The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  “Walter.”

  “Marcy.”

  She hesitated. Then her narrow shoulders squared and she moved off, high heels clacking on the marble floor.

  The door opened again and Assistant District Attorney Joseph Mascarenas stepped out. He was squat and obese, in a rumpled suit with scuffed shoes too small for his body. Fager had to move aside so he could get to the hallway.

  “Joe, what’s with holding a bail hearing in chambers? Was Cody Geronimo back there?”

  “Never brought him up.” Mascarenas smoothed his soiled tie. “We dismissed pending indictment.”

  “The fuck?” Fager rubbed red eyes. “You don’t dismiss murder cases.”

  “Pending indictment. All the time.”

  “In stupid DWIs. Stupid shopliftings.” Fager’s hands balled into fists. He caught himself and forced his fingers open. “Not murder, Joe.”

  Mascarenas dropped his voice and tilted his head at the intercom. “Hold it ’til we’re outside.”

  Fager towered over Mascarenas as the prosecutor rested on a precast planter in front of the courthouse. It was a familiar staging for them. Fager on his feet, pacing, filling out his tailored suit with a body still trim and fit from his Army days. Mascarenas, a lump of flesh on concrete, listening to his smarter, more energetic, more prosperous adversary.

  Mascarenas noticed something different. Fager used to be all right angles. He still had the square jaw of the Special Forces lieutenant. But today the ninety degrees at his shoulders came from padding. Fager was stooped, sagging.

  “We’ve done how many cases together, Joe?”

  “Maybe two hundred. Stand ’em up, knock ’em down.”

  “I’ve never seen you release a murderer just to pull back and reload. What the hell?”

  Mascarenas shielded his eyes from the sun.

  “Hey, amigo. Two hundred times you screwed me in holes I don’t have. With you, Walt, nothing’s straight. But now you want me to be straight with you?”

  “I can’t stand it. I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Don’t like the view from outside the huddle? Big difference, counsel of record,” Mascarenas jerked a thumb at civilians lined up to pass through security, “or one of them.”

  “I wanted to see Geronimo up close.”

  “Only thing you missed was Thornton showing leg. Nice leg. Judge Diaz thought so, too.”

  “Marcy always plays Judy Diaz like that.”

  “No studs in that clubhouse. All tongue and groove construction.”

  Fager came to a stop in front of the prosecutor. “Joe, I should have been in there. Fuck what you think about Marcy Thornton.”

  Mascarenas shrugged. “You got no standing, Walt. If we get into this with Thornton, you’ll learn fast you don’t count.”

  “If you get into this?” Fager shouted the question.

  The sun’s heat beaded sweat on Mascarenas’s plump face. He wiped a yellowed handkerchief across his forehead and took his time folding it back into his pocket.

  When he was ready, Mascarenas said, “I liked Linda. She can’t be blamed for you.”

  “I guess that counts as sympathy. Now answer my question. What do you mean if you get into this with Thornton?”

  Mascarenas sighed.

  “Thornton’s screaming profiling. We’ve already heard from tribal presidents she rousted out of bed. Another Pueblo Revolt if we prosecute America’s favorite Indian artist. Throw in that Aragon eavesdropped on Geronimo consulting his attorney. Thornton lit a lawyer-client privilege bomb under Diaz and blew her through the ceiling.”

  “Sanitize the investigation. Seal Aragon off. Reassign the file and start over. The profiling stuff is routine posturing.”

  Mascarenas hauled himself to his feet but avoided meeting Fager’s stare.

  “No one left to vaccinate. Aragon was so proud of herself she played her tape at roll call. Brass from State Police was in the room. They’re out, too. In steps Dewey Nobles.”

  “Not Dewey No-Balls. Please don’t tell me he’s messing with Linda’s case.”

  “You never complained when one of your guys needed a weak link on our side. Dewey pulled the case from Aragon and made the call to dismiss. I can’t prosecute a case the police won’t own. Diaz ordered us to give Thornton the recording and everything seized from Geronimo.”

