Michael McGarrity - The big gamble

All except Helen Muiz left the room. She stood up, handed Kerney the to-do list, and said, "I think those two young people like each other."

"I noticed that," Kerney replied.

"Well I hope they do a better job hiding it when they're undercover."

Helen left the room laughing.

Getting lost in El Paso put Clayton in a foul mood. What looked so easy to get to on a street map wound up being a series of false starts, wrong turns, and wasted time parked at the side of roads trying to figure out where in the hell he was. He did a lot better at finding his way in the mountains and forests on the rez than in the concrete and asphalt of cities.

Finally, he made it to the Upper Valley, a suburban strip of land on the west side of El Paso that bordered the Rio Grande. He drove through wide streets lined with shade trees, passing newer two-story homes, looking for the right turnoff. Here and there along the road were old farmhouses, some irrigation canals, and patches of agricultural land that had not yet given way to the sprawl.

Deborah Shea, the girlfriend who'd been so conveniently present at Rojas's house, no longer lived at the address listed on her driver's license. Clayton got the story from the current owner, an older, retired army major who actually thought cops were the good guys. He pulled out a mortgage settlement statement which showed that the seller of the house had been Big Five Trucking, Inc., Rojas's company.

"I don't know this woman you're looking for," the man said. "The house was vacant when we bought it."

Clayton checked the closing date for the sale of the house against the issue date he'd recorded from Shea's driver's license. She'd used the address to renew her license six months after the new owner had moved in.

Clayton wondered if Deborah Shea had ever even lived in the house, and went looking for neighbors who might know. According to one woman, a home owner on the same street, the house had been built six years ago and a Hispanic family lived there prior to the retired army major moving in.

"Were there any other occupants?" Clayton asked, trying not to stare at the woman's tinted and wildly curled hairdo that probably cost a hundred bucks a pop every time she went to the beauty parlor. He'd never known Apache women to do such strange things to their hair, and it had nothing to do with money.

The woman, whose husband ran a maquiladora in Juarez, shook her head. "No, it was just Tony, Martha, and the children."

"How well did you know them?" Clayton asked.

"They were nice people who always came to the annual neighborhood potluck parties. The children were polite and well behaved. Other than that, they didn't do a lot of socializing. The kids kept them too busy."

Clayton rephrased his question: "What do you know about them?"

"Tony worked for a trucking company. He had a management position of some sort."

"Big Five Trucking?"

"Yes, I think that's it. Martha was a stay-at-home mom."

Clayton thanked the woman, left, and kept looking for Deborah Shea. She wasn't listed in the phone book or in the several recent city directories he examined at a branch library. He tried a long shot at a motor vehicle office, hoping that Shea had reported an address change, and struck out.

"Can you search your database of licensed drivers by address?" Clayton asked the office manager.

"You bet," the manager said, turning to his keyboard.

"How far back do you want to go?"

"Six years."

The man pulled up the data on his computer screen and printed out the information. The retired army officer, his wife, former occupants Tony and Martha Duran, and Deborah Shea topped the list. But another eight people, all young females, had also used the address to get licenses at one time or another.

"What is this address, an apartment or something?" the manager asked. "A group home? A sorority house?"

"None of the above," Clayton replied. "It's a single-family house."

"That's unreal. What's going on?"

"I'm not sure," Clayton said, handing the list back to the manager. "Can I have hard copies of the license information for each of those drivers?"

"Sure thing."

Clayton took the information to the El Paso police headquarters and got a desk officer to cross-check all the names with computerized arrest records. Two of the women had rap sheets of one count each, for soliciting. The officer escorted Clayton to a vice-squad cop and introduced him as Detective Brewer. He was an older, soft-bellied man with a passive face who wore a shirt with a cigarette-ash burn in the pocket. His breath stank of nicotine.

Brewer pulled the offense reports on the women. Both had been busted at an El Paso hotel.

"What were the case dispositions?" Clayton asked.

It took a minute for Brewer to ferret out the notations. "Both paid fines," he said.

"Where can I find them?" Clayton asked.

"Hell if I know," Brewer said. "They haven't been seen in town for over a year, maybe two. Whores move around a lot these days, one city to the next."

"What about their pimps?"

"There's nothing in the files about that."

Brewer didn't seem particularly eager to help, and his attitude bothered Clayton. He stuck Deborah Shea's motor vehicle photograph under the man's nose. "Do you know this woman?"

Brewer shook his head.

"How about Luis Rojas?"

"I don't know any Luis Rojas who's working girls in El Paso," the detective said.

One by one, Clayton fed Brewer all the driver's license photographs to review.

"Except for the two whores, I don't know any of these women," Brewer said, handing them back.

Although he didn't mean it, Clayton said, "Thanks."

Brewer nodded, watched the Indian cop leave, and dialed a private number. "Tell Mr. Rojas I need to talk to him," he said to the kid who answered the phone.

"Call back at six," Fidel said. "He'll be here then."

The deputy's report on the Norvell DWI stop identified the passenger in the car as Helen Pearson, and gave a rural route address. The phone book carried no listing, so Kerney called the post office and learned that Pearson now had a postal box. The application listed her permanent residence on a road off the Old Santa Fe Trail, just outside the city limits. It was a high-end neighborhood with big houses on large hillside view lots.

Kerney drove to the address. No one answered his knock at the main house, but two cars were parked in front of a large detached studio. A sign over the door read BUCKAROO DESIGNS.

Inside, two Hispanic women were working at sewing machines, and an Anglo woman was pinning pattern paper to some fabric at a large worktable in the center of the room. Racks of custom cowboy shirts, embroidered blue jeans, western-style dresses, and fringed jackets were lined up along a back wall. Bolts of fabric were neatly arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Scraps of cloth littered the floor.

The Anglo woman looked up, set aside a pincushion, and crossed the room. About forty, she had brown hair cut short, delicate features, and wore no makeup other than lipstick. The face of a film actress flashed across Kerney's mind, but he couldn't put a name to it.

"Helen Pearson?" he asked.

"That's me," the woman replied cheerily.

Kerney showed Pearson his shield and her smile faded. "What is it?"

"I've a few questions about Tyler Norvell."

Pearson broke off eye contact and her voice rose. "What kind of questions?"

"You do know him?" Kerney asked, keeping an agreeable look on his face.

"Past tense," Pearson said. "I haven't seen him in many years."

The palpable tension in Pearson's body made Kerney want to probe more. But the shut-down look in her eyes argued against it. He moved off subject. "This is quite the enterprise you've got going," he said, looking around the studio. "How long have you been in business?"