The man wheedled, “C’mon, Martinez, this name you want, it’s the real thing. I’m going to have to lay low for a while, just to stay safe. What if someone sees us talking? Did you ever wonder why no one else on the street would say a word? They ain’t crazy. Me, I’m crazy enough to help you out, but you gotta make it worth my while.”
Craziness didn’t enter into it, Cruz knew. Desperation was more like it. Tommy would sell his grandmother for the sake of a drink. “We’ll see,” he said skeptically. He handed the man a couple more bills, and they vanished with the same speed as the first. “You aren’t getting any more until after I check out what you tell me. So what do you have?”
Tommy looked around nervously once more. He leaned closer and lowered his voice, although there was no one within two hunched yards of them. “You talked to a lot of people. Have you talked to Jose Valdez yet?”
Cruz pulled out his notebook and wrote the name down. “Who is he?”
“He served time in prison nine different times, all on firearm charges,” Madeline answered. “He’s been out for eight months.”
Both men looked at her in surprise. Cruz didn’t look pleased at her knowledge. He shot her a hard look before turning his gaze back to Tommy. “Where can we find him?”
Tommy mentioned a few places the man might be found, adding, “I don’t know where he lives or nothing.”
“Don’t worry,” Cruz answered dryly, “I’m sure Detective Casey can help me out with that.”
“Remember, you owe me, Martinez.” The second cigarette was snuffed out under Tommy’s well-worn sneaker.
“We’ll see.”
Without further words Tommy backed away, and then melted into the trees.
Cruz and Madeline walked through the park toward their car, which was parked across the street. “Would you mind telling me how you knew about Valdez?” he asked.
She recounted her research, choosing her words carefully to avoid telling him what had motivated her to look up the names in the first place.
“When were you going to tell me about this?” he asked tersely, and she looked at him warily. He seemed angry at this latest bit of news. His long legs were crossing the street in long strides. She wondered if it was because she hadn’t told him about the work she’d done on her own or if it stemmed from another, more ominous reason.
“Eventually.” She finally answered his terse question. “Once you were out of ideas of your own.”
They had reached the car by now and he stopped, not getting in. “Look, Madeline, we’re
“It’s no big deal.” She met his gaze squarely. “I had a hunch, so I put together a list of released felons who’d served time for firearm charges.” She fished in her purse, pulled the list out and handed it to him. His eyes scanned the sheet quickly, saw the names that were already crossed out and grunted before handing it back to her. “If you’d shown this to me earlier you could have saved the department some money.”
She shrugged and replaced the paper in her purse. “Not necessarily. Valdez was the one I would have wanted to talk to first, but at least Tommy corroborated that he’s a suspect.” She got in the car.
Cruz was silent as he pulled out of the parking lot. He still wore a slight frown on his face. She wished she knew what was bothering him. He didn’t speak again until he asked for Valdez’s address. She gave it to him without consulting the sheet in her purse, and that seemed to annoy him even more. “Do you have microchips for brains?” he asked. “How the hell do you remember all that?”
She shrugged. She’d long ago found it was futile to question the ability she had. She just accepted it. “It’s a gift.”
“Kids in your high school must have hated having you in their classes. You had to really throw off the curve at test time.”
As they drove deeper into the city, the surroundings grew more deteriorated. She was not surprised that Valdez’s address was going to be found in one of the worst slums in the city. “Did you hate people like that when you were in high school?”
“Mostly I spent my time trying to set up study dates with girls like you.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” she said dryly. Dates of any kind had been scarce when she was a teenager. Her natural reserve had made her hard to get to know. And the fact that she had towered over most of the boys in her class hadn’t increased her social life, either. She was sure that any dates Cruz Martinez had set up probably had had very little to do with studying, unless he’d taken classes in anatomy.
“What’s the matter, didn’t you ever have study dates?” he asked. “You know, where you pretended to go to the library to study, and then spent the evening making out in the stacks?”
“You obviously had a very depraved adolescence.”
“Not really,” he denied. “I was just naturally curious. I was always interested in learning something new.”
She could tell by his tone that his love of learning had less to do with books than with getting a girl behind them. Apparently some things never changed.
He pulled the car over to park next to a large, dark building. Half-naked children played on the front porch, and next to the building a man huddled, rocking back and forth mumbling to himself, oblivious to the activity around him.
They walked up the steps and the children fell silent, staring at them with wary eyes. Once they entered the building they could hear the voices behind them resume. Cruz knocked on the door immediately inside the building, and a voice called out, “Who’s there?”
They exchanged a look and without words decided that for now, they wouldn’t identify themselves. “I’m looking for Jose Valdez,” Madeline answered.
“Room 457,” the voice answered. The door never opened. They turned and climbed the open wooden staircase.
“I can’t believe this building can pass fire codes,” Madeline said. Plaster was missing in numerous places in the wall, and wires showed through among the laths. The hallways were littered and had a sour smell.
“There are probably few in this neighborhood that could,” Cruz answered.
They reached the fourth floor and knocked at room 457. There was no answer. They both waited, listening for sounds of movement, but the room was silent. Finally they turned away.
When they were on the street again Madeline asked, “So next we try the places Tommy named where Valdez hangs out, right?”
Cruz hesitated. “Not today,” he said, after a moment. “It’s getting late and I have other plans tonight.”
Madeline rolled her eyes, immediately drawing her own conclusion about what those plans entailed. “You can break your date, Martinez. Whoever she is, she’ll recover.”
He neither confirmed nor denied her assumption. “I can’t put this off. But I promise we can work as late as you want tomorrow.” He shot her a warning glance. “I wouldn’t advise you to check out any of the places on your own tonight. It wouldn’t be safe, even for a cop, to be in any of those areas alone.”
“I don’t need you to watch over me,” she assured him.
“I mean it, Madeline.” His voice was implacable. “I’d better not find that you went out by yourself. We’re in this together. You insisted on that, and you’re going to have to live with your own rules.”
She couldn’t help wondering at his real reason for issuing the warning. Was it fear for her safety, or did he merely want to be at her side when they found Valdez, to ensure that the man said nothing that would incriminate him?
She left him at the parking lot after he made her promise she’d wait until tomorrow to continue the search for Valdez. He certainly was single-minded. He badgered her until she agreed, and then fixed her with a long look and said, “I’m going to hold you to that.”
Madeline grimaced at his departing figure as she got into her own car. Maybe he wasn’t afraid of what she would find out, after all. Perhaps it was simply ego-he didn’t want her making any strides in the case without him. It wasn’t going to hurt to wait until the morning, but she was curious as to what was so important that he couldn’t cancel it for tonight.
An idea suddenly struck then. She watched as he got into his own car and began leaving the lot. He certainly seemed in a hurry tonight. The royal blue low-slung sports car turned into the street. She gave him a few moments and followed slowly. She made sure that she maintained a four-car distance between them, in case he happened to
