King Peso: An Emilia Cruz Novel (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 4)

by Carmen Amato

  “Rio.”

  “Hey, Rio. I’m Emilia. Can you do a job for me?” Emilia held out 50 pesos. “Go over to the abarrotes store over there and get me some chips. Get some for yourself, too, if you bring them back right away.”

  “The kind in a can?”

  “If that’s the kind you like.”

  The kid darted forward, took the money, and flapped his way down the block. Emilia leaned against Silvio’s wall. She watched the boy and checked her text messages at the same time. Claudia Sanchez had sent three. Emilia deleted them without reading.

  Rio was back with two cans of chips, faster than she would have expected. Emilia popped the top on one and let him keep the other. He didn’t open it.

  “You’re not supposed to go into the house,” he said.

  “Are you going to tell on me?” Emilia offered the open can.

  Rio hesitated before taking a chip. “Señora Isabel isn’t home any more. Nobody made any food yesterday.”

  Emilia watched the chip explode into pieces as he stuffed the entire thing into his mouth at once. Rio was so young, yet death was commonplace in his world. “Did you eat here?” she asked.

  The neatly barbered head nodded. He swallowed the chip and raised his hand hesitantly for another. “Are you going to cook now?” he asked.

  Emilia offered the can again and he took two chips this time. “Did you know Señora Isabel?” she asked.

  Rio coughed. A few crumbs sprayed out of his mouth and into the plastic bottle dangling below his chin.

  “Señora Isabel was nice, wasn’t she?” Emilia pressed.

  Rio stuffed another handful of chips into his mouth but couldn’t control the sudden tears that cascaded down his cheeks.

  “You liked her,” Emilia said. “I liked her, too.”

  Rio nodded, chest heaving. “I liked being inside. It was safe.”

  Emilia was suddenly face-to-face with the childhood misery that Isabel de Silvio had fought. “You mean inside the gate? To eat?”

  “And work.”

  “You worked for her?” Emilia imagine Isabel taking in the child, cutting his hair, doing her best to be a counterweight to a rudderless and often brief life on the streets.

  Rio nodded again. His tears continued to flow even as he took the rest of the chips in Emilia’s can.

  Emilia knelt to be on his level. “What did you do for Señora Isabel?” she asked.

  He looked toward the house and the crime scene tape barring the entrance. “Watered the garden. Picked tomatoes.”

  “I can see that you’d be a real good helper.” Emilia gently took the second can of chips from the boy, every instinct telling her to keep probing. “Did anyone else help, too?”

  Rio watched her hands as Emilia pried the foil off the top of the can. “Who’s going to make rice and beans now?”

  “I don’t know.” Emilia held out the can to him. Emilia wondered if he was making up things to get the chips. “Who else came to work for Señora Isabel?”

  “Only me,” Rio said with a spark of pride.

  Emilia smiled encouragingly. She could see Isabel’s heart going out to this child. “You must be special.”

  “Señora Isabel let me watch television,” he said. His tears had left two lines down his grubby cheeks.

  “Inside the house?” she asked.

  “A movie with talking cars,” Rio said. “There was one with a purple dinosaur, too.”

  Emilia froze with a smile on her face and the chip can held out to the boy. Without prompting he’d described the children’s DVDs she’d seen in the living room. Had Isabel taken care of him in Silvio’s absence and the child somehow killed her? Or had he seen who had?

  Her mind raced, trying to figure out the best angle. “Did you watch television Sunday night? Four nights ago?”

  Rio put a hand to his mouth as if to bite another chip. “It was a secret.”

  “I love secrets,” Emilia said.

  Rio blinked at Emilia, then broke into a snuffling laugh. “I watched television. When Señor Franco wasn’t there.”

  “That was your secret?” Emilia pressed. “Señora Isabel let you come in the house on Sunday when Señor Franco was gone?”

  Rio put his finger across his mouth as if to quiet Emilia. The glue was taking effect. First he’d be giddy, then stoned and sullen. “At night, too.”

  “Sunday night?” Emilia didn’t know if Rio understood the passage of time or not.

