In Desperation

by Rick Mofina

  “Yes.”

  “Are you in any way responsible for her kidnapping?”

  Cora hesitated for one moment, then another.

  “Are you in any way responsible for her kidnapping?”

  A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “I feel that I am.”

  “Answer yes or no, please.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Krendler made notations on the graph paper with his fountain pen.

  “We’ll move on. Prior to your daughter’s kidnapping, were you aware of Lyle Galviera’s involvement in any illegal activity?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know he associated with people involved in criminal activity?”

  “No.”

  “Do you presently know the whereabouts of Lyle Galviera?”

  “No.”

  “Since the kidnapping, have you had any contact with Lyle Galviera?”

  “No.”

  “Do you presently know the whereabouts of your daughter?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who is responsible for your daughter’s kidnapping?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever used illegal drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you currently using illegal drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know Octavio Sergio Salazar?”

  “No. Wait, yes. No. I mean I know that name from the news reports on the men murdered-”

  “Answer yes or no, please. Do you know Octavio Sergio Salazar?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know John Walker Johnson?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know Ruiz Limon-Rocha?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know Alfredo Hector Tecaza?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know of Carlos Manolo Sanchez, or anyone using that alias?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever reside in San Francisco, California?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you residing in San Francisco in 1991?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you using illegal drugs at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you commit any criminal acts at that time?”

  Cora’s chin crumpled.

  “Did you commit any criminal acts at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you ever arrested for your crimes?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know Donald Montradori?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know a man named Donnie Cargo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you associate with Donnie Cargo in San Francisco?”

  Cora hesitated and started breathing a little deeper.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you and Donnie Cargo associate with a man named Vic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you associate with Eduardo Zartosa?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever know a person named Eduardo Zartosa?”

  “No. I don’t know who that is.”

  “Yes or no, please.”

  “No.”

  “Were you, Vic and Donnie Cargo ever in the vicinity of Haight-Ashbury in 1991?” Cora hesitated.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you in the vicinity of Belvedere and Waller?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Was a fourth person present?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was a gun present?”

  “Yes.”

  Tears rolled down her face. It was raining so hard that night…

  …Donnie wheels the car hard…there’s a shadow standing under the building’s overhang…taking shelter from the rain… She’s with Donnie and Vic. Vic’s angry. Crazy mother is dealing on my territory… Donnie and Vic leap out…don’t leave me alone…she’s so wired…wired to heaven she floats from the car…floating…everything turns blue…shouting…arguing…she’s there…no, she’s not anywhere… Vic’s shouting, swearing… What’s happening…a gun…the muzzle flashes fire in the night… CRACK…groaning…

  “Was someone shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you present when someone was shot?”

  …screams…now there’s a hot gun in her hand and someone’s squirming on the ground… Donnie…Vic, what’s happening…she’s holding the gun…why…why is the gun in her hand…did she fire the gun…the car is leaving… Donnie and Vic are leaving…leaving her behind… DONNIEEE… VIC…

  “Were you present when someone was shot?”

  …everything is blue…confusing in the rain…who’ll stop the rain…trouble on the rise…a hand seizes her ankle…a voice gurgling…begging…pulling her down to her knees…to see that he’s young like her…scared like her…eyes blazing…help me…he squeezes…God help!!… por favor…touching him…warm blood on her hands…so much blood…help me…he’s been shot…somebody help…the rain glistening on his face…he’s young like her…begging in Spanish…por favor…por favor…he’s praying in Spanish…he’s dying…I’m sorry…por favor…she supports his head…I’m so sorry…holds his hand…sirens approaching…por favor…sirens getting louder…she’s alone with him…with the gun…blood on her hands…sirens…I’m sorry…they’re coming…por favor…he’s calling his mother…he’s dying…she has to go…por favor… I’m sorry…she has to run…but she can’t leave him to die like this…I’m so sorry…she removes her necklace…a crucifix…he receives it…crushes it hard in his hand…blood to blood…I’m so sorry…blood on her hands she runs away…por favor…his pleas echo…follow her, haunt her in the rain…rip into her…por favor…she throws the gun into the trash and runs…God please forgive me…and runs…leaving him to die…alone in the rain clutching the crucifix her mother and father gave her for her fourteenth birthday at the kitchen table in their home in Buffalo…she ached for home…sirens are screaming…she is screaming…and running…running for her life…

  Krendler is asking her…

  “Was someone shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you present when someone was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you shoot someone?”

  The needles of the polygraph swayed wildly as if scratching in desperation.

  “Did you shoot anyone?”

  She turned in her chair. Her eyes filled with pain, she found her brother.

  “Cora, please face me and answer the question,” Krendler said. “Did you shoot anyone?”

  Cora did not turn back. She met the stares of Hackett, Pruitt and the other investigators.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

  Krendler disconnected Cora from the machine. Then, against Baker-Brown’s advice, she began recounting all she could of that rainy night.

