by Manuel Ramos
She looked at me, then at Móntez. Her smile finally broke out completely. “Slow down, Luis. We’re not in the courtroom. This is only between the three of us, for now.”
“He’s telling you what he knows, Ana, what he’s learned,” Luis said.
“How about his parole officer?”
“He’s not in on this.”
“Maybe we can work out something that is good for us all, including the department.”
I didn’t quite understand what happened, but just like that the tension in the room faded. Luis relaxed in his chair. Ana Domingo, Community Liaison Officer for the Denver Police Department, stood up and walked to a water cooler sitting in the corner of her office. She pulled a paper cup out of a holder attached to the cooler and helped herself to a drink of water.
She held my fate in her smooth-skinned hands. I think I quit breathing for a few seconds.
“You guys want a drink?”
She talked to us a few minutes more. She confirmed that Luis made the 911 call. She asked about María Contreras, but we didn’t tell her anything more than that I watched the house as part of Luis’ work for her. I never offered that I saw María Contreras at the house, and Domingo never asked me that question directly.
Luis drove me back to Corrine’s house. We decided to call it quits for the day.
“Long night, longer day,” Luis said.
“Let’s hope tonight doesn’t turn into another drama.” As soon as I said it I knew I’d jinxed the evening.
10 [Luis]
yeah, my bad luck boy
been havin’ bad luck all of my days, yes
I gave Gus a ride home. On the way, he wrapped up Jackie O’s problem.
Gus believed that Cristelli’s threats against Jackie were dead. “He has no witness, no complaining party. Villagrana isn’t going to do anything. Without her, he has no leverage.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m sure. It’s her grandson. Blood is thicker than whatever she was carrying around. She’s seen the error of her ways. She’s doing penance for her sins by cleaning toilets at the church. She doesn’t ever want to see Cristelli again. I think Jackie can get whatever she wants out of Cristelli.”
“She doesn’t want anything for herself. She wants him out of business.”
“Can you do that?”
“I can’t. But Jackie can. I’ll arrange a meeting with the district attorney, maybe the consumer fraud unit at the attorney general’s. Good work, Gus.”
“Hell, I didn’t do anything.”
“You tracked her down. That’s something.”
“If you say so.”
I’d intended to go home to recapture some of my missed sleep, but there were a dozen different things at the office that I had to finish. They wouldn’t wait for me to take a nap. I felt like I had a second wind. I dropped off Gus and drove to the office.
The meeting with Ana Domingo had gone as well as could be expected. We parted apparently on good terms. That’s why I worried when I walked in the office and Rosa told me she’d called and left a message that I had to get back to her as soon as possible.
“She didn’t say what it was about?”
“I’d of told you if she did, Luis. But you know it’s gonna involve your hoodlum pal Gus.”
“You need to let go of your attitude.”
“Only thing I need’s a raise. When that guy finally messes up, I’ll be there with my attitude and shit, just so I can say I told you so.” She rotated in her chair back to her computer screen.
I called Domingo’s direct number as soon as I closed my office door behind me.
She answered and waded right in.
“We got a problem, Luis,” she said. “Rather, you and your guy Corral have a problem.”
Kind of what I expected. “What? You know everything we know. You said it was okay.”
“What I said was that we could probably work something out, since you guys were trying to do the right thing. But now, well, now, there’s a hang-up. A bump in the road.”
“Am I supposed to guess what it is until I get it right?”
“Be nice. I don’t have to talk with you, Móntez.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever.”
It was obvious she had ambivalent feelings about me, with good reason. The truth was that we’d crossed paths months before because of one of my more unsavory clients. She called me in her office and let me have it about the client, a certain Clyde Williams. Seems that Clyde showed up at her office and tried to get friendly with Ms. Domingo. Apparently he was a bit aggressive about it. She told me that she had to get physical herself. Williams ended up on the floor with a swollen eye from a well-placed jab delivered by Ana. He didn’t say anything to me about the incident, but I had no doubt that it happened. Somehow, Williams’ crap brushed off on me and she held a grudge of some sort.
“I went over the fire and what’s been found so far with Brett Montaño, the chief investigator for the fire department. He knew about the 911 call, so he had his antenna up for signs that something happened in that house before the fire. He says it looks like someone probably was killed in the house after all, but nothing definitive until the test results come back to him. Weeks from now.”
“So, that gibes with what Gus said, and what we reported to you.”
“You’re half-right.”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t official yet, so you can’t do anything with it.” It was more a question than a statement.
“I get it.”
“Montaño says there might have been two people killed in that house. Something about a preliminary report on blood stains that were found on bits and pieces of the wall that survived the fire. He said he was guessing since the fire destroyed almost everything that might be considered hard evidence, and that it would be weeks before the actual test results come back.”
“Wow. He went from no bodies to maybe two? Gus doesn’t know anything about a second body. He would’ve told you about it. This doesn’t mean that Gus was hiding anything. Just that he didn’t know.”
