"Aloha,” I said.
"Buenos días.” His bass rumbled like someone rolling a piano through an empty warehouse. “We've been waiting."
He was big enough to be plural, but when I stepped inside from the hall, a human being who could have sat on his shoulder rose from the upholstered bench. She was about nineteen, olive-tinted, with full lips, eyes as big as the giant's in a head half as large, and black hair hanging loose and glistening to her waist. She wore a white blouse tucked into black slacks cinched by a belt with a heavy silver buckle, cork sandals on her bare feet. She'd have looked appropriate in a mantilla and lace, or a cape made of turquoise, sitting on a sandstone throne.
The season was past for Hawaiian shirts and sandals, but those traditions don't exist in Mexico or its northernmost branch.
"Mr. Walker?” said the woman. “I'm Carmelita Zorboron."
"I was afraid you'd say that. I was hoping you were Dolores, the patron saint of private detectives."
"You're not surprised. My picture has been in the papers and on TV. I'm sure that upsets my father. Before this, the only time his picture was ever published he was wearing a black bandanna across his face and holding a rifle."
"That was him? I thought that Zapatista story was a gag."
"Not to him. He is a proud man. He denied it just once, when he wanted to bring his family to the United States."
I thought she was more Anglicized than she acted. Her accent was too pronounced, her English too careful. But seeing her made me feel better about the hunk of pre-Columbian architecture in my little waiting room. I had an idea she could control him.
"Let's go inside.” I rattled my keys. “This half of the building's been unstable since they blew up Hudson's Department Store. Señor Colossus exceeds the load capacity."
"Felipe,” rumbled the big man.
"Okay if I call you Flip?” I opened the private door and held it.
He said nothing, hanging back for Carmelita to enter first.
Inside the brain trust he pulled out the customer's chair and hung on until she was perched on the edge. He remained standing while I took my seat behind the desk. There were no other chairs, but he looked as if he'd feel at home sitting Indian fashion on the floor.
"You spoke with Jackie two days before he was killed,” the woman said.
"Did I?” I didn't hesitate while taking a cigarette out of the pack.
"You don't have to deny it. I'm not accusing you of anything. One of my father's people saw him at the football game. He saw you talking, and when you left he followed you and got your license plate number. He told me this after my father was arrested. He did not tell the police."
"It wouldn't have looked good for your father if he had. They'd have wanted to know why he was so interested, and who for. Did he happen to overhear this conversation?"
She shook her head. “That is one of the reasons why I am here, to ask you what it was about."
"What does anybody talk about at Ford Field? Someone should sue the team on behalf of real lions for character assassination."
Felipe shifted his weight from one foot to the other, punishing a floorboard.
"Please,” Carmelita said.
I blew smoke at the dark spot on the ceiling. “It won't help your father's case."
"Please."
"Por favor,” said Felipe, without tone.
"I didn't take the job,” I said, “so it wasn't privileged communication. He wanted to hire me to buy a fighting cock from Zorboron. Your father wouldn't deal with him."
"Prince Cortez.” Carmelita nodded. “Jackie was right. Papa was not pleased with our relationship."
"If he were any less pleased, Jackie'd be cut in twelve pieces instead of six."
"My father did not do that."
"There's not a lot of difference between swinging the machete and giving the order."
"He did not do that either,” she said. “If he had, do you not think he would have arranged to be seen engaged in some innocent activity at the time the police think Jackie was murdered?"
I smoked my cigarette in silence. It was a point.
Carmelita lifted her chin. “My father is not an angel. Nor is he a fool. He has no illusions about his daughter's virtue. Even if he had, he would do nothing during his time of trouble with Immigration. He would wait. He has the patience of a hunting cat. That is why they call him El Tigre."
"Okay, so you've established reasonable doubt. You'd better get going if you want to convince the rest of the jury pool."
"I want to hire you to find the real killer."
"I don't hunt killers. My specialty's missing persons. The first rule is not to become one."
"You can at least demonstrate that my father was not the only one in Mexicantown who had a reason to kill Jackie."
"Why should I? My books are in good shape right now. One Emiliano Zorboron more or less won't affect the local tax base."
"My father is the one man my people can go to for justice when they are preyed upon by their own. The police file reports and do nothing. If he is convicted and deported, there will be no one to defend them.” She paused, a fist on her thigh, until her breath stopped coming in short, shallow gusts. “I should not need to add that deportation would be a death sentence. The Mexican government tried him in absentia after the Zapatistas failed. His enemies will see to it he does not survive his first six weeks in prison."
I took one last bitter drag—a mistake I make twenty times a day—and mashed out the stub. “Where would I start? Your people don't pour out their secrets for Anglos."
"Talk to my father. He is like a priest, and Mexicantown is his flock. There is no affair so private he does not know it in detail. He will not see me, and I suspect he distrusts Felipe's ability to act upon any information he might give him."
