Falling Down (2 page)

B
ob Gates followed me up the narrow bricked stairway to my roof.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You've got a bad cop. A traitor, somewhere inside TPD. You want my help?”

“That's pretty much it.”

Downslope from the house, trimming a blue Palo Verde tree, Nathan Brittles watched us carefully. Long-bladed clippers held in front of him as he watched, clippers snicking open and shut, open and shut, his body turning to see me on the roof, the clipper action mechanical without focus, and no longer anywhere near the Palo Verde, snicking open and shut on nothing but air.

His sadness and disappointment battered my heart.

I looked away.

I no longer knew where our love had gone.

On the roof, I sat at my battered redwood picnic table while Gates locked hands above his eyes and rotated slowly, taking in the view.

“Helluva view,” Gates said. “Clear day like this, I can see Elephant Hill, all the way down past Green Valley. That's gotta be forty miles south. You
own
this place?”

“Yes,” I said shortly.

Waiting him out, Gates a patient man, acting lieu
tenant of the Tucson Police Department. Had a slow way of talking, like he really didn't much care to say more than he had to. Or just didn't like to talk.

“You must see a lot of wild life from up here.”

“Javelinas, bobcats, foxes, coyotes,” I said. “Lots of pack rats, lots of snakes.”

“I live in a condo, off a golf course,” Gates said. “Saw a rattler in my backyard, that snake was so big you coulda put a saddle on it. I whacked at it with a shovel, lost my TV cable service for a week.”

“Why the stand-up comic routine, Bob? And don't tell me you came here just for the view.”

“Mmmm,” he said, swiveling north to look up at the Santa Catalinas, towering behind the house. Took in the million-dollar homes stretching far into the dry foothills. I let him ramble across the rooftop, noticed that he stayed a good two feet from the low-bricked railings.

 

Yes, it was my own home.

Built by a surgeon in the '70s before the gold rush in real estate. Southeast of Sunset and Swann, you drop down into a small ravine and then climb a hill overlooking all of Tucson. Picnic table on the roof, a memory of my early years in Tuba City. Random wooden chairs from garage sales.

I'd sit up there and watch the sun rise, or set, or streak through monsoon clouds and create double and triple rainbows.

I helped the surgeon disprove a multimillion-dollar malpractice suit brought by a family of nine, I didn't care much about the details, I just uncovered a history of past crash-car insurance scams. Buy four junkers. Cruise along U.S.-10 at seventy miles an hour, lock on to a Benz or Beemer, then box it between all four junkers and the guy driving the front car, they've disconnected the brake lights, he hits the brakes hard, and
wham,
it's a huge lawsuit.

The surgeon had properties all over the world. Could have paid my fee with cash, but the guy was so grateful, he gave me the home on the hill with the view. He never told me the place was lousy with pack rats. After five weeks they chewed through several cables on my Jeep Cherokee.

 

Gates circled back to the table, pulled out a ladder-back wooden chair.

“Sorry I had to come here,” he said. “Tried your office for a week.”

“I'm retired.”

“Still. I hate bringing this to your home, instead of your office.”

“I don't want to contract out to TPD. I really am retired. I quit.”

“Not what I hear.”

“I've got a good life here.”

“Laura, I know you've got a good man, a loving daughter, and you're gaga over a granddaughter. And where are your girls?”

“Spider's got a full-time job with flex hours, her baby always with her.”

“And this baby, this granddaughter, what's her name?”

“Sarah Katherine.”

As Gates settled into the chair, two of the lower rungs popped out and he nearly fell over when the chair collapsed. Not bothered, he pulled another chair over and sat down. Quick mover for a big guy. Gates somewhere in his fifties. He'd been with TPD for a thousand years. Instead of wearing his lieutenant's uniform, he dressed for himself and not the job:

The shirt had a blue flower-and-bird pattern, buttoned at the neck and color-coordinated with his light gray jacket. He removed his jacket, folded it across the back of another chair.

“Want some sun tea?” I said.

“I'd love some.”

“No ice.”

He shrugged. I pulled two large jelly glasses from a wooden cabinet, poured the tea. Set the glasses out on some paper napkins from Risky Business, poured the tea, and sipped it while Gates rotated his glass around and around, adjusting the napkin, finally tasting the tea. People mask and delay their real intentions by eating or drinking, by fiddling with glasses and plates and utensils and napkins, getting them in some order while they carefully work out in their head just how and what they're going to say.

Usually, the more they fiddle, the worse the message.

“You read the local papers?” he asked.

“Not much.”

“But you've heard that we've got problems with drug smuggling?”

“Drugs?” I said. “Yeah. The
Star
runs a drug story every day now.”

“Reporters don't know jack. A bust in South Tucson, front-page news. How much do you know about the
mara
cartels laundering money through Arizona banks?”

“I quit hacking into bank records two years ago. I do nothing illegal anymore.”

“And what if it
was
legal?”

He'd been fiddling with a naugahyde briefcase under the table. Reached down, laid it flat but unopened on the table.

“Heard you also quit taking autopsy photos,” Gates said.

“You brought pictures of dead people to my house?”

One hand hesitated on the briefcase, waiting for encouragement.

“Drugs and dead people,” I said. “Not my line of work.”

“Nope. But bank records, you can track money transfers. Legal or illegal.”

“Illegal? Drug money?”

“Drugs, extortion, gambling…we don't yet understand the size of this operation. Bodies piling up, somebody new taking control of organized crime, from Nogales north to Tucson. It's backward logic. With so many bodies, there has to be a lot of money moving somewhere.”

“Where?”

“No idea,” Gates said. “Our people can't find anything.”

“But it's connected to a bad cop?”

