Spiral

by David L Lindsey

  That was it, Haydon thought, that was Valverde's mission in life, what he dedicated himself to perfecting: getting ahead while covering his ass, all in one fluid motion.

  "If Sosa was concerned about security, why wasn't he using an armored limousine?" Haydon asked. "Did he ever request one?"

  "I don't have any," Valverde said. "I used to. I had one. But it's just too big an investment. Besides, if somebody really wants their man that armor shit isn't going to stop them. The KD-2, that Teflon-coated stuff, cuts it like butter."

  Haydon kept his eyes on Valverde. "You know a lot about KD-2, Mr. Valverde?"

  "Look, I read that shit in the magazines," Valverde explained, defensive again. "People in the business, security people, talk about it all the time. I told you, it's a big thing now."

  Haydon switched subjects. "What bank does Mr. Sosa write his checks on?"

  Valverde looked at Haydon. The man was transparent, Haydon thought. You could see his mind working all over his face. This clearly was a question with different implications.

  "I don't remember," he said.

  "Then check in your files there," Haydon said.

  "I don't keep those kinds of records," Valverde said. "Nobody does."

  "Does Sosa sign the checks, or is someone authorized to do it for him?"

  Valverde thought about that.

  "Maybe your secretary remembers," Haydon suggested.

  "Sosa signs them, I think. Yeah, Sosa."

  "Has he always paid by check?" "Right."

  "For three years?" "Right."

  "He's your best customer, always pays by check, and you can't remember the name of his bank?"

  "Right."

  Haydon looked at Valverde in silence. He found the man depressing. Like his furniture, he was several notches down from where he pretended to be. You could buy his respect at outlet prices. You could get him at lower-than-ever reduced rates. The only problem was that when you had bought him, and got him out in the light where you could get a good look at what you had, there would be the sudden sinking feeling that you still had paid more than he was worth.

  "Mr. Valverde, this is a homicide investigation," Haydon said. "You can be prosecuted for concealing information, or providing false testimony."

  Valverde continued to stare at Haydon. Then, with resignation, his head sagged between his shoulders.

  "He's always paid me in cash," he said glumly. "The guy always carried big bucks. These people, they live in a different kind of world from you and me. Okay? He wants to pay me in cash, what am I gonna do? Say, 'Gee, thanks, but I'd rather have a check.' I'm not going to offend the guy. That kind of money, it was nothing to him. Pocket change. Literally. You don't want to get picky with people like that. Shit."

  Haydon listened.

  "Look. These wealthy Mexican types, they're a class act. He doesn't flash the stuff. Very discreet. Just a clean, white envelope. Thank you very much. I'm not going to offend the guy."

  "You didn't suspect anything?"

  "What! What?" Valverde suddenly became animated, leaning forward over the opened manila folder, his eyes widened, his shoulders bunched up around his neck as he spread his hands palms up on the desk. "Suspect! What am I supposed to suspect? When the hell did cash get to be a dirty word? My old man used to be proud he didn't have no debts. Paid for everything in cash or he didn't get it. I got to 'suspect' cash now? Cash, for Christ's sake!"

  Valverde was laying it on too thick. Haydon had had enough of his dramatics. "I'll need Esteban Moreno's address," he said. "Does he have a family?"

  Valverde fell back in his chair again. His face was drawn. This was the part he had dreaded.

  "A mother, a brother, and a sister," he said flatly.

  "They've got to be notified. Someone has to identify the body."

  "Oh, shit. This is terrible."

  "Give me the address," Haydon said.

  There was a long silence.

  "Look, the guy worked for me for two and a half years," Valverde said with resignation. "I'll do it. I'll tell them."

  "Do you know the family?"

  Valverde closed his eyes and nodded. When he opened them again, he looked at Haydon and tilted his head toward the front office.

  "That's his little sister was in here. Celia Moreno."

