The Girl Next Door cr-3

by Brad Parks

  * * *

  The new caller was Detective Owen Smiley.

  “You said fifteen minutes,” I teased. “It’s been at least twenty-four.”

  “Yeah, well, what I got is worth waiting for.”

  “That’s not what Mrs. Smiley tells me.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, I wish. Just wait until you’re married with three kids under the age of five. Even a lady-killer like you will be striking out.”

  I didn’t bother informing him I’d struck out plenty of times already, even without kids to blame it on.

  “Anyhow,” I said. “What do you have for me?”

  “Good news. We get a grant that gives us a certain amount of reward money each year. The chief tells me we’re well under budget so far, and if we don’t use it, we lose it. So he authorized ten large.”

  Ten grand was a nice chunk of change for that family-for any family. I thought about the sparseness of the furnishings, the folding chairs, and the disco-era couch. Ten thousand dollars would make them feel like they had hit the lottery. Maybe they could even buy a lawn mower for all that grass in front of their house.

  “I’ll have to send your chief a thank-you note,” I said.

  “You’ll have to do more than that. If we take a statement from these people, we’ll have to shift Nancy Marino to a homicide in our UCR numbers. We don’t get many of those in lovely Bloomfield, so each one makes a big difference in our annual clearance rate. If I don’t close this one, it’ll mess with our numbers.”

  “You’ll close. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay, okay. Now, the deal with the reward is the information has to lead to an arrest and conviction. That’s how it works. You be sure to tell these people that.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “And I know they don’t want the cops around. But I just might be in the neighborhood should they find ten thousand reasons to have a change of heart. So give me a call if that happens. I want my chief to know he’s not wasting his money.”

  Tommy’s car rolled slowly past me and parked two houses down. The final piece of my team was now in place.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Let me go work my magic.”

  Except, of course, it wasn’t really my magic I was counting on. I knew it was Tee and Tommy who were going to save this part of the day, if in fact it could be saved.

  Tommy was walking up the sidewalk as Tee and I got out of our cars. We congregated in front of the house, and I did the proper introductions. The three of us were, to say the least, ill-matched. There was Tommy, the wispy, nattily dressed Cuban who accessorized his tight-cut shirt and pants with the latest Dolce amp; Gabbana sunglasses; Tee, the muscle-bound black guy, wearing winter camouflage pants, a black sleeveless shirt that showed off his biceps, and a matching black skullcap, from which his braids sprouted; and me, the tall, well-scrubbed white boy wearing a charcoal gray suit along with the world’s most boring shirt and tie combination.

  The Alfaros wouldn’t know what hit them.

  “So here’s the deal,” I continued. “The Bloomfield Police have authorized a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the hit-and-run death of Nancy Marino. We need to convince them it’s in their best interest to do what is required to claim this reward.”

  “All right. Ten grand. I can work with that,” Tee said, then pointed at me. “Your job is to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Agreed,” Tommy said. “Let’s do it.”

  We walked up the driveway, three men intent on their mission, ascending the concrete steps with Tommy in the lead. As we were knocking on the door, our attention turned toward the house, we didn’t notice that Felix Alfaro had walked up behind us.

  “Hello,” he said.

  We turned to see Mr. Alfaro, wearing a T-shirt that said TICO’S PAINTING in a script meant to look like brush strokes. Underneath, in a plainer font, it said, RESIDENTIAL/COMMERCIAL and INTERIORS/EXTERIORS. The entire T-shirt was flecked with paint splatters, and Mr. Alfaro, while smiling at us, looked properly spent from a long day of work. It was around three o’clock. At Tico’s Painting, they probably started at six and quit at two, to spare themselves working during the hottest part of the day.

  “Buenos dias,” Tee said. “My name’s Tee.”

  “Buenas tardes,” Mr. Alfaro replied.

  Tee turned to Tommy. “Tell him we just here to talk a little bit about what his missus saw.”

  Mr. Alfaro nodded like he understood, but Tommy said the appropriate words in Spanish anyway. Mr. Alfaro said, “Okay.”

