The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller (19 page)

“Yas?” Angela said, but stood a little away. Her dark hair had a purplish sheen and spilled around full shoulders, while an orange top revealed ample cleavage.

Ray pulled himself up, lowered his shades, and said in his most becoming voice, “Come sit with us a minute?”

“You do my work, den I come sit with you.” She looked at all our faces, coming back to David’s often. “I get your waitress.” She tooled away.

I said to Ray, “That irresistible charm.”

“Next time,” he said.

David said, “She’ll be back.” He was tense, but still managed to scarf some tortillas and butter.

Soon Angela brought a pitcher of beer. She looked at David and said, “You want somet’ing different?”

“No, I’ll take the beer.” He nodded toward Tamika and said, “This is Tamika. She’s looking for Binky. Is she around?”

“Hi, girl. You know my cousin?” Tamika said.

Angela sent David a glance, then studied Tamika’s face and flashed a frown. “Your cousin? Yeah, mine too,” she said. “I got to go wait on a table.” Then Angela spied the folded twenty Ray had between two fingers, held in her direction, though subtly.

She left to wait on a table but returned after saying something to our server. Standing next to Ray, her right arm was to his left beneath the table edge. He’d passed the twenty. Angela said, “Everybody happy here? You no order dinner?” She looked at Ray and dropped her voice. “You got sonthin’ on your mind?”

Unsure of me, she glanced in my direction a few times.

“I haven’t seen my cousin since we been, like, thirteen,” Tamika said in her soft, harmless way.

“Yah?” Angela said.

“Yah.” Smiling, Tamika picked up the pitcher and poured for each of us as if she had all the time in the world. Looked up to say, “You think she’ll come around tonight?”

“Maybe,” Angela said, and started to move off.

Ray caught her by the skirt, lightly. Flirting with his voice, soft, melodious: “That
pito
over there,” he said, nodding toward the man who came and went into the kitchen area, “you won’t let him fire you, will you, you talkin’ with us?”

“He won’ fire me,” Angela said. “I be back.” She picked some empty bottles off another table and took them back into the kitchen. Minutes passed before she returned. Then, standing with her hands in front of her and perspiration shining on her forehead, she said, “You come wit’ me.”

Tamika gave a smile that would entice a snake out of a bird’s nest. “You damn all
right
,” she said.

Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack, click-clack
, went Angela’s little feet on the sidewalk. She and Ray were in front. Tamika and I trailed, and David was in between. Angela kept glancing back at him. We passed a doorway of a closed business where a grubby transient grabbed his crotch as we walked by.

Ahead, neon button lights chased around the office window of “The Bar None Motel.” We passed through an arch and into the courtyard and came up on the short leg of an L where only one
window glowed with light behind a shade. Angela went to that door and knocked one-two, one-two.

A small face, surrounded by dark hair, appeared as the door cracked open. It opened wider and the girl stepped back, her eyes darting from face to face.

Ray smoothly jostled Angela sideways as David and Tamika went in, then walked her a few steps back toward the street.

I followed the other two into the room. My cop training made me look in the bathroom. Behind the door on a hook was a white negligee. Over the shower rod a pair of white bikini panties were drying. A red silk rose lay on top of the medicine cabinet. And on the toilet tank was a slim plastic container holding salmon-colored condom packets. I picked one up and looked at it. Made in Japan.

Binky was sitting on the bed when I came back. She wore a gray nightshirt with Bugs Bunny in full-toothed grin on the front, and gray slippers with blue inner linings. The bed was turned back for only one person. The pillow was propped up as if she’d been watching TV before we came in, and indeed, the set was on, volume low, tuned to
Star Trek
on Channel 13. She backed up on the bed and tucked her legs under her.

David said, “We’re here to help you.” Her eyes shifted to him and held.

When Tamika spoke to her in Spanish, the girl shook her head vigorously, clearly alarmed.

“Interpret,” I said.

“I asked if she is being kept here against her will.”

