Coyote

by Linda Barnes

  I broke in. “Why would Amalia tell me she was Manuela?”

  “Because then you will get the card and ask no questions.”

  “But the picture—” I said.

  “Manuela is her prima, her cousin. She looks a little like Manuela.”

  “But didn’t you want to know who the dead woman was?”

  “No,” Ana said forcefully. “No. We know our friends are in California. Our friends. My friends …”

  She started to cry in earnest now. “And then Amalia is gone and the boss at the factory says to me, don’t worry, the ones who leave get their green cards, and I must move to a new apartment because the officials find the other place and they know the girls who stay there have no papers, but I don’t know anymore, and I move in with somebody else and I do my work and I leave and walk around and I don’t go near the boss and I’m afraid the next time the coyote comes back, he’ll know that we went for help, that Amalia talked to this lady. And I think if I look some more in the old apartment, maybe Manuela left something else there, maybe deeper in the mattress. And I go. I am so stupid, I go. And instead a policeman is there.”

  She came to an abrupt halt and buried her face in her hands.

  The knock on the door startled all of us. It made Ana cry out. Dave walked in and handed Mooney Clinton’s ID folder. “A few partials,” he said. “Should I have her take a look at it?”

  “No!” Mooney said quickly. “Lift the photo out and get five more like it—cop photos, perps, whatever. We let her pick hurt out. We’re doing this by the book. This bastard’s not going to walk.”

  Ana picked him out of a group of six with no hesitation.

  Son of a dog, she called him, and she spat.

  37

  Harrison Clinton, I said to myself as I piloted my car home from the station. Was I surprised? Numb? Shocked? Angry? Angry, yes, because I’d believed a man who had a set of credentials, a deferential drawl, a face and body that stood up to close scrutiny. Had attraction made me blind? Shouldn’t I have questioned his distrust of Jamieson? Instead my own dislike of Jamieson made Clinton seem more reasonable.

  Good old Harry Clinton. A man whose work might take him from Boston to Texas to Boston again, with no one asking too many questions about his comings and goings.… A man with access to any one of the boxy neutral sedans, the Aries, Reliants, and low-cost Chevys the INS kept as agency cars. A man who lied as easily as he breathed. “If I’d been tailing you, you wouldn’t have known it, ma’am.” I’d believed him.

  A man who’d kissed me. To be honest, a man I’d kissed. A man I’d almost invited to bed. A man who extorted and raped and killed. I sucked in air and sped through the tail end of a yellow light.

  I should have—I stopped myself on the edge of a pit of self-recrimination. I know it’s useless, but the habit clings.

  The Toyota made the turn into my driveway of its own accord. I rummaged in my handbag for keys. It took all my concentration to fit the key into the lock and make the door work.

  I hollered for Roz, but there was no answering yell. Still out looking for Paolina. I thought about joining the search, but I knew damn well I needed a couple hours with the covers over my head before I could function.

  I wrote Roz a note in bold red Magic Marker: “If you hear from Harry Clinton, wake me immediately! Don’t trust him!”

  I thought about adding another brief sentence. “He’s a killer.” Then I tried “He’s a murderer.” Either way Roz wouldn’t believe me.

  There was a note on the fridge reminding me not to miss tomorrow’s volleyball practice. Biggest game of the season coming up. I took the note down and replaced it with my larger red warning. Then I checked the meager contents of the refrigerator, yanked out a carton of orange juice, and stood in the chill of the open door, gulping it down.

  T. C. came yowling into the room, and I wondered when I’d last fed him. I fetched a can of his favorite FancyFeast and tried to make amends. He sneered at me, but he gobbled like a starved alley-cat.

  Barely managing to negotiate the stairs and kick my sneakers off, I fell asleep fully dressed, sprawled across the bedclothes. I woke a seeming instant later to the shrill demand of the telephone. My mouth felt dry as bone.

  The voice was a familiar Texas drawl. I sat up in bed, suddenly alert and focused. My hand tightened on the receiver.

  “Uh, hi,” I said, willing my voice deliberately casual.

