999

by Al Sarrantonio

  “They must have fallen off a garbage truck.”

  “Every morning? And only shoes, nothing else? Besides, the ones I found this morning were almost new.”

  “Maybe somebody was moving and they fell off the back of a pickup truck.”

  “Every morning?” Romero repeated. “These were Cole Hahns. Expensive loafers like that don’t get thrown on top of a load of stuff in a pickup truck.”

  “What difference does it make? It’s only shoes. Maybe somebody’s kidding around.”

  “Sure,” Romero said. “Somebody’s kidding around.”

  “A practical joke,” the sergeant said. “So people will wonder why the shoes are on the road. Hey, you wondered. The joke’s working.”

  “Yeah,” Romero said. “A practical joke.”

  * * *

  The next morning, it was a battered pair of Timberland work boots. As Romero crested the hill by the Baptist church, he wasn’t surprised to see them. In fact, the only thing he had been uncertain about was what type of footwear they would be.

  If this is a practical joke, it’s certainly working, he thought. Whoever’s doing it is awfully persistent. Who …

  The problem nagged at him all day. Between investigating a hit-and-run on St. Francis Drive and a break-in at an art gallery on Canyon Road, he returned to the crest of the hill on Old Pecos Trail several times, making sure that other shoes hadn’t appeared. For all he knew, the joker was dumping the shoes during the daytime. If so, the plan Romero was thinking about would be worthless. But after the eighth time he returned and still didn’t see more shoes, he told himself he had a chance.

  The plan had the merit of simplicity. All it required was determination, and of that he had plenty. Besides, it would be a good reason to postpone going home. So after getting a Quarter Pounder and fries, a Coke and two large containers of coffee from McDonald’s, he headed toward Old Pecos Trail as dusk thickened. He used his private car, a five-year-old, dark blue Jeep Cherokee—no sense in being conspicuous. He considered establishing his stakeout in the Baptist church’s parking lot. That would give him a great view of Old Pecos Trail. But at night, with his car the only one in the lot, he’d be conspicuous. Across from the church, though, East Lupita Road intersected with Old Pecos Trail. It was a quiet residential area, and if he parked there, he couldn’t be seen by anyone driving along Old Pecos. In contrast, he himself would have a good view of passing traffic.

  It can work, he thought. There were streetlights on Old Pecos Trail but not on East Lupita. Sitting in darkness, munching on his Quarter Pounder and fries, using the caffeine in the Coke and the two coffees to keep himself alert, he concentrated on the illuminated crest of the hill. For a while, the headlights of passing cars were frequent and distracting. After each vehicle passed, he stared toward the area of the road that interested him, but no sooner did he focus on that spot than more headlights sped past, and he had to stare harder to see if anything had been dropped. He had his right hand ready to turn the ignition key and yank the gearshift into forward, his right foot primed to stomp the accelerator. To relax, he turned on the radio for fifteen-minute stretches, careful that he didn’t weaken the battery. Then traffic became sporadic, making it easy to watch the road. But after an eleven o’clock news report in which the main item was about a fire in a store at the De Vargas mall, he realized the flaw in his plan. All that caffeine. The tension of straining to watch the road.

  He had to go to the bathroom.

  But I went when I picked up the food.

  That was then. Those were two large coffees you drank.

  Hey, I had to keep awake.

  He squirmed. He tensed his abdominal muscles. He would have relieved himself into one of the beverage containers, but he had crumbled all three of them when he stuffed them into the bag that the Quarter Pounder and fries came in. His bladder ached. Headlights passed. No shoes were dropped. He pressed his thighs together. More headlights. No shoes. He turned his ignition key, switched on his headlights, and hurried toward the nearest public rest room, which was on St. Michael’s Drive at an all-night gas station because at eleven-thirty most restaurants and takeout places were closed.

  When he got back, two cowboy boots were on the road.

  “It’s almost one in the morning. Why are you coming home so late?”

  Romero told his wife about the shoes.

  “Shoes? Are you crazy?”

  “Haven’t you ever been curious about something?”

