by Noreen Ayres
“How’s the new one? Linda.”
“Good, good. She did good.”
“I need a quarter,” Jolene said. “You have a quarter?”
Monty ignored her, put his hand on my elbow and walked me down the hallway. I wondered if Raymond was seeing all this, but of course he was. He’s a cop.
“C’mere,” he said, whisking me into the office. Big Franny—Coral—was still there, putting her brush in her sizable purse. She smiled sweetly and said good evening to Monty, and he said for her to collect from Howard out of the drawer; he’d see her tomorrow.
When he shut the door, he locked it.
I looked at him curiously, and then I smelled the whiskey. He didn’t seem mad. He didn’t seem as though he was about to accuse me of anything. I said, “What?” meaning what do you want, or what did I do, or why’d you lock the door; and then it became very apparent. He stepped right over to me, slid his palms onto my shoulders underneath my black jacket and dropped it right off. Before I knew it, he was running both hands down my sides. When he bent his head, I saw the dull-silver snake earring swing toward his jaw and the office light thread his wavy hair with silver strands.
“Monty,” I said, trying to figure out how to handle this. But maybe he thought it was a cry of relief, gratitude that he was finally making his big move, because before I could react, he hooked three fingers in my knit top and pulled, and slipped it all the way off one shoulder, exposing my breast. He ran a rough thumb over it, my own taut flesh springing back like an unwilling kid put down for a nap.
I jerked away just as the door handle rattled and someone knocked, and I heard Ray Vega’s voice say, “Hey, open up!” and then all at once hard banging. I got my breath and pulled up my blouse.
When he unlocked the door, Raymond stood glaring, his eyes red from Mexicali ale. Ray the taller, Monty the one who said, “Just who the fuck are you?”
Ray gave Monty a shove full-handed on his chest, and Monty slung a punch to the side of Ray’s jaw. By the time I called him off, my Mexican rogue knew he’d blown it big. On the way out, with Ray hustling me along like any good boyfriend would, or me hustling him, it was hard to tell, Lacy J. was on the jukebox singing “Everybody Makes Mistakes.”
Everyone does. From the passenger seat, Ray apologized all the way home.
29
“You know this ain’t easy.”
“What, Monty? What isn’t easy?”
“Maybe I need to apologize.”
Giving that some thought a moment, I said, blandly, “Am I supposed to work tonight, or do you have enough people?” He was calling me at home, ten o’clock, and I’d only just booted Ray Vega out, who’d slept on the couch in the living room and left with his hair standing on end and his mouth, according to him, tasting like shit.
“Nah, I don’t want you to work tonight. You need the money?”
“What do you think?”
“I’ll pay you anyway. That new one, Linda, she’ll take over. And Coral. There’s not gonna be that much goin’ on tonight anyway. Never is, Tuesdays.”
Tuesday. It was hard to imagine it was only Sunday I’d been at the rally and seen the murder, Monday I’d been back out to the Avalos farm and then at Monty’s farm, and last night at the Python. Some days are longer than weeks.
“I want to make it up to you, what I did last night,” he said. “That was most ungentlemanly.”
“A Viking would be ashamed,” I said, leaving the interpretation of how mad I was to him.
“I hurt that guy?”
“He’ll be all right.”
“What happened to ol’ Father Time? You dump him for this guy?”
“That’s none of your business. But since you asked, he’s just a friend.”
“He know that? He’s a little touchy for just a friend, won’t let you out of his sight. Listen,” he said, his voice soft, hesitant.
“Where you calling from?” I asked.
“The club. It’s cold and dark in here. I don’t even have the light turned on. With my window boarded up, the only light’s from the john.”
“I feel real sorry for you.”
“I know it’s my own damn fault. I just can’t drink like I used to.”
“What broke the window?” I asked, switching the subject.
“I busted it myself tryin’ to get it unstuck. Listen here,” he said, “I’d like to take you to hear some good music this afternoon. No funny business. Just to make up.”
“Who plays music in the afternoon?”
“There’s this place up in Carbon Canyon. You know where that is? Take the Fifty-Seven—”
My skin temperature went up ten degrees.
