by Kit Frazier
Puck’s service started at three in the afternoon. Music from an organ played softly behind a red velvet curtain in the front of the small, mahogany-paneled room. In front of the curtain, three large sprays of yellow roses flanked an elaborate chrome coffin.
Kimmie Ray and Pilar were already there, sitting straight in the velvet chairs cordoned off for family. Both carried handkerchiefs they used to dab their eyes.
Kimmie wore a short black dress expensively cut and a pair of very high heels that got a lot of attention from the male mourners. Pilar, wearing a no-nonsense black cotton dress, held her hand.
I had spoken with Cantu, who reported there weren’t any more leads, and that Josh was wandering the site like a zombie with a mission.
The solicitous woman from the lobby came soundlessly in, bearing a tray of cookies and punch, which she placed discretely on a corner console to enhance the viewing experience. She teetered up to Kimmie Ray and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Kimmie nodded and dabbed her eyes. The older woman cocked her head.
“Have we met before?” the old woman said.
Startled, Kimmie sat back a little and said, “Well, yes. I buried my husband here five years ago.”
The old woman nodded, still studying Kimmie’s face. “There was another one too, though, right?”
Kimmie took a deep breath and whispered, “Yes. A long time ago.” The old woman straightened her back, still eyeing her with a birdlike stare. “You got any more husbands layin’ around?”
Behind her, Tres arrived, and the door soundlessly opened and shut behind him.
He stepped inside the velvet rope and bent to kiss Kimmie Ray, once on each cheek. He whispered something to her and she nodded. Then he took her hand and gave it one of those double shakes, one at the hand, the other on the elbow, with a pained look on his face. He went to hug Pilar, but she was stiff in his embrace.
“May I help you?” the funeral worker said. She’d slipped back into the room and took Tres by the elbow to seat him behind the family, which seemed to annoy him beyond all reason.
Junior Hollis stood at the back of the hall like a bulldog at the back fence.
I stared at the coffin, but I didn’t want to see what was left of Puck. I made my way forward and paid my condolences to Kimmie, then sat toward the back with Mia, feeling like I’d swallowed a concrete brick.
Mia squeezed my hand. “You okay, querida?”
“I guess. I just keep seeing Puck laying there on the steps in a pool of blood, and Faith, blood spattered and in shock.” I sighed. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“Same thing,” Mia said.
A handful of people I didn’t know showed up at a quarter “til. A couple of them were in well-made suits. They filed by, peered into the casket, and nodded to themselves. I frowned. They looked like they were just making sure he was dead. I kept craning my neck, looking for Logan.
At ten “til, two Hispanic men came in quietly. They both wore their good jeans the ones with no holes and no fade marks with shiny cowboy boots, their shirts untucked. They made their way quietly to the back.
“Do we know them?” Mia whispered, and I nodded.
“Chino and Jitters. Puck’s light and sound guys from the Pier.”
“Cholos,” Mia said, and I nodded, looking at the tattoos scrawling from beneath their shirtsleeves. “There’s some bad magia negra around here.”
And then one source of the bad energy Mia felt strolled through the door.
Diego DeLeon and a pair of his cousins sauntered into the funeral home like they were comfortable with death and had seen more than their share of it. Their eyes scanned the visitors on the way up to the casket. Diego leaned over, studied Puck’s body, then nodded and crossed himself. The Syndicate’s front man making sure El Patron’s back man was moldering in the grave. I shivered.
I stared at Diego. Mia had predicted I’d meet a man from my past.
He was darkly handsome, like an Abercrombie & Fitch edition of Boys Gone Bad. He was nearly six feet tall and dressed in a dark suit, black shirt, and black silk tie that fit so well it made me swallow hard.
His skin was the color of a double shot of bourbon. Diego knelt and said something to Kimmie Ray, gently kissed her hand, and stood.
Movement distracted me from behind, and when I turned, I noticed Chino and Jitters were gone.
