Nine Days: A Mystery Read online

  Before I shut the computer off, I went to check my e-mail and saw that there was a message to Margaret Ness from Pete’s nom de plume, Uncle Vito. I clicked it open and read:

  Here’s another picture of Olmos—I got it too late to include in our recent correspondence.

  There was an attachment, a digital photo of a squat Hispanic guy in his mid-sixties, in front of an office building on a city street. It looked like it had been taken from a car about half a block away. I didn’t recognize him.

  Puzzled, I went and got the cardboard box out of the cabinet. A white paper corner peeked up from the scramble of crinkled money, and I wondered why I hadn’t seen it the day before. It was a plain letter-sized envelope, sealed. Inside there was a note, handwritten in Pete’s spiky scrawl, folded around a single color photo. The note read:

  J.—

  We discovered after you left that one of our northern suppliers, Nick Olmos, was an undercover federal agent. He went over the wall after it broke and might be looking for trouble. This was taken in San Antonio. Keep your eyes open.

  —P.

  The photo was of the same guy from Pete’s e-mail, only here he was thinner, better groomed, and without the wire-rimmed glasses. He was talking to a familiar-looking woman at some sort of outdoor vegetable stand. I peered closer, and my stomach dropped through the floor. It was Silvia Molina.

  She was using better posture, wearing younger clothes, and her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail that made her look closer to fifty than seventy. I checked the camera-stamped date in the lower right corner. It had been taken six days ago.

  I stood there staring at the photo until my eyes watered, then laid it on the table and went out into the backyard. I wanted to feel that big sky lifting the top of my head off. I needed something to release the pressure.

  My first coherent thought, when the brain made its way back into my skull, was to pack my stuff, go find the truck, and just start driving. I had fifty grand sitting on my kitchen table and a clean slate. I reminded myself about the woodwork and went back inside to try Hector’s cell again. He still wasn’t answering. I doubted that he was at home, but I didn’t want the possibility nagging at me, so I called the bar.

  Mike answered. He told me that he hadn’t seen Hector since Friday.

  “Any idea how I can reach him?” I asked. “He’s not answering his cell.”

  “Sorry,” Mike said. “What’s up?”

  Wishing I knew the answer to that question, I moved on to logistics. “You don’t happen to know a mechanic named Nathan, do you?”

  Mike recited a number, apparently from memory, which I scribbled down on a paper towel. While I did it, I heard him rummaging around with something clinky on the other end of the line.

  “What are you doing at work in the middle of the day?”

  “I thought maybe somebody had turned in my phone. I don’t see it in the lost and found here, though.”

  I remembered Tova bringing it to him on Thursday night. He sure did lose things fast.

  Something jingled, and Mike muttered, “Well, I’ll be damned. Richard’s keys.”

  “The ones he lost on Thursday night? Are you sure?”

  “Well, there’s a medallion thing with ‘R.E.H.’ on it, and a Lexus key. Somebody must have turned them in on Friday, because we tore the damned place apart looking for them on Thursday night, after you and Connie left.”

  Tweaked as I was at the moment about Pete’s e-mail, I needed a second to remember why I cared about Richard’s keys. The whole issue seemed absurdly meaningless now.

  “You still there?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah. Sorry. Listen, if you see Hector, ask him to call me, will you?”

  He agreed and we hung up. I punched in the number he’d given me, and a man with a deep Texas voice answered. He’d gotten a message from Hector first thing that morning, he said. He told me his shop was a few blocks north of the square, on Main, and that I could pick up the truck any time.

  IV

  After retrieving my wheels, I got to work freaking out, alternately planning my escape and talking myself out of it again. Silvia’s changed appearance in the photo told me that she was a field operative of some kind, undercover either here or there. Several million possibilities branched out from that one, all of which I spent some time with that afternoon, narrowing down to the two most likely: She’d gotten her information about me from Olmos, and they were now colluding to squeeze me for some cash; or his appearance in the vicinity was a fluke, and they were working together on something completely unrelated to me. Given Silvia’s behavior toward me since I’d hit town, I was betting heavily on the former.

  At some point in the proceedings, I ran a background check on her through one of the online services and discovered that she was a Cuban national who’d been granted asylum in ’94. She appeared to have come straight to Azula and lived here ever since, which smelled funny to me. She was sixty-two and widowed, with no children, so I doubted that she had family here, and it didn’t seem like the most likely destination for a Cuban expatriate. Maybe she’d been pressed into service with the feds as part of her asylum deal. The thought gave me a little hope; if true, it had happened long ago enough that I wouldn’t be at the top of her food chain. Of course, everything I was reading about her could all be government-sponsored bullshit, just like the stuff anybody looking me up on one of these databases would find.

  I almost let six o’clock go by, but I was thinking clearly enough by then to realize that the local underground might be my only resource when this Silvia/Olmos shit hit the fan. Not only that, if I could make nice with the Kings, maybe they’d share whatever was currently floating around on the airwaves about me. That would give me a big leg up. Not to mention the gun.

  V

  The Inca’s place was at the end of a dead-end gravel road, a crooked board-and-batten house that backed onto open pasture. There were three pickups in front, parked at various angles on the dry grass, and I smelled meat cooking when I got out and went up onto the porch.

