Southtown

Page 12

“You sound like you don’t approve.”
Another pause, like she was censoring herself. “There are rumors Barrera and Barrow got their results by doing what the cops couldn’t. They bent rules, used bribery, threats, whatever it took.”
“But the case stood up in court.”
“Stirman was scum. The jury would’ve handed him a death sentence if that was an option.”
“What about the arrest itself?” I asked. “Fred Barrow’s notes on the case—he makes it sound like he apprehended Stirman personal y.”
“He did. Would’ve been late April ’95. Wil Stirman got tipped off things were going against him. He made plans to flee the country. Barrow and Barrera got word of this, like, the night he was planning to leave.
Instead of tel ing the police, the two of them decide to play cowboy and show up at Stirman’s apartment with guns blazing. Just the kind of cool, methodical detective work you’d appreciate. A woman was kil ed in the crossfire—one of Stirman’s prostitutes. Stirman was critical y wounded. He just about bled to death before the police and paramedics arrived. There were some other . . . irregularities about that night.”
“Irregularities.”
“That’s al you get for free,” she told me. “How do you know Stirman is in town?”
I didn’t answer.
“Look, Tres—I get the revenge angle. The Task Force has considered it. I know SAPD cal ed Erainya and Sam Barrera, along with the attorneys who prosecuted the Stirman case. They were al offered protection.”
“They were?”
“And they declined. The point is—Stirman isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t hang around here. Unless you have evidence that would change my mind . . .”
I stared at Sam Barrera’s yel ow BMW. “Can I come by tonight?”
“I’l be at the office until six. Or you can come by the house.”
“I can make the office by six.”
An uneasy pause, the wipers going back and forth across my windshield. Ana said, “Ralph would love to see you, Tres.”
“Same,” I said. “It’s just . . . I don’t want to barge in, with the baby and al .”
“You wouldn’t be barging in.”
I said nothing.
“Okay then,” she said. “So . . .”
“By six,” I told her. “Count on it.”
I folded up the phone.
I waited for a break in the rain before gathering Jem in my arms and carrying him to the front door.
Inside, the television was going. Live footage of drizzle, as if there wasn’t enough of it right outside. The weatherman warned that three area dams were already over capacity.
A leather briefcase sat next to Erainya’s living room couch. Spread out on the coffee table was a picnic lunch—a checkered cloth, bouquet of wildflowers, bottle of wine, cheese, baguette, kalamata olives.
Erainya’s boyfriend was a few steps down the hal way, his ear pressed to the door of Erainya’s study.
“Hear anything good?” I asked.
He straightened, faced me with as much dignity as a caught snoop could.
He was a gray-haired Latino, trim, chocolate eyes, a pencil mustache and impeccable taste in clothes.
Early sixties, but he could’ve passed for ten years younger. He would’ve been the heartthrob of any retirement community.
He held a finger to his lips, pointed to the heavy sleeping bundle in my arms.
I carried Jem past him, down the hal way to the bedroom.
Jem mumbled something about goalie position as I laid him on his bed and tugged off his soccer cleats.
On his TV, a video game character was suspended mid-jump over an exploding barrel, probably paused since Jem had left that morning. The video system was a duplicate of the one Jem lost in the flooded van. A gift, Jem had told me earlier, from the nice doctor.
I turned off the monitor.
On the way back down the hal , I heard voices coming from behind the study door, where Dr. Dreamboat had been eavesdropping.
Erainya yel ed, “Goddamn it, Barrera!”
Sam Barrera said something I couldn’t quite make out.
I was tempted to eavesdrop myself, but the doctor was watching me, so I joined him in the living room.
He poured a glass of merlot from the tabletop picnic. “Tres, may I offer you some?”
I shook my head. “How long has she been in there?”
“About twenty minutes. I was hoping to surprise her with lunch, as you can see.”
“Inconvenient.”
He set down the wine bottle. “You know this man Barrera?”
I nodded. “An old rival.”
“They were shouting. I was concerned. That’s why I was at the door.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself, Doctor.”
He studied me as if I were a patient, as if he were scanning for al ergies lurking behind my eyes. “Would it hurt to cal me J.P.?”
“Yeah. Probably would.”
He managed a smile. “From Jem, I expected resentment. But from you? Give me a chance, Tres.”
The problem was: He was right. Erainya was crazy about this guy. Jem thought he was right up there with fruit rol ups. And I resented him why—because he was too old for Erainya? Because he lavished Jem with presents? Maybe I feared he was after the tens of dol ars in Erainya’s bank account.
“Sanchez,” I said. “That’s your last name, right? Dr. Sanchez?”
He raised his eyebrows. “So you think you might try to remember it, after al ?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I suppose a glass of wine wouldn’t hurt.”
