“Good enough.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Interview B. You may want to clear your slate for the rest of the day. It’s going to be a long one.”
She swung out, met up with Peabody, and went in to talk to Joe Inez.
“Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, in interview with Inez, Joe, and Inez, Consuela. I’m going to read you your rights at this time.” Once she had, she sat at the table across from them. “Do you both understand your rights and obligations in this matter?”
“Yeah, I do, but Connie isn’t involved.”
“This is for her protection. Mr. Inez, have you come in to interview of your own volition?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“I’d like you to tell me, for the record, why you chose to come in and make a statement today.”
“I… I did a lot of things I’m not proud of, in the past. But I got a family. I’ve got three kids, three boys. If I don’t do what’s right, how am I supposed to tell them they have to do what’s right?’
“Okay. Do you want something to drink?”
“I-no.” Obviously flustered, he cleared his throat. “I’m good.”
“Mrs. Inez?”
“No, thank you. We just want to get this over with.”
“Tell me what happened, Joe. What happened back in the spring of 2043?”
“Ah, most of us, even if we didn’t go to the school, went to the dances. Maybe to dance, or pick fights, do some dealing, look for recruits.”
“Who are we?”
“Oh. The Soldados. Lino and Steve were co-captains then. Well, Lino mostly ran the gang. Steve was more muscle. Lino wanted more recruits, and he figured you got more recruits when you had trouble. When you had, like, a common enemy. He talked like that,” Joe added. “But I didn’t know, I swear to God, I didn’t know, until later.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“The bomb. I didn’t know. I’d been a member for about a year, year and a half, and Lino liked that I was good with my hands. That I could fix stuff. That I could boost cars.” He let out a breath. “He used to say I’d be somebody. He’d make me somebody. But I had to make my mark.”
“Your mark.”
“The kill mark. I couldn’t be upper level until I did a kill, until I’d made my mark.”
“You still wear the Soldado tattoo,” Eve pointed out. “It doesn’t include the kill mark, the X below the cross.”
“No, I never made my mark. I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t mind a fight, hell, I liked fighting. Get out there, get a little bloody. Blow off steam. But I didn’t want to kill anybody.”
“And still, you and Lino were friends,” Eve prompted.
“Yeah, or I thought we were. Lino used to razz me about it, but… just like guys razz each other about shit. I guess that’s why I didn’t know what he had going, what he set up.”
“He didn’t tell you about the bomb.”
“He never said anything to me. He said how he’d meet up with me there, at the dance. The bomb at the dance, when it went off, I was right there. Right there. Ronni Edwards got killed. She went up ten feet away from me. I knew her.”
He stopped, and rubbed his hands over his face. When he dropped them again, Connie took one in hers.
“I knew her,” Joe repeated. “Since we were in kindergarten I knew her, and she blew apart in front of me. I never…” He lowered his head, fought for composure. “Sorry.”
“Take your time,” Eve told him.
“It went-it went to hell in seconds. Music’s playing, kids are dancing or hanging. Then it went to hell. The noise, the fire. More kids got hurt, and then they’re running around, crazy scared, and more get hurt in the trample. Lino and Chávez and Penny, they’re hauling kids out like heroes, and saying how it was the Skulls, the motherfriggin’ Skulls.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But they weren’t there, not when it went down.”
“Lino, Steve, and Penny weren’t there,” Eve qualified.
“Yeah. I mean no, no they weren’t there when the place exploded. I’d been looking for Lino. I had a couple guys who wanted in-wanted in the gang, so I was looking for Lino. Nobody’d seen him. Just minutes before it blew, nobody’d seen him or Penny or Steve. He never missed a dance. I figured, well, he was just late getting there. And probably lucky for him, I thought that after. Lucky for him because we figured he was the target. It was later when I realized he was the one making the noises about being the target.”
“Were you hurt in the first bombing?”
“Got some burns, cut up some from the stuff that was flying around. Not real bad. If I’d been standing where Ronni was… I thought about that. Thought about that and how Ronni had just blown. It got me up, got me thinking, yeah, those Skulls needed some killing. So I’m up, think I’m up to get my mark because of that, and I hear Lino and Penny talking.”
“Where were you when you heard them?”
“We had a place we used, like a headquarters. This basement in a building on Second Avenue, right off 101st. Big basement, the place was like a maze. Rattrap,” he said with a sour smile. “They fixed it up about ten years back. It’s apartments now. Nice apartments.”
“Just for my curiosity, do you know who owned it?”
“Sure.” He looked puzzled by the question. “José Ortega-the old guy-kind of a big deal in the neighborhood. José was one of us. Soldado-I mean the old guy’s grandson was one of us. But the fact was, Lino said it was our place.”
Ripples, Eve thought. “Okay. So you heard Lino and Penny talking when you went into the basement, into the headquarters.”
“Yeah, like I said, it was a big place, lots of rooms, and corridors. I was heading for the war room. I was up, and I wanted in on the retaliation. Hell, I wanted to lead the charge. But I passed one of the flop rooms, and I heard them talking about how it worked. How planting the boomer at the dance got the community-that’s how Lino put it-the community involved. How they’d hit the Skulls now, and everyone would cheer. The Soldados would be heroes because everybody thought the Skulls attacked, the Skulls brought blood to neutral territory. And Penny said they should’ve used a bigger bomb.”
He looked down at his hands, then lifted his gaze back to Eve’s. Tears glazed it. “She said that. Said how Lino should’ve built a bigger boomer so there’d be more dead instead of just that little bitch Ronni. How a bunch of bodies would’ve gotten people really juiced. And he laughed. He laughed and said, ‘Wait a few days.’ ”
He reached for his wife’s hand. “Can I get some water? I think I could use some water.”
Peabody rose, walked over to fill a paper cup. “Take your time, Mr. Inez,” she told him.
“I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe they’d do that. To our own. Chaz Polaro was in the hospital, and they didn’t know if he was going to make it. And they’re in there, laughing. They’re the ones who did it, and they’re laughing.
“It could’ve been me that night, dead or maybe dying. It could have been any of us, and he’d done it. They’d done it. I went in, so pissed off. They were on this old mattress we had down there, and she was mostly naked. I said, ‘What the fuck, Lino.’ I’m sorry, Connie, that’s what I said.”
Joe began to talk quickly now, pushing the words out, pushing the memories. “I said, ‘You fucking bastard, you set that boomer on us.’ He started telling me to chill, frost it up. How it was strategy, for the good of the gang, and all this bullshit. I told him to get fucked, and I walked out. He came after me. We had a lot of words-and Connie’s going to get steamed if I say them all. Upshot was he told me he was captain, and I’d follow orders, I’d keep my mouth shut or he’d set Chávez on me. He said we were going to hit the Skulls and hard, that he’d already made the boomer for the hit. If I didn’t want him to shove it down my throat and hit the remote, I’d keep my mouth shut. I guess he wasn’t sure I got the point because I got jumped a few hours later, got the shit kicked out of me.