What You Break

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Thanks.”

  I went back to my seat and waited until they determined it was all right for us to leave. As I waited I watched as the rest of the people in the room went back to their visits. It was as if nothing had happened, as if things were back to normal. But there wasn’t anything normal about this place, about what had happened to Salazar, or about me being there.

  49

  (WEDNESDAY EVENING)

  I’d gotten word to Charlie Prince about what had happened to Rondo Salazar. He thanked me for the heads-up and told me he’d get back to me. I had no idea that when he said it that he would do it in person, but when I returned from my first run to the airport that night, Prince was waiting for me on one of the threadbare couches in the lobby. The lobby was pretty dead, but Charlie wondered if we couldn’t go someplace where we couldn’t be overheard.

  “Sure.”

  I walked him past the aviation mural and into the coffee shop. Although the coffee shop was closed by seven, management kept some lights on in case the guests wanted to get out of their rooms and find a quiet spot to work. We were alone and sat at the same booth I always sat at, the one with the wingtip for a table.

  “Is he dead?” I asked, as we were sitting down.

  “Nope, but the prick might as well be.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Salazar lost a lot of blood, a lot of blood. Fucked up his brain. He’s in a coma and the doctor says he’s gonna stay that way until he craps out down the road. You think people in comas can have nightmares, Gus?” He wasn’t really asking. He was hoping. “I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that motherfucker’s gonna have one long, long nightmare.”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. So what happened?”

  “The sheriff’s investigators are doing their thing as we speak, but it looks like it was planned out to get your boy. Had a bull’s-eye on his back. Seems there was a kinda bullshit fight between a few guys on the yard. One Crip and, get this, a cholo from the Asesinos. Real loud, a bunch of screaming, pushing, and shoving. Lotta sound, but not much fury. Salazar was off to the side in a big crowd, whole bunch of guys around him, so it was hard to see what happened. At one point Salazar ducked down and disappeared from view. When the fight broke up and the crowd went back to doing whatever they were all doing, Salazar was already down and leaking all kinds of oil. Somebody tried to give old Rondo a lesson in dental hygiene by trying to brush his pearly whites through the side of his neck. Whoever it was giving the lesson used the sharpened end of a toothbrush on him. Stuck it in good and deep. It wasn’t a warning, no sir. They meant to kill his murdering ass. Even better this way.”

  “No trial.”

  “Maybe in fifty years from now, when doctors figure out how to wake up the comatose asshole. By then I’ll be retired or dead and beyond giving a shit.”

  But Prince’s being here belied his words. He gave a shit, all right, or he would have just given me a call. No, he was here for a reason and I wanted to know it.

  “Charlie,” I said, “I’m glad you came by to tell me all this in person, but what are you really doing here?”

  His expression changed reflexively, almost as if he was wounded by what I’d said. He even started to raise his palms in protest. It was no good and we both knew it. He put his hands back down before they got to his chest.

  “Okay, all right, Gus. It’s a feeling I got.”

  “Which feeling is that?”

  “The feeling that tells me your poking around the way you been got somebody nervous, real nervous, and they were anxious to make sure Rondo Salazar wasn’t ever gonna talk to nobody about nothing ever again, not in this lifetime.”

  “But he wasn’t talking to anybody anyway.”

  “C’mon. You know how it is. He wasn’t talking yesterday. He wasn’t talking now. Maybe he wouldn’t talk tomorrow, but there’s no statute of limitation on homicide. He spends five, ten years in Attica and he don’t like it so much. Too cold, so cold it makes his little nipples hard and he decides to talk up, to trade his story for time in a downstate facility. This way, hey, that’s never gonna happen.”

  “Good point, but I gotta tell you, Charlie, I’m getting nowhere.” I shrugged. “Until we know what happened to Rondo Salazar for real, it’s all guesswork. Like the CO at Riverhead told me, maybe Rondo gave the wrong guy the wrong look or told somebody to fuck off and that was that. We’ve got no way of knowing whether his ending up on the wrong end of a sharpened toothbrush handle had anything to do with Linh Tang Spears’s murder or my poking around.”

  Prince tapped his nose. “I trust my feelings and I trust this.”

  “Charlie, if every cop was right about their feelings . . .”

  “I know. I know. Everybody from green rookies to Chief thinks he’s fucking Sherlock Holmes and can look into a perp’s eyes and tell he’s lying or smell when this one’s guilty and that one ain’t. I know. So let’s assume I’m wrong. Tell me what you been up to anyhow and I’ll be on my way.”

  I told him about my conversation with Abby Spears, my meeting with Jim Bogart, and my little run-in with Kevin Spears. I told that I’d talked to LT’s old roommate, Kaitlin Fine. I explained to him about LT’s issues with her identity and her acting out. That’s when Prince’s eyes lit up. I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I was thinking the same thing after I met with the Fine woman and the boyfriend.”

  He gave me a look and made a skeptical face. “How you know what I’m thinking?”

