The In Death Collection Books 26-29 - J.D. Robb [250]
“I knew the little bastard, and the rest of them. I worked those streets when I was in uniform. He was a badass by the time he was eight. Stealing, tagging stores, busting things up just to bust them. His mother, she tried. I’d see her dragging him to school, to church. I caught him with a pocketful of Jazz when he was about ten. I let him off, ’cause of the mother.”
“Did you know Nick Soto?”
“Dealer, street tough, liked to rough up women. Slippery bastard. Then someone slipped a knife in him. Fifty, sixty times. I didn’t work that one, but I knew him some.”
“Did anyone talk to the daughter or Lino on that one?”
He paused, rubbed a finger over his cheek. “Had to. Lino and the Soto kid were tight. The fact is, I think she was worse than he was, worse than Lino. He stole something, it was for money. He beat the shit out of somebody, there was a reason. Kid had a purpose. Her? Carried hate around in her. She stole, it was to take it from somebody else. She beat the shit out of someone, it was for the hell of it. You’re sniffing at them for that case?”
“I had Penny Soto in on something today. She claims her father raped her, regularly. That didn’t come out.”
“Like I said, I didn’t work it. But I knew some of the particulars.” He shook his head. “That had come out, I’d know.”
“You looked for Lino after the bombing.”
“He’d taken over the Soldados by then, him and Chávez served as captains. The site wasn’t strict Skull territory. It was in the disputed turf, but plenty of them hung there. It was retaliation. I know it was Soldados, and the Soldados didn’t breathe without Lino telling them to. Mrs. Martinez said Lino took off, two days before the bombing.”
He shook his head. “I had to believe her, or I had to believe she believed it. She let us go through the place. No sign of him, and we checked with neighbors, and not all of them had any love for the son of a bitch. Got the same story. He lit out before the incident. We put the heat on the Soldados, and turned it up. We couldn’t get one of them to refute that. Not one. But they did it, Lieutenant, they set it up, Martinez and Chávez. I know it in my guts.”
“My guts say the same.”
“Have you got a line on them? Either of them?”
“I’ve got Lino Martinez in the morgue.”
Stuben scooped up noodles. “Best place for him.”
“How about any of the alternate gangs? Would any of them take a hit at Lino after all this time?”
“Skulls, Bloods. Most of them are dead, gone, or locked up. Always a few around, both sides of that. But that fire’s been out a long while. How’d he buy it?”
“You’ve heard about the murder at St. Cristóbal’s? The one posing as a priest.”
“Martinez?”
“Yeah. How’s that play for you, him going under like that for five years—in plain sight?”
Stuben sat back, gave it some thought over his tube of cream soda. “He was wily. He had brains and could stay frosty. It was hard, even when he was a kid, to pin anything on him. Knew how to cover his tracks, or get someone to do it for him. He fought his way up to the top level of the Soldados by the time he was sixteen. Had to be something in it for him, some game. Something big to keep him under. You had the Soto girl in on this?”
“Today.”
“She’d have known, no question in my mind. He came back, he’d go to Penny Soto. Lino had a weak spot, she was it. He made her a lieutenant, and she’s not fifteen, for Christ’s sake. Word was, there was some dissention in the ranks about that. Lino took out the dissenter with a pipe, and let her kick the shit out of him. ’Course, the dissenter claimed, from his hospital bed with his jaw wired, that he fell down some stairs. Back then? You couldn’t work one of them against the other. They’d take a knife to the heart first.”
“Times change.”
Stuben nodded. “They do. You might try Joe Inez.”
“I ran it by him once. Weak link?” she asked, but for courtesy as she already knew.
“That’d be the one. Joe, he didn’t have the kill switch in him. Didn’t have the hardness for it.”
“Is there anyone else I should talk to? Any other former members? I’ve got a couple people