Burning Midnight (14 page)

For a few seconds after I'd called out to him he lay motionless in the grass, a child hoping to confound the monster in his bedroom by becoming invisible under the covers. But I could see his narrow back now in the same flannel shirt and the stingy curve of his rump in loose jeans faded almost white. Then he stirred again and got up in one movement, thrusting himself to his feet without first climbing onto his knees. I envied him his flexibility, but it's a dumb thing to do when the person who called you out is armed. I kept my reflexes on a leash and didn't fire.

“Who are you?”

“The Easter Bunny. Find any eggs?”

“What?”

“Wrong room. Forget it. Who are you hiding from?”

He was in between growth spurts. He looked taller than he was because the last one had outdistanced his body fat, but he hadn't yet caught up with his large hands and feet. He was going to be tall for a Mexican, if they were any kind of clue. A good-looking kid, once he took a bath and changed clothes. His dark hair, defiantly unbrushed, curled over his ears and his face was narrow and dirty and feral-looking, the full lips set tight and the pupils shrunken in his sister's hickory-colored eyes. The sun was at ground level behind me, in his eyes, and he didn't like what he was seeing; narrowed pupils didn't have to mean he was on drugs. But I kept the muzzle trained on his slender middle.

“I wasn't doing anything,” he said. His accent was Middle Western, no trace of Spanish.

“Not what I asked.”

“Who are you?”

“This isn't
Jeopardy.
I want answers, not questions. Let's go again. See the show?”

He thought about that. “What show?”

“Seriously; again? Okay. Detroit's Finest. They're here all week. Stop wasting time. You heard the sirens.”

“I thought they were looking for me. That's why I hid.”

An answer at last. I'd begun to give up hope. “Now, why would they be looking for you?”

“I ran away.”

“I know. I ran after you.”

“Yeah, I thought that was you at the mission. You don't run so good.”

“I know when to stop. My name is Amos Walker. I'm a detective.”

“Cop?”

“Private. Missing persons is my specialty. Is any of this starting to make sense?”

“Did Chata hire you?”

“I'm working for your uncle.”

“My uncle lives in Mexico. We never met.”

“Not an uncle, I guess, the one I'm talking about. Your brother-in-law's father. There may not be a word for it. Him you've met.”

“No cops in my family.”

We weren't getting anywhere, and I was losing the light. If he slipped me again I didn't stand a chance. “It's getting cold. Let's sit in the car and turn on the heater.”

“I'm not getting in any car with you.”

“If I were a pervert, your pants would already be down around your ankles.”

He jumped, blushed; I'd thought that reaction had died along with wearing your underpants out of sight. But he recovered quickly.

“Working for a cop is the same as being a cop. You'll take me in.”

“I won't have to, if you walk a block in any direction from this spot.”

He shook his head. I let out air.

“Kids. Why do you argue when you know it won't change anything? Get in the car. I'll let you play the radio. No hip-hop, though. All this stimulating conversation is giving me a headache.”

“You going to shoot me if I don't?”

“In the foot. Easy target. What do you take, a size ten at least?”

That made his eyes widen. He was young enough to know I wasn't bluffing. Most of us lose that ability when we get old and sneaky. He reached up to pull a long blade of dead grass from under his collar and started around me in the direction of the Cutlass.

“Just a second.” I stopped him with my free hand on his shoulder, lowered the gun to my hip, and patted him down. From chest to crotch he wasn't carrying so much as a billfold. I stopped there. A thorough job would include his legs and ankles, but you need a partner for that. I didn't want to catch one of those clodhoppers in the face.

I didn't think he was carrying. It would have been in his hand when he stood up.

“
Un grande desperado,
hey?” he said when I finished and backed away. Where do teenagers get their perfect timing? I wanted to turn him over my knee, but he looked like a biter.

I did some head-shaking of my own.
“Un niño idiota.”

“I'm not a baby!”

