Liars Anonymous

by Louise Ure

  All I knew was that someone who automatically gave a false name with no thought whatsoever was my kind of liar. And Treadwell didn’t seem to know anything about that kind of woman at all.

  I stopped for a six-pack on the way back to Bonita’s, choosing Dos Equis, as if the purchase of the right brand might work as a talisman in unraveling the mystery of the dropped coaster. As parched as I was, I decided to save the beer till after my workout. I shouldn’t have been drinking the stuff anyway; it added fat instead of muscle. Now I’d have to add more cardio to counteract it.

  I looked around at the detritus that Bonita had left behind. Two bulging black garbage bags and a straight flush of empty pizza boxes in the corner. Eight cardboard boxes full of clothes and household goods that Martin would come by to pick up. Dust bunnies the size of grocery carts underneath the dining room table.

  I sat down in the ugliest but most comfortable armchair I’d ever seen. As wide as a boat, with flaring arms that took up an extra three feet, it was a faded yellow fabric, with cigarette burns near the back, and a bright serape thrown over the seat cushion. Clearly, household furniture wouldn’t count for much in Bonita’s list of assets. Equally clearly, she wasn’t getting her security deposit back.

  I pulled the coaster from my back pocket and flattened it out on my thigh. It was a creamy tan, with the brand’s XX marking, the face of Montezuma, and a circular pattern of Aztec art. I held it closer to read the penciled note around the edge. It was fluidly written and very light. Probably a woman’s handwriting. Juanito’s 1900 F. Nineteen hundred could be an address or a year or a price or even a time, if anybody who was part of that note had a military background. But lots of my Latino friends in high school had used twenty-four hour time, too. Juanito could be somebody’s name or business. And the F? Maybe an apartment designation or part of a name. But if it was a first initial, it wasn’t my Luisa. Someone she was supposed to meet?

  Bonita had taken her laptop with her, so I started low tech, with the phone book. It was quite likely that Juanito was a first name, and that would be no help at all. But I checked the J’s just in case it was a last name. No Juanitos were listed.

  The yellow pages wouldn’t do me any good if I didn’t know what kind of business “Juanito’s” was. Maybe. Maybe. I went back to the white pages and flipped to the section that listed businesses alphabetically.

  Yes. A bar called Juanito’s near Ajo Street in South Tucson. The address wasn’t 1900, but a bar and a beer coaster seemed to go together rather nicely. Maybe I’d found the right Juanito’s. And if 1900 was a time and meant seven p.m., I still had time enough for a quick lower-body workout before I had to be there.

  I pawed through Bonita’s leave-behinds in search of gym equipment. Nothing solid enough or heavy enough. I finally found what I was looking for in the backyard. Two empty five-gallon plastic gas cans with handles. If I filled them about two-thirds full with sand, they’d be the perfect weight. There was an old apple crate that would work as a step and I could bungee-cord the two gas cans to a five-foot metal pole I found by the back fence to make a barbell. I checked to make sure that no neighbors had a good line of sight into the backyard, then stripped down to my underwear.

  I started with squats and step-ups, adding sand to the jugs until my legs shook with fatigue after three sets of reps. Two bungee cords tied together made an ad hoc jump rope, and I alternated abdominal crunches and obliques with five minutes on the rope.

  At the end, I was sweating from places I didn’t know I had pores, and was as winded as if I’d run all the way to Nogales.

  One more set of gas-can squats before I celebrated, holding a hose over my head and bringing blessed relief.

  It was time to meet Juanito.

  A smart woman in Tucson should still think twice before showing up alone in a bar at night, especially on the south side of town. I didn’t want to look too approachable.

  I spiked my hair with American Greaser, the only beauty product I use, and put on my favorite “keep your distance” T-shirt that said: SOME DAYS IT’S JUST NOT WORTH CHEWING THROUGH THE RESTRAINTS. The tattooed jacks around my biceps were clearly visible.

