Girls in Pink

by Bob Bickford

  The hot dog tasted good, with plenty of mustard and chili. The soda came in a large paper cup.

  “I like my drink better from a bottle,” I said.

  “You'd like to sweep up glass every day, too?” he asked. “Wrong neighborhood, amigo.”

  I nodded agreement and kept eating.

  “Plenty of ice in it, though,” I said. “That counts for something.”

  “What's on your mind, Crowe?”

  He sat across from me, small and brown, like an attentive cricket. He looked old and harmless, and I knew a lot of the people who had underestimated him that way weren't around anymore.

  Lopez was from a small town, and had come north to Santa Teresa by way of Chihuahua a lot of years ago and joined the huge, invisible troop of workers picking avocados and oranges. Some of them stuck around to wash cars and clean swimming pools. A lot of them had children who seemed to be going places.

  He had seen opportunity in need. Here in Santa Teresa lived a large group of people ignored by most of the local services and businesses. He organized liquor and prostitutes and games, but he also brought doctors and dentists from Mexico to work out of makeshift offices in kitchens and back rooms. He arranged trucks and cars and places to live. He sold all the things that the people who were already here saw no reason to sell to Mexicans.

  There were rumors of dead bodies sunk to the bottom of the Santa Teresa Channel, dropped off by small fishing boats in the pre-dawn; those who had opposed his success for various reasons and those who wanted to steal the market for themselves. I didn't doubt the stories, but I didn't think any of it had happened for a long time.

  Lopez was the man to turn to when there was no one else. The locals called him el Mayor, and in fact he had more real power than the de facto mayor of Santa Teresa. Through all of it, he had worked from this corner, serving hot dogs.

  I thought he was my friend. He had seen a lot and done a lot, and unlike a lot of the people who I met, he never got very impressed with himself. I didn't mind if some of him rubbed off on me.

  I cleaned my mouth with a paper napkin and set the dregs of my meal aside.

  “Wanted to talk to you about something,” I said.

  “Figured you did.”

  “You know a guy named Sal Cleveland?' I asked.

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “I know everyone.”

  He kept his eyes on my face. His attention was always complete. It was something I liked about him.

  “There's a problem between him and me,” I said. “I think it's going to get bigger.”

  I told him about Charlene Cleveland. He knew some of it already, from the newspaper and talk on the street, but not that she had hired me to help her. The help had gotten her killed. I knew who had done the killing, but there didn't seem to be much I could do about it.

  “You take things too personally,” he said, when I finished. “You did what the lady hired you to do. She asked you to get her free. She didn't hire you to protect her. If she needed protection, she should have known it and done something about it.”

  I looked at the entrance of the drive-in. It was nearly two o'clock, and it would be closing soon, since it only opened for lunch. I watched the girl behind the counter. She didn't have much to do now, except bus a rag around and watch me back.

  “Did you have feelings for this woman?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I was surprised at the emotion I felt, something beneath the anger.

  “It's complicated,” I said. “I think she spent a lot of her life not being wanted. There was no reason for it. She was pretty enough.”

  “Some people need to not be wanted,” he shrugged. “They look for it.”

  “She asked me to have a drink with her afterward,” I said. “I said 'no'. I don't make friends with my clients. I was harsher than I needed to be. She cried when she left my office, and a few hours later she was dead.”

  He shrugged and shook his head.

  “Capone, Moran—all those guys,” he said. “Cleveland's cut from the same cloth. He made his first money the same way as them, twenty or so years ago. Bathtub hooch, Mexican girls and some marijuana . . . his clubs, some property. The difference is, he was never poor. He came here from a rich family in Ohio. Santa Teresa was always big enough for him, you know? He didn't want more, or need more.”

  “If this is his town, it's funny I haven't crossed paths with him before now.”

