The Zozobra Incident

by Don Travis

  “You’ve got it all wrong. I went to see Professor Sturgis on a case matter. It wasn’t personal. I never mentioned your name once.”

  “No, you just mentioned screwing a student and a scholarship all in the same breath. You might as well have spelled out my name. And for your information, I’ve never gone to bed with Sturgis.”

  “Then why did he think I was talking about you?”

  “Because he hasn’t gotten a scholarship for anyone else, that’s why. But that’s beside the point. It was me you were talking about. You know it, and so do I.”

  “All right, I let a professional situation get a little personal. But my visit to Sturgis was justified, something I had to do.”

  “Do you think the professor and I are trying to blackmail somebody with dirty pictures?”

  “How do you know what case I was talking about?” The words were out of my mouth before I could swallow them.

  “Because Sturgis told me, that’s why! Well, for your information, I don’t have any pictures of that lawyer, dirty or otherwise. Never seen them and don’t want to. And if I did, I wouldn’t stoop to trying to squeeze money out of the man. I work for my living!”

  “Paul, please understand. It’s something I had to do. I owed my client that much.”

  “But you didn’t owe me a thing.” His voice was strident. “And I came within an ace of turning down a sweet scholarship just to stay here with you. Man, what a mistake that would have been.”

  “Look, let’s sit down and straighten all this out.”

  “No way. Those days are over, Mr. Vinson. I don’t ever want to see you again. I’ll quit my job at the country club so you can use the pool without embarrassing yourself.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’ll use the Y until you head off to Northwestern.”

  “Wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.” With that acid comment, he broke the connection.

  I sat with the dead phone in my hand for a long minute while my world turned sour. Undigested pizza sat heavily in my stomach. My old bullet wound ached. I’d lost something rare and precious, all because of my ham-handed approach to the job.

  Damn Del Dahlman and the train he rode in on!

  Chapter 12

  AFTER A miserable night, I got up on the wrong side of grouchy, feeling empty yet unable to face breakfast. I hungered for one of the Denver omelets Paul made so well. I wanted to watch him wake up. Talk to him. Laugh with him. Let him ask a thousand who-what-why questions about my life. I wanted him.

  Moving as if underwater, I mindlessly went about the routine of cleaning up. I needed to get some things done, but as I wasn’t fit for human contact, I steered clear of the office and started retracing my steps.

  While picking up a single-use camera at the nearest drug store, I went surly with the clerk and was immediately contrite. My problems were not hers; doubtless she had enough of her own. I crawled back into the car and snapped twenty-four random shots on the way to the South Valley.

  Rory Tarleton’s homestead was considerably tidier than on my first visit. No one answered my knock, and there was no sign of him in the darkroom at the rear of the place. I was just slipping back into the Impala when the roar of an engine caught my attention. Rory rolled down the road on a US military Indian motorcycle, complete with sidecar, and parked in the drive beside the old Toyota up on blocks. The antique motor stroked smoothly, a testament to his mechanical skills.

  “You again,” he groused. “What you want this time?”

  “What the fuck’s your problem?” Groping for an attitude change, I sighed and glanced around. “Looks like I did you a favor. The place looks 1,000 percent better. Now if you get rid of that junker, the joint will look decent.”

  “No way. That Toyota’ll run like a top when I get through with it. I’ll double my money.”

  “Like you will with the bike? It’s new, isn’t it?” It wasn’t new, of course. It was probably a leftover from WWII.

  He puffed up and smiled. “Yeah, just picked it up a few days ago. Didn’t take much work to get it purring. Whadda you want, anyway?”

  I held out my camera. “The same deal you made Emilio. By the way, have you heard from him?”

  He shook his head. “Not since them pictures. Same deal? Okay, for fifty bucks I develop, print, and forget them. I’ll let you know when they’re ready.”

  “Nope. I’m gonna watch you work. Just like Emilio did.”

  He shrugged, jiggling his beer belly. “Whatever. But I get paid up front.”

  “No problem.” I peeled off some bills Del would eventually replace.

  The next hour was devoted to staying out of Tarleton’s way in the cramped little shack behind the house. Even by the muted glare of the hazy red light he’d snapped on, I could see he wasn’t duplicating the negatives—if such a thing was even possible.

  Tarleton was giving me funny glances by the time he draped the last print over an old-fashioned heat drum. He flipped on a sixty-watt bulb as the first photos peeled off the dryer. Grabbing the first three, he shuffled through them before facing me with a bayonet in his hand.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Vinson?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Them pictures ain’t nothing. You coulda gone anywheres and got them done for ten bucks tops! How come you brought them here?”

  “Wanted to watch you work.”

  “You still looking for them dirties Emilio had?”

  I nodded. “Trying to trace them from development to the blackmailer.”

  He relaxed and buried the tip of the long bayonet in the wall beside his table. That was his stress reliever—the planking was pretty well splintered.

  “You lied to me. About one thing, anyway.”

  He wrapped his fist around the hilt of the bayonet. “About what?”

  “About the way Emilio paid for your skills. You got an administrative separation from the Corps, didn’t you? And here you had me fooled by that kiddy porn with little girls.”