“Okay, I was half wrong. Make with the big feet, Murietta.”

“Who's that?”

“A man without a head. You'd get along.” I gestured with the artillery.

When we were inside the car I returned the revolver to its clip, started the motor, and switched on the heater. He had leg room to spare; Alderdyce hadn't adjusted it when he got out. The boy scratched the back of the hand with an indigo tarantula spread out on it. It was healing. “Your car smells like cigarettes.”

“Can't think why.” I reached past him for the fresh pack in the glove compartment, unzipped the cellophane, and offered him one. He stared at it and shook his head.

“You're not supposed to do that,” he said. “It's against the law.”

“Chata didn't tell me you were funny.”

He said nothing. If I didn't dial it down I'd lose him.

“You're shooting each other in school hallways. I don't care if you're smoking.” I lit one and cracked the window. I turned on the blower and let it drive the cold and damp out of my leg. “Speaking of shooting.”

He jumped again.

“You saw him,” I said.

“Who?”

“
El Tigre.
Zorborón. Maybe you saw him get that third eye.”

“I don't know who that is.”

“Not good. Spend any time in Mexicantown, you know the Tiger, by reputation at least. You lie about that, you lied about the other. You need to work on your answers if you plan to run with
bandidos
.”

“Yeah, I saw him. I went there to ask him for a job. He was dead when I opened the door.” His voice shook a little.

I got mad for no reason, except a really first-class murderer wouldn't let a youngster walk in on that. They have standards. If he thought he was the one I was mad at, that was okay. I wanted him scareder of me than who he was hiding from.

“They just keep coming,” I said.

“What?”

“The lies,
muchacho.
Not even good ones; a good one I can at least appreciate for the effort. You're a carpenter, not a mechanic. And the last person Zorborón would hire is someone wearing that tattoo. What was it really, some kind of initiation?”

He said nothing. It was a shot in the dark—literally; the sun had gone and all I saw were the lights from the dash reflecting off his forehead and cheekbones—but it had struck home.

“Anyone can visit an ink parlor,” I said. “They can lose their license when it's a minor without the permission of a guardian, but they're not supposed to use dirty needles either: All those cases of hepatitis started with a toilet seat. Once you get a tat, you have to prove you deserve it. Your uncle John thinks you may have capped Zorborón with that in mind.”

“Don't call him that.”

I inhaled deep and let it stagger back out. “I have to wonder why you'd be more upset about that than about a cop thinking you killed someone.”

“I'm not worried about that. I didn't kill anybody.”

“What were you supposed to do, walk in and smack him on the shoulder, then run out? Ever see a western?”

He shook his head after a second. I was confusing him with questions that didn't mean anything. You won't find that in the manual under interrogations, but every cop knows about it.

“Indians used to do that,” I said, “count coup. In the movies, anyway. Places like Wyoming and Arizona. I don't know about Mexico. Maybe they were too busy building pyramids. One of a hundred ways to show off your
cojones.
”

“It was something like that.”

I needed time to process the answer. It was just idiotic enough to be true, if I hadn't given it to him. I shifted gears. “What were you doing in the rooster house? Don't waste breath denying it. You called your sister from that phone over there, and who'd think of looking for a runaway Hispanic hiding behind a bunch of fighting cocks? It's like tracking a stolen cantaloupe to the farmers' market. That's how a kid would think, anyway. Cops look everywhere.”

“You know that already, why'd you ask?”

“I was breaking the ice. What did you see before you ducked out?”

He said nothing.

“Anyone see you duck out?”

He repeated himself.

“You didn't come out the front, so you waited until the fire door was unlocked and went out that way. Hid in the alley and circled around while I was inside looking at Django and Berdoo, what was left of them. Then the cops came and you had no place to run, so you dropped to the ground. How much did you see or hear before you left?”

Nothing. He'd gone inside himself, which was a better place to lie low than an open lot. I shifted gears again.

