fall, you little bitch,” he panted and heaved her toward the empty sky.

  The gun was heavy in Emilia’s left hand as she squeezed the trigger in the direction of his voice. The automatic fired again and again. Her teeth gritted against the pain shooting sparklers into her head. The report filled her ears and the recoil battered her shoulder into the cement.

  Perez let go.

  Gasping for air, Emilia watched his body cartwheel down the side of the building. Someone was screaming but she didn’t know if it was Perez or herself.

  “You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Detective Cruz.” Almaprieto’s voice competed with the cries and the blood hammering in Emilia’s ears.

  High above her, yet almost close enough to touch, the big yellow moon flickered. The stars over the ocean merged with the sparklers of pain, everything dipping and diving like Pedro Montealegre’s silver dolphins.

  Through the shimmer, Emilia watched as a man in a coat played a flashlight over her prone body. Almaprieto. The screaming changed pitch; there was hysteria in the sound now. It was the scream of an animal, a wild animal that was trapped and dying. Wild dogs railing at the moon, she thought dully. They would die, too.

  Almaprieto’s gun was dull and ugly as he stood over her.

  The shot was loud.

  The pain was too much. Emilia closed her eyes and let herself fall.

  Chapter 32

  Strange creatures hovered over her, all eyes and spectacles, the rest shrouded in green. They spoke in a language she didn’t understand. Plastic hands roved over her body, stripping off her shoes, sweatshirt, and holster.

  The heavy vest had molded itself to her torso. There was an immense relief when it was pulled away but the release made her scream. Her tee shirt was cut away and she saw the rosary tumble from the pocket. Emilia tried to stretch out her hand to take it. Her arm didn’t move. “That’s mine,” she said.

  Her words were lost in the frenzied motion all around her. No one listened.

  The noise around her intensified even as Emilia felt her hand grow cold. The chill spread up her arm, travelled across her chest and stilled her heart. She closed her eyes.

  ☼

  “She was always at the top of her class,” Sophia’s voice said. “When she was 12 she even won a medal at school.”

  “What was it for?” Kurt’s voice asked.

  Sophia sighed. “Maybe science. Emilia was always good at science.”

  Emilia forced her eyes open. She was in a hospital room, with an IV drip in the back of her left hand and her right arm in a cast from shoulder to wrist. Her chest ached, but her overriding sensation was one of floating. The head of the bed was slightly raised. She could see the moving green ripples of a heart monitor screen on one side of the bed, and her mother and Kurt sitting in two metal and tweed armchairs on the other side.

  “Volleyball,” Emilia said. Her voice came out in a hushed rasp, as if she was a three-pack-a-day smoker. “I won it for volleyball.”

  Both Sophia and Kurt jumped to their feet. Sophia’s smile was the same as always, beautiful and a little vague.
Kurt looked relieved and exhausted at the same time.

  Sophia kissed her first. “I’ve met Carlos, your nice young man, niña.”

  “Who?”

  “I invited him to the wedding.” Sophia patted Emilia’s arm.

  Emilia blinked and suddenly Kurt was there instead of her mother.

  “You weren’t supposed to meet my mother this way,” Emilia whispered. Her face felt strange, as if it belonged on a mannequin.

  Kurt smoothed her hair. “Sophia and Ernesto are okay. Your mother thinks you just broke your arm. Don’t worry about anything.”

  Emilia blinked. Her eyelids felt like granite. “Am I going to make it?”

  “You’re going to be fine,” Kurt said softly. “Took a round in your upper arm. Broke the bone. Your vest stopped the rest but you have four broken ribs and a lot of bruising.”

  Questions pushed at Emilia’s consciousness. How did I get here? Is Flores alive? Did Silvio tell Espinosa?

  She fell asleep again.

  ☼

  The next time she woke, Silvio was in the room, sitting where her mother had been before. He was using the rolling tray that fit over the hospital bed as a game table. Cards were laid out for solitaire.

  “Hey,” Emilia croaked.

  Silvio looked up from the cards. “You want water or the nurse?”

  “Water.”

