Broken Places

by Tracy Clark

  A little girl of about eight sat on a pink Barbie bicycle in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Lunas’, watching me as though she were waiting for me to do something miraculous, like sprout wings and fly. She barely blinked. Two houses up, an old man with a bushy white mustache stood sprinkling his grass with a limp garden hose and stopped to see what I was up to. I tried not to make any unnecessary movements and kept my hands completely visible, my body angled so I could see both the street and the Luna door, my eyes sweeping the sidewalk, the windows of the houses nearby, the little girl on the bicycle, the old man with the hose, my car. The reassuring weight of the gun in my clip holster gave me a peace of mind that money could not buy.

  A half minute after I rang the bell, the Lunas’ curtains parted, then stilled. I turned to face the window, hoping I looked nonthreatening. From inside, I heard the muffled sound of a television but nothing else, until moments later when the security chain was engaged and the lock on the door slid free. I stepped back as the door opened and the top half of a woman’s face appeared, her dark eyes cautious. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Luna?” I asked. “Mrs. Irma Luna?”

  I could see a wall of suspicion rise. “Who are you?” she asked in accented English. “What do you want?”

  When I gave her my name and a brief summary of why I was there, she slammed the door in my face, the force of it blowing my hair back. Feeling the neighbors’ eyes on my back, I stood there for a moment doing nothing. The block was certainly getting their money’s worth.

  I rang the bell again, then eased back a couple steps and waited. It took almost a minute for Mrs. Luna to open the door again. Angrily, she stepped from behind it and stood in the doorway where I could see all of her, though she kept a tight grip on the door. She looked to be about five foot three, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved pink shirt with pearly buttons and embroidered flowers along the bodice, her straight black hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Maybe she was my age, mid-thirties, maybe a little older. Steady eyes staring out of a face with sharp angles told me I didn’t have long before the door slammed shut again.

  “Go away,” she ordered. “I do not want you here. You and the police have done enough.”

  “Mrs. Luna, I understand you’re angry, but I’m not with the police. I’d just like to talk to you about your son, Cesar. About what happened at St. Brendan’s.”

  The caution in her eyes turned to something harder and much colder. For a while she didn’t speak. “You look like police. You come to me like they come, and I’ve told them all I am going to. You are not interested in what happened to Cesar, only in what you say happened.”

  I lifted the bottom corner of my jacket to show her I didn’t have a star. “I’m not with the police. I’m just here for the truth.”

  “The truth is that my son is dead! The truth is that no one outside of this neighborhood cares that this is so!”

  “I care.”

  She eyed me skeptically. “I don’t believe you. Leave my house.”

  The door began to close. “I was a friend of the priest who was killed along with your son. I do care, Mrs. Luna. More than you know.”

  The door opened wide again.

  I dug into my back pocket, pulled out my PI’s license and business card, and held them out for her to read. “I’m a private investigator. This is my card. This is a copy of my license. I am not the police. I want to find the truth. That’ll be a lot easier to accomplish if I know more about your son.”

  Defiant eyes met mine. “And the police whose job it is to find the truth? What are they doing, besides blaming my son for such a terrible thing?” Her eyes bore into mine. The door wavered.

  “Could you go to your grave in peace not knowing what happened to Cesar, Mrs. Luna? Because I sure couldn’t. Father Heaton was family to me. I need to know how he died. Somebody has to pay for taking him.” Mrs. Luna stood there saying nothing. “Sometimes people won’t talk to the police,” I said hurriedly. “But I was hoping you’d talk to me. I need you to tell me about Cesar.”

  Her dark eyes burned hot. “He was a gangbanger and a criminal, isn’t that what they say?”

  I hesitated. “Yes. That’s what they say.” Her eyes widened. I’d shocked her. She’d likely expected me to lie. “But I’m sure he was more than that to you, wasn’t he?”