  Anger suffused his heavy features, but he relaxed almost immediately. “Wasn’t fooling nobody. Sex is sex. ’Sides, Emilio kinda looks like a girl if you squint your eyes. And he paid me the fifty too, just like I said.” A foxy smile crawled across his lips. “So by rights, you still owe me.”

  “In your dreams, Tarleton.”

  He smirked. “That’s okay. Be kinda hard to take you for a girl. Besides, you’re too old for me.”

  “You like twinks, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Well, you satisfied I didn’t steal none of your pics?”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t swipe some of Emilio’s. He might not have been watching as closely as I was.”

  “Like hell! He was right there with his nose stuck in ever step of the way. Now get the hell offa my place. And I hear any talk about my discharge, I’ll come looking for you. You hear?”

  “I hope they let you take retirement.”

  Rory looked confused at my switch in attitude, but he answered anyway. “Yeah. Barely.”

  As I walked down his short, dusty driveway, he came out onto the front porch. “Hey, Vinson, anybody ever tell you, you got a cute butt?” His raucous laugh brought up phlegm. He hawked and spat in the yard.

  As soon as I got to Five Points, I pulled into a parking lot and dialed Paul’s cell. It went to voice mail. Then I searched my notes for Estelle’s work number. She answered on the second ring, smoothly singing the name of the James, Jamieson & Smith firm, but went silent when I identified myself. Reluctantly she agreed to meet me during her lunch period in the Smith’s parking lot at Lomas and San Pedro.

  I killed the rest of the morning by meticulously going through Emilio’s list. I had located most of the men he knew by name, but it was slow going trying to find anonymous men by description alone.

  A little after noon, I drove to the supermarket and waited for Estelle. She looked worried when she got out of the Taurus a few minutes later.

  “I’m not looking to has
sle you. Just need to go over a few things again. By the way, how’s your little boy?”

  That brought a half smile. “Just fine. Growing more every day. I can’t stay long. I only have half an hour for lunch.”

  “We won’t be long. Have you heard from Emilio since we talked?”

  She shook her head. “No. I have heard nothing.”

  “He took off somewhere, and I need to talk to him again. His car was spotted in Santa Fe and Taos. Do you know if he has friends in either of those places?”

  “No, no one. Oh, yes, he had a… uh, what do you call them? A trick? Yes, he had a trick in Santa Fe he told me about. A big shot. A banker he saw sometimes. I’m sorry, I don’t know his name.”

  “That’s okay. At least you gave me a place to begin.”

  Estelle thought for a moment. “Have you tried his cell phone?”

  “He has a cell?”

  “Yes, at least he did when he was with me.”

  “You told me you didn’t know how to get in touch with him.”

  “I forgot about the phone. And I don’t even know if he still has it.”

  My brow furrowed. I distinctly recalled asking Del in the initial interview for Emilio’s number. Estelle apparently saw my confusion.

  “No one knew about it; not even Mr. Dahlman.”

  “Do you remember the number?”

  “No, but I have it at home.”

  “Can you get it for me?”

  “May I borrow your cell?”

  I handed it over and watched as she dialed. After a moment she greeted her grandmother. I spoke enough Spanish to understand she asked the old woman to look in her jewelry box for a small address book. Within two minutes the little prick’s phone number was in my hands.

  After I thanked Estelle, she hesitated before getting into her car. “Mr. Vinson, I appreciate the way you spoke to Mr. James without involving me. I hope he was able to help you.”

  “He eased my mind a little. And you’re welcome. But there is one thing I’m curious about. Did Emilio know any of the people working in the JJS office?”

  “No, I am certain he did not.”

  “Could he have met one of them? As a pickup?”

  “I don’t think so. He knew where I worked, and if he had done that, he would have bragged about it. No, I’m sure he never met any of them.”

  “Thank you.”

  I waited until she left the parking lot before flipping open my cell and dialing Emilio’s number. It rang until it went to voice mail. The voice asking me to leave a message sounded like Emilio’s, but I declined the invitation.

  What kind of investigator was I, anyway? True, my client had thrown me off track about a phone, but there had been a clue. The second time I went looking for Emilio at the C&W Palace, I’d observed Puerco Arrullar making a call. Since Emilio was supposed to be servicing a client at the time, it was likely he’d been contacted by cell phone.

  It was possible the succession of “lost” cell phones Del had told me about had been one of the chores Emilio performed for Puerco’s gang. Or perhaps selling what he got for free was Emilio’s way of making an extra buck or two.

  When I got back, Hazel pushed me to take care of some mundane office tasks—signing this, okaying that, until I finally snapped at her. Looking wounded, she withdrew and closed my door a little too firmly, the opening shot in her long-suffering mother routine. Moments later her frosty voice informed me Detective Enriquez was on the line.

  “I checked with that postal worker at the main office,” Gene said. “She identified one of the pictures.”

  “Which one?”

  “Prada.”

  “The hustler hustled me.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased, given the other one is your mint of the month.”

  “Now, Gene—”

  “I’m sorry, but I gotta pull your chain once in a while. That’s all the payback I ever get.”

  “Yeah, right. Do me a favor, will you?”

  “Another one?”

