Bloodville

by Don Bullis

  ―Your correct name is Wally Webb?‖ Doc began.

  ―Actually Walton. Walton D. Webb. The D is for Douglas.‖ ―Age?‖

  ―Twenty-seven.‖

  ―Address.‖

  ―Four ten Fourth Street, Northwest. Albuquerque.‖

  ―That's this place.‖

  ―Yeah, well, right, I'm kinda between places right now. Know

  what I mean. I'm looking for an apartment.‖

  ―Whatever. You know an individual named Joe Cato?‖ ―I do. A low-life beaner greaseball, you ask me.‖

  ―You ever do any business with him?‖

  ―Not as I recall.‖

  ―He claims he bought a gun from you. It turns out that particular gun was used in an armed robbery and the murders of two innocent people. Now, Mr. Walton Douglas Webb, I suggest that if you know anything about this matter, you share it with me. The truth will come out sooner or later, and if you lie to me, I know a way to get you a free place to live for a good long while for accessory to murder. You get my meanin‘, Walton Douglas Webb?‖

  Webb's face lost color. He dropped a cigarette butt into the gravel of the parking lot and crushed it out with the pointed toe of an Acme boot. His hand shook as he lit another one. ―Ok, ok, ok. I sold it to him, but I didn't do nothing wrong.‖

  ―I know,‖ Doc said. ―No body ever does anything wrong. That's why I don't have no job security. Tell me about the gun.‖

  ―It was about the middle of November, I think. Last year. I sold Joe a nine-millimeter pistol. I don't remember what kind it was. I'd recognize it if I saw it again. There was two nicks on the handle of it. Two boxes of bullets went with it, and a real cheapo holster.‖

  ―How much did you get for it?‖

  ―Thirty bucks. He tried to jew me down to twenty-five, but I figured the gun was worth thirty-five in the first place, so I didn't jew. Hell, the two boxes of bullets was worth ten bucks alone.‖

  ―So you delivered the gun, a holster, and two boxes of ninemillimeter ammunition to Joe Cato for thirty dollars?‖

  ―The bullets wasn't for a nine millimeter. They were for a .38 special, or a super. I don't remember which one.‖ Sweat soaked through the front of Webb‘s shirt.

  Doc snapped his notebook closed. ―Now why in the hell would you sell .38 caliber ammunition with a nine-millimeter gun?‖

  ―Just, ah, just wanted to get rid of it was all. I don't have a .38. You know, nothing to shoot it in.‖

  Doc thought about what Dr. Howard had said to him at the morgue three months before. ―Was there any nine millimeter ammunition with the gun you sold to Cato?‖

  ―The clip had some bullets in it. Six or eight, at least. I think.‖

  ―No extras?‖

  ―I didn‘t have any.‖

  ―You didn't happen to make a note of the gun's serial number, did you?‖

  ―No. Like I said. I don't even know what kind it was.‖

  ―Where'd you get it?‖

  ―I bought it from a guy that used to be a roommate of mine, last summer, I think it was. Him and his wife used to run a bar up in Kansas, as I understand it, and she gave him the gun for a present.‖

  ―You don't recall the man's name, do you?‖

  ―Matter of fact, no I don't. I didn't room with him very long. Never seen him since, either.‖

  ―I figured. Do you know a guy named Ray Stirling?‖

  ―I don't think so.‖

  ―How about Billy Ray White, or Billy Ray Stirling?‖

  ―Nope.‖

  Doc took a picture of Billy Ray White out of his shirt pocket and showed it to Webb. ―Know him?‖

  ―Never seen him before.‖

  ―Cato says this man was with him when he visited you at this car lot on November sixteenth last year.‖

  ―That‘s a damn lie, officer. I never saw Cato with anyone. I don't think anyone likes him well enough to hang out with him. I sure as hell don't. Spic bastard.‖

  ―You know Dave Sipe and Joe Peters?‖

  ―Sure.‖ Webb felt better, then. It seemed as if the cop had shifted attention away from him and toward guys he knew were criminals. ―Sure. Sipe works here part-time and Peters hangs out a lot. Does odd jobs once in a while. God knows what else they do. Come to think of it, maybe Sipe and Cato are friends.‖

  ―You ever get your .30-30?‖

  ―What?‖

  ―Your .30-30 rifle. Cato said you wanted to buy a .30-30. You ever find one?‖

  ―What would I want with an old .30-30? That'd be like shooting a musket. I got me a .270 Remington I hunt with. Have for years. Killed a lot of deer with it, too.‖

  ―You stay handy, Walton. We may want to talk to you again.‖

    

  Colonel Sam Black entered St. Vincent's Hospital in Santa Fe on February 29, 1968 suffering from a respiratory ailment. Chairman Tom Fetter of the State Police Board told the Albuquerque Journal that doctors expected the chief to be away from work for six or eight weeks. He said he had appointed Lieutenant Colonel Charles Scarberry to act as chief in the interim. Governor David F. Cargo approved and so did a majority of Board members.