  He got up, pushed a button by her bed, and it slowly raised to a semi-sitting position. There was a small dresser opposite the bed. Silvio fetched her a glass of water from a pitcher and unceremoniously jammed a straw into it. “Here.”

  Emilia look it with her left hand. The water was cool. A few sips and her mouth felt like part of her head again. “What day is it?” she whispered.

  “Thursday.”

  “Thursday,” Emilia repeated. She’d lost three days.

  When she lowered the glass, Silvio put it on the tray next to his cards. “You want the nurse now?”

  “No,” Emilia said. “Tell me what happened.”

  Silvio scooped up the cards and shuffled them. “What do you remember?”

  “Valentino was down,” Emilia recalled slowly. “Perez had fallen. Almaprieto was standing over me and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. I heard someone scream. It must have been Flores.”

  “Flores shot Almaprieto,” Silvio said.

  “Did he kill him?”

  “Either the six shots or the fall killed him.” Silvio spoke without emotion. “He landed right next to Perez.”

  “Almaprieto was his uncle,” Emilia said.

  “But you were the woman he wanted to marry,” Silvio said. “Flores killed Almaprieto to keep him from killing you, then got you down in the elevator.”

  Emilia closed her eyes, trying to take it all in. Each thought emerged slowly, as if forced through a funnel. “Are Flores and I in trouble?” she managed.

  Silvio shuffled the cards again. “According to the press statement from Chief Salazar’s office, Almaprieto and Perez met Monday night so that Almaprieto could urge Perez to resign. Internal Affairs had investigated, found him guilty of unspecified abuses. Chief Salazar had counseled Almaprieto against a meeting, but Almaprieto obviously decided that such a senior officer deserved the courtesy.”

  “Madre de Dios,” Emilia said shakily and opened her eyes.

  Silvio went on. “I gave the tape to Espinosa. He believed the whole story about trying to get the Customs rosters and what happened to Irma Gonzalez, but couldn’t make an arrest at Customs because no one on the tape mentioned Customs or Sarmiento or Irma.” He shrugged. “Same as always. Two steps forward, one step back. I said we’d watch Sarmiento, see what develops.”

  “That’s all?” Emilia quavered.

  “Don’t rush me, Cruz,” Silvio grumbled. He fanned the deck of cards then just as quickly snapped the deck into a tidy rectangle. “Espinosa cut a deal with Salazar. That’s the basis of the cover up. This way we keep Almaprieto’s extended network from going after either you or Flores.”

  Emilia blinked. “What about ballistics?”

  “Both Almaprieto and Perez carried the same make and model of automatic they were shot with. Looks like they shot each other. Nobody’s going to bother with ballistics.”

  “Valentino?”

  Silvio shook his head. “Can’t say the name rings a bell.”

  “He was there,” Emilia struggled to sit up. “You heard--.”

  “Rayos, Cruz. You really lost your sense of humor.” Silvio reached in back of his chair, pulled out a folded newspaper. “Read page four when you feel up to it.”

  Emilia tried to unfold the paper. Silvio watched her, then with an impatient snort, he opened it and pointed to the story. The body of Bernardo Valentino Pinto had been found near the village of Gallo Pinto east of San Marco. A leader of Los Martillos, a local community police organization, Valentino Pinto’s death was thought to be the result of a power struggle inside Los Martillos related to a recently discovered killing field near the town and the federale drug raid on the Fiesta Verde cannery in Gallo Pinto. Valentino Pinto’s faction of Los Martillos was under investigation, according to a federale spokesman.

  “So you--.” Emilia trailed off.

  “Long drive in the dark,” Silvio said matter-of-factly.

  “Madre de Dios.” Emilia tried to imagine Silvio collecting Valentino’s body off the top of the skyscraper and hauling it out to Gallo Pinto in the middle of the night.

  Silvio interrupted her thoughts. “So you’re in the clear. Flores, too.”

  “Wait.” Emilia’s brain slogged through the chain of events. “How are they going to explain a detective getting shot the same night?”

