by Carmen Amato
“I’d like to speak with you regarding the kidnapping of the Morelos de Gama child,” she said again, this time more slowly. “It might be important in the context of the death of Fausto Inocente.”
“The cop found murdered off Punta Diamante?” Denton asked. “You’re investigating?”
“Yes,” Emilia said. She watched Kurt pull himself out of the pool, his shoulder muscles bunching and relaxing. Candlelight flickered over his wet body as he reached for a towel. “Is there a time we can meet?”
“I can’t be seen to meet with some two-bit Mexican police,” Denton sounded appalled that she would even ask. “My clients trust me.”
Emilia swallowed anger. “I just have a few questions and I’d rather not do it over the phone.” Like Horacio Valdez Ruiz, how Denton reacted would be as important as the words he said.
Kurt expertly twisted the cork off a bottle of champagne and filled two flutes. His movements had both fluidity and precision and again Emilia was struck by how different he was from the other men she knew. He had nothing to prove to her, she realized, he’d already proven everything he needed to prove. To himself.
“Look, in my business, involvement with the police always means trouble.” Denton’s voice was testy, as if he knew he was speaking to someone who smelled bad. “I don’t have anything for you, Detective.”
“Ten minutes,” Emilia said.
“Sorry, Detective.”
“You name the place,” Emilia parried.
By the time she’d convinced Denton to meet and pinned him down to a place and time, the magic of the evening was gone. Emilia knew she had no business at the Palacio Réal with a gringo man who lived like Alan Denton; with a pliant world in his hand, able to shape it into anything he wanted. It wasn’t her world where success was nothing more than a small sharp-edged stone, if anything at all.
Emilia broke the connection and looked around. Kurt was sitting at the table watching her. A waiter noiselessly served two plates of seafood and fancy rice then disappeared.
“I have to go,” Emilia said, conscious that she’d gotten herself into a ludicrous situation. She was wearing a bathing suit she couldn’t afford, with her toothbrush in her purse, expecting to have a relationship with a gringo man who could have his pick of any Mexican woman who passed by.
“What’s the matter?” Kurt stood up.
“I’m sorry. Work stuff.” Emilia felt herself blushing furiously and was glad it was too dark for him to see. She retrieved the pareo, stuck her feet into her sandals, and gathered up her things. “I’ll return the bathing suit. I never meant to--.”
“Wait a minute.” Kurt swung around the table to put his hands on her shoulders. His body blocked the path back to the main part of the hotel. “Who was on the phone?”
“A work appointment.” Emilia held her bags in front so she wouldn’t surrender to the closeness of his warm skin, to the urge to press her face into his shoulder and smell the clean water scent of him. “Something else to follow up,” she said. “I have to go.”
“You have to do it now?” Kurt wasn’t letting go.
Emilia couldn’t meet his eye. “It’s late,” she said flatly. The night sky was starry and the candles around the pool glowed but she felt the darkness close in.
“I haven’t made it a secret that I’m interested,” Kurt said. “You’re a smart woman, you’re cool under fire, and you’re damn attractive.” He lifted his chin at the pool. “I was pretty sure you were interested, too.”
Emilia shook her head. “I’m sorry. This isn’t going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“It just can’t.”
“I thought you weren’t afraid of anything but I was wrong.” Kurt dropped his hands. “You’re afraid of me.”
“I am certainly not afraid of you.” Emilia adjusted her load as the slippery plastic hotel bag threatened to escape her grasp.
“Then what is it?” Kurt demanded. “Fear of intimacy? Sex? I doubt it.”
Before Emilia could even stammer out a denial he rolled on. “You’ve bought into this country’s unspoken rules about the haves and have-nots, Emilia,” he said. His words had a clipped edge to them. “I represent something you’re not supposed to want and that phone call reminded you.”
It was a shot to the heart and Emilia took refuge in an instant fortress of self-righteousness. “You’re very presumptuous thinking that I have feelings for you, señor,” she said.
“You’re a crappy liar, Emilia,” Kurt said.
