In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries) Read online

  There was a confusion of whispering inside, some rustling, feet hit the floor, and the door opened.

  A youngish man, maybe early thirties, with prison-gang tattoos all over his face, his arms and hands, his neck and his bare chest--tribal insignia illuminating his criminal history and his membership in the Sleepy Lagoon gang set, as if his compact body were a living totem pole--stood there, naked except for white jockey shorts that he had pulled on inside out. He was surprised to the point of tearfulness when he saw the wall of midnight blue facing him, as well as his parole officer, Patricia Goodson, all with hands on gun butts, more officers visible out in the hallway. The man assumed the position before he was asked to, hands locked behind his neck, legs spread.

  Next the woman appeared, pulling a bathrobe around her thin body. Like her husband, she had elaborate gang tattoos on her neck, her chest, and her hands. Her front teeth were silver-foiled. She appeared to be pregnant, and seemed to be more angry than frightened.

  "Paco," she called out as she scanned the room for her son.

  "!Mami!" The child slipped past me and ran to her. She more or less scooped him into the bedroom, whispered a firm caution, and then shut the door behind him.

  "Maggie." Harry turned to me. "You want to get her out of here?"

  "You're Teresa?" I asked her, looking at her closely, the gang tattoos, silver front teeth, old needle tracks on her arms, her toughness, her anger. This was not the Teresa of my imagination, not the pretty young innocent whose teenage boyfriend, young Jesus, had fallen prey to the street and disappeared. She was the street, a hardcore gangster, as she probably was on that particular January day. As Harry suggested, if Jesus had lived he likely would have grown up to be some version of the man in the inside-out underwear now lying spread-eagled on the threadbare carpet in front of his family.

  "Come with me, please," I said and escorted her out to the hall.

  When Teresa saw the officers watching us from their positions on the stairs and down the hall, she modestly pulled her robe tighter and crossed her arms over her breasts.

  "You from the County?" she asked.

  "Awfully late for a little boy to be up watching television alone," I said. Through all of this I held my camera in my left hand, about shoulder high. If I turned my head I could see what I was getting in the tiny monitor on the side so that I could make adjustments. Teresa said nothing about the camera.

  I said, "Your son opened the door to strangers in the middle of the night."

  "Xochi wanted..." She gazed toward the apartment door just as someone closed it.

  "Sex," I said.

  She nodded. "I don't like to do it with my little boy in the same room."

  "How long has Xochi been out of prison this time?" I asked.

  Her hand dropped to the round ball of her pregnant belly. "Five months, six almost."

  I took her arm and turned it over, showing the blackened track scars. "Are you using?"

  With her hand still limply in mine, she shook her head. "Not now."

  "Teresa, I want to talk to you about a boy you knew a long time ago. Jesus Ramon."

  "Jesus." She shook her head. "I don't want to talk about Jesus no more. Everything I know about that boy, I told it a long time ago. I want to forget that boy."

  "The day after he went missing, you left the country," I said.

  She nodded. "I went to stay with my grandmother in Mexico for a while."

  "Tell me about Jesus," I said. "His mother thinks he was an angel, the police think he was a little devil. Which was it?"

  "Both," she said firmly. "He was just a boy, like all the rest of them."

  "You were in a gang."

  "That's how you stay alive where I come from."

  "How was Jesus doing in school?"

  "He already dropped out." She seemed to be studying the floor, bored or defiant, or I didn't know what, but she wasn't looking at me.

  "Were you in school?"

  "I quit in eighth grade. Didn't need it."

  "You were with Jesus the day he went missing," I said. "You saw him get into a car with Detective Mike Flint. Tell me what you remember."

  "Nada." She shook her head. "Nothing. Don't remember nothing."

  "What did Detective Flint say to you and Jesus?"

  Again she shook her head.

  I said, "And what do you remember about Boni Erquiaga that day?"

