Salvation in Death

  “Did he tell you what happened to Father Flores?”

  “What did I care? How’m I supposed to know there ever was one?”

  “Why was he masquerading as a priest?”

  “He wanted to come back, lay low. He liked people looking at him like he was a big deal, he liked the respect.”

  “Five years, Penny. Don’t string me. What was the angle?”

  “He liked the secrets, too, the sins. He used them when he could, when he wanted.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “He had some ready, sure. More than a priest earns. When he was in the mood, he’d get us a room at a fancy hotel, and we’d order room service and shit. Paid cash.”

  “Did he buy you things?”

  “Sure.” She flipped her finger at one of her earrings. “Lino wasn’t stingy.”

  “He trusted you a lot.”

  “Lino and I went back, all the way back. We needed each other. That’s what this is about.” She slapped her palm on her tattoo. “This is family, and it’s protection. My mother was useless, more interested in her next fix than me. More interested in that than stopping my old man from moving on me. Barely twelve years old the first time he raped me. Slapped me around good, too, and he tells me I’ll keep my mouth shut about it, and he won’t slap me around next time. Kept it shut for two years before I couldn’t take it anymore. I joined the Soldados, and I got family.”

  “Your data states that your father was killed when you were fourteen. Stabbed. Cut to pieces.”

  “No loss.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “My client’s not going to answer that. Don’t answer that, Penny.”

  Penny only smiled, rubbed a fingertip on her kill mark.

  “You and Lino,” Eve concluded. “Makes a hell of a bond. And two years later, he’s smoke. Gone.”

  “Nothing lasts forever.”

  “Were you in on the planning of the Skull bombing?”

  “My—”

  Penny held up a finger to stop her lawyer. “Questioned and released, a long time ago. Nobody ever proved that was Soldado work.”

  “People died.”

  “Happens every day.”

  “Lino planned it. He was one of the leaders, and he had the skills.”

  “I guess you’ll never know, seeing as he’s dead.”

  “Yeah, he’s dead. You’re not. And your legal counsel will tell you there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

  “You can’t hang it on me now any more than they could then.”

  “What was Lino waiting for? When was payday, Penny?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her eyes skittered away. “He’s dead, so I guess we can’t ask him.”

  “Where’s Steve Chávez?”

  “Don’t know. Can’t say.” She yawned. “We done?”

  “Lino was marking time, picking up some grease along the way so he could show off, live high, then duck back under the collar. A man doesn’t do that for five years so he can bang an old girlfriend.”

  “He loved me. We used to talk about taking off, making a big score, and coming back riding high. Never worked out, but he came back.”

  “Do you have an alibi for the day of his death?”

  “I opened the bodega at six A.M., along with Rosita. We did the prep, and worked the breakfast counter for three hours straight. Around ten, Pep and I—stock boy—took our break together in the back room, then I was back on the counter when the first cops came in asking questions. And I heard he was dead.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Worked my shift, went home. What was I supposed to do?”

  “All right. You’re free to go.”

  “About damn time.”

  Eve waited until they’d left the room. She sat alone, in silence another full minute. “Record off,” she said.

  When she was back in her office, standing, staring out the tiny window, Peabody came in.

  “Any luck with Penny?”

  “Yeah. A twisted mix of lies and truth. More lies than, but enough truth to get a picture. She claims she doesn’t know what happened to the real Flores—lie. That she doesn’t know what Lino was waiting for here—lie. She admits no knowledge of the bombing. Not a lie, more a ‘Prove it, bitch.’ Same with Chávez’s whereabouts. She said Lino loved her. I think that’s truth, or she believes it to be. She never said she loved him. If she had, it would’ve been a lie. But she had been banging him for the past few years.”

  “If they’ve been having it on for that long, he told her what he was up to.”

  “Yeah. I think he may have helped her kill the first time, earn her mark—maybe they earned them together as the timing jibes with Teresa’s statement. Her father. He’d been sexually abusing her. She had enough. They cut him up.”