  “Yeah, right now I’m curious why you think I’m stupid enough to believe you’re coming home so late because of some old shoes you found on the road. Have you got a girlfriend, is that it?”

  “You don’t look so good,” his sergeant said.

  Romero shrugged despondently.

  “You been out all night, partying?” the sergeant joked.

  “Don’t I wish.”

  The sergeant became serious. “What is it? More trouble at home?”

  Romero almost told him the whole story, but remembering the sergeant’s indifference when he’d earlier been told about the shoes, Romero knew he wouldn’t get much sympathy. Maybe the opposite. “Yeah, more trouble at home.”

  After all, what he’d done last night was, he had to admit, a little strange. Using his free time to sit in a car for three hours, waiting for … If a practical joker wanted to keep tossing shoes on the road, so what? Let the guy waste his time. Why waste my own time trying to catch him? There were too many real crimes to be investigated. What am I going to charge the guy with? Littering?

  Throughout his shift, Romero made a determined effort not to go near Old Pecos Trail. A couple of times during a busy day of interviewing witnesses about an assault, a break-in, another purse snatching, and a near-fatal car accident on Paseo de Peralta, he was close enough to have swung past Old Pecos Trail on his way from one incident to another, but he deliberately chose an alternate route. Time to change patterns, he told himself. Time to concentrate on what’s important.

  At the end of his shift, his lack of sleep the previous night caught up to him. He left work exhausted. Hoping for a quiet evening at home, he followed congested traffic through the dust of the eternal construction project on Cerrillos Road, reached Interstate 25, and headed north. Sunset on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains tinted them the blood color for which the early Spanish colonists had named them. In a half hour, I’ll have my feet up and be drinking a beer, he thought. He passed the exit to St. Francis Drive. A sign told him that the next exit, the one for Old Pecos Trail, was two miles ahead. He blocked it from his mind, continued to admire the sunset, imagined the beer he was going to drink, and turned on the radio. A weather report told him that the high for the day had been seventy-five, typical for mid-May, but that a cold front was coming in and that the night temperature could drop as much as forty degrees, with a threat of frost in low-lying areas. The announcer suggested covering any recently purchased tender plants. The average frost-free day was May 15, but …

  Romero took the Old Pecos Trail exit.

  Just for the hell of it, he thought. Just to have a look and settle my curiosity. What can it hurt? As he crested the hill, he was surprised to notice that his heart was beating a little faster. Do I really expect to find more shoes? he asked himself. Is it going to annoy me that they were here all day and I didn’t come over to check? Pressure built in his chest as that section came into view. He breathed deeply …

  And exhaled when he saw that there wasn’t anything on the road. There, he told himself. It was worth the detour. I proved that I’d have wasted my time if I drove over here during my shift. I can go home now without being bugged that I didn’t satisfy my curiosity.

  But all the time he and his wife sat watching television while they ate Kentucky Fried Chicken (their son was out with friends), Romero felt restless. He couldn’t stop thinking that whoever was dumping the shoes would do so again. The bastard will think he’s outsmarted me. You? What are you talking about? He doesn’t have the
faintest idea who you are. Well, he’ll think he’s outsmarted whoever’s picking up the shoes. The difference is the same.

  The beer that Romero had been looking forward to tasted like water.

  And of course the next morning, damn it, there was a pair of women’s tan pumps five yards away from each other along the median. Scowling, Romero blocked morning traffic, picked up the pumps, and set them in the trunk with the others. Where the hell is this guy getting the shoes? he thought. These pumps are almost new. So are the loafers I picked up the other day. Who throws out perfectly good shoes, even for a practical joke?

  When Romero was done for the day, he phoned his wife to tell her, “I have to work late. One of the guys on the evening shift got sick. I’m filling in.” He caught up on some paperwork he needed to do. Then he went to a nearby Pizza Hut and got a medium pepperoni with mushrooms and black olives, to go. He also got a large Coke and two large coffees, but this time he’d learned his lesson and came prepared with an empty plastic gallon jug that he could urinate in. More, he brought a Walkman and earphones so he wouldn’t have to use the car’s radio and worry about wearing down the battery.

