Matters of Doubt (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

When I got back to Caffeine Central I found Picasso waiting outside. He was sitting next to his bike, slouched against the building wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt, cut-off jeans, and his ever present combat boots. When he saw me approaching, he scrambled to his feet. His eyebrow ring was still missing, and the neck of his sweatshirt obscured all but the single red, yellow, and black repeat pattern of his coral snake tattoo. “Are you okay, Cal?” He asked. “Doc told me you got beat up last night. She said it was some Russian cage fighter dude.”

“I'll live. Come on up. We can talk.”

While Picasso wrestled with Archie, I brewed us both a cup of tea and used mine to wash down three aspirin. Watching me drink my tea, he said, “Thought you were an espresso geek.”

“It's tea today. I'm still a little wobbly.” I wasn't hungry, but I could tell he was. I made him a three egg omelet with Gruyere cheese, toast, and diced potatoes fried up in red onions, sage, and olive oil. While he ate I brought him up to date. Of course, the first thing he wanted to hear about was my fight with Semyon: “Is the dude really a cage fighter?”

“I don't know. He was a little slow, come to think of it. Maybe he just bought the t-shirt.”

“Man, I wish I'd been there.”

“To see me get my butt kicked?”

“No, to help you.”

I chuckled. “The truth is I got more help than I ever expected.”

Picasso laughed. “Yeah, Doc told me about the hooker with the two-by-four.” He put his hands together and made a chopping motion. “
Ka-boom
. She must've really nailed him!” We both laughed at the image—his imagined, mine seen through a fog of semiconsciousness. Then Picasso added, “Doc said the hooker had some information about Conyers.”

I described what Bambi had overheard. After meeting Bambi, and in view of what she'd done to help me, the term “hooker” seemed unjust, and I didn't use it.

Picasso piled a chunk of omelet on a piece of toast and paused before wolfing it down. “I don't know, Cal. Brothers fight all the time. Maybe that tip wasn't worth getting your ass kicked.”

I nodded. “The thought occurred to me. We've been assuming Conyers was killed by the person he was blackmailing. Surely he wasn't blackmailing his stepbrother.” I wondered about Jessica Armandy's role in this, but my thoughts were so vague I didn't even bring it up. Picasso sighed, but not before taking another huge bite of egg and potato.

“I've got much better news about your mom's case. I think I've identified her lover.”

He lowered his fork to his plate. “Who is it?”

“He doesn't know I know. You can't breathe a word of this to anyone, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“His name's Hugo Weiman. He's a big time lobbyist in the state.”

Picasso stopped chewing and narrowed his eyes. “Did he do it? Did he kill her?”

I raised a hand like a traffic cop. “Whoa, I don't know yet. I've got a private investigator digging into it as we speak.” Then wagging a finger in his direction, I added, “You need to stay cool.” I was glad I'd left out that Weiman was the owner of the property where his mother's remains were found and had suffered a gunshot wound on the day she disappeared. The last thing I needed was for Picasso to go after Weiman.

We fell silent for while until Picasso spoke. “So, Doc stitched your ear up?”

“Yeah, saved me a trip to the ER.”

A mischievous smile spread across his face. “She's pretty hot, huh?” When I didn't respond, he added, “You married?”

“Uh, no. My wife passed away three years ago.”

He smacked his forehead with his palm. “Sorry.” More silence, then, “Mind if I ask what happened?”

I looked down and studied the surface of the table. “She took her own life.” It was my dirty little secret, something that still hung over me with a stench of guilt. But there it was, freely admitted with little urging. I was again surprised at my trust in this young man.

“Bummer,” was all he replied.

We sat there without speaking. Cars whooshed by down on the street and a jackhammer some blocks away came on intermittently. Finally, I said, “Yeah, it's something I don't talk about much. It wasn't my finest hour. I, uh, missed the warning signs.”

He gave his lip ring a couple of tugs and sighed. “It's easy to blame yourself when shit happens, man. It's the
easiest
thing to do, believe me.”

I met his eyes and nodded. I could only imagine the blame he'd placed on himself, a kid of twelve, when his mother suddenly vanished. I got up and made us more tea. I told him about my meeting with Cynthia Duncan and how she'd agreed to look into the scandal Larry Vincent had suppressed. When I told him Cynthia had talked to Ronnie Lutz about the broken camera, and it looked favorable, he said, “Man, that's a relief. She did that for
me
?”

“Sure. She's in your corner.” I pulled out my phone, scrolled down to her number and wrote it on the back of a card. “Here. Use the phone I gave you to thank her. She'd be thrilled to hear from you.” Then it was my turn to look mischievous. “How's Caitlin's algebra coming along?”

