As I started to protest, I heard two people coming down the dock. I stood and looked. It was Eddie and his new friend Pete. They were coming to the Tiger Lily.
“Looks like I have company,” I said.
She took my arm.
“I said I don’t kiss on the first date,” she said. She leaned in against me, putting her arms around my neck. My hands automatically went to her waist.
“I lied,” she said, and kissed me on the mouth. Then she did it again, then again. She pulled away, keeping her arms around my neck. From five inches away she stared at me, her mouth slightly open, and her eyes so dark they disappeared. A lock of hair had fallen across her forehead. Now I kissed her. And again.
After an age, and very slowly, we untangled.
“Hey Jackson, you home?” Eddie yelled from below.
“Come up and see me some time,” Dahlia said, doing her best Mae West. She leaned forward and kissed me again.
I started to say something along the line of, ‘if we’re quiet maybe they’ll go away,’ when she walked to the edge and looked down. “Hey, Eddie,” she said.
46
We were in the lounge, all standing. Eddie was looking uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Miss Dahlia,” he said. “I sure didn’t mean to interrupt.”
She smiled at him. “Nothing to be sorry for. Honestly, I was just leaving. I still have a teenager at home and it’s a long drive.”
Eddie looked at me.
“Sadly, it’s true,” I said.
“The teenager, or the drive,” Pete said.
Dahlia laughed. “Both.” She reached out and touched my arm. “Thanks a lot. Give me a call.”
She looked at Pete. “Nice to see you again.”
“Likewise,” he said.
She hugged Eddie. “Billy didn’t do anything wrong, and they’ll find that out.”
Eddie nodded.
With a small wave of the hand, she went out the sliding doors and stepped onto the dock. We followed. We watched her walk to the gate where Danny had the shuttle waiting.
Pete said, “Wow.”
After we heard the gate clang shut, Eddie turned to me.
“What’s a guy got to do to get a beer around this joint?”
I smiled. “Come on in and sit a spell. I’ll see what I can do.”
I dug a bottle of Dos Equis from the refrigerator. I waved one at Pete.
“No thanks,” he said, settling on the couch. “Not much of a beer drinker. Not this late, anyway.”
“First bad thing I’ve learned about him,” Eddie said, accepting the beer I handed him.
“Something from the bar?”
“Now, that I can do. Do you have gin?”
“Plymouth okay?”
“Indeed. Maybe with a splash of lime and a dash of bitters.”
“Man after my own heart.” I made two.
I could tell Eddie had something on his mind, but I knew it wouldn’t come out until he was ready. I channeled the music from up top to the lounge. I settled in the highback chair and sipped my drink.
“This is a nice boat,” Pete said.
“It’s no Moneypenny,” I said.
“Beg pardon?”
“Oh, sorry. You’ve changed the name.”
He took a drink, “Oh, yeah, 13 Episodes. That’s what bought it.” He looked at his drink. “Just right,” he said.
“Tell Jackson what you were telling me, earlier,” Eddie said. Pete set his drink aside.
“Eddie was telling me about his nephew, and you helping to look into it. What I was telling him was that before my current incarnation as a writer, I was an attorney.”
“I won’t hold it against you,” I said.
He laughed. “Thanks. Just do me a favor and don’t spread the word. I want to fit in here.”
“Secret’s safe with me.”
“I had worked at a firm that is licensed in most of the western states,” he continued. “I didn’t really do criminal law, but listening to Eddie, I said that in my opinion, the
only thing keeping his nephew in jail was bad representation.”
“Attorney Taggart.”
He shrugged. “Eddie says he’s local. One of the good ol’ boys.”
“You think another attorney can get Billy out?”
“I’m not trying to spread false hope. But it sounds like a case could be made to, at least, get him from behind bars.”
“What do you think?” Eddie said, looking at me.
I looked at Pete. My bullshit meter didn’t move. He seemed to be sincere.
“You willing to do more than talk about it? You willing to go up with Eddie and see what you can do?”
