by David Ellis
From my left pants pocket, I removed my wallet and a crumbled photograph I carry around of Talia and Emily. Charlie dropped the wallet but took a look at the photograph.
His expression relaxed. He struggled a moment.
“This is your wife and daughter,” he said.
I nodded. “Please don’t damage it,” I said. “It’s irreplaceable. It—means something to me.”
Charlie let out a sigh and dropped his arms. As I hoped, the photo, combined with my clear willingness to comply with his search, had taken the wind out of his sails. “Okay, kid, sorry—sorry.” He handed me the photo, then the cell phone. He bent down and retrieved my wallet and money and car keys. “Just—you with your questions. It makes me nervous.”
“Charlie, I’m going to try real hard not to be offended.”
He reached for my shoulder. He felt bad now. “Just being careful. The questions and all.
“Sorry,” he said again, as he got back in the car.
47
LAST NIGHT, I’D ONLY KNOWN TWO THINGS—STARLIGHT had leapfrogged Bert Wozniak’s company for a big project, and Starlight was being given a pass by Charlie in our shakedown scheme. Now I knew more. Joey Espinoza’s brother-in-law was the owner of Starlight. And that brought back this little tidbit from the first time I visited Charlie’s office back in December, when I passed by her office: Joey Espinoza’s wife was on Charlie’s payroll.
And now I knew how sensitive a thing it was for Charlie. Raising the topic with him almost cost me everything.
Here was how I figured it. Joey wanted his brother-in-law’s company to get the sweetheart state contract. He talked to Charlie. They probably cut a deal. The PCB does what it does, manufacturing a reason why the lowest bidder—Adalbert Wozniak’s company—isn’t qualified. Voilà, Starlight gets the contract. Wozniak feels cheated. He starts making some noise. He even goes to the state’s inspector general to complain. It comes back to Charlie. He and Joey decide that Wozniak has to be silenced. Especially because, at this point, Joey is already securely in the grasp of the federal government. They’ve already sunk their hooks into him. The absolute last thing Joey needs is more trouble. So Charlie handles the details. Wozniak is gunned down. It looks like one of those gang things that happen far too often. A tragic, senseless loss. An unsolved murder. Terrible, but not unusual, not in the part of town where Wozniak had his offices.
Only there’s a problem: The murder is pinned on a teenage member of the Columbus Street Cannibals, the same gang that Joey Espinoza has been tied in to. The heat actually turns up on Joey. So Charlie does what he can to keep Joey from singing about the Wozniak shooting, and the Starlight Catering deal, to the feds. I’ll hire your wife while you’re inside, he tells him. Maybe he offers to cover Joey’s mortgage, too. Maybe a job afterward. Joey won’t lose his house or his wife while he’s serving time. Probably other promises are made, too. Whatever it takes, to keep Joey quiet from his new federal friends.
Damage control.
Adalbert Wozniak wasn’t murdered because he refused to pay the Cannibals’ extortion demands. He was gunned down because he was about to expose a pay-to-play scheme involving Joey Espinoza, Charlie Cimino, and the Procurement and Construction Board.
I felt sure of it. But there were still things I was missing. I was missing the connection to Ernesto Ramirez.
And I was missing proof of any of this.
48
I MET ESMERALDA RAMIREZ FOR LUNCH AT A DINER near her home. I got there first. The place wasn’t crowded. The economy was slipping further. People were worried.
The weather matched the mood of the country. Typical Midwest February, cold and wet and gloomy. No snow had fallen in several weeks, but sheets of ice lined the streets and sidewalks. I almost took a header walking into the place. Everything was harder to do this time of year.
I didn’t recognize her when she walked in. She was wearing one of those puffy jackets, light blue, and a matching hat with a beanie on top. She looked like a little girl in many ways.
But she wasn’t a little girl. She was a widow. A mother of two. And unemployed, last I checked.
“How are you?” I asked. I hate small-talk intros like that, but I really wanted to know.
