A Nasty Piece of Work (3 page)

“Oh, I have the usual ones, too. I’m superstitious about the number thirteen. I’m spooked by thirteen people eating at the same table, I won’t set foot on the thirteenth floor of a building even if it’s numbered fourteen, I won’t walk on a Thirteenth Avenue or drive on an interstate numbered thirteen or take a plane on the thirteenth day of the month.”

With the kind of suppleness one associates with cats, Friday slipped the sandals onto her feet, then angled her head and stared at me for a moment. “So I think I enjoyed meeting you, Lemuel,” she said finally.

“You’re not sure?”

There was a quick little shake of the head, a petulant curling of the Scott Fitzgerald underlip. “I’m not sure, no.” Suddenly a cloud flitted across her features and she was swallowing emotions. She looked like one of those modern females wrestling with the eternal problem of how to give yourself generously and keep part of yourself back in case the giving doesn’t work out. “So you never know who someone is the first time you meet them, do you, Lemuel? You only know who they want you to think they are.”

“That already tells you something important.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll call you.”

“Yes.” She frowned. “Okay. Call me.” She ducked into the beat-up Ford van parked in the shadow of a stand of Mexican pinyons and waved once through the open window as she drove off. I watched the Ford until it turned onto the interstate and was lost in the swarm of traffic. Why did I feel as if something important had happened? I retrieved the rake leaning against the tree and, turning back toward the Once in a Blue Moon, followed the prints of her naked feet down the pathway, raking the sand behind me as I went. It was a trick I’d picked up from an Israeli colleague in Peshawar—the Israelis raked the sand around their camp every night and then inspected the track for footprints first thing at first light.

Three

“Yo, Gunn? It’s me, it’s your daughter, it’s your adopted progeny.”

I kicked off my running shoes and settled my lean, mean six-foot carcass onto the yellow couch, the phone wedged between my right ear and the shrapnel scar on my right shoulder, my hands clasped behind my head, a moronic ear-to-ear grin plastered across my moronic face. “God damn, it’s good to hear your voice, Kubra.”

“It’s good to hear yours, Gunn.”

Since she’d gone off to junior college, my daughter’s phone calls had become a regular Sunday morning feature, which was when the long distance rates were bargain basement. Thanks to strings I’d been able to pull with a former American ambassador to Kabul, Kubra had been one of the three hundred or so Afghan refugees allowed into the U.S. of A. She had registered at school under the name on her certificate of American citizenship, Kubra Ziayee, but she had signed up for courses, had introduced herself to classmates, using Gunn, which tickled me to tears. When she phoned me Sundays she called herself Gunn, and pronounced it with a certain belligerent intensity, as if a lot of unspoken sentiments were hanging on the name. I got the message and it warmed my heart, which was a part of the anatomy I seemed to be losing touch with.

“How was your week, little lady?”

“I aced a bio exam and lucked into a part-time job with a veterinarian named Cunningham. It’s not much—I scrub up after the dog and cat clients—but it’s a foot in the door, and it won’t look bad on my application when I apply to vet school. Besides which it’ll sure help out in the cash-flow department. Until further notice, I can make do without the check you send every month. Mr. Cunningham’s promised to let me look over his shoulder when he performs operations. What’s up with you, Gunn? You haven’t beat up on anyone since that motorcycle cop in Santa Fe told you to keep your hands where he could see them? Jesus, Gunn, what do you have against keeping your hands where someone can see them?”

I educated her, which is what you do with people you love. “It wasn’t what he said. It was
how
he said it.”

“He said it the way a policeman says dialogue he memorized. Boy, did you have a hard time squirming out of that one. You could have lost your detective license.”

I had to smile. “To answer your question, I finally got around to pumping out the septic—”

“You’ve been threatening to do it since Christmas. Has any work come your way?”

“As a matter of fact, a lady bail bondsman came by with a predicament. She posted bond on a guy who was caught buying cocaine. She’s pretty sure he’s skipped. She stands to lose $125,000 if he doesn’t show up for the trial.”

“And you stand to gain some cash flow if he’s brought in. What does the damsel in distress look like?”

I laughed into the phone. “Would you believe buck teeth, straw hair, cross-eyed with a lisp and a limp?”

