Kurtz and Barent Mystery Series: Books 1-3, page 9
“You wouldn’t happen to know why, or even who, would you, Jaime?”
Ruiz gave a small shake of his head. “My people, they come to me when they’re in trouble, I try to help them. This Herman Delgado, he a short fellow, little beard?”
“Yes.”
“I remember him. He mind his own business. He leave the old neighborhood maybe six months ago. I don’t know where. I don’t know why. I had no reason to ask. One of my people, he want to go into business for himself, I can’t stop him. He ever need me, I’m here.”
“Regular little Godfather, aren’t you, Jaime?”
Ruiz looked hurt. “What for you want to insult me, Barent?”
“No reason, I guess. We cops tend to be like that.”
Ruiz smiled slightly and spread his hands. “Anything else I can do for you, Barent?”
“If you hear anything, you’ll let me know.” It was a statement, not a question.
Ruiz’ smile grew wider. “I always cooperate with the law. It’s how I got to where I am today.”
Barent reached into his wallet, pulled out a card. “It’s got my number,” he said, and handed the card to Ruiz.
Ruiz turned the card back and forth in his fingers, as if not quite certain what to do with it. Then he shrugged. “Sure, Barent. I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.”
Chapter 11
Cancun: sun, sand and fun.
Kurtz had asked Kathy to come along with him. She had seemed to think about it, searching his face with a crooked smile. Then she gave a tiny shrug and a shake of her head. “Thanks for asking,” she said, “but I need to work on my thesis and I could use the time. Have fun.” Kurtz couldn’t argue, but it seemed pretty obvious that there was something else on her mind. He was moody the whole evening after that, which Kathy ignored—if she even noticed.
A blast of heat took him in the face as soon as he exited the plane and he shuddered luxuriously, filling his lungs with the heavy, perfumed air. He walked into the terminal, retrieved his suitcase from the baggage checkout and took a cab from the airport to the Hotel Meridian, a brand new tower of adobe, red stucco and glass rising twenty stories above the beach.
He spent the next two days taking long walks by the water, soaking up the sun on his bare chest, eating ceviche and snapper baked in a salt crust and arroz con pollo and loin of pork with mole, swimming in the sea and floating on his back in the enormous pool.
As evening of the second day approached, he lay on a lounge chair by the water, sipping a piña colada and listening with sleepy contentment to a mariachi band composed of five young boys in Mexican hats playing Guantanamera in the shade of a grove of palm trees. Three more hats lay on the grass and people passing by would stop and listen for a few moments and occasionally throw some loose change into the hats.
Threading their way through the crowded forest of lounge chairs, an elderly lady with curled gray hair and a bald fat man wearing a striped bathing suit and carrying a beach bag walked in his direction. They settled themselves on lounges. The man took a tube of Coppertone out of the beach bag and squirted some on his abdomen. Then he pulled a paperback book out of the bag and idly flipped through the pages while rubbing in the Coppertone with his other hand. Kurtz, lulled by the sun and the warmth of the breeze, his eyes half closed, could see the woman looking him up and down. She smiled, showing large, perfect teeth, and said, “What do you do, young man?”
Kurtz shook his head drowsily. “Excuse me?”
“I saw you with that drink and I wondered, is that a piña colada? I always wanted to try a piña colada. I always think about asking for one but then I always change my mind at the last instant and order rum and coke instead. Isn’t that silly? So I thought I’d ask. Are you an American? You look like an American. What’s your name? Where are you from?”
Kurtz stared at her and shook his head, still half asleep.
The fat man reclined the head of his lounge and lay back, his enormous abdomen rising up like a white dome through his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt. He gave Kurtz a quick look, shrugged his shoulders and stared at the pool.
“I’m Esther Brinkman.” She jabbed the fat man with her elbow. He ignored her. “This is Stanley, my husband. We’re from the Bronx. Do you like Mexican food? We love it. We come here every year. We used to go to Acapulco and we tried Ixtapa once but Cancun is much nicer. They give you everything you ask for and they have their own water system, all along the beach, but don’t try the restaurants in town, you might be sorry.