  She thought things over for a time, and the door stayed open. “He would not have stolen from God’s house. We are Catholic. But the police do not listen. The police say the priest killed my Cesar.”

  “I promise you. He did not.”

  “What can you do against the police? They are many. You are just one.” She wrapped her arms around herself, as though she’d caught a chill, her eyes still angry, wounded, defensive.

  “A determined one can do a great deal against many, Mrs. Luna. And right now, no one is more determined than I am. I don’t believe your son robbed that church, and Father Heaton did not kill him. If I’m right, if that’s true, then there’s somebody walking around out there who thinks they got away with two murders. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make sure whoever it is pays for what they did. What do you want, Mrs. Luna?”

  “Justice,” she answered, her voice strong, resolute. She studied me for a moment without speaking. “My neighbors are watching. They do not like strangers.”

  I didn’t bother to turn around to look. I could feel them watching. “I’m not too wild about strangers either.”

  “And yet you come here alone? A woman. You are either very brave or very stupid.”

  I smiled. “Probably a little bit of both.”

  Without another word, Mrs. Luna held the door open, stepped back, and let me in. “Then come. For Cesar, I will also be a little bit of both.”

  * * *

  An old woman dressed in a yellow house dress and red slippers sat on a floral couch with a little dark-haired girl of about three, both of them watching a lively cartoon in Spanish. Neither looked up as I was led toward the back of the house. In the dining room, Mrs. Luna and I sat in two of the six chairs that surrounded a well-polished table covered by a large doily tablecloth. She offered me something to drink or eat. I politely declined. “My son was not a perfect son,” she began. “But he was my son. Do you have children?”

  I shook my head no. “Not yet.” I could barely keep house plants alive; I shuddered to think how I’d handle a real live human.

  She gave me a pitying half smile. “Then you cannot know.” She pointed to a spot on the wall behind me. I turned to see a large framed photo of an angelic altar boy, his eyes cast heavenward, his small hands on a white Bible.

  “Cesar?”

  She nodded. “He was a good boy. But the world changes people. His father, my Jorge, died not long after that picture was taken. That is when Cesar began to find trouble. He turned away from the church, from us. But he was young. I hoped he would return, somehow become a good man.”

  “Do you know where he was the night he died? Why he might have ended up at St. Brendan’s?”

  Her lips twisted distastefully. “He often went out late. I could not stop him. He would give no answers. After a long time, I stopped asking, too afraid that one day he would tell me something I did not want to know. I continued to pray for him, to light the candles.”

  “Did you notice any changes in him?”

  Mrs. Luna looked puzzled. “Changes?”

  “Going out more often, or not as much,” I prompted. “Did he seem angry, upset? Did he mention having a problem with anyone?” I recalled Cesar’s bruised face, the beating he’d taken. “Any change at all.”

  “He seemed . . . less hard,” she offered. “A few times they called for him, but he did not go. I was pleased. He even went to Mass with me. Not for a long time had he done this. I told him, with tears, how happy this made me. But again, he would go out.”

  “And the day he died?”

  “I made him breakfast.” Mrs. Luna smiled, appearing to recall the morning, but her sm
ile quickly faded. “Then he went. The next time I saw my son he was dead, cold.”

  “There was a storm,” I said.

  “Yes. I worried where he was on such a night.... I always worried. I worry now, even though I know where he is.”

  “He must have been heading someplace pretty important to go out in that weather.”

  Her expression soured. “He was always with them—the men who are not men.”

  “None of them will talk to the police,” I said.

  She sneered. “Their precious code. They will not go against it.”

  “Even Hector Perez?”

  “Not even him, even though he grew up with my Cesar. They were like brothers, both the same—boys without fathers looking for something in the streets that only God and family can give. Hector’s mother feels as I do about the Scorpions, but what can we do?” From the front room, the music on the cartoon swelled to a crescendo. The toddler giggled wildly. Mrs. Luna studied me. “How is it you are so close to this priest that you would come all the way out here to do what the police won’t? A friend, you said.”

