Burning Midnight

by Loren D. Estleman

  He could pass for the concierge in a one-star hotel in San Diego, but his hands were a dead giveaway: soft, paraffin-treated, with nails pared round and as white as cane sugar. I wouldn’t trust him at blackjack. But the law is a different game. My source, a former federal judge, now a consultant to one of the biggest firms in Detroit—a lawyer who represented lawyers—had told me that Buho could reduce a thirty-year sergeant in Major Crimes to a blubbering penitent on the stand. I disliked him on sight, and as a rule I was prepared to like Mexicans. He was too studiedly humble, which is colossal arrogance of a kind. But I wouldn’t place my life in the hands of a lawyer I liked.

  He bowed to Chata in the living room, gripping a moleskin briefcase in both hands at his chest like a shield, and asked if there was a place where he could speak with the boy in private.

  “I’m his guardian. Anything you have to say to him you can say to me.”

  “No, Señora. I have my oath.” His tone was firmer than his actions.

  “It’s true,” I said, when she looked at me. “Unless Nesto says you can sit in.”

  “He’s asked me not to. I thought perhaps his lawyer—”

  “Your pardon, Señora. Mr. Walker is my client.”

  “That’s so he can tell me what Nesto tells him. It lets me claim privilege. Señor Buho confirmed it when I talked to him on the phone.”

  “Then you can insist I take part,” she said.

  “You think he’ll say in front of you what he’d say to his mouthpiece?”

  “I do not like this term.” Buho looked bemused. He might have been calling me all kinds of a puerco inside.

  “Then you can tell me afterwards,” she said.

  “I can. I probably won’t.”

  “But you’ll tell John!”

  “I don’t know that yet. I already said that.”

  “Give it up, honey. He’s as much a brick wall as my old man.” It was the first thing Jerry had said since the lawyer had arrived. He sat on the sofa with his knees spread and his glass cradled in both hands between his thighs. His eyes were out of focus and he missed half his consonants.

  “He’s my brother! You talk as if I haven’t any rights.”

  Buho bowed again. “You grasp the situation very well, madam.” He seemed to be able to turn the Antonio Banderas accent off and on. A smart lawyer has more skins than an onion.

  She called off the assault. “His room’s the first door on the left, top of the stairs.” She sounded as tired as she looked.

  “Thank you. I should like to speak with Mr. Walker first, in private also.”

  She didn’t even react to that except with a tiny nod that might have been her chin quivering. Buho and I went into the kitchen. No door separated it from the living room, so we kept our voices low. I told him everything I’d learned, went over with him the questions I wanted answered, and let him examine the lighter. He hefted it on his palm, turned it upside down to read ZIPPO engraved on the bottom, ran his thumb over the raised enamel design on the side. For good measure he flipped it open and spun the wheel, getting a spark but no flame, snapped it shut.

  “The fluid, it evaporates even when you don’t use it. You think it is the same lighter from the video?”

  “That’s one of the questions I want you to ask Nesto.”

  “Is a complicated affair, no?”

  “Is a complicated affair, yes. And stop talking like the Cisco Kid. You were born in Santa Fe, so was your father and grandfather, and you went to Harvard. I like to know all about a man before I do business with him.”

  He smiled, showing a row of teeth so white and even you couldn’t see the divisions between at first. I didn’t count this as a genuine expression any more than the eternal surprise. “Okay, fella,” he said. “I’ll go up and see the kid.”

  FIFTEEN

  He was alone with Nesto forty-five minutes. It would work out to ten minutes of solid questions and answers and a half-hour of art. That left five minutes of silence; but silence is an art also.

  I spent the time watching television with Jerry and Chata. The program happened to be a National Geographic special about interesting aquatic fauna. I doubt when it wrapped up that any of us could repeat anything we’d learned about life at the bottom of the wine-dark sea, except that it bore a disturbing resemblance to Mexicantown. Jerry had finished drinking and sat glassy-eyed and silent. I pegged him as an amateur with beginner’s luck; a dedicated alcoholic would have slid under the coffee table ten minutes into the androgynous world of the seahorse. I nursed my second vodka, the fastest-acting and sneakiest of distilled poisons. It made hail-fellows-well-met of axe murderers and horny Vikings of Baptist lay readers.