Her fortress needed a higher wall. “Maybe I’m not impressed with a man who swanks around all day drinking cocktails,” Emilia said. “Chatting with tourists and giving orders to Mexicans.”
Kurt’s face tightened. “Sometimes I talk on the phone, too.”
“Thank you, señor, for a most interesting evening.” Emilia turned and hustled herself down the steps toward the lights of the main part of the hotel.
Kurt came after her and grabbed her arm, sending the plastic bag slithering down the stairs ahead of them. “What the hell just happened here?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This is how you want to leave things? Me pissed off and you too afraid to live your life?”
“Kurt.” She meant to sound tough and independent but the word came out in a beggar’s voice, like a dry tear. Emilia felt like an idiot. There was nothing she could say, no explanation she could give that would make sense to a man like him.
“Come back when you’ve figured out what you’re really afraid of, Emilia,” Kurt said quietly. “Just don’t take too long deciding.”
“I’m sorry,” Emilia whispered.
“Me, too,” Kurt said.
☼
A sign advertising sharpening services was on the gate. The grinding wheel was set up in the courtyard. Emilia unlocked the front door and tossed her purse and the hotel bag on the sofa. Her head pounded in time with her empty stomach, two mojitos, and a refrain in her heart that said she was the biggest idiot in the world. She pushed open the door to the kitchen and stopped.
Her mother and Ernesto Cruz were in each other’s arms. Their mouths were locked together. They were fully involved in the kiss, unaware of Emilia, unaware of where they were.
Emilia backed out of the house. She found herself walking the cracked streets of the barrio, unconsciously making her way to the church. It was very late when she rang the rectory bell.
Padre Ricardo opened the door and let her in. If he was surprised to see Emilia on his doorstep in a red bathing suit and matching pareo, he didn’t show it.
“I just need to sit for a while, Father,” she said.
He turned on the altar lights and they sat in a pew. Emilia was drained, too numb to even form a coherent thought. The numbness scared her, though, as if she’d reached a breaking point. She’d turned into a zombie, one that got pushed and pulled by other people. Squeezed in the middle by what everyone else wanted and expected and would use her to get. She’d be numb forever and she’d never feel anything real again. Not love or passion or anything having to do with Kurt Rucker.
She didn’t know how long she and Padre Ricardo sat side by side without speaking. The old priest’s presence was a comfort, a rope to hold onto before her sanity completely left.
“Difficult investigation?” he finally asked.
“I’ve given everything to this job, Father,” Emilia said. She looked straight ahead to the altar, to the large figure of dead Jesus with his arms spread wide and nailed to the cross. The crucifix was life size and affixed to the back wall. It was painted Italian porcelain, the pride and joy of the small parish.
“You’ve worked very hard to get where you are,” Padre Ricardo said.
“Everything.” Emilia felt her eyes burn. “I don’t have any friends. I don’t have nice clothes or go to parties. I’m not married.”
The priest sighed.
“I have worked so hard.” Emilia couldn’t suppress a soft s
ob and hated herself for the weakness it represented. She jammed a fist into the other hand. “As hard as I could. No one was going to be a better cop. A better detective. A better fighter.”
“I doubt there is a better police officer in all of Acapulco.” Padre Ricardo’s voice was soothing.
“I’m a liar, Padre,” Emilia said. From its perch to the side of the cross, the fat paschal candle in its bronze holder flickered as if disappointed with her words. “I do it all the time. I lie to everybody without thinking twice about it and I’m not even any good at it.”
Padre Ricardo smiled. “I remember when you told the school that you were an orphan and lived in the rectory so your mother wouldn’t have to come to the school for something. I forget what, now.”
“Science day.” Emilia sniffed. “There’s someone . . . he knows me too well. He could tell that I was lying to him tonight.”
“Do you want to tell me about him?”
Emilia sighed. At some point she wasn’t going to be numb anymore and the pain was going to be very sharp and heavy. “When I got home Mama was kissing Ernesto Cruz in the kitchen,” she said.