“Let me think about it.”
“I’m countin’ to five. One, two, three, four—last chance. ‘Do I have a fun time with Monty, or do I sit home alone and watch reruns of Perry Masonite?’ Five.”
“Another time, Monty. I’ve—”
“Yeah, well, me too,” he said, his voice going kind of tired on me.
“Maybe I could go for an hour or so.”
“No problem there. I got Paulie out at the farm diggin’ me a new manure pit. I have to go check, make sure he don’t scrape me a hole to Timbuktu. I did that kind of work two summers in school, runnin’ equipment, don’t want to do it no more. Your kidneys bounce around like golf balls in a mason jar. Did I tell you Paulie popped Switchie last night?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“After you-all left, in the parkin’ lot. Switchie called him a sheepfucker and Paulie belted him one. You don’t call a big ox like Paulie them kinda names.”
I could picture Switchie pulling a knife, going after Paulie, but I thought that if that happened Paulie couldn’t very well be digging a manure pit.
Monty said, “I’m goin’ out around three, three-thirty. Now, you comin’ or not? I gotta plan my day.”
“If you see me there, you see me there,” I said, and left it at that.
I called Joe and we agreed to meet for a sandwich. He was telling me about a scene he’d been on late the night before that was supposed to be an accidental explosion in a garage, but Joe knew it wasn’t because the man’s body was torn in half and bits of dynamite casing still remained where the man had laid the stick in the middle of his belly.
“Does all this ever get to you, Joe?”
“Of course it does.” He took a bite from a runny chicken salad sandwich. The milk gathered at the corners of his mouth till he could get the napkin there. He was wearing a tie with multicolored streaks on the diagonal, and glanced down to see if it was still unsullied.
“You ever want to just go away?”
“Like Italy?”
“Hah. Speaking of, guess what? Monty wants me to go with him to hear some music this afternoon. A place in Carbon Canyon, the canyon we found Not-Miranda in.”
Joe put his sandwich down, sat back in his chair, and looked hard at me, the crinkles at his eyes tightening. “Let’s get you a wire.”
“The only thing we’ll probably get is a bunch of bikers scratching bugs off their bellies.”
“Go over and see Dave Waterman. He’ll have Sonja wire you up. Do that.”
I gave a nod, but it was one that said I heard you, not one that meant I would. I took a red grape that had been polishing itself in the lettuce and put it in my mouth.
Back at my condo, I thought about calling Nathan to tell him that Miranda’s husband turned in dental and med charts for his wife, this new information supposed to assure us that the canyon victim could not be Miranda. But the phone rang first, and it was Les Fedders with a proposition I couldn’t refuse.
“I’m going down to interview the Pierson household,” he said. “You want to come?”
My watch said one-thirty. Half hour down, hour interview, half hour back. Then forty minutes north to Carbon Canyon. I could make it. I’d be later than Monty would like, but I could make it.
San Clemente’s a gift from God whether you’re a sk
inhead biker or a family Nixon. A small community along a beautiful stretch of coast, the city’s downtown section is quaint and sleepy. Good views in the foothills and along the coast, like good views everywhere, go to the well-to-do, and on the trailing edges, cute cottages merge with slightly seedy quickstop businesses.
Climbing out of the car with Les Fedders, I watched a guy in black leathers and no hair pull on a glove and throw a leg over his Harley as he was about to leave the front of a motel. Next to the motel was Rollie Pierson’s house. It was small, fog-gray, and sat streetside in the shadow of a weedy bluff. The blue-framed window in front was open. Through it, while Les knocked on the door, I could hear the urgent tones of a radio minister.
The door opened to a woman with a harvest of yellow-gray hair and a purple feather duster in her hand. She said, “Yes?” in a wary voice.
“Orange County investigators, ma’am,” Les said. “Are you Shirley Atwater? I believe I spoke with you on the phone. Les Fedders?” I silently gave him credit for an empathy I did not know he had, credit for not saying homicide when he said investigators. The word is too much for some people. “This is Miss Brandon from forensic services. Could we come in a moment?” He was positively gracious.