  “She admitted—”

  “No. She admitted the abuse, and that was truth. She admitted she’d joined the gang at fourteen to escape it, to make family, for protection. Her father was found hacked to pieces in an abandoned building when she was fourteen. He was a known dealer, and the cops put it down to an illegals deal gone bad. Probably didn’t work it very hard. Why bother? She and Lino would’ve been covered for it anyway. Others in the gang would’ve alibied them, or threatened someone else into it.”

  She heard Peabody close the office door, turned.

  “Are you doing okay?” Peabody asked.

  “Yes.” Eve walked to the AutoChef, programmed coffee. “Let’s keep going. We’re going to want to dig back into that case file. I’ve got the case files for the bombings, and we’ll need to reach out to the investigators. I need to put some pressure on Penny. More pressure than a couple months in over slapping at a cop.”

  “Do you think she killed Lino?”

  “We’ll check her alibi, but I bet it’s nice and tight. She had it ready for me, and on a platter. No, she’s the hothead. I don’t think she did the kill. But I think she’s connected. At the very least she knows who did.”

  “Maybe they had a fight. Lovers’ tangle.”

  “Maybe. I can’t see her going five years without getting pissed off at a lover. Or being exclusive,” she said slowly, and handed one of the coffee mugs to Peabody. “Let’s find out if she was banging anybody else besides Lino. Lino used his confessional privileges to blackmail when it suited him. Can’t see him hitting up for nickels. So we see who’d use the church who had enough to make paying for sin worthwhile. And we need full information on the victims and fatalities of the restaurant bombing.”

  “You know how I said I thought it was starting to fall into place? Now it feels like it’s spreading out all over.”

  “Just more pieces. They’re going to fall somewhere. Let’s start with the bombings, work forward. The primary investigator’s still on the job. Contact Detective Stuben, out of the Four-six. See if he and/or his old partner have time for a sit-down.”

  “Okay. Dallas.” She wanted to say more, it was all over her face. The need to comfort or reassure.

  “Right now let’s just work the case, Peabody. That’s it.”

  With a nod, Peabody stepped out, and Eve turned back to the window. Time enough, Eve thought, time enough later to feel it, to let herself feel any empathy or connection to another young girl who’d killed to escape the brutality of her father.

  She finished off her coffee, then requested the case files for the Soto murder. And was grateful that Peabody buzzed through with an affirmative from Stuben before she had the chance to dig into them.

  Stuben wanted to meet at a deli by his own cop shop. He was already packing into a mystery sandwich and a side of slaw when Eve and Peabody arrived. “Detective Stuben, Lieutenant Dallas. My partner, Detective Peabody.” Eve offered a hand. “Thanks for taking the time.”

  “Not a problem.” His voice was tough-edged Bronx. “Getting my lunch in. Food’s good here, if you want to eat and meet.”

  “Wouldn’t mind.” Eve settled on a steamed dog
and some sort of pasta curls, and noted Peabody was offsetting her morning burrito with a melon plate.

  “Kohn, my old partner’s off on a fishing trip. Testing retirement out, see if it suits him before he takes the jump,” Stuben began. “If you want to talk to him, he’s due back tomorrow.”

  Stuben dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin. “I used to take that file out every couple months, the first year or two after the bombings. I guess longer.” He shook his head, bit into his sandwich. “Take it out again, review, maybe do more follow-ups once or twice a year for another stretch. Dack, too—my partner. We’d sit down like this, over a meal or a brew, and go through it again. Ten, twelve years down, I’d still get it out. Some of them don’t leave you alone.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “That area, it was going through a bad time then. Couldn’t bring itself back after the Urbans. We didn’t have enough street cops, not enough on the gang patrols. And the gangs shoved it up our ass, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Did you know Lino Martinez?”

  “I knew the little bastard, and the rest of them. I worked those streets when I was in uniform. He was a badass by the time he was eight. Stealing, tagging stores, busting things up just to bust them. His mother, she tried. I’d see her dragging him to school, to church. I caught him with a pocketful of Jazz when he was about ten. I let him off, ’cause of the mother.”

