“Felipe is the best. I paid for his education. We worked side by side in a meatpacking plant in León when we were boys. I trust him with my life.”
“Trust me. So far the prosecution has a case, and all he’s got is a chicken.”
“He had no right to offer you Prince Cortez. I am in here because I refused to let Brill dirty his feathers.”
I played with a cold cigarette. You can’t smoke in jail now, which is what they call kind and usual punishment. “You’re in here because someone dirtied his hands good on Brill. And no one owns a fighting cock, except apparently me. It’s illegal.”
“That is America. Execute men, but do not abuse fowl.” He scratched his chin. He had an eagle tattooed between two fingers so that it opened its wings when he spread his hand. “Speak to my cousin, Nolo Suiz. He may know something.”
“The one who owns the restaurant where the body was found?”
“Sí. I do not know if he had dealings with Brill. But I think he thinks I should be frying tortillas and he should be running Mexi-cantown.”
• • •
The restaurant was a single story of cinder block, with every square inch of concrete painted gaily and crudely with dancers and bullfighters and vaqueros on horseback, and evidently no name. The same stylized Aztec eagle that Zorboron wore between his fingers spread its wings above the door. In Detroit, you learn to read gang signs like cattle brands, without taking them too seriously. The most notorious band, Young Boys, Incorporated, was mainly a fiction of the late mayor’s to derail an investigation into his personal finances.
A middleweight Hispanic in uniform stood in front of the yellow police tape across the entrance. I showed him the letter from Merida, who seemed to be a familiar figure on that detail because he let me duck under and go in without any more foreplay. I passed through a room full of tables and upended chairs and paused inside the swinging kitchen doors to watch a dissection.
A Mexican built along Zorboron’s delicate lines, but with coarser features and forearms as big around as melons, quartered a pig on a great butcher-block table in less time than it takes to say it, am-bidextrously using a big cleaver to chop bone and a curve-bladed knife to slice sinew. He operated with a surgeon’s lack of extraneous motion and made as much noise as a tyrannosaur eating a tenor.
“Nolo Suiz?”
He looked up, startled, with a sharp instrument in each hand and an expression that made me glad I always go armed on a homicide case. The medical examiner had said that whoever had cut up Jackie Brill had known a thing or two about bones and joints.
“¿Quien es?”
“Amos Walker. I’m representing your cousin Emiliano’s attorney.”
I showed him my ID, with the honorary deputy’s badge pinned to the bottom of the folder.
“El Tigre don’ go to cops. Get out.”
I put away the folder and went for another pocket. He raised the cleaver high enough to throw. The Baby Ice Age never moved slower than my hand drawing out Merida’s letter. I stepped his way, holding it out. He put down the cleaver to take it but hung on to the knife in his other hand. He read for a long time.
“I don’ like Felipe.” He gave back the letter.
“If there was a law against hating lawyers, the jails would burst.”
I put up the letter, letting my coat slide open to show the revolver on my belt. He put down the knife then and mopped his hands on his apron. It looked like a bloody test pattern.
“Who takes out the trash here?” I asked.
“Me, sometimes. Sometimes staff. My cousin, Carmelita. You think she carved up her hombre?” He leered.
“It’s a thought. She’s healthy enough, and if she spent much time in this kitchen she’d know where to make the cuts. Same goes for the rest of the help.”
“Me too. Back home I work in a camiceria since before I was big enough to lift a side of beef. You think it was me?”
“Not on that evidence. Zorboron told me he worked in a meatpacking plant. Butchering’s practically a spectator sport in Mexico. Half the neighborhood’s wise to the moves. But the Tiger has a motive, and Jackie Brill turned up in a sack behind your establishment.”
“It wasn’t even one of my bags. Health Department wouldn’t let me use nothing cheap like that.”
“If you were dumb enough to use one of your own, you’re too dumb to operate your own cash register.”
“Dumb enough to dump ‘em behind my own place, though.”