  ―Chief Scarberry,‖ Fetter said to a poorly attended press conference, ―has more seniority, more experience, than any other officer in the department. I, as Chairman of the Board, based the appointment primarily on that important and salient fact, in addition to which he is one of the most respected men to ever wear a State Police uniform.‖

  On Friday, March first, late in the afternoon, Sergeant Finch arrived at State Police Headquarters in Santa Fe carrying a thick sheaf of papers. Chere Ortiz ushered him directly into Scarberry's office.

  ―What you got for me, Freddy?‖ the acting chief asked.

  ―I got a wheelbarrow full of shit, Chief.‖ He put a stack of papers on Scarberry's desk.

  ―I don't have time to read all that, Freddy. Just tell me about it.‖

  Quietly annoyed that Scarberry didn't want to at least thumb through the files he'd worked so diligently to amass, Finch selected a manila folder and opened it.

  ―Torrez got his brain in the end of his dick. Since that time you nailed him right after the Rice killing, he‘s made at least a half dozen trips out to Budville, in his department vehicle, for no other reason than to fuck that blond babe with the big tits. He shacks up with her at Gunn‘s Motel in Villa de Cubero. Room seven. He's been late for duty because he stayed in bed with her too long, too.‖

  ―You got dates and times on that?‖

  ―Yes sir.

  ―What else?‖

  ―Not too much on Torrez. He seems to be pretty close to Marty Vigil, and he spends a lot of time up in Tierra Amarilla or here in Santa Fe. He pretty much turned the Budville deal over to Spurlock.‖

  ―What about that dipstick?‖

  ―A bunch. Ain't turned in a mileage or fuel report since the first of the year, and I know for a fact he‘s been all over the state— Farmington, Hobbs, Taos—not to mention all the trips he makes back and forth to Gallup. 'Course, he seems to spend more and more time in Albuquerque and less and less in Gallup. I hear his old lady has a real case of the ass with him. Word is she wants to move back to Roswell in the worst way. They say it ain't a happy marriage.‖ He turned a page. ―We could make a pretty good case that the only reason Doc went to Hobbs was so he could visit his mama and daddy on the way back. They live on a ranch south of Roswell, toward Artesia. His old man used to be sheriff or some kind of stud-duck down there.‖

  ―I don‘t give a goddamn if his daddy is Robert O. Anderson, Spurlock will by-god stay stationed where he is long's I got anything to say about it! Take that to the bank. What else?‖

  ―Spurlock seems to spend a lot of time hangin' around with the Albuquerque cops, that Budwister guy, and the radio logs don't show half of it. But the best of all is that I saw him drinking beer in an Albuquerque bar, the Wine Cellar, twice, with Budwister, after which he entered, and operated a state owned vehicle. Saw it with my o
wn eyes. I can even tell you how many beers he had, what kind, and over what period of time.‖

  ―That's good shit, Freddy. I want you to stay on Torrez and Spurlock. Like mange scabs on a mutt.‖

  ―You mean we're not gonna do nothing with what I got so far?‖ ―Timing's real bad. If I do anything now, it'll look like I'm takin‘ advantage of Sam bein‘ out sick. We'll wait. But you watch and see. One of these guys will step on his own foreskin real bad, and when he does, wham/bang, and thank you ma'am, we'll have the makings of a complete reorganization of the Criminal Bureau, from captain to clerk typist, and there won't be nothing Black or Fetter, or even the governor can do to stop it. You're doin' good, Freddy. Keep it up. These guys are your first priority. Hell, you could be a lieutenant in the Criminal Bureau by the end of the year. Think about that when you get bored.‖

  CHAPTER IX

  In February 1968, the weather warmed to an early spring and the mountain air at Budville was clear and clean and the sky a bright, intense, blue. The desert earth was warm and dry on the day Clarence Mumfee chose to begin wrecking out some of the late Bud Rice's junk cars. He arrived in the little town driving an ancient International pickup truck, salmon pink in color, with a homemade, hand operated, crane mounted in the bed. A battered and bent tandem-wheeled trailer with high wooden sideboards bounced along behind the old truck. Max Atkins occupied the truck's passenger seat. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth and another one rode behind his right ear.

