by Chris Culver
I waved to Yassir and then took the side door into my kitchen. As soon as I shut the door, I heard soft footsteps coming from the front room, and I turned to see my wife. She wore a green silk hijab, a black turtleneck sweater, and jeans. In two steps, she crossed the kitchen and leaned against my chest. I hugged her tight and felt her tremble against me.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
She pulled her head back so we could look at each other and nodded, taking a deep breath. “I’m still a little freaked out. Once these guys finish working, I’m going to Yasmine’s. I don’t want to be here.”
It felt like a small prick, nothing more, but as the boy who put his thumb in the dike could attest, even small cracks can have outsized effects. I’m an Arab, and my wife is half Persian and half Turkish. We attend a mosque. My wife wears the hijab. My son and daughter speak Arabic as well as they speak English. Most people treat us warmly, no differently than they would treat other families, but a sizable minority stare at us like we’re monsters when we go to the mall, they cross the street when we pass, they clutch their hands to their chests and visibly pale when they see us sitting together on an airplane.
I can tolerate most things, but I can’t stand the sneers, the dirty looks, and the occasional insults people hurl at us. They fear and hate us because a group of assholes who claim to believe the same things we do and who happen to look like us blow up buildings and fight to return the world to the twelfth century. This, though, was our home, the one place in the world where we could escape all that and be ourselves. And now my wife didn’t want to be here anymore. I felt a flood of cold anger wash over me.
Hannah reached up and put a hand on my cheek. “Your eyes are as black as night. I don’t know what you were just thinking, but stop.”
I patted her back and extricated myself from her hug. “I’m sorry. I just came by for the car. I’ve got to go back to work.”
“I didn’t think you had to go into work again until your lawyer called.”
I didn’t want to think about my lawyer or my disciplinary hearing, so I nodded to the front door. “This changed things. I’m going to be busy for the next few days.”
She looked directly in my eyes, allowing me to see the concern across her face. “Are you doing okay?”
“You’re wondering if I’m thinking about having a drink.”
She nodded. “I saw the news this morning. People aren’t really saying you lured Dante here, are they?”
“If they weren’t before, Leonard put the idea in their heads. He’s a piece of work.”
Her face was drawn as she nodded. “If you need anything, give me a call. You’ve been through a lot these past couple of days.”
As usual, she was right. I cared about Michelle, and while I hadn’t known Dante very well, he could have had a long, productive life. Held just beneath the surface of my emotions, I felt a deep, abiding sense of loss and guilt. For the moment, my anger held those feelings in check, but it wouldn’t take much to pierce that facade, to burst that dam open. I couldn’t deal with those feelings now, though. I didn’t have time to grieve.
“I’m fine,” I said. “We’ll talk in a couple of days. I’ll make an appointment to see the department therapist.”
“Just as long as you’re dealing with things in a healthy manner.”
“I’m not going to drink.”
Again.
She put a hand on my chest. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“A gang killed my friend and sent somebody to kill us in our sleep. I’m not the one who’s going to be hurt.”
She turned around and walked to the fridge. “You’re already hurt, probably worse than you realize.”
“I know, but I don’t have time to deal with it.”
She turned and looked at me over her shoulder. “Do you want something to eat before you go?”
“Sure.”
She made me a sandwich, and I sat down across from her at the breakfast table to eat. Afterwards, I pulled my cell phone from my jacket and called my dispatcher’s back line.
“Hey,” I said, glancing at my wife and winking. “This is Captain Mike Bowers. I need an address from the BMV database. First name Tomas. Last name Quesada. He’s a male, approximately thirty years old.”
“What’s your badge number, Captain?”
Since he had filed formal charges against me, I had seen Captain Bowers’ badge number on reports so often that I had it memorized. I recited it and then repeated it slowly. The dispatcher clicked off for a moment and then gave me an address in a part of the city I didn’t expect.
“You sure this is it?”
“It’s the address of the only Tomas Quesada we’ve got in our database. Anything else?”
“That’s it,” I said, writing the address down on my notepad. “Thank you.”
Once I slipped my phone in my pocket, Hannah looked at me and sighed. “Aren’t you going to get in trouble for impersonating a superior officer?”
I shook my head and stood up. “Call’s logged, but nobody will have a reason to look it up.”
She nodded, but I doubted she believed me. I hugged her, though, and told her I’d be safe. Her lips moved as she watched me leave, so I could tell she had started praying. We used to do that together every night. I missed that tradition.
According to my dispatcher, Tomas Quesada lived in Woodruff Place, a historic neighborhood about a mile east of the downtown area. I took my VW over and drove through the neighborhood to get a better feel for the place and to see the exits in case I had to make a run for it. Most of the homes around me had a century of wear on them, but they also had ornate woodwork, mature trees, and a sense of permanence I rarely found elsewhere. These houses had seen wars and peace, rains and droughts, good times and bad and still managed to stand through it all. They embodied the history of our city, and walking amongst them, I felt small and more than a little envious of their owners. If the area had better schools, Hannah, the kids, and I might have ended up there.
