I do remember that he, too, seemed to know Shirley. After whispering only a few minutes that seemed like an hour, I saw them do a group hug before Romero gave me a salute and walked out the door
I was left with a transformed bag lady and a guy from the east that spewed out words I didn’t understand. Too fast. Maybe police lingo. Maybe just me. My mind—scrambled.
From the reporter’s desk:
Get Over It Magazine Draft
Untitled By L.C.
Twenty Years Earlier
THE SUMMER HEAT WAS fierce. She had to walk to and from her job and she usually left early and returned late so she didn’t have to be out in it. Today the lady wanted her to show up at precisely eleven in the morning. There was no escaping the harsh rays of the desert sun.
White people don’t think black people can get sunburned, Zoey thought, but sure enough her young skin was dry, blistered, and painfully sore. Sunburned.
When she got home she ran straight toward the kitchen and pulled the corn oil out from one of the few cupboards. She poured it into the palms of her hands and rubbed it over her thirsty skin. Worked as good as those pricey department store lotions, she figured. She had to figure that.
Their sweltering apartment stunk. It smelled like all the tenants were having indoor barbecue of human excrement for dinner. Sometimes her big brother took her out of there. Somehow he got his hands on a a car. Sometimes. He took her to a park on the far east side of town. A park with palm trees and water and birds and happy families picnicking on tables dotting an oasis of green grass.
Sometimes.
Now Zoey sat in the cramped corner that was her bedroom. She couldn’t ignore the pungent smells of car exhaust and the obnoxious street noise. Bad people all around. Not families.
She needed to earn a lot of money because she was getting out. She willed it to happen. She was going to buy her way out of this ghetto. That was a difference for her. She was going to earn her way out, not get it in illegal ways like her big brother.
Sundays was her momma’s and her cooking day. No matter what, her momma worked hard to feed them a decent meal on Sundays. Once in a while, they’d have barbecued spareribs. They didn’t have a real barbecue, but they got by with an old rusted out-horse trough, some rocks on the bottom, something like charcoal, but Zoey wasn’t sure what it was, and the grill from a junker car. It didn’t matter. Zoey and her mother could make a mean barbecue. And the kitchen wouldn’t go from hot to hell.
Her momma made pork chops coated with graham crackers. That was for holidays. In winter sometimes they made Gold Coast Stew, a dish filled with some sparse chicken pieces and peppers and tomatoes and Zoey’s favorite ingredient—peanut, butter. Her momma told her the recipe was straight out of Africa and once in a while they even added banana slices to the stew. Even canned pineapple chunks.
It got cold in the high desert in winter, and they had nothing, but a space heater. Didn’t matter they only had one. They didn’t have much more space than that, anyway.
Two things for sure. On Sundays they didn’t have beans or rice. And they didn’t have macaroni and powdered cheese.
Zoey was too young to work, at least legally, but her plan was coming along. She was stuck, all right, right in the middle of a bad neighborhood, but she figured it out. It wasn’t much more than a mile or two to walk and she could find some nice homes. Not too nice, she figured, because those folks had full-time maids. Pretty nice. That’s where she’d find her customers. She knew how to scrub a floor and clean a toilet so shiny people could eat off of them. And she didn’t have to worry about tax stuff. Pay her in cash and she’d do the job of their regular cleaning ladies for half of their asking price.
Zoey Lane started cleaning one home, four miles away.
DETECTIVE TAYLOR FINALLY announced, “There’s no reason you need to stick around here. Zoey will take care of the clean-up. My guys have what they need.”
I looked at the bloody mess and shook my head. I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t want to leave.
Shirley seemed to read my mind. Or my growling stomach. “You go, Steve. Sterling and I can go next door for a bite to eat. We’ll stick around until Zoey arrives. And God knows with all this police tape around here, the restaurant will need the business. Just don’t forget what I told you.”
“Dying man’s last words. I won’t forget. Trouble is coming.”
The yellow crime-scene tape now wrapped around my storefront. Right next to the outdoor bistro tables of the restaurant adjoining my store.
