The Zozobra Incident

by Don Travis

  “There’s times when cost isn’t everything, you know. I needed Joe cold, and he’s got as good contacts in this town as I do. So I went for someone he couldn’t compromise.”

  “Good thinking.”

  I felt a little greasy as I exited the Billingham Building.

  WHEN I returned to the office, Charlie Weeks filled me in on what he’d learned about the Zellner murders. Gilbert Zellner and Helen Martinez Zellner had been found shot to death in their Mercedes between Santa Fe and Española this past February. The husband-and-wife team was well known to northern New Mexico lawmen. Both served time for drug dealing, but that didn’t prevent them from manufacturing crystal meth at their ten-acre hideaway in the rolling hills north of Santa Fe. Most homegrown labs were able to produce something like a weekend supply of meth, but the Zellner operation was considerably larger than that. It fell short of the big Mexican warehouse operations but was big enough to attract attention. The Iron Cross Club handled some of the Zellners’ product.

  When the couple showed up dead, authorities assumed rival drug makers from Mexico or southern Colorado had been the culprits, until a young woman named Miranda Skelton confided to a girlfriend she had witnessed the murders. Miranda was a strange creature; her biker chick’s brashness was overlaid with a coed’s naïveté. Apparently she was up for anything—except cold-blooded murder. Once whispers of the girl’s confession to her friend reached official ears, she was hauled into Santa Fe, where she exposed the entire tragic event.

  According to Miranda, her boyfriend, Melvin Whiznant, known by the sobriquet of Head Cross, and his lieutenant, Adder, had killed the two drug dealers in a dispute. The Iron Crosses wanted total control over distribution of the meth and ended up with nothing except more trouble than they could handle. To make matters worse, if Whiznant was convicted of these killings, it would be his third major felony. Even if he managed to escape the death penalty, he wouldn’t be coming home again.

  Understanding that Miranda was the key to the case, the police tucked her away in a nice safe cell, as a material witness until the trial. When defense counsel insisted on deposing the state’s witness, the court had called on the Blahs for someone to look out for her interests. Del ended up as her guardian by the luck of the draw or because it was his turn in the barrel—depending upon the way you viewed the assignment.

  Here was a promising new lead, and Del’s lame excuse for not mentioning it before bordered on the dumb—hell, on the brain-dead. I phoned to fill him in on the Billingham interview but ran head-on into his version of Hazel. Finally I settled for leaving him a pithy message informing him his merger was probably off and that we had to have a serious talk about Miranda Skelton.

  Disgusted with my client, I stalked out into the bullpen and announced I was taking a few days off.

  Hazel took my announcement well. In fact, she brightened perceptibly. “About time. Where are you going?”

  “Going? I’m not going anywhere. I’ll just kick back and try not to think about business for a long weekend.”

  “A weekend?” She grimaced. “That’s not taking time off, BJ. The Santa Fe Fiesta starts soon. Why don’t you go?”

  “If it’s a fair I want, the state fair’s about to get underway right here in Albuquerque.”

  Now fully in her take-control mode, she started making plans. “No, you need to get out of town. Monday is Labor Day, and they’re burning Zozobra up in Fort Marcy Park next Thursday night to kick off the festivities. Take the whole week and enjoy yourself.”

  Every year since God was a baby, our neighbors to the north have held a Fiesta. As the opening act, they fire up a giant marionette called Zozobra, or Old Man Gloom, to burn up everyone’s troubles. I hadn’t attended the ritual since my high school years, and the idea held some attraction.

  Hazel was good at reading me and sensed weakness. “It’s the perfect thing to make you forget all this Dahlman mess. Take a long drive through the northern mountains; the trees are already turning up there. Go play golf in Los Alamos. You always liked their course. Then you can come back to Santa Fe for Zozobra on Thursday.”

  With no better idea, I acquiesced, although I refused to do the motor-tour bit. Instead I agreed only to drive up to Santa Fe on Thursday for an overnight stay. Hazel grunted at the partial rejection of her plans, but before the afternoon was over, she barged into my office and laid a ticket on the desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “Admission ticket to Fort Marcy Park.”