  “Did you know Nick Soto?”

  “Dealer, street tough, liked to rough up women. Slippery bastard. Then someone slipped a knife in him. Fifty, sixty times. I didn’t work that one, but I knew him some.”

  “Did anyone talk to the daughter or Lino on that one?”

  He paused, rubbed a finger over his cheek. “Had to. Lino and the Soto kid were tight. The fact is, I think she was worse than he was, worse than Lino. He stole something, it was for money. He beat the shit out of somebody, there was a reason. Kid had a purpose. Her? Carried hate around in her. She stole, it was to take it from somebody else. She beat the shit out of someone, it was for the hell of it. You’re sniffing at them for that case?”

  “I had Penny Soto in on something today. She claims her father raped her, regularly. That didn’t come out.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t work it. But I knew some of the particulars.” He shook his head. “That had come out, I’d know.”

  “You looked for Lino after the bombing.”

  “He’d taken over the Soldados by then, him and Chávez served as captains. The site wasn’t strict Skull territory. It was in the disputed turf, but plenty of them hung there. It was retaliation. I know it was Soldados, and the Soldados didn’t breathe without Lino telling them to. Mrs. Martinez said Lino took off, two days before the bombing.”

  He shook his head. “I had to believe her, or I had to believe she believed it. She let us go through the place. No sign of him, and we checked with neighbors, and not all of them had any love for the son of a bitch. Got the same story. He lit out before the incident. We put the heat on the Soldados, and turned it up. We couldn’t get one of them to refute that. Not one. But they did it, Lieutenant, they set it up, Martinez and Chávez. I know it in my guts.”

  “My guts say the same.”

  “Have you got a line on them? Either of them?”

  “I’ve got Lino Martinez in the morgue.”

  Stuben scooped up noodles. “Best place for him.”

  “How about any of the alternate gangs? Would any of them take a hit at Lino after all this time?”

  “Skulls, Bloods. Most of them are dead, gone, or locked up. Always a few around, both sides of that. But that fire’s been out a long while. How’d he buy it?”

  “You’ve heard about the murder at St. Cristóbal’s? The one posing as a priest.”

  “Martinez?”

  “Yeah. How’s that play for you, him going under like that for five years—in plain sight?”

  Stuben sat back, gave it some thought over his tube of cream soda. “He was wily. He had brains and could stay frosty. It was hard, even when he was a kid, to pin anything on him. Knew how to cover his tracks, or get someone to do it for him. He fought his way up to the top level of the Soldados by the time he was sixteen. Had to be something in it for him, some game. Something big to keep him under. You had the Soto girl in on this?”

  “Today.”

  “She’d have known, no question in my mind. He came back, he’d go to Penny Soto. Lino had a weak spot, she was it. He made her a lieutenant, and she’s not fifteen, for Christ’s sake. Word was, there was some dissention in the ranks about that. Lino took out the dissenter with a pipe, and let her kick the shit out of him. ’Course, the dissenter claimed, from his hospital bed with his jaw wired, that he fell down some stairs. Back then? You couldn’t work one of them against the other. They’d take a knife to the heart first.”

  “Times change.”

  Stuben nodded. “They do. You might try Joe Inez.”

  “I ran it by him once. Weak link?” she asked, but for courtesy as she already knew.

  “That’d be the one. Joe, he didn’t have the kill switch in him. Didn’t have the hardness for it.”

  “Is there anyone else I should talk to? Any other former members? I’ve got a couple people working on getting me names, but you’d know better.”

  “I can tell you anybody who was top rungs back that time, they’re gone. Dead, in a cage, or in the wind. Some are still around, but they’d’ve been rank and file. Martinez and Chávez were in charge. And Soto. She took it over when they lit out.”

  “I appreciate it, Detective.”

  “You get anything leads to closing the bombing, we’re square.”