  Flossie‘s experience in life didn't prepare her for an arrangement where a white man worked for a black man, but, as she told Nettie, she knew the times were changing; President Johnson already said he planned to give everything away to the niggers anyhow. Smitten with Max from the first time she saw him, Flossie couldn‘t keep her eyes off Mumfee‘s hired hand. She liked his quick and easy smile and his slow and southern way of talking. She wondered about his association with Clarence but she didn't ask. Not then, anyway.

  Clarence and Max moved into the little house previously occupied by Blanche Brown and they went to work on the cars the next morning. Clarence would hook his truck's winch cable onto one of the derelicts, hoist it up and drag it out and away from the others and the dismantling would begin. Bent and broken parts, excised with an acetylene torch, went into the trailer as scrap. Usable body parts, carefully removed with wrench and ratchet, were set apart and chalkmarked with the make and model of the vehicle from which they came. Motors, accessory parts, and driveline components were also set aside unless they appeared worn, or rusted, beyond further use in which case they went into the trailer, too. Max removed seats, floor mats, dashboards, headliners, tires and anything else combustible. He stacked and burned it all every day, blanketing Budville with the sharp stink of burning rubber and sending up a spire of black smoke visible from the Brushy Mountain Fire Tower half way to Pie Town.

  Bud's junkyard dogs put up a great howl when work on the cars began but they strained at their chains, snapped and slavered even more when Max got near them. Flossie determined to get rid of them on the first day and by the next morning, the pit bulls had disappeared. No one in or around Budville ever knew or asked what became of the dogs. But then no one cared or missed them either.

  Once every week Clarence towed the junk laden trailer into Albuquerque where, based on weight, he sold the scrap to Frenchy LeCroix‘s Auto Parts and Salvage Yard. Clarence split the proceeds with Flossie, fifty-fifty, and used his share of the profits to pay Max's wages and to meet his own living expenses. His real profit would come later when he sold the motors and reusable parts.

  A condition of Max's parole provided that he consume no alcoholic beverages but Clarence didn't consider himself the white boy‘s keeper. ―Hell,‖ he said, ―a man works out in the sun the day long, amongst the scorpions and the spiders and the centipedes, in dust and smoke and dirt, why, he's entitled to a cold drink from time to time, and I sure ain't the one to keep him from it.‖

  On the trips to Albuquerque, the two of them would often stop for cold beers, usually at the Liberty Bar on Central Avenue. A vacant lot close by, between First Street and the Santa Fe Railroad tracks, provided a handy place to park the pickup truck and trailer. Clarence didn't know anyone who drank in the Old Liberty Bar but Max seemed to be passing acquainted with a couple of regular patrons. Clarence noticed that after a couple of beers in the Old Lib, Max called him nigger more than at other times, and acted as though he was boss. Clarence never made an issue of it.

  The weather warmed more and more as true spring arrived in March and Flossie sometimes found herself watching Max work. He often stripped down to his waist and the multi-colored tattoos all over his arms, chest, and back fascinated her. Two years of weightlifting while serving time in the pen at Florence left the young man's upper body well muscled. Max even pumped iron as he worked, doing curls with car axles and overhead presses with drive shafts. His muscles rippled and glistened with sweat in the bright sunlight. Before long, Flossie determined it necessary to more closely supervise the dismantling operation. She'd visit the salvage yard daily to count fenders, trunk lids, bumpers and motor blocks and then she'd match car titles with vehicle identification numbers. Forms had to be completed, notarized and sent off to the Motor Vehicle Department in Santa Fe for each vehicle wrecked-out and sold as salvage. Bud had taught her how to do it. When she finished the paperwork, she'd just stand around and watch Max work, hardly aware that Clarence was there. Then she began delivering lunch to the salvage yard at noon and iced tea or lemonade three or four times during the day. Max didn't say much beyond thanking Flossie, and smiling, until one day in midMarch.

