by Brian Ewing
Still getting his bearings together, a pissed Super Dave threw the office door open as Sisto was crossing the lobby; he’d probably been waiting all morning for the moment. Dave had a concentrated expression, no doubt rehearsing the verbal beating he saw himself delivering.
“Sisto,” Dave’s voiced echoed across the empty lobby in the early morning.
Attempting his own brisk powerwalk, Dave approached Sisto to not scream what was about to come next. “Listen, you sonofabitch! I don’t know what you’re mixed up in, but you can’t be inviting this kind of publicity to the Corden Palisades. I have a responsibility to protect the tenants here and I have been thinking about it all morning. You need to get your shit out of here by the end of the month.”
Sisto took a step back to soak in the entire scenario Super Dave had presented to him. Dave accompanied his malnourished and abused frame with an abundance of panic sweat. His jaw kept shifting left to right over and over. Sisto was lucky to catch it as Dave hadn’t remained stationary during the entire tirade, pacing back and forth like he was about to enter the ring for an underground street fight. Sisto forced back a grin, thinking about how the fight would be announced. ‘In this corner, six-foot-one, weighing in at one-hundred-thirty-five pounds, fighting previously out of Chemistry Cove, the one, the only, The Super Crackhead.’ The odd behavior was nowhere near Dave’s normal attempt to hide his strung-out actions. Sisto looked at the greying skin around Dave’s orbital region, accentuating the black pools of his dilated eyes from copious amounts of drugs. Sisto was blown away that the human rat had the nerve to approach him, knowing good and well that he and Craig had been friends and that he was aware of the tragedy on the roof the night before.
“Come again?” Sisto presented it as a question but ended it more as a taunt as frustration rose. “You want to kick me out?”
“Yes,” Dave rattled, “End of next week, the thirtieth.”
“Fuck off, Dave,” Sisto blurted out.
Super Dave looked like Sisto had just whipped his dick out in front of him, slapped some peanut butter on it, and asked Dave if he was hungry.
“You slimy little fuck.” Sisto started to unravel. “You realize my friend was murdered up on the roof last night?”
“Exactly my point,” Dave said, after picking his jaw back up from the shock of having been berated.
“What do you mean, what is your point?” Sisto countered. “You think I invite murderers over for a bite to eat, followed up by a beheading?”
Sisto continued as Dave’s face began to accumulate fresh beads of sweat and his skin tone fell another few shades if possible. “What do you expect me to tell Teri and Fred Corden when they check in next, Sisto? You think they won’t be itching to get your ass out of the building?”
“Dave, you are a frail and squeamish little drug addict. If I didn’t consider this place home, I would have gotten the building condemned long ago. You’re creepy as fuck, lingering around the corners, and I can count on one hand how many issues you have fixed in the building in six years. I have seen the odd correlation of white powder in your nostril when you claim to feel ‘sick.’ Also, don’t think I haven’t heard how you hit on the younger women in the building. You think Teri and Fred would want to hear about that? Doesn’t their twenty-something-year-old granddaughter live on the seventh floor?”
Super Dave Carlsen was stunned, not having any legs to stand on and not knowing how the perception of the conversation that played out in his head a half hour before could have gotten so sidetracked.
Sisto recognized he owned the conversation at that point and followed up with, “You picked the wrong day to nut up, motherfucker. This is what I am gonna do. I’m gonna go get breakfast, get some work done, and when I am finished, I am going to come back to my apartment and sleep for an absurdly unrealistic amount of time. And you, you are gonna leave me the fuck alone. For good. Understand?”
Super Dave’s only reply was a swallow of pride, turning around as the balls he thought were so huge mere moments ago had been deflated with a few realities he could not refute.
“And, I have a broken window in my apartment from the perpetrator last night that I want fixed by the time I get back, Dave.”
Sisto walked out of the building feeling somewhat chipper, all considered, and made it to the bus stop just in time.
Sisto was confused as he first got to IHOP, forgetting that the rest of the normal world made a thing of going out to breakfast on a Sunday morning. Not being religious, he did remember having a family on his block growing up that was always up early on Sundays in their dress clothes, either on their way to church or just coming back from it, depending on what time Sisto had seen them. A lot of the time the Harris family, who lived across the street, had containers of food they marched in from a variety of post-absolution breakfasts around town. Sisto and Eddie would be playing football in the front yard or basketball in the driveway and see what looked to be a bus of family members exiting the Econoline van. Sisto vividly remembered the family because every one of those smug assholes had a cheery face filled with faith only on the blessed day. If you caught Brittany Harris on a Tuesday in the hallway at school, she would rather spit on you than acknowledge you. Mark Harris once tripped Sisto in the fourth grade during lunch, causing Sisto to allow his French bread pizza and chocolate milk go flying in front of him. Sisto couldn’t tell which kid had even tripped him, but Eddie saw it clear as day and punched Mark square in the nose. That could have been one of the reasons Mr. Harris stopped coming to have beers with his dad some evenings, now that Sisto thought about it.
