Call Of The Witch (9 page)

“
What?”

“
Well he is, Tony. The
poor woman works her fingers to the bone all day scrubbing other
people’s toilets, and this punk robs her of her hard-earned money
and spends it on booze, drugs and whatever.”

“
I suppose, but I meant,
what you thought about him being a regular at Mike’s Pub. Is that
just a coincident?”

“
I don’t know. You heard
the neighbor kid.”

“
Brian.”

“
He said the man in the
van that stopped Kelly yesterday had an accent.”

“
He didn’t say it was a
Spanish accent. Besides, Karina Martinez said her son doesn’t own a
van.”

“
Maybe not, but I still
want to talk to him.”

“
All right. You’re
driving. Guess we have nothing to lose. You should get
that?”

“
Get what?”

“
The phone. It’s Detective
Olson.”

“
I didn’t
hear––”

Carlos’ phone rang, nearly scaring him out of
his seat. I looked at him and smiled. “Told you.”

He drew a bead on me and scowled. “I hate
when you do that.”

“
Better get it quick. It’s
important.”

He answered after the third ring. I could
tell from his side of the conversation that it was big. He didn’t
repeat what he heard, but his questions were relevant to the case.
He ended with, ‘thanks’, assuring the caller he would tell me. As
he tucked the phone back into his pocket, he said, “You were
right.”

“
Olson?”

“
She said the kidnapper
called back with a ransom demand. You’re not going to believe
this.”

“
What?”

“
They only want ten
thousand dollars. Brewbaker’s got that much in his safe at
home.”

“
Did they say when they
want to make the drop?”

“
No. Lionel told the
caller he wanted to talk to Kelly first. Make sure she was all
right. The caller got angry and hung up.”

“
Damnit! Was Dominic able
to trace the call?”

“
Negative.”

“
Huh. Ten thousand dollars
you say?”

“
Yup.”

“
That doesn’t seem like a
lot of money for a ransom. I think we’re dealing with amateurs.
Surely whoever it is must not know how much Lionel Brewbaker is
worth.”

“
Ten thousand dollars is a
lot of money to a punk like Raul Martinez.”

“
It sure is.” I flipped my
hand in a forward gesture. “Let’s go talk to him.”

“
All right then. To Mike’s
Pub it is.”

Some of the bars on the upper side of
Jefferson Avenue are high-class, a few of them even ritzy,
especially the lounge at the Debutante Hotel. Lower in the hood,
however, the clubs get shabbier. Closer to the railroad tracks they
become downright seedy. Mike’s Pub sits just south of the tracks
next to an old textile warehouse. It sits back by the loading docks
where addicts, alcoholics and derelicts congregate at night.
Occasionally one of the hopped-up misguided fools falls asleep on
the tracks. Carlos and I know this because we’ve investigated a
number of train vs. pedestrian fatalities over the years. It’s
never pretty and we never get used to it.

I followed Carlos into the pub. Heads turned
immediately. We were in street clothes, but everyone there knew we
were cops. Some, perhaps with outstanding warrants, moved quickly
to the back of the room. A few disappeared entirely. It took awhile
for our vision to adjust to the cave-like atmosphere and the sharp
spikes of neon stabbing at our eyes. The smell of stale beer and
cigarettes hung in the air like carnival grease. A tattooed woman
leaning over a pool table squealed after sinking an eight ball. I
thought for a moment it was for some other reason. Maybe it
was.

Carlos spotted Raul first. He nudged me with
his elbow and pointed him out. “That’s him,” he said. “I recognize
him from his picture at Karina’s.”

“
All right then. Let’s go
talk to him.”

We split up and approached Raul from both
flanks. The bar stool to his left was empty. I took a seat there,
bumping into Raul on purpose to distract him. A bald biker-looking
dude with a grizzled beard and heavily tattooed arms occupied the
stool to Raul’s right. He was bigger than Carlos, but complied
without protest when Carlos tapped his shoulder and motioned a nod
for him to take a hike. Carlos straddled the stool, but did not
sit.

