The Arraignment

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I pull up to the curb under the shade of an old elm tree half a block up and across the street from the old house with its cut-up flats and sagging front porch.

The large two-story wooden frame house at 408 appears larger and more run-down in daylight. I also notice something that wasn’t there on my last visit, an older model SUV parked in front. The body is boxy and beat-up, primed, but unpainted. Parked on the short gravel drive on the other side of the stairs, its front bumper is into the bushes against the house with the large, aggressive tread of the rear tires sitting halfway onto the sidewalk.

What catches my attention most, however, is the car’s back window. It’s covered by a piece of wrinkled black plastic, taped and wrapped around the window frame. This vehicle fits to a tee the Chevy Blazer that Espinoza described on my visit with him at the lockup.

I sit and watch for a few minutes. Signs of life in one of the houses, the one at 408. The front door opens, the screen door pushing out.

Tall and slender, carrying a suitcase in each hand, I recognize the build. It’s the Mexican I’d seen that night, the one Espinoza had described, but without the hat this time. If the name on the mailbox is real, and Joyce’s information is accurate, this is Hector Saldado, who makes calls daily on his cell phone to the area around Cancun.

Saldado carries the suitcases down the stairs to the back of the beat-up Blazer, where he swings the rack with the spare tire out of the way and lifts the hinged rear door with the plastic-covered window. As he tosses the suitcases inside, another figure comes shooting out the door. Running barefoot, half naked, carrying a child in her arms, she makes it to the top step when Saldado turns and sees her.

She tries to get past him on the stairs, but he reaches out and grabs her by one arm, almost ripping the child out of her hands.

She tries to pull free, and he swings her around so the baby is nearly propelled from her arms by the centrifugal force.

The Mexican is powerful, wiry. With his hands gripping her upper arms from behind he lifts her, the child still sheltered in her arms, off her feet. Quickly he has her back up the stairs, inside the door, and beyond the shadows, where he stops, turns, and looks, making sure no one has seen him. I slide off to one side behind the wheel. Then he disappears.

The entire episode took less than twenty seconds. Anybody watching would consider it overly aggressive for any husband to treat his wife in this way. Some might call the cops, though I wouldn’t want my own life to hang on that slender thread. What she is doing here I don’t know, but Robin Watkins, Espinoza’s child-wife, is in serious trouble.

I grab my cell phone and dial nine-one-one. The operator comes on.

“I want to report domestic violence.”

“Is this an emergency?”

“It is.”

“Is the act occurring at this time?”

“Yes.” I give her the address, my name, and cell number.

“We will dispatch a car.”

“How long?”

“It may take a few minutes,” she says.

“How many minutes?”

“I can’t give you an estimate. We don’t have any officers in the area at the moment. As soon as a unit is available.”

I hang up, take a deep breath, and step out of the car. From the backseat I grab my old attache case, Samsonite, hard-sided and heavy. I close the car door and step back to the trunk. Inside, under the spare, I find the tire iron, a half-inch steel rod, about eighteen inches long, straight with a chisel point at one end for fitting into the jack, and curved to a forty-five-degree angle with a welded tire lug socket on the other end. This state now has two yammering U.S. senators who would strip every implement of defense from the hands of its citizens. That they haven’t banned lug wrenches and hammers is only a question of time.

I take the documents and files out of my briefcase and lay the iron diagonally inside, the only way it will fit, then close the briefcase and slam the trunk. As I head across the street, I hit the auto-lock button on my key ring and listen as the doors lock. The heat is oppressive, the sun beating down, reflecting up off the street’s fractured concrete.

At the top of the stairs I check the mailbox. Saldado, H. is still listed as residing in apartment G.

I pull open the screen. The front door is still open, so I step inside. It’s cooler here, dark, with a current of air drifting down the hallway from the back of the house.

The apartment at the foot of the stairs directly on my right is lettered “A” in dented brass, screwed into the top cross brace of the old three-panel door.