  “More than that,” I said.

  She studied me. “But not blood.”

  I shifted in my chair, suddenly uncomfortable. “No, but the closest thing I had to it.” I hesitated, resistant to sharing such a personal part of myself. Mrs. Luna sat watching my internal struggle, and I could see the barriers begin to rise again. Not sharing would close her down. “I lost my mother when I was a kid. Father Heaton helped me through it.”

  “Your real father? He did not help?”

  I shrugged. “Took off. I guess the thought of being a single parent was too much for him.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “I stopped missing him a long time ago.”

  She nodded knowingly. “A familiar story, a familiar sadness.” She sighed. “Then it seems someone has taken something very dear to both of us, yes?” The silence hung in the air between us. Mrs. Luna stared off into the distance. She looked as though she would never have another happy moment as long as she lived. “I apologize for closing the door. You are different from the others. Perhaps it is true we want the same thing. Still, it is difficult to trust. People so often wear false faces.”

  I nodded, understanding completely. She rose from the chair and pulled herself up to her full height. “I think it would help you to see Cesar’s room, to see who he was. Maybe then you can find the person who did this to him and to your father.”

  I shot to my feet, surprised by the offer. “Yes, it would. Thank you.”

  “But if you are not as you seem,” she said. “If this is some trick played upon me, I will not rest. I will not stop until I have my justice. You understand this?”

  I smiled. “Seems we are a lot more alike than we are different, Mrs. Luna.” She led me back to a room set apart from the rest of the house. She turned the knob on a narrow door, opened it, and then stepped aside to let me through. She didn’t venture past the threshold.

  “Everything is as it was,” she said softly. “I cannot bring myself to go in, not yet.” Her eyes blazed. “I would not let the police look. They showed no respect. They made up their minds about Cesar before they even showed up.” She hovered in the doorway, her eyes avoiding her son’s things. “For them, it was all about the priest,” she said, nearly in a whisper. She stood there stoically, watching. “Do what you must.”

  I thanked her again and got to work. Cesar owned a pretty impressive stereo system and a big-screen plasma TV, along with hundreds of CDs and DVDs, which I slowly fanned through. Most of the music was in Spanish, produced by artists I didn’t know. The movie titles leaned toward the car-chase-creepy-vampire variety, top of the hit parade, I assumed, for eighteen-year-old males. The walls were plastered with Scarface posters, and strands of multicolored Christmas lights hung from the stucco ceiling.

  For nearly an hour, with Mrs. Luna standing as still as a sentinel, I searched on my knees and on tiptoe. I emptied drawers and filled them again. I picked through the closet, feeling down into the toes of boots and shoes, checking the pockets of shirts, pants, and jackets. I slid my hands along shelves, but drew back only dusty fingers.

  Taped to the dresser mirror with narrow strips of clear tape were photos of Cesar’s mother, the old woman, and the little girl in the front room. There was also a photo of Hector Perez, whom I recognized from his mug shot. In the photo, Hector posed rakishly with Cesar in a smoky bar, his arm slung fraternally around Cesar’s shoulder. Hector, dark and covered in angry tats, might have been attractive if not for the malevolent sneer. A few of the tape strips didn’t have photos attached to them.

  I kept searching. I fluttered the pages of magazines and crawled beneath Cesar’s bed, scraping up long-forgotten discards—an empty candy wrapper, a broken shoelace, an old issue of Hot Rod magazine. I ran my hands between Cesar’s mattress and box spring. Nothing. I lifted the mattress, expecting well-thumbed issues of Playboy tucked away where Mrs. Luna wouldn’t find them. Nothing. Then, by chance, I noticed a slit in the side of the mattress wide enough for a hand to fit through. I reached in and felt around, my hand bumping up against something solid, yet flexible. A book. I pulled it free. It was a Bible.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Luna asked from the doorway.