  Chapter 11

  HAYDON took Mooney back to the police station, where he would start the paperwork on their part of the investigation and type up a report on the Belgrano killing, which would have to be put on the back burner for a while. Before he left the station, Haydon called Nina at her studio and told her he was going to be working late, maybe all night. She said the courtyards were coming slowly anyway, and since he wasn't going to be home she would send out for a sandwich and work late too. She promised him she would be home by midnight.

  Sosa's home was, of course, in River Oaks. Haydon was not surprised. Sosa's Mexico City address had been in Lomas Altas, one of the most prestigious and fashionable sections in the western part of the city. Former Mexican president Jose Lopez Portillo's flamboyant sister had built an extravagant mansion there with questionable funds during her brother's administration. Sosa kept high-ranking company.

  There were no walls or gates protecting the Italianate residence on Inverness, but tall hedges screened the entrance itself from the quiet avenue in front. In the falling dusk, Haydon did not at first see the guards who stood beside their cars at the driveway entrance. As he turned off the street and eased between the hedge that loomed above the car, two men in business suits stepped out of the blue evening and into the beams of his headlights. They made no effort to hide their automatic weapons.

  Lowering the window, Haydon held up his shield at the same moment a sharp beam from a powerful flashlight played into his eyes. It stayed there. His temper flared, but he held his tongue and fought the urge to slap down the flashlight as he put the shield in front of his eyes. He could see nothing behind the glare, but he could hear the second man talking to someone over a hand-held radio.

  There was a scratchy response, and the man with the flashlight said, "You may continue, senor." He pointed the beam along the paved drive as a gesture of escort. "Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience."

  Haydon was surprised they hadn't asked whom he had come to see, which was just as well, because he didn't know if Sosa was married, had a family, or lived alone.

  He put the car in gear and drove toward the long, softly lighted loggia that stretched across the front of the house. A man hurried down the steps to wait for him, and was there to open the car door by the time he turned off the motor.

  "Please," the man said as Haydon got out of the car. He gave a nodding salute, and indicated that he should be followed. Haydon had the odd impression he was expected, that he was the only one who didn't know what was about to happen next. Their footsteps made rasping sounds on the footlighted stones as they quickly ascended. At both ends of the loggia men with automatic weapons leaned on the shadow side of the columns, and yet another stood at the door itself. Haydon knew there would be no legal impropriety in this ostentatious show of weaponry, but it rankled him nonetheless. He resented the state-of-siege mentality that seemed more appropriate in the Middle East, or in Latin America itself. He was irritated, too, because it reminded him that this was just a more overt representation of an attitude that was increasing among many wealthy United States citizens as well. Especially in Texas, where the right to bear arms was sacrosanct. For the most part, that right had been judiciously and cautiously exercised in the past, but this seemed no longer to be the case. There was a cowboy on every street now. The state bristled with arms.

  As the heavy wooden front door swung open, Haydon was greeted by a thin young man with tortoiseshell glasses. He wore a suit and a heavily starched Oxford-cloth white shirt with a button-down collar.

  "Please come in, Detective Haydon," he said, stepping back for Haydon to enter a vestibule dominated by a curving double stairway of dove-gray marble
that reached to a balcony on the second floor. A heavy chandelier hung from the high ceiling, adding brilliance to the polished marble. "My name is Efren Gamboa. My father is waiting to talk to you in the library."

  Gamboa? Haydon didn't say anything. Apparently he didn't need to. Everything seemed to be going according to schedule. Someone else's schedule.

  The two men walked across a floor inlaid with a black marble labyrinth pattern that encompassed the entire entryway to a pair of carved wooden doors. The young man opened the doors, and they entered a spacious and richly decorated room. Haydon quickly saw that it was a library in name only, furnished with the kinds of volumes that are the stock items of interior decorators whose clients want the appearance of erudition. Huge tomes of matching leather bindings with gold imprinting lined the mahogany shelves. There were rows and rows of matching sets of dark leather volumes accented with others in red and green morocco, and the butter-colored spines of parchment bindings. Massive folio volumes lay on their sides in the lower shelves. A heavy library table dominated the near side of the room. It was decorated with a giant antique globe on a brass stand, and excellent pieces of pre-Columbian statuary under individual Plexiglas canopies. No room here for spreading out one of the volumes from the shelves and perusing its expensive pages.