  “They charge admission now?”

  “Of course.” Her jowls jiggled in agitation. “How do you think they raise all that money for charity?”

  “They raise money for charity?”

  “A bunch. You’re booked at the La Fonda, but only for Thursday night, and we’re lucky to find that. I had to call on a friend.” She predictably paused for me to ask for details. Yeah, right. I wouldn’t touch that one with a stick.

  “Everything’s booked solid from Albuquerque to Raton. Has been for weeks,” she said.

  I still refused to bite. “Thanks.”

  “Humph,” she groused. Then she paused and added, “It’s a single.”

  “That’s fine by me.”

  “And it’s in the name of David Herring.”

  “Who the hell is David Herring?”

  “The fellow who made the reservation.”

  “How am I supposed to pass myself off as—”

  “You’re a former Marine, an ex-cop, and a high-powered PI. If you can’t find a way, you’re in the wrong business.”

  Taking her advice, I didn’t worry about it. Besides, she’d fix it long before I arrived at the La Fonda.

  I WENT to the North Valley club Saturday, ostensibly for physical therapy in the pool, but actually on the off chance Paul would agree to go with me to the Zozobra burning. Alas, another lifeguard presided over the swimming pool. Had Paul followed through on his threat to quit his job? I made some inquiries and determined he was still on the club’s payroll.

  Late Sunday morning I took a leisurely shower, dressed, and went to church, something I do off and on. I’m a believer in a higher power, although it is not firmly defined in my own mind. I was raised in the church and attended regularly until my late teen years, when I began to suspect who I was. Then disenchantment set in—big time. How could a loving God simply write me off because I wasn’t like other people? After all, He’d made me that way; there was no doubt of that. I was not the product of a broken home. It was not the lack of a strong father figure or the presence of a smothering mother that made me gay. No, my sexual orientation was hardwired.

  After reaching that conclusion, I rebelled and stopped going to church. If it didn’t want me—the way I was, not the way it demanded I be—then to hell with it. So I lived for years with something lacking in my life. It was in the Marines, of all places, where things were reconciled to my satisfaction. A fellow junior officer with a brand-new degree in ancient languages opened my eyes. He showed me how those damning passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Kings and elsewhere had been perverted to reflect local prejudices by the substitution of a Greek verb here and an Aramaic noun there and applying what had been intended as a proscription against temple behavior to the general demeanor. Maybe this didn’t explain things for the rest of the world, but it gave me enough to once again accept the embrace of organized worship.

  On the way to the nearest Blake’s drive-in after church, I turned on my cell and checked my voice mail. I was hoping my elusive client had tried to contact me, but it was the smoky, sexy voice of Emilio Prada in my ear instead.

  “Hiya, Mr. V. Know you been trying to reach me. I…. well, I guess it’s time we talked. Gimme a call, and maybe I’ll drive down and meet you pretty soon. Let me know if that’s okay. Uh, I guess you figured out this is Emilio. See ya.”

  I listened to the message twice more, trying to pin down something in the kid’s voice. Finally I identified it. It was worry, if not downright fea
r. No one answered my return call, but I left a message on his voice mail saying I’d be in Santa Fe Thursday afternoon and was booked at the La Fonda that night. “Driving down” most likely meant he was north of us, possibly in Taos, so it would be easier to make his move if I went part of the way to him.

  There was no return call. Nor did Emilio answer my subsequent attempts to reach his number.

  I HAD planned to keep Labor Day labor-free, but it didn’t work out that way. I was rereading James Lee Burke’s Edgar Award–winning Black Cherry Blues, featuring his Dave Robicheaux character, when I was interrupted by a phone call from Charlie.

  “It’s Alan Mendoza, BJ; he’s in the hospital. Well, he’s in the UNM emergency ward. They’ll probably let him go when they get through treating him.”

  “What happened? Will he be all right?”

