Accustomed to the Dark (19 page)

I was right.

20

T
HE TELEPHONE STARTED
chirping at about a quarter to one in the afternoon, just as I was approaching Interstate 40, south of Wheeler. I was able to see the green highway signs through the wavering sheets of rain, but nothing beyond them.

I lifted the phone from the passenger seat, flipped it open.

“Hello.”

“Josh.” Hector Ramirez. “I've been trying to reach you all morning.”

“I was out of range.”

“Where are you?”

“On the road.”

“Where?”

“Texas.”

“
Texas?
What the hell are you doing in Texas?”

“Checking something out.”

“You're thinking Dallas? You're thinking Lucero's bringing Martinez and the woman back there?”

“I don't know, Hector. I'm looking into it.”

“Forget it, Josh. You don't know Dallas. Even if they're there, you'd never find them. And the place is probably crawling with Feds already. You're wasting your time.”

“I've got time to waste. Has anyone spotted that RV of Sylvia Miller's?”

“Nope. It probably got dumped in a garage somewhere. But we ran a check on RV registrations, and had Motor Vehicles cross-check them against new licenses. We've got an RV registered to a Susan Sanborn, and three months ago, the same Susan Sanborn applied for a driver's license. The picture on the license is Miller. So now we know her name, and we know what kind of an RV she bought. For what that's worth.”

“What kind was it?”

“An eighty-four Tioga. Twenty-two feet. But it's not on the road. Someone would've seen it.”

“What did Miller use for ID when she got the license?”

“Passport. According to the Feds, she got the passport with a birth certificate.”

“A dead baby.”

“Yeah.” You find the grave of a child born at about the same time you were, request a copy of the birth certificate from the Department of Records, and use that to obtain other ID.

“Oh,” said Hector. “The Denver cops picked up something about Lyle Monroe. You remember—the guy in the house? When you made that stupid phone call?”

“I remember.”

“According to his girlfriend, he was one of Lucero's investors.”

“Investors?”

“Monroe would drop five, ten grand on Lucero every couple of months, according to her. Lucero used it to buy coke. He'd pay back Monroe double the money.”

“Why would Lucero need Monroe's money?”

“He probably didn't. Denver cops figure he took the money to keep Monroe on a string. It never hurts to have a buddy with connections. You knew that Monroe was old money up there? Old family?”

“Yeah.”

“He wasn't doing too well with that movie business of his. The money from Lucero probably helped out.
Assisted him in maintaining the extravagant lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed
, it says here. According to the girlfriend—her name's Heidi, by the way—Monroe thought Lucero was the bee's knees.”

“The bee's knees?”

“That's a paraphrase.”

“So why did Lucero shoot him?”

“They don't know. The Denver cops. What they're saying is, maybe Monroe balked at the game plan. Whatever it was.”

“Or maybe Lucero's gun went off accidentally, while he was cleaning it.”

“Yeah, there's that.”

“Did the Denver cops find her safe-deposit box?”

“Yeah. Nothing in it. Tax records. Listen, Josh, why don't you get on back here? You won't be able to do anything in Dallas.”

“I'm losing the signal, Hector.”

“Asshole,” he said, and hung up.

I flipped the phone shut.

What Ernie Martinez lacked in subtlety he made up for in stupidity. I'd gone only two steps down the concrete walkway when I heard him roar behind me and come clomping across the portico.

Ducking, I wheeled to my right, and as he blitzed past me I thumped a left into his kidney. He was moving too quickly in the same direction for the punch to do much damage, but when he spun around to face me, his face was twisted with rage.

“What's the matter, Ernie?” I said. “Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

He came in at me, heavy shoulders lowered, fingers clawing at the air. If I'd let him grab me, he could've torn me apart. I didn't let him. I got in a good jab at his nose, and then another. While he contemplated those, I hooked a right into his belly. Ernie hadn't been doing his sit-ups. He gasped.

I moved away, lowering my hands. “Come on, Ernie,” I said. “You can do better than that. Big tough guy like you?”

From the portico, Nancy shouted, “
Kill the fucker, Ernie!
”

My plan was working wonderfully so far.