“You’re pulling my leg, Gunn. That’s not the kind of moth that turns around your flame. Hey, don’t do anything foolish, huh? I mean, don’t run any risks, don’t climb out on any limbs. You adopted me but I also adopted you. You’re the only adopted father I have.”

“There’s no way you’re going to lose me.”

“Yeah. Well. Uh.” I could hear her clearing a frog of anxiety from the back of her throat. “I met this dude—”

I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. “What
dude
? Are you—?”

“Am I what?”

“You know what. Ah, hell, Kubra, are you sleeping with him?”

“Oh, boy, what is it with adopted dads that they see their adopted daughters as eternal vestal virgins? The answer to your not very discreet question is, not yet. Get a life, Gunn. The dirty deed is bound to happen sooner or later—”

“I vote for later.”

Her sweet tinsel laughter tickled my ear. “I’m not ruling out sooner.”

If I couldn’t reason with her, I figured I could scare her. “A day doesn’t go by without another story on venereal disease turning up in the Albuquerque paper.”

“I’ve read all those stories, Gunn. They even handed out a pamphlet in the home economics class. Statistically speaking, it’s not the problem.”

“Look, Kubra, the bottom line is, before you sleep with someone, get to know him. As long as he’s not scoring for the sake of scoring, it can work out. I just think you’re still kinda young.”

I heard the groan work its way down the tube. “Jeeeez. I’m seventeen and a half a week from Tuesday.”

“If you’re still figuring in the halves, you’re young.”

“Don’t tell me you never scored for the sake of scoring, Gunn.”

“When I want to work up a sweat, I pump iron or septic tanks.”

“Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent pure! Darn it, Gunn, what are we fighting over? Ted and I haven’t got past the handholding stage. We go dutch on milk shakes in the Campus Cave and talk about Elizabethan poetry and Oriental religions and NBA basketball. He walks me back to the dorm. We kiss in the shadows under the awning. Can you deal with that, Gunn, or you figuring on turning up with your shotgun?”

“I don’t touch shotguns anymore. When I touch them they have a nasty habit of going off.”

She laughed. “Love you.”

“Me, too, little lady.”

“Call you next Sunday. Bye.”

“Next Sunday. Hey, if I’m not here, my accountant in Las Cruces will know where to find me.”

I couldn’t miss the snicker. “Your
accountant,
right. She’s the one who scores”—another snicker—“I mean
keeps
score when your bank balance dips into the red. Neat legend. Bye for now.”

“Bye.”

Four

I put in a call to a photojournalist pal at the
Las Cruces Star
named Lyle Leggett. Leggett was a thin man in his late forties who, without malice aforethought, managed to look ten years older. It probably had a little to do with not shaving. It probably had a lot to do with not caring. Several years before, when we’d both been younger and fitter and less concerned about mortality, I’d let Leggett, who was freelancing out of Islamabad, tag along when I slipped across the Pakistani badlands into Afghanistan with a cargo of Kalashnikovs lashed to the sides of pack horses. At the time some CIA genius had decided we ought to be arming friendly tribesmen against the Taliban. (I use the word “friendly” in its loosest sense.) Leggett sold the spread to the Associated Press and eventually won a Columbia School of Journalism photojournalist prize, which, true to form, he’d turned up to collect with a tie hanging loose around his neck and the top button of his wrinkled shirt unbuttoned. Last time our paths crossed, in a bar around the corner from the
Star
a year or so back, I’d been surprised how much hair Leggett had lost. What little he had left seemed to have been pasted across his sun-peeling scalp one strand at a time.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Lyle asked when the switchboard finally figured out which extension to ring.

“I need a favor,” I announced.

“I owe you, Gunn. Only ask.”

“Twelve days ago a joker name of Emilio Gava was arraigned in the Las Cruces courthouse on charges of buying cocaine. He was released on bail. Someone from the
Star
was on the courthouse steps when he came out. That someone took a photo of the alleged perpetrator, but when the item materialized on an inside page, there was no photo attached. I’d appreciate it if I could get a copy of the photo from your morgue.”

Leggett got back to me an hour and a quarter later. “Here’s the deal, Gunn. I dug out the original rough layout for the page on which the item appeared. Funny part was they were going to publish a head shot with the article but pulled it at the last minute.”