  ―You know, Miz Rice, much as I'm favorable to ice tea and lemonade, a nice cold bottle of Coors Beer would go a lot farther toward slakin' my thirst.‖

  ―I'll see to that, Max. I'll see to it,‖ Flossie said.

  Max soon began taking his meals with Flossie and soon after that he found his way into her bed. He displayed considerable sexual stamina and at Flossie‘s insistence, he moved, bag and baggage, into the living quarters of the Budville Trading Post. Max became, he freely admitted, a kept man, and he loved it. Flossie had come into money and she had a willingness to spend a lot of it on her lover. She bought him new clothing, from boots to skivvies, and a gun, a .357 Colt revolver, because he said he needed one. Who knew, after all, when the man who killed Bud would come back and kill Flossie.

  On a Friday in April, as Clarence Mumfee packed up to go home to St. Johns for the weekend, Max quit his job. ―I got a lot better things to do with myself than gandy-dance a bunch of goddamn junk,‖ Max said to Clarence.

  ―I reckon,‖ Clarence said. ―You ain‘t done a lick around here lately anyhow, and shaggin Flossie‘s got to be more pleasurable than beddin‘ down with me. What‘chu gonna do about that parole paper says you got to work for me ‗til yer parole is up?‖

  ―I ain‘t gonna do nothin‘ about it because you ain‘t gonna tell nobody I don‘t work for you no more.‖ Max took his new pistol out of his hip pocked and spun it around on his index finger. ―You understand me, Clarence?‖

  ―You know I ain‘t got no love for The Man, Max. I ain‘t sayin‘ nothin‘ to nobody.‖

  ―Good. Flossie and me decided you can stay on here and finish up with them cars. You need help, hire an Indian.‖

  Clarence stayed on in Budville, and he didn‘t hire anyone to help him. He‘d only kept Max around as a favor to his daughter.

  Nettie stayed away from Max whenever she could. He scared the housekeeper nearly to death when he threatened to hide her insulin because she didn‘t serve his supper as quickly as he would have liked.

  Max, often drunk, seemed to be running the Budville Trading Company.

  CHAPTER X

  Dave Sipe changed his mind about talking to the police. It came as a surprise to him that the long-term section of the Bernalillo County jail smelled bad—like vomit, piss, flatulence and unwashed bodies. Around him he saw a steel-hard p
lace, cold, dreary, gray and monotonous; nothing like the short term cells where prisoners came and went in a few hours, or a few days at most. He tried sleeping as an escape from confinement but soon learned he couldn‘t sleep all the time no matter how much he masturbated.

  The court appointed an attorney to represent Sipe; an attractive young woman named Sharon Baca. She told him she‘d do everything necessary to defend him if he was innocent of complicity in the crime. She also told him that if he had any part in the offense, any knowledge of it, he'd do well to take the deal the District Attorney offered. Don Wilcoxson, she said, was quite capable of prosecuting him right into the state penitentiary for a long time at the least, and into the gas chamber at the most. Sipe said he'd talk to the cops.

  ―OK,‖ Herman said to Doc as they waited for a jail guard to deliver Sipe and his lawyer to an interrogation room, ―here's the drill. Wilcoxson agreed to give this turkey immunity from prosecution if we think what he knows is important enough to hang White and Peters. So let's take it slow and easy with him and get everything we can.‖

  ―Wilcoxson not goin' to offer immunity to Cato?‖ Doc asked. ―Nope,‖ Herman said. ―Three reasons, he says. The first is that Joe‘s such a damn liar that we'd be bettin‘ a lot of chips on a hundred to one long shot. The second is we got him off the hook on a separate felony crime committed in a different jurisdiction. Juries tend to take a dim view of arrangements like that, and you‘re gonna love the third reason. I neglected to tell Mr. Cato his constitutional rights as provided by the Miranda decision of 1966 before we talked to him. Anything he told us is inadmissible.‖

  ―Hell,‖ Doc said, ―he asked to talk to us!‖

  ―Doesn‘t matter according to Wilcoxson. Only good thing is that Cato don‘t know we violated his rights so we'll just keep him danglin‘. He's good for raw information once in a while, not to mention a few laughs.‖

  A guard ushered Sipe and Sharon Baca into the jail's interrogation room. Her copper/black hair in a bun, she wore a severe, dark blue, conservatively cut suit. She knew Budwister and didn't bother to identify herself to Spurlock.