Let Us Prey

by Blake Banner

  I smiled and did as she asked. As I was grinding the pepper, she said, “You do know, right, if you ever need to talk…”

  I handed her the tomatoes, and as she poured them over the meat, I said, “I’m not gay.”

  She laughed. It was a funny, infectious laugh that made me laugh too. She put her hand on my arm. “I know.”

  We stared at each other a moment, smiling.

  I said, “I’ll set the table.”

  TWELVE

  We were up at five, and Dehan performed her ritual of frying bacon and eggs and making coffee. To me, breakfast is a slice of toasted rye and a large espresso, but I was beginning to enjoy the ritual as much as she obviously did, so I wasn’t about to complain.

  By six, we were on the road, moving through a dark city that was yawning and stretching and fumbling its way to the bathroom. We took the Cross Bronx Expressway over the Alexander Hamilton and the George Washington, and then we followed the I-80 through endless suburbs, heading west and north. We didn’t say a word to each other until we had left Totowa behind us and we were driving among countryside and thick woodlands touched by the early morning sun.

  Then I eased back in my seat and said, “We need to address the elephant in the room.”

  She turned to look at me. “What?”

  “It looks as though Baxter sent us on a wild goose chase. We have absolutely no reason to believe that Tamara Gunthersen had anything to do with Stephen’s murder. Or am I wrong?”

  She grunted. After a bit, she said, “Her husband still has a Colt .38. She still probably came here to see Stephen.”

  I glanced at her. “Did she shoot Ernesto Sanchez?” She shrugged. “This walking ray of divine sunshine shot a Sureño?”

  Mindfuck was right.

  We didn’t discuss it again until we reached Attica. We left the car in the parking lot, showed our badges at the gate, and a warden showed us across the yard into one of the wings. From there, we were taken to a secure interview room with concrete walls and no windows. A fluorescent strip on the ceiling gave a dead, stark light over a table and three chairs.

  After five minutes, steel doors clanged and echoed, and Alfonso Sanchez was led in. He was seated opposite us and handcuffed to the table. He was in his thirties, but he looked older. He had a Fu Man Chu mustache and a tattooed face. He wasn’t somebody you’d want your daughter to date.

  “We’ve been looking for your brother, Ernesto.”

  He smiled. The question amused him. “You bin lookin’ for Ernesto? You found him?”

  “He went off the radar two years ago.”

  The smile faded and he shrugged. “What can I tell you, cop? I don’t know nothin’.” He gestured around him. “I’m inside. What do I know?”

  Dehan said, “You could tell us if he’s dead. Is he dead, or was he just injured?”

  He hissed through his teeth and looked away.

  She pressed him. “Come on, Alfonso. I know you. I saw you every fuckin’ day when we were growing up. You went everywhere together. You did everything together. You want me to believe you weren’t there when he got shot?”

  He was looking mad and scared at the same time. He didn’t know what we knew, and he was seeing his sentence shifting from two years to twenty for the murder of Stephen Springfellow.

  I leaned across the table and spoke softly. “Did you and Ernesto murder Steve?”

  “No! Uh-uh!” He was shaking his head.

  I ignored him and went on. “Because right now, Ernesto’s blood and an eyewitness put you both at the scene of the murder.”

  He was still shaking his head. “Uh-uh, no way. I was there, and so was my bro, but I did not kill that motherfucker.”

  “But you beat him up.”

  “Yeah, we beat him. But we did not kill him. Shit! He weren’t through talking to him…”

  He knew he’d said too much, sighed, and shut his mouth.

  Dehan gave a small laugh. “Okay, help me out here, Alfonso, because to be honest, things are not looking good for you right now. See, here’s my problem. There is you, there is Ernesto, and there is Steve. Steve is tied to the chair, and you both are beating him…”

  Alfonso was shaking his head.

  Dehan ignored him. “Then what happens, Steve suddenly slips his bonds, shoots your brother, then shoots himself, and just before he dies, he ties himself up again? Come on, level with us, or you are going down for the double homicide of Steve and your brother.”

  He sighed. “Hija de puta…”

  I growled, “Watch your tongue.”

