Parts Unknown (8 page)

Susan, Bunch’s girlfriend, used to say the Healey was my surrogate for female companionship, and I had come to realize that it would have been better if that had been so. Because the way things turned out, Susan was dead, and Bunch still hadn’t gotten over it. But that had been a couple years ago, and neither Bunch nor I talked about it anymore. Not that we talked much about it then. As Uncle Wyn told Bunch at the time, the ones you love live on in your heart, and you have them with you always. He didn’t have as much consolation for me—the one I had loved lived on in the women’s state pen, and all I had left in my heart was a bitterness and sense of betrayal I was still trying to get rid of. And gradually I was managing to. I learned that I couldn’t let someone like that influence the rest of my life; she had her shot at it once and that was enough. But sometimes, alone with the wind whistling across the cockpit and the rumble of the exhaust stirring memories of our good times in the Healey, I wondered what it might have been like.

Boring.

That’s what it would have been like. As boring and colorless as the cars we threaded among, and I was a lot better off by myself and doing what I wanted. Such as worrying about the future of Kirk and Associates. Such as sweating a stack of bills on the office desk. Such as thinking like a goddamn accountant. Maybe it wouldn’t have been all that different after all. But—and I shifted down to make the turn from Cherry Creek Drive onto Colorado Boulevard—it made no difference now. As Uncle Wyn had said, that ball game was over. It didn’t pay, he said, to lie there in the dark and play over and over the errors of a game that was already in the record books. It was something that had cost him a lot of sleep when he was a young catcher; but none of it did a damn bit of good once the umpire tossed the first ball for the next game.

Not that he would say life was fun and games—a cliché like that sent Uncle Wyn’s eyes rolling up until only their whites showed. But there was some truth for him in the idea of ending a thing with the neatness of a final inning. And telling yourself you could begin over with the scoreboard empty and waiting. It was a truth he tried hard to convince me of, anyway.

Midafternoon was a good time to work out at the health club, a remodeled supermarket that had been expanded to include a swimming pool and saunas as well as the usual arrangement of exercise machines. Most of the clientele wouldn’t arrive until after working hours, and those who were there tended to be models trying to stay in shape between gigs. Their shiny Lycra stretched where it should stretch, and their ponytails bobbed saucily as they ran around the indoor track. It sure beat watching television while you pumped iron, and it was sad to think all this might end in a few weeks.

Bunch was waiting by the time I returned. “That tall blonde—was she there?”

“Oh, yeah! Wearing this new skintight silver thing that just … wow!”

“You’re telling me she wasn’t there.”

He was right; she wasn’t. “What about the Hally job? What’d they decide on?”

“Nothing, yet. Coe said he’d call us in a day or two.”

“You showed him all the options?”

“Yes, Dev. I showed him all the options. And the prices. And the benefits of going with the better equipment. But I don’t think he was impressed. The guy’s cheap, that’s all.”

Well, I hadn’t really counted on any money coming from that direction anyway. “What about Senora Chiquichano’s friends?”

“I don’t think she’s got any.” He lurched out of the swivel chair and limped over to lean on the wrought-iron rail that guarded the lower half of the window. The traffic below in Wazee Street was heavy and loud with the day’s final deliveries, trucks returning to their garages, commuters taking shortcuts to and from the Valley Highway. Bunch closed the glass air panel against the noise. “Her neighbors don’t know much about her. She moved into the place maybe a year ago. Stays by herself, doesn’t cause any problems, keeps the house and grounds very neat. She didn’t return the visits a couple people made to welcome her to the neighborhood. She’s self-employed.”

“Doing what?”

“Runs a small-time janitorial service—Olympia Janitorial—and my guess is she uses a crew of illegals and pays them maybe fifty cents an hour and all the cigarette butts they can carry. One of the neighbors figures she has plenty of money because there’s always somebody working around the place—doing the yard, washing her car, handyman stuff. And she has a maid who lives in. That’s it.”

“That’s it? She doesn’t have any extra income from somewhere?”