  “I was so stoned. I nearly died later when Vic told me that I shot the guy, that I took the gun from them and shot him. I don’t remember doing that. I really don’t think I did that. I was so wired. Donnie disappeared. I never saw Donnie again. But Vic told me I did it.” Cora sobbed. “Maybe I did. Vic said that the kid was connected to very bad drug people who would come after me, come after my family in Buffalo. So I could never go home again. Never contact my family. Vic said he would watch over me, that what happened would be our secret, that I had to hide and never breathe a word to anyone. I was terrified. He sent me to New York, then Miami. Then I went to L.A., where he had set things up.”

  Cora was anguished by what she’d done.

  “I never should have left him to die alone. After the shooting I wondered about him. Who was the young man who died on the street in the rain? Did he have a family? I was going to check the San Francisco papers to see what they’d reported, but I didn’t. It was too painful. I didn’t want to know. I never knew anything about him.”

  While Cora was running, she had no one to turn to. Vic had sent her money, which she used for drugs. She was so messed up and so scared. She ached to go home but thought she would be f
ollowed and killed, along with her family. Vic had control over much of her life because he knew about that night in San Francisco.

  Cora looked to her brother for understanding but his face betrayed nothing.

  “For ten years I drifted,” she said, “scraping along the bottom, believing I had taken a life and wasted my own. Then I was given a miracle. I had Tilly. She was my salvation, my chance to start over. I pulled myself together for her.”

  Still, for some twenty years Cora had been tormented by guilt. Struggling to build a good life, she never told a soul about her past.

  “I know I was wrong not to tell you when you were trying to help me find Tilly. I kept this one secret to protect Tilly, to keep anyone, especially cartels, from knowing my connection to the San Francisco murder because that would guarantee her death. If no one knows, then there’s hope they might let her go.

  “I swear to you that I am not involved in Tilly’s kidnapping. I’ve worked hard at making a good life for her. I know nothing about what Lyle was up to. Nothing. Yes, I did dream that maybe I could have a better life with him, for Tilly, but that dream died the night she was kidnapped. Over the years, I read legal stuff about murder, about participating in crimes that result in murder. Before you arrest me, I beg that if you find Tilly safe, you will let me hold her one last time.”

  A long moment of silence passed before Hackett shot Pruitt a glance.

  “Cora,” Pruitt said, “Donald Montradori, the man you knew as Donnie Cargo, died a short time ago in Canada.”

  “What?”

  “Cancer. Before he died, he gave us a sworn statement about what happened that night. After seeing you pleading for your daughter on the news, he wanted to clear his conscience. All I can tell you is that he said that you did not fire the gun. After the shooting, the gun was placed in your hands. He and Vic knew that you were too high to remember anything. He said you had nothing to do with the murder and that Vic knew the truth.”

  “Is this true?” Cora asked the investigators.

  Moseley nodded.

  “Then why all this?” Cora indicated Krendler and the polygraph.

  “We had to see if your account of that night fit with Donnie’s and all the evidence.”

  “Evidence.”

  “The fingerprints you submitted for your daughter’s case matched those on the murder weapon and this.” Pruitt passed her a large color photograph of the crucifix. Her crucifix. “This was held back. Very few people knew what the victim held in his hand, or what he told paramedics before he died.”

  “He spoke before he died?”

  “He said an angel put him in God’s hands.”

  Cora covered her face with her hands.

  “Cora,” Pruitt said. “We’re not going to arrest you or charge you. Not at this time. You were present at the commission of a crime and you fled the scene, but we’ll talk to our D.A. There are plenty of complications and mitigating factors. We need to talk to other parties. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Hold on. With regards to the victim…” Hackett, who had not eased off on his suspicions entirely, folded his arms across his chest, turned to Cora and said, “The man who was murdered in San Francisco was Eduardo Zartosa, the youngest brother of Samson Zartosa, leader of the Norte Cartel. The men who have your daughter work for him.”

  All the color drained from Cora’s face.

  A soft knock sounded at the door and a man opened it. “Sorry to interrupt but the task force at the house just received a call for Cora. The caller said he was Lyle Galviera.”

  52

  Six Feathers, Arizona

  Lyle Galviera was under siege.

  A couple of boys were kicking the shit out of the soda machine outside his room at the Sleep City Motel because it had swallowed their money without giving up a drink.

  Galviera had been striving to find a way out of his situation with the cartel but the assault outside on the machine was interfering. “Come on, you stupid freaking-” The earsplitting racket, the vibrating floor, as if forces were coming for him.

  His chest was tightening; he couldn’t think.

  Since the kidnapping, his face had appeared in the news next to Tilly’s, then Salazar and Johnson’s. But he had cut his hair, had stopped shaving, wore a ball cap, dark glasses and managed to move around freely.

  For how much longer? I don’t know.

  His entire room shook.

  Christ, he wanted to go outside and slap those little assholes, but he couldn’t afford to cause a scene, to give anyone reason to remember him. He turned back to the TV to face himself on the news again, then concentrated on his work on the desk.