  “You've only been here a couple of years, and that's exactly what I'm talking about. The other guys get into trouble because they want to rule entire big cities, states, buy off the cops, own local governments. Sal never did that, and doesn't now. He just has his thing and is happy with it. There isn't enough action here that anybody wants to come up from L.A. and take it away from him.”

  He looked at me sharply. “Not that one or two haven't tried. It didn't end well for them. He and I reached an agreement a long, long time ago. We are very polite and careful to stay out of each other's way. I stay away from his business, and he leaves the Mexicans alone. He's...”

  Lopez searched for words in English, and couldn't find them

  “A él se le cruzaron los cables,” he said. “El está mal de la cabeza.”

  “Crazy,” I said. “Dangerously crazy.”

  “Si, el es psiscopáta,” he nodded. “He isn't after money. He just thinks it's all a lot of fun, and he doesn't want attention that would spoil it for him.”

  “I heard he likes to hurt people. Can't say I like that.”

  He looked away from me, at the passing cars. His wrinkled face was almost sad, and I figured he saw things that had to do with him, and nothing to do with me. When he spoke again, I had to lean forward to hear him.

  “I think, amigo, you put yourself too much in harm's way when you shouldn't. It's a kind of...” He wobbled his hand in the air. “Orgullo. Cockiness...to think you have the answers for the problems of others. I think it's why you do what you do.”

  “I make a living,” I said. “I lost my romantic notions about it a long time ago.”

  “Wrong.” He smiled slowly. “Romantic is exactly what you are. And a little guilty, I think, like all of us. You were supposed to save this unhappy woman, and you didn't. That makes you very angry. There's more, though, am I right?”

  I nodded. “There's more. There was a witness to the killing. A woman. I think Cleveland saw her at the scene, and worse, I think he knows who she is.”

  “She saw the murder first hand? Why didn't Cleveland kill her, too?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “There's a lot I don't know. Cleveland's mixed up with her, too. She says he killed her father and her younger sister years ago, when she jilted him.”

  He put his hands flat on the picnic table, got himself up and walked over to the counter. He came back with two more cups filled with ice and soda. He set mine carefully in front of me and sat back down.

  “I thought so, another woman,” he said. “And this one you can save? To make up for the first one, who you lost?”

  I thought about it and shrugged.

  “This...witness...is maybe a little bit crazy,” I said. “She's going to be hard to keep tabs on. I don't know if I can protect her.”

  “Most people don't want to be saved, in my experience,” he said. “Everyone has their own reasons for what they do, including you. Someday you're going to rescue someone who didn't ask you to and it's going to kill you. I tell you that very seriously.”

  He took a drink, and looked down at the ice in his cup. “And I think you are in love with this second woman, no?”

  “I'm too old and tired to believe much in love,” I snorted. “I just don't want to see her get killed, too.”

  My friend looked at me steadily, measuring the lie. He shook his head.

  “Sal Cleveland might kill you, you understand? Think about that before you get involved where no one asked you to or wants you to.”

  He gave me a crooked smile, and I smiled back. He made some sense.
>
  “Or at least be in love with the woman who gets you killed,” he said.

  “What else can you tell me about Cleveland?” I lit a cigarette and pushed the package across the table to him.

  He picked it up and lit one for himself. He held the smoke like someone who didn't do it often. “He's a tarambana,” he said. “A good-for-nothing shit. He doesn't do any of his own work...he never has. That isn't even his real name, you know.”

  “I've heard that Cleveland isn't the name he was born with. He came here from Ohio.”

  “Who cares where he came from?” he said. “Unless you're Mexican, everyone here came from someplace else. He's so good looking he's almost beautiful. He does what he does because he has to, you understand? He has his clubs and his whores and his deals, and he plays with it like a child plays. He doesn't grow his business, he isn't interested in power and control because it makes him money.”

  He puffed at his smoke and spat a shred of tobacco off the end of his tongue.

  “He just likes to hurt people.”

  “The money and power are a means to do that,” I said. “A bonus.”

  “Are the people from Ohio so bad?” he asked. “I have never been there. Is he a typical person from Ohio?”

