The Girl at the Deep End of the Lake Page 12

  Mendoza gestured to the man in shirtsleeves, “This is Commander Davis, our watch commander.” Indicating the other two, “This is Agent Cummings and Agent Pistorius of the FBI.”

  I nodded. Tweedledee was Cummings, Tweedledum was Pistorius.

  “You were right,” Mendoza continued, “There is no missing persons on the Ambassador’s granddaughter. Commander Davis thought it best to bring the FBI in because of who the girl is.”

  “Lieutenant Mendoza has told me your story but I’d like to hear it from you,” Davis said.

  So once again I related pulling the girl from the lake, telling it up to her grandfather visiting the houseboat. Once again I omitted the reward. Didn’t see any reason to talk about it.

  “I understand you’ve lost a foot,” Agent Cummings said.

  I nodded.

  “Lose it in the service, Iraq, Afghanistan?”

  “Industrial accident,” I said. “Got it caught in an auger.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “The Lieutenant says you said you had been in the service.”

  There wasn’t anything to say to that, so I didn’t say anything.

  “You own a houseboat out on Lake Pleasant.”

  I didn’t hear a question so I didn’t say anything.

  “I want you to understand that you are in no trouble,” Cummings said, “but what is funny is that I had you run through every databank available, and until you bought the houseboat you didn’t exist. Where were you born?”

  “In a hospital right next to my mother.” I looked at Mendoza. “We done?”

  He looked at Davis and Davis nodded.

  I stood and Boyce opened the door.

  “Stay where we can find you,” Pistorius said.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Of course not,” Mendoza said.

  “Then I’ll be where the hell I want to be.”

  29

  “Do you still get the headaches?” Blackhawk asked.

  We were in Blackhawk’s office. I was lying on his couch with an arm across my eyes.

  “Not as much,” I said.

  “What you need is a woman,” Elena said. She was across the room on a straight back chair with one foot hiked up on the seat of the chair opposite. She was applying a very bright shade of red to her toenails.

  “You available?”

  She snorted. “Am I available?”

  She looked at Blackhawk, “Am I available?”

  “Free as a breeze.”

  “There you are. When do you want to get married?”

  I laughed, sitting up. “Now that’s a whirlwind romance.”

  “I can’t get this lug to marry me,” she said switching feet, “might as well be you.”

  Blackhawk stood, “All right. Let’s go get married.”

  She looked up, startled. “What?”

  “You want to get married, let’s go get married.”

  “When? Right now?”

  “When better. Yeah, right now. We’ll go downtown and get married.”

  “Well, uh, what about my family? I can’t get married without my mother and my sisters. I don’t even have a dress.”

  Blackhawk laughed. He looked at me as if to say- See! He laughed harder.

  “You bastard,” she spit at him. “You make fun of me!” She turned back to her toes. “Now I don’t marry you at all.”

  “What about your friend Anita?” Blackhawk asked, sitting down.

  She looked at him. “You want to marry Anita?”

  He laughed again. “No, for Jackson. Fix him up with Anita.”

  “Hey, hey, don’t do me any favors. I like my life the way it is.”

  Elena was looking at me with that light in her eyes.

  “Yes, Anita. Anita would be perfect for you, Jackson. I will bring her over to introduce to you.”

  “No, don’t do that,” I groaned. “Please, I beg of you.”

  “You would love her,” she continued as if I hadn’t said a thing. “She is very sweet. Very kind. Everyone says she has a great personality and beautiful eyes.”

  “And fat,” Blackhawk said.

  “You shut up,” Elena said. “She is not fat. Maybe just a little plump, but cute. Not some skinny, bony Anglo girl.”

  “Lots to love,” Blackhawk grinned at me.

  “Where’s Nacho?” I asked, to change the subject.

  “You are a coward like your friend here,” Elena said, stretching a foot out and admiring her toes. “Anita deserves better.”

  “His day off,” Blackhawk said, ignoring her.

  I stretched my legs out, then I took the prosthetic off and began to rub my stump.