He shook his head and his face clouded over. “You don't want to know. She's got a locker over at Twelfth Street, you know, a place to put her stuff. And she's in line to get an apartment,
an apartment!
But every time that fucking family of hers shows up, she forgets all about trying to get off the street. I don't know man, it's frustrating.” There was bitterness in his eyes I hadn't seen since that first day in my office. “All they're interested in is her income potential.”

He needed to vent, so I let him go. I had little to offer except to urge him to be patient and to remind him how he felt at sixteen. To that, he shot back, “Yeah, but the street's no place for a sixteen-year-old girl
.
” I had to agree. The streets were no place for anyone, boy or girl.

I was still feeling light-headed, so Picasso did me a favor and took Arch out for a short walk before he left. I sat down on the couch with my laptop, caught up on my email, and made a few phone calls. I left a message for Nando to get back to me. I wanted to know if he had any thoughts on what to do about the Russian, Semyon.

I laid my head on the back of the couch with the whole mess swirling around in my mind. I drifted off and dreamed Semyon was at the front door. When my cell went off, it became him ringing a doorbell. I awoke full of anxiety, my head pounding. It was Anna checking in. I told her I'd dropped Bambi at the shelter, and when I mentioned I still had a low grade headache and that my bandage was leaking she told me to stop by the clinic.

My phone rang a second time. It was Nando. “
Hola, amigo. ¿Que tal?
” he barked out in his deep, accent inflected voice.

“
Bien
,” I said without enthusiasm.

“I've got some information on the gun accident.”

I felt a flutter in my gut. I knew that tone of voice. Nando had something important to tell me, but he wasn't going to share it on the phone. We agreed to meet at the apartment that evening, and I talked him into bringing takeout from Cuba Cuba
.

Later that afternoon I sat in a treatment room clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth. Anna had just removed the bloody bandage from my ear and was poking around with a cotton swab. Before starting this torture she'd handed me a small mirror. I took one look at my ear and looked away. It was a pulpy, yellow-purple mass, and the stitched, vertical split looked like the zipper in my jeans. But her warm breath was caressing my cheek again, which helped me cope.

She said, “Hold still. I'm just about done. This looks okay, but I'm worried about a hematoma. If one develops, you'll have a true cauliflower ear.”

“Then what, a transplant?”

She laughed, a kind of girlish sound I hadn't heard before. “
No
, but I'll have to drain it so the skin can reattach to the cartilage. We'll keep an eye on it.” With that, she rushed off to see another patient.

Outside, it was misting slightly, but not enough to stop Picasso from working and Archie from keeping him company. His mural of rowdy health care agitators was becoming more fully populated. They poured off the flanks of Mt. Hood like ants and crossed Portland's eastern plain like an advancing army before crossing the Morrison Bridge. They carried signs and banners. The life-size lead marchers—Gandhi, King, Lennon, and Mother Teresa—were arm in arm and now fully sketched in. Picasso was busy painting John Lennon. The image caught the pop star in the blush of his youth, and he seemed to burst from the wall in three dimensions. I stopped dead. The image took me back to another time, and a thickness developed in my throat that I couldn't quite explain. I waited a few moments before saying, “It's looking good.”

He turned around but didn't smile. He was all business when he worked. “It's a long ways from done.”

“How do you decide who to put in?”

He shrugged. “Artist's prerogative, man. It's just based on what I've read about people. John Lennon spoke out on health care way ahead of his time. So did King. I found a great quote from him that I'm thinking about using as the tag line for this mural.”

“What'd he say?”

Picasso set his brush down and leafed through his notebook. “Here it is.” He cleared his throat. “‘Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.' Then I'm going to add something like, ‘Join the march for universal healthcare.'”

“Nice.” I nodded toward the mural. “You really nailed Doc.”

He laughed. “Thanks, man. You think she'll like it?”

I glanced at her image then back at him. “I know she will.”

Picasso picked up his brush, but before he turned back to his mural, he said, “Did you get a chance to look into Joey's situation?”

I sighed more heavily than I meant to. It had been a long day. “Yeah, I did. I need to talk to him next. I'm tied up tonight, but I'll be around tomorrow.”

“Yeah, well things aren't cool. I was in his tent last night. He's got a big, honkin' gun, Cal.”

“Hand gun?”

“Yeah, but it looks like a friggin' cannon. He's no danger to the public, but I'm worried what he might do to himself.”

“Set something up for tomorrow night and let me know.”

Nando arrived at Caffeine Central just after seven with a large white bag filled with food and a six pack of La Tropical. After setting the food and beer down upstairs, he went over to the window and carefully moved the blinds just enough to allow him to look down at the street. My stomach tightened. “What's up?”