  “People there are the same as people everywhere. I grew up in St. Louis, not so far from there. People are people, mostly.”

  “I thought as much,” he said. “He mentions Ohio frequently, like it matters. Anyway, he likes the gangster life, he likes his clubs, because it gives a reason to be bad. He likes to be bad. He likes to hurt people.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Some people say he's brujo,” he said. “A kind of witch. Does that scare you?”

  I thought about it, and shook my head. Lopez watched me intently.

  “Not a whole lot scares me,” I said.

  He nodded approvingly. “So, you have two problems with him. He killed the woman you were looking after, or thought you should look after, and there's a witness to it who you're afraid he'll come for, a woman you say you're not in love with. You want to bring him to justice?”

  “I don't think it can happen that way,” I said. “He's already sent some boys after the woman.”

  I told him about the pair parked in front of Annie's house.

  “You're going to have a hard time getting to the head of this monster,” he said. “He'll send his guys after you, one by one and two by two, and there are a lot of them. He never does his own dirty work. I'm surprised he shot the woman himself, if your witness friend is right.”

  “She's right,” I said. “She says she saw him fire the shot, and I don't think she knows how to lie.”

  He looked strangely at me, but didn't comment.

  “It will be hard to touch him in one of his clubs,” he said. “You'd be cut to ribbons if you tried. You'll have to lure him out. If you interest him more than you already have, you might be sorry. Once he smells weakness, he is persistent. He enjoys it. He doesn't mind trouble.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I know.” He nodded. “Let me think on this for a little while, si? I'll talk to some people who I trust and get hold of you.”

  “There may not be much time,” I said. “I think things are going to start happening fast, don't you?”

  He didn't answer. He was looking at the traffic.

  “I was a fisherman, did you know?” he asked. “In Corazón Rosa, my town. So very beautiful...on the ocean. I still have a house there, with a balcony that looks at the ocean. I'll go back one day, and leave all this to the chacales, the jackals.”

  “Corazón Rosa,” I said. “Pink...heart?”

  “Pink heart,” he nodded. “The local mud has a certain color, something to do with minerals. All of the adobe looks pink, depending on the light. Some people think it makes the place look very beautiful.”

  “Sounds like something I'd like to see.”

  “If you get tired enough of this, let me know. Maybe I'll buy another boat and put you to work fishing. You might like it.”

  I touched his shoulder and went back to the Ford.

  -Fourteen-

  Some people think three o’clock in the morning is the worst time, the time we come closest to the sense of our own ending. The gray face that looks back from the bathroom mirror tells us what we’ll look like when we’re very old. It’s when we know for sure that all clocks stop, sooner or later. It’s the hour when investigations dead-end, when smoke tastes stale and strange things crawl out of doorways to lie down and sun themselves in the streetlights.

  There's something worse, though. What’s worse is looking at your watch, a little before five on a Friday afternoon, with another Friday night on the horizon. There’s an anticipation of sounds—laughter, ice chiming in the evening's first drink, the whisper of silk, a ringing phone. There’s the promise of lipstick and colored lights. And then you realize you have no place to go to, and no one to go there with.

  I had been keeping my own company for a while, and this wasn't the first Friday night that I sat by the radio with the sports page in my lap. Tonight, the box scores all added up to numbers I didn’t want to hear, and my living room was even gloomier than usual, so after a while I shrugged off the mood and put a tie on. I got my hat off its hook and locked the front door behind me. A cup of coffee and a piece of pie were going to be better than being alone. In fact, they would probably be swell company.

  As I went down the steps, I glanced at the dark windows on Annie Kahlo's house. I felt a stab of loneliness and thought about knocking on her door, but in the end I didn't. Instead, I walked a few blocks up Ortega, past the cemetery to an all-night joint. Everyone called it Camel Diner, probably because there was a faded dromedary painted on the old cigarette advertisement beside the entrance. If the place had ever had another name, it was long forgotten.