I frowned, scanning the room to see if there were any other Syndicate guys skulking in the small crowd. Nobody else I recognized, nobody from El Patron, and still no Faith. I half wondered if Selena Obregon, the escaped leader of El Patron, would materialize among the floral sprays, and I shivered, looking again for Logan.
As Diego took a seat, our gazes met, and something flashed in his dark eyes. My breath caught the way it does when you stumble across a beautiful snake.
A large hand touched my shoulder from behind, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I looked up and saw Deke. The panic subsided as he sat beside me.
Mia hit me with her elbow and whispered, “Ay caramba!”
“Deke,” I said, “This is Mia Santiago. Mia, this is Deke. He, uh, works with Faith.”
Mia’s brown eyes twinkled, and Deke cranked up a smile that reminded me of spring meadows and fresh laundry. No easy feat on a guy that big.
“You all doin’ okay?” he whispered in his dark velvet voice. I shook my head.
“You seen Faith?” he said.
“Not one peep.”
Nodding, he leaned back in the pew, arms crossed. Diego’s guys were eyeing Deke, and he eyed them back.
Diego leveled his gaze on me, and his lips curved into a slow smile. Beside me, I felt Deke expand.
Then Logan walked in.
Our eyes locked, and I got that feeling of high-powered calm that Logan always exudes. His lips twitched into a half smile of recognition, and as soon as it was there, it was gone. His gaze swept over the room, stopping briefly on Diego and his entourage, Deke, and then Tres, Kimmie Ray, and Pilar.
Logan moved forward, taking Kimmie’s hand, and he spoke softly to her. She bowed her head, nodding as the tears came again.
Logan stood, turned toward the coffin, and looked down, his jaw muscle clenched, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was made of steel. It lasted only a moment, and then he turned, very slowly, and swept the room again. A hush fell over the small congregation. Suddenly, the room felt very cold.
Logan discretely looked down at his cell, and his face stiffened. He looked at me, a hard look that said be careful, and then he turned and left.
Mia whispered, “You have such interesting friends.”
I’d been bugging Cantu and Logan about gang activity and the possibility of a gang war for the past two weeks. Sitting within three feet of Diego DeLeon, I realized I’d been asking the wrong people.
At that moment, a middle-aged man with proud carriage and a belly that looked like he was trying to hide a basketball pushed through the red velvet curtain and smiled a consoling smile. I wondered if they taught that smile at preacher school. He was carrying a Bible in his pudgy hand, and his hair was sprayed with so much product it looked like a football helmet. The preacher from New Hope, I assumed.
He looked down at Puck, then out at the congregation, nodded, and said, “Are we ready?”
I looked at Mia, who shrugged.
“All right then,” he said and went out the side door, where Kimmie Ray, Pilar, and Tres went for the family car. The dozen other mourners followed suit. We piled into our respective cars and joined the small funeral procession to Blackland Cemetery in Dawes County.
“Boy, they weren’t kidding when they said it was a graveside service,” I said, folding myself into Mia’s Beetle. She slid her little round sunglasses over her small nose, popped some bubble gum into her mouth, and revved up the little motor. We peeled out of the parking lot. Once we were on the road, she tucked a small yellow rose into the Bug’s dandy little dashboard bud vase.
; “You stole a flower from a funeral?” I said.
“I borrowed it. They’re not using it.”
Mia’s belief in the hereafter takes some getting used to. It also takes some keeping up with.
We joined the procession and I sat, tapping my pen to my lips. “Anything strike you as weird back there?” I said.
“The whole thing is weird. You Anglos got a funny way of sending people off to their eternal glory.”
“Well, it doesn’t usually go that way,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out what the deal between Tres and Josh is, and with so few people attending the funeral, why was Diego DeLeon and his Syndicate posse there? I didn’t see anyone from El Patron, and we know Puck was connected to El Patron before he was killed. From what I’ve heard, usually someone from a vato’s gang shows up at the funeral.”
Mia shrugged, taking a corner so fast the G-force gave me Angelina Jolie lips.
“Who all have you talked to?” she said.
