Authors: Rex Burns
“They can’t do this!”
“It’s a public health issue. Rabies is a contagious disease.”
“I don’t have rabies!”
“The first sign is unreasonable anger and irritability.”
Bunch forced up the corners of his mouth “Then you’ve got fucking rabies. Look—I’m smiling. I’m talking very calmly and rationally. I do not have rabies. They cannot make me take those shots.”
“It doesn’t say you have to. It just says you might.”
“Goddamn dogs. Goddamn shots. I hate them both!” He pulled up his pants leg to show a scabby but smooth patch of flesh surrounded by the yellow of old bruise. “Look, it’s almost cleared up. No infection, no bleeding, no goddamn rabies.”
“No dog either.”
“I said I’m working on that.” His voice emphasized sweetness and light. “But if I steal that dog, Dev, it’ll be because I want to and not because some fucking bureaucrat tells me to. I’m not going to do one thing I damn well don’t want to do.” Tossing the crumpled letter into the trash, he added, “And while you’ve been laying around in the hospital pissing and moaning about that lousy car, I’ve been working. You know what today is?”
“The day before tomorrow.”
“An anniversary. The third week to the day that Nestor disappeared.”
I waited for him to tell me why that was important.
“I went back over his route home. I figured maybe other people were on schedules too. That they touched his route the same time every Tuesday, maybe, or worked in the area and started home about the same time. People we missed when we went out to knock on doors.”
“And?”
“Well, if you’re not all that interested … .”
I was interested; Bunch had a good idea. But he didn’t need me stroking him—he was doing well enough on his own. “Out with it.”
“An ice cream vendor. You know these people that pedal ice cream carts around town? The three wheelers?”
“A tricycle cart? He saw something?”
“She. Got legs on her like a linebacker. Face like one, too. She remembered seeing Nestor get picked up by a van.”
“How’d she know it was him?”
“His picture. She says she crosses Williams Street every afternoon, all summer long, just about five-fifteen. Two or three times a week, she’d see Nestor coming down Forty-seventh Avenue, and he’d usually buy something from her—Popsicle, snow cone, something cheap like that. He always walked by himself, but he was friendly, like he didn’t have many people to talk to. In fact, she thought that’s mostly why he bought something—to practice his English, and maybe because she was somebody he kind of knew. So she was surprised when this van pulled to the curb and Nestor went over to see what they wanted. Then he got in, and off they went.”
“He just got in? Didn’t argue with them or try to run?”
“That’s how she described it. They talked for a few seconds and then he got in.”
“Description?”
“Plain white van. No side or back windows. Colorado plates, but she didn’t get a number.”
“She see anybody?”
“She thinks it was a man driving, but she’s not sure. A man in the rider’s seat talked to Nestor. White. She didn’t think he had a beard or mustache, but she won’t swear to it after this long. By the time she crossed the street, they were already pulling away.”
It wasn’t much and it didn’t seem to lead anywhere. But so far, it was the last glimpse of a missing person. “If it had Colorado plates, it probably wasn’t the immigration people. Federal plates are white.”
“That’s what I figure. I checked with missing persons again, too. Nothing on either Nestor or Serafina. But I found out where Mrs. Chiquichano’s cleaning crews will be working tonight.”
“How’d you do that?”
“The usual, Watson: ratiocination and inductive reasoning. Besides, she had the work schedule posted on her office wall.”
“You went by?”
“After hours.”
Bunch told me what else he’d found in the office of Olympia Janitorial Services, and it didn’t come to much—a small desk, an answering machine on the telephone, a work schedule for the crew, and a file drawer with a few employee records. “She could run the business out of her home. All she really needs is a phone. But she’s got this dinky one-room office in a house over on Twenty-third.”
“Who owns the house?”
“Good point. I’ll check with the tax people.” He heaved off the desk. “Let’s get some dinner and then see what the cleaning crew has to say.”
Bunch drove his Bronco and we headed for the southwest corner of the city, an area of shopping malls and office complexes surrounded by restaurants that did good business with the singles and working couples who populated the area. Health spas, mom-and-pop franchises, and large, high-rise apartment buildings filled up the rolling hills and promised luxury living close to downtown.
“How many employees?”
