The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  Something swooshed overhead. Too cold for bats. It was an owl, now hooting from an alligator juniper whose cracked skin shone in the silvery light.

  She loved New Mexico. She would never live anywhere else. But goddamn, why did it have to be so fucked up?

  Aragon forced her mind to empty to make room for sleep. She had four hours until first light.

  A familiar dream returned near dawn. The weight of the sleeping bag brought it on. She was pinned on the concrete. Her pants had been pulled to her knees, her underwear ripped away. She saw Miguel vaulting the fence of his front yard, charging to her rescue. He ran so fast the breeze he created pushed back hair from his high, brown forehead. He was so beautiful she no longer felt the hands between her legs, the foot on the back of her neck, the rough concrete under her cheek.

  Miguel charged into the boys holding her down and sent them flying. He reached to lift her to her feet, to hold her tight, protect her. Behind him another boy, one Miguel missed, pulled an ugly revolver from his waistband.

  Now came the part that made it easy to sleep and wake up happy.

  A pistol appears in her hand, a larger, more deadly weapon than the gangster’s gun. The barrel spouts flame. It becomes a machine gun. The gangster’s chest explodes. There are more of them now, rising from the concrete, from behind trees, attacking from lowriders pulled to the curb. Her gun never runs out of bullets. She fires again and again as Miguel’s arms wrap around her from behind, his lips on her neck, the soft breath of the life she saved caressing her hair.

  Nineteen

  2:10 a.m. Sandy Lewis entered the garage in her red flannel nightshirt and fuzzy slippers, carrying a bowl of chocolate ice cream topped with peanuts. Rick Lewis was in their Dodge Caravan working on his laptop. An extension cord snaked across the floor to an outlet by the chest freezer. Inside the van files and photographs covered seats, floor, and windows. A yellow sheet of paper with blocks of handwriting dangled from the rearview mirror.

  He asked his wife, “Why are you up?”

  She handed the ice cream through the driver’s side window. “You never came to bed.”

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  “I don’t like it when you say that.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s not funny. Or clever.”

  They had a rule against his working inside the house. Close-ups in stark light showing how a woman’s head had been opened to remove the bones from her inner ear. Their daughters didn’t need to know this much about daddy’s job.

  She knew he was worried about the suspension. They had discussed it after the kids were in bed. They needed his salary, but could get by if he was fired. She had a good job as Public Information Officer for the Game and Fish department. She talked to reporters about license fees and ranchers wanting elk permits, and the effects of drought on snow geese. He made half her take-home pay dealing with the horrors in those photos taped to the windshield.

  She came around the other side to get in. She didn’t look at what she moved from the passenger seat. She kept her eyes on him.

  “Denise is down south, around Ladron Peak, trying to find a piece of private property where a murder may have been committed.” He never disclosed the names of people he was investigating until they were arrested. “I tried Google Earth but got lost. There’s too much open country and too few landmarks to know what you’re seeing.”

  “Could have saved you time. We’ve got a bighorn program there.”

  “I don’t follow.” He dug into the ice cream.

  “We filmed that area in low-level flights. You can find a puddle of water on those films.”

  “Who do I talk to about seeing them?”

  “The PIO. But she won’t entertain your inspection of public records request unless you come to bed now.”

  He tried. The clock read 3:30 a.m., but he just stared at the dark ceiling. Sandy rolled onto her side and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Think about something besides work.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We can still get a couple hours if you settle down.”

  “I’m keeping you awake. But I meant sorry for being so stupid.”

  “What are you talking about?” She sat up and turned on the light to see his face. He continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “A smart guy, thinking of his family, he wouldn’t mind kissing a little ass. He’d watch somebody like Dewey Nobles instead of Denise Aragon to see how it’s done. They hate her, you know. We had this guy, cranked up clunk, yelling out a window, shooting at trees, blowing out windshields. Denise went in the back of the house, came up behind him while he was calling us pig fuckers and knocked him out with a frying pan off his stove.”

  “They hate her for that?”

  “She was supposed to be in Dewey’s meeting, listening to the big plan, memorizing lines Dewey drew on an aerial of the house he called ‘vectors of opportunity.’ Next thing we’re outside, Denise in that window shouting come get the guy. Dewey standing there with his pointer, a complete idiot, nobody hearing him anymore. A smart guy would have asked for a different partner right then, learned to say ‘vectors of opportunity’ when Dewey’s around.”

  “She’s one of those.”

  “She scares the hell out of them.”

  “How did she know she could take that guy so easily?”

  “I told her.”

  Sandy played with a button on his pajamas, trying to get him to look at her. “What are you leaving out?”

  “I found the door unlocked, the clunk facing away. I told Denise on our way to Dewey’s meeting.” He had more to say. Sandy waited. “I couldn’t have gone in there, on my own call. Denise made things happen while the rest of us were stuck in cement.”

  “You’ve been on fire since you two teamed up.”

  “I need to kiss a little more ass, is all I’m saying.”

  “Detective Lewis, you are so full of crap tonight, you know?”

  She lifted her top over her head. Now he was looking at her. She stood on the mattress and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her underwear.