  The door behind the screen was open, giving a view all the way through to the backyard, where a dozen or so people were milling around under a canopy of white Christmas lights. Not expecting anyone to hear me, I rapped on the screen door, and almost jumped out of my skin when a hand reached immediately out of the darkness to open it.

  The guy attached was maybe thirty-five, short, and solidly fat, with a red and black bandanna riding low on his forehead, covering his eyebrows. Every visible inch of skin except for his face was adorned with indigo tattoos. He was dressed in an oversize black T-shirt and baggy black jeans, and wore a pair of what looked like welder’s glasses—thick black plastic frames with nearly opaque round lenses—despite the dimness of the room.

  He gestured politely for me to come in and sit down, asking, “Can I get you something? There’s beer, lemonade.…” He had a low, melodious voice with a thick accent, and spoke with care, as if testing each word for accuracy before pronouncing it.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  He nodded, and waited for me to take the worn tweed chair facing the sofa. The room was cozily illuminated by a single floor lamp, and the homey sound of children playing and people laughing and talking filtered in from the backyard.

  “Cabrito’s almost ready,” he told me, dropping onto the sofa after I sat down. “It’s been cooking all day.”

  I waited. It was his party.

  “You lied to Alex about having a police record,” he said.

  I hadn’t expected that, and replied almost automatically, “It was in California, under another name.”

  The Inca smiled, showing a gold grill with a diamond on each canine, and said, “You are Jaana Rizzoli, yes?”

  Time stopped moving. High up on a back shelf somewhere, the brain noticed that he’d pronounced the name correctly—Jane-ah rather than the flat Jah-na that always drove me nuts. The black lenses remained trained on me for what felt like a century; then the Inc
a shifted one hip forward and brought out the Kahr ACP I’d seen with Alex. I waited for it to point at me, but it went down onto the coffee table, on its side.

  A little girl about five years old came trotting into the living room from the back of the house. She went around the coffee table, showing no interest in the gun, and pressed her little body against the Inca’s knee, saying something in Spanish. He put an arm around her, leaning his head down to listen, then replied in a low voice and gave her a gentle push. She looked at me curiously as she sidled out.

  “My daughter,” he murmured, smiling.

  There was a long pause; then he went on in his ponderous way. “I consider it my duty to make sure that she grows up in an environment devoid of the nonsensical bullshit groups like the Aryan Brotherhood perpetrate. I take my parental responsibilities very seriously.”

  The flat lenses glinted toward me again, and I felt a hot surge of hope.

  “It’s my understanding that the Brotherhood doesn’t operate in this area,” I said, amazed at how calm my voice sounded.

  “You understand correctly,” he replied, leaning back against the sofa with his chin lifting. “I don’t allow those coños in my territory.”

  “How do you keep them out?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “The chief of police, she was a woman of great insight. She understood that allowing my organization to operate without undue interference had benefits to her position.”

  I felt a twinge of respect for the Amazon. She was more than just cop. She’d had some sense.

  The Inca seemed to be waiting for me to say something, and when I didn’t, he asked, “She was helping the government to hide you?”

  I couldn’t see the harm in him knowing it now that she was dead, so I nodded.

  He continued looking at me, his head to one side.

  “Did she tell you who I am?” I asked when the silence started to stretch out.

  He shook his head. “I assure you that my source is of no danger to you. Please honor me with your trust on that.” The “please” didn’t make it sound any less like a threat.

  I slid to the front of the chair and looked at the Kahr, then at him. He nodded. I picked it up, holding myself tight. A spasm of revulsion clutched at my stomach, then receded. I checked the chamber and magazine and slipped it into my front pocket. It felt like a block of ice pressed against my hip.

  “I wonder,” I said carefully, “if you’ve heard any other interesting things that might concern me.”

  “Do you refer to this captivity of the policechief’s husband?” The Inca frowned, puzzled.

  I didn’t, but he had my attention. “Richard’s alive?”

  He nodded, sneering, “He hired some white boys for a job and then failed to pay them for their work. They are holding him at their compound on Flat Creek, just across the county line west of here, hoping that someone will pay a ransom for his sorry ass.” He paused to run a finger under one eye, chuckling softly.

  I was still sitting on the edge of the chair, my elbows on my knees, and I felt a faint tremor run down into my hands. I pressed them together so that it wouldn’t show. “Do you know what Richard hired them for?”

  “Yes,” the Inca said simply. I waited, but he didn’t go on.

  “Did it have something to do with Milestone Properties?”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  A thrill of satisfaction shot through me, making me less careful. “How about Teresa? Did he have them kill her?”

  The Inca made a derisive noise. “Those cowards can’t even kill a man who deserves it.”

  “So who did it?”

  “I do not know,” he said, looking off to one side with annoyance twisting the part of his face that I could see, “and I am not much pleased by that fact. There has never been a hit in my territory of which I was not made aware beforehand.” I shifted in the chair, and he added quickly, in his peculiar, formal cadence, “It was not the Brotherhood—this I know, from my informants—but neither was it another of my known competitors.” He sighed. “Things will not go so well with my people now that she is gone.”