“The books say ten. But her schedule only lists about fifty jobs. There’s no need for ten workers to clean that few offices once a week.”
“Shadow employees? A tax dodge?”
“She’s doing it on her apartment house. Why not on the cleaning business, too? On the books, she has a small business with ten independent contractors who work part-time—no FICA, no mandatory medical to pay. In fact, she runs four or five illegals who work their butts off for nothing. She writes off a little overhead, pays a little tax, pockets a lot of wages. Anybody needs to know, that’s how she struggles along to make a living. Meanwhile, she’s got a sockful of thousand-dollar bills tucked away somewhere.”
“You think she launders the money somehow?”
“Why should she, Dev? Is IRS after her? No. Is she living beyond her means of support? No. What she can’t do is invest the money—not legally, anyway. My guess is she’s hiding it outside the country. El Salvador, maybe. Cayman Islands. Hell, maybe she just stuffs it in a trunk under the bed. She wouldn’t be the first one to bury a coffee can full of dollars in the backyard.”
True enough. The people who had to worry about laundering money were those who wanted to spend a lot of it in this country and whom the IRS had under a microscope. The Bronco edged to the curb in front of a line of tan brick shops and parked behind a battered carryall. Through the plate-glass window of a friendly neighborhood loan company, we could see bustling figures vacuuming, wiping, dumping trash cans into large plastic garbage bags. A man leaned against one wall and smoked as he watched the women work quickly. Bunch rapped on the glass door and the man looked up, puzzled. Then he came over to open it slightly.
“Yes?”
“Are you with Olympia Janitorial Services?”
“Yes.”
Behind him, the women had stopped to stare. I recognized the one on the vacuum cleaner as the woman who had been washing Mrs. Chiquichano’s car. Her eyes recognized me too, but her face was a mask.
Bunch flicked his ID card and leaned against the wavering door. “We’d like to ask you people a couple questions.”
The man’s pockmarked face turned a sick gray and his lips sucked up somewhere under his full mustache. Sudden tension rang like a bell through the room, and for a moment they looked like birds poised to leap into the air.
“We’re private detectives,” I said in Spanish. “We’re looking for two missing people.” I held up the photographs of Nestor and Serafina. “Do any of you know these people?”
The man, breathing again, shook his head. “No.”
Bunch easily pushed the door open against his weight and stepped in. “You haven’t even looked at the picture, my man. Here.”
He stared first at Bunch, growing aware of his size, then carefully studied the photographs. “No sir. We don’t know these ones.”
“Show them to the ladies, Dev.” He smiled at the man. “What’s your job on the crew?”
“Me? Supervisor. And I drive the truck.”
“Mrs. Chiquichano pay you well for that?”
Behind me, I heard the supervisor mutter uncomfortably and Bunch ask something else. The first woman looked carefully at the photographs and then, mute, shook her head and turned quickly back to her mop and pail. The next shrugged and said, “No.” The woman on the vacuum cleaner looked hard at me before she gazed at the photographs. “No, sir,” she whispered, her eyes snagging mine again. Without moving her head, she rolled her eyes toward the back door and then handed the picture to me. We thanked them, and the man watched us pull away into the night. I told Bunch to go around the block and let me off at the alley.
“What for?”
“One of the women wants to tell me something.”
“Jesus, Dev, don’t you ever learn? It could be another setup.”
I pulled my cap tighter over the bandage that still gripped my scalp. “These people have no reason. The bikers are the only ones to pull crap like that.”
“I’ll follow along anyway.”
“Suit yourself.”
But halfway down the silent and dark alley, I was relieved to think of Bunch at my back. The only light came from the main street, over the wall of stores—a thin glow reflected off the low clouds that had started to fill Denver’s shallow valley as the day’s air cooled. The far end of the lane was marked by a fainter gray, and glass chips grated beneath my shoes as I picked my way past garbage cans and Dumpsters whose doors hung blackly open. The sudden rush of a dog behind a fence on the other side brought a prickle of quick sweat down my back, and I paused a moment to let the deep growls die out.
It was hard to make out the shop names on the doors, but I glimpsed light falling from a rear window and peered through the dirty glass. One of the women scrubbed rapidly at the washroom mirror. I leaned beside the closed door and waited.
