Cliff Diver (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1) (3 page)

“I grew up here,”
she blurted.

Rucker looked up
at her, eyebrows raised above the blue-green eyes.

“My father died in
an accident when I was little,” Emilia heard herself say. “Tío Raul is his
brother. My mother and I came to live here with him and Tía Lourdes and their
two boys. Six people in a one bedroom apartment. I slept in the kitchen. On the
table. Too many roaches to sleep on the floor.”

Rucker didn’t
react.

“My cousins taught
me how to fight. How to keep away from the cartel
sicarios
and the men
who wanted girls to sell to the
turistas
.” She was challenging him for
no good reason, throwing the
barrio’s
harshness at him as if it was his
fault. “My mother wasn’t right after my father died. She didn’t work and we
didn’t have any money. Most weekends I sold candy at the highway toll booths.
Until my cousin Alvaro helped me join the police. That’s when my mother and I
moved into our own house. I’m a detective now and the money’s good but I’ll
never have enough for places like the Palacio Réal.”

Rucker pushed
himself away from the tool bench, took out his wallet and slowly and
deliberately folded several of the
Estados Unidos
bills inside. He
replaced the wallet in his hip pocket, peeled off the stained singlet and
picked up his dress shirt. Emilia watched the lean muscles of his chest and
abdomen flex as he put on the shirt and buttoned it.

“By the time I was
six I was the best milker in the family,” Rucker said. “On a dairy farm
everybody milks the cows twice a day. Cows don’t care if you’re sick. If it’s
freezing cold. They still need to be milked.”

He rolled up the
shirt sleeves, hiding the monogram. “When I was 18 I’d milked enough cows to
last me a lifetime and I enlisted in the Marine Corps. Fought in the desert war
and a couple of other places, too. When I got out I went to college. Studied
hotel and restaurant management so I’d never have to go back to that farm. Sent
my parents a couple of tickets last year to come visit. But they’d rather stay
with the cows.”

They looked at
each other. An awkward silence was broken by the sound of footsteps and
rattling pans overhead.

Rucker gestured at
the dismantled Suburban. “Well, Detective, the bank will be open in about an
hour. How do we want to get there?”

“I think that you
could call me Emilia,” she said.

“Kurt,” he said in
return.

☼

They took an
anonymous green and white
libre
taxi to the bank. Kurt Rucker’s friend
was the manager, a polished Spaniard who swallowed a comment about Rucker’s
appearance when Emilia displayed her detective badge.

Ten minutes later,
the currency scanner confirmed Kurt’s theory. The money was counterfeit.

“Excellent fakes,”
the bank manager said. “And given that there are just a handful of currency
scanners in Acapulco for this high a denomination of American bill, quite a
clever scheme.”

“You never saw
us,” Emilia said. “You never saw these bills.”

☼

By the time the
libre
taxi brought them back to the garage, Emilia had made up her mind. She didn’t
tell Kurt until they were alone in Tía Lourdes’s kitchen. She could tell he
didn’t like the idea. But he didn’t have anything better to suggest.

“If we don’t let
them find the car and the money,” Emilia insisted. “They’re never going to
leave you alone.”

“How are you going
to explain losing a car?”

Emilia rubbed her
eyes. Last night’s adrenaline had ebbed, leaving her tired and shaky. “We won’t
lose it. They want the money, not the car. We can pull a spark plug to make
sure they leave it and pick it up later.”

“We’re letting
them win,” Kurt said.

“We’re making sure
you stay alive.” Emilia opened her shoulder bag and pulled out her notebook and
cell phone. “We’ll copy the serial numbers from the bills to trace the money.
That way we might even catch who’s passing it.”

Kurt slumped in
his chair and nodded. “All right.”

She dialed Rico.

“You sure you
trust him?” Kurt tossed out.

Emilia heard
Rico’s voice grunt “
Bueno?
” For a wild moment she wondered if Kurt was
right. But if she couldn’t trust Rico there was no one to trust at all. Kurt
Rucker looked away as she told Rico what had happened and what they needed him
to do.

☼

They reassembled
the Suburban and its counterfeit load and abandoned it on a little rocky
outcropping along the Carretera Escénica about two miles past the gate to the
Palacio Réal. Kurt broke the spark plug just as Rico drove up at the wheel of
an old
libre
taxi. Emilia and Kurt jumped in the back and then they were
gone.