Ideally, I would have visited at about four in the morning. People tend to listen a little better at that time of the morning, especially if they see my firearm. If I visited now, he’d be awake and alert, which would make things a lot more difficult. Not that I had much of a choice.
After a few minutes of driving, I parked in front of an American four-square with white clapboard siding, black shutters, and an exposed rubble stone foundation. A red brick walkway led to the front porch, while two posts in front served as hitching points for horses, attesting to the home’s age and historic accuracy.
I take on a variety of personas when interviewing people, and which one I choose all depends on the person I’m interviewing. When talking to well-educated people, especially people who think they’re smarter than everyone else on the planet, I act a bit like a bumbling detective. Smart people clam up if I come at them too strongly, but they let their guards down around idiots and oftentimes say things without realizing it. Around teenagers and college students, sometimes I act like a parent, while other times I act more like a roommate or a friend.
Gangbangers present unique challenges. The older guys have usually spent considerable amounts of time in police interviews, so they usually clam up and ask for lawyers. The younger guys who are struggling to make their bones in the gang usually try to show the world how tough they are by acting defiantly. I have to give gangsters a reason to talk. That means I usually lie to them.
I followed the bricks to the front porch and then checked my firearm and the badge on my hip. I rang the doorbell twice and then took a step back so he could see me out of the peephole. When he hadn’t come within a minute, I rang again and then knocked. Finally, I saw movement through the frosted glass windows beside the door, so I removed my badge from my belt and held it up so Tomas could see it when he opened up. I spoke as soon as he flipped the locks and cracked the door.
“Tomas Quesada?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
; “Detective Sergeant Ash Rashid with IMPD. We spoke a few years back. You free to talk for a few minutes?”
He opened the door about a foot more, allowing me to see him for the first time in almost ten years. He had a trim, athletic build, and we stood roughly the same height. I didn’t get to see him move much, but what I saw worried me a little. Occasionally, I run into muscle-bound thugs on the streets or even in my department who try to intimidate people with the size of their biceps or various other bodily appendages. They swagger and talk a lot, but they rarely worry me for one simple fact: most guys with muscles don’t know how to use them. They don’t need to learn. In just a few steps, though, I saw something different in Tomas Quesada, an economy of movement, the practiced grace of someone who knew how to handle himself. I immediately dropped my right leg back, minimizing the profile I had exposed to him.
Even though we were the same height, he still managed to look down his nose at me. “I remember you. What do you want?”
“Just a few minutes of your time. I need to talk to you about a murder.”
“You got the wrong guy, Detective,” he said, shaking his head and trying to shut his door. Before he could, I shot my foot forward and into the crack. He looked at it and then frowned. “I left that life a long time ago, right after Tino got pinched.”
A lot of well-educated people think the men and women who make a living on the streets are stupid because they’re poorly educated or because they don’t use proper English. Some are, obviously, but not men like Quesada. He grew up and thrived in one of the roughest neighborhoods our country has to offer. Judging by his house, maybe he had left his old lifestyle and gang behind, but I couldn’t take him at his word. That meant I needed to give him a reason to talk.
“Why do you think I’m here?”
He sighed and then crossed his arms. “Because you’re an asshole.”
That was probably true.
“One of my confidential informants said you were involved in the murder of a young woman named Michelle Washington.”
He screwed up his face. “The chick who got killed way out on Fall Creek?”
“The young woman who testified against your former employer and was killed on Fall Creek Road. I see you’ve heard of her.”
He tilted his head up and then looked at me down his nose. “Now I know why you’re here, and I’ll tell you flat out. I didn’t do it. I’m not lying; when you arrested Tino, I got out while I could. Besides, I was out of town when she died.”
I reached into my jacket for a notepad. “That’s interesting, because we haven’t announced her time of death yet. How do you know you were out of town?”
“Because I’ve been at a retreat with my company for the past week. Got in last night.”
If true, that changed things. It’d tell me he really was out of the life and that he truly had no role in Michelle’s death. “What kind of retreat was it?”
He tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips distastefully. “The corporate kind. We went to Chicago and sat through lectures about how we could better meet the needs of our clients. I got CPE credit for it.”
I pointed my pen at his chest. “What is CPE credit?”
“Continuing Professional Education. I’m an accountant.”
I wish I had known that going in, because I would have taken a different tack with him.
“I’m glad to hear you left your old life behind, but I’ve still got a dead woman and I think you can help me. You make some calls for me and ask around, I’ll never bother you again.”
He chuckled, but it was more an exasperated noise than a sign of merriment. “You don’t get it, man. I don’t talk to those people anymore. I don’t even know anybody’s phone number.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You grew up with those guys. You got to know somebody in that old neighborhood.”
“I don’t.”
