The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  UNDERCOVER SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT

  JAMEY LOVED the purple, pink, and violet of the sky over the Catalina Mountains after sundown. He loved feeling the warm desert breeze against his face when he drove the Corvette with the top down. He knew wind-whipped hair got split ends that looked tacky on long hair. Appearance was nine-tenths of undercover work or any other police work for that matter. The undercover assignment had been a disappointment because Jamey had loved how he looked in his police uniform. But the new police chief had chosen Jamey right out of police academy to begin a special undercover assignment, to be part of an internal security unit for the police chief. The others in the narcotics undercover unit had no idea Jamey was there to watch them as well as to work with them.

  Jamey loved the mock orange blossoms’ perfume in the air, and he loved his role of “boy toy” for a shakedown at the Stage Coach later in the evening. Jamey liked to sing along with the radio and talk to himself. Working undercover two years had changed Jamey’s idea about wearing a uniform and being a cop. All the uniform cops ever talked about was their dicks and how much they hated homosexuals. Jamey had felt so lonely he wanted to quit the department, but then Ferro had come into his life.

  Jamey had never responded so strongly to a man before, and Ferro had wanted to keep fucking all night. Jamey had not been taken to an expensive resort suite before; he had been accustomed to the hurried brutal thrusts and abrupt embraces in the dark with balding fraternity alumni brothers. Ferro had been different from the start for both of them. Jamey had not felt so captivated in years; Ferro’s blazing dark eyes made Jamey weak with desire.

  The police academy had not really been Jamey’s idea; he had followed two fraternity brothers to the police academy after graduation. His two buddies had dropped out the first week, but Jamey had stayed because it seemed easier to stay. He liked being with the rest of the guys, and he didn’t mind having someone else make the decisions. That was what Jamey had enjoyed most about Ferro; Ferro took command and told Jamey what they would do. Jamey got chills whenever Ferro gave him instructions. Jamey had got chills too whenever the police chief called him into his office alone to brief Jamey on his special assignment. Upon graduation Jamey had left the academy immediately on special assignment to narcotics and vice. The police chief said they liked his “blond, blue-eyed good looks” so necessary for undercover work at university fraternity and sorority parties.

  Jamey was proud of his versatility; he could look preppy and clean-cut or grow out his hair like this and walk on the wild side. Jamey enjoyed watching his own reflection in the plate glass as he eased the Corvette up Oracle. Tonight he wore tight black leather pants and a black leather shirt with silver studs open to his navel. His blond hair had grown so long it had reached his shoulders. He looked perfect. He loved his life undercover, dressing up and pretending to be someone he was not.

  Jamey had told Ferro about his passion for uniforms, and he had told Ferro about his fraternity brothers who had wanted to be cops. Jamey remembered vividly how Ferro had spat at the mention of cops. Right then Jamey had known that silence was better, silence had always been better than trouble. Jamey had intended to explain to Ferro that police work was only a job; but Ferro had not wanted to talk so Jamey had let the subject drop. Jamey had learned as a rookie not to be surprised when he saw the undercover officers and cops in uniform fill their pockets with the cash and the drugs they had confiscated for evidence. Jamey had learned the rules. He let the others know he was easy. When they offered him a share or cut, Jamey took it. Jamey had played the dumb fraternity jock who did anything the others told him to do.

  The chief had asked Jamey to watch for any suspicious behavior he might notice among his fellow undercover officers. The chief had spent an uncomfortable interval staring directly into Jamey’s eyes after he said that. It was crazy, but when Jamey was under intense pressure such as that, he sometimes imagined straight men were coming on to him. At first, it had seemed to Jamey, the police chief had done him a favor by assigning him directly from the academy to narcotics undercover work; others waited years walking a beat or writing traffic tickets. Undercover narcotics was the big cookie jar. But very soon Jamey had sensed jealous undercurrents within the department, and suspicion focused on him. Jamey didn’t know why the police chief had singled him out from the other recruits, but others in the department thought they knew. Jamey was one of the new chief’s pets, and a spy sent to report on the others in the narcotics unit. Jamey found his picture from the Cop Cakes calendar taped to the door of his department locker. Jamey had felt all their eyes on him, but Jamey had been cool; he had laughed it off. He knew the sergeant and the others behind desks had the best jobs of all; they got thousands in cash just for passing on classified police information, or for zealously “cleaning out” files or for evidence in the department vault that had mysteriously disappeared.

