We found a table by the wall at the end of the bar with an obstructed view of a small stage where men in tight suits with gaudy trimming down the trouser sides and jacket sleeves strummed a variety of stringed instruments and sang. Just as I was taking my seat, two trumpets blasted into the song and frightened me half to death. Beyond us were more tables filling the back of the club. I was quite interested and wished that I’d brought my camera along.
Luz ordered cans of Tecate with salt and cut limes and instructed me on sprinkling the can tops with the salt and squeezing lime juice over that. The next time we ordered, I intended to ask for club soda. We must have sat there an hour, nursing our drinks and listening to the music, which was very lively and very loud, especially those trumpets. She explained that the word mariachi referred to the marriage bands that serenaded lovers and newlyweds in the Mexican reign of Maximilian and Carlota. I nodded and said their costumes reminded me of a description of bridegroom’s clothing at hacienda weddings. Then I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to provide her or anyone with historical tidbits.
So there we sat—silent. She didn’t say anything more until she sat up, alert, and hissed, “Here we go. Check out the guy talking to the leader. See, he’s handing him money.”
I resisted the urge to comment on her confusing pronoun usage—two masculine pronouns referring, presumably, to two different people with antecedents in the previous sentence.
“That’s Barrientos. See if you can stay awake long enough to listen. You’ll need to say something about his singing.”
I resented the implication that I’d been falling asleep. I’d been thinking about Adela Mariscal and what would happen when the toxicology tests arrived in the hands of Sergeant Guevara.
The object of our trip was a broad man, rather short for his weight but not fat at all. He had on tight jeans held up by a belt and a huge silver belt buckle decorated with a gold scorpion, fancy tooled cowboy boots, a cowboy shirt with gold scorpion studs and embroidery, and a cowboy hat, which, when removed, revealed the telltale bleached streak in his black hair. I thought he’d have looked much better without the streak, but then what did I know about drug-dealer fashion? Obviously it involved a lot of gold—and scorpions. He was also wearing a heavy gold cross on a chain, a gold watch that looked like a Rolex, and several large gold rings. Good grief! Didn’t he realize that so much gold jewelry was in poor taste? As he began to sing, I slipped a notebook and pen out of my handbag.
“What are you doing?” Luz hissed.
“I’m going to take notes. You said I’d need to critique his—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Put that stuff away. You’re supposed to be here enjoying the music, not writing a damned newspaper column. I’m convincing you that opera isn’t the only game in town. Remember? Now will you act like a normal person?”
“I am a normal person,” I protested. “And that man has a good voice. Not well trained, but powerful, nice tone, even some vibrato.”
“Great. Save it for him. He’s singing ‘Granada’ now. It’s a big favorite. That’s the one you should really listen to.”
“I’ve already heard Placido Domingo sing it. Mr. Barrientos isn’t as good by any means.”
“Shit, Carolyn. We’re running a scam here. You need to get with it. Now, this song is about a burro.”
“Really. Why would a bride want to hear a song about a burro?” I asked.
“How the hell do I know?”
We listened to that song and then a third that had people smirking at each other and shouting encouragement. “Scumbag,” Luz muttered under her breath.
“What’s the matter?” I whispered. “This one is very dramatic.”
“Right,” she snarled. “It’s a corrida. About some scumbag drug dealer who supposedly helped the poor and the Church and was shot up by the badass federales. Robin Hood in the coke trade.”
Her expression was really ferocious, and I could only hope that Mr. Barrientos didn’t notice her reaction to his singing. If he did, he certainly wouldn’t want to join us. In fact, he might tell someone to shoot us, or do it himself. Then suddenly she was smiling and clapping.
“Here we go,” she said to me, and waved the waiter over as Mr. Barrientos finished what was evidently to be his last number. He bowed to enthusiastic applause, in which I joined since I was supposed to be a new fan. My partner, if you could call her that, was telling the waiter we’d like to buy the singer a drink. But what were we to do if he refused? I wondered. He looked our way, stared rather too closely at my hair, and strode through the tables in our direction. “What did I tell you? The blonde hair did it,” Luz murmured.
Suddenly a thought occurred to me. “Are we traveling incognito?” I asked in a whisper.