  “We were not the only ones there.” He looked real scared for a moment and leaned forward. “You gotta understand, this had nothing to do with the Sureños. This was just me an’ Ernesto, doin’ a private job.”

  Dehan snapped, “What kind of private job?”

  “I’m comin’ to that. But you got to understand, this is nothin’ to do with the gang. Okay?”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “It was Danny Schultz. He come to me and Ernesto in Pepe’s Place. We knew him from when we were kids. He’s a fuckin’ loser. Always wheelin’ and dealin’ and always makin’ a fuckin’ loss.” He laughed and I saw he had three teeth missing. “But he comes to me an’ Ernesto an’ he says he has a job. His employer—he call him his ‘employer’—wants him to beat up some guy and find some chick. He says the pay is real good. Danny is no good for that kind of job.” He turned to Dehan like they were old pals. “You know Danny, right? Skinny little fuck. So his employer tells him to go find some real pros. So he come to us.”

  Dehan’s voice could have corroded stainless steel. “Yeah, you’re real professionals. So the guy you had to beat up was Steve?”

  “Yeah, Danny said this guy knew where the chick was.”

  “So what happened?”

  He shrugged and pulled a face. He looked confused. “The whole thing was crazy. We get to the apartment and Danny knocks on the door, like he is going to visit his fockin’ family. The guy opens the door and we go in. Danny is pushin’ him. But the fuckin’ chick is there in the apartment. So what the fuck? Now what?”

  I stopped him. “Is this the girl?”

  I showed him a photograph of Tammy.

  He nodded. “Yeah, that’s her. Cute chick.”

  Dehan said, “So what happened next?”

  “Danny starts going crazy, screaming at both of them to tell where it is.”

  I stopped him again. “Where what is?”

  He shook his head. “I dunno, man. He’s just screaming, ‘Where the fuck is it? Tell me where the fuck it is!’ But they just keep sayin’ they don’t know what he’s talkin’ about. So Danny tells me and Ernesto to tie Steve to the chair. Now Steve is getting scared, right? So he changes his tune. Now he’s sayin’ he don’t know where it is, but she does.”

  “Hang on.” It was Dehan. “Did Danny tell you at any point who his employer was?”

  Alfonso shook his head. “No, man, that was like, secret. But he made it sound like this guy had plenny money. That was not a consideration. An’ this chick, she had something that he wanted real bad. So I’m thinking now we gonna have to beat up on the girl. But Danny has a different idea. He is gonna be smart. She is like crying and begging for them not to hurt Steve. She even gets down on her knees, and she is sayin’ over and over, ‘please don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him.’ So Danny tells her he is going to beat Steve to death if she don’t tell him where it is. All she does is cry. So Danny gives Steve a backhander…” He started laughing with real mirth. “The motherfucker almost breaks his fockin’ hand. You could see the fockin’ tears in his eyes, man. So he says to me and Ernesto to beat Steve to death, and don’t stop until she talks.”

  Dehan shook her head. “But you didn’t.”

  “No, man. We give him a good beating. Danny is standing by the door, smoking. Me and Ernesto is takin’ it in turns, and Steve is in a bad way. She is on the floor, hysterical, cryin’ and beggin’, ‘plea
se don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt him!’” He turned to look at me with genuine bewilderment. “But who gets chicks, right? Suddenly, she’s screaming, ‘all right! All right!’ like this, ‘all right, I take you to it! Just stop hurting him!’ And she goes to a chest of drawers, like she’s gonna get some keys or some shit. And, I am swearing to you, man, she takes out a .38 from the drawer an’ she plugs a hole right in Steve’s chest. Right there! Like that, pom! Then she shoots Ernesto. Then she turns the gun on Danny, but he is out of there like fockin’ shit, man.”

  Dehan narrowed her eyes. “She didn’t shoot you…”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, man, I bent down to help Ernesto and get him out of there. He’s hurt bad. I look at her. She looks at me. Then she’s gone. I don’t know if she went after Danny or what she did. I just know I didn’t die that night porque Dios no lo quiso.” He looked at me. “God didn’t want it.”

  I drummed the table with my fingers. “Yeah, no doubt he’s saving you for a sunbeam.”