The taxi was one
of thousands and attracted no attention as it puttered up to the
privada
gate. The army checkpoint was in place. The sergeant studied Emilia’s badge
before gesturing to his corporal to open the gate. Rico chafed in the small
vehicle but maintained his taxi driver cover.

The brakes on the
old taxi strained against the steep pitch of the road as they passed the
carefully manicured foliage of the luxury villas. All of the villas cost tens
of millions of pesos, Emilia knew. Several Hollywood stars had homes there, as
did many of Mexico’s entertainment and business elite. Every meter down the
road was another light year away from Kurt Rucker.

His arrival at the
Palacio Réal confirmed the distance. As Kurt climbed out of the taxi in his
stained khakis and rumpled shirt the uniformed doorman and bellhops swarmed
around him. More staff materialized, all smartly dressed, the women in blue
print dresses, the men in stone-colored slacks and coordinating print shirts.
Señor
Rooker, we were so worried . . . Señor Rooker, we had a problem with
. . .
Señor
Rooker, you need to call . . .

Kurt stepped away
from the throng for a moment and met Emilia’s eyes. She smiled tightly. He gave
her a little salute and went into the hotel.

Through the glass
doors Emilia could see a wide lobby open to the ocean. A long bar angled along
one side. A mosaic façade spelled out
Pasodoble
in shiny blue tiles.
People in clean, white clothes carried cool drinks as they walked by the grand
piano.

“Not your kind,
chica
,”
Rico said. He put the car in gear and they started the long painful drive up
the steep road to the highway.

Chapter 3

Emilia woke up
slowly. Her muscles felt like a train wreck as she lay in the narrow bed under the
rough wool blanket. She flopped over on her side to check the time and groaned.
It was 7:00 am and Rico would be there in an hour to pick her up.

The bed creaked as
Emilia rolled herself upright, got her feet on the terracotta, and rubbed until
her face felt warm. She’d blithely said that they wouldn’t lose the car and had
convinced Kurt and Rico that offering it up to those seeking the counterfeit
was the right thing to do, but in the cool morning air, she wasn’t so sure.
What if they managed to take the car? What if they didn’t come back and find
it? Would they keep stalking Kurt? More importantly, who had set up the ambush
on the highway?

Emilia and Rico
had cooked up a plausible story to use in case the car was gone. Emilia was to
say that the car had broken down late at night after dropping off Rucker. She
hadn’t been able to get a tow truck because it was too late and too far out of
town so she’d called Rico for help. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong so
he’d driven her home. They’d come back to get the car with a tow truck in the
morning, but the car was gone. If Lt. Inocente decided they’d displayed poor
judgment and referred their case to the union for arbitration, both Emilia and
Rico could lose their jobs.

She pulled on a
sweatshirt and jeans, unable to shake her growing anxiety. The story sounded
like so much bullshit. Emilia hastily kissed the fingertips of her right hand
and pressed them to the crucifix above her bed. “
Jesu Cristo, ayudame
,”
she murmured.

The water coming
out of the bathroom faucet was cold and splashed away the last vestiges of
sleep. As Emilia headed downstairs she heard her mother’s voice. Sophia
invariably was up early, talking to herself as she made coffee and
chilaquiles
or sticky rolls for breakfast.

Emilia crossed the
small living room, feeling the familiar shiver of pride at the color television
and upholstered sofa and loveseat that had all come from the Liverpool
department store. She pushed open the door to the kitchen. The yellow concrete
block house was small and neat, with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and a
front room, kitchen, and extra toilet on the main level. There wasn’t a lot of
furniture but what they had was the best quality that Emilia could afford and
there was a real stove with an oven and hot water whenever she or her mother
Sophia turned on the faucet. “Good morning, Mama,” she said.

Sophia was at the
counter, slim and attractive, her long dark hair roped into the usual braid
down her back. She wore plastic flip-flops and a flowered apron over a dress
with an equally cheerful print. Most people assumed Sophia was Emilia’s older
sister rather than her mother and her smooth, unlined face wreathed into a
smile as she handed Emilia a mug of hot coffee. “Good morning,
niña
.”