Martinez had seen too many movies. He lumbered in at me like a cowboy in a Western, his hands balled now, and he threw a big, sloppy roundhouse right. I stepped away from it and hooked him in the gut again. As he folded forward, I smacked my open palm against his ear.

I moved back again. “Maybe we should do this some other time,” I said. “When you're feeling better.”

He was still bent forward. He dove at me and I stepped aside. He landed in the dirt.

“Need a hand up?” I asked him.

He rolled over onto his elbows. The T-shirt was brown with dust. “Motherfucker,” he said. But he stayed on the ground.

“
You go away!
” Nancy screeched at me. She hadn't moved from the portico. “
I'll call the cops!
”

“What do you think, Ernie?” I said. “Think we should get the cops here?”

Still supporting himself on his elbow, Martinez turned to her. His hair hung in thick strands down his forehead. “Shut up,” he told her.

“
Ernie, he's got no right!
”

“Shut the fuck
up!
” he said.

I turned to her. “Nancy? You want to leave? I'll drive you. Your father just wants to talk to you.”

Her eyes were slits. “You go to
hell
, mister.”

I nodded. Mission accomplished. “Maybe we'll talk later.”

“
Never!
” she said.

“Right,” I said.

I went down the walkway and out to my car. Before I climbed into the Ford, I looked back at them. He was still on the ground. She was squatting down beside him, reaching out. He swatted her hands away.

Later, when I told William and Rita what had happened, neither was overly impressed.

“So,” Rita said, “basically, what happened was that you bullied the man in front of his girlfriend.”

We were in William's office, Rita in one of the client chairs, me in the other. She was wearing a lightweight pale blue top of knitted silk, V-necked, over a long flared skirt of dark blue linen. Behind the desk, William was wearing a pinstriped pale yellow Oxford shirt with a buttoned-down collar, a patterned red silk tie, and a gray suit vest. I was wearing sackcloth and ashes.

“Basically,” I said, “yeah.”

“Thereby,” she said, “provoking her sympathy for him. That was very cunning.”

“If I'd known,” said William, “that you'd had an earlier run-in with Martinez, I wouldn't have let you continue with the case.”

I said, “I didn't know until this morning that Martinez was involved.”

He nodded. He was tapping a pencil lightly, distractedly, against the edge of the desk. “I think,” he said, “that we'll let Rita handle this one from here on.”

“Probably a good idea,” I said. I turned to her. “Watch out for that left of his.”

“That won't be necessary,” she said. “I'll just shoot him on sight.”

William smiled. “Joshua, why don't you write up the report. And then you can take off for the day. Oh. Could I borrow the Ford? I can get it back to you tonight.”

He had borrowed my car before. His own, a bustle-back Eldorado, was sometimes a bit too conspicuous.

“Sure,” I said. “Do I get the Cadillac?”

“You can take Rita's Mercedes.” An old yellow sedan, as solid as a tank, and almost as fast.

“Fine,” I said. I stood. “Look,” I told him. “I screwed up. I should've handled it differently.”

“Water under the bridge,” he said. He smiled. “Do up the report and then take off. We'll bring the car over to your place. After nine o'clock, I imagine. We'll stop in and say hello.”

“I'll get out the pretzels and beer.” I turned to Rita. “Take care with Martinez.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Slugger.”

When you look back at your life, you discover, or you invent, points in time that seem to be tightly knotted nodes of possibility. Out of the seemingly endless options that present themselves in a given situation, you choose one in particular, and your life and the lives of those around you start moving relentlessly toward a particular outcome.

One of these nodes, in my life, was the moment I decided to antagonize Ernie Martinez in front of Nancy Gomez. If I'd simply walked away, I've often told myself since, things would have proceeded differently.

Another of these was the moment that I agreed, without any serious thought, to lend my car to William. If I'd stopped to consider, it might have occurred to me that Ernie Martinez would be looking for me.

But Martinez hadn't come back at me after the incident at Vanessie's, and I assumed he wouldn't come back at me now.

I stopped for lunch in Wellington, Texas, at two o'clock. Gray chicken-fried steak, gray home fries, gray green beans. By two-thirty, I was back on the road. I was about a hundred and twenty miles from Carlton. The rain kept coming.