  Boni's name got her attention. Her head snapped up and she looked at me with heat flashing in her dark eyes. "Is he still in prison?"

  I nodded. "I visited him there a few days ago."

  "Did that lying bastard say anything about me?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like I know who killed Jesus and where his body is."

  "Do you?"

  "No," she said with enough force that the officer down the hall moved a few steps closer. "I don't know nothing about nothing that happened after I saw Jesus go away in the officer's car. He was just gone, all right?"

  "Did Detective Flint seem angry with Jesus, or was he rough with him? Did Jesus resist him?"

  "None of those things. Jesus put back his hands, the officer cuffed him, and Jesus got in the car. They drove away. That was all."

  "Where was Nelda Ruiz when that was happening?"

  "That puta was right there by the car with Boni. She'd been doing him for a while. She told me he was always after her, you know. She told me he threatened her what he'd do if she wouldn't give it to him."

  "Did you believe her?"

  Teresa, with exaggerated ennui, said, "I didn't care."

  "That day wasn't the first time you saw Jesus get arrested, was it?"

  "No. Cops, they're all over us all the time. Like now." She locked eyes with the closest uniformed officer. "Pigs."

  "So it wasn't a big deal when Jesus got picked up that day."

  "No."

  "But on that day, you ran all the way over to Mrs. Ramon's bodega, crying. You got her to go over to the police station to bail out her son," I said. "Why were you so upset that day?"

  "That day was a long time ago," she said. "I don't remember."

  Then I remembered that Harry had said there were kids, plural, in the apartment. So I asked, "How many babies is this for you?"

  "Three."

  "Where's the other one?"

  "In Mexico with my grandmother," she said. "Xochi isn't her father."

  Harry opened the apartment door. "You need us to get the boy's clothes together, Maggie?"

  "No, Harry, I don't," I said, understanding that he was making a threat to the woman, and I didn't like it. "We're finished. Teresa is having some serious memory problems."

  "I understand pregnancy does that to a woman." He turned back into the apartment. "We're done here. Let's go, let the kid get to bed."

  Officers filed out. Patricia Goodson lingered to offer a few words of advice and caution for Xochi, but let Harry have the last word. Xochi still seemed a bit dazed after having his domestic peace invaded in the middle of the night.

  "You two," Harry said. As he lectured both parents, he pulled one of his cards out of his breast pocket, wrote a number on it, and handed it to Xochi. "You have a smart little boy in there. You need to do a better job taking care of him. Time you both start acting like the grownups, set an example for him. This number is for a friend of mine, a plastic surgeon. He'll laser off those tats for you, won't charge you anything if you tell him I sent you. It'll hurt like hell, but you need to do it. For the boy."

  His parting words were, "Don't make me come back here."

  Then we followed the others down the stairs and out. There was no curbside debriefing. Without fanfare, everyone got back into their cars and fanned out to patrol the streets.

  "Get what you wanted?" Harry asked me. He made a midblock U-turn and radioed that he was back on patrol.

  "I'm not sure yet. Did you?"

  "Yeah, pretty much. We want them to know we're keeping an eye on them. Xochi peed in a cup and came up dirty.
Goodson gave him a warning in exchange for his drug source. Says he just goes down on the street and looks for a crowd by a fence."

  "Do you believe him?"

  "Maybe. He says Teresa won't let him bring it in the house, and that's good."

  "Do you think she's clean?"

  "Lord, I hope so."

  Harry drove us up Broadway, then crosstown on Sixth Street. Downtown was beautiful--towering high-rises lighted for the night, palm trees swaying in a warm, gentle breeze--as long as I looked up. At street level, even though the streets were clean and the buildings were generally in good repair--many indeed were elegant--on random blocks the scene was like driving through a circus from hell. Inside the gated entry of a once famous hotel, a wizened old woman with a kerchief on her head, a babushka, sold little plastic bags of something to the human ruins who reached hands through her iron bars.

