John Lescroart - Damage

“I don’t like it, but yeah. All right.”

Because they had to make a stop at the bank for cash, they didn’t get down to Lupe’s until about noon. Once there, they drove around the back of the by-now-familiar warehouse to where a double-wide trailer sat incongruously up against a hill that looked as though it had been strip-mined at the back of the large parking lot. A brisk breeze blew under a pewter gray sky as they got out of the SUV and up the steps to the front door. They rang the bell and a short, heavy-set Latina answered. With a mere nod for an introduction, she directed them past the kitchen and eating area and along a short hallway to what was obviously the man’s business side of the trailer.

Lupe and three other Hispanic men sat, each with a bottle of Negra Modelo beer, in a large living room that would have been spacious but for the clutter. Besides the enormous flat-screen television set, a low black-glass coffee table, a metal bench, two couches, and three leather Barcaloungers, Lupe or whoever had a penchant for storing things out in the open, and all around the periphery of the room on the floor were both opened and still-closed cases of beer and tequila, used pizza boxes, piles of girlie and dog-fight and hot-rod magazines. The three windows-two on one wall and one on the other-had no curtains, and even with the overcast day, the room had a certain brightness.

When Eztli and Ro entered, Lupe stood up and he and Eztli greeted each other with an arm around the neck and a chest bump. Lupe then nodded in a businesslike way to Ro and said something in Spanish that Eztli answered, then translated for Ro. “He says this is a good way to find people. Put out a reward.”

Ro shrugged. “Whatever works,” he said.

“Here is your man. Hector.” Lupe reverted to English for Ro’s benefit. Turning around, he pointed at one of the men who’d come forward in one of the Barcaloungers, and who upon hearing his name stood up, his face with a hopeful, helpful expression and his hands clasped in front of him.

Ro looked at him and laughed. “Guy looks like he’s going to piss himself.” He gave what sounded like a dog bark and at the same time made a quick lurch in Hector’s direction, and the diminutive worker jumped as though a current had passed through him. Everybody except Hector got a chuckle out of that. Ro straightened up and laughed again, then turned back to Lupe. “Tell him I don’t bite.” Then, directly to him, “Easy, José, I don’t bite.”

“Hector,” the man said in a quavering voice.

“Hector, José, whatever. The point is, where’s Gloria?”

Hector threw a plaintive look at Lupe, who interpreted it and said, “First the money.”

“First the money. Naturally.” Sighing dramatically, nodding, Ro reached into his jeans’ front pocket and extracted a thick stack of folded-over hundred-dollar bills. Handing them over to Lupe, he said, “You want me to count ’em out?”

“No,” Lupe said. “If it’s wrong, he will tell us.” He looked back over to Hector, whose eyes were glued to the bills. “All right, Hector, they’ve come all the way down here to talk to you. Time to tell them what you know.”

Hector pulled out his cell phone. “This is the woman you’re looking for, sí ?” He showed Ro the picture.

He recognized her immediately. “That’s her, all right. Where is she?”

But Hector, perhaps understanding that he only had leverage until he gave up his information, put on an apologetic face. “I am sorry, but before, I will need the money,” he said in English.

“There’s the money,” Ro said, gesturing to it. Then, to Lupe, “Give him the goddamn money.”

Lupe turned back to Ro. “What is he going to do with all of this money? Where is he going to put it? Does he even have a bank account? I’m trying to save him a lot of trouble.”

“Ask me if I give a shit,” Ro said.

With a final small show of reluctance, Lupe held out the wad of cash, then reverted back to Spanish, saying something to Hector, who simply took the bills and nodded in satisfaction, stuffing them into his pants pocket.

Ro turned to Hector. “Okay, you got the money. Talk to me.”

Out of his other pants pocket, Hector extracted a folded piece of paper, opened it, and passed it across to Ro. In pencil, written in block letters, he saw the name GLORIA SERRANO and a street address with the word Sunnyvale under it. He pointed at the name and asked Hector, “So, Gloria Serrano.”

“Sí . ”

“You know for a fact she lives at this address?” Then a thought occurred to him. “What if it turns out it’s not the right one?”

Hector made a face. “I know it’s the right address. I know her husband.”

Ro said to Lupe. “You know where this fucker lives if he got it wrong?”

Lupe turned and spoke in Spanish to one of the other two men. “Near Jorge,” he said. “He can find him.”

“He’d better be able to.”

“Really,” Lupe said. “No problem.” He pointed at the piece of paper. “That is your woman.”

Hector said a few more sentences in Spanish, after which all the other men looked around at one another and laughed.

“What’s funny?” Ro turned to Eztli and asked.

“Hector suggested a way that Lupe could get some money out of this was that maybe after the woman gets her inheritance, Lupe could go by and see if she’d like to give him some of it for helping to find her so she could claim it.”

After a minute to let it sink in, Ro threw a baleful look at Hector and said, “Good idea, José.” Then, “Let’s go, Ez. We’re done here.”

Lupe, his crew, and Hector were still standing around while Lupe went to one of the windows to watch Eztli and Ro get into their car and drive out of the lot.

When they had gone around the corner of the warehouse, Lupe turned around and walked over to where Hector stood waiting for something else to happen with Jorge Cristobal and Lupe’s companion, a wiry rail of steel named Daniel.

“Hey, man,” Lupe said to Hector in Spanish. “You still look like you got to pee. You got to take a leak, is that it?” Murillo was in fact shifting his weight from foot to foot, hands in his pockets as though he were cold. Lupe’s face, set in a half smile, didn’t signal a warning of any kind as he brought his fisted right hand up in a vicious punch to Hector’s cheek.

The backs of the young man’s knees hit the glass coffee table and he fell heavily over it and down on his back to the floor. Before he had any time to even begin to recover, Daniel was on him, his knees on his arms, holding them useless, pummeling his face and head with a flurry of punches. After he’d knocked any chance of a fight out of him, he jumped back up to his feet and, with the fury still on him, kicked at his head two, three, four times.

Until at last Lupe reached out and grabbed him. “Daniel! Bastantes!”

Seemingly unable to stop himself, Daniel struck out another time with his boot, then finally, reluctantly stepped back, breathing hard. He continued to back away while Lupe went around the table and leaned down over Hector’s now nearly motionless body. He reached into the boy’s jeans pocket and pulled out the folded wad of bills, then straightened up and kicked Murillo in the side once more for good measure. “Idiota!”

Then he turned to face Jorge and Daniel, peeling hundred-dollar bills off and counting them out: “… dos, tres, quatro, cinco…” He handed the first five hundred to Jorge, then counted out another equal share to Daniel. Finally he looked down at Hector, still unconscious. “I offer this little prick two thousand dollars and he tells me no, the money is all his?” He walked back over a couple of steps, hawked and spit on him, then looked over at Daniel. “Go dump this trash someplace,” he said. “Jorge, get us both a couple of beers, would you?”