Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  “Cassandra took Andrea as her working name,” Aragon said. “She must have known mom’s history.”

  “These are old. She would have been too young to hear about it when the arrests happened. Baca had to tell her daughter. How to inspire your kid to reach for the stars.”

  Aragon was reading the last file, the officer’s account of observing Baca at work, following her to the rooms in the La Fonda Hotel, seeing her come down, get back to it, zeroing in on men alone at the bar. Then approaching himself, taking her to the room he’d paid for with operating expenses, haggling, the arrest.

  “Maybe someone else told Cassandra,” Aragon said.

  “Like the father?”

  “Whoever that is.”

  The next pages were notes about Baca’s possible connection with a larger prostitution operation, the real target of the temporary vice squad. The officers had hoped to ID other working girls and find a common thread leading back to the pimp. They never got beyond arresting individual women and watching them bail out, sometimes seeing charges dismissed for speedy trial violations, the DA not very impressed with the project.

  One girl, a Monica Otero, had been willing to talk. She’d been busted with heroin and a derringer in her purse. The weapons enhancement provided incentive. She told them to talk to Luke Tapia, her driver. He was getting instructions from someone else. Tapia was known to the police. He hung out at the old Tres Pistoles Bar. They waited for him, two officers stretching drinks, watching the entrance every night for a week until the bartender called them officers loud enough for the room to hear.

  No more arrests for Tapia. No more police contacts. He disappeared.

  So did Monica Otero.

  Aragon found something, checked the other files, found it there, too. She opened them side by side and brought Lewis over.

  “Who posted bail every time?” she asked.

  “Rigoberto Silva.”

  “I know his son. He was at Santa Fe High with my brother.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s only more Martinezes in Santa Fe than Silvas. But I’m wondering.”

  She did something she’d learned from Lewis when they were investigating Cody Geronimo’s businesses. She went to the Secretary of State’s website, brought down the tab for “search corporations,” and typed in a name.

  “Eeeeeee, Benny,” she said in a sing-song northern New Mexico accent. “Rigo is vice president of Silva Enterprises.”

  They stood at the copier reproducing the old files, wanting to avoid handling the fragile onion skin too much. Lewis passed copies to her. She punched holes and entered them into their case book.

  “Living history.”

  Their sergeant had come up behind them. Pete Perez was new to the department, brought in from Albuquerque after their last two bosses went down, one for getting a pal’s car out of impound while his DUI charge was still pending, the last, Deputy Chief Dewy Nobles, for ordering Aragon to exclude exculpatory evidence from a case file. Perez was supposed to be a breath of fresh air, someone without political aspirations and not related to everyone in city government. He was getting a hard time from other cops, but Aragon liked him.

  “I got word from city legal you have a deposition coming up,” he said to Aragon.

  “Thornton’s suit against everybody who went after Cody Geronimo. The only people she didn’t sue are the women he killed.”

  “What I’m learning about Santa Fe, it wouldn’t surprise me.” Perez shook a large black-and-white photo he’d been holding at his side. “All this stuff about Don Juan de Oñate, the Indians crying and bawling to City Council, wanting their own statue to show what an evil man he was for cutting off feet, the Butcher of Acoma. Look at this. Just in from down near Agua Fria. I gave it to Pork and Sauerkraut.”

  Detectives Darrel Park and Conrad Fenstermacher.

  In the photo a man, Native American, ponytail sheathed in leather bindings, lay on gravel next to the concrete pad for an electrical transformer. Eyes closed, like they’d been squeezed shut. A small entrance wound at his temple, very little blood. He was trussed in what looked to be copper cable, arms bound behind his back.

  “Is that bone?” Aragon asked and tapped the black and white.

  “Where his left foot should be,” Perez said. “OMI says it could have been a sword that took it off. Don Juan rides again.”

  Ten

  Benny Silva wanted to know what brought the detectives back. They weren’t really interested in how customers found him, his rates for parking a dumpster, what the city charged at the only landfill he could use for construction waste.