  Jamey drove past the Stage Coach to check out the vehicles in the parking lot to see if the others were there yet. He drove under the freeway overpass to the bridge on the Santa Cruz River. The water in the river came from the city sewage treatment plant; still the cattails and other greenery along the banks looked succulent. Jamey parked the Corvette and walked down the riverbank. He was always a little nervous before a shakedown, and this one at the Stage Coach was important. According to Perry, the guy Tiny who managed the Stage Coach owed them because his dancers didn’t keep their pussies covered. Anyway, Perry said all they had to do was wait until they saw the blonde go into Tiny’s office. Tiny had called them about the blonde with the kilo of “top grade”; Tiny was setting up the blonde so they would get a kilo worth five times what he owed them.

  Jamey was supposed to pull his .38 to make the shakedown look convincing. Jamey let the others handle the details; he was content to follow orders. Still, he could feel his stomach tense and his bowels heat up as he parked the Corvette next to a row of Harleys in the parking lot. It all seemed simple enough. They would wait until backup units had surrounded the bar parking lot. They wanted to give Tiny and the blonde enough time to cut up some lines to sample before they rushed the office door. Perry would give the signal, and uniformed officers would kick in the back door to the office a moment before Jamey came through the front door.

  SHOOT-OUT AT THE STAGE COACH

  SEESE REMEMBERED a horror movie she had once seen in which blood had flowed out elevator doors in waves and had flooded a hotel lobby. The police had forced Seese to sit in the chair with her feet in the pool of Tiny’s blood. The blood had soaked through the soles of her shoes and through her stockings, but the police refused to move her. She sat handcuffed in the chair until six o’clock the following morning while internal affairs investigators came and went. Seese had closed her eyes but kept remembering the movie with the blood flowing from the elevator doors, oceans of blood. Tiny had been a huge man, over three hundred pounds. How many pints in a quart? How many quarts in a gallon? Seese could not stop her thoughts from spinning; her brain was a slot machine rolling up words and images from everywhere. Her father’s blood in the South China Sea. The undercover pig had deserved what he got. Maybe Tiny had deserved it. Or maybe the police had got sick of Tiny. Now they were rid of him and they had got his bar and assets too. Seese couldn’t stop thinking. She had been drinking vodka tonics with Cherie before she took the train case into Tiny’s office.

  Seese had watched the police all night. They regularly had different interrogators ask her the same questions again and again. Did she remember who came through what door first? Who was shot first? Who shot the undercover officer? Who shot Tiny? No questions about the kilo of cocaine in the train case. The train case had been removed by the first undercover-unit officer into the room after the firing had ceased. She had hit the floor after she had seen Tiny reach for his gun. She had been splattered with the undercover cop’s blood after Tiny had fired and had dropped the cop in his tracks as he came through the door. She had been facedown on the floor when the other cop
s in uniform had opened fire on Tiny, so she had only heard him hit the floor.

  Seese began to notice the odor of the blood almost at once. The police had turned off the air conditioner in the office, and the big pool of Tiny’s blood was beginning to spoil. They had removed the dead undercover cop almost at once, but they had left Tiny on his back near Seese’s feet. Somehow the police had assumed Tiny was her lover, and the sight of his body was intended to shake some information loose from Seese. Where had the kilo come from? They had already assumed the cocaine did not belong to her because bitches might haul coke for their men, but it wasn’t theirs.

  Seese could think of no reason why she was still alive. Why hadn’t the police shot her? They had shot fat Tiny full of big holes. The explosive force of the bullets had blown out his fat like pillow stuffing. Human fat was bright white. She had dived to the floor to save herself; but for what? Every chance she might have had to find Monte and all her hope were gone now.