Behind us cars whisked down Pacific Coast Highway. The Nazi biker dude horsed his hog around, rolling forward and pausing as if to say, World, have a look at this. Against his shaved skull were the bold strokes of an inked swastika. He fired up, shifted, and roared off after two cars, ripping through a light just turned red, the noise belching under the bluff’s protection.
Shirley Atwater led us through the living room into the dining area, freshly dusted, I presumed, and pulled out a straight-backed wooden chair for me. She offered lemonade. I declined, as did Les. She went into the living room and turned the radio volume up, then down, then quickly off, bustling back to the kitchen to pour herself lemonade. Sitting at the end of the brown Formica dining table, she was framed by the window and backlit by yellow globes of fruit dangling off a tree in the backyard so bright in the afternoon sun they looked like party lights.
Les asked, “Have you heard from your sister, Miz Atwater?”
“I don’t know where she is. I sure don’t.” She shifted her frightened eyes to me. “We never got along too good till last year we started getting closer. She started AA then. I could tolerate her after that. Every family has one like that, don’t they?”
“I believe that’s so,” I said.
Les said, “What about Mr. Pierson’s family? Is there anyone else?”
“Rollie was an only child. His parents passed a long time ago. I didn’t like him much when he was drinking so bad, but he let me move in here with them last year when I lost my job. You can’t take that away from him. And he did have Arleta to put up with.”
“Would you know if he was acquainted with a man named Monty Blackman?” I asked.
Shirley looked at me then as though she had just had something confirmed that had long bothered her but had gone unarticulated. After a while, she said, “Rollie was forever running out to his place.”
“What was he doing that for?” Les said.
“I never paid that much attention. But I do know he got Rollie all excited about motorcycles. Rollie wanted to take Arleta down to this motorcycle shop in Oceanside, buy himself a motorcycle. Harley’s House of Harleys, that’s what it is. Had to have Arleta along. I said on the quiet, ‘Arleta, you let that man buy that thing and you’ll be forever throwin’ money after it.’ I know because my first husband had a boat. Just shovel your money in a hole in the water. That’s the way it is with men’s hobbies.”
“Did Monty Blackman ever come here?” Les asked.
“No. He’d phone though. Kinda scratchy voice.”
“When was the last time you think that was?”
“I don’t rightly know, but it’s been all along. The phone rings a lot—rang a lot—and then he’d be gone, off to here, off to there. Arleta was getting plenty tired of it. She told me she was going to have to be going along to check up on him. She teased him, said he must have one of those women stashed away or he wouldn’t be going out wherever all the time. They were happier, the both of them stopped drinking.”
All the while, Les was jotting in his notebook the size of a pack of playing cards.
Shirley stroked the feather duster that lay in her lap. I couldn’t see her whole hand on the duster, but I could see the wrist going and now I saw the knuckles rise to a squeezing motion.
I said, “You really are worried, aren’t you, Mrs. Atwater?”
Her whole being slumped, and she let out a sigh and said, “Oh my, yes. I am.”
“How long has your sister been gone?” I asked.
Before she glanced away I had already seen the tears fill in her eyes. She focused on one of those old-fashioned clocks that looked melted at the sides. “I never did set the clock to daylight saving. Isn’t that terrible?”
Les and I were quiet.
Soon Shirley said, “Rollie took a lot of lemons out there to him. Sometimes he’d bring back avocados—trade-zies, you could say. We couldn’t eat ’em fast enough. Arleta’d put them in salads and make Mexican, but they’d get moldy so fast. We got some growing in the windowsill,” she said, nodding toward the kitchen.
“How long has your sister been gone?”
“I was away. I went with an old friend. When I came back, lemons were just all over the yard. I had to pick them up. Arleta would eat them by the dozen,” she said, smiling at the memory. “When she gave up drinking, she just seemed to crave that fruit. She’d suck on one all day long like a baby on a pacifier.” Shirley bowed her head and said, “Over a week. That’d put it about right.” Then she raised her head and looked at me with a plea in her eyes.
I reached over and put my hand on top of the one that held the feather duster. She raised the other hand, held the length of her forefinger stiffly under her nose, with her lips quivering, her eyes closed, her breath coming fast.
