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

by Carmen Amato

  Out of the 1900 women who showed up that morning in response to the advertisements, fewer than a quarter completed the writing sample and English test. A dozen uniforms kept order as those who passed waited to be interviewed. Ten at a time formed a line to talk to Emilia as she sat behind a table with Paola to keep the paperwork organized.

  Emilia’s first victory, which Claudia had yet to recognize, was approval to use the gymnasium at the central police building, the same gymnasium where Emilia had won the hand-to-hand competition over the other patrol officers competing for a single detective slot three years ago. Emilia had also gotten permission for two dozen uniforms to keep order, which allowed her to divide the huge space into processing zones, just as she’d imagined.

  In the first zone, candidates completed an application and a copy was made of their cédula identity card and school records. The second zone was for the English and writing tests administered by a team from the police academy.

  Emilia commanded the third zone. She was the final decision point, selecting 60 women representing the initial cut.

  The fourth zone was a circle of folding chairs where the lucky ones waited as their cédula was checked for a criminal record. Those who made it through that hurdle received a packet of instructions for training. Some would drop out, others would flunk the physical fitness and psychological tests. Eventually, Emilia would have the final 30 Las Palomas patrol officers Carlota wanted on the streets within a month.

  Natividad looked like a good candidate but the woman’s essay was terrible. Her handwriting was loopy and girlish, her spelling that of a student who hadn’t paid attention in class. She’d need to be taught how to write the basics, much less a police report. It was too bad they didn’t have time for that.

  Emilia looked up and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have the qualifications we’re looking for.” She pointed past the line of waiting women to the exit. “Thank you for coming. There is a small dispensa you can pick up on your way out.”

  That was Claudia’s idea. Every woman who didn’t make the cut got a small box of household staples to compensate for the time they’d spent applying. It was a nice gesture that would go far in promoting Las Palomas even before it was up and running, and Emilia had to give her credit.

  “I can’t go,” Natividad said. She spoke well, as if her education had been better than her writing sample suggested.

  “Excuse me?” Emilia lifted her pen to mark the woman’s paperwork as Disqualified.

  “I need this job.” Her voice shook with nerves.

  Emilia put down the application packet. “You’re not fully qualified. They should have told you after you took the writing test. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll do anything for this job,” Natividad said. She repeated the sentence in English.

  Emilia hesitated. There was an intensity and resolve about the woman that she liked. The other candidates who passed every test were giggly girls in spandex and halters, unsure of what they were signing up to do and more interested in their cell phones than in following directions.

  She leafed through the girl’s paperwork again. “You work on one of the boats at Playa Olvidada?”

  “For now,” Natividad said.

  “That’s a tough environment,” Emilia observed. She looked at the woman’s hands. They were well groomed instead of chapped and red from pulling in fishing nets and gutting fish.

  “I do accounts for the fishermen so they know how much the broker should pay for each catch,” Natividad said, as if she’d known what Emilia was thinking. “They don’t mess with me.”

  “Okay.” Emilia slid a numbered card across the table and indicated the chairs in zone four. “Take this and wait over there.”

  Natividad pressed the ticket to her heart as if it was gold. “Thank you, thank you,” she breathed. “You won’t be sorry.”

  Paola took Natividad’s file. The next woman in line put her papers on the table.

  Emilia started to read. Two hundred hopefuls to go.

  ☼

  Two hours and three cups of coffee later, Emilia found herself looking at a girl who couldn’t be more than 16 years old. She was a tiny thing with pencil-thin wrists and eyes the size of saucers. She wore a pink tee shirt and skinny jeans and had a mass of black curly hair corralled by a banana clip.

  “Can I see your cédula?” Emilia asked.

  The girl’s mouth hardened but she opened her purse and dug out a wallet. She held it for Emilia to look at the identity card through a cloudy plastic sleeve.

  “Take it out,” Emilia prompted.

  “You can see it,” the girl said.

  Emilia plucked the wallet out of the girl’s hand and extracted the cédula. It proclaimed that Tina Maria Velasco was 22 and lived in the upscale Las Brisas neighborhood. Emilia held the card to the light and saw where it had been carefully cut and another picture substituted. The forgery wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best she’d ever seen, either.

  “Paola,” Emilia said, turning away from the candidate. “Could you get some more file folders?”

  “Now?” Paola asked, pen poised over her notes.

  “Yes,” Emilia said. “I’d also like a latte. Do you remember where the kitchen is? Get one for yourself as well.”

  Paola didn’t have to be told twice. She trotted off, her dark suit incongruous amid the noisy sea of women in casual clothing.

  The young candidate was still at the table. “How much did it cost you?” Emilia asked.

  “Three hundred pesos.”

  “You got a bargain.” Emilia handed back both the wallet and the false identification card. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one,” Tina Maria replied.

  “Sixteen,” Emilia countered.

  “Seventeen,” Tina Maria admitted, her voice barely a whisper.

  Emilia returned the girl’s paperwork. “The exit is over there. You can―.”

  “Do this job,” Tina Maria finished the sentence. “Doesn’t matter how hard it is. I’ve already done harder.”