  Tee began addressing Mr. Alfaro directly: “Look, I’m going to break it down for you real straight. You and me, we ain’t got a lot in common, right?”

  Tommy began translating. Tee waited until he stopped, then went on: “But we got one thing we definitely got in common, and that’s that we don’t trust the cops, right? What cops do to my people, I don’t even want to get started. And what cops do to your people ain’t too cool neither, you know what I’m saying?”

  Another pause for Tommy to catch up.

  “Now, I know he look like a cop”-Tee pointed at me-“and I know he look like he might be a cop”-Tee gestured to Tommy-“but I ain’t no cop, you feel me?”

  Mr. Alfaro waited for Tommy, then bobbed his head up and down. “Yeah,” he said, grinning. “You no a cop.”

  “All right. And I’m telling you they ain’t cops, either,” Tee said. “They newspaper reporters.”

  Mr. Alfaro appeared to be growing befuddled about where this was all going. But Tee plowed on.

  “So-and here’s where I’m just laying it on the line for you-I want you to know that we don’t care if you got any problems with your green card or nothing, you know what I’m saying? We ain’t here about that, and we ain’t going to let no one near you who cares about that. We’ll protect you and your family. You got my word on that. And this brother’s word is solid.”

  Tee pounded his big, meaty chest when he said “solid.” I’m not sure how precisely Tommy was able to put all of what Tee had said into Spanish-a lot of it seemed fairly idiomatic-but Mr. Alfaro was again smiling.

  “I show you something,” Mr. Alfaro said, reaching into his back pocket, pulling out a well-worn wallet and producing a small, white piece of paper.

  It was a perfectly legitimate Social Security card.

  * * *

  Over the next few minutes, we fell over ourselves to offer apologies for the misunderstanding, and Mr. Alfaro graciously accepted them. Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder, If he and his wife were here legally, why were they so leery of the police? Why hide from them? Why talk to me with the insistence of “no police”?

  Mr. Alfaro had been on the landing of his front steps the entire time we had been talking, and he finally walked up them toward his front door.

  “Give me minute,” he said.

  As he disappeared behind the front door, we looked at each other sheepishly.

  Tee turned to Tommy. “I know why he’s ignorant,” Tee said, jabbing a thumb in my direction. “What’s your excuse?”

  Tommy was about to return fire when the door reopened and we were invited into the Alfaros’ threadbare living room. The shades were drawn, as usual, but I now recognized that not as an attempt to hide from the world but as an effort to keep the house cool. There was no air-conditioning.

  The children were on the floor, contentedly playing-the little boy with a train, the girl with a doll of some sort. They looked up at us with big, dark eyes, regarded us for a moment or two, then returned to their toys. Mrs. Alfaro was taking a basket of laundry upstairs and said something involving “momento.” My keen language skills told me that meant she would be a moment.

  She came back downstairs and went into the kitchen to do the whole coffee thing again, I thought. But no, she returned to the living room and we all sat-Mr. and Mrs. Alfaro in folding seats, Tommy and I in mismatched chairs that had been dragged in from the dining room, and Tee on the disco
couch. Mrs. Alfaro had a folded-up Spanish-language newspaper, which she occasionally used to fan herself.

  Without being prompted, Mr. Alfaro launched into the backstory of their immigration status, which Tommy patiently translated. During the El Salvadoran Civil War, when his family was booted from its coffee plantation, he was still just a boy, but he realized his future was no longer in El Salvador. When he was old enough, he applied for political asylum in the United States, but that application had been rejected, for reasons he either didn’t accept or didn’t understand. So he applied for a green card. He waited nine years for his name to finally rise to the top of a waiting list. His wife was able to come over three years after that. And they held off on starting a family until they were in the United States, so their children could be born here as full-fledged citizens.

  “He says he could have come here years earlier, but he wanted to do it the right way,” Tommy said.