While we sat there, I was thinking of the decalcified teeth in the recovered jawbone Meyer Singer kept by him while he worked. Remembering, as if from a dream, one of my investigation handbooks, or one of my forensics textbooks, some detail there, telling me what lemons can do to bone and teeth from protracted contact. Or was it from Dr. Clyde Snow? His disappeareds, witnessing from the grave? Lemons.
I was still patting Mrs. Atwater’s hand when I heard the radio preacher’s voice again and realized Les had gone to the living room. The start of a fast-tempo hymn pulled through the archway. “Beulah Land,” it was. “Beulah Land.”
30
The afternoon light was a polished yellow, and as I drove onto the road leading to Carbon Canyon, the same road I took two weeks before to the crime scene that started it all, I saw a hang glider come floating over a distant bluff, a great blue-and-red butterfly coasting in the sunlight. No doubt he thought he was perfectly alone, yet above him circled a hawk, trolling the currents of air, eye out for a morsel of luck.
A few miles up the winding road I passed the scene where Miranda Robertson’s Cadillac had scorched a cliffside, the gray hull now gone and the hint of what had lain there blending with the shadows and soil colors. And after a few miles more, I pulled into the dirt lot of Los Lobos, found a pocket in a row of parked cars, and shut off the engine. At the other end of the lot were motorcycles, parked nose-out.
I walked toward the front but stopped first at some tables under the trees near the motorcycles. A hippie-looking man was selling skull rings, snake earrings, and death-rider belt buckles laid out on black velvet.
“See anything you like, I’ll give you a deal,” he said. He’d perched his feather-bedecked hat on top of a short, unpainted totem pole that had long ago turned gray. It had a deep crack running through it as if hit by baby lightning.
“Thanks. Probably not today.”
“Today’s as good as any other day.”
“Rightly so,” I said, “but not today.�
�
I left and walked into a fenced outdoor area with a stage at one end and benches in the middle. The band was playing a fast rockabilly version of the old Beatles’ “Give Me Love,” while children ran around the legs of their mothers settled on the benches, and raced over the dusty hardpack littered with cigarette butts like marks on a dull chalkboard. The men looked silent and still, too hip to move their bodies to the music.
Across the lot, Monty Blackman sat on a bench under a wood canopy thatched with purple morning-glory vine, its bugles turned to the sun. On the fence by his left shoulder was a white metal sign that read DO NOT THROW TRASH IN THE CREEK. Jolene sat on the bench next to him.
A man stood off to one side of her, talking to them both. He was a carrot-redhead, wore mirrored sunglasses, and in one hand held a beer and in the other a briefcase. Tattooed on his arm were the letters worn by every biker out to prove he’s bad: FTW, for Fuck the World. Jolene was smiling prettily at him, and I thought, That bim will smile for anything.
I made an abrupt turn and went inside the bar, wanting to buy my own before someone else offered. Inside, more biker types were playing pool, eating burgers, watching the big TV with no sound. On the jukebox Confederate Railroad was lauding the merits of women just a little on the trashy side. Standing sideways to the bar, I ordered a beer from an old man in a plain shirt who looked very carefully at the cash register keys before he’d strike. I’ve been in biker bars before, even made two arrests in two different hangouts in one night when I was on patrol in Oakland, and mostly—in the afternoons, at least—the places are quiet, almost otherworldly in their control. These patrons were no different: softspoken and at ease in their “colors,” strutting the pins, patches, and awarded wings that told which remarkable sexual accomplishments they’d performed before witnesses or which gang they belonged to. As I looked around, I felt a slight edginess, but not much more than if I’d been in a yuppie club anywhere up and down the coast on a Saturday night.
When I took my beer outside, Jolene came over, her bare midriff chalky under the tied-up ends of her blouse. Her lips were wet and puffy as if hotly kissed, her big blue eyes shone, and in her pixie haircut, she looked like a baby trying out big-girl clothes and big-girl boys. Coming close, she said, “Monty’s doing some kind of business with that freak with the briefcase. What’s going on inside?” She tossed her head back toward the redhead now talking to someone else, rolled her eyes, then said, “He lisps.”
