“And then what happened?”
“They did me.”
“They raped you.”
“Yes sir.”
“All of them raped you?”
“Yes sir. Two times each.”
“Did you try to resist?”
“You think I’m crazy? Getting raped’s bad but getting killed’s worse.”
“So you consented out of fear for your life.”
“For sure.”
“Go on.”
“So then they took me back to the motel and we drank some beer then they started fucking me again …”
“Raping you …”
“Yes sir. So then Richard comes in, he must’ve been sleeping next door where his room was and heard them and me ’cause I was yelling for them to stop ’cause it was hurting me and he came in and told them to stop, couldn’t they see they were hurting me, so they told him to go fuck himself and get out of there but he didn’t leave.”
“He wasn’t scared of them?”
“Probably but he was trying to help me. He’d probably smoked some weed, he had some righteous weed he was trying to sell.”
“Go on.”
“So they didn’t like the way he was ranking on them, like I was his girlfriend or something, I wasn’t, I was just his friend, so he kept on ranking them and they started beating up on him. So then he pulled a knife out of his boot like one of them Green Berets and tried to come at them with it and that really pissed them off so they took it off him and starting really wailing on his ass, beating him up fearsome. He was really yelling, you could probably hear him clear across the highway. So they got nervous somebody would hear him and call the cops, so they got some of the clothesline out of the washroom where the laundry machines are and tied him up with it, real tight, they didn’t need to tie him that tight, it was practically stopping the blood in his hands. So after they tied him up they threw him in his car and drove up to the mountains where they had been with me.”
“You went with them?”
“They made me. They were afraid I’d call the cops. I would’ve too.”
(She takes a drink of water.)
“Go on please.”
“So then when we got up there it got real gnarly. I mean it was rank. First two of them fucked him in the ass …”
“They anally raped him?”
“From behind, yes sir.”
“Do you remember which two?”
“Let’s see … it wasn’t Lone Wolf … it was the old one, Goose. And not the kid … Roach, he was the other one …”
“Please continue.”
“Richard was screaming like crazy and they told him to shut the fuck up but he kept screaming so they said fuck this. So then they had this fire going, they held him down and they stuck his knife in the fire until it got hot, then they stabbed him with it a whole bunch of times. They’d heat it up every couple of times, maybe so’s it would go in easier, I don’t know. All I know is they kept stabbing him. So by the time they were done stabbing him he was dead, no question.”
“What were you doing during this time, Miss Gomez?”
“Praying. That they wouldn’t kill me. Especially not like they killed him. It was the most horrible thing I ever saw.”
(She takes another drink, composes herself.)
“Continue whenever you can. Do you want to take a break?”
“No sir. I’m all right. It’s just remembering all that is really awful. Especially the next part.”
“I understand … continue please.”
“So then they took the knife …”
“Maybe we should take a break …”
“No I want to finish … so they took his knife and they cut off his dick and they stuck it in his mouth.”
“They emasculated him.”
“They cut off his dick, yes sir. And stuck it in his mouth.”
“Like it was part of a ritual?”
“Yes sir. Like that voodoo stuff you read about.”
“Go on please.”
“So then we all hung around for a while, like they were figuring out what to do next, so then Lone Wolf gets out this gun out of his pocket and he shoots him in the head …”
“The victim who was as far as you could tell already dead.”
“He was definitely dead, for sure. So he shot him a bunch of times in the head and one of the other ones says what’re you doing that for and he tells him so it’ll look like he got shot first and then stabbed. So the cops’ll think it was a gang-style murder and get thrown off the trail.”
“He said that. The one you knew as Lone Wolf.”
“Yes sir.”
“Go on please.”
“So then they threw his body into the bush down the slope and they put me in the car and drove me back to the motel.”
“And they let you go?”
“Yes sir. First they talked about killing me so I wouldn’t talk to the police but I promised them I wouldn’t talk to the police so Lone Wolf said okay we don’t kill her she ain’t talking are you and I said no. ’Cause he knew I’d be too scared to ’cause they’d come back and really would kill me. So they just fucked me instead …”
“All of them?”