There is another door directly across the hall to my left; apartment B. Farther on, there are two more doors on that same side, apartments D and E. Apartment G, Saldado’s, has to be upstairs.

I climb the stairs two at time, watching where I step, trying to make as little noise as possible. Near the top, my eyes come level with the floor of the hallway on two. This traverses the second story directly over the hallway below.

I continue my climb until I see the door on the right just beyond the top of the stairs: G.

From the layout of the building, Saldado’s apartment appears to be larger than the other flats. With only a single door on the right because of the open stairwell, his unit spans the entire length of the building, front to back on that side.

I press my ear against the soiled plaster of the wall just above the level of the floor. I am still standing six or seven steps from the top as I listen. What sounds like noises from a television inside, voices followed by canned laughter.

I check my watch, hoping to hear the screeching tires of a patrol unit pulling up out front. Instead what I hear is the cry of a woman, a single wail, followed by a dense thud as something or someone slams up against the wall on the other side. The vibration against the walls causes me to pull my head away. It is followed by a muted scream and what sounds like sobbing.

Quickly I open the attache and take out the tire iron. Feeling the weight of it in my hand, I scramble to come up with a plan, some diversion, a distraction, something that will take Saldado’s mind off of the woman if only for a moment to give the cops time to get here.

Ahead of me down the hallway, past the door to his apartment, a small section of the wall juts out, maybe two feet square. In a larger building this might be the wall covering a steel I-beam, part of the interior structure. In this case, my guess is it’s a plumbing or electrical chase installed when they carved the old house into apartments.

I look at Saldado’s door again. I can’t slip inside his apartment unnoticed, but my business card can. Quickly I jot a note on the back of one of my cards, climb to the top of the stairs, and carefully set the briefcase in the center of the top step, so anybody coming or going can’t miss it.

Quickly, I move down the hall until I’m standing directly in front of Saldado’s apartment door. There is a security hole for viewing, one of those round fish-eye lenses in the door. I can’t be certain, but from the angle I am guessing that anyone looking from inside won’t be able to see far enough down the hall to glimpse the abandoned attache.

I take a deep breath, then slip the business card under the door, and pound as hard as I can on the door, twice.

There is one quick sob from inside. This is instantly muffled. Before it stops, I am ten feet down the corridor moving lightly on the balls of my feet, in the opposite direction from the empty briefcase.

I huddle behind the plaster column formed by the chase, barely deep enough to conceal my body with my back pressed against the wall.

Several seconds pass. I listen.

The voices from the television inside suddenly become more faint until I can no longer hear them. Then, nothing. I stand listening, what seems like an eternity. Beads of sweat form on my forehead and upper lip, while my sweating palm grips the tire iron. I strain to listen. Nothing. Seconds pass to a minute. I check my watch. The cops should be coming.

Then I hear it. The sign of life given up by every old building, the universal groan from one of the aging floor joists as someone walks over it. Someone is moving slowly near the front door just on the other side, probably looking through the peephole. I visualize what is happening inside. A man, tall and wiry, scruffy dark beard peering through the hole, seeing nothing. Then picking up my business card and reading the message.

“Mr. Espinoza: I have a $5,000 cash refund for your unused fees since you hired another lawyer. A friend gave me this address and I’m trying to find you. Paul Madriani”

Saldado may not be welcoming visitors, but five thousand in cash?

Several more seconds pass, then footsteps inside. I hear crying. This time it’s the child. Then hobbled footsteps. A man’s voice, something in Spanish. The sounds getting closer to the door. I tighten my grip on the tire iron in my right hand. The dead bolt is turned on the inside, and the door opens. I press my back against the wall.

“Who’s there?” It’s a woman’s voice, scared, faltering. “Who is out there?”

They listen for a second. Saldado’s probably looking through the peephole, while he holds a pistol to her head.