  Charlie told me Alan was sitting on Luther Hickey again last night when those same two guys showed up. This time they made him. Hickey walloped on him some, but Alan claimed he would be all right. He’d have a shiner for a few days, but nothing was broken. His wife, Alice, was there with him… as was Charlie.

  “I’ll be right down,” I said.

  I pulled into the parking structure at the west end of the Richardson Pavilion at UNM Hospital twenty minutes later. Charlie was waiting for me in the overcrowded waiting area of the emergency room, but he’d greased the wheels and soon had us back where a doctor was just finishing up with Alan Mendoza.

  “I don’t want you getting in any more fights for the next two weeks,” the pretty black woman said. “I won’t take it kindly if you undo all of my work.”

  Alan, a broad, swarthy man about Charlie’s age who could have been her grandfather, gave her a big gap-toothed grin. “Might get in one tomorrow if I knew you’d be my doctor.”

  “You do that, and I’ll show you what pain really is!”

  She patted his cheek, beamed at us, and told him he was ready to check out at the front desk. A second later we heard her cheerfully greet another patient hidden by a curtain next door.

  “What happened, Alan?” I asked.

  “Those two guys Hickey had a beer party with a couple of nights ago showed up. They gave me the evil eye when they went in, but once the door closed behind them, I figured everything was copasetic. Early this morning—it was still dark—the door opened and Hickey and one of the others came out of the apartment. I was wondering where the other one was when he bashed in the window right at my head. The guy musta crawled out of a window at the back and snuck around behind me. He got me by the neck so I couldn’t start the car. After that, they wrestled me out into the street and started beating on me.”

  Alan had been lucky. A car had turned down the street and his assailants took off in Hickey’s Mercury. The driver of the car stopped and called for an ambulance.

  “Thank God. Did you get his name?” I asked.

  “Nope. He hung around until the meat wagon showed up, and then he took off.”

  “Why the hell would Hickey do something like that? He’s bound to know that’ll send him straight back to Santa Fe. Were any words exchanged? Did you argue with them? Threaten them?”

  “Nope.” Alan groaned as he moved to emphasize his point. “It was just a bashed-out window and then wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.”

  “Hickey’s lid’s not screwed on tight,” Charlie said. “I called the station, and the boys are looking for him and his pals, but they’re in the wind. He knows you put Alan on him. Tell him, Alan.”

  “His two buddies held me while Hickey delivered the beating. Two or three times, he said to ‘tell that nosy PI this is what’s coming to him if he keeps fucking around.’”

  “Tell him what else he said,” Charlie prompted.

  “Said ‘that pansy in 5100’ was going to get the same treatment.”

  I looked at Charlie. “Did you tell the police about the threat?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but I’ll let you warn Dahlman.”

  Alan added, “I was able to ID one of the guys with Hickey. His name’s Jackson Starbucks.” Alan tried to laugh, but it turned into a pained grunt. His hand automatically went to cradle his bruised ribs. “Honest to God, that’s his name. Found a sheet on him. He was at Santa Fe the same time as Hickey. Went up for attempted murder during a domestic dispute.”

  “Nice bunch of people. We’ll take care of all of your medical expenses, okay? Send the medical bills and the tab for your broken window to Hazel. Charlie will see that you get home all right.”

  “My wife’s down at the pharmacy filling the doctor’s prescriptions. Don’t worry about me. Just find that fucking madman.”

  Del didn’t answer his home or cell phones, but I got through to him at the office. Apparently he didn’t observe Labor Day either. Thankfully there was a way of bypassing the switchboard for after-hours incoming calls.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

  I told him about the beating Alan had taken and the threats made against the two of us.

  “So Hickey’s the one behind the blackmail scheme?”

  “That’s possible. Or he could just be a homophobe that I sent spinning out of control when I interviewed him. But this Zellner murder thing can’t be dismissed. I haven’t finished looking into that at this point.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “The police are looking for Hickey and his friends. As soon as they run him down, Gene and I will question him. The other day I tricked him into writing down my name and address and got the handwriting sample to Gloria down at K-Y. Maybe she can tie him to the blackmail envelope and the threat to me. But until they catch him, you should watch your back.”

