A Place in the Wind

by Suzanne Chazin

  “They’re like having one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel. No thank you! I want to die in my home.”

  “Who’s talking about dying?” asked Vega. “Look, let me call your son—”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not my son. He’s my ex–son-in-law.”

  “Okay. We’ll call him—”

  “No.”

  “Then how about your daughter?”

  “She’s dead. Died of cancer right before my wife passed. I don’t need anyone’s help. I’m okay with dying in my own home.”

  “Stop talking about dying,” said Vega. “Is that what that gun on your dresser’s about? I sure hope not.”

  “That gun is for my protection.”

  “Then you need to secure it better.”

  “I did. It’s now next to my hospital bed in the den.”

  “I mean, lock it up,” said Vega. “And you need to stop talking about dying or I’m going to take it away. For your own safety—”

  “That gun is my safety!” Zimmerman insisted. “As for dying? We’re all dying, Jimmy. You. Me. The only question is where and when.”

  Ay, puñeta! Vega was no good at handling heavy subjects like this. “Let me text Adele.” He sent her a quick message to explain where he was and what was going on. He thought about Greco’s advice last night—about how he and Adele needed to find common ground. Maybe Max Zimmerman was it.

  “I’m not suicidal, Jimmy.” Zimmerman reached across and put a hand over Vega’s cell phone. He peered at Vega over the tops of his black-rimmed glasses. “I’m an old man who wants to spend what’s left of my life in the comfort of my own home. Is that such a crime?”

  “Then please stop talking about dying.”

  Zimmerman sat back and laughed. Vega wasn’t expecting that. “Ah. You’re a Catholic, aren’t you? You were raised on all that talk of heaven and hell. Hell is right here, Jimmy. Trust me, I’ve seen it.” Max thumped his left hand with the partially missing finger on his chest. “Nothing on the other side scares me in the least. The only thing that scares me is on this side.”

  “What are you scared of?”

  “Losing my independence.” Zimmerman shot a glance at his front door like the cops were still behind it. “Please don’t let them take it from me.”

  “Then let Adele get someone in here to help. She knows a lot of people.”

  “I can’t afford it. I’m living on Social Security and my small pension from Adventureland.” The county amusement park.

  “Maybe Adele can work out an arrangement. Room and board in return for some care.”

  “And what if I don’t like the person?”

  “She’ll find someone else.” Vega tried to get inside Zimmerman’s head. “Look at this in simple, logical terms. You do nothing, okay?”

  “Uh-huh—”

  “And then you fall or the police come back here. They may make the choice for you. Why not make it for yourself?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Vega’s phone dinged. It was a text from Adele. The first text they’d exchanged in days. It was a start.

  “She’s on her way home,” said Vega. “Let me talk to her about this, all right?”

  “Talk. Of course . . . talk.” Zimmerman shrugged. “Talk costs nothing. Del dicho al hecho hay mucho trecho.”

  Vega froze. “Between word and deed, there’s a great distance.” A Latin-American proverb. Zimmerman delivered it with his trademark Eastern European accent. But there was no mistaking the fluidness in his words. “You speak Spanish?”

  Zimmerman smiled. “A little.”

  He’d never mentioned it to Adele. He’d never tried once to communicate in Spanish with any of the landscapers and handymen she’d sent over. Maybe he wasn’t confident in his command. Still, Vega felt like there were layers to Max Zimmerman that he was only barely aware of.

  Chapter 31

  Vega sat in his truck, checking his cell phone messages, while he waited for Adele to return home. He had one from Mike Carp.

  Need you at a press conference at noon in Broad Plains. Meet me at the offices of Americans for Sensible Immigra tion. Carp included a website link with an address. There were eagles and American flags all over the website, along with immigration articles that carried words like “scourge” and “menace” in their titles. Vega was pretty sure after looking at the website that “sensible immigration” was code for “deport all foreigners.”

