I had my eyes locked into his face, waiting to read it for signs of fear or violence when he noticed my presence. But when he saw me Sanchez just threw up his hands in mock surrender and said, “You waiting for me, Officer?” grinning broadly all the while.
I grinned back. “I know you’re clean, Joe. You always are. I just wanted to have a little talk with you.”
Sanchez grinned again. “Why don’t we go up to my crib, then?”
I nodded assent and let him walk into the steaming hallway ahead of me. We took the stairs up to the third floor. Sanchez fiddled with the double lock on his door, and when the door opened I slammed my right fist into the back of his neck, sending him sprawling into his immaculate, cheap-plush living room. He looked up at me from the floor, his whole body trembling in anger. I closed the door behind me, and we stared at each other. Sanchez recovered quickly, getting to his feet and brushing off his silk jacket.
The sardonic grin returned. “This ain’t happened in a while,” he said. “You with the sheriff’s?”
“L.A.P.D.,” I said, for old-times’ sake. I dug the letters out of my coat pocket, holding my coat closed so that Sanchez wouldn’t know that I was unarmed. I tossed them in his face. “You forgot your mail, Joe.”
I waited for a reaction. Sanchez shrugged and plopped into a sofa covered with Mexican souvenir blankets. I pulled a chair up to within breathing distance of him.
“Dope and green cards, pretty nice,” I said.
Sanchez shrugged, then looked at me defiantly. “What do you want, man?” He spat at me.
“I want to know what a good-looking, middle-class white woman like Marcella Harris was doing down here on Medina Court,” I said, “besides buying dope from you.”
Sanchez’s manner seemed to crumple in relief, then tense up in fear. It was bizarre. “I didn’t kill her, man,” he said.
“I’m sure you didn’t. Let’s make this simple. You tell me what you know, and I’ll leave you alone–forever. You don’t tell me, and I’ll have the Immigration cops and the feds up here in fifteen minutes. _Comprende?_”
Sanchez nodded. “A friend of mine brought her around. She wanted to buy some reefer. She kept coming back. She thought Medina Court was kicks. She was a loca, a hot-headed redhead. She liked to smoke reef and dance. She liked Mexican music.” Sanchez shrugged, indicating completion of his story.
It wasn’t enough. I told him so: “Not good enough, Joe. You make it sound like you just tolerated her. I don’t buy it. I heard she used to hang out with you and a bunch of other pachucos down at the auto graveyard.”
“Okay, man. I liked her. ‘_La Roja_,’ I used to call her. ‘The Red One.'”
“Were you screwing her?”
Sanchez was genuinely indignant: “No, man! She wanted me to, but I’m engaged! I don’t mess with no _gringas_.”
“Forgive me for mentioning it. Was she hooked on stuff?”
Sanchez hesitated. “She … she took pills. She was a nurse and she could get codeine. She used to get crazy and act silly when she was high on it. She said she could be .
I leaned forward. “She said _what_, Joe?”
“She … she . . . said she could outfight any Mexican, and out-fuck and out-drink any _puta_. She said that she’d seen stuff that . . . that . . .”
“That _what?_” I screamed.
“That would have made our _cojones_ fall off!” Sanchez screamed back.
“Did she hang out with any other guys here on Medina?” I asked.
Sanchez shook his head. “No. She was just interested in me. I told the others to leave her alone, that she was bad news. I liked her, but I had no respect for her. She used to leave her kid alone at night. Anyway, I started giving Marcella the cold shoulder. She took the hint and didn’t come around no more. I ain’t seen her in six months.”
I got up and walked around the room. The walls were adorned with bullfight posters and cheap landscape prints. “Who introduced her to you?” I asked.