  Fager threw his head to the sky and swore. Mascarenas picked up his cracked briefcase.

  “Sucks, don’t it, Walt? This conversation we’re having right now, I have them every day with people who learn the guy who hurt someone they love counts more than they do. Every time I charge someone, I give them power and rights their victims will never know. All it takes is that word, defendant, and a shitbag becomes a player with a pile of chips on his side of the table.”

  “Marcy doesn’t have any moves she didn’t get from me.”

  “You’re not in the game, Walt. You’re in the stands watching the teams on the field.” Mascarenas pulled a crumpled business card from his pocket. “Give Aragon a call. She gets yanked from a dead girl in a trunk because your wife’s case gets special attention. Then she’s told to sit in a corner and shut up. Call her right now, while she’s still loco about Geronimo walking.” He mimicked a sing-song Mexican accent. “Eeeee. Tell her cousin Jose sent you.”

  “What can she tell me you won’t tell me yourself? I’m getting a bad feeling here.”

  “You always had the good instincts.”

  “Joe.”

  “Call Aragon. But don’t use the accent. Seriously.”

  Five

  “Job opening: Santa Fe Police Department Deputy Chief of Operations. Must be paper-trained and spineless. Testicles strongly discouraged. SFPD is an equal opportunity employer. Any idiot can get the job.”

  Lewis put down the sheet of printer paper he had found taped to the fridge in the break room. He gave Aragon a long look across the tiny office they shared.

  She raised her eyes to meet his. “What?”

  He had three other examples of the “Help Wanted” ad, taken from the water cooler, the soda machine, and the glass door leading to Administration.

  “We have real work to do,” he said. “Reports about two dead women and a famous artist who thinks he’s getting away with killing one of them. Instead I’m cleaning up after you, to save us the time we’d lose hauled in front of Dewey.”

  Lewis shook his head and dug into pancakes left over from breakfast with his wife and girls. He tried never to go twenty-four hours without seeing his family. He had rushed home after Nobles yanked the Fager case from them. When he returned he found Aragon in the parking lot staring through the windshield of her personal car. He tapped on her window, mouthed hot food, and led the way to their office.

  Just when she was calming down over breakfast, they learned Geronimo had been released. The news came from a smirking Omar Serrano and Conrad Fenstermacher, the detectives who would have been in their position if Nobles had not wanted the more senior team of Aragon and Lewis to handle the Linda Fager killing.

  They kicked it back and forth over reheated pancakes. Why was Nobles surrendering so easily on a solid arrest in such a brutal crime? They did paperwork, returned calls, checked court schedules. Then went at it again.

  Aragon started. “Because some judge has a wild hair, we forget what happened in the back of that store?”

  “When we took the kids to Disneyland, the hotel had his paintings everywhere. That Marriott had over a thousand rooms. Two Cody Geronimos over the bed. Two by every elevator. I swear I was seeing the same picture over and over except for little things I noticed.”

  “The great detective. And art critic. Made for Santa Fe.”

  “Chubby Indian women,” Lewis said, “maybe one holding a basket. By the elevators they hold blankets. The one to the right of our bed, the w
oman looks up. The left, she looks down. Wow. Heavy. Like, really deep.”

  “You’re saying it’s because of who Geronimo is, why Dewey’s laying down?”

  “Can’t be scalping the city’s most famous Indian with an election coming. The Mayor needs casino money. Or maybe there’s something bent with Nobles. He threw in the towel over an hour before court began, before Judge Diaz said anything about a problem with the tape. Thornton didn’t file a written motion. So how did he know what was coming?”

  “And Geronimo sitting there, hands zipped behind his back, telling us he was going home because he had work to do?” Aragon unfolded the day’s New Mexican and passed it to Lewis, opened to the arts section. “Guy rips a woman apart. Goes to jail. Gets out. Doesn’t break stride.”

  “Secret Canyon Gallery,” Lewis read. “New works by Cody Geronimo, America’s premier Native artist. Fourteen daring multimedia masterpieces celebrating his metamorphosis from painter to sculptor. Experience Cody’s passion, genius, and spirituality in three mystical dimensions.”