“See who it is.” A whispered, harsh voice, accented. “And remember I have your baby in here. The door closes for a second. Then I hear the security chain slide off, and it opens again. He pushes her out into the hallway and closes the door behind her quickly. I hear the dead bolt snap closed and the security chain slide back in place.

I peep, one-eyed, around the corner of my hiding place. She doesn’t see me. Robin Watkins already has her back to me as she focuses on the only visible item out of place in the hallway, my abandoned briefcase on the stairs. I had hoped Espinoza would go for this, giving me a one-time shot from behind with the tire iron.

Instead Watkins stands at the top of the stairs looking down. “Hello. Are you there?”

No answer as I hide in the alcove. If she sees me, with her child held by Saldado inside, I’m afraid she will panic and give me up. She starts down the stairs, slowly, calling out as she goes.

As she nears the bottom, I lose the sound of her footfalls, periodically picking her up from the sound of her voice as she calls out. I hear the squeak of the front door, followed by the wooden screen as it opens and slams closed.

If the cops drive up now, there is no telling what she will do; run to them or run back upstairs to the apartment to save her baby.

But it doesn’t happen. I check my watch. The cops are taking their time. A few seconds later I hear the doors down below again, first the screen then the front door closing. Her footsteps moving, not up the stairs but down the hallway below, toward the rear of the building. She is checking carefully, every place I may have gone, calling out. I hear the back door open and close, then silence. I wait and listen, wondering what Saldado is doing inside. Probably looking out the windows. If a patrol car pulls up, all hell could break loose.

For a few seconds, I wonder if perhaps fear hasn’t over-taken maternal instincts, causing Watkins to take off through the backyard. I hear the baby crying inconsolably inside. Watkins can no doubt hear this as well.

Just about the time I think she has taken off, I hear the rattle of the knob at the back door, not down below this time but at the back porch on the second story, five feet away and down the hall to my right. I press back as deep as I can into the shadows as I hear the door open.

She is coming. Back to the apartment. Watkins will have to walk right past me to get there. The door closes behind her. I hear her breathing, sniffling back tears, her feet shuffling on the old wooden-planked floor. Her face is bruised, one eye closed from the swelling. Her nose is bleeding. I can’t tell if it’s broken. Her gaze cast down at the floor, she doesn’t see me until she looks up.

I put a finger to my lips, gesture of silence. Robin looks toward the door down the hall, then back to me. She sees the tire iron in my hand and shakes her head quickly. Robin Watkins knows what lies behind that door. Knowing this, she has little confidence in me or the weapon in my hand.

Before she can say anything, I reach out and grab her, pulling her toward the wall.

“My baby’s in there,” she whispers.

“I know. Besides Saldado, how many are there inside?”

She looks at me like she doesn’t recognize the name or understand the question.

“The man inside with your baby, is he alone?”

She nods slowly, in a trance. I’m wondering if she’s drugged or just in shock.

“Where’s your husband?”

She points toward the door.

The child is crying again.

“My baby. I need to get my baby,” she says.

I have to hold her by one arm to keep her from going. “Does he have a gun? The man inside?”

She shakes her head, shrugs. She doesn’t know. “A knife,” she says. “It’s all I saw.”

“We have to figure some way to get him to come out,” I tell her.

She shakes her head and tries to pull away again.

“Listen, if you don’t help me, I can’t get your baby out of there.”

This seems to focus her attention.

We don’t have much time. Saldado had to hear her when she opened and closed the back door. He’ll be watching through the prism right now, wondering what she’s doing out of view.

“Walk past the door as fast as you can,” I cup my hand over her ear and whisper. “Get the briefcase and take it back to the apartment door. When you get to the door hold it up for him to see. He’ll be watching you through the peephole. Tell him I went to my car to get some papers for your husband to sign, but the money is in the case. Understand? The money is in the case. Then put it on the floor right outside the door. Whatever you do, when he opens the door, don’t go inside.”