  “Lots of nights.”

  “But at night Señor Franco was home,” she pointed out.

  “I took care of the garden at night.” More snuffles of mirth.

  Emilia smiled as if she understood the joke. “Did Señor Franco let you in at night?”

  Rio ran a forearm across his nose, careful not to disturb the soda bottle below his chin. “No, I used the key.”

  Emilia’s mouth went dry. “You have a key?”

  “Señora Isabel gave me a key,” Rio reached for another chip.

  “Can I see it?” Emilia asked.

  Rio shook his head with a slow, dopey move. The glue was softening his cognitive abilities. “I don’t have it any more,” he said.

  Emilia resisted the urge to grab him by the shoulders and rattle him until the fog lifted and the child’s brain speeded up. “What happened to the key?”

  Rio looked down the street again, toward the grocery store. The sidewalk was still empty.

  Emilia tapped the can of chips to get his attention again. When his head wobbled back in her direction, she asked, “Did you lose the key, Rio?”

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Did you give it to somebody?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to the key, Rio?” Emilia said. “It’s important that you tell me.”

  “Do you need it to cook the rice and beans?” He blinked at her.

  Emilia offered up a mental prayer for forgiveness. “Yes. That’s why I need to know where the key is.”

  Rio rubbed his eyes with fingers dusted with salt. “I sold it.”

  “You sold the key that Señora Isabel gave you? Why?”

  “The big boys wanted glue.”

  “Who did you sell it to?”

  “The man.”

  “The man.” Emilia smiled at him. Assurance. Trust. Encouragement. “Does he have a name?”

  Rio found the last chip and stuffed it into his mouth.

  “Tell me about the man, Rio,” Emilia urged. “Why did he want to buy your key?”

  Rio shrugged.

  Emilia shifted her position. Her leg muscles were beginning to protest the prolonged squat. “How did he know you had the key?” she asked.

  “He was here.”

  “Four nights ago? When Señora Isabel was home?”

  Rio drew a circle on his forehead near his hairline. “The circle man was here.”

  “The circle man?” Emilia wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “On Sunday or another day?”

  Rio’s thumb again inscribed an imaginary circle on his forehead. “The circle man,” he repeated.

  “Did he have a hat with a circle on it?” Emilia’s mind flashed through logo possibilities: sports teams, businesses, political campaigns.

  Rio blinked at her very slowly. “When are you making the rice and beans?”

  “Soon,” Emilia said. “Tell me what day the circle man came.”

  “What day,” Rio parroted.

  Emilia decided on a different tack. “Did the circle man ever ask you about books? Green books that Señor Franco had?”

  Rio half turned away from her, ignoring all the positive vibes she was sending. “He, he . . . I didn’t talk to him.”

  “But you sold him the key,” Emilia said hastily. “You said he was here. You must have talked to him. Do you remember his name?”

  Rio stiffened. Emilia followed his gaze. The glue boys were clustered on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store again. All stared at Emilia as she crouched next to Rio.
She felt fear emanate from Rio’s thin body. “Are you afraid of the other boys, Rio?” she asked softly. “Do you want to come with me and find a safe place to sleep?”

  “Go away,” Rio mumbled. He turned and started to shuffle away.

  Emilia reached for the boy’s arm. “Rio, wait―.”

  The boy slammed a fist into her face with a shocking display of strength. Emilia jerked backwards and came up hard against the faded blue cement wall. As her vision narrowed and fireworks went off inside her skull, her cell phone chimed with the notification of a text message.

  Rio took off, half running, half shuffling, his flip flops slapping against the sidewalk.

  Chapter 9

  Emilia retreated to the balcony with a mug of coffee and watched the hotel come to life below her. Colorful umbrellas bloomed along the beach, the breakfast buffet went up on the lower terrace of the Pasodoble Bar, and staff readied the marina for boat trips to the private island the hotel owned a mile offshore.

  Kurt joined her, already dressed in a starched and monogrammed button-down shirt, khaki pants with knife-edge creases, and polished loafers.

