Текст книги "January Justice"

Автор книги: Athol Dickson

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

31

In the bunk above me was a bodybuilder who called himself Flaco. He had tattoos everywhere, including teardrops at the corners of his eyes. On the bunk across the narrow aisle beside me lay another inmate named Chuy, who seemed to suffer from chronic flatulence. I didn’t know the name of the guy who was lying on the third bunk above Flaco, or the two guys above Chuy, or the guys in the bunks on either side of mine and Flaco’s, or the guys on either side of Chuy. There were a lot of guys I hadn’t met that day, six rows with three sets of bunks in the dormitory where I was, fifty-four beds and sixty-one inmates, seven of whom were sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor.

I wore the orange jumpsuit they had given me when I was booked. On the concrete beside my bunk were the cloth slippers they had given me when I gave up my shoes. I lay on a thin mattress, staring at the putty-colored steel under the mattress of the bunk above me. I was thinking about history. It is often said to repeat itself, and this was no exception.

I had been in jail before, in a Serbian-controlled village outside Sarajevo when my fire team had been overwhelmed after nearly three weeks in country, directing air strikes against Ratko Mladić’s artillery and mortar positions. The Serbs had been very unhappy with us. Compared to their accommodations, the Orange County Men’s Jail in Santa Ana was a five-star hotel. The snoring and occasional shouts and slamming doors made it tough to sleep. So did the fluorescent lights shining in my eyes from the corridor, but at least nobody was getting tortured down the hall, and my elbows weren’t wired together behind my back.

I also thought about other people’s history. Doña Elena’s, for example. Kidnapped before, and almost kidnapped again, if that had been their intention. It wasn’t surprising that she had managed to kill Castro. After the first kidnapping, it would have been much more surprising if she hadn’t begun to keep a weapon by her bed, and if she hadn’t learned to use it. But Alejandra Delarosa suddenly attacking her again after so many years… I hadn’t seen that one coming.

What had drawn Delarosa out of hiding?

The answer, I realized, might have been me. Me, asking all those questions up in Pico-Union.

I thought about Valentín Vega, setting me on Delarosa’s trail, and Castro, dead set against it. I remembered what Doña Elena had said about the other voices she had heard while Delarosa held her captive, men’s voices talking about the URNG. I wondered just how good a handle Vega had on his own operation. Was it possible a splinter group had been behind the kidnapping without his knowledge?

Or had Valentín Vega known that all along?

Maybe Vega had played me from the start, used me to stir the pot a little, make it hot for Delarosa and her confederates—Castro and whoever the other two men were. Maybe Vega had used me to get Delarosa to come out of hiding and to get Castro to show his true colors.

But even if Castro had been in on the kidnapping with Delarosa, why would they go after Doña Elena again? If the goal was to finish what they started, why wait so many years?

Maybe it wasn’t about the kidnapping. Maybe there was something else going on, something I hadn’t yet begun to uncover. For example, who were those two guys who had tried to kill me? Were they really with the Guatemalan junta, as I’d assumed? Were they actually allied with Castro in some scheme? Were they the two men Doña Elena had seen with him and Delarosa in her home? And if so, what was their interest in the situation?

I felt like a tourist from a far-off country wandering through a town where nobody spoke my language. Now and then I caught a word or two or saw a facial expression or a gesture that made sense, but mostly I had no idea what anyone was saying.

A guy passed my bunk, making for the head. A few minutes later, he came back. This time he stopped. He turned to face my bunk. He put his hand on his groin. I sighed. He was hidden from the stomach up by Flaco’s bunk above me, but I could tell he had to be at least six and a half feet tall. The big ones always overestimated their abilities.

Bending down, he said, “Move over, punk.” His low voice rumbled like distant thunder.

I focused on what Bud had said. You defend yourself, no matter what. Haley would be happy with nothing less. I said, “Keep moving.”

He chuckled. He bent a little more to look down on me. He said, “Move over and get naked.”

