Cool in Tucson (9 page)

“Fresh air can wait.”  Eisenstaat, the graying, cynical, self-appointed time-server of the section looked up from his keyboard, wearing the trade-mark sneer with which he fended off work while he waited for retirement.  “But dashing Harry would sure like to dash over to Starbuck’s for a chocolate frappuccino.  Hurry up with it, will you?”

“It’s ready now.  Get your frappo in a go-cup, will you?  I need that warrant back here ASAP.” 

“Sure sure sure.”  He took his sweet time getting up, straightening his stiff knees.  “Relentless Ruthie’s in a hurry, what else is new?”  Somehow he’d learned that her middle name was Ruth, and begun using it to characterize her as a driven workaholic.  Sarah smiled as if she thought he’d paid her a compliment as she grabbed her once-again ringing phone and said, “Burke.”

A voice she didn’t know said, “This is Tony Delarosa.  I’m downstairs.  You got a dead man you think is Ace Perkins?”

“Yes.  Wow, that was quick.”

“Dietz caught me in my car, a block away.  This a good time to talk?”  It wasn’t,  but he was here now, ready to do a favor.  She told him how to find her. 

In two minutes he was standing in the door of her cubicle, a square-jawed, ruddy man with dark eyes and black hair curled tight against his skull, his shoulders bulging against his shirt. 
Weight-lifter
. 
Showboat.  What else?
  He said, “You pretty sure about this?”

“We made him off his prints.”  She showed him the records.  

“Son of a gun.”  He sat down and crossed his legs, put his blunt-fingered right hand on her desk and began tapping, some brisk rhythm he seemed to hear in his head.  All his movements had the heft and energy of over-abundant muscle.  “Where’d you find him?”

Sarah described the scene in Rillito Park, and asked him, “Are you the one who sent him to Florence?”

“No.  I busted him three months after he got out.  Bought half an ounce of coke off him, slapped on the cuffs and asked him if he wanted to help himself.  Had him on my team in half an hour.  Ace was a pro, he knew the drill.”  He had a way of nodding to himself between sentences, as if to endorse something he had just said.      

“Ace was your snitch?  Oh, well, then—” She smiled and he smiled back, a flashy, assertive man who appeared to get his share of the groceries, maybe a bit over, every day.  The extra muscle must come from his efforts to work off some of the food, she thought.  He seemed pleased about his bulk, though; he wore his clothes snug.  “So,” Sarah said, watching his face, “you want to tell me who killed him?”

When he laughed, the dark eyes almost disappeared into the round pillows of his ruddy cheeks.  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if narcs knew as much as people think?  The truth is I’m really surprised to hear about this.” 

“You are?  I thought narcs never got surprised.”

“Be nice, now.”  A smaller smile this time, one quick gleam in his deeply tanned face.  “As far as I could tell, Ace was being very careful and playing strictly by the rules.  I mean, you know…street rules.”

“Uh-huh.  Was he, um, an important player in the Tucson drug trade, reports of which we all agree are greatly exaggerated?”  Sarah thought the way drug interdiction worked, or mostly didn’t work, was crazy.  But it wasn’t on her worksheet and she had never been one to fight the system; she just threw a jab at it now and then to show she wasn’t intimidated. 
Which when you come right down to it of course I am
.  You didn’t get ahead in the Tucson PD by dissing the drug war.

He gave her the standard heavy-lidded look she always got from narcs when her question had been indiscreet.  “We’re going to bust it wide open one day soon and then I’ll answer all your questions.”

“I’ll look forward to that.  How was Ace doing for himself?”

“Very well.”

“And for you?  Were you satisfied with the quality of his information?”

“Well, like the song says I was making a list and checking it twice.  But it looked very good.  I thought
¾
” He sat up straighter and the tapping stopped. “Now it looks like I better check my list again.” 

“I see.”  She watched him carefully while she asked the next question.  “You check off anything I might be able to use, will you be able to share?” 

He looked friendly and candid as he said, “Oh, if I get a lead on Ace’s killer you can have it, Sarah, of course.  Could I ask, is the body at the Forensic Sciences Center?”

“Yes.  Why?”

“You mind if I take a look?”

“My pleasure
¾
I’ll set it up for you.  An eyeball ID would be great right now.  If you see anything that doesn’t match with your memories, you’ll call me?”

“Of course.  The autopsy hasn’t been done yet, has it?”

“Two o’clock tomorrow.  You want to come?”

“I can’t, I’ve got a—another thing.  But I’ll run by there and take a look right now, if that’s okay.”

“I’ll tell them to expect you.”

He started out, turned in the door and said, “Sarah, can I just—say something?  You could be looking for a very dangerous guy.”

“You think?”

“Well…Ace Perkins was experienced and tough, he wouldn’t go down easy.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“You want to be pretty careful how you
¾
”

“Tony, I’m always careful.”

“I’m sure.  Don’t take offense.  I just mean…Ace Perkins was no pushover.”

“Understood.”  She got up and walked around her desk to shake his square, meaty hand.  “I do thank you for taking the time to come by,” she said, and smiled up at him graciously, because you could never have too many friends in narcotics.  But now, why was he holding onto her hand?  She met his eyes and realized that he was coming on to her, using a slightly more ham-handed version of the same move she had just used on Will Dietz.  She squinted at him humorously while she pulled her hand away and said, “Then again, you know, we could be looking for a mugger who doesn’t even know he just killed a guy with connections.”

