by Carmen Amato
“So selling assets wasn’t that difficult?” Emilia took a sip of the hot coffee. She decided she liked Rivas. He was probably somebody’s fun grandfather, the one who let them stay up late and took them to the Santa Clara store for the best ice cream in Mexico and convinced their mother that they should learn how to water ski.
Rivas stirred his own coffee. “Lomas Bottling made us a decent offer and was willing to invest to recap the machinery.”
“And that was the end of it?” Emilia asked. She put down her cup and scribbled Lomas Bottling in her notebook.
Rivas drank some coffee, then bit into his own wafer cookie. He swallowed before shaking his head. “It just bought Fausto some time, I’m afraid.”
“Bruno said Fausto asked for an increase in his allowance from the company,” Emilia said. “Do you know if they fought over it?”
Rivas put down the rest of his cookie. “You seem to be fishing here, Detective, and I’ll be honest. Fausto was never going to stop gambling and Bruno was never going to approve but they were brothers and they knew that family was important.” He shook his head as if regretfully amused. “It was actually good when Fausto got a job. Gave him something else to do during the day.”
“So he didn’t care about the plans to streamline the company?”
“Bruno would like to get out from under other production assets and just focus on real estate.” Earlier in their conversation Rivas had outlined the property assets owned by Seguros Guerrero. It was an impressive list of luxury high-rise buildings in Acapulco and further up the coast in Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa.
“Would that have had any impact on Fausto?” Emilia finished her cookies.
“The same as Bruno and the other stakeholders in that their income is a percentage of profits.”
“So if the company shrinks, the profits shrink?”
Rivas cocked an eyebrow. “Not necessarily. Bruno and I think the remaining assets can be better managed and produce better profit margins.” He sipped his coffee. “The local real estate market is strong and Bruno wants to focus the company there.”
“Would Fausto have seen it that way?” Emilia didn’t know if this mattered or not.
“I have no idea,” Rivas said.
☼
Emilia got a glass jar full of ceviche and avocado from the little stand down by the Hospital Santa Lucia that always had reliable food. She ate the pickled fish standing up with the rest of the customers who were there for a late lunch, most of them in white lab coats or nurse’s uniforms. She felt hot and sticky in her suit and heels but restless all the same.
As much as she was sure that el teniente’s death was connected to the counterfeit money, the invisible Hudsons, and the Morelos de Gama kidnapping, she couldn’t discount the family situation. If Rita Inocente was correct about the San Pedro fundraiser, Maria Teresa might have had a reason to want her husband out of the way. And while Emilia might like Bruno, maybe he’d fought with his brother about money and things had gotten out of hand. Rivas had given Bruno an alibi but they were close; it might have been all planned.
Wouldn’t that please the mayor, Emilia thought wryly as she handed back her fork and empty glass jar to the stand owner. A personal issue. Yes, even better.
☼
Emilia used her cell phone to check in with Rico. He and Fuentes had closed out the dispatch calls from that morning and joined Macias and Sandor in haunting the various marinas. They had a few promising leads to follow with regard to other pleasure boats. She thought about calling Silvio and didn’t.
The day was never going to end, she decided, as she walked into the small office of Seguridad Sanchez. To her surprise, the manager was an older woman in a plain blouse and skirt with a nametag that read Dulcie.
Emilia showed her badge and explained the situation and told her what she needed. Three minutes later Dulcie shook her head at an unseen computer screen as Emilia waited behind the counter.
“I can give you the name of the day guard for the Las Brisas privada gate at location number 2,” Dulcie said. She’d already explained how the particular Las Brisas neighborhood was divided into various privadas, all of which the company protected. The Inocente residence was in location 2. “The night guard was fired yesterday.”
Emilia blinked. “The person working the gate at location 2 on Tuesday night was fired?”
Dulcie nodded. “The note here says he was drinking on the job. A resident reported him and the supervisor fired him.” She looked proud. “We have empowered our local supervisors in order to provide the very best service.”