“My baby’s inside.”

“I know. I’ll get your baby for you. Do you understand?”

She turns her head and looks up at me. I’m not sure she does.

“Will my baby be all right?” She almost says it out loud.

I put my hand over her mouth.

“I’ll take care of your baby. When he opens up you just step to the other side of the door and stay out of the way.”

She nods.

Before she can ask another question, I send her on her way. She looks back at me over her shoulder, now clearly in the visual compass of the prism. I motion for her to look the other way. She does it, making it appear as if someone is pulling the strings on a marionette. She is in shock. My fear is, after she gets the briefcase and returns to the door, she will have forgotten everything else.

But before she gets there, she stops in front of the door. I hold my breath. If he opens the door and pulls her in, there is nothing I can do. My mind wants to send her telepathic messages to move.

I hear the chain slide on the door from the inside. I start to move, trying to close the distance to the door. The noise from the chain seems to jar her back to reality. Her feet begin to move, a kind of slow shuffle on down the hall toward the stairs and my attache case.

I take a deep breath and settle into my hiding place. I can pray that Saldado is alone and without a gun. If not, he’s gonna be pissed when he gets the drop and finds out I only have sixty bucks in my wallet and some change in my pocket.

She picks up the briefcase and turns this way. Robot in a trance. I’m nodding, motioning for her to come this way, back to the door.

She walks like a zombie. She is in shock. She could be suffering a concussion from the blows to her head. She carries the empty briefcase in her left hand. When she gets to the door, she turns and stands there looking straight ahead at the blank wooden door.

Saldado has to be watching her through the prism right now. I motion to her, grip one wrist with my hand, and raise the other hand still holding the tire iron. “Lift the briefcase and show it to him.” I do everything but say the words.

Finally she does it, hesitates for a moment, then says: “The money’s inside.”

I hear the security chain come off. Then he pauses. “Where is he?”

She shakes her head a little. Clears the fog. “Went to his car,” she says. “Some papers to sign.”

He thinks about this for a second. Then the dead bolt turns. Open sesame. I work my way around the pilaster, and hugging the wall with my back, I’m at the door in three long sideways steps. Watkins is still standing there in front of it holding the briefcase. She’s in a daze.

Holding the tire iron in both hands, I motion with my head for her to move aside. She doesn’t see me or it doesn’t register.

The doorknob turns. There’s no time. With my back against the wall I raise my left leg, put my foot against her arm holding the briefcase, and push as hard as I can with my foot. The briefcase comes out of her hand and drops. Watkins sprawls to the floor six feet away down the hall. An instant later, the door opens a crack.

I throw my body against it, shoulder first, and push with my legs. I trip over the briefcase, lose traction, leather soles on a wooden floor.

The door opens halfway before Saldado knows what’s hit him, his eyes wide, two black olives floating in a sea of white. I get just a glimpse of his face before he reacts. Quick as a cat, he throws himself against the other side of the door and stands me up straight. Suddenly the momentum shifts. Leaning, he has leverage. He reaches around the door, something in his hand, shiny and flashing, a straight razor. He swipes at me, catches my right arm, and slices the thin sleeve of my cotton shirt as if it were tissue paper.

In the instant it takes me to regroup, he has the door closing like a mountain has fallen on it from the other side.

I push with everything I have. I’m losing. The door is closing inch by inch, until it hits something hard and stops. I look down. Robin Watkins, bleeding and bruised, is huddled at my feet. She has jammed my briefcase into the opening.

I throw my shoulder against the door and it budges. Saldado knows he can’t win. He can push, but he can’t close the door. He tries kicking at the case, but Watkins is holding it in place with both hands.

He tries to reach out with the blade again. This time I deflect it with the tire iron, catching his knuckles with the lug end of the steel. He pulls his hand back in. For a few seconds, he holds me. I throw myself against the door, once, twice, three times. Each shot transfers the blow to his body on the other side. He absorbs several more of these, then suddenly steps back and the door flies open.

