“Goddammit. You have any idea the position you’re putting me in?”
“I think so, and I don’t like it, but I’m asking anyway: You have any contacts at the sheriff’s department, Monroe County, Florida?”
“Suddenly, from out of left field—”
“Humor me.”
“That’s the Keys, right, Key West? No, I do not.”
“Okay.” He left Mo an opening that went unfilled. “Thanks, anyway,” he said.
“Why there? Not Guerra again.”
“Something I read. Probably nothing—my specialty these days.”
“Look, Hardesty, I’m going to eat my lox and eggs now and my Langer’s onion roll and if I haven’t called you by one, I ain’t calling, right? And you can screw your instincts.” He hung up.
Wil swallowed lukewarm coffee, checked the yellow pages for car rental companies, phoned a couple for rates, then a Valley listing for a cab. By twelve-twenty he was back at the house, a beige Ford Tempo running a day-rate tab in the drive. Lisa’d brought their answering machine from home and he checked it for messages, saw one flashing and punched it up:
All right. The best I could do down there is a Lieutenant Sawyer, my counterpart in Homicide.
Wil wrote down the number.
This is unofficial, he’s agreed to talk to you as a favor to me. But push his buttons like you do mine and we’re cashing in our chips, understood? Speaking of which, I think it would be a good idea for you not to call me for a while.
Wil erased the message, then dialed, waited, introduced himself, and explained what he wanted to a friendly-enough voice with a trace of South Florida.
“D-e-S-a-n-t-i-s, Martin,” Sawyer repeated back. “Nineteen-forty-five through forty-nine. Hold a sec.”
Wil heard the soft click of computer keys. A minute went by.
“Doesn’t look as though he bothered our people any. You say he lived around here?”
“That was my understanding,” Wil said. “You mind checking another name?”
“I guess not, long as this isn’t some list.”
“It’s not. G-u-e-r-r-a, Leonardo, same time frame.”
The clicks again, a chair squeaking. “Got a hit here,” Sawyer came back. “Leonardo Guerra, age seventeen, resident of Stock Island. Arrested July 7th, 1949, suspect in a homicide. Held, questioned, cleared, released. Doesn’t say when.”
“Does it say what cleared him?”
“No idea, partner. Some of these old files got transferred over with just the basics.”
“There any way of locating the hard copies?”
“Not on the Saturday before Christmas at four o’clock our time. You have yourself a good afternoon, hear?”
Wil replaced the receiver, poured himself a glass of milk, and drank it. He looked up the number of a nearby copy shop, called, and got their fax number. Then he dialed Key West information and rang the library there. A Ms. Norris answered, to whom he explained he was investigating a murder and needed her help finding a story in a forty-one-year-old edition of the local paper. That it had a bearing on the case.
“Sir—did you say Lieutenant? We’re closing soon. Can you call back Monday when our archivist will be in?”
“I wish I could do that, Ms. Norris. You sound very nice, and I have no authority to insist that you help me. But the truth is a little girl named Jessica may die Sunday unless I get that information today.”
The faint sound of long distance. “And if I find something?”
“I have a number where you can fax it after you call me collect.”
Ms. Norris agreed to look; Wil gave her the information, then waited for her call, pegging the chances she would at maybe one in four—easier to just close up and go home. He cleaned up the kitchen, iced his knee, put on a wash, things to dissipate restless energy. Forty minutes passed, an hour; wind slid the hydrangea bushes against the windows. Lisa phoned, said she’d get back to him when he explained.
“Sorry to take so long,” Ms. Norris said, calling after he’d written her off and was wondering what the hell to do next. “I had to wait until we closed and there were three articles, none very long. I hope they help.”