  That was the first ink I got, lovingly drawn by an inmate named Lisa just before I got out of jail. She’d rigged an ink tube and needle onto the handle of an electric toothbrush, resulting in a primitive tattoo starter kit. I’d originally agreed to a more clichéd barbed-wire design, as Lisa said that was the only thing she could draw very well. But when the pain started ratcheting up, I chickened out. “Don’t draw in the wire. Just make each barb look like the kind of jacks we used to play with,” I told her, wiping away my tears.

  “There,” she’d said, dabbing at the last of the blood. “Much better than a tramp stamp or barbed wire.”

  I agreed.

  I got to Juanito’s bar half an hour early. It was white-painted brick and as small as a childless couple’s home, sitting alone in the middle of a tiny dirt parking area. There were two cars and a pickup truck already in the lot. I pulled in and made a U-turn, leaving the nose of my truck pointed out.

  Pushing on the wooden door, I stepped inside and waited while my eyes adjusted. The setting sun was still a good inch above the Tucson Mountains behind me, but that meant a blinding glare coming through the front windows at about shoulder height. Dust swirled through the beam, bisecting the room into shadow and light.

  It was a narrow room, with a scarred wooden bar along the right wall, a handful of rickety stools, and a painted concrete floor. The customers were all at the mismatched tables along the left: one group of four card players, and two Latinos at another table who’d pushed their chairs back against the wall and sat side by side.

  No sign of my Luisa. I took a stool at the bar.

  “Cerveza.”

  The bartender, a middle-aged Hispanic man with long sideburns and full lips, tapped the Tecate spigot and raised his eyebrows in question. I nodded.

  The pantomime over with, he placed a beer coaster on the bar and the full glass on top of it. “Four dollars.”

  I paid without complaint. The Dos Equis beer coaster was the same kind I’d picked up at the tree.

  One of the wall-sitters got up to put money in the jukebox. An old-fashioned mariachi ballad, full of trumpets and strings and ululation, began to play. None of that edgy, hip-hop narcocorrido stuff here.

  Gradually the room got used to my presence and conversation started up again, most of it in Spanish. I couldn’t understand it all, but got the idea that one of the card players was looking for a place to stay tonight since his girlfriend had kicked him out. Another, named Marcos, had just signed on for another month with a construction company.

  Nobody mentioned Luisa or any other woman with an L name.

  An older Hispanic couple came in, nodded politely, and took the two stools next to me. The man ordered for the woman without asking: a sign of either a long history together or an inconsiderate date. He called her Cara, but I wasn’t sure if that was an endearment or her name.

  How could I find out if someone here was the F I was looking for? The jukebox mariachis finished another plaint of lost love.

  “¿Como está Felicia?” the woman beside me asked of the bartender.

  I choked on my beer and lost his reply in my coughing. Felicia! And if she used a nickname, it might be Licia, the word that almost came out when I asked her name. She was both the F name and the L name I was looking for, and she’d been leaving a message for someone to meet her here at the bar.

  I toyed with my drink and waited, sure now that I was in the right place.

  One of the card players left and two more showed up to join the table.

  A few minutes after seven, the door to the storage area in the back of the bar opened and a narrow, dark head poked through.

  She spotted me at the bar and turned to run. I jumped to my feet. “Felicia!”

  I followed her through a narrow passageway clogged with cleaning products and liquor bottl
es, and out a back door that stuttered and slapped behind me.

  There was no trace of her. I rounded the building at a full gallop, nearly colliding with the bartender, who’d come out the front door to watch the chase.

  A car started up behind the tamarisk trees to my right, but by the time I reached the street it was already out of sight. I’d lost her.

  I climbed in the truck, started it, and turned in the direction that Felicia/Luisa had gone. The bartender watched me go, a cell phone held to his ear as I pulled away.

  Not knowing what kind of car I was looking for, all I could do was scan the vehicles around me for Felicia’s profile. I didn’t even know if she was in a car by herself.

  A family in a blue pickup. An elderly black man in an equally old Cadillac. A teenager with rap music booming from a Toyota. For a moment I thought I’d spotted her in a white sedan that pulled into a Circle K on the corner, but when the driver got out, it was a long-haired boy. When dusk turned to night, I called it quits and returned to Bonita’s house.