  The young man led Haydon past the table to a sitting area with an oval arrangement of creamy Roche-Bobois leather armchairs around a large oriental carpet as precise and detailed as any Haydon had ever seen. It was Chinese, with gul motifs in cream and rose.

  A man in his early sixties stood from one of the plush chairs and gravely waited for the young man to bring Haydon to him. As they approached, the older man stepped forward and extended his hand.

  "Please let me introduce myself, Mr. Haydon. I am Benigo Gamboa Parra. Mr. Sosa worked for me."

  Haydon shook Gamboa's hand.

  "You were expecting me?" Haydon asked.

  "Not you specifically, but the police."

  "How did you learn of his death?"

  "Mr. Haydon," Gamboa said, his expression one of sadness and world-weariness, "I am preoccupied with security. That kind of tragedy does not occur to someone in my employ without my immediate knowledge."

  "But how did you learn of it?" Haydon persisted. His tone was polite, but emphatic.

  "Of course." Gamboa understood, and nodded in deference to

  Haydon's position. "I was in another limousine at the time. We had radio contact. We heard the firing and my driver brought me back here at once. My security personnel have a police scanner. They followed the developments." He looked at his son, who excused himself and left the room. "Please, sit down, Mr. Haydon."

  Gamboa himself sat down, and unbuttoned his suit coat so that the garment would hang more comfortably. It was tailored of silk the color of ashes, and complimented his wavy gray hair. He wore glasses, slightly tinted.

  "I know you have questions. I will do everything I can to assist

  you."

  "I'm sure you have no idea what provoked this attack," Haydon said curtly, keeping a tight rein on his temper.

  The tension in the flat tone of his voice was not lost on Gamboa. He looked at Haydon for a moment as if he were giving him time to relax. The Mexican's eyes were alert, though the flesh around them was sagging from age. There was a sense of melancholy in them that suggested his life had not been without other tragedies.

  "I have a million ideas, Mr. Haydon. I do not live with this absurd security without reasons." Gamboa touched his glasses and smiled tiredly. "For many years I have been active in Mexican politics," he said simply. He seemed to find that explanation enough.

  "You are still active?"

  Gamboa shook his head. "I retired after my service in the Jose Lopez Portillo administration. The stresses are as real for the manana Mexican public servant as for your own distinguished government officials. When President Portillo left office it was a good time for me to leave as well. A good time to retire. I have devoted a large portion of my life to my country. It was a duty. It was right that I should do it. But a man does not live forever. I have a family to consider. True, as you have seen, my children are mostly grown, but in Mexico we stay a family longer than is your custom here. I am not too old to enjoy my children, or to help them with their careers."

  "You have other children?"

  "Two sons, two daughters. Efren is my second son. He has been in law school at Harvard. The alma mater of our President de la Madrid. A good selection for a young man."

  "What is your relationship with Sosa?"

  "Ramon has been my close friend and associate for many years. Before I entered political life, I was a businessman who had been blessed with some success. Since I could not continue my commercial pursuits while I was in politics, I retained Mr. Sosa as my representative. Something like your blind trust here in the United States. He looked after my interests, while I tried to attend to the interests of Mexico."

  "Do you have any idea why he was assassinated?"

  Gamboa shook his head again, slowly closing and then opening his eyes.

  "No. They were not after poor Ramon. They thought I was in the limousine."

  Haydon studied him. "You seem sure of that."

  "As I said, there is a purpose for the security."

  "You believe your life is in danger from opposing political factions in Mexico?" Haydon was still missing the point here. Gamboa was using his charming paternalism to sidestep the obvious intent of Haydon's questions.