I scratched my scalp line with my pen and then looked at my notepad. He was probably telling me the truth, but I couldn’t leave without being sure.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “This is a rapidly evolving situation, and I’m not the only person working this case. You help me today, no one will bother you again. If you keep stonewalling me, though, you might get some unexpected visitors at work come Monday morning. It sounds like you’re doing pretty well for yourself. You don’t want a bunch of homicide detectives coming into your office with questions about you.”
By the way his body froze, I’d say I had struck a nerve.
“You know how hard I’ve worked to get where I am?”
“I have an idea. That’s why I want to give you a way out. I don’t want to hurt you. Matter of fact, I couldn’t be happier that you made something out of your life. I don’t get to see too many success stories out of your neighborhood. Help me now.”
“You wonder why people hate the police.”
“Oh, I don’t wonder at all,” I said. “I know. And look, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here. You answer my questions, and I’ll leave. If you’re straight with me, I’ll be straight with you. That’s how this works.”
All at once, the hard expression left his eyes and his shoulders dipped a quarter inch as he relaxed his muscles. He dropped his right hand—presumably his punching hand—to his side.
“I don’t know anything about your dead girl, but I’ve heard some rumors. I might know something.”
“Anything can help.”
He paused for a moment and then focused on some spot above my shoulder. “The boys are split. Tino hasn’t named his successor yet.”
I narrowed my eyes, a little incredulous. “He’s getting a needle in his arm in a week. Why would he not name his successor?”
Quesada’s face went red, angry. “Probably because he doesn’t think you’ll go through with it. That’s what they tell you in school, isn’t it? Innocent men don’t get sent to death row?”
I shook my head. “Ramirez isn’t innocent. You’re old enough to know that.”
“Tino was my best friend. He didn’t kill Angel Hererra, and you folks know it. He wasn’t even in the country when you guys say Angel died.”
“Let’s take a step back,” I said, holding up my hand in an attempt to calm the situation. “Santino Ramirez is your friend. I’m sympathetic. Tell me about your old gang. They’re split.”
He hesitated, and then some of the redness left his face. “Yeah, they’re split, but they’ve got common enemies. A man shoots enough of them, might get Tino’s attention.”
That actually explained a couple of things. Our murder rate had spiked in the past few weeks, odd for this time of year but not odd during a gang war. More than that, it explained why Barrio Sureño suddenly had the balls—and stupidity—to send somebody to kill a cop. Maybe the leaders couldn’t contain their underlings anymore.
“You got any names?”
“Like I said earlier, I’m out of that life. When you guys set Tino up, I left.”
I didn’t plan to explain it to Quesada, but we actually had a strong case against Ramirez. In addition to our six eyewitnesses who saw Ramirez shoot Angel, we found the murder weapon in plain sight in Ramirez’s home. We then found his prints on the gun and the rounds in the magazine. Not only that, we found gunshot residue on a jacket in his closet and we found out he had a motive for wanting Angel dead. Rarely have I investigated a stronger case.
“Who’s leading the rival factions?”
He looked left and right, as if checking to see if any of his old gang buddies had hidden behind the hedges that lined the front of his house. “You’ll leave if I tell you?”
I nodded. “Scout’s honor.”
“Fine, then. Tristan Salazar. He’s up at Pendleton. Other boy you’re looking at is probably Danny Navarra. I heard he was stirring things up. Lives by the Children’s Museum. There are others, too, but they don’t have much claim to the throne.”
The Pendleton Correctional Facility housed a lot of Indianapo
lis’s more disreputable citizens. The warden once told me I’m not very popular amongst his maximum security population. Danny Navarra’s name piqued my interest, too. Agent Havelock had mentioned another Navarra.
“Is Danny Navarra related to Miguel Navarra?”
Quesada tilted his head back and looked at me down his nose. “How do you know Miguel?”
“Are they related or not?”
“Miguel is Danny’s uncle.”
So Havelock had held back on me. He knew more about Barrio Sureño than he let on.
“These two, Salazar and Navarra,” I said, nodding, “killing the witnesses in Santino’s trial would help them?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Tomas, nodding. “No better way to solidify your power base than to neutralize your enemies.”
“Could Tristan Salazar order hits from prison?” I asked.
“He’s got some soldiers.”
“Either of them know the Bony Lady?” I asked, remembering the name Emilia Rios had given the statuette last night.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Everybody’s got to pay the Bony Lady. You caress her face, or you feel her blade. That’s how it is.”
So either one could have killed Michelle and dumped her at the shrine. I had hoped to eliminate one of the two, but I could work with both. I allowed my jacket to cover my weapon.
“If you’re lying to me, I’m coming back and I’m going to be pissed.”
“I’m not lying.”
I tried to get a read on him, but I couldn’t see past the anger in his eyes. Good enough.
“Then thank you for your help.”
I turned and walked back to my car. I had at least one more person to see today.
Chapter 11