Saldado retreats to the center of a small living room. He backs up and nearly falls over a low, flimsy coffee table. He flattens one of the legs and kicks the rest of it out of the way. Splintered pieces of wood fly across the room. The tabletop crashes into a large package wrapped in plastic and lying on the floor by the end of the sofa.

The Mexican crouches, knees flexed, holding the razor blade out in front of him, his eyes fixed on the tire iron in my hands.

Off to my left is the child, a little boy sitting in soiled Pampers on the couch, wide-eyed, staring at me. For the moment, his crying is stopped by the surprise of my entry. He has one little fist wet with saliva in his mouth.

I look at Saldado, and the thought reaches both of us at the same instant. He makes a move toward the child. I lash out with the iron, missing him by a few inches, but it’s enough to make him step back and to his left. As he does I move into the breach, circling to my right, putting myself between him and the boy. He continues this circular dance of combat and forces me farther to the right. He’s looking at the open door and Robin Watkins kneeling on the floor. I’m where I want to be, and I don’t budge. He has the blade, but I have greater reach with the iron. If he slashes at me and misses, I’ll break his arm. If I get lucky, I might nail him in the head.

Saldado studies the situation, dark pupils darting back and forth between Watkins kneeling in the doorway and her child on the sofa. Either one of them will do. He feints toward the mother and catches me leaning. I lash out. Nothing but the swish of air. He goes the other way toward the child. The tire iron cuts a figure eight through empty space.

He backs off, smiling at me. “Not so easy, uh?” He wipes perspiration off his upper lip with one arm.

I’m watching his eyes. He’s gauging the distance of my reach, my willingness to risk the blade.

He looks at the child, then back at the mother. Obvious moves now, leaving me to wonder which one he will go for, his focus never far from the tire iron. He looks quickly at the child, takes a half step in that direction.

This time, I don’t go for it. Instead I move my head in that direction, my feet planted firmly. When he reverses field toward the door, I’m ready for him.

Saldado is committed. Momentum carries him. Just enough time for a quick hitch with the iron for a back swing. I lay into him like a left-handed batter with a Louisville slugger. The lug end of the tire iron catches him full force, low along the left side of his chest-a deadening thud and the cracking of bone.

“Unnnnnhhhh.” It knocks the wind out of him. Saldado staggers backward. Surprise and pain, followed an instant later by anger-all the emotions of adrenaline flashing across his face in less than a second. Before I can follow up with another blow, he lashes at me, a halfhearted effort, but enough to keep me away, fight or flight.

He comes at me again. The blade slashes under the iron. I bend at the midsection, leaning back, and the straight edge of the razor misses my stomach by an inch.

Looping the iron, I catch the back of his hand on the follow-through, but without enough force to do any damage.

Saldado is holding his side with one hand now-glancing under his arm, feeling the pain, and assessing the damage. There’s blood on his shirt. He looks at it, then realizes, as I do, that its not where I hit him.

There is an arc of tiny red splotches up high on his shoulder as if someone swung a loaded paint brush in his direction.

Breathing heavily, in pain, he connects the dots before I do. He smiles. “You’re bleeding, senor.”

I glance quickly down. There is blood dripping off the end of the tire iron and onto the floor.

While I’m distracted for an instant, Saldado tries for an opening. I check him with my eyes, catching him leaning and freeze him in place. Having felt the bite of the steel in my hand, he has no desire to offer up a second course.

My right shirt sleeve is red from the elbow to the buttoned cuff where he slashed it with the razor through the door. Adrenaline has killed the pain. Either that or he’s severed a nerve.

His movement is slower now. So is mine. He positions his injured side away from me, protecting it, still holding the bottom of his rib cage with one hand, as he waves the blade slowly back and forth, stirring the air in front of my face with the other.

