Collateral Damage

by Austin S. Camacho

  Driving down uncluttered blacktops with the desert receding flat and brown in every direction, he had to admit that his body liked it out there. The air tasted different, sweeter than he was used to. It was warmer, but dry enough to keep his clothes from sticking to him. And every time he stopped his car, the silence fell in on him, as refreshing as a massage. And when people saw him staring at their cars, or at them, they smiled. Dropping back into his seat and pulling the door closed he considered it again. His body really liked it here.

  His mind, however, was restless. It was like some form of sensory deprivation. He realized that some part of him craved clutter, needed the background noise a real functioning city provides. So he breathed easier as the nightlife stirred into wakefulness. And he found himself smiling when his telephone rang.

  “Hey Hannibal!” Quaker’s frantic voice jumped into Hannibal’s ear. “I think we got a pretty good suspect here. Tall guy inside. Big black car outside. Come take a look.”

  * * *

  Hannibal reached the address Quaker gave him in less than two minutes. The old, rambling house was styled like a Mexican hacienda with stucco walls and a low-pillared porch. There were no other structures within easy walking distance, giving the impression that this one grew up out of the desert sand of its own accord. Frantic music pouring out of the building did not cover the laughter or the sound of dancing feet. Rolling slowly past, Hannibal saw two figures doing a spastic dance on the porch, shadowed by the light behind them. It was evident that they were dancing together, but by form both were clearly male.

  A low wall wrapped its stone arms around the large parking lot just past the house. Quaker sat atop it not far from the entrance. As Hannibal approached, he stood, his gangly arms waving Hannibal in. As he brought the car to a stop, Hannibal powered his window down.

  “This is somebody’s house?”

  Quaker thrust his face forward, wearing a weary grin. “Nope. I was stopped behind this guy at a light and I noticed the plate was like the ones we were looking for. The car kind of looked right, so I followed him. When he parked here I called you. Come on around inside and I’ll lead you to the car. Sure hope it ain’t another false alarm.”

  “Amen to that,” Hannibal said. He had already done this eight times that day, on occasions when Quaker, or Sarge, had found a car that could be right, but could not find the owner to confirm they fit the description.

  As Hannibal turned the wheel to follow Quaker across the hard ground of the parking lot, another Ford slid up behind him. Headlights bounced off his rear bumper, allowed him to see Sarge’s silhouette in his rear view mirror. Seconds later he saw yet another similar vehicle fall into line behind Sarge. Their short convoy bounced along the path through close-parked cars, reminding Hannibal of a trip through a drive-in theater’s grounds. The cars were mostly new and expensive at the beginning of his journey. As they neared the back of the lot they approached a small gathering of older models.

  Finally Quaker stopped and pointed at a large, dark-colored vehicle. The space beside it on the driver’s side was vacant, and Hannibal pulled into it, stopping too close to the target car. Sarge parked in the nearest space, seven cars away. The other car, Virgil’s, passed him to park in the next row. Hannibal killed the engine, listening again to the way the open spaces seemed to suck the sound away. Voices carried clearly from the house nearly a hundred yards away. And as he opened the door he stared up into a very clear, star-speckled night sky. A broad full moon hung directly overhead. Just what I need, Hannibal thought.

  Sarge’s footsteps crunched toward them, the beam from the flashlight in his beefy fist jiggling across the ground to finally rest on the bumper of the big car Hannibal now stood behind. Hannibal nodded his head at the bright silver characters raised against a cobalt blue background: 902, a dot, then JZB. More important to him was that he recognized the shape of the deep blue vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car at least a decade old. The differences between this car and the new vehicles he had seen earlier in the day were subtle but at the same time obvious. He hissed, “Yes,” in a very soft voice. “This is the car that almost hit me.”

  “Neat ain’t it?” Quaker said. “Now we know the guy you want’s a fag.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This place is a gay club,” Quaker said, his pale angular face a grinning death’s head in the moonlight. “If he’s in there, he’s a fag.”

  Hannibal paced a few feet away. “A customer you think?”

