by Don Travis
I set my cup down so hard the coffee dregs sloshed onto the table. Ignoring the mess, I mentally recoiled from my thought processes. Paul fit the description of the man who rented the post-office boxes as readily as Emilio did.
With dragging footsteps, I went to my bedroom and shuffled through snapshots of Paul I’d taken recently. Selecting one, I glanced at it fondly. Dressed in black jeans and a red form-fitting pullover shirt, he stood in front of the fireplace in the den with a broad smile on his face. His black hair was slightly long and unruly, like a kid’s. I reluctantly slipped the photo into my pocket along with the one of Emilio and Estelle.
As Paul had remarked, my pool therapy had been hit-or-miss lately, so after cleaning up, I took a quick trip downtown, hoping to clear the calendar before heading for the North Valley Country Club. Hazel came in early, confounding my effort to slip in and out of the office, but I brushed aside her attempts to order my day and hurried out, promising to call later.
I laughed all the way down the stairs. Why did I keep her around if I spent so much time avoiding her? Good question, easily answered. Because I loved the old gal, that’s why. When Mom was alive, she’d been like a spinster aunt. A nosy, interfering old biddy whose wisdom and experience and unquestioned devotion was well worth the effort.
PAUL WAS in the shallow end of the pool, giving a swimming lesson to a matron of a certain age who was almost certainly the wife of one of the fuddy-duddies in waiting. He gave me a sly wink while supporting the lady’s bare abdomen as he instructed her in the art of aquatic kicking. She went under when he took away his hands. She surfaced, laughing and sputtering and clinging to Paul’s sleek form. She probably took the dive in order to feel him up.
Dismayed by my reaction, I hit the water and went about my regimen with uncharacteristic fervor. I was exhausted by the end of my prescribed laps. I noticed the two of them watching as I crawled out of the water and collapsed onto a lounge chair. I dried my hair with a towel and wiped the water from my face; sun and evaporation took care of the rest.
I closed my eyes and was drifting off when a soft baritone startled me.
“Hello, Mr. V.”
I snapped to a sitting position.
“Whoa,” Paul said. “Didn’t mean to shake you up.”
Mr. V—that was what Emilio called me. Did it mean anything? Paul and I had agreed he would address me more formally in a public setting, and that sounded both respectful and familiar.
Or had he picked it up from Emilio?
“Hi, Paul. Guess I was dozing.”
“Not surprising. You really went at it hard this morning. In the pool, I mean. Well, the other too.”
“Yeah, I got it done, but I had a little trouble with it.”
“Amazed you had the energy to take it on.” He dropped his voice. “I know I wouldn’t have.”
“I’ve got to stop letting this case take up so much time. It’s a troublesome son of a bitch.” I mentally kicked myself for deliberately baiting the individual who was rapidly becoming the most significant person in my benighted life.
But he ignored—or missed—my invitation to ask about the case and flashed another smile. “You’ll crack it. I’ve got confidence in you.”
“Thanks.”
Were the words sincere, or was I being flummoxed by yet another pretty face? I generally had confidence in my judgment of others, but it looked as if I’d been wrong about Emilio—not to mention Del. That had been a big miscalculation. Now I questioned my reading of Paul. A worm of self-loathing wiggled in my belly.
“Can I get you anything?”
When I declined he returned to his duties as lifeguard.
After showering off the chlorine and dressing, I reclaimed my car and headed straight for UNM.
I wasn’t so lucky this time. Professor Sturgis was teaching a class. Nonetheless I waited, brooding over my dark thoughts so much that when he finally appeared, I belligerently demanded an audience.
As we settled down in his office, his puzzled look let me know he’d caught my mood.
“Steve, I’m disappointed you did not honor my request to hold this investigation confidential.”
“Sorry, but I thought I’d explained that already.”
“You did, but I’ve uncovered some information recently that disturbs me, and I think you’re more deeply involved than you let on.”
Astonishment blanked his features. “How is that?”
“I think you’re part of this blackmail attempt.”
“What?” Sturgis didn’t appear angry, merely surprised.
“I need those photos and the negatives. The time for screwing around is over.”
“I wish I could help, but I don’t have them.”
“Does your brother?”
“If he does, he certainly didn’t get them from me. I’ve told you before, BJ, I merely saw the pictures. I have never possessed them.”
“I heard what you said. But if this thing blows open, it could cost you your reputation. Your job, even.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m tenured, and short of criminal activity, nobody’s going to fire me. And I assure you I have indulged in no criminal activity.” I opened my mouth, but he forestalled me with a wave of his hand. “As far as my sexual orientation, if that’s what you’re alluding to, it’s an open secret within the department.”
“But how would the department view sleeping with one of your students? Would that be enough to jeopardize your tenure?”
My heart sank as his eyelids flickered and his lips tightened. “I have done nothing improper, certainly nothing to merit the interest of my department head.”
“Even if you had a relationship involving a student under your authority? It would raise a number of ethical, if not legal questions. Pressuring a student for sexual favors in exchange for grades, for example.”