She snapped, “Just shut up. Follow my lead, and we’ll be fine.”
“Hey, Salvador,” she greeted him. “Long time no see. What can we order for you?”
He stared at her and then frowned. “Jesus i Maria! Vallejo? Aren’t you a narc? What are you doin’ here?”
”I was in Vice,” she replied, “not narcotics, but I’m retired. Meet Carolyn Blue. She’s a friend of mine who likes opera. I told her she hasn’t heard real music till she’s heard a good mariachi singer. Right, Caro?”
Now I was Caro. “Right, Luz. Won’t you sit down?” I smiled at Mr. Barrientos. He certainly was muscular, but he didn’t look exactly like “muscle” in the violent sense. The way that bouncer at Brazen Babes had looked.
“Caro, meet Salvador Barrientos. We’re lucky he was here tonight. Wasn’t the singing as good as I told you?”
Mr. Barrientos was smiling back at me, taking a seat, ordering a straight shot of tequila evidently, since that’s what the waiter brought him. Well, it was my turn now. “You do, indeed, have an excellent voice, Mr. Barrientos.”
“Yeah? Gracias, senora.” He actually made a sweeping motion with his hat, like someone in the movies. Old movies.
“Yes, I’ve heard Placido Domino sing ‘Granada,’ and I wasn’t a bit more moved by him than by your rendition. Your voice has extraordinary power.”
“Yeah? Real loud, huh?” He moved his chair closer.
I scooted to the other side of mine and buried my nose over my beer can.
“Hey, lemme fix that for you,” he said and went into the salt-sprinkling, lime-squeezing routine. “I can tell you’re a classy Anglo lady who don’t know much about Tecate. How come you got her drinkin’ that horse piss, Lieutenant? Yeah, I remember you. Lieutenant. Vice.” He turned back to me. “How about a shot of this?” He held up his tequila. Luz shook her head ever so slightly.
“That’s very kind of you,” I replied, “but I’m afraid I don’t have a head for more than one tequila drink, and we had dinner at Martino’s.”
“Sure, Martino’s. Good place. Me, I like the sesos.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Sesos. Brains. Muy sabroso. You oughta try ’em. And hey, I’m an American citizen. You don’t have to speak Spanish to me. So you like my singing, huh?”
“Very much,” I replied. He was leaning my way again. “Excellent tonal quality, and you have a good range.”
“Nah. I ain’t got a ranch. But my yard’s pretty big. Over near the golf course. Big yard. Maybe you want to come see it.”
Did I? I looked toward Luz, and she replied for me. “Say, that would be great. Now that I’m not a cop anymore, I can associate with whoever I want.”
“They kick you out? Catch you takin’ the mordida?” He grinned, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together suggestively.
“Nothing so sexy,” she replied. “Medical retirement.” She picked her cane up from beside the chair and displayed it.
“Got shot, huh? It happens. I been shot myself.”
I’d decided that I didn’t want to go to his house, so I didn’t wait for Luz to bring up the subject of our quest. I did it myself. “I think you may know a friend of mine, Mr. Barrientos. Another ope
ra lover,” I said. Luz frowned. Barrientos denied knowing any opera lovers, although he said that he’d like to get to know me better. I tried to simper, but I’m afraid it wasn’t very successful. “Your name sounds so familiar,” I murmured.
“Well, I got a reputation.” He nodded, looking tough and proud of it. “But I don’ know that a lady like you would have heard about me.”
“No,” I insisted. “I’m sure Vladik Gubenko mentioned your name.”
“Who?” He looked puzzled, but I assumed that he was acting.
“Aren’t you connected with gambling?”
“Well, I lay a bet now and then. An’ I know where to put my money too. You don’t see Palomino—that’s what my friends call me—Palomino—you don’t see me making or taking sucker bets.”
I nodded admiringly. “I know that’s so. Vladik said you were too lucky for him, and he owed you money.”
“Yeah? What kinda name’s that? Va-dik? He got a big one?”
“Debt you mean? Well, forty thousand dollars sounds big to me.”
