Angel Among Us (15 page)

‘What did she do when you asked her to help you find your wife?' Maggie asked. Her voice was thick with worry. I knew why: if Arcelia Gallagher had stumbled on whoever had taken Aldo's wife, she may have walked into an incredibly dangerous situation. She may well have put her own life in danger trying to help someone else.

Aldo looked confused. Eventually, through his brother, he was able to convey that he did not know what Arcelia Gallagher had done to help them. She had said she would call him if she found out anything and, although he had received a phone message from Arcelia the day before she disappeared, she had not left any details. She had only said he was not to worry about his wife, that she would be OK, and would contact him when she could.

‘But then I hear that Mrs Gallagher is missing, and my wife still does not call or come home, and things are twice as bad, not better,' Aldo added through his brother.

As he told this story, I could feel Gonzales turning against the man. I understood why, but I could not forgive the commander for it. Aldo Flores was all that Gonzales feared others would see him as: someone who did not belong in the community, beaten down by life, fearful of the authorities, unambitious, content to rake someone else's leaves, his whole world revolving around family, with no aspirations to power or vast wealth even envisioned. He had not learned to speak English and he dressed like a peasant. He was exactly what Gonzales did not want to be. Even more troubling, Gonzales could understand every syllable the frightened man uttered and I am certain he brought his own interpretations to all those stutterings and silences. By the time Aldo was done, I knew the absolute worst possible outcome was all too likely to occur. And it did.

My fears were realized when Maggie excused herself from the interrogation room and joined Gonzales in the observation chamber.

‘It sounds to me like he has a reason to be concerned,' she told Gonzales. ‘His wife is missing and you cannot ignore the similarities between her and Arcelia Gallagher. I think we need to start investigating his wife's disappearance as part of this case.'

‘Book him,' Gonzales said abruptly. He looked at his watch. ‘I've got to go home and get some sleep. We'll talk more in the morning.'

Maggie stared at him incredulously. ‘Book him? I can't do that. What reason do we have? You can't throw him in a jail cell. Look at him – he's terrified. His wife is missing. Think of how frightened he must be.'

Gonzales would not look her in the eye. ‘Think of something and book him. I don't want him leaving this town and I don't want him leaving this country. There's something off about him. And by his own words, he's connected to both missing women. Book him, put him in a holding cell for now and then lose the key.'

‘Sir,' Maggie said, shocked. She was at a loss for more to say.

Gonzales brushed past her, eager to get out the door. ‘We have to have someone to show for the last two days, Gunn. If we don't arrest someone soon, this town is going to lynch Danny Gallagher. Just book him and we'll sort it out later.'

He had disappeared down the hall but Maggie still could not move. She stared after Gonzales, her innate sense of fairness in chaos. Calvano grew curious at her long absence and poked his head out into the hallway. Seeing her standing there, he gave her a quizzical look and mouthed the word ‘What?'

‘You don't want to know,' Maggie said. She reached for the door to the interrogation room. Her face was grim. ‘And you're not going to like what I have to tell you.'

T
o say that Calvano didn't like the orders Gonzales had given them was an understatement. He flat out refused to do it. He left Maggie to process Aldo Flores and to handle his outraged brother. It was not like Calvano to walk out on Maggie and so I followed him, curious to see where he was going.

It was well after midnight and the streets were empty. All the reporters were, thankfully, back at their hotels, downing drinks and telling themselves they performed a valuable service by exposing dangerous killers like Danny Gallagher.

Calvano looked up at the clear, starry skies and began to walk west until he reached a seedy coffee shop frequented by prostitutes and drug dealers. Most of the booths were filled, but the waitress quickly cleared one for Calvano. Like everyone else in the coffee shop, she knew he was a cop and she didn't want any trouble on her shift.

I sat across from him, drinking in the aroma of his coffee as I tried to figure out the enigma that was Adrian Calvano. Not so long ago, he had been a swaggering ladies man and a useless detective. Then he had met Maggie and, with nothing between them but professional respect, she had made him both a better man and a better detective. I think something had been awakened in him, perhaps even a conscience. He was finding it harder to accept some of the things Gonzales asked him to do now that he was thinking for himself. I had never taken that step as I had never made it that far. I admired him for it.