  I considered showing him the photo of Olmos that I’d gotten from Pete, but the radar told me to keep it in my pocket.

  “May I request a favor of you?” the Inca asked.

  There was no requesting about it. He held all the cards. “Of course.”

  “This man Maines, is it true that he is to become the next chief of police?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, surprised. “I wasn’t aware that he wanted the job.”

  The Inca retrieved a black lacquer card case from his hip pocket. It was the real thing, not a plastic knockoff. Crime pays. He removed a card, checked the back, and held it out. “If you learn of anything more concerning his future plans, I would appreciate knowing.”

  I nodded, taking the card. The name MAURICIO TORRES was printed on the front, and it had a phone number handwritten on the back.

  VI

  I drove out to a sporting goods store that I’d spotted on my trip to Johnson City, bought a box of Tritons, and loaded the Kahr in the parking lot. It didn’t feel quite so repellent in my hand now—a tamed basket of adders rather than the stinging wild bite it had given me before. I sat there holding it, letting my hand get used to a gun again while I considered the best approach to use with Silvia.

  There was nobody home at the botanica when I got there. I thought about waiting around, but the late night with Hector was beginning to catch up with me, and I was afraid I’d fall asleep if I parked. Until I got more information on this Olmos character, I didn’t want anyone getting any kind of drop on me.

  I got back in the truck and aimed it toward the corner store on the square, to pick up something with caffeine and sugar in it. As I came around the courthouse, I saw that the lights were on in Hector’s apartment.

  I pulled up and parked at the curb, let myself into the bar, and vaulted up the stairs. The apartment door was standing open, and the radar stopped me on the landing to listen. There was a quiet step in the hall; then the sheriff’s lanky figure came into view with its back to me, moving toward the kitchen table.

  “I hope you have a search warrant,” I said from the doorway.

  He turned slowly, not surprised. “Don’t need one. Exigent circumstances. Guerra was stopped in Galveston this morning. Trying to hire a boat to Mexico.”

  A curious sensation washed through me. It felt a lot like relief. I hadn’t even been aware that I was worried. Immediately behind it, though, was disbelief. “To Mexico? Are you sure?”

  Maines had been casting his pale eyes around the apartment, and now he turned them on me. He didn’t say anything, just waited for me to continue talking.

  “What time did they stop him?” I asked, coming in.

  The sheriff savored his ten seconds, then said, “Eleven eighteen.”

  That meant Hector had left my place near dawn, which would have come shortly after I’d fallen asleep.

  “Bail hearing in the morning,” Maines was saying. “He’s cooling his heels across the square until then.”

  “How long has he been in there?”

  “DPS released him to me about eight.” As if it were an afterthought, he added, “He probably wouldn’t mind a visitor. Judge isn’t likely to grant bail, given his flight.”

  I gave that the look it deserved, and Maines’s phantom smile appeared. “No tricks. I already got all the evidence I need.”

  I didn’t beg to differ.

  Headlights splashed across the face of the courthouse, and Maines stepped over to the bay window to look out. Then he turned with his index finger to his hat brim, saying politely, “Excuse me.”

  I watched him go, then took a walk around the apartment. Nothing appeared to have changed since the last time I’d been in it, except that the cat food bowls were empty again. I filled them up, and Luigi materialized at the top of the stairs as if by magic. He complained about the slow service, then started to eat.
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br />   I went over and lay down on the bed to think, which I realized, too late, was a mistake. The sheets smelled of Hector, and my body started making decisions. I fought it for a while, then decided it couldn’t do any worse than my head, and got up.

  VII

  The jail was a dirt-colored stone behemoth standing flush with the curb, its front door recessed into an arcade of massive arches. The hall inside had a ’60s-era green terrazzo floor, with a small office of the same vintage on the right. In it, a tan-uniformed kid with a Taser on his hip sat with his legs up on the desk, playing online poker.

  He finished the hand before he got up. “You wanna see Guerra?”

  I looked him over. He was maybe twenty-five, white-blond, clean-cut, skinny. I’d never seen him before. “Maines told you I was coming?”

  He went past me into the hall, jingling keys. “Only prisoner in the place.”

  Another hall ran down the center of the building, parallel to the street. It was divided from the front section by an iron gate that looked original.

  The kid unlocked this and held it open for me. “He’s right here,” he said, gesturing to the first cell on the left. “You need anything, just holler.” He shut the gate and locked it.

  “You’re leaving me alone with a murder suspect?” I said, just to egg him. “What if he tries to kill me?”

  The guard shrugged. “Holler loud.”

  Hector was lying on the bunk with his feet toward the front of the cell, in the same clothes he’d been wearing last night. There was a straight-backed chair standing against the hallway wall, which I pulled over and sat in, side-on to the cell. Hector didn’t move, just lay there with his arms folded under his head, looking at the ceiling.

  “You OK?” I asked after a couple of minutes had ticked by. I saw a muscle in his neck twitch, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes were open, but he wouldn’t look at me.

  I’ve experienced the flighty male often enough not to take it personally, but there was obviously more going on here than a guy trying to avoid an unwanted romantic entanglement.