He was a white guy, late thirties, probably, with a full black beard grown nearly to his chest, a shaved head, and a swastika tattoo on his neck. I popped him in the crotch with the knuckles of my left hand. He grunted with pain and bent a little lower as I spun around on my back, braced my shoulders against the wall, and kicked his knees with my heels. There was a loud popping sound. He screamed and dropped to the floor.

I got out of the bunk, got a grip on his beard with one hand, and took the collar of his overalls in the other hand. The inmates on the bunks on each side watched silently as I dragged him down the aisle between them. It was hard work. He was heavy. His screams became whimpering moans.

“Oh, my knees. You broke my knees.”

I reached the open area near the door where the overflow guys were lying on the mattresses on the floor. The inmate closest to the door was a little fellow, maybe five feet four and one hundred and twenty pounds.

I told him, “Go find this guy’s bunk and get in it.”

The little fellow got up and went looking. I dragged the would-be rapist to the little guy’s mattress and dropped him there. The rapist was still moaning loudly. I banged on the door ten or eleven times with the side of my fist, and then I went back to my bunk.

A few minutes later, two guards came in. One of them knelt beside the moaning man while the other one stood facing the bunks. He shouted, “Who did this?”

I lay on my back, studying the underside of Flaco’s bunk above me. I was still thinking about what Bud Tanner said and what Haley would have said if only she were there. Step one is, you go on. You don’t take the easy out. Semper Fi, no matter what.

Again the guard shouted, “Who did this?”

Nobody answered.

A minute later, two other guards arrived. The four of them each gripped a corner of the sheet under the moaning man. They picked him up and carried him away. The door slammed behind them. Everyone was quiet. After a few minutes, someone in a nearby bunk began to snore.

32

In the morning the guards led us out and down a hall into a large recreation area, where we lined up for chow. Powdered eggs, powdered milk, some sort of orange-colored liquid, cold bacon, and a slice of white bread. It wasn’t any worse than a meal ready to eat in the Marines. I found a seat at a round steel table and dug in.

About nine o’clock, four guards came into the recreation area and announced they would be calling names for court. Mine was the third name on their list. When I walked over to the deputies, they put cuffs on my wrists and chains around my ankles, which were connected by another chain to the cuffs. After they had called a dozen prisoners up to be restrained, we all shuffled off in single file.

It turned out the Orange County Superior Court had a courtroom right there in the jail. They kept us waiting in a holding cell until our names were called. When it was my turn, a deputy removed the cuffs and shackles and led me into the courtroom. It wasn’t a very big space. The ceiling was low. The public seating area was limited but completely full. I figured most of the observers were reporters. Obviously, a home invasion at a congressman’s residence was big news. I figured the reporters had already checked my criminal record and learned I was one of the butchers of Laui Kalay. Toss in a movie star like Doña Elena mortally wounding one of her attackers, and you had a global story.

I thanked God for the presence of mind that had led me to answer “self-employed private investigator” when they booked me into jail the day before. I told myself there was no reason the reporters would care about my employment history, no reason they would look into it hard enough to learn I was once Haley Lane’s chauffeur and bodyguard. I told myself the police file on Haley’s murder wasn’t public, so the reporters wouldn’t know I was the other victim on the night she died. I told myself those things and prayed they were true.

Teru was waiting for me beside a table in front of the raised platform where the judge was sitting. He looked good in a well-tailored black suit with a red paisley tie and a pair of tasseled Italian-looking loafers.

“Nice shoes,” I said.

“Can’t say the same about yours.”

Looking down at the slippers, I shrugged. “Comfort before fashion.”

We sat at the table. He put a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen in front of me. “Sign this power of attorney so I can tell Howard Williams to cover your bail,” he said.

“Howard Williams?”

“The lawyer in New York.”

“I know who you mean. But can’t I use my own savings and a bondsman?”

“With a bail bondsman, you’d have to cover ten percent. Do you have a hundred thousand?”

“You think it will be set that high? A million dollars, really?”