He let the blinds slide back into place and turned to face me. “Two guys in an SUV down by the corner are watching you. They look like Russians to me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That's one of the things I wanted to talk about.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Nando swirled a jumbo shrimp around in a thick garlic sauce, popped it in his mouth, took a swig of his La Tropical, and belched appreciatively. He sat across the table from me wearing a pearl colored blazer over a lime green silk shirt, dark slacks, and hand tooled leather sandals. I'd just finished telling him about my encounter with Semyon. He frowned, shook his head. “It is bad enough that you hurt this Russian in a fight, Calvin, but it is much worse that you caused Jessica Armandy to lose one of her girls. I believe this is called a double whammy.”

The beer Nando had opened for me tasted flat and bitter. I set it down and shrugged. “Bambi wanted out. What was I supposed to do?”

“A noble gesture, to be sure, but there may be consequences. I will tell Armandy that your fight with the Russian was unavoidable and that you have no idea where this Bambi has run off to. I doubt she will accept this.” He shook his head and made a face. “The sex trade is a nasty business. As for the Russian, there is no use talking to him. We Cubans know some things about Russians. They are a mean, stubborn lot. I could have one of my—”

I waved him off. “I don't need a damn bodyguard. Can't afford it.”

Nando shook his head and flashed that knowing smile that never failed to irritate me. “You are as stubborn as a Russian, my friend. Where is the gun I gave you?”

I pointed down the hall. “In the bedroom.”

“Good. If you go out at night, take it with you.”

I nodded, but wasn't sure what I was going to do. The thought of packing a gun around didn't thrill me, particularly since I didn't have a permit to carry a concealed weapon in the first place. On the other hand, squaring off against Semyon again, unarmed, didn't thrill me either.

Nando must have sensed my ambiguity, because he added, “If this Semyon confronts you again, he will do more than cut up your ear, Calvin.”

I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, I get it.” Then I pushed the shrimp around on my plate before saying, “Are you going to tell me about Weiman's accident or what?”

Nando ate another shrimp and took a long pull on his Tropical. His face brightened. “Hugo Weiman lives with all the other millionaires on the north side of Lake Oswego. I have befriended his gardener, a Mexican from Oaxaca named Clemente Rodriquez. He has worked for Señor Weiman for eleven years. He remembers when El Patron shot himself. He wasn't there when it happened, but a live-in maid was, a woman named Maria Escobar. She now lives and works in North Portland.”

“Did you approach her?”

“No. Rodriquez said she has good English, so I figured you would want the pleasure. But here is the best part—he also told me that the accident did not happen at the house in Lake O.”

“I knew it,” I blurted.

“Maria told him Weiman came home wounded that night. He arrived in his wife's car with a bloody towel wrapped around his hand. The wife was driving and they were both very upset. Maria said something very bad had happened.”

I smiled so hard it hurt my ear. “Nice work, Nando. How can I get hold of her?”

He fished a card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. It had a street address and phone number written on the back. “She lives in St. Johns. She owns a taqueria
there, Maria's. I have heard the fish tacos are to die for. There's one potential problem. Rodriquez thinks she might be unwilling to talk to you about this matter.”

“Why?”

“He said Escobar stopped talking about the incident shortly after it happened and then left Weiman's employ a week later. He thinks Weiman might have paid for her silence.”

“There's always a catch,” I said, scraping garlic sauce off a shrimp with the shard of a
tostones
before taking a small bite. My headache was nearly gone, but my stomach was still tentative. I pushed my plate toward Nando. “Here. Take the rest of my shrimp. The ones I ate are thrashing around in my stomach.”

Before Nando left, he took another look out on the street. The Russians weren't there, but he still made a show of checking his shoulder-holstered revolver. Setting an example, no doubt.

I was in bed reading a James Crumley paperback when Picasso called thirty minutes later. He told me Joey was expecting me the next night, and I told him I'd be there after dinner. I put the book aside and sat propped on a pillow for a while. Archie came over and laid his head on the bed next to me for an ear scratch. Food, an occasional run, and a nightly ear scratch—that's all he required of me in exchange for his unconditional love. I finally turned off the light, and the last thing I remember thinking before slipping off was how many people in Portland seemed to be hurting and in need of help. Too many, by my count.

The next morning I did some more research on the VA policies on PTSD and checked my office voice mail. I returned two calls from prospective clients, proving not everyone in the northern valley listened to
Vincent's View.