  “Tell us about Dolores Baca,” Detective Aragon said.

  Getting to it.

  “Which one?”

  “You know more than one?”

  “There’s Bacas from Espanola. The grandmother, Dolores. Dolores Maria Baca Trujillo y Alarid, she taught me math at Chimayo Elementary. Dolores Baca at the Public Health Department, she does permits for waste disposal, my toilet rental line.” He scratched his head. “Let me think, there’s one down in Bernalillo, she—”

  “Dolores Baca, mother of Cassandra Baca. Also known as Andrea Chacon, Andrea Luna, Andrea Tenorio.”

  “Now we’re talking half of northern New Mexico, all those families. Five hundred years they been here. That adds up.”

  “Who’s Rigo Silva?”

  “Are you just flipping pages in the phone book?”

  “Your vice president.”

  “You know, why ask? He’s my brother, too. I’m gonna bet you know that.”

  “Where can we find him?”

  “Out on a job. Working, like I should be.”

  Lewis tapped Aragon’s arm, pointed to a painting behind a desk, Spanish conquistadors, Indians kneeling before them, some being whipped, some being run through with lances. A sword on the wall.

  “That’s Don Juan de Oñate,” Silva said. “Y Salazar, the whole name. A great man. I carry that sword in the Fiesta. The Aragons came into this country with him. Your people. How come I never seen you march? You forget who you are?”

  Aragon wanted to throw something back, but said, “You know everybody but the Dolores Baca we want to know about. Her daughter was the one in your dumpster. Your brother knows the mother. He posted her bail three times when she was arrested for prostitution. Have him call us.”

  Aragon and Lewis left a different way than they’d come in, taking a side door and a long walk around the building back to their car in front. They saw bins of scrap metal, glass, newspapers, the rows of portable toilets, a metal crusher, a metal hangar, the door partially opened, something like a huge pressure cooker in there. And unwound copper coaxial cable on the ground, by itself, looking used, like it had been pulled out of something.

  “Too many coincidences,” Aragon said as she snapped photos on her phone.

  “I wonder if E. Benny has that copper in his book,” Lewis said.

  Silva was there waiting for them, the book open to the right page, showing the copper scrap he bought, from who, where they got it, where he sold it down the line. He said he saw them go the wrong way, maybe they were lost. They want a tour, just ask. By the way …

  “There’s a Dolores Baca in Cuyamungue, now I recall. Her husband works State Highway Department. Another Dolores Baca over in Cebolla, ranching family, and one in Ojo Caliente, the restaurant when you come off the hill. Best rellenos in the state. That’s Dolores Saracino Baca, she says she’s got Arab in her from when the Moors had Spain. I think of more, I’ve got your card.”

  An hour at their office playing with search engines, they found the case of E. Benny Silva Enterprises versus Jeremiah Kohn Productions. They accessed the online First Judicial District Court file and read docket entries. They understood the multi-million dollar judgment part, but not much else. Aragon called her cousin, Deput
y DA Joe Mascarenas, and asked him to make sense of it. Mascarenas pulled it up on a computer in his office. Aragon put the call on speaker so Lewis could hear.

  “It’s been in limbo. Post-verdict motions, hearings, the trial judge recusing himself. Interest is adding up fast. The time for appeal hasn’t started with the motion for new trial pending. Hold on. It’s been pending almost a year.”

  “If there’s no judge,” Lewis asked, “what happens?”

  “There is a judge, by default. The Chief Judge. The First Judicial Court adopted that procedure when the governor and legislature deadlocked over adding new judges to tackle the backlog. This way the Chief Judge could send work to those with the lightest or fastest dockets.”

  “Or keep it for herself?”

  “Why would she?”

  Somebody stepped into the doorway to their small office. They looked up to see Tomas Rivera holding an armful of roses.

