Crystal Meth Cowboys

by John Knoerle

  "Esteban? Why him? How'd you know where he lived?"

  Florence answered quickly, impatient at the interruption. "My husband’s a public defender, he has a Rolodex. Anyway, the note, all I said was someone was selling speed from room #12 of the Coach House Inn. I didn't know there was this big drug ring in town. From what I'd heard Esteban was the local dealer."

  Wes recalled Florence sitting next to him at the Bell's dinner table, pretending she had no idea who Esteban No Middle Name Rodriguez was.

  "I thought Esteban and his…thugs would just, you know, scare him off."

  Florence burst out crying then, bending over, grabbing Wes Lyedecker's arm for support as she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Wes handed her a wash cloth, remembering how he'd thought her so wonderfully sensitive when she'd asked him if he wanted to 'talk to someone' about the shooting in room #12. Florence soaked the wash cloth pressed to her nose. Wes fitted all the pieces together.

  "So the badass Sinoloan meth dealers get the word from Esteban and go to room #12. They do what they do to Robert Bjornstedt and find something very interesting in his saddle bags. A pencil sketch, most likely nude and an exact likeness, of Florence Jillison."

  Wes looked down upon Florence's dark roots until she nodded. He remembered how she had dug her nails into his hand when her fax bell rang, remembered her dewy-eyed concern about gathering up Bjornstedt's 'personal effects'.

  "They faxed you the picture, pictures, and kept faxing them till you were ready to play ball." Wes told himself to quit showing off and shut up. It wasn't his voice he needed on tape. "Is that right? Is that what happened?"

  "Yes," whimpered Florence to her shoes.

  "I can't hear you."

  Florence straightened up. Her eyes were pink as a rabbit's and ringed with black. Her tears had carved tracks through her cheek blusher. Her chin trembled. "Yes, yes, fuck yes, that's what fucking happened!"

  Wes backed away to protect his microphone. The towels and bedsheets in the linen closet damped the echo of the narrow space. Bell was going to be impressed with the quality of this recording.

  "They told me, me, I had to approach John Aubuchon” said Florence in a clenched, whispered scream. “John Aubuchon's everything I have ever fought against in my whole fucking life! I had to go to John Aubuchon and propose a deal."

  "I'll bet he liked that," said Wes.

  "O-ho," said Florence.

  "What kind of a deal?"

  Florence puffed her cheeks out as far as they would go.

  "Did you tell John Aubuchon that he would get X number of dollars a week, in cash, if he allowed a meth lab to be constructed on the grounds of his plant? Did you tell John Aubuchon that? Florence?"

  Florence gestured emphatically, as if arguing with someone. Wes glanced down at the recorder in his pocket. The red record light was still on. He guessed he had a few minutes of tape left though it felt as if he'd been inside the linen closet for at least an hour. "Maybe the drug dealers offered you a campaign contribution as an extra added inducement," said Wes, remembering her saturation TV campaign in the week before the election.

  "No, that was Aubuchon's idea," said Florence after a time, the storm passed, peaceful as the sea. She smiled sadly. "He wanted to make sure I won the election, make sure he had a partner in crime."

  "And what about Mayor Krumrie? What was his involvement?" Florence shook her head dismissively. "The Mayor wasn't in on it?"

  Florence used the wash cloth to wipe a scrim of perspiration off her forehead. She said, "Wes, don't be a dolt. John Aubuchon would never trust his deepest darkest secret to a drunk."

  "Ah," said Wes. He paused to review what he had captured on tape. Florence had yet to unambiguously state that John Aubuchon agreed to a deal. Wes decided to try a little of that sympathetic understanding that Ms. Jillison wielded so effectively.

  "Florence, forgive me, but seeing Bell layed out on that gurney with his skin all turned blue, God, I don't know, I just lost it. I don't condone what you did, not one bit. But maybe I can kind of understand it under the circumstances."

  Wes offered his hand. Florence took it after a time, wedged her fingers in between his and squeezed so hard that that Wes actually felt sorry for her for a moment. "That must have been a terrible moment," he said softly. "When you approached John Aubuchon with the deal."

  Florence nodded, let go of his hand and wrapped him in a steaming hug. Wes hitched himself up so that Florence's cheek just missed the mini-recorder in his shirt pocket. She said something with the word 'horrible' in it. Wes patted her hair. It was stiff with spray. He eased her back a few inches and made eye contact.