“You did a good job playing dumb with the cops and ducked an accessory charge. Zorboron and Brill had a bad history. Being related to the owner of the restaurant would make this a comfortable place to make the drop. Nothing dumb about that on your side.”
“I don’ even know Brill.”
“You knew Emiliano didn’t like him. Word’s out you think you’re better qualified to run things than your cousin. Maybe you found a way to vote him off the island.”
I’d bet the odds and blew it. He’d seemed more comfortable with the cleaver, so I’d focused my attention on his right hand hovering near it. When the knife flashed into his left fist I made a late backhand swipe and got a nasty cut on the base of my palm. The blade tinkled in a corner, and I drew my weapon.
“Cops wasn’t outside, I’d take away that piece and grind you up for a burrito.” His big forearms bent at an angle in a wrestler’s stance.
“Let’s have them in.” I held my free hand out to the side dripping blood. “What’s your immigration status?”
His face paled beneath the natural pigment. His features were sharper than Zorboron’s, rodentlike. “Why shouldn’ I run things? I came here six years before Emiliano. I sent him money to come and bring Carmelita. I loaned him money to rent a garage and buy his first rooster. He paid me back with money only. Didn’ offer me a partnership in his loan and protection business. Instead he trusts that big donkey Felipe. I am his blood!”
“Speaking of which, you got a Band-Aid?”
He found a kit in a steel drawer. I put away the gun and watched him as I poured on antiseptic and bound my hand in gauze, but he’d spent his wad. INS means TNT in ethnic circles. “So far you’ve convinced me you wouldn’t help your cousin out of a ditch now: much less help him dump a corpse. If he did it alone, he wouldn’t choose here and put ammo against him in your hands. Good work, Nolo. Before this, he was clean on just a working basis. You make a better defense lawyer than Felipe.”
“I didn’ kill this Brill,” he said. “I didn’ even know what he looked like till I saw his picture on TV.”
“I believe you. You’d have deposited the evidence in Zorboron’s back yard just to make sure it stuck. Who else hated Brill, or hated Zorboron enough to hang a frame on him?”
“Sister Delia.”
That rattled me. So far the case had fathers and daughters and cousins and all of Jackie Brill’s relatives. Brothers and pets seemed to be all that was left. “¿Quien es?” I said.
“She used to be a nun, but she quit when the old pope died. She runs her own mission now, across from Most Holy Redeemer, and she ain’ so Christian about what she thinks of El Tigre.”
• • •
I don’t know what I expected; a squat old dragon, probably, with a ruler in her fist and a prominent moustache. Sister Delia turned out to be a tall, handsome, horsy-looking woman with bobbed red hair and a grip best suited to a polo mallet. I shook circulation back into my fingers and sat in a shabby but clean armchair in a storefront whose plate-glass windows looked out on the Gothic pile of the church. Her coffee would float the Ark. I bit off a chunk and put cup and saucer on a folding card table.
“I haven’t met Senor Merida,” she said cheerfully. “If he represents Zorboron, I’m not sure Christ Himself could keep him from the flames.”
“That doesn’t say much on my behalf. I’m trying to get the Tiger out of the pit.”
“You’re just misled. The residents of Mexicantown are honest and hardworking—that whole cliché—and
they’re raising a generation whose accomplishments will establish whole new stereotypes, like the ones Asians enjoy now, as thinkers and innovators. The only thing that can stop them is prejudice. A gangbanger like Zorboron feeds that with every breath he takes.”
“You don’t think he can be saved?”
“I don’t. That’s where I parted with the Vatican. I stayed on from loyalty, but when the guard changed I got out. Cock fights; can you think of any symbol more demeaning to a people?”
“He isn’t in for that.”
That didn’t pierce her armor. She sat in a cracked plastic scoop chair with her long legs crossed in pleated slacks. The mission seemed to be a place where the poor and homeless came in from the weather to thaw their veins with hot soup and that nerve-shredding coffee and listen to Scripture in Spanish. It was a nice day, and we had it all to ourselves.
“His daughter thinks he was set up,” I said. “I think so too. Did you know Jackie Brill?”