  “If you need to kiss ass, we can fix that right now.”

  Later, lying naked on sheets falling to the floor, she ran her fingers through his hair. “You’re my hero.” She kissed him slowly, patiently now that their bodies glowed instead of burned. “That’s how I see you every day walking out the door. You’re a warrior fighting against a world gone mad. I don’t want somebody different coming home. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I do. Yes.”

  “Great. Now can we get some sleep?”

  Twenty

  Goff looked up from his bowl of menudo, grinning under a wet, red mustache.

  “Big, dumb Po-lack walks into a Mexican restaurant, says to the girl, give me a nice, fat kielbasa. Girl says back, meester, you got this wrong. You give me a nice, fat kielbasa and I give you … ”

  “Cut the crap,” Bronkowski said. “What do you have for me?”

  “Nothing tops the Polish joke in your mirror.” Goff chased his food with a long drink of coffee. “Christ. You’re wrapped as tight as Fager. Have a seat. Get some breakfast. This place is great.”

  Bronkowski pulled out a chair across the table. A young woman with fake eyebrows painted two inches higher than natural arrived with a coffee pot and a glass of ice water. He ordered eggs, sunny-side up, Christmas-style—green and red chile. She didn’t speak English. “Huevos rancheros,” he said and let it go.

  “That guessing game you played with Fager, when you were here with Aragon and Lewis, about something missing from his wife’s remains, you enjoy that?” Bronkowski set his eyes on Goff’s face.

  “Fager didn’t flinch. Learns bones were cut from inside her head, trophies for Geronimo, he picks up his coffee and keeps reading.” Go
ff met Bronkowski’s stare. “Just another case for him. Cold-blooded bastard.”

  Bronkowski tried the coffee then pushed it away. Dishwater laced with cinnamon.

  “Let’s make this quick.” Bronkowski removed the little notebook from his jacket pocket and clicked a pen. “You first.”

  “What did you think of Geronimo?” Goff scooped diced raw onions into his menudo, followed by a tablespoon of oregano. “Fager in one of his memos to Mascarenas let us know about your visit to his big gallery opening. You shook his hand, had a nice talk. You talked to him longer than I did on the Tasha Gonzalez case. Using art bullshit to get close. Not bad.”

  “How far back did you dig into his background?”

  “Enough to doubt Geronimo is his real name.”

  “None of that’s in the file.”

  “We were getting a river of PC shit for casting suspicion on the Native American Picasso or Michelangelo or whatever he is. The chief assigned his community relations director to our team, sitting there correcting our language, editing our reports, bugging us to unpack our feelings and assumptions toward the other. I still don’t know what the fuck that meant. We had to go to a white privilege workshop. I learned I was no longer Jewish but Anglo, and a bigoted turdball deserving a lifetime of guilt ’cause I don’t have ancestors massacred at Wounded Knee.”

  “You are a bigoted turdball.”

  “Now you’re the one with the jokes.”

  “Geronimo,” Bronkowski said.

  “Right.” Goff pushed his bowl away and leaned forward. “It’s not a Navajo name, but he claims he was born on the Alamo Rez. That’s Navajo, the Alamo Band they’re called—sounds like a music group from Texas. It’s a damn poor, sorry place, worse than the big rez around Shiprock. These people are out on their own, hundreds of miles from any other Navajos, in even harder country. I found nothing to back his claim about being Indian except stories that always came back to him.”

  “He built himself a legend?”

  “It’s not an Apache name, either. The Mexicans gave it to one man only. Yet our guy doesn’t blow that horn, that he’s a direct descendant of a real Indian war chief every school kid’s heard about. For someone so good at self-promotion—his true game, you know—he’d use that. You seeing this?”

  “I been thinking ‘Cody Geronimo’ is too good. Like a movie star picking something that rings. Charles Bronson. He was Charles Dennis Buchinsky.”

  “You’d know. America’s only Polack action hero.”

  “Tom Cruise’s real name is Thomas Mapother. The Fourth.”

  “You sit around reading People magazine? Fager must not have enough for you to do.”

  Bronkowski let it go, coming from a guy who spends his days collecting retirement, Goff’s mind was stuck in the past when he had something to get him out of the house every day. “So what is Cody Geronimo’s real name?”

  “I never found a birth certificate. Records on the rez are a mess. Not every squaw who pushes out a papoose does the paperwork. Maybe that explains it. But still.”

  “Still, you are a bigoted turdball.”

  Bronkowski’s order arrived. The waitress with eyebrows high on her forehead delivered a plate of eggs exactly the way he ordered it. He thought she didn’t understand.

  “What else you keep out of the file?” Bronkowski asked as he broke egg yolk with a tortilla.

  Goff flipped a brown envelope across the table. “Only Aragon knows about this.” Bronkowski wiped his fingers and opened the flap. Inside were approximately twenty photographs. They showed an artist’s studio and rooms in a large house crammed with Navajo rugs and traditional Native American artwork.

  “He didn’t do Tasha Gonzalez in his studio,” Goff said. “Windows everywhere to let in light. Tourists can watch the great genius at work. He’s got apprentices and students coming and going all the time. The last five shots are his house, just to give you the flavor. I doubt he wanted blood on those rugs. Even the bathrooms are full of pretty things. He did her somewhere else.”