I left for Maria's Taqueria at a quarter past ten. I didn't have a plan except that I wanted to be her first customer for lunch. I took the 405 over to Highway 30 and crossed the St. Johns Bridge. The massive Gothic towers of the structure made it look like something spanning the Thames in London. It was a fine day and people were out on the streets in St. Johns, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in North Portland crammed with small shops and two-thousand-square-foot houses.

The taqueria was located in a converted Cape Cod painted green with bright yellow trim and a red door. A sign in a window read Gringos Welcome. It wasn't open yet, so I crossed the street and got a cappuccino to ease the wait. That's one of Portland's finer points—you're never far from a great cup of coffee.

At 10:25, a young, attractive Hispanic woman hurried down Lombard and let herself into the taqueria. She wore white sneakers and a white cotton blouse over cropped pants. She was probably six months pregnant, and her stride was strong and purposeful, reminding me of Anna Eriksen. A few minutes later, two older women in white blouses showed up and were let in. The hired help, I guessed. At eleven, someone inside flipped the closed sign on the door to open.

The place had a warm, spicy smell: tomatoes, cumin, and red peppers. One of the older women was in the kitchen, the other busy placing menus on the tables. The woman I assumed was Maria Escobar was behind the small counter next to the entry, scanning a clipboard, pen in hand. She had a round face, high cheek bones, and a rosebud mouth accentuated with blood red lipstick. She glanced up and smiled. I smiled back and keeping it light, said, “Hi. Maria Escobar?”

She maintained the smile, but her face stiffened slightly. “Yes, I am.” Her look was direct, her dark eyes wary.

I found myself wondering if I looked like an immigration officer or something. I handed her a card, introduced myself, and told her I'd like to ask her a few questions about a previous employer, Hugo Weiman.

“What would you like to know?”

I glanced around and said, “Is there someplace we can talk in private?”

She nodded toward the back of the dining room. “We can talk back there, but I don't have much time. We'll be busy soon.”

I followed her to a back table, and after we sat down I plunged right in. “I'm investigating an accident Hugo Weiman had back in 2005, on May 18. A gun accident.”

Her eyes narrowed. Her posture became more erect. “I know nothing about this accident,” she said, her voice not quite defiant. “I'm sorry. I cannot help you.”

She started to push away from the table, and I raised a hand. “Wait. I need your help, Ms. Escobar. I know what you told the gardener, Clemente Rodriquez. The accident didn't happen at Weiman's home. It happened someplace else. Weiman lied about it.”

Her eyes flashed. “Why are you asking these questions?”

“Because a young man's life hangs in the balance,” I shot back. “I'm trying to help him find out who murdered his mother eight years ago.” I opened a folder I'd brought with me and handed her two pieces of paper clipped together. “This is a copy of a newspaper article about the murder.”

She took the papers and dropped them on the table without looking down. “I am sorry this boy lost his mother, but I know nothing about it.”

“I know you don't. What I need from you is the truth about what happened to Hugo Weiman and his wife that night. That's all I'm asking.”

She stood up, and I followed. “I'm sorry, Mr. Claxton.”

“It's been eight years. Did Weiman pay you to be quiet?”

Her eyes flashed sharp daggers and her mouth quivered. “I did
not
take his money. I decided to work somewhere else. That was all.”

“So why not talk to me then?”

She dropped her eyes and rested her hand on the gentle swell of her stomach. “I don't want to get involved. I have others to think about.” She turned and walked away.

I followed, and speaking to her back, said, “I understand, Ms. Escobar. I'm just asking you to tell the truth about that night, that's all.” Of course, she was right to be wary. If she were illegal, getting entangled in the justice system, even as a witness, would pose serious risks for her. I knew it, and she knew it. I said, “Look, I'll treat everything you tell me as strictly confidential and keep your identity anonymous.” This would mean using her only as a source but not as a witness, a tradeoff I was willing to make.

She turned around. “I'm sorry, Mr. Claxton. I cannot help you.”

So much for tradeoffs. “You have my number. Think about it. It's the right thing to do.”

I left the taqueria feeling thoroughly dejected. The only good news was that Maria Escobar's reluctance to talk seemed to corroborate what the gardener, Clemente Rodriquez, had told Nando. Weiman had tried to buy her silence, but she had refused the money. It seemed certain now that Hugo Weiman had covered up the true circumstances of his gunshot wound on the evening Nicole Baxter disappeared. I only lacked the details. How much did Maria Escobar know?

An east wind from the Gorge buffeted my car as I headed back over the St. Johns Bridge. The river was flecked with glistening white caps. I thought about this young woman turning down easy money offered to her by Hugo Weiman. I'd seen pride as much as anger flash in her eyes. Suddenly I felt a little better about my chances of hearing again from Maria Escobar. Maybe she would do the right thing.