Emilia tried to share the woman’s enthusiasm. “You said a resident reported him?”
“Yes.” Dulcie clicked a key. “But I’m not sure I should be giving that out.”
“This is a murder investigation,’ Emilia said. “I don’t know if this is important or not but I could use some help.”
She must have sounded exhausted or pathetic or maybe it was just female solidarity at work in jobs that were usually a man’s purview.
Dulcie pursed her lips and stared at her computer screen. Emilia waited.
“The resident who reported him was Bruno Inocente,” Dulcie said.
Chapter 12
Emilia got back to the squadroom late in the afternoon. The rest of the detectives were there, joking and laughing a little too noisily.
As she crossed the room to her old desk, Silvio went into Lt. Inocente’s office and walked out again empty-handed.
“Where’s the dispatch board?” he demanded. The noise in the room went down as the other detectives watched, Gomez almost laughing, waiting for the showdown.
Emilia pointed to the murder board. She’d screwed a hook into the wall that morning and hung the dispatch clipboard there.
Silvio stalked over and snatched the empty clipboard off the hook. “What the fuck is this?”
Emilia waited until he came around to her desk. She wasn’t going to have a shouting match across the room but she knew that there was more behind the anger than thwarted authority. Whoever handed out the assignments had a lot of leverage over the fortunes of the detectives. Good cases were opportunities to gain a few perks or make a little money on the side. No assignments, no new money-making opportunities. Moreover, the lieutenant invariably got a kickback from whatever the detective got out of the case. The an age-old system of patronage was routine police procedure. “New assignments get handed out at the 9:00 meeting,” she said calmly.
Silvio broke the clipboard in two, tossed it on her desk and walked out of the squadroom.
☼
It felt strange being in Lt. Inocente’s office. Emilia hadn’t brought her nameplate in and her bag was locked in her own desk drawer. Castro’s magic tool had made it impossible to relock the office desk. She hoped she could find the key to the one drawer that he’d been unable to jimmy. It required a four-sided serrated-edge key.
There was a folded newspaper on el teniente’s chair. The society pages showcased Acapulco’s rich and famous. Maria Teresa had looked directly into the camera, wearing a slinky red gown and a crystal ornament in her hair. Castro and Gomez had been hard at work on her alibi.
As Emilia typed up the reports of her discussions during the day and picked out the facts to post on the murder board, Loyola and Ibarra came into el teniente’s office with the forensics report, acting as if it had just been released.
Six sets of fingerprints had been found on the boat; one set was clearly that of Lt. Inocente. There was no match for the others.
“Forensics said that one set of prints was that of a child,” Loyola said. He was tall, with a long mournful face and wire framed glasses. Emilia had heard that the former schoolteacher was married, but he’d never talked about his wife or any children.
“So I heard,” Emilia said coolly. “Bring the family in to get printed. The wife said he used to take the kids boating.”
“Hers, too?” Ibarra asked.
“Yes.” The office was stifling
with both men in it. Ibarra was short and stocky. Cigarette fumes wafted off him and thickened in the windowless office. “Anything off his computer?”
Loyola grimaced. “Not yet.”
The desk phone rang. The two detectives walked out and Emilia lifted the receiver to hear Obregon’s voice ask for an update.
☼
When Emilia got home Ernesto Cruz was sitting on the sofa, a pillow and blanket next to him. He was wearing old-fashioned long white underwear and a long-sleeved tee shirt. Both were old but clean. It was long past midnight and she was tired to the bone. She kicked off her maldita high heels. She was never wearing them again.
“Hello,” Emilia said. Part of her was still at the office, seeing the faded print of pages that had been photocopied too many times, seeing Fausto Inocente’s signature on half-hearted efforts to investigate escalating violence. She’d read the rest of the files that had been in the office but ad found nothing relevant, either to el teniente’s murder or las perdidas.
Ernesto touched the blanket next to him. “You mother is very kind.”
