Part 14 (1/2)
”Good G.o.d, how you've grown!” The priest stepped forward and shook Rico's hand in a firm, dry grasp. ”The last time I saw you was.. . well, I hate to think how many years have pa.s.sed! But you're a man now, aren't you?” Rico smiled and shrugged. He thought, Father, if you only knew . . .
”So I've heard you've moved out of the barrio. You're living on Sunset Boulevard?”
”I've got an apartment on the Strip.”
”I'm glad to hear that. Where are you working?”
”For myself,” Rico said, and when Silvera's gaze sharpened, he added. ”Doing this and that. I'm trying to start my own messenger service.” Silvera nodded. Of course, he knew that Rico was probably selling drugs or pimping, possibly both. Rico's hands were too smooth, and he'd never had the education for a desk job, though as a child playing around this very church Rico had shown a healthy curiosity about life that Silvera hoped would blossom into a quest for real knowledge. A stab of sorrow and pity caught Silvera in the heart.
The waste, he thought, the terrible waste.
”I'm making out okay,” Rico said. He'd sensed what was going on in the priest's head, behind those black, fathomless eyes.
Silvera motioned toward the front pew. ”Please, sit down.” Rico did, and Silvera sat beside him. ”You look fine,” he said, which was a lie because Rico looked as drained as an empty bottle and much thinner than he ought to be. He wondered what Rico was selling. Cocaine? Amphetamines? Angel dust? Surely not heroin.
Rico was too smart to get involved with junk, and he probably recalled how the addicts had screamed from their windows when they'd injected themselves with a hit cut with baby powder or sugar. ”It's been too long,” Silvera said.
”A long time since I've been inside here, yeah.” Rico looked around the church, his gaze coming to rest on the window. ”I'd almost forgotten what it looked like in here. What surprises me is that your window hasn't been broken yet.”
”It's been tried. I've been having some trouble with the Homicides.”
”They're a bunch of punks. You should call the cops on them.”
”No. It's neighborhood business and nothing that I can't take care of. Your att.i.tude about the police seems to have changed since your were running with the Cripplers.”
”You're wrong, Father. I still think the cops are good-for-nothing pigs, but you can't handle the Homicides by yourself. They'll cut your throat as fast as anybody else's. Maybe faster.”
Silvera nodded thoughtfully, searching the younger man's eyes. A terrible bitterness seemed to be churning there, the look of a dog long deprived of food.
And there was something else, too, something that lay much deeper and closer to Rico's soul. Silvera saw just a quick flash of it, like dark, glimmering quicksilver, and recognized it as fear-an emotion he'd seen in his own mirror eyes a great deal recently. ”You come to see me for a reason, Rico. Can I help you?”
”I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no.” He shrugged, looked at the stained-gla.s.s window, and seemed to have a hard time saying it. ”Father, has Merida Santos come to see you in the last couple of days?”
”Merida? No.”
”Oh, Jesus,” Rico said softly. ”I thought she might've . . . you know, come here to talk to you. I've . . . I've made her pregnant, and now she's gone. Even her crazy mother doesn't know where she is, and I can't sleep at night not knowing what's happened to her.
”Slow down,” the priest said, and gripped Rico's shoulder. ”Take it easy and tell me everything from the beginning.”
Rico took a deep breath. ”I picked her up at her building on Sat.u.r.day night...”
When Rico was finished, his hands were clasped tightly in his lap. ”I called the cops this morning and talked to the missing persons guy. He said not to worry about it, that a lot of people disappeared for a couple of days at a time and then came back home. He said it's called running away from home, so I knew then that ” ”fjj he wasn't taking me too seriously, you know? He said that if her mother wasn't ”Xn concerned, I shouldn't be either. Good-for-nothin' pig! I don't know what to do, Father! I think . . . maybe something bad's happened to her!”
Silvera's eyes were black and brooding. In this neighborhood, he knew, any of a dozen terrible things could've happened to Merida Santos-kidnapping, rape, murder. ... He refused to think about that. ”Merida's a good girl. I can't imagine her running away from home. Still, if you say she's pregnant, she may be afraid to face her mother.”