  I held it up. “Why would Cesar hide this?”

  She peered at the book from half a room away. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice cracking. She looked puzzled.

  I shook my head. I had no idea either. Why would anyone hide a Bible? I sat down on the mattress and opened it, fluttering the pages. I gasped when a photograph of a young black girl and a church bulletin from St. Brendan’s fell on my lap. I shot to my feet, turned to Mrs. Luna, and held the bulletin up for her to see it. “St. Brendan’s. He didn’t just stumble on it. He’d been there before.” He and Pop weren’t strangers.

  “How can you know this? Many people go to church.”

  “Father Heaton made it a point to meet every person who stepped inside his church. He learned their names; he remembered things about them, even if he only met them once. They knew each other. There was a connection.” I held up the photograph. “Who’s this girl?”

  Mrs. Luna stared at the picture. “I have never seen her before. Why would Cesar hide these things?” I heard her, but didn’t answer. My attention was drawn to the items in my hand, which, at this point, were more precious to me than gold. There were no handwritten notations scrawled in the borders of the Bible’s pages, no highlighted passages, or turned-down corners anywhere. The bulletin, too, was unmarred. I noted the date, Sunday, December twelfth. I studied the photograph again. The girl looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, pretty. She smiled easily for the photographer. Had that been Cesar? “What does this mean?” Mrs. Luna asked.

  “Nothing yet,” I said, buoyed by the possibilities. “Do you mind if I take these with me?”

  “You want to take Cesar’s Bible?”

  “I promise I’ll return it to you.”

  She nodded, though she didn’t look at all sure. I slipped the bulletin and photo back inside the book, then set the book aside while I continued my search with renewed vigor. What else would I find? Where else would it lead me?

  Several bottles of high-smelling cologne and hair gel sat on the dresser, along with a couple dollars in loose change and a knockoff designer watch. A Bulls ashtray fashioned from cheap tin sat off to the side, the tray filled with some sort of ash. I picked it up, sniffed the debris, rolled the ash around on my fingertips.

  “My Cesar did not smoke; he did not do drugs.”

  I held the ashtray out so she could see it better. “Not drugs, ash. But not tobacco. Something else.”

  She glowered. “But the something else always turns out to be something we must pay for, in money, in years, often both. The law is not blind when it comes to us.”

  I couldn’t argue with her. She was right up to a point. Systems, legal or otherwise, rarely worked in favor of tho
se with black and brown skin. For our communities, breaks and benefits didn’t exist. Punitive punishment ruled, and it came down hard. I doubted Cesar ever got a single break his entire life. “May I keep looking?” I asked. “I won’t without your consent.”

  She scanned the room, glancing at the Bible on the bed, the ash in the tray, me. Finally, she nodded. “Continue.”

  I plucked out a few of the larger pieces from the ashtray and cradled them in the palm of my hand.

  “Paper,” I finally decided.

  Not writing paper, heavier.

  I glanced back at the mirror and the empty strips of tape. Photographic paper. “He burned photos.” I faced Mrs. Luna. “There are photos missing from the mirror. Can you remember what they were?”

  She studied the mirror, bewildered. “His pictures of the Scorpions are not there.”

  “Why would he burn those?”

  She shrugged, but did not look at me. Her eyes were locked on the Bible.

  “He was reading the Holy Book,” she whispered, her eyes flooding with tears. “My son would have been a good man.”

  “He left the photo of Hector Perez,” I pointed out.

  “I told you they were like brothers. That is a bond not easily broken.”

  “He may have been one of the last people to see Cesar alive.”

  She dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex from her pocket. “How do you know this?”

  “He gave the police a statement. He didn’t tell you?” Mrs. Luna shook her head. “Do you think he’d talk to me?”

  “No, he will not.... Does that mean you will not try?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’ll try.”

  Hopeful eyes held mine. “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Then I will come with you. He will not talk to you, but he will talk to me.”