“At least.”

I sighed, picked up the pen, and signed where he pointed on the paper.

The bailiff called the court to order, and the judge asked the lawyers to go to work. A middle-aged woman sitting at another table rose and explained that the people believed I had participated in a home invasion. She listed their evidence against me. The judge asked me how I wished to plead. Teru and I stood up, and I told her I was not guilty. We sat down again. The middle-aged woman said the judge should refuse to grant me bail, because I was a highly trained ex-soldier with a criminal record, capable of great violence, and an obvious flight risk who had spent years traveling all over the world. Teru stood up and said the judge should grant bail because I was a highly decorated marine with strong connections to the community.

The judge cast her eye over the crowd of reporters and said, “Bail is set at one million five hundred thousand dollars. Bailiff, call the next one.”

The middle-aged woman at the other table looked smug. She probably assumed I wouldn’t be able to make that much bail.

Teru said, “Should I tell Williams to use a bail bondsman and pay the full amount directly?”

I thought about it for a minute. “If Williams pays it in cash, would the reporters find out?”

“No. The source of bail payments isn’t made public.”

“If I appear when I’m supposed to, the county returns the money?”

“That’s right, unless there are fees. They’ll take those off the top.”

I decided it didn’t make sense to pay one hundred and fifty thousand to a bondsman when I didn’t have to. Haley would want me to be smart with the money. “Tell Williams to go ahead and cover the whole million and a half.”

About two hours later, a deputy took me to the intake and release center, where my clothing and the contents of my pockets were returned. They didn’t return my firearm or my knife. Teru met me outside in the lobby. So did half a dozen reporters, including two camera teams. Everybody started asking questions at the same time. I had learned how to handle it from watching Haley. I smiled as widely as I could and looked straight at the cameras so my photos in the media would look wholesome and friendly, but I didn’t say a word. It was a great relief that nobody mentioned Haley.

Teru and I jaywalked across Flower Street, with the reporters all around us. He guided me toward the parking garage next to the municipal stadium. Questions kept flying in spite of our silence. I admired the reporters’ persistence.

At the parking garage, we took the stairs to the second level and got into Teru’s Porsche. He put his unlit pipe in his mouth, gunned the engine a couple of times to warn the reporters standing behind the rear bumper, and backed out of the parking place. He drove well through the little crowd. Not everyone knows how to drive a Porsche in low gear.

When we were on the road, I said, “Where’s the limo?”

“At the house. Detective Harper called and told us where to find it.”

“Good for him. How long has it been since you were in a courtroom?”

“Twenty years, give or take.”

“You were pretty good.”

“That was the easy part. Anyone could do it. But you’re gonna need somebody, Malcolm. Somebody very good. The assistant district attorney gave me their case file. They have your fingerprints in the house. They have Doña Elena Montes and Congressman Montes saying you told them you’re working for the URNG. They have your gun, and it was discharged in the commission of the crime. They have photos of you and Castro together in a couple of places.”

The photos surprised me. I wondered who had taken them and why Harper hadn’t mentioned them before. I said, “What places?”

“The cemetery in Newport. In front of Musso and Frank in Hollywood. Did you know the cops had you under surveillance?”

“I did not. Does the file say they took the photos?”

“No, I just assumed the Feds or LAPD were watching the Guatemalans for the congressman when you came along. Who else would have taken them?”

“Those two guys who tried to kill me, maybe. Or maybe not. I didn’t see them at the cemetery. That was Haley’s birthday, so I wasn’t in the best state of mind. I wasn’t paying much attention to my perimeter. But I did see them outside Musso and Frank.”

“Why would they give pictures to the police?”

“I don’t know.”

Teru aimed us at the on-ramp to the 55 and gunned it. The Porsche accelerated nicely.

I said, “How many miles on this thing?”

“Hundred twenty-two thousand.”

“I thought you said the miles were low.”

“Low for the price.”

Teru, it’s a Porsche. You don’t buy a high-mileage Porsche. What were you thinking?”