  "This endless all-night shuffle." I looked at Harry's profile. "Does it ever get to you?"

  "Only when it's kids."

  "Like that little boy tonight?"

  "That kid? No. He's just fine. Bright little guy, look at what he did, figuring out how to unbolt the door. Right now he has two parents and a roof over his head and no one's hurting him. What else does a kid need?"

  "A future."

  He smiled. "I can't play God."

  "Mike would see that little kid as a gangbanger in training."

  "Maybe that's the difference between Mike and me. He was a good cop and all. One of the best." He eased across a deserted intersection against the light. "But he did tend to look on the dark side of things."

  "True," I said.

  Harry turned to me. "Soon as I met you, I knew you were the one who was going to make the difference for Mike. Out here, it isn't easy staying straight all the time, doing the right thing instead of the easy one. Because of you, Mike made some good choices he might not have made if his life had been different."

  "He did the same for me," I said. I turned to look out the side window. Mike the tough guy, the softy. And the nag. Tough to argue with someone who sees the world in black-and-white when your own realm is mostly shades of gray. Noisy sometimes, but it worked. For us it worked.

  After a few blocks, Harry reached across and patted the seat beside me. "It's none of my business, but you okay?"

  "Sure," I said. "I'm just fine."

  "You have to give it time. You'll miss Mike..."

  "Harry," I said before he could get any further into that particular riff; how many people had given me some version of the same advice over the last couple of days?

  "Don't mean to pry, just want you to know I'm here," he said.

  "Thank you," I said. "I appreciate the concern."

  "You're very welcome," he said. "As long as we're over this way, we might as well go check on Lisa Penaloza.."

  • • •

  Club Las Palmas was a taxi-dance place that had been doing business on Broadway since World War II when the sailors were in town. There was a new clientele and a new decor, a Mexican fiesta theme, and the price for ten minutes in the arms of a dance hostess had risen from a dime to five dollars. But the general idea remained unchanged over sixty years, and was best expressed by the flashing neon sign over the door: GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS.

  The men taking some air on the sidewalk in front of the club looked like companeros, country boys from Mexico, all slicked up for romance. There were a few in jackets and ties, but most wore a variation on a starched, tight-fitting, western-style shirt, tight, pressed jeans, and hand-tooled boots, the ensemble topped off with a stiff, white straw cowboy hat.

  "Girls, girls, girls?" I said as we passed under the neon. "You take me to the nicest places, Harry."

  "It's okay here." He held the door for me. "Most of these guys are a long way from home, can't afford a wife, or the wife is back in the village hoping he doesn't get into trouble. These boys work hard for their money. They get a little coin in their pockets, they come here, dance a little, get a little hard-on, have a good time. No liquor, no hands below the waist. Who's hurt?"

  We strolled in past the security desk with no more than a nod. A mirror ball spun above the dance floor. Couples on timers sat at tables around the dance floor, or they danced close. A snack bar at the near end sold supermarket-brand soda for three dollars a can.

  The music was Banda, the language of love was Spanish, and the hostesses were, every one of them, Latina. Their party dresses were cheap and bright and shiny, but over all they were attractive and wholesome-looking. Some of them would have passed muster at any senior prom on the city's east side.

  I looked around. "All they do here is dance?"

  "Downstairs that's all. For a little extra, you can take a girl upstairs for 'conversation.' There's no sex allowed, but who cares if you cop a little feel when no one's watching?"

  Harry was on patrol, as Harry always is, looking around, making some of the paying guests uncomfortable. We weren't Immigration, but anyone in uniform probably made a good portion of the clientele nervous.

  The manager intercepted us as we walked toward the dance floor. He grinned big, showing a gold tooth, showing his apprehension as well.

  "Can I help you?" he asked, actually wringing his hands.

  "I'm looking for someone." Harry kept eyeing the room. "One of your hostesses, Lisa Penaloza."

  "Sorry." The manager shrugged, held up his palms. "No la conozco. No Lisa Penaloza works here."

