The Demon Hunters (9 page)

I fumbled into to my robe and went
downstairs with Mac at my heels. Jack and Mel were nowhere in
sight. Guess I surprised them too. Yawning, I got Mac’s bowl,
filled it from the bag of kibble in the pantry, and because I adore
the little excuse for a real dog, crumbled a liver treat in his
chow. I knew I shouldn’t, because Mac would expect the same
tomorrow morning.

I needed a jump-start, so I filled the
coffeemaker with Turkish roast. If this didn’t bring me awake,
nothing would. Cup in hand, I went back up to my
bedroom.

I sat at my desk, staring at the
monitor, pecking at the keyboard with my right hand because my left
firmly held a giant cup of java, which I couldn’t put on the desk
without pushing off some of the clutter.

I hacked into the Tremonton Marble
Motel’s database. Rio and Rojero had Room 15. The only phone calls
made to and from the motel were to Gia and their family home.
Groping for the phone, I called the Marble, announced myself as
Tiff Banks, consultant with Clarion Police Department, and asked if
the Borrego boys had any visitors. According to the manager, they
did not.

More delving showed Rio used his
credit cards to pay the motel bill and buy gas at a station just
outside Tremonton, but nothing after.

Royal would have hacked into Clarion
PD database, but I didn’t dare go that far.

I picked up the phone and
punched in a number. A feminine voice answered on the third ring.
“
Hola, esto es
Margot.”

“
Senora Labiosa? How are
you?”

Chapter
Seven

Driving in gang territory didn’t
bother me. No person would approach me unless I approached them
first, and if I did, they would cooperate. Not only are the Labiosa
family respected, they are esteemed. They would have put the word
out.

Nothing special marks the area as
Clarion’s gangland. It’s a worn-out, worn-down neighborhood in west
Clarion and looks like other run-down areas in other cities. The
sidewalks and homes sit in deep shade cast by big old trees with
wide-spreading branches. The houses are small brick or clapboard,
the latter once painted, but now faded and peeling. Some of the
small front yards are well-kept, the grass mown and small borders
colorful with flowers and shrubs. In others, the grass is long and
quickly dies in summer due to lack of water. Children’s battered
toys sit on sidewalks and in gutters. The rusting hulks of old cars
squat between houses, along with old refrigerators and kid’s swing
sets. Some of the houses feature outside Christmas lights, left up
year-round, tattered by the ferocity of winter storms.

The air felt warm and lazy, the
streets seemed to drowse in the heat of the sun. Ahead of me, a dog
trotted across the pavement to lap up water which ran from a lawn
sprinkler into the gutter. It looked up as I passed, and looking in
my side mirror, I saw it stare after me for a second, then
circumnavigate the damp lawn and settle in the dusty soil beneath a
ragged privet hedge. Teen boys and girls lounged in porches, on a
miscellany of old furniture, sodas and cigarettes in hand. Older
men, talking in low voices, sat in groups in porches and beneath
shade trees.

I pulled over and cut the engine.
Ernesto waved at me from his perch atop the steps leading up to his
house.

Finding Ernesto Sanjurjo is easy. He
never moves from his spot on the steps of a tumbled-down house on
Weston Avenue. He can’t.

Many shades are restricted to a small
area. Ernesto has his steps. I’ve driven past his old home and seen
him walking up and down, up and down. Mel and Jack are the only
ghosts I know who roam an entire house.

“
Hola,
Ernesto!” I called out as I walked along the overgrown
path.

“
Hola.
I bin waitin’ for you.”

Ernesto is five-seven, raven-haired,
built like a tank with the seamed, craggy face of a thug, something
other youth of his day misinterpreted. Ernesto was never a thug,
and eventually joined a gang only after years of pressure. He died
at age sixteen. One night, at a local party, he got involved in a
fracas over, of all things, a cigarette. He got a big knife from
the kitchen and went after Jose Mallaca, but didn’t find him. He
had cooled off by the time he got back to the party. But when he
left to head home, Jose was waiting for him with his own big knife.
Jose stabbed unarmed Ernesto twice in the chest. Ernesto managed to
drag himself up the steps to his house and there he died. His
mother discovered him early the next morning. She took her other
children and left Clarion. The house remains empty and is coming
apart. If you look carefully, you can still see the stains where
Ernesto’s blood sank into the old, faded wood.

I sat next to him. “Why have you been
waiting for me?”

He spread his hands in a you-know
gesture. “The Labiosa put out you comin’ down here. So I say to
myself, Ernesto, that big ol’ white woman wan’ somethin’ from the
Labiosa. Must be ‘cause young Alissario Borrego gone missin’. She
gonna be askin’ if you seen anythin’.”

Big ol’ white
woman
? I am a six-foot-four Caucasian with
long silver-white hair, so I suppose it’s an apt description, but
not exactly flattering.

“
Did
you see anything?”

Ernesto looked at me with a sly smile
in his half-closed eyes. “First we talk.”

So I sat on the creaky wood porch of a
broken-down old house for an hour, chatting to the shade of a
murdered teen. Ernesto is not totally isolated, he listens in on
conversations between people passing up and down the street, and he
had stored up a whole lot of questions. We discussed local news and
events, national news, education, global warming, Barak Obama, the
Utah Jazz, the Grizzlies, the economy, and a host of things you
would not expect a young man of Ernesto’s youth and background to
show interest in. Then I did an impersonation of Entertainment
Tonight, updating on the celebrity gossip.

Ernesto leaned back on one elbow, eyes
half closed, face wearing a look of desperation, the front of his
body drenched red. On the night he died, he was determined to get
up the last step and into the house, but he didn’t make
it.

As I slouched there, the top half of
me in shade, my legs in the sun and starting to burn through the
denim of my Levis, I thought of all the things Ernesto would never
do. He would never grow up, never fall in love, never have a
family. And never watch his children grow into little
gang-bangers.

