Dragon Fruit Page 9

  ‘A Texan pretending to be from Mexico? Odd.’ I propped my heels up on the table. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Miss Jaymie. I do not like to tell you what to do. But please take your shoes off the table. You eat on that table sometimes.’

  She had a point. I lowered my feet to the floor.

  ‘Now. You ask me why somebody would do it? Because’ – Gabi pointed a finger upwards – ‘because he does not want me to know, but I know anyway: he is a cop.’

  ‘The man who called was a cop?’ I stared at her. ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘I been paying attention, that’s how. I been paying attention to the way you figure things out. This guy? He had nothing to tell. No, he only had things to ask, you know? Like, who is the little girl? Where does she come from and why is she missing? Who wants to find her?’

  ‘The third damn cop in less than twenty-four hours. What the hell is this all about?’ I got up and slid my chair under the table. ‘How much did you tell him?’

  ‘Me?’ Gabi widened her eyes. ‘If you talked Spanish better, Miss Jaymie, you would know. I told the cop guy to mind his own business.’

  ‘Very good. Because it’s also possible he was a criminal, Gabi, somebody trying to get his hands on Rosie. A crim, not a cop.’

  ‘Miss Jaymie, please, what are you talking about? Of course he is a crim.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Like I said, he is a cop.’

  Gabi left at five. But I stayed on, till dusk began to collect in the corners of the little rooms. Then I dropped the blinds, stepped out onto the front porch and locked the door. As I bent to uncouple my Schwinn from the bannister, something made me stop and listen.

  The birds had broken off their evening roosting songs, and the only sound I could hear was the swoosh of traffic out on the street. I straightened and glanced to my right.

  Standing just inside the cluster of giant bird of paradise trees was a man.

  He was Hispanic, slight, and young – no more than nineteen or twenty years old. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, inadequate in the evening chill. The guy didn’t look threatening, but he didn’t look friendly, either. Wary, maybe even afraid.

  ‘Buenas noches.’ I kept my voice low. Then I waited. The guy seemed to be debating: run, or stay?

  ‘Buenas … noches.’ The fellow seemed awkward with the words. He had an odd voice, lilting and high. Like that of a tropical bird.

  He trilled a few more words, and I realized he wasn’t speaking Spanish. An indigenous language of Mexico, maybe. ‘Sorry.’ I spread my hands in apology.

  He tried a few halting words in Spanish. Then he reached into the breast pocket of his thin cotton shirt and pulled out a piece of paper folded many times over. Keeping his eyes on me, he opened it and held it up.

  Rosie gazed back at me from the flyer. My breath caught.

  This guy was the one we were after, I was sure of it.

  ‘Si.’ I patted my chest. ‘My flyer.’ God, how stupid was it, not speaking Spanish in this place and time?

  My eyes on him, I tugged my phone from my pants pocket. But when he saw the phone, his face closed. Quickly, before he could take off, I held up a hand.

  ‘Mi amiga,’ I pleaded. ‘Mi amiga habla español. OK?’ I was pretty sure he knew some Spanish. Gabi would be able to bridge the gap.

  He relaxed a little and nodded. He’d understood.

  ‘Gabi Gutierrez, she works with me.’ Again I patted my chest. ‘Jaymie, Jaymie Zarlin. And you?’

  Again, the shutters came down. He shrugged. ‘Chino.’ I was pretty sure that wasn’t his real name.

  But he pointed at the phone and nodded. ‘Is OK.’

  Just as I began to dial, the repo woman next door stepped out on her porch. She looked over, and Chino faded back into the shrubbery.

  ‘Everything good over there?’

  ‘Everything’s good,’ I called back. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better.’ The woman descended her steps, reached into her shirt to adjust a bra strap, then walked on.

  I thought about asking this Chino guy to step inside the office, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want that. So instead I moved toward the back garden, motioning him to follow. He complied.

  I sat down at the round garden table. The small space was dark now. The heady tropical scent of the tobira bushes filled the night air.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the young man sat down opposite me. I noticed he had little hair on his face, just a downy mustache on his upper lip. His eyelids had an Asian fold. Maybe his nickname really was Chino, who knew.

  He looked away from my direct gaze, out of politeness. That told me he hadn’t been in this country for long.

