Holy Guacamole! (24 page)

“Knock it off, Hector. Carolyn’s a civilian. She doesn’t appreciate cop humor.”

“Geez, Vallejo, ex-
cuse
me,” said Agent Parko.

After that we were interviewed separately. Frankly, I don’t know what I said to the man who talked to me. Someone else from the DEA. I dozed off right in the middle of a question at one point, and he sent out for coffee. I suppose I told him the whole story, hoping I could go home and fall into bed.

No such luck. We were then taken to an observation room, where we watched Mr. Barrientos being interviewed. The idea was that every time we heard him tell a lie, we would notify the man who had interviewed me, who would then go into the interrogation room and whisper to Agent Parko, who would threaten Mr. Barrientos for lying to him. This went on forever because Mr. Barrientos told so many lies. Probably everything he said was a lie, but we couldn’t identify all of them.

The things he said about us were certainly lies, particularly about me. I
never
responded sexually to his hand on my breast or fondled his genitalia once I had him taped up. Luz thought it was hilarious when I turned red and started to sputter. Some friend she was. I was so angry with Mr. Barrientos that I hoped they’d give him the death penalty. I even offered to testify at the death penalty hearing as to the emotional anguish he’d caused me by the nasty things he said. Luz didn’t think the prosecutor would ask for capital punishment. She said they’d try to “flip” him for a lighter sentence and testimony against his colleagues, unless, of course, he admitted to killing Vladik. It was all very disheartening.

When we finally left the jail, we were met by a newspaper reporter, a photographer, and representatives of three TV stations. Luz said something or other to them. I suppose she was used to such unpleasant and embarrassing scenes. I refused comment, and we made our way to the car, which had been brought around for us.

We didn’t get home until seven-thirty. I provided Luz with a bed, a nightgown, a toothbrush, and a tube of ointment for her knee, something Jason uses when he becomes over enthusiastic about his athletic pursuits and strains his muscles and joints. I’d have felt much more sympathetic to her pain if she hadn’t laughed during Mr. Barrientos’s slanderous testimony about me.

Targeting Boris

I
magine not getting
to bed until seven forty-five in the morning. I was still in deep sleep at twelve-thirty when Luz woke me up. “Get dressed,” she said. “I’ve made coffee.”

I peered blearily at the clock, calculated how much sleep I’d had—less than five hours—and told her to go away.

“We need to talk,” she insisted, and threw off my covers.

I snatched them right back.

“What do I have to do? Turn the shower on for you? Draw a bath? Pour cold water on your head?”

I sighed because it was obvious that she wasn’t going away. When I sat up, I had that dizzy, half nauseated feeling induced by rising when seriously sleep deprived. “I’m sick.”

“Nothing coffee won’t fix.” She went into the master bath and grabbed a toweling robe off the hook, Jason’s as it happened, and insisted that I put it on, then kicked some fuzzy slippers out from under the bed. “Cute,” she commented. “Do I have to put them on your feet?” I was still fumbling with the tie belt of the robe. “I warn you, kneeling hurts, which makes me real grumpy. So get into your own slippers.”

No matter what I wanted—and that was to crawl back into bed—I ended up in the kitchen drinking coffee that was strong enough to remove the enamel from my teeth. Did she carry her own brand, or had she boiled some of mine for several hours? It did wake me up.

“So, Boris Stepanovich. The SOB obviously lied to us about Barrientos killing Vladik. I didn’t hear anything in that interrogation to indicate that there was bad blood between Vladik and Barrientos, did you?”

“I missed a lot of what he said. Didn’t you notice? I kept falling asleep.”

“Well, Barrientos claimed that he was at Mariachi Caliente singing for half the night when Vladik died. And when a man won’t confess to me when he thinks he’s going to get a blade in his—”

“Yes,” I interrupted quickly. “And I noticed, when I happened to be awake, that the agents and detectives at the jail were throwing so many questions that he got his lies confused, but he still didn’t admit to anything but the—what are
mojados
, anyway?”

“Wetbacks.”

“Ah. Isn’t that term politically incorrect? Well, he never admitted to anything having to do with Vladik except illegal-alien smuggling.”

