Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (22 page)

I turned to Bobby. “If Angie tries to go off on her own, don’t let her. Make sure you or Snout go with her. If it’s Snout, no crazy-ass shotgun. A pistol, fine, but nothing too big. Next time I see him, he should still have all nine of his toes.”

“I’ll be done with the burn in an hour,” Bobby said. “My house,
carne asada
, lunch.”

I nodded, ran to Griselda’s car, and hopped in. The car was moving before my door closed.

On the drive to Morales Bar, Griselda updated me on the progress of Yolanda’s murder investigation. Griselda drove ninety miles an hour with one casual arm on the window like a Sunday drive. Considering the events of the day, she even let me smoke in her patrol car. So long as I gave her one of my cigarettes.

“Still fighting to keep it a homicide. Blunt force trauma, coroner said. The wound was deep. From the photos, it doesn’t look like it could be from the fall. Hoping when we comb the bottom of the well, we find a rock or whatever that did it. We find that, we find a bit more of the story. There’s a lot of broken concrete around the pump.”

“I don’t need the details,” I said. The image of Yolanda’s dead eyes and wet black dress returned.

“Sorry. I do that. You get lost in the job sometimes. Desensitized is what they call it. All the crazy you see becomes normal, and normal becomes crazy.”

“Probably why you’re with Bobby,” I said, smiling.

“I know that was a joke, but probably right. Maybe. I know I can’t do normal. Whatever that is.”

I shook my head. “I can’t even figure how things have escalated to the point they’re at. I track it in my mind, but I can’t find where it went nuts. Not too long ago, I was spending my days trying to make my dying father laugh. And before that, doing shit all.”

“Life’s crazy, yeah?”

“Where’re you with Bobby’s list?” I asked.

“Just getting started. The way things work down here is, I got my cases, but I also got my regular shifts. So while I’m doing my interviews, a lot of them on the phone which isn’t optimal, I also got to drive the ditch banks and help lost hunters. Without time and resources, I’m trying my best to keep Yolanda from getting lost in the system.”

“That’s something.”

“I’ll work the interviews. Everyone I can find. But a lot of people were there. And a few Mexican nationals, I’m going to have a hard time talking to. Including your friend, Tomás. On top of it, everyone was intoxicated. I drew up a timeline. The doc placed the time of death at between one thirty and two in the morning. I’m focusing on finding the people who were unaccounted for then.”

“Based on what?”

“People’s accounts. Foggy, drunken memories. Bobby gave me a starting point. And Mr. Morales seems to have a practically photographic memory for the events inside his bar. Whether he’s been drinking or not.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

Griselda continued. “I got no reason to believe this was anything more than one person. So, I’m taking what each person says, who they saw, what they were doing, and cross-referencing everyone’s story. It’s going to take some time, but it’s already starting to give me a picture, at least from what we got so far. If two, three people say they remembered, say, Mike Egger playing pool the whole time, then I take that as gospel. He’s off the list.”

“Taking the nicest and Catholic-est guy on the face of the earth off a list of possible suspects, that’s big news.”

“Just an example.”

“So, the gazillion-dollar question. Who’s not accounted for?”

“Yeah, that’s what sucks. Almost everybody. Including you and Bobby, Buck Buck, and Snout. I think I’ve scratched like five people off my list. So far the real problem is figuring out who all was there. I got three or four high school kids that nobody can ID. Most likely from Calexico, but who knows. Then there’s another half dozen out-of-town hunters and a few field-workers. The bar was open and serving. If I hadn’t been on duty, I would’ve been there. And I never even met your father.”

“It was a good wake.”

We pulled into the empty dirt lot in front of Morales Bar. Both Griselda and I cautiously got out of the patrol car. The constant volley of distant shotgun fire played soundtrack to our approach. Griselda kept one hand on her sidearm. She turned to me.

“Get back in the car,” she said.

“Fuck that,” I countered.

She gave me a stare and shook her head, but didn’t say or do anything to stop me. With one hand on the door, Griselda nodded her head silently as if counting to herself. She quickly opened the door and entered the dark bar, pistol still in her holster, but unsnapped and ready. The door closed behind her. I yanked it open and followed her into the hot, empty room.

While Griselda gave the room a visual once-over, I found Mr. Morales behind the bar. On his back. He was alive, but it looked like he’d been worked over pretty good. His right eye was swollen closed, and dried blood painted his face coming from one ear, his nostrils, and the side of his mouth. His broken right arm was bent at an unnatural angle that made me recoil.