  She got to her feet, paused. “One more thing. The families of the victims. Are you in touch?”

  “Now and then.”

  “If I need to, can I tap you again on this?”

  “You know where to find me.”

  17

  EVE FOLLOWED HER NOSE TO ST. CRISTÓBAL’S. Rosa, her hair bundled over a face prettily flushed, answered the door. She wore an apron over a colorful top and slim black pants.

  “Hello. How can I help you?”

  “A couple of questions for you, and for Fathers López and Freeman.”

  “The fathers aren’t here right at the moment, but . . . Would you mind coming back to the kitchen? I’m making bread, and you caught me right in the middle.”

  “Sure. Making it?” Eve added as she and Peabody followed Rosa through the rectory. “Like from flour?”

  “Yes.” Rosa tossed a smile over her shoulder. “And other things. Father López is especially fond of my rosemary bread. I was just about to shape the dough, and don’t want it to over-rise.”

  In the little kitchen, a work counter held a large bowl, a stone board, a bin of flour.

  “My mother bakes bread,” Peabody commented. “And her mother, my sister. My dad gets his hands in sometimes.”

  “It’s a nice skill, and a relaxing chore. Do you bake?”

  “Not much, and not really in a while.”

  “It takes time.” Rosa punched a fist into the bowl of dough, and had Eve frowning. “Therapeutic.” Rosa laughed, then turned the dough onto the board, and began to pat and pull. “Now, how can I help you?”

  “You lived in the neighborhood,” Eve said, “in the spring of 2043. There were two bombings.”

  “Oh.” Rosa’s eyes clouded. “A terrible time. So much loss, pain, fear. My kids were just little guys. I kept them close, took them out of school for a month because I was afraid of what might happen next.”

  “There were never any arrests.”

  “No.”

  “Did you know Lino Martinez?”

  “If you lived in the neighborhood during that time, you knew Lino. He ran the Soldados, him and that gorilla Steve Chávez. To protect the neighborhood, he’d say. To keep what was ours. His poor mother. She worked so hard. She worked for my uncle, at the restaurant.”

  “The investiga
tors suspected Lino for the bombing, but were never able to talk to him.”

  “I always thought he had his hand in it. The gang was his religion, and he was, at that age, a fanatic. Violence was his answer. But he was gone before it happened—the second bombing, I mean. Most thought he’d planned it, set it in motion, then ran off to avoid arrest.”

  She formed three long, narrow rolls of dough, and to Eve’s reluctant fascination, began to braid them like a woman braided hair. “He was supposed to be at that dance, when the first bomb went off,” Rosa continued. “He liked to dance. But he didn’t go. None of his inner circle, except Joe Inez, were there when it happened. Lupe Edwards’s daughter, Ronni, died in that bombing. She was barely sixteen.”

  Eve cocked her head. “And neither Lino nor Chávez were there? That would’ve been unusual?”

  “Yes. As I said, he liked to dance, and he liked to swagger and show off. I heard they were on their way there when the bomb went off. So, maybe that was true. In any case, Ronni was killed. A lot of kids were hurt, some seriously, and the rumor was Lino was the target. When he left, so soon after, a lot of people said it was because he knew the Skulls would try again. They said, some said, he left to prevent innocent people from being hurt.” Her lips twisted. “Like he was a hero.”

  Eve studied Rosa’s face. “That’s not what you said.”

  “No. I think he left because he was a coward. I think he ordered the second bombing and made sure he was far away when it happened.”

  “There were no arrests on that bombing either.”

  “No, but everyone knew it was the Soldados. Who else?”

  Eve debated with herself a moment. “Did you ever have any trouble with Lino, you specifically?”

  “No.” As she spoke, she turned the braided dough into a circle, set it on a baking sheet, then began to form three more strips. “I was older than he was, of course, and my kids too young to interest him as recruits. Plus, his mother worked for my family. He left me and mine alone. I know he tried to recruit some of the older kids, but my grandfather had a talk with him.”