“I just ignored it. Too weird.”
“Did you ever talk to her about it?”
“I don’t think I saw her since then,” she answered.
“Was this normal to you? I mean, had she ever asked you for money before?”
“We never really talked much or hung out,” she explained.
“Did you ever talk to each other?” I probed.
“Maybe at a Christmas party at my parents’ house,” she said, then added: “She’s just weird.”
“We’re all weird.”
“Not like her. She’s sort of a loner.”
There was sympathy in her words, a sort of sadness that another human being could be so alone. And there was fear that something like that could happen to her. I started to get a better picture of the girl I was looking for and even of the one in front of me. The latter was full of bluster that projected a pronounced maturity but underneath she was very much the opposite. Her phone buzzed and she reflexively picked up the phone. It was her friend replying with Nelson’s address.
“Do you want to write it down?” she smirked.
“Text it to me,” I told her.
Before we parted, I asked that she keep our conversation in confidence but I knew full well that wasn’t going to happen. A flurry of gossip among the kids might actually help flush out some more information and it even might help flush out Jeanette herself.
Morgan was back to her casual, confident self, and I was grateful for it. When I wished her good bye she bounced to her feet and flashed me a peace sign.
“With light and love,” she chirped.
***
The house was a mustard-colored box whose stucco was bleached near white in spots where the sun pounded it relentlessly. The treeless front yard was covered in a layer of brittle crab grass like hay spread out for a pony-ride stable. An overpowering smell of cat urine baking in the sun tickled the area high up in the nose.
The screen door was intact but the screen was not. I reached through it to knock on the windowless door. A few moments passed before an abuelita in a housecoat shuffled in the doorway.
“Hi, we’re looking for Nelson,” I said in a slow and deliberate manner, but the old woman stared blankly back at me. “Nelson Portillo? Is he home?”
I got no response and looked to Hector to provide some assistance. Instead, he reached passed the abuelita and pushed the front door open wider and simultaneously stepped into the house.
“Whoa, what are you doing?” I said.
This woke the abuelita up and she rattled off a string of invectives at Hector but they fell on deaf ears. I saw movement in the dark area towards the back of the house. Hector saw it too and ran in that direction. There was more shouting inside and then a flash of light of a rear door being opened and the bright sun pouring in.
I stepped off the stoop and ran to the side of the house where a narrow walkway cut through the space between Nelson’s house and the neighbor’s. I crossed the small back yard, jumped a rusted chain link fence, and stumbled into the back alley. To the right was a long, empty stretch. To the left was a shorter bit that led to a cross street. I ran in that direction.
Hector stood in the middle of the intersection, his arms hanging by his sides but enough away from his body to be in a pose of provocation. Faced off with him was a young Latino of indeterminate age because of his shaved head and tattoos. The young man reached into the pocket of his calf-length shorts and pulled out a switchblade. He swirled the tip in Hector’s direction. The blade glinted brilliantly in the afternoon sun.
I moved a few paces towards them.
“Let’s get out of here,” I called out to Hector. “It’s not worth it.”
The man facing off with Hector glanced in my direction and then back to his elder combatant.
“Listen to the guero, old man,” he smirked.
Hector didn’t heed his advice. He calmly removed his jacket, folded it once over and laid it on the pavement. When he stood back up, he had a knife of his own. Unlike his foe, Hector held the knife in a fist with the blade pointed down. It felt more menacing.
The closest I had ever been to a knife fight was my high school production of West Side Story when I endured two plus hours of torturous singing because of a crush I had on the girl who played Maria. There was nothing poetic about this version. There were no hunched over torsos, no choreographed circling. The younger man puffed out his chest and rolled up onto the balls of his feet in this odd bouncy posture. He feinted towards Hector’s shoulder but was surprised, as was I, by the lack of a response from the old man. Hector stood motionless. He somehow knew there was no intention to harm behind the move. What was an attempt to frighten succeeded only in scaring the intimidator.
Hector took a purposeful step forward when a Honda held together by Bondo and duct tape came to a rapid stop on the far corner. Two young Latinos emerged, leaving the front and driver’s doors open. They instinctively looped around Hector in a sort of pincer move that would have made Rommel proud. The three of them looked at Hector, and then to me, and then calculated their odds. I could see them collectively come to a satisfying conclusion — three against one, fair fight.
But Hector didn’t act like the underdog. If anything, he was more emboldened by the long odds. He made the first move, and all three men took a synchronized step back. Art sometimes does imitate life. Hector singled out the original fighter and squared off with him. His first step was met with a move that stopped him cold. The man lifted his XXL white t-shirt and revealed a gun tucked into the elastic waistband of his basketball shorts. The butt of the gun was like an ink stain on his stomach.
I took a step back. Hector didn’t move an inch. He stared impassively at the threat. The man with the gun decided Hector wasn’t going to charge him and seemed to relax a bit. He slowly backed up towards the car and his friends moved with him. They all got in and sped off.
“What the hell was that?” I shouted as Hector approached, but he didn’t stop to answer. I reached out and grabbed his arm. The old man shot me a look that instantly eased my grip.
“I told him when we meet again I was going to kill him.”
“Who?”
Hector thumbed in the direction of the aborted knife fight.
“The boy who took Mr. Valenti’s money,” he answered.
THE GREAT SOCKEYE RUN
First thing Monday morning I called my assistant in. She was a three-hundred-pound woman with a hint of an Okie accent that went back two generations. She was full of old-timey phrases that somehow didn’t grate on me, most likely because she had the purest heart of anyone I had ever met. I held onto her for a decade despite many efforts to move her somewhere else. In the corporate world, people covet assistants like they covet neighbor’s wives.
“Yes, Mr. Restic?” she sang. She insisted on using formal titles despite the fact that we told her not to.
“Can you dig up the name of the private investigator we use for background checks on job candidates?”
“Of course,” she replied, but I detected a slight hesitation. For the average associate, we employed a standard online service that combed through arrest records and publicly-available financial data. But for certain senior roles we needed to look deeper into people’s lives. The public record did not always tell the full story; money and a good lawyer can get a lot of stuff expunged from the book of record. And what’s readily available doesn’t uncover what we called “soft issues.” Mistresses were concerning but not as concerning as multiple divorces. The firm didn’t mind people of low morals but it couldn’t expose itself to individuals whose poor judgment would cost them gobs of money. Another big red flag was anyone who initiated a lawsuit. If they did it in the past, who was to say they wouldn’t do it to us?