  Buho and I reconvened, alone with our hosts’ permission, at a glass-topped table on a poker chip–size deck in the backyard. A pair of coach lamps mounted on either side of the glass doorwall coaxed a number of tough tiny moths into self-immolation. They were doomed anyway, because outside those auras of intense heat, sitting there was like picnicking on the Aleutians. I turned up my collar against the frigid breezes that whipped around the corners of the house, but Buho was plainly suffering in the cold. His nose was cherry-colored and he shivered visibly, without a word of complaint.

  “That’s one scared muchacho,” he opened. “He’s all right, I think.”

  “In general, or in sworn testimony?”

  “In general. He’s no killer. He’s a pretty good liar, but aren’t they all at that age.”

  “Youth isn’t for wimps. So much for philosophy. Give me something I can use.”

  He opened a cigarette case made of black silk stretched over a frame, aluminum or bamboo, and offered me something brown with a gold tip. I don’t know where they get them; probably through the mail from some reservation so they don’t have to pay state taxes. I shook my head and stuck a Winston between my lips. “I like my poison slow.”

  He shrugged—an elegant gesture in his culture, insolence personified in mine—and lit us both up off a butane lighter that shot a blue flame two inches high, endangering his toy moustache. His brand smelled like autumn—downwind of a city incinerator. “He’s telling the truth about Zorborón. Luis Guerrara put him up to returning that lighter. It belonged to El Tigre originally, according to The Brother. Lighters, they are always being misplaced, yes?”

  “Sí. You’re forgetting our conversation. Save the pidgin English for the tourists.”

  “I underestimate gringos. It’s a failing.” He blew smoke at the wind, which took it and tore it to shreds. “It was a warning of some kind: If we can lift your lighter from under your nose and use it to destroy your business, we can destroy you as easily. This convinces me the Maldados were not involved in his murder. Why warn a dead man?”

  “He ignored the warning.”

  “The timeline was too tight. If they are in protection, they know these things need to sink in.”

  “A rogue gang member, maybe. A lot of Mexicans are part Indian. The tribes elected their chiefs. They didn’t coronate them. They went their own way when they didn’t trust their counsel.”

  “I think you’ve been reading Mari Sandoz too much. Most mestizos don’t know her from Marie Osmond. But you’re right in principle. There is no allowing for the actions of the individual. However, I think we can eliminate Guerrara as a prime mover in Zorborón’s fate.”

  “You can. I’m keeping my options open. What happened in the coop?”

  “The boy says he sneaked past the two caretakers and went upstairs to wait for sundown before making his way home. He couldn’t be sure he wasn’t seen near the garage, or what he might have seen when he approached it. He had no idea when he’d find opportunity to leave. When the fire door was opened, he took advantage of the situation and slipped out—unobserved, so he thinks. He took cover behind some trash cans in the alley, and when the time seemed right he ran, straight to the overgrown lot where you found him. The arrival of the police kept him there until the coast cleared. That would be the moment
you stumbled on him.”

  “I stumble a lot.” I flicked ash into the wind. “There were no trash cans in that alley.”

  He smoothed his moustache with a knuckle. “You’re certain of this?”

  “I looked out into it after I stumbled over Django and Berdoo.”

  “These, I take it, were the two men you found dead. He said he knew nothing about that. He didn’t even hear the shotgun blast. By then he might have been lying in that lot.” He frowned. “I wish I’d known about these phantom trash cans before I spoke with him.”

  “I didn’t know he’d say he hid behind them. I deliberately didn’t grill him until I had the rule of law to stand in front of me.”

  He smiled, showing that row of teeth like poured concrete around a reservoir. “You’ve an impressive knowledge of legal terminology for a layman.”

  “I’ve got cable. Stop oiling me up. What’s next?”

  “It’s early to speak of a defense strategy. Normally in cases such as this I explore the home environment, but I could not draw him out on that subject.”