“Yes sir.”
“Go on.”
“Then they left on their motorcycles. That’s all. That’s the whole story.”
“IT’S COMPLETE BULLSHIT,” Lone Wolf tells me defiantly. “You want to know why?”
“As a matter of fact, I would,” I say in response. I don’t know the particulars yet, that’ll come out in discovery, drop by excruciating drop, however Robertson wants to play it, which will be as close to the vest as possible. That’s okay, I know how the field is slanted now, I’ll make my adjustments. What I have been formally presented with is that this afternoon the grand jury, basing its decision solely on testimony by Rita Gomez, the motel maid who to my chagrin and profound embarrassment turned up as suddenly as she disappeared, brought open-charge-of-murder counts against my clients, all four of them, which can in theory be anything from first-degree murder, with aggravating circumstances, to involuntary manslaughter; but I know Robertson’s going for the Big Enchilada, he’ll only drop down if that becomes an absolute impossibility. The state wants my clients to die.
“Because if we’d killed the fucker, and she was there,” he replies, “we’d have dusted her, too. Over and out.”
There’s a certain irrefutability to that. I haven’t seen her testimony, of course, but she had to have claimed to have been at the killing, because no one would’ve believed her unless she was there.
“Maybe you took pity on her,” I throw back at him. “Maybe you thought she’d be too scared to talk.”
“You gotta be shitting us, man,” he says, almost laughing out loud at me. “You think we’re gonna take pity on some cunt that could fry us? Jesus H. Christ,” he continues, shaking his head in disgust, “maybe you ain’t the lawyer for us. You sure as hell ain’t showing a lot of brains about this.”
I’m stung. A glib retort fires from my cerebrum to the tip of my tongue. I manage to choke it off, probably the most mature act I’ve accomplished in recent memory. Let them have the skirmishes; I want to win the war.
It’s quiet. We hear each other breathing, we merge into a single entity, inhale, exhale, in unison. It’s after midnight, the jail population has long since been put to bed, but I have access to my little band twenty-four hours a day and I wasn’t content with delaying this until morning (which is what Robertson assumed I’d do when he waited until nine-thirty to inform me of the charges). Last week I probably would have; but I’ve been burned too many times recently, on this case and everything else, to let something this important slide. I’m going to set the agenda now, or at least try to. And one thing’s for certain: I’m not getting off this case.
“Your choice,” I say calmly.
The other three panic; Lone Wolf smiles, more broadly than I’ve heretofore seen. Now I know why he’s called Lone
Wolf.
“Just testing,” he says with an admirable lack of fear under the circumstances. “You ain’t getting off that easy. You’re in here with us, lawyer man.”
The others aren’t sure; I keep them on the hook for a few delicious seconds before I mercifully let them off.
“Fine,” I say to all of them. “I’m with you.”
The relief is genuine. It makes me feel good, partly because of the control factor, and partly because they really do want me; and need me. Their aloneness hits me: I’m their only link to the other side of the cage they’re in.
“Under two conditions,” I continue.
“Whatever,” Lone Wolf says, a bit too hastily. He had his moment; now the precariousness of their situation is too important to play with any longer. I’m glad he’s feeling desperate, but a part of me wishes he wouldn’t show it. I like the absolute bravado in his nature.
“Make sure you hear this,” I tell them. “All of you. Your lives are going to depend on it.”
They’re waiting.
“That under no circumstances do you lie to me,” I say, holding up a pinkie. “None.”
“We haven’t,” he answers.
“The consent or lack of it with the state’s witness is questionable, my friend,” I reply, “but we’re past that now. And two,” I say, taking a breath, an honest one, because this is all of it, and I want them to understand that, “is that you’re innocent. Maybe I could’ve finessed it before; I can’t now.”
“We are,” Lone Wolf says without flinching.
I look at each of them in turn. Either they’re the greatest ensemble of actors since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, or they’re telling the truth.