  I dialed the phone, and Gabi answered on the first ring. ‘Miss Jaymie, what, did I forget something?’

  ‘No. Gabi, I’m sitting here with a young man who says his name’s Chino. He’s come with the flyer, and he wants to tell me something.’

  ‘But he don’t speak no English, right? Maybe he really is the one.’

  ‘Right. But his Spanish isn’t that good either. I think he might speak an Indian language. Gabi, he’s spooked. I need you to translate, but don’t go scaring him off, OK?’

  ‘I’m gonna talk straight.’

  ‘Straight is OK. Mean is not. Remember, we don’t know that he’s had anything to do with Rosie’s abduction.’

  ‘Miss Jaymie, please trust me. Give him the phone.’

  I watched as the young man spoke, hesitantly at first, then with gathering force and directness. He and Gabi talked for two or three minutes. Then he looked over at me and handed me the cell.

  ‘Miss Jaymie, OK. Listen to me. This guy, yes, his nickname is Chino. He’s too scared to tell us the rest of his name. And he speaks Spanish, but you are right, his first language is an Indian one that I never heard of.’ Gabi’s words merged together in a turbulent stream.

  ‘Now here it is. Chino was on the panga boat with two other guys. Some other people in Mexico, some people he don’t wanna talk about, they made him get on the boat. They said they would hurt Chino’s family if he didn’t help take the marijuana up to California. Now listen, Miss Jaymie. One of those two other guys on the boat was the boss. The other one, he didn’t want to go, just like Chino. But guess what else he said, Miss Jaymie. In the beginning, there were two little girls in the boat.’

  ‘My God.’ I turned and stared at Chino.

  ‘It is terrible, yes. Terrible. One little girl died. She was three, maybe four years old. He says nobody hurt her, she just got sick and then died. And the other one, she was sick too, but not somuch, and she didn’t die.’

  ‘And that was Rosie.’

  ‘Yes. The one on the flyer, he said.’

  ‘Gabi. Are you certain that’s what he told you? That one child died?’

  Chino got to his feet. His eyes were fixed on me, and he looked ready to bolt. I put out a hand, pleading with him to stay.

  ‘Yes, he said that. I think maybe—’

  ‘Gabi, quick. Just the main points.’

  ‘OK. He don’t know why the little girls were in the boat. And the other guy like him, he knows nothing too. But he thinks maybe the leader, the third pangero, a guy named Flaco, he knows it all. And that is the end.’

  ‘Gabi, we need more. Chino has to know more than that. Did you push it?’

  ‘Yes, I pushed it and pushed it. He thinks maybe that guy Flaco, he went back down to the beach and got Rosie after they unloaded the marijuana. But he don’t know why, and he don’t even know that for sure. Because right after Flaco left, Chino took off. And now he’s scared, Miss Jaymie. Real scared.’

  I looked up. Chino had fluttered a hand in farewell. ‘Gabi, I gotta go.’

  ‘Lo siento,’ Chino said.

  He was sorry. And so was I.

  ‘Wait. Dinero.’ I made the sign for cash with my fingers and thumb.

  I walked back around to the office door, let myself in, and switched on the light. Becau
se I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure about Chino, I shut the door.

  I managed to locate the key that unlocked the bottom drawer in Gabi’s desk, slid it open and lifted the cash box lid. I hesitated: how much would it take to make sure Chino returned if he received more information?

  When I stepped outside, Chino was waiting, once again concealed within the massive leaves of the giant bird of paradise.

  ‘Muchas gracias.’ I held out the money.

  Chino stepped forward, then stopped. I could see him hesitating. He stared down at the five twenty-dollar bills in my hand.

  ‘Lo siento,’ he said again in his awkward Spanish. He held up the flyer.

  He was telling me he’d come forward to help Rosie, not for the reward. I understood. It was blood money, after all.

  ‘Yes. But I want you to have the money. If you learn more, please come back and tell me.’ I tried to mime out my words.

  His eyes met my own. Then he ran a swift finger across his throat. ‘Tengo miedo.’ He was afraid.

  ‘Narcos?’

  ‘Narcos, si. Y … El policía.’