  "Florence, I'm confused. Help me understand why John Aubuchon would agree to your very risky proposal to place a drug lab inside his property?"

  "Beats me," said Florence, dabbing at her eyes with the wash cloth. "But he did."

  Wes tightened his grip around her upper arms. He stepped back and said, "Ms. Jillison, you're facing multiple counts of conspiracy to distribute and accessory to murder. I would strongly encourage you to take this opportunity to do yourself some good."

  Florence looked confused. The wash cloth dangled limply from her hand.

  "You're the Mayor-elect. Chief Sunomoka's new boss. If you instruct him to issue an immediate APB for John Aubuchon I might forget all this."

  Florence got it. She bared her teeth like a ferret cornered in a barn stall. "This was off the record. You, you said this was just between you and me!"

  Wes pulled the mini-cassette recorder from his, Bell's, shirt pocket, pushed the stop button and said, "I lied. Now, if you want to avoid a twenty year prison sentence I'd suggest you go have a long talk with the Chief of Police."

  Florence Jillison snatched furiously at the cassette recorder. She balled her fists and pounded on Wes Lydecker’s chest. She buried her face in Bell’s bullet-riddled shirt and bawled her eyes out. She pressed her breasts against Wes’ belly and ran her palms on either side of his crotch.

  Wes Lyedecker didn't feel a thing. He opened the linen closet door and pulled Florence Jillison out into the hall.

  Epilogue

  Wes Lyedecker awoke from a dark dream to the sound of an idling big rig. He flexed his spine and stretched his muscles, willing heat into his arms and legs. The desert night was cold. He wiped the windshield with his road rag. A Pontiac station wagon sat parked two spaces to his right, lights out, windows fogged. The idling big rig was dark save for a dim nightlight in the cab. At the far end of the lot a few RV's huddled by the dump station. Wes remembered now. He was in a rest area off Interstate 80. Rest rooms, pay phone, dog walk, road map mounted in a glass case. 'Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federico Pena, Secretary'. Wes sat up straight in the bucket seat. Cyril Reese’s chrome .45 was in his lap.

  Wes Lyedecker felt as if he could have steered his RX-7 in any direction he liked when the setting sun burst over the salt flats, turning interstate 80 into a lake of fire, paving the horizon with light. Only the high speed wobble of his tires on the soft shoulder brought him around and, after four tanks of gas, untold coffees and twenty furious tailgating, passing-on-the-right hours on the road, he pulled off at a rest area and parked in the lot, nose out. The map said he was in Skull Valley, 49 miles west of Salt Lake City and just south of the Great Salt Lake.

  To distract himself during the long drive Wes had puzzled out the many unasked questions he had for Bell. DWO was Driving While Oriental, that was obvious. NHI was probably No Humans Involved. And as to why Bell and Sherri had asked him to move in, there was only one explanation. They felt sorry for him. They didn’t need the money. They took pity on a despised rookie away from home for the first time and asked him to share their home.

  Wes shifted the gun on his lap. He’d known he would never figure out why Bell called the test pilot in the black corvette Farmer John so he'd asked Cyril Reese. After the funeral. At the wake at the Deer Lick Inn. After Wes told Cyril Reese that he had surrendered his badge
and gun to Chief Sunomoka and Reese had presented Wes his service weapon for the long drive home, laid the gleaming .45 across his broad palm and offered it to Wes in front of everyone.

  Reese said 'Because he's smoked so many pigs' was the answer to the question. Wes had laughed.

  Wes hefted the gun in his hand. Had Reese been trying to tell him something? Surrendering his weapon so that Wes Lyedecker would do the honorable thing? It didn't seem so at the time. Though they all knew the circumstances of the shoot no one at the Deer Lick Inn had shunned him. CJ, Renaldo, Little Jim, Jake Hansey and Cyril Reese had all hugged his shoulder and patted his back and muttered condolences as if Bell had been his partner for twenty years. Even Sherri, who kept her composure through the church ceremony, trying so hard to be the stalwart cop wife, collapsed in Wes Lyedecker's arms when the bagpiper piped Amazing Grace at the graveside.

  Only Cosmo the barkeep kept his distance at the wake, eyeing Wes obliquely, his magnified eyeballs saying he suspected, he knew Wes Lyedecker's good intentions were responsible for the demise of his best customer.

  Wes put his finger through the trigger guard. Too easy. Three quick movements. Lift, point, squeeze.