“I’m Richard Kurtz,” Kurtz said. “I’m from New York.”
“See?” Esther Brinkman jabbed her husband again, who grunted but didn’t bother turning his head. “I can always tell, something about the eyes. Are you here all alone? A good looking young man like yourself?” Kurtz, beginning to get a hemmed in feeling but not knowing how to get away without seeming rude, said, “Yes, actually. I am.”
“That’s a shame. Stanley, isn’t that a shame?”
Stanley nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said. “A shame.”
“So what do you do?” She held up a hand suddenly. “No! Don’t tell me. Let me guess.” She squinted at him, her little eyes almost closing, her mouth looking like a raisin. “You’re in sales. You’ve got that look, something very persuasive.” She nodded triumphantly. “I can always tell.”
“I’m a surgeon,” Kurtz said. It just slipped out, and immediately he thought, You dope.
“A surgeon?” Her eyes grew wide. “A real surgeon?”
“Yes,” Kurtz said weakly.
She stared at him. “Stanley,” she said, and clutched her husband by the hand. “He’s a surgeon.”
Stanley turned his head and gave Kurtz a blank look. He shook his head sadly and rolled his eyes.
“I have someone you just have to meet. Where is she?” Mrs. Brinkman half rose from her seat and urgently scanned the crowd.
Oh, no, Kurtz thought. “I have to be going,” he said.
Esther Brinkman ignored him. Her eyes lit up and she frantically waved at someone behind Kurtz’ chair, all five fingers wriggling in the breeze.
“Please,” Kurtz said. “You’ll have to excuse me.” He stood, turned, stopped, stared.
Oval face, long lashes, wide green eyes. She was tall. From the tips of her toes to the top of her head must have been a solid, willowy six feet. She wore a white string bikini, which covered very little of her tanned, lush figure. Long blonde hair hung halfway down her back, tied in a ponytail. Her hands were on her hips, head cocked to the side at a wary angle.
“This is Lenore,” Mrs. Brinkman said. “Our daughter.”
Kurtz turned his head, stared at Mrs. Brinkman. She gave him a thin smile. He turned back to Lenore and cleared his throat. “Pleased to meet you,” he said.
Lenore Brinkman said nothing and looked at her mother. She did not, Kurtz thought, look pleased. Mrs. Brinkman stared back at her, a triumphant little grin on her face.
“This is Richard Kurtz,” Mrs. Brinkman said, “from New York. He’s a surgeon.”
“A surgeon,” Lenore said. Her voice was smooth and deep, like molasses. Her eyes went back to Kurtz’ face. She gave her head a tiny shake, pasted a look on her face that was less than enthralled, and breathed a resigned sigh.
Kurtz said, “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure,” Lenore said. She glanced at her mother. “Not here.”
Mrs. Brinkman smiled like a bright, predatory bird. “Have a good time,” she said to Kurtz. “I knew you two would get along.”
“I don’t know what it is about the women in my family,” Lenore Brinkman said. She had put on a white jumpsuit and they sat on the hotel balcony, sharing a plate of shrimp with hot sauce and two Dos Equis. The sun was setting over the ocean and the sky overhead was shot full of purple and orange streaks. Far across the sand, phosphorescent waves broke rhythmically on the beach. “They’re all crazy. My uncles are such nice, sweet men but my mother and both her sisters are completely out of their minds.”
“She seemed to know what she was doing,” Kurtz said.
“She knows exactly what she’s doing.” Lenore peeled a shrimp, dipped it in sauce, and bit off half of it. “My mother is a very smart woman. She could have done something with her life, except that girls growing up back then weren’t supposed to do something with their lives. Instead, she bossed around my father and drove me and my sister absolutely nuts.”
Lenore Brinkman had a degree from Cooper Union in Graphic Art and worked in advertising. She was twenty-six years old. She was just getting over a relationship that had not worked out.
“Harrison’s father is an S.O.B. and Harrison didn’t have the backbone to stand up to him.” She shook her head. “Things have been difficult for them lately. They’re old money and money’s been tight, to which I say tough. Let them learn how the rest of the world has to live. They deserve it. Harrison’s father is president of a Savings and Loan.” Lenore snickered and took a chug from her beer.
