Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  “I’ve got one I never use.”

  “My place then.”

  “I’ll bring Lotaburgers in case it’s a mistake.” He looked hurt. She punched his shoulder. “The rabbit food, silly. Not your place.”

  They had Daniel Breskin with a few taps on the screen of Rivera’s phone.

  The top search results gave them a computer entrepreneur in Seattle with connections to New Mexico. Reports about Breskin’s success with three start-ups led them to a story about the modernistic mansion he’d built above Santa Fe. They got the address with a call to the County Assessor’s office.

  They saw his place from a half-mile away. At the crown of a hill, sunlight bouncing off white walls. The driveway was a paved road. Halfway up, on the steepest slope, they passed through an open gate on rollers retracted into the pinyon and juniper.

  They reached the house after more bends in the roadway. Macadam gave way to interlocking masonry blocks ending at a four-car garage. A path of crushed sea shells bordered by lavender led to the front door.

  A woman was bending into the trunk of a white BMW. She came out with a white gym bag. Asian, thirties, long straight black hair against a white exercise bra, white stretch pants, white sandals. Strong calves, graceful back. She straightened when she saw them. Rivera pulled his car close. They got out, showing their badges and giving their names.

  “We’d like to talk to Daniel Breskin,” Aragon said.

  “My husband is away. Can I help you?”

  “May we talk inside?”

  The woman bumped the car door shut with her hip.

  “Would you like something to drink? It’s so awfully hot.”

  They followed her into the house, cool and dark. A dozen roses sat in a ceramic pot on a table in the entry. Same small, tight blooms as the ones in Andrea’s dumpster. At the end of the hallway they stepped into an ocean of light so piercing they winced. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed an infinity pool beyond the glass, the water line underscoring a view across Santa Fe’s rooftops. Everything was sharp angles, hard surfaces, and, where there wasn’t artwork or rugs, white. White leather furniture low to the ground. White blinds pulled above the glass. Built-in cabinets almost white, a very pale variety of ash or maple, Aragon guessed, not knowing how to identify much beyond pine and oak.

  The Asian woman was standing at a counter with a sink and refrigerator sunk into white surfaces.

  “We didn’t get your name?”

  “Sun-Hi Breskin. I go by Sunny.”

  Aragon scanned the mantle over a glass-enclosed fireplace. Small Asian figurines, cut glass, nothing with New Mexico style. On the bookshelves, volumes about localities around the world, not one on Santa Fe. She looked down another hallway, a glass wall here instead of stone, a view across a courtyard to a separate building, a smaller version of this one but still larger than most New Mexico homes.

  “What’s that playing?” Rivera asked. She hadn’t noticed the music but now that she listened, it was airy stuff, no beat, no drive. Loose, shapeless sounds. No lyrics telling stories about broken hearts and broken homes.

  “It’s the loop they play at my yoga studio.”

  “I like it,” Rivera said.

  Breskin smiled at that and filled glasses from a pitcher in the refrigerator. They moved to seats around a coffee table. White again. Aragon tasted pineapple in what she thought was plain water.

  “From pineapple cores,” Breskin said as Aragon flicked her tongue across her lips. “It adds bromelain. Good for recovery. I just finished my power-flow class. I bet you have amazing abs. May I see them?”

  Rivera hid a smile behind his glass.

  “I don’t think so.” Aragon put her drink on a white coaster on what she guessed was white marble. “Mrs. Breskin, we have a very serious case. I can’t go into all the details. We’re looking into purchases of large quantities of roses in Santa Fe on Monday of this week.”

  “Roses.”

  “Did your husband purchase six dozen roses from Whole Foods?”

  “He always brings me roses when he comes home from Seattle.” She paused. “You said six dozen?”

  Aragon studied her: Quadriceps and calves filled out the stretch pants. Her bare midriff showed rippled abdominal muscles. The inverted triangles of delts topped her arms. The white top was sheer enough to see nipples and aureoles. Coal-black eyes. The light in the room bounced off her black hair.