  “Now he’s a Native artist,” Aragon said. “Shit, I’m the Native. I was Santa Fe before pink coyotes and opera parties and movie stars claiming they discovered this town. Before the best place for carne adovada and sopapillas became a French restaurant with a pre-op tranny handing out menus on fucking parchment.”

  “Okay.” Lewis had heard some of this before, especially about the fabled New Mexican café lost to hipper cuisine. Aragon had ratcheted it up today. Maybe he should tell her she’d gone too far and had better watch it, you couldn’t talk like that around SFPD and not get burned eventually. Somebody besides a partner who looked out for you would take it to Nobles.

  Maybe she resented him, too—Richland Ellison Lewis, now just Rick, so it came across friendlier when he gave his name in court. A white guy who moved here from Pennsylvania because he’d read in Outside Magazine that Santa Fe was a great place to live, better than the rowhome above the remains of a Bethlehem Steel Plant. Maybe she resented him just a little, though he felt their partnership was solid.

  “I bet his show’ll be packed tonight,” Lewis said, wondering if Aragon was done. He made a note of the gallery’s address. “All this publicity.”

  She wasn’t done. “The great Native artist busted for murder. The art snobs will wet their pants, stain their designer clothes.”

  “Okay,” Lewis said again.

  In the larger work area outside their cubbyhole, Serrano and Fenstermacher deposited donut boxes by the coffee pot.

  Lewis said, “They never buy.”

  “Showing how happy they are to duck the Geronimo case. Everybody in this division would have done the same as us, caught the same shit.”

  Serrano entered their doorway and held an opened box out to Aragon. Fenstermacher looked in over his shoulder.

  “Not a good night for Butch and Sundance.” Serrano had a fake grin plastered across his face. “Cheer up with a cherry cruller. Or maybe you want something with a hole?”

  “Watch it, Hotdog,” Lewis said, jumping ahead of Aragon.

  “Five Ten.”

  “Five Ten” was the section of the Santa Fe Police Department’s regs requiring officers to report to the Professional Standards Unit any hazing or harassment based on race, ethnicity, age, religion, tribal membership, gender, sexual preference, or marital status. It was the department’s equivalent of mandatory child-abuse reporting—exactly what he was going to remind Aragon of about a few minutes ago.

  Serrano got defensive, stammered that Lewis was Cassidy in the partnership, not Aragon. He was talking about an Old West outlaw. A real hombre. A legend. And, hey, as he started backing away to escape Lewis’s glare, making Fenstermacher backpedal with him, who wouldn’t want to be compared to Robert Redford?

  “Butch was Paul Newman, dumbass,” she said.

  She’d been getting it from Serrano ever since she declined a weekend of alcohol and few clothes on his boat at Elephant Butte. She’d seen female cops compelled to testify about affairs with fellow officers as a way of impeaching their testimony. In the trial of an Albuquerque cop charged with murdering his wife, the defense showed the jury a chart that could have been an organized crime network. It mapped out who was screwing who within that department. The female officers testifying against the accused cop were bitter spurned lovers, the male investigators were jealous competitors. A murderer walked.

  She’d find her men outside the SFPD, thank you very much.

  Besides, a guy like Serrano probably needed to believe she was a lesbian. She didn’t care. But she did get tired of him proving what an idiot he was.

  “Five Ten yourself, Denise,” Serrano said, and she regretted saying anything. “Gender hostility. Profiling men as stupid.”

  Lewis said, “Omar, she’s not saying you’re not stupid because you’re a man. You’re just stupid.”

  “Smarter than you think,” Serrano fired back as he took his donuts to the next office. “I’m not the one who blew a murder case strutting my stuff at roll call.”

  “Let me out of here,” Aragon said as she answered a ringing phone. “Aragon. Criminal Investigations.” She covered the mouthpiece. “Walter Fager.” Into the phone she said, “You know Juanita’s on Airport Road? Yeah, next to Latinos Unidos. Three-thirty.”