“Aside from her apartment building? If she did, I’d know about it. I checked out the realtor who sold the house. She says Chiquichano financed her loan through Citizen’s Bank and Trust and paid a third down with a certified check. The people at Citizen’s wouldn’t give me any information from her loan application—said it was confidential.”

“We can fix that.” I thumbed through the stationery file for the Kirk and Associates Credit Service letterhead. Professional courtesy between moneylenders opened a lot of doors.

Bunch went on. “Public records lists her as the sole owner of the place where Frentanes lives, and they say she’s paid her taxes and assessments.”

“Lived. Felix doesn’t live there anymore.”

“What’s that mean?”

I told him and he stared at me for a long moment, putting things together. “Felix thinks Mrs. Chiquichano turned him in to immigration?”

“It makes sense. It’s a good way to get rid of him, and it happened just after we talked to her about Serafina.”

“But we didn’t say Felix told us. Maybe we found out from some of the people who live near the apartment—people she asked about Serafina.”

“And maybe that’s what she told Felix she did. Maybe she and Felix were the only two who knew Serafina was missing.”

He grunted. “She lies to you about Serafina. Now she gets rid of Felix. Why?”

“Why indeed.”

Bunch, restless and hobbling, went to the brick wall and leaned stiff-armed against it to do slow, one-armed presses while he pondered. “I’m beginning to get the feeling, Dev. I think we should have another talk with Mrs. Gutierrez.”

“Not so fast. Did you see that note about the guy who wants a debugging estimate?”

“Yeah. I already called him. I go by tomorrow to take a look at his office.”

On the way over to talk to Nestor’s aunt, we discussed last night’s adventure and the possibility of recovering the battery pack. “Heard anything from the bikers yet?”

“No,” I said. “Some anonymous calls on the recorder, but that could be anyone.”

“Probably didn’t find it. It’s probably still there in the ditch.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Stiff and bruised, but no infection. I’m not worried about rabies.”

“It’s supposed to take a few days to show up.”

“How do you know?”

“I did some reading on it. Two, three days from now, after the wound starts to heal, bam! Then it’s the needle in the belly routine.”

“I hate needles worse than I hate dogs.”

“Then we’d better make some plans,” I said.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

Mrs. Gutierrez was in her forties, stocky, with glossy black hair and high cheekbones that showed a strong mixture of Indian. The hair, braided and then twisted up into a tight coil, showed no gray yet; and despite the worry in her eyes when we spoke of Nestor and Serafina and Felix, her face had the plumpness and color of good health. Bunch and I towered over the woman so much that we both had to be careful not to step on her. When she offered us a seat on the overstuffed couch facing the large television screen, we sat with relief.

“I wrote to his mother in case he went home, but she thought he was still up here.” From an end table, she lifted a flimsy air letter bright with foreign stamps. “They’ve heard nothing from him. They’re very worried.”

“Is it possible he and Serafina Frentanes went away together, Mrs. Gutierrez?”

She gave that some thought, half listening to the sounds of children that filtered through the thin walls of the tiny house. Then the tight coil shook no. “I don’t think he even knew her. He never mentioned anyone who lived there except Senor Medina—the man who lives across the hall. They talked a lot about El Salvador. They played cards sometimes.” She added, “Besides, Nestor has a sweetheart in Ibarutu. Maria Cristina. He was always talking about her—how long it would be before he had enough money to return and buy a farm and marry her, how long the war would last, whether he should bring her to the States.” The head shook again. “He would not go with another woman, I’m sure.”

“We didn’t think so, Mrs. Gutierrez,” said Bunch. “It’s just something we have to ask.”

“I understand, but it’s impossible.” She went into a long amplification of what she’d said, describing the relationship between Nestor’s family and that of his intended. Maria Cristina Quiroga, whose line was related to Nestor’s by the marriage of his great-great-aunt to her great-great-uncle. “And besides, Nestor was very much worried about finding another job if he was fired from this one for not having the papers. He was working very hard to earn enough money so when things get better in El Salvador, he can go back and buy a farm. He just wouldn’t up and leave a good job.”

Bunch broke in. “What can you tell us about Mrs. Chiquichano?”