  “I wasn’t a detective, but I was on the job for twenty years, Charlie. Give me a little credit. You’re thinking that LT had a fight or something or saw something on TV or the net that made her feel insecure and she acted out. That she went to a bar and got completely shitfaced. That she ran into Salazar somewhere when she was drunk off her ass and things got out of control. Maybe she was gonna fuck Salazar and then changed her mind and Rondo wasn’t in the mood for a woman to change her mind.”

  “So, okay, you do know what I’m thinking. Remind me to give you a medal.” He reached over and clapped me on the shoulder. “You read the report, right? She had alcohol in her system when we found her. She would have had to have a lot of it in her for us to find some still in her.”

  “Maybe. Like I said, I had the same thought.”

  “But not anymore, huh?”

  “I like it less than I used to. Even with her acting out, I guess I don’t see her and Rondo ending up in the same bar. And say they did, say the scenario is just like you painted it, why didn’t he rape her first if it was about that? And don’t tell me because he was too polite or it went against his upbringing. It was okay for him to cut her up like that and murder her, but not rape her when she changed her mind? See, I think that’s where it falls apart.”

  Prince stood up. “Well, I’m gonna check it out anyways. There’s bars all along the South Shore where the Asesinos boys hang out.”

  “I thought you were done with the case, Charlie, now that Rondo is in a long-term coma.”

  He shook his head at me. “Still bugs me that he never spoke to us about it. I want it to make some kinda sense to me, even if it’s fucked-up gang-thinking sense.”

  “I’ve also been to her old job twice,” I said.

  “Anything?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay, then, I’m outta here,” he said, turning to go. “You think of anything else, you let me know.”

  “I’ll do that. Same for you.”

  “Will do, Gus.”

  And he was gone. After he left, I had trouble not going over our conversation in my head. There was just something about it that bugged me. I couldn’t figure out what it was, though. Maybe it was Charlie’s delighting in Salazar getting stabbed in the neck. I wasn’t exactly crying about it, nor was I clicking up my heels, either. Whatever was bugging me, I’d hav
e a long shift to think about it.

  50

  (THURSDAY MORNING)

  I was caught in between, and in between is never a good place to be.

  It had been a pretty normal shift for a Wednesday night, which is to say, a quiet shift. Most of the activity at the Paragon is on either side of the weekend. My few runs were themselves quiet ones. No chatty guests wanting to be my best pal. No moaning guests bitching about the overwhelming floral odor of the soap or the poor quality of the towels in the hotel. It was my experience that people could find almost anything to complain about. When I first took the courtesy van job, it was all I could do not to pull over and scream at them about perspective. My son just died, you fucking moron, and you’re gonna sit there and cry to me about the goddamned fucking soap?

  On the job, I had always been able to control myself that way. When the gawkers would come over to me near a murder scene or fatal accident and whine to me about their neighbor’s dog pissing on their lawn, I had all the patience in the world. Now, not so much, not on the inside. Inside me these days there was rage. A little less lately, but it was in me deep, right where the universe had planted it, and I didn’t think it would ever go away. I used to fantasize about being who I once was, about having my old life back. Not anymore. The world was stuck with me. I was stuck with me, stuck in between who I once was and who I would become. But my current issue was less global. I still couldn’t forget my talk with Charlie Prince. It was like that catchy but annoying song you can’t get out of your head no matter what you do. I was also thinking of Maggie and how badly I wanted to hear her voice.

  The plan was to sleep for a few hours and then call Maggie’s hotel at a reasonable hour, but after fifteen minutes of squeezing my eyes shut and hearing Charlie Prince’s voice describing what had happened to Rondo Salazar, I decided the sleep part wasn’t going to happen, not yet, anyway. It was still too early to call Maggie, so I showered, shaved, and took myself to breakfast. Breakfast by myself kind of depressed me. It made me think about Slava, about how we hadn’t had breakfast last Saturday and how we might never have breakfast together again. For all I knew, he was dead. I didn’t like to think that. Sure, I was close to Bill, but that was different. Slava and I understood each other in a way only one cop can understand another. And we shared an unspoken bond, too, one that didn’t have anything to do with wearing a badge or carrying a gun. I couldn’t explain it even if I tried, but it was powerful.

  After breakfast, I decided to go back over to Gyron and have that talk with Carl Ryan. I don’t know why I was bothering except that I had become more stubborn as I aged. Maybe because Gyron was only a few blocks from the airport diner or maybe it was that I just didn’t buy the scenario that Prince had latched onto, the one I had thought of myself when I met with LT’s friends. I figured I’d talk to Ryan and move on. Move on to where? That was the question. I wasn’t sure I had any answers. With Salazar in a coma and with no idea of where LT had gone after leaving work that Saturday, I had no real hope of ever finding the why behind her murder. This whole thing was like swimming in wet concrete. I had worked hard to get exactly nowhere, and if I didn’t make progress soon, I’d sink.

  I pulled into the lot just as Carl Ryan was getting out of his Maserati. I didn’t know if the car was any good, but it was beautiful to look at. I came up on him before he was aware of me and startled him.

  “Sorry, Carl.”