  “Didn’t I tell you it would all work out?” he asked. He touched his coffee mug to hers in a toast. “Solid alibis, both of you.”

  Yesterday in front of Silvio’s house, with her vision still hazy from Rio’s punch, Emilia had read the text from Macias that said she and Silvio were cleared. She’d called him and was almost drunk with relief to hear that Silvio would be released Friday morning. Emilia was to report to the squadroom to pick up her badge and Silvio’s release papers before collecting him at the bull pen.

  “You did,” Emilia said. “But things in Mexico so rarely go the way gringos think they should.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Kurt said.

  “I’m sorry for last night,” Emilia said.

  Kurt put down his mug and lifted Emilia’s hair to examine the bruise on the back of her head. “It doesn’t look so bad this morning,” he said. “The eye is worse.”

  “Can we say I had a car accident?” Emilia asked. “Your staff is bound to ask questions.”

  Last night, she’d been a wreck with a bloated left eye and blood-soaked tee from the nasty cut on the back of her head. Christine, the hotel concierge, had spotted Emilia as she wobbled across the lobby of the Palacio Réal, hoping to escape into the elevator without being seen. Instead, the skinny blonde puta had over-reacted with a screech of alarm, alerting everyone in the lobby. Emilia loathed the woman at the best of times but never so much as last night.

  “We’ll have to say someone else was driving,” Kurt said. “Unless the kid punched your car, too.”

  ☼

  The guard at the police station gate recognized the Suburban and waved her through without asking for a badge. Macias and Sandor met her in the entrance and got her past the guard desk.

  It seemed to Emilia that she no longer belonged in the squadroom. Her desk was bare and empty, a reminder that her presence was temporary. Silvio’s coffee cup was still by his keyboard, as if he’d just got up for a moment and would be right back. The sludge of coffee in the bottom was beginning to mold. Emilia reminded herself to wash it before she brought him back to the squadroom.

  In comparison, the desks of both Macias and Sandor were heaped with files. Another paper mountain covered the desks of Castro and Gomez. Neither were there and Emilia assumed they were out on the streets, fucking up another case.

  “We’re so far behind, it’s a joke,” Sandor said.

  “Loyola needs to find some fresh meat,” Emilia observed and removed her sunglasses. Isabel’s death scene photos were gone from the murder board wall, replaced by Acapulco’s latest violent crime. Two men and a woman shot on a sidewalk, no doubt with a large caliber handgun. They all looked relatively young.

  Before either of her colleagues could answer, Loyola stalked out of his office. “Well, Cruz,” he said and gestured to her black eye. “Looks like you got yourself into a bit of trouble while you’ve been away.”

  “Car accident,” Emilia said.

  “With somebody’s fist,” Loyola snorted. The acting lieutenant looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. Behind wire spectacles, his eyes were red-rimmed and sunk into dark circles of fatigue. His skin was ashy and his clothes were rumpled.

  “Not your problem,” Emilia flashed back. “Let’s get Silvio out of the bull pen.”

  Loyola’s mouth twisted into a begrudging smile as he put her gun and badge on her desk. “There you go, Cruz,” he said. “You get to be a detective again until Monday.”

  “I’ll be sure to check the calendar,” Emilia replied. She scooped up her badge, slipped the lanyard over her neck, and checked her gun before securing it in the holster under her left arm. It felt good.

  Loyola nodded at Macias and Sandor. “You two can brief her on the latest developments and make sure she gets the paperwork.” He shifted his attention back to Emilia. “Pick up Silvio and bring him back here. I want him to know we’ve been working his wife’s case.”

  “You’ve had an arrest?” Emilia asked, looking from Loyola to the other two detectives.

  “No, but we will,” Loyola said. “The important thing is that Franco’s been cleared. We need him back on the job. This place is going in the shitter. With you out he’ll team with Ibarra.”

  Over Loyola’s shoulder, Macias raised his eyebrows in a subtle let-it-go signal.

  “Okay,” Emilia said to Loyola. “Thanks.”

  The phone in Loyola’s office rang. He gave a grunt of exasperation, went into the office, and slammed the door.

  “What’s going on with him?” Emilia asked.