“Absolute rubbish. I can justify every grade awarded to any of my students.”
“How about a scholarship?”
Irritation gave way to anger. “How dare you make such insinuations? I am a professional, Mr. Vinson, and I do not take advantage of my students for personal reasons. Now please leave. And phone my secretary if you want to see me again.”
I crawled into the Impala feeling as if I were soiling the seat covers and headed downtown, parking in my own spot at the lot on Copper. Then I walked to APD to complete the second part of my odious mission.
To stroll downtown Albuquerque was to yo-yo through time. A block due east of me sat the Hyatt Regency and the Plaza Tower, representing the new. My office building, a sandstone structure recently painted an atrocious white, represented Albuquerque’s past. At Fifth and Central Avenue NW, the famous KiMo Theatre with its incredibly intricate Indian Art Deco curlicues and flourishes provided a similar contrast to the new multi-screen movie complex four blocks away.
The Albuquerque police headquarters building was a freestanding edifice across Marquette Avenue from City Hall. I’d not yet decided whether it was a matter of security or the joy of inconveniencing the public that motivated law enforcement authorities to require citizens to walk around to the north-facing entrance on Roma.
The APD entryway was small with a glass-enclosed alcove to the left for filing and receiving records. A row of bolted-down plastic chairs and an awkwardly placed table for filling out forms were probably uncomfortable by design. The double doors at the back of the foyer gave access to the building proper, but a security station blocked the way. After studying my ID and bullshitting a minute, the attending officer verified Gene was in the building and sent me on my way. Threading the corridors to his office was like old home week. That picked up my morale a bit, but handing him the two photos sent it plunging again.
“You got me to thinking, partner. Maybe you ought to show these photographs to the mail clerk and see if she can identify either man. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong.”
Gene gave me a look—one that said “Who do you think you’re fooling?” and “I understand you
r pain” all at the same time. He tapped the snapshot of Paul smiling into the camera. “You sure about this?”
“Yeah.” My voice held a sigh. “I’m confident it wasn’t him, but we might as well remove all doubt.”
“Makes sense. I’ll try to get by the PO before the end of the day. I’ll call when I know something.”
“Thanks, I’ll owe you one.”
“More,” he shot back. “One more.”
HAZEL MIGHT be overbearing at times, but she knew me well enough to get out of my way when I entered the office. She allowed me half an hour to glance through the messages on my desk and return a couple of calls before knocking on my door. I knew it was time to clean up my attitude when she actually waited to be invited inside.
In truth Hazel was good for me. Before long she had me immersed in the details of a couple of other investigations and the daily routine of the office. I climbed back on my roller coaster when I tried Paul’s cell number without success.
Shortly after lunch Gloria McInnes called to tell me she’d compared the prints from Luther Hickey’s APD card to those on the extortion envelopes. They did not match, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything; there had been two men in the red truck involved in the Molotov attack against my house.
It was time to check out this ex-con maintenance supervisor for myself. Before leaving the office, I studied his sheet and examined the two photos Charlie had turned up. Then I hooked a small tape recorder to my belt and headed for the car.
The Royal Crest was a white five-story concrete building designed before architects began draping everything with glass. It had a well-settled, snobbish, self-satisfied look about it, as befitted one of Albuquerque’s classier apartment addresses.
I eased the Impala into a visitor’s spot and walked around to the underground parking garage entrance. It wouldn’t take much to get past the steel mesh barrier that slowly rose and fell to accommodate tenants’ vehicles as they came and went. Then I approached the front entrance across a ribbon of pebbled concrete snaking in gentle curves between twin expanses of close-cropped green grass. No flowers. I rang the buzzer marked Manager at the front entrance and negotiated my entry by means of a talking black box.
Eventually the door buzzed, allowing me access to a large entryway with a bank of mailboxes to my right. This opened onto an even larger reception area furnished with heavy but comfortable-looking divans and chairs upholstered in faux white damask with lots of pink and green blossoms embroidered into the fabric. Every flat expanse of shelf and table in the room held a vase of flowers. I suspected many were silk. There were also plenty of mirrors in gilt frames scattered around the walls.
The assistant manager met me in the reception area, checked my credentials, and then, without expressing the slightest degree of curiosity, directed me to the basement where the maintenance supervisor’s office—make that cubbyhole—was located. Luther Hickey was not in said cubbyhole, but I spotted him coming down the hall with a wrench in his hand. He slowed as he approached.
“Help you?” Tapping the business end of the wrench in the palm of his right hand took some of the cordiality out of his words.
Hickey stood an inch or two over my six feet, but he was twice as wide as I was. His mug shot had reflected a fit man. A drilling rig probably kept the fat off him, but he’d gone flabby during or after his stay in Santa Fe. That and his unkempt beard and hair, both prematurely gray, revealed a man who groveled in his own misery. I suspected one of his few pleasures in life was feeling sorry for himself.
I flipped on the recorder before he reached me. “Luther Hickey?”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“Mr. Hickey, my name is B. J. Vinson. I’m a confidential investigator. I need to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?” The tone indicated I wasn’t going to get far with him.
