Burning Midnight

by Loren D. Estleman

  “You know how you can tell when a cop’s been using the computer?”

  He nodded. “Next time, let’s just throw out punch lines.”

  The charmer came back on the bullhorn, saying something in soothing Spanish. I got in the car, ground the cold engine to life, and pulled into the slick street just as a squad car passed carrying a charcoal grill in its open trunk.

  * * *

  Rosecranz, the little man who lived in the lobby, had unlocked the door to my kneehole reception room for the odd customer to come in and read my old magazines, just as he had for twenty years, and for twenty years I had yet to find anyone waiting there in the morning when I got in. This time was the same, with a twist: Someone was moving around inside the private office, which I keep locked.

  I unshipped the Smith & Wesson once again, stood aside from the frosted glass panel in the door, grasped the knob in my free hand, and went in fast and hard, cocking the hammer for a lighter pull on the trigger in the same movement.

  I caught Luís Guerrera in mid-pace. He crouched and spun, a box cutter materializing in his palm as he did so and the blade flicking out like a gas jet. His T-shirt was sweat through and his jeans sagged from his narrow hips, the material heavy with the weight of perspiration and dirt. He looked as if he’d come in straight from a marathon. Which was probably pretty close to the truth.

  When he saw who it was he relaxed a little, but the cutter stayed tight in his grip. It went back to wherever it had come from, as quickly as it had appeared, when I uncocked and holstered the revolver.

  “Keep away from the window,” I said. “Town’s full of snipers today.”

  He sidestepped to put solid wall at his back.

  I circled around him and sat behind the desk, giving it a once-over. I never lock the drawers—the safe is a little more secure for hiding the odd crown jewel or fissionable material—but I keep them pulled out at different lengths just in case someone has pawed through them or planted something and didn’t take care to put them back exactly the way they were. Ordinarily a cautious character like El Hermano would take the care, but in his present condition I doubted he had the patience. He resembled every composite sketch I’d ever seen of a wanted fugitive, with the surprised, put-upon expression the people who designed the Identi-Kits favored. The two long facial scars looked like parentheses.

  So far we hadn’t spoken. I broke a fresh pack out of the belly drawer, dealt myself a smoke, and skidded the rest across the blotter.

  He shook his head. “Never use them. I keep clean.”

  I grinned, pointing the cigarette in my mouth toward the ceiling, and struck a match.

  His whole face turned down in a scowl. “Dirty Mexican; that it?”

  “Cut it out.” I spoke around the first puff. “If you draw the ethnic card, your own people will cut you off at los rodillos.”

  “Las rodillas means the knees,” he said. “You said rolling pins.”

  “So I’m a lug in two languages. You want to sit down? My guess is you’ve been working your rodillas more than your butt lately.”

  He shook his head; but he sat, registering surprise when he tried to push the chair back from the desk and it wouldn’t budge.

  “Bolted down,” I said. “I don’t like people messing with the feng shui.”

  “You never stop, uh?”

  I stopped. “You were missed at Zorborón’s send-off.”

  “You were there?”

  “I don’t crash funerals. Cops looked disappointed you didn’t show.”

  “I didn’t kill Domingo. He was doing a fair job of it without anybody’s help.”

  “Somebody helped him.”

  “Who?”

  I shook my head. “You came to me.”

  “License on the wall says you’re the detective.”

  “Whoever it was might’ve gotten away with it if he didn’t try to dress it up with arson. But then it would’ve been just another OD. It had to look like Seventh Sunday was the man behind the recent rash of suspicious fires in the neighborhood and missed his timing. The M.E. wouldn’t have had enough tissue to test for narcotics or it would’ve been clear he was in no shape to make a bomb. The Arson Squad stops looking when they’ve got their turkey roasted nice and crisp. But that didn’t happen, so the bombing at Sister Delia’s stays open.”

  “Why’d I bother, if all I wanted was to take his place?”

  “That’s the other theory, but they’re not mutually exclusive. If it looked like an accident, you could step right in without being the prime suspect.”