  “It’s lousy, just like everyone else’s.”

  “Please do not presume to speak for me. I was the only surviving child in a devout Catholic household, and doted upon shamelessly. I had to learn humility the way a high school dropout acquires his GED.”

  I figured he’d cheated on the final. Aloud I said, “The sister’s indulgent and the brother-in-law—”

  “Yes. I observed the brother-in-law.”

  “I was going to say ‘doesn’t have a clue.’ Drinking’s not his problem, apart from not knowing how to do it. His father took the other tack. That worked out about as well as you can imagine, so he’s just sitting out the kid’s puberty and waiting for Mr. Miyagi to come along and put him right.”

  “He’s a family friend, this Señor Miyagi?”

  I couldn’t tell when he was monkeying around, so I let that one swing. “What you do in court’s your headache. I meant what do we do with Nesto? That father I mentioned is my client. He’s also a cop. Guess which one kicks in when he finds out I found the boy and he was on the scene of a double homicide he happens to be investigating?”

  “I should think it would be unpleasant.” He shook his head. “In matters such as these, a man who prides himself upon his professionalism would be inclined to treat the boy as he would any other subject. This in my opinion would be a mistake. He wouldn’t last an hour in County.”

  “He wouldn’t last an hour in Beverly Hills once word gets out.”

  “I can get him a room in the Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake. The young men there are more interested in getting out and getting back to their misdemeanors than shivving a fresh fish.”

  “I told his sister and brother-in-law he’d be safe in County.”

  “I wouldn’t take the chance. Based on what you just told me, he knows more than he lets on, and it stands to reason someone out there knows it as well. The word, as you put it, is out already, or I do not know my neighborhood. What is one more jailhouse tragedy in our sad community?” He sighed smoke, crushed out his butt fastidiously on the glass table, and lit another off his pocket blowtorch. The tobacco, or whatever it was, burned as fast as dry straw. “You must not take this as legal advice. If you repeat it, I shall of course deny it. I have a license to preserve.”

  “Me, too. People forget that. The advice, Señor Buho. I’m not paying you out of pocket to flap your arms.”

  “This is a saying, yes?”

  When I gave him the blank wall, he flushed under the brown and lapsed back into American. “Your client’s a policeman. You’d be within bounds if you laid all this before him; let him make the decision.”

  “That’s a hell of a load to dump on a friend.”

  “I wasn’t aware you were friends.”

  “It’s complicated. What else you got?”

  “Again, this isn’t professional counsel. Do nothing.”

  “I could come up with that myself for free.”

  “I see I must be specific, at the risk of my livelihood.” The taste of what he was smoking had gotten to him. He pressed out the fresh one next to the old butt and committed his last drag to the wind. “You’ve fulfilled your mission, which was to return this boy to his guardians and convince him as to the toxic nature of gang activity. Recent events have seen to the last, or I’m no judge of human behavior. Your job is done. Walk away from it.”

  I shook my head.

  “I will not argue the point. I owe the success of my modest practice to human nature, after all.”

  “I know your rates. What do you call substantial?”

  “As I said, a difficult language.” He got up and tucked his briefcase under his arm. “I called the police.”

  “I don’t think I like that.”

  “As an officer of the court I had no choice. I told them the boy knows nothing, but that he will be there bright and early tomorrow morning with me by his side.”

  “I’d love to have been in on that call.”

  “I’ve had unpleasant conversations before, and the boy needs rest. I said if they insisted on seeing him immediately, all they’d get would be silence on the advice of counsel. He is a minor, and entitled to certain protections under the law. I added that I’ve represented the ACLU and the Hispanic League, and that I have brought action before on behalf of my people. The police know me as a man of my word.”

  “I bet that’s just how they put it.” Nesto had good instincts, whatever other reasons he had for insisting on being defended by one of his own. The race card carried so much weight in Detroit it ought to be registered along with firearms and explosives. “Okay if I talk to him?”

  “You don’t need my permission. I’m not his attorney, although naturally I let the officer I spoke to assume what he wanted to. As yours, I’d advise against it. Anything you learn from the young man would not be protected. Wasn’t that the reason you retained me in the first place?”