“Thanks, Mama.”
Emilia was about to raise the mug to her lips when she realized there was a
third person in the kitchen.

A strange man was
sitting at the table drinking coffee. There was a plate next to him as if he’d
just finished breakfast. He was probably in his mid-50’s, with a defeated look
in a turned-down mouth. His clothes were old and worn and not very clean.
Emilia knew without asking that he’d been sleeping on the street.

“Who’s your
friend, Mama?” Emilia asked softly.

Sophia moved to
the table and put her hand on the man’s shoulder. “You don’t know?” she asked.

“Mama.” Emilia
kept her voice even. “Who is this?”

“This is Ernesto!”
Sophia exclaimed, her smile widening with pride.

“You must be
Emilia,” the man said. His diction was uneducated, his voice was raspy and he
had a lower tooth missing. He gestured at the coffee maker on the small
counter. His hands were calloused from a lifetime of manual labor. “Thank you
for inviting me into your home.”

“Mama?” Emilia
pressed.

“We were at the
mercado
,”
Sophia said.

Emilia swallowed
down her impatience. Any pressure invariably made her mother cry. “You already
went to the
mercado
this morning, Mama?”

“Yes, that’s where
I found Ernesto,” Sophia said, emphasizing the man’s name. She took his mug and
scurried to the coffee maker to top it up.

Her mother was
glowing, Emilia realized, and not with the vague uncertainty she usually
projected, but with a rare air of assurance.

When Sophia gave
the cup back to Ernesto, Emilia caught her mother by the upper arm. “I’m glad
you have a new friend, Mama, but you should have asked me before bringing
strangers into the house.”

The man shuffled
to his feet with a sort of threadbare dignity. “Forgive me, señorita. I am
Ernesto Cruz. Your mother was kind enough to offer me the hospitality of your
house.”

“Ernesto’s not a
friend,” Sophia gushed, her arm still firmly in Emilia’s grasp.

“I’ll work in
return for her kindness,” the man said and indicated a large wooden crate and
bulging knapsack on the floor by the table.

Sophia put her
arms around Emilia’s waist and hugged her, making Emilia release her grip.
Emilia shifted her mother so she could continue talking to the man. “I don’t
quite understand, señor.”

“My grinding wheel,”
he explained. “I sharpen knives and scissors for whoever needs it.”

“Is that why
you’re here? My mother asked you to sharpen something?” Emilia frowned around
her mother’s head. Every few months the local knife grinder usually set up his
grinding wheel on a busy street corner a few blocks away. He sang or shouted to
call attention to his presence and women in the neighborhood brought him their
items to be sharpened. It was a social event when he came, a reason to gossip
as the sparks flew and blunt steel was honed and polished. Each sharpened item
cost a few pesos. But the grinder never came into anyone’s house unless there
was something large to be sharpened, like a meat slicer or an office paper
cutter. “Something in the house?” she asked.

Sophia started to
laugh and pulled out of the hug. “Emilia, you are being so silly,” she cried.
“This is my Ernesto.”

“Your Ernesto?”

“Ernesto Cruz.
Your father.”

“Mama?” Emilia
didn’t quite let her mother get away. This obvious vagrant was not the father
who had died years ago. “What’s going on?”

Sophia’s face was
bright with happiness. “My Ernesto has come back to me.”

“Señor.” Emilia
addressed the man still standing by the table. “Your name is Ernesto Cruz?”

“Yes,” he said. He
nodded once at her, clearly understanding that something was not right.

“Stay there,
señor,” Emilia ordered. The man slid back into the kitchen chair and put his
hands possessively around the cup of coffee on the table.

Emilia tucked an
arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Mama, we have to have a little talk.”

“Not now.” Sophia
gazed lovingly at the knife grinder. “Your father’s home and I promised to make
tamales
. Get an apron and you can help me.”

Emilia’s eyes flew
from her mother to Ernesto. He shook his head slightly.

Sophia squirmed
away from Emilia and started to unload the plastic bags on the counter. “I’m
going to make
sopa de mariscos
and
tamales
to celebrate.” She
showed Emilia a handful of corn husks before she dumped them into the sink.
“Look! So nice, as if Señora Cardona knew that today was the day Ernesto was
coming home.”