  Seese had lapsed into dreamlike states while she was awake; she saw David’s face on Tiny’s body, which seemed to be bloating from the heat. This was cop fun; to display their trophy; this must be a big one. The police chief himself and the sheriff stood away from the blood at the back of the office and had listened as the detectives questioned Seese about the sequence of events.

  Maybe David was dead and Monte was dead. Maybe she would soon be dead. The handcuffs and her arms bent back around the chair had caused her upper body to go numb. The police refused to let her use the toilet. Seese slipped into a trancelike calm, as if she had just polished off a pint of whiskey and a half a gram of coke. A strange form of exhaustion had agitated her thoughts while her body gradually became numb. Yes or no; wet or dry. Seese had not thought about the precise meanings of words since she quit school. Seese wet her pants and smiled as she saw how this had excited the police; they had left her handcuffed to the chair because this was what they had wanted. She had not overheard them discuss freeing her until three or four in the morning.

  Finally Seese had passed out from exhaustion; she woke up when a sheriff’s deputy decided to unlock the handcuffs because her hands and arms had swollen. The police were rolling Tiny’s old-fashioned box safe out the door; behind them were the ambulance crews with body bags. Seese saw then that the dead narc had only been taken outside and left facedown on the floor by a pool table. His long blond hair was soaked with blood, but no one had bothered even to throw a bar towel over him. She had assumed when they took the dead pig out of the office, they were taking him to his glorious reward; to lie in state at a local funeral home, then the police honor guard and twenty-one-gun salute at the graveyard.

  Seese tried to figure it out. She wasn’t sure she trusted her own senses, but something seemed odd. The behavior of the others was not what she had anticipated; sheriff’s deputies and police whispered and walked past the corpse without looking down or stopping. When the police chief and the sheriff had arrived at the scene, they had studied the close-ups the police photographers had taken hours earlier, before the corpse of the cop had been moved from the office. Then Seese knew. The dead cop had been set up by his own people. Cops took care of their own kind if they stepped out of line. They had kept asking her if she was sure the undercover man had come in the door first because the department had certain guidelines and procedures to prevent confusion during police raids. Uniformed officers broke through doors first; undercover followed. Otherwise, suspects pulled guns the way Tiny had. Was she certain the undercover cop had come through the office door first? Yes, she was certain. Had he yelled “Police”? No, he had not yelled “Police.” Could she be mistaken? Wasn’t she snorting cocaine with the deceased that night, wasn’t she drunk as well? Was it possible she had not heard the officers come through the back door first? Maybe she had only imagined the undercover cop coming first. Then Seese knew. Seese got the picture.

  Seese said nothing. She let them ask the questions over and over. Could she be mistaken? After all, she had old arrest records for misdemeanor prostitution in Tucson. Hadn’t the uniformed officers shouted “Police!” as they broke down the back door? Didn’t the undercover man shout “Police!” too as he came through the front door? Seese understood what they wanted her to remember; if her memory improved, they would be happy to see her leave town, and even the state, and she wouldn’t ever be asked to return to testify. In fact, they would recommend Seese leave Arizona and never return again, if she knew what was good for her. For all Seese knew, the police had shot their own man; Tiny had only fired once, and he might have missed. The police had sprayed Tiny’s office with bullets; stray bullets had torn big chunks out of the phone book on Tiny’s desk, and bullets had shattered the fake maple paneling like the plastic or fiberglass it really was. Police bullets had pierced the cheap plasterboard walls of Tiny’s office. Yes, her memory had improved; it was clear now, the uniform cops had come through the door first. Then Seese had remembered Cherie and the other dancers and the customers who had been in the Stage Coach when the shooting started. She had not heard if there had been other injuries.

  The police chief himself had talked to her alone in the backseat of his unmarked car. Seese had seventy-two hours to gas up and get out of town. If she was caught in Tucson after seventy-two hours, they had a list of charges they would slap her with; for starters, they had accomplice to felony murder. Seese did not know why she felt giddy at a moment such as that; she felt like laughing because the police chief did not want to get too close to her because she stank of her own urine and Tiny’s blood. She had watched how his eyes had examined her breasts and thighs; she wanted to laugh out loud. Luckily she had been a mess because the police chief looked as if he might like to fuck her.