At ten o'clock on that Friday night in June, six years ago, I was lying on the sofa in my living room when I heard the shots. They were loud, fired just outside. There were two of them, followed by two more.

I was living then in the rear half of a small house on Santa Fe Avenue. The apartment was small—the bedroom closet, where I kept my pistol, wasn't that far from the living room. But I think that at some level I already knew what had happened, knew who had been shot and why, and I didn't run to get it. I ran, instead, to the front door and out it, and down the three wooden steps to the narrow driveway.

I had parked Rita's Mercedes out on the street, so William could drive my Ford into the driveway. The Ford was there now, and there were two bodies lying in the gravel on either side of it, sprawled in the light of the street lamp like dolls cast aside.

21

I
ARRIVED IN
Carlton, Texas, at a quarter to five in the afternoon. The rain was still hurtling down.

I keep a small work duffle in the Cherokee. When I stopped at a Circle-K, I turned around, reached back over my seat. I opened the duffle and dug out a thermos bottle, an empty mason jar with a lid, and an old pair of Ziess binoculars. I set the binoculars on the passenger seat, lay the Mason jar on the floor mat. Cradling the thermos like a football, I sprinted through the downpour to the store's entrance. The air was warm and thick, and the raindrops that spattered against my cheeks felt like blood.

Inside the store, I filled the thermos with coffee and I bought a couple of plastic-wrapped gray sandwiches, some bottles of water, a package of Fig Newtons. I also bought a small bottle of dishwashing soap and some disposable washcloths. From the clerk, I got some paper cups and the directions to Hillside Avenue, where Thomas Thorogood lived.

Back in the car, I took the soap and the washcloths from the paper bag. One by one, I covered the interior of the Jeep's windows with a thin film of soap. To any shopper walking past, I was just a maniac from New Mexico who had a thing for clean windows.

Just as I finished, the telephone rang.

“Hello?”

“Joshua Croft?” A male voice, slow and soft and Southern.

“Yes?”

“This is Ted Chartoff? In Dallas?” He ended the sentences with a rising inflection, as though they were questions. “Ed Norman asked me to give you a call.”

“Hello.”

“Just wanted to let you know that I'm on the stick here. I put out some feelers already, on that Lucero scumbag?”

“Thanks. I appreciate your help.”

“No sweat, buddy. I never met that Mrs. Mondragón of yours, but I hear she's a damn fine woman.”

“She is.”

“Don't you worry. If the scumbag is anywhere near Dallas, I'll be camping in his asshole by the end of the week.”

“Save me a bunk.”

He chuckled. “I'll do that. And, lookit, I got some stuff on the guy you asked about, Thorogood?”

“Yeah?”

“His father's a big honcho, over in Wichita Falls? Owns a big frozen food company, trucks food to restaurants from here to hell and gone. Junior's a vice president in the company. Picture of him in one of the Texas magazines, last month. Got it here, you want it. You got a fax?”

I already had one photograph of Thorogood. Mr. Niederman had printed out a copy of his surveillance shot. But another picture wouldn't hurt. “Yeah. You can use the same number, after we hang up. Anything else on Thorogood?”

“He's a major pussy hound. Doesn't seem to do much of anything but chase women. Hardly ever shows up at the office, even. That house in Carlton? Used to be the family place. The father signed it over to Junior a couple years ago. I figure the kid for deadwood. Daddy keeps him on the payroll, to give him an allowance? But he sticks him out in Carlton, where he won't trip over his dick in public. But, lookit, if Junior's hooked up with Lucero, maybe he's using Daddy's trucks to move some nose candy?”

“Maybe, yeah.” Lucero had apparently used Lyle Monroe in Denver. Maybe he had used Thorogood down here.

“Okay, lookit,” said Chartoff, “I talked to Dick Jepson, over in Miami? Ed said you were in and out, contact-wise, and he asked me to do a little liaising. Dick's on board, too. He's got your number. Anything turns up, he'll give you a jingle. He can't reach you, he'll buzz me. How's that by you?”