“I’ll give you a to-go cup. Take them with you. It’s for your own good.”
I tilted my head—a habit I have when I hear something I don’t like. “That’s starting to sound like a threat. Is that a threat?” I stared at her.
She stared back without speaking.
After a few seconds, I raised my left hand and said, “Okay. Alright. You don’t want to help us. I get it.” I shrugged and nodded that I understood. “You’re scared. Fine. How about you call your manager and tell him you’ve got a problem and you need his help. Maybe he’ll answer a question or two.”
“Besa mi culo,” she said, nearly spitting the words at me. Kiss my ass.
I like a succinct answer, but not that one. Fortunately, the place was so loud that no one could overhear us.
I smiled. “Rita, there you go again,” I said. I paused and the smile left. I stared at her a second, then said, “Look, you don’t need this trouble, and I sure as hell don’t want it, but we really need to get some questions answered. If not from you, then we need to talk to your boss. And Rita, if you don’t call him out here—right fucking now!”—this part I said plenty loud enough for people around us to stop what they were doing and look. I quieted down and pulled out my cell phone—“then I’m going to put in a phone call to my friends out there in the parking lot. What if we are cops? What then? My friends are going to come inside here and start busting this place up, taking people down and ruining your whole goddamned night. Is that what you want? Or would you rather just call your boss?”
Rita stared at me for a few seconds, her eyes firing daggers. Then she turned and picked up a telephone. She spoke into the phone, and then hung up and walked ten feet or so away. Less than a minute later, a middle-aged man in slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt hurried out to meet us.
“Amigos,” he said with a smile as he opened his arms, “Please—come join me in my office.”
“Thank you.” I said. I took the ten-dollar bill from the stack of change. “Rita—keep the change,” I called out. From the scowl I got in return, a wild guess told me that Rita was not happy with me. Also the extended middle finger helped clear up any confusion I might have had.
~~~~
“I am Jorge Sanchez, owner of this establishment,” the man said as we entered his office. He pointed to two vinyl-covered diner’s chairs in front of a desk buried in papers.
The little office was crammed with file cabinets. The walls were covered with State of Washington posters with clever little sayings like “Employees—Know Your Rights!” and the like, conveniently printed in Spanish as well as English.
“I thought this place was Ramon’s Cantina,” I said. “Where’s Ramon?”
“Ah,” Jorge said, smiling, “there never was a Ramon. When I started this bar, Ramon’s Cantina sounded better than Jorge’s Cantina. You know what I mean?”
“Interesting,” I said. “I suppose.”
I looked at Toni. She weighed the two names. “Ramon’s, Jorge’s—I think he’s right,” she said.
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“I’m told you are looking for some people,” Jorge said. “I’ll tell you what I know, because I want no trouble with the police.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, choosing not to tell him we weren’t the police, “but no offense, this place doesn’t exactly have a reputation as being a family joint—one where you go to avoid trouble.”
“Alas, to remain profitable, we have been forced to cultivate a certain public image to attract a certain type of clientele,” Jorge said. “It’s part of our marketing efforts. Some of these customers are rough characters—rougher than we’d like. But they pay well. Besides, we don’t usually know about that until they’ve created a problem, and then it’s too late. Meanwhile, I try to keep things in balance as long as they behave themselves here. But, you should know that the bar itself—behind the scenes, we always cooperate with the authorities. We’re squeaky clean. I went to U-Dub, you know. MBA.”
“Really?” Toni said, smiling. “I’m impressed. We both went to U-Dub as well. Good to see a fellow alum.”
“Yeah, it is. I can switch from barrio-speak to banker-talk on a dime in three different languages—all depends on the audience,” Jorge said, smiling. “But the important thing is I wanted you to know that I know how to run my business the right way. I play by the rules.”
“Maybe with the possible exception of the lovely Rita out there,” I answered. “She seemed a little agitated.”
Jorge cringed. “For that, I apologize,” he said. “I will speak to her.”