  “I was in already. You saw him the other day.”

  “I made that pitch, but you know cops. The plan to hang everything on Domingo fizzled out along with the bomb. That puts you back up top. Like I said, they stop looking when they’ve got their case.”

  The smile had died, but its ghost pulled at the corners of his mouth. “You stood up for me, uh?”

  “You I don’t care about. If you didn’t wind up like Siete in a couple of years, some gangbanger—an ambitious Maldado, like as not, as if there weren’t enough competition from the Detroit Zaps and the Mexican originals—would do the job. But that wouldn’t put the real arsonist out of action.”

  “You keep talking like you know who he is.”

  I flicked ash at the souvenir tray on the desk and missed. It broke up and scattered in the current from the furnace blower, which kicked in with a clang and a shudder and the smell of scorched dust. Waited.

  He crossed his long legs. That made him look as casual as a panther seated on its haunches. “You should’ve seen Domingo a few years ago. He was beautiful. Quick, smart—we called him Zorro. Those of us who were born here. They don’t know about Zorro in Mexico. It was El Tigre brought him down. When the main hombre got out of drugs, that made an opening for somebody else to dig in here. Domingo, he liked to know all about a thing before he got involved. What’s one little needle prick? Nothing, usually. But he was”—he stumbled a little over the word—“susceptible.”

  “Well, no one can touch him now. Why come here? You’ll get just as much from the cops if you tell them you’re innocent.”

  “I want you to tell them.”

  “I tried,” I said. “Es no uso.”

  “You should stick with English. You sound less stupid.”

  “I’ve been told. Why should I be any more successful this time, in whatever language?”

  “Because when you tell them I’ll be with you.” He smiled again when I reacted. “Es claro, pero no?”

  I nodded. It was clear, but yes.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “You can turn yourself in without me holding your hand,” I said. “My stock at headquarters isn’t that high.”

  “Higher than mine. I walk in there, what’s to stop some rookie from chopping me full of holes? They’re all sold on this excremento that Mexican gangs aren’t afraid of cops. They’re liable to think I went there to pick up some notches; that old macho thing.”

  “Could be. But in that case the rookie wouldn’t be likely to notice me by your side. My insurance policy has an innocent bystander clause that voids the account. We’d better hold the party here.”

  “You mean it?”

  “The super’s getting lazy. He can use shaking up.”

  “So the answer is yes.”

  “Sí.” I picked up the telephone and called John Alderdyce’s cell.

  “What’s the catch?” said the inspector once the pitch was made.

  “No catch. He wants to close the season on Luis Guerrera.”

  “So far he’s just a person of interest, not a fugitive.”

  “That’s press talk. The Molina thing’s got this town strung tight.”

  “Not anymore.”

  I didn’t ask. I could get the news off the radio. “Guerrera’s innocent, John.”

  “Only if you stretch the definition.”

  “I’m thinking when you do get him you want it to stick.”

  “This on t
he level? No Walker Rope-a-Dope?”

  “Nope. Too tired.”

  The connection broke. I cradled the receiver and got up. “Time to pat you down.”

  The cutter came back out before I could react, the blade glittering.

  After a beat Guerrera grinned. His teeth against brown skin were as bright as UV rays. He executed a reverse border roll, sliding the blade back into the handle as he spun the doohickey and held it out for me to take.

  “Graceful.” I dropped it in the belly drawer and bumped it shut. “Now stand for the frisk.”

  He shrugged and leaned his palms against the wall. I slid my hands over ribs and sternum and taut nervous muscle under a thin coating of flesh. It was like searching an Erector Set.

  He wasn’t carrying so much as a wallet. Where he lived he didn’t need one. His credit was good everywhere inside Maldado territory.

  I stepped back while he found his balance. “Don’t expect them not to rough you around when you get to lockup. Down there they don’t sort them out according to who came in on his own and who they had to go out and get.”

  “I’ve been through it before,” he said.

  “That was routine. This time the world’s watching. But only as far as Admissions down at County. After that you’re no longer in the United States.”

