The Girls He Adored

5

“Pender, you got more balls than Hoover had high heels,” said Aurelio Bustamante. The longtime Monterey County sheriff was seated behind an enormous desk crowded with awards and mementos. “First you interrogate-”

“Interview.” Pender slouched in his chair so as not to tower over the sheriff, a short round man in a brown western-cut suit and a sunny white Stetson. Pender had started to remove his own hat- he rarely wore it into a room-but changed his mind: when in California…

“You interrogate one of my officers, an injured officer, let me add, without my knowledge or permission. Now you want to interrogate one of my prisoners, but you don't want to share what you got? Unh-unh, I don't think so. You gonna fuck me from behind, my frien', you goddamn well better give me a reach-around.”

When dealing with local law enforcement officials, FBI agents could count on a range of reactions from hero worship to bitter resentment, depending on how much contact the locals had had with the bureau. The sixtyish Bustamante was clearly no virgin.

Nor was Pender-he decided to see if he couldn't turn the sheriff's animosity to his own advantage.

“Believe me, Sheriff, I sympathize completely with you. I started out as a sheriff's deputy in upstate New York. And if I'm fucking you, then it's a daisy chain, because I've got my boss so far up my ass he has to wear one of those coal miner hats with the little flashlight on top.”

The crow's-feet at the corners of Bustamante's eyes deepened almost imperceptibly at the piquant image.

Pender pressed on. “Sheriff Bustamante, if you think the FBI is piss-arrogant to you and yours, you should see how they treat their own-especially old-timers like me. I'm two years short of mandatory retirement, they're trying to force me out early, my last fitness report referred to me as the worst-dressed agent in the history of the bureau, my personnel file's been flagged for so many petty bureaucratic violations it reads like a rap sheet, and if I have to get a court order to interview your prisoner, his lawyer's gonna be on it like stink on shit, and I'm gonna go home with nothing.”

“Now I'm suppose' to feel sorry for you because you're a fuckup?” scoffed Bustamante. “I let you in to see this guy without his lawyer present and he walks on account of it, it's gonna be my ass on the line, too.”

“Sheriff, I give you my word I won't ask him a single question about the current case.”

“Then you're not gonna get anything out of him anyway-he claims to have amneeesia.” Bustamante weighted the word with contempt.

“Just give me a shot, that's all I ask.”

“And if I do that for you, what do you do for me?” Bustamante spread his hands out, palms up, and waggled his fingers toward himself in the universal fork-it-over gesture.

Pender picked up a foot-long brass nameplate-AURELIO BUSTAMANTE, SHERIFF-and placed it in the middle of the desk, facing the sheriff. Then, in a semicircle behind the nameplate, he arranged a Kiwanis Club man-of-the-year pen-and-pencil set in an engraved marble holder; a baseball autographed by the last roster of the now-defunct Salinas Peppers; a gold-framed photograph of the sheriff and Mrs. Bustamante, a smiling Hispanic-looking woman with upswept white hair, standing behind a passle of children and grandchildren; and a silver badge engraved with the words GRAND MARSHALL, SALINAS RODEO, mounted onto a fourinch-high wooden plaque with an angled base.

“This is you at your next press conference.” Pender tapped the nameplate, then each of the other items in turn. “And here's your valiant Deputy Jervis, here's the mayor and the DA and whoever else in your department you'd like to reward with a little face time, here's your wife and family, and here's the FBI resident agent from Monterey in a dark suit and conservative tie.

“Ladies and gentlemen…” Pender lifted the nameplate up and down with each syllable, manipulating it as if it were a hand puppet. “I'm Sheriff Aurelio Bustamante, and I've called this press conference to announce that the Monterey County Sheriff's Department has been responsible for the capture of one of the most dangerous and sought-after serial killers in the history of law enforcement.”

Bustamante reached across the desk and tipped the Grand Marshall plaque representing the FBI over onto its face, then leaned back, his fingers tented over his round belly. “If it's him, I've already got him-what do I need you for?”

“Because otherwise it goes like this…” Pender tipped the nameplate over and moved the plaque up to the front of the grouping. “Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Special Agent Photo Op of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A few weeks ago a young woman was brutally stabbed to death within sight of a MONTEREY COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPUTY, who was in turn caught unawares and skewered like a fucking shish-ka-bob. Eventually the suspect was apprehended, but unfortunately, the MONTEREY COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT had absolutely no idea who the fuck they were holding. Fortunately, the FBI was able to determine through its own resources that-”

Bustamante cut him off. “Put everything back where it was, then wait outside.”

Hurriedly, Pender rearranged the desk; as he left the room, he saw the sheriff reaching for the telephone. He cooled his heels in a straight-backed wooden chair in the hallway for forty-five minutes. When the sheriff's secretary ushered him back into the office, Bustamante was tilted back in his leather chair, with his cowboybooted feet up on the desk.

“I just got off the phone with the district attorney. Both our offices, we want to cooperate with the FBI in every way possible without compromising the investigation. However, he says there's absolutely no possibility of him allowing you to question our prisoner without his lawyer being present.”

“That's-”

“Let me finish. We can't let you question the man without his lawyer, but since the Supreme Court ruled that a prisoner in jail has no expectation of privacy, exclusive of conferences with his own attorney, there's nothing that says we can't put an undercover man in the cell with him in order to, and here I quote the district attorney, ‘further ongoing investigations into crimes unrelated to those for which the prisoner is currently charged.’ ”

“It has to be me.” Pender began to marshal his arguments. “It would take days to get one of your-”

“It's you.”

“-people up to sp- Oh. Great. Thanks. How soon?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. There's no way we're putting you in with him here. It's too dangerous, and besides, he's been single-housed for a month-he'd know something was up if we gave him a roommate. But he's due in court for a procedural hearing tomorrow. The old jail next to the courthouse has been closed down since 'seventy-one, but we still use the east wing to house prisoners between court appearances. We can put you in one of the holding cells with him without too much danger-he'll be in restraints. Of course, so will you, but that can't be helped. We'll get you in place, then bring him over a little early-that'll give you some time alone with him.”

“I want you to know how much I appreciate-” Pender began.

The sheriff cut him off. “Before you thank me, I have something I want you to read.”

Bustamante took his booted feet off the desktop, leaned forward, and slid a photocopied document across the desk to Pender. It was a medical report detailing the injuries received by one Refugio Cortes, the prisoner's former cellmate, in the county jail, on the prisoner's first day in custody.

Pender skimmed it: depressed fractures of the orbital bones surrounding both eyes, broken nose, broken ribs, crushed pelvis. The doctors had managed to save the penis, though it would never function again save as a conduit for urine; the testicles, however, were gone, along with the rest of the contents of the scrotal sac.

“I wish I had some pictures to go along with that, my frien',” said Bustamante. “Just so you know what you're getting into.”