Authors: Don Bullis
Tags: #Murderers, #General, #New Mexico, #Historical, #Fiction
―Touch it you son-of-a-bitch and I'll cut you in two!‖ An Illinois State Police officer racked a round into the pump shotgun's chamber for emphasis.
Billy froze in his tracks with his hands up as more than half a dozen other officers appeared from the woods and from around both sides of the house all with guns drawn and aimed at him. A heavy-set young deputy sheriff took Billy Ray's pistol and another police officer slammed the wanted man hard in the back with an open hand and sent him sprawling face down into the wet grass. An officer's knee in the neck and another officer's knee in the small of his back pinned him as handcuffs were ratcheted tightly into place around his wrists. Strong hands jerked him back to his feet and held him. He faced a placid looking man wearing a snap-brim hat, gray three-piece suit and a blue and red stripped necktie.
―Your name Billy Ray White?‖
―No. Kendrick. Eric Kendrick.‖
The agent took a folded document from his inside coat pocket. ―That'll work just as well. This reads Billy Ray White, also known as Eric Lee Kendrick, et al. I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have here a warrant for your arrest charging you with illegal flight to avoid prosecution from the state of New Mexico on charges of murder and armed robbery. I am required by provisions of the United State Supreme Court decision of 1966 known as Miranda v. Arizona to familiarize you with the rights afforded you by the Constitution of the United States.‖ He cleared his throat and recited: ―You have the unqualified right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney and to have him present during questioning by law enforcement personnel. If you ....‖
―I understand all that shit. I read the newspapers.‖
―Do you wish to waive your right to silence?‖
Morning air chilled the half-naked suspect and his bare feet were
cold and wet from dew, but Billy Ray wouldn't let any FBI pig know he was uncomfortable. ―What the hell‘d you say I was charged with?‖ ―Let's see here: murder, two counts, and armed robbery. You're a very tough guy, Mr. Kendrick. One of your victims was an eighty-two year old woman. Threaten to throw her dentures at you, did she?‖
―If that's the way you want it.‖
―That's the way I want it, screw. What'd you do to Jimmy?‖ The agent smiled. ―He won't be helping you, or anyone else for
Officers arrested Lady Lydia and another whore sleeping in the apartment and charged them both with harboring a fugitive and aiding and abetting a felon. The local prosecutor released them later the same afternoon. He told the sheriff he had much more to worry about than a couple of two-bit trollops. In his days as a young defense lawyer, the prosecutor had represented Lydia Bohannon in court on a prostitution charge. She‘d paid his fee in trade. He remembered her fondly.
Sheriff Ed Moss provided Billy Ray, as a federal prisoner, a cell all to himself in the Madison County Jail. On the following Wednesday, the U. S. Attorney for Illinois relinquished the prisoner to local authority which continued to hold him on the New Mexico warrant.
August 22, 1968
Mr. Donald J. Wilcoxson
Assistant District Attorney
Second Judicial District of New Mexico Albuquerque New Mexico
This is to let you know that I hold in my custody at Edwardsville Illinois a subject by the name of Billy Ray White and other names and according to the FBI he is wanted by you on your warrant #68-970 for murder and other high crimes and he has refused to waive extradition from my jurisdiction to New Mexico so you must begin extradition proceedings within five (5) days of this letter or I will have no discourse but to release this said known criminal Billy Ray White back into the population of our state which I do not want to do as I am sure you can appreciate and understand and I can't hold him on Missouri charges either.
Lady Lydia called on Billy Ray at the Madison County Jail the first visitor's day after his arrest.
―Sorry to see you in here, honey,‖ she said. ―I miss you.‖
―Well, you better get used to it. It'll be a while before I get out of this shit. How bad the pigs do Jimmy?‖
―One of the girls said they shot him about ten times. I don't know for sure. They had his body gone and all before I got back to the apartment. There was so much blood and stuff on the sofa the landlord got rid of it. All over the wall, too, and a couple bullet holes, too. Poor Jimmy.‖
―Yeah. Poor Jimmy. Damn pigs. They didn't have to kill him. Hell, he never hurt nobody. It must be some big deal to get on the Ten Most Wanted List. I figure they sent fifteen cops to get me.‖
―There was twenty-one cops from three different departments. The one that brought me in told me. He also took me home. I gave him a tumble in the sack and a little oral action for his trouble. He said they been watching you for three or four days. Somebody ratted you out and told the FBI where you were.‖
―I figured somebody did because me and Jimmy ain‘t pulled anything since January or February.‖
―Don't you wonder who it was?‖
―It don't matter. Could've been any one of a hundred guys.‖ ―It matters to me, honey. You shouldn't have to be in here and
Jimmy shouldn't be dead. I'm going to find out who did it and cut his prick off.‖
―How you gonna find out?‖
―Same cop I was telling you about. He'll find out for me. He liked that French job I gave him. He said he never had it before.‖
―The thing is, Lydia, I'm gonna need your help. I been thinkin' this over and I'm gonna need witnesses to prove I was right here in East St. Louis last fall. Around Thanksgiving. See, I'm gonna fight this extradition and if I can show that I was right here, maybe they won't send me back to New Mexico in the first place. It's worth a try anyway. Hell, I did a couple little jobs out there in the Wild West, but I didn't kill nobody.‖
―Who do you want me to get?‖
―I don't know. Jimmy would'a been the best. Get ahold of Lyle Bromer. See what he can do. Him and me was tight eight, ten, months back. Before I pulled the jewelry store job down in Louisiana. See if he remembers.‖
―Lyle is a little dim-witted, honey, with that metal plate in his head, and all.‖
―I know it, but except for you, he's about all I got.‖
―I'll find him, honey. Don't you worry about it.‖
As a teenager, Lyle Bromer much admired actors Vic Morrow and the role he played in
The Blackboard Jungle
and James Dean and the role he played in
Rebel Without A Cause
. Before he turned sixteen— and became legally licensed to drive—he tooled around St. Louis in hot-rod automobiles, usually accessorized with stolen parts. Girls liked his cars, his ducktail haircut, and the money he spent.
