Skeleton justice mm-2

by Michael Baden

  Then she saw what she was waiting for. A long, casual stride, a familiar toss of dark hair. Paco Sandoval emerged from the shadows of some maple trees and headed toward her. When he was ten feet away, Manny opened the container in her purse. Mycroft sat up and sniffed.

  When Paco was seven feet away, Manny tossed two gourmet strips across the trail. Mycroft shot after them, a blur of red trailing his bright green leash.

  "Oh, my dog! He's loose! Get him!" Manny rose from the bench but made no effort to chase Mycroft. Paco glanced her way, questioning.

  "I can't chase him. I sprained my ankle. Please grab his leash for me," Manny said, averting her face by looking down at her Ace bandage-wrapped ankle.

  Dutifully, Paco sprinted after Mycroft, who wasn't terribly hard to catch. Having downed two bacon and liver strips, he was busy sniffing the grass on the off chance he might have missed a third.

  Manny limped across the path, holding her hand out for the leash. When Paco extended it to her, Manny took it with her left hand and linked her right arm firmly through Paco's. "Thank you, Paco. You're very good with animals."

  He looked down at her in surprise, still not recognizing her.

  "Let's walk a bit, shall we? We have a little talking to do."

  Her voice triggered Paco's memory and he tugged to release his arm.

  "Don't run, Paco," Manny said, her voice quiet and firm. "If you do, I'll start screaming that you stole my wallet. You know I'll do it."

  She felt his arm, which was still hard with tension as he continued trying to pull away. No time for an opening argument; just move straight to the cross-examination.

  "The mailbox explosion, the Vampire-it's all related, and it all goes back to your family's past in Argentina, isn't that right?"

  Paco's glowing olive complexion seemed a little grayish now, his lips pale and pressed to a thin line. His head swiveled left, then right. "We can't be seen together," Paco said, his voice low and urgent. "Don't you understand? If they see me talking to you, they'll kill Travis."

  "Who will? Who has Travis?"

  Paco stopped on the path. The old ladies who had passed Manny earlier were now sitting on a bench, taking a breather. Two joggers passed in iPod-induced oblivion. The only place for anyone to hide was in the trees overhead. They were near Fifty-ninth Street and Manny spotted a red-and-black carriage pulled by a dappled mare clopping along.

  "C'mon, Paco." Manny tugged his arm. "Let's see the park like the tourists do." Mycroft looked at her as if to say I was just there this morning. Boooring…

  After finally settling Mycroft at their feet, Manny leaned forward and spoke to their driver, who only seemed interested in stating the duration and price of the ride.

  Manny turned to look directly at Paco. "Tell me where Travis is now."

  Paco shook his head. "I don't know, honestly. But I'm worried. I haven't heard from him in two days." He leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands.

  "Travis contacts you regularly?"

  "No." Manny had to strain to hear him. "They do."

  "Who?"

  "The Vampire. Sometimes it's a man, sometimes a woman."

  Paco straightened and faced Manny. His dark eyes glistened with tears. "I got Travis into this mess. I was supposed to be the one to get arrested."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The first contact came about two weeks ago." Paco closed his eyes as he spoke, as if he couldn't bear to see his confessor. "A text message saying I needed to call this number to get important news that would affect my family."

  "Who answered?"

  "It was a recorded message directed to me. The voice said they had information that would destroy my father's career, put him in prison. They told me to go to that club in Hoboken, said that someone would make contact with me there. I wanted to go because I needed to protect my mother from any harm, but I was nervous, so I asked Travis-"

  "If he wanted to go clubbing." Manny sighed. Her poor client. He wasn't even supposed to have been there. The Vampire had set up the mailbox bombing as a trap for Paco, but the wrong little mouse had stumbled into it. And Paco had stood by and watched his friend go down and did nothing to help.

  "Let me get this straight," Manny said in the tone she reserved for liars on the witness stand. "You let your friend be arrested on a charge of terrorism and you said nothing to the police about the strange phone call that brought you two to Club Epoch?"

