that dude she was seeing
… if I had my guess.”
Behr just stood there in the night for a moment. “Is that who did this to you, Ezra?” he asked. Ezra paused, then nodded.
“Now who would he be?” Behr asked.
“Never did get a name. He’d wait in the car for her to come down. Then he’d drive her off. He’d bring her back late sometimes, and go in with her. But he’d be gone before morning,” Ezra said.
“What kind of guy was this?” Behr asked.
“White dude. Young. Six feet, lean and lanky. Had some shaggy brown hair. He’d go stomping up and down the stairs no matter what time of night it was. When she wasn’t around, he’d bang on her door and yell all night. He was a real asshole, this dude.”
“And you saw him rough her up, or drag her around? You got in the middle of it?”
“No,” Ezra said.
“But you think she was trying to lose the guy?”
“Oh, she did. ’Cause I seen him show up here a few times looking for her since she gone. Last time he kept banging on the door for twenty minutes until I went and talked to him. I asked him to quiet down. Told him she moved. Told him I didn’t have a forwarding address and to leave. He said to get outta his face or I’d ‘end up down by the river listening to the trains whistle by.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That’s what this dude said: ‘Tell me where she is or you’ll end up floating downriver by the m-f’ing railroad tracks.’ But he said the whole m-f word. Man, he was drunk as hell. I kept on telling him I didn’t know, and then… Well, like I said, the dude was a real asshole.”
“Did you call the cops?” Behr wondered.
“Didn’t have to,” Ezra said, “they came on their own. Someone else must’ve called. The guy was long gone of course. And then this lieutenant showed up, real nice fella, and took my statement. Told me they’d try and track the boyfriend down, but if he showed up again I should stay inside.”
“A lieutenant, huh?” Behr asked. Ezra nodded.
“You ever see her with a guy by the name of Aurelio Santos?”
“What’s he look like?” Ezra asked.
“About five-ten. Solid. Curly black hair. Mid-thirties. Real friendly.”
“No, no…”
“If you’re on the Internet I could show you a picture,” Behr offered.
“I don’t do computer,” Ezra said.
Behr was about ready to write out his number for Ezra and walk away when he just asked one more time. Sometimes that worked, too. “Give me her address, Ezra.”
“You’re not a cop, are you,” he said.
“Not anymore,” Behr said. Ezra shrugged.
“It’s in my unit.” Ezra shuffled down to the other end of the apartments. Behr followed and waited at the door, glancing inside at the man’s meager furnishings. Ezra disappeared into a back room for a moment, then reappeared holding a few envelopes and a Post-it with an address on Schultz Park.
“If you’re going over there, maybe you could give her these?” Ezra extended a small packet of envelopes rubber-banded together. Behr reached for them, wondering whether he should be careful about opening and resealing them or just tear them apart for information, when Ezra took that off the table, pulling back the mail. “I should just have the mailman do it. Federal offense otherwise, right?”
“Sure, you do it that way,” Behr said, taking the Post-it with the new address. He’d seen the woman’s whole name. It was Flavia Inez.
Behr handed Ezra a business card. “Call me if that boyfriend shows up again.”
“Okay,” the old man said, but he sounded doubtful.
SIXTEEN
Hector Nogero was in the den behind locked doors stacking “peas” and spinner baskets and considering his suerte. The last three months had been brilliant. He was making so much money he’d brought his father up from Chamelecon. With an introduction by letter from his uncle, who was in prison for gang activity in Honduras, Hector had taken title to the house on Traub from a man for close to nothing. Foreclosure proceedings had begun on the property, which was why the man had sold cheap, but Hector had earned more than enough to pay off the note and back taxes before the marshals would return to seize the place in the coming weeks. Four or five “shakes” a day, with a house full of paying customers playing at least one number if not dozens, and his only expenses were a bouncer, a pretty “shake girl” to pull in players and conduct the drawings, and a cut for MS-13 for his permiso to operate. He was like the fucking loteria. Even now he had a living room full of them, chilling, drinking a coffee, a beer, watching a race or a few innings of beisbol, and handing over their whole paychecks hoping to win a three or four number combination that would pay a few thousand. Soon he’d buy the electronic ticket machines and video surveillance cameras. He had his son with him, too-Chaco had come on the plane with his father. Hector looked over at Chaco, playing on the floor with some of the peas, which were actually plastic balls. He’d heard they used to use dried peas with numbers written on them back in the old days, when the game was invented, and that’s why it was called “pea shake.” But now the world was plastic.
When the summer ended he would send Chaco to American preschool. By the time he was four, he’d speak perfect English.
“?Estas bien?” Hector asked Chaco as he unlocked the door and exited the den. Chaco nodded several times. “?Estas cansado?” Hector asked. This time Chaco shook his head, and Hector pulled the door shut behind him. On his way to the front parlor, where the sounds of many voices told him he had a full house of customers, he glanced down the hall toward the back door. His father was headed in that direction.
“?Que haces, viejo?” Hector called out. Then he heard a tapping at the back door.
“?Quien es?” his father said, reaching for the doorknob.
“?No, papa!” Hector called as his father swung the door open and he saw the three men. His father tried to push the door closed, but it blasted open and the first man stepped in. He brought down a black cylinder on top of his father’s head with a crack. The old man crumpled to the ground.
“Austin!” Hector yelled. His bouncer appeared in the living room doorway. He was big, filling the frame, but the man who had dropped his father was almost as big, and harder. The two men behind him-one young and wild looking, the other older and bad-were no joke either. They were all inside now. The first one advanced, his face speckled with the blood of Hector’s father; he could now see that the black cylinder was a metal flashlight, raised to strike. In his last glance back, Hector saw Austin, the fucking maricon American bouncer everyone told him he needed to hire to make a smooth transition into the neighborhood, run back for the living room. And out the door after that, Hector realized with a sinking feeling. Hector turned and lunged at the man who had hit his father, punching him in the jaw. The man’s head turned briefly to the side then back forward, his eyes filled with rage. Hector was only a meter sixty-two, his weight under seventy kilos; how much damage could he have hoped for?
Hector felt himself fly into the wall, and then he felt the pain behind his ear. Somehow he knew this must’ve been backward and that the flashlight hit was first, the throw second. Before Hector could fall to the ground, the man had him by the neck, had twisted his head sideways and encircled it with an arm. It wasn’t exactly a headlock, nor was it a chokehold. He’d have to call it a neck-break half applied. The top of his head was wedged into the man’s trunk, his spine arching. He stood up on his toes and tried desperately to keep his balance. He felt the man’s forearm crushing into his jaw. His rear teeth crumbled against one another as he was dragged into the front room.
“Shake’s over, motherfuckers,” Kenny Schlegel screamed, dinging the person nearest him, a middle-aged black woman smoking a menthol, on her upper back with his length of pipe.
“Oh, lord,” she said, going down; as it was a glancing blow, she then managed to scramble away on all