I leaned down next to him and started when his head turned to me, showing a bloody jack-o’-lantern grin. “Fucking pussy hit like my great-grandniece.”

It was unsettling to me that this was the first time I’d ever seen Mr. Morales smile.

“Here,” I yelled at Griselda.

She ran to my side, cringing at the sight of Mr. Morales.

“You better get an ambulance down here,” I said.

Griselda nodded, took one more look at Mr. Morales, and ran outside.

I leaned in, putting one hand on Mr. Morales’s shoulder. I was afraid to move him, but I wanted him to know that I was there. “We got help coming,” I said.

He shook his head and then spit a bloody gob against the back of the bar. His voice was quiet, but strong. “Who’s going to work the bar? I ain’t never closed in over forty years.”

“That’ll get figured out. Can’t worry about that.”

“Who’s going to work the bar?”

“Okay, I’ll find someone. Jesus Christ.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Someone. I’m starting to understand why they beat your old ass.”

“Not that fucking Bobby.”

“Shit. I’ll find someone. I have no fucking idea. If no one else, I’ll do it.”

“Okay.”

“Finally.”

“You can keep it shut during the day, but come six or seven, I want them doors open. Don’t fuck it up,” he said.

“What’s to fuck up?” I said, insulted.

“It ain’t as easy as you think.”

“Sure. How does it go? I give the customers money and they give me beer, right? Or, oh, it’s so confusing,” I said. “I know you’re all beat to shit and all, but where did you learn how to ask for favors?”

“People show up, the doors are closed, they won’t come back.”

“It’s covered. You probably look worse than you are. You’re going to be fine.”

“I know I’m going to be fine. This wasn’t my first hiding. My arm hurts like hell and I’m going to piss blood for a week, but past that.” He started to sit up, but thought better of it and lay back down.

“Was Alejandro looking for Tomás?”

“Of course,
estúpido
. If he hadn’t punked up and brought another
cabrón
, I would’ve got a few more punches in. Tagged him a pretty nice one.”

“You tell him anything?”

“What’s to tell? I don’t know where Tommy is. Wouldn’t’ve told him anyway, but I ain’t had nothing to give. Gave me the beating ’cause he was scared.”

“Yeah, he looked real scared when he was chasing me.”

“Shit scared. He’s playing tough, but he knows that Tommy is going to kill him. Makes him dangerous, yeah? Knows he’s cornered. Can’t just leave town ’cause where the hell’d he go. If he has money maybe. Mostly he knows he’s got to stay and die, so he’s going to die fighting.”

“But he’s the one coming after us, after you.”

“Try to understand it. He got no choice. I know my grandson. Alejandro can’t hide in Chicali, and he can’t go
mano-a
with Tommy. He’s going to look for some angle, some back alley, some last ditch. He’s scared. Should be, too. Tommy ain’t the kid you knew.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that.”

“
Mi hija
’s boy, he ain’t afraid to be what they call
pocho
. An American playing Mexican when he needs to. Heard someone use the word Trisket ’cause it’s nothing but a brown cracker. Tommy, he ain’t got the past. The Life. You grow up like Alejandro, in a
colonia
near the dump, scraping by, selling fucking gum, stealing scraps—you don’t got hope to hold you back. You only got survival. Doing what you need to stay alive. Tomás thinks he has a future. Alejandro knows he doesn’t. He’s got nothing to lose.”

“You sound like you feel sorry for him.”

“Kid like Alejandro, he couldn’t be anything ’cept who he is.” Mr. Morales shook his head. He closed his eyes. “Damn, my balls hurt.”

Griselda walked back inside. “How’s he doing? I got an ambulance coming up from Calexico. Ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Hey, sweetness, honey,
muchacha
,” Mr. Morales said to Griselda. “Be an angel and pop a beer for me.”

“He’s going to be all right,” I said.

They put Mr. Morales into the back of the ambulance. He refused to leave until I once again promised that the bar would be open for business that evening. After the ambulance drove south, Griselda and I walked across the street to my house.

“This has gotten out of hand,” Griselda said.

“You’re telling me?”

I had no idea what to do. For the time being, I was going to grab my stuff and stay at Bobby’s until we knew what was going to happen with Alejandro. I also grabbed two boxes that Angie had marked “Jack’s Papers.” If I was going to hole up, I’d need something to read. Why not dig into my father’s past and explore his innermost secrets?

The flames rose a foot, ignited by the dripping fat of the
carne asada
. The meat sizzled on the barbecue as Bobby flicked at the thin strips with a pair of tongs. He took a mouthful of beer and spit-taked it over the flames. The smoky steam filled his backyard with a savory aroma.