  She did not want the police to follow her so she did not call a taxi. Instead Seese had left on foot from the Stage Coach. She hurried across the frontage road. She was nothing to the police really; she wasn’t even a problem. Probably the police chief and sheriff were already riding together in the helicopter back downtown to prepare statements for the press. They were already erasing her. No woman had been in the office with Tiny, contrary to early reports. Seese imagined that by next week and the funeral, they would already have forgot the real reason the narc had got blown to kingdom come. By the time the big state funeral for the narc rolled around, they would only remember that the dead man had been a cop and one of their own, whatever else he might have been. All they would remember was the fat fucker at the titty bar had killed a good man.

  Seese waited in the scrubby greasewood bushes that grew on the plain of old river gravel the city had bought for a park that was never built. She heard loud police radios in cars that raced over the bridge, and she wondered if the police were trying to follow her. She felt strangely relaxed and calm, certain she was safe, crouched in the sand, hidden by the greasewood as if she were a desert animal. The police would expect to find her hitchhiking down Interstate 10. Seese was shivering and could not stop. She did not feel either cold or afraid: it was as if the shivering of her muscles had been separate from her, from her real self. She stretched out on the ground under the greasewood; she was nauseous with exhaustion but still her eyes would not close. Her eyes were wide open and she knew she could not force her hands to cover her eyes. She saw the sandy ground close up with the tiny yellow greasewood leaves scattered over it; she saw, only inches from her eyes, the gnarled, twisted trunk of the greasewood.

  When Seese and Cherie had worked for Tiny, the police used to find dead whores dumped in the greasewood flats near the bridge. Naturally whore killers didn’t take the trouble to haul the bodies very far; Seese had hidden deep in the greasewood thickets where people could hardly get through. Seese lay on her side and stared at the river gravel; the ground resembled a map with villages and cities marked with pebbles of varying size as one might expect to see, if one could fly over a map instead of the earth.

  How cool it felt to lie on the ground with the greasewood for shade; in a few hours t
he sun would be high enough to penetrate the thin shade. Seese knew she’d have to move, but by then, the police would be gone. Seese wished she had her picture of Monte with her then because something had happened. Probably it was exhaustion, but she was having difficulty remembering Monte’s face. Her memories of his face as a newborn had blurred together with her memories of Monte on the day he had disappeared. Even the strange dream Seese had had of Monte as a much older child had become part of her memory, and she cried because she could no longer remember how Monte looked.

  Seese took deep breaths to help her relax and remember. She rolled over on her back and saw the bright blue sky through the spindly branches and twigs. A mother always remembers; a mother never forgets. Tears filled her eyes. She had to remember. She had to remember because she had to find Monte. Nothing else mattered. In the distance, she heard police radios and car doors slamming. She knew she should be alert for footsteps, but it had been as if her veins were flooded with morphine, and she felt powerless to move. Dying was like that, easy and natural as breathing out and in. If the police found her, she would never know; a bullet in back of the head and she would simply not wake up. That was fine with her; she didn’t want to be awake anymore. In her dreams she could be with Monte and with Eric again. In her dreams she could forget she had lost everything; she wanted to sleep forever.

  When Seese woke, her face and body had been sticky with sweat, and tiny black ants had been crawling over her feet and hands. She jumped up and brushed off the ants. She rubbed the skin on her legs and feet through torn panty hose. The dried blood had worn off her shoes and left only a dark stain. Seese imagined Tiny’s corpse as a pig’s carcass with a man’s head; she could feel an invisible film of rancid oil on her ankles and feet, wherever Tiny’s greasy blood had touched her skin. She could hear the rush-hour traffic on Interstate 10 and on Silverbell Road. The cops who had been searching for her would have finished their shift. It was almost nine A.M. Seese tried to wash up a little in the river so she could use the pay phone at the 1-10 truck stop without attracting attention. The water felt so cool Seese had been tempted to drink some; she had expected the water to stink like shit, the way the air smelled near the sewage treatment plant. But all she had been able to smell had been the terrible odor of Tiny’s blood as she tried to wash off her shoes and feet in the shallow water.