From what I could tell of Essie Ramirez, she didn’t like to play the pity card. She gave a bitter smile, like she was actually going to give me a substantive answer, but she quickly retreated. “I’ve had better days,” she said. “And you? Have you succeeded in your quest?”
“Getting there.”
We ordered coffee and took menus.
“I have questions,” I told her.
She wrapped her hands around the coffee. Her youthful face was drawn, sleep-deprived, and lined along the eyes and forehead. She was tired and stressed. I wasn’t having the time of my life these days, either, but I had some money and I didn’t have two children to feed and care for.
She looked up at me.
“You said I’d made some progress with your husband,” I said. “That I’d convinced him to tell me what he knew.”
“Yes. That’s what I thought.”
“And then he came home one night and he said, ‘The truth doesn’t matter. It’s not worth prison.’ Words to that effect?”
“Yes.”
“Why ‘prison?’ Why would he be worried about going to prison?”
She took a drink of coffee and savored it. It was actually a pretty good cup for a diner. Hot, dark, and smooth.
I liked Essie. She had very little going for her right now, but she carried herself with quiet dignity. She didn’t complain or even raise her voice when she spoke. And I had to admit, she was attractive. Large, watery brown eyes, long lashes, a small curved face. Ernesto had done well for himself.
She stared at me for a moment. “Are you asking me if my husband was involved in something illegal?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask me that.”
That was another thing I liked about her. She was direct. From my limited conversations with her, she had absolutely zero capacity for bullshit.
“Was your husband involved in something illegal?”
“The answer is no.”
“Do you think you would know? I mean, you said he was protective. Old-fashioned. He wouldn’t talk to you about certain things.”
“And I took all of that into account in giving you my answer. I knew him better than anyone. I would have known.”
I believed her. I believed that she would know if her husband was up to no good, even if he tried to shield her from it. And that was saying something, because in my experience, the human capacity for deception knows no bounds.
“Did your husband ever talk about Joseph Espinoza? Or Joey Espinoza?”
“No.”
“Hector Almundo?”
“No.”
“Charlie Cimino?”
Third time was a charm. She held on that name. “That one,” she said. “He owned housing, I believe. A slumlord.”
That could be. Charlie was a developer. I thought he handled more commercial than anything, but sure, it was more than possible that Charlie did residential housing, too.
“My husband was part of a protest. He didn’t lead it, but he was part of it. The conditions at the housing unit.”
Interesting. A new connection, possibly. “Anything come of that? The protest?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember. It was a few years ago. I just don’t remember. All I remember is that Ernesto did not like that man. He thought he took advantage of poor people.”
I made a mental note. Okay, move on.
“Ernesto still had friends in the gangs,” I said.
She nodded. “A fragile truce.”
“Come again?”
“It’s how he referred to his relationship with the gangs. The Lords and the Cannibals. He was trying to steal away their members. He was trying to give those children an alternative. He was a threat to the gangs, in a real way. But he managed to
coexist with them. He knew them. He socialized with them. He liked them. He taught some of them.”
I thought back to the day I confronted Ernesto in Liberty Park. The day he was killed. The two gangbangers standing with him. The tattoo of a tiny dagger on their upper arm, the sign of a Latin Lord.
“There was a guy I saw in Liberty Park with your husband,” I said. “A little under six feet, broad-chested. He had a goatee. And a long scar across his forehead.”
Nothing seemed to register, not surprisingly, until I got to the part about the scar on the forehead. Her eyes trailed off. She gave a presumptive nod. She knew whom I meant.
“I’d like to talk to him,” I said.
After lunch, I went to the office. I drafted a couple of motions and prepared for a court appearance tomorrow. Most of the work I was handling was civil in nature, not criminal, as it had come courtesy of Charlie Cimino. Civil cases are different than criminal. The primary way they are different is that they are utterly boring. Pushing all kinds of paper. Preparing four to five years for trial. Not my style. But at least it was all litigation, and it was paying the bills for now.