  There was an unexpected steel behind the angel face and cloud of hair. Emilia stared across the table. Tina Maria stared back, her jaw set.

  “What else is fake here?” Emilia asked, indicating the application papers.

  “Nothing.”

  Emilia read the girl’s application. She’d gotten high marks for her English. Her essay was very good and her handwriting small and neat. Still, she was a child with fake identification. “I’m sorry,” Emilia sighed. “You can pick up a dispensa―.”

  “No,” Tina Maria said. “I will be the best you have. I’ll work harder than anyone else here. You’ll see.”

  Emilia shook her head. “You’re too young and too small.”

  The young girl looked around the huge gymnasium and at the seating area where selectees in tight jeans and spandex tops checked their cell phones. She put both hands flat on the table. “There was no size or age requirement in the newspaper. Unless you lied.”

  Emilia saw ugly burn marks on the back of the girl’s right hand. She had a larger scar on the inside of her left arm, possibly from the edge of a hot iron.

  “You’re a muchacha planta, aren’t you?” Emilia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What about your family?” Emilia asked. “Do they know you want to be a cop?”

  Tina Maria shook her head. “My family doesn’t live in Acapulco.”

  Emilia considered. Tina Maria was a live-in maid, probably from a small village in the state of Guerrero. She might be the family’s only source of income. No doubt Las Palomas would more than double her salary. “But if you join Las Palomas,” Emilia said. “You’ll have to find a place to live.”

  Tina Maria lifted her chin to indicate the women who already had tickets. “One of them will need a place, too,” she said. “We can share.

  “Being a cop is much harder,” Emilia cautioned. “And dangerous.”

  “I love Acapulco,” the girl said
impulsively. “I can do something to make it better. Talk to people. Tell them where to go and all the things there are to see.”

  Emilia was suddenly swept back three years, to a shabby interrogation room at the police station, and a conversation with a thickset man. She’d said something similar to a detective named Rico Portillo and he’d given her a chance to become the first female police detective in Acapulco. He was dead now and she’d never really thanked him for the chance he’d given her.

  “Okay,” Emilia said. Against her better judgement, she slid a ticket across the table. “You’ve made the first cut.”

  The girl would probably wash out in the physical fitness test, but there was something about her that Emilia liked very much.

  ☼

  The very last candidate was named Rosalita Riva Diaz. She was a striking woman about Emilia’s age. She was the only candidate to wear a dress and the clingy fabric accentuated her considerable curves. Expensive sandals showed off manicured toes. The woman wore her shoulder-length hair in loose curls and her wary smile was brightened with red lipstick.

  Emilia had seen that smile before, on too many downtown street corners.

  Mumbling something to Paola about stretching her legs, Emilia took the application and slipped out from behind the table. She steered Rosalita a few steps away.

  “You’re a working girl,” Emilia said.

  The woman’s smile faded into a thin line. “What makes you say that?”

  “I’ve been around, too.”

  “Does that disqualify me?” Rosalita asked.

  “Hooker to cop is pretty unusual,” Emilia said.

  Rosalita hitched the wary smile back in place. “I figure you need somebody with street smarts.”

  “Who put you up to this?” Emilia pressed. “Who wants you to be their eyes inside?”

  “I want a better life,” the other woman said flatly. There was no guile or pretense in her eyes.

  “Being a cop is hard,” Emilia said.

  “I said better,” Rosalita said. “Not easy.”

  Emilia looked down at the application. Rosalita knew English. The essay was fine, her handwriting was tidy. Her high school graduation information could be genuine.

  “You got an arrest record?” Emilia asked.

  “No.”

  “You know I’ll find out.”

  “Go ahead. I don’t have a record.”

  “You’re an inside girl,” Emilia ventured. Inside girls went to hotels to service tourists and were less vulnerable than common street walkers. Rosalita’s pimp would be a fixer inside the hotel who set up the appointments.

  “Yes.”

  “What about your pimp?”

  “That’s my problem, not yours.” Rosalita didn’t flinch or look away.

  “Are you clean?”

  The woman extended a bare arm. There were no needle tracks. Her fingernails were short and polished; no long nails for scooping cocaine up her nose. “I drank,” Rosalita said. “But that’s all.”

  “And now?”

  “It won’t be a problem, I promise you.”

  “You have to pass the psychological and medical exams,” Emilia warned. “Plus the physical fitness test.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  Emilia pretended to study the application again, but her thoughts weren’t on the printed page.

  On one hand, Rosalita had the potential to be a decent patrol officer. Her test scores were high and she’d have the survival skills many of the other candidates didn’t.

  On the other hand, Emilia didn’t believe the reason Rosalita had given for why she wanted to become a cop. The distance between the two occupations was too great. Rosalita was smart enough to work in a shop or other less dangerous job. She had a motive for joining Las Palomas and Emilia wanted to know what it was.

  But the bottom line was that if Claudia knew Emilia had hired a hooker, she’d probably have a stroke.

  Emilia handed Rosalita a ticket.