Pete nodded. “Yeah, I can do that, I’m not doing anything else. But as a consultant. It’s probably smart to leave the local attorney as the attorney of record.”
“You wanna come up with us?” Eddie asked.
I thought about Blackhawk and Diaz.
“Later, maybe. Blackhawk’s got a small problem he wants me to help with.”
Eddie smiled. “I don’t see Blackhawk needing much help on anything.”
“I brush his suits and shine his shoes.”
“There is somebody named Blackhawk?” Pete said.
I smiled. “Nobody seems to believe it,” I said.
“Hell,” Eddie said. “They got rappers call themselves Pump Diddle and such. Blackhawk don’t seem much of a stretch.”
47
The next evening I was sitting, with the very real Blackhawk, at El Patron. I was nursing a beer. I was sitting at my favorite stool, on the corner. Nacho was across from me, reading the paper. Blackhawk was next to me, sipping a club soda.
“I’m going to start calling you Joe, or something,” I said.
He looked at me.
“Why?”
“Every time I tell people your name is Blackhawk, they don’t believe me.”
He was silent a moment.
“Well, that’s okay with me. My name was Joe.”
“Really?”
Nacho looked up.
“No,” Blackhawk laughed.
Nacho shook his head in disgust, and looked back to his paper.
I heard someone come in behind me and Blackhawk looked past me. I swiveled. It was Diaz. He was bleeding and one eye was almost shut. He stood in the middle of the floor looking at us.
“You are bleeding on my dance floor,” Blackhawk said. He turned and signaled Jimmy. “Bring a bar towel.” Jimmy came around the bar with a towel. Blackhawk took it and walked over to Diaz. He tossed Diaz the towel while he was still five feet away. Diaz caught it and started to wipe his face.
“Clean my floor,” Blackhawk said.
Diaz looked at him. Expecting sympathy, maybe. Blackhawk was impassive. Diaz finally leaned down and mopped the floor, then straightened and pressed the towel against his face. Blackhawk turned and went back to the bar.
“Get the first aid kit,” he told Jimmy.
Jimmy retrieved it and set it in front of me. I motioned Diaz over. He was bleeding from his nose and lip. Blackhawk and I, both, had extensive medic training. Diaz’s wounds were mostly superficial. His lip was split and a blow to his eye had burst blood vessels, making the eye ugly and red. The lid was swelling. His eyebrow was split and bleeding.
I motioned him to sit beside me. I opened the kit and selected a couple of butterfly bandages and a tube of antibiotic. I swabbed him with the towel and he whined like a kitten. Every time I tried to apply antibiotic, he flinched and pulled away.
“Sit still, or I’m going to knock you off the stool,” I said.
He forced himself to sit still while I finished. I snapped the kit shut and Jimmy took it and put it under the bar. Blackhawk sat a stool down from Diaz so he could swivel and look at him.
“You fall out of bed in that motel,” he said.
“They snatched me off the street.”
“Who they?” I said.
“Rojo and that other guy, Omar. The guy
that let me out of the bathroom when I was hijacked.”
“What were you doing on the street?” Blackhawk said.
“Hey, man. I was just taking a walk. Man, I was sick of sitting in that motel.”
“That the whore’s name?” Nacho said. “Walk? She got a sister, Don’t Walk?”
I studied the man for a long moment. I knew he was lying, and I knew Blackhawk knew he was lying. What for?
“Why would they try to snatch you? Garza would be happy if they just put a round in your head.”
“That’s what they said they were going to do. They beat on me and told me they were going to kill me. I told them to let me talk to Garza but Rojo said ‘Fuck Garza’. That’s when I believed them. Man, I was scared shitless. They threw me in the car. They didn’t tell me where they were going, but I knew where they were taking me.”
“Where?”
“Down to the river bottom. You shoot a man down there, and his bones are picked clean in a week.”
“How come you aren’t dead in the river bottom.”
“Omar was driving, and the dumb fucker was out of gas so they stopped to get some, and while he’s pumping, a cop car pulls into the pump across from us. I know they can’t do anything, so I just get out and walked away.”