For now. Until the U.S. attorney shut down its operation and swooped in with all kinds of indictments. Including one for me, as Christopher Moody had promised. It would be, for all practical purposes, the end of my legal career.
I brought some work home and reviewed some legal research. I also thought about Madison Koehler. More to the point, I thought about sex. The sleeping giant—figuratively speaking—had been awakened, and now I wanted more. I wasn’t sure if it was the pure carnal gratification I craved or just the reminder that I was still alive.
I fell asleep on the love seat. I woke with a start somewhere in the middle of the night from a steamy dream. Silk sheets, sweaty bodies, soft moans, and naughty laughter. The woman in the dream, as it happened, was Ernesto Ramirez’s wife.
49
ESSIE RAMIREZ CALLED ME THE NEXT MORNING WITH one piece of information: a place to meet the guy I had described, the forehead-scar-goateed Latin Lord. No name. Just a place. The place was a restaurant called Su Casa, on the southwest side. I was relatively sure from the address that it fell comfortably within the territory claimed by the Latin Lords.
I got there at five-thirty, as directed. It was already dark outside, appropriate for what I assumed would be a clandestine meeting. I parked less than a block away and walked in right on time. Su Casa was a small establishment that smelled of grilled steak and sizzling onions. A soccer game played from a small television up in the corner. I scanned across the mustard-colored walls, but no one seemed to be paying me much attention. Finally a young woman, a teenager who looked like she worked there, approached me. “Mr. Kol-AR-ich?” she asked tentatively.
Not exactly. Emphasis on the first syllable. Kola, like the drink. Rich, like wealthy. “Kolarich,” I corrected, but she wasn’t concerned with pronunciation. She led me behind the counter, past a few pounds of carne asada, peppers, and onions cooking on a grill, into a back room filled with dry supplies, open boxes of napkins and straws and the like on cheap shelving, with a refrigerator off to the side. The woman kept walking, up to an exit door. She pointed to the door, which I took to mean I was supposed to go outside.
I pushed open the door and looked out before stepping out. It was an alley, with two large Dumpsters overflowing with garbage and, to my right, the outline of a single man, who fit the general build of the man I was supposed to meet. Behind him, about thirty yards or so, was the street.
Decision time. I realized that when I closed this door, it might not reopen. There was only one way out of this alley, and that was through this gangbanger. I didn’t know what he had on him in terms of weapons, or whether he had some friends ready to join him. All I knew was there was no turning back, once I stepped into the alley.
On a list of good ideas, this one was pretty low. It was possible that this guy was Ernesto’s friend, and he’d want to help me find his killer. But it was equally possible—maybe more so—that he was the reason Ernesto died. He was there when I did my thing with the subpoena, after all. He very well could have been the person who went back and got the word out: Ernesto’s going to talk.
In fact, the more I thought about it, the more probable that prospect seemed.
I took the step down into the alley. The door slammed behind me.
He walked toward me. The lighting was for shit in the alley, but he got close enough so I could just barely make him out. It was him, all right, whatever his name was. The scowl, the idiotic goatee, the scar across his forehead. Scarface, I decided. Scarface was wearing a thick bomber jacket, pants that looked like he was warming up for a basketball game, and leather high-tops. Me, I was in a suit with a long coat. He had the advantage, if this turned nasty.
“You got balls,” Scarface said.
“I have questions,” I answered.
He stepped closer to me. Maybe ten feet. “Only reason I’m here is cuz Essie asked.”
“Who killed Adalbert Wozniak?”
“Who?”
I paused. “You know who he is. What do you know about his murder?”
He didn’t answer.
“I mean, that’s why Ernesto was killed, right? Because of what he knew?”
“Don’t say Nesto’s name. You don’t got the right.”
I sighed. I put out my hands. “Okay. Fine. But he knew something. And he was going to tell me. I want to find out who killed him. And to do that, I need to find out who killed Bert Wozniak.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I think it’s my fault.”