  “I’m calling about Saturday night.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I managed.

  “Think you can make it? Dinner?”

  “Sure,” I said evenly. “Glad you remembered. Looking forward to it.”

  There was a long pause. I could hear him breathing. He gave a snort that might have been a laugh. “You know, you’re good. Real good. Almost good enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I know,” he said. His voice was different, colder. The words came faster and the good-old-boy accent had diminished.

  “What do you know?”

  “You’re the bitch who screwed it up. She’d never have gone to the cops on her own.”

  “Where are you?” I said.

  The voice got lazy again. “You knew about me, didn’t you? That’s why you put me off. Otherwise we’d have gone upstairs and fucked, right? I never have trouble with women. I mean, I don’t have to buy it or beg for it, you know.”

  I tried to picture Harry Clinton. This man on the phone had his voice, but it seemed to me, listening to him, that his appearance must have changed. How I hate it that monsters look normal. The deception of that outward normality prickled up my spine as I listened to him rant.

  “I mean, I had to cut up Manuela, didn’t I? Once I realized the stupid bitch didn’t have the damned card on her. Somebody finds the card, matches it to the corpse, they’re going to start checking Immigration files, right? Lead ’em to my little side business. You know, everything that happened, it’s Manuela’s damned fault. She stole my ID folder, stole it while she was doing me in the back room at Hunneman. Cutting her was bad, you know? She was okay, smart. Too smart. Like you. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  “I had to kill those other women too. Can you believe that Manuela, telling all those other bitches about me? About where I worked and what my real name was? Cutting them was bad, but I cleaned it all up. I can think rings around any cop. Jamieson, he up and asked me about phony green cards. Hell, it wasn’t phony, just blank. I did the photo for Manuela, to gain a little time. The damn blackmailing bitch. You listening?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “You’re gonna help me get out of this. There’s no real evidence against me. I cleaned everything up. There’s just that damned woman, the one the police have, thanks to you. She can say it’s me, convince a jury. Other than her word they’ll never get squat. I want her, and you’re going to deliver her.”

  “Forget it. There’s plenty of evidence. Once they start doing forensics with you in mind, they’ll be able to—”

  “Shut up. There’s nothing a good lawyer can’t knock down. I’m no moron. I’m a pro. I wanted to be a cop, you know that, but I got into this immigration stuff instead. I know all about forensics. But that woman, she gets all teary-eyed and a jury buys anything she says. Juries don’t give a damn about fingerprints and expert testimony. But give ’em a victim, an eyewitness, and they slobber all over the floor. Hell, what am I talking trial for? There won’t be a trial. I’m walking away from this. You’re gonna help me. Help me get that Ana girl away from the cops. So listen.”

  “I’ve been listening.”

  “This part you might want to write down.”

  “What?”

  “My terms.”

  “For giving yourself up?” I grabbed an old bank statement and a pencil from my bedside table while I spoke. I stared at my wristwatch, noted the time.

  “Go ahead, play stupid. Go ahead. You don’t need to understand.
Just tell your cop friend I want to deal. I want that Spanish girl they’ve got in jail. I want her delivered to me today, this afternoon, at three o’clock. You’ll escort her.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll call back in an hour.”

  “The cops aren’t going to go along with this stunt. Why the hell should they?”

  “Well, I sure thought I was in trouble,” he said as if he hadn’t heard my question. “Jamieson sniffing around, you out at Hunneman’s. Thought I might be in too deep, but I guess I’m a lucky man.”

  He made that noise again, the one that might have been a laugh. “I got me a guest in my office. You want to say hello to your baby sister? You hang on now, and I’ll put her right on the line.”

  “Paolina?” I could barely get the name out.

  “Carlotta,” came her small, scared voice. “I’m sorry—”

  “I’ll be in touch,” drawled Clinton. And the line went dead. I kept jiggling the little button and repeating her name.

  38

  “Mooney,” I said urgently, moving forward in my seat until he had to meet my eyes or turn his face to avoid me, “I’m trusting you on this.”

