10 Tahoe Trap (6 page)

“What are they?”

“There’s Bridgett and Mike and Dr. Garcia and Mr. Schue. I don’t like Mike. There’s others, too, but I can’t remember.”

“Bridgett and Mike, do you know their last names?”

Paco shook his head.

“Do you know Mr. Schue or Dr. Garcia’s first name?”

“No.”

“Do you know where they live?”

He shrugged. “I know the houses when I see them.”

“So if we knew where to drive around, you might remember where they are.”

“Yeah.” Paco rocked the rocking chair for the first time, then stopped it after one oscillation.

“Were any of them on the lake? If so, that would make it a lot easier because we could just drive the lake-shore roads.”

“I think they’re all on the lake. No, not all. But most.”

“I may ask you to help me find some of those houses.” I sipped beer. “Why do you think Cassie wanted to come to Tahoe in the middle of the night? You didn’t deliver that early, did you?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know why.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She just woke me up and said we had to leave earlier than normal.”

“You mean, you still had to make your regular deliveries, but she had to go someplace first.”

Paco nodded.

“She give you a reason?”

Paco shook his head.

“Did she say anything during the drive?”

“No. I was asleep.”

I finished my beer, carried the bottle to the kitchen nook, came back.

“Paco, has anything been different lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, has Cassie been doing anything unusual? Different projects? Talking to different people? Working a different schedule?”

He shook his head.

“Why do you think she told you about contacting me if something happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did it come up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think back. Something made her bring it up. She didn’t just say something like, ‘Paco, we’ll have dinner as soon as you finish your homework, and then I’ll tell you who to call in case something happens to me.’ She didn’t say it like that, right?”

“No. She was, like, upset. I don’t know why. She made me sit at the table and she said she had something important to tell me.”

I waited.

Paco continued. “She showed me a slip of paper with your name and phone number, and she showed me your number in her cell phone. She said that if anything bad ever happened to her, that I should call you. She said you were like a cop only you wouldn’t tell the real cops about us.”

“And she didn’t want to talk to the real cops because...?”

“Because they would take me away from her. She said that if you don’t have the right papers, you have to go to Mexico.”

“Did she tell you anything else?”

“No. She took me into my bedroom and showed me where she was going to put a note she wrote you. And your phone number.”

“Where did she put it?” I asked.

“She put the note up above one of the ceiling tiles. Then she taped your phone number to the dresser.”

“What’s the note about?”

“I don’t know,” Paco said. He looked down at the floor. “I told you I can’t read.”

“Is the note still in the ceiling?”

He nodded.

“Then tomorrow we’ll drive down to the valley and get it.”

Paco shrugged.

“Don’t you want to go home?”

“Not really.”

“You’ll miss school and your friends.”

“I don’t miss them.”

He didn’t say it with remorse or spite. Except for when he cried after being chased, he didn’t show any emotion.

“What do you want to do now?” I asked.

“Eat dinner.”

“We just ate.”

“That was a long time ago. You asked me a million questions since then.”

“So now you’re hungry.”

He nodded.

“Okay, I’ll get going on dinner. You got a preference?”

“I could eat another cheeseburger.”

I thought about what I had in the fridge. “Tell you what. Because we just ate cheeseburgers, how about some chicken? You like chicken?”

He shrugged again. “It’s okay.”

I was starting to learn Paco’s vocabulary of shrugs. Some were affirmative, some negative, some in between.

I put some breast fillets in the oven, found an acorn squash, jump-started it in the microwave before adding it to the oven, put some canned green beans on the stovetop on low, sat down on the other chair near Paco.

“You want anything?” I said.

He looked at the woodstove. “That’s the furnace,” he said.

“Right.”

“Can you turn it on?”

“You cold? Sure.” There were just a few split logs in the rack. “Let me get some kindling.”

I took my bucket outside and got some huge Jeffrey pine cones from the can where I store them in the early fall.

Paco watched as I crumpled some paper, arranged a few of the big cones, set a split on top.

“You burn pine cones,” he said.

“Make great kindling.”

“We have a thermostat in our house,” he said.

“Dial heat is handy,” I said. “But I have to do it the old-fashioned way.” I struck a wooden match on the cast iron stove, lit the fire, sat with Paco while the fire grew behind the glass in the stove door.

Paco looked around the room. “Where’s your TV?”

“I don’t have a TV.”

Paco stared at me as if I were suddenly an alien. “Everyone has TV.”

“Everyone but me.”

“What do you do?”

“Work. Read. Go for hikes with Spot and Street. Stuff like that.”

“The bug lady,” he said.

I nodded.

Paco looked at Spot, then over at my shelves of art books.

“Why do you have all those books?”

“I like to look at them.”

“You read,” he said.

“Yeah, but those are art books, so they’re mostly pictures of paintings and sculptures. You want to look at some?”

Paco shook his head.

In time, I put some barbecue sauce on the chicken, and five minutes later I served up dinner on my little kitchen table.

Paco and I sat on the two fold-up chairs. We faced across from each other while Spot sat on the floor to one side, his head well above the table top. He watched Paco, following each forkful from the boy’s plate up to his mouth.

Paco ate his chicken, but left his squash and beans.

“Field To Fridge is all about selling and delivering produce,” I said.

Paco nodded.

“But you don’t like green beans?”

“I like fresh beans. Canned beans are bad for you.”

