Home Killings, page 4
Stapleton shook his head in doubt. “I can give you permission, of course. But I’m sure Diego had a password to get into his own files. You’ll have to figure that out.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Ignoring the computer momentarily, I looked at the few photos that Sáenz had leaning on his desk. “You know these people?”
Stapleton leaned over. “That’s a picture of his family and him, up in Iowa. His mom and dad, a bunch of brothers and sisters. This is a shot of him when he won a UPI award. This one, I don’t know who it is.”
It was a picture of Diego with a young man, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. Ball in hand, they were leaning against a basketball pole. Diego was smiling. The boy was looking tough, his arms crossed, the one hand showing balled up in a fist with the word “Loco” tattoed over his knuckles. I wondered if the other hand displayed the word “Vato.”
I also wondered if that was Gato Negro.
Stapleton told me that Diego was not married, nor, as far as the editor knew, was he dating anyone. “I think he had a lover back in Iowa, but he dumped her or she dumped him. That was before he came here.”
I leaned over the desk again. “He was a good-looking guy,” I said, thinking back to the body, remembering how death has a way of taking beauty away.
“Yeah,” said Stapleton, “some people wondered why he didn’t try out for a local television news show. He had the looks.”
“That would have been something.”
“Yeah, but he lacked one thing to be a television anchorman.”
“What’s that?”
“Stupidity.”
A real newspaperman, I thought, looking at Stapleton.
The editor picked up his own words, as if afraid that maybe I had a relative in the television business. “Diego was one of the smarter people I knew. He went to Loyola in Chicago, graduated in journalism with honors. This job opened right when he got out of school. I was hesitant at first to take someone so young, without any experience. But he just wowed me during the interview. I hired him on the spot.”
Stapleton allowed me to look through the desk drawers. Nothing in particular helped move me toward any conclusions. Only pencils, clips, White-Out, press cards, tape, calculator, stamps, pins, The Cumberland Journal stationery. “Do you know if he kept a notebook on him, Mr. Stapleton?”
He thought a minute. “Yes. He kept a small one, usually in his shirt pocket. I remember, because he was the only reporter on the floor who owned a Mont Blanc pen.” Stapleton chuckled.
“How does a reporter own a Mont Blanc?” I asked.
“It was a gift from his mother. She gave it to him when he graduated. Oh, god, I’ve got to be calling her …”
With that, I left him, thanking him for his help, and assuring him that I would be in touch. Stapleton shook his head in understanding, though the heavy thought of having to tell parents such news had invaded most every corner of his mind.
Then his news-mind flicked back on, slicing through the mourning. “Detective,” he called out as I walked through the door. “What I’ve given you is privileged information. The name Gato Negro and all. I’d appreciate it if that data stayed between you and me, until I decide to print it.”
I half-promised him it would, though there was no energy behind my words. The lilt in his voice revealed his readiness to take issue with me regarding whose rights were primary, his as a reporter or mine as a homicide detective. This sudden tension was necessary, I suppose. But I had felt it before, from reporters in Atlanta. It didn’t make for fast friendships.
Chapter Four
Before leaving the offices of The Cumberland Journal, I used one of the front desk phones to call Doc.
“I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of your work.”
“That’s fine. I can talk,” he said. The flat echo of his voice made it clear he spoke into a speaker phone. An assistant made periodic comments in the background.
“Did you find a notebook on Sáenz? Perhaps in his shirt pocket?”
“Nope. Nothing.”
“Really?”
“It surprised me, too, considering he was a reporter.”
“What about a pen?”
“Oh, yes. A Mont Blanc. I always wanted to have one of those. But no notebook. If he had one, looks like your killer lifted it.”
“So you’re thinking it’s a homicide now?” I asked. This surprised me, as I had yet to tell Doc what else I had found after he left the crime scene.
“Yes, I’m a believer. Remember those blotches on his hand that you pointed out to me? Sáenz’s right hand was bruised. The back of it. There are marks all around, under his knuckles. Also slight bruising over the central phalanges of his middle, ring, and pinky fingers. Good work, Romilia.”
“Damn.” The image became clear immediately in my head of how Sáenz had died. “So somebody grabbed his hand while Sáenz held the gun?”
“Yep. Then they forced it under his own throat and had his finger pull the trigger.”
“The perp overpowered him.”
“I’d say. Your killer is strong. Looks like Sáenz’s hand was in a large vise grip.”
“I take it there were burn marks around the entry wound.”
“Indeed. He was shot up close. The barrel was pushed up hard against his skin.”
The image crystalized, all except for the face of the killer. The murderer somehow got close enough to Sáenz to restrain him, grab the gun in the reporter’s hand, and force Sáenz’s hand and pistol up under his head, then squeezed his fingers enough to have the gun go off.
With the image, questions came to mind. Was Sáenz aiming the gun at the killer? If so, how could the killer be so quick as to grab Sáenz’s hand? Did he come from behind or in front? Why was a news reporter carrying a gun?
“This brings up a lot of stuff, Doc,” I said. “I’d like to come over and visit you sometime today, after I check on this Nolensville Road lead.”