“
Raul Martinez?” he
said.

Raul had been looking at me, sizing me up.
Perhaps he had already figured me out as a cop. I saw him reach for
his beer bottle just as Carlos called his name. I clamped my hand
down on his wrist, pinning it to the bar. He attempted to stand,
planting his feet firmly on the floor. Carlos palmed his chest and
pushed him back, knocking him off balance. He grabbed the bar rail
to keep from falling. His stool went over. A patron carrying a full
tray of freshly poured beers tripped over it. Glasses and bottles
shattered. Chairs scattered, and a ten-foot circle opened up around
us. I twisted Raul’s arm behind his back and spun him around.
Carlos grabbed Raul’s right arm, forced it across his neck and held
him there in a choke hold.

“
You want to try
something, Martinez?”

The jukebox fell silent. The front door
opened and several patrons rushed out single file. Another three or
four slipped out through the side exit. Someone behind me cleared
his throat, and I heard the clicking of a shotgun’s hammer pulling
back. I looked over my shoulder. The bartender and his sawed-off
twelve-gauge had a bead on the three of us. I reached into my
pocket slowly, showed him my badge and identified myself. Carlos
didn’t seem the least bit interested. He kept his own bead on
Martinez, leaning into him so hard the man could barely breathe.
The barkeep lowered his weapon. I returned my badge to my pocket;
and said to Carlos, “We should take this outside.”

The barkeep agreed.

We ushered Martinez out the back door and
across the parking lot. He offered no resistance, but Carlos still
found it necessary to press Martinez’s face against a chain-link
fence so hard it imprinted a patchwork of diamonds into his cheek.
I mentioned something about going easy on him. He said he was going
easy. I guessed it was all just a matter of interpretation.

“
Spread`em,” I said,
directing Martinez into the frisk position while Carlos patted him
down. I think Carlos was hoping to find something incriminating:
drugs, weapons, anything that would give us a reason to haul him
in.

“
Whaddya got scumbag?”
Carlos’ voice sounded short and breathless, as if spitting the
words through gritted teeth. He pulled a cell phone from Martinez’s
front pocket. “Is this yours?”

Martinez remained his usual cordial self.
“Fuck you!”

“
Yeah, I bet you’d like
that, wouldn’t you?”

He tossed the phone to me. I flipped through
the contact numbers and determined it was not Kelly Brewbaker’s.
Carlos continued his pat down.

Martinez said, “Why are you arresting
me?”

“
We’re not,” he answered.
“Not yet anyway.”

“
I didn’t do
anything.”

“
You attempted to strike
an officer.”

“
No I didn’t.”

“
Yeah ya did. My partner
here will attest to that.”

Martinez looked over his shoulder at me. I
gave him a friendly smile and a nod.

“
You’re all the same, you
stinkin` cops.”

“
What’s this?” said
Carlos. He removed what looked like a pair of lady’s underpants
from Martinez’s back pocket. He unfurled them and held them up for
me to see. They looked extremely small. “Get this, Tony. Girls’
panties. The pervert’s carrying around little girls’
underwear.”

“
Whose are they?” I
asked.

Carlos wadded them up, spun Martinez around
and shoved the panties in his face. “Yeah, scum. Whose are these?
You hitting on little girls?”

Martinez seemed unapologetic. “Fuck you.
Ain’t no law against carrying women’s panties.”

“
They’re not women’s.
They’re girls’.”

“
So? Ain’t no crime in
carrying girls’ panties.”

Carlos tossed the underwear to me. He grabbed
Raul at the collar and rammed his fist up under his chin, knocking
his head back into the fence. “It is if the girl who owns them has
been kidnapped.”

“
Hey man, I don’t know
nothing `bout no kidnapping. So fuck off.”

“
Then whose are
they?”

“
I don’t know.”

Carlos drove his fist further into Martinez’s
neck. Martinez gasped, but found no relief in his struggle. “Whose
are they?”

“
I don’t know,” he
snarled. He was breathing through his nose, but even that was
difficult for him. “My mother’s a maid. She does laundry for some
rich white folks, the Brewbakers I think. Sometimes she takes it
home to wash so she can watch her soaps on TV.”

