Mission Road (9 page)

“What else?” Etch asked.

“A body turned up in a South Side dumpster this morning. One of Zapata’s cutters, shot point-blank in the gut. Our guys have been asking around. Seems there was a meeting that went bad at Jarrasco’s last night. This guy and a friend met a heavyset Latino with a ponytail, about the same time that Ana was shot. The description kinda matches Ralph Arguello.”

“You’re saying Arguello has an alibi.”

“A bad goddamn alibi. He was busy shooting a guy?”

“But that would mean he didn’t shoot Ana.”

“It’s weak, sir. It’s still gotta be him.”

Etch heard the indecision in his voice.

Kelsey was the equivalent of an Abrams tank. As long as he had a clear target in the distance and wide straight road, he would roll over everything in his path. But as soon as he started doubting his aim or hit muddy terrain, he ground to a halt. He needed a good push to keep going.

“Kelsey,” Etch said, “if you think you may have been too focused on Arguello, for whatever reason, if you think you’ve made a mistake, it’s not too late . . .”

He could almost feel the steam on the other end of the line. Etch had dared to use the
M
-word.

“I didn’t make a mistake, sir,” Kelsey said tightly.

“All right.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

Kelsey hung up, hard.

Etch sat back and closed his eyes. He tried to convince himself everything could still work out.

With luck, Kelsey would now hound Arguello till Doomsday, and he would think it was his own idea. He would think Etch had tried to convince him not to.

Etch didn’t hate many people, but Ralph Arguello deserved to go down. He’d gotten away with murder before. He was no better than the Whites. Worse. He’d married Ana, jeopardized the career Etch had helped her build.

Two years ago, watching them at the altar had been more than Etch could bear—Ana in her white dress, her face so much like her mother’s, and a common criminal next to her, grinning like the devil.

Navarre and Maia Lee had been at the wedding. Then, as now, standing by Ralph Arguello, supporting somebody who didn’t deserve it, watching him take Ana’s hand.

Etch imagined Lucia sitting next to him, the way she had so many years on patrol.

Why did you do it, Etch?
she asked.

It was an accident,
he promised her.
It wasn’t supposed to happen.

She turned her face to the window.
It was no accident. You know better.

The sound of his cell phone startled him out of his trance.

His surveillance man had a short report: Maia Lee had spent the last couple of hours inside the
Express-News
offices, probably going through the archives. Now she was at the Pig Stand, talking to the old guy behind the counter.

Etch hung up, hit the steering wheel with his palm.

“Miss Lee,” he chided. “Miss Lee, Miss Lee.”

He felt his anger building.

Jaime Santos had done more than a little talking. The old man was dangerous. And Maia Lee . . . she was too much like Ana. She was following Ana’s trail too well.

If Kelsey didn’t do his work right, if Arguello started looking bad as a suspect . . .

Etch searched for a fallback plan. Only one came to him—an idea that had been brewing since he debriefed the old deputy Drapiewski. It had a certain sense of justice to it.

He switched his phone to answering service. He radioed dispatch and put himself in the field. Then he put the car in drive.

He circled Travis Square and parked across the street from San Fernando Cathedral.

The man Etch wanted to see was doing business in front of the cathedral as usual. He was leaning over the portable cooler on his ice cream bicycle, offering a strawberry
paleta
to the girl who sold T-shirts at the souvenir stand.

At the end of the block, a beat cop was eating lunch on the hood of a pickup truck. A bored security guard lounged in front of the Catholic Family Center.

Hernandez didn’t think they would recognize him. It didn’t matter, anyway. This was his city, his territory. He could talk to an old collar if he wanted to.

He punched a request into his laptop, printed out some information. Then he got out of his car and walked across Mission.

“Titus,” he called.

Titus Roe had been grinning at the T-shirt seller, but his smile evaporated when he saw the lieutenant.

Roe was grizzled and lanky, with a face like crocodile leather—all greasy bumps and hard lines. He wore a red flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves to show his garden of flower tattoos—marigolds, roses, bluebonnets and cacti.

“Hi, uh . . . sir.”

Roe’s discomfort pleased Etch. He had warned the ex-con never to address him by name.

The T-shirt seller backed away. She was Latina, young and pretty, a little heavy on the mascara and hairspray. Just out of high school, probably, but Etch figured she could still sense the police aura. He was used to this effect on people—like he had some mildly frightening disfigurement that kept others from getting too close.

