The Big Gamble (25 page)

Ramona grinned back.

“And Deacon?” Kerney asked, interrupting the by-play.

“He’s mine,” Ramona said, turning off her smile. “I called and asked him to make some enlargements of the pictures he took. I’m picking them up this evening. Maybe he’ll be stoned enough to let down his guard.”

“I’d like to see those pictures,” Vialpando said.

“Not a chance,” Ramona replied.

“Can you give Detective Piño backup at Deacon’s?” Kerney asked Vialpando.

“It’s already arranged.”

“Very good,” Kerney said.

“I’d like to use Detective Piño undercover at Tully’s club, Chief,” Vialpando said.

“I haven’t forgotten your request, Sergeant, and I’m willing to go along with it, if needed. You’ve been very helpful to us, and I appreciate it. But let’s see how far we get before Ramona has to start her new job.”

Kerney pushed his chair back. “I want reports from everybody ASAP. I’ll be at home tonight. Call me there.”

All except Helen Muiz left the room. She stood up, handed Kerney the to-do list, and said, “I think those two young people like each other.”

“I noticed that,” Kerney replied.

“Well I hope they do a better job hiding it when they’re undercover.”

Helen left the room laughing.

 

Getting lost in El Paso put Clayton in a foul mood. What looked so easy to get to on a street map wound up being a series of false starts, wrong turns, and wasted time parked at the side of roads trying to figure out where in the hell he was. He did a lot better at finding his way in the mountains and forests on the rez than in the concrete and asphalt of cities.

Finally, he made it to the Upper Valley, a suburban strip of land on the west side of El Paso that bordered the Rio Grande. He drove through wide streets lined with shade trees, passing newer two-story homes, looking for the right turnoff. Here and there along the road were old farmhouses, some irrigation canals, and patches of agricultural land that had not yet given way to the sprawl.

Deborah Shea, the girlfriend who’d been so conveniently present at Rojas’s house, no longer lived at the address listed on her driver’s license. Clayton got the story from the current owner, an older, retired army major who actually thought cops were the good guys. He pulled out a mortgage settlement statement which showed that the seller of the house had been Big Five Trucking, Inc., Rojas’s company.

“I don’t know this woman you’re looking for,” the man said. “The house was vacant when we bought it.”

Clayton checked the closing date for the sale of the house against the issue date he’d recorded from Shea’s driver’s license. She’d used the address to renew her license six months after the new owner had moved in.

Clayton wondered if Deborah Shea had ever even lived in the house, and went looking for neighbors who might know. According to one woman, a home owner on the same street, the house had been built six years ago and a Hispanic family lived there prior to the retired army major moving in.

“Were there any other occupants?” Clayton asked, trying not to stare at the woman’s tinted and wildly curled hairdo that probably cost a hundred bucks a pop every time she went to the beauty parlor. He’d never known Apache women to do such strange things to their hair, and it had nothing to do with money.

The woman, whose husband ran a maquiladora in Juárez, shook her head. “No, it was just Tony, Martha, and the children.”

“How well did you know them?” Clayton asked.

“They were nice people who always came to the annual neighborhood potluck parties. The children were polite and well behaved. Other than that, they didn’t do a lot of socializing. The kids kept them too busy.”

Clayton rephrased his question: “What do you know about them?”

“Tony worked for a trucking company. He had a management position of some sort.”

“Big Five Trucking?”

“Yes, I think that’s it. Martha was a stay-at-home mom.”

Clayton thanked the woman, left, and kept looking for Deborah Shea. She wasn’t listed in the phone book or in the several recent city directories he examined at a branch library. He tried a long shot at a motor vehicle office, hoping that Shea had reported an address change, and struck out.

“Can you search your database of licensed drivers by address?” Clayton asked the office manager.

“You bet,” the manager said, turning to his keyboard.

“How far back do you want to go?”

“Six years.”

The man pulled up the data on his computer screen and printed out the information. The retired army officer, his wife, former occupants Tony and Martha Duran, and Deborah Shea topped the list. But another eight people, all young females, had also used the address to get licenses at one time or another.