“THEY WAS A CAUTION, them boys.” Her laugh, completely spontaneous and of equal enjoyment to sender and receiver, is deep and rolling, like a hollow barrel tumbling down a long tunnel incline, echoing and echoing.
“So you do remember them?”
“You don’t forget four mugs like those,” she tells me. “You know me,” she continues (I do, as a matter of fact, but she’d say the same thing to a perfect stranger), “I don’t never forget a face. I could tell you exactly to the quarter inch how long Elvis’s sideburns were and it’s been a good twenty years since the last time that boy set foot in here, God rest his soul. Liked his hamsteak practically burnt and mashed a bowlful of salsa in his grits. Righteous guitar player, too. You been down to Graceland yet?”
I don’t reply; it’s not expected. I’m sitting at the counter of the only coffee shop in Madrid, a captive audience. It’s white Formica, highly polished, an old soda-fountain counter, complemented by tall bolted-down stools covered in fading but unripped and untaped red Naugahyde.
It’s blisteringly hot outside. The old window air-conditioner, turned up to high cool, is wheezing and coughing for all it’s worth, which isn’t much but better than nothing.
Maggie’s across the counter from me, leaning on her elbows, a smoldering Lucky stuck in the corner of her mouth like Ida Lupino in High Sierra. She’s wearing a Grateful Dead tank-top, Levi cutoffs, and high-heeled bedroom mules with pink fluffy toes. Her own toes are painted with metallic green polish. She admits to seventy, and her outrageously dyed carrot-red hair has a royal-blue punk streak right down the center. An on-the-spot gift from a recent customer.
She refills both our cups. I’m her only customer at the moment.
I left Santa Fe early this morning, following the bikers’ trail. New Mexico 14’s a pretty road, old and picturesque, the now-overdone stuff of postcards and slick magazine ads. It winds past the state penitentiary, down through Madrid, past Golden, whose authentic trading post was commonly acknowledged to have the finest selection of turquoise jewelry in the country, until the owner died a few years back and his heirs didn’t keep it going, at length bisecting Interstate 40 east of Albuquerque. Maggie’s cafe is one of the ‘must’ stops for locals; not for the food, which is standard diner fare and half of that defrosted, but for Maggie and her wild stream-of-consciousness off-the-wall conversation and philosophizing.
“Didn’t they intimidate you?” I ask. “Just a smidgen?”
“What for?” she says in genuine puzzlement.
“Because they scare the shit out of most civilians, that’s what for,” I answer. “That’s their stock in trade, among other things.”
“You’re joshing me,” she says. “Hell those boys were pure pussycats. Rode some boss motorcycles, too. Ain’t nothing like a Harley to get your juices flowing. My third ex-husband rode a Harley. Rode it ’till the day he rode it right off a cliff out there by Jemez Pueblo. Wasn’t hardly enough left of that machine to fill a baby’s shoebox. He was a handsome devil, that one. Wasn’t the same after that crackup, though,” she adds. “Ever’thing got all bent up, even his dingle. I couldn’t look at the poor thing without breaking out in sheer hysterics. Reckon that’s why he run off with some half-Navajo woman. She must’ve featured the angle of his dangle. He sure enough was a handsome man ’till then, though.” She pats her hair in place, glancing at herself in the back-bar mirror. She’s been known to hit on the occasional retired RV tourist who’s fallen in more or less by mistake, with or without his wife standing by.
Some pussycats, I think. Mountain lions maybe. I can’t imagine anyone conjuring them as cuddly little fur things.
“And polite, too,” she adds. “Excellent manners. Reflects well on their mothers.”
“They show you their tattoos?”
“A choice selection of them. Those you can show in mixed company,” she says primly. “And I showed them one or two of mine back!” she roars, laughing that wild laugh again. “They was mighty impressed, let me tell you. Said mine was better, right to my face they did. It’s true, too. Some of theirs were home-made jobs, what you call jailhouse tattoos. All of mine are professionally done,” she adds proudly. “Lyle Tuttle did my heart and my butterfly when he came through here. I wouldn’t serve him ’till he promised to do me. You see him written up in that Rolling Stone anniversary issue by any chance? That boy’s the Rembrandt of tattoo artists, doctor.”