He was about to pour when we heard the gunshot from the study.
Chapter 9
Even before the crazy woman picked up the gun, Sam Barrera wasn’t having a good day.
He’d spent the last twenty-four hours making careful notes from his case files, trying to understand what he’d gotten himself into eight years ago. Unfortunately, the information he needed most wasn’t in the files.
He wouldn’t have committed incriminating evidence to writing.
After breakfast, his real estate agent cal ed. She had a quarter-mil ion-dol ar offer for the Southtown house, but she needed an answer by Friday. He told her he’d have to think about it.
A few minutes later, his doctor cal ed—the goddamn neurologist who’d adopted him.
“Sam, did you visit?” he wanted to know.
“Yeah, I visited.”
“And?”
What was Sam supposed to say? The place had scared him to death.
“It’s your best chance,” the doctor assured him. “It real y is. But openings don’t happen often. We have to jump on this right away. I need an answer soon.”
Again, Sam said he had to think about it.
He hung up and drew a picture of the neurologist with devil horns. By the time he’d finished drawing it, he’d forgotten who it was supposed to be.
Then, as if al that wasn’t enough, a courier delivered the videotape.
Sam had watched the video four times, even though it was one of the most horrible things he’d ever seen.
He hoped the images would keep his memory from fading, keep his sense of urgency alive.
When he’d cal ed Erainya Manos, he asked for a morning meeting. But she had insisted he come at noon, when her house would be empty.
Words were slippery for Barrera at noon. So far, he had let her do the talking. Mostly, that consisted of ranting.
She spoke with her hands. She was short and wiry and seemed to blame Sam and her late husband for everything, including Wil Stirman, her business problems and the state of her housekeeping.
While she paced around, yel ing at him, Sam focused on the room. He remembered being in this den before. The old Sony Trinitron with rabbit-ear antennae. The leather reclining chair that smel ed of pipe tobacco. The limestone fireplace with the moldy twelve-point buck’s head above the mantel. The watercolor fishing scenes.
This was Fred Barrow’s den. It pleased Sam to come up with the name without looking at his notes.
Maybe it was because the woman kept yel ing that name.
Fred Barrow and Sam had sat here, in this room. They had made a temporary truce, a plan to catch the man they both hated—Wil Stirman.
Sam wondered why the woman hadn’t changed the decor, if she hated her deceased husband so much.
Two reasons occurred to him—she didn’t use this room; or changing it would’ve deprived her of something to complain about. The way she slapped the air when she spoke—this woman liked targets. Probably, she kept the den intact for the same reason people keep their boss’s face on a dartboard.
He felt satisfied with his analysis, then found himself staring at the striped pattern of the woman’s dress and he forgot where he was. Goddamn it. He checked his notepad.
“How can you sit there so calm?” the woman demanded. “What—you’re taking notes on me? Jesus, Barrera. What did Stirman say?”
Sam had the videotape in his lap. For lack of a better idea, he said, “Maybe you should watch this.”
The woman grabbed the cassette and stuck it in the VCR.
The dusty old television flickered green, then showed a badly beaten man tied to a chair. Sam had written the man’s name in his notepad—Gerry Far. He’d underlined it once for each time he watched the tape. Sam stil didn’t recognize the man’s face. That could have been because there wasn’t much left to recognize.
“Barrera?” An off-screen voice—male, West Texas accent. “You remember Gerry Far? He’s going to give a statement now—little different story than the one he told at my trial. I thought you’d like a preview before I send it to the media in forty-eight hours. You ready, Gerry?”
The camera centered on what was left of Gerry Far’s face.
The woman in the striped dress paced in front of the television, cursing in a language Sam didn’t recognize.
Gerry Far got about ten sentences out of his ruined mouth before the woman snarled, “I won’t listen to this.”
She punched the TV’s off button. “Goddamn it, Barrera!”
“Turn it back on,” he said calmly. “You need to see it.”
She made a fist in the air. Then she hit the on button.
Gerry Far told his story in slow painful gulps.
Sam had always been best at reading places, reading people. The way the image shook, the jerky zoom motions, meant a handheld camera rather than a tripod. Stirman’s midsection could be seen moving behind Gerry, his hand occasional y patting Gerry’s shoulder. Stirman had an accomplice doing the filming.
The room had brick wal s, large rectangular windows. Two of the windows were boarded up, but one was not. The bad quality of the video bleached the view outside, but Sam could just make out one cabled support column of the Alamodome. Clouds obscured the angle of the light, but Sam guessed the film had been shot in the late afternoon. If he read the orientation correctly, the building was somewhere just northeast of downtown. A brick warehouse near St. Paul Square. A leap of deduction, maybe, but he was hardly ever wrong.
“Did I do anything to you, Gerry?” Stirman was saying. “Did I deserve this?”