Steven Gore - Power Blind

“I used to think of it as white noise,” Gage said, poking around in his birra. “Charlie used to alert to guys like that from a mile away.”

“But that was more about like attracting like.”

Spike reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a wallet-sized Mexican prayer card encased in plastic.

“My brother bought this for Faith at a shrine in Culiacan. He’s still playing amateur anthropologist. He wanted to give it to her at your father’s funeral, but it didn’t seem appropriate.”

He handed it to Gage.

“She still interested in Catholic animas?” Spike asked.

Gage nodded as he examined the image of folk saint Jesus Malverde, protector of drug dealers, overlaid on a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe. He dipped his head toward the Jaliscos. “Those guys may need this thing a lot more than Faith.”

“I’m sure they never leave home without one.”

“They also don’t leave home unarmed,” Gage said. “Check out the front pocket of the guy on the right.”

Spike’s cell phone vibrated a couple of minutes later as the Mexicans ate shrimp cocktails from bulbous sundae glasses.

“ Hola, Mama. ” Spike spoke loudly, smiling at Gage. “ Estoy en la Fiesta Brava.” He listened for fifteen seconds, then in a lower voice passed on the warning about weapons and disconnected.

“You know what else Charlie was working on?” Spike asked.

“Off the record?”

“I don’t know. Tell me a little more.”

“He was trying to recover the wallet of somebody who got robbed.”

“Why off the record?”

“It was a government official.”

“There’s no law saying people have to report crimes against themselves,” Spike said. “Off the record is okay.”

“Brandon Meyer was mugged a week or two before Charlie got shot.”

“No shit?”

“He wanted Charlie to get his wallet back.”

“Why didn’t Meyer report it?”

“I think he was afraid it would slop back on his brother.”

“I don’t get it. A mugging is a mugging. Happens all the time.”

“But this one happened at night in the Tenderloin.”

“The Tenderloin?” Even Spike wouldn’t walk through the Tenderloin after sunset, and he carried two handguns and Mace. “What was the brother of a presidential candidate doing in there? That has National Enquirer written all over it.”

“Meyer claimed he cut through on his way to a meeting, but I don’t believe him.”

Spike clucked. “You not believing an exalted federal judge like him. I’m shocked, simply shocked.”

They watched the waiter deliver two Dos XXs to the Jaliscos.

“How’d you find out about the mugging?” Spike asked.

“From Socorro. Then Meyer called me to drop by, but only to make sure I didn’t pursue it.”

“Why didn’t he just cancel the credit cards and forget the whole thing?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. Could be there was something in the wallet.”

Spike grinned. “Like maybe a Viagra tablet and the cell number of a Tenderloin prostitute?”

Gage shook his head. “Unlikely. I’m not sure sex is his thing anymore. He gets off screwing over whoever shows up in his court.”

Spike laughed. “Talk about a helluva photo op. That pale-butted pipsqueak bouncing up and down between the legs of some methed-up hooker in a skid-row hotel.”

Gage cast him a sour expression. “I’m glad I already finished my lunch,” Gage said, pushing away his plate. Spike was still grinning, now red-faced. “You better finish the thought before you explode.”

“And Meyer working his little pene, yelling, ‘Motion denied! Motion denied!’ ”

Spike laughed, stomach bouncing, until tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He wiped them with his napkin. “Man, what an image.”

“Are you done ruining my meal?”

“I hope so.” Spike rubbed his side. “I think I pulled a muscle.”

One of the Jaliscos walked over to the jukebox, dropped in fifty cents, then punched a button. He returned to his table as an accordion blast began “El Corrido Contrabando,” a ballad celebrating Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Lord of the Skies, a Mexican who smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine in 727s, then faked dying during plastic surgery and retired to Colombia.

“Is that song for your benefit?” Gage asked.

“No. They think I’m an insurance salesman. Just a guy selling term life.” Spike grinned again. “When I’m really pushing life terms.”

Gage shook his head. “You still get a kick out of this.”

“That’s why I can’t bring myself to retire. It’s even hard to think about it.”

Spike’s grin faded as his sentence trailed off. He paused, his face turned somber.

“Middle age is weird. You think about things you never thought about before. It hit me the other night that from the moment my father came across the border, he never felt at home again anywhere. Not in Mexico and not in Arizona, even after he became a citizen.” Spike tapped the gold badge clipped to his belt under his jacket. “And I’m not sure I really felt at home until I got this piece of metal. Maybe that’s why he wanted me to follow you up here. Kinda makes it hard to give it up.”

Spike paused again, thinking, then his eyes brightened. “Well, that and Placita. She couldn’t stand me hanging around the house all the time.”

“She tell you that?”

“Straight out, the first time I talked about it. Then she reached for the phone and threatened to make her nephew give me a job driving one of his cabs-until I showed her a news article saying it was more dangerous than being a cop.”

“But she’d made her point.”

“Yeah, big time.”

Spike pulled his case log out of the manila envelope.

“That’s another thing.” Spike skimmed down the chronology. “Charlie wouldn’t tell me how he got over to Geary Street where he got shot, but I think he took a taxi. A Checker cab driver remembered dropping off somebody who resembled Charlie two blocks away about twenty minutes before it happened. Charlie denied it was him. But I think it was.”

“So he didn’t want to use a car that could be traced to him?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Sounds like you spent as much time investigating Charlie as you did whoever shot him.”

“More. He was stonewalling. There had to be a reason, and it wasn’t a no-harm, no-foul case. A few days after he was shot he got pneumonia and it seemed like he wasn’t going to make it. Would’ve made it a homicide right then.”

“What did the neighborhood canvass turn up?”

“We got a possible ID of Charlie at a coffee shop. Eyewitness IDs are bad enough, but this was one where the clerk had no reason to pay attention at the time. So I’m not sure what to make of it.”

Spike tilted his head toward the two men, one of whom was opening his phone. The man held it to his ear, nodded, then snapped it closed. Thirty seconds later, a younger Hispanic man entered and pulled a chair up to the Jaliscos’ table and set down a small black canvas duffel, stretched tight by its contents. He was dressed in Levi’s and oversized sweatshirt and wearing wraparound sunglasses.

“Looks like they’re going to do the deal right here,” Gage said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was heroin in that bag. They wouldn’t need a briefcase of money to buy so few kilos of cocaine.”

Spike punched redial on his phone, reported in to the surveillance officers driving down Mission Street toward the restaurant, then disconnected.

The three men kept casting quick glances around the restaurant, too often for Spike to risk another photo.

“They’re bringing a dog,” Spike said, sliding his phone into his jacket pocket. “He’ll take a little sniff as they walk outside.” He smiled. “Then off to the pokey.” He pushed his plate away. “What’re you working on besides Charlie?”