“What is this address, an apartment or something?” the manager asked. “A group home? A sorority house?”

“None of the above,” Clayton replied. “It’s a single-family house.”

“That’s unreal. What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Clayton said, handing the list back to the manager. “Can I have hard copies of the license information for each of those drivers?”

“Sure thing.”

Clayton took the information to the El Paso police headquarters and got a desk officer to cross-check all the names with computerized arrest records. Two of the women had rap sheets of one count each, for soliciting. The officer escorted Clayton to a vice-squad cop and introduced him as Detective Brewer. He was an older, soft-bellied man with a passive face who wore a shirt with a cigarette-ash burn in the pocket. His breath stank of nicotine.

Brewer pulled the offense reports on the women. Both had been busted at an El Paso hotel.

“What were the case dispositions?” Clayton asked.

It took a minute for Brewer to ferret out the notations. “Both paid fines,” he said.

“Where can I find them?” Clayton asked.

“Hell if I know,” Brewer said. “They haven’t been seen in town for over a year, maybe two. Whores move around a lot these days, one city to the next.”

“What about their pimps?”

“There’s nothing in the files about that.”

Brewer didn’t seem particularly eager to help, and his attitude bothered Clayton. He stuck Deborah Shea’s motor vehicle photograph under the man’s nose. “Do you know this woman?”

Brewer shook his head.

“How about Luis Rojas?”

“I don’t know any Luis Rojas who’s working girls in El Paso,” the detective said.

One by one, Clayton fed Brewer all the driver’s license photographs to review.

“Except for the two whores, I don’t know any of these women,” Brewer said, handing them back.

Although he didn’t mean it, Clayton said, “Thanks.”

Brewer nodded, watched the Indian cop leave, and dialed a private number. “Tell Mr. Rojas I need to talk to him,” he said to the kid who answered the phone.

“Call back at six,” Fidel said. “He’ll be here then.”

 

The deputy’s report on the Norvell DWI stop identified the passenger in the car as Helen Pearson, and gave a rural route address. The phone book carried no listing, so Kerney called the post office and learned that Pearson now had a postal box. The application listed her permanent residence on a road off the Old Santa Fe Trail, just outside the city limits. It was a high-end neighborhood with big houses on large hillside view lots.

Kerney drove to the address. No one answered his knock at the main house, but two cars were parked in front of a large detached studio. A sign over the door read BUCKAROO DESIGNS.

Inside, two Hispanic women were working at sewing machines, and an Anglo woman was pinning pattern paper to some fabric at a large worktable in the center of the room. Racks of custom cowboy shirts, embroidered blue jeans, western-style dresses, and fringed jackets were lined up along a back wall. Bolts of fabric were neatly arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Scraps of cloth littered the floor.

The Anglo woman looked up, set aside a pincushion, and crossed the room. About forty, she had brown hair cut short, delicate features, and wore no makeup other than lipstick. The face of a film actress flashed across Kerney’s mind, but he couldn’t put a name to it.

“Helen Pearson?” he asked.

“That’s me,” the woman replied cheerily.

Kerney showed Pearson his shield and her smile faded. “What is it?”

“I’ve a few questions about Tyler Norvell.”

Pearson broke off eye contact and her voice rose. “What kind of questions?”

“You do know him?” Kerney asked, keeping an agreeable look on his face.

“Past tense,” Pearson said. “I haven’t seen him in many years.”

The palpable tension in Pearson’s body made Kerney want to probe more. But the shut-down look in her eyes argued against it. He moved off subject. “This is quite the enterprise you’ve got going,” he said, looking around the studio. “How long have you been in business?”

“Eight years,” Pearson said, still frowning.

Pearson wore a plain gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. “Do you run the business with your husband?” Kerney asked.

She glanced at the ring as though it had betrayed her. “No, he’s a landscape architect.”

On a bulletin board behind a nearby desk were crayon drawings signed by Melissa and Stephen. “Do you have children?” Kerney asked.