“I must’ve missed it,” I tell her, leafing through my notes. She refills my cup, adds a precise amount of half-and-half, stirs it in for me. I look up. “It was Saturday morning when they were here. You’re sure?”
“Damn straight I’m sure,” she replies with indignation. “I said so didn’t I? Well didn’t I?”
“Of course,” I reply quickly. Maggie’s not someone I want to pick a fight with. For one thing, it could keep me here a couple hours extra, and I’ve got places to go and people to see.
“Do I look like I have Alzheimer’s disease to you?” she continues. “Do I? My mind is so sharp,” she goes on, not waiting for an answer, “that a professor from MIT, that’s the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to you, doctor, told me he wanted me to come back to Boston, Massachusetts, to study me. My brain. He said I had the most accurate brain of any mature person he had ever encountered. Yes, it was Saturday morning. Bright and early.”
“Do you recall how early? When they showed up?”
“They was setting on the front stoop when I opened up.” Maggie lives in a little apartment in the back. She showed it to me once. It’s decorated in mostly Hawaiian tourist style.
“Which was when?”
“Seven-thirty. Regular as clockwork. Not seven-twenty-five,” she says forcefully. “Not seven-thirty-five. Seven-thirty. A.M. amen.”
I jot down the information in my notebook. The bikers had told me the same story: after leaving Santa Fe before sunup, they’d ridden south, stopped for gasoline and a couple six-packs at an all-night mini-mart north of Cerrillos, and got to Madrid about seven, where they’d camped out on Maggie’s porch until she opened. The station attendant, a teenage boy with a severe case of neck boils, had remembered them vividly. Maggie might think them pussycats but they’d definitely scared him, four apparitions riding out of the night on low-slung hogs: the stuff o
f American nightmares. They drank one of the six-packs while they stood there filling their bikes, no more than fifteen or twenty seconds to the can. It was right before six when they got there; the boy remembered it precisely because while they were doing their business he’d turned on the TV to catch the first news and it ran a color-bar for about a minute before the six o’clock program came on. I’d showed him a time-coded credit card receipt Goose had signed. That’s the one, the boy had said affirmatively. I’d also shown him pictures, Polaroids I’d taken the day before. It was them, no doubt about it. You don’t forget four strangers like that, not hardly.
“What’d they eat?” I ask Maggie. I don’t really care, I just want to test that so-called brain of hers. I drain my coffee; it’s cold, acidy-tasting under the sweet cream. My back is getting cold from the air-conditioner blowing on my wet shirt.
“Bacon and eggs over medium, grits, wheat toast. Ham and easy over, hashed browns, biscuits. Bacon and scrambled hard, hashed browns, white toast. French toast, bacon. Four milks, three coffees. The kid didn’t drink coffee. And four large O.J.’s,” she concludes, trumping me.
I put a dollar on the counter, wave her off from making change, close my notebook.
“You bailing out on me, doctor?”
“Places to go and people to see,” I reply.
“Don’t take your time coming back. And bring your little girl with you next time. She like them castanets I gave her?”
“She loves them,” I tell her. “Practically sleeps with them.” I’d stopped in about a year ago with Claudia, and Maggie had insisted on giving us the grand tour. Claudia’s eye had caught an old pair of Spanish castanets sitting on Maggie’s bureau, a gift from an old admirer, and Maggie had made her a gift of them there and then. I didn’t think Maggie needed to know Claudia had lost interest by the afternoon and shortly after had misplaced them, never to be seen again.
“Well tell her hello for me,” Maggie says, beaming. “Tell her there’s another present waiting for her with her name on it.”
“I will,” I say. “And thanks.”
I walk to the door. I can feel a blast of heat on the other side.
Against the Wind Page 9
