by Manuel Ramos
“I’m worried about you. If that isn’t enough, I’m worried for myself.”
I hesitated. “What do you want me to do?”
“Go home. Or come over here. Don’t stay at the office. That’s the first place this killer will look. I knew I should have forced you to leave.”
She did sound worried. Rosa was strong. I relied on her to be a rock when cases and clients whirled around the office like dead leaves caught in a windy tunnel. This was different.
“I’ll swing by your house. We can have dinner somewhere, maybe a drink. Okay?”
Slight pause. “Okay. I got food here. But leave now.”
Gus called almost as soon as Rosa hung up. I told him I was on my way to Rosa’s. He assumed he would stop by Ana’s.
I thought about calling Batista. When I realized I wasn’t sure what I would talk to him about, or what questions I wanted him to answer, I stuck my phone in my coat pocket. He knew everything I knew about the Contreras family. I trusted that he also knew what he was doing. If anyone could find Sam Contreras it would be Fulgencio Batista, a hard-nosed Mexican cop on the trail of the man that got away. My trust didn’t put me at ease, but it was all I had.
I drove to Rosa’s rolling through about a hundred different scenarios. My brain wouldn’t turn off. I knew it was irrational. No one had actually threatened me. No one had taken a shot at me or tried to force out of me the hiding place for the missing money. I’d done nothing wrong and yet I was compelled to wear guilt, or something very close to guilt.
Batista probably had it all covered, I reminded myself again.
Then I’d jump to thinking about all the bad that could happen even with Batista’s help.
That downer was followed with my insecurity about retirement and leaving the only life I’d known for forty years. What would I do in the morning when I had no place to be, no appointments to keep, no problems to solve or clients to help?
I realized I was alone, as alone as one man can be. No wife or lover. Children spread across the country, hundreds of miles away. No real plans, no real money. What was I doing, and who was I supposed to do it with? I hunched over the steering wheel, almost as if I expected a bullet to crash through the windshield, or a semi to T-bone my car at the next intersection.
Rosa’s little house sat near City Park on the east side of Denver. She lived with a cat, a fish tank and a stuffed parrot—her dead pal, she said. When I knocked on her door, she answered quickly with a worried look on her face. She pulled me inside.
Rosa kept a clean and neat home. Tidy. In her youth, she wore bright colors, drove tricked-out cars and decorated various apartments with native pottery and Chicana flash. Her style had mellowed. The walls were subdued shades of brown and yellow. She displayed a few black and white photographs. That was it for decoration. Her home didn’t have a pillow out of place, or a dirty cup on a counter.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I got the strangest call. Just now. Freaked me out a little.”
“Who called?”
“Gus’ girlfriend, Ana what’s-her-name.”
“Ana Domingo called you?”
“Yeah. Not like we’ve ever talked.”
“What’d she want?”
“She asked for María’s file, said she wanted to look over a few things; mentioned something about a timeline. Our office file. She’s checking on dates, whatever. Tell you the truth, she didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“She asked you? Why not call me? Or go to Gus? What could she be up to?”
“You tell me. It didn’t sound right. I put her off. Said I wasn’t feeling too good and that I would get back to her tomorrow. She didn’t call you?”
“Hell no. She’s up to something. You know she can’t see the file?”
“Of course. She has to know that, too. What the . . . ? She left with Batista, remember? Maybe he put her up to it?”
“Christ, what could that mean?”
“That they’re working together. They’re both police, so it makes sense. He’s unofficially here, you said, right? She’s helping him, probably all he’s got for backup.”
“They just met today and she’s already working on his investigation?”
“Maybe they just met today. We don’t really know, do we? I thought there was something between them. He could’ve talked with her before he even came out here.”
“Unlikely. How would he know about her?”
She shrugged. “Or else he swept her off her feet when he saved her ass from getting run over at the parade. Some girls might be impressed with that.”
“More likely.”
“But she’s supposed to be hot after Gus,” Rosa said. “The poor guy almost got beat up because of her.”
I held up my hands. Rosa had gone where I regretted leading her. “Whoa. We don’t know what kind of relationship there is between Ana and Batista, if there even is one. Could be totally legit. All on the up-and-up.” She wrinkled her eyebrows at me. “Or she could just be doing her own thing, maybe trying to help Gus. That’s possible, don’t you think?”
“Sure, Luis. Whatever you say.”
She walked me to her dining table where a steaming bowl of pozole waited. She had prepared small plates of chopped onions, radishes and cabbage, sliced limes and oregano. The pungent smell of New Mexico red chile powder floated from the kitchen to the table.
My appetite returned. We ate two big bowls of the spicy stew. The warm tortillas and cold beer made the meal one of the best I’d had in days. The comfortable feeling that overtook me at her table translated into conversation that extended into her living room and late into the night.
We talked about María Contreras, Fulgencio Batista, Ana Domingo and Gus Corral. These were new people in our lives, but they’d assumed an importance that we agreed was unexpected. Rosa confirmed that she didn’t trust any of the four, although she grudgingly gave Gus one of her “Oh, he’s all right, I guess.”
