by Manuel Ramos
I think Macías was hurt when I told him I couldn’t meet him later for a drink. I wanted to tell him that I no longer belonged to the club where he and others like him had lifetime memberships. I had let mine lapse even though I’d paid the dues. I said only that I had other plans, and then I hung up. My watch read almost ten.
I texted the address to Móntez, said I would find it and added that, if our guy showed, I would watch him for a few hours. To myself I said, “Waste of time.”
I used the office’s account with a do-it-yourself car rental outfit. I found one of the mini cars parked two blocks from Corrine’s house. The “revitalized” Northside was the perfect area for this kind of enterprise. The hipsters and yuppies and young marrieds must have loved the idea of accessing an environmentally friendly automobile through glitzy technology that included a plastic card that unlocked the car and turned on the timer. Corrine still lived in the middle of the gentrification, although she confessed that it was a struggle, especially with the developers calling every week trying to convince her to sell.
The rental was a blue and white toy, almost too small for me, but Luis told me the rates were cheap and I could park it almost anywhere without worrying about meters, tickets or gas. As I drove south on always-busy I-25 from the Northside to the Westwood neighborhood, I felt exposed, vulnerable, silly. The car was smaller than Corrine’s Kia. If any other car or truck hit me, my ride would crumble into a tiny ball of smashed metal and plastic, with me jellied in the middle of the ball.
I knew how I looked to all the drivers who passed me, some honking their horns even though I was in the slow lane. In the tiny car I came off as a brown-skinned, muscle-bound hulk pressed up against the steering wheel of a car that had no business carrying me.
Westwood was one of the few remaining neighborhoods in the Denver city limits where the word “barrio” still fit. Working families who’d been residents for decades, damaged but proud houses and small shops that dealt in everything from motorcycle repairs to marijuana cookies, all mixed together in a crooked rectangle bordered by Alameda, Mississippi, Federal and Sheridan. Tattoo artists collected books for neighborhood kids, Mexican taquerías sprung up and died like mushrooms, while the public art of Chicano artist Carlos Frésquez welcomed visitors to the community at Morrison Road, the diagonal street that cut through the heart of Westwood.
I drove past the address. Valdez lived in a gray aging house that must have had all of four rooms. The dirt yard had no plant life. No life period. I parked the car several blocks from his house, locked it up and electronically closed the account. I walked back to Valdez’s house. The lights were on but I didn’t see anyone. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, or what Móntez expected from me. He’d simply said, “Watch him.”
I stood in darkness under a tall pine tree with rough branches and hoped that I would stay awake. I made myself as comfortable as possible. I bent my knees and squeezed into the darkness of the tree. From where I stood I could see the front and a side door, and a large dirty picture window covered with dark blinds or curtains.
The night was filled with throbbing noise. Thumping bass rhythms mixed with barking dogs, ambulance sirens and hollering children. Screen doors slammed, water flowed along the curb and traffic moved on the major streets in a constant hum.
I watched and waited and managed to stay awake until midnight, but I drifted in and out of awareness. Then I must have dozed off because I jerked against the tree when I heard a distant car alarm.
A pickup truck painted primer gray sat on the gravel driveway that ran along the side of the house. It looked like a late 1970s Ford.
The lights were still on in the house but there was no movement, no sign of any life.
I wrote down the New Mexico license plate number hanging on the back of the pickup. I thought I could check that out back at the office and then Móntez could decide how he wanted to use the information, if it mattered at all. I hadn’t expected much, so even a license plate number struck me as worthwhile.
I turned to walk to the rental car when headlights lit up my side of the street and I jumped back in the shadows. A dark, late model Camry pulled to a stop in front of the house. For almost five minutes nothing happened. The driver’s door opened and a woman stepped out. I couldn’t see her face because of the scarf wrapped around her head. She carried a large handbag. She rushed to the side door and tapped on the cracked wood. Light from the house surrounded her when the door opened. A man grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. The door slammed shut.