“No need,” I answered. “It’s over. Besides, she already hates me. No need to get her even more upset. She might blow a fuse.”
I laid out the photo of Gina on Jorge’s desk, along with the group photo. “This girl here is Gina Fiore—you may have seen her on TV. She’s gone missing. We’ve been hired by her family to help the police find her. It’s been reported to us that she frequents your bar in the company of this man here—we think his name is Eddie.” I laid the next photo down. “And this girl here, probably named Karen or Carolyn or something along those lines.” I laid down the last photo. “We are trying to identify these two people so we can see if they might help us find Gina.”
“His name might be Edward, Eduardo, something like that, as well,” Toni said.
“I recognize him,” Jorge said. “His name is Eduardo Salazar.” He’d suddenly become very serious. “He is a real chingón—a badass. And he has very bad friends.”
I wrote his name down in my notebook. “Why do you say that?” I asked.
“I’d prefer not to say,” he said, the fear in his eyes obvious. “My information is all second-hand, anyway. Trust me, amigo. From what I hear, he is a dangerous man. One of those rough characters I referred to. Between you and me, if he chose another cantina, I’d be happy. Let’s just leave it at that.”
I nodded. “Okay. When did you see him last?”
“I haven’t seen him for a week or so. Like I said, if I don’t see him anymore around here, that’s okay. I want no trouble with anybody, including the police.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“No, but if I did, I could not tell you. Not out of disrespect, but because of who he is and who his friends are.”
I nodded. “Alright. I understand.”
“Do you know who this girl is?” Toni asked, pointing to the unknown woman.
“I think I may have seen her,” he said slowly as he studied the photo. “I might recognize her, I’m not sure.” He studied the other photos. “I’ve definitely seen this one,” he said quickly, pointing to the picture of Gina. “She’s been in often. Several times I’ve seen her with Eduardo Salazar.”
“Is that right?” I asked. “Is it possible any of your employees might know this girl or might be able to shed some more light on Eduardo Salazar?”
“Probably not. If I ask anybody around here to talk to you about Eduardo Salazar, they’ll likely quit right on the spot. They might talk to you about the girl, if they know her. But not if you start talking about Eduardo Salazar first. If you ask about him—even show his picture—they’ll clam up. They won’t answer any questions. I can ask around about the girl separately if you’d like, tell them her parents are looking for her, or something like that.”
“That would be helpful,” I said, handing him the photo of the mystery girl along with one of our business cards.
“We understand about the problem with you-know-who,” Toni said. “It’d probably be better if we’d never even visited.”
“I can handle my business,” Jorge answered confidently. “If asked, I’ll tell them I sent you away empty-handed.”
The room was quiet for a moment, then Toni suddenly stood up, smiled, and said, “Mr. Sanchez, you’ve been absolutely no help at all.”
“Good!” Jorge said, smiling broadly as he stood.
I looked from one to the other for a second before I saw what Toni
was doing. I stood up and said, “I’m certain your name or your establishment will never come up in the course of this investigation.”
“Good!” he said again, beaming.
“We’re very sorry to have bothered you, sir,” I added. “We didn’t mention any names at the bar. Tell anyone who asks that we’re looking for the girl.”
“Excellent!” he said, still smiling. “Thanks for coming. And don’t come back!”
~~~~
“Strange,” Toni said as we left the bar.
“You got that right,” I agreed. “Jorge was petrified by this Eduardo Salazar character.”
“No shit. He seemed more afraid of him than of the police, of us, or of anything we could possibly do to him. Who scares a guy that much?”
“Someone with a nasty rep,” I answered.
“True. At least we got a name,” Toni said.