  I pulled open the door and went into the smells of coffee and fried onions. I didn’t much like sitting at the counter, so I headed for a booth in the back.

  “Hello, Nate. You're awful early tonight. You want the same as always, or you looking for adventure tonight?”

  Roxanne was a redhead in her forties. She had a tired, pretty face and a husband who drove a bus. They were saving to move back to New York. They had been saving for more than ten years, and I had my doubts they were ever going to make it. You can learn a lot talking to the people in a diner, and maybe I knew more about Roxanne than I did about myself.

  “I better not risk it,” I said. “Same as always.”

  “Pie and coffee it is, then.” She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a small envelope. “Someone came in and left you something about an hour ago.”

  “I must be coming in here too regular,” I said. “Who it was it, you know?”

  I took it from her and slit the flap with a thumbnail. I shook a playing card onto the table and held the envelope up to make sure there was nothing else.

  “Tall guy, thin...smelled kinda funny.”

  The card had the usual stylized bicycle printed on the back. This one seemed different to me, though, because the bicycle carried a rider, the line drawing of a man, unremarkable except that he carried a coil of rope over one shoulder.

  “He smelled funny?” I said, still looking at the card. “How do you mean?”

  “I'm not quite sure,” she said. “Sort of sweet, like he'd been sick or something. Do sick people smell sweet? I don't know why I thought that.”

  I turned the card over. It was a six of spades. There was nothing written or marked on either side. I looked at the envelope again; it had no handwriting or marks on it either. Roxanne leaned over my shoulder to look, bringing in an aura of Beechnut chewing gum.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “Beats me.”

  We both looked up at the tan suit that had joined us. Rex Raines smiled at Roxanne, and asked for coffee. She left to get the order. I pointed at the seat across from me, and he sat down.

&nb
sp; “Saw you come in,” he said. “I planned to get in touch tomorrow, anyway. You like this place?”

  “I guess so. I've been coming to Camel's as long as I've lived here. You get to be a regular somewhere, you stop thinking about whether you like it or not.”

  “Like being married,” he said.

  “I was just thinking about that.” I didn't elaborate, and after a moment he shifted in his seat, as though he was bracing himself.

  “I have some news,” he said. “Hopefully you see it as good news.”

  “Might as well just give it to me.”

  “He's in the clear,” he said. “Cleveland didn't kill his wife.”

  I was instantly irate. “Says who?”

  He put a hand on my arm. “Alibi's rock solid, Nate. He closed the Hi-lo Club that night. Didn't leave until after three. Bartender swears it.”

  “What...the ugly hag keeps a shotgun under the bar?” I demanded. “That's who's giving you their word?”

  “There's a dozen or more folks who will back it up. He was nowhere near Highway 12 the night his wife got killed.”

  “Annie Kahlo saw him!”

  I could feel the heat in my face. My voice raised, and several people turned on their stools to look.

  “Annie Kahlo's a looney,” he hissed. “Give it up, would you? You hate Sal Cleveland so bad you don't see straight any more. It's a dead end. If he did it, I'd arrest him. He didn't do it. Wouldn't you like to see the mug who shot her put away?”

  I stood up. “That's exactly what I want, Rex. I guess your orders say different.”

  “Sal Cleveland's off-limits, and that's final. Leave him alone, or you're going to be in the kind of trouble I can't get you out of.”

  I slapped three dimes on the table and got my hat. I headed for the street. On my way, I brushed by Roxanne, who carried my pie and two coffee cups on a tray.

  “Give it to him.” I said. “On me.”

  I made it all the way to the door before the fury completely washed over me. I turned and marched back to the booth. Raines looked up at me, trying not to show his alarm.

  “He shot her in the face!” I yelled. “She sat there with two goddamned broken legs and he shot her in the face! You have a witness to it and you won't do a good goddamned thing about it. To hell with it. If you can't do your job, I'll take care of the creep myself.”