A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (22 page)

21

C
OLEMAN SLEEPING BAG
:
LIGHTWEIGHT
,
LIME GREEN W
/
BEIGE INTERIOR
,
WELL USED
,
ZIPPER BROKEN
.

Felicia Solano might have been a drunk, but at some point, it looked like she had also been a good Catholic. Along the wall opposite the front door of the small house on Ohio was a pristine white side table with curved legs and scallops carved into the edges under the single wide drawer. There was a lace table-topper on which sat a foot-tall porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary. Directly above the statue, an ornate wooden crucifix with an authentically painted Christ figure was nailed in place. Surrounding him were four small oil paintings of figures I couldn’t identify but took for saints.

One of the bullets that had penetrated the front wall had lodged in the plaster near the ceiling, a good four feet away from the crucifix. I tried to impart some significance to that distance. Was it a near miss or a wide one?

I’d been inside waiting for nearly three hours as the sun went down and darkness filled the small house. And I was beginning to think Patrick’s idea, a long shot to begin with, was not going to pay off.

If Neck Tattoo had used Jesús’s phone to find Roberto Solano, then it was likely he’d still be tracking the activity.

We went to see Jesús’s friend David and his mother. With generous bribes—a smartphone for David and the security of a new number for his mother—we were able to convince them to part with his old cell. We took David’s phone and Jesús’s, which was still in my desk, and a new prepaid phone, and set up a series of text messages that told whoever might be monitoring the activity that Jesús and his family would be moving to a new location but that they’d be stopping by the house to pick up fresh clothing and a few other necessities.

“Why do we need both his old cell and a new burner? I’m not sure I follow,” Marty had said.

Patrick explained it as if he were talking to elementary-school students. And of course I’d never admit it to anyone, but I was glad because I didn’t get it either. “If someone was following the activity on Jesús’s old phone, they’d see that nothing has happened recently.”

Marty nodded and I tried not to.

“But our guy saw him on the phone in Oceanside, so he’ll know he has another phone.”

It finally clicked into place. Patrick sent a message to David’s phone from the new burner saying that Jesús and his family would be coming home to pick things up. But he didn’t reply from David’s phone. He took Jesús’s old phone and sent another text. This one said:
im not supposed to use this phone but i don’t think you read the text from my new one.
Then he repeated the information from the first text and replied from David’s phone.

If anyone was paying attention, they’d think the Solanos would be visiting Ohio Street sometime that night.

“Anything going on out there?” I said into the radio.

Patrick’s voice came back. “Nothing.” He was on one of the balconies of the apartment building next door. From his vantage point, he could see the driveway, the small house, and most of the backyard. We had an undercover surveillance team on the streets around the house watching for any sign of someone checking out the house.

We’d given them plenty of time to make a move. Or get set up for one.

“Should we send them in?” Patrick asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

Our first hope was that someone would try to get inside to set up an ambush. At this point, that seemed unlikely.

I peeked through the mini-blinds on the front window and watched Felicia Solano’s old Hyundai pull up the narrow driveway. The porch light was off and only ambient light filtered down toward the front porch. When Lauren Terrones got out, dressed in sweats and a zip-up hoodie, I could almost believe she was Jesús’s mother. Jen, though, in her cap and khaki pants, was much less convincing as a teenage boy.

If anything was going to go down, now would be the time. “Patrick?” I whispered into the mic.

“All clear,” he said.

They came up onto the porch, and Lauren slid a key into the deadbolt. Once they got inside, they closed the door behind themselves and turned on the lights. Then Jen went into the back bedroom and loaded up reusable shopping bags with clothes for Jesús and Maria. Lauren went into the front bedroom and did the same.

I watched them, my Glock in my hand pointed at the floor, my ears focused and listening for any unusual sounds outside.

“No movement,” Patrick said. “Everything looks clear. Marty?”

“All clear.”

Patrick checked in with the rest of the team. Clear all around.

There was one more possibility. When Jen and Lauren loaded up the Hyundai, they’d drive to a predetermined rendezvous point near the LBPD North Patrol Division station. The surveillance team would follow them in three cars. The drive would give them plenty of time to determine if anyone else might be following them.

The headlights of their car shone on the blinds in the front window, illuminating the living room. The glow faded as they backed slowly out of the driveway.

“They’re off,” Patrick told me. “I’ll come down, meet you outside.”

We sat on the porch of the Solanos’ bungalow and listened to the report from Jen and the team. It took them twenty-six minutes to make it to where they were going. They weren’t followed.

“Sorry,” I said to him. “Thought we had a chance with this one.”

“Me too.” We were quiet for a few moments. “I still don’t believe that Jesús’s father just happened to get killed on the same day he called.”