We rounded the corner of the building, headed toward the back parking lot and saw three Mexican men standing near my Jeep. When they saw us, they began slowly walking toward us. One of the men split off from the others and started circling to our right in a not-so-subtle attempt to flank us. All three men were probably in their mid- to late twenties. All wore some sort of outer garment—either vest or denim jacket. Great, I thought—the better to hide the automatic weapons under. I focused on the two men in front of us while Toni concentrated on the guy circling to our side. One of my guys was tall and looked like a body builder. He was bald and completely covered with prison tattoos. The other guy was shorter and more round, but no less bald. He did have a mustache. He wore a vest over a white T-shirt. His arms were also covered with prison ink.
“Look confident and mean,” I whispered to Toni, trying not to move my lips.
We approached to within about ten feet, and then stopped. They stopped as well. “What’s up?” I called out. “Going inside?”
“Maybe in a minute, esse,” Mr. Short and Round said quietly.
“We were just leaving,” I said. “Nice place. Ask for Rita. She’s a hoot.”
“Yeah, real nice,” he said. He gave me a mean glare for maybe ten seconds—long enough for Mr. Scout to reach a decent flanking position. Toni had turned completely around to stare the bastard down, her back to mine.
Mr. Short and Round said, “We hear you’re looking for a friend of ours.”
I was ready. “Really? Maybe you can help us,” I said. “You know this girl?” I walked forward with the photo of Gina in my left hand, extended. My right hand I kept straight down to my side, ready to go for my Les Baer Thunder Ranch 1911 handgun, .45 caliber. I’d have no cover, but I was a damned quick draw. And I was 100 percent confident that by now Toni had her hand on her Glock and had already determined where her closest cover was.
I handed the photo to Mr. Short and Round. He looked at it for a few seconds, then looked back at me.
“I don’t know her,” he said, confused and maybe a little disappointed. “This who you’re looking for?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Who’d you think?”
He looked at the photo, and then at me, but didn’t answer
“You probably saw her on TV,” I said, continuing my story. “She’s gone missing. Her family hired us to help try and find her.”
He handed the photo to Mr. Big and Tall, who stared at it a moment. I could see that he recognized her immediately. He fired off a string of rapid Spanish to Mr. Short and Round, all the while nodding his head.
“He’s seen her?” I asked.
“On TV,” Short and Round replied. He seemed confused. “You got other pictures?” he asked.
I figured that Rita, our clever little bartender, had phoned these guys while we were talking to Jorge and told them we were snooping around with pictures of Eduardo Salazar—thus the greeting committee. Short and Round expected us to be looking for Salazar and, therefore, he expected me to present photos of Salazar. Presenting photos of Gina instead had caught him by surprise, as I’d hoped it would. I hoped Rita hadn’t been very specific about what type of photo we had. The head shot of Salazar might make it seem more like we were looking for him by virtue of the fact that he’d been singled out. The group photo might allow my story that we were focusing on Gina, not Eduardo, to continue. So I handed him the group photo.
“See here, this is a picture of the girl with some friends of hers at this bar. That’s why we came here. We wanted to ask if any of these people could help us find her. Do you recognize any of them?”
He studied the photo, then quickly handed it back to me. “I never seen none of ’em.”
“Too bad. Nobody inside recognized them either,” I said. “Well, I appreciate your help. You guys have a good evening. We won’t take up any more of your time.”
He turned and silently looked at Mr. Big and Tall with a confused look on this face. While he was still considering his options, I walked past and then turned and watched. I was ready to jump in if needed, but Toni walked past with no incident. The men stared at us, but they did nothing.
We climbed into the Jeep, and Toni said, quietly, “Whew! That was intense!” I don’t know if she meant intense thrilling or intense scary.
I fired up the Jeep and looked back to see the three men, still standing in the parking lot talking to each other.
“That little bitch Rita called in the welcome wagon, didn’t she?” Toni said indignantly.
“Looks like it,” I agreed. “Looks like Jorge was right—this Eduardo Salazar guy is dangerous. Hell, we didn’t even make it out of the damn parking lot before they were on us.”
