The Man Who Risked His Partner

“Señor Axbrewder,” she said. “After so long a time. How good to see you.”

  “Señora Santiago.” My Spanish wasn’t perfect, but I liked using it. “Señor Santiago. The pleasure is mine. Are you well?”

  “As well as God permits,” she replied. “Life has many difficulties for everyone.” Her unhappiness lay in her voice like a pile of rocks, but she was too polite—and too reserved—to mention it. “And the Senora Fistoulari? Is she well?”

  I gave a shrug that wasn’t anywhere near as eloquent as it should’ve been. “Like yourself, as well as God permits.” The grapevine being what it was, I was sure that the Santiagos knew about Ginny’s hand. “Her injury grieves her.”

  That was a bit more direct than they were used to. They stood there not looking me in the eye, politely sympathetic and just a little embarrassed. After all, I was an Anglo, even if I did have passable Spanish. They would’ve defended my merit with great loyalty—and high indignation if they were doubted. But everyone knows all Anglos are crazy.

  To ease the situation, Santiago spoke for the first time. “Señor Axbrewder, what we have is yours. How may we serve you?”

  A good question. Now that I was here, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. On the other hand, my feeling of responsibility didn’t go away.

  I should’ve spent ten minutes making polite conversation before I got to the point, but I didn’t have either the time or the heart for it. Trying to strike the right balance between detachment and concern, I said, “I have read in the newspaper concerning the disappearance of young Pablo.”

  I was asking them if he’d come home.

  Their answer was as oblique as my question. They didn’t say anything.

  They didn’t have to.

  “Señor,” I said. “Señora.” Feeling my way. “I have done my work for you in the past, as you know. Now I wish to do such work again. If you will permit it, I wish to seek the whereabouts of young Pablo.”

  For an instant Senora Santiago’s gaze flicked up to my face. Then she looked at her husband. But he didn’t look at either of us.

  Neither of them spoke.

  Their constraint didn’t seem entirely natural. My offer didn’t please them, even though they had every reason to be satisfied with the work Ginny and I’d done for them.

  They knew something about Pablo’s disappearance that they didn’t want to tell me. Or they didn’t trust me.

  Or they couldn’t afford to hire me?

  “In this matter,” I said with more bluntness than good manners, “I do not wish payment. I have conceived a fondness for Pablo. I wish to seek him for the peace of my heart.”

  She turned away and started straightening cans on a shelf beside her. But she couldn’t keep it up. With both hands, she lifted her apron to cover her face.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. The silence made my stomach hurt like a bad tooth, but I forced myself to keep quiet and wait.

  Santiago stared at his wife’s back for a long minute. Then some combination of decency and pain made him try to explain.

  “Señor Axbrewder,” he said softly, “among our people many tales are told. Some are true, some false. Some become false in the telling. Yet no harm is intended by them. With tales our people amuse themselves, to soften the difficulties of life.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. I had no idea what he was getting at.

  Still watching his wife’s back, he said, “One tale concerns a large hombre who labors among the sufferings of others and has become devoted to strong drink.”

  I almost gaped at him. So that was it. They weren’t going to talk to me about Pablo because they didn’t trust me. Suddenly the store seemed to become too hot, and I was sweating again.

  But Santiago wasn’t finished. “I have heard another tale also.” He actually sounded like he was trying to be kind to me. “I have heard that this same hombre once sought speech with that unforgiven pendejo”—coming from him, the obscenity sounded extravagant and bitter—“whom the Anglos name el Senor. This the hombre did in his need, because of a peril to his brother’s daughter and other children. But el Senor forced drink upon him and caused him to be beaten and cast him out.”

  He shrugged delicately. “I know the truth of none of these things. But the chota capitán has spoken to us of our son. The police seek him as they are able. You need not trouble yourself, Senor Axbrewder.”

  It took me a minute to absorb what he meant. I was too mad to think straight. He was warning me. Trust didn’t have anything to do with it. He was trying to tell me that a drunk el Senor didn’t like had better not go around asking questions about Pablo.