“He tried to rent this building for his filthy exhibition.” she said. “When I said no, he offered me a cut of the take. He spouted some nonsense about having to get to know it for the sport it is. He left when I threatened to call the police.”
“He made me the same pitch.”
“You see what I’m talking about? Zorboron’s plague has spread to the white suburbs. He’s the worst thing to happen to the Chicano image since Pancho Villa.”
“You’re not Chicano, are you?”
Her smile chilled the steam off my coffee. “I’m one of those white liberal meddlers you hear so much about; the people the KKK hate more than themselves. What about you?”
“Just a meddler. When did Brill approach you?”
“Last week. If you think I killed him and cut him up and dumped him at Zorboron’s door, thank you for the compliment. I’m not that devious, but if I were I’d have done it just for the way Brill treated Carmelita. She’s a sweet girl.”
“You know her?”
“Everyone knows everyone here. Most of them came from the same three villages. Sooner or later they all showed up at Most Holy Redeemer.”
“Did she go there to confess?”
“Technically, I can’t say. I never saw her use a booth.”
“Technically, bees can’t fly,” I said. “Let’s put that word aside.”
“A doctor knows medicine, but a nurse knows patients. It’s the same with priests and nuns. People would trust me with things they’d never tell the father. I won’t violate that just because I no longer wear the habit.”
“You’d make a good lawyer.”
The smile evaporated. “These days anyone can be a lawyer; anyone at all. Being a nun takes cojones.”
• • •
I had everything now but a motive, and I could guess at that. It was some kind of record for me in an investigative quagmire like murder. But it’s a small community, where events take place in closer order than they do out in the world. I called Felipe Quintas de la Merida and agreed to meet him and Carmelita in his office.
It was above a garage around the corner from Nolo Suiz’s restaurant, close enough to smell the hot grease and cilantro. Merida’s diploma hung in a frame on imitation wood paneling behind an easy-assembly desk. I figured the second door led to his living quarters. Today he wore a lightweight gray suit off the big-and-tall rack and a dark blue shirt-and-tie set that made him look like a bouncer in one of the better strip clubs north of the county line. Carmelita, in a yellow dress and open-toed pumps, sat facing me on the customer’s side with her hair up. She looked drawn, and pretty as end of day.
“Nice setup,” I said. “What goes on downstairs?”
Merida didn’t stir behind his desk. “They fix cars. We don’t stage cockfights in Mexicantown anymore. It’s become a suburban sport.”
“Outsourcing. Very American. I don’t guess Jackie Brill made himself any more popular than always when he tried to reintroduce it to the neighborhood.”
Carmelita perked up. “He did? Do you think that’s why he was killed?”
“No, it was over you. The police are right about that.”
She drooped.
“Who told you Brill wanted to do that?” asked the lawyer.
“Sister Delia.”
I’d picked a spot where I could watch both their reactions. Merida’s face was an adobe wall. Carmelita’s fell apart in little pieces. I decided to start with her.
“He tried to cut a deal to use her mission,” I said. “She was a hard sell. She’s not exactly an aficionado, but she was even less inclined because of you. You were a lot more forthcoming with her than you were with me. All I knew was you and Brill had a history.”
She gripped the arms of her chair. “She swore she wouldn’t—”
Merida broke in. “You covered a lot of ground in a day.”
“It isn’t Acapulco. You can do the place in an hour.” I was still looking at the young woman.
“It was a scare,” she said before the lawyer could speak again. “I was—late. He offered to make all the arrangements. He insisted. He said he’d pay for everything. I reminded him I’m a Catholic. He threatened me. He was terrified, I could see that. He knew Papa would kill him if he found out.”
“Carmelita—” Merida began.
“Did he hit you?”
“No. He was afraid to go that far.” The pieces came back together. She was the Tiger’s child. “But you know that, if you spoke with Sister Delia.”
“She kept your confidence. I’ve been working this job since before you were born. I get the most I can out of what little I get.”