  “Yeah. Will you return the pictures to me? I need Prada’s for the file, and I’d hate for Paul’s to get into your system for no good reason.”

  “He’s already in it. Don’t tell me you didn’t check for a sheet?”

  “Of course not!” Then I screwed up my standard of ethics by asking why he was on record.

  “Nothing serious. Drunk and disorderly at an off-campus beer party. Got into a fight with another guy, barely missed being charged with assault.”

  “Oh, crap. Is it still pending?”

  “Naw. He got fingerprinted, mugged, and slammed into a cell overnight. The judge let him go with a warning.”

  “When was that?”

  “A year back. Nothing before or since.”

  “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “Man, do you ever. But there’s more. One of the guys in the Gang Unit tells me Barton flirted around with one of the gangs back in high school. There’s no evidence he actually joined, but there was some sort of blood connection, I gather.”

  “Which gang?” I asked with my heart in my throat.

  “Probably the Santos Morenos. That was their turf, even back then. I can check it out if you want.”

  “No, thanks. Let me do it.”

  I hung up and processed what I had learned. The system snares a lot of young men for one thing or the other, and Paul’s charges hadn’t been serious. A wake-up call was probably what he needed at the time.

  The other thing bothered me, but maybe it shouldn’t. Every kid in Albuquerque was exposed to a gang like the Saints sooner or later. And in Paul’s part of the South Valley, half the people were related by blood or marriage. The fact Gene’s contact was vague about the details was both good and bad: bad because whatever brought Paul to his attention was enough for him to remember it years later; good because it meant Paul hadn’t been seriously involved with the Saints or any other gang.

  Finding some comfort in that thought, I turned to how Emilio had snookered me. I dialed his number and tried to determine if the voice mail recording was Emilio’s voice. Probably, but I still wasn’t sure. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. I don’t put my voice on the cell I carry; I use the prerecorded message. At least the service had not been interrupted, but given his history with other phones, it was anyone’s guess who would eventually answer the ring.

  And then I remembered something else. The day I’d hauled him home to grill him, we’d been heading for the front door when he stopped in his tracks. At the time I thought that was because of the firebomb attack. But he’d halted a fraction of a second before I heard the truck motor outside the house. He stopped when I said we’d catch the blackmailer through the mailboxes he’d rented if questioning johns didn’t do the trick.

  Son of a bitch! He knew who stole the negatives from him. He’d figured it out that very instant, and it was enough to send him running.

  Unable to sit still that night, I went to the C&W Palace, unsure of what was I hoping to find. Emilio was in Santa Fe or Taos or points north, so it was unlikely I’d find him at the Saints’ table. Maybe I expected to experience a revelation by merely staring at Puerco’s fat shoulders. Or was it Paul I hoped to see? Whatever it was, I didn’t find it. I spent half the time dialing Emilio’s phone and listening to it shunt me off to a talking computer. I finally went home and turned in.

  Awakening from a restless sleep in the middle of the night, I grabbed the phone and punched in Emilio’s number. After a moment his baritone answered. Taken by surprise, I almost launched into a tirade, but good sense prevailed.

  “Emilio, this is B. J. Vinson. We need to talk.”

  I was speaking into the ether. The line was dead. That, of course, finished off my night. I tried calling a couple more times, even leaving brief, nonthreatening messages. He did not return my calls.

  It was difficult to get my motor running the next morning. I contacted Charlie by phone and asked him if he’d learned anything new about Royal Crest. He
hadn’t, but his questioning of the staff had begun to raise the anxiety level of the manager, so I told him to lay off the questions and put somebody to watching Hickey. Then I moped around the house doing Internet background searches on a couple of the johns I’d recently identified from Emilio’s list.

  PULLING AN end run around Miss Snoot-in-the-Air, I called the Blah firm at five minutes after noon the next day and slid right through to Del before he escaped to what was probably a power lunch at the Petroleum Club with Someone Important.

  He agreed to meet me that afternoon for drinks at his downtown country club. I understood his choice of locale as soon as I saw him at the bar, dressed in golf slacks. I waved away his offer of a drink.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Emilio had a cell phone?” The attack wasn’t fair because Estelle had said Del didn’t know about it, but it established the pecking order for the meeting.

  He looked confused. “I did. I told you I’d bought him three or four of the damned things. He just couldn’t—”

  “Well, he has one now. And it’s active.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “For about one second at two o’clock this morning. As soon as he found out it was me, he hung up.”

  Del looked thoughtful. “That probably means he’s still around, doesn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily. Some of these throwaway phones piggyback off major provider networks. They’re nationwide.”

  “How about Mexico? Will they work down there?”

  “Don’t see why not, but the last sighting was north, not south. His car was seen in Santa Fe and in Taos.”

  “He’s headed for Colorado?”

  “Why did you say that? Does that ring any bells?”

  “No, but if he’s running, Taos is on the way to Colorado.”

  “Maybe. Del, have you heard anything else from the blackmailer?”

  “Not a peep. That’s unusual, isn’t it? He should have reacted to my note by now.”

  “Might not have had the opportunity. I haven’t told you yet, but Emilio was the one who rented the post-office boxes.”