After she hung up, he ordered flowers to be delivered to her Monday at the library. Then he drove the Tempo to the copy shop, where the three faxes had already arrived. He read in the order she’d marked:
LOCAL GIRL MISSING, FOUL PLAY FEARED
(July 3, 1949) Authorities, family and concerned neighbors of eight-year-old Anita Espinosa expanded search efforts to find the girl, missing from her Stock Island home since yesterday. Dolores Espinosa, 38, told the Key West Citizen that her daughter was not the kind to run off and described her as a loving, trusting child liked by all. Coordinating efforts to find Anita is Sheriff Forrest Biggio, who said he was “fearful of foul play.” Anyone with information should contact him immediately at his Whitehead Street office.
ESPINOSA GIRL FOUND DEAD, ARREST MADE
(July 7, 1949) The search for little Anita Espinosa ended tragically today with the discovery of her remains in a mangrove thicket two miles from her Stock Island home. Preliminary reports by Medical Examiner Hector Torres indicate the eight-year-old was murdered. “With a knife, we think, taking into consideration the advanced state of decomposition,” he told The Citizen. The lone bright spot in this tragedy is the arrest of a suspect, Leonardo Guerra, 17. Guerra, who lives with his aunt and guardian in the same rural neighborhood as the murdered girl, was described by Sheriff Forrest Biggio as a known troublemaker who carried a knife with which he often intimidated other boys into “doing things they weren’t born to.” Biggio revealed the boys broke silence to come forward about the incidents following Guerra’s arrest. The Citizen joins all right-thinking residents in the hope that justice for young Guerra will be swift and sure.
ESPINOSA SUSPECT RELEASED, CASE STILL UNSOLVED
(July 9, 1949) Sheriff Forrest Biggio has released Leonardo Guerra, 17, from custody, The Citizen learned. The prime suspect in the heinous murder of Anita Espinosa, 8, was provided an alibi and cleared of wrongdoing in the case by Martin R. DeSantis, 18, a highly respected resident of Stock Island who left July 3rd to enter Catholic seminary in Baltimore. When contacted there, DeSantis testified that Guerra had been helping him prepare for the priesthood July 2nd, the day Medical Examiner H. Torres speculated was the approximate time of death. Prior to his religious calling, DeSantis lived with Guerra and Guerra’s younger sister at their aunt’s residence following the trio’s arrival here from Cuba in 1945. Other unspecified charges against Guerra also were dropped due to an apparent change of heart by Guerra’s youthful accusers. Biggio vowed to continue the search for Espinosa’s killer but agreed that valuable time had been lost.
New pieces of the puzzle spun and floated:
Anita Espinosa, the first Innocent.
Martin DeSantis/Lenny Guerra, pals from Cuba going in different directions.
Lenny owing his freedom, his life, to Martin’s ‘alibi’—backward-sounding if Martin is Lenny’s blackmail victim.
Other unspecified charges.
Wil had the faxes spliced together onto one sheet and ran off a dozen copies. Then he headed for St. Boniface, picturing as he drove a chain under great stress snapping at its weakest link.
The Santa Ana was blowing hard as Wil pulled the Ford Tempo into the church lot just after four. He found a spot away from Lisa’s Acura and Guerra’s black Mercedes and limped toward the administration building. Warm dry gusts bent the deodar cedars on the lawn and sent dead leaves whipping down the drive.
“Father Martin isn’t in his office this afternoon,” the girl told him. “He’s hearing confessions.”
Wil glanced around for Lisa, thought he heard her voice coming from behind a closed door, then backtracked to the church. Dust blew in the side entrance with him and forced it shut with a bang. Several people in the vicinity of the confessionals looked up sharply, then returned to their prayers. As Wil slipped
into a pew near the door with the light on and the Father DeSantis sign, an Hispanic girl left the confessional and began saying her rosary. Late-afternoon sun threw reds and blues off the stained glass windows.
They’d faded by the time Wil entered the confessional.
He waited in the dim close space until the portal slid open and the familiar voice asked him how long since his last confession.
“Hello, Father,” he said.
After a pause, the priest said, “Mr. Hardesty? Forgive me for sounding surprised.”
“I was taught confession is good for the soul.”
“You have something you wish to confess?”
Wil pushed a copy of the three articles through the portal.
