Red Man Down(65)

‘Guys,’ Delaney looked at his watch, ‘what are you proposing to do?’

‘Go after this wildcat mechanic and make him sweat a little. Chances are he’s undocumented and we can get him to tell us what he’s been doing to the car.’

‘And then?’

‘Maybe he chats with his customers. If so he could have some idea where Joey’s going, which must be where he’s stashing money.’

‘The troublesome kid is beginning to look like our chief suspect? This is quite a switch.’ He didn’t buy their idea all at once; he made them go over, in detail, what they expected to find and why they thought they could get JR to tell them what they wanted to know. He admonished them, ‘Tread lightly. Even Republicans are starting to love immigrants now if they’re Hispanic and look like they might vote any time in the next fifty years.’

Then he urged them to remember every hour they were spending on the three García cases was inevitably going to cheat some other investigation down the line, ‘because I don’t print the money, you do understand that, don’t you? I only get it to spend it after I sit in committee meetings and beg like a starving dog.’

But finally he said, ‘All right, go for it. I’ll be in meetings again this afternoon.’ His frustration boiling over, he added briefly, ‘I told them today that this has got to be the last day. I was hired to do police work. But right now the city council is hell-bent on combining some patrol functions with the suburbs, and they think they can’t be deprived of my wisdom. But keep me informed, please. Text me if anything changes.’

The three of them came out of his office feeling moderately jazzed. But in a few steps Sarah remembered something and started to turn back.

‘What is it?’ Leo said, alarmed.

‘I meant to tell him that I think Tracy’s getting close to the message too, and ask if I can keep him till he finds it.’

Leo wrapped a long arm around her shoulders and held her close. ‘Work it out with Elsie,’ he said softly, into her ear. ‘Let the man eat his lunch; don’t pester him after you just won a round. Aren’t you ever going to learn boss management?’

The shop was ill-equipped and shabby, converted from a two-bay garage that had once had two gas pumps in front and been called a ‘filling station.’ It had been abandoned years ago by the corporation that now, in much larger and shinier venues, operated ‘convenience stores’ that sold gas out front and rows of noxious snacks in shiny wrappers inside.

The pumps were gone, and much of the glass that had fronted the station had been replaced with plywood panels. The mechanic who rented the site didn’t need much light inside, anyway; he mostly used the building to house the van where he kept all his tools. He did all his repair work in the weedy yard behind the building, in the shade of the mesquites that grew untrimmed around three sides of the lot. The street side of the lot featured a cracked driveway and a crumbling curb, and there was no sign that flaunted the name of the proprietor. The entire operation was amazingly close to clandestine, in plain sight in the bright city of Tucson but not, somehow, at all noticeable.

The sunshine was intermittent today, covered often by surly gray clouds left over from last week’s storm. Temps were hanging in the fifties, and a cold breeze occasionally gusted, throwing dirt against the windshield with a noise like sleet.

Leo had stayed behind with the money problem. Sarah and Jason had persuaded Oscar to join them on the hunt for the mechanic. ‘You’re the one who knows cars,’ Jason had said. ‘We need you for this, buddy.’ A kind of bond had formed between the two of them yesterday afternoon in what Jason was now calling ‘Chico’s Little Shop of Horrors.’

Sarah had not been able to find JR’s Auto Repair listed in any directory of Tucson services, so Jason and Oscar had done some free-form snooping around the neighborhood, using Jason’s recent experience in the bar on Flowing Wells as a paradigm. ‘Schmooze,’ he’d told Oscar. ‘Shuffle around grinning like a doofus. Talk about the weather.’

Sarah had agreed to circle the four-block area, looking for mechanics with no logos or waving detectives, whichever came first. On her third circuit Jason had broken off a conversation with a muscular hot-dog vendor in a hairnet and jumped in the Impala, looking cheerful.

‘Not many frills in this neighborhood, but there’s a lotta nice folks around here,’ he’d said. He’d learned the mechanic’s name, Juan Rodriguez, and his address. ‘My man here on the hot-dog wagon says he’s a good little guy, just trying to get along and feed a couple of kids.’