"The justice system has laws against outside competition. If he can open up to me without incriminating himself in another area, he knows the language better than I do. A turnkey would be listening, and he'd wind up with a dozen more charges against him. I'd have to be working for his lawyer in order to arrange a private interview."
Felipe trundled forward and handed me a business card:
FELIPE QUINTAS DE LA MERIDA
ATTORNEY AT LAW
I ran my thumb over an embossed coat of arms. “You represent Zorboron?"
"Sí. Yes. Since before Carmelita was born."
"Okay, Mr. Merida. I need fifteen hundred to start."
"Felipe?"
The big man nodded and went out. He made very little noise crossing through the reception room. They say elephants walk quietly too. “Where's his briefcase?” I asked Carmelita.
"In his head."
"He could fit the entire Michigan Penal Code in there."
When he returned, Merida was carrying what might have been a medium-size safe by a handle on top. The handle stuck up through a hole in a heavy black cloth that covered the boxlike shape on all sides. When I realized he was about to set it on my desk, I cleared room for it. He hoisted it onto the corner without much effort. It seemed to be a lot lighter than a safe.
"What's in it?"
"Your retainer.” He switched off the cloth, startling the thing inside, which made a shrill squawk of a battle cry and hurled itself against the wooden staves that caged it. I shoved away from it as if a snake had struck at me. Merida, who seemed to know his way around a few things other than torts, made cooing noises until the dervish in the cage stopped whirling and flapping. It stood erect on its newspaper carpet, glaring at me from under its floppy comb with feathers floating down all around.
"His highness, the prince.” Carmelita crossed her legs. “You know his worth. Jackie was many things, but he was not a liar."
"I meant cash, not livestock."
"Immigration has frozen all my father's accounts. I wait tables for minimum wage in my cousin's restaurant, the one where Jackie was found.” Her throat worked. “Cortez is all I can offer in the way of security."
Merida said, “He needs sunlight and air and cracked corn. Water. A goldfish is more trouble."
"Keep him. I'm appointing you his conservator."
He dropped the cloth back over the cage, choking off the rooster in the middle of some avian blasphemy.
"You will find him at this address,” said the lawyer, writing on the back of another card. “Raul is in charge. Show him this card to collect."
I took it. “I'll need a letter for the cops, confirming I'm acting as your agent. On stationery without the Kentucky Colonel's picture on it."
He produced an envelope from a pocket of his cargo pants. His name and an address on West Vernor were engraved on it in gold and on the computer-printed letter it contained, both good linen stock. His signature might have been written by Prince Cortez. That made him genuine.
Carmelita Zorboron rose and grasped my hand in a fine slim one strung with hidden cable. “Thank you, Mr. Walker. Please report to Flip.” Her smile burst like an incandescent bulb and was gone. In a minute she and Merida were as well.
I stared at the door for a while. Then I stared at the window and the wall. I'd bartered my services for jewelry and friendship and debts outstanding. It was bound to come to chickens sooner or later.
* * * *
"Trust me,” I said. “I'm the only one you've talked to in forty-eight hours who doesn't have an axe to grind."
"Felipe told me Carmelita wanted to hire you. I said no. Jail has robbed me of the respect of my servant and my child."
"Yeah, well, what are you gonna do? Up here they don't let you stick them in cages and feed them cracked corn."
I had no idea how that sat with him. Emiliano Zorboron looked as much like a gang leader as Felipe Quintas de la Merida looked like an attorney; small for a tiger, with the cuffs of his orange Wayne County jumpsuit turned back to let his hands poke out, and fine featured to the point of transparency. But when it came to showing what he was thinking, he was as transparent as a drill press. He might have been thirty-five or fifty. His accent was less obvious than his daughter's, which confirmed my suspicion she leaned on hers a little for effect.
We were seated facing each other at a plain maple table in a room reserved for lawyer-client conferences at the jail. I didn't think it was bugged, but just in case, I'd brought along a transistor radio and tuned it in to a gassy talk show to confuse eavesdroppers. RICO and the Patriot Act had danced a flamenco all over the First and Fifth Amendments.
"I had no part in Jackie Brill's death,” Zorboron said.
"I'm being paid to believe you, so okay. Who did?"
"Someone with good sense."
"I didn't care for him either, but you've got the best motive so far."
"What does it matter whether they send me home for murder or committing perjury when I applied for my visa? I am sure you know something of my trouble there."
"The immigration beef you can beat, if Merida's half as good as his stationery. Murder's ten times tougher. We got all the killers we need domestic. We can export one now and then."
"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 Mexicantown."
* * * *
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, ambidextrously 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.
"¿Quién 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 carniceria 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?"
AHMM, June 2007 Page 6
