While I was absorbed in processing what I had just read, Cate tapped me on the shoulder. "Ready?" she asked.
"Yeah, sure," I smiled. "Uh, listen, maybe Susan would like to join us. Get away from the books for a while, you know. Clear her head."
"Would you care to join us, Susan?" Cate asked.
"No, I don't think so, but thanks for asking," she replied.
"Come on, Susan," I said as I slipped my arm around Cate's waist. "All work and no play makes for a dull woman."
It was the dumbest remark I could ever remember uttering, and Cate looked at me like I had gone completely around the bend. But I now wanted desperately to get Susan involved in a conversation. I was hoping that my arm around Cate would show her she didn't have a clear field to Cate's affections and drive her to protect something I knew she wanted. She looked at me for a moment, and I saw her territorial instincts kick into gear.
"Maybe I could use some time away from this," she finally said with a smile.
"Great!" I said. "Where do you two suggest? I'm not up on the good Austin restaurants anymore."
Susan looked at Cate and then back at me. "How about the Eighth Street Bar and Grill? It's not very far from here, and we haven't been there for a while."
She wasn't speaking to me but was letting me know I had trespassed into an area where she had staked a claim. If Cate was aware of any of this crap, she didn't let on.
"Would you like to go in my car?" Susan offered.
"Why don't we follow you? You know where you're going, and after lunch I need to speak to Cate alone," I said. "Unless that's a problem, Susan."
"Of course not, Jo. I'll get my car from the parking garage and meet you out front."
I opened the door of my car and waited for Cate to get settled before I went to the driver's side. I started the engine and turned on the air. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts when I heard Cate say, "There she is."
I watched as a familiar looking blue-gray Mercedes 380 SL nosed into the street and waited as several cars went by before pulling out of the garage exit. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the second vehicle I had photographed at the ABP plant.
"Nice car," I said.
"Too small," Cate replied. "You can fall into it, but it takes an ejector seat to get out gracefully if you're dressed for an evening out."
"I'll bet there's not a lot of room to maneuver in the backseat either," I said with a chuckle.
"I wouldn't know." She laughed. "It's been a long time since I spent much time in the backseat of a car."
Susan swung into a parking space in the alleyway next to the Eighth Street Bar and Grill. It had a French cafe look about it. Round, linen-covered tables behind a wrought iron fence lined the wide sidewalk on either side of the main entrance. It was after one, and most of the tables were already in partial shade. We found a table close to the building and sat down. A bored-looking young man approached us with glasses of water and menus. We all selected something light that wouldn't take long to prepare.
While we waited, Susan unbuttoned her jacket and leaned back, sipping her water. She frequently looked at Cate, and I would have sworn she winked at her. Cate looked uncomfortable sitting between us, and I was sorry that I had put her in that situation.
"Cate told me what happened to your housekeeper, Jo. Terrible thing."
"Yes, it was. She was a fine woman and a good friend. When I find out who was responsible, I might not be able to wait for the criminal justice system to hash it all out."
"But those things are better left in the hands of professionals, don't you agree?"
"I am a professional."
"Not a professional detective though."
"You'd be amazed what a good reporter can uncover, Susan. There are things I can find out and places I can go where the police wouldn't be welcome."
"And people actually talk to you?"
"Tell me things they wouldn't tell their own priest. Surprisingly, twenty bucks can buy a lot of information, as long as whomever you're talking to needs a fix bad enough."
"As an attorney I can tell you that kind of evidence wouldn't be considered very reliable in court."
"I'm not interested in going to court, Susan."
"Ah, yes, revenge. I forgot," she said as she wrapped both hands around her water glass and held it in front of her face.
"If revenge means justice is served, then I'm for it. A lot of cases are never solved because the cops don't have a vested interest in digging deep enough. They're in a hurry to clear as many cases as they can. I, on the other hand, have all the time in the world, and I'm extremely patient in tracking down even minor leads."
"Still, you must admit that some cases are unsolvable."
I shook my head. "For every crime, there's someone somewhere who knows something. Hell, they might not even know they know it. For example, I was just reading about an old case that happened a couple of blocks from here."
"Really," Cate said. It was the first time she had spoken since we sat down.
"Yeah. Some sorority girl whose body was found in an alley behind Sixth Street. Raped, murdered, and dumped. I was drawn to it because it happened not long after you and I met. Back in November of nineteen eighty."
"And the case has never been solved?" Susan asked. "I'd think that proved my point, Jo. A twenty-five-year-old murder case. Whoever did it could be on another continent or dead by now."
"Or he or she could be living within spitting distance of the crime scene."
"This is beginning to sound like one of those debate cases we argued in law school," Cate said.
"Personally, I think it's a snipe hunt," Susan said over the top of her glass.
"Maybe," I said with a smile. "But I'll bet the boys at Kappa Alpha really sweated for a while."