In the summer of 1965, Lyle‘d just turned eighteen, St. Louis police officers found the garage behind his parent's house stacked from floor to ceiling with stolen auto parts: Ford fender skirts, Oldsmobile hubcaps, Chevrolet short-blocks and Buick four-barrel carburetors. The judge offered Lyle a choice. He could join the army while his criminal record remained clear, or he could face grand theft charges. Lyle enlisted.
He did eight weeks of boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Because of his mechanical aptitude, he underwent advanced training with the First Cavalry Division at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Six months after his arrest, he arrived in Viet Nam, just in time to be a part of the Masher/White Wing search and destroy operation in the Mekong Delta during the first week of 1966.
On January 15, blind-stoned on Maui-wowie, he walked into the lowered barrel of a Sherman tank and cracked his skull open. In a coma, and after a series of flights, first by helicopter and then a half dozen fixed-wing aircraft, medics delivered him to the military hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. Doctors removed pieces of his broken skull and installed a stainless steel plate. A week later, Lyle regained consciousness. Tests revealed that his motor functions seemed fine except the involuntary muscles that controlled his eyelids worked overtime. He blinked rapidly, and constantly. His attention span was quite short, but his long-term memory seemed intact.
Awarded the Purple Heart and Good Conduct medals, and assigned a ninety percent disability pension, the army discharged Lyle and sent him home. He found minimum-wage work in a filling station where he did little but pump gas and wash windshields. When not working, Lyle spent a lot time drinking whiskey with the girls at the Dago Rose whorehouse in East St. Louis.
The August 25 edition of the St. Louis
Post Dispatch
carried a United Press story that reported the discovery of a nude body near the Chain of Rocks Bridge. Official reports described the body as that of a male, 25 to 35 years of age, five feet, two inches tall, weighing 125 pounds. Officers said the cause of death was a blow to the head. The man had also been emasculated. Police officials asked for assistance from the public in identifying the victim.
Things didn‘t work out the way Billy Ray planned. A blandfaced contract public defender wearing an ill-fitting blue suit stopped by the Madison County jail one day in early September. He spent five minutes consulting with his court-designated client.
―Here's the way the old cookie crumbles, Mr. Kendrick,‖ he said. ―We reviewed your case and we decline to demand an extradition hearing. You're goin' back to New Mexico one way or the other. It might as well be in a way that saves the people of Illinois as much money as possible. We suggest that you not waive extradition. Make ‗em jump through all the hoops. We'll review the paperwork and make sure they do it right. As an attorney, it‘s my opinion that your interests are best served by returning to New Mexico under the circumstances I have described to stand trial.‖
New Mexico. Don‘t that matter?‖
―Not much. Witnesses are good in a trial. Not in an extradition
hearing, which you‘re not getting one of anyway.‖
After that, the extradition proceeded from a formal request by
New Mexico Governor Dave Cargo to Illinois Governor Otto Kearner.
Upon completion of the paperwork it only remained for New Mexico
officers to remove the suspect from Illinois. The paper shuffling took
five weeks. On Monday, September 23, Governor Kearner approved
extradition. A day later, Sheriff Jack Elkins and State Police Sgt. Al
North departed Albuquerque for Illinois. Billy Ray White returned to New Mexico in chains on Friday, September 27. The trip both ways was uneventful. ―Damn boring,‖ Jack Elkins called it. At Don Wilcoxson‘s request, Elkins locked Billy Ray in the solitary confinement cell of the Bernalillo County Jail. The ADA didn‘t consider the Valencia
County Jail adequate for the likes of the accused killer.
On Monday the 