  “I think I’ll stay at the hotel next door tonight.”

  “Probably a good idea.”

  I considered doing the same thing… but what if Paul had a change of heart and tried to contact me? No, I’d go home and lock the doors behind me.

  A LITTLE later, as I got out of the Impala in my driveway and was halfway to the back door, Luther Hickey suddenly blocked my way. There was a sneer on his shaggy face as he tapped a metal baseball bat into the palm of his right hand—just as he had toyed with the wrench when I’d interviewed him in the basement of the Royal Crest.

  Chapter 14

  MY FIRST thought, a totally irrational one, was that I was going to have to delist my home telephone number. My second was closer to being on the mark—my Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, 9 mm semiautomatic was locked in the trunk of the Impala. Unloaded!

  A millisecond later, the skin on my back puckered and the scar on my thigh burned as I focused on the man brandishing a baseball bat.

  “What are you doing here, Hickey? This is private property. You’re trespassing.”

  He laughed, revealing yellowed teeth in the middle of his matted beard. “Trespassing? That all you can come up with? You think trespassing’s what I got on my mind?” He took a step forward. I retreated two. “If I’m going back to the pen, it’s gonna be for something big.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About you wrecking my life, that’s what.” We did the two-step again. I was now at the edge of the driveway.

  “You’re crazy. All I did was ask you some questions.”

  “All you did was come to where I work and ask your questions, getting my boss all goosey. Then you had somebody come and talk to him about the ex-con in the basement and the queer on the fifth floor. Then you put some Mexican creep outside my place to watch everything I do. You know what all that adds up to?”

  I held my tongue. He’d either talk himself up for something or out of something. The ball was in his court.

  “Me getting fired, that’s what. It’s a lousy fucking job, but it’s the only one I could find. If I’m going down again, I’m going down for something that’ll earn me some respect up there in Santa Fe.”

  “Hickey, don’t be a damned fool. You can handle what’s coming your way right now. Bu
t if you go any further, you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars.”

  “Fuck it. At least I’ll have a roof over my head and three squares a day.”

  He set his stance. I knew what was coming next. So be it. I hadn’t been in a real dustup recently. Maybe this was what I needed.

  “Yoo-hoo! Mr. Vinson? BJ?”

  The thin, frail voice startled both of us. I glanced over my right shoulder and saw Mrs. Wardlow, my across-the-street neighbor, standing at the end of my driveway. Her helmet of blue-white hair glowed like an angel’s halo.

  “I saw a big hairy man go into your backyard. I’m afraid I called the police. I hope that’s all right.”

  The word police released both of us. Hickey telegraphed his swing, and the bat took out a chunk of brick from the corner of the garage. If I hadn’t jerked out of the way, it would have taken off my head. I barreled into him before he had a chance to recover. His body odor almost did me in as I drove my shoulder into his chest. I bounced off him. He grunted and reeled backward but didn’t go over. He still held the bat loosely in his left hand. I kicked him in the soft underside of the wrist. His hand flexed, and the bat flew up and tumbled over my head, crashing down onto the hood of the Impala. I heard it clank onto the concrete driveway.

  Even absent the weapon, Hickey was capable of doing major harm. His eyes went to slits as he gathered himself and started to move. I threw myself to the ground and rolled into him, catching him in the shins and dumping him on top of me. The force of the blow drove the air from my lungs, rendering me helpless for a precious few seconds, but Hickey got to his feet. All I could manage was to twist over to see if he was coming to finish me off.

  He wasn’t. He’d gone over hard. Hickey was hurt, but he wasn’t finished. I struggled to my feet. He bled copiously from a cut on his forehead where he’d bounced off the brick walkway. Blood from his nose soaked his heavy beard. His eyes wandered around wildly before managing to fix on me. His rage restored him in a hurry.