  "Maybe she uses a different name." Harry reached into his breast pocket and took out a mug shot, a woman with dark hair and a black eye, and handed it to the manager. With barely a glance at the picture, the manager shook his head and handed it back.

  "As I recall the state statutes covering dancing establishments," Harry said, the mug shot held up in front of him, "you have to run a background check on all the hostesses you hire. If anyone comes back with a history of solicitation, you can't hire her. Now, see the woman in this picture? She is a convicted prostitute. I have good information that she is in your establishment tonight. I intend to find her."

  "I go by the rules. Strictly by the rules. There are no whores working in my place. I run an honest business. Chamber of Commerce all the way."

  "Listen to me, Jorge."

  "Fredo," the manager corrected.

  "Fredo. There are a couple ways we can proceed. I can spend the rest of the night going through your place, one chica at a time." Harry paused to give Fredo time to think over the implications; some of the paying guests were already slipping out the front door. One deserted his partner in the middle of the dance floor and made a quick exit. "Then again, maybe this girl lied to you, gave you the wrong name so she would came up clean. How could it be your fault?"

  "Oh-h-h." Fredo hit his head, eyes wide as if revelation had just flashed by. "Soy estupido. Lisa something. Sure. You say the puta lied to me?"

  "That must be the way it happened," Harry said. "Now, is she here?"

  "I think I saw her go upstairs to the small lounge with a customer."

  "Thanks, Fredo." We headed toward the elevator.

  Fredo came with us as far as the elevator door. "You tell that puta to get out of my place. You tell her that if she ever comes back, I will throw her out on her round little ass."

  "Sure, Fredo." Harry waited for another couple to enter the elevator before we followed. "That's exactly what I'll tell her."

  Fredo declined to come upstairs with us.

  The couple sharing the elevator was young and less than pleased to be confined with Harry. He seemed amused by their discomfort. He asked the woman, "How much can you clear in a night working here?"

  She held up her hands and said, "No hablo ingles."

  So Harry repeated the question in perfect Spanish. Trapped, embarrassed that her ruse had not worked, probably afraid not to be cooperative, she answered in English.

  "Sixty dollars, sir," she said. "We work from six o'clock until one in the morning. On a good night, I can take home maybe sixty do
llars."

  "Counting tips?"

  She nodded her head.

  "Sixty dollars is barely minimum wage," I said.

  She shrugged, then the doors opened and the couple got out.

  I said to Harry, "What do you think she really earns?"

  "Couple hundred, most of it under the table. All cash. Plus whatever services she negotiates to deliver after hours."

  The upstairs lounge had sofas arranged for privacy. There was another snack bar, and a security man, but no one seemed to be paying attention or checking to see whether a little hand-holding here and there bloomed into heavy petting. It was dark enough that you'd have to look very hard to see what your neighbors might be doing, if you cared to.

  I spotted Lisa first, sitting with an older man off to one side. They were angled facing each other, heads touching; he had an arm on the back of the sofa behind her. Her hands were busy down toward their laps.

  I peered through the gloom, expecting to see Lisa working in the area of her customer's fly. Instead, I saw her surreptitiously unscrew the cap of a half-pint bottle of Bacardi and pour some into the open cola can the man held with his free hand, mixing a Cuba Libre. She recapped the bottle and slipped it between the sofa cushions. The customer raised the can and drank, and then he offered it to her.

  Harry walked over and sat down close beside Lisa on the sofa, crowding her. I sat on the little cocktail table in front of her, our knees nearly touching.

  "Hello, Lisa," Harry said.

  Lisa looked at Harry, eyes stopping on his shiny badge. "I didn't do nothing, Officer," she said, defensive. "Anybody says I did, they lied."

  "Just want to talk to you," he said quietly.

  "Another time." She put her hand on her customer's thigh and turned away from Harry. "I'm working right now."

  "How you been doing since you got out of Frontera?"