“About one of your tenants.”
“Ain’t allowed to talk about none of the tenants. Can’t even tell nobody if one of their dogs takes a shit on the carpet. Just have to clean it up without saying a word.”
“This is more serious than crapping on the rug. And if you won’t talk to me, I’ll phone your probation officer and have him ask the questions.”
“Fuck the probation officer. You reach for a phone and you’ll be sorry.”
“I believe that was a threat.”
“Naw. Just saying I won’t give you the time of day, you do that.”
“That’s not the way I heard it, especially with that wrench in your hand.”
He looked down at the heavy tool in his left hand. “Yeah, and I know how to use it too.”
“That was a threat, Hickey. Enough to send you back to Santa Fe.”
“I was just saying I been working on some equipment with this wrench and know how to use it. You think I meant something else, it’s your word against mine.”
“No contest. All I have to do is press a complaint, and you’re gone.”
He pursed his lips like he was about to whistle and gave me a long stare. When I didn’t break, his stance eased. “Okay, ask, and I’ll decide how much to talk.”
“You know Mr. Del Dahlman?”
“The fruit in 5100? Yeah, I know him. We’re big buddies.”
“How’s that?”
“He stops up his crapper and he calls me. Every time. Always calls me.”
“That happen often?”
“More’n it oughta. If you ask me, he tosses his used rubbers in the stool.”
“I take it you don’t think much of Mr. Dahlman.”
“Probably think about him the way he thinks about me.”
“How often are you in his apartment?”
“Like I say, ever time he stops up his stool.”
“Is he always present when you go inside?”
“Hey, wait a minute. I ain’t no thief. I didn’t take nothing outa his place.”
“No one accused you of it, Mr. Hickey. I’m merely trying to understand how this works.”
“Yeah, sometimes he’s already gone when I respond to his call. But I don’t touch nothing but what I’m supposed to.”
“Do you leave a note telling him what you’ve done if he isn’t there?”
“Nope. Just do my job and leave. If it didn’t get done right, he calls again. But I always do it right the first time.”
“Have you ever given anybody else access to his apartment?”
“Huh?”
“Have you ever let someone into his place?”
“Naw. Get fired for that.”
“How about admitting someone to the lobby to leave a message for him?”
“That’s the front office’s job, not mine.”
“That didn’t answer the question.”
His eyes narrowed. “No. I never let nobody in that didn’t belong here.”
“Then how did that envelope get stuffed into his mailbox?”
“What envelope? I don’t know nothing about no envelope. Hey man, I stick to my part of the building. The mechanical room’s down here. I don’t go up to the lobby unless the manager calls me up for something. This is bullshit, and I’m through answering your fucking questions.”
I considered taking up his challenge by calling the probation officer but decided that would accomplish little. Instead I’d have Charlie call in one of his retired buddies to do some surveillance on the man.
“All right, Mr. Hickey. You write down my name, address, and telephone number so you can contact me in case you remember something, and I’ll go away and leave you alone.”
“There ain’t nothing to remember. What’s this about anyway?”
“It’s about extortion. A crime that can get a man a lot of years in this state. Especially if it’s his second fall.”
Blood rushed to his face; his cheeks turned a rosy red. The long greasy-looking beard twitched. His lips tightened. “You son of a bitch, I ain’t trying to hold nobody up.”
“Knock off the attitude, Hickey. You’re an ex-con
on probation for damned near killing a man. Show me some cooperation or I will call your probation officer.”
“All right, give me your fucking card but don’t expect no calls.”
“I’m out of cards. Write down the information.”
“Who’d you say you was? Let me see some ID.” After I held my PI license in front of his eyes, he brushed by me on the way to his broom closet of an office. Once inside he rooted around for pen and pad, finally managing to come up with a scrap of paper and a pencil. He wrote down the information I fed him and then looked up from the desk.
“There now. Satisfied?”
I snatched the piece of paper from the desk and turned around to leave. “I changed my mind. You probably wouldn’t call, anyway.”
“Already told you I wouldn’t.”
Once back in the Impala, I took a look at the scribbling. It was poor penmanship, but I couldn’t tell if it matched the writing on either of the envelopes. Charlie could take it to the K-Y Lab tomorrow. Maybe Gloria or one of her coworkers could analyze it for me.
I knocked off in the middle of the afternoon, and since I’d skipped lunch, I picked up a pan pizza on my way home. But the recollection of my meeting with Steve Sturgis that morning came back to kill my appetite. Viscerally I connected the pizza with my misery and ended up throwing most of it in the garbage. Unable to sit still, I gave the house an unneeded dusting.
Around ten the phone rang. I knew who it was even before glancing at the caller ID. Although I forced a cheerful tone, my heart was filled with dread.
Paul answered my greeting with a tirade. “What do you think you’re doing? You went to see my professor? Are you jealous or just crazy?”
“Calm down, Paul.”
“Calm down? You accused one of my teachers of sleeping with me. Are you trying to torpedo my scholarship? I never figured you for that kind of guy, Vince.”