  "Mr. Haydon, Mexico is full of fanatics. It is our shame and our pride. After all, one could call the fathers of our revolution fanatics. Yours too. But all Mexicans are fervent people, not just the 'movers and shakers' as you call them here. Perhaps there are some fanatics who disagreed with my politics. No man can expect to be loved by everyone. Certainly not a man in government. If he were, he would not be doing his job. It is not realistic.

  "In Mexico there are those who feel that a man has committed a crime simply by virtue of his wealth. There is much to be hopeful about in my country, but there is no denying that many people are still uneducated. Ignorance among our poor is a plague for all of us, because the disappointments they face in life causes them to grasp at weak reeds for hope. They are taught by some to hate those who have more than they. They are told that their poverty is a direct result of our wealth. Their bitterness is corrosive and unavoidable, and their exploitation by leftists is understandable."

  Gamboa sighed and looked around the room.

  "Mexico has its problems, Mr. Haydon. They may appear primitive to you. You may wonder why we cannot pull ourselves together for progress. Why we cannot educate our people, why there is the terrible gap between the rich and the poor, why we cannot be more economically productive, more honest. More like you North Americans." His eyes settled on Haydon. "Well, for all our faults we are not deceiving ourselves. We may have to look over our shoulders while we step into the twenty-first century, but we will be there along with everyone else. And another generation will have engaged the complexities that challenge us. There will be more answers. There will be more hope."

  An expression of resignation slowly replaced the light that had momentarily illuminated the dignified Gamboa's eyes.

  "In the meantime we must face the realities of the situation," he said. "To answer your question: I do not know who would want to assassinate me, Mr. Haydon. I only know that I must never let down my guard. I can never have enough eyes to watch. I can never have enough ears to listen."

  Haydon sat silently, breathing the rich aroma of the leather upon which they sat, and looked at Benigo Gamboa. He wondered at the complex truth behind what he had been saying. He did not believe that the old man had only these vague notions of who the assailants might have been. While it might be true he had many nameless enemies, Haydon was sure that these enemies were known to him.

  "Mr. Gamboa, did you know any of the other men killed in the attack?"

  "Yes." Gamboa nodded heavil
y. "Yes. There were two security men in a Mercedes. I did not know them personally. They were hired from a local agency. There was the chauffeur of the limousine. He has driven for us for several years. Again I did not know him personally. Sosa made all those kinds of arrangements. And then there were Mr. Crisman and Mr. Lowell. This morning Mr. Sosa and I met with these two men to discuss the possibility of my buying some property in Austin from Mr. Lowell."

  "He was a realtor there?"

  "A land developer, yes."

  "Crisman was also a developer?"

  "No. He is an attorney here in Houston. We were meeting in his office in the Coastal Tower building in Greenway Plaza. He had been the contact between myself and Mr. Lowell. We came to a verbal agreement this morning and I asked the two men to lunch. We dined together at Charlie T's. A long lunch, because we talked at greater length about the land. We had more drinks after lunch, and then we left. Ramon and Mr. Crisman were going to take Mr. Lowell to his hotel—"

  "Where was he staying?"

  "The Westin Galleria. And then Ramon was to take Mr. Crisman back to his office."

  "Why didn't you go with them?"

  "I frequently leave in a separate vehicle from the one in which I arrive at a restaurant or business meeting. It is something my chief of security arranges."

  "Were you expecting this attempt?"

  "No more so than at any other time, as I have said."

  "Why did the security men follow the limousine instead of following the vehicle in which you were riding when you left the restaurant?"

  "I don't know the particulars. All of the logistics are handled by my security chief, Lucas Negrete. You may talk to him about it."

  Security chief. Gamboa still used the language of a government official. But somehow Haydon thought that was less a habit from a past vocation than it was the confident vocabulary of a man who simply viewed himself as being as important as any dignitary regardless of whether or not he was attached to a political authority.

  "Has Mr. Negrete been with you long?"