Pérez, who went by Manny even to his enemies, looked up, nearly jumped, and said, “Jesus. Cooper.”
Cooper was wearing a banana yellow Tommy Bahama short-sleeve shirt featuring green illustrations of parrots. “The hell are you, Manny?” he said.
“They let you just waltz right in?” Manny was acting casual now, going back to his coffee while he spoke.
“Been told I look like a cop,” Cooper said. “Lucky me.”
He noticed Manny wasn’t reading anything or doing any paperwork. On the desk he saw a blotter, calendar, and phone-no notes, no forms, no files. Manny was doing nothing but sipping the coffee, probably chasing a BK breakfast sandwich with it. As if this weren’t his real office. Which it wasn’t.
“Looks like you’re working that big homicide case,” Cooper said. “Reviewing the file, following up on some leads to start the day. Hell, maybe you’ll even give it some more thought while you’re having some plantain chips and a couple of Miller Genuine Drafts on your three-hour lunch. You’ll be taking that lunch in what, about an hour?”
Eyes shifty, taking in the squad room, Manny said, “Nice to see you’ve maintained your sense of decorum.” Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Fucking gringo, you don’t just come in here and say all that in the middle of the floor.”
Cooper deposited himself in the chair alongside Manny’s desk. The detective wore a pale brown long-sleeve shirt that looked to be made of silk, the collar unbuttoned, Manny showing off his brown skin and scant few curls of chest hair. He had a big head of wavy black hair and a neat black beard that hid a developing double chin. A thin gold chain snaked around the base of his neck.
Cooper set the snapshot of the tattoo on the empty desk and pushed it over.
“Nineteen-year-old kid washed up on the beach in Road Town,” he said. “Had that tattooed on his neck.”
“And I care about this why?”
Cooper looked at him. He gave Manny some time, knowing that the detective would give some thought, there with the coffee, to some of the other things Cooper could be saying in the middle of the floor. A few things Manny wouldn’t want his fellow cops hearing.
“He was shot in the back,” Cooper said after a while. “Had both legs broken, like maybe he jumped off the tenth floor of a building trying to get away. Could have been using, but was probably getting shot up by somebody, I’m guessing heroin. Mark on his neck is a voodoo sign.”
Almost involuntarily, Manny peered at the picture. “Hard to tell,” he said.
“Not for you.”
Manny shook his head. “Might have seen something like it along the way, but the people you’re thinking of don’t use it.”
“Maybe not,” Cooper said, “but they might know who does.”
Manny shrugged.
Cooper said, “You know, this kid could have been a mule. Or hell, maybe he saw something he wasn’t supposed to see. Any way you look at it, somebody wanted him pretty dead. Means to me somebody had something to hide. Probably something worth hiding.”
Manny looked at the picture again.
“There’s a cop I know here in San Juan,” Cooper said, “possessed of a keen olfactory nerve. Where others blindly pursue justice, or arrests, he also knows when a case presents an opportunity to pad his numbered account in the Caymans.”
Manny leaned back in his chair and pushed the coffee to the other side of the desk.
“You show me that picture,” he said, “you don’t even need to tell me the story. The smell of money ain’t what’s coming off that one. You know what that picture smells like? An outhouse, ese. Smells like you’re knee-deep in shit.”
He stood up.
“Fuck you, Cooper. I’ll give you a couple hours, but that’s it. I got that lunch to get to.”
Cooper entertained himself by waiting to see whether Manny would offer to buy the tickets. He didn’t, so Cooper paid the twenty-four bucks. He saw on his stub that the first fight began at noon.
The sunglassed Manny eyed his ticket when Cooper gave it to him.
“Shitty seats,” he said. “Listen, ese, I’ll meet you inside-and I may need to spread some goodwill. Know what I’m saying?”
“Bill me,” Cooper said. He handed his ticket to a stout old man in a red vest and pushed through the turnstile.
The cool blast of the gallera’s air-conditioning system dried his sweaty skin. He flagged down a girl in a halter top and short-shorts slinging a concessions tray, bought a beer from her, pulled down a few ounces of it, and thought that if he had to wait for Manny to find whoever it was the cop was looking for, he may as well figure out how to make some money on the noon fight in the meantime. He crossed the lobby to the credit window, laid down a MasterCard displaying a name that wasn’t his, and bought a five-thousand-dollar credit line. The teller, who, like ninety percent of the people in here, was middle-aged, male, and overweight, pushed a bright blue plastic card across the counter. Cooper slipped it into his breast pocket, the card sticking out by an inch or two, enough to show the officials how much he was good for.
He found the hall that led to the ring; it was lit like a Best Buy. A velvet rope kept you a couple feet back from the glass, but even standing on the other side of the rope you could poke your head in, almost against the window, and get a good look at the birds. The walls in the narrow hall were composed of cages, each about two feet square, stacked in three rows, so that the top row of roosters stared back at you from eye level.
Cooper found one of the noon combatants and scoped the gamecock out, leaning in until his face was an inch from the glass. The rooster stood his ground. Cooper thought the foot-tall bird looked like somebody had just given him a haircut and removed his pants-the feathers on his wings and neck were slicked back, his legs and tail plucked, the skin red, swollen, greased. There was a splash of gold in the feathers of the rooster’s neck, Cooper thinking this was one proud-looking bird, his handlers unable to make a fool of him despite the plucking. He found the second fighter, a smaller, fatter, relatively unkempt bird, his feathers a mottled black and white. This one bobbed hyperactively around his cage.
Cooper decided to go with the black-and-white scrapper-unless the fix is in, he thought, I’m walking out of here a few grand to the good.
The handlers pulled the two birds out of their cages, taking them into the back room. Peering through the empty cage of the black-and-white bird, Cooper caught a glimpse of Manny talking with somebody against a concrete wall. The guy was tall, taller than Manny by a foot, and dark-made Manny look like a gringo himself. Cooper watched as the black-and-white rooster’s handlers gathered behind the cages and took his bird away, the crazed animal pecking and scratching the whole way. When the entourage had passed, Manny and his buddy were no longer there.
Cooper took his seat while the birds were positioned beneath Plexiglas boxes on the artificial turf of the cockpit. The roosters were going crazy, trying to get at each other with the sharp wooden espuelas their handlers had strapped to each leg. Cooper had heard that gamecocks were fed a pregame meal of brandy and coffee, Cooper thinking he’d be whacking away at the box too-pants off, legs greased, drunk and java-juiced, about to get gouged to death if you didn’t strike first. Bring it on.
Manny took his seat beside Cooper about three minutes into the fight. Even at noon, the arena was packed, circular rows of middle-aged men rising steeply up from the cockpit, the shouting rising to a fever pitch as the birds beat the shit out of each other.
“Vámonos, ese,” Manny said. “Got what we were looking for. Maybe you should have stayed in the car-when I show you what it cost us, you going to wish you kept your twelve bucks.”