  Vega texted Carp that he would be there. This was his life now. He didn’t make the policies—he just drove the policy maker. Everything else was out of his hands.

  Then why did he feel so uncomfortable all the time?

  Adele pulled her pale green Prius behind Vega’s pickup. Vega sprang from the car with his bag of bagels and held them out to her as a peace offering. He read something broken in her face.

  “Nena, what’s wrong?”

  “No one will take him.”

  “Take who?”

  “Wil Martinez. Rolando Benitez’s brother. He’s still in jail.”

  “So?”

  “I’m trying to get him out.”

  “Why?”

  Adele gave Vega an exasperated look. “Because he’s an innocent teenager locked up in a place full of dangerous felons, that’s why!”

  “There’s nothing you can do about that.”

  “The judge said he’d spring him if I could find a responsible person for him to live with.”

  “No responsible person’s going to take on the brother of a suspected murderer.”

  “And just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“you toss him over.” She breezed past him and his bag of bagels and walked up the front steps of her porch. Vega didn’t have a clue why she was so angry. But now, he was angry too.

  When they got inside, he tossed the bag of bagels on her dining-room table. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

  “For crying out loud, Adele, what is wrong with you?” Sophia was at school. He could say what he wanted. “Is this teenager more important than us? I came all the way over here to talk to you and all you can do is worry over a young man you met for what? Twenty minutes?”

  She turned to face him. There was something deep and sad in her eyes. Everything that came out of his mouth seemed to be the wrong thing and he couldn’t understand why.

  “I just want to make things right with us. I don’t know how.” He felt embarrassed by the need in his own voice. It made him want to run away. But for some reason, it had the opposite effect on Adele. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her head in his chest.

  “It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for taking it out on you.”

  They stayed like that, their bodies saying what their words couldn’t. Then he gently pushed her back.

  “You saw my text, right? About Max?”

  “Yeah.” She frowned. “That Mrs. Morrison—”

  “But even if there was no Mrs. Morrison,” said Vega, “he can’t live alone anymore.”

  “I know. I can try to find him some help, but he’s so proud. He doesn’t want it.”

  “You’re going to need to convince him.”

  She broke away. “How can I convince him of anything when I can’t even convince people in this town to talk to one another?” She walked the bag of bagels into the kitchen and pulled down a couple of plates. “I wish you weren’t working for Mike Carp. It makes everything so much harder.”

  “Believe me, nena, I wish that too.” Vega pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and straddled it, leaning his arms along the seat back. He’d spent the last two sleepless nights trying to come up with an escape route. He couldn’t find one. He didn’t have enough time in the pension system to retire. He had too much baggage since the shooting to work as a cop someplace else. He was good with his hands, but lacked the licenses to make any real money in the trades. And as far as his accounting degree went, he’d rather put a bullet in his head.
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br />   “You can’t ask Captain Waring for a transfer?”

  “The police department’s like the military, Adele. You get an order, you have to obey it.”

  “You weren’t ordered to work directly for Carp.”

  “I was ordered to work for his staff. What he does with me after that is beyond my control. Getting mad at me is like getting mad at the janitor who cleans Carp’s office.”

  She leaned against the counter and studied him. “I don’t know, Jimmy. Ever since the Benitez shooting, it’s like we’re on two different wavelengths. I’m trying to keep this town together. And you’re working for a man who wants to tear it apart.”

  “Mike Carp’s not the reason this town is coming apart,” said Vega. “The town’s eating itself. That fight at the vigil—”

  “Was started by a cop’s son and two of his friends—who didn’t get arrested, I might add.”

  “Yeah, well, that cop’s son got his ass kicked last night. By three Latinos. So I’d say the hate’s flowing in both directions.”

  “Well, you’re not helping things!”

  “You want me to quit? I’ll quit. But that’s my only choice right now. The job won’t take me back in any other capacity. Not now. Maybe not ever. I’m miserable, nena. Miserable because the man I work for has all the sensitivity of a wrecking crane. Miserable because I’m never gonna be a detective again. And miserable most of all because I’m hurting you.”