Shirley used my bathroom. Somewhere inside that magic bag of tricks she carried makeup, brushes, and a light perfume. Truthfully, she took my breath away when she walked back in. I could only wish I’d look as beautiful when the years took their toll on me.
THE SMALL BISTRO offered six tables outside and all were empty. Sitting under the last rays of the day’s sun, Shirley ordered a steak sandwich, fries, and a dirty martini.
She watched my eyebrows lift.
“Hey, I’m a working girl and I need to eat. I’m also off duty. I could use a stiff drink for the stiff I just produced.”
I ordered water.
“No way,” Shirley said. “You need to eat. Have a glass of wine. You need to bring yourself back to earth. ”
I ordered a bowl of minestrone and a light Pinot Grigio, hoping both would go down like Alka Seltzer.
She took a hard gulp of her martini. A quick shake of her head told me the gulp went down like fire. The smile that followed told me she liked firewater.
“You look terrible,” Shirley said. “Whiter than my Grandma Nora’s starched underwear.”
“Yeah. There’s a dead man’s remains in my new store.”
“That’s going to be taking care of. Soon. Is there anyone I can call for you?”
I shrugged. “No. He’s in New York.”
Shirley took another swig of the martini, this time chasing it with French fries. She grew quiet and her ivory skin paled.
“Maybe I should be calling someone for you,” I said.
“You’re perceptive.” She paused. “It’s the third man I’ve killed. It sucks, no matter how charged the circumstances and how nefarious the fallen.” She switched back to me.
“Do you have any enemies?” she asked.
“No. What does this have to do with me?”
“Have you been advertising some sort of grand opening?”
“Not until tomorrow. It will be in the papers and on the radio, but—”
“But what?”
“The local paper ran the standard press release. Who. What. When Where. We were lucky to get a small photo with it.
“And we sent out about a thousand postcards last week.”
Shirley stirred the remains of a green olive in her glass. “Since I didn’t get one, I’m guessing our stiff didn’t, either.”
A white van pulled up in front of my storefront. The side panel read only, Zoey, in a small script.
“That’s my professional cleaning crew?” I asked. My opening would never happen on time. “Not a very professional looking van.”
“She’s the best, and a damn smart one. You wouldn’t want her scaring off the customers you don’t even have yet, do you? Besides, every law enforcement agency in Southern Arizona knows to call Clean Scene when there’s a nasty job involved. They all know Zoey.”
“She’s cleaning that blood up by herself?”
“She’s always first on the scene; she’ll give you a quote, and then she pulls in her team. Only I told her to skip the quote this time and just do it.”
“I don’t need a quote,” I said. “I need my world back.”
“Listen, give me the keys and tell me how to set your alarm. I’ll let Zoey in and we’ll call it a night. You go home. Meet us all back here in the morning because Zoey’s gonna want her check, and I warned you her work won’t come cheap.”
I nodded and scribbled down the alarm instructions. “I’m sorry I misjudged you.”
/> “Hell, I got myself so stinky today I couldn’t even stand me. Besides, you were damn kind, but you never did give me that twenty bucks and the water.”
“I’ll buy,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she agreed. “Listen, honey, his aim wasn’t so good when he fired at me. Probably hyped-up on drugs and out of his mind. Nothing to worry about.”
My back stiffened. It wasn’t what she said, but how she said it. Her voice had dropped an octave. It reminded me of my father telling me the flu shot wouldn’t hurt. And I wondered what the dying man’s last words meant and why Shirley assumed, or at least pretended, that I didn’t hear them.
Trouble is coming.
Chapter 4
Let’s Go Boating
FOR SOME IT would be too much of a risk. Not for Sacrum. For Sacrum, it was innate and unavoidable. A part of life if he was going to really live. He wore evil the way a hog wore slop, although never as messy. Quite clean, in fact.
For Sacrum it was a second skin. Another layer to his multi-dimensional self that suited him well.