  “May I ask, how long have you been here?”

  “Almost two years.” Breskin got up to bring the pitcher to the table. Aragon caught Rivera’s eyes following her. “We moved down from Seattle when this home was ready. Daniel maintains a condo there, where his work is.”

  “And you stay here?”

  “His business is not my business. He spends most of his time out there when he’s in Santa Fe.” She flipped a hand at the glass wall revealing the large guesthouse.

  “Do you work?”

  “I maintain the house.”

  “What is your husband’s business?”

  “He made his money in virtual reality technology. First for medical surgery, then computer games.”

  “I take it you and your husband don’t spend much time together.”

  “What’s this about? Why are you interested in the state of our marriage?”

  “I apologize.” Aragon took a long drink of pineapple water to change gears. “I get that way, trailing one question off another. Back to the roses. Would it be too much to ask if we may have one of the blooms? I understand they may hold some special meaning for you. We can wait until you’re ready to throw them out.”

  “You can have them. I usually get rid of them when Daniel leaves.”

  “Can you tell us where he was Monday night?”

  “Again, what does that have to do with people buying large quantities of roses? Is that a crime?”

  “The roses may be connected to a very serious crime. We need to eliminate your husband from our inquiries. If you can account for his time.”

  Sunny Breskin pushed silky black hair behind an ear. Aragon scratched her scalp stubble.

  “We went to Coyote for an early dinner. He needed to work all night. We were done and home by seven. He went to his office in the guesthouse.”

  “Why would he have bought six dozen? Did he have a purpose for the five dozen he didn’t give you?”

  “I don’t like your insinuations. Why don’t you ask Danny yourself? Call his office. No, here’s his cell phone.” She found a pen and paper in an ivory box on the bookshelf and wrote out his number. “I’m wondering whether there’s more to your visit than you’re telling me.”

  “Why would that be, Mrs. Breskin?”

  She removed a cell phone from the same ivory box and tapped numbers on the screen.

  “Who are you calling, Mrs. Breskin?”

  “I want my lawyer here, unless you’re leaving.”

  Aragon gathered the flowers on the way out, water dripping from the stems on the cold stone floor.

  “One dozen for me, five for someone else, that’s what Sun-Hi Breskin’s thinking right now,” she said as they got into the car. “You were sure quiet. You really liked that music?”

  “I was watching her.”

  “I bet you were.”

  The gate was open for them on the way down and started closing as soon as they passed through. Aragon stopped at the bottom of the drive to point out the cameras for Rivera.

  She brought up on her phone the crime reporting map from the SFPD’s website.

  “We’re here,” she said, “where there are no recently reported crimes. Nothing. Not even registered sex offenders nearby. Down here … ” She scrolled to bring up southwest Santa Fe, past Jaguar Road. “These red dots, like measles. Sex offenders, the heaviest concentration of violent and property crime. This is where Cassandra Baca�
��s body was dumped. Two different worlds, a lot more than ten miles apart. Say those roses were his. What would a guy like Daniel Breskin be doing down there?”

  “I think she’s watching us.”

  Aragon followed Rivera’s gaze. A camera that had pointed at cars entering the drive now pointed at them.

  Aragon said, “She might have seen his coming and going. We need to ask if Mr. Breskin went out.”

  “We have his personal cell.”

  “Let’s learn more about him. When I asked what his business is, notice she said how he’d made his money in the past, not what he’s doing now? And see what your FBI mad scientists say about these flowers, whether they’re the same as the ones in the dumpster.”

  “We’ve got plenty to do. I don’t think tonight’s ideal for you to experience celeriac and kohlrabi.”

  “Lotaburgers and work. I’m happy.”

  Benny Silva telling her who she is.

  You don’t march in the Fiesta. You forget how your people got here?