Emilia put one
hand under her mother’s elbow and the other around her shoulders and propelled
Sophia up the stairs. Sophia whimpered a little, as she always did when Emilia
took charge. The two women made it to the top of the stairs and Emilia guided
them into her mother’s bedroom. It was as small and spare as Emilia’s own, with
the same white cotton curtains and bed below a crucifix. In contrast with
Emilia’s room, however, the walls of Sophia’s were lined with clothes. There
was no proper closet and so they’d attached hooks to the walls. On hangars,
Sophia’s dresses lined the walls like a vertical garden of color and texture.

Emilia plunked her
mother on the bed, then closed the bedroom door and leaned against it.

“Really, Emilia,”
Sophia said breathlessly. “I have to start cooking.”

“Mama,” Emilia
said, wondering how difficult this conversation was going to be. “That man
downstairs is not my father. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course he is.”
Sophia’s eyes were wide and dark and trusting. “His name is Ernesto Cruz.”

Emilia knelt in
front of her mother and took Sophia’s hands in hers. “Mama, there are probably
hundreds of people in Mexico named Ernesto Cruz. He’s just one of them.”

Sophia frowned.
“He’s Ernesto Cruz. Your father is Ernesto Cruz. Don’t you think I’d know my
own husband’s name?”

“This Ernesto Cruz
was never married to you, Mama.” Emilia’s eyes filled with tears as
bewilderment spread across Sophia’s face. She felt as if she was slapping her
mother. They’d had this type of conversation before when Sophia got mixed up,
although the situation had never been quite so serious. “He’s a knife grinder
you met in the
mercado
. You don’t know anything about him. Where he’s
from, why he’s homeless, if he’s a criminal.”

“He’s my husband
Ernesto Cruz,” Sophia said stubbornly. She pulled a hand away to find the end
of her braid. She wound it through her fingers, a nervous habit that surfaced
when things got too difficult to understand. Tía Lourdes told stories of how
smart and witty Sophia had been as a young girl, but Emilia had never known
that young girl.

“No, Mama,” Emilia
said. “He’s not. For all we know he might be married to somebody else.”

“Stop it!” Sophia
pulled away so abruptly that Emilia was caught off balance. She toppled over,
rapping her head against the door.

“Mama--.”

“I won’t stand for
this sort of disrespect,” Sophia shouted.

“Mama, if he was
my father I would be glad.” Emilia scrambled to a sitting position on the
floor, her head still ringing. “I swear I would. But that’s not going to
happen. My father died a long time ago and that man downstairs is some stranger
you found wandering in the
mercado
. Nothing is going to change that.”

“You father is waiting
for me,” Sophia said, calm again. “He said he would sharpen my sewing
scissors.”

They stared at
each other for a long moment, Sophia defiant, Emilia at a total loss for words.

Sophia opened the
bedroom door and walked out.

Emilia heard her
mother call out “Ernesto.” The knife grinder’s voice filtered indistinctly up
the stairs. Emilia hauled herself to her feet and walked into her own bedroom
just in time to hear her cell phone vibrate angrily on the bedside table.

“Where are you?”
Rico demanded as soon as she answered. “I’ve been outside for ten minutes.”

“
Madre de Dios
,”
Emilia swore.

She begged Rico
for three more minutes, found a clean tee shirt, slung on her shoulder holster,
clipped her hair into a messy twist and pulled on her denim jacket. When Emilia
got downstairs, Sophia and Ernesto were in the kitchen. She was soaking produce
in an iodine bath and he was unpacking his grinding wheel.

“I’m going to work
now, Mama,” Emilia said.

Sophia nodded
vaguely. Emilia stepped to the side of the table where Ernesto was working. She
bent down that so he could see the gun under her jacket. “I’m police,” she
said, her voice low enough so that Sophia didn’t hear. “My cousins are police,
too. If you’ve done anything, we’ll know. If anything goes missing from the
house, we’re blaming you.”

Ernesto looked
startled. “No, I swear.”

He might be
harmless but Emilia went on because these things needed to be said. “My mother
may have invited you into our house. And she might be a little confused about
who you are. But I’m not. And to be very clear. You’re not welcome in her bed.
Or mine.”