Once, Sisto had gone door to door to offer his services to mow yards for extra money and had quite the experience with Mrs. Harris, the lady of the family, if you could call her such. She looked at him dead-eyed and said if she wanted to watch poor people do her yard work she would hire a Mexican as they were at least proficient in their work. The old swamp-donkey could spit fiery racism at you on Saturday and have the audacity to cross herself and say a Hail Mary on Sunday. At the young age of eleven, Sisto learned via hard knocks that good is good, and bad is bad. Going to church didn’t make you a good person. You could be a fucking cunt like Mrs. Harris and still go to church. The other side of the coin all the years later, you could be an agnostic wanderer with no friends that has psychic visions and had to be a good person because that’s what Sam and Marilyn Sisto had embedded in him throughout his upbringing. Sisto knew it was easier to be a scumbag but that wasn’t an option for him. He hated people for the most part, in all reality. His father always told him that you don’t do good things to be rewarded, you do them because it’s the right thing to do.
It was barely seven-thirty and there was a line of people already on the list to be seated. Sisto figured that since Ama wasn’t going to meet up with him until nine, he would sit on the cold, epoxy-coated bench and do some research on his phone while taking in the fresh morning air. He knew at the current point in the morning, Ama was trying to clean up the image of the plate from Carson Vinnova’s getaway vehicle, while Caden and Bell were going to interrogate Cameron Coleman’s ex who lived in Balmport, a good two hours southeast of Saratoga City. Sisto realized he would need to take note of things and writing it out would be easier to organize, but he wasn’t a dork like Bell, carrying around a notepad. He got up and told the old man who looked half asleep next to him, to save his spot a moment. Sisto walked in past the families plastered against the walls, waiting for their names to be called so they could gorge themselves, and approached the hostess stand. Busy as it was, no hostess was manning the station, and Sisto poked his head around to find a kid menu and some crayons. He would make do with that. He turned to walk back outside to reclaim his seat next to the old man that looked like an extra from The Walking Dead.
Feeling good about his choice to write things down, he started a map in red crayon across the paper with names. First was Cameron Coleman, followed by Fernando Aguilar. Last in that list was Craig Allman. Sis
to frowned as he wrote out the name. Nothing Carson Vinnova did seemed random, but he also never gave off any impression that he had more than two brain cells to rub together. The partner was the one that must have orchestrated the kills and messages so that is what Sisto decided to focus on. Cameron Coleman was tied to Frank Vinnova’s group via Danny Milano. It would make sense—Carson wanting to off Coleman since he got away clean while everyone else in his father’s empire perished. Sisto also understood the symbolic reason to kill Craig. Frank was Carson’s father but also his best friend, the same way that Craig was Sisto’s best friend. Fernando Aguilar was a random chess piece, and nothing seemed to be random in the current situation Sisto was forced to follow.
Sisto opened Google and ran Fernando Aguilar’s name through the search engine. The first few links were social media, which surprised Sisto as he remembered Bell stating that Aguilar had worked in kitchens for forty years before opening his carnicería. Aguilar had to be in his late fifties or early sixties and while there was no law against it, Sisto didn’t know a ton of older people into social media. Opening the first link, it went to a professional network connection site. Sisto then realized that most of these results were business social media pages, which did make more sense to him. The professional network site he clicked on showed a profile with a picture of a proud, older Hispanic man. Sisto saw the pride in the man’s eyes, knowing he’d busted his ass and was creating his own American dream. There had been some of his URLs linked in his profile, directing either to other social media pages or direct websites.
The second link was a website named loshermanosaguilarsaratogacity.com. Shaking his head in dismay at the extremely long domain name, Sisto clicked on the link and was directed to a clean, simple site, probably created using a template builder from one of the reputable web hosting providers. Sisto had spent a few years as a sales and support team member at a tech company, where he learned the basic troubleshooting aspects most businessmen cringed at dealing with in regard to custom website maintenance. Sisto never knew why, after template builders had been released, anyone would pay thousands of dollars to a developer to create a custom-coded site. Granted, there may have been a really cool feature that the interface of the proprietary software from the template builder couldn’t support, but if you are a plumber, you don’t need any intricate database that can cause more issues than it’s worth. Sisto only saw greed in those accounts, greed from a developer that knew his clients didn’t know any better. Sisto was happy to leave that job once he decided he would help the police departments full-time. It wasn’t like he needed to truly work anyhow, after inheriting his fortune as a result of losing his family members. Sisto liked to work, liked to have a purpose, and even though the line of work he had currently been in as of late only presented the horrors and injustices of the world, he had a duty to put The Reels to good use. ‘You don’t do good things to get rewarded, you do them because it’s the right thing to do.’
Fernando Aguilar created his site as more of a blog between him and his brothers. Sisto sifted around some of the posts, mainly recapping local events he and his family had attended. Within the website, there were links to Facebook and Instagram. Sisto clicked on the Instagram icon, directing him to a page with the handle @loshermanosaguilarsc. The page was filled with many pictures of four older Hispanic men, along with their families, most captions in both English and reiterated below in Spanish. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until Sisto scrolled down a dozen or so posts. Sisto didn’t know why or how it could mean anything to Carson Vinnova, but Sisto clicked on the image he felt in his fingertips may have been why Aguilar was chosen and read the caption.