  Adele walked over and stroked his hair. He felt her forgiveness radiating off her like tropical sun. It unclenched the knot in his stomach.

  “Do you want me to slice some bagels?” she asked. “Brew some coffee?”

  “No.” He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close. “Something else.” He buried his head on her abdomen and kissed her. He untucked her shirt from her jeans and snaked a hand around her backside. Her body turned sweaty and liquid beneath his touch. It soothed him to know he still had this effect on her.

  He rose and kicked the chair aside. Then he unbuttoned her shirt and tossed off his own. Her bare skin pressed against his made him feel like a teenager again. They cleaved to each other, two limbs of the same tree, their bodies entwined as one.

  “Not here,” she whispered. It was a weekday morning. They were standing by the windows in her kitchen. “Upstairs.”

  Sophia was hours from coming home from school. Their careers were in ruins. But maybe—just maybe—there were some small compensations.

  He made love to her with an urgency he hadn’t known he’d felt. She was the one good thing that had happened to him this past year. He could stand to lose a lot of things. But he could never stand to lose her.

  He kissed her shoulder as he rose. “I’ve got to be at work by noon today. I’d better take a shower.” When he returned to her bedroom to get into his clothes, he found Adele dressed and standing at her bedroom window, the one that overlooked Max Zimmerman’s house.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If I don’t find someone by the end of the day, Wil is going to sit at the county jail for months—maybe even lose his DACA.”

  “That’s too bad. But what can you do? You can’t take him in. You’ve got Sophia. End of story.”

  “But . . . Wil is innocent.”

  “A, no one can say that for sure. And B, whether he is or isn’t, he’s the brother of an extremely contentious high-profile murderer.”

  “Alleged murderer,” said Adele.

  “Mobs don’t care about words like ‘alleged,’ Adele. You can’t take him in. Peter would forbid it, and for once, I agree with him. You’ve already had one threatening letter in your mailbox. You’d be buying trouble for yourself and—more importantly—for Sophia.”

  “There is another alternative.”

  Vega sat on the edge of the bed and slipped into his socks. “Hey, don’t look at me. I work for Carp. Can you imagine the trouble I’d get in?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about you,” said Adele. “I was thinking about Max Zimmerman.”

  Vega stopped putting on his sock. He’d been warm from the shower and their lovemaking. But now, he felt a chill across his back. “Are you for real?” He whispered the words, as if someone might overhear them. “You want to put the brother of a murderer in the same house as an eighty-eight-year-old infirm man?”

  “Wil Martinez is just a scared kid whose life has been upended. He has no one. And Max needs someone to help him.”

  “Not this someone.”

  “I’m not going to blindside Max,” said Adele. “I’ll tell him everything. Absolutely everything. If he says no—as I think he will—at least I’ll know I tried.”

  “He’s an old man.”

  “He’s a tough old man,” said Adele.

  Vega’s phone dinged with a text message. He squinted at the screen and cursed. “Carp wants me there fifteen minutes earlier. I gotta run.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Carp’s giving a press conference about ‘Catherine’s Law’ at Americans for Sensible Immigration.”

  “Jimmy! That’s a rabidly xenophobic group!”

  “I don’t make the itinerary.”

  “But you don’t seem too bothered by it either!” He went to kiss her. She pushed him away. “Sometimes I think I don’t know you.”

  Vega strapped on his duty belt and maneuvered the holster for his gun. “I haven’t changed, nena.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe that’s part of the problem.”

  Chapter 32

  Mike Carp made sure Vega stood next to him at the press conference while he expressed outrage at the beating of a “police officer’s son” by “violent illegals” in Lake Holly. Flashbulbs clicked. Spotlights danced across Vega’s field of vision. He didn’t like being used as window dressing for any cause, much less one he felt so conflicted about.

  A couple of the reporters tried to play cute with him while he was standing around at the event. They must have taken his name and Googled it, because by the time the event was over, they all seemed to know exactly who he was.