“Let's go back to the garage. What did
El Hermano
tell you to do to let Zorborón know you existed?”

He jumped a third time. He was part jackrabbit. “Who's that, another man without a head?”

I nodded. His body language made more sense than his speech. “Yeah, I thought it was Guerrera. He's got taste. Seventh Sunday would have told you to chop his head off and bring it back;
no es sutil,
our Domingo. What was it?”

For a moment I thought he'd returned to that place where I couldn't follow. Then clothing rustled and he leaned forward, taking his features out of the glow from the dials. He was going for his ankles. I reached back and loosened the Smith; I'd been wrong about other things than how far to frisk. Then he sat back and something glittered in his palm. He wasn't holding it like a gun or a knife.

I took my hand off my gun, reached up, and switched on the dome light. In that noninfrared light, the enameled thunderbird on the lighter was orange and turquoise.

 

FOURTEEN

“Where'd you get it? Don't answer,” I said when he opened his mouth. I knew what he would say anyway. I pocketed the lighter, turned off the blower, and put the car in gear.

“Where we going, police station?”

“Home.”

“Whose?”

“Yours.” I turned on the radio. All I got was a bunch of blowhards taking off on the government. I'd been hoping for salsa. I turned it off.

“Why?”

“Because that's where you live.”

“I was going to—”

“Ridiculous extremes. Rack and ruin. Hell in a handbasket. The Hop. Pipe down or I'll swing this car around and put you back where I found you.”

He piped down. He hadn't showered in more than twenty-four hours and puberty makes full use of the glands. I opened the window wider for fresh air.

The whoosh of wind and cold discouraged conversation and helped make my mind a blank. I didn't want to hear anything and I didn't want to draw any conclusions from what I'd heard that would make me a witness against him.

I turned on the radio for the traffic report and took the surface roads. The reporters hovering over the expressways were announcing more clogged arteries than Burger King. Everyone was in a hurry to get home and drown the day in beer. I was too busy babysitting and harboring to join them.

On Outer Drive I pulled into a gas station and up to a pay phone opposite the air compressor. A man's voice answered in Beverly Hills.

“Gerald Alderdyce?”

“That's not my name. Who's calling?” His voice was shallower than his father's, but he'd inherited his telephone etiquette.

I'd forgotten he'd changed his name. I told him who was calling. He interrupted before I could say anything more.

“You're fired, pal. I don't care what John says. He gave up the right to make my decisions for me before I was eighteen.”

“Talk to him, not me. I've got your brother-in-law in the car. If you won't take him, the cops will. He's a witness in three murders.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Is your wife there?”

“She's sleeping. She didn't get much rest last night. I won't—”

“I didn't ask you to. Give her another ten minutes. We'll be there in twenty.” I slung the receiver back on its hook.

“Jerry's a fucking pain in the ass,” Nesto said as we slid back into traffic.

“He's your brother-in-law. It's in the code.”

“He thinks I'm going through a phase. Fuck's that mean?”

“It means when you can't get through a sentence without sticking ‘fuck' in it.”

His sister was standing on the little front porch when we turned into the driveway. She wore a gray Aéropostale sweatshirt with the hood folded back, red shirt, jeans, loafers. She'd pulled her shimmering black hair into a ponytail. When I braked, crunching limestone, the door behind her opened and a big man came out and rested a hand on her shoulder. He was as tall as his father, not as bulky, but every bit as dark as when I'd first known John, like burnished cast iron. His shoulders were broad under a dress shirt open at the collar with the cuffs turned back, tucked into pinstripe slacks; he'd left the office in the place where he hung up his coat and tie and changed into slippers. Something liquid caught the porch light in a glass in his other hand.

Nesto was out of the car before I could get my door open. He trotted up the steps and brushed past his sister just as she stepped forward with her arms open. Jerry turned, opening an angry mouth, but with one hand on his wife's shoulder and the other holding his drink all he could do was say, “Hey!” He was just as articulate as the old man.