I sat with Angie, Griselda, Snout, and Buck Buck, each of us on lawn chairs around a plastic table. Each with bottles of beer in our hands. In the center of the table was everything we needed for our meal: flour tortillas in a warmer, guacamole, homemade salsa, chopped onions, cilantro, and a cooling earthen pot of refried beans. It all looked and smelled so good that nobody faulted Snout when he stuck his two fingers in the beans and scooped out a mouthful.

When Bobby finally brought the big plate of sizzling meat to the table, we were all so famished that for the next fifteen minutes not a single word was spoken. All communication was made through pointing and grunting, combined with facial expressions that suggested the continuum from gastronomic bliss to “Ouch, I just bit the inside of my cheek.”

When food tastes that good, you want to savor it, but your mouth won’t let you. It’s uncontrollable, acting on its own. I didn’t even stop chewing when I bit my finger trying to jam the fat end of a burrito into my mouth.

Nothing like the simple pleasure of good food to put things in perspective. Well, not really. Even filet mignon and caviar isn’t going to make a person forget that there’s a homicidal Mexican in a canary-yellow shirt looking to bleed you.

Sated and full of meat, I lounged on Bobby’s sofa and closed my eyes. The food and lack of sleep threatened to carry me away. If not for my damn brain, I might have snuck in a nap. No such luck. It had its own agenda. It wanted to examine my life.

For the last ten years, I had never planned more than a week ahead. That’s the way I liked it. I wasn’t attached or tied down to anything. Not to places I lived or even the people around me. I had people I cared about. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t walk away. The people and places would always be there. No reason I had to be. Just like with the people in the Imperial Valley. It didn’t matter how long I was gone. They would be there when I returned.

I had never had a job that I wouldn’t have left at the drop of a condescending remark. I had never had a boss that I wouldn’t tell to fuck off, if they got mouthy. That’s the beauty of a shitty job. There was always another slightly less shitty job waiting. I was just smart enough and just stupid enough to get by doing a hundred different menial chores.

But now I was home. Back home and contemplating staying. Some of it was beyond my control. I now owned a house. I owned a farm. I had three hundred and sixty acres of arable land. I owned all sorts of crazy shit that I had never wanted. Hell, I owned an antique tractor that hadn’t run when I was a kid and was still sitting in the exact same spot on the edge of the property. What the hell was I going to do?

“What’re you thinking about?” Angie leaned over the back of the sofa, looking down at me.

“Nothing. Stuff,” I said.

I moved my legs just in time as she jumped over the back of the sofa and slid onto the cushions. She grabbed my legs, put them on her lap, and looked at me with that damn smile.

“Sorry I got you mixed up in my bullshit,” I said. “Pretty fancy driving back there.”

“I watched a lot of
Dukes of Hazzard
as a kid.”

“Seriously, if anything had happened to you, I don’t know what. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pull everyone down in this hole with me.”

Angie smiled. “What’s happened has happened. We’re all grown-ups. If we wanted to walk away, we would. Only person you’re responsible for is you.” She looked at me for a few seconds. Her smile vanished. “You and that kid.”

I pulled my feet off her lap and sat up. “Do we have to do this now? I don’t want that put on me, Angie.”

“Juan is your father’s child. When your father died, when his mother died, the only person he has is you. If you don’t help, who will?”

“As soon as this business with Alejandro is done, then I’ll concentrate on figuring out what to do with the kid. He’s safe where he’s at. Safer, at least. Doesn’t make sense to do anything now. I don’t know when or if Alejandro’ll try something again.”

“You’re really thinking about leaving him down there?” Angie said, a little too snide.

“I don’t know, Angie. I don’t know what’s best for him. What I’m going to do.”

“You’d leave him down there. Without a mother or father?”

I didn’t say anything, hoping that was hint enough that I was no longer interested in talking about it.

“I know you,” Angie said. “I know what you would have done twelve years ago. And there’s no reason you’d do anything different now.”

Angie stood up and left the room. The air felt thicker, more difficult to inhale. The food in my stomach turned to acid and weight. I closed my eyes, feeling like even more of a failure.

I woke up about an hour later. The house was quiet, the room still warm and bright from the afternoon sun.

Next to the front door were the two boxes of Pop’s papers. I slowly sat up, letting the blood settle in my body. I carried the boxes to the edge of the sofa and sat back down. In an overly dramatic way, I put my hand on the lid and peeked inside. It looked like letters, manila folders, Christmas cards, pretty much any paper that had handwritten messages on it. Some bills, as well. I set the lid on the cushion beside me.