  “I wanted a lawyer in the picture, not around my neck. I need to know what the boy knows or I can’t go ahead.”

  He grinned again, then returned to his look of innocence personified. “Here is my card. I think you have more need for me than he.”

  I looked at it: They were printing them vertically now, to make room for landlines, cell phones, e-mail, and Web sites. Amazing how much information you can get onto a scrap of pasteboard without including anything you could use.

  SIXTEEN

  After Buho bowed and left, I said I wanted a few minutes with Nesto. His sister crossed her arms. “He’s exhausted and filthy. Come back tomorrow when he’s rested.”

  I wanted him too tired to tell any more lies, but I came up with a reason that wouldn’t get me thrown out of the house. “It’s in his best interest to talk to me before he talks to the police. They won’t care if his face is washed.”

  “Isn’t that why you got a lawyer?”

  “Five minutes.”

  She glanced at Jerry, who was sitting in that same splayed position on the sofa with his chin on his chest. No help there. “Five minutes. I’ll fill the tub.”

  He wouldn’t be a teenager without a sign tacked to his door. This one was diamond-shaped yellow cardboard reading CUIDADO in black block letters. I knocked.

  “Who is it?”

  “Walker.”

  “Go away.”

  “Not an option.”

  “Go away!”

  I tried the knob. It was locked. “If we talk here, you won’t have to tell the cops the same lies you told the lawyer. Ever try lying to a cop? I don’t recommend it.”

  After a long silence, bedsprings shifted. The lock clicked. He was sitting on the edge of the bed by the time I let myself in, wearing the black T-shirt he’d had on under the flannel shirt, dirty socks on his feet. He’d washed his face, but his eyes were red-rimmed and his mouth was sullen. The room was just big enough for the bed, a nightstand, and a student desk and chair. A lean, muscular Brazilian was kicki
ng the stuffing out of a soccer ball on a poster taped to a wall. The look on his face said it was stuffed with rocks.

  “Your sister only gave me five minutes,” I said. “I don’t want to waste any of them listening to the same horseshit you fed Buho. You want to make up stories? Save them for your dentist. You can always buy false teeth.”

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “He’d have gotten the truth out of you if he knew there weren’t any trash cans for you to hide behind in that alley.”

  He started. His face turned as red as his eyes. I wish all the liars I had to pry open had the decency to blush when they were caught out.

  He looked away. “It might not have been trash cans. I didn’t take notes.”

  “Maybe it was that stack of boxes.”

  “Yeah. Come to think of it.”

  “You stink at this, you know it? And I’m playing on your team. Think what a tired sergeant with a heavy caseload could do with what you gave him. There were no boxes either. No trees, no window drapes, no Chinese screen, no cloak of invisibility. If you ducked behind anything, it was the truck they were loading with rooster cages.”

  He jumped at that, too, but his lips formed the start of another lie. I cut him off. “Cops are simple organisms. If you don’t give them the bird in the bush, they’ll close their fists on the one in hand, that bird being you. Too metaphorical? How’s ‘tried as an adult’ sound?”

  He bit his lip. He was acting now, but he knew I knew. A puff of air would blow him over.

  I puffed. “You couldn’t miss it. It had to be a big truck.”

  “I saw a truck,” he said. “A big one.”

  “Spoiler on the cab? Mud flaps with naked women on them?”

  “I don’t remember anything like that.”

  I nodded. I was prepared to believe him now. A desperate liar will jump at almost any bait.

  “The old guy in the building took the chain off the door. I came down from upstairs, he didn’t see me pressed up against the end of one of the metal shelves. The other one, the Mexican, was watching the front. The old guy went out the alley door and I went out right behind him. He didn’t turn around or he’d’ve seen me. The truck was just stopping. I don’t think whoever was in the front looked in his mirrors. I don’t know for sure, but when I slipped around behind the back and ran out of the alley, nobody yelled at me. I stood in a doorway for a while, but then I heard somebody unlocking it on the other side and I took off for the grass lot.