I walked around the tree and looked for a way that I could approach the house without being seen. Such a route did not exist. As soon as I entered the street I would be exposed and in clear view from the picture window.
I stood where I was and waited.
Fifteen minutes. The side door opened abruptly. The woman emerged wrapping the scarf across her forehead. I saw her face for a second. María Contreras. She ran out of the house, looked over her shoulder, then jumped in her car. She sped away almost immediately.
Two minutes. A tall man wearing a dark hoody slipped out of the house and climbed in the pickup truck. He backed out of the yard and drove down the street in the opposite direction from the woman. The lights in the house remained on.
I looked up and down the street. I saw no one, not a kid on a bike or an old-timer out for a walk. It was late, I reminded myself. I ran across the street and peered in through the side door window. A man lay on the kitchen floor. He looked unconscious or dead. Then I saw the blood seeping out of a gaping wound on his right temple. I backed away from the door, checked the street again, then ran to my tree and called Móntez.
“Get out of there and meet me at the office,” he said.
“Shouldn’t I call the cops?”
“I’m calling my client first. I’ll see you in about twenty minutes. You sure he’s dead?”
“Yeah. That hole in his head is too big.”
“Get out of there,” he repeated.
For an instant I toyed with the idea that no matter what Móntez said, I should report what I’d seen. But that old feeling crept up my spine and I reacted as I always had. I didn’t want to connect with the police right then. I jogged through the Westwood night back to the car, away from the bloody scene. I felt like the kid who was blamed for everything—the sucker, the punk, the kid who never knew what hit him. I couldn’t shake the feeling.
“You didn’t recognize the guy in the pickup, or the dead guy?” Móntez looked worried.
“No. I couldn’t make out any face details on the man and I almost didn’t recognize Contreras because of the scarf. I wouldn’t have known it was her except for her license photo in the file. The dead guy didn’t look like much, just dead.”
“He could have been Valdez?”
“Sure. He could have been anybody. I don’t really know.”
The image of the bleeding man stayed in my head. I thought after all I’d been through I was immune to blood, gore and death. I realized I wasn’t and I felt better about myself.
“And you didn’t hear any gunshots or fighting? Nothing like that?” the lawyer asked for about the tenth time. We were repeating ourselves.
“Nothing. I’m not sure the dead man was shot. Someone could have opened his skull with a hammer or something like that.”
“You think Contreras did it?”
“I don’t know, Luis. I saw her run in, then run out, followed by the hoody guy. He was there first. He could have been the killer. I’m not sure how long he was in the house.”
Móntez arched his eyebrows.
“Or the vic could’ve already been dead before either of them arrived. I didn’t hear anything and I was there for a couple of hours. The action wasn’t much, it all happened fast.”
“But she was in long enough to clobber someone and make sure he was dead?”
“Yeah, I guess. It doesn’t take long to kill someone, does it?”
He looked sideways at me. “Depends, I
guess.”
“I thought she didn’t know where Valdez lived. Wasn’t that what she told you? Wasn’t she kind of obsessed with knowing where he lived?”
“Yeah. She wanted to know where he was, for her protection, she said. After you left your message about what you found out, I called her. She asked if I had an address and I gave it to her.”
“Earlier tonight?” I was wary of where the conversation was headed.
“Yes. She knew what we knew.”
“You call your client again? Now that there’s a dead person involved? What’s her story?”
He shook his head. “I get an ‘out of service’ message on her cell.”
“Christ.”
“But that’s not all.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. On my way over here I drove past the address she gave us on her client information sheet.”
I could see it coming.
“It’s an empty lot.”
I tried to take in all he was telling me. “She planned this whole thing, to get a line on Valdez?” I said. “She used us. And she’s already on the run.”
“Looks like it. She’s moving fast.”
We kept at it, going over what I had seen, what it could mean and what it meant for our work for María Contreras. I was tired and sleepy. Móntez looked worn out, but he talked like he could go all night. I decided I had enough.