  Paco bit his lip, but to give him credit, he didn't look away from her. He met her gaze and held it. "By that time, I knew what they had called me there to tell me."

  "Which was?"

  Paco held his hand up to deflect her question. "I couldn't speak up on that night. I had to have time to think. Travis and I were separated by the police. They let me go, so I assumed they'd let him go, too."

  "But they didn't. And you still didn't speak up. So do the right thing now. Come forward and tell everything you know to the police."

  "No!"

  Paco's shout made the carriage driver glance back over his shoulder. Then he turned discreetly away. Manny guessed he'd probably witnessed plenty of lovers' quarrels in his career.

  "The next day, the Vampire contacted me again. He told me they would kill Travis and his mother if I went to the police. After Travis got out of jail, he told me the same thing. Every time I speak to him, he begs me not to tell the authorities. He says if we wait it out, everything will be okay."

  The gentle sway of the carriage should have been relaxing, but Manny had never felt more tense. "And you believe that? Paco, these people have attacked six people and tortured and killed two more. You can't possibly trust anything they say."

  "I don't trust them, but I trust Travis. He says the FBI won't believe anything he says. They're convinced he's a terrorist."

  Manny took a deep breath. She could hear an edge of hysteria building in Paco's voice. She needed to calm him down and get his story straight from the beginning. Then she could talk some sense into him.

  "We need to talk about the past, Paco," she began. "What were your parents doing during the Dirty War?"

  Her sudden about-face startled Paco. "Nothing," he said loudly. "My parents are good people."

  "The Vampire knows something about your father's past, doesn't he?" Manny continued. "Something that would destroy your dad's diplomatic career. This killer is using you, Paco. He's taking advantage of your desire to protect your family. I understand you don't want anything to happen to them, but this has gone on long enough. Innocent people are getting hurt."

  "Innocent?" Paco spat the word out like a piece of bad meat. "Amanda Hogaarth wasn't innocent. Raymond Fortes wasn't innocent. They got what they deserved."

  Surprised by his intensity, Manny considered her next move. Clearly, she was on to something here, but she had to tread carefully to keep him talking. She had no idea why Paco claimed Ms. Hogaarth deserved to die, but she could guess why Dr. Fortes had met his grisly end.

  "Dr. Fortes was tortured because he was a torturer himself during the Dirty War, right?"

  "The worst kind." Suddenly, Paco wanted to tell her more. He glanced around, but no one was near but another carriage ten feet behind them. Paco's face shined with recently awakened idealism. "He supervised the torture. Told the soldiers just how far to go so the person wouldn't die. So that he would live to be tortured some more the next day. This is how he used his medical training."

  Manny shivered. She had seen the autopsy photos of Fortes's rat-gnawed body, imagined his slow, agonizing death. At the time, she couldn't fathom how one human being could do such a thing to another. But Paco's claim, if it was true, made Fortes's death seem, if not justifiable, maybe understandable. How chilling to think that Fortes had coolly directed the torture of young people for maximum effectiveness, then left that life behind and came to New York to take up legitimate work as a researcher. Imagine developing fertility drugs to create new life when you were a cold-blooded killer.

  She began to th
ink out loud. "Back in Argentina, Fortes was an obstetrician. He delivered babies."

  Paco stiffened. Manny sensed he might be about to leap out of the slow-moving carriage, so she shamelessly threw her arms around his neck, locking her fingers tightly, yanking up poor Mycroft on his leash. To anyone passing by, they were lovers engaged in a flagrant public display of affection.

  Their faces were inches apart. "Raymond Fortes delivered the babies of the Desaparecidos," Manny said, her eyes locked on Paco's. "Then he took them away to be adopted by strangers."

  Paco's eyes filled with tears. He squirmed away from Manny's embrace.

  "You know someone whose baby was taken," Manny said. "Your parents… long before you were born…" But then she thought of the photo she'd seen in Paco's room. That photo, a recent photo, showed him with a man old enough to have been born during the Dirty War. Who was that?

