Falling Down Read online

  Wraaaack wraaack.

  Wrens, desert trash birds. I hate them, hate their raucousness. The uniform officer standing nearby clanked his baton against the aluminum gutter downspout, but the wrens just went farther up the roof.

  “Yeah,” Kyle said. “All we want to know, you recognize anybody?”

  Renteria shook his head. He wouldn’t look up.

  “He knows who they were,” Kyle said to me.

  “No, man. I don’t know who they were, okay?”

  “Did they all have tattoos?”

  Renteria’s teeth chattered. Kyle offered him the tequila and Renteria took large, thirsty gulps, tequila dripping onto his clothes.

  “Tattoos,” Kyle said. A very soft, gentle voice. “They had big tats, right? Especially on their faces? Like a number? You know the kind of people I’m talking about, Ramon.”

  “Maras, sure, okay? They’re gonna find out I told you, I’m dead.”

  “They won’t find out.” Kyle turned to me. I’d been studying the GPS history on the cell. “Anything useful there?”

  “One of the best GPS units around,” I said. “A Brunton multi-navigator unit.”

  “I’m not a techie,” Kyle said. “What does it do?”

  “Barometer, altimeter, compass. And a twelve-channel parallel receiver.”

  “So?”

  “You know those navigation systems in cars?” I said. “Same thing. This gives a simple, one-button to find your way back home, find your way anywhere. Stores up to ten reversible routes, with stops in between start and finish. It automatically records your trip and stores the data.”

  “So?” Kyle said again.

  “Four different locations,” I said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Just that. I can pinpoint three different places here on the south side. One up somewhere in Tucson.”

  “Does that thing show addresses?” He leaned over, I turned the tiny screen so he could read it.

  “Within a few houses.”

  “What would we find there?”

  “Not my job,” I said.

  “Nope. Sure not your job. Just write ’em down, I’ll send out detectives. This gonzo here. This Ramon. Whaddya think he knows from this GPS thing?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ve got the locations. Data talks, even if he doesn’t.”

  He waved the uniform over to keep Renteria secure. “You ready to go back in there?”

  “Hooo,” I said, not meaning to exhale so loud.

  “Repellent,” Kyle said. “Not pretty. You want to leave, just walk around the outside of the house. You got the GPS stuff, that’s most important.”

  He waited.

  “I’m here,” I said finally. “Let’s do it.”

  He grabbed the assist canes, levered himself to his feet quickly. Fit the metal support bands around his upper arms and moved easily. Slid back the screen door to the dining room, went inside, and I followed.

  One body lay across the kitchen floor, a hand pushed against a carport utility door screen with such force the man had shoved the bottom corner of the door open three inches before he died. The CSU techs weren’t finished, so the door stayed open. Flies already swarming inside, feasting on the blood from the stumps where all his fingers had been chopped off. The man’s other hand was nailed to the linoleum flooring, the fingers also missing, the arm smashed to bits at the elbow so the forearm protruded at an impossible angle from the body. Impossible if you’re alive, I mean. When the tech moved I saw the feet lying flat against the floor, the ankles smashed and both feet also nailed to the floor.

  “Different pattern with the fingers,” a CSU tech said. “Hand on the door, somebody just whacked it off with one blow. Probably used this.” Pointing at a meat cleaver on the Formica countertop. “But this hand…first they nailed it down. Roofing nails, I’d say. Zinc heads. Then Joey here—”

  “Joey?” I said. “You’ve got an ID?”

  “Tom, Dick, Joey, what’s the difference? They started out, they took off one finger at a time. The other two, in the living room, shotgun with no hesitation. Didn’t even have weapons, but whoever came in here, they wanted something only from Joey here. Did his teeth first. Then, near as I can tell without running some DNA and blood analysis, this guy’s hand? It’s been chewed on.

  “Chewed?” Kyle said. “He trying to fight off the horror?”

  “Nah. He’s already nailed down. My guess? A dog.”

  “A dog,” Kyle said. “Jesus. I always think I’ve heard it all.”