  Silvio put the deck of cards on the tray table, divided them, and slid the top cut under the bottom half. “You, me, and Flores were on stakeout, trying to catch the gangs stealing from stores in the neighborhood. Drive-by shooter got you.”

  “Your idea?”

  “One of my best,” Silvio said with a hand on his heart. “By the time Flores and I got you to the emergency room, the wire was gone, the story was polished, and we were ready for prime time.”

  “What about ballistics?”

  “Supposedly none of us got any shots off. So no need to check. Hollywood’s the only other person who knows everything. I thought he deserved that. I found your gun. He took it home. Nobody’s asking to look at it.”

  “Thanks for telling him.” Emilia’s left hand roved over the blanket. “Where is Flores? Is he all right?”

  “That kid nearly got you killed,” Silvio said with sudden heat. “As soon as I heard him laughing on the audio I knew you were in fucking trouble. All that shit about getting married. I assume you didn’t know. Also that you weren’t planning on dumping Hollywood for him.”

  Emilia reached for the water glass with a wobbly hand. Silvio gave it to her again. “He’d dreamed up this this giant fantasy of the two of us together,” she said after a few sips. “Like his fantasy of being a cop.”

  Silvio plucked a card out of the deck and tossed it onto Emilia’s blanket. “Kid admitted to me that he’d told Almaprieto that he was in love with you. He knew what was going on the whole time.”

  Emilia picked up the card. It was the queen of hearts. “So it was true. Almaprieto got his goons to look me over. It had nothing to do with the investigation.”

  Silvio shuffled the cards. “If Flores hadn’t been there, you’d probably never know who’d been checking you out.”

  “And if I’d never had lunch with Obregon, they would never have gotten spooked.”

  “Looks that way.” Silvio fanned the cards and Emilia stuck the queen of hearts back into the deck. “Flores resigned on Tuesday.”

  Emilia closed her eyes again. Her lids felt heavy, as if a wet towel was pressing down on them. “Did you make him?”

  “Nobody had to make him,” Silvio said. He shuffled the cards, squared the deck, and left it on the table. “The kid wanted to get as far away from
Acapulco as he could. He went to some music gig in Mexico City. Left you this note.”

  Silvio pulled a small envelope out of his back pocket and tossed it on the bed.

  Emilia didn’t have the energy to pick it up. “Did you read it?”

  “It’s an apology,” Silvio said. “A kid’s apology, as if saying ‘sorry’ takes care of everything.”

  A nurse bustled in and smiled to see Emilia awake. She told Silvio he had to leave.

  “I’ll let Hollywood know you’re awake,” he said and headed for the door.

  “Franco.” Emilia was suddenly weepy. He’d gotten her and Flores out of a crime scene, given the tape to Espinosa, let Kurt know what had happened. No testing her, no backing down from the fight.

  Silvio wasn’t the easiest man to work with but he was a damn good partner. No matter what bluster he threw at her, she knew he’d always come through.

  “What?” He turned in the doorway.

  “Your bedside manner is shit,” Emilia said.

  Silvio gave her a rare smile. “You owe me for the cards.”

  He left. Emilia put the envelope from Flores on the tray table next to the deck of cards as the nurse checked the various monitors. “Are my clothes somewhere?” Emilia asked.

  “Let’s see.” The nurse opened a cabinet facing the bed and took out a large zip-lock bag with the hospital logo printed in blue. She put it on the bed next to Emilia. “Some of your clothing had to be cut off, but everything else was collected up.”

  Her cross trainers, with the socks neatly rolled inside, weighted the bag. With her left hand, Emilia slowly took out the bulletproof vest. Three rounds were buried in the thick material.

  Emilia’s hand shook as she emptied the bag, finding footgear, leggings, and the stuff from her pockets.

  Her wallet.

  Her cell phone.

  Her badge.

  Her rosary.

  Chapter 33

  Two weeks later, Emilia wore one of Mercedes’s silk dresses along with a scarf as a sling to her mother’s wedding. A mariachi band played in the church garden afterwards and the newlyweds spent two nights at the Palacio Réal for their honeymoon as their wedding gift from Kurt.