  ‘The cop?’ Had I understood right? He’d said ‘cop’, singular. Not ‘cops’. ‘Chino, who—’

  But he’d moved away. I stepped forward to stop him, but in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

  NINE

  ‘Where’s Blanca?’ I asked Dexter the following morning. This set off an urgent howl. Dex rocketed out through the door as I opened it.

  Dex was still the same cocky little punk he’d always been. He seemed to have forgotten he’d ever had four legs. He couldn’t go on long runs with me anymore, but other than that, three legs served him just fine.

  Together we climbed into Blue Boy. I backed my brother’s Camino out of the old redwood car shed and pointed it down the steep drive. Dex hopped up from the floor to the passenger seat. We weren’t moving fast enough: he threatened me with his herding dog stare and a low throaty growl.

  We coasted down the drive and turned into El Balcon. At the corner of El Balcon and Cliff, I pulled over and applied my parking brake.

  ‘Wait here, OK?’ Dexter didn’t deal with orders, but he did listen to offers, suggestions, and tips.

  Blanca was out in her backyard, rounding up imaginary sheep. Deaf and blind since birth, the lethal-white border collie dwelt in a silent yet vibrant world of her own making.

  Mrs McMenamin peered out from her breakfast nook table and gave me a wave, but she didn’t stand up. At eighty-five, her arthritis could be nearly unbearable at times, especially first thing in the morning. I waved back and drew the gate shut behind me.

  I lifted Blanca’s leash from its hook on the porch post and walked up to the collie, holding out my hand for her to smell me. She escalated into a paroxysm of pleasure, twisting in circles and leaping at me. Blanca was still young, around two, and her energy was irrepressible once uncorked.

  Mrs McMenamin did her best by Blanca. Her granddaughter had rescued the white collie pup from a tote bag left beside a freeway on-ramp. Four months later the young woman was locked up in Chowchilla, thanks to her heroin addiction.

  I waved goodbye to Blanca’s mistress and led the dog back out through the gate.

  ‘Here’s your girlfriend!’ I announced as I opened the car door. Blanca scrambled in. Much wagging of tails and nose pressing commenced. Then we were off, up the road to the gully.

  The Hondo Gully was ideal for these two misfits. Unless they flushed a coyote, there wasn’t much trouble they could get into. And even if they did come across a coyote, Dex had a way of disarming his cousins.

  I parked at the lower entrance, opened the passenger door and stepped back as the two blithe spirits bolted off up the slope. I followed at a more relaxed pace.

  The gully, an old creek bed, was lined with a steep series of benches cut by long-ago water surges. The path meandered along one of these benches. Live oaks arched overhead, creating a dappled shade when the sun was out. This morning, though, a breeze off the ocean sailed straight up the gully, trailing a lacey mantilla of fog in its wake. I zipped up my sweatshirt against the chill.

  As I ambled along, the fog thickened. Even in the fog the air bubbled with birdsong.

  Blanca raced ahead in loops of joy, surging ahead and then circling back to Dexter and I. There wasn’t much she could bump into on the path, and besides, by now she knew it by heart.

  I let my mind wander. I thought about Chino and his visit the evening before.

  Chino was no criminal. He was just an impoverished young guy who was struggling to survive. He’d felt guilty, all right, and wanted to help. Even so, he hadn’t told me much. He was afraid of the traffickers – and a cop.

  So there’d been a cop, or somebody who’d seemed like a cop, at More Mesa that night. This wasn’t looking like a simple case, not anymore.

  The dogs and I were closer to the ocean now, and the fog was dense. I could hear the fog horn bleating a warning off the marina below. I couldn’t see Blanca, though. I stopped and listened.

  Without warning, the white collie burst out of the underbrush at the side of the trail. Head down, low to the ground, she raced over to Dex. Dex halted, sniffed the breeze, and let out a warning growl.

  A runner loped out of the fog. He was tall, dressed in a navy warm-up outfit. Dexter let out a serious snarl, and Blanca cowered against my legs.

  ‘Jaymie!’ Del Wasson halted mid-stride. ‘So, you walk down in here?’

  I studied Del’s lean handsome face. Nothing seemed awry, and yet something wasn’t quite right. Was this encounter by chance?