  Virgil’s gravely voice rumbled in from behind him. “Not by this car. A hustler. Working the crowd.”

  “Sure,” Hannibal said, looking around himself. “This is where the hired help park.”

  “So, you’ll know him when you see him?” Sarge asked. When Hannibal nodded, he added, “So I guess we go in and get him.”

  Hannibal leaned against his car’s trunk. “That might not be the best plan. He might have a lot of friends in there, he might recognize me. It could get messy.”

  “Well, I sure ain’t up to waiting out here all night until he decides his night is over,” Sarge said.

  “Besides,” Quaker added, “when he does come out, he’ll probably have company, if you know what I mean.”

  Virgil listened to the others, then took a deep breath and let out a long breath through his nose. “I’ll go get him,” he said in a low monotone.

  “But you don’t even know what this guy looks like,” Hannibal said.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  * * *

  Virgil was dressed in casual slacks and a knit shirt, but he drew several stares when he entered. First, he was taller than almost anyone in the room. He was a big, solid man and his skin had a sheen like black leather. He strode through the crowded room and something about his manner made the sea of writhing bodies part before him. He looked neither left nor right on his path toward the DJ’s station. The flashing lights in the darkened room did not seem to affect him, nor did he react in any way to the booming music battering his ears. It seemed to be some bizarre hybrid of country and disco, and the men on the floor were twisting themselves into pretzels trying to dance to it.

  Inside him, Virgil’s entire being was clenched like a fist. The all male group here made his flesh crawl. Memories clawed at his mind, memories of days and nights in prison when he had to fight both the drug addiction he could not feed and the predators who needed sexual release so much that they turned to members of their own sex and sometimes did not care if their partners were willing or not. Years of successfully defending himself did not make the thought any more pleasant.

  At the far end of the dance floor he leaned forward but still had to shout to the bald, leather-clad DJ over the music. After a second iteration the DJ nodded, winked at him, and gave him a thumbs up sign. Virgil turned and made it most of the way across the floor before the DJ lowered the music and spoke into his microphone in a voice just a bit higher than Virgil thought it should be.

  “That tall, dark, beefy man heading toward the door has a message for you all. He’s had a little mistake in the parking area and he wants to make it good. So if your license plate number is 902 - JZB, catch him at the door to talk about what he’s willing to do to make it up to you.”

  Virgil stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and lit a Lucky Strike. He had managed to avoid the use of illegal substances for five long years and he never drank alcohol because he knew where that could lead. But as he filled his lungs with smoke he knew he could never call himself drug free until he lost this habit too.

  The man who burst through the doorway behind him raised a smile on Virgil’s face. He was almost Virgil’s height, six foot four, with straight, black, stringy hair. His slender frame was wrapped in a buckskin shirt and leather pants. He bounced up to Virgil, talking very rapidly, pointing into Virgil’s face.

  “Are you crazy man?” the newcomer asked. “I know you didn’t put a ding in my ride. That car’s a classic, man. Do you have any idea what parts for that thing cost?”r />
  Virgil rolled his yellowed eyes and held his hand forward. “Virgil,” he said.

  The other man, startled by this simple action, calmed a bit and took Virgil’s hand. “Fancy,” he said.

  Virgil puffed air out of his cheeks in a stifled laugh and pointed with his head toward the parking lot. The two moved on, Virgil walking in his usual slow, steady manner. Fancy’s movement was more frantic. He took two steps when one would do, swaying left to right on the path. As they neared his car, Fancy’s high-heeled cowboy boots began dancing a flamenco around Virgil and his arms waved wildly.

  “Holy shit, man. Look at that. I can’t believe you parked that close to my ride. What the fuck’s the matter with you? I can’t even open my damn door.”

  Fancy started around his car to the passenger side, but stopped as Quaker rose up from between the vehicles, a short length of pipe in his right hand. “Sucks, don’t it?” Quaker said.

  Beside Quaker, Hannibal rose to his feet and stared hard at the face framed in the moonlight before him. He watched as anger and indignation slowly gave way to recognition in those eyes. The man’s lower lip began to tremble as Hannibal’s focus shifted to a space over his shoulder.

