He picked up the cigarette, spilled some ash on his belly, and took a drag.
"I used to," I said, "when I was working for the Middlesex DA."
"Well, he's gone. You want to see Delaney?"
"Yes."
The fat cop jerked his head down the corridor behind him. "Last door," he said and picked up the phone as I walked away.
The corridor had once been marble, and some of it still showed above the green-painted Sheetrock that had been layered onto the lower walls like an ugly wainscotting. Threadbare brown carpet covered the floor. The corridor was long and on each side of it were pebbled glass doors with the names of the occupants stenciled on the glass. Identification and Forensic. Traffic. Juvenile. Delaney's office was at the end, a big one, with palladian windows on two sides. The ceilings were high. There were a couple of yellow oak file cabinets on the wall to my right. Near the left wall, a conference table was littered with crumpled Coke cans, overturned foam coffee cups, some ash trays full of cigarette butts, and the faint traces of powdered sugar where someone had polished off a donut. Beyond the conference table was the half-ajar door to a private washroom. I smiled when I saw it. They don't build them this way anymore. Delaney was just putting the phone down when I came in. He looked a little surprised, as if people didn't come in very often.
"My name's Spenser," I said.
"So, what's the Middlesex DA want with me?" Delaney said.
He was a tallish man, gone soft, with a lot of broken blood vessels in his cheeks, and an ugly red vinyl hairpiece on top of his head. It didn't match his sideburns, but it probably wouldn't have matched anyone's sideburns except maybe Plastic Man's. He or the guy out front had confused the part about I-used-to-work-for-the-Middlesex-DA. I decided not to clarify it.
"Looking for information on a guy named Luis Deleon."
"You try 411?" Delaney smiled. He had big yellow teeth like a horse.
"He's not in the phone book," I said.
"Why you asking about him?"
"Missing persons case I'm on," I said. "Woman named Lisa St. Claire. I thought Deleon might know something about her."
"Why do you think that?"
"She's married now to somebody else, but they used to date."
"He a Cha Cha?"
"Yeah."
"She's Anglo?"
"Un huh."
Delaney shook his head. He glanced over toward the washroom and then glanced back at me.
"You think she's with him?"
"I don't know," I said. "I just thought I'd talk with him. See what he knew. You ever hear of him?"
"Deleon don't even sound spic, does it? Doesn't matter. Fucking cucarachas change their name around here every other day."
He looked at the washroom again and licked his lips. "You wanna excuse me," he said. "Got to use the facilities for a minute."
"Sure."
He got up and headed for the lav. The door closed. I heard him cough, a deep ugly sound, then some silence. Then the flush of the toilet. The door opened and Delaney came out. He looked
I said.
The priest thought about my question.
"There is no simple answer to that," he said. "Santiago is an evil man, of this there is no question. He is a criminal, almost surely a murderer. He deals in narcotics, in prostitutes, in gambling. He sells green cards. He controls much of what happens in the Hispanic community here, which is to say most of Proctor."
"Except San Juan Hill," I said.
"Except San Juan Hill."
"So what's the no-simple part?"
"He is not entirely, I think, a bad man. A poor person can get money or a job from Freddie Santiago. Wars among some of the youth gangs are settled by him. Paternity and alimony payments are often enforced by him. Every election he works very hard to get Hispanic people registered."
"And he probably contributes to the Police Beneficent Association," I said.
The priest smiled for a moment.
"I think it is certain," he said, "that Freddie Santiago contributes generously to the police. Have you talked to them?"
"I talked to the Chief of Detectives," I said.
"He was Irish?" the priest said.
"Yeah, Delaney."
"They are all Irish," the priest said. "The police, the school superintendent, the mayor, all of the power structure. They are Irish and they speak English. And the city is Spanish and speaks Spanish."
"You speak Spanish, Father?"
"Haltingly at best," the priest said. "I can still say a Latin mass, but I have not been successful with the language of my flock. I assume the police weren't helpful to you."
"They weren't."
"If she's with Deleon an Anglo woman with an Hispanic man for the police here, it would mean she was irretrievably tainted."
Six teenaged boys in baggy jeans and San Antonio Spurs warmup jackets swaggered by us on the sidewalk below. They looked up at us. It was not a friendly look.
One of them said something in Spanish. They all laughed.
"Did you understand what he said?" I asked the priest.
"He said, in effect, `Look at the eunuch in his dress,"' the priest said. His red face held no expression. "I've heard it before."
"If they would talk to me, is there enough English spoken in Proctor for me to ask questions and understand the answers?" I said.