  ‘Yeah, me and the dogs.’ Dex had stopped barking, but every ten seconds or so, he let out a growl. Blanca, confused, roved from me to Dex and back again.

  ‘I can see what’s wrong with that one.’ Del laughed and pointed at the three-legged heeler. ‘What about the white one? He looks psycho.’

  Now, if there’s one word that sets my teeth on edge, it’s the word psycho. I’d heard people say it to my brother, and I knew how it could hurt. Blanca didn’t care, but I damn well did. Del Wasson, forever more, would be nothing but toast.

  ‘He’s a she. And she’s blind and deaf.’ I would have moved on, but I was curious to see what Wasson was up to and decided to stay put.

  ‘Huh. You had any tips yet about the missing kid?’

  ‘Nothing yet.’ I assumed an innocent expression. ‘How about the drug smuggling?’

  Del smiled, a sexy lazy smile that no doubt worked for him ninety-nine percent of the time. ‘You know I can’t talk about that, Jaymie.’

  Now I saw what wasn’t quite right about Del. He looked as if he’d just scrunched Wowie Maui into his hair and stepped from his vehicle. He wasn’t out for a run – that was a lie.

  ‘Is that your jogging outfit? I’d have pegged you for a tennis player, Detective.’

  ‘I play tennis, yeah.’ He grinned. ‘But I like to keep in shape, you know?’

  ‘Sure.’ I realized I was sick of bantering with Del. I took a step to move on around him.

  ‘Jaymie, hold on a minute, will you?’ The man had the nerve to put a hand on my arm. I looked down at it, then met his eyes with a hard look. Wasson lifted his hand.

  ‘Something I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  I watched as Wasson unzipped the side pocket of his warm-up jacket and removed the flyer. Rosie’s pixie face looked up at me.

  ‘Come on, Wasson. We’ve been over this before. Or do you have some new info for me?’ What was the guy playing at?

  ‘No, I don’t. But my boss is putting pressure on me. I’d like to know what all this is about.’ He took a step closer, and Dexter bared his teeth. Wasson stepped back.

  ‘Help me out here, Jaymie. You know how it works. Scratch my back, and—’

  God damn. Had the guy learned nothing? He’d actually winked.

  ‘Like I told you, it’s just a case I’m working on. A missing kid.’ The man’s persistence wa
s beginning to worry me. I needed to redirect his attention. ‘We think it’s her father who’s taken her, and she’s not in any immediate danger. The girl just needs to be back where she belongs, with her mom.’

  ‘That so? It still needs to be reported.’ But Del looked skeptical. I hadn’t quite sold him on what I thought was a most excellentlie. I could make it better, though.

  ‘The mother did report it, down in Los Angeles. But they stuck it in the bottom of the stack.’ Plausible, I thought. Anyone could get lost in the labyrinth called LA. It was a miracle anything, or anyone, was ever found.

  ‘So, what – the mother came to you about this, out of the blue?’

  ‘That’s right. I wouldn’t call it out of the blue, though. People know what I do, Del. Word of mouth.’

  ‘That’s good. Means your business is taking off, right?’

  ‘Uh huh.’ My mind was working overtime trying to figure out what the guy was after. I was sure the barrage of false signals was hiding a hard-edged purpose.

  ‘Anyway. Shouldn’t be too hard to find her, with a weird birthmark like she’s got.’

  Interesting. I’d read through Gabi’s text for the flyer, and I didn’t remember seeing the word ‘birthmark’.

  ‘Birthmark? What are you talking about?’

  Now Del’s mask slipped. He looked concerned, almost, and I watched his expression change as he struggled to regroup.

  ‘What? The flyer said something …’ He scanned the paper and read aloud. ‘OK, here it is: Distinguishing mark.’

  ‘Distinguishing mark can mean a scar,’ I replied. ‘Right?’

  Wasson smiled, a touch too brightly this time. ‘OK, it just said “mark.” So shoot me for ass-suming.’

  ‘No,’ I answered, playing along. Best to let old Del think he got away with it. ‘No, I won’t shoot you for that.’ I shrugged and turned to go. ‘Know your way out of here, Wasson?’ Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I couldn’t resist.

  He forced a laugh. ‘I told you, I run through here all the time.’ He started off.