  Confident that he hadn’t forgotten anything, he drove to the stakeout. Santa Fe had its share of dirt roads, and East Lupita was one of them. Flanked by chamisa bushes and Russian olive trees, it had widely spaced adobe houses and got very little traffic. Parked near the corner, Romero saw the church across from him, its bell tower reminding him of a pueblo mission. Beyond were the piñon-dotted Sun Mountain and Atalaya Ridge, the sunset as vividly blood-colored as it had been the previous evening.

  Traffic passed. Studying it, he put on his headphones and switched the Walkman from CD to radio. After finding a call-in show (was the environment truly as threatened as ecologists claimed?), he sipped his Coke, dug into his pizza, and settled back to watch traffic.

  An hour after dark, he realized that he had indeed forgotten something. The previous day’s weather report had warned about low night temperatures, possibly even a frost, and now Romero felt a chill creep up his legs. He was grateful for the warm coffee. He hugged his chest, wishing that he’d brought a jacket. His breath vapor clouded the windshield so that he often had to use a handkerchief to clear it. He rolled down his window, and that helped control his breath vapor, but it also allowed more cold to enter the vehicle, making him shiver. Moonlight reflected off lingering snow on top of the mountains, especially at the ski basin, and that made him feel even colder. He turned on the Jeep and used its heater to warm him. All the while, he concentrated on the dwindling traffic.

  Eleven o’clock, and still no shoes. He kept reminding himself that it had been about this hour two nights earlier when he had been forced to leave to find a rest room. When he had returned twenty minutes later, he had found the cowboy boots. If whoever was doing this followed a pattern, there was a good chance that something would happen in the next half hour.

  Stay patient, he thought.

  But as had happened two nights earlier, the Coke and the coffees finally had their effect. Fortunately, he had that problem taken care of. He grabbed the empty gallon jug from the seat beside him, twisted its cap off, positioned the jug beneath the steering wheel, and started to urinate, only to squint from the headlights of a car that approached behind him, reflecting in his rearview mirror.

  His bladder muscles tensed, interrupting the flow of urine. Jesus, he thought. Although he was certain that the driver wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing, he felt self-conscious enough that he quickly capped the jug and set it on the passenger floor.

  Come on, he told the approaching car. He needed to urinate as bad as ever and urged the car to pass him, to turn onto Old Pecos Trail and leave, so he could grab the jug again.

  The headlights stopped behind him.

  What in God’s name? Romero thought.

  Then rooflights began to flash, and Romero realized that what was behind him was a police car. Ignoring his urgent need to urinate, he rolled down his window and placed his hands on top of the steering wheel, where the approaching officer, not knowing who was in the car or what he was getting into, would be relieved to see them.

  Footsteps crunched on the dirt road. A blinding flashlight scanned the inside of Romero’s car, assessing the empty pizza box, lingering over the yellow liquid in the plastic jug. “Sir, may I see your license and registration, please?”

  Romero recognized the voice. “It’s okay, Tony. It’s me.”

  “Who … Gabe?”

  The flashlight beam hurt Romero’s eyes.

  “Gabe?”

  “The one and only.”

  “What the hell are you doing out here? We had several complaints about somebody suspicious sitting in a car, like he was casing the houses in the neighborhood.”

  “It’s only me.”

  “Were you here two nights ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “We had complaints then, too, but when we got here, the car was gone. What are you doing?” the officer repeated.

  Trying not to squirm from the pressure in his abdomen, Romero said, “I’m on a stakeout.”

  “Nobody told me about any stakeout. What’s going on that—”

  Realizing how long it would take to explain the odd-sounding truth, Romero said, “They’ve been having some attempted break-ins over at the church. I’m watching to see if whoever’s been doing it comes back.”

  “Man, sitting out here all night—this is some piss-poor assignment they gave you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Well, I’ll leave before I draw any more attention to you. Good hunting.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And next time, tell the shift commander to let the rest of us know what’s going on so we don’t screw things up.”