“!Bruto!” Merida’s face showed color for the first time. “She’s your client, not a defendant on trial.”
“They’re all on trial until I separate them from their lies and omissions. She held back the pregnancy because she knew it was the best motive on earth for a father to kill an unwanted suitor. She said it herself; that’s why Brill was desperate to terminate it on the q.t. What happened?”
“It was a false alarm,” she said. “I was just—late. But the episode determined me to end the relationship.” Her accent was softer now. She’d given up on playing the heiress apparent.
“That explains how he found the grit to go ahead and try to buy Prince Cortez through me. It also leaves only one person with reason enough to kill Jackie and the skill to process him like prime rib.” I looked at Merida. “Sister Delia said anyone can be a lawyer. She wasn’t speaking generally, was she?”
“Cuidado, amigo. “ The big man’s tone was at low idle. “You’re coming close to grounds for action.”
“I’ve been sued before,” I said, “if that’s the action you mean. You’ve got the doublespeak down, but you’ll never be a successful criminal attorney if you think the cops are dumb enough to arrest Zorboron’s cousin just because you ditched the body behind his restaurant. You were loyal enough to the Tiger to try to implicate his most outspoken rival; but that would just be a collateral benefit, wouldn’t it? How long have you been in love with Carmelita?”
He laughed. The noise lacked resonance of his speech and had a nasty little rattle in it.
“Felipe?” Carmelita was staring at him.
“Remain calm. He swings his machete in the dark.” It had the sound of an Old Country saying.
“No good, Flip. She knows. I knew, too, but I was too busy being sure Zorboron was guilty to read anything into the little things like the way you hold doors and chairs for her. Sister Delia knew because Carmelita told her. There’s no other explanation for why she’d drag out that remark about lawyers when the subject came up.”
“Felipe.” She wasn’t questioning him now. The syllables came out in a slow snarl of accusation.
I said, “You and Emiliano worked in the same meatpacking plant when you were kids. You never forget your first job or how to do it.”
The desk erupted, coming up and over and almost clipping me before I could jump out of my chair. I knew he’d have strength, b
ut I’d misjudged his speed. But Carmelita was slower to react. The near edge of the desk landed in her lap and the momentum threw her chair over onto its back with her still in it. She screamed, a clear, bell-like, south-of-the-border cry like you only hear now in old movies about lusty banditos and dancing senoritas, drowned out before it hit its peak by a horrified roar as Merida saw what he’d done and lunged across the desk to catch it before it pinned her to the floor.
He made it with an inch to spare and time for me to draw down on him where he stood clutching the heavy piece of furniture with his great arms strained to the limits of their tendons.
• • •
We sat on the stoop in front of the door to his office, which belonged to the garage above which Felipe Merida had practiced law until yesterday. Zorboron conducted business inside only when rain or cold prevented him from making high-interest loans and promises from that concrete pedestal sprayed all over with graffiti in Spanish. I was in my shirtsleeves, the Tiger in a black T-shirt that showed raw muscle stretched over bone with no flesh to spare. The day was warm, not precisely Indian summer because we hadn’t had a frost yet, but nice enough for two acquaintances to drink Dos Equis from the bottle on the street, knowing there wouldn’t be many like it for a long time.
“He was the friend of my youth,” he said. “He should have told me of his intentions toward my daughter.”
I said, “He hadn’t any, apart from mooning around in her orbit until she found someone closer to her age and type. You’d have taken even that away if he’d opened his mouth.”
“Yes, but he should have showed me the respect. Carmelita is different. She tells me nothing and I know less.”
“Congratulations. That makes you an American dad. She knew how he felt without his having to tell her. Women are born with that talent, both sides of the Rio Grande.”
“Poor Felipe. I would help him if it were not for my problems with Immigration.”
“He’s confessed. He’ll get off with less than a life sentence if Brill’s rich relatives stay out of it. I think they’ve made all the noise they’re going to. He’s off their hands, and they don’t have to pay him any more to keep him off.”
Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection Page 51