I had taken one of the two chairs in the room, Ray stood, and Tamika sat on the edge of the bed. Binky kept glancing at Ray with something I read as fear.

Tamika said something to her, fast, urgent. Then she turned to us and said, “She’s coming with us. I told her that. She can stay at my place.”

“What about Angela?” I said, concerned for her too.

Ray said, “We take one thing at a time.”

Tamika got up and opened drawers in the small dresser in the corner. Binky stayed frozen in place. I found two plastic grocery bags in a drawer and handed one to Tamika, and as she stuffed things in them from other drawers, I went into the bathroom and got Binky’s toothbrush and a small, flowered cosmetics bag. I glanced at the condoms—the same brand as those I found in the coffee packets in Turtle Rock—and took those too.

Then I went to the open closet-space opposite the bathroom and got a pair of sneakers, two folded tank-tops, and a clump of underpants off the shelf. A long red sweater was on a hanger. I pulled it off and brought it to Binky, who was now standing by the bed but cowed by Tamika’s relentless energy as she slammed drawers, drew off a pillowcase, and filled it with clothes she couldn’t fit in the plastic sack. David helped Binky put on the sweater. Then she got down and pulled from under the bed a pair of brown moccasins.

Now her expression was set to a timid determination. She crossed over to the other side of the bed and tipped up the lamp on the nightstand, retrieving a small sheaf of folded money, and thrust it into her sweater pocket. When she turned again to look at us, a shadow of a smile came over her face.

TWENTY-THREE

R
ay led the way. Tamika, with her plastic sacks in tow, walked beside Binky, and David and I brought up the rear. When we were almost to the archway, two men angled toward us from between the office and the first motel room.

Binky stopped, still as a bird sighting a cat, then stepped to the other side of Tamika while Ray slowed and his face grew hard.

The larger man called out, “Hey!
Pucha!
”

Binky whimpered.

“Hey, yourself, man,” Ray said.

The larger man wore a dark leather jacket and a beige shirt, and had a tight, mean face. The smaller one had both his hands in his jacket pockets. I kept him in my sight, watching for cues.

Light from motel signs glowing on his leather jacket, the bigger one said to Ray, “Where you goin’, Pancho?”

“No trouble, man,” Ray said. “We’re just going to our car.”

“Fuck you are,” lemon-face said. No one moved. I’d look back later and say it was a Mexican stand-off, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time. “That one don’t go with you,” the guy said, thrusting his chin Binky’s way.

David said, “Is your name Izzy?”

The man stared, then made a move past Ray and Tamika to reach for Binky. Ray jammed over and grabbed the guy’s shirt in a fist, nearly lifting him off the ground, and shoved him away.

I pulled Binky back and stood in front of her. The little guy kept shifting weight, not sure of himself, keeping an eye on David. David moved closer to him. Then the big one came at Ray.

Ray blocked a punch, then his left flew out and slammed into the jerk’s jaw so hard a string of spit laced over the dark air. The man landed quick and hard, unable to spare his head from the asphalt. It hit like a boot dropped on hardwood.

The little one had no impulse to join the fray. He backed up, palms forward while Ray was leaning over the first one, who was still down but trying to rise.

Ray dug into the gonzo’s arm with plier-like fingers just above the elbow. The punk yelped so hard it rang around the court. “I don’t have nothing, I don’t have nothing,
fuck
you, man!”

Ray prepared to mash him again.

“Enough,” I called to Ray. “Come on, let’s go.”

Tamika’s Spanish vowels were tripping in that ripple-brook way, soft words, trying to placate.

Feeling for a weapon on the downed guy and coming up empty, Ray called him something in Spanish, then turned and approached the twerp David was covering. Ray shoved him and in an instant gained a control hold, then patted him and pulled a ditch-gun out of his sock. I got a sick knot in my stomach. It just as easily could have been drawn and used.

The little guy started chattering, “Okay, okay, okay. Lea’ me ’lone, man. I done nothin’ to you.”