“I figured you could keep it running.”

“You did?”

He turned to smile at me, pipe clenched tightly in his teeth. “I did.”

“Okay. Was there anything else in that file they gave you?”

“They know you’ve been looking into Doña Elena’s finances.”

“How do they know that?”

“They took your computer. It was in your search history.”

“Oh boy.”

“It’s a motive, Malcolm. They’ll say you went looking to find out exactly what her assets are and exactly where they are. They’ll say it’s what you would do if you were thinking about a kidnapping.”

“I know.”

“Another thing. Doña Elena says Delarosa was in on the home invasion.”

“I know that, too.”

“Okay, but they have a statement from your buddy, Tom Harper. He says you were asking lots of questions about Delarosa but wouldn’t tell him why. And that Detective Russo with the LAPD confirms it in a separate statement.”

“Yeah, we had a talk over lunch.”

“Not good, Malcolm. Like I said, you’re gonna need a better lawyer. Maybe somebody who gardens in his spare time instead of the other way around.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh, I definitely say so.”

33

We rode in silence for a few miles. I ran through all the possible explanations for the Montes’s home invasion. The more I thought about the possibility that Vega had intended to murder the congressman and frame me for it all along, the more sense that theory made. With my court-martial conviction and dishonorable discharge, I was the perfect patsy. In fact, I had been a fool not to see it coming.

I said, “You got an hour or two?”

Teru said, “Sure.”

I pointed at an upcoming exit. “Take the 405 to LA.”

Teru took the exit, and we rode north.

We got off the highway at Century Boulevard, and I directed Teru to the Renaissance Hotel near LAX. He pulled under the porte cochere and waved off the valet. I hopped out, told the valet we would only be a minute, and went inside the lobby.

The desk clerk was convinced he had a moral duty to safeguard the privacy of the hotel’s guests until I placed a pair of twenties on the counter. He put the money in his pocket, turned to his computer, and started tapping keys.

He said, “Mr. Brown checked out this morning.”

I wasn’t surprised. I said, “Did he happen to mention where he was going from here?”

“No.”

“He was here for quite a while, wasn’t he?”

The clerk checked the screen. “Twenty-three days.”

“Maybe he got to know someone on the staff. A maid? A manager?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“What room was he in?”

“I couldn’t say.”

I said, “Answer me.”

He looked up. We made eye contact. I gave him the stare that had motivated many good marines to follow my commands.

He said, “Six sixteen.”

“Has it been cleaned?”

“I doubt it.”

“Give me a pass card.”

“You could get me fired, going up there with a card.”

“I can get you fired for taking that money, and I will unless you give me the card.”

He gave me the card. I crossed the lobby to the elevator. When I got to the room upstairs, the door was open and a cleaning cart was parked there in the hall. I went in.

A short Latino woman came out of the bathroom, carrying used towels. She wore a pink uniform and Reebok running shoes. She said, “Jes?”

I spoke to her in Spanish. “Mr. Brown left something in the room. He asked me to come back and get it.”

She frowned. “Okay…”

“It is not a problem. I have his key. Look.” I swiped the card in the mechanism on the open door. A small green light appeared.

She said “Okay” again, this time with more sincerity.

I went to a table and picked up a pad of scratch paper which had the hotel’s logo at the top. I held it at an angle to the window so the daylight fell across it, hoping for indentations left by the last note. There were none that I could see.

As the maid was leaving the room, I said, “Mr. Brown asked me to leave you a tip.”

She stopped and turned back to face me. I gave her a twenty. She said, “He is a very nice man.”

“Your accent. You are Guatemalan?”

“From Guatemala City, yes.” She lifted her chin a little. “But I have a green card. So does my husband.”

“I am sure you do. And you have family in Guatemala?”

“My mother and three sisters, and their children.”

I had moved to the bedside table. Opening the drawer, I said, “No father? Brothers? No men?”

“All dead, sir.”