We joked about judges and other lawyers, even a few cops. We had years of legal battles to pick from.
We laughed at some of my crazier antics, most of which had to do with my drinking.
We talked about what to expect after I closed my practice. Neither one of us was on strong ground regarding our respective futures.
We were most engaged when we talked about various clients and cases over the years. She surprised me with what she remembered. She had retained important details—dates, names and places—that I could never recall because they had been buried by hundreds of other dates, names and places that bumped up against each other like marbles in a hyper pinball game. She helped me see that every once in a while we had done some good, often in spite of my careless work ethic and self-destructive tendencies.
About midnight, after we drank one beer too many and laughed at one story too much, a strange thought crossed my mind that losing Rosa was going to be the most difficult part of retiring. I quickly said goodnight. I left her house feeling something I didn’t quite understand.
27 [Gus]
my mother used to tell me, she said, son, there’s gonna be days like this
I’d intended to sleep. That turned out to be impossible. My brain was hot with thoughts and images of Ana and Batista and Sam Contreras and stacks of dirty money.
It was late, too late, but I threw on my running shoes. I sprinted out of Corrine’s house into the darkness. Her motion light caught me before I left the yard. Then, more darkness until the trees parted and the street lights marked the sidewalk. I ran in the general direction of downtown Denver, south and east. I left the sidewalk and ran down the middle of the streets. I moved my legs as fast as I could, daring my body to break down, hoping that it didn’t.
The new condos on Tejon Street loomed above me. I worried that a rich hipster would panic when he saw the Chicano cholo running down the street way past midnight. I calculated the odds that I’d be shot by a bearded marksman from a condo balcony. They weren’t in my favor. And still I though
t of Ana and Batista and Sam Contreras.
I’d never met Sam Contreras. Luis had been one of Sam’s customers, and what I did know about the man I learned from my lawyer. He’d described Sam as a “throwback,” someone who could make a person run out of his bar simply with a look. Tough. He caused his wife’s death, most likely from torture, and probably killed his business partner. He was a drug and human smuggler and he laundered money for marijuana tycoons. He escaped from a Mexican prison during a bloody, deadly riot. He did business with crime cartels. I didn’t like the Sam Contreras that Luis described.
I added one more point to the mental picture of Sam Contreras. He wanted his money and he would do anything to get it.
I wanted to holler when I remembered the kiss Batista gave to Ana. I stayed silent except for the urgent rush of my breath in and out of my lungs. No screaming homeboy in the streets to wake up the gentry. No wild loco to arouse the remaining raza in the small houses and weary-looking duplexes. Only a dark flash in the night, sprinting through the Northside, oblivious to anyone and anything.
Dogs barked at me as I passed their yards. I barely glanced at the former mortuary, now-hip restaurant and the giant milk can ice cream joint as I sped down the hill that looped towards the freeway. I made it to the Highland Bridge across I-25. I trudged on. I circled Commons Park, stopped at the Millennium Bridge and turned around. People slept in the weeds and brush along the South Platte River. A man with a stringy beard, wearing a patched parka and holding a dirty American flag, watched me glide by. He looked like he hated me. I crossed I-25 again and headed home.
I sat on my lumpy bed in Corrine’s basement, sweating and thinking about how we could draw out Sam Contreras. It was not an enjoyable exercise. Truth be told, I didn’t want to ever meet Sam Contreras, but it didn’t look like I had a choice.
The same solution circled around repeatedly. Sam had to think that Luis knew where to find his money. Maybe even that Luis had the money. María Contreras could have given him the loot the night she died in his office. As her lawyer, he had a duty to protect her property. Why else was she there?
It was an easy enough idea to believe. Even Batista and Ana acted as though Luis knew more than he was letting on—when they had the spare time to think about the fugitive that brought the Mexican cop to gringolandia.
When I finally crawled under the blankets, I had the beginning of an idea. I wasn’t sure that Luis Móntez would go along. I planned to cross that bridge in the morning.
I found Luis standing in the middle of the remains of what had been my place of work. A lawyer’s office is built on paper, no matter what the computer geeks say, and it looked like a ton of that foundation had been dumped on the floor. Filing cabinet drawers were strewn around the place, folders were ripped and page after page of legal documents scattered across the floor as though they’d been tossed in the air and left to drift in the wind.
Luis held a manila folder in one hand and a cardboard box in the other. He looked lost.
“What happened?” I asked. I already knew the answer.
“Someone broke in, trashed the place. Not sure if they found what they were looking for. I called the police. They should be here any minute.”
“No one else around? The place clear?”
Luis nodded. “I just got here, but there’s no one else. Rosa’s probably on her way.”
“How’d they get in?”
“I think they just jimmied the front door lock. It wouldn’t be that hard. Rosa was always on me to add more security. I told the building manager he needed to be more proactive, but it’s never happened.”
“No alarms or cameras?”
He looked at me like I had a snake crawling out of my mouth.
“We’re not exactly on Seventeenth Street here, Gus. There’s a camera at the building front entrance. It’s not always on, the janitor says. That’s all I know about.”