  Not so. To do it right he should walk out on the salt flats for a few hundred yards where he wouldn't wake anyone and his blood would drain into the soft silt and the buzzards would pick him clean. That would be the honorable way.

  Florence Jillison had done as she was told. But by the time she convinced the Chief to convince the Sheriff to stake out the airports, John Aubuchon was miles above the Pacific in his twin-engine Gruman.

  Florence didn't attend the funeral. She missed the parade of squad cars – Wislow PD units, CHP, Air Base MP's, sheriff's deputies, corrections officers - that followed the hearse westbound on Playa Road, headlights wig-wagging, light bars blazing. They were backed up all the way through town. Motor officers who were sealing off intersections turned and saluted as the hearse rolled by. Wes followed in the LTD Crown Victoria, waxed and buffed to a gleaming shine.

  Chief Sunomoka delivered the eulogy at graveside, saying whatever you could say about Bell you couldn't say he wasn't alive, which seemed to Wes a weird thing to say about a waxen corpse. Wes tendered his resignation after the burial and gave the Chief of Police an envelope containing the mini-cassette. He didn't bother with explanations. The Chief could do with it as he pleased.

  Too easy. Wes tucked the .45 into the front of his trousers and jacked open the car door. He extricated himself from the low slung seat in stages. He braced for a blast of cold air but the desert night was calm. Truck tires sang down the interstate. No one stirred. The rest area was at rest.

  He should have known. He should have stayed at Bell's side and comforted Sherri. He had recognized Bell's startled, far off look, had seen it on the faces of the terminal patients being wheeled up and down the halls of the hospital where his mother worked. Wes Lyedecker’s two machine pistol rounds caused heart palpitations that burst a blood vessel in Bell's brain that led to a series of small strokes that produced a heart seizure that caused Bell's death on the operating table. Lt. Coroner Bernard Fischer performed the autopsy. He discovered that Bell suffered from cardiac arrythmia and cited that as the central culprit in his expiration. A Shooting Review Board composed of Chief Sunomoka, Sgt. Harrick and Little Jim ruled that Lyedecker's shoot was justified.

  Wes closed the car door and buttoned his suit coat over the gun. He knew better of course. If a certain rookie cop hadn't contacted a certain Mayor-elect with certain information he was expressly warned not to share, Officer Thomas J. Bell would still be alive.

  The 'J' stood for Jeremiah. It was on the death certificate. He would have loved to give Bell shit about that name. That was the worst part of death for the living, thought Wes. All the leftover scenes you looked forward to - his sheepish entrance into the recovery room, Bell saying, 'You know, Braintree, when I said "Shoot the motherfuckers" I wasn’t referring to myself,' Wes saying, 'Now you tell me' or, better yet, just a dumbass 'Ohhhhh'.

  Having saved his partner's life Wes would have felt entitled to ask Bell the one question that had really been bugging him. What was the deal with that stupid joke? The one about the talking hat box. All it could say was 'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.' What was so godamned funny about that?!

  Wes trod the sidewalk toward the brown pod that housed the restrooms and the road map mounted in a glass case. It had an old-fashioned phone booth, with a door that opened and closed. He studied it. He looked out across the grass to the lunar dark of the salt flats. He walked over to the phone booth and pulled the cantilevered glass door shut. A light came on. He pushed 'O' and placed a credit card call. His mother answered on the second ring.

  "Wesley?"

  "Hi Mom."

  "I knew it was you. What's wrong?"

  The phone booth smelled of cigarette smoke. Wes opened the door, dousing the overhead light. "Nothing much. Just thought I'd call you up in the middle of the night and say hi."

  The connection had a split second delay. He heard his last word echo-echo down the line.

  "All right," said his mother gamely. "Hi. How goes it out there…ere…ere?"

  Wes smiled. He shifted the .45 from between his legs to across his thigh. He took his time. "Not so hot actually. My partner, Officer Bell, was shot and killed."

  "Oh my dear God," said his mother. "Wes, that's terrible…ible…ible."

  "Yes," said Wes. "It is that."

  "But what…I mean, how did…" Her words were swallowed up.

  “How did it happen?” said Wes.

  “Yes,” said his mother.

  “You want to know who killed him?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Wes looked out and up, at the cut glass brilliance of the desert sky. "Well," he said, "As it turns out, I did."

  Wes listened to his words repeat themselves down two thousand miles of underground cable and disappear into the silence at the other end. He pressed his forehead to the smoky glass.