  The tech placed a latex-gloved finger under the body’s jaw, turned it so I could see his mouth.

  Bits of teeth and bone.

  “Teeth first, or last?” another CSU tech said. “But not random, I’d say.”

  “Bled out from both hands and mouth, small amount from the feet. They left this guy alive long enough to find what they wanted. Then they put the shotgun against his back, wham. Random?”

  “These aren’t gangbangers out to get revenge for some vato humping another vato’s sister. This is deliberate.”

  “Why are you so sure about that?” I said, done with my digital photographs.

  “Well, I’m not. But first off, there’s the familiar death card. La Bruja warns all snitches and rats and witnesses. No me jodas. Plus, in seven years working homicides, I’ve seen all kinds of mutilations, this just has the smell of deliberate torture, you know what I mean, lady?”

  I did.

  I went into the living room.

  Sensory overload. Not the shotgun pattern. Nine double-ought pellets, bloody holes splattered across each man’s shirt. The pattern tight, the shotgun probably no more than five feet away.

  Not the pattern, nor the blood. Not the missing fingers. Just every detail of the room:

  cheap mesquite and fake rattan furniture

  overstuffed sofa and matching chair with huge cushions

  a dead woman

  a dead young child

  The woman and child had been irrelevant to the killers. I worked extra hard shutting down my gut feelings, shooting one picture after another.

  Kyle moved next to me, his mouth to my ear.

  “Guy was our inside man. Three years it took to get him inside. Now he’s just toast.”

  Rental house furniture with a busy tan and rust fabric that wouldn’t show stains, the kind of junk you buy at a chain discount furniture outlet, no payment for one year, no interest for two. Five-foot-long faux brass coffee table, the mirrored top crazed with age. Flat black assemble-it-yourself entertainment center with expensive flat-screen TV and surround-sound speakers and DVD equipment. Biker and car magazines everywhere, stacks of porn tapes and DVDs.

  I shot over a hundred images. Different aperture, different times. Had to mount my flash on the Nikon shoe for the body in the corner. Enough. I went out to the front yard, leaned against a TPD car in the driveway, hands down in front, holding the Nikon while I tried a mantra, to get the whole sensory data out of my system, I couldn’t leave the crime scene unless I started reclaiming myself before I drove away. I can’t do this work much longer, a thought which had distracted me a lot these days, distracted me now so that I didn’t hear Kyle until he came beside me.

  “You all right?” Kyle said.

  “Smiles and cries,” I said finally.

  “Cries and Whispers?” he said.

  Out of my mantra, halfway between curious and irritated. He mistook it for confusion. “An Ingmar Bergman film, right?” he said.

  “No. Training Day. Denzel takes this new detective, Ethan Hawke, to Scott Glenn’s house, Hawke’s over-loaded with some PCP Denzel made him smoke, but Hawke says that’s what the streets are. Smiles and cries. How you’ve got to learn to hide them.”

  “Don’t watch many cop movies. What do you see on this street?”

  Typical South Tucson street. Small stucco bungalows on small lots, fencing everywhere, all the windows with wrought-iron bars. Old cars, furniture, discarded toys, even clothing, strew
n around some of the yards. Half a block away a large Dodge pickup sprawled across a front lawn, the hood up, the car boom box speakers thundering.

  “I don’t see any people,” I said finally.

  “Hiding. They all know that maras have been here. We’ll do a house-to-house survey, but nobody’ll know anything, they didn’t see or hear anything. They don’t want to be slaughtered, either.”

  “This gang, these maras, are they really that savage?”

  “You’ve been inside, you’ve seen the slaughter. What do you think?”

  “The death card,” I said. “Who’s this La Bruja?”

  “No idea.”

  “And the threat. No me jodas. Where’d that come from?”

  “Border slang. My theory? You know that movie Heat?”

  “I thought you didn’t watch cop movies.”

  “The bank shootout. Pure adrenaline, watching that scene. Anyway, there’s this grungy guy who’s part of the early crew that robs the armored truck.”