  “Officer Vega, didn’t you shoot and kill an unarmed civilian in December?”

  “As a Hispanic, how do you feel about your boss’s proposed legislation?”

  “Isn’t it true that the man you gunned down was an undocumented immigrant?”

  Vega felt blindsided. He was trying hard to retreat into the shadows and this new position had dragged him front and center again. He was thankful when Doug Prescott ushered him away and Hugh Vanderlinden blocked the reporters.

  “Detective Vega has no comment,” said Vanderlinden. “He is here in an official capacity on assignment by the county police. Please direct your questions to Mr. Carp.”

  Outside, Vega thanked Prescott and Vanderlinden for rescuing him. He stayed in the Suburban after that, waiting for Carp to finish glad-handing supporters. His phone rang. He picked it up. Greco. The man wasn’t even supposed to be working today.

  “Listen . . . Vega. Lake Holly’s got enough problems without your boss adding gasoline to the fire.”

  “You saw the press conference? Already? It just finished.”

  “I didn’t need to see it. He was all over the talk shows this morning, shooting his mouth off about illegals beating up a cop’s son.”

  “I can’t control what he says.”

  “You can correct his facts, can’t you? The story’s changing on our end.”

  “You found the three guys who beat up Brad Jankowski?”

  “They’re down at the station now, being interviewed. Two are Hispanic. One is white. All of ’em were born and raised right over in Granville and as American as you and me.”

  “So it wasn’t retaliation for what happened at the vigil?”

  “More town-related than anything else. It had to do with some grudge match over a girl. We’re gonna charge ’em with assault, of course. But we’re trying to dance away from escalating things. It’d help us if Carp keeps to the same script.”

/>   “It’s too late as far as his press conference at Americans for Sensible Immigration. He just finished speaking.”

  “What’s done is done,” said Greco. “But at least let him know that he’s got to stop spreading that story. It’s not only going to rile people up, it’s gonna put our department in an embarrassing position when the facts come out.”

  “Will do.”

  When Carp got back in the Suburban, he had a huge grin on his face. “We’ve hit the big time, Jimmy. Just got the word—CNN’s doing a profile on me. Got a reporter meeting me at my real-estate offices in an hour to discuss ‘Catherine’s Law’ and that terrible situation up in Lake Holly—the way things are escalating and all.”

  “Uh, sir?”

  “Yes?” Carp looked up from his paperwork.

  “I just got a call from a friend at the Lake Holly PD. You might want to leave out any mention of that incident involving the beating of a police officer’s son.” Vega explained the call and circumstances.

  Carp’s eyes never left the document he was reading. “Thank you, Jimmy. I will certainly take your concerns under consideration.”

  Vega wondered if he hadn’t made himself clear. “Uh, Mr. Carp? These aren’t concerns exactly. They’re facts. From one of the detectives who interviewed the suspects. American-born suspects, one of whom is white.”

  “Yes, well. I’m sure Lake Holly has many reasons at this point to sugarcoat the situation.” Carp grabbed his phone and began tapping out a text.

  “Mr. Carp,” Vega interrupted. “The situation in Lake Holly is pretty tense right now. If you go on CNN and start telling people—”

  “Do we need to change seats here or something, Jimmy? Because the last I looked, the voters of this county elected me to county executive. They entrusted me to decide what’s in the best interests of the people of this county. You, on the other hand, are a screwup with the current policing powers of a meter maid. You caught a break here, Jimmy. I took a little pity on you. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  Pity? The word burned. Vega wanted to pull over to the curb, dump Carp on his fat ass, and drive away. He’d have two glorious seconds of satisfaction—followed by a lifetime of regret. He’d been debating whether to tell Carp about Sarah Kenner’s connection to Jeffrey Langstrom. But now, he couldn’t see the point. Why help a man who thought so little of him? So he bottled all the words he longed to say inside him and drove.