"Kappa Alpha?" Cate said.
"She went to a party there the night she died. She was a Tri-Delt."
"Wasn't Tri-Delt your sorority, Susan?" Cate asked.
"When I was at Oklahoma," she answered, putting emphasis on the Oklahoma part as if to distance herself from the crime.
When our food arrived, Susan seemed relieved to have some other way to occupy herself. I was halfway through my sandwich before stopping to speak again.
"By the way, Cate, we've dug up a couple of interesting things for the illegals story," I said.
She looked quickly at Susan and back to me without speaking.
"We've been tracking someone who might be involved in bringing them in. A guy named Camarena who works for American Beef and Pork. Seems this Camarena has a cousin, Escobar, who might be bringing illegals in for him. It's not all tied together yet, but it shouldn't be long."
"Is this the story Kyle was working on?" Susan asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
"Yes," I answered. "I suspect that either Camarena or Escobar might have been involved in the murder of my housekeeper."
"It sounds like you have a lot of mights and maybes."
"It's just a matter of getting lucky and tying it all together."
I couldn't tell from Susan's demeanor whether what I said had rattled her. If she knew anything incriminating, she certainly wasn't going to tell me about it. And she didn't know where I had gotten the information about Camarena or ABP. To a total stranger, there was nothing unusual about Cate's demeanor either, but her eyes were saying volumes to me. I hoped Susan didn't know those eyes as well as I did.
Susan finished her lunch, and, shortly afterward, excused herself, saying she needed to get back to work on the case at the office. I wouldn't let her pay for her food, and we parted with a handshake. On her way out, she whispered something to Cate and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, undoubtedly for my benefit. I smiled as she left, but a swift kick to the shin from under the table abruptly interrupted my smile.
"What was that shit all about?" Cate demanded.
"Which shit?" I asked, rubbing my shin.
"That stuff about a murdered sorority girl and Camarena. It soun
ded like you were interrogating Susan."
"No, I wasn't. But I've run into too many coincidences in the last few days. Just thought I'd see what kind of reaction I'd get from good old Susan."
"Surely you didn't expect her to divulge any information about ABP or Felix Camarena to you. They are her clients, and she doesn't owe you any explanation about them."
"She doesn't know where I found out about them either. I haven't given away your midnight file search."
"What could you possibly have hoped to accomplish with that conversation, Jo?"
"Truthfully, I'm hoping that she'll contact Camarena, and he'll come after me to find out what I know. Of course, if Susan is totally in the dark about what Camarena is doing at ABP, I don't have anything to worry about."
I spent another half-hour telling her what I had found out about Camarena from Professor Evans and Freddie Escobar. Although she was mildly impressed with the information, she defended Susan to the bitter end. I had tried to shake her up and had come up with squat, not even rapid blinking or a hard swallow. Cate had always been an excellent judge of character and not easily snowed by a polished demeanor. She trusted Susan implicitly, and I hoped, for her sake, that she was right.
I paid the bill and drove her back to her office. My Godsent parking place was long gone, forcing me into a few trips around the block before I spotted a car pulling away from the curb a block from her building.
"How long are you going to be in Austin?"
"Going back to San Antonio in a couple of hours. There's not much more to find here, and I need to check in with Pauli."
"Have you spoken to Kyle about what you've found yet?"
"No. I'd like to keep it as far from him as possible until it's actually time for the story to break. I might call Sarita tomorrow though. If it looks like he's stuck and just spinning his wheels, maybe whoever was responsible for having him shot will lay off. No sense going after him if he doesn't know anything."
"They might decide you're a better target."
"I've made copies of everything I've found. Pauli will have them. If something does happen, he'll give them to Kyle. He'll have to decide if the story's worth pursuing after that."
"Damn, Jo, I didn't involve you in this so you could become a sacrificial lamb."
I reached across the car and touched the tips of her hair. "I know," I said. "But considering how little I've given him, this doesn't seem like much."
Her eyes glistened. "I hate this. I wish you would chuck the whole thing."
"It's too late for that now, darlin'." I opened my door and went to the passenger side to help Cate out of the car.
"Promise me you'll be careful, Jo. Stay in San Antonio with your friend."
"If you'd ever heard the way he snores, you wouldn't ask me to do that."
"I want you to promise anyway. And look me in the eyes when you do, so I'll know you're not lying."
She knew me too well, and she knew the power her eyes had over me. I promised to stay with Pauli as I walked her to the entrance of her building and gave her his address and phone number in case she needed to contact me.