“A cop car,” Blackhawk said.
“Yeah man, pulled up right next to us. They didn’t tie me up or nothing. Just Rojo sitting next to me with a gun.”
“They chase you?”
“Hell, yeah they chased me. But Omar had to put the gas nozzle back and get in and start it up, and I went the other way so they had to pull out and turn around. Gave me time to ditch them.”
“What does ‘fuck Garza’ mean?” Blackhawk asked.
“It means they weren’t getting rid of him for Garza. They were doing it for themselves,” I said. I was tired of the dancing. I reached over and yanked him off the stool and slapped him in the ear. He let out a high-pitched yelp, like a puppy.
“You and Rojo and this other guy stole the money.” It wasn’t a question.
He covered his ear with his forearm and ducked away from me. Blackhawk grabbed him and shook him.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Okay, okay. Cool it, man. It was Rojo and Omar. They took the money, I just drove the truck. I went in the bathroom like Rojo told me, and stayed there until Omar opened the door. I took the truck across the border and acted surprised when the money wasn’t there.”
“You actually thought Garza was going to let that slide.”
“Rojo’s in thick with Garza. He was going to vouch for me and we’d lay low for a while, then just disappear, man.”
“But he turned you out.”
“The fucker ratted me, man. So I came here.”
Nacho spoke up. “So you were just feeding me a line of shit when you acted like you recognized that guy, Omar, but didn’t know him.”
Diaz didn’t say anything.
“You one dumb son of a bitch to believe somebody like Rojo,” Nacho said in disgust.
“You the one that believed me, man,” Diaz said.
Nacho came off the stool and Diaz backed up, his palm out to ward Nacho off. “Hey, hey, man, I don’t mean nothin’.”
“Who’s got the money?” Blackhawk said.
“Those guys.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where does Rojo live?”
“I don’t know, but Omar has a crib south of Roosevelt.”
Blackhawk looked at me.
“Place to start,” I said
48
Nacho wanted to come with us, so we took his Jeep Cherokee. He drove and I sat next to him. Blackhawk was behind me and Diaz behind Nacho. Omar’s place was a dump south of Roosevelt just west of Interstate 17. I had retrieved the Kahr .45 from the trunk of the Mustang. Blackhawk had slipped a shoulder holster under his impeccable jacket, and slid his 9mm Sig Sauer into it. He pocketed a small Ruger .380. Best way to not get in a war is to be prepared for one.
The place turned out to be ten minutes from the club. Nacho took us up to the freeway then north to McDowell and across, to where we could come down to Roosevelt, then down the side street it was on. It was the kind of neighborhood where people sat on their front porch steps, even in the summer. The houses were a mix, from rundown shacks, to nicely kept small homes with neat yards. Omar’s was a wreck.
Nacho cruised past the house and Diaz said, “That’s it.”
“Keep going,” Blackhawk said. “Go around the block.”
Nacho turned right at the next street, then right again. When we were back on Omar’s street, a block away, Blackhawk said, “Park here.”
Nacho pulled to the curb, but didn’t turn the motor off. I twisted around and looked at Blackhawk, following his lead.
Blackhawk looked at me, “This guy knows Diaz, but not us. Let’s go pay him a visit, see what we can shake out of him.”
Nacho turned in the seat. “Me too?”
“Hell yes, you are ugly enough to scare anyone into spilling their guts,” I said.
“With such power comes great responsibility,” he said, opening the car door.
Blackhawk looked at Diaz. “You stay here.” He opened his door and stepped out. He started down the street. Nacho and I followed.
The house was old, made of blocks, with a shingled roof. Some of the shingles were missing. There was a weedy carport on our side of the house. We came up the drive to the small porch. There was just one step up. A rusty metal chair sat by itself next to the door. It was one of those porch chairs with a back that opened out like a fan. The height of fashion in 1950. It was hard to tell what the original color was. The door had a window in it, and there was a bay window behind the chair. Closed, ratty-looking blinds covered both windows.