Land south of Tucson had long ago claimed victory over earlier settlers and their dreams to go west, and survive. The land spread out far and wide. And raw. Extreme. Dangerous. Even deadly.
Sacrum found his dream home there, not that he was looking. He’d been out hiking for the day. One of those hikes where you go and try and find yourself. Instead he found her.
A fucking boat? Out here in the desert? Totally perfect.
Sacrum approached with caution. Who wouldn’t? He’d once been traveling the dark sides at a Denver medical convention. Crap sessions during the day, but he passed on the arranged dinners and nightlife and went walking. Somehow he ended up beyond some old viaducts. Failing infrastructure and a lot of homeless people.
Aggressive and passive at the same time. He kept walking until he saw—the airplane! A crap of a thing in the middle of no man’s land and no runway, but the thing hadn’t crashed. It intrigued him. More than that. The sight of it was a real turn on and he didn’t even know why. He started running toward it. Bad idea. Nine-hundred pounds of meat in the form of four men came out yielding rifles.
Sacrum had turned his back and walked away. Slowly. He had a hard-on. He didn’t know why, but if felt real good as he kept on walking.
And so on this new day, merely out for a hike and away from it all, he sees a boat out in the middle of the desert. Caution came to mind. Curiosity killed it. He had a hunting knife in his back pocket. Maybe not a normal hunter’s knife. He had a 7-inch KA-BAR Marine Corp. fighting knife. He felt it in his pocket as much as the hard-on. Something good was about to happen in spite of a few rifles in the way.
Chapter 5
Open for Business
THE DAY WENT exactly as planned. The glazers arrived at the break of dawn to replace the door. The cleaning crew finished by noon. Every jewelry case and mirror glistened. The alarm company made certain every camera was functioning, and I was fully educated on how to operate the system.
It was show time. My new staff arrived early to spread out our glorious goodies. Yes. I saw one employee shiver as she crossed where she knew a dead man had been slain on the travertine floor four days earlier, but she got to her station. The caterers arrived before we finished filling the display cabinets with our treasures, sure to awe our guests.
With a venture like a grand opening you never know for sure what kind of outcome you might get. You plan for a huge gathering and if you have too much food you donate leftovers to a charity. If you have too much leftover booze, you either return it or drink it.
We had a full house. The food would disappear and I kept my eye on the booze that was going fast.
As she had warned, Shirley showed up early. I had no idea what to expect. We only had about thirty guests milling around, but she was the item to behold. Shirley had already told me she was most adept at dressing up like the bag lady I met, a twenty-dollar whore, or a five-thousand dollar escort.
She looked like a queen. Tall. Lanky. Mature. Tastefully dressed in what I guessed was a Chanel knockoff. I acknowledged her presence and she offered me a nod of the head. I walked over to her.
“Don’t tell me you’re my bodyguard tonight?”
“Nah. You have plenty of unis around here. I’m on my way to some soiree with the Senator in town. Damn politics, but it’s a thousand-bucks-a-plate and my plate is paid for by you, the taxpayers. I might as well enjoy it.”
“Unis?”
“Cops. Uniforms. The good guys. Here to protect and serve and mostly make their presence known. And I’m guessing Detective Taylor will drop by.” She looked around the room and said, “Hey, you have a great turnout here already.”
“Probably they all want to see where the body went down,” I said.
“Kiddo, you have bodies here right now. Living bodies with money. Go make nice to them,” Shirley said.
She stuck around for about an hour. I wanted to introduce her to Gage, but there was still no sign of him. Where was he? He’d promised to be with me. His promises didn’t always stick, but I loved him anyway. Someday, maybe, we’d marry. Maybe that would stick.
It was nearing seven o’clock. Still, I saw no sign of Gage and hoped he might at least have the courtesy to show up before the last round of champagne and the mini trays of flaming desserts.
Absorbed with the mayor and the newspaper and what I hoped would be a new and loyal clientele eager to buy our treasures, I barely looked up when a man asked me to show him engagement rings.
“I want a single diamond. No side stones. Maybe a marquis, but you could advise me otherwise.”
