Robert Browne - Down Among the Dead Men

So Vargas went outside to his car, checked his cell phone’s address book again, and dialed.

After several rings, the line came to life. “Hey, hey, Number Two, it’s been a while.”

Jennings called Vargas Number Two because they shared the same first name and because the first time they met, Vargas was “just another reporter come to take a dump on the cops.”

When that turned out not to be true, a friendship and a nickname were born.

“I need a favor,” Vargas said.

“So what else is new? Give me a minute or two to win this hand and I’ll get back to you. I just went all in.”

“You’re a brave man.”

“Tell that to my ex. In the meantime, I’m putting you on hold.”

Vargas heard the line click and waited.

A minute or two later, it came to life again and Jennings said, “I just won a monster pot, my friend, so you caught me in a good mood. What do you want and who do I have to kill to get it?”

“No killing necessary,” Vargas said, then gave him just enough details to convince him to help.

There was a pause on the line. “You sure this is something you want to get involved in?”

“No choice at this point,” Vargas said. “I’ve gotta know who she is.”

“Sounds to me like you’re developing a crush on the victim.”

“Hardly. I just found out she’s alive.”

“Yeah, and I’d lay odds your hardened little heart skipped a beat or two when you did.”

“Are you gonna help me or give me grief?”

“Both,” Jennings said. “The bad news is, nobody’s all that anxious to talk to a broken-down ex-cop. But the good news is that I know a couple of Albuquerque major-crimes investigators who still owe me a favor. Maybe I can get one of them to pony up.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

“Yeah, that’s me, hombre. Mr. Reliable.”

The detective’s name was Pasternak, an old-school Jack Webb clone, crew cut and all, a just-the-facts-ma’am kind of guy you wouldn’t want to meet on the wrong side of a nightstick.

He looked about as at home in a Starbucks as a bulldog at a Japanese tea ceremony.

“Jennings tells me you’re a good guy,” he said.

They were sitting at a corner table, nursing cups of coffee, Pasternak black, Vargas cream and sugar. Vargas didn’t particularly like Starbucks coffee, but Pasternak had chosen the meeting place. It was several blocks away from the Albuquerque police station, and Vargas figured the chances of running into one of Pasternak’s colleagues was unlikely.

Which, he supposed, was the point.

“But I just want you to know,” Pasternak continued, “that that don’t mean jack to me. I learned a long time ago to make my own judgment about people. So until I know what your interest in this case is, you ain’t gettin’ squat.”

“Jennings didn’t tell you?”

“Just enough to pique my curiosity and get you an introduction.” He sipped his coffee. “So what’s on your mind?”

Vargas cut straight to it. “Mexico.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“I just got back from Juarez. That’s where your vic was shot the first time.”

Pasternak stared at him. “The first time?”

“Come on,” Vargas said. “You’ve done the ballistics, talked to the medical examiner. You know she was shot three times, by two different guns. And since the third one was a head shot, I’m guessing she still hasn’t made much of a statement.”

Pasternak tried and failed to hide his surprise. “Know about head wounds, do you?”

“My brother was shot point-blank by a gangbanger when he was seventeen. He was never the same again.”

“Tough break.”

“Especially the part when he killed himself fifteen years later.”

Manny had led a tortured life for those fifteen years. Unpredictable motor functions, slurred speech, a diminished IQ. No more ghost stories. No more smiles. A lonely man who had decided that life just wasn’t worth living. So about two and half years ago, he had repeated what the gangbanger had done, and got it right this time.

Not that Vargas could blame him. As low as he himself had gotten after the suicide, he couldn’t even imagine the shit his brother had been going through.

But then this wasn’t the time and place to be dwelling on such things, was it?

Apparently Pasternak didn’t think so, either.

“So tell me,” he said. “Do we have a leak in the department or are you getting your information from somewhere else?”

“If you had a leak, we wouldn’t be talking. And, believe me, there’s a lot more.”

Pasternak stared down at the dark liquid in his cup, taking a moment to process this.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m on the hook. What do you want from me?”

“Just the basic facts of the case.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all I really need.”

“You’re a cheap date,” Pasternak said. “Maybe Jennings was right about you.” He took a sip of the coffee. “Her name is Elizabeth Crawford.”

Vargas was surprised and must have shown it, because Pasternak said, “Not what you were expecting?”

“The name I heard was Angie.”

Pasternak’s eyes widened slightly. “Who’s your source?”

“Not until I get the rest.”

“The only people who could possibly know that name are people who had direct contact with her.”

“Exactly,” Vargas said. “So finish what you were saying.”

Pasternak nodded. “Like I told you, her name is Elizabeth Crawford. First few days she was at Burke Memorial ICU and we got nothing from her. Paramedics reported that she kept saying the name Angie over and over again, but her speech was slurred and nobody was even sure if that was accurate. Whatever the case, she wasn’t much help with the identification. They almost lost her a few times and I gotta say, it’s a miracle she pulled through. Somebody fights that hard to survive, you figure they must have a real good reason to live.”

“Did you fingerprint her?”

Another nod. “That’s what did it for us. We put her in the database and got a hit out of Los Angeles. We contacted her place of employment, wound up talking to her ex-husband, and he told us she’d been missing for several months. Went on vacation and never came back. And guess where she went?”

“Where?”

“Mexico.”

“Juarez?”

Pasternak shook his head. “Baja Norte. She and her sister went on a Mexican Riviera cruise and disappeared off the face of the earth. Cruise line reported it when their room steward realized they hadn’t returned in a while. And the purser said Crawford had mentioned she had ‘misplaced her sister.’”

“So then Angie’s the sister?”

“Nope. Her name is Jennifer. Angie’s still a mystery to us.”

“I assume the FBI was called in?”

“FBI, Homeland Security, the whole ball of wax. They checked activity on their credit cards, tried tracing their cell phones, and got nada.”

“Until Taco Bell.”

“That’s right. And believe me, they threw everything they had into it, since Crawford was practically one of their own.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s an assistant district attorney. Or was. Just like her ex. They thought maybe the disappearances might’ve had something to do with one of her cases, but they could never connect anything. She dealt mostly with domestic crimes and special victims.”

Vargas felt a small bump in his heart rate. This story just kept getting better and better. But he wondered why he hadn’t heard about this.

Then he realized that it had happened around the time he was up in Vancouver, going through his third stint of rehab. The one that finally stuck. And he hadn’t exactly been paying much attention to the world before that.