“I’m an old friend of Titus’s,” Hernandez told her. “Come on, Titus, pray with me.”

He put an arm around Roe’s shoulders and led him toward the cathedral.

Inside, San Fernando smelled of candles and newly hewn limestone. The recent renovations had taken the eighteenth-century mildew out of the air.

Hernandez wasn’t used to the changes. The cathedral had been falling apart before, sure, but it had been familiar—the city’s deepest taproot, an institution a year older than George Washington. Now the sanctuary felt raw, too open, too bright.

Up front, choir members were practicing a Christmas carol for tonight’s Las Posadas celebration. A scattering of parishioners prayed in the pews. Hernandez and Roe slipped into the back row by the sacristy, where a bank of votives glowed.

“I almost had a date, man,” Roe whined. “You know how long I’ve been working on her?”

“Work on her later,” Etch told him.

Roe laced his hands together. “Who you looking for?”

Etch smiled.

Roe squirmed. “What? I’ve been cooperating, Lieutenant. Shit—you know I have.”

True, Titus had given him some good leads over the years. Once upon a time, Titus Roe had been well connected, one of the busiest, if not best, assassins who worked locally.

He’d done two years in Floresville State for assault, but the only time Etch had a clear shot at busting him for capital murder, he’d let Titus go.

The hit had been a drug lord on the East Side—not exactly a loss to society. By sheer luck, Etch had found the murder weapon, tied it to Roe beyond a reasonable doubt, then set the evidence aside after explaining to Titus that it could come back anytime if he failed to cooperate. Since then, Titus had been a valuable informant.

“The Franklin White murder,” Etch said.

“Aw, hell, Lieutenant. I didn’t have shit to do with that. You think I’m crazy?”

Etch ignored the question. Of course, Roe was crazy. “You got any idea who did it?”

Roe’s eyes drifted toward the front of the cathedral, where the choir was singing “Adeste Fidelis.”

“Um . . . none,” Roe said. “None.”

“People are looking into it,” Etch said. “Last week, Sergeant DeLeon. Now other people are stirring things up.”

Roe’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

“Maybe the person who did the crime should be nervous.”

He offered Roe the slip of paper he’d printed out.

Roe read the information. He moistened his lips, stared at the crucifix above the altar. “Lieutenant . . . what exactly do you want?”

“Loose ends are difficult, Titus. That old gun of yours, for instance—if it should ever be found, come to the attention of the DA . . .”

Titus shivered. “I’m trying to go straight, Lieutenant. If this is some kind of test—”

“It’s absolutely a test, Titus. I need a solution. I need to retire next month, understand? And when I do, your problems retire with me. You’ll have nothing to worry about but selling
paletas
and dating the T-shirt girl.”

“I—I can’t.”

“You can,” Etch told him. “You’ve got no choice. Now memorize that paper and light a candle with it, you understand?”

Etch left him in the pew. When he looked back, Titus Roe was praying almost as if he meant it.

•                           •                           •

ETCH DROVE NORTH.

He passed Hildebrand, turned into Olmos Park, past Guy White’s mansion on Contour. A mile further into the basin, he passed the wooded ridge above the dam where Lucia and he had once sat talking, the whole city spread below them, bloodred in the sunset.

Cops weren’t supposed to fall in love on the job. They weren’t supposed to break the law, or hate criminals, or kill, either.

Etch had tried to follow the rules.

He’d failed miserably.

After Lucia died, he’d thrown himself into the career track. He made lieutenant, just like she said he should.

The higher he rose in the department, the more he realized that professional ethics were like Kevlar vests. Cops wore them only because they were required to. They were supposed to be good for you, but what beat cop hadn’t slipped off the damn vest once in a while, just to get rid of the scratchy hot confinement?

Etch vowed never to forget what had happened to Lucia.

He’d do whatever he had to. The truth could never come out.

He drove across the dam and parked downhill on the utility road.

Late afternoon, the sky was dark and cloudy. Cold seeped into the car the moment he cut the engine. Through the trees, he saw the deck of the house, the windows glowing large and yellow like the eyes of an enormous predator.

He got out of his car and opened the trunk.

•                           •                           •

IN AN ALLEY BEHIND SAN FERNANDO
Cathedral, Titus Roe opened his ice cream cooler.