  But why? What did Pablo’s disappearance have to do with el Senor?

  All at once my instincts woke up and started jumping to conclusions in all directions. “Senor Santiago,” I said, my voice as soft as his, “you have spoken with el Señor.”

  After a long moment he nodded.

  “What has he said to you?”

  Abruptly his wife whipped down her apron and swung toward me. Her eyes flared fury and grief. “He tells us that our son will be avenged. That Godless man speaks to us of vengeance, when the fault belongs to him and no other.”

  Avenged, I thought. Oh my God. But I didn’t stop. “He is dead?” The way I said it made Santiago look at me. “You have knowledge of this?”

  “Yes, Señor,” he replied through his teeth. “I have knowledge.”

  The rational part of my mind plodded slowly along behind me, thinking, They don’t know he’s dead. They haven’t found a body. If they found a body, the store would be closed. They’d be in mourning.

  However, the rest of me had already arrived somewhere else. They knew Pablo was dead because el Senor told them. They went to him because they knew that Pablo was running numbers. They were afraid and didn’t have anywhere else to turn. He told them their son was dead.

  Before Santiago could recover enough of his manners and dignity to drop his eyes, I demanded, “Did you speak to the chotas of this?”

  Senora Santiago snapped, “Is he a fool?” She made a gesture with her open hand that indicated her husband from head to foot. “Would he betray his son and his life to those who care nothing by naming el Senor to them? Then both the chotas and that evil man would fall upon us as vultures feast upon the lost.”

  I knew how she felt. Puerta del Sol’s finest didn’t exactly treat me with the milk of human kindness—and I wasn’t even Chicano. But simple practicality, if not fairness, impelled me to say, “Some among them are worthy of trust.”

  Santiago nodded. Maybe he was just being polite to the crazy Anglo. But his wife was too angry and hurt to stop. “This one is not. He is vile among our people.” She raged so that she wouldn’t start to keen. “It would be an ill deed to tell such a one the name of his own father. That pig.”

  Well, I could think of maybe twenty detectives—and three times that many street cops—who fit the description. “Señora,” I asked, “who was that man who spoke to you of your son?”

  She was mad enough to answer. Her people had been dealing with Anglos for better than two hundred years, however, and her instinct for caution ran deep. Clamping her mouth shut, she looked at her husband.

  Slowly he said, “Senor Axbrewder, our Pablo is dead. He set his feet to a bad way, but he was only a child. No good or evil will restore him. If you concern yourself in this sorrow, you also may die. What purpose will be served by a naming of names?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that, so I made one up. “I am Anglo. My voice is heard in places where yours is not.” Which was half true, anyway. Ginny has been known to get the DA’s attention, when she wants it. “A name may do me no harm, and yet have great power in the ears of those who merit trust.”

  Santiago thought for a minute while his wife glared at the floor and knotted her hands in and out of her apron. Then his shoulders lifted in a shrug that might have been hope or despair.

  “Cason,” he said. “Capit?
?n Cason.”

  Well, well. Captain Cason. Captain of Detectives Philip pig bastard Cason. That made sense. He was exactly the sort of man who would be assigned to investigate Roscoe Chavez’s murder. The sort of man you could trust not to learn more than you wanted him to. Not where people like el Senor were concerned, anyway.

  The bare idea made me sicker than I was already. I could imagine the way he’d behaved when he questioned the Santiagos.

  “I know this Capitán Cason.” To make myself feel better, I said obscenely, “He has the balls of a dog.”

  Santiago acted like he hadn’t heard me, but his wife let out one quick flashing smile.

  “Yet better men stand over him,” I went on. “If they are told what he does, they will not ignore it.”

  The whole thing made me livid. “My friends,” I said, “I have had no drink for many months. I will do nothing that is foolish. But I swear to you that I will do all that I am able, so that those who cause the deaths of children will not continue.”

  He didn’t respond. He was probably afraid that he’d let me into more trouble than I could handle. But she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and said, “Gracias, Señor.”

  So that I wouldn’t start foaming at the mouth, I turned and walked out of the store.