Emilia let her bag slip to the floor and peeled off her jacket, revealing her shoulder holster. The last thing she wanted to do was deal with this situation but it could not be put off another day. She slumped onto the loveseat.
Once upon a time he’d probably been a handsome man. His eyes were large and dark, but trapped within furrows of white-lined wrinkles as if he’d stared at a hot sky for too long and his hair was sprinkled with gray but still thick.
“Are you from Acapulco, Señor Cruz?” Emilia asked, hoping she sounded casual.
“No.” He folded his hands in his lap. “No, I came here from Mexico City.”
“Do you have family here?”
“No. I am a stranger here.” He smiled sadly. Despite the lower gap, his teeth were surprisingly clean and white. Maybe he wasn’t as old as she’d thought. “Your mother is the only person I know.”
“So you’re just visiting Acapulco, señor?” Emilia asked.
“But if you would call me Ernesto, I would not be so much of a stranger.”
Emilia nodded. “Ernesto, then.” She rubbed her eyes. “So you came for work?”
“No, I just got on the bus.”
“You just got on a bus in Mexico City to come to Acapulco?” Emilia nodded as if that was a reasonable thing to do.
“I didn’t want to be in Mexico City anymore,” he explained.
“Well.” Emilia yawned. Obviously she was going to have to pull the full story out of this man bit by bit. And she was too tired to be very nice about it. “Your family is in Mexico City, señor. Ernesto, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Do they know where you are?”
Ernesto shrugged. He stared beyond Emilia, to the picture of the pope on the wall by the window.
“My mother said you had a business trip,” Emilia said. “Did you go see your family?”
Ernesto seemed to shake for a moment. “No. I went to Zihuatanejo. There’s no knife grinder there.”
“Okay.’ Emilia rubbed her eyes again. “But what about your family, Ernesto?”
“Just my wife.”
“Does she know you are in Acapulco?”
“I had three sons, you know,” he said abruptly.
Emilia registered the past tense. “Tell me about them,” she said.
“I got on the bus because I could not stay there anymore. My sons were lost to me there.”
Emilia wondered if she had the energy to listen to what she knew was coming.
“My three boys,” Ernesto said. “There were no jobs, no nothing for them to do. So they paid all our money to a coyote to guide them across the border.”
Emilia squeezed her hands together between her knees.
“The coyote took their money but they were left alone in the desert. They died in the sun with their wives. The police told us their tongues swelled because there was no water and they died like that. They’re buried up there.” He made a tiny flapping gesture with one hand. “Near the border but not in El Norte. But together at least.”
“I’m sorry, Ernesto,” Emilia said. Now she understood why he was like a man with a broken mainspring.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. “So now I am in Acapulco,” he said. “It is warm here.”
“Ernesto,” Emilia said softly. “What about your wife? She’s in Mexico City?”
“I suppose.”
“All alone?”
The thin shoulders shrugged. “Your mother--.”
“My mother doesn’t understand,” Emilia said.
Ernesto didn’t say anything.
Emilia was suddenly exhausted; exhausted to the point of death for the second night in a row. She hauled herself out of the loveseat and went upstairs.
Chapter 13
Five detectives, including Emilia, showed up for the 9:00 am meeting the next day. Silvio was there, glowering. Rico and Fuentes stood on the opposite side of the room from him. Macias and Sandor stayed at their desks. Emilia squared her shoulders and walked over to the murder board. Once again she was struck by what a good job Silvio had done, using painter’s tape to run a timeline across the top and posting up the pictures of the location of the bloodstains on the upper hull of the cigarette boat, how the body was found face down, a close-up of the bag tied at the back of Lt. Inocente’s neck before it was cut, and the bloodsoaked shoulders. On the right he had cards thumbtacked showing pertinent facts: phone call at 10 pm; wallet, car keys and police credentials still at home, blood alcohol level, sexual activity. There was a blank spot on the board for witness and informant information.
“Anything from the marina?” Emilia asked.