My new friend Palomino roared with laughter. “No, chica, a big dick. Well, I guess that ain’t no conversation for a nice lady, huh? Sorry. But I don’t know nobody with a name like that.”
“He’s Russian,” I persisted. “The artistic director of Opera at the Pass.”
“Don’t know him. Sorry. Hey, there’s someone waving at me. I’ll get back to you ladies.”
“Well, you really screwed that up,” said Luz angrily. “You should have let me handle the questioning.”
“He doesn’t know Vladik. He doesn’t even seem to know that Vladik’s dead.”
“Right. Or he’s not gonna admit to knowing a dead guy, especially if he killed him. Now we’ll have to go out to his house and wait for him. Could be half the night. If you hadn’t screwed up, we could have gone with him and got on with it.”
“Got on with what?” I asked, bemused. She’d done it again—he killed him. Two male pronouns with only one instead of two antecedents. Should I mention it to her?
27
Stake Out
Luz
Well that’s what I get for tearning up with an amateur, I thought as we drove toward Campestre, where everyone said Barrientos lived. Luck was with us when we got to the guard station. I ordered Smack down out of sight and told the guard that we had been invited by Mr. Barrientos to visit him at home. The guard and I leered at each other knowingly, and he opened the gate, even told us how to get there. Of course, the two of us were speaking Spanish, so the directions passed right over Carolyn’s head. We found the place, a big, sprawling adobe house with a three-car garage and a lawn, for Christ’s sake. No wonder Juarez was running out of water.
I found us a good stakeout spot under a tree with a straight line of sight to the house. “Why don’t we park in the driveway?” Carolyn asked.
“Because we need to find out if there’s anyone in the house, and if there isn’t, we don’t want to look too eager when he gets home. I told her to keep the motor running, and I took out a gadget I had for opening other people’s garage doors and began trying different wavelengths. Of course she wanted to know what I was doing, but just about then one of his garage doors zipped up. The space inside was empty, and it looked like the middle space was too. While Carolyn gaped, I closed the one door and kept trying frequencies until I got the middle door open. I’d been right. I noted the two frequencies, figuring he’d put his car in one of the spots. There was a monster pickup in the far one, a big black number with dark tinted windows, a chrome roll bar, and spotlights. The steel looked heavy enough that you wouldn’t be able to shoot through it, which was a nice feature if you were a drug dealer. Since no one came out to check the garage doors going up and down, I figured the house was empty, but I didn’t count on it.
Of course, I’d rather Barrientos came home and let us in himself. Then we wouldn’t have to mess with security alarms, but if that didn’t work, then we’d drive right into his garage after he was asleep, kick the door in if I couldn’t open it with picks, and drag him out to the car. Whatever worked. When she asked again what we were doing, I told her we were on a stakeout and to keep her eyes open for lights and movement in the house.
“A stakeout?” She actually sounded intrigued. Didn’t take much to entertain the woman. Nothing in the world more frigging boring than a stakeout, but she didn’t know that.
“You want to go to sleep, feel free. We could be here a while.”
“What? And miss my first stakeout?” she exclaimed indignantly. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Okay. So what are these murder investigations you’ve been involved in?” Might as well do something to pass the time, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be subjected to any more history lessons. I wished now that I’d had her use the john before we left the mariachi place. She wasn’t going to want to pee behind someone’s bush if she needed to go before he got home.
“Well, a friend of mine went missing in New Orleans, and the police wouldn’t do a thing.”
Her voice sounded kind of weepy. Must have been a good friend.
“So I found the murderer myself.”
“No shit?” I didn’t believe a word of it.
“And a colleague of Jason’s was murdered in New York. We solved that one together. And my mother-in-law was accused of murdering someone in San Francisco, and again the police weren’t helpful, so a private detective and I saw to her exoneration. And then there was the corpse I found in a Barcelona art exhibit—”
“Jesus, you seem to run into a lot of corpses. Maybe I better take you home before you get me killed.”
“I’m driving,” she pointed out. “Are we doing something dangerous? Besides visiting Juarez?”
“It depends. Just follow my lead.”
“Your knee seems to be feeling better tonight,” she remarked. “I noticed that you didn’t seem to limp at all.”
