THE RESTAURANT CALLED EL CIDREÑO offered Creole cooking and was popular with the Criminal Affairs investigators who worked out of Puerto Rico Police headquarters on Roosevelt Avenue, Hato Rey.
They would come in here or look over from their tables and see the bearded guy with Lorendo Paz and make the guy as an informer. Look at him. The hair, the work shirt they gave him in Bayamón. Caught in a drug bust and fell out a window-the reason for the cane-and after a month in the hole willing to make a plea deal. Except that Lorendo Paz, always properly attired, wearing the cream-colored suit today, would touch his napkin to his trimmed mustache, take the napkin away and be smiling, talking to the guy like they were good friends. So then the cops who came in El Cidreño or looked over from their tables would think, sure, the guy was a narc, DEA, and had to dress like that, the junkie shirt with the jeans and rubber sandals… But if he was undercover or he was an informer, what was he doing out in the open talking to a Criminal Affairs investigator? Finally a cop known for his determination got up from his chicken and plantains, went over to the table where Lorendo sat with the bearded guy and said, “Lorendo, I need to talk to you later today.” Lorendo said, “Of course,” and then said, “Oh, I want you to meet Vincent Mora. With the Miami Beach Police, Detective Bureau. We know each other a long time, since the FBI school. Yes, Vincent has been here, almost two months, on a medical leave. A robber shot him in the hip.”
Oh.
After that the investigators would look over and wonder if the bearded guy, Vincent, was any good. A robber had shot him, uh? What happened to the robber? If they say he got away maybe it wasn’t a robber who shot him but a woman’s husband. The investigators, eating their black beans and rice, their fried pork and bananas, enjoyed that idea and suggested different ways the shooting might have occurred. Their favorite one was Vincent going out the window naked-bam.
Vincent Mora. The guy didn’t look Puerto Rican, though his name could be. All the money that cops in the States got paid-why didn’t he buy some sharp clothes with style? What was he talking about to Lorendo so intently?
He was talking about Iris Ruiz.
Lorendo made his face look tired, without effort, and told Vincent he was making a career of Iris Ruiz because he needed something to do that was important to him and concerned a person’s life, not because Iris was a special case. There were a thousand Iris Ruizes in San Juan.
Vincent narrowed his eyes at him.
And Lorendo raised Iris’s rating. All right, there was no one like her. Okay? Fantastic girl. Her looks could stop your breathing. She had style, class, personality and she made sure a doctor looked up her every week without fail.
Vincent shook his head.
And Lorendo said, “What you’re doing we’ve both seen, how many times? The cop who has a feeling for a whore. He wants to be her savior, change her, make her like she used to be, uh? Before she found out that little fuzzy thing she sits on can make her money.”
“That’s not nice,” Vincent said.
“Oh, is that so? What is it attracts you to her, her mind? Her intelligence?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Vincent said. “Ever since I got shot I’ve been horny. It started, lying in the hospital looking at the nurses. What is it about nurses? Almost every woman I look at now I take her clothes off. Not all women, but more than you’d think.”
“Who doesn’t?” Lorendo said. “Man, you don’t have to get shot.”
“It’s like I’m starting over again, looking at girls.”
“It’s your age. How old are you, forty?”
Vincent said yes, and then said, “Forty-one.”
“Sure, it’s your age. Maybe getting shot, too. You see you aren’t going to live forever, you don’t want to miss anything.”
“Maybe… You ever been shot?”
“No, I’ve been lucky.”
“It can happen,” Vincent said, “when you least expect. I was off duty, walking home…” He said, “You know, I could retire with fifteen years in. I could stay right here and draw three-quarters of my pay for life.” It would buy a lot of cod fries and crab turnovers, get him a nice place near the beach. He could live here. Why not? He said, “I could stand to get married again. It’s what people do, they get married. But not to Iris. That’s never entered my mind.”
“Good. There’s hope for you.”
“You know what she has for breakfast? Toast and a Coke.”
“You need to go back to work,” Lorendo said. “You think she has a problem. You’re the one with the problem. You nice to a girl like that, give her what she wants, oh, everything’s fine. You don’t give in to her, what happens?”
“She whines, she breaks things…”
“Vincent,” Lorendo said, amazed, “this little girl, she’s leading you around by your bicho. You know that?”
“All she talks about is going to the States.”
“Of course. It’s the dream, marry some rich guy. They all want that. Man, you stick your nose in there, you bring all this on yourself. I love it.”
“Well, now she’s going. This guy Donovan that owns the hotel, she says offered her a job as a hostess. In Atlantic City.”
“Ah, Mr. Tommy Donovan,” Lorendo said. “Now we’re getting to something.”
“Not here, Atlantic City.”
“I heard you. They built a place there last year, cost a hundred million dollars.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Go out to the hotel. You take the T-One bus.”
“He’s never in his office,” Vincent said, “or he’s in conference. And his home phone’s unlisted.”
“So that’s why you take me to lunch. You want me to get you his private number.”
“And his address. I want to look him in the eye.”
“I don’t believe this,” Lorendo said. “You going to see this guy, head of one of the biggest private companies in Puerto Rico, he’s in land development, man, he’s in hotel casinos, to ask him about Iris?”
“You just put your finger on it,” Vincent said. He pushed his plate of crab shells away from him to lean on the table. “Tell me why a guy like that wants to take a girl like Iris all the way to Atlantic City? As a hostess-whatever a hostess is.”
“Because,” Lorendo said, “he can do anything he wants. That’s the thing that gets you, isn’t it? Man, it’s becoming more clear to me. You resent this guy Tommy Donovan. It doesn’t matter you don’t want Iris, you don’t want him to have her. Vincent,” Lorendo said, “she’s a whore. What whores do, if they can, they go where the action is.”
“She quit.”
“Oh, you believe that?”
“Get me the guy’s address,” Vincent said. “Would you do that for me?”
He paid the check. Lorendo, waiting for him outside, was talking to the investigator who had approached their table. The investigator nodded to Vincent as he came out, looking at his rattan cane, his rubber sandals, and Lorendo said, “Vincent, my associate was asking, he would like to know what happened to the man who shot you.”
“He died on the way to the hospital,” Vincent said, looking directly at Lorendo’s associate, straightfaced. “I think he lost his will to live.”
Calle del Parque, Number Fifty-two, upstairs.
Teddy knocked on the door and knocked and knocked until it opened a few inches and there was a pretty sleepy girl looking at him over the chain. Her eyes puffy, what he could see of them in all that hair.
“Hi. You remember me?”
Iris said, “I’m still sleeping.”
“We met in the taxicab yesterday. How’d your business appointment work out? I remember you said you were going to Atlantic City. I thought, hey, maybe you’d do me a favor.”