“Ah.” Padre Ricardo looked pensive.
“A real kiss,” Emilia said miserably. Like the way Kurt had kissed her.
“How old is your mother, Emilia?” Padre Ricardo asked.
“Forty-six,” Emilia said.
“Does she deserve a chance at happiness?” Padre Ricardo asked gently.
“He’s married to somebody else,” Emilia said.
“Maybe you have to let Sophia work this out for herself,” Padre Ricardo said.
“You know she--.”
Padre Ricardo cut her off. “For once, Emilia, don’t do it for her.”
Chapter 22
The entire squadroom was there, eating her doughnuts and drinking her expensive coffee. Emilia had two doughnuts herself, making up for the lack of dinner last night and the bare mouthful of coffee she’d managed to choke down while watching her mother and Ernesto Cruz beam at each other across the breakfast table.
All of the detectives had brought in their uniforms, hanging them up on the handles of the filing cabinets or the edge of a bulletin board. Draped in navy blue, the squadroom looked like the tent of a somber ocean-going circus.
Despite the full house, the meeting was both subdued and tense. It was clear that no one was looking forward to the funeral that afternoon. Emilia knew that most of the detectives were waiting for her to take her revenge on Gomez while he studiously avoided her. Meanwhile, everyone was running out of steam on the Inocente investigation. The only item of note was verification that the security guard Bruno Inocente had reported for drinking on the job had indeed been drunk that night. Macias and Sandor had tracked down both the supervisor and the former guard and gotten statements. All agreed that Bruno and Rita should not be considered suspects. Emilia didn’t mention the attempted bribe.
“Does anybody have anything on the El Machete gang?” Emilia asked as the meeting broke up.
“El Machete?” Silvio frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“The Ruiz killing,” she said in what she hoped was an offhand manner. “I heard he was El Machete.”
“Bad bunch.” Macias paused to swallow a bite of doughnut. “They’ve got some girls, some gangbang stuff going on in a neighborhood over by the cathedral. Sicarios for hire, mostly hits for the Zetas.”
“I looked in the files,” Emilia said. “Nobody’s ever had a case with them.”
“We brought in a guy maybe a year ago,’ Loyola said. He gestured with his hand against the opposite forearm. “Had a big knife tattoo.”
“That’s them,” Silvio said.
“Couple questions about a robbery.” Loyola scratched his head. “Didn’t have much.”
“El teniente said we couldn’t hold him,” Ibarra corrected him. “Let him go the same day.”
Nobody had anything else and the group dispersed. Emilia drove out of the police station lot and headed south toward the beaches. The sky was overcast but the tourists would still be out, showing off sunburned bodies, eating overpriced hamburgers and being pestered by kids to buy shell ornaments and string bags.
She turned onto la Costera and headed south on the busy avenue, following a caravan of minibuses swathed in varying shades of rust. The big hotels were behind her and the rocks and old fort of Farallón de San Lorenzo jutted into the bay on her left. In a few minutes she saw the signs for the two beaches occupying the small peninsula that formed Acapulco’s southwest edge. She followed the signs touting the Mágico Mundo water park but sheared off before the turnoff and found the public parking lot. It was already full and she had to circle twice before finding a spot.
The sounds and smells of Playa Caletilla hit hard as Emilia climbed out of the car. The noise of boat engines competed with the shrill cries of beachgoers and shouts of vendors. The mayor had been incensed when some website had listed Playa Caletilla as one of Mexico’s three dirtiest beaches but the website had probably been right. It was one of the cheapest places for a family to spend the day and was generally packed with scores of people bobbing in the water between the shoreline and small boats at anchor just a few yards away. Beach umbrellas formed a long undulating line of color and the air enjoyed a mix of seaweed, diesel fuel, and coconut oil.
The hotels that lined the Playa Caletilla were five or six stories, far less grand than the spectacular hi-rises that rose along the main curve of the bay or the dramatic architecture of Punta Diamante. This was the spot for locals to splash in the water and eat seafood from the stalls of the men who dove for oysters or scooped up fish in their nets.