He sat there for nearly an hour, drinking coffee and staring at the place mat, his thoughts unreadable and his mood inscrutable. It was close to three o'clock in the morning when the coffee shop door opened and Maggie stuck her head inside. She spotted Calvano and slid into the booth across from him, causing me to scramble to one corner to avoid that somersaulting feeling I get when someone occupies the same space as me.

‘I figured you'd be here,' Maggie said. ‘I processed him. His brother Rodrigo is getting him a lawyer.'

Calvano was not going to thank her for doing Gonzales's dirty work. Nor was he going to apologize for abandoning his duty. ‘Gonzales is a douche bag,' he told Maggie. ‘I don't care if he's your godfather or not. I don't trust him. And what he's doing right now? There's no excuse for it. It's not right.'

‘Aldo is connected to both missing women,' Maggie pointed out. ‘Would you rather we were still focusing on Danny Gallagher?'

‘It's times like these when I wish I smoked,' Calvano said. He stared longingly at a couple of streetwalkers who were eating chocolate sundaes and smoking cigarettes in defiance of town ordinances banning smoking in restaurants. He turned back to Maggie. ‘You know, Aldo Flores and Danny Gallagher aren't the only people who had contact with both women. It doesn't have to be a choice between the husband and some poor beaner, who has no idea what hit him and who only wants to find his wife and kid.'

‘Like who?' Maggie asked, gently sliding Calvano's coffee out of his reach. He had clearly had enough for the night.

‘Like Father Sojak,' Calvano said reluctantly. ‘And we both know that Aldo helped his brother out at the Delmonte House. That means his wife took the bus to bring him lunch there. Which means there are people at that house who came in contact with both her and Arcelia Gallagher. For all we know, Enrique Romero is behind this all.'

Maggie laughed. ‘Now you sound like Gonzales. Look, I don't like Romero any more than you do. That Hollywood routine wears me out in about ten seconds. But he has no reason whatsoever to have anything to do with either woman. You're just angry because he's a lousy husband.'

‘I still say we're not done out there,' Calvano said stubbornly. ‘There are too many roads that lead to that house.'

‘I hear you,' Maggie said. ‘It bothers me as well. But Gonzales wants us to focus on making a case against Aldo Flores.'

‘Then let him think that's what we're doing.' Calvano said flatly. ‘But me? I want to find Arcelia Gallagher, not chase dead ends. And I'm telling you, there's something that connects her to that house and it's not just that exorcism she helped with or whatever the hell it was.'

‘OK,' Maggie conceded. ‘I'll make a deal with you. If you can still sleep after all that coffee, let's each grab a few hours and then we'll head out there again in the morning.'

‘For real?' Calvano asked.

Maggie nodded. ‘For real.'

Because I was facing the plate glass window of the coffee shop, I saw Skip Bostwick approaching before anyone else did. I knew immediately it would not end well. Maggie's ex was bopping down the street in that annoying way of his, in search of local color for his story. Or maybe he was looking for a hooker to erase the memory of Lindsey Stanford. Whatever he was up to, it had not taken him long to make Stanford happy and, judging from the spring in his step, he thought it had done him some good.

Son of a bitch – he had been following Maggie. That's what had brought him to this street. He kept peering into alleys and looking at the cars parked along the street, wondering where she had gone. I shot him the bird in a burst of solidarity with my living partners, but he probably wouldn't have noticed had I been visible. The guy was that into himself. He spotted the brightly lit coffee shop from down the street and hurried toward it. I saw him recognize Maggie's car parked a few doors down. Then he saw Maggie and Calvano, heads bent together over coffee, and I am sure he leapt right to the wrong conclusion. Like the jerk he was, he acted like he still owned her. He came inside looking for a fight.