“Oh, hey, let’s be really politically correct—undocumented-immigrant smuggling.”

I giggled. “How about poor-folks-looking-for-a-home smuggling? Or—”

Luz grinned. “Knock it off. My ancestors waded across the river.”

“And mine were probably unpleasant Protestants whom nobody liked in their country of origin,” I said, still giddy from too little sleep.

“Sounds right to me,” she said. “Now can we get back to the point, which is Palomino didn’t kill Vladik. Which makes you wonder why Boris told us that.” Luz was wearing her scary look.

“Because Boris killed Vladik himself!” I guessed, having caught the drift of her reasoning.

“It’s sure worth investigating. Want more coffee?”

“I think I’ll make some breakfast. Your coffee is—ah—strong. Very strong.”

“Wimp,” Luz said laughing. “Boris claimed he was at Brazen Babes when Vladik died. We should check that out.”

“We could ask the Russian girls—women.” I had no idea whether Luz was interested in feminist, politically correct designations for women. She probably was. “They’re in the university dormitory now, and I’m sure they’d be glad to help.”

“Okay. And I think we should look up that bouncer. Then when we get some information, we’ll head for Brazen Babes, later tonight. First, we talk to the dancer Boris claimed to have slept with—Carmen, he said. Then we ask him why he lied to us.”

“I’d really rather not have to talk to him again.” That preference didn’t do me much good, nor did the statement that I needed more sleep. Luz said we wouldn’t be hitting Brazen Babes until late, so I could catch some sleep before we went. Then she offered to make breakfast while I called the Russian sopranos.

I had the telephone number for their floor at the dormitory, but another student answered. She said Polya and Irina were out in their new car with a couple of “jocks” from the dorm. That did not sound good to me. New car? Jocks? Perhaps those huge young men who had helped carry in their belongings? Perhaps I needed to have a talk with the girls about preserving one’s good name—wait. Had they decided that they weren’t lesbians? I asked the student when they might be back and was given a cell phone number. They had cell phones? I’d been soliciting help from the ad hoc opera committee, and the objects of our charity had already acquired cell phones and a new car?

I was somewhat reassured to find that the cell phone belonged to one of the athletes, who promptly put on Irina, who was so excited that she could hardly talk. Evidently Ray Lee Cleveland had arrived that afternoon in person with a 1985 convertible of some sort. The girls were stunned by the fact that it was a convertible, which they evidently considered the ultimate in American chic. I thought nothing could be more dangerous to one’s skin than daily exposure to El Paso’s continuous and powerful sunshine.

Even more exciting than the fold-down top, according to Irina, was the fact that the car started every time they turned the key. They had tried it ten times already, and the ignition had never disappointed them. They could have gone out by themselves, without their large neighbors on hand to push when necessary, had they realized what a treasure the car was.

Irina thanked me. Polya thanked me, and she was driving so I cut that short. Irina said that as soon as they had jobs—and they had an interview on Monday with the maquila person who needed translations from and to Russian—they planned to buy the ingredients to bake something (the name was Russian and the description was not promising) for the Clevelands and for me.

Evidently my earlier worries, except for those concerning skin cancer, were unfounded. I no longer felt it incumbent upon myself to warn the girls of the sexual dangers of association with brawny athletes. I finally managed to break into “Car Talk—Russian Style” to ask at what times, if any, they had seen Boris Stepanovich on the night Vladik died.

“He is being very angry with us that we do not dance for him anymore,” said Irina, sounding much less exuberant than before. “He threaten to turn us in to immigration peoples, but we say we have friend, Mrs. Blue, who is protecting us and seeing we have food and car and nice place to live.”

Wonderful,
I thought.
Now he’s probably very angry with me.
“Can you remember if he was in the club that night?” I asked again.

Irina and Polya conferred. I could tell that they had restarted the car several times since our conversation began. If they weren’t careful, they’d burn out the ignition. Even I knew that. “Boris Stepanovich is there when we come to work because he complains how late we are, but he knows why we are coming late. Because of opera party,” said Irina.

“And after that?” I asked.

“He send for Carmen after she dance, and we are not seeing them again before we are going home to trailer.”

After hanging up, I passed this information on to Luz, who said, “We need to talk to the stripper before we go into Boris’s office.”