  I was thinking, el Senor knows Pablo is dead.

  He knows Pablo was killed.

  He knows why.

  7

  I didn’t know why.

  But I wasn’t about to ask sweet old Captain Cason for an answer. I’d had a run-in with him once. Down in this neighborhood, I’d happened on a tourist trying to rape a local woman. In an excess of zeal, as they say, I damn near put my whole fist through one of his kidneys. Cason didn’t like that. In his mind, a ruptured kidney was too high a price to pay for trying to give some Mex chippy what she had coming. Since this particular “Mex chippy” happened to be a decent and hardworking woman, he hadn’t had any trouble leaning on her until she dropped the charges.

  What I wanted to do with Captain Cason didn’t involve asking questions.

  I also wasn’t going to talk to any of his superiors. Not yet—not when I didn’t have anything solid to go on. And not when I couldn’t imagine any man or woman stupid or reckless or even just ignorant enough to hurt one of el Señor’s numbers runners. That resembled putting your entire hand in an active garbage disposal.

  Like most good criminal operations, a successful numbers racket runs on trust. In other words, if you do anything to mess it up, you can trust that el Senor will cut your heart out and feed it to your loved ones with salsa. A kid like Pablo carrying bets or winnings is usually safer than a bank vault.

  Whatever happened to Pablo, whoever did it was so out of touch with reality that it took my breath away.

  No, I didn’t want to talk to anyone in Cason’s chain of command. The man I wanted to talk to was Sergeant Raul Encino of Missing Persons. Not because the case was on his desk, but because he was a good cop, and he might be able to tell me what was going on. He didn’t really owe me any favors, but he thought he did because he cared about his work, and Ginny and I had helped him out once.

  Unfortunately, he was on the night shift, so I couldn’t call him for a few hours yet.

  That galled me. At the moment I was a hell of a lot more interested in Pablo Santiago than in threats to Reg Haskell’s legs—which I wasn’t sure I believed in anyway. But I didn’t have much choice. Trailing cigarette butts and dust, I went back to the Buick, fired it up, and began the long drive toward Haskell’s branch of the First Puerta del Sol National Bank.

  I made it with fifteen minutes to spare. At four fifteen I lumbered into the ice cream parlor parking lot and found a space near the one where Ginny sat glaring at me in the Olds.

  What with winter and the cloud cover, dusk was coming early, and the air had a gray, grainy quality, like amateur photography. The wind was getting sharper, and the temperature was starting to drop. The combination made my eyes water as I got out of the Buick and headed toward the Olds. By the time I got into the passenger seat where I belonged, I must’ve looked like I was crying.

  Even that didn’t work. The sight of a man my size dripping like an orphaned four-year-old has been known to make her laugh out loud, but not this time. Her face was the same color as the air, and she didn’t look at me. Her left forearm lay in her lap like a dead piece of meat, but her right kept squeezing the wheel as if she couldn’t find a way to grip it hard enough.

  In one of my pockets, I found a clean handkerchief. After I blew my nose, my eyes stopped watering. With as much gentleness as I could muster, I asked, “Been here long?”

  She didn’t answer that. In a tone that she held deliberately flat, keeping herself under control, she said, “Brew, I don’t like fighting with you.”

  I couldn’t bear the way she looked. It took me through the middle like a drill bit. I folded my arms protectively over my stomach and tried not to sound too brittle as I commented, “That’s never stopped you before.”

  She didn’t turn her head. I had a perfect view of the way the muscles at the corner of her jaw bunched. But she remained still until she was sure of her self-command. Then she sounded soft and hard, like being tapped lightly with a truncheon.

  “You’re living in a dream world, Axbrewder. Face facts. We aren’t equipped to handle this. It scared Smithsonian off, and he has a hell of a lot more resources than we do. If it’s for real, it’s too dangerous. And if it isn’t, we’re wasting our time.”

  I absolutely couldn’t bear it. “Don’t tell me.” Sonofabitch Axbrewder in full cry. “Reston Cole refused to see you, and you let him get away with it.”