He moved aside boxes of banana
paletas
until his fingers hit cold metal—the Colt .45 he had promised himself never to use.

He unfolded the paper Lieutenant Hernandez had given him and read the information again. Two addresses. One in town, one in Austin. The car’s make and color, with a license plate. A bad printout of a driver’s license photo and the woman’s name.

He folded the paper and put it back in his pocket.

He looked up at the rose window.

Retirement,
he thought.
One month and the bastard will stop hounding me.

He decided to start with the local address, go from there.

He muttered a silent apology to God and to the woman he didn’t even know.

Maia Lee.

•                           •                           •

ETCH HERNANDEZ UNLATCHED THE LONG BLACK
case and assembled the pieces.

He tried the scope, saw nothing for a moment but fuzzy leaves. Then he readjusted the lens and saw Jaime Santos standing on his porch, still drinking his
atole
and watching the clouds.

How could the old man stand the cold?

Go inside,
Etch thought.

But the old man stood his ground.

Santos had sold out an officer. He would be dangerous in court. Whatever happened now was his own damn fault.

Etch murmured Lucia’s name. He was hollow, nothing else inside him except her memory.

He lined the X-hairs on the old man’s chest, and exhaled as he squeezed the trigger.

“ARE YOU SURE THIS TIME?” I ASKED.

“Yeah,” Ralph said from the front seat. “That’s the bastard.”

Nothing is more embarrassing than siccing the mob on the wrong person. Ralph’s eyesight may have been laser-corrected, but thirty minutes ago at the Poco Mas Bar he’d mistakenly identified a burly Latino with a peroxide red buzz cut as one of the thugs who’d jumped him the night before.

We’d unleashed Madeleine White and watched the alleged thug get reduced to hamburger meat over the hood of the limo. The whole time, he swore up and down he didn’t know anybody named Zapata. Finally Ralph realized we’d screwed up.

We left the poor dude sixty bucks for a new shirt, called an ambulance and scrammed.

Now, after three more conversations with my street friends and several twenty-dollar bribes, we were parked across Roosevelt Avenue from Mission San José, watching another burly redheaded Latino order a burrito at Taco Shack #3. The dilapidated look of the place made me wonder what had happened to Taco Shacks #1 and #2. I imagined they were turning into fossil fuel in the sedimentary layers below.

I squirmed in my new black suit.

A hot shower with scented soap and designer shampoo hadn’t changed the feeling that I’d washed myself in grease, using a mobster’s bathroom. My borrowed silk slacks were too tight in the crotch. The shirt collar was stiff with starch. Sitting in the back of the limo with Madeleine White, I felt like I was on my way to the mafia prom.

“Too many people around,” Madeleine said, scoping out the scene. “I don’t want more blood on the car.”

“Sensitive type, aren’t you?” I asked.

She glared at me like she was about to kick me in the face again.

Screw it.

Now that I realized who she was, I couldn’t take her seriously.

I remembered her, all right. Frankie’s little sister.

When I’d known her before, she’d been a ten-year-old kid with a dirty blond ponytail, a shrill voice and painter’s pants decorated with Magic Markers. She always had bruises on her arms from getting into fights with her classmates. She used to sit in the bleachers during football practice and throw tennis balls at me. The coach never had the nerve to run her off because of her dad’s reputation. Frankie called her the Brat.

Now, she must’ve been pushing thirty, but she looked closer to twenty. Proof positive she had Guy White’s genes.

She didn’t stick out her tongue anymore, but her
I-hate-you
expression hadn’t changed.

“Listen,” she told me, “
I
don’t care if we draw attention.
I’m
not the one running from the police.”

I wished I had a good comeback, or maybe just a better way of tracking down Johnny Shoes.

Unfortunately, Madeleine’s plan was the best one we had. She’d said looking for Zapata’s men would be easier than looking for the man himself, and she was right. When it came to moving around and avoiding detection, Zapata was slightly more paranoid than your average Third World dictator.

“What was that martial arts style you used on me earlier, anyway?” I asked her.

“Shen Chuan.”

Ralph and I exchanged looks.

“Hell,” I said.

As far as I knew, Shen Chuan was the only native Texas martial arts system. It was also a hard damn style to defend against. It was taught in the East Texas piney woods by one extremely good, extremely unconventional sensei.

“You study with Lansdale?” I asked.

“Did,”
Madeleine corrected. “He kicked me out of the dojo. Said I was over-the-top.”