Pearson’s tension rose again. Her hand fluttered to her neck and her eyes looked frightened. “Why are you asking me all these things?”

“How long have you been married?” Kerney asked.

“Stop it,” Pearson hissed. She turned away to glance at the two women. “Why are you questioning me like this?” she whispered.

“Would you be more comfortable if we talked outside?”

Pearson nodded stiffly, her eyes dark with worry. She walked through the open door and led Kerney a good distance away from the studio.

Pearson had reacted to Kerney’s innocuous questions in a way that made him believe she was hiding something. A straight-out lie just might shake it loose. “I know you worked for Norvell,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Do I really need to be more graphic? I’ll put it another way: Norvell pimped for you.”

Pearson trembled, hugged herself, and said nothing.

Kerney stepped in closer. Pearson backed up. “It looks like you’ve built a new life for yourself,” he said. “Talking to me doesn’t have to ruin it.”

She laughed, harshly, shallowly. “Oh, so you’re the good cop, right?”

“Or the bad cop,” Kerney replied, “depending on how you want to play it.”

“What would the bad cop do?” she asked, struggling for composure.

“You have a husband, children, a thriving business, a reputation, new friends . . .”

Pearson finished Kerney’s thought. “Do I want them to know I was once a whore, a hooker, a prostitute?” The words spilled out of her.

“Something like that.”

She caved, lost her poise, buried her head in her hands. Kerney stayed back and let her cry. She forced herself to straighten up, composed her face, and spread her arms wide, as if to embrace the hilltop house, the views of the mountains in the distance, her reinvented, respectable life.

“If I hadn’t done what I did, I would have none of this,” Pearson said. “Can you understand that?”

Kerney nodded.

“How can you possibly protect me?”

“When the time comes, I’ll ask the DA to have you appear before a grand jury. Your testimony will be sealed and never made public.”

Kerney knew he might be making a false promise, and while he didn’t want to cause Pearson any pain, getting to Norvell was much more important than preserving the woman’s secret.

“It’s your call,” he said.

Pearson’s slight nod of agreement gave Kerney no sense of satisfaction. She had the look of a small animal about to be eaten by a predator.

“Come inside the house,” she said.

It took an hour for Pearson to tell her story. Part confession, part rationalization, it spanned the years just before Norvell’s return to New Mexico and his election to his first term in office. Pearson had been the number-one girl in Norvell’s Denver stable; the most expensive, the most in demand, the one with the most repeat customers.

She had made money, spent money, gotten high, lived the good life: designer clothes, weeks at luxury resorts with wealthy men, extravagant gifts, world travel. She explained what it had meant to a girl from a dysfunctional family who’d felt worthless and stupid.

She told him how watching Norvell’s older girls get dumped as they lost their bloom made her realize she had to do something with her life before it was too late. How coming to Santa Fe on working weekends to be with clients, she found a place where she thought it would be possible to turn things around.

Kerney didn’t interrupt. He heard her out as she talked about breaking away from Norvell, moving to Santa Fe, going into therapy, apprenticing with a clothing designer, opening her business, meeting her future husband, starting a family. Finally, she stopped, exhausted by the outpouring. But her eyes looked clearer, less troubled.

Kerney decided not to press too much for specifics. That would come later in an in-depth interview. He brought up Adam Tully and Luis Rojas and got confirmation that both were Norvell’s partners. He learned that Rojas lived in El Paso. She had no knowledge of Cassie Bedlow, Gene Barrett, or Leo Silva.

“We’ll need to meet again,” he said. “You can pick the time and place, but it must be soon.”

“How did you find me?” Pearson asked.

“Luck,” Kerney replied.

“Here at the house is best, in the mornings after eight. My husband goes to work and drops the children off at preschool on his way.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Kerney said. “I think we can wrap things up in one session.”

Pearson’s eyes bored into Kerney with the hardness of a con who’d been trumped. “You suckered me with this bullshit about the grand jury, didn’t you?”