“
Your turn,” I eventually
said.

“
Aw . . .
c’mon.”

“
Next time, Ernesto. Now,
do you have anything for me or not?”

He sat up. “I seen it all. I seen his
lady come down here when half a dozen Nor‘side punks had him. I
seen them flyin’ all over the place. I seen her take a bullet for
him.”

Whoa!
“When?”

“’
Bout a year ago. Craziest
thing I ever seen.” He looked at me out the corners of his eyes.
“You wanna know more?”

You bet I did. “I don’t know if it’s
relevant to his disappearance, but go on,” I said
casually.

He pointed south along the street.
“Down there. ‘Bout eight at night. They was out for his blood.
Couldn’t see good, but I seen them round him an’ she comes outta
nowhere. Then, like she disappears an’ they fallin’ all over an’
then she’s back in the middle of them. One of them, he has a gun
an’ he shoots her. Then they run off. Rio, he picks her up an’
takes her away. I thought she’d had it. But I see her down here a
couple times after an’ she’s fine.”

“
This was a year
ago?”

“
Uh huh.”

I didn’t know what to make
of any of that, but it sounded like a rival gang went after Rio and
Gia took a bullet for him. And she said he didn’t have enemies?
The
little feuds
were over?

I stored it away for future
consideration. “What else? I’m looking for something
recent.”

“
Big black
automóvil
goin’ up an’
down past the Borrego place three nights runnin’, a couple weeks
ago. Fancy. Musta cost a bundle.”

My hip numbed up. I shifted on the
hard step. “You didn’t happen to get the license plate?”

He shook his head. “But it came past a
half-dozen times or more each night an’ it went real slow. Big
black bastard.”

“
You said that.
Big black car
isn’t much
help.”

“
Foreign make. Older model.
Mint condition.
Mercedes-Benz.”

I whistled
appreciatively.
There couldn’t be
many older-model Mercedes-Benz in the area. If it was still in the
area.

I got to my
feet
and dusted off my backside.
“Nothing else?”

Ernesto shook his
head.

“
Then I’ll be
going. I’ll see you later, ‘Nesto.”

“
Yeah, yeah. Yous
just go on with your life, lady. Leave me here sunnin’ on the
porch.”

I waved and started
off.

“
Hey! You
hear
anythin’ ‘bout that
bastardo
Mallaca?”

As far as I knew, Jose
Mallaca had served time, had his sentence remitted and left the
state with his family, and Ernesto should know it. Like many
shades, as time passed he became forgetful. I looked back. “I’ll
try and find out for you.”

“
Gracias.
Voy a esperar por ti.
”

Yeah, he’d be waiting for
me. He wasn’t going anywhere and only I could talk to
him.

I went back to my car, got in and
pulled away from the curb. Ernesto waved. I waved back.

I felt the pressure of eyes
as I drove down the street. The residents watched me, and I’m sure
they wondered what the crazy white woman was up to, getting out her
car and sitting on the steps of an old, deserted, ramshackle house
for over an hour. Maybe they saw my lips moving. Maybe they grinned
at one another and made
loco
signs with their hands. If another person had
strayed in their territory, they would have wandered over, gathered
around and looked menacing. Perhaps they would have done more than
look. But the Labiosa expected me and nobody would get in my
way.

***

You can’t miss the double
cast-iron gates of the Labiosa property and the high brick wall
fronting the block. Several muscular young men lounge either side
of the gate day and night, their long black hair pulled back in
braids, the white of their singlets emphasizing dusky skin etched
with tattoos in all colors of the spectrum. They may seem lazy, but
they see everything, and nobody gets near those gates without their
okay.

The young men are not
guards. Senor Labiosa doesn’t believe he needs protection and he’s
probably right. An attack on the family could bring on a gang war
the likes of which has never been seen in Clarion, and nobody wants
that, especially not the gangs. It would bring the cops down hard
on them and their territory. The lads stand at the gates of their
own volition, makes them feel big and mean, and Gerarco Labiosa
indulges them.

Of course, they are big,
and they are mean.

I pulled up on the end of
the driveway and stayed put until one of them came to the car and
looked me over in a deliberate way. He nodded, and someone inside
the property operated the mechanism which made the gates slowly
swing apart. I thanked him and drove on through.

The gravel driveway wound
between tall poplar and clumps of pink peony, purple and white
hydrangea, and pink rhododendron. You might expect the landscape to
open up to a huge immaculate lawn fronting a plantation style
mansion, but instead come abruptly to a tiny square of grass and
the family’s
modest, two-story brick home.
Six such homes once occupied the block, but the Labiosa took
possession of them twenty years ago, razed them and built their
private compound. I’m sure the former owners were suitably
compensated. There again, I doubt they had a choice.

To look at
Gerarco and Margot Labiosa’s house, you would not
know they have the wealth to live in a considerably nicer
neighborhood. Gerarco does not look like he wields power akin to a
Mafia don.

Gerarco sat in a wood rocking chair on
the porch of their house, wearing a starched white shirt with the
sleeves rolled up in homage to the warm temperature, black braces
supporting his baggy dark-brown pants. In his eighties, he held a
black kerchief in one hand with which to mop his bald, gleaming
head. Piercing green eyes watched my approach over the top of tiny
round spectacles. “Mama, she is here,” he called over his
shoulder.

Margot bustled out the front door as I
walked up the path, looking like a traditional Old-World Spanish
grandma, wiping floury hands on her yellow and white floral apron.
The hose beneath her black skirt wrinkled around her ankles and
flour dotted the wrinkled skin above the neck of her black blouse.
A half-dozen jeweled pins were stuck porcupine fashion through gray
hair pulled back in a tight bun.