  “For me?” Lewis asked. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Hang on, Joe.” Aragon glared at Rivera. Flowers the day after their date? Members of a joint federal-state task force screwing each other was not in the protocol.

  “This isn’t what you think,” Rivera said.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I stopped by Whole Foods for a bite. Your Elaine Salas has been asking about collecting roses from local florists with the goal of trying to match them genetically to those around Andrea. I got these at Whole Foods. It’s hot in the car. Can you put them in water?”

  He only needed one for the lab. He was pushing it with a dozen. Other cops would see. The talk would start.

  Shit. She’d forgotten to keep him current on the girl’s identity. But it wasn’t irritation that pushed an apology out of the way.

  “Whole Foods doesn’t sell roses,” she said. “We were there yesterday.”

  “Someone had bought them out. A loving husband bought six dozen for his wife, all they had. They restocked this morning.”

  “How many roses were in that dumpster? It could have been six dozen.”

  They finished with Mascarenas, then called Elaine Salas and got their answer. Sixty roses. Five dozen.

  Lewis and she were thinking alike. He passed around copies of the florist pages in the Santa Fe Dex and five pages of a Google search. They divided the stores and made calls. They didn’t bother with FTD or Flowers.com on the assumption those outfits would merely route an order through one of the brick and mortars on their list. In all, each called nine florists. It didn’t take long.

  They came back with only two possibilities. Thirteen dozen red sweetheart roses had been purchased from Ava’s Flowers for a bat mitzvah. They were still in the store’s cooler, awaiting delivery this evening.

  The other large purchase had been for a funeral at the Santuario de Chimayo the previous Sunday. They’d run that down, but it was probably a dead end.

  “Let’s learn who cleaned out Whole Foods,” Aragon said, “and what they did with the flowers. We’re one dozen short, but that’s close enough. A Whole Foods bag on Cassandra Baca’s head, flowers from Whole Foods around her. Just maybe.”

  Lewis headed to district court to obtain copies of the pleadings and trial transcript in the Silva lawsuit. Aragon went with Rivera to Whole Foods. He called ahead and asked to meet with the manager.

  She noticed Rivera left the roses behind on her desk.

  In his car she told him they’d identified Andrea as Cassandra Baca.

  “Superb work.” He plugged his phone into the car stereo. “You have me listening to country music. This song is about us.”

  She knew it, about not closing your eyes, not looking backward to another love, another time.

  Rivera sang along, his voice nothing like Miguel’s, the lyrics telling her what he wanted: see me, not someone else.

  Brown adobes rolled by, the city historical or cultural commission, whatever it was, thinking every building looking the same was a good idea. Aragon was tired of it, all the brown, millions of dollars for a building of mud and straw, no angles, nothing new. Not a city, a theme park.

  She hit eject and cut Rivera off in the middle of the next verse.

  It wasn’t the buildings. She honestly liked the look, was proud of it, nothing coming close anywhere in the country. It felt sometimes like a piece of Spain, or Mexico centuries ago. It was Rivera, first playing with the roses, now having fun with the hard time she had loving him. Had she told him Miguel was a beautiful singer? He shouldn’t even try. It didn’t help.

  Did she just think that? ‘Loving him’?

  Not Miguel Martinez. Him, Tomas Rivera?

  “I do something wrong?” He glanced at her, then back to the windshield.

  “No.” She wasn’t going to tell him. “I was thinking about the case. I couldn’t concentrate. Sorry.”

  “Look at this place,” he said as they pulled in the Whole Foods lot. “A money factory. Always packed. I didn’t ask if the flowers were organic, free trade, animal friendly, whatever.”

  “Fregan. I learned that from a smelly girl named Gray, whose family has more money than any Aragon or Rivera. But she won’t buy food. She’ll only eat what people throw away. And she won’t wash.”

  She’d explain later if Rivera asked. They parked and entered the store. Again she saw vegetables and fruits from another planet.