“Shut up,” Ray said, and tucked the gun under his own shirt in back.

Lemon-Face rose on one elbow and whined, “Why you messin’ with my gir’fren?”

“You mean her?” Ray said. “She your friend? You his friend?” Binky stood frozen. “I don’t
think
so. Now get outta here. Go on!” Ray said, and moved like he was going to give the punk a kick. The punk scrambled up and hurried off with the other one. A few yards away, they both spat curses our way.

“Ask her who those guys were,” Ray told Tamika. He was checking the car mirrors to see what might be coming up on us.

She did, and Binky paused ever so briefly, then said, “Julio.” She looked down as if sorry to be giving up the name or sorry for a memory. “D’other one Izzy.”

“Izzy! That’s
him!
The coyote,” David said. “I knew it!” He craned his head to look back, but we were too far away by now. In Binky’s small face was the resigned dread of a kid watching for foot shadows to break the light under a bedroom door.

We sat like a family in Tamika’s living room. Impressionist prints of women in pastels and parasols hung on the walls. Tamika, a woman of contrasts.

Ray was getting a big soda bottle to put on the coffee table, and a large bag of chips ripped down the middle, while Tamika brought glasses. Binky spoke with a sadness in her voice. I’d give the girl credit. Stressed or not, she tried to use English. “I know Izzy…
hijos
,” Binky said.

“Since you were kids,” Tamika said.

“
Si
. He go way. But…I see
mas
.”

“Ask her his full name,” I said.

Before she could, Binky answered, “Hector Corona Lizzaraga.”

“Hector,” I said.

She nodded. She told Tamika that Izzy was her brother Humberto’s age. Hector was getting to be a big-shot in her village from his activities as a smuggler of persons. One time, Humberto decided to cross the border in the hope of sending money back to the family. Everything was so going well, until Humberto was killed by the
Norte Americanos
one night, in one of the gullies. “Bery bad mans,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. From then on, Hector’s price for getting people across went up. But Binky believed she should take her brother’s place. For her mother, it had been the first time she could buy blankets for everyone.

David, sitting across from her, whispered, “Blankets.”

She said, “Izzy…
loco
,” her lips quivering. “My fren’,” Binky said after a few moments, “
Fue asesinado
.”

Tamika glanced at Ray.

Even I got that one. “Who was that, Binky?”

She wiped her nose on her red sweater, studied her lap for a moment, then said, “Her name Nita Estevez.”

Ray hadn’t known about Nita Estevez. It was a county case, nothing he’d be privy to. “A month ago,” I said.

Binky nodded. Bunny teeth protruded in a fold between the sweater edges. Her face was heart-shaped, giving all the more effect to her helpless, childlike appearance.

“We’re going to protect you, Binky. You know that, don’t you?” I said. “Do you know who murdered your friend?”

“Izzy.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Bery mad.”

“What was he mad about, do you know?”

Softly, with a furtive glance toward Dave, she said, “He mad she no wanoo fock guys.”

It was after two when I got home. Tomorrow I’d call the guys at Homicide and deal with whatever criticism was due. For now I was too exhausted to think.

I had three messages on my answering machine. I pressed the button and let them play. The first was from Mary Langston. She wondered if her grandson could come see the guinea pig. The second was from Joe: “Checkin’ in, kiddo. Call me in the morning. I may get turned loose tomorrow. Love ya.” Joe, using the L word, which we don’t do…so much commitment. Joe, coming home!

My thoughts flipped to David, sleeping on Ray’s couch now. Knowing I could hear the next message from the machine, I drifted in to the laundry room to check on Motorboat. His blond head was sticking out of the log, nose working hard against the shadows: That you?

I bent over the cage and lifted the lid. His pod-seed eyes were as intense as a madman’s. “It’s me, little guy. Just me.” I pinched
some alfalfa out of the nearby sack and lowered the stiff stems in. Ever-Ready beastie snatched the stalks, which jerked now in motion like a nervous green mustache.