  They still sent money back to El Salvador. They spoke of their family there as if they still lived in poverty. And I couldn’t help but think, And you’re living in the lap of luxury? But I suppose it’s all relative.

  After enough of the get-to-know-you stuff, I caught Tommy’s eye and gave him a small “let’s get on with it” hand gesture.

  “Mr. Alfaro, I’m sorry, I just have to ask, why do you have these feelings against the police?” I asked.

  Tommy translated the question, and Mr. Alfaro looked directly at me for the first time since we darkened his doorstep.

  “Do you know of the Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista?” he asked.

  I shook my head. He glanced over at his children, to confirm they weren’t listening, then turned to Tommy and began speaking in a low, rapid voice.

  “They were the national police of El Salvador,” Tommy translated. “They were … brutal thugs … like terrorists … They roamed around the countryside with their death squads … They had a network of informants … All it took was one accusation to ruin someone’s life … One night they … a death squad … came for my grandfather … He was accused of being a Marxist sympathizer … He insisted he was no such thing-he was just a coffee grower who wanted to live in peace … They killed him and mutilated his body … And they made my father watch the whole thing.”

  It was difficult to know what to say. Part of me wanted to proclaim that he was in the United States now and things were different here. Except that, in all likelihood, those death squads had probably been either financed or trained by Uncle Sam. We did a lot of shady stuff back in the seventies and eighties in the name of propping up democracy in Central America. I’m sure it felt necessary at the time-we couldn’t allow the Communist menace to get a foothold in our backyard-but it was hard to imagine how the senseless death of a coffee farmer had aided that cause.

  “I was two years old,” Mr. Alfaro said. “I don’t know him, my grandfather.”

  “Mr. Alfaro, I’m very sorry,” I said, and I tried to slow my speech just enough to give him some help following it but not enough to be the dumb American who talks loud and slow to be understood. “Our police here aren’t perfect. They make mistakes like everyone else. But they are, by and large, very good people who try their best to uphold the law. You can trust them.”

  Mr. Alfaro swiveled his head toward his wife, then back at me. Finally, Tee-who had been squirming on the disco couch for a while now-lost his patience.

  “Man, I’m getting bored,” he burst out. “Did you tell him about the ten grand? Just tell him about the ten grand. Never mind, I’ll do it.”

  Tee scooted himself forward on the couch and began using large gestures as he spoke.

  “If your wife here talks to the police about what she saw and they end up sending the dude that did it to jail? The cops will give you ten grand. That’s ten thousand dollars. Mucho dinero. You feel me?”

  I think Mr. Alfaro followed what Tee was saying. But, just in case, Tommy talked him through it in Spanish. The Alfaros conversed briefly-actually, it seemed like Mr. Alfaro was doing most of the talking and Mrs. Alfaro, in between waves of her newspaper, was doing the agreeing. At the end, they were both smiling nervously, and Mr. Alfaro delivered a small monologue to Tommy.

  At the conclusion of it, Tommy said, “Mr. Alfaro wants you to know he’s not doing this for the reward money. He’s doing it so his children can see that things are different here. He says they’re American citizens, and they need to learn to trust their government.”

  “So they’re going to cooperate?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” Tommy said. “They’re going to cooperate.”

  * * *

  I summoned Detective Owen Smiley from his hiding spot, and he arrived ten minutes later, with another officer there to translate for him. Mrs. Alfaro made some coffee, and my little trio stuck around long enough to make sure the ice was broken and everyone was getting along okay.

  Then, when it was time to get down to business, Owen announced, “Okay, the reporters go bye-bye now.”

  I protested briefly-after all, I wasn’t even technically a reporter anymore-but the fact was I had places to go, people to meet, and perhaps leftover potato salad to eat.

  Tommy, Tee, and I spilled out onto the sidewalk. The day had gone from hot to hotter, and the humidity reminded me of the inside of a dog’s mouth. I looked to the sky, which had a few puffy clouds that might form into something like a heat-breaking storm. But for now the forecast called for a ninety percent chance of shvitzing, with a strong possibility for continued swampiness.