“I need your legal advice, Luis. So, what do we do, counselor?”
Móntez stood up and stretched his arms over his head like he was greeting the sun. He reminded me of the prison’s yoga class. He walked behind his desk with his arms reaching for the ceiling, his fingers vibrating. Gray hair streaked his temples and mustache. His dark jaw tightened and his shining eyes shrunk to black dots. He stared at a poster that hung on his wall: a bunch of deep purple grapes dripped blood. The words “Boycott Grapes!” stretched over the fruit like an ironic halo.
“Time to call the cops.”
6 [Luis]
my father said to be strong
and that a good man could never do wrong
Gus and I talked until the sun came up. We mapped out all the possible scenarios that could explain what Gus saw at the Westwood house. None of them sounded totally right to either of us. We were sure that Gus watched María Contreras and Richard Valdez at the house, but unsure whether Valdez was the dead man or the man in the pickup.
I turned on Rosa’s computer and ran a quick search of the license plate number. It didn’t take long to learn that the plates had been stolen in Las Cruces, New Mexico, along with the late model Honda to which they’d been attached. The guy in the pickup most likely had already tossed them into somebody’s dumpster.
We finally agreed that we had to get the police involved but the risk for Gus was too high considering that he’d left the scene of a major crime. Parolees were sent back to prison for far less than that. He wanted to call the police in the first place, but we decided discretion was a better route to go. I tried to reassure him. The worst he was guilty of was following his lawyer’s, and employer’s misguided directions.
“Let me take you home, Gus. Get some sleep.” He rubbed his eyes, looked around the office as though he finally realized where he was.
We drove in silence for the most part. He asked when I would call the police.
“As soon as I let you off. Might as well get them over to the house tonight.” I paused. “Uh, this morning.” The eastern sky streaked orange and red as the sun made its way up from the distant plains.
When I stopped at Corrine’s house, Gus sat in my car without moving. “Something wrong?” I asked.
“Who is this woman, and why did she pick you to run her game? If she wanted to kill Valdez, there had to be an easier way to find him.”
“I never met her before. No idea why she would come to my office for help with Valdez. She said she was married to Sam Contreras. I knew him, sort of. I don’t remember her from his funeral. But maybe she recalled me or Sam mentioned something.”
“People do talk about you,” he said.
“That good or bad?”
He shrugged. “Her story about Valdez trying to get his hands on the money? You still buy that?”
“I talked with someone who said he was Valdez. He sounded serious about wanting his money, and that María knows where it is. If he’s the dead man, I doubt we’ll ever know the whole truth.”
“Her story sounds more and more off key.”
“I agree. Right now, I don’t know what to believe. I’ll call the cops, report the killing, and we’ll start over tomorrow morning. Get some rest.”
He slowly opened the car door, squirmed out of his seat and then he stopped. He turned back to look at me.
“It’s just that . . . Oh, screw it.”
“What is it? What’s bothering you?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say this hasn’t been interesting. Be careful, Luis. See you tomorrow.”
I made an anonymous call to the police department using a public phone, maybe the last one on the Northside. The scarred device hung on a pole near the corner of Thirty-Second and Vallejo. A metal half-shell, covered with graffiti tags and hipster stickers, hovered around the grungy phone. I stood in the dawn shadow of a pre-gentrification building that housed a chiropractor and karate school. The only people I’d ever seen using the phone, early morning or late at night, were hunched-over Latinos trying to find a ride, or drunk young white men, also looking for a ride.
I lived less than ten minutes from Corrine Corral’s house. I drove with the window open. The morning air slid over my face and rushed through my remaining hair. I was suddenly fully awake. I couldn’t help but notice that the Northside had changed but I’d quit worrying about it. It’s a given that change happens to all of us whether we want it or not. I parked in front of my house. As I locked the car, my cell buzzed. Gus. He couldn’t wait a few hours to talk at my office.