  “I thought they threw out the rubber hoses a long time ago.”

  “Where’d a sprout like you hear about rubber hoses?”

  “The old man learned English watching old movies. I had to wait till he passed out in front of the set to leave the house without a beating.”

  “Leave the defense work to your p.d.”

  “Think I’m lying?”

  “They’re trying a young puke in Livingston County for beating his girlfriend’s three-year-old to death because he peed on his couch, and that little kid still had it better than somebody else. Everybody’s childhood sucked. I’m not the one you need to sell.”

  “I’m not selling anything. I just don’t want to get shot down in the street like Jesus.”

  “Your brother let his cojones do his thinking for him. Right now I’m talking about what happens before you’re arraigned.”

  “I never got that far; they kicked me because I wasn’t their boy and they knew it. But it can’t get any tougher than the neighborhood.”

  “Not at first, and maybe not at all. Probably they’ll just shove you back and forth: ‘Stop butting me, punk; you looking for an assault beef?’ Playground stuff. Once in a while someone gets the bright idea to dislocate a finger, then pop it back in without leaving a mark. Or they can pull a Hefty bag over your head and tie it around your neck with duct tape. Bend you back over a chair and pour a bottle of Pepsi up your nose. It always seems to be Pepsi, for some reason. Maybe it’s a contract thing. Some of the younger cops served in the Gulf and brought back what they learned in the internment camps.”

  “You trying to talk me out of it?”

  “I’m trying to talk you out of coming back here with a half-dozen of your amigos when you find out it isn’t Law and Order.”

  “I don’t scare so easy.” But he was a little white around the nostrils.

  “Good; you’ll need it. I’m just telling you about things that worked in the past. Local interrogation methods haven’t come under investigation lately. They’re not likely to change until they do. They don’t like gangs downtown.”

  “Jealous of the competition, I guess.”

  “The important thing to remember is they’ll stop short of crippling or killing. As long as you don’t forget that, you won’t write your name on something that’ll take a lot of sidebars in court to set aside.”

  “Suppose they slip.”

  “There’s always that.”

  His mouth tightened a little. It was as close to afraid as he’d shown. Well, I’d laid it on thick; that Hispanic bravado was getting to be as annoying as the same Christmas carol over and over. But I hadn’t made anything up.

  * * *

  It was after dark when Alderdyce came, alone as agreed. His narrow-brimmed Borsalino hat and Chesterfield coat were dusted with snow and he looked tired, but that’s an old cop trick to make people think they’re human. I took out the cutter and held it out. “It’s all he had on him. When the case falls apart you can slap him with CCW, put him to work for a couple of months scraping gum off the sidewalk.”

  “You won’t mind if I go over him again.”

  I told him to help himself. When that was finished he shook loose the bracelets and read the Miranda in English and Spanish. It sounded more like a threat in the second. I asked what had happened with Antonio Molina.

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “I don’t listen to the news anymore. Too depressing.”

  “He went to a window and the sniper took his shot.”

  “Dead?”

  “Still in surgery; but those boys don’t shoot to wound. I’ve got the department’s best interviewer and a steno cooling their jets in the waiting room in case he comes out of the anesthetic. We want his partner.”

  “He should be easier to take. They wouldn’t risk two heavy hitters on a couple of nothings like Django and Berdoo.”

  “If his own people didn’t delete him he’ll be heading due south at speed. We’re probably too late already. Molina doesn’t come out of it—which he won’t, Christmas is for kids—we start over. Including proving there’s an original Zap within two thousand miles.”

  “Most people don’t believe in werewolves.”

  “That supposed to mean anything?”

  “Nada. Just something Zorborón said.”

  “I’m already starting to feel nostalgic about the son of a bitch.” He clamped a hard hand on Guerrera’s upper arm. To me: “Coming?”

  “I’m wiped out,” I said. “I’ve got a big meeting in the morning.”

  “Yeah. This comes from an anonymous tip, right?”