I didn’t either. Detectives don’t like coincidence. We spend all of our time looking for connections, chains of cause and effect, one thing leading to another. We counted on those connections, and we couldn’t do anything without them. Coincidence, though, shits on all of that. When we start accepting coincidence, we stop making cases.

22

T
-SHIRTS
,
SEVEN
:
ASSORTED BRANDS
,
COLORS
,
AND STYLES
.

We’d had close to a hundred calls and e-mails since we’d put out the press release with Bishop’s photo. Almost all of them were dead ends. A few were legit, people who knew Bishop in passing or had seen him on the street or at one of the shelters. None of them, though, gave us any information more substantial than we already had. After Henry Nichols and Mr. Lee, the best lead we found came not from the media outreach but from pounding the pavement.

Her name was Mary, and like most of the people we’d talked to about Bishop, she’d been homeless for quite some time. She’d been in and out of shelters and transitional housing for almost a decade. Most recently, though, she’d been on the street. Lauren and Stan found her through the Centro Shalom food bank. It was luck, mostly. On their most recent swing by the location to check on the copies of the photos they’d distributed, one of the volunteers mentioned that he had seen Mary earlier and that she had commented on the photo of Bishop. They canvassed the area and found her a few blocks away at a picnic table under a large shade tree in Martin Luther King Jr. Park. She didn’t want to come to the station, so I took an unmarked cruiser and met Stan and Lauren there.

The park was fairly large, with a community center and soccer and softball fields. Their unit was in the parking lot about twenty-five yards from where Mary sat. They saw me pull up and park next to their car. Lauren left Stan with the woman and came to meet me. While she was walking toward me, I took several bills out of my wallet and slipped them into my shirt pocket.

“She have something good?” I asked.

“I don’t know about evidentiary value, but Stan and I thought you’d want to hear it from her.”

That made me curious. So we walked past the bronze statue of MLK and a playground with new multicolored plastic equipment on a gray rubberized ground cover and approached them.

“Mary,” Stan said. “This is the detective I told you about. His name is Danny Beckett.”

She looked up at me, and the creases spiderwebbing her brown face deepened as she squinted. Even though we were in the shade, she lifted a dirty hand to her brow to shade her eyes.

“Mary has some vision problems,” Lauren said.

“I haven’t been able to get my glasses fixed,” she said. It looked like she was missing all the teeth from the incisors back on the left side.

“Well,” I said. “We might be able to help you with that. May I sit down?”

She was facing outward with her back against the edge of the table. She twisted around and hefted a tote bag overflowing with soiled clothing items off of the bench and up onto the table to make room for me. “Please.” She smiled politely at me and gestured to the empty space next to her. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Thank you. My friends say you knew a man named Bishop.”

“Yes,” she said, her gaze drifting toward the playground. “I did. So sad to hear the bad news.”

“Me too,” I said. “What can you tell me about him?”

She liked to keep to herself. Tried not to go to the mission unless she had to. Didn’t like the way they were always preaching at her. But it was the Fourth of July. She hated the Fourth of July. The sounds of all those fireworks going off, all those little explosions. It reminded her of being a girl in El Salvador and how scared she was when the soldiers came.

Last July she was able to get a bed, and she hoped she’d be able to get one this year too. They gave you seven days. She could get cleaned up and get a few good nights’ sleep. It would be good. It had been a long time.

She got there early on the third, before breakfast, hoping that she’d be able to get in ahead of everybody who’d be looking for a place. That one with the beard, the young one, said he’d see what he could do. What was his name? Mike? Matt? Something with an
M
.

After the runny oatmeal, she got cleaned up as much as she could and went back to see Mark.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he said. “I managed to get you up to number eight on the waiting list, so there’s a chance, but not a very good one.”

Mary nodded. “Thanks,” she said.

“You can wait and see, or come back at dinner.”

“Okay.”

“It’s the holiday. We always have more people wanting to be inside.”

“I know. Don’t like to be out there with all the bombs exploding.”

He took his glasses off. Rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“If we can’t get you in here, Saint Andrew’s is having a dinner and keeping their multipurpose room open late, so you won’t have to be outside.”

She went back in the late afternoon and found out that she didn’t make it to the top of the list, so on the afternoon of the fourth, she made her way to the church and pushed her folding cart across the parking lot and found a place near the door. There was already a line, but it wasn’t too long yet. Six people ahead of her, waiting along the wall next to the double doors that led into the church’s auxiliary room. They did meals most holidays. Not bad.

Mary was surprised that there weren’t more people. She didn’t know anybody ahead of her. None of them had a wagon or a cart. Maybe they were staying in cars. Maybe they had places and just couldn’t afford food. A woman was reading a book while a little girl sat next to her and played with some kind of a Barbie doll. Some stupid thing with blonde hair that didn’t look a thing like the child’s long black ponytail. The two of them didn’t look street, but they did look hungry. She watched the little girl for a long time and tried not to remember the things that were trying to get into her head.