“Ah, that woman!” Mrs. Gutierrez settled back in the armchair with its patches of crocheted doilies. “She’s not from Ibarutu, I can tell you that. Her family lived on a ranch somewhere up in the mountains, and the only time they ever saw civilization was once or twice a year when they made the trip down for a saint’s day. They were poor—even for El Salvador, they were poor. But look at her now!”

She went on to describe Mrs. Chiquichano—born Hernandes—as a girl, growing up in feed sack dresses and shoeless as a chicken until she was in her teens. If the woman had any schooling at all up in those godforsaken mountains, it was only what little someone in the family could provide or what she could learn herself. There were rumors about her chastity or lack of it too, but then, those country girls were often treated like animals, so if they acted that way it was only to be expected, and Mrs. Gutierrez didn’t even want to think of what might have gone on. But when she was sixteen, she was given in marriage to Senor Chiquichano, a friend of her father’s and even older by a handful of years. His death during one of those quick, violent raids by either the army or the guerrillas left the young widow on her own. She quickly sold the property left by her husband and, wearing straw sandals and carrying her only pair of shoes in a plastic bag, boarded a bus headed north. Somehow she got her immigration papers and ended up in Denver, writing once a year to her family and sending occasional photographs of her car, her house, herself in the finest clothes. It was her success, in fact, that led many from Ibarutu and the surrounding province to come to Denver, including the younger Mr. and Mrs. Gutierrez.

“She rents rooms only to people from El Salvador?”

“I think so. You understand how it is—people when they first come north are very, very frightened. Especially”—she hesitated and looked from me to Bunch—”especially if they are undocumented. I’m sure many of those rooming there are undocumented. Like Nestor.”

“She knows this?” Bunch asked.

“Of course. That’s how she makes her money.”

“You mean she charges them extra?”

“Yes.” And to provide them their false Social Security numbers so they could get the jobs, which she also arranged for. And to cash their paychecks when they lacked identification. Senora Chiquichano was a legal immigrant, and the others huddled behind the aegis of her legality—for a fee. Mrs. Gutierrez looked down at her hands with their tightly intertwined fingers. “I wanted Nestor to stay with us—my husband and I both asked him to. But he said no. He said he wouldn’t want to make our home any smaller than it already is. And there was the problem of the danger.”

“How’s that?”

“Immigration. If we were caught with him living here, we could go to jail or be deported.”

“Wouldn’t Mrs. Chiquichano be deported too?” asked Bunch.

“Yes. That’s why she charges so much, she says: to pay for the risk she’s in.”

The risk wasn’t all that great—the courts would have to prove she knew they were illegals, and no law required landlords to ask their renters for documentation. Ironically, the Gutierrezes were in greater danger by being relatives of the illegal than someone like Chiquichano, who exploited them but could claim ignorance of their status. “Can’t they rent a room somewhere else?” I asked.

The woman’s rounded shoulders rose and fell. “They’re afraid to trust anyone else, Mr. Kirk. Maybe someone else would demand even more. She’s greedy but at least she speaks their language and knows their people. She’s from their country. To frightened people, that means a lot.”

“How much did Nestor pay?”

“Most of what he made. She gave him forty dollars a week from his paycheck for personal expenses and savings.”

He netted around two hundred a week, I remembered, which meant he was paying as much as six forty a month for the closet-sized cubicle. Bunch and I had talked to about twenty occupants, and if the rents were comparable, then the income from that dump of an apartment house came to over twelve thousand dollars a month. Most if not all of which would be unreported to IRS, and little of which went back as property taxes or overhead. Add to that the other fees the woman extorted or any additional roomers we had missed, and that run-down rabbit warren suddenly began to look like a gold mine.

“No wonder she can afford a couple maids and a gardener.”

Bunch shook his head. “I bet she doesn’t pay them.”

Mrs. Gutierrez nodded. “Nestor told me—she brought two women into the country from a farm up near her father’s place. She promised to teach them English and give them a place to stay if they work for her for five years. She does the same to get workers for her cleaning business.”

“A fine old American tradition: bond servants.”

“Sounds more like slavery to me,” said Bunch.

“Is she bringing many more people from Ibarutu to Denver?”