  Manny released her grip. Paco slumped on the carriage seat. He looked young now, much younger than the sophisticated eighteen-year-old she had waylaid fifteen minutes ago. He had seen the world, more of it than most people his age, but he didn't know the world. He was a child, a frightened child.

  Manny took his hand. "Paco, in your room there's a photo of you and another man, a man about thirty. Who is that?"

  "Esteban," he whispered. "My brother, Esteban."

  "He was adopted?"

  Paco nodded. "I never knew. Until-"

  Paco stopped talking.

  "Until the Vampire told you," Manny said. "He knows your family's secret."

  Paco nodded. "That night at Club Epoch, one of the guys took me into a back room and gave me an iPod to listen to. A voice just started talking. He spoke in Spanish, and it was like listening to my father read me a scary story when I was a kid, except the characters in this story were my own family.

  "The voice said Esteban's birth parents were a young couple in graduate school named Estrella and Hector, who opposed the dictatorship and participated in protests. They were kidnapped when Estrella was seven months pregnant, and Hector was killed before her eyes."

  Paco's voice trembled and his dark eyes blinked furiously. "Then Estrella was tortured for weeks in terrible ways, until the torture finally brought the baby's birth early. They took the baby away from her and she died a few days later. They dumped her body in the ocean."

  Paco paused, his face pale and clammy, his breath coming in shuddering gasps. "What else did the man tell you, Paco?" Manny whispered.

  "The soldiers gave the baby boy to my father. They wanted that baby to be raised by someone with the right politics."

  Paco stopped, too exhausted to continue.

  "But, Paco, how can you be sure that this baby of the disappeared young couple was really your brother, Esteban? I mean, this crazy person calls you up with this story and you believe him? What did your father say?"

  "He doesn't know that I know. He's kept this secret from all of us. He's still controlled by those terrible people. Telling lies, lies, lies. My whole childhood was full of things that didn't make sense, things that I wasn't allowed to ask about. Now everything makes sense."

  "Like what?"

  "I was always my grandparents' favorite. They were cold to Esteban, and I never could figure out why. And my father… well, my father is harsh to everyone, but he was particularly hard on my brother."

  "The biological child favored over the adopted one," Manny said.

  "Yes. And there are no photos of Esteban as a baby, and none of my mother pregnant with him, but there are tons of me. And Esteban was small and sickly as a child."

  "Because of the premature birth," Manny said. "The nurse must have been Amanda Hogaarth. She worked with Dr. Fortes on the side, helping deliver the babies."

  Paco nodded. "That's why I said I don't care that the Vampire killed those two people. But I don't want Travis to be hurt, and I don't want my mother ever to learn any of this."

  "But, Paco, your mother knows Esteban is adopted."

  "Yes, but she doesn't know how my father got the baby. I'm sure of that. He had to have lied to her, told her Esteban was simply an orphan who needed a home. She must have wanted a baby desperately. But my mother would never have agreed to take the baby of a murdered girl, take him away from the rest of his biological family. You see how kindhearted she is. She had no trouble raising Esteban as her own, because she thought he was abandoned. She loves him, always has. Not like my father."

  A dark scowl settled over Paco's face. The dour expression brought out a resemblance to his father. "Paco," Manny said, "you've got to talk to your father about this. Find out what's true. He may know who the Vampire is, what motivates him."

  "No way! He'll just lie-he's a master at that. He'll do anything to protect his reputation, his position." Paco's voice rose, and again the driver turned to look at his mercurial passengers. "He'll have me sent away, and then there will be no one to protect my mother. I'm all she has. I can't let that happen."

  "What about your brother? Does he know?"

  "Esteban is a doctor. He took a year off after his residency to work for Doctors Without Borders. He's in Sudan now-completely out of touch. Sometimes he's able to get an e-mail through. But I can't send him an e-mail with news like this. He'll be knocked flat by it. And he's in a very dangerous place. He needs to stay sharp, alert. I can't endanger him. I'll tell him when he gets back in six months."

