Her voice trembled momentarily, but she held it together. Garza wanted to pounce on her, to drag the information out of her, but had to sit and listen.
“We were so happy together. The tattoo business has taken off so big, the past ten, twelve years. People could see it, you know? His talent? His gift? It just . . . it shined out of everything he ever did.” She paused. “But he was sweet, too. You could see that in the work, too. The sweetness.”
Garza saw an opening. “And the men?” she asked. “Please tell me about the men.”
“Too sweet maybe,” said Octavia, going on without hearing Garza. “He would never have gone with those men if he hadn’t been too naive, too trusting for this world. I didn’t like them. I told him that. There was something about them. Something dark. Something evil. I could just see it.”
A siren screamed outside suddenly, a passing ambulance. Octavia went silent until the sound faded away.
“There were three of them,” she said finally. “Last week we got a call from a man who said he had a special order. Said he’d pay four thousand dollars cash for a good afternoon’s work. Gary had to come to him, though. That was the only catch. But for the price, it was good for him. Four thousand.” She looked from Garza to Fisk, stressing the impact of that much cash. “Gary asked where he should go, and they said, ‘Don’t worry about that, we’ll pick you up.’ ”
She sat forward suddenly, as though she was about to get up. But she was just stretching out so that she could swallow more easily, craning her neck as though for extra air.
“Gary was so excited, but I didn’t like it. I truly . . . I’m not just saying that now. I did not like it at all. I don’t like different things. ‘Whatever it is,’ I said to Gary, ‘it’s not worth it. Don’t do it.’ But he was like, ‘It’ll be fine, Tavy. It’s a gig. Nothing’s going to happen.’ ” She smiled a sad, fond smile. “No one else ever called me Tavy. And now no one ever will.” Her smile turned pinched, and tears sprang from her eyes. “Gary’s folks farmed wheat. That was the difference between him and me. You stand out in a field of wheat, looking out at all that bounty, and you think the world is bounteous and gentle and generous. But me? My old man ran a meatpacking plant. You spend your young years near a slaughterhouse, you realize on a deep level that things won’t always be fine. Just the opposite. You understand that beneath all our good intentions and bad pretensions, we’re just meat on the hoof.” She stared at Garza. “All that killing. It does something to you. Makes you cold.”
Garza looked at her own hands for a moment. Fisk was standing to the side, giving them space.
Octavia said, “Maybe that’s why I needed Gary. I needed his light.”
Garza hesitated before saying, “Please, Octavia . . . so when did the men come?”
“Three days ago. Not to the house, they came to the store downstairs. I was up here working when they came. I sure never talked to them or anything. I do Photoshop work, mostly advertising, but some glamour, some fashion. Taking the ugly off people—that’s what Gary calls it.” She smiled faintly. “Anyway, Gary called me from the store downstairs to say he was leaving. Said he’d be back that night. So I went over and looked out the window. Set back a bit, so they couldn’t see me.”
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes looking into the past, not seeing what was around her.
“There was something about them,” she said quietly. “I instantly wanted to run down and tell him not to go. Three men. There wasn’t anything necessarily remarkable about them. It just . . . it wasn’t right.”
“Can you describe them in any way? Did anything happen?”
“Not really,” she said. “It was up here, looking down. Gary, he’s one of those guys who never met a stranger, you know? He was talking away. All the way into the back of the truck.” This time her smile was angry, angry at her husband for trusting the men who’d killed him. “It was an SUV they got into. Brown.” Her hands balled into fists and she pounded her thighs. “Why didn’t I stop him? Why?”
“You couldn’t have known,” Garza said. “May I ask a leading question?”
“Whatever that is,” said Octavia.
“Did any of the men wear a hat?”
Octavia thought hard. “Yes. A sports team hat. Baseball. I don’t give a shit to follow any of that stuff. Does that help you? Can you catch them?”
Garza took the woman’s hand. “Two of them are already dead themselves. One remains.”
“You find him,” said Octavia, then buried her head in her hands. “My Gary . . .”
“I will find him,” Garza said. “I will.”
CHAPTER 48
Where are you staying now?”
“The Sheraton,” Garza said. She was checking her messages on her phone. “Tomorrow is the big day.”
“I don’t like this feeling,” he said. “The feeling of running out of hours in a day.”
“I’m so exhausted. And keyed up at the same time. I can’t believe I lost a man today. Two.”
Fisk nodded. There was nothing to say to that.
IT WAS NEARLY TEN by the time Fisk and Garza reached the Sheraton. He pulled up outside under the overhang, watching theatergoers trickle in from Times Square. A homeless man stood praying and singing to a streetlight.
She opened her door and extended one leg out, her foot reaching the curb before a valet could arrive. “Did you eat?” she said, without looking back.
“I’ve been dining out of a vending machine pretty exclusively.”
She nodded. “Cop cuisine.”
“Are you offering to buy me dinner?”
“No,” she said, rising from Fisk’s car. “But you can join me if you like.”
THEY FOUND SEATS TOGETHER at a table near the lounge. But when the time came to order, neither one wanted food.
Garza said, “What do you think of a Chilean Malbec?”
“Love it.”
“You didn’t seem like a shot and a beer kind of man.”
“Oh, but I am. Just not tonight.”
The server came and Fisk ordered two glasses. The San Felipe Garza had wanted only came by the bottle. She tried to make him change the wine, but he refused, and the server went away to get a bottle.
Then Fisk felt strange. He hadn’t drunk wine with anyone, never mind an exotically beautiful woman, since he was with Gersten. Suddenly he was moved to keep the conversation about work.
“Tell me about Vargas, your president.”
Garza’s eyebrows lifted and she fiddled with the cocktail napkin the server had left in front of her. “President Vargas is a good man. A courageous man. And I believe the presidency will break him.”
“How?”
“He is still a man of principle.”
“You say ‘still’?”
“I knew him when he was a law professor.”
“Oh,” said Fisk, not sure if he wanted to know more.
“I believe the accord is built on a good foundation. In the past, cooperation between Mexico and the States has focused on equipment, police funding, communications protocols, all sorts of law enforcement tools. Gifts, I call them. As from a parent to a child. Your country saying, ‘Here, play with these, and keep quiet and out of our way.’ I like more guns, more breaching explosives, more trucks, more helicopters, more body armor, better radios. But it is just money. There is no working relationship. No sense of responsibility.”