“Yeah, I figure it was the tequila.”
There was silence for a while, and then she said, “Your condo is very nice, and all on one floor. That must be a blessing.”
She was obviously one of these people who feel obligated to keep the conversation going. So all right. I’d entertain her and maybe set her mind at rest about my ability to take care of us if the situation got sticky. “Well, the house that I got in my divorce settlement and still owned when I had to retire was two-story and a real pain in the ass for someone in a wheelchair, which I was after a while. That was before I started taking the expensive meds and got better.”
“Does the police medical insurance pay for them?” she asked. “Our medication insurance at the university has co-pays up to eighty dollars for three months for some prescriptions, or so a friend told us. Neither Jason nor I have had to use it for any long-term treatments.”
“Eighty for three months would look good to me,” I said bitterly. “I got insurance, but it doesn’t cover the eighteen thousand they charge every year. I had to mortgage my house to pay for the first couple of years, so I could get mobile enough to earn some money.”
“I didn’t realize you had a job.”
“I don’t. I do a little bounty hunting now and then. For instance, the first time I heard about a guy with a big reward on his head, the scuzzball was over here in Juarez. Bounty hunters don’t like to come over here. They don’t want to end up in jail. But I figured I didn’t have anything to lose, and I knew where he went to visit a lady friend—without body guards—so I came on over, caught the two of them fucking—you’re wincing, right? Well, what they were doing couldn’t be called making love, if you know what I mean.”
I gathered that she didn’t and still objected to my choice of words, which made it damn hard to tell the woman a story. “Anyway, I made the guy tie up the woman. Then, I stuck the pistol up his nose—”
“Are you carrying a gun tonight?” she asked. “We could go to jail if you are. I’ve read in the newspaper that the Mexican authorities don’t allow people to t
ransport guns across the border. They throw visitors right in prison if there are weapons in the car, even if the people just forgot—”
“I’m not carrying,” I interrupted. “I was more desperate in those days. Say, do you want me to finish this story?” She did. “So I made him shoot himself full of his own product.” I had to laugh just thinking about it. The guy was a dealer who was smart enough not to use, so the heroin he’d brought for his true love was enough to send him right into the nodding-off stage.
“Then I strapped him into my car and told the agent at customs he was a boyfriend who was drunk. Since I’d declared American and didn’t have an accent, Immigration took my word for it, and I hauled my prisoner off to the feds. The reward paid for the new condo and a lot of meds.”
All and all, Carolyn thought that was pretty neat and wanted to hear more bounty-hunter stories. Since I only had one more, which I didn’t want to talk about because it had gotten pretty messy, I told her about busting whores and johns in the downtown area when I was a beat cop and later working the stash-house detail. That one got her all upset. She thought maybe she’d need to keep her eyes open for stash houses in her neighborhood. I assured her that she should. So that’s the way it went.
Next she said, “I didn’t realize you’d been married.”
“Yeah. Right out of college. Big wedding, white dress, the whole enchilada. My parents were pretty pissed off when we got divorced. Dad had to come back from a prospecting trip in Mexico to catch the wedding, they spent a fortune to give away their number-two daughter, and then the bridegroom gave her back. I’m not saying Francisco was a bad guy. He wasn’t. Probably the nicest banker you ever met.”
“You married a banker?” Carolyn exclaimed.
I was kind of insulted at how surprised she was. “Right. He graduated in business from the university here, then went on to the Wharton School of Business for his master’s, which is a big deal, fancy Ivy League university. Then he came home and married me. Is that so hard to believe? I told you he was a good guy. We loved each other, and he didn’t even mind a wife on the job, but he wanted kids in the worst way. Frankly, I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I wanted him to be happy, so we tried. When normal screwing around didn’t do it, we both went to doctors. He was fine. I was going need all that hormone stuff and getting it on at just the right time, maybe some test-tube deal. That was where I drew the line. I told him he’d better get an annulment because I wasn’t going for the hormone stuff. No way. Imagine me on the streets chasing some criminal type and all of a sudden I’m having PMS to end all PMS. So we split. The Church gave us an annulment. The state gave us a divorce. It was too bad, but that’s the way it had to be.”
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