  Chapter 16

  The first week of training for the Las Palomas selectees was hectic. Claudia insisted on making a cheerleading speech every morning to the patrol officer candidates but other than that left everything to Emilia. Thankfully, instructors from the police academy were there with lesson plans and tests. Mornings were devoted to classroom instruction and the afternoons were for physical fitness training and instruction in the use of nightsticks, handcuffs, and pepper spray. Emilia joined the afternoon sessions whenever she could but her administrative responsibilities were endless. No one else in the Las Palomas front office had a clue about police procedures or even the hierarchy of the police department. One minion or another was continually at Emilia’s door with questions and problems for her to solve, keeping Emilia in the office long after everyone else had gone for the day. She barely saw Kurt at all.

  But by Friday, a routine had been established, giving Emilia a chance to get her head above water. She grabbed the opportunity to get out of the office, which is how she found herself in the state’s attorney general’s office with a business card in her hand and a weak smile on her face. She was taking a huge risk requesting an update on their investigation into the Salinas murder; hopefully word would not get out that she was asking questions related to El Trio.

  “Thank you for coming, Detective Cruz,” the attorney said, opening the door to the conference room.

  Emilia took the seat he indicated at the conference table. The man’s name was Sergio Noriega Menendez and he was the senior investigating attorney. He’d been Javier Salinas Arroliza’s boss.

  Another man and woman, both well dressed in business suits, came into the conference room. Noriega introduced them as Javier Riviera Cortez and Josefina Vargas Guzmán. They were followed by another woman wearing a dark cotton dress and white apron and pushing a trolley laden with a coffee service.

  Once they’d all been served, Noriega looked at Emilia expectantly. “We’re very interested in what you have to tell us about the police investigation into Javier’s murder.”

  Emilia lowered her cup into its saucer, too surprised to even take a sip of coffee. “I was under the impression we’d be discussing your investigation,” she said.

  “Our investigation?” Noriega frowned. “What are you talking about.”

  Emilia went cold. She distinctly remembered Chief Salazar telling her that there would be no unified El Trio investigation and that the state’s attorney general’s office would conduct their own investigation into Salinas’s death while the federales did the same for Espinosa. Vega’s death was being investigated by the Acapulco police and Chief Salazar’s office was in charge of that.

  “Well, your inquiry,” she ventured.

  Noriega jabbed a finger into the air. “Your colleagues specifically asked us not to investigate. Said the Acapulco police department was all over it. Are you now telling me nothing has been done?”

  Emilia took out her notebook and a pen, and made a show of flipping through the pages of the notebook. “And you spoke to . . .” She let the question hang in the air.

  Noriega looked at his colleagues with an expression like thunder. He was probably in his early fifties, with wavy hair distracting from a receding hairline. His colleagues were at least 20 years younger, with the weary looks of good people who had too much work and too little life. “Neither gave me a business card,” he said. “I think I was so upset that day I forgot to ask for one.”

  “Lopez, or Loya,” Josefina said. She was pretty, with long straight hair worn parted on the side. She wore a pale gray dress with a multi-strand silver necklace worth two months of Emilia’s salary. “Something like that.”

  “He wore glasses,” Riviera said. “The other was shorter. Stocky. Smelled like cigarettes.”

  Loyola and Ibarra. Emilia swallowed her surprise and nodded as if their names were written in her notebook. Inside, she was seething.

  The three attorneys looked at her expectantly.

  “We’ve had a miscommunicati
on,” Emilia managed.

  “I hold your department responsible,” Noriega barked.

  Madre de Dios, but this was not what she had expected. “I have a few questions,” Emilia said. “When I get back to the office, we can get things straightened out.”

  “This is deplorable.” Noriega banged a fist on the table. “I don’t know what you police spend your days doing, but it isn’t catching murders.”

  Emilia deliberately looked at the younger attorneys to give Noriega a chance to simmer down. “Can you each tell me the last time you saw Salinas?”

  They had all seen Salinas the day he was killed. The attorney had left the office a little after 9:00 pm. That wasn’t particularly late for him; the man often stayed in the office until 10:00 or 11:00 pm. He didn’t have much of a social life. After work, Salinas either ate at a restaurant with a book or had a meal at home prepared by his housekeeper.

  “Married?” Emilia asked.

  “No,” Josefina replied quickly. “Javier worked almost all the time. If Javier handled a case, you could depend that it would be perfect. Every detail considered, every thread followed. He never forgot a promise or let you down.”

  Noriega did most of the talking after that. Salinas had no commitments besides work during the week that anyone knew about. Salinas was an excellent attorney who knew the risks associated with his position. He kept a low profile and didn’t attract the wrong sort of attention. Although he often handled important cases, he didn’t seek out publicity.

  “But he was a regular at several restaurants,” Emilia said. “Do you know which?”

  Noriega shook his head.

  “The Octagon,” Josefina interjected. “Tahoma. Leonardo’s. El Jazz, but not as much as the others.”

  Noriega glared at Josefina. The look carried an undercurrent of hostility that was more than annoyance at an underling speaking out of turn.

  “I have some pictures I’d like you to look at,” Emilia said. She got out the graduation picture from Loyola’s file, Espinosa’s portrait from the newspaper, and the photo of Silvio and Isabel taken from their bedroom.