  “I still want to know what celeriac is,” she said.

  Flowers, but not roses, were displayed outside. They asked a cashier for the manager and were pointed to a young man helping another stack boxes of soy milk. He introduced himself as Simon Townsend and led them to the small floral department.

  There they saw roses, dozens, their ends in black plastic buckets filled with water, each dozen wrapped in a crisp, clear plastic sheath. They learned the roses were indeed free trade, grown in El Salvador, and distributed by an importer committed to ethical, sustainable practices. Even more, the roses bore Veriflora labels, a certification, the manager told them, ensuring equitable hiring and employment practices, safe workplace and housing conditions, access to health care, education, transportation, and the prevention of child labor.

  Aragon leaned in close and sniffed. All those ethics and they forgot about smelling good.

  She said, “We understand someone bought you out the day before yesterday, one person. We’d like to know who that was. Can you pull up a credit card transaction? If it was cash, we’re out of luck.”

  “I’ll check sales. Help yourself to coffee. Give my name to the cashier.”

  “I could eat,” Aragon said. “We’ll be at the tables.”

  They ordered from the deli section. Rivera ordered quinoa salad and got a look from Aragon. She went for a brick of meatloaf. They took seats up front looking out on the parking lot.

  “We’re interested in a guy named Benny Silva,” she said. “His brother posted bail for Cassandra Baca’s mother when she was picked up on prostitution beefs long ago. Cassandra adopted her mother’s street name. She ends up in one of Silva’s dumpsters. He’s got a nine-million-dollar verdict hanging on a decision by Judge Judith Diaz, who, we know, was having sex with this girl. There’s a circle here. They’re all inside the line, but I’m not understanding it yet.”

  “The mother, did she know about her daughter’s after-school activities?”

  “She was too doped up to get anything out of her. The house is like two worlds. The one Dolores Baca inhabits, trashed out, a junkie’s flop. You step into Cassandra’s room, you’re somewhere else.” She thought of the kids at Camino High filming the class movie, stepping into lockers to reach a better world. “Neat, tidy, clean. New things. Sports car posters on the wall. I had boy bands on my wall. Lewis says his daughters have horses. Cassandra had a car tattoo on her hip. A neighbor says she tinkered with cars. Maybe Cassandra saw them as a way out, she was going somewhere, fast
. Maybe a statement she wasn’t like her mom with the shitty heaps in the driveway.”

  “Except in how she was making money. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Mom went through the room looking for money for another carpet ride. The way she went straight to the closet, leaving everything else untouched, I get the feeling she’s tossed the room before and learned where Cassandra didn’t keep cash.”

  “Cassandra had money outside the house?”

  “She bought her own clothes, lunches. I don’t see Dolores Baca giving her that. Maybe she was saving up for that fast car to get her out of Dodge. Rick is going to swing by the school, deliver the parental consent form, and take a look at her locker.”

  “Mom was too doped to talk, but read and signed a consent form?”

  Aragon fluttered fingers in front of her lips, saying sorry, I’ve got a mouthful.

  “Here it is.” Townsend was at the table. He handed Aragon an index card. “Daniel Breskin. He bought six dozen roses. I can’t give you his credit card number.”

  “We’ll find him,” Aragon said. “This meatloaf’s great. You put in pine nuts. My grandmother did that. We’d pick them where Jack Nicklaus built those houses for millionaires.”

  Rivera said he’d be right back. She read texts from Lewis. He had the court files in Silva’s case and was on his way to Camino High. Rivera climbed in with a small shopping bag.

  “For you. Stretch your horizons.” He unpacked on the seat. “Kohlrabi, Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, and your favorite, celeriac.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen.”

  “I’ll cook for you.”

  “I’ve never had a guy cook vegetables for me. Flip burgers, burn a steak, maybe. This is new.”

  “Can’t cook in your brother’s truck. It would have to be one of our places for once. I’ve got a kitchen I don’t use enough.”