  “Does that hurt?” Elena asked watching me.

  “Mystery pains,” I said.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Sometimes I feel like my toes are cramping.”

  “You don’t have toes,” she said.

  Blackhawk shook his head, lowering his head to hide his smile

  She was looking at me very sincerely.

  “I know,” I said. “But sometimes it feels like I do. That’s why I call it a mystery pain.”

  She studied me a while, then said to Blackhawk, “Sometimes I think your friend is a little weird.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Blackhawk said.

  “What does Nacho do on his days off?” I asked.

  “I never thought of that,” Elena said. “What does he do, go to chicken fights?”

  “I thought he was more of a ballet or Museum of Modern Art kind of guy,” I said.

  “Yeah, the ballet,” Blackhawk said. “That’s why he keeps a tutu behind the bar. In case he has a sudden overwhelming urge to whip out an allegro.”

  “Or an arabesque.”

  “You two are so full of shit,” Elena said, stretching her other foot out for inspection.

  Blackhawk looked at me. “I think he just chills out. Watches Telemundo and drinks beer.”

  “That ain’t all bad,” I said.

  “You watch Telemundo?” he asked.

  “You know I don’t have a TV.”

  Elena looked at me, shocked, “You don’t have a television?”

  I shook my head.

  She looked at Blackhawk, “He doesn’t have a television?”

  Blackhawk shrugged.

  She looked back at me in amazement, “Man, you are weird. Everybody has a television.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  She cocked her head, her eyes narrowing, “You funning me?”

  “I’ve been on his boat,” Blackhawk said. “He doesn’t have one.”

  “You must be rich, live on a boat,” she said, not able to stay with the television discussion.

  I laughed. “Just the opposite,” I said. “I live on a boat because I can’t afford a house.”

  “Weird,” she said, shaking her head, going back to her toes.

  The door opened and Nacho came in.

  “Hey Nacho,” I said. “What do you do on your day off?”

  “Hey, guess what?” he said.

  “What?” Blackhawk asked.

  “I think I found that fucker.”

  “Which fucker?”

  “That Roland fucker!”

  30

  “So where is he?”

  Nacho moved across the room and poured himself a drink from the bar. He drank it down and poured another.

  “You shouldn’t drink so early,” Elena said, still admiring both feet stretched out in front of her.

  Holding the glass, Nacho pointed at her with his index finger. “That’s the reason I’m not married,” he said.

  Not even looking at him, Elena said, “You’re not married because you are so ugly.”

  “Don’t start that married stuff again,” Blackhawk said. “So where is he?”

  “You remember Benny Yoon?” Nacho asked.

  Blackhawk nodded.

  “Did time with Benny Yoon,” Nacho said to me. “He didn’t learn the less
on. He’s still out there using and abusing, so I went looking and sure enough found him down at that Margaret Hance Park, off of Central. I came walking up and that little band of stringers he had all got up and took off. He recognized me so he knew better than to take off. I asked him about Roland, showed him the picture but he didn’t have to look at it. He knew Roland. At first he said he hadn’t seen him so I asked him with a little more -.” He looked at Blackhawk.

  “Emphasis,” Blackhawk said.

  “Yeah, emphasis. That helped him to remember.”

  “What did he remember?” Blackhawk asked.

  “He remembered that the same dude Benny got his stuff from was tight with Roland.”

  “A Playboy Diablo?”

  He shrugged, “He didn’t know. Thought so, but wasn’t sure.”

  “What’s the dude’s name?” I asked.

  “Benny says Henry Cisneros.”

  “Does he hang at the warehouse?”

  Nacho shook his head, “I went by there this morning. Still got police tape up. I sat down the street for an hour and a black and white went by twice, so ain’t nobody using the warehouse.”

  “You know where we find Cisneros?”

  Nacho finished his drink, “No, but Benny Yoon knows where he is. Says he doesn’t, but I know he does.”

  “So we encourage Mr. Yoon to divulge that information,” I said,

  “We do,” Blackhawk said, standing.