  Her control scared me. It was too tight. When she broke, the explosion was going to do something terrible.

  Carefully she unclosed her hand from the wheel and stared at the stress lines on her palm and fingers. “Reston Cole,” she said, “is on vacation. He left two days ago. His secretary says he’s gone skiing in Canada. Won’t be back for two weeks.

  “She didn’t have any reason to lie to me. She sounded too cheerful and helpful about it. And too many other people heard her.”

  Oh, well. Scratch one perfectly decent source of information. It all seemed a little too convenient, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  “What about the cops?” I asked. “Have they got anything on irresistible Reg?”

  “Not even a parking ticket.” She snorted bitterly. “It’s Monday. They didn’t feel much like working. I had to sit around for an hour and a half. But they finally called back. He’s cleaner than we are.”

  That wasn’t saying much. Most of the cons in the state pen are cleaner than I am. But I had to admit that we weren’t getting anywhere.

  I didn’t say anything. It was my turn to talk, but I didn’t volunteer. I needed Ginny to ask. To do something that would indicate some kind of decision.

  Nobody ever said she was stupid. After a minute she finally looked at me. I couldn’t read her face or her voice, but she gave me what I wanted.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll go along. At least for a while. What did you get from Mrs. Haskell?”

  I let out a private sigh of relief. Then I told her all about my conversation with Sara Haskell.

  I’m good at things like that. When I was done. Ginny had the whole thing almost word for word.

  While I talked, she went back to staring out the windshield. Her eyes matched the dusk. Before I finished, she began tapping her fingers on the wheel. A light touch without any rhythm—just thinking. I was so relieved that I almost kissed her.

  To be honest, I was also relieved because she was thinking too hard to ask me how I’d spent the rest of the afternoon.

  “I wonder what changed him,” she murmured finally. The cold outside leaked into the Olds, but she didn’t seem to notice. “How does a boring accountant turn into a lady-killer?”

  “Success?” I suggested. Her mind was somewhere else, but
I didn’t care. “This is America. Success is supposed to be magic.”

  She shook her head. “Risk.” For a second I thought she was answering me. Then she went on, “There’s no way to make that kind of money that fast without risk. A lot of it.”

  “Not to mention breaking the law,” I muttered. I’ve never understood how people make money legally.

  “Brew,” she said slowly, “can you think of any kind of investment in the whole world that makes you rich over the weekend?”

  That little improbability had occurred to me, but her manner made me realize that it hadn’t occurred to me hard enough. For something to say, I said, “I bet Smithsonian knows exactly what kind of investments those were.”

  “Fat-ass,” she growled automatically. But she was thinking something else. “Or maybe,” she said, “he’s been lying to his wife all along.”

  Lying to her for five years now. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” I drawled. “What do you suppose the truth is like, if it’s bad enough to make him tell his own wife lies a brick wall would have trouble believing?”

  She snorted again. “It makes me wonder about his opinion of her.”

  There was an obvious point to be made about all this. So maybe Reg Haskell had been lying to his wife. So maybe he thought she had all the brains of a boiled artichoke. And maybe he was even screwing around with every woman in San Reno County. So what? None of that proved he wasn’t in real danger.

  If he was in danger, we had to protect him.

  It was an obvious point, so I didn’t make it. I didn’t want Ginny thinking about el Señor and ritual hits again—and about dropping the case. Instead I pointed at the door of the ice cream parlor. “Let’s ask him. Here he comes.”

  It was four thirty on the dot, and Haskell strode out of the bank like he didn’t have an enemy or a worry within a hundred miles.

  As we left the Olds, Ginny muttered, “You ask him. I’m already too mad to be civil about it.”

  Haskell waved and moved toward us, carrying his briefcase. He wore an elegant camel’s hair coat, the kind that makes you think the man inside it has all the money in the world. Which reminded me for some reason that he hadn’t sounded particularly rich when Ginny told him what she charged. Cash poor? I had no way of knowing. But he sure as hell wasn’t cold, not in that coat. The night’s chill had started to poke at me through my clothes, but he obviously didn’t have that problem.