Tony Delarosa didn’t like being turned off.  His eyes turned flat and cold above a small, condescending smile. “Oh, I seriously doubt that, Sarah,” he said.  He put both hands in his pockets and stood there jingling his coins, considered a few seconds and gave another of his little self-endorsing nods.  “But if you do catch a guy like that, you know what you’ll have?”

“What?”

“The luckiest dumb sonofabitch in the world.”
                

CHAPTER SEVEN

First thing to do after I get the car put away,
Hector decided as he neared Exit 303,
is call Mama.
  Tell her I got this chance to make a few dollars doing cleanup in a pecan grove in Benson, and I’ll be home tomorrow, sometime late. 

Hector was nineteen, still lived at home, paid his mother a little every week.  Called her
Mamacita,
hugged her a lot and
showed
her his dimply smile—that shit-eating grin she called it, pretending she didn’t like it, saying don’t you come around me with that shit-eating grin—but it always worked.  She was happy to cook all his favorite things, keep his room nice and give him his space. 

He paid his two sisters in Middle School a little something too, to do his laundry every Saturday like Mama showed them.  Besides that he had two aunts in the neighborhood who doted on him, were glad to warm up a plate of beans and rice any time.  Hector had things pretty much the way he wanted in his life except when the women started in on him about school, saying you should go back while you’re still young, at least get your GED.  School, shit.  GED, for what?  Hector had a plan. 

He had been working for Ace for almost four months, had a little over two thousand dollars saved, in fifties and hundreds in a tight roll saran-wrapped and taped to the bottom of a loose floor tile under his bed.  Owned an ’87 Subaru Brat with a dented hood, no air but it was paid for, had papers for it so he didn’t have to worry like before when he was boosting cars.  It looked about a hundred years old but the brakes were good and he kept it tuned.  It took care of business for him now and would make the trip to  Mexico when the time came if he couldn’t trade up by then. 

He still kept his stupid part-time job at the car wash that paid a couple bucks over minimum wage and they took out payroll taxes besides, shee-it.  But it was good cover, kept his parole officer happy.  He even bagged groceries sometimes at the Food City down the road, his Mama and aunts saying Good boy, works so hard.  Since he did that stretch in juvie, his Mama and aunts would do just about anything to help him stay straight.  Funny how things worked out sometimes, ever since he served time they treated him sweeter than ever and with more respect—like he was a man now. 

He understood of course that Ace had arranged to have him take most of the risks and do all the worst drudgery for a small cut of the money.  That was what you had to put up with in the beginning, to get started.  Hector and his friend Miguel, when they talked about getting started, agreed they were lucky to live in Tucson.

“Always plenty of action here,” Miguel said.  “Been working a safe house for a
coyote
lately, you wouldn’t believe how many people he’s got crammed in there.  All’s I do is stand around with a gun under my jacket, three or four days whenever he needs me, and I make me some damn good money.”

“There you go.  And any time crossers and dope get slow,” Hector said, “you boost a car, it’s only sixty miles to the border.” 

“Fact.  Anybody says he can’t get started in Tucson gotta be a real
menso
.”

Privately Hector thought Miguel was welcome to those crazy
coyotes,
always  ready to cut your throat any time they got spooked by the border patrol.  Ace was scary but not crazy, and this fat deal they had going wasn’t even hard work. 

Some time on a weekday, ten A.M. Monday this week, Hector picked up the product, that’s what Ace called it, at the auto repair shop or the back door of one of Rudy’s bars.  Went where he was told to go, stood in a corner with his mouth shut till Rudy or one of his goons put a package in his hands. 

He tucked the package in the wheel well of his old red Subaru Brat and drove six miles or so northwest across town to the rancid single-wide Ace rented in a mobile home park in the Flowing Wells area.  It was a last outpost for people who were not quite homeless yet, free-lancing whores without pimps who worked the corners on Euclid, and long-standing addicts who managed their habits well enough to work a few shifts a week.  The small spaces between the plastic cribs were drifts of beer cans, dogshit, condoms and cigarette butts.  Ace and Hector paid no attention to the filthy garbage underfoot or to the pleas and fights going on in the squats around them.  They walked inside silently, Hector carrying the brown paper package, and locked the door.  

Ace spread a clean sheet over the wobbly table, pulled the bag of white powder out of Hector’s parcel, and divided the cocaine into two parts.  Hector washed his enamel pot, mixed the coke Ace measured out for him with water and baking soda, and started it heating slowly on the stove.  While the crack was cooking, Ace would tear off short lengths of waxed paper all over the table and divide the rest of the snow into precise little piles in the middle of each piece.  Hector wrapped the little piles into twists of waxed paper, put the twists in gallon baggies and tucked the baggies in a Trader Joe’s grocery sack, the sturdy paper model with handles.  Ace liked everything neat. 

As soon as the crack had floated to the top and the soda settled to the bottom, they would skim off the crack and lay it out on the table under a heat lamp.  It didn’t take long to finish off in Tucson, where the bone-dry air sucked the moisture out of everything.  They would eat a snack, nap for an hour in plastic chaises under the rattling air conditioner, and then portion and wrap the crack.