Chapter Twenty-One
I SPENT A sleepless night in Pauli's spare bedroom, and it wasn't just that his snoring shook the wall between our rooms. All the little pieces of information I had gathered were floating around inside my head looking for a way to connect with one another. On my way out of Austin, I had stopped back at the Alumni Association and spent a little more time with Cedric Evans. He may have been older than dirt, but the man knew how to find information. He had dug back in the filed student records and come up with Felix Camarena's financial benefactor, a small company called Pan American Investments, which listed its headquarters in Kimball, Texas, a suburb of Houston. According to Professor Evans, Pan American Investments had gone belly up in the mid-eighties.
I gave up on sleep and felt my way down the dark hallway into the living room. At four in the morning, I was parked in Pauli's kitchen going over my notes again and waiting for his coffee maker to finish spitting and burping out its contents. In an effort to kill time, I began making lists of people to call and places to look on one sheet of paper. On a second sheet, I compiled a longer list of questions. Was there a connection besides business between Susan Bradley and Camarena? Had Susan known Camarena at UT Law? Was Camarena responsible for the death of Julianne McCaffrey? Even if he was, what did that have to do with the illegals story? Or with Susan Bradley for that matter? Maybe in my zeal to track the original story I had allowed myself to become sidetracked, and there were actually two stories in front of me linked only by coincidence. I made outlines, drew mind webs, anything to put all the pieces together, and was getting nowhere fast.
Around five thirty, I heard Pauli padding down the hallway. He was bleary-eyed as he came into the kitchen, barely acknowledging my presence as he headed straight for the coffee maker. Bringing his cup to the table, he eased down on a chair and looked at the papers in front of me. "Drives you nuts, don't it?"
"There's so much and yet so little here," I said, throwing my pencil down in frustration. "How did you do it for so long?"
"You were a fuckin' reporter, how did you?"
"My job was to go where they told me and shoot pictures. I didn't have to investigate the backgrounds of everyone involved."
"You never know where the next big piece of the puzzle will come from, so you just have to keep pokin' around until it turns up."
"What if it never turns up?"
"Then you're fucked and move on to the next case." He shrugged. "It happens."
"Do you have a plan for today?"
"I plan to sit here all day doin' grunt work —phone calls, that sort of thing. Gimme that list." He read over the things I had written down. "How's about I take the Pan American Investment Company and the Austin PD. You can call Mr. or Mrs. McCaffrey."
"Thanks for nothin'. I guess you haven't found out anything more about the illegals Escobar is bringing in."
"Remember Mercado? The dumb shit told me he heard there were some comin' in this week, but he was really flyin' when he told me, so who knows. To make that one you'd have to see them come in the front door illegal and go out the back door semi-legal. Then, if we could follow them to their final destination, at least we'd see the whole route. And that's only if you believe Mercado's hallucinations and want to sit on your ass for God knows how many days and nights to wait for the big arrival."
"Do we have another choice?"
"Nope. We're down to the most borin' part for now."
Less than an hour later, I found myself sipping coffee from the plastic lid of a Thermos bottle across the street from the San Antonio Produce Terminal. Pauli had insisted that I bring my camera and any telephoto lenses I had, the bigger the better. Now the camera rested on the car seat between us, equipped with a 500-millimeter lens that would have taken a picture of a gnat's ass on a grape from where we were parked. Lack of sleep, coupled with extreme boredom, began to overcome the gallon of coffee I had already consumed, and periodically, I dozed off, slouching down in the seat. Every time I got comfortable, Pauli punched me to get a shot of something. The chances were the person in question had absolutely nothing to do with anything, but Pauli planned to run them all past his buddies at the police department anyway.
By nine that morning, the Produce Terminal was bursting at the seams with restaurant owners looking for a deal on fresh produce. The Terminal was a huge open warehouse with half a dozen oversized garage doors that had to be hoisted open with chains. Samples of fruit and vegetables were displayed everywhere. Customers told each vendor what they wanted, and it appeared from the backs of trucks, which had been backed into makeshift stalls throughout the building. Seemingly it was not an efficient way to do business, but the San Antonio Produce Terminal had been operating the same way for decades. The really big produce buyers, primarily grocery chains, picked up the produce themselves in their own trucks. The Terminal wasn't big business the way most p
eople think of it, but from everything I heard it was a decent livelihood for most of the vendors.
I was halfway into a dream that made me smile when Pauli punched me again. He was really beginning to piss me off, and the bruise on my left arm grew with each punch.
"Now what?"
"One of Escobar's trucks just came into a back bay."
I looked through one of the big doors and decided Pauli must have X-ray vision to see through all the crap inside the building.
"The tan one with the eagle on the side. See it?" he asked as I picked up the camera and used the lens as binoculars.
Peering through the eyepiece of the camera, I panned the camera around until I found the truck he had described. "Got it," I said. "Now what?"
"Keep watching it. If anything but lettuce comes out the rear, take its picture."
A 500-millimeter lens isn't designed to be hand-held. I looked around the car and found an old oil rag on the back floorboard. Folding it to make a pad, I laid it on the dashboard and rested the camera lens on it.
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