  31

  The three of us crowded into Nacho’s car again. This time I had more than the knife. I had the Kahr .45 in a hip holster and the .380 Ruger LCP in my back pocket. Both had the nasty little rounds in them that are sold under the description of home protection. Soft hollow point rounds that exploded into flesh and thoroughly wreck everything in its path.

  Nacho drove us across Baseline to Central, then north. We parked behind the Irish Cultural Center on Central and walked down into the park. It was ripe with the scent of newly mown grass. A ribbon of sidewalk disappeared into the distance. It was alive with joggers and the urban dwellers walking their little yipper dogs. Little inbred balls of fluffy fur with high-pitched yips that would drive the Dalai Lama to murder. Psychotic dogs inbred at puppy farms and sold with large price tags.

  As we passed one spandex-clad older woman with her little ball of white fluff, Nacho asked, “Know what we call those dogs back in Sonora?”

  “What?” I bit.

  “Bait,” he grinned.

  I laughed.

  “Know why old women joggers wear skin-tight spandex?” he asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Keeps their Depends in place!” He laughed out loud.

  I just shook my head.

  “You’re hilarious,” Blackhawk said.

  “You know what..,” then he stopped, staring down the pathway. “He’s not here,” he said. He looked all around.

  “You expected him to be?” Blackhawk asked.

  “Yeah, I did. Guy like him doesn’t have wheels. Sleeps in a crack house. Goes to a shelter every couple weeks to clean up, get a meal. He’s somewhere close.”

  “Any shelters around here?” I asked.

  He shook his head. He stood with his hands on his hips.

  “There,” he said nodding toward a clump of decorative bushes with a brick wall around them. A man sat on the wall.

  “That Yoon?” I asked.

  Blackhawk shook his head, “Not Yoon.”

  “It’s one of the shitbags that was hanging with him earlier,” Nacho said.

  “He know where Yoon is?” I asked.

  “Yeah, probably,” Nacho said, moving toward the man.

  The guy looked half-asleep in the sun when we walked up on him. He started when he became aware of us.

  “Hey,” he said. “You got a cigarette?”

  Nacho shook his head, “Don’t smoke. Where did Yoon go?”

  The guy tried to look dumb, which wasn’t a reach. “Who?”

  Blackhawk reached over and grabbed a handful of his long stringy hair and jerked the guy to his feet. He gave him a shove and the guy went back, tripping over the brick wall and falling into the bushes.

  “Hey!” he yelled. He didn’t try to get up. “You didn’t have to do that.” His voice had the whine of someone used to being shoved around.

  “Answer his question,” Blackhawk said softly.

  The guy stared at Blackhawk, then said, “He’s up on his corner.”

  “What’s his corner?” Blackhawk asked.

  The guy waved a hand toward the south, “He works the light rail stop.”

  Blackhawk turned and looked at me, then started back toward where we had parked. Nacho and I followed.

  “Hey, you got any spare change?” the guy called after us.

  When we got to Central, Blackhawk and I crossed the street. Nacho stayed on the west side. We could see people standing at the light rail stop. Blackhawk spotted Yoon from a block away.

  “That’s him,” he said, nodding toward a raggedy looking man with a long coat and a knit cap. He was on Nacho’s side of the street. Yoon was working the cars stopped at the light. Then when the light rail stopped and the passengers stepped off, he worked them. He was carrying a tin can to collect the money and a cardboard sign. Most of the people shouldered right past him but there was always some sucker to stop and put money in his can, usually a young woman. As we got closer I could read the sign. The childish scrawl across it declared him to be a homeless Vietnam veteran. He looked like shit, but even so he didn’t look nearly old enough to have been in Vietnam, unless he had done his tour as a five year old.

  Yoon spotted Nacho about ten steps before Nacho reached the corner. He turned and bolted across the intersection with honking cars in his wake. He ran right into our arms.

  “Hey Benny, long time no see,” Blackhawk said.

  “Shit!” Yoon said.