The place was wrecked, but it didn’t look like anything had been broken. The burglars weren’t into mischief. They wanted something specific.
“My computer was taken,” Luis said. “The only good thing is that most of this stuff is closed, over with. Not too many active cases left. I was gonna ditch that computer anyway. But we’ll have to let the clients know.”
“The Contreras file?”
He nodded. “Plus, I don’t see the paper file.”
“Really? You have a copy?”
He nodded again. “Most of it, yeah. When we started closing out files and returning documents to clients, I asked Rosa to keep copies. Standard procedure. We kept a paper file from the first day María Contreras showed her face here. Lately, Rosa added whatever else we had on the computer. That was a no-brainer.”
“Where could it be?”
“We have a storage room in the building basement. She might have put it there already. I haven’t checked it yet. I’ll go down there now.”
He rushed to his desk and plucked a set of keys out of the top drawer.
“Maybe I should go with you?”
He paused. “No, no. Wait for Rosa and the cops. I’ll be right back. Just a few minutes. I’ll know right away if they got to the storage room.”
He sprinted to the elevator, then changed his mind and walked through the door to the stairwell.
The office turned into a surreal circus when the police arrived a few minutes later. The first thing that happened was that I was immediately surrounded by a pair of Denver’s finest. I’m sure I looked the part, so I didn’t really blame the two for doing their jobs. It took a few minutes but I patiently corrected any misconception.
The office was yet another crime scene.
The cops wanted to speak to Luis. I said he would be right back from the basement. Immediately one of the uniforms ran to the stairway door and headed for the lower level. She jerked open the door and disappeared.
I watched from my desk and answered all the questions. Uniforms and plainclothes walked through the office quickly or huddled together and whispered. Some type of police technician looked over the door and confirmed that the lock had been broken. Men in suits and sweaters took photographs, rolled out measuring tape and squinted at file drawers and paper scraps.
Suddenly four policemen sprinted to the stairway door.
“What’s going on?” I shouted at one of the cops.
“There’s a woman, hurt. They found her in the stairwell.” He joined the group running down the stairs. Someone barked an order to send more men to the back door of the building.
We paced around St. Joseph’s emergency waiting room. That’s when I told Luis how I thought we might smoke out Sam Contreras.
He wouldn’t even listen at first. “I can’t think about that now,” he said. “We’re here for Rosa.”
After about an hour he finally talked with me about what we could do. We stood in front of a coffee vending machine.
“It looks like he’s already found us—found me. And Rosa paid the price.”
“It looks like that, but until Rosa tells us, we don’t know for sure what happened in the basement.”
“It’s got to be him. What else could it be? He was looking for whatever María Contreras might have given me. He ransacked the office, then figured out we had storage, wanted to make sure he had everything and then was surprised by Rosa.” He pounded his fist against the coffee machine. “Damn. She shouldn’t have been alone.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Nothing we could have done.”
He shook his head. He reached into the machine and pulled out a cup of gray coffee.
Luis had found Rosa bleeding in the stairwell, unconscious. She had a nasty cut on the back of her head. He called for an ambulance and was trying to stop the blood when a cop found him. Luis looked up into the drawn revolver of the police woman. He stepped away from Rosa and explained what he was doing. The cop called for backup. Eventually the situation was sorted out. We guessed that Rosa had arrived before Luis and then had the same idea to check on the storage roo
m. She must have surprised the burglar, who knocked her out.
“We’ll get the son-of-a-bitch. Whatever it takes.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
Part Four
My Bad
28 [Luis]
and I’m so afraid I’m gonna find you with a so-called smoking gun
Rosa had a concussion and required a few stiches, but she was released from the hospital after one long night. She didn’t see the person who knocked her on the head. She was in the stairwell, looking through a small window in the stairwell door to the storage room door trying to see whether that door had been breached, when she heard something behind her, then . . . nothing. She woke up in the ambulance.
My office was closed by the police, again, while they tried to gather evidence. I explained to them what I thought was going on, but no one I talked to seemed interested in a possible Mexican prison escapee who was supposed to be dead. After that, I didn’t have the heart to go back and try to straighten out the mess in the office, especially with Rosa laid up at her house.
Gus and I agreed everyone should meet at Corrine’s house to talk about what to do. Corrine wandered in and out with offers of drinks and food. I sat on the couch and faced Ana, Batista and Gus, all sitting in chairs that formed a semicircle in front of the couch.
“Nothing’s happened since the break-in and attack on Rosa?” Ana asked.
Gus had let me know that he and Ana were no longer an item, but he didn’t offer an explanation. I figured he’d tell me it and when he felt I should know. There was a certain tension between them that everyone noticed. No one said anything about it.
“I haven’t left my house,” I answered. “The office is a mess, Rosa’s still laid up, and Sam or Paco or whoever was after me hasn’t made a move.”
“That’s right,” Gus said. “That’s why I think it’s time we did something.”
Batista stared at Gus. “Like what?” he said. “What do you have in mind?”
I jumped in before Gus responded. “It’s not that we have anything definite to do, it’s just that Gus and I have looked again through all the stuff that María Contreras gave us. We think we might have found something.”