I picked up a red envelope resting on top. Looking at the return address, it was from an address in Portland, Oregon. I didn’t recognize the name: Samuel Eliason. The postmark told me it was from 1972. Inside was a birthday card with a cartoon stripper on the front. Inside was a bad pun. It was signed
Sammo
in a man’s block letters, no message.

What kind of insight was I supposed to have gained from this? Had I just lifted back the veil and seen into Pop’s true nature? It could be anybody: an army buddy, a business acquaintance, someone from high school. What was I looking for? Secrets? Something that would tell me something about Pop that would ultimately tell me something about myself?

I felt like an asshole.

I put the letter back in the envelope and tossed the envelope back in the box. I replaced the lid and then gave the box a light kick.

My phone rang. It was Tomás. I had left a message while the paramedics were putting Mr. Morales onto the gurney. That had been hours before. I was surprised that it had taken him so long to get back to me.

I had expected Tomás to be angry or at least show some kind of emotion, but either he had had time to process the events or he just wasn’t the kind of guy to give anything away. He was all business, planning, and tactics. He felt Alejandro’s insult (his word) of attacking his grandfather, but only chose to look at it as an expression of Alejandro’s combat strategy.

“I agree with
mi abuelito.
The
pendejo
sounds desperate. He’s, what would you say, gasping at straws.” I didn’t correct him. “Going after someone as harmless as
Lito
, or even chasing after you. He’s attacking whoever he can put in front of him. Because he knows when he faces me, it will be too late. An easy target is at least a target. You can’t shoot what’s behind you. It’s a respectable approach. Proactive.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t kill Mr. Morales.”

“Would’ve cost him too much. Going to cost him as it is. But if he had killed him, I don’t know.”

“How much more can it cost him? You’re planning on killing him.”

“In Mexico, there may be little quality of life. So at the least, you do your best to maintain a quality of death. If he had killed
mi abuelito
, his death would have been poor and endless.”

“Jesus. So what do we do now?” I asked.

“We?
We
don’t do anything. I am in the process of taking care of this shitstorm that you started. You should do nothing, stay away from this, go about your life. Maybe be a little more careful, but just go back to whatever you were doing.”

“I wasn’t really doing anything,” I said.

“Then go back to your nothing,” Tomás said. “You have no idea what this is costing me. Shifting my attention to a speck of nothing like Alejandro has caused a loss of focus on my primary profit centers. I have enough to consider without protecting you. You cannot help me.

“When he needs extra hands for heavy work, Alejandro hires the same five or six men. Two of them, the ones you shoveled, they aren’t going to know anything. They were out of the picture before he went gone. Some friends, I’m told, have information about one of the others. Once we find him, I’ll be that much closer to Alejandro.”

“I’m supposed to just sit around and wait,” I said.

Tomás answered sternly. “I’m not mad at you, Jimmy. But I need you to respect my position.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. “I promised your grandfather I’d keep the bar open for him. If you need me, that’s where I’ll be.”

“Better if you dug a hole and climbed inside.”

“Don’t like that idea. Planning on going down there and slinging some beer. Don’t think Alejandro would expect me to be there. Besides, I can bring my own security.”

“You promised him?” Tomás asked, considering it.

“He wouldn’t get in the ambulance until I did.”

There was about five seconds of silence. I chose not to fill it.

“Safe a place as any, I guess. Public. Keep that
pinche
Bobby Maves around. Much trouble as he is, he’s got a good taste for war. You want, I can send Big Piwi down.”

“There’s a Big Piwi?”

“Little Piwi’s
hermano.
”

“Is there a Medium Piwi?”

Tomás laughed. I was glad to have reduced some of the tension between us. Tomás said, “Stay out of trouble. This
mierda
with Alejandro will be over soon. After that, we’ll talk about next.”

“Is there any way that all of this can end without people getting hurt? Without someone getting killed?”

“Probably,” Tomás said after a brief silence. “But that’s not the current plan.”

“
Dónde está Señor Morales?
” or “
Tú no eres Señor Morales
” were the only greetings I got from the Mexican customers before I handed them their Budweisers. From the white clientele, I got the English versions of the same questions as I served them their Coors Lights. I was amazed at how clearly divided beer choice and race coincided at Morales Bar.

I gave each person the short answer, and word quickly spread among the patrons about the attack on Mr. Morales. In Spanish and in English, the only topic of conversation at Morales Bar for the first hour was the
cabrón
that attacked Mr. Morales and what each individual would do if he ever saw the culprit. I started to wish that Alejandro would try something, picturing him charging into the room, only to face a barload of drunk enemies.

