“See, the thing is, I think I’m looking for someone younger.”
“These Cuban families,” Rod said and then drifted off in his sentence, his eye back on the cat. “Is that thing getting closer to us?” he asked.
“No,” Sam said. “It’s on a chain.” He wondered if Rod had suffered some kind of mild stroke. “What were you saying about these Cuban families?”
“Maybe half of them are legal, the other half came on a boat, they all use the same names. Could be twelve Maria Corteses in that family.”
That was already something Sam had considered, which meant that the real Maria in question here was probably illegal, which would make it doubly hard to track her down.
“Did you happen to run any old car registrations for this person?”
“It’s all there, Sam,” Rod said, though he kind of spat the words out. “I took initiative.”
Guy sure was bitter, Sam thought, but after pulling through a few pages, he found a current registration for a 1991 Honda Civic to an address only a few miles from the building where Balsalmo was killed. It was a place to start.
He sifted through the rest of the papers and found a few more car registrations, along with a permit for a vehicle not currently being operated dated a few months earlier to the same address as the Civic. A 1977 Ford Ranchero. A good sign.
“What do I owe you for this stuff, Rod?”
“Nothing,” Rod said.
“No favor I can do for you?”
“No,” Rod said. He’d locked eyes with the civet, which had begun to emit a low growl. “You ever feel like you were born into the wrong species?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Sam said.
“You know of any available jobs out there in the private sector, Sam?”
“You’re in the private sector,” Sam said.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “Something where I got a little action.”
If it was up to Sam, he’d prescribe a course of action for Rod that involved large sums of psychotropic drugs, followed by intensive regression therapy. And a promise that he would never be allowed to proctor a line at the DMV again.
“Can’t say that I do,” Sam said.
“Then what are you doing? Why do you need this information?”
Sam was pretty comfortable with most of his friends. They rarely asked questions, and when they did it was usually just to protect their own asses. Understandable. But Rod seemed like he just wanted a piece of the action.
“I’m doing some process serving,” Sam said. “Maria here is getting sued by Sears. Owes thirteen hundred on a Bowflex she bought on credit. It’s actually a pretty interesting case.” Sam continued to prattle on until Rod lost interest and started staring at the cat again, which caused the cat to start pacing back and forth on its leash, that low growl turning more guttural. After a good five minutes essentially describing the plot of an episode of Simon amp; Simon that he remembered, Sam concluded by saying, “So, if you’re interested in that, just let me know.”
By this time, the other patrons in the bar had noticed the cat’s change in personality and were scooting to the other side of the bar, which reminded Sam of how people used to sit in the nonsmoking section on airplanes, as if the metal tube they were locked in could somehow discern where the smoke went. If that weird-ass cat thing decided to rip away from the wall and attack Rod and start eating faces, it was Sam’s impression that being on the other side of the bar would only increase the fun for the beast. The only person who didn’t move was the drag queen-or who Sam had decided was a drag queen, since very few women that he knew had a growth of beard and a tattoo of a naked woman riding a dragon inked on their forearms. It was a good disguise, anyway, and suggested that an aggressive Asian cat was the least of his (her?) concerns.
Unfortunately, the bartender was not so encumbered, as he noticed the change. “Easy, Scooter, easy,” he said, and then started to make his way over to the table with a bat in his hand. Sam didn’t know what he was planning with the bat, and anyway it was all a little too late, really, since Sam had wanted a beer about fifteen minutes earlier, but now just wanted to get psycho Rod back to the DMV before he did even more damage in public. Sam yanked Rod out of the booth by his sleeve and got him out the door before they had to fight their way out. Used to be you could go into a bar without encountering civet cats and drag queens, but Sam thought maybe it was the person he was hanging out with that brought on these odd circumstances. Sam made a mental note to find a better DMV source, perhaps someone who hadn’t been mentally neutered at some point in the recent past.
An hour later, Sam parked in front of a house on the eastern edge of Little Havana. It was an old house, probably built before 1930, conveniently located next to a coin-wash Laundromat and Kwik Stop on Northwest 8th. Across the street was the Olancho Cafe and a dollar store. It was one of those weird neighborhoods where these classic old houses were now wedged between commercial properties, which for Sam was a good thing. It meant that you could park in front of a house and no one would assume you were casing it, even when that’s precisely what you were doing.
The house looked to be no more than a thousand square feet, but there were enough cars parked behind the chain-link fence separating the property from the sidewalk to suggest that those thousand square feet were being occupied by quite a few people. The Honda Civic was there, as was an old Ford truck, its hood a rusted red, a lowered Camaro, a primer-colored Karmann Ghia on blocks and, parked all the way in the back, the Ranchero. It had a camper shell on it, which looked absurd, but then Sam didn’t exactly consider the Ranchero a practical car as it was.
From the exterior, the house looked to be in good shape. It had a fresh coat of yellow paint, the front porch was trimmed in white, there was a rocking chair just beside the front door-which was open-and an Adirondack-style chair on the other side. Whoever lived here, Sam thought, actually lived here.
The chain-link fence was joined in the center by two swinging gates padlocked together. Sam never understood why people somehow thought padlocks would keep them safe or keep their possessions from being stolen. All anyone needed to do was climb over the fence, hot-wire the car and drive it right through the fence. Or, with two paper clips, they could pop the padlock open in under twenty seconds. Sure, if you shoot a lock it might not open, but if you actually just disengage the locking system, it’ll pop right open.
Running around inside the fencing was a big Labrador. Another good sign.
Sam got out of his car and walked up to the fence. He could hear the drone of a television coming from the inside. The television was turned to either the news or an action film, as all he could hear was explosions and screams and sirens. Hard to tell the difference these days. The Labrador was rolling around with a stuffed penguin on the mostly dirt front lawn, paying Sam absolutely no attention in the least. Sam had a brief vision of what it would be like with that weird-ass civet in there, too. The Lab would probably lick it to death.
“Hello?” Sam shouted. He did it a couple more times until an older gentleman wearing Bermuda shorts and no shirt came out onto the front porch.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Real pleasant.
“Chuck Finley,” Sam said. “From the Department of Motor Vehicles.”
“You got a warrant?”
“No, sir,” Sam said. “Not a criminal matter. Just here about the registration on your Ranchero there in the back.”
The man walked down the front steps, stopped next to the dog and just stared at the animal, like he was trying to will it into action. “Some guard dog,” the man said. “My stepdaughter, she tells me this dog will help keep us safe. Two years, it’s never barked once. I don’t even know if it has vocal cords. Just chases that stuffed penguin around the yard all day.”
The man knelt down and scratched the dog’s head. The man was older, but Sam couldn’t figure out just how old. He had ruddy brown skin and his eyes carried deep bags, but his shirtless torso was lean and muscular. No tats, no notable scars, not even really any hair to speak of. He could be fifty. He could be seventy.