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lot these days, distracted me now so that I didn’t hear Kyle until he came beside me.
    â€œYou all right?” Kyle said.
    â€œSmiles and cries,” I said finally.
    â€œ Cries and Whispers? ” he said.
    Out of my mantra, halfway between curious and irritated. He mistook it for confusion. “An Ingmar Bergman film, right?” he said.
    â€œNo. Training Day . Denzel takes this new detective, Ethan Hawke, to Scott Glenn’s house, Hawke’s over-loaded with some PCP Denzel made him smoke, but Hawke says that’s what the streets are. Smiles and cries. How you’ve got to learn to hide them.”
    â€œDon’t watch many cop movies. What do you see on this street?”
    Typical South Tucson street. Small stucco bungalows on small lots, fencing everywhere, all the windows with wrought-iron bars. Old cars, furniture, discarded toys, even clothing, strewn around some of the yards. Half a block away a large Dodge pickup sprawled across a front lawn, the hood up, the car boom box speakers thundering.
    â€œI don’t see any people,” I said finally.
    â€œHiding. They all know that maras have been here. We’ll do a house-to-house survey, but nobody’ll know anything, they didn’t see or hear anything. They don’t want to be slaughtered, either.”
    â€œThis gang, these maras, are they really that savage?”
    â€œYou’ve been inside, you’ve seen the slaughter. What do you think?”
    â€œThe death card,” I said. “Who’s this La Bruja ?”
    â€œNo idea.”
    â€œAnd the threat. No me jodas . Where’d that come from?”
    â€œBorder slang. My theory? You know that movie Heat ?”
    â€œI thought you didn’t watch cop movies.”
    â€œThe bank shootout. Pure adrenaline, watching that scene. Anyway, there’s this grungy guy who’s part of the early crew that robs the armored truck.”
    â€œWaingro,” I said.
    â€œYeah. Well, he’s holding a nine mil on the three armored car guys, who are stupefied out of their brains by the accident and robbery. Waingro, he’s pure psycho. He says to one of the guards, ‘Don’t fuck with me. You want to fuck with me?’ And kills the guard. These maras, they’re like all gangbangers, they’ve got the director’s cut of movies like Scarface . They get off on all the moviepsychos. Anyway. That’s my theory about these cards. So what are you doing at this crime scene, anyway?”
    â€œI came here to look for financial records. I mean, that’s why I thought I’d been asked. But the CSI techs didn’t find any computers, any disks or data CDs, no bank account information, no deposit slips.”
    â€œThe GPS units?”
    â€œYou’ll know when your people seal off those locations.”
    Kyle eyed me carefully. “You know more about this than I do,” he said finally. “I’m the lead homicide detective, but you know something more. Right?”
    He unsnapped a leather pouch on his belt, his thumbs flying over the cell phone keyboard, sending several text messages, waited for brief replies.
    â€œListen,” he said. “Word is that you’re up for some job at TPD. Tracking maras computer accounts, bank records? Is that connected to this?”
    â€œAsk Bob Gates,” I said. “How’d you know that? About the job?”
    â€œWord’s around.”
    â€œBob said that the word was not around.”
    â€œThis is just between you and me.”
    â€œAnd who exactly are you?” I said.
    â€œA cop with thirty-seven years on the force. Passed over for sergeant, some say. Didn’t want to be sergeant, I say. Normally, I’d be off the street, in my little casita, watching TV and drinking tequila and once in a while thinking about eating my gun. Only on the bad days. They keep me around. I’ve been on so many homicides, I’ve always got something