As time progressed, I felt safer and safer. So much so that I told Snout and Buck Buck to get off the roof where they had stationed themselves without my provocation. They joined Bobby in the corner and set to steady drinking. All three with their eyes on the door.

Three hours into playing bartender, I found a groove. It was a good rowdy crowd, and everyone was there to forget their day. After the talk of the attack on Mr. Morales, much of the conversation shifted to the dead girl across the street. It seemed that many of the people in the bar were there the night of Pop’s wake. They each told their story. I caught snippets of opinion, observation, and straight-up bullshit.

“Mike and I were playing pool the whole night. Remember seeing some hot broads, but I couldn’t even say if I saw the one that died. Heard she was a whore. Not surprised she got killed. They know what they’re doing. They know the risks.”

“
Si permanecemos en la República, nosotros nos moriremos de hambre. Así que venimos al Norte, y ellos nos matan. Si usted es un mexicano, usted no puede ganar.
”

“Someone told me she was shot five times. I don’t remember hearing no shots. But with all these fucking hunters around, who could tell. Shit, maybe it was a accident. My brother once shot me twice on accident. Least he said it was a accident.”

“All the drug shit down there—before you know it, that violence going to make its way over the fence. Next time, it ain’t going to be just a Mexican that’s dead, I’ll tell you.”

“
Yo no recuerdo nada. Bebí tanto, fui afuera de enfermo. Vomité en el lado de una camioneta anaranjada. Y entonces me desmayé.”

Bobby gave me a whistle and held up his empty beer bottle, smiling. Like he was expecting table service. I flipped him off, but he didn’t see me. He was facing the door and his expression had changed. So had Snout’s and Buck Buck’s. I don’t know if I’ve seen awe, but that was probably as close as I would get.

The gigantic Mexican ducking under the doorway was the biggest man I’d ever seen, and I spent three months in Tonga. He was about two inches under seven feet with forearms bigger than my thighs. The strange thing was that under his prominent brow, he had a gentle face. Even with the five teardrop tattoos under his left eye. It was a gentle face, but it was nowhere near friendly. It was like his face was trying to fool everyone into thinking he wasn’t an enormous monster. He was. He looked like he lived under a bridge and ate live things.

Everyone in the bar had stopped what they were doing and were looking directly at him. Nobody moved. People froze, beer bottles halfway to their mouth. I felt like I had walked into a cartoon.

He nodded at me and walked toward the bar, his eyes focused on my face. I did and said nothing. He reached into his pocket. I felt a thimbleful of piss escape my body. I heard the high-pitched slide of chairs from the corner where Bobby was, but I didn’t look away from my new friend. I slowly put a Budweiser on the bar and shot him an insincere smile. I kept my other hand near Mr. Morales’s shotgun, although I doubted its efficacy on this target.

“Big Piwi?” I hoped.

He opened a cell phone and touched a few keys with his massive chorizo fingers and then handed it to me. I slowly put it to my ear, expecting it to be hot to the touch. Big Piwi drank from his beer, his pinkie sticking straight out.

“Big Piwi will drive you,” Tomás said without greeting.

“Drive me where?”

“Where he takes you.”

“I thought I was laying low. I thought I was supposed to stay out of this,” I said.

“I didn’t ask you a question, Jimmy. Big Piwi will drive you,” Tomás said, his voice strained. “If I tell you to do something, I have a good reason. And I expect you to comply. I am your friend, but that will always come second to my interests.”

“Not really how I would define friendship.”

He ignored my comment. “We found one of the men we were looking for. We’ve been asking him questions. He tells us some things, but not others. About Alejandro and that. Here’s the thing. He asked for you.”

“For me?”

“He asked for you. By name.”

“Who is he? Do I know him?”

“That’s what you’re going to tell me. He keeps saying he has something he’ll only tell you. We’ve been persuasive, but he has been equally adamant,” Tomás said. “Big Piwi is an excellent driver.” He hung up.

I handed Big Piwi the phone. He crushed it in his hand and threw it on the ground. A bit over the top, but effective. That’ll keep anyone from tracing a call.

Big Piwi was as loquacious as his brother. I tried asking about Little Piwi’s condition in both English and Spanish, but only got a surly shrug. I asked him where we were going and got even less. When we drove across the border into Mexicali, I wasn’t surprised. I verbally expressed my concerns. He nonverbally expressed his lack of concern by ignoring me completely.