“I am sorry,” I said, continuing my search of the room by looking in the trash can. “It is a very dangerous city.”

“Yes. There is much crime.”

“Well, it appears Mr. Brown was wrong. He left nothing here.”

“Maybe those other two found it already.”

“What other two?”

“The men from the consulate.”

“Oh, of course. Antonio and Manuel. I am sorry I missed seeing them. That Antonio, he is so funny looking, the way he wears that big gold chain.”

“You think that is funny? I like it. I was going to get one for my husband.”

“What do I know about fashion? Your husband will undoubtedly be very handsome with your gift around his neck.”

I passed her at the door, then left the room.

Back down in the lobby, I found a room marked “Business Center” and used the pass card to enter. In the room were several computers and printers on built-in worktops, available for hotel guests. I sat at a computer, brought up the Internet and did a little surfing. I found the address for the Guatemalan consulate, then went back outside, where Teru stood leaning on the Porsche with his arms crossed and smoke rising from his pipe.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Vega’s gone.”

“I assume he didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

“Nope.”

“Where should we start looking?”

“I have no idea. But the two guys who tried to kill me were here earlier. They might have a clue.”

“Where would we find them?”

“They claimed they’re with the Guatemalan consulate.”

“So let’s get over there.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

I gave Teru the address. We got back on the 405 and took it to the 10. We exited at Normandie Avenue and turned north, past Rosedale Cemetery on the right and Seoul International Park on the left. We turned left on Wilshire.

The consulate was in a fifteen-story steel-and-glass building at the corner of South Ardmore. On the corner was something called the “Woori America Bank.” I thought it was a strange address for them to choose, being in the middle of Koreatown, until I remembered that the next neighborhood to the east was Pico-Union. The government had picked a spot as close as they could get to the majority of the Guatemalan population in LA without having to expose themselves to the distasteful poverty and gangs that afflicted their people.

Teru dropped me at the curb across the street and drove on in search of a parking spot. I went inside and found suite 100.

There was a crest on the door, the same one I had seen a few blocks away in Pico-Union on the giant flag in the window of the Guatemalan Benevolence Society building. I wondered if the old men playing dominoes over there knew the Guatemalan government preferred an office here among Koreans rather than in their neighborhood.

I opened the door and entered a small room with chairs along two walls and a stack of Spanish-language magazines on a table in the corner. In the opposite corner was flag draped just so and hanging from a varnished wooden flagpole. Beside the flag was a modular work cubicle with a low countertop facing the room. In the cubicle sat a young woman in a tight red dress. She wore red lipstick to match the dress and large plastic hoop earrings, also red. The only thing missing was a hat with tropical fruit.

I considered telling her why I was there but decided that was unlikely to get me answers, so I just gave her my card and said, “I’m Malcolm Cutter, here to see the consul general.”

She checked her computer. “Forgive me. Your name again?”

“Cutter. I don’t have an appointment.”

She knitted her brow and shook her head. “I’m sorry. You must make an appointment.”

I said, “You speak English very well.”

She smiled. “Thank you. Now, if there is nothing else?”

“Would you mention one thing to the consul general?”

“Probably not. He is a very busy man.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. Just pick up your phone and mention Valentín Vega’s name. Also a failed attempt to murder me in the Santa Ana Mountains a few days ago. And while you’re at it, let him know the man who was arrested yesterday for breaking into Congressman Hector Montes’s house is standing in his lobby.”

She stared at me. I flashed my most winning smile. Many women have reported weak knees and butterflies in response to my smile, but the receptionist appeared to be immune. She simply continued to stare. There must have had a panic button behind her desk somewhere, because two soldiers in uniform entered the reception area through an opening behind her, a corporal and a sergeant. They joined the receptionist in staring at me with deadpan expressions on their Indian features. Their hands rested on their sidearms.

I said, “And here I thought we were getting along so well.”

She spoke Spanish to the soldiers. “Watch him closely. He could be an escaped criminal.” I was amused that she seemed to assume I spoke no Spanish. It was like the Japanese businessmen. So many people seemed to underestimate me.