“I had my doubts about coming along but maybe my mother was right. Get away from it all.” She shrugged and wrinkled her nose at the shrimp she was peeling. Then she said, “Look, I don’t want to string you along. You seem like a nice guy but I don’t know if I’m ready to get involved with anybody just yet.”
Kurtz sipped his beer and stared at the thin crescent of sun still barely visible above the horizon. “I understand,” he said. He thought about Kathy and wondered for an instant what she might be doing, back in New York. “Maybe I’m not ready either.”
Lenore suddenly grinned. “Mom was all over you like a pekingese chewing a bone. You looked pretty funny.”
“I was trying to escape without being rude.”
“Sometimes you just have to be rude.” Lenore put her feet up on the lower rail and leaned her head back. Her hair glinted in the fading light. “Doctors...” She glanced into her beer, then drained the glass. “Every Jewish mother’s dream.”
“Why is that?” Kurtz asked.
“Why?” Lenore shrugged. “I suppose it’s cultural. Jews admire education and it takes a lot of education to be a doctor. And there’s the old stereotype about Jews and money; it’s at least partly true. Jews like money. Doctors make money.”
“Everyone,” Kurtz said, “likes money.”
“With us it’s different. For five thousand years, sooner or later a Roman or a Cossack or a Nazi or the Spanish Inquisition would take everything we had and either kill us or kick us out. But if you had money, maybe you could buy a ticket to somewhere else; maybe you could bribe the soldier who comes to arrest you; maybe you could get away. Money buys security and Jews are nuts about security, an attitude that I can understand completely. I mean, Jews know they’re paranoid, but just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean nobody is out to get you.
“Now me...” Lenore shook her golden hair out over her shoulders and ran her hands through it. “I liked art. Art is cultured. Jews are very into culture so my parents approved—they could tell their friends I was a genius. But culture is chancy. From a financial perspective, there is nothing in the slightest bit secure about culture. It is absolutely astounding the speed with which a genius can turn into a bum in the opinion of your family if you actually want to do something cultural for a living. You want to play the piano, learn to paint, study ballet: wonderful! You want to be a pianist, or an artist, or a dancer? Forget it; you’ll never amount to anything. You’re a bum. Of course, if you somehow manage to actually be successful, then you’re a genius again.” Lenore shrugged, and peeled another shrimp. “Oh, well.”
Kurtz thought for a moment of his own boyhood, running barefoot through muddy fields in summer, trekking through snow that came up to his chest in winter. Nothing too cultural about that, and nobody he grew up with seemed to miss it.
“I’m twenty-six,” Lenore said. “Mom’s getting worried. A few years ago, if I wanted to go out with someone who wasn’t Jewish, she’d threaten to disown me. I say ‘she’ because my father never had anything to say about it anyway. Now she’s fixing me up with strange men.” Lenore gave a little laugh. “I know my mother. She’s willing to compromise. You’re not a Jewish doctor, but you are a doctor.”
The sun had set completely; only a faint orange glow still lingered over the horizon. A waiter walked around the terrace with a cart full of citronella lanterns, lit them and put them up on poles around the railing. Kurtz could hear the band beginning to play inside the Hotel. “Do you like to dance?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Let’s dance,” he said, and took her by the hand.
“Mrs. Delgado?”
She was short and fat, with round, plump arms and a round, moon face. She looked at him silently, with open suspicion.
“I’m Detective Barent.” He showed her his badge. “This is Detective Moran. Could we come in?”
She stared at them, her large black eyes flitting back and forth between their faces. Finally, she stepped aside and they walked past her into the apartment. Paint was peeling from the walls. Tiny puddles of rust lay on the floor where radiator pipes had leaked. Cheap plyboard tables covered with vinyl, three rickety garden chairs and an old collapsed couch with springs showing through the fabric were the only furniture. The faucet over the kitchen sink steadily dripped.
Mrs. Delgado stood in the center of the room, looking at their faces silently and expectantly. Barent cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about your son,” he finally said.
She shrugged. “Why do you care? He wasn’t your son.”