  “I didn’t see search warrants in the file.” Breaking and entering to sniff around was exactly what he expected of Goff.

  “I never got resources to find where else he might have done his killing. Thornton brought the roof down on me. I was cleaning out my desk in a week.”

  “Shit.” Bronkowski dabbed his napkin at a spot of chile splashed on his leather vest. “Walt and I thought we ended your career. We were kind of proud of that.”

  The waitress dropped off their checks. Bronkowski put his hand over both of them.

  “We appreciate your assistance on this, despite the history between us.”

  “Let go of that.” Goff slipped the checks from under Bronkowski’s palm, found his. “I’d have to puke up anything Walter Fager paid for. Shit, I’m breaking kosher just eating at the same table with you two.”

  “Menudo’s kosher?”

  “Funnier by the minute, Bronkowski. Today I learn you’re a comedian. Still, two things I can’t figure about you.”

  “Just two?”

  “What the hell are you doing with Fager? He hurts people. That half-assed Bandidos look you got going, I know that’s not you.”

  “Dang.” Bronkowski tugged at his vest. “I was going for Hells Angels.”

  “He doesn’t just defend scum of the earth.” Goff wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “That case where a drunk slammed into a family on Christmas Eve, killing the wife and three kids. Fager turned an expired prescription for narcolepsy pills into a line dad killed his family nodding off at the wheel. That father never got off the stand. He killed himself the next day because he couldn’t live with the seed Fager planted in his heart.”

  “We did that case by the book. Just like the one that took you down.”

  “I bet you can’t remember the name of that drunk, or the family he wiped out.” Goff pointed his spoon across the table at Bronkowski. “Another day, another dollar for you and Fager.”

  “Get that out of my face. You got ten seconds. What’s the other thing?”

  “I’ve seen that antique belly gun in your belt. Why don’t you carry a semi-auto like everybody else in the twenty-first century?”

  “Now you’re getting personal. This interest in another man’s gun, people gonna start talking.”

  “You gotta crack a joke to duck the question.”

  “Something I haven’t figured about you.”

  “Oh, your turn now.” Goff put down his spoon, like he was freeing his hands to fight.

  Bronkowski saw them, no longer eating or talking. Staring at each other, the smaller brown people at other tables sensing something between the big men, shifting in their chairs to turn away.

  Bronkowski broke the silence. “Why didn’t you get Geronimo the first time?”

  “I told you, Indians drove me off.”

  “Sure, like the old movies. Indians smelled white men before they saw them. A dirty cop does have a certain air about him.”

  “You just stopped being funny.”

  “I can’t help thinking. Had the case gone to a cop who did the job straight up, a beautiful woman I cared about would be alive and I wouldn’t be sitting here trading spitballs with you.”

  “Second thought, you buy.” Goff flipped his check at Bronkowski.

  “I’ve got a meeting across town with your favorite lawyer.” Bronkowski dropped money on the table. “The family’s name was Shelby. Daniel, the father. Shirley his wife. Dawn, age twelve, Susan, eight, and Billy just five years old. Susan was into gymnastics. Dawn liked horses. Shirley sang in her church choir. It’s our client’s name, the one who killed them, that’s who I can’t remember.”

  Twenty-One

  Right where Geronimo stood? The exact spot, Fager insisted. It was the strangest instruction he had received in almost twenty years as Fager
’s investigator.

  So here he was, where Geronimo had stood, inside the tall hedge. Fager would arrive soon and give him his cue.

  As he waited, his mind ran back to Goff’s questions. Why did he stick with Fager? Why carry a Dick Tracy gun anybody would leave at home in a bedside drawer? The answer to the second question answered both.

  Bosnia 1994, he and Fager were half of a Special Forces unit that did not officially exist. But the artillery fire they were directing against Serbian militia was very real.

  Fager had been right about the field cannons and the Muslims they were supposed to be helping. The cannons, leftovers from some other war, had trouble with high explosive shells. The antique guns could not be trusted. Neither could the Muslims. Many of these men had come from Libya, Egypt, Syria, learned killing in Afghanistan. Fager believed Bosnia was only a flashpoint in some bigger war they were fighting. “We’ll see them again,” Fager would say, “closer to home.”

  As the Special Forces team was watching a NATO strike in a valley below their outpost, the Muslims attacked. Pat Johnson and Murph Talbott took the first bullets. Bronkowski never got off a shot. His M-249 jammed. He used it as a club before gun barrels forced him onto his belly and boots broke his ribs.

  Fager disappeared.

  They concealed Bronkowski in goat carts under bales of hay. Other days it was piles of garbage. Once it was dead bodies. He knew they were moving south. He started hearing “Libya” mixed in among words that sounded Arabic, nothing like the peasants’ Albanian.

  At a camp in deep woods Bronkowski heard grunts and gasps, then Fager was standing there, wiping a knife on his pants. It took a week to reach the coast. They sat on the beach until they were picked up by Italians poaching in fishing grounds abandoned during the fighting.