Some people are capable of opening a door and simply walking through it. Others have to fling it open with the bang to announce to the world that they are there. Naturally Skip Bostwick fell into this category. All eyes turned to him and not a single person in that coffee shop gave a crap that he was handsome. They were street people. They had been around enough to know an asshole when they saw one. I think everyone, down to the harried waitress, pegged him for what he really was within three seconds of seeing him.

He was oblivious to the impression he made and sauntered over to Maggie and Calvano's booth with his customary cockiness. ‘Well, well, well,' he said. ‘What have we here? I guess you two are part of the very tiny city that never sleeps. Working on a new lead in the case?'

With monumental effort, Maggie kept her cool. ‘Go away, Skip. You're the last person on earth we would tell anything to.'

Calvano entered the fray. ‘
Skip?
' he asked. ‘What kind of name is that for a grown man?'

‘You tell me,
Adrian
,' Skip shot back. ‘Yo, Adrian!'

How mature. They were fighting over their names. The two little boys in Arcelia Gallagher's class had shown more maturity than these two.

Calvano stood up and, I had to admit, he could be very intimidating. I think it's the combination of his prissy hygiene and the slightly crazy look he gets in his eyes that is one hundred percent Italian.

The street whores appreciated Calvano way more than they admired ole Skippy's fake good looks. They squealed in anticipation as the two men squared off. The waitress hurried over, took a closer look at them and decided to wait by the cash register until it was over.

‘Mano-a-mano!' one of the prostitutes announced, making it apparent that she was a he.

‘Come on guys,' Maggie pleaded. Her worst fear had just arrived. But she may as well have been spitting into the wind. There was only one way this was going to go down.

‘What's it like working with my ex-wife?' Bostwick asked Calvano. ‘You get off on how bossy she is?'

There were a lot of things Calvano could have said in reply. But he decided to get right to the point. He landed one of the best right hooks I have ever seen – and we're talking about many drunken nights at a bar staring bleary-eyed at televised fights – right in the center of Skip Bostwick's nose. The man dropped like a rock as blood gushed out in rivers. Calvano pulled his fist back and stared at it, astonished. I'm not sure he had ever connected so thoroughly before.

The coffee shop was dead quiet. Not a person moved. Even Maggie was speechless.

I was euphoric. I was, in fact, dancing on the tabletop, although no one could appreciate it. Oh, how many times I had wanted to do what Calvano had just done – to haul off and slug someone who richly deserved it and let my fists do the talking. It felt good to see Skip Bostwick go down. And it was pure heaven to see him writhing on a dirty coffee shop floor.

If Calvano agreed with me, he hid it well. ‘I'm sorry,' he said to Maggie. ‘I didn't know I could do that.'

Skip Bostwick had begun to groan. He held his nose in both hands and rocked from side-to-side, mumbling something that sounded like ‘my node, my node', as blood ran over his hands. Maggie gestured for the waitress to bring over some napkins. When she hurried over with a fistful of them, Maggie grabbed a handful and bent over Skip. She started to dab the blood from his face and then thought better of it. She ended up dropping the wad of paper on his chest. ‘Be a man and mop it up yourself,' she said, sliding back into her booth. She had decided she was going to simply watch and see what unfolded next.

If Bostwick had hoped for help for his injuries, he gave up the tactic quickly. Struggling to sit up, he glared at Maggie and Calvano, his hands cupped under his nose to catch the blood flowing from it. ‘I'm going to sue the shit out of both of you and the department,' he told him. ‘That was assault. There were witnesses.'

‘Don't look at us,' one of the prostitutes told him. The others nodded their agreement. ‘You're looking at Miss Hear No Evil, See No Evil and our little sister Speak No Evil.' Amid a chorus of ‘uh-huhs' she turned her back on Bostwick.

Maggie had decided that she was backing her partner on this one. She leaned over until she was only a few inches from her ex-husband's face and whispered to him, ‘So help me God, Skip, if you even so much as
tell
anyone how you got that, I will make sure that no one on the force ever talks to you again. And trust me, there are way more people who like me at this point. I will make sure that no one in this town gives you the slightest scrap of information to help you with your story. Walk away or your so-called career as a crime reporter is over before it starts.'