Thin Air

"I don't know him. I hope he is not correct."

"You know Deleon?" I said.

"Yes."

"You know where I can find him?"

"No, I have not seen him since he was small. His mother used to bring him, then, but she was a desperate woman and one day she killed herself, God rest her soul. I never saw Luis again. But I hear things. I hear he has become an important person in San Juan Hill."

The priest paused and looked at me.

"And I hear he has become very dangerous."

I nodded.

"You should be careful if you plan to approach him," the priest said.

"I'm fairly dangerous myself, Father."

"Yes, you have the look. I have seen it far too often not to know it."

"If you were me, Father, where would you look for Deleon?"

"I don't know:"

"Would any of your parishioners know?"

"If they do, they would not tell me."

"You're their priest."

"Here I am not their priest. I am a gringo."

I nodded. The priest was silent. I could hear a boom box playing somewhere.

"If you do not speak Spanish, no one in San Juan Hill will speak with you."

"Even if they speak English?"

"Even then."

"How about Freddie Santiago?" I said.

"He might speak to you, if he thought it served him. But he is not in San Juan Hill."

"What would serve Santiago?" I said.

The priest thought about my question.

"There is no simple answer to that," he said. "Santiago is an evil man, of this there is no question. He is a criminal, almost surely a murderer. He deals in narcotics, in prostitutes, in gambling. He sells green cards. He controls much of what happens in the Hispanic community here, which is to say most of Proctor."

"Except San Juan Hill," I said.

"Except San Juan Hill."

"So what's the no-simple part?"

"He is not entirely, I think, a bad man. A poor person can get money or a job from Freddie Santiago. Wars among some of the youth gangs are settled by him. Paternity and alimony payments are often enforced by him. Every election he works very hard to get Hispanic people registered."

"And he probably contributes to the Police Beneficent Association," I said.

The priest smiled for a moment.

"I think it is certain," he said, "that Freddie Santiago contributes generously to the police. Have you talked to them?"

"I talked to the Chief of Detectives," I said.

"He was Irish?" the priest said.

"Yeah, Delaney."

"They are all Irish," the priest said. "The police, the school superintendent, the mayor, all of the power structure. They are Irish and they speak English. And the city is Spanish and speaks Spanish."

"You speak Spanish, Father?"

"Haltingly at best," the priest said. "I can still say a Latin mass, but I have not been successful with the language of my flock. I assume the police weren't helpful to you."

"They weren't."

"If she's with Deleon… an Anglo woman with an Hispanic man… for the police here, it would mean she was irretrievably tainted."

Six teenaged boys in baggy jeans and San Antonio Spurs warmup jackets swaggered by us on the sidewalk below. They looked up at us. It was not a friendly look.

One of them said something in Spanish. They all laughed.

"Did you understand what he said?" I asked the priest.

"He said, in effect, `Look at the eunuch in his dress,"' the priest said. His red face held no expression. "I've heard it before."

"If they would talk to me, is there enough English spoken in Proctor for me to ask questions and understand the answers?" I said.

"They will not talk to you, and if they would, I do not think they could," the priest said.

"But Freddie Santiago speaks English," I said.

"Very well, I've heard. If you talk to him, be respectful, and very careful. He is a deadly adversary."

"Wait'll he gets a load of me," I said. "How'd you end up here, Father, in the tail end of hell's half acre?"

"A priest's duty is to serve where God sends him," he said.

As he spoke, he was looking at the barren asphalt playground where the three kids were still drinking wine and smoking dope against the graffiti-covered handball wall.

"And… I drink," he said.

Chapter 13

Quirk came into my office like he always does, like it was his, and don't argue about it. He was wearing a tan suit and a blue-striped shirt with a button-down collar and a khaki-colored knit tie. It was as springlike as the weather, which was soft and flowery with a slight breeze drifting in through the open window. He pulled one of my client chairs around and sat down and put one foot on my desk.

"What have you got?" Quirk said.

"There's a guy named Luis Deleon," I said.

"Yeah."

"He's an Hispanic guy from Proctor who Lisa met in a class at Merrimack State."

"Un huh."

"Apparently Lisa had a relationship with him, before she met Belson."

"Un huh."

"You been listening to her answering machine tapes?" I said.

"Yeah. Guy has maybe a little Spanish accent, on the tape. Says he's going to stop by."

"Could be Deleon," I said.

"And?"

"He lives in a section of Proctor called San Juan Hill," I said. "I've talked to some people. He's sort of a figure there. Wrong side of the law, I think. The way I hear it, Deleon may also be on the wrong side of the local Godfather, Freddie Santiago."

"Santiago's got a lot of juice in Proctor," Quirk said. "You speak any Spanish?"

"No," I said.

"You know where this guy Deleon is?"

"No. San Juan Hill someplace, but we don't have an address yet."

"We probably ought to get one," Quirk said.

"She may not be with him."

"Sure," Quirk said. "But it's the best lead you got. What are you waiting for?"

"If Lisa's with Deleon, voluntarily or involuntarily, we need to go a little careful."

"Yeah."

We were quiet. The spring air drifted in through the window and ruffled the newspaper on my desk.

"I'll see what we got on Deleon," Quirk said, "if anything."

"Maybe you should check out Lisa's background, a little."

"We have, a little," Quirk said.

"And?"

"Goes back a couple years," Quirk said, "without anything unusual-and then nothing. It's like she didn't exist prior to 1990."

"How hard did you look?"

"Hard enough. We lifted some prints from the house that are probably hers. We're waiting to hear."

"What about her references and stuff at the radio station?"

"Checked them," Quirk said. "They never heard of her."

"Previous employment, all that?"

"Fake."

"Academic credits when she entered Merrimack State?"

"None required. It's open enrollment, continuing education."

"Might explain the everything-started-the-night-we-met deal she had with Belson," I said.

"Might," Quirk said.

"Anybody named Vaughn crop up while you were looking?"