  Manny stared down at Mycroft, who was blissfully napping at her feet. Rarely had she felt so completely stymied. She simply couldn't relate to a family like Paco's, where everyone presented a cheerful face to the world while tiptoeing around land mines in private. In the Manfreda family, everything was out in the open. You were happy-everyone shared it; sad-everyone knew why; mad-you screamed at the offender and two minutes later you kissed and made up. Impossible to keep a secret, no matter how you tried. Uncle Bobby's gambling problem, cousin Kay's extramarital fling, Aunt Joan's colonoscopy-all fair game, reviewed in excruciating detail at family gatherings. Manny simply had no expertise in the kind of evasion practiced by the Sandovals. How could she get Paco to confront his father with what he knew? She couldn't unravel eighteen years of twisted family dynamics in one carriage ride around Central Park.

  Would it be any easier to get Paco to tell his story to the police? Because as tantalizing as this new information was, it really didn't help the Vampire investigation if she was the only person who knew it. Sure, she could take it to Pasquarelli and he would most likely believe her, based on his friendship with Jake. But how could he move forward with it?

  There were instances in which diplomatic immunity could be breached, in which the police could force a diplomat to cooperate in an investigation, but hearsay evidence from the defense lawyer of an escaped federal prisoner charged with terrorism wasn't one of them. Not even close. For Pasquarelli to be able to act on this information, he needed to hear it directly from Paco.

  Manny didn't hesitate to play the guilt card.

  Sure, Jewish mothers grabbed all the headlines for inspiring guilt, but Italian mothers were no slouches, and Manny had learned at the knee of the best.

  "Do I have to remind you that your friend is in the hands of a multiple murderer, a torturer, because of your actions?"

  Paco grew petulant now, just as she had always done when her mother pulled the old "After all I've done for you, can't you do this one little thing for me?"

  "Travis is the one who told me not to tell," Paco said.

  "He's terrified, Paco!" Manny reminded him. "And now he's being held captive by people who haven't hesitated to kill and torture. Of course he's going to say whatever they tell him to say."

  She took both of Paco's hands in hers and spoke slowly and patiently, as she would to a child. "This has gone on long enough. You need to do the right thing. Come with me now to talk to Detective Pasquarelli. He's a good man. He can help."

  Paco wrenched his hands away. "It's not that easy! They won't be able to talk to me and my father without my mo
ther finding out. Since the bombing, she's been a nervous wreck. She doesn't like me going anywhere. In fact"-he checked his watch-"I'm late getting home now. She's going to start calling me."

  Manny made a concerted effort not to roll her eyes. She suspected that Mrs. Sandoval was a lot tougher than her son gave her credit for. "Paco, your mother's going to find out about this sooner or later. The adoption doesn't reflect badly on her. In fact, she's done a great job raising Esteban. A doctor, and one who does volunteer work-she must be very proud of him." Manny let out all the stops. "Now, make her proud of you. You know she would never want more people to get hurt. Come and talk to the police and put an end to all these attacks."

  "No!"

  And before Manny could even snatch at his sleeve, Paco leaped from the slow-moving carriage and dashed nimbly into the trees, heading east. Manny watched him go. She wasn't crazy enough to try the same stunt, wearing high heels and dragging a poodle.

  The driver soon exited onto Central Park South and pulled up at the curb. He held out his hand to Manny. "Ride's over. Forty dollars, please."

  BLOOD.

  Jake had printed the word in block letters on the whiteboard in his office, retraced each letter with bold strokes of his red marker, drawn a box around it, sketched arrows radiating out from it. Still, the word refused to cooperate.

  It was like a "Down" answer in a crossword puzzle that fit neatly into the allocated spaces but wouldn't mesh with the "Across" clues.

  He tried again. "Just listen to me, Vito. Give me the benefit of the doubt while I work through the evidence." He hadn't seen or spoken to Manny all day. She was his preferred sounding board, but in her absence, Vito would have to do.

  Vito Pasquarelli had pushed himself halfway out of the chair in Jake's office, but the plea in his friend's voice made him fall back into his seat. "You've been over it twenty times already. Be careful not to twist the facts to fit the theory."