  “I’ll make a point of it.”

  The officer got back in his cruiser, turned off the flashing lights, passed Romero’s car, waved, and steered onto Old Pecos Trail. Instantly, Romero grabbed the plastic jug and urinated for what seemed a minute and a half. When he finished and leaned back, sighing, his sense of relaxation lasted only as long as it took him to study Old Pecos Trail again.

  The next thing, he scrambled out of his car and ran cursing toward a pair of men’s shoes—they turned out to be Rockports—lying laced together in the middle of the road.

  * * *

  “Did you tell Tony Ortega you’d been ordered to stake out the Baptist church?” his sergeant demanded.

  Romero reluctantly nodded.

  “What kind of bullshit is that? Nobody put you on any stakeout. Sitting in a car all night, acting suspicious. You’d better have a damned good reason for—”

  Romero didn’t have a choice. “The shoes.”

  “What?”

  “The shoes I keep finding on Old Pecos Trail.”

  His eyes wide, the sergeant listened to Romero’s explanation. “You don’t put in enough hours? You want to donate a couple nights free overtime on some crazy—”

  “Hey, I know it’s a little unusual.”

  “A little?”

  “Whoever’s dumping those shoes is playing some kind of game.”

  “And you want to play it with him.”

  “What?”

  “He leaves the shoes. You take them. He leaves more shoes. You take them. You’re playing his game.”

  “No, it isn’t like that.”

  “Well, what is it like? Listen to me. Quit hanging around that street. Somebody might shoot you for a prowler.”

  When Romero finished his shift, he found a dozen old shoes piled in front of his locker. Somebody laughed in the lunchroom.

  “I’m Officer Romero, ma’am, and I guess I made you a little nervous last night and two nights earlier. I was in my car, watching the church across the street. We had a report that somebody might try to break in. It seems you thought I’m the one who might try breaking in. I just wanted to assure you the neighborhood’s perfectly safe with me parked out there.”
>
  “I’m Officer Romero, sir, and I guess I made you a little nervous last night and two nights earlier.”

  This time, he had everything under control. No more large Cokes and coffees, although he did keep his plastic jug, just in case. He made sure to bring a jacket, although the frost danger had finally passed and the night temperature was warmer. He was trying to eat better, too, munching on a burrito grande con polio from Felipe’s, the best Mexican takeout in town. He settled back and listened to the radio call-in show on the Walkman. The program was still on the environmental theme: “Hey, man, I used to be able to swim in the rivers when I was a kid. I used to be able to eat the fish I caught in them. I’d be nuts to do that now.”

  It was just after dark. The headlights of a car went past. No shoes. No problem. Romero was ready to be patient. He was in a rhythm. Nothing would probably happen until it usually did—after eleven. The Walkman’s earphones pinched his head. He took them off and readjusted them as headlights sped past, heading to the right, out of town. Simultaneously, a different pair of headlights rushed past, heading to the left, into town. Romero’s window was down. Despite the sound of the engines, he heard a distinct thunk, then another. The vehicles were gone, and he gaped at two hiking boots on the road.

  Holy …

  Move! He twisted the ignition key and yanked the gearshift into drive. Breathless, he urged the car forward, its rear tires spewing stones and dirt, but as he reached Old Pecos Trail, he faced a hurried decision. Which driver had dropped the shoes? Which car? Right or left?

  He didn’t have any jurisdiction out of town. Left! His tires squealing on the pavement, he sped toward the receding taillights. The road dipped, then rose toward the stoplight at Cordova, which was red and which Romero hoped would stay that way, but as he sped closer to what he now saw was a pickup truck, the light changed to green, and the truck drove through the intersection.

  Shit.

  Romero had an emergency light on the passenger seat. Shaped like a dome, it was plugged into the cigarette lighter. He thrust it out the window and onto the roof, where its magnetic base held it in place. Turning it on, seeing the reflection of its flashing red light, he pressed harder on the accelerator. He sped through the intersection, rushed up behind the pickup truck, blared his horn, and nodded when the truck went slower, angling toward the side of the road.