  I helped myself to a cold Dos Equis on my way through the kitchen, then turned on the bug light on the back porch and perched gingerly on the rump-sprung chaise lounge. The breeze died away.

  At least I knew who F was now. And where to find her.

  If I’d guessed her age right, she’d be too young to be a patron at the bar. But she could sure be family. She had the same gracefully arched eyebrows and full lips as the bartender. His daughter, maybe?

  But I still didn’t know what she was doing at the arroyo. It had to be a good thirteen, fourteen miles from the bar. Was she there to meet someone? To leave a beer-coaster message for someone? And did she have anything at all to do with the accident or the fight on Friday night?

  “What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into, Felicia?” I asked the bottle.

  Chapter Six

  A heavy pounding shook the front door. I put down the beer and jogged back toward the front of the house.

  “You in there! Open up!”

  I held my breath. No one but Treadwell knew I was here.

  “Now!” the man’s voice demanded. “I’m serious. I’ve got a gun!”

  Panicked, I searched around me for a weapon. An empty pizza box wasn’t going to do the job.

  I tiptoed to the front door and sidled along the wall to the window. The hammering continued. I squatted down and, lifting the barest inch of dusty curtain, peeked above the sill.

  Faded jeans and a worn leather belt with a tarnished silver buckle. A white T-shirt with the Tucson Fire Department logo over the left breast. And above that, the scowling face of my brother Martin.

  “Jesus, Martin,” I said, opening the door, “you scared the shit out of me.”

  “Jessie? What are you doing here?”

  “Do you really have a gun? If you do, I’m not letting you in here, no matter what.”

  “I was supposed to pick up Bonita’s stuff. When I saw the lights on…”

  “And you were ready to do what? Shoot the squatter?”

  “Naw, I didn’t really—”

  “Damn good thing.” I turned away, leaving the door open for him. “Probably shoot your own fucking foot off.”

  “I just didn’t expect—”

  “I know.” I sank into the ugly yellow chair.

  Martin hadn’t aged at all. Clear blue eyes, an almost-handlebar mustache, and the barest hint of crow’s feet around his eyes from squinting at the summer sun.

  “So, how’ve you been?” he said, dismissing the two-year absence and all his unreturned messages. He moved a carton of books off a dining room chair and took a seat.

  “Okay. I’m probably leaving tomorrow, so if you need to take anything…” Monday would be the comp day I’d been promised. I had to be back in Phoenix by Tuesday evening for my shift.

  “No, no, that’s okay. It can wait. You just surprised me, that’s all.” He looked everywhere in the room except at me.

  I hadn’t seen Martin since the trial; there was no simple way to ease back into the banter and comfort we’d had before that time.

  “I saw Paula on TV,” I started.

  “Yeah.” He inspected Bonita’s worn carpeting. “Great way to get your name on national television.”

  His ex-wife had taken up with an incarcerated bank robber through a church penpal program, and had helped him bust out of jail. She’d been featured prominently on an America’s Most Wanted program last fall. That made two of Martin’s family members making the news.

  “It was a good picture of her.” It wasn’t a question but it sure could have won in the Dumb Comments category.

  He looked up with the grin I remembered from his elementary school photos. “Not bad for a mug shot.”

  I thought about my own mug shot. Mouth held firm but straight. Eyes alight with the certitude of the righteous.

  We waited while the embarrassment, the questions, the denials, and the pain settled at ankle level, like scuffed dust. After a few moments, Martin tried to start three sentences, but ultimately chose none of them, as seemingly unsure of my status in the family as my mother was. I was going to have to do this on my own.

  “I’m not here about family stuff. It’s for my job.” I explained about HandsOn and the disappearance of the man in the Cadillac. “So I won’t be here long. I won’t bother anybody.”

  He nodded and rubbed his palms together. Washing the taint of me away? Dismissing my story as another lie? My mother’s barbs must have found a place to snag. I didn’t wait to find out.