“Ah,” I said. “Like seat belts and milk.”

Paco made a small nod.

“You don’t like squash, either?” I said. “It’s fresh. Relatively speaking, that is.”

He shook his head. “Squash tastes bad.”

“Okay if I eat yours?” I asked.

Paco shrugged.

I reached for his plate, slid his squash and beans onto my plate.

“Do you have ice cream?” he asked.

“No.”

“Cookies?”

“Sorry. I’ve got pumpkin pie. You like frozen pumpkin pie, or does it have to be fresh?”

“I like frozen pie if you cook it.”

“Okay, I’ll cook it. Takes an hour, though. You think you can stay up an hour? You didn’t get much sleep last night.”

He thought about it.

“You could wake me up,” he said.

So I cooked the pie. Paco fell asleep in the rocker.

EIGHT

I woke Paco up when the pie was done.

Spot was back at his place at the table as we ate. His tongue made a trip down the right side of his jowls and back up the left. Spot began to quiver when a little chunk of pie fell off of Paco’s fork onto the Formica table. Spot looked at the pie chunk, then looked at Paco. Then he trained his big ears and eyes on that chunk as if to vaporize it. Nostrils twitched and flexed. He swallowed. Only after Paco had scooped the chunk back onto his fork, used his finger to wipe the residue off the table, and then licked his finger did Spot calm with disappointment.

Paco was on his second piece when Spot gave up his intense focus, turned his ears behind him, then got up and walked to the door. Spot stared at the solid door, his tail on the medium setting. Eventually came a two-rap knock.

Paco jerked and stared at the door, fright on his face.

“Don’t worry, Paco.” I pointed at Spot. “It’s someone Spot knows. Otherwise, he’d bark.”

 I knew it wasn’t Street, because then his tail would be on high speed, and he’d be doing the stationary prance.

I opened the door. It was Diamond, wearing his uniform.

“Just in time for dessert,” I said. “Or are you on duty?”

“Officers on duty still gotta eat.”

I nodded. “I’ve got pumpkin pie.” I looked at Paco. “I even cooked it.”

“Homemade or store bought?” Diamond said. He looked at Paco. Paco kept his head down, eating his pie.

“Lot of picky people in this room,” I said. “Store bought. You think I could make a homemade pie?”

“You made that bread for Anna Quinn’s little adventure at the Vikingsholm Castle.” He looked at the pie on the stovetop. “Anyway, preservatives’ll keep me looking youthful.”

I put my plate in the sink, served up a big piece on another plate, and set it down at the table.

“Paco, meet my friend Diamond,” I said. “Diamond, meet Paco.”

Diamond nodded at the boy, sat down, forked a big piece of pie into his mouth.

Paco stared down at his pie, not meeting Diamond’s eyes. It was probably Diamond’s uniform. The boy had been taught to be wary of cops.

“I’m from Mexico City,” Diamond said to Paco. “How about you?”

“Stockton,” Paco said in a tiny voice.

“Dónde?” Diamond said.

Paco didn’t respond.

“You don’t speak Spanish?” Diamond said.

Paco shook his head. Always, he kept his eyes down.

When Diamond finished his pie, he got up, washed his plate and mine and set them in the dish rack.

“I’d feed you pie more often if you always washed my dishes,” I said.

“Used to be a dishwasher in a restaurant,” Diamond said. “Brushing up on my technique.”

“Seems like you had every kind of menial service job before you finished your degree and got into law enforcement,” I said.

“I was a Mexican immigrant with major work ethic and no means.”

“Meaning, you take what you can get and are grateful for any paying work?”

“Sí.”

Paco raised his eyes and suddenly watched Diamond as if to memorize him. He focused on Diamond’s belt, his gun, his radio, then looked down to Diamond’s shiny black shoes, then raised up to the insignia on Diamond’s jacket.

“But you were recently studying the French philosophers, right?” I said. “Thinking of a future career change?”

Diamond glanced at Paco. “You want to pay the mortgage, a law enforcement career beats philosophy,” he said. “You want big perspectives on life, philosophy beats everything.”

“Big perspectives on life?”

“Conundrums of meaning and purpose. Moral dilemmas. Like that.”

“Of course,” I said. “Like that.”

When Diamond left, I followed him out to his patrol unit.

“You assumed the kid speaks Spanish,” I said.

“Brown skin. Work clothes. Skin and fingernail dirt that won’t wash out for two weeks. Logical guess.”

“Dirt and Spanish go together?”

“Dirt like that on a kid that age in California means field work. Add in brown skin, you got roots from south of the border. Almost for certain he would speak Spanish. So I tried him. But surprise, no Español.”

“My thought, too,” I said.

“Means this kid is screwed unless he gets some serious help. Probably his mama brought him from Mexico as a new baby. Which makes him a Mexican citizen and an illegal immigrant. Kid grows up speaking American English, but this ain’t his country. Without Spanish, Mexico ain’t his country, either. Not having a country is a tough gig for anyone, never mind a little kid.”

“He told me he doesn’t have brothers or sisters,” I said. “No family that he knows of. You got any idea what I should do with this kid?”

“Got me. I’m a cop, not a social worker.” Diamond got into his SUV, started it, spoke out the open window.

“The boy tell you anything about the men in the pickup?”

“Yeah. Paco said one was black and one was white, and they were both huge and they looked like superheroes.”