  He’d emptied all the contents from his wallet-not his fake wallet, but the real one that he’d kept hidden in the liner of his travel bag. The desk was layered with credit cards, membership cards, cash, business cards, worn tattered bits of paper with notes scrawled on them.

  Where is it? It has to be here.

  He inspected each item, looking for an elusive scrap of information he had seen before. He’d placed a mental flag on it. He reexamined each business card, searching for the one possibility, the tiny thread that could lead him out of this.

  His attempt back at Apache Junction to contact the cartel by trying Salazar’s secret number, using the phone he’d stolen in the restaurant, had failed.

  The line just rang and rang.

  He’d gotten nervous and given up. He’d left Apache Junction and driven aimlessly, trying to find a way out, until exhaustion stopped him here.

  He wasn’t sure where here was but it seemed fitting for the hell he was in. The room smelled bad, there were cigarette butts in the corner of the bathroom floor, the ceiling was scuffed and the sheets were frayed.

  Is this it?

  It was a card Johnson or Salazar had given him long ago for their hotel, one he’d overlooked because it had been compressed against another card. He turned it over to a faded notation. A telephone number and next to it Thirty, penned in ink and crossed out.

  Was this his link to the Norte Cartel?

  Galviera recognized the area code as Ciudad Juarez. He knew that major cartel operators used numbers for aliases. Studying the number, he came back to his dilemma. If he surrendered to police, it was over. He’d lose his business, go to jail and risk Tilly’s life.

  If he could reach the Norte Cartel, reason with them, put this all on Salazar and Johnson, give the cartel the money in exchange for Tilly, he might be able to make it work.

  What do I do?

  He returned to the all-news channel as once more it replayed the most recent development: the identities of Tilly’s kidnappers, who were known to belong to the Norte Cartel. And there was a new suspect, a young one, who’d been on a Phoenix-bound bus before eluding arrest. Then he saw Tilly’s face again.

  Oh Jesus, should I go to police or try the cartel option?

  Either way, I’m dead.

  Time was running out.

  Do something. Now.

  Galviera gathered his wallet items, locked his room and drove through town until he found a bar that looked like it would do: The Cha Cha Club. Chicken wire covered the windows. The linoleum floor was warped. A few people were inside. A sign over the bar said Cash Only. There was a jukebox playing something painful, a pool table, two TVs mounted in the far corners, and there was a pay phone in a booth with a folding privacy door.

  Galviera got change from the bartender, got into the booth, held his card up to the neon to read the number, checked with the operator, deposited coins and placed his call. The number clicked, followed by long-distance static, then it rang.

  He licked his lips. He’d expected a recording, a disconnection, a wrong number, but it rang two, three, four times, then, “Sí?”

  Galviera’s heart skipped and he focused his thoughts. This was it, his shot. He spoke in Spanish.

  “This is Lyle Galviera.”

  A long, cautious silence.

  “Who gave you this number?”<
br />
  “Salazar, before he was murdered in the desert.” Another long silence passed before Galviera broke it. “It’s very important that I speak to Thirty now.”

  “Speak.”

  “Your people are looking for me.”

  “My people are concerned about the theft of our property and are holding an asset for return of that property.”

  “I am an innocent third party in this dispute,” Galviera said. “So are the others connected to the asset. But I have a solution.”

  “And what is it?”

  “That we meet in the Phoenix area. I will return your property in exchange for the asset, undamaged. Then the matter will be closed.”

  “That is desirable. We wish to resolve the issue quickly, amicably. I assure you no damage has been done to the asset.”

  “I will give you an email address and propose the time and location.”

  “No. We will tell you the time and location, in the Phoenix area as you prefer. Your email?”

  Galviera gave him an email address from an online account he used under another name.

  “If this is a setup, the asset we’re holding will be destroyed.”

  “I assure you, this is not a setup.”

  “Good, Mr. Galviera, we’ll contact you. We’ll finish this within the next forty-eight hours.”

  The call ended.

  Did that happen?

  Adrenaline pumped through Galviera, blood drummed in his ears. He sat at the bar, ordered a Coke and took a few minutes to let his pulse level off.

  “You all right there, pal?” the bartender asked.

  “I lost my cell phone and need to buy a new one. Is there a good place around here?”

  “Six Feathers Mall, down the street. Can’t miss it.”

  The clerk at the Six Feathers Mall cell phone store fixed him up quickly with a top-notch, good-to-go, prepaid plan for a phone. Galviera paid cash for it and felt relatively safe with a new phone under an alias. He knew that you did not have to be making a cell phone call for the location of the caller to be tracked; something about triangulating the roaming signals. So to be safe while driving to Phoenix, he shut it off and removed the battery when he wasn’t using it, to ensure he did not accidentally switch it on.

  When Galviera got to the outskirts of the city, he went to JBD Mini-Storage and found the self-storage unit he’d rented. He collected the nylon gym bags containing the $1.1 million in cash. Then he drove across the metro area to another self-storage outlet and collected more bags until he had a total of $2.5 million in brick-sized bundles of unmarked tens and twenties.