  On her knees in her efficiency apartment on the far west side of town, pushing aside coats and holding back the ironing board before it fell on her head, she pulled the suitcase from the back of her closet. Then the long wooden case her father had made, over five feet long. It took the entire floor under her clothes. Wire twisted around nails held it closed. Inside, not a fake conquistador sword like the one she’d seen on Silva’s wall with his lost Spanish Empire fan club stuff. This one had markings showing it had been forged in Toledo, Spain. Nicks in the blade, her father said, from when an Aragon fought with Don Juan de Oñate all the way from Mexico City to here. Four-and-a-half feet long, a foot soldier’s weapon. With the hilt it was as tall as her.

  A corset of chain mail was wrapped in black velvet, a couple ringlets dented and twisted where her father said it had stopped an Apache spear. In another wooden box, a morion, a Spanish soldier’s crescent-shaped helmet, the pointed brim in front and back curving up, a ridge of tin splitting the crown. The dent over the right eye: stones hurled from Acoma’s sky fortress, a city on a pillar of rock above a dry valley. An Aragon had survived the first Indian attack and returned with Oñate and cannons. They had done terrible things. But it was war on both sides. When Indians got a soldier, the Spaniard took a long time dying. The women got them at the end. Guess what they did?

  That’s what her father had said to the little girl watching him suit up.

  She had marched with him in the Fiesta parade. She’d be in a pleated dress, usually bright blue or red, whatever her mother was wearing that year. They had matching fans and tiaras with glass stones. He father marched with the heavy sword in front of his face, point up, sweating under the chain mail and morion. They’d precede La Conquistadora, Our Lady of the Rosary, a four-hundred-year-old statue carried on a platform. The very same statue that had escaped the Pueblo uprising and returned to Santa Fe in the reconquista. An Aragon had entered the city with De Vargas and his troops.

  Her parents never marched after she’d been raped on the playground across from their house. We have lost, her father said. We are not the victors here.

  Her brothers were sent out of town to the New Mexico Military Academy, in Roswell. It felt like Texas down there when she’d gone to see them graduate, marching in blazing sun in military uniforms they’d never wear again. Javier hated coming into Santa Fe. Her other brother, Christobal, left the state entirely, another proud export.

  She’d fought to go back to school. Her parents had talked about sending her to a convent. Where else do you put a girl who’s been raped? Thank Jesus she didn’t get pregnant.

  She’d made it through those years, always running straight at the violence, making herself get stronger, but never claiming her place in the parade, showing who she was, proud as hell of it and not making any excuses.

  She marched in the shadows, her beautiful black hair gone, her armor the muscles she’d built to cover her bones. What she’d wrapped around her heart, she didn’t have words for.

  Aragon returned the ancient soldier’s tools to the floor of her closet and lined cross-trainers and hiking boots on the boxes. She should probably donate the family treasures to a museum. She would never use them. No one would. They took up so much space.

  No conquistadors left in the Aragon family.

  And Benny Silva saw it.

  Eleven

  Principal Mead took the parental consent from Lewis and pushed a folder across the table.

  “This is what we have on Cassandra Baca,” Mead said. “Teachers complained of her sleeping in class. One teacher reported suspicion of physical abuse. He took her to the school nurse. Cassandra refused to cooperate, but there were bruises plainly visible on her neck and arms. She said they were hickeys from a boyfriend.”

  Inside the folder Lewis found grades, test results, and discipline reports. He didn’t see something he’d been expecting. The neighbor had said Cassandra Baca worked on her mother’s cars. He saw nothing to indicate she’d taken any shop classes.

  Also in the file was a report of bullying, with Cassandra as the victim.

  “Tell me about the bullying.”

  McRae, the school resource officer, was in the room this time, sitting with Lewis across from Mead and her assistant, Ulibarri. Mead nodded for him to speak.