“Mi casa es su casa,” he said through a horribly accented Spanish. Then he laughed.
Though a fairly large southern city, Nashville was not Atlanta. Even in the early-morning hours Atlanta can offer some movement, even if it is only composed of drunks and the homeless. At seven a.m. there was very little happening down Nashville’s Nolensville Road. The four-lane highway that pointed north and south from the center of town to its edges was desolate. Few cars drove by. Nolensville collected Nashville poverty. Numerous old businesses lined the roads, used cars, a tire shop, ubiquitous pawn shops, a very old McDonald’s that still had the original neon “M” that showed the lightbulb tube running through its yellow background. There was no gas station here, nor parks, nor churches. And, of course, no banks. The pawn shops had control over any loan and investment transaction. Toppled trash cans on the sidewalks spilled out several days’ worth of garbage. This scene was a lifetime away from the streets of Bellevue in the west or the little town of Franklin just to the south, where the real moneychangers lived. The only similarity between Nolensville and those two posh communities was that it was now shrouded in the calm of early morning, and seemed as tranquil as the most peaceful place on earth.
It took a few minutes of driving before I saw something that offered me a possibility. A sign upon the wall of an old wooden building said “Taquería,” with an arrow pointing up a side street. It was not a large sign, perhaps the size of a small windshield. It had few adornments on it save the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green. Taquería was not a word that a Latino would use in order to cultivate a gringo clientele. This small sign was obviously meant to attract local raza.
I took the side street and pulled away from Nolensville Road. One half block away, a light burned through a fairly large picture window. A crack ran down one of its corners. A woman moved around inside. Though passing the window only once, I could tell she was older, perhaps in her mid-fifties. She moved around, placing objects upon shelves.
I parked the car and walked to the front door. A streetlight that offered no glow buzzed above me, its constant electric crackle cutting through the silence of early day. The sign hanging in the window of the door said “cerrado.” I knocked.
The woman turned and looked at me, a certain harshness penetrating her stare. Undoubtedly, a number of her children and grandchildren had been on the receiving end of such a stare whenever having done something wrong. What I now did wrong, most assuredly, was break the rhythm of her early morning, taking her from the first moments of a workday.
She moved to the door. Perhaps my being a woman allowed her to do that. Yet she did not open it until asking in thickly accented English who I was. I introduced myself in Spanish, saying I was with the police and showing her my badge and ID. She stared at it, then with no hesitation unlocked the door and opened it wide. The cold air rushed in, making her show me a curt courtesy, “Pásese, por favor, pase adelante.”
I thanked her and walked in. The odor of a hundred bags of masa harina, the flour used for tortillas, tamales, pupusas, flautas, and every other corn-based food, whipped into my nose. That had not happened since Mamá and I had left Atlanta. This woman’s shelves held a cornucopia of Latin foods: cans of processed refried beans, both pinto and black; red cascabel peppers, dried and packaged in crinkly plastic sacks; bags of sweet breads piled high in a wooden trough; three troughs filled with tomatoes, jalapeño peppers, serrano peppers, banana peppers, green tomatillos in their husks, cilantro, onions, garlic. A trough to one side displayed at least one hundred CDs and cassettes of rancheras, corridos, cumbias, Gloria Estefan, Selena, Los Tigres del Norte, Los Bukis. Another wooden trough held a legion of video cassettes. A large refrigerator with glass doors displayed pounds of cheeses from both cow and goat milks. Bags of premade tortillas were also stacked in there, waiting for a working mother to come by before rushing home to make dinner for a hungry family. Posters lined the walls: Selena standing beautiful and voluptuous, a photo taken just weeks before her murder; another of a Latina woman whom I did not know, but who stood in a pose that barely allowed for her arms and thighs to cover her nude breasts and pubis; right next to her an old, large poster of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Below the posters, upon rough wooden shelves, sat two huge stereo speakers. She had yet to turn them on. They sat like fat, black mouths, ready to belt out a round of sad corridos.
This place was different from Nolensville Road. Out there, on the street and during the day, most assuredly the population was predominantly African American and White. That street really had yet to begin to speak two languages. Yet here, just a half block away from the daily rush of Nolensville, stood an almost breathing edifice of raza. I had found the pulsing heart of a very small yet growing Nashville Latino barrio.
“What can I do for you?” she asked in Spanish, though her eyes looked me up and down. She was about ten inches shorter than I. “You’re a cop, you say?”
Chota was the word she used for cop. Mexican. I shook my head at the not-flattering term. I offered my hand and gave her my name, but did not tell her yet that I was with homicide. She gave me her one hand, but in the other she held a sack of white onions. She held them in a way that requested I get to my point. Yet I waited for her to introduce herself. She did not. “And you are …?”
“Marina. Doña Marina Osegueda, at your service.” The courteous words came out automatically. I doubted them. She just stared at me, waiting. Her dress was simple enough, a pattern that looked as if she had bought the material at a sewing store and had sewn it herself. She had tied her steely hair into a bun to keep it out of her face. Her aging eyes were quick to dart about. They had been darting ever since she spotted me through the window of the door. “What do you need?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“What’s his name?”