“I
think
it's connected.” Hands out, palms up, shoulders rising and falling a few inches, the universal shrug of
I don't know
. “We've been friends a long time, Laura. You know a gut feeling when it hits. My gut tells me, this is all connected.”

“Please tell me you've checked this out on your own.”

“As far as I can, without telling anybody…yeah, I've looked.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“You've come at the wrong time, Bob. I'm trying to phase out of my business, not take in more work.”

“You're the only licensed PI in your company.”

“That's a poor argument, you know it. Computer searches, data mining, it's a whole new world. Half my employees are MBAs. And a lawyer on board, to keep us strictly legit, and to get court orders and financial search orders. PIs aren't like Sam Spade anymore.”

“So there's no use appealing to you as a good citizen?”

I snorted, poured myself some more sun tea. A blend
of Red Zinger and slices of jalapeño peppers. Gates wandered around the rooftop, shaded his eyes to look over the Santa Catalina Mountains piled high behind the house. Seated again, he pulled off his lizardskin boots and socks, stretched his feet into the sun.

“Would you do it as a favor to me?” he said.

Briefcase on his lap, opened, one hand inside, waiting.

“I think I saw this movie,” I said finally. “
Manhunter,
from that Harris book
Red Dragon
. Where the FBI man brings photos of two happy families, wanting to sink the hook of interest for a retired investigator.”

“TPD needs your help.”

“I don't work drug cases.”

“It's not about drugs. Or bank records. We've got a bad cop.”

“Whoever it is, you know how to deal with them. You've got Internal Affairs, or whatever you call it.”

“Office of Internal Affairs.”

“So? Deal with the
it
.”

“Don't know who
it
is.”

The whole thing shaped up, right then, I realized what he wanted, my eyes opening with the insight, and Bob saw my eyes and nodded.

“Oh, no,” I said. “Bob, that's, you want
me
to run an investigation?”

“Computer records need checking. Got to be done by somebody from outside TPD.”

“No way, Bob.”

Stroking his briefcase, still making no move to open it.

“You ever hear of these new gangs called
maras
?” he said. “All kinds of facial tattoos?”

“El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras…probably in LA?”

“For the last five months, the
maras
have been systematically taking over all Tucson drug networks. Weed, coke, white and black tar heroin.”

“That's
not
been in the papers,” I said. “Bob. You've
got a lot of TPD people working this. I can't see where I'd help in any way. I'm retired here. I want to shuck off most of my life.”

“The presidential vote,” Gates said. “Just last fall. You volunteered to help detect electronic voting fraud.”

“That was politics. I didn't want my guy to lose.”

“He lost anyway. Besides, knowing you, Laura, it's mainly
you
that doesn't want to lose. Look. If you don't want to hear any more about why I'm here, I'd understand that. I'd leave. Will you hear me out first?”

He unsnapped the brass clasps of his briefcase, raised the top, swiveled the briefcase around for me to look inside. Two tabbed manila folders. A Glock nine.

“Two propositions on the table,” Gates said, removing the folders. “Help us. You get back your PI license. And you get back your Glock.”

All sound stopped. No breeze, no birds, no traffic, Nathan wasn't
snipsnipping
. One of those moments where people say:

I nodded.

He'd set the hook well. My computer forensics business depended, in part, in being legal, on my having a valid Arizona private investigator's license.

“After that casino deal last year, where you and your boyfriend hustled the casino manager out of his own place with guns in his back, well, the ISB assistant chief wants you totally out of business. Cancel your PI license, cancel your gun-carry permit.”

He opened a folder. The top page was the TPD organizational chart.

“Professional Standards Division,” Gates said. “See this blank box down here? Narcotics Conspiracy Section. We want to add a special section. Hasn't even got a name. Headed by…”

Wet his right thumb, slid the org chart off, showing a large color photo.

“Jordan Kligerman. TPD up-and-comer. Tough man. An accountant, except he doesn't know jack about computer hacking. He's already got a staff of three people. You'd report as a civilian. Contracted, paid off the books, but equivalent pay of top detective. Sixty, seventy thousand.”

He knew the money was not why I'd consider the offer.

“What's this guy like?”

“Between you and me, Kligerman is a pogue. A desk cowboy. Never rode patrol, never worked a crime scene. Strictly an accountant, but somebody you'd never want to underestimate. If you do this.”

“Bob, why
would
I do this?”

“A lot of street people are dying. For every gangbanger involved in drugs, these
maras
are killing three, four, hell, whole families of civilians.”

“How many?”

“Laura. This is totally off the record. So far, near's we can figure, the
maras
have killed almost one hundred twenty-five people. But that's really not the worst thing of all.”

Underneath Kligerman's file, a white envelope stuffed with pictures. Gates started to pull out a few snaps, but I laid my hand over the envelope.

“Not here, Bob.”

“They're not dead,” he said.

“Just tell me who they are. I don't care, right now, I don't care about what they look like.”

“They're children.”

“Children?”

“Teenagers, mostly,” he said. “Being used as drug mules.”

“Carrying?”

“Swallowing.”

“Good God,” I said.

“They're conditioned to swallow twenty, thirty…a
whole lot of small balloons of heroin. They cross over alone or with rental parents. Once in a while, a balloon breaks. We're talking almost pure heroin. Right from Afghanistan, suppliers of at least ninety percent of the world's heroin. It's so pure, if a balloon breaks inside somebody's intestine, no way they live.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Bob, I mean, where's the dotted line here? Between teenage drug mules and a bad cop?”

“No dotted line. Just a guess. An
ed
ucated guess. Special drug raids, kept secret from all but top planners, some of these raids go sour. Somebody's tipped off. We set a sting, a fake raid. Somebody talked.”

“Somebody inside TPD?”

“Yes.”

“But you don't know who.”

“No.”

“And you want me to…
what,
Bob?