I looked up and what I saw gave me pause. Handsome. Sophisticated. Charismatic. All without saying another word, an aura of stardom surrounded him.
I hid any gasp that wanted to leap up from somewhere deep inside my throat and pulled out a tray of extravagant marquise-cut stones from a secured drawer below the case. I read him well by the flat look on his face. He was intent on buying my best. I knew if I was lucky I’d go to the backroom safe and I’d make a sale. A very big sale.
He had my full attention, this man.
“Marcus,” he said as I returned from the safe.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Sterling Falls.”
“The proprietress?”
“I suppose one could surmise that from our store name plastered across our burgundy awning. Yes.”
If his sudden whisper took me by surprise, his words threw me off guard. “Are you Albino?”
“Excuse me?”
He took my arm in his hand and stared into my eyes. “You skin is so pure. You’re eyes, opaque.” When he saw me pull my arm away he quickly withdrew and added, “I’m so sorry. I’m a doctor. A plastic surgeon. I just tend to notice things I shouldn’t and then open my mouth inappropriately.”
Was he a potential client? A big buyer? I stood my calm. “No problem. And no, medically speaking, I’m not an Albino, but darn close.”
“And yet you live here in the desert?”
Now I was on the precipice of irritation. “I know how to protect my skin, Mr.—”
“Marcus. Dr. Marcus Armstrong. And I apologize again. A professional hazard when I see such beautiful alabaster skin. Most of my patients would die for skin like yours.”
I unfolded the black velvet bag without acknowledging his compliment. “And here are the stones. The most beautiful of marquise cuts, and I’m sure they’re for a beautiful woman. What do you think?” I asked.
“I think we’re talking about forty or fifty thousand dollars and I need to think about it.”
“Of course,” I said, placing our best solitaires back into the velvet roll and tray and handed them to my new employee, a certified gemologist that also knew the art of any sale and security policies.
“I’ll look around, Ms. Falls,” the doctor said.
From across the room, I watched as Detective Taylor hugged Shirley goodbye, then returned his gaze my way. We didn�
��t speak, but our eyes met and I understood he wanted to remain in the background.
Three dozen red roses caught my peripheral vision. Behind the arrangement, headed my way, was the coy and smiling face of Gage Beauchamp. My Gage. Late, as usual, but always worth the wait.
“Sorry, love, it’s not easy to travel from New York to Tucson. And what’s up with this traffic? I’d have been better off on a camel.”
I gladly received the flowers and pecked him on the cheek. “The gem show is in town. Perfect time for my opening and my traffic in here, not so much for traffic on the roads. You’re here and that’s all that matters.”
“Let me introduce you to one of our guests, Dr. Marcus—”
I turned to the counter to find my hot buyer had disappeared.
Gage deflected any panic of losing a sale. “You have yourself quite a crowd. Maybe bigger than the art gallery opening in New York. Really. I’m so happy for you.”
“I don’t have time for your happiness game, Gage.”
“You bet you do. This is the perfect time. Pickle juice. Pickle juice is one of my favorite things. Now your turn. Top of mind and fast as you can.”
“Beaches.”
“Good, okay. My turn. Pet rocks.”
“You must be joking,” I said.
“No criticism allowed. Your turn.”
I answered, “Big jewelry sales.”
“The kaboom noise a staple gun makes,” he said.
“Last round, Gage. Dogs.”
“See. I didn’t know that about you! What kind of dogs?”
“Oh, so we’re allowed to ask questions?”
“My game, my rules.”
“Small, and that’s my final answer. Let’s go meet some of my guests, but first, how was your show?”
“A couple of sales. Enough to make me feel like an Andy Warhol wannabe and few enough I feel like the living Van Gogh, hoping they’ll sell when I’m good and dead and I’m buried without one ear.”
“A happy medium,” I said.
Gage said, “You need some of your own champagne you’re pouring. I’ll go get some, and maybe a little cheese. You look a little, shall we say, extra pale.”
Evil Cries Page 2