Barent frowned at this and felt the muscles across his shoulders tightening. “That’s true,” he said carefully. “But I have children of my own, and I sympathize with what you must be feeling.” Barent meant it. His own youngest son, Benjamin, had died from leukemia three years ago, at the age of fourteen. Ever since then, Barent had had a lot of difficulty dealing with the bereaved parents of dead children, even if the dead children were career criminals like Herman Delgado.
Moran, who knew this, looked at him with moody surprise. “May we sit down, Mrs. Delgado?”
She glanced at the couch and shrugged. Barent sat. Mrs. Delgado lowered her weight into one of the chairs, which swayed beneath her. Moran continued to stand.
“Mrs. Delgado, it’s my job to try to find the people who killed your son. Anything at all that you can tell me might be helpful.”
“You a little late to be helpful. Herman, he run with a bad crowd but that the only crowd he ever know. It’s hard for a boy to grow up right when he don’t have no one to show him how.” She sat up straight, her face closed in, her eyes fixed somewhere beyond Barent’s shoulder, staring into nothing.
Barent nodded. He flicked a glance at Moran, who gave a minute shrug. He took a small cardboard box out of his pocket and removed the cover. Inside the box lay the ring that Kurtz had retrieved from Bill Mose’s intestines. “Mrs. Delgado, could you tell us if your son had a ring like this?”
She looked at it without much interest. “I don’t know,” she said. “We don’t see Herman too much. He spend most of the day sleeping. At night, he was mostly out.” She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know,” she said again.
“Could you tell us who his friends were? Did he have a job? Who did he work with?”
The door opened. A girl no more than twelve stood there, dressed in a green blouse and jeans, frowning first at Barent, then at Moran. “Herman hang out with Jimmy Ramirez,” the girl said. “Jimmy Ramirez his best friend. And Carlos Rivera—but Carlos move away and we don’t see him no more.”
“My little girl, Angela,” Mrs. Delgado said. “She’s right. You ask Jimmy Ramirez. I don’t know nothing about Herman’s business. He come in late. He say nothing. Sometimes he give me money.” She shrugged. “That’s all I know.”
Angela sat down at the table, cradled her cupped hands beneath her chin and swung her legs back and forth under the chair. She watched Barent and Moran as if they were strange creatures in a zoo.
“Have you seen this ring before, Angela?” Barent asked.
Angela stared at the ring for a long moment, frowning, then gave a little shrug. Barent glanced at Moran, carefully closed the box and put it back in his pocket. “Thank you, Mrs. Delgado,” he said. “Thank you, Angela.”
Angela nodded her head. Mrs. Delgado said nothing. As the door closed behind them, Barent could see her staring at the cracked, faded wall. She looked as if she would stay there forever, Barent thought, staring, with no expression on her face.
Chapter 12
On the evening of January 6th, a street gang in the Bronx known as the “Black Dragons” invaded the territory of another gang that called itself the “King Cobras.”
Two days before, a fourteen-year-old named Shawna, who had been sleeping with a Black Dragon named Jackson, had gone into a convenience store to pick up some lipstick. Shawna browsed the shelves, turned her head quickly around to see if anyone was watching, and pocketed the one she liked. She stopped at the counter, paid a quarter for a chocolate covered cherry and went out the door.
“Yo.” A tall, well built young man smiled at her. He had a thin moustache and hair cut into a brush, with a gold skull set into the lobe of his left ear.
“What you want?” Shawna asked.
“What I want?” The young man looked her up and down and smacked his lips. “Why don’t you come along with me and find out?”
“With you?” Shawna thought about it while she chewed her chocolate covered cherry. The young man’s jacket was black and looked like real leather. He wore Adidas High Tops and his hair had twin lightning bolts cut down to the scalp on both sides. “You don’t look like so much.”
“No?” He smiled wider, reached into his pocket, pulled out a round tin container that said “Happy Days Chewing Tobacco” and pulled off the top. The tin was filled with soft white powder. He held it out to her. “I got what you want if you got what I want.”
Shawna looked at the powder, looked up at the boy’s grinning face and swallowed. Abruptly, she nodded.