It was quiet for a second, then Toni said, “That was good thinking back there, boss. I was wondering how that was going to play out. You confused the hell out of that guy. That could have gotten ugly fast if he thought we were looking for Salazar.”
“True,” I said. “Better to not have to fight your way to the car if you can avoid it. Speaking of which, did you have the flanker covered?”
“Of course. I made sure he noticed I had my hand on my gun.”
“Good. Avoiding a fight is one thing, but no sense in us looking like pussies.” I thought for a few moments. “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but it’s pretty clear that these people are way fucking dangerous. I sure hope Gina’s not gotten herself involved with them.”
Chapter 6
DWAYNE AGREED TO meet us at the police station first thing next morning after I called him and told him about Eduardo Salazar and our experience at Ramon’s. Gus met us in the lobby and took us back to Dwayne’s office.
“Heard you had a little excitement last night,” Gus said.
“Yeah, a little,” I said. “We met up with some mean-looking chulos in the parking lot at Ramon’s Cantina.”
“Ramon’s Cantina, eh?” he asked, laughing. “You trying to impress your partner here by taking her to an uptown establishment like Ramon’s?”
“Yeah, something like that. She likes to live life on the edge.”
“The gentlemen in the parking lot seemed to take offense at us looking for Eduardo Salazar,” Toni said.
“Did they try to muscle you around?” Gus asked.
“They were about to,” Toni answered, “but golden boy here whipped out a verbal razzle-dazzle on them. Confused them with so much quick-talking bullshit that they ended up with stars in their eyes. We just walked right past them, hopped in the Jeep, and drove away. They were still there arguing with each other there in the parking lot, trying to figure out exactly what Danny said. Might still be there, for that matter.”
Gus laughed. “Nice work. No sense creating a lot of extra paperwork.”
We walked into Dwayne’s office. “Were they gang members?” Gus asked.
“What do you think, Toni?” I asked.
“Too old. Too big,” she said.
“That’s what I thought, too,” I said. “These guys didn’t look like your normal Yakima/Tacoma skinny, teenaged gangbangers. I actually thought they looked more like La eMe type
s.”
“Really? Prison gang? Mexican Mafia?” Dwayne asked.
“Yeah. Older than your typical MS-13 kids. Wiser. Maybe a little less macho-psycho fire in their eyes, but colder, more calculating, actually more menacing. Somehow I get the feeling that the guys last night are much more dangerous.”
“They were bigger, that’s for sure,” Toni said. “One guy must have been six five and two-fifty.” She paused, and then added, “Oh, and two out of three were bald. Lots of ink, too.”
“Okay,” Dwayne said, pointing to the conference table. “Have a seat and tell us what happened from the start.”
We sat down and recounted the events of yesterday afternoon at Pacific Wine and Spirits and of last night at Ramon’s, of meeting the bartender and then Jorge, and finally of meeting the three bad guys in the parking lot on our way back to the car. We didn’t leave anything out.
“Here’s some enhanced photos that Kenny made,” I said, handing copies of all the photos over to Dwayne.
Dwayne studied them for a moment, then asked, “Who’s this?”
“That’s Reggie Campbell. She works with Gina.”
“And this?”
“We haven’t identified her yet. Karen, or Carolyn—something like that. We’re working on trying to ID her now.”
Dwayne pulled the photo of Eduardo Salazar forward and stared at it for a few more seconds. He said, “And you think the scumbags in the parking lot were upset with you because you were asking about this other scumbag here named Eduardo Salazar?”
“Technically, we never asked anyone about Salazar, specifically,” I said. “They had to assume that all on their own. Not counting these guys, we only talked to the bartender and to Jorge Sanchez. We just handed the bartender the group photo—never even told her who we were looking for. I’m guessing that she jumped to a conclusion and notified her buddies out back that we were asking about Eduardo Salazar. I doubt she cared about Gina or the others.”
“Maybe she was worried about covering something up,” Gus said. “Maybe something happened to Gina and her friends were involved.”
Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) Page 9