He tries to get me to swing at the blade, moving it closer. I refuse to take the bait. He would move in behind my swing and catch my arm coming back. In the meantime, the razor would be free to do its work.

“Man, you keep this up,” he says, “you going to end up like your friend on the floor there.”

“Yeah, you do a real good job beating on women,” I tell him.

“No. No. Not that one. Your other friend. Over there.” He gestures with his head in the other direction. “I let you keep the money. Take it and go. I give you your life,” he says.

I glance over quickly and realize he’s talking about the package wrapped in plastic and lying on the floor.

“Espinoza?”

He nods slowly, smiling at me.

“What about the child and the woman?”

He shrugs, offers a disarming smile. “What are they to me?”

Watkins must have seen him kill her husband. I can’t believe he would let her go.

“I’ve already called the police,” I tell him.

“You lie.”

“Stick around and find out.”

He waves the blade at me. “How long you think you can bleed like that, man, and still stand up? Huh? Why don’t you go?”

His eyes tell me that the second I move toward the door he’ll come with the blade.

“Let her take the child and go.”

“Sure.”

“Robin?”

She looks at me but doesn’t say anything.

“Get your baby,” I tell her.

She looks at the child, then back at me.

“Get up and get your baby.”

The Mexican is smiling. He knows if he can take me down, he can catch the woman and her child before they can get to the front door.

She stands up. Takes a few tentative steps into the room.

“Come behind me,” I tell her.

The Mexican smiles at me. He could grab her in a second, force me to drop the iron, then cut her throat and kill me.

She moves behind me, grabs the child, huddles him in her arms.

“Go,” I tell her.

She moves to the door, then turns and looks at me.

“Go!” I turn my head and take my eyes off of him for a fraction of a second.

In that instant he comes at me. The blade comes underneath. He reaches up with the hand of his wounded side and grabs the action end of the iron before I can swing.

I trap his arm with the razor under one elbow against my side.

“Go!” Between clenched teeth. It’s all I can do to keep from biting my tongue as Saldado’s body crashes into me, his shoulder coming up under my chin, forcing my head farther to the right.

With terror etched in her eyes, clutching her child, she disappears down the hall.

Saldado, with the razor hand trapped under my arm, tries to maneuver his wrist to cut into my back. I feel the blade scraping against the cotton fabric of my shirt, and I pull him, twisting, whirling to keep him off balance.

I leverage the weight of my body and let physics do the rest. Centrifugal force sends us hurtling across the room until our feet hit an immovable object, Espinoza’s body, and gravity takes over.

I cuff my hand around the back of his neck and, on the way down, give him a hard shove, accelerating his fall and driving him onto his chest.

I hit the floor on one shoulder. The crushing contact knocks the wind out of me.

Saldado takes it on the chest, landing directly in front of my eyes. He expels a mist of vaporized blood from his nose and mouth, propelled by breath from a punctured lung. The hand with the blade slaps the floor and the razor clatters across the old hardwood planks.

For several seconds neither of us moves. Crumpled on my side against the end of the couch, unable to breathe, I listen to his wheezing punctuated by occasional groans.

My brain is beginning to go blank, vision blurred like someone has poured water over a sheet of glass in front of my eyes.

I see him lift his head, the frothy bubbles of blood dripping from his mouth and nose.

My own breath comes slowly, shallow, my head as light as helium.

He struggles onto to his hands and knees, his eyes glazed with pain and pitted with anger as he looks at me and weaves on all fours.

I focus on the shining blade across the floor.

He turns his head and sees it.

I try to move, but my body won’t obey. My feet are cold, vision dimming; audible illusions begin to fill my ears, sounds of buzzing.

When my eyes return to him, Saldado’s attention is no longer on the razor across the floor. Instead he is struggling to his feet, holding his side, his dark eyes directed toward the front of the building. As my vision fades, I recognize the sound, somewhere beyond the walls of the room, the electronic harmonics of a siren.