“
So after she does the
wash, you go and steal the kid’s underwear?”

He looked away then, unable to maintain eye
contact with Carlos. I could tell that Carlos did not yet get it. I
cleared my throat, and when he looked at me, I shook my head and
said, “He doesn’t take the clean ones.”

Carlos seemed confused at first, then
surprised, and repulsed. “That’s sick!”

Martinez said, “Might be sick, but it ain’t
illegal.”

“
Technically it is,” I
said. “It’s stealing.”

“
So sue me.”

Carlos said, “We went to your house you know,
and we talked to your mother.”

“
What, did she tell you I
steal girls’ panties?”

“
No, she told us you steal
her money.”

“
No she didn’t. She
wouldn’t do that.”

“
Why wouldn’t
she?”

“
Because she knows
I’d––”

“
You’d what?” said Carlos.
He tightened his grip on Martinez’s collar and gave it a twist,
choking off the last bit of air he was able to squander.

“
Carlos!” I reached over
and tugged on his sleeve. “Let him go. He’s not worth
it.”

I could see that Carlos wanted to hurt the
man. Martinez’s face had begun to turn blue. I grabbed Carlos by
the wrist and tried pulling it away.

“
Carlos, stop it! Let him
go!”

In all the years I have known Carlos, I’ve
never known him to lose his cool with a suspect. Sure, he’s had to
get rough with a few, even had to shoot a man dead once. But he’s
never inflected police brutality on anyone, not like he was doing
then. I grabbed his hand with both of mine and yanked as hard as I
could.

“
Carlos! LET. HIM.
GO!”

I like to think I saved the man’s life. Truth
be told though, Carlos is incredibly strong. His love for Snickers
Bars and greasy foods notwithstanding, he keeps himself remarkably
fit, especially for his age. If he wanted to, he could have killed
Raul Martinez with his bare hands. Shy of shooting Carlos, I could
do nothing to stop him.

When he finally let go, Martinez slumped to
the ground like a ragdoll. I looked at Carlos. He seemed
bewildered, perhaps surprised at himself for what he had nearly
done. I said to him in a hush, “What was all that about?”

He shook his head lightly. “I don’t know,
Tony. I wanted to kill the bastard.”

I looked back at Martinez. He was coming
around, but slowly. “You damn near did,” I said. “Damn near
did.”

It was obvious after that little incident
that we weren’t going to get any useful information out of Raul
Martinez. So with great reluctance, and no probable cause to haul
him in, we had no other option but to let him go.

It was seven-thirty when we left Mike’s Pub
and headed out to Danvers to see Dmitry Kovalchuk, Kelly’s dance
instructor and owner of Swan Lake Dance Studio. I offered to drive,
thinking Carlos needed some time to pull himself together after the
episode with Raul Martinez. But he wouldn’t have it. Said that
driving would calm his nerves more than sitting idle in the
passenger seat would. I asked if he wanted to talk about it. He
said no. A few miles later, he broke a stretch of silence and said,
“Jose.”

I had been daydreaming out the window,
thinking about Karina Martinez and something she said. When asked
about Kelly’s manner of dress, she told us that Lionel Brewbaker
was strict, but that Mrs. Brewbaker liked to spoil Kelly, let her
wear whatever she wanted to wear on weekends. How would she know
that, I thought, if she didn’t work for the Brewbakers on
weekends?

Carlos came back, “Did you hear me?”

I turned to him. “What?”

“
I said Jose.”

“
Jose who?”

“
My brother.”

“
I didn’t know you had a
brother.”

“
Well I don’t now. He’s
dead.”

“
Oh. I’m
sorry.”

“
Don’t be. I’m
not.”

“
Okay, then why bring him
up?”

“
You asked me if I wanted
to talk about it.”

“
I asked you if you wanted
to talk about your dead brother, Jose?”

“
No! You asked me if I
wanted to talk about what happened back there. At Mike’s
Pub.”