  Dehan stared at me for a moment, then looked back at Alfonso. “You are telling me that after begging for him not to be hurt, she pulled a gun on you and shot him before she shot Ernesto? She didn’t shoot Ernesto, you, and Danny. She shot Steve.”

  He shrugged. “That’s the way it happened, man. If I was going to lie to you, I would tell you something more convincing. She pulled the gun from the drawer, I’m thinkin’, ‘fuck, I am going to die,’ but then she points that thing at Steve and shoots him through the heart.”

  I sighed. “What happened to Ernesto?”

  “The bullet was lodged in his chest. It come in through the side, tore up his lungs. He died. We put him in a sack and buried him in the river.”

  We were quiet for a bit. Eventually, I asked him, “Where can we find Danny Schultz?”

  “He used to hang out at Pepe’s Place, on Longwood, by the railway bridge.”

  “Okay.” I stood.

  “Hey, Stone, I know you ain’t gonna believe me. But losin’ my bro’ like that…” He jerked his head at Dehan. “She’ll tell you. Me and him, we was close, man, real close. Losin’ him and then having my life spared like that… when I get out of here, I am goin’ straight. I didn’t kill Steve. I done bad things and I gotta atone for them, and I will. But I did not kill Steve.”

  When we got to the door, he called out, “An’ I cooperated with you! Right?”

  I looked back at him and nodded.

  Down in the parking lot, Dehan leaned her ass against the car and crossed her arms. In the glaring heat, against the burgundy of the Jag, her hair looked very black.

  “Is it me? Am I going crazy? Or is it the world? You know, maybe it’s normal. Maybe it’s normal for a sweet girl that everybody describes as luminous to pull out a .38 and blow away the man she’s supposed to love. Maybe I’m the crazy one.”

  I opened the door and climbed in. As she got in next to me, I said, “You’re not crazy, Dehan. We’ve been chasing ghosts and shadows.”

  “You’re not kidding! The one motive we had, the one solid thing we had to hold on to, just got flushed down the can!”

  I fired up the engine and looked at my double reflection in her shades. “But it never was the motive.”

  THIRTEEN

  It was six p.m. and as hot as midday by the time we cruised down Longwood Avenue in the Bronx and pulled up in front of Pepe’s Place. It was shady and quiet, empty apart from a couple of old guys sitting in the corner drinking beer and minding their own business. The place was seedy, but clean, and there were posters of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin on the walls.

  Pepe was one of those rarest of men who walked his own path in life and managed to retain the respect of everybody who knew him. The Sureños drank in his bar, but they left him alone, and the cops knew he was clean and let him be. Even Mick, back in the day, steered clear of him.

  He was a big Mexican with an ugly scar on his face. Rumor was he had done some ugly things back home and had to leave. But nobody was in a hurry to find out if it was true or not. Pepe was not a man you questioned. As we stepped through the door, he was polishing glasses. He looked at Dehan and recognized her.

  “Hola, Carmen.” He gave me the once-over. “John, you want a drink or you want to ask me questions?”

  I climbed on a stool, and Dehan leaned on the bar next to me. I said, “How about both? Let’s have a couple of beers.”

  He pulled two draughts, and while he was at it, Dehan asked him, “Danny Schultz around?”

  He glanced at her and finished pouring before he answered. He gave us our drinks and wiped the bar dry around the pump.

  “Danny’s dead.”

  I frowned. “Since when?”

  He made a face that said he was thinking. “Eighteen months?”

  “What happened?”

  He gave a snort and leaned against the till. “You’re cops. You know how it is. With guys like Danny, if there ain’t some direct eyewitness, or some proof they can find right there and then, they shelve the case and leave it. Forty percent of cases don’t get solved for the same reason. The cops in hoods like this, they don’t even try. I’m sorry, I don’t wanna be offensive, and I can kinda understand it, you know? People don’t make it easy. Nobody talks, nobody saw nothin’, nobody heard nothin’.” He shrugged. “But if you want my opinion, he was screwing the wrong chick.”

  Dehan glanced at me, then back at Pepe. “Danny Schultz? Danny never screwed anything but the IRS in his whole life.”