  “This is him,” Hannibal said. “The man in Ruth’s picture.”

  Fancy spun to see a human bulldog with receding hair slapping a baseball bat into his left hand. “Then I guess he’s coming with us.”

  * * *

  On closer inspection, Hannibal decided this Fancy was too dark to be a white man. His hair, hanging about his shoulders, betrayed a Native American heritage. His nose was broad as a black man’s, his eyes dark and piercing as he stared up from the chair in Hannibal’s motel room. He wondered how many tourists went straight to the major hotels on the strip and missed the many small single level motels like this one that surrounded the city.

  “So,” Hannibal said, pacing in front of Fancy while he tightened his black gloves, “Shoshone? Hopi? Ute? Paiute?”

  “Hopi,” Fancy said. “Like you give a shit. What the hell is this? Why’d you grab me?”

  “You know why,” Hannibal said, placing a foot on the bed and resting his elbow on the upraised knee. “I chased you away from Oscar Peters’ house... let’s see, it will be a week ago tomorrow I think. You sure can run, I’ll give you that. I want to know why you were running, Mister....”

  “You don’t need to know my name,” Fancy said, sitting up straighter.

  “I need to know if you murdered Oscar Peters.”

  “Yeah, right,” Fancy said, propping his hands on the arms of the chair. Sarge, Quaker and Virgil held his eyes. “So now you interrogate me, is that it? You and your little gang of leg breakers?”

  Hannibal considered for a moment. This man may well be a cold-blooded murderer, but his words were those of an experienced victim. He could, after all have been set up by someone who never thought anyone could trace him back here.

  “No,” Hannibal said. “Just me.” He hooked a thumb toward the door while maintaining eye contact with Fancy. He felt rather than saw his partners leaving, Quaker first, then Virgil, and finally Sarge. Hannibal heard the door click shut behind him and saw Fancy’s shoulders drop an inch in relative relaxation. Hannibal opened his top button and pulled his tie down a bit. Half his face smiled at the absurdity of the situation.

  “So the question is whether you put a knife into Oscar Peters’ throat. And I really would like to know your name.”

  “Many Bad Horses.” When Hannibal looked up in surprise, Fancy repeated. “My real name. Victor Many Bad Horses. Most people just call me Fancy. And no, I didn’t cut Oscar. He was like that when I got there. You a cop?”

  Hannibal pulled a two-liter bottle of root beer from the little refrigerator and filled two glasses. “Not a cop, but I have an interest in this murder.” As he handed Fancy a glass he said, “I used to be a cop though. A cop would ask you, if you’re innocent, why’d you run?”

  Fancy took a long drink that nearly emptied his glass. Hannibal thought Virgil had been right. This man was a hustler by trade. He was looking for the angle. Staring into the ice cubes in his glass, he must have thought he saw it. “Sure, I see now. Joan sent you, didn’t she? Well she ought to know she can trust me. I might have stayed around awhile, or even called the cops myself if she wasn’t there. But she recognized me, and I didn’t want to get twisted up with whatever the hell she was planning.”

  Hannibal nodded and raised his glass in salute before taking a drink himself. Then he nodded, his lower lip protruding, as if considering Fancy’s story and deciding it sounded about right. “And what would you tell the cop who asked why you were there in the first place?”

  “The truth,” Fancy said, leaning back and crossing his legs. “Oscar invited me over to help him out. We got to be pretty good friends when he was living out here last year.”

  “Really?” Hannibal stood and drank the last of his soda. It tasted good, but left a bitter after taste, like Fancy’s story. “I didn’t think the boy was that type. And anyway he moved to the other side of the country. Why would he be calling you? And why now?”

  Fancy’s long fingers wrapped around the arms of his chair and Hannibal could see muscles bulge under his shirt. “What do you know? Oscar had a big heart, big enough to find affection on both sides of the fence. He had lots of people wanting time with him out there in Virginia, but when he was in trouble he called me!”

  “Trouble?”