“But I don’t want to go into his office. He’s mad at me because I lured his dancers into respectability. He’s threatening to turn them into the INS.”

“Yeah, right. Like he’s going to tell INS he’s got two girls working without green cards and not getting paid.” She set plates of toast down on the table and picked up the Sunday paper. “Take a look at this. We hit the front page.”

My heart sank when I saw the picture right in the center—in color. Luz and I, leaving the jail. “Look at my hair,” I cried. “There should be a law against photographing a woman who looks that bad.”

“Hey, I think it’s cute. All those pieces sticking up every which way. Makes you look younger. Except for the circles under your eyes. But don’t worry about the picture. Get a load of the copy. We’re both quoted.”

The headline said, “Ex-Cop and Food Writer Kidnap Wanted Drug Dealer in Juarez.” I sighed and skimmed the copy. Luz was quoted as saying, “It’s always a pleasure to see evil people brought to justice.” I was quoted as saying, “I’m tired, and I want to go home. If you and your microphone don’t get out of my way, I’m going to box your ears with it.”

“I couldn’t have said that,” I groaned.

“Oh, but you did. I heard it. You scared that TV guy half to death. He fell over a camera cord trying to get away from you.”

The I-Got-Kids Excuse

C
arolyn didn’t think
much of the breakfast I produced: two slices of toast each, spread with some jelly I found in the refrigerator, and another cup of coffee. She said the
preserves
were for canapés. Like I cared. Then she apologized, admitting that she was just grumpy and that she’d used the preserves on toast herself.

We tracked down the bouncer by calling the Russian girls again and asking for his name, which was Marcus Finnegan, aka Fats. Finnegan was listed in the phone book, so we got his address and visited his house across the mountain off Copia without telling him we were on our way. So much for elaborate detective work.

We found Finnegan in his front yard, a patch of yellow, scraggily grass in front of an adobe house that needed paint everywhere paint could be applied. He had a defunct refrigerator and some discarded furniture decorating the front porch, and he himself was sitting in a sagging lawn chair set in the middle of dead grass, sunning himself and his tattoos and protruding belly in his undershirt and grease-stained pants. A pretty sight.

“Hey, Marcus,” I called, climbing the cracked cement steps to his yard. “We came to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Piss off,” he replied, but with no particular animus. He was drinking beer from a can and promptly laid a newspaper over his face when I spoke to him.

I removed the paper, which had a story I hadn’t seen that morning. I hadn’t read much beyond the piece about us on the front page and our picture. On page two, section B, I learned that the Border Patrol had raided the Pinon Trailer Park on the Westside and caught fifteen illegal aliens, presumably in transit away from the border, and Ramona Islas-Barrientos, who was arrested for smuggling illegal aliens. Handing the article to Carolyn, I leaned over Fats and poked him in the chest. The man might have impressive arm muscles, but he also has tits that are bigger than mine.

“Let’s start again, Mar-cus. You being an important employee at Brazen Babes, which is to say their bouncer, and tight with your boss Boris, that asswipe Russian entrepreneur and purveyor of naked—”

“Hey, shut up, will you? I got kids. They’re right there in the house.”

I could hear them, galumphing around and shrieking. “Like I care, Mar-cus. You don’t want your kids to hear the questions, get your fat ass outa that chair. The three of us can take a stroll down the street and have our chat in private.”

Carolyn cleared her throat and discreetly nodded toward the porch where the noise had shut down, and two kids were peeking out the screen door. Obviously she thought I should watch my language in front of the children. How did she think he talked at home? Like he suddenly changed from a dirty-mouth bouncer to a clean-spoken daddy. Marcus saw them too. His beady little, fat-encased eyes jumped back and forth between us and the offspring, one of whom was yelling, “Hey, Ma. There’s two ladies out . . .”

Before Mrs. Marcus could respond, we were all crowding down the cement steps and heading away from the house with Marcus in the lead. We got as far as a stone-and-weed-choked arroyo at the end of the street, where Marcus sat down on a rock and said, “So what d’ya want? I’m a family man. I don’t take my work home. Ain’t the kinda thing a man tells his wife and kids about.”