It had been a surprising choice when Alan Denton had suggested it, but now she realized why he’d feel comfortable talking to her here. Neither was likely to be recognized in the setting amid the throngs of holiday sun-seekers.
With her gun in her bag and her jacket left in the car, Emilia was just another girl in a tank top, jeans and sunglasses sauntering along the malecón, checking out the food stalls and watching kids jump in and out of the water while heavyset mamas sat under umbrellas and watched. The beach curved around the edge of the peninsula and in the distance the Hotel Caleta was a handsome white bulwark ringed with bright blue umbrellas.
As promised, Denton was at the ice cream shop across from the entrance to the beach. He was a slight man in a blue polo shirt, jeans and loafers, with a copy of El Economista tucked under his arm so she’d recognize him. He had on aviator sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes, but he didn’t look gringo the way Kurt did. Denton was dark and sharp-featured as though there was Arab blood in his lineage. His coloring allowed him to blend into the sea of Mexican faces.
Emilia got herself a lemon gelato in a sugar cone and left the ice cream shop. Denton followed her a moment later, licking a chocolate cone.
“Detective Cruz?” Denton didn’t extend his hand to shake hers.
“Thanks for meeting me.” Emilia walked slowly along the boardwalk. They were just another couple enjoying the weekday sun and fun.
“You said you wanted to talk about Fausto Inocente.” Denton’s accent gave him away even if his face didn’t. “You realize I barely met him?”
“I know,” Emilia said. She licked a lemony drip off the hand holding the cone. “But he was involved in the Morelos de Gama kidnapping.”
“Okay.”
“I want to know how the money got delivered to the kidnappers.” The ice cream was cold and delicious but was combining with the doughnuts for an adrenaline-like sugar rush.
“That was your man Inocente’s end.” Denton bit, rather than licked, his ice cream and the top of the cone disappeared.
“Morelos de Gama’s accountant said that the ransom was in pesos.” Emilia watched Denton for some kind of reaction. When he merely bit into the cone again, she went on. “He said that the family withdrew cash from a number of accounts and turned it over to you to oversee the transfer.”
“So?”
“So the actual ransom that the kidnappers took was in dollars.”
“Is this some trick?” Denton asked. The execrable accent didn’t hide his sudden fury. “A blackmail trick? Tell Morelos de Gama I played loose with his money?”
“I want to know what happened between the time Morelos de Gama gave you pesos and when the kidnapers dismantled a car to get at a six million dollar ransom.”
“What are you talking about?” Denton’s fury subsided into confusion.
The Pinkerton Agency was the preeminent private security company in Mexico; the ultimate in personal security, the refuge for the country’s rich when they had to deal with kidnappings, blackmail, or extortion. Alan Denton might not be a friend but his reaction told her he was a professional and would work with her to make sure his reputation wasn’t tarnished.
Emilia bit into her cone as he’d done, trying to finish the gelato before it melted and ran over her hand in a sticky, lemony mess. “The actual ransom that the kidnappers took in exchange for the Morelos de Gama child was six million in counterfeit dollars concealed in a vehicle brought to Mexico by a couple named Hudson from Flagstaff, Arizona. I know, because I found the money in the car and left it on the side of the road. I didn’t know there was a connection between the fake money and the child until we came back to get the car and there he was.”
Denton stopped by a trash can bolted to a metal stand. It was already overflowing with plastic cups and food wrappers but he tossed in his wadded up napkin and it didn’t spill out. The Pinkerton agent was used to taking risks, Emilia decided, but he was also accustomed to things going his way.
“So you think I took the pesos?” he asked. “Pulled some sort of fast switch?”
“You’re Pinkerton,” Emilia said. “I doubt it.”
He glanced at her as they started walking again and Emilia took another bite from her cone.
“I told Morelos we’d handle it but he insisted we bring in Inocente,” Denton said. “Seemed to be a big deal for him. Said they were close family friends, that he could be trusted and would take the big risks.”