“The boyfriend, Josh, who’s been inebriated since I met him at the Pier; the stepbrother, Tres, who owns her record contract; Dawes County Sheriff Junior Hollis, who is a total ass and is in charge of the search; Deke, the bouncer, who seems to care about the girls who work at the club; about six strippers; and Kitty Litter Queen Kimmie Ray. I still have to track down the school Faith was sent to and why.”
“You mean why they sent her and not her brother?” Mia said and took a left so sharp it nearly rolled the Beetle down the embankment. “I thought you said she went to private school for a better education.”
“A better education than the Eanes district? You gotta be kidding,” I said, white-knuckling the dash.
Mia shrugged. “Where did you say Kimmie met old man Ainsworth?”
I thought back to what she’d told me and the archives I’d read.
“His wife was dying. She was a nursing assistant. Mrs. Ainsworth died, and Kimmie cleared out her closet. Old Man Cullen conveniently had a heart attack a year later. He left everything to Tres, who manages Kimmie’s estate.”
Mia pondered that. “How long has la criada been around?”
“Pilar, the housekeeper?” I shrugged. “Long enough that she seems to really care about Wylie and Faith.”
“You talk to her?”
I let out a long breath. “No, I didn’t. Not really.”
Mia smiled serenely. “You want to know what goes on in someone’s house, ask the help. People act like they’re not there most of the time. And then a big family crisis comes, and they’re expected to keep the whole family propped up.”
“You know this from Abuelita Maria?” I said, and Mia nodded.
“I know from me, too. I used to help my grandmother clean houses on the weekends and after school.”
She looked down at her hands, no longer callused, but I remember the years when they were. Those same hands now took pictures that won the Texas Press Organization award for photography two years in a row.
I nodded. “I should have thought to ask Pilar.” There was apology in my voice, but Mia shrugged.
“You didn’t know. That wasn’t your experience. Just like I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a house of crazy gringas.”
“Oh, give me a break. Your grandma is every bit as crazy as Mama and Clairee,” I said, and Mia grinned.
“And you’re the better for it, aren’t you, querida?”
I squeezed her hand. “I think maybe we’re both the better for it.”
We arrived at the old Blackland Cemetery, where five generations of Pucketts were laid to rest among some of the original settlers of Central Texas. The cemetery showed it.
Sun-scorched weeds tangled out of control, and the drought ripped giant cracks in the earth. I wondered if it was possible for lingering spirits to drift from their dry graves for a peek at the living. Despite the heat, I shivered.
Nana MacKinnon spends an inordinate amount of time at our family plots. She goes there to picnic between Daddy and Grandpa’s graves. She says it helps her see more clearly. I used to go with her right after Daddy died.
Later, I was more interested in dance lessons and drama, and my time with the living replaced my time with the dead.
Now I write obituaries for a living. Maybe if I’d sat with Nana a little longer, I could have seen that one coming.
We all filed out of our vehicles in the hundred-degree heat. Kimmie and the family flanked the minister, who smiled benevolently at us as we stood at a respectful distance. The suits all lined up behind us. I thought about Puck and his body in the box, and wondered what he would think about all this, and if he even knew what happened to him and by whom. I wondered where Logan had been called to go, knowing he would call me when he could.
Mia snapped a discrete picture, but the minister caught the lens and his smile widened. She got some crowd shots, and I noticed Diego about six feet behind me. I was trying to think of a respectful way to take a step back and hand him my card when the minister placed one hand on the coffin and lifted the Bible into the air with the other.
In a television preacher voice he boomed, “I was asked to be here today by Kimmie Ray Ainsworth, beloved mother of Wylie Ray Puckett, whom we lay to rest today. I didn’t know Wylie Ray Puckett, and I don’t know where he is today, but let this be a lesson to all of us.”
Ah, a traditional funeral. Who knew?
I stood there, staring at the preacher. Kimmie Ray seemed to go further into shock.