  “Thanks for the help, guys,” I said.

  “You needed it,” Tee replied. “See you around.”

  “They say the neon lights are bright on Brooaaadwaaaaay,” Tommy crooned, dreadfully off-key as usual.

  “Yeah, I’ll pay up,” I said, cringing. “Your singing is an embarrassment to gay men everywhere.”

  “Yeah, well, that suit is an embarrassment, period,” Tommy shot back. “When did you buy it? Nineteen eighty-four?”

  “Yeah, wanna see the skinny leather tie I got with it?” I said, then switched gears. “Tommy, seriously, thank you. I know you’re risking a lot to be here, and I appreciate it. You’re a good friend and I’m lucky to have you.”

  “Cut it out. I’m the one who’s supposed to get overemotional, remember? Just watch your back until the arrests go down, okay?”

  “You sound like Tina.”

  The skin around his eyes crinkled and he said, “Yeah, maybe there’s a reason for that.”

  Before I could ask what he meant, he was gone, back to the comfort of air-conditioning, which is where I soon returned myself.

  I still had a half hour before meeting with the Marino sisters, just enough time to return home and check on my wounded cat. In an unusual show of initiative, Deadline had managed to remove himself from the bathroom and trek all the way into the living room, where he had taken up residence on a windowsill. Only my cat would feel the need to bathe in sunlight on the hottest day of the year, thus sparing his body having to expend any energy to heat itself.

  “No, that’s okay, don’t get up,” I said as I entered. When I saw he had heeded my command perfectly, I added, “Good cat.”

  Then I went upstairs to change. I had spent enough time in my monkey suit for one day. And it was just too hot to muster the enthusiasm to don my normal uniform. Slacks and a polo shirt would have to be good enough.

  Returning to my car, I noticed Constance at her usual spot, watering a lawn that was-even in the throes of a July heat wave-lush and green. Last summer I found myself rooting for water restrictions so she and her emerald island could be knocked down a few pegs. I gave her my usual I’m-going-somewhere-no-time-to-talk wave, but she stopped watering and dragged herself and her hose in my direction.

  “There was some excitement at your house last night,” Constance said, showing her usual mastery for telling me things I already knew.

  “There sure was,” I said.

  “There were ambulances.
I was so surprised. I was worried you had a fall.”

  “Oh, everything is fine, thank you,” I assured her, unaware that falling at home was a potential concern for able-bodied thirty-two-year-old men. Mostly, I was trying to formulate a polite way to extricate myself from a rehash of the “excitement.” I decided if I just laughed at whatever she said next and dove into my car, that would do the trick. My car door was already open when she said something that made me a little more eager to stop and chat:

  “There was a man looking at your house last night.”

  “A man? What do you mean?” I asked, closing the door and walking a few paces toward her.

  “Well, I wasn’t really paying attention. I was just watering my lawn”-and minding her own business, to be sure-“but I saw this man walk up your driveway, look into your backyard, then come back around front and ring your doorbell. You weren’t home.”

  “About what time was this?”

  “Well, I had just gotten back from the soup kitchen”-Constance volunteered and wanted to make sure everyone knew it-“so it was probably about six?”

  “What did the man look like?”

  “Well, I wasn’t really looking. I was watering my lawn,” she said again.

  “Well, sure, but you must have gotten some sense of him. Even if you just saw him out of the corner of your eye?”

  She put down the hose and crossed her arms, pursing her lips, as if this was all necessary to summon the proper concentration to answer the question.

  “Well, he was … thick,” she said.

  Hired killers often are.

  “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked.

  “Not that I … no, definitely not.”

  “Well, then I would say he was a little fat. I didn’t want to be unkind, in case he was a friend of yours.”

  “Tall guy? Short guy?”

  “About medium.”

  “White? Black? Hispanic?”

  “White.”

  “Old guy? Young guy?”

  “It was hard to tell. I didn’t see his face. He definitely wasn’t young. But I don’t think he was old, either.”