A light was snapped on, Father Martin backlit through the screen. He put on reading glasses. Minutes passed; the sound of wind finding cracks in the building, then of paper folding. Father Martin removed the glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, snapped off the light. Wil could hear him breathing.
“What is it you wish from me, Mr. Hardesty?” The voice was empty of resonance.
“The truth,” Wil said. “That Lenny has her.”
“Has who?”
Wil waited.
“Well? Are you not going to tell me?”
“You’re still covering for him, aren’t you? Jessica—the little girl I was telling you about,” Wil said. “Lenny’s going to kill her to bless your fund-raiser.”
“Do you realize what you are saying, and to whom? Excuse me, but I have much to do for tomorrow.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Father. You may not fear the Catholic church, but the media will wallow in this. Throw in what I’ve learned about Chawa Uve, lover of innocent blood, and everything you’ve built here is burning big-time.”
“You would threaten St. Boniface as well as me?”
“To save her? To end the killings? Try me.”
“What we do here is far bigger than one man.” The flatness was gone from his voice now.
“You know better than that,” Wil said. “First the Hollywood crowd will disengage, all your image-conscious types. Then the money dries up. Then the dream. Pretty soon it’s just you and the rebozos again—if they let you stick around.”
“You are—beyond belief.”
“And what are you, Father? Does the name Benito mean anything? He was a beautiful boy with dark eyes, six years old when Lenny cut him. And the others—Anita Espinosa. Why do you continue to protect him?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Blood sacrifices, children’s lives traded for wealth. You an accessory to murder.”
“That’s what you think I desire—wealth?” He spat the word.
“Lenny I can see killing. But what happened to Martin DeSantis, the respected young man who wanted to be a Catholic priest?”
The wind moaned and slacked. Father Martin said, “You remind me of a child peering into a kaleidoscope, thinking he sees lions and tigers.”
“Talk to me, goddammit. Where is Jessica Pacheco?”
“I don’t know.”
“‘Which of you can be happy knowing others are suffering, can live knowing others are dying?’ Your words, the other Sunday. How long can you go on being two people?”
“I tell you I don’t know where she is.”
“But Lenny’s blackmailing you, isn’t he? Something to do with the Espinosa killing.”
“Each of us has his cross, Mr. Hardesty. No one but the very young is completely innocent.”
Wil took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t care about that. All I want is to stop him, to save the girl. Give Lenny up and I’ll try to leave you out of it.”
Father Martin leaned back in his chair, the copy crinkled in his hand. When he spoke he sounded like the scratchy soundtrack to an old travelogue: “Lenny and I met in school—in Cuba. We were drawn to each other, we became like brothers. He was a loner, usually in trouble because his father had been kicked to death by policía, and his mother was too ill to handle him. I was forest people, the one pointed at and whispered about—the only one in my village permitted to attend outside school.
“One day Lenny was arrested for stealing. At the police station, he heard talk of my village, of soldiers coming there that night. Lenny was thirteen—a year younger than me, but he knew I couldn’t go back, which is what I wanted desperately. We fought. Afterward he pulled my face close to his and told me I was coming with him and Sissy to Key West. By then his mother was dying, and an aunt there had sent for the children. Next morning, Lenny hid me at his house when the soldiers came with guns. That afternoon the three of us were on a fishing boat, sick and retching, but alive.” He cleared his throat of sudden emotion, then went on.
“Twice the boat nearly sank. But God had a plan for me, and it was St. Boniface, and whatever Lenny is he’s been a part of that plan. Give him up? You should not underestimate me either, Mr. Hardesty.”
Wil applied pressure to temples that had begun to throb and ventured in another direction. “Why were you the only one of your people to attend school?”
“I was—special. I’d passed tests. We were poor, and the others were needed for work.”
“Your people sacrificed children.”
The priest’s sigh was resignation itself. “Chawan tradition was the way of the blood, Mr. Hardesty. Very primitive, very misguided. A very long time ago.”
“And something that Lenny never abandoned after learning it from you.”
“That is absurd.”