By the time they opened the doors, there were several dozen people in line. Not as many as Mary expected, but more and more families came. She never used to see so many families. The great recession was what did it. There were some familiar faces. Nobody she’d say anything to, but she nodded at people more than a few times.

Toward the end of the line, she saw Bishop. If he’d been closer, she would have talked to him. Not much, just a “Hi, how are you” or something. He’d given her a whole Subway sandwich once. Turkey and ham and everything. It was on the wheat bread, but she didn’t complain about that. Honestly, it was so good she hardly noticed. She’d heard a few other people say things about him. About things like that sandwich. People don’t talk like that about other people very much. It’s always
Stay away from him
and
Watch out for that one
. She made up her mind to say hello to him if she had the chance.

They had hot dogs and burgers and potato salad and baked beans. It was good. She had seconds on the beans and potato salad because they didn’t get as many people as they’d expected, and that stuff was easy to chew on the right side of her mouth where she still had a few good teeth.

By the time everyone finished eating, even after the vanilla ice cream they had for dessert, it was getting dark. Firecrackers and bottle rockets and all sorts of other things had been going off sporadically for a few hours. But the frequency was increasing. So was the intensity. Everything was getting louder. Closer. She saw the first flash of light in the windows high up on the wall.

She took her cart and moved across the room into the corner farthest from the door, the wall that backed up against the church itself. She wanted to get as far away from it as she could. She pulled one of the folding chairs away from the table and backed it up against the floor-to-ceiling cupboards. She had put as much distance as she could between herself and the noise and commotion outside. It wasn’t enough.

She started digging through her cart, looking for her cube. Sometimes it made her feel better. Spinning the colored squares around. She knew the point was to make each side the same color, to make all those little squares match, but she never really bothered with that. She just liked to twist it around and watch it change. But she couldn’t find it. She dug deeper and deeper and tried not to notice the sounds.

That’s why she didn’t hear him at first. She knew from the way he said her name that he was repeating it. He said it again and she finally looked up.

“Hi, Mary.” Bishop looked so tall to her. Was he tall? She tried to remember. Maybe it was just because she was sitting down. “Can I join you?” he said.

She nodded, and he went to the closest table and got a chair for himself.

“How you doing?”

“Okay,” she said, knowing he could see the lie.

“You thirsty? They’ve got some soda pop and some punch.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I checked it.” He grinned at her. “It’s just plain punch.”

She smiled back. To be polite. Kept her mouth closed so he wouldn’t see how many teeth were missing.

He sat there with her. She wasn’t quite as scared.

“The sound’s the worst part?”

She nodded.

He looked at her for a minute, like he was thinking about something, trying to make a decision.

“Wait right here, okay?” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

She didn’t want him to go.

“Really,” he said. “Right back.”

As she watched him walk out the door, the flashes in the windows got brighter and the explosions got louder. She looked down at her feet, closed her eyes, and put her hands over her ears.

The touch on her arm startled her. She opened her eyes and looked up. It was Bishop. He was standing in front of her, doing some kind of little dance, shuffling his feet and swaying back and forth. It took her a few seconds to notice the headphones he was wearing. They were the old kind, not those ones the kids use now that stick right in their ears. These ones had the foam earpieces and the wire that goes over your head.

Bishop grinned at her again and motioned for her to stand up.

She didn’t want to, so he took her hand and pulled gently. When she stood, he removed the headphones from his own ears and put them on her. She recognized the song immediately. “Moon River” from that old Audrey Hepburn movie. Mary couldn’t remember when or where she’d first heard the song, but she knew it.

Bishop took the old Discman out of his vest pocket and put it in her hands. She held it in front of herself, and he took her elbows and swayed back and forth with her. It was almost like they were dancing.

When the song ended, he showed her how to work the controls and told her she could hang onto it until he saw her again.

“You sure?” she said, surprised.

He nodded. “I hardly ever use it anyway.”

They sat back down and she listened to the song. She didn’t forget about what was going on outside, but for a while, at least, it wasn’t quite as frightening as it had been.

She closed her eyes for a few minutes. Did she fall asleep? She must have, because Bishop was gone.

She found one of the volunteers and said, “Have you seen Bishop?”

“I’m sorry,” the young woman said. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

She turned on the park bench next to me and looked through the aged tote bag she had put on the table. “I never got to give it back to him,” she said, holding it up for us to see.

“You shouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “He would have wanted you to have it.”

“I used up the batteries,” she said.

“Here,” I said, handing her the four twenties that I had folded into my shirt pocket. “Get some more.”

“You’re a kind man,” she said to me. “Like he was. Gave me a whole Subway sandwich once.”