  “Somebody threatened him, he said, somebody he took real serious.” Fancy drained his glass, and reached to refill it himself. “I didn’t want to fly out, because plane tickets are too easy to trace. So I hopped in the old Lincoln and drove on out there. I called him when I got there....”

  “Which was when?” Hannibal asked, pacing across the room, staying between Fancy and the door. Fancy was becoming a bit too agitated for his taste. Hannibal felt the tension bleeding off him, bouncing about in the deep shadows at the corners of the room.

  “I got out there Monday, early,” Fancy said. “Couldn’t get Oscar on the phone so I rang Joan. She said she had a date with him that night, but I should come by early in the evening. So I found a motel, took a long nap. When I woke up I went out for some dinner then went on to Oscar’s place.” Fancy’s eyes dropped to the floor and his voiced dropped into a raspy lower register. “I waited a bit too long. Got there a bit too late.”

  For a brief moment Hannibal wasn’t sure where to take his interrogation. It would be easy to believe Fancy’s story, and just as easy to believe he was practicing a script handed him by a cunning killer. Right that minute, Joan looked like the most likely actress for that role. And that suggested a line of inquiry that made Hannibal smile.

  “Tell me, Fancy, how well do you know Joan Kitteridge? I mean, you only met her last year, right?”

  Fancy’s eyes were hooded. A thick silence surrounded the room, holding his words inside. “Well, yeah, we met when she spent last summer in town here. And I never laid eyes on her again until she turned up here today, asking me all those questions. Except for that night in front of Oscar’s house, of course. Why? What are you getting at?”

  “Oh nothing. She stay at the same hotel back then?”

  “Uh-huh,” Fancy nodded. “She says she likes The Orleans because it’s off the strip and....”

  The single lamp cast much of Fancy’s face in shadow as he stood straight, but Hannibal could see his face twisting into an angry mask. His voice, low again, had an ugly hiss behind it. “Joan didn’t send you, did she?”

  Hannibal stood easy, hands at his sides but very alert. “I don’t believe I ever said she did.”

  Fancy pulled his right foot up on the chair he had been sitting in. From his boot he pulled a long narrow dagger and turned to wave it in circles, its point poised to open Hannibal’s navel. “All right, just who the hell are you, mister?”

  “I can’t believe you don’t recognize me, Fancy man,” Hannibal said, his knees slightly bent.
He could almost smell the adrenaline flooding Fancy’s body. “You almost ran me over with the old Lincoln less than a week ago, a couple blocks from Oscar’s house.”

  In the glare from the lamp, Fancy’s eyes seemed to glow with a fire of their own. He swiped with the knife from left to right a couple of times, but Hannibal knew he need not worry about the first couple of feints. His own hands curled into gloved fists and he assumed a comfortable fighting stance. Fancy’s boots danced on the floor, his teeth bared in hatred. Hannibal bounced slightly on his toes, but did not back up.

  “So, am I supposed to be frightened?” Hannibal asked.

  Fancy made a sound someplace between a shout and a growl as he drove his knife forward. Hannibal pivoted to his right. The blade slid past his body, slashing into the inside of his suit coat. His left fist shot forward, clipping Fancy’s jaw. Surprisingly, Fancy kept his feet and slashed backward. Hannibal barely avoided the knife, its tip making a whooshing sound as it sliced the air an inch in front of Hannibal’s throat. Then Hannibal’s right foot snapped upward with crushing power between Fancy’s legs. The taller man was paralyzed just long enough for Hannibal to land a right cross that twisted Fancy’s head around, then a left hook to his midsection, and finally a right uppercut that landed him, unconscious, across the bed.

  The sound of Fancy bouncing on the bed was drowned out by rushing feet as Quaker and Sarge burst into the room. Hannibal was panting but waved his friends to relax.

  “He get frisky?” Sarge asked.

  “Not so you’d notice,” Hannibal said. “But grab that blade. Then I think we should have no problem getting him to the police. They can hold him on suspicion of murder based on what I know now. Then we’ll swing across town. Somebody I know is in town and I think I ought to drop in and say hi.”