A few minutes later, the door opened and a pale plastic sack of trash thumped onto the pavement. Another followed, and a female shape stepped into the darkness and dragged one of the bags toward a Dumpster at the corner of the building. The shape wrestled it in and turned and saw me against the wall.
“Aiii!”
“iShhhh—cuidado! La otra mujer quiere hablar conmigo.”
“iDios mío, señorl iUsted me asustó!”
She went inside quickly, and a moment later, the other woman came out, carrying a half-empty bag of trash.
“You’ve seen those people in the photographs?” I whispered in Spanish.
“No, senor. I’m sorry. I don’t even know them. But you’re looking for them to help them, yes?”
“Yes. Their relatives hired me to find them.”
“Hired you? Ah … .”
“What’s wrong?”
“I have no money.”
“Does that mean you want me to find someone?”
She spoke quickly before I might say I wouldn’t help. “Felicidad de Silva. My friend. She’s gone—disappeared.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” The woman stopped suddenly and listened. From inside the shop the man’s voice called “
iCatalina!
”
“
iMomentito!
she called back. “Here.” She fumbled inside her brassiere and handed me a folded piece of paper, warm from her flesh. “This is Felicidad’s boyfriend’s name. Can you help me? I don’t have any money now, but I will pay when I can—I promise!”
“
iCatalina—vamos ahora!
” the voice called again.
“Go on in—I’ll toss the trash.” I shoved the paper into a pocket and hoisted the last bag over to the Dumpster. The door shut behind her, and the silhouette of a man’s head filled the small wire-glass window as he peered suspiciously into the dark. I waited, motionless against the bulk of shadow that was the Dumpster, until the silhouette disappeared and the light clicked off.
Bunch was leaning against the Bronco’s fender when I reached the end of the alley. “I thought you were going to back me up.”
“You told me to suit myself, Dev. It suited me to wait here.” He slammed the door and started the car. “I sure as hell don’t want to be where I’m not wanted, old buddy, and as bitchy as you’ve been these last few days, I’m not sure I want to be anywhere around you.”
I had heard my own words on occasion lately and noted the irritability behind them. What’s worse, I’d even been aware of a carelessness about how my words hit people. It was as if I were trying to provoke and anger all those around me, and I didn’t seem to mind that I did. Some of it might have been the soreness in my shoulder and head. A lot of it, I decided, was because neither case seemed to be going anywhere. But none of it was because of Bunch. “I’m sorry, Bunch. I guess I’m stewing about the business. And that call from Costello—it still hasn’t come through.”
“Hey, no problem. Just give me a raise and all is forgiven.”
I lifted a middle finger. “Here it is.”
“I take it that’s a no?”
“And screw Senora Gutierrez and her cousin Nestor, too.”
“Uh-oh. Another lead gone sour.”
“Worse.” I pulled the slip of paper from my pocket. “There’s another illegal missing: Felicidad de Silva. She’s a friend of one of those women. She asked me to look for her.”
“Another one? Holy shit! This keeps up, INS won’t have to worry about illegals at all.”
I read the name on the paper—Rafael Garcia—and a telephone number. “This is her boyfriend. I told the woman I’d look into it for her.”
“For free?”
“Why not? That’s our going rate.” I added, “She said she’d pay later.”
“And you believed that? An old moneygrubber like you?”
“That promise is more than we got from the other two.”
Bunch pulled onto the apron of a gas station and coasted to the phone hood. “We’re building up points in heaven, Dev. Think of it that way.”
“Yeah. No good deed goes unpunished.”
The man’s worried voice gave me directions. His apartment was in one of those brick boxes that nestle between private homes over on the east side, the kind called “garden level” because the shrubbery comes in the windows.
“Rafael Garcia?”
He was a thin, nervous man, around thirty, with a trimmed mustache that emphasized the width of his mouth and its narrow lips, and reminded me vaguely of some Hispanic movie star who always smoked thin cigars. “I don’t know what happened to Felicidad. One day she just didn’t show up no more. We had it all set for a date, you know? She and Catalina and Maria Linda, they were all going to the movies. Only Felicidad was coming over here, you know? That’s the way we had to do it because of the old bat.”