“For a church called New Hope, that didn’t sound very hopeful,” I whispered to Mia, but her mouth was open, too.
“Did he just say Puck got what he deserved?” Mia said.
“I wonder if that preacher is from the school they sent Faith to,” I whispered.
Behind me, I heard a shuffling noise, and I turned to find Diego and his carnales were gone.
“Mia,” I whispered. “I need to go.”
I sprinted around gravestones as quickly as my spike heels would carry me, trying very hard not to sweat, with Mia right behind me.
I figured God would look after Puck, and Pilar would see to Kimmie Ray. I had a gangster to catch, a cat to feed, and a girl to find.
Chapter Twenty-o
Knowing where to get information and actually weaseling it out of someone are two different things. It was six o’clock Sunday evening and Tanner wanted something on his desk supporting or refuting a looming gang war in addition to a short on the funeral by tomorrow morning.
I’d been so caught up in finding Faith that I’d let my workload slide. But if Hollis and the crack reporters at the Journal were right, the two weren’t mutually exclusive.
I needed to talk to Diego DeLeon. I left things badly the last time we’d met, but he didn’t tear holes in my panties, leave me a dead bird, or threaten to chop off my ears at the funeral, so things were looking up.
The trick was going to be finding him. Since carnales usually don’t take out ads in the Google, I had Mia drop me off at home so I could make some phone calls and do a computer search on local mobsters.
I waved to the prepubescent cop who was sitting under the streetlight. He grinned and waved back, and I shook my head. The kid had honest-to-God dimples.
After doing the outdoor thing with Marlowe and letting Muse chew me out while I fed her and freshened her water, I shimmied out of my dress and slipped into an old tee shirt and shorts. My whole body sighed inside the soft cotton. I poured myself a tall bourbon and Diet Coke and flipped on the television.
CNN droned in the background about terror alerts and some arms deal going on in South America. I let it drone.
I wrote a short article on the funeral and checked my email. Mia sent the photos of the funeral, and I whizzed through them, chose three, and sent the whole shebang to the FTP site for Ethan to post to the Sentinel site, cc-ing a copy to Tanner.
Work for the day done, I Googled Diego DeLeon. I didn’t get a phone number or address or an official confession.
With a cross-reference betw
een DeLeon and the Syndicate, I found three articles on an acquittal for money laundering two years ago, when the feds shut down a car wash that had allegedly cleaned money for under-the-table affairs at two Syndicate-owned strip clubs Lipstick and Boners.
Oh, ick. A mafioso with a sense of humor. I flipped on my cell and called Deke.
“Boners, gentlemen’s paradise,” a male voice that wasn’t Deke barked into the phone. I asked for the bouncer and was informed he hadn’t made it back from the funeral.
I was about to ask to leave a message when the guy said, “This is Chino.” He talked around what I hoped was a big wad of bubble gum. “Somethin’ I can help you wit’?”
Chino the deejay worked at Boners? That was interesting.
“Yes, I saw you at the funeral and before at the Pier, remember? You were doing lights and sound for his sister?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “You wanted that fed to take my shirt off.”
There was something sinister and suggestive in his voice, and I shuddered. “I saw Diego at the funeral today, and he told me to give him a call, but I left without getting his number.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He told me he’s a partner at Boners,” I lied, “so I thought I’d try to track him down there.”
“He ain’t a partner no more,” Chino said, and then I was listening to a dial tone.
I stared at the phone. “Well. He obviously skipped phone etiquette in home ec,” I told Marlowe. The dog raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.
I called the other club and got even less information. Some reporter I’m going to be. But what I lack in talent I make up for in persistence, and so I called and left a message for Dan Soliz at the gang unit and was told he’d be in at three tomorrow.
Hanging up, I was at a loss. “What would Bogey do?” I said to Marlowe. The dog got up and went to the kitchen and stood in front of the refrigerator.
While the fridge is not usually a font of information, it is occasionally a source of sustenance. I grazed out enough stuff to make a turkey sandwich, gave the dog half, and checked the cat’s water.