“Maybe. I’d still like to talk to him again.”
“I’ll let you know when we can make it.”
“Uh . . . Luis. It might be better if I meet with Gus alone. Less formal that way. I just want to confirm that he saw two live persons and one dead man in the house, and that there wasn’t a fourth person or body. If it’s just him and me, I don’t have to go through all the hoops that are required when a lawyer gets involved. You understand that, right, Luis?”
Yeah, I understood. She wanted me out of the way. She thought she could trip up Gus, or she thought he would be more honest if I wasn’t around. Or she was telling the truth. I would leave it up to Gus as far as how he wanted to play it.
“I’ll see if he wants to give you a call. If he does, you can set up your meeting. But there’s no reason for him to lie about any of this.”
“Oh, there’s a reason. More than one when you think about it. He could be more involved than he’s letting on. He could be covering for what he really did. Or for someone else.”
“Don’t go there, Ana. We’ve been straight with you.”
“Hope so. I checked up on your boy. He’s not exactly the poster child for civic responsibility and good citizenship.”
“He’s done his time and he leveled with you about his record, which you knew about anyway. Give him a break. It’s no secret he was just released from prison.”
“True enough. But he was busted for some wild stuff. Could be that once a thug, always a thug. A lot of cops think he skated away from some very serious time.”
“He almost got killed. He saved the life of an abused woman. His sister was kidnapped. He opened the door for your department and the feds on enough information to shut down a major operation of one of the cartels. I think he earned whatever skating he enjoyed.”
She took a few seconds to respond. “However it went down, I need to talk with Gus Corral o
ne more time. Make sure he gets the message. I don’t want to have to track him down.” She hung up.
I felt tired again. My back ached. My eyes burned and watered. I cleared my dry throat. It was nothing.
Had the guy I trusted let me down? I should believe Gus. I began to doubt my instincts. “You’re too old for this, Móntez,” I thought. “You lost whatever street smarts you used to have. If you ever had any.”
I waited for someone to shake me, to grab me by the collar and tell me to cut the crap and get with the program.
11 [Gus]
must be the same ol’ thing
that make a tom cat fight all night
I nodded off for about an hour before Móntez woke me with another phone call.
“Domingo wants to talk with you again,” he said. “Something about how more than one person might have been killed in that house before the fire. She wants to clear up that you didn’t know about a second dead guy.”
“Of course, I didn’t. Why would she think I did?”
“I doubt that she does. The fire investigator said that maybe there was more than one body in the house. She’s just following the story. Pinning down the details for her report, especially about you. She has to prove her job is worthwhile, cost efficient. She’s still in a test period for her funding, you know?”
“So for the sake of her budget I have to talk with her again? You sure this is the way to take care of this?”
“I’m okay with it. It’s not perfect, but I doubt Domingo is hiding anything from us.”
“You have anything to back up that belief?”
“A year ago. Something similar. One of my clients witnessed a shooting in LoDo, when the bars closed and all the drunken kids poured out and hassled each other. My guy saw the shooter but didn’t want to get involved. Sure you can appreciate that. I thought we should try to get the killer off the streets, so my client talked with Domingo, just like you.”
“And she followed through for your guy?”
“Yes. My client gave her a description of the shooter, then she talked with others on the force who put a name to the description, and when the cops looking into the shooting learned the name, they tracked down the bad guy and eventually got a confession. And my client never testified or anything else. Domingo took care of it.”
I didn’t like all of it but since I was already in deep, I had to play it out.
“When does she want to meet?”
“Not set yet. She wants to hear from you. Maybe you can handle it with a phone call. She made it clear she’d rather not have me around, but that’s up to you.”
“What do you think?”
“I always advise that you have an attorney when you talk with the cops, but, honestly, I don’t see too much of a downside here. You confirm your story to her one more time, hopefully she lets it go.”
“I never thought I’d be volunteering to talk to the cops. Especially about someone getting killed. Prison did a job on me, for sure.”
“She’s still a law enforcement officer, still a cop no matter how innocuous her job title is. Keep that in mind.”
“I’ll try to remember.”
“Any thoughts about who the second body might be?”
“Hell no. I don’t even know who the first body is. Those two, Contreras and the guy in the hoody, I don’t want to mess with them. They’ve killed at least one guy, maybe two, maybe more, and we have no idea why.”
“And they have no way of knowing that you are in any way involved. The most María Contreras knows is that you work for me and you did some investigation to help with her Richard Valdez problem. Which looks like she’s resolved.”
“He must be body number one. I just hope I don’t end up as body number three.”
“Or suspect number one. Good luck with Domingo. Call her when you feel like it.”