“To make room for an important article?”

“To make room for what we call a filler—something we shove in when we suddenly find ourselves with a hole in the page when we go to press. A friend in the city room seems to recall that the city editor received a phone call, after which he ordered the photo pulled.”

“Any idea who might have called?” I asked.

I could hear Lyle laughing into his end of the conversation. “Maybe it was Gava’s mother. Maybe her son is shy.”

“At least that confirms there were photos taken,” I said hopefully.

“Yeah, there were photos taken. We had a trainee named Gordon Comstock, naturally everyone took to calling him Flash Gordon, shooting outside the courthouse that day. Flash doesn’t remember shooting anyone named Gava, but then he shot a half-dozen rolls of film. His personal notebook mentions six shots of a Gava, initial E. I checked the master log in the photo morgue. It lists an envelope under the name of Gava, initial E. When I looked in the
G
drawer, the envelope was missing. No photos, no negatives. Sorry I can’t be of more help, Gunn.”

“You may have helped me more than you know,” I said. “So far you’ve only given me pieces, but they’ll begin to fall into place. They almost always do.”

“Yeah, sure. Say, if you’re planning to run some Kalashnikovs across a border anytime soon, give me a heads-up.”

Five

Detective Awlson sat hunched over an IBM electric typewriter, hunting and pecking away with two forefingers faster than any touch typist I’d ever seen. Every now and then he’d raise his squinty brown eyes to read what he’d written, all the while tugging at an earlobe which looked as if it’d been tugged at before. He’d frown at the mystery of the little ball stabbing typed letters onto the page, then go back to the keyboard. “What can I do you?” he asked without looking up or letting up.

I hauled one of my Santa Fe All-State Indemnity cards out of my billfold and dropped it on the desk. I was decked out in tan slacks and a tie and jacket and street shoes in order to give the Santa Fe logo credibility.

Awlson stopped typing long enough for his eyes to take in the printing on the card. He took his sweet time finishing what he was working on before slowly swiveling around to face me. I could see him giving me the kind of once-over you only get from a detective with a lot of flight time.

“Five foot eleven, one hundred sixty,” he guessed.

“You’re in the ballpark. You undershot by one inch and overshot by five pounds.”

“I’m losin’ my touch.” Awlson gestured with a very pointed chin to a very narrow wooden chair. I scraped it over to the desk and lowered myself into it. “Lemuel Gunn,” he announced with that New Mexican laziness which betrays a particular worldview, namely that people in a hurry die sooner. Lethargy, according to the gospel I picked up while running guns into Afghanistan for an employer who turned out to be as loyal as Iago, equals longevity. Awlson flipped my card over to see if anything was written on the back. He seemed disappointed when he found it blank. “I reckon I know what Santa Fe and All-State mean, but Indemnity has sure got me confounded.”

“It’s a fancy way of saying insurance.”

“Hell, why don’t you folks come right out with it instead of prevaricatin’ the way you do?”

Awlson’s cubbyhole of an office was at the bitter end of a long tunnel-like corridor in one of those precinct houses that are so old they ought to be declared historical monuments. The steel-and-glass warts we all know and loathe weren’t even on the drawing boards when this particular police station was constructed. The floor was worn wide-board planking, the walls were wainscoted, the single window in Awlson’s office was long and narrow and sashed with dark wood that had turned gray with age. The window was closed because the only things coming in from the street would have been noise and exhaust fumes mixed with hot air. A slowly churning overhead propeller stirred the few papers scattered around Detective Awlson’s desk and the wooden table near the door. There was a tall wooden filing cabinet against one wall with a neatly folded peach-colored sports jacket spilling out of an open drawer, and six or seven old Remingtons piled one on top of the other in a corner. Awlson himself was in suspenders and shirtsleeves, with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows, a striped tie knotted under a very conspicuous Adam’s apple. A shoulder holster with a long-barreled Colt Special nested in it hung from a peg on the wall behind him.

He noticed me noticing the Remingtons. “We’re keepin’ them ’gainst the day when these IBMs turn ornery. So who you insurin’ and what’s it got to do with yours truly?”