I tried to imagine what Joe Lansdale would consider over-the-top. Chain saws and atom bombs, maybe.

It seemed strange to me that a girl like Madeleine White would’ve taken up martial arts so intensely. Then I remembered something Ralph had told me. Mr. White had come to him for help when Frankie’s problems got so bad they affected the family. I wondered what exactly that meant.

At the Taco Shack counter, the redheaded thug was getting his order.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s interrupt this poor man’s lunch.”

“Hold up,” Ralph said. “He’s moving.”

Sure enough, Mr. Thug had cradled his taco bag like an offensive lineman and was jogging across Roosevelt Avenue.

He didn’t seem to have seen us, but he was moving at a good clip. He cut through the parking lot of San José and headed for the mission gates.

“Pull the car around,” Madeleine ordered the driver.

“Why is he going to San José?” I wondered.

“Damn,” Ralph said.

“What?”

“Zapata’s mother.”

“What are you talking about?”

The limo did a tight one-eighty.

I held the door handle to avoid slamming into Madeleine.

“Zapata’s mom is a parishioner,” Ralph said. “Ana told me once. I forgot. Zapata’s family’s been at the mission for, like, centuries.”

Madeleine snorted. “You think Zapata is in there with his
mother?
What, praying?”

I tried to imagine Johnny Zapata as a good Catholic boy. Or even a good boy. Or even having a mother. I failed.

“I don’t want this to go down in a church,” Ralph muttered.

The limo stopped in front of the visitors’ center.

Madeleine slipped a new clip into her nine. “Alex was right, Arguello. You are getting soft.”

She kicked open the car door, looked at me expectantly. “Are we kicking someone’s ass or not?”

•                           •                           •

AS A PI, I’VE LEARNED YOU
get better help from people if you make an effort to like them. It’s not about making them like you. You have to develop a genuine affection for disagreeable people. With the hard-luck cases I meet, often the best way to like them is to find something about them with which you can empathize.

With Madeleine White, that wasn’t easy.

The ass-kicking woman who led us into the mission was as hard to love as the bratty little girl I’d known at Alamo Heights.

The only memory that made me feel any sympathy for her was so unpleasant I’d buried it for years.

My senior year at Heights, I attended my last Howdy Night celebration to kick off the new school term. It was a sultry September evening. Millions of grackles were screeching in the trees. The air was thick with mosquitoes and barbecue smoke and teenage hormones.

The football field had been converted into a carnival ground. Parents and younger siblings milled around everywhere. Teachers worked the standard game booths: the dunking chair, the sponge toss, the cakewalk.

I was supposed to be meeting my girlfriend Lillian, but she was running late, so I fell in with Ralph and Frankie White, who were trying the football toss and drinking Big Red sodas secretly laced with tequila.

Over by the fifty-yard line, Frankie’s dad was talking to one of the city councilmen. Guy White wore jeans and loafers and an Izod button-down, like he was one of the common yuppies. His silver hair contrasted starkly with his deep summer tan. His smile radiated good humor. The field was crowded, but he had an open radius ten feet wide around him. Only little children who didn’t know any better wandered close to him.

Frankie was getting angry because he couldn’t get the football through the tire. He always griped that he should’ve made quarterback, but he couldn’t throw to save his life. He kept giving carnival tickets to our bored English teacher, Mrs. Weems, and kept bouncing footballs off the rim of the tire, or throwing into the midst of screaming drill team girls by mistake.

Ralph was cracking up, which didn’t help Frankie’s mood.

After a few tosses his little sister, Madeleine, ran up to him. As usual, her clothes were decorated with Magic Marker designs—spirals, mazes, scary faces. She had a fistful of candy canes and her face was painted blue and gold. There was
cascarón
glitter and confetti in her hair.

“Share your tickets, Frankie,” she demanded.

“Get lost, Brat,” he growled.

Madeleine held her ground. “Dad said they were for both of us. He told you to share.”

Frankie jumped toward her and faked throwing the football at her. She squealed and ducked her head.

Mrs. Weems, normally an innocuous soul, said, “Now, Franklin—”

“I told you to get lost,” Frankie yelled at his sister.

“You can’t touch me anymore!” Madeleine’s chin was trembling. “Dad said—”

She never got to finish her sentence.

Frankie grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and marched her away.