I felt like calling her as soon as I hung up on Móntez. When Domingo and I connected, it was short and sweet and to the point. Yeah, she was anxious to meet. No, it wouldn’t work to talk over the phone. She offered to meet after she closed her office. She said she wanted it to be informal—less paperwork, she repeated. The woman had a big distaste for paperwork. She suggested that I come by her apartment around eight. I agreed, wrote down her address and hung up. The call lasted less than two minutes.
That evening I explained the set-up to Corrine. We were at her house, me with coffee and her with a glass of wine. She reminded me that we were supposed to talk about the case I was working on for Móntez and, of course, she had a hundred questions about the client, my surveillance, the fire, the dead guy. I patiently explained all of it to her. She was okay with everything until I got to the part about meeting Domingo without Móntez. She absolutely did not like that.
“Haven’t you seen the news? Cops are killing young men of color all across the country, and getting away with it. Never indicted. People are rioting, burning their cities, because of bad cops. I remember when community leaders gave speeches about how the police were an occupying force in the hood. These days they got the weapons and technology to back up that description. You can’t trust the cops.”
I said I doubted Domingo was going to kill me. Then I made the mistake of telling her she was acting all “old school.”
“Is it old school to try to keep your ass out of jail? Is it old school to try to clue you in on the way the world really operates?” She worked herself into a good display of emotion.
I wanted to say, yeah, that is really from the past, the way-way past, but instead I told her that nothing serious could happen since the meeting would be in Domingo’s apartment.
She stopped in mid-hysteria. She looked me up and down, finally smiled. “She wants you to come to her place? At eight o’clock at night? And you don’t think there’s anything strange about that?” Corrine folded her arms in front of her loose-fitting sweatshirt and chuckled.
“Think about it. If she wants me arrested, she can have that happen anywhere. If she’s trying to pry info out of me, there’s nothing to find out. What kind of trap could she be setting?”
“Then why in the hell is this meeting even happening?”
“For the reason Móntez said. She’s finishing up a few details. She wants me to deny for the record that I know anything about this second body, without making a big deal out of it. That’s all. If Móntez isn’t worried, I’m not either.”
She made a show of pretending that she washed her hands of me and my problems. It was seven-thirty. Time for me to leave.
“Uh, can I borrow the car?”
She tossed the keys to me. “Good luck, little brother. I’m not bailing you out this time.”
I hoped that was true.
Ana Domingo lived about twenty minutes from Corrine. The less than five-year-old building sat in the Five Points neighborhood. Once thought of as the “black” part of town, which in Denver, and everywhere else, I guess, was real estate agent code for poor and crime-ridden. Five Points had been trying to remake its image for a number of years but it hadn’t quite enjoyed the same economic turnaround as other parts of Denver. Five Points had great history—jazz, food, famous and infamous residents—but that history wasn’t always appreciated by city planners or the young families and hustling entrepreneurs who took a chance on a remodeled Victorian or a new condo. Duplicating a pattern I knew only too well from changes in my own neighborhood, older residents shared an uneasy mix with newcomers.
I drove east on Thirty-Eighth Avenue until it curved southward under I-25 and became Fox, then Twenty-Second—past a dark and quiet Coors Field towards downtown, where I turned on Lawrence and drove northeast until Thirtieth. I switched on the Kia’s radio and listened to a nice Latin jazz number that had me shaking my head and tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. Corrine’s favorite station was the public jazz outlet, KUVO, an iconic enterprise that had been part of the Five Points neighborhood for decades. Southeast, more or less, past Curtis Park, and I arrived at Domingo’s building. Further e
ast a few blocks sat the Five Points Media Center, where public and community television stations shared space with KUVO.
The walk to the front entrance of the building was unevenly lit, and I couldn’t see whether anyone waited. I thought over why I’d agreed to meet with Domingo. Móntez seemed okay with the idea, so there was that. But usually the word of an attorney wouldn’t have been enough for me to cooperate with the police to the length I’d already gone. Corrine saw through my posing and acted as though she’d figured out what was going on with me. But since I didn’t know what that was, she could only be guessing.
I walked slowly and made sure I was alone. The door to the complex was an impressive solid hunk of dark wood with several wrought-iron fixtures that made it look like the entrance to an old castle. With the help of an overhead light I searched through the directory and pressed the button next to the name plate that read “364 A. Domingo.”
“Gus?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
The lock clicked and I opened the door. I took the elevator to the third floor. When the elevator doors opened she surprised me by standing in the hallway, waiting.
“Right on time,” she said.
“Not hard to find. Especially with GPS.”
She turned and walked down the hall to her apartment. She was dressed in jeans and a V-necked shirt that looked like it was made for working out—shiny, tight, colorful and red. She may have tried to look relaxed but her hair was still tied up on the top of her head.
Her apartment reminded me of her office. Clean, neat, nothing frivolous. A half-dozen photographs hung on one wall. They looked like family pictures. She was in all of them, usually surrounded by three or four men I took to be her brothers, maybe a father. They were the same men from the picture in her office. No other women, not even someone who could pass for the mother.