“Damn right it’s your fault,” he spit.
“So help me figure out who did this.”
Sixty seconds passed in what felt like sixty minutes. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and I had a pretty good idea that those hands weren’t empty.
The temperatures had fallen. I could see my breath. But my body wasn’t cold in the slightest. Because I still wasn’t sure whether this guy Scarface was on the right side or the wrong side. He hadn’t told me anything yet. Could be, he was just letting me talk, to hear what I knew before he decided to adios me.
“They pinned Wozniak’s murder on a kid,” I went on. “A Cannibal. Eddie Vargas. They found his prints in the car and they found the gun at his apartment. But it wasn’t him, was it?”
He didn’t answer. I couldn’t make out his facial expression, not in the dark.
“It wasn’t the Cannibals at all,” I said. “The kid was set up. It was you guys. It was the Lords. I mean, that’s why we’re in a dark alley, right? And why I don’t know your name. Because you don’t want to be seen with me. Because you want to give me a name, and you don’t want it coming back to you.”
Scarface didn’t say anything. He shuffled his feet. Kept his hands in his pockets.
“So give me the name,” I said.
Instead of producing a name, he produced a gun, from his right pocket, and pointed it at me. Had it done any good to try to evade him, I would have done so. But I was boxed in on each side and behind me. This guy was standing between me and my thirty-fifth birthday.
The best play, it seemed to me, was to stay perfectly still. It took some doing. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a gun pointed at me, but it was close.
Scarface walked toward me, keeping the gun trained on me. He was comfortable holding it. Not his first time, either.
I slowly raised my hands, showing my palms, an unconscious reaction, trying to calm a situation. To an outsider, it would look like a stickup.
“Okay, listen. Hey,” I said, as the gun’s barrel pressed against my forehead. I leaned back slightly, another natural reaction, but it had the effect of putting me slightly off-balance. I didn’t have much going for me at the moment, but the balance problem removed virtually any countermove I could possibly make, other than falling backward.
I could only assume that if he wanted me dead, I’d be toast already.
/> “There’s only one reason you’ve been breathing for the last year,” he said. “And that’s Nesto. He wouldn’t have wanted it. He’d say, ‘Don’t lose your way.’ ”
It was the same phrase Essie Ramirez had said to me.
“You fuckin’ killed him, man. You.” He imprinted the barrel into my forehead. Now it was a struggle not to fall over. I wasn’t in the mood for any sudden movements so this was becoming tricky. “Nesto, he was like my—he was—”
He choked up with emotion. The gun came off my forehead. He moved away from me, the gun at his side now. He put his hands on his knees, bending over like he was going to vomit, and started to cry.
He was like my father, he was going to say.
I didn’t move. He was losing control of his emotions and holding a firearm. A smarter person might have started running. Or knocked him over. Or disarmed him. But I didn’t move.
“I held his head. I held him. I said, ‘Don’t go, Nesto. You can’t go, man.’ ”
He went on like that for a few minutes. I didn’t realize he’d been there when Ernesto was gunned down. I’d never held a dying person in my arms. I couldn’t imagine it.
I took a deep breath. The adrenaline, always lagging behind, rushed through my body. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, but I couldn’t speak. Neither could he, for a spell. I stood completely still. I could have gone for the gun but the drama had passed.
Finally, he raised himself. He caught his breath. Wiped at his face with his sleeve. Still holding the gun.
“The Polish guy,” he said with no inflection, staring into the wall. “Kiko did that.” He turned his head slightly in my direction. “You know Kiko?”
I did. Every prosecutor who ever worked in gang crimes knew Kiko.
I caught my breath and kept quiet, hoping he would tell me more. I was pretty sure that he knew more, and that he’d passed it on to Ernesto.
“Who told Kiko to kill Bert Wozniak?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Never said.”
“Do you know why?” I tried.
His head stopped shaking. “Kiko and me—our families. Back when we was kids.”