  He didn’t seem pleased at my being there, but I put that down to the startle. Men don’t like looking scared in front of other men, most especially in front of athletes, guys in the military, or cops. It’s the uniform thing. No matter the lip service we pay about equality and sameness, men feel a little less than what they are in front of other men who take real physical risks. Men spend their whole lives measuring themselves against one another, and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. Everything from the size of our penises to our bank accounts is fair play. In some ways, that’s what Ryan’s Maserati and my Mustang were about. Some men accept it and make it a small part of their lives. Some men, men like Pete McCann, made it what their lives were about.

  “That’s okay. You are a persistent bastard,” he said with a laugh, patting me on the shoulder. “Lara told me you were back.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not getting anywhere, huh?”

  “Worse. I feel like I’m getting farther away than closer. Did you hear about what happened to the guy who killed Linh Trang?”

  He hesitated, went a little pale. “Hear what?

  “Someone stabbed him in the throat with the sharpened end of a toothbrush. He’s in a coma and it doesn’t look like he’s coming out of it anytime soon.”

  Ryan’s color returned. He turned, spit on the ground, and said, “Good. Fuck him. Come on, walk with me.”

  We headed toward the offices. He held the door open for me so that I entered first. Lara’s face lit up and she leaned forward, opening her mouth to say something, but when Ryan walked in behind me, her whole body language changed. Her face went cold. She looked nervous.

  Ryan seemed not to notice. “Any calls, Lara?”

  “Nothing yet, Carl.”

  “Okay, Mr. Murphy and I are going back to my office. No calls for, say . . . how long do you think this will take, Gus?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes, tops.”

  “No calls for fifteen minutes. C’mon, Gus,” he said, holding the door for me once again.

  I waved bye to Lara and headed into the back.

  We settled into our seats—Ryan behind his desk, me in front. He offered me coffee. I turned it down. He made himself a cup. I let him take a few sips before I asked my questions.

  “Why was Linh Trang here that Saturday?”

  “She had some financials to see to that probably could’ve waited until Monday, but she was really diligent about her work. Now I wish . . .” His voice drifted off.

  “What do you wish?”

  He looked genuinely ill there for a moment. “I wish she hadn’t come in. I can’t help but think if she had stayed home that day . . . you know. Maybe she wouldn’t have done X or Y and she would never have run into that scumbag.”

  I considered saying something about the futility of wishes, but just moved on.

  “You told the detectives that she got in around ten, went to her office, but that no one saw her leave. Is that right?”

  He looked impressed. “How do you know all that?”

  “Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I don’t have sources.”

  “Yeah,” he said, winking, “don’t we all? But yes, that’s about right. I stopped in to say hi to her when I saw she was in. She said she’d be done in a few hours and I left it at that. I was out on the floor with the guys most of the day, getting shipments packed up for pickup on Monday morning. We were very busy because of the short week ahead.”

  “But nobody saw her leave?”

  “No, but she did punch in and out. Well, not really, not like in the old days. We have a digital time clock that works on the employee’s fingerprint. No buddy clocking in or out for you.” He reached into the top drawer of his desk and came out with a folder. He handed it to me. “When Lara told me you’d come back and said you would probably come again, I got that out. It’s Linh Trang’s daily time record reports from the month she was killed.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen a copy of it.” I handed it back to him. “So there’s no way to fake this?”

  “Why would anyone want to fake it? And, no, otherwise what would be the point of having a fingerprint reader?”

  “I guess.”

  “So you would have no idea of where she was going once she left here?”

  He shrugged. “None. Like I said, I just popped my head into her office to see why she was here. We couldn’t have spoken for more than twenty seconds.”

  I kept at it because I didn’t w
ant to have to come back if I forgot to ask even a stupid question. Ryan had been pretty patient with me, but I could tell he was tired of answering these questions again and I had no official standing.

  “Just one or two more questions. Anyone else here that day that might have an idea?”

  “I doubt it,” he said, his annoyance getting a little closer to the surface. “The guys in the shop and on the floor have very limited contact with the office staff.”

  “But they might have some contact? I mean, no one keeps tabs on all their employees’ movements. We had cops who were dating each other, but no one knew about it.”

  “Off the record?” he said, leaning forward.

  “Sure.”

  “Listen, Gus, most of the guys in the shop, they’re . . .” He waved his hand. “They’re illegals. Oh, they come in here with Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses and stuff, but we don’t ask too many questions. It’s how we survive against foreign competition and how we keep our employees happy. Most of them don’t speak a lot of English. When they’re here, they keep their heads down and their mouths shut. They don’t want to notice anyone or get noticed by anyone.”

  “How did Linh Trang feel about your arrangements?”

  “She didn’t love it, but she was a realist and none of us was doing anything strictly illegal. Besides, she was going to leave soon anyway.”

  “Look, I know I’m being a pain in the balls, but I’d still like to talk to the guys who were here with you that day?”

  His patience was nearly at an end. “I don’t even remember who was here that Saturday.”

  “But you would have their time sheets, no?”

  That did it. Patience over. He stood up, face red, “Okay, Gus—”

  But I didn’t let him finish. My cell buzzed, and when I saw that it was Maggie calling, I raised my palm to Ryan to stop him and answered the phone.

  “Just give me a second, okay?” I whispered to her. “I’m working the Spears thing. Or let me call you back.”