  “Cassandra got it because she was one of the pretty ones. She was knocked around good behind the gym building. Then it stopped. I saw Cassandra with Star Salazar and understood. She had a protector. Nobody messed with Star.”

  “Who’s this Star Salazar?” Lewis asked, thumbing through the girl’s file, seeing only the single report of bullying.

  “One of our very real problems,” Mead said. “She’s older than other students because she missed time while she was in the juvenile detention center.”

  “For what?”

  “All I know is she was an adjudicated youth under commitment. The particulars are not revealed to us.”

  “Armed robbery,” McRae said. “I know the arresting officer. She pulled a gun on a clerk at Latinos Mundial, fired into a rack of cigarettes behind his head when he laughed at her.”

  “Nice friend to have watching your back. I’d like contact information for her parents.”

  “I’ll take care of you.” McRae pushed himself to his feet. “You ready to see the locker?”

  “May we prepare our students?” Mead asked.

  “The news has been released, now that we’ve identified Cassandra Baca. You’ll have television reporters trying to put your students on camera. You should have them ready.”

  In the hallway, Lewis said, “That was bull, saying she didn’t know why Star Salazar was committed.”

  “There’s an effort to play down the crime problems here,” McRae said. “It’s not just a PR thing. If you’re always thinking Camino High is a juvie hall with books, that’s what you get. Power-of-positive-thinking sort of thing. And God forbid, don’t stigmatize children as thugs. But it’s my job to always see things exactly as they are. Eyes open. I know the bad kids walking these halls. Star Salazar is a very bad kid.”

  Cassandra Baca’s locker was in another wing of the building. Students moving between classes stopped to watch as McRae positioned bolt cutters on the lock.

  “Keep going,” McRae told them. “In one minute you’re out of class without a pass.”

  They waited until the hallway cleared before opening the locker.

  Inside they found a sweatshirt on a hook, an overnight bag, clean underwear and bras, and pepper spray.

  “Stuff gets in,” McRae said. “It’s like jail.”

  Lewis wondered if Cassandra took the pepper spray on her hookups. He reached for the overnight bag. Inside he found makeup, Handiwipes, toothbrush and paste, a mini-bottle of mouthwash, and condoms. Tucked inside the kit was two hundred dollars in tens and twenties.

&
nbsp; He took the sweatshirt from the hook and found another three hundred dollars in the hand-warmer pouch.

  With the sweatshirt out of the way he could see the back of the locker. It was covered with photos of expensive cars taped to gray metal.

  “Guess I pegged Cassandra wrong,” McRae said. “I thought she had it together.”

  “So did she. Do you have that list of friends you promised?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Get me one on Star Salazar, too.”

  Lewis waited for Aragon outside Dolores Baca’s house. Perla Gallegos watched him, a curtain in the front window pulled aside, weathered fingers curled around the fabric. A woman came out of the house on the other end of the cul-de-sac to put a bag in the rolling city trash container on the side of the house. He remembered they hadn’t completed their canvas because no one else had been home and caught up with her.

  She did not have much to add. She’d seen Cassandra coming and going, had noticed nothing unusual, but kept her children away from the Baca house. She and Dolores had had an argument about the derelict cars in the driveway. She was afraid a homeless person would move in. Baca told her the cars weren’t going anywhere, she might need them some day. They could still run, once she got some money together.

  Aragon pulled up and met him on the walk to the Baca’s doorstep.

  “We’re under surveillance,” Lewis said and nodded at Perla Gallegos’s hand around the edge of drapery in her front window. “A one-woman neighborhood watch.”

  “Let’s hope Dolores isn’t zonked again,” Aragon said. “She needs to hear about her daughter. We can’t just leave her a note to read when she comes out of the clouds.”

  No one answered their knock. No response came when they shouted who they were. Lewis moved to the front window, still open, but this time no sound of a television inside.

  “The Nissan’s there behind the dead Chevys,” he said. “She should be home.”

  “I’ll check the side.”

  “Meet you around back.”