  “Walter Fager’s calling you direct?” Lewis asked as she dialed another number.

  “You were flipping pancakes. Joe Mascarenas and I brainstormed. How do we keep Linda Fager’s case on life support while Dewey’s pulling the plug? I’ll explain in the car. I think you’ll like it.”

  She held up a finger and spoke into the phone.

  “Mister menudo man. Can you do Li’l Jane’s at three?”

  Lewis spoke before she hung up.

  “Who’s menudo man?”

  “That part,” Aragon slid an accordion file from the file cabinet against the wall, turned and looked into her partner’s eyes, “maybe you won’t like so much.”

  Six

  Lokos.

  Black spray paint connected points of light in a plywood backboard, rim bent and no net. The points of light were bullet holes.

  “We’re supposed to guess Westside or Southside,” said Lewis.

  “Even a Glock 17 doesn’t hold enough to spell it out,” Aragon replied. “Westside spells Locos with the ‘k’ to save ammo and let you know it’s them.”

  They unwrapped Lotaburgers and popped lids off their coffees. One thing about working without sleep, you learned fast after the rookie mistake of loading up on sugar and caffeine. Crash and burn two hours later, sometimes in the middle of testifying, your brain shutting down with the answer locked in your head. Then you went stupid, became the numb cop the defense lawyer wanted jurors to see.

  Aragon and Lewis went for protein. Her favorite protein delivery vehicle was the Lotaburger double patty from the Blake’s chain. She’d been eating those burgers with green chile, cheese, onions, tomato, pickle, and lettuce since she was five years old. Now she had Lewis eating them, too, when she was buying.

  They had parked on a small street among old cars with bumpers held on by rope and Chevy Silverados with Mexican flags and Raider decals in rear windows.

  “Second time you brought me here,” Lewis said. “First time was that IAD ruckus. It’s not IAD anymore. We’re supposed to call it Professional Standards.”

  Around the basketball court a chain-link fence kept nothing in or out except plastic bags carried on the wind.

  “I come here to remember why I do this job,” Aragon said.

  Lewis followed her gaze across the patch of urban decay hidden in the midst of hip Santa Fe, just blocks from a brewpub and bistros and a bakery producing artisanal bread nobody on this street could afford.

  “Why Miller Park?” he asked.

  “The neighborhood changed the name. It’s Kille
r Park even if Rec and Parks can’t find that on their official directory.”

  She chucked her chin at single-story stucco houses across the lot.

  “My family had the third house from the left. There used to be grass and rose bushes along the fences. My father helped build that basketball court with material left over from a paving job. I decided to become a cop right there under the backboard. I was thirteen years old.”

  Three years working together and this was the first Aragon had talked about herself. The only family he knew about was a brother who lived in the mountains east of town and rumors of another somewhere on the West coast. He let her open up at her own pace. He dug into his burger and washed it down with watery coffee.

  “Westside was moving in,” she said after a while. “They put a bounty on Mann Street bangers.”

  “Never ran across anybody throwing Mann Street signs.”

  “Extinct, hunted out like native elk. The Aragons had nothing to do with gangs. My father lectured my brothers, checked their skin for tats, searched their bedroom for knives and money they shouldn’t have. He didn’t worry about me. Just don’t date a gang boy and you were okay. Except Westside Lokos decided the way to draw out Mann Street was to rape their sisters. They thought my brothers were hiding to avoid a fight. They didn’t know my father sent them to Roswell, to the New Mexico Military Institute, when he caught them riding with some wannabes.”

  Lewis stopped eating. His partner was showing more than the scar you could see under her buzz cut. Cables tensed in her neck. Small hands, but strong ones, gripped the steering wheel. Her nails were unpolished, cut short so she wouldn’t draw an excessive violence beef by accidentally raking someone’s face.

  “They broke a bottle over my head. Dragged me out of my yard. Making a point, four o’clock in the afternoon. This place was theirs now. Miguel came running from that house on the corner with the trailer in the yard.”

  “Miguel?” Lewis put his half-finished burger on the bag folded across his lap.