  Pepe smiled and shrugged. “He got lucky. I saw it with my own eyes. If I hadna seen it, I wouldn’t believe it either. Danny Schultz. He was sitting right there, where you’re sitting now, complaining about taxes or the weather or whatever. I never listened to the pendejo. Then this chick comes in. Real sweet, real class, you know what I’m saying? Nicely dressed. Not a puta like these chicks you see ’round here. Nice. You could take her anywhere and feel proud, right?”

  Dehan looked impatient. She was nodding. “So what happened?”

  “She sits next to Danny and orders a martini.” He laughed. “I don’t think I ever served a martini before. She had to tell me how to prepare it. So Danny—” He looked at Dehan. “You know Danny, he knows everything, right? He starts explaining about the different martinis and how to make them, how much gin, how much vermouth, one olive, two olive, and he’s sayin’ something about James Bond drinks a Bradford martini, shaken, not stirred. Some shit. Anyway, I’m going to tell him to leave the lady in peace, when I see she’s liking it. She’s laughing like she thinks he’s cute. ‘Who would have told me,’ she says, ‘I was gonna come into a bar in the Bronx and meet a guy who’s an expert on cocktails?’”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out the picture of Tamara Gunthersen. “This the woman?”

  He stared at it a moment, then shook his head. “Nah. This chick had black hair cut short and green eyes. That’s the girl next door, cute, nice. But this was a sophisticated woman, smart. She had class, you understand me? She sounded like Deep South, Louisiana, Alabama, something like that. With a real drawl, you know?”

  “So what makes you think he saw her again?”

  He looked at me with wide eyes and spread his hands. “They leave together!”

  Dehan was incredulous and laughed. “They left together?”

  “Si, hombre! She’s tellin’ him about her car. Is a classic Mustang, he should see it. Also she is a little scared in this neighborhood alone. And she ask him why he don’t go with her. So they go out together. An’ that is the last time I ever see Danny Schultz. They found his body next morning.” He gestured with his hand. For a moment he looked mad, like it was all wrong and that shouldn’t have happened to Danny. “Twenty meters from here! In the yard next door. Shot through the heart.”

  Dehan was shaking her head. “Son of a gun…”

  Pepe looked at me for a long moment. “You know, it don’t make a lot of sense.”

  I nodded. “I agree, Pepe. It doesn’t. Whic
hever way you look at it, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “But the cops weren’t interested, John. Is just Danny. Who’s gonna miss Danny? So he got shot; he probably deserved it. You know what Chavez says to me? He probably tried to rape her. How can you write off a guy’s life because of what he probably would of done?”

  “You can’t.” I threw some coins on the counter. “Thanks, Pepe. Take it easy.”

  “Yeah, you too, John, Carmen.”

  In the car, Dehan said, “I am not even going to try.”

  I nodded as I fired up the engine. “I agree. I need a shower and a good sleep. We’ll come at it fresh in the morning.”

  “Who the fuck is this woman now? Every time a door opens, it doesn’t lead us closer to an answer; it lets in another character to make the damn case even more confusing!”

  “We’ll dig out Danny’s case. It must be in the cold cases file. We’ll get the lab to compare the two slugs.”

  “Steve and Danny?”

  I nodded. “We need to get to Geronimo.”

  “And Tammy.”

  I looked at her. She was right.

  I dropped her at her apartment, and she hesitated a moment before getting out. She smiled suddenly. “It’s been fun. We should do it again sometime.”

  I laughed out loud. “You’re some kind of crazy, Dehan.”

  The smile faded a little. “I mean what I said. If you ever need to talk…”

  I punched her gently on the shoulder. “Okay, partner. Good to know.”

  As I drove back toward Morris Park and Haight Avenue, I thought about Geronimo dos Santos and Tamara Gunthersen. They were the linchpins in the case. Everything hung on those two individuals. They were the dual keys to understanding the case.

  And we knew next to nothing about dos Santos, but we had a superabundance of information about Tamara. Yet as we had discovered this evening, all that information was as good as useless, because the bottom line was, we still knew nothing about her. All the information we had was smoke.

  Was she a ruthless sociopath? Or did she have good reason to kill Steve? Was it love that took her running back to him? Or was it some other, darker reason? Was she a victim, or was she a predator, preying on the people around her?