She picked up the telephone handset and pushed some buttons. After a short pause she spoke into the phone, repeating what I had just said. She listened for a moment, said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up.

She switched back to English. “Would you allow these men to search you for weapons?”

Since my gun and knife were in an Orange County evidence locker, I held my arms out to the side. “Sure.”

The corporal stepped forward and frisked me. He said, “Nothing,” and stepped back.

The woman stood and gestured toward the corridor. “This way, if you would.”

The consul general was a small, clean-shaven man in a beige guayabera shirt. He had the cheekbones of an Indian and the eyes of a shark. He didn’t rise behind his desk when I was escorted into his corner office. He looked up at me, then down at a paper in his hand, which he read silently for nearly a minute before he sighed grandly—presumably to indicate the enormous burden that he carried for his people—laid the paper on the desk, looked up at me again, and said, “Yes?”

I told him who I was and that I had been working for Valentín Vega. I told him why. I mentioned the two men who had followed me and tried to kill me. Then I told him about the home invasion and my arrest. I explained that it seemed possible Vega had planned to murder the congressman or else intimidate him into withdrawing his opposition to the URNG, using me as a scapegoat for the crime.

I said, “I’m guessing you want to get rid of Valentín Vega and get the URNG out of the way, but Vega’s disappeared, so that just got a lot more difficult. I’m also guessing you didn’t like it when I went to work for Vega, so you told your guys to follow me around and try to scare me off and kill me and so forth. As you can see, I’m very hard to kill, but it still offends me when people try to do it. Normally, I’d return the favor and come after you. But I think Vega set me up to take the fall for the Montes home invasion, so in this case our interests are the same. Why don’t we stop stepping on each other’s toes and work on this together?”

He stared at me with a puzzled expression. “These two men you describe, who claim they disappear people, they are not associated with my government. Those days are far behind us now, and the evil men responsible for such atrocities are being brought to justice even as we speak.”

I said, “Maybe I got it wrong. I did say it was only a guess on my part. But I assume Valentín Vega is of interest to you?”

“We are interested in him, certainly. He claims he is merely a politician now, and there are some in my government who find it convenient to forget his crimes during our civil war, but many others believe he bears the same guilt as the junta and should be brought to justice.”

“I would like to help with that.”

“In what way?”

I said, “While I understand and certainly believe you when you say the two men that I mentioned are not your associates, I still assume your consulate makes it your business to know the whereabouts of prominent Guatemalan citizens when they visit this country. Only in order to protect them and serve them, naturally.”

He nodded. “Naturally.”

“So may I assume you have some idea where Valentín Vega is at this moment? And may I assume that it would be in your nation’s interest if I were to find him and bring him to justice for his role in this terrible attack on Congressman Montes’s wife?”

The consul general aimed his shark black eyes at me, saying nothing.

“Of course,” I continued, “if you did assist me in locating Vega, and if I was successful in bringing him to justice, you would have the thanks of the American people, who would otherwise be outraged that such a criminal might enter our country from yours and treat a member of our government so shamefully. At least I believe that would be the reaction should the press learn what I know about this situation.”

He continued to stare at me for a few more seconds; then he said, “Thank you for your visit.” He picked up the paper and began to read again, and the sergeant put his hand on my shoulder, so I left the room.

Teru was waiting near the front doors of the office building when I emerged.

“So?” he said. “Did you get a clue?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

We walked a block to where he had parked the Porsche. We got in and drove to Newport. It took nearly an hour because rush-hour traffic had begun. We reached the gates at El Nido and stopped, waiting as they swung open. My cell phone rang. I put it to my ear and said, “Hello.”

I recognized the consulate receptionist’s voice. She said, “12 Calle 9A 2-21, Zona 1, Vista Hermosa 1. That’s in Guatemala City. Do you have all that?”

“Yes,” I said, “Thank you very much,” but she was already off the line.