Macias and Sandor exchanged nervous looks and came over to the murder board. Macias made a show of consulting his notebook while Sandor stood and looked at him.
“El teniente had the boat about two years,” Macias reported. His most striking feature was a full head of lush, curly black hair. From the squadroom chatter Emilia knew it attracted women like flies to honey. “Always docked it at the building’s marina. Took it out most weekends, usually with his kids. Wife went with them sometimes. Dock fees are part of the building’s condo fees. Gas and maintenance provided by the marina for a separate charge. His fees were always paid on time, no problems.”
“Get to the point,” Silvio said.
Macias nodded, not at all discomfited by Silvio’s brusqueness. “Night supervisor says el teniente took the boat out a little after 11:30. By himself.”
It was the first bit of information they’d gotten since the maid said he’d received a phone call around 10:00 pm and left the apartment. “He saw him?” Emilia asked.
Macias nodded again. “Plus his code matched up and--.”
“Code?” Rico interrupted.
“Marina gate is a key code type of thing. Gotta punch in four numbers to open the gate.”
“Is there a video?” Emilia asked.
“System hasn’t been installed yet.” Sandor spoke this time. His voice was soft. He was an even tempered man who was generally quiet except when it came to complaining about the copier. “But the whole marina’s like a fortress. You can only get into it through the building. Even if you get into your boat, you have to have the code to get your boat out of its slip. So it’s pretty secure.”
“A security system to take a boat out of the marina?” Silvio wrote 11:30 pm on the murder board timeline.
Sandor consulted his own notebook. “Pretty good technology. Every boat has a tracking device on it and a unique code to get through the water gate.”
“So, Lt. Inocente would have had to be the one to take the boat out himself?” Rico asked. “No one could sail up to the marina, come into the gate and take out his boat?”
“No boats came in that late,” Sandor said. “We asked.”
“And they’re sure that Inocente punched in his own code?” This from Silvio.
Macias shook his head. “Supe
rvisor ran the program that records the codes. Inocente’s code was entered at 11:42 Tuesday night.”
“Okay.” Emilia suppressed a little thrill that not only did they have a witness who saw Lt. Inocente leave in his own boat but that the discussion was going so well. “Did he say if this was normal? Did el teniente usually take his boat out that late?”
Macias flipped a page on his notebook. “The supervisor could call up the last 30 days of the log for el teniente’s code. He’d taken the boat out at night around 11:00 pm a couple of times.” He tore the page out of his notebook and handed it to Silvio. “Here are the dates.”
“According to the coroner’s report he would have been killed around midnight,” Rico said as Silvio copied the new information onto the murder board. “He takes the boat out. Dead twenty minutes later.”
“Enough time to have a fuck,” Macias supplied.
Rico frowned, his jowls drooping. “At sea.”
“Good job,” Emilia said to Macias and Sandor. Rico’s theory of a delivery at sea gone awry seemed to be more and more plausible, although el teniente’s stop to have sex didn’t quite fit.
“More on the boat angle,” Fuentes spoke up for the first time that morning. “Portillo and I have been checking other marinas, trying to see if any boat would have met up with el teniente’s at sea. So far nobody else near Punta Diamante but we’ve got about a dozen more to check out.”
“No Water Patrol calls near there, either,” Rico said.
Emilia silently thanked Rico for following up with Water Patrol. He wasn’t the most imaginative detective but he was dogged.
Macias put away his notebook and he and Sandor closed ranks. Neither moved toward the other, but Emilia could tell.
“Okay.” She looked at Rico and Fuentes. “Did you have a chance to check out Seguros Guerrero and Aqua Pacifico and the rest of the family business dealings?”
Rico shook his head. “Just some news so far. Not too much more than what el teniente’s brother had to say. The father died about six years ago and the business went to the brothers. Maybe it was in the will but Bruno got a bigger share and the chairmanship. Started reshaping the company like you said, to focus on real estate. Agua Pacifico was sold to this Lomas Bottling for about ten million pesos.”