  “Waingro,” I said.

  “Yeah. Well, he’s holding a nine mil on the three armored car guys, who are stupefied out of their brains by the accident and robbery. Waingro, he’s pure psycho. He says to one of the guards, ‘Don’t fuck with me. You want to fuck with me?’ And kills the guard. These maras, they’re like all gangbangers, they’ve got the director’s cut of movies like Scarface. They get off on all the movie psychos. Anyway. That’s my theory about these cards. So what are you doing at this crime scene, anyway?”

  “I came here to look for financial records. I mean, that’s why I thought I’d been asked. But the CSI techs didn’t find any computers, any disks or data CDs, no bank account information, no deposit slips.”

  “The GPS units?”

  “You’ll know when your people seal off those locations.”

  Kyle eyed me carefully. “You know more about this than I do,” he said finally. “I’m the lead homicide detective, but you know something more. Right?”

  He unsnapped a leather pouch on his belt, his thumbs flying over the cell phone keyboard, sending several text messages, waited for brief replies.

  “Listen,” he said. “Word is that you’re up for some job at TPD. Tracking maras computer accounts, bank records? Is that connected to this?”

  “Ask Bob Gates,” I said. “How’d you know that? About the job?”

  “Word’s around.”

  “Bob said that the word was not around.”

  “This is just between you and me.”

  “And who exactly are you?” I said.

  “A cop with thirty-seven years on the force. Passed over for sergeant, some say. Didn’t want to be sergeant, I say. Normally, I’d be off the street, in my little casita, watching TV and drinking tequila and once in a while thinking about eating my gun. Only on the bad days. They keep me around. I’ve been on so many homicides, I’ve always got something they need.”

  “Sounds to me like you enjoy still being around.”

  “A word in your ear,” he said. “Some of the top suits, they don’t want you. Jordan Kligerman. He’s a good-looking stud, but he’s a pogue. Never rode a mile in a unit, never took down a suspect. He’s an accountant, he’ll use you up.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Christopher. Who are these…these maras?”

  He hesitated a long time. Not from wanting to hide things or avoid the discussion, just choosing his words.

  “They’re the worst of everything,” he said finally. “The Colombians, the Russian mafia, these maras are the absolute worst of all the ruthless assassins I’ve ever known. You saw the woman and the kid? Executions. Meant nothing to them. Probably made the man watch before they nailed him down.”

  “Are drugs that serious a problem in Tucson?”

  “Tucson,” he said. “I’ve been here since the old days. Before stretch marks.”

  “And I should be interested in this…why?”

  “In the old days, you used to know who did what. Gambling, women, horses and dogs, racing, I mean. The dog track is still here, but now there’s a big greyhound rehabilitation group. They’ll place a greyhound in your home. Only problem is, especially with the males…they’re trained to race on the flat, to go after the rabbit. You try to adopt one of these males, they can’t go up and down stairs, they can’t even jump into your car. They only know what they’ve been trained to do. They don’t know anything else.”

  “And you? These days, you don’t know…what?”

  “The border is broken, Laura. These days, it’s not just your average Jose coming across so he can feed his family. Now, the people coming up from Mexico. Hell. Coming up from Central America. They’re different people, different criminals, different values. But mainly, they’re criminals.”

  A low-rider cruised slowly by, subwoofer pumping a salsa beat, the five occupants turning their heads in unison to stare at us while driving by. I flinched.

  “Not a drive-by,” Kyle said. “They’re just curious.”

  “This violence, it all seems so…so random.”

  “Unpredictable. Seen enough here?”

  Again, he sorted through what to say.

  “This isn’t about the drugs. It’s about control of those drugs. I can get you a thick file, if you want in on this. I don’t know, I’m not high enough in TPD to know why they want to hire you. But if you choose to go with TPD, count on me. I’ll watch your back.”

  “Why would you promise that to somebody you just met?”

  “You look like a woman with trouble in her heart, you talk about smiles and cries.”