  The crowd discharging from the light rail streamed around us. No one made eye contact. In the downtown big city no one gets involved.

  We walked him down a side street without resistance. Blackhawk had a hand on the back of his neck like they were old buddies. There was a closed club that had outdoor seating. The chairs were stacked up against the wall. I pulled three out and Blackhawk shoved Yoon onto the one in the middle. Nacho had headed back to get his Jeep Cherokee.

  Yoon pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket. He shook one out, his hand shaking. He offered it to Blackhawk, then to me. We both shook our heads.

  He put it between his lips and lit it. His hands shook so badly he could hardly strike the match.

  “Hey, Blackhawk,” he said. “How’s it hangin’? Ain’t seen you in a coon’s age. So you still got that nightclub?” He was nervously rattling. He had a line of spittle running from a tooth to his lip. I couldn’t look at him. “Nice place. Always did like that place though it was a Mex place. What’s the name? I forgot the name.”

  “El Patron,” Blackhawk said.

  “Yeah, Patron,” he said, dragging on the cigarette like it would be his last. “Like the tequila. Always liked that place. I lived closer, I’d be in there regular.”

  “You come in there,” Blackhawk said, “I’ll have Nacho break your leg.”

  “Hey, that ain’t no way to be.”

  “Shut up,” I said. He looked at me, was about to say something, then decided to shut up.

  We sat silently until Nacho pulled to the curb. Each of us took an arm and moved Yoon to the car. Blackhawk opened the back door. Nacho said, “Get rid of the fag. You’ll stink up my car bad enough without it.”

  Yoon flipped the cigarette and Blackhawk moved him into the back seat and came in behind him. I got in the front passenger and Nacho pulled away from the curb.

  “Where we going?” Yoon asked.

  “We’re going to see Henry Cisneros.”

  Yoon’s eyes widened. “Shit, man. What you gonna do that for?”

  I took Roland’s picture out of my pocket.

  “
You know this guy?”

  He barely glanced at the photo. I pulled the Kahr from the holster and rapped him across his nose.

  “Goddamn man! What you do that for?”

  I shook the photo. This time he looked at it.

  “Yeah, like I told Nacho, I seen him around. I don’t hang with him or nothin’. He’s hooked up man, outa my league.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Roland something. Guy’s hooked up with some serious bangers. MS-13 and shit.”

  “Where we going?” Nacho asked.

  “Where we going?” I said, lifting the Kahr.

  “Whoa dog, ain’t no reason for violence,” he said pronouncing it vi-o-lence.

  “Where we going?”

  “Chill now,” he said, lifting a hand to ward me off. “He usually down off Encanto, down in the hood below the Shamrock Farms factory. They gotta house down there. Diablo’s and shit. That’s where I gotta go to get shit when I can’t find it down at the park.”

  “What street?”

  “31st Ave, but man, you gotta dump me before you get there. He see me and he’ll fuck me up.” He looked at Blackhawk. “Hey Blackhawk, you and me go back a long way. You gotta keep me out of it. That motherfucker will fuck me up, man.”

  “Shut up,” Blackhawk said.

  “He’ll fuck me up, man.”

  “Shut up,” Blackhawk said more softly.

  Yoon’s jaw clamped shut and he hunched back into the corner, his eyes flitting all over the place.

  After a while Nacho made a couple of turns and the Shamrock factory loomed on my left.

  “Where now?” Nacho asked.

  “Go on down past Encanto,” Yoon said. Now he scrunched down in the seat, so only the top of his head was above the bottom of the window.

  “Take us past it,” Blackhawk said.

  Yoon peeked up, “Go two blocks and turn right.”

  Nacho drove two more blocks and turned right. All the houses past Encanto were little block houses with carports. About every fourth one was clean and neat, but the rest had rusted cars in the knee-high weeds with old sofas and ratty chairs on the front stoop as lawn furniture. A half a block ahead there was one of the more junky ones with a half dozen young Hispanic men sitting around the front porch.