“You want to play more games, Brat?” Frankie’s face was bright red. “You want the apple dunk? Huh?”

She tried to fight him off, but he dragged her over to the tin washtub. Then he pushed her head underwater.

“Frankie,” Ralph said. “Stop.”

Frankie brought Madeleine up again, screaming and sputtering.

Mrs. Weems shouted, “Stop it!”

“You didn’t get an apple, Brat?” Frankie said. “Gee, I’m sorry.”

He shoved Madeleine under again. That’s when Ralph and Mrs. Weems and I all got into the act.

Ralph pulled Madeleine away from Frankie while Mrs. Weems and I tried to restrain him, but Frankie had the weight advantage. He elbowed me in the gut, then pushed poor Mrs. Weems a little too hard. She stumbled backward.

“Stay off me!” he yelled.

“Franklin White!” Mrs. Weems got to her feet, furious, and slapped him hard across the face.

Frankie looked stunned. Then his face blanched. I was pretty sure he was about to kill our English teacher when a deep voice said, “Franklin.”

Guy White stood behind us.

Frankie’s shoulders hunched. He blinked hard, like a dog who expects a beating.

Madeleine was kneeling in the grass, crying and coughing up water, her face paint smeared. She got to her feet, but she didn’t run to Daddy. Instead, she yanked her wrist free of Ralph’s hand and took off into the crowd. Her father paid no attention.

His eyes bored into his son.

“Come with me,” Mr. White told Frankie.

“I’m with my friends,” Frankie mumbled. “I don’t want to.”

I couldn’t tell which was stronger in Frankie’s voice—hate or fear.

“Now,”
Mr. White said calmly.

“Hey, Frankie,” Ralph said. “It’s cool. We’ll catch you later.”

Mr. White glanced at Ralph, appraising him. Maybe he recognized that Ralph was letting Frankie save face. Maybe, in a cold way, he even appreciated that.

Frankie’s fists clenched. He planted his feet, trying to ignore his father’s order. But it was like watching a time-lapse movie—a granite hillside being slowly and mercilessly eroded by the sun and the wind. Finally Mr. White pointed toward the parking lot, and Frankie followed his father off the playing field. We didn’t see them or Madeleine again that night. Soon, I was much more interested in my girlfriend and Ralph’s tequila, and I stopped thinking about the incident with the Whites.

But looking back on it, I felt sorry for Madeleine.

I tried to imagine what it would be like living with two men like her father and brother, being kid sister to Frankie White, who could bring out the violent side in anyone, even a gentle middle-aged English teacher.

•                           •                           •

RALPH, MADELEINE AND I FOLLOWED THE
redheaded thug into the grounds of Mission San José.

It was a cold Saturday evening, too late and overcast for much of a crowd. The
convento
was empty except for an elderly couple studying a tourist brochure. Ancient huisache trees lay flat against the ground and the foundations of ruined buildings made weird geometry in the grass. Along the fort walls, oak doors were fastened shut, as if the Indians who’d lived there two hundred years before were still inside, cooking dinner or stumbling through vespers prayers in their strange new Spanish language.

Mr. Thug toted his taco bag toward the
tiendita
—a tiny souvenir shop in one of the Indian apartments. The sign out front promised religious memorabilia and ice-cold bottled water. He went inside.

Ralph stopped. He stared at the shop door, his hand in the pocket of his new leather jacket where a borrowed .38 waited.

Guy White’s manservant had taken one look at Ralph, then given him a tough-guy outfit—black jeans, leather jacket, boots. Me, I got a silk suit. Bloody typical.

“Zapata’s mom,” Ralph said. “I remember now. She runs the souvenir shop.”

“Are we going in?” Madeleine asked.

“
Chiquita,
you ever meet Zapata?”

Madeleine’s scowl reminded me of the angry little girl at Howdy Night—a ten-year-old foolishly determined to hold her ground.

“Call me
chiquita
again,” she said, “and I’ll cut out your tongue.”

Ralph pulled out his .38, opened the door for Madeleine. “Ladies first.”

Inside, the souvenir shop was crammed with postcard carousels, shelves bristling with plaster saint figurines, holographic Jesus portraits that smiled and suffered and ascended in 3-D.

Johnny Zapata stood at the jewelry counter with Mr. Thug, both of them getting yelled at by a gray-haired Latina cashier so hideously ugly she could only have been Zapata’s mother.