  “Three more homicides last night,” Macias said. “We’re so short-handed nobody’s even got time to file reports let alone investigate.”

  Sandor shook his head sadly as he led them back to his desk; it was pushed against that of his partner like Emilia’s and Silvio’s desks. “This is getting crazy.”

  “What about Isabel’s murder?” Emilia asked. “It’s been five days.”

  “Nothing,” Macias admitted as he dropped into his desk chair. “Some scared neighbors blaming the neighborhood kids. A guy who wanted to place bets with Silvio. No prints, no match for the rounds. Nothing that is going to take us anywhere.”

  “Do you have the evidence reports?” Emilia asked. “I want to check something.”

  “Sure.” Macias shuffled through the papers on his desk, found a printout, and passed it over.

  Just as Emilia thought, no green linen-covered accounting ledgers were on the list of items taken out of Silvio’s house.

  “What’s going on, Cruz?” Sandor asked.

  Emilia lowered herself into a chair by the side of Sandor’s desk. “Don’t ask me how I know,” she said. “But Silvio’s bookie ledgers are missing from his house.”

  Sandor held out his hand and she gave him the evidence roster. Macias came around to stand behind his partner’s chair. The two men were silent as they reviewed the list.

  “You’re sure?” Sandor said at length. “Should we send the crime scene techs back in?”

  “Don’t waste their time,” Emilia said. “The books are gone. I’m sure.”

  “It’s a gambling thing? Not part of the El Trio mess?” Macias asked. He leaned against his partner’s desk.

  “Maybe,” Emilia said. “I talked to this kid yesterday who hangs out around Silvio’s house. One of the strays who ate there when Isabel fed the neighborhood kids.”

  She told them briefly about Rio and the boy’s story of selling the key. They tossed around a couple of theories as to the identity of the “circle man” and agreed that a ball cap with a sports emblem was the best explanation.

  “We can print out a couple of logos, find the kid again, and get him to identify which one this circle man was wearing,” Macias finally decided.

  “Maybe if Silvio sees the logos, he’ll have an idea of who it could be,” Emilia offered. Thi
s was the part of the job she loved; sorting out seemingly abstract and unrelated details, brainstorming next steps with other quick minds. “Might have seen someone hanging around the neighborhood with a ball cap with a certain logo on it.”

  “Fuck, we’re wasting time talking.” Macias swung around to his own desk chair, tapped his keyboard and the printer across the room by the copier coughed into life. It spit out a sheaf of papers. “You go pick up Silvio, bring him back here.”

  Sandor collected the papers and gave them to Emilia. “Loyola needs to sign them,” he said.

  “I know the drill,” Emilia replied. She looked at the two detectives. “Thanks for helping.”

  Macias nodded. “Silvio didn’t deserve this.”

  Emilia crossed the room and tapped on Loyola’s office door, the papers in her hand. When she heard him respond, she cracked open the door. “I need you to sign the release papers.”

  “Give them to me,” Loyola said.

  Emilia came in and slid the papers on the desk. Loyola looked even worse than he had before, as if stress was mounting by the minute.

  He pulled the papers close and began to read, his head bobbing nervously and his lips pinched in concentration.

  Emilia stepped closer to the desk, looking for the file with her name written on the upper edge. It wasn’t there but the two-drawer safe in the corner of the room was unlocked. The top drawer was open a few inches and she could see file folders inside.

  “I thought you should be the one to pick him up,” Loyola said. “Partners and all.”

  “Thanks,” Emilia said. “I wouldn’t have wanted anybody else to get him.”

  Loyola signed the documents with a shaky hand. His signature came out loopy and erratic. He caught her looking at his handwriting, impatiently gathered up the sheaf of papers and rattled them at her. “Bring him straight back here,” he snapped. “I don’t suppose Silvio will be in a good mood but we need to talk.”

  “Sure.” Emilia stuck the papers in her bag.

  “And like I said,” Loyola went on. “You can keep your badge until Monday when you go to your next assignment. They want you for this new unit, Cruz. Christ the King couldn’t get you out of it.”