“They call him Gato Negro.”
Marina’s piercing eyes quit piercing me. They rolled upwards as she turned and carried the bag of white onions to a bin. “What’s Nelson done now?” she asked, placing the onions carefully into the bin.
“That’s his name? Nelson?”
“Yes. Nelson García. But he likes to be called Gato Negro.”
“Why? Does it mean something, like a gang thing, or …”
“Because he hates the name Nelson. Thinks it sounds like a queer gringo.”
I shook my head at this logic. No doubt Doña Marina, the local distributor of Latino food, was also the conduit of local gossip.
“So you’re finally coming around to make him stop busting out those streetlights?” she asked, motioning her face toward the window and the pole outside.
“Well, no … did Nelson do that?”
“Yes, when he was fifteen. About four years ago. I called the police, but you never came.”
“I see. No, I’m here on other business. Do you know Nelson well? Is he a relative?” I asked that to see if she would be calling Nelson’s home after I took off in my car.
“No. He and his family came here just a few years ago. When he and his sisters were just kids. Nice family. But Nelson is a little wild.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
She walked over to the window. I followed behind. She pointed beyond my car toward a house that sat alone in a patch of yard. A couple of bicycles lay in the dry grass. A dark blue pickup truck in relatively good condition was parked just in front of the house.
“Right there. But they’re all asleep right now. Hey, what’s this all about? You don’t look like a regular cop, hija.”
She called me ‘daughter,’ which made me feel the mother in her. It made me want to ask more about herself, her own children and grandchildren, how long she had lived here and what had brought her to Nashville, a Latino-less town, in the first place. I wanted to introduce my son to her, just to hear her go on about how cute he was. All that would have to wait, I hoped, until another visit, one during off hours. But most assuredly I would be telling Mamá about this place. Marina’s store would make my own mother feel more at home. Perhaps it would help her insomnia.
“Oh, it’s nothing really. I’m working on a case. I think Gato Negro could help me out on it.” I smiled, hoping to disengage suspicions.
“Is it because of drugs?” she asked too suddenly.
“What about drugs?”
“Oh, that boy. I hear he’s been smoking that stuff. The grassy stuff, you know.” She did not have any sense of the lingo in either language. “But he really is a good boy, officer. I’ve known him since he was just a little chamaco.”
“Don’t worry, Doña Marina, I don’t think he’s in any real trouble yet.”
She heard my hasta el momento, my ‘yet.’ She looked at me.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve never met a chota latina in this town before.” She kept looking at me. I could not tell, from her forced stance of neutrality, whether she gazed at me with respect or with a necessary distance.
I tried to break her eye lock. “You have a wonderful store here,” I said. “I would like to come by during the day and pick up some things for my mother.”
The compliment—as well as the reference to mamá (yes, I was actually born unto this world, not hatched in the Chota Department)—seemed to lighten her demeanor. She actually smiled. “You like it? I built it seven years ago. Well, my boys built it for me. At first there was very little business. But now I can’t keep up with the demand. I even have gringos and negros come in here and buy food!”
We chatted a few minutes longer. Yet I was anxious, now having a real name to follow up on. I wanted to wander over to that house and get a chance to talk with the boy. I hoped that, arriving at this early-morning hour, I could catch him sleeping, which would help get more honest, crude answers from him. But I said none of this to Doña Marina, wanting to keep her from picking up the phone or walking over to the García home to warn them. Perhaps she would not. Then again, how much appeasing could I do, given the fact that I was out so early in the morning looking for a guy named Black Cat?
I cordially said goodbye and walked out. Her eyes pushed through the window and lay upon my back. I turned and smiled one last time. Doña Marina slapped a quick smile upon her own face and waved back. I pulled away from the curb, certain that her smile lasted for a very short while.
Instead of walking up to Gato Negro’s house, I drove the half block away from Doña Marina’s store. It was a last-ditch attempt to have her stop looking at me. Maybe she would believe I had left the neighborhood, and thus would return to preparing her store for the day.
I walked up to the faux-brick-covered building. Some of the façade had begun to peel. The roof shingles were uneven. Though poor, the porch and small yard were kept tidy.
A woman in her mid-forties answered my knock. She had obviously been up for a little while. “Yes?” she asked in clear English. It was clipped with a Mexican accent.
I introduced myself, showing my badge. “Is Nelson García around?” I asked in Spanish.
She hesitated, then said in Spanish, “No, he’s not here now. He comes in later.”
“Oh. From work?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“What time do you expect him?”
“I, I am not sure. He comes in at different times.”
“I see. Where does he work?”
A quick lie could not come to her. What place would be open this early in the morning where he could be working? A place where a cop wouldn’t take the time to check out?
“I am not sure. He has changed jobs.”
“I see. You his mother?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know where he works?”
She said nothing, only looked down at the doorframe.
I sighed testily. “Look. I just need to ask him some questions. Something’s happened to a friend of his named Diego Sáenz. I was wondering if Gato could help us find out what occurred.”