I signaled Blackhawk to circle back through the carport and check the back door. Nacho and I stood where anyone inside couldn’t see us. I was giving Blackhawk plenty of time to get into position when the door opened, and Blackhawk stepped out.
“Back door was unlocked,” he said. He nodded toward the interior of the house, “You better see this.”
Nacho and I followed him in. The place was a dump. There was a heavily soiled couch with a ripped arm just inside, under the window. A stuffed chair that didn’t match anything was against the wall. There was a tin tray table next to it, with an overflowing ashtray. The floors were hardwood, scuffed and worn. There were fast-food wrappers everywhere. Whoever had eaten out of them had finished and left them where they lay. Some had old, moldy food on them. The place stank of decay, cigarettes and marijuana. Over the top of that was another dull and pungent odor. An odor familiar to me.
Blackhawk moved through the house with purpose, so we followed. He led us into the kitchen. On the floor was a body. It was a man. His body had the shrunken look of having been there a while. There was a stain of dried blood under him. He was wearing a Phoenix Suns jersey and a pair of jeans. His arms were covered in tattoos. On his feet was a pair of tennis shoes that were the most improbable color of lime green. They looked brand new, and stood out in the room like a rose in a meat locker.
“Hello, Omar,” Nacho said.
Omar was on his back, his glassy eyes filmed over and half closed. He had been shot center mass. The bullet had burst his heart and he was dead before he hit the floor.
Blackhawk picked up a dirty rag and wrapped it around his hand then gingerly rolled the body on its side. He studied the exit wound, then let the body roll back onto its back. The movement loosened some body gas and my stomach lurched. I looked around the room. There was splattered blood on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and on the small half table that still had dirty dishes on it.
I looked at Nacho, “Go to the front window and watch.”
“Watch for what?” he said.
“For anything. Blackhawk and I are going to shake the place down, and we don’t want someone walking in on us.”
H
e turned to leave. “And don’t touch a thing but your shoe soles on the floor,” Blackhawk said.
Using the hand wrapped in the rag, Blackhawk began opening cabinets. He found a stained roll of paper towels and handed them to me. I unwrapped several and wrapped my hands with them. We began to methodically search the house.
Omar seemed to have lived a Spartan existence. What closets there were, were empty. Very few dishes, and nothing but beer and cheese in the refrigerator. The cheese had green mold on it. In the one inch space between the cabinet holding the kitchen sink and the refrigerator, I saw a piece of paper. I fished it out. It was a tri-folded schedule for the local Greyhound Bus service. I showed it to Blackhawk. He looked it over.
“You steal that much money, why you taking the bus?” he said.
I shook my head. We went back through, room by room, overturning the furniture, tearing out the batting on the bottom. We pulled each drawer out, checking for anything taped underneath. We looked for false bottoms. Blackhawk pulled his pocket knife and unscrewed the light fixtures. We looked in the back of the filthy toilet. The bathroom had a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving things and a really obnoxious aftershave. We took the medicine cabinet down. Nothing was in the freezer at all. There was a dishwasher, but it was rusted, empty and disconnected. I pulled it out. Nothing behind it. We turned the bed over. Nothing. Blackhawk took the ceiling fan down. Nothing. There was a mirror screwed to the wall. I pulled my pocketknife to unscrew it when Blackhawk stepped over and smashed it with the butt of the Sig Sauer. Nothing was behind it. In the bedroom closet we found a trapdoor in the ceiling that led to a crawlspace. We brought a kitchen chair over and I climbed up and pushed it aside. I used the flashlight function on my phone. There was hardly enough room up top for a man to climb into. The light revealed nothing but insulation.
I climbed back down and leaving the chair there, we went back into the kitchen. Omar was really starting to smell.
“Nothing here,” I said.
“I didn’t expect to find anything. Omar wouldn’t have the money anyway,” Blackhawk said. “I’m betting on Rojo.”
“Yeah, me too. Let’s vamoose.”
The Librarian Her Daughter and the Man Who Lost His Head Page 18