  “Do you want me to follow you in Bonita’s car? I’ll help you carry stuff…” I grabbed a box from the pile against the wall.

  He jumped up as well. “Don’t bother. I’ll come back next week sometime.”

  He left without saying good-bye. Without touching me. As if I were a stranger he’d passed on the street. And maybe I was.

  I left the house at seven the next morning, in search of a massive breakfast to make up for having drunk my dinner the night before. The pancakes had just arrived when my cell phone went off.

  “Jessie? You still in town?” It was Treadwell. This couldn’t be good.

  “I’m at the Denny’s on Speedway.”

  “Order me some eggs. Over easy.” I glared at the phone like it had just farted.

  He beat the eggs to the table by seconds, huffing into the seat opposite me with a scrape of keys and handcuffs against the laminated tabletop as the waitress plunked the plate down in front of him.

  “Tell me more about this HandsOn program.”

  “I thought you said there wasn’t any crime here.”

  “We’ve still got a car thief to find.” He let the egg bleed across the plate and dunked a triangle of toast into the yolk.

  I pushed my pancakes aside and looked around to signal a waitress for more coffee. No luck. There was a gaggle of them near the kitchen, but none looked my way.

  “It combines three technologies—built-in sensors that give you diagnostics about the car’s performance, the GPS system that gives you location and directions, and a really strong satellite phone with HandsOn advisors available at the other end.”

  He nodded and kept eating. When I didn’t continue, he patted his lips with a paper napkin and said, “What else? Like, what do the sensors do?”

  “They can tell whether you’re in a crash and how bad it is. Whether you need an oil change. Why your ‘check engine’ light is on…” I made a rolling wave with my hand to indicate the thousand other things the system could read.

  “Can it tell where you’ve been?”

  “Not unless you’ve asked the GPS to give you directions someplace. That’d still be in the system.”

  “No, we checked.”

  “Some rental cars have that tracking equipment installed,” I added, “so they can tell if you’ve taken the car across state lines or into Mexico.”

  He shook his head. That wasn’t what he was interested in.

  “It should be able
to tell you how fast the car was going when it was hit and whether he slammed the brakes on. Would that help?”

  Treadwell returned to his eggs. “Not a lot. We can pretty much estimate the combined speed based on the damage to the car’s rear end. And we found some blue paint embedded in the Caddy’s bumper. It’s a color Ford uses, so we already know we’re looking for a blue Ford with significant front-end damage.”

  I stripped the lid off a thimble of half and half, added it to the cold coffee in my cup, and took a sip, thinking back to the three voices I’d heard.

  “There is one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It can tell you if anybody else was in the car with him.”

  Treadwell sat up so fast you’d think the caffeine had reached his system, not mine.

  “Weight distribution. It can tell you if there was somebody else in the car, where they were sitting, and whether they had their seat belt on.”

  He pursed his lips. “Well, at least we’d know whether we were looking for one car thief or two.”

  The money he left on the table didn’t even cover the tip.

  When I got back to Bonita’s house I decided that the sisterly thing to do would be to clean the place up well enough that Bonita could get her cleaning deposit back. And if there wasn’t any deposit to be reclaimed, at least I’d have the benefit of a clean bathtub tonight.

  I poked around under the sink and opened likely boxes until I found sponges, paper towels, and a couple of all-purpose cleaning products.

  I sure hoped this Felicia from the bar didn’t drive a blue Ford. Maybe it belonged to Emily Markson or her ever-so-attentive lawyer-neighbor, Paul Willard. But that didn’t make much sense if Markson’s car had been stolen from the airport parking lot.

  There might be a way to get part of the answer.

  I stopped at Walgreens on my way to the South Tucson City Hall and bought a stiff, canvas arm sling and some dark lavender eye shadow, then rubbed dime-sized eye shadow dots around my throat like a necklace of finger bruises and added another smear under my left eye. Emily Markson’s bruises hadn’t looked much different, but hers would be tougher to get rid of.