  “Carlotta, the bastard isn’t giving us a hell of a lot to work with.” His voice was flat and lifeless. I remembered hearing it like that before, when he’d phoned the wife of a young cop wounded in action. His colorless monotone gave nothing away, surely not the deathbed gravity of the rookie’s condition.

  We were parked in an unmarked unit on Boston Common, outside the entryway to Park Street Station, largest and busiest of Boston’s subway stations. Shoppers lined up for tokens at the outside booth; more swarmed down the steps to take places in another line inside. The newsstand vendors grabbed quarters and dispatched folded Globes and open tabloid Heralds. The Fens serial killer was still front-page stuff. Hot-dog and balloon men sold their wares to hordes of tourists. Mooney was behind the wheel. I rode shotgun. Ana was in the backseat, sandwiched between Joanne Triola and a scowling Walter Jamieson.

  Harry Clinton’s call had come an endless ten minutes late. By that time Mooney was seated next to me at the kitchen table, the phone was tapped, and a horde of headphoned technicians lurked outside in a phone-company truck, bent over high-tech consoles, trying to trace the call. It was a crazy long shot, but nobody wanted to let the chance to shake out the equipment go by.

  “Keep him on the line,” Walter Jamieson had urged when the phone finally sounded. He was sitting across from me at the table. I wasn’t pleased about having him, but Mooney’d brought him along.

  It was a dumb thing to say. I knew I was supposed to keep the creep talking.

  I’d tried, but he wasn’t in the mood. “Have the girl at Park Street Station, three this afternoon, first level outbound, where the C train loads. The station has to stay open. Any barricades, any construction work, anything unusual, the deal’s off. You walk Ana in. No guns. No cops. You’ll get instructions.”

  “Let me—”

  He’d hung up and I’d finished saying “talk to Paolina” in my head.

  His voice had been projected on a speaker, so I hadn’t needed to repeat the message. He’d sounded brisk and efficient. None of the mania of the earlier call showed, none of the frayed nerves.

  “Cool,” Jamieson had observed. “Very much in control.”

  “If he was in control, he’d be gone,” Mooney’d said. “This stunt is crazy. He’ll never get away.”

  “He will if it’s a choice between him and Paolina,” I’d snapped. “I wish I’d stayed the hell out of this.”

  I wished I’d raced to the cops the minute I’d heard about the Hunneman plant. But I’d been afraid I’d lose Paolina, afraid Marta would carry out her threat and move away if the factory closed.

  I might lose Paolina anyway, I thought.

  “I’ll remind you the next time.” Mooney must have seen the look on my face. His voice petered out and he’d averted his eyes, staring at his wrist-watch as if it had secrets written across the dial.

  “Three o’clock. Right at the beginning of the Park Street rush,” he’d commented gloomily. “We can rule out firepower. The commissioner gets flack for high-speed chases on deserted highways. He’s not going to go for staging some High Noon shootout at Park Street Station.”

  “Clinton’s one smart, crazy bastard,” Jamieson had said admiringly.

  “Maybe if you’d mentioned you suspected him—” I’d said.

  “Maybe if you’d told us anything—”

  “Shut up,” Mooney had thundered. “We haven’t got the time.”

  We didn’t. We had less than three hours.

  Mooney worked the telephone, notifying the INS and the FBI and the commissioner’s office, bringing in only those who needed to know, only those he trusted most. A slow infiltration of the subway stop began—a vendor here, a cleaner there.

  “Not too many cleaners,” I protested. “He’ll know they’re phonies.”

  The rep from the MBTA looked up indignantly. Mooney placed a restraining hand on my arm.

  Marta was at Lilia’s. At first I hadn’t wanted to tell her. What’s the use? I’d said, bad news keeps. I’d almost felt she didn’t deserve the truth, not after deceiving Paolina for so long. But she had a right to know, a mother’s right to worry.

  Mooney sent in people disguised as train conductors and token dispensers, but only at shift change or lunch break, only when the regular employee could be intercepted and fed some plausible lie about not being needed.