  “Sure. I don’t like to look at myself on television. Vaya con Dios, El Hermano,” I told the prisoner.

  He shook his head. “Even when you get it right, it sounds wrong.”

  After they left I uncapped the office bottle and poured what was left into a glass. It burned going down and soured my stomach, but it numbed the nerve that had been jumping near the bottom. I put away the drinking paraphernalia and went home to finish up the bottle I had there. Since I wasn’t looking forward to the next morning anyway I thought I might as well make myself physically miserable as well.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  In the morning I left a message for Commander Ray Charla with Arson to get back to me. When the phone rang I had eggs sizzling in a skillet. I tucked the receiver under my chin and flipped them while he read me the results of chemical and microscopic examination of the bill spike he’d rescued from the ashes at Sister Delia’s office. He translated the information from the geek as he went.

  The next piece of information required more calls. The clerk I spoke to needed authorization I didn’t have and couldn’t get. The eggs got cold before I tracked down a supernumerary whose job was so close to the subflooring that sudden unemployment wouldn’t change her lifestyle. As these things happen, she had access to what I needed; the most menial and lowest paid almost always do. She offered to fax the document to my office, but I said that wouldn’t be necessary. I didn’t want to put her breach in writing, and in any case there was no reason to bog both of us down in a discussion of why I didn’t own a machine.

  With a cold egg sandwich floating comfortably in coffee I drove down to Corktown and found a space in front of the square house where the sister lived. The ROOMS FOR RENT signs were still in place, a little more curled at the edges. The same automobiles I’d seen before were parked in the same places, snow piled around their tires; they would move the first of every month when the unemployment checks needed cashing. I walked around a slight dark-skinned girl of about ten seated on the porch steps, preoccupied with the text she was sending, and waited for the hefty landlady t
o let me in. The next generation will come with thumbs the size of cucumbers. The sun glimmered the color of skim milk behind a layer of clouds as thin as waxed paper and my breath smoked around my ears. It was going to be mufflers with the Easter bonnets again this year.

  I found Delia sitting cross-legged on the patterned rug in her room, her bandaged arms rubber-gauntleted to the elbows, sorting Rorschach-shaped scraps of charred paper into piles on a sheet of butcher paper. The gloves were stained black and there were black smears on her sweatshirt and jeans and the tip of her nose. The unprocessed scraps filled a macramé bag on the floor at her elbow.

  “Pull up a chair,” she said. “Arson let me forage. If I can restore twenty percent of what I lost from my files, I should qualify for a master’s in archaeology.”

  “That ought to go well with the science degree.”

  “The girls must love you. You remember everything.”

  “Some of it comes to me in dreams. Usually when it’s too late.” Such beautiful promise. Such profanity. Why don’t Latins rule the world? I sat in the rocking chair. “Been following the news?”

  “One more lead story from Mexicantown and they’ll have to broadcast it in two languages. The police have Luís Guerrera in custody and a Zapatista named Molina in a drawer in the county morgue.”

  The TV and radio reports had linked Molina to the murders in the rooster factory—part of a power play, the cops said, to fill the vacuum left by Emiliano Zorborón’s untimely death; Roscoe Berdoo and Django would have made inconvenient witnesses. Old Country Zaps were suspected. The cops were silent on whether Molina had given them any information before he died. El Hermano, they said, was being held as a person of interest in the death of Domingo “Seventh Sunday” Siete. The police refused to comment on whether there was any connection suspected with Zorborón’s murder and the firebombing of Sister Delia’s house of charity.

  “How are your hands?”

  She held them up in front of her face as if she’d forgotten about them until that moment. “They itch like crazy. That means they’re healing. My doctor wouldn’t approve of what I’m doing with them, but the sooner I can get my operation back on its feet the better. As things stand it will take months to retrieve what the neighborhood lost this past week. Years, more likely; probably as many as it took to start changing people’s minds about what Mexican-Americans are all about. All we needed was murder, arson, and cockfighting to put us right back under that sombrero at the base of a cactus.”