“Hey everybody! Come join the fun today from 11am-6pm for our annual Fall Farmer’s market in Downtown Saratoga City. There will be a ton of great local tents for you to stop by and see some of the finest that your fellow Saratogians have to offer. East end of the Main Street Center is where we will be with all the other food trucks. Hope to see you there!”
What caught Sisto’s eye was not the caption, or the men in the photo, but the truck behind them. Sisto recognized that food truck very well. It was American Sammys, the food truck Sisto frequented anytime he went downtown for the Friday night events. What did it matter? Was it a second clue next to the fingerprint that Craig was going be butchered right from under Sisto’s nose? There had to be a more direct correlation than he was able to see, but the bottom line was that indirectly Fernando Aguilar was someone from Sisto’s past, confirming that all three victims served a purpose and were in no way random.
Sisto timed it perfectly as he walked inside around twenty-after-eight and put his name in for a booth. He was seated around thirty minutes later, only sitting with a coffee for fifteen minutes before Ama showed up.
“Sorry I’m late, parking was rough,” Ama said as she approached the table with her travel computer bag, strap across her chest.
Ama looked like she’d been able to get a few solid hours of sleep in, as she no longer had the inflamed, red branches of blood vessels extending from her corneas. The puffy bags from hours of being upset the night before had also subsided. The time to rest had given Ama’s subconscious time to process the situation and as she took the cross strap off her opposite shoulder, shoving the bag in the corner of her side of the booth, he noticed a swag of confidence in her motions. Using his ever-progressing detective skills, it also looked like she’d showered as her hair was almost dry but now had a clean shine about it. She smelled really good, too. Not a weird, dissociated smell that The Reels usually replaced through his cross-wiring, but floral champagne-like essence of perfume wafted across the table.
“You look well rested,” Sisto commented.
“Yeah, I got six solid hours, probably to the thanks of the double Jacks. You?”
“I was drained and slept hard for a few hours. Woke up around six-thirty and headed this way.”
“You have been here all this time?”
Sisto recapped his interaction with Super Dave, then explained he had been doing research on his phone while waiting, pointing to his notes in crayon on the child menu.
The chicken scratch caused Ama’s eyebrow to arch. “Seriously Sisto? You know your phone has a note app you can type in stuff.”
“I don’t like going back and forth between the app and what I was looking at online.”
Giving a look like inspecting a Cro-Magnon fossil, Ama accepted his quirk and continued, “We got some stuff to go over, it seems like. Did you already order?”
“Of course not. I waited for you. Just the coffee so far.” Sisto raised his mug.
Amy was getting buried with orders as the hostess, who had to be new, triple sat her with adequate-sized parties in each, leaving Sisto and Ama to wait longer than normal. It didn’t bother them; in fact, it made Sisto feel good, knowing he was taking up a table of hers, giving her time to catch up. Looking like she had been in a fight with a grizzly bear, the silver-blonde curls escaped her blue headband, dangling in her face as she sighed to catch her breath.
“I am so sorry,” Amy apologized in her sweet, Southern twang, “It’s that Sunday church crowd, ya know?”
“Amy, you take your time. We are in no rush,” Sisto comforted.
“Y’all are so sweet.” Amy relaxed. “What can I start you off with to drink, sweetie?”
“May I have a green tea and a glass of ice water?” Ama asked.
“Absolutely. Y’all take your time lookin’ at the menu and I’ll be right back with that.”
Amy disappeared to the back area by the expo line where the computer system was set up and started entering the food orders of two of the three larger groups surrounding Sisto and Ama. Sisto looked back to Ama, watching as she rifled through her bag to pull out some printed papers.
“Did you get a match on the plate?” Sisto inquired.
“Indeed I did,” Ama replied happily. “The Cadillac Escalade belongs to Michael Dyer. He lives south of here, about twenty-five minut
es.”
“I don’t know any Michael Dyer. Does he have a connection to the Vinnovas?”
“Not that I have found, as of yet. Still running his name through some databases at home.”
“Well, at least it’s something to look into,”
Sisto stated optimistically. Sisto racked his brain, repeating the name over and over, trying to jar a memory loose to no avail.
“Apparently, aside from getting speeding tickets and a domestic violence charge from over twenty years ago, Dyer seems like a nobody.”
“No one in this situation is a nobody,” Sisto answered, looking down at his notes. “So far, there have been three victims and I have had some interaction with all of them.”
Waiting for further explanation, Sisto paused as Amy dropped off Ama’s beverages and asked if they were ready to order.
“I’ll take a Jack cheese and avocado omelet with hash browns please,” Ama relayed, not even opening the menu.
Amy looked over to Sisto and he replied his normal, “Classic breakfast crepes and hash browns, please.”
Amy, pleasant as always, smiled as she took Sisto’s and Ama’s menus and walked away into her own personal chaos.
Picking up where he’d left off, Sisto explained his notes. “Obviously Craig lived in our building and was my friend. Cameron Coleman was driving the group of men that murdered my family. I didn’t know where Fernando Aguilar fit in the mix, but apparently he was the co-owner of a food truck I regularly visited.”