“What’d they say when you reported the dead man?”
“Nothing really. The 911 operator I talked with pushed for my name, of course. Wanted to know how I knew about the dead guy. I just gave them the address and told them what they would find. Took less than a minute.”
“I guess that’s all we can do for now?”
“For now. I probably should do more. Never learn, I guess. I’ll talk to the police officially, as soon as there’s news about the killing and who was killed. If it connects to my client, I should try to find out what the police are doing, even if she has skipped out on me. If it’s Valdez, I have a bad mess on my hands.”
Gus groaned but I let it slide. I admitted to myself that I was thrown by the turn of events.
“I don’t want to screw up, Luis,” he said. “I’m on thin ice with my P.O. If he thinks I’m involved in this, in any way, you know he’ll send me back.”
An idea opened up in front of me, out of nowhere. “I’ll talk with Ana Domingo,” I said. “Maybe she can help if Harold Mills gets all hot and bothered.”
“Who?”
“Ana Domingo. She’s the fairly new Community Liaison Officer for the department. Helping parolees is supposed to be one of her projects. That and things like Meet-A-Cop nights and school assembly presentations. Not a fan of mine, guess I’ve defended too many losers she thinks should be put away for the good of the community. But we have a professional relationship. From what I’ve read about her job, whatever anyone talks to her about is supposed to be confidential except in the most serious life or death circumstances.”
“I think we’re there, Luis. Someone got killed. Sounds serious to me. And you’re gonna believe that she won’t run to her supervisors with what you tell her? You and I know better.”
Gus spoke a lot of truth, a nasty habit.
“I’ll do what I need to do to protect you, Gus. Beginning with last night when you called me from your stakeout in Westwood, you’re my client as well as my employee. I have a duty to you that even the cops can’t violate.” I don’t th
ink he believed me. “But we need to know what’s going on.”
“María Contreras is your client, too. How does that work?” That was what had bothered him all night. The more I learned about Gus, the more I respected his smarts.
“Good question, Gus. At this point, I have to consider that she’s abandoned our relationship. She hasn’t responded to my messages or calls, and I can’t communicate with her. I don’t think I’m cross-ways with her as long as all I do is help you connect with the police and don’t implicate her.”
“I don’t see how you can pull that off, Luis. This law stuff is crazy. Not sure I understand what you can or can’t do. Not sure I want to understand.”
“The rules can be tricky. I can only do my best, and what is best for my clients.”
“Yeah, tricky.” I could hear him move around, switch the phone from one hand to the other. “We start with a simple ‘she’s got my money and I want it,’” he said. “And end with ‘maybe she iced someone and we helped her find the guy she killed, and hope we don’t send our client to jail.’”
As I said, Gus had a nasty habit.
7 [Gus]
but don’t play with me ’cause you’re playing with fire
After I called Móntez I thought I should check the news for any reports on the dead man in the beat-up house. But I didn’t turn on the TV because I didn’t want to wake my sister. So I waited. I didn’t get any sleep. My head ached and my skin felt dirty. The sun was already coming up and I couldn’t rest until I knew what was happening. I had the bright idea to have a morning beer from Corrine’s refrigerator while I listened to music in the basement.
The music sounded old and gimmicky and I tired of it quickly. All the singers were dead. The beer tasted bad. Flat and sour. I realized that wasn’t the beer’s fault. I returned upstairs, threw most of the beer down the kitchen sink, and waited some more. I struggled with Corrine’s flashy coffee maker but eventually I boiled a pot of coffee.
The dead man had me intrigued as well as worried. Was Valdez the guy bleeding on the kitchen floor or the guy driving the truck? Why had María Contreras needed Luis and me to find Valdez if he wanted to meet with her anyway? Who was the second man? Was María Contreras a killer or a witness to murder? Which client would Móntez protect if he had to make a choice, Contreras or me?