  “He’s smart,” Jamieson kept saying. “Look what he’s done so far.”

  “Right,” I snapped.

  “I don’t mean the killings,” he said quickly. “But the rest—that was neatly done, you got to admit. He must have made a mint bringing in aliens, collecting from them for the trip, then hitting up employers desperate for cheap labor, collecting for protection.”

  “He wasn’t as smart as Manuela Estefan,” I said defiantly.

  But he was. He was alive. She was dead.

  Jamieson cleared his throat. “Anyhow, what I meant to say is that he’ll check out the area, go downstairs, wait for a few trains, see if everything’s running right. Anything out of the ordinary, he’s gone.”

  And the beauty of Park Street as a switch point was that he could go just about anywhere. Down to the lower level and out through any one of half a dozen exits. Onto his choice of Green Line or Red Line trains. Inbound, outbound. Through tunnels, up steps, across tracks.

  “Carlotta,” Mooney said at about a quarter to three, startling me out of my trance, “take Ana for a little walk. Back in ten minutes.”

  “Huh?”

  “He could be out there now. Here on the Common. I want him to see her with you. You can test the wire.”

  I shrugged. It didn’t make much sense to me, but I was itchy from the enforced idleness of the car, willing to do anything to stretch my legs.

  “We may take off, but we’ll be back here in ten,” Mooney promised. “Don’t go downstairs until you check in with me.”

  Ana and I got out and walked toward the Park Street fountain. The brass basin was dry, the way it is most of the year, with the carved fishes gasping their surprise instead of spouting water. A rain-coated man with a wireless mike called sinners to repent for the love of sweet Jesus Christ. Nobody paid him any more attention than they’d pay a strolling violinist in a crowded restaurant.

  I wondered for the seventeenth time about a gun. I’d decided not to take one. Because I was afraid I’d use it. A subway station is no place for guns. If I had one, I might rely on it. I might lose my self-control, endanger Paolina—I knew all the goddamned reasons, and my hand still ached for a weapon.

  “You okay?” I asked Ana. Dumb question. I asked it to see if the techs could pick up what I was saying.

  “Sí.”

  The man she feared most in the world was waiting down in the guts of the station for her. Sure, she was okay.

  The wire worke
d fine above ground. It was underground that static ruled. Mooney said it might work. It was worth the chance.

  It wasn’t worth wiring Ana. It would just make killing and dumping her quickly more attractive to Clinton. So it was up to me to keep the cops informed while convincing Clinton the cops were nowhere around.

  On the main path across the Common, two tall black guys ran the regular three-card monte scam. The faces changed from year to year, the game remained the same. I did a quick crowd scan, picked out the shill in maybe ten seconds. He glanced up and recognized me from my cop days, grinned hesitantly, relaxed as I strolled on by.

  We retraced our steps and circled the fountain twice. The sky was clear blue broken by wisps of cirrus. The church steeple was dazzlingly white. All the sounds seemed muted, separate. I felt like I was walking in fog, like no one could see me. People rushed by and I wondered if anyone could read the horrors in my mind. I wondered if Harry Clinton could see us, perched somewhere in the distance, eyes glued to binoculars. I wondered which of the hot-dog vendors was a cop.

  I wondered where the wire techs were. No telephone trucks. Clinton would have been on to that in a flash.

  The car pulled up in front of us. I put a cold hand on Ana’s arm and without another word we walked toward it. I got in the front door. Ana got in the back.

  “Madre de Dios,” she muttered, inhaling sharply.

  Jamieson was no longer in the backseat. Instead there sat a woman who could have been Ana’s twin. Her sister, at least, I thought, staring at her more closely.

  “What the hell?” I said to Mooney. “Oh, no, this isn’t going to—”

  “Carlotta.” It was Joanne Triola talking now. “This is Sergeant Ramirez, on loan from Lowell. We weren’t sure we could get her here in time. She’s undercover Narcotics.”

  She was wearing the same green blouse, the same rust-colored skirt. Ana was removing her raincoat, handing it over.