”Who wouldn't be? She tried to chop me up with a butcher knife. That was yesterday afternoon?” Rico nodded. ”Then maybe Merida's come home since then?
Maybe she just stayed away from home overnight because she was afraid to tell her mother she was pregnant?”
”Maybe. I thought about calling the missing persons cops again and saying I was Merida's father or uncle, but you know what that b.a.s.t.a.r.do told me? He said they were too busy to hunt down every little girl who decided to run away from the barrio. Busy doin' what? Ain't that a load of s.h.i.+t?” He stopped abruptly.
”Oh. Sorry, Father.”
”That's all right. I agree. It is a load of s.h.i.+t. But why don't we go see Mrs. Santos together? Maybe Merida's come home by now, or Mrs. Santos might talk to me more freely than she would you.”
Silvera rose to his feet.
”I love her, Father,” Rico said as he stood up. ”I want you to know that.”
”That may be, Rico. But I don't think you love her enough, do you?” Rico felt speared with guilt. Silvera's eyes were like hard bits of black gla.s.s, reflecting the secrets of Rico's soul back at him. He was shamed to silence.
”All right,” Silvera said, and clapped Rico softly on the shoulder. ”Let's go.”
SIX.
”Here's what we got,” Sully Reece said as he laid a thick sheaf of white bluelined computer printout paper amid the general disarray on Palatazin's desk.
”The people down in Vehicle I.D. are going crazy, but they're sending their computers back through the whole list of plate numbers again just in case it missed any the first time, which Taylor says is highly unlikely. As you can see, there are quite a few people in L.A. who drive a gray, white, or light blue Volks bearing a two, a seven, and a 'T' in some numerical combination.”
”My G.o.d,” Palatazin said as he unfolded the list. ”I never knew there were so many Volkswagens in the whole state!”
”That's every combination the computers could come up with.” Palatazin bit down on his pipe. ”Of course, he could be driving with a stolen license plate.”
”Don't even think it, please. If that's the case, then you can just about triple the number of plates listed on that printout. And if that chick was wrong about even one digit, then the whole thing's screwed.”
”Well, let's hope she wasn't.” He glanced down the list, which contained a few hundred names and addresses. ”These are grouped by area?”
”Yes, sir. Taylor thought the computers were going to blow up, but he programmed them to give us our information on the basis of twenty major areas. The first twenty-five or so addresses, for instance, are located in a grid from Fairfax Avenue to Alvarado Street.”
”Fine. That makes it a little easier for the officers.” Palatazin counted down twenty-eight names and tore them off the list. ”Split whoever's available up into teams, Sully, and hand out as many of those names as you can. You and I will be taking these.”
”Yes, sir. Oh, have you seen this?” He held up the morning edition of the Times.
There on the front page in a black-bordered box under a headline that read ”Do You Know This Man?” was the composite of the face they were seeking. ”That should do some good.”
Palatazin took the paper and laid it out on his desk. ”I hope so. It's flashed through my mind that this man might be an insurance agent from Glendale-a wife, two children, and a cat-who likes a bit of action on the side. If that's the case, then we're back at square one.” He looked up suddenly, as if he'd heard something, and stared intensely past Reece into the corner.
”Captain?” Reece asked after a few seconds. He glanced over his shouldernothing there, of course. But nevertheless he felt a chill ripple between his shoulder blades, as if he sensed someone standing right behind him. Palatazin blinked and looked away, forcing himself to stare down at the list of names and addresses. Garvin, Kelly, Vaughan ... he thought he'd seen something begin to stir in that corner . . . Mehta, Salvatore, Ho ... where the apparition of his mother had stood yesterday afternoon . . . Emiliana, Lopez, Carlyle . . .
but before he could focus on it, the faint movement like the sluggish motion of ripples through muddy water had ceased. He glanced quickly up at Reece.
”What...
uh ... about that other thing I asked you to look into?”