  He pivoted his upper body, looking up and down the street, deciding what he wanted to say to me.

  “Another word in your ear,” he said finally.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know anything about this possible job at TPD. But don’t do it.”

  “Why?”

  “You see anybody on this street yet?”

  “No.”

  “Most of them are illegals. Or undocumented workers, if you’re politically leftish. Most of the men, and they are mostly men, they send money back to Mexico. At Christmas, they all go home and celebrate Three Kings day. Then they find another coyote who’ll smuggle them back across the border, so up here they can earn more money to send home. They pay two to five thousand dollars to get smuggled across, with a guide. Most of them haven’t got the money, they’ve given all they earned to their families. So they take out loans to pay for the smuggling. It’s all just…just, well, it’s a system that benefits a few. The border is broken, Laura. People and drugs and all kinds of things flood northward. Whatever hushhush operation TPD wants you for, it’s just a waste of time.”

  “And your advice?” I said.

  “More than a few Tucson cops,” he said. “They may not be on the take, but their eyes are for sale. They work on the edge, they depend on their CIs, but sometimes they use police secrets, something they’ve overheard, or an internal document they’ve seen, they trade off these secrets for CI tips.”

  “Okay, Bob,” I said. “You’ve warned me, okay. So?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Forget…what?”

  “Whatever they’ve offered you.”

  “Chris.”

  “Christopher.”

  “Christopher. Nobody’s offered me anything. I’m doing one small thing for them tomorrow. I get a payback, then I’m gone.”

  “Payback,” he said. “Here’s my view on payback. My ex drove a Honda Accord. It got stolen and recovered the next day, except the passenger seat was missing. Like they only had time to remove that one thing, and the heat showed around the corner. So a month later, my ex is bitch bitch bitch, get a new seat, so I’m at a junkyard looking for a replacement and I see this seat that looks so familiar, it’s so familiar it’s…it’s the stolen seat, it’s still got the smiley face decals on the side. That’s when payback is just plain sour.”

  His cynicism enveloped me, overwhelmed me, I turned to my car.

/>   “What small thing?” Kyle said.

  “Say what?”

  “You said, you’re doing one small thing for TPD, then you’re done.”

  “Take my advice, Christopher. You don’t want to know.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Christopher, tell me. How’d you lose so much weight?”

  “Seven hundred calories a day. Three hours on a treadmill. My wife said I’d got to take it off or she’d leave me.”

  “She must be happy.”

  “Well. She left me anyway. See you around.”

  I trudged to my Jeep Cherokee, set the Nikon on the passenger seat, and drove away, I didn’t even put the lens cap on or turn the battery off.

  I called Mary Emich, apologized for being delayed, said I’d be there soon.

  Headed up I-10 and turned east on Ina, but not really to meet Mary Emich. Just to go to the park and be by myself. In a world where a child’s life meant so little, I wanted to spend time in my favorite spot in Tohono Chul.

  The grotto, the Riparian area, the soothing watery ripples of the artificial creek bed and the puppyfish. A spot where I’d found serenity five years ago, but where I also set in irrevocable motion the events from which Tigger died.

  But that’s another story for another time.

  7

  “Oh, dear,” the old woman said. “These aren’t the desert pupfish.”

  Reading the placard beside the stream, listing several different kinds of endangered fish. She’d banged her walker into my serenity, couldn’t stay in one position, moving around and around until I gave up.

  “Over there,” I said. Pointing to the grotto some twenty yards away. “This is the riparian habitat.”

  “This isn’t the grotto? This plaza, this isn’t the grotto?” Confused, trying to read her park map while navigating her walker.

  “Let me show you,” I said. “Just a minute.” I dialed Mary Emich’s number and she answered immediately. “I’m here. Near the grotto.”

  “Five minutes,” Mary said.

  “I appreciate your help,” the old woman said. “But look, there are some fish in this little stream, I don’t care if they’re pupfish. I’m going to sit on the bench, I’m just going to listen to the water, I’m just going to watch these fish.”