“Lenny stole the Chawa idols from a Cuban museum in 1963. He was running guns to Castro then, easy to get them out of the country. Today they’d be worth plenty, yet he’s never sold them. Isn’t it obvious why?”
“Lenny is a collector as well as a seller of antiquities. He uses those pieces to generate business. I see many people in my office. In exchange for inquiries, our missions receive half the profits. To serve the greater good, I choose not to delve beyond that.”
“And because he also makes you money selling babies he doesn’t kill to rich parishioners you steer his way.”
“For an intelligent man, Mr. Hardesty, you disappoint me. Even if I were to accept such crudeness, my parishioners are in no way coerced.”
“And I say your splitting profits with Lenny Guerra might perk up some ears at the chancery. Last chance: Where is Jessica Pacheco?”
“I don’t know.”
Wil took a deep breath. The air in the closed space seemed fetid and used up now, and he hurt from being in one position so long. It all seemed upside down and out of sync, a dark twisting mobius of truth and lies.
“Who confesses you, Father?” he said.
“DeSantis is lying, but it makes no sense. Lenny-saves-him-he-saves-Lenny seems like a wash. Yet the SOB is still into him for something.” Wil winced as Lisa applied antiseptic creme to the scalp wound. They were in the guest bedroom, his shirt off to check progress on the bruising.
“You mentioned his ambition.”
“It has to be more than that.”
She touched the stitches gently. “You’re pulling a little bit there, but it looks pretty good.”
“I figured he’d crack.”
“Maybe he really doesn’t know,” Lisa said. She screwed the cap on the tube, replaced it in his Dopp kit. “How’s your knee?”
“Tender. They’re too tied-in for him not to know.”
“Can’t Mo do something?”
“With what—more of my speculations?”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “It’s not going well, is it?” She began to rub his shoulders, cautiously at first, then more intently.
“Feels good,” he said, closing his eyes. “How did you do with Guerra?”
She kept rubbing.
“Ouch, lighter please. Well?”
“I don’t know, nothing concrete yet—just a feeling that more money is coming in than going out. I keep trying to poke around in the files, but—”
<
br /> He unblinked. “But what?”
“I look around to see where he is, what he’s up to, what I might be able to do, and it’s as if he’s reading my mind. Following me with his eyes. When I ask questions I pretend I don’t know the answers to, he’s all smiles, but indirect and evasive. Wil, I need more time.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure about the fund-raiser?”
“Let’s get a pizza or something, forget about it for one night.”
“Don’t be patronizing. I hate that.” Her fingers hit a spot, causing him to wince. She bit her lip.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. It’s frustrating. I want to do more.”
Wil drew her to him and held her around the waist. “We still have most of tomorrow, Lenny’ll be tied up with the event. Whatever happens will be afterward.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m not. But sometimes thinking that way is all you have to keep from going crazy.” Her fingers smoothed the hair over his ears. “I’m glad you came, Leese.”
She softened against him, and he pulled her down onto his good knee, lightly touched her cheek. “I was afraid I’d lost you.”
Her eyes swept his face.
“And myself,” he added.
“It’s different now?”
“What’s different is I’m not drinking even though I’m tempted. That’s been you. Having something not to drink for.”
“Wil—”
He kissed her tentatively, felt her kiss back soft, then harder. A chord struck and resonated in him, and he felt it surge against his khakis. After a bit she broke from him and traced his lips with her fingernail, smiled as he undid her blouse and took each breast in his mouth. They tasted perfumey of lotion and warm wind, the nipples firm under his tongue, and there was a tightness at his heart, as if she’d reached in and put her hand around it. She undressed first, her skin reminding him of the pale honey they’d trek to Ojai for in fall. She helped him pull the khakis off over his erection, pushed him gently back on Raeann Rodriguez’ bed, straddled him, and guided him inside. As they moved together in familiar symmetry, easy at first in deference to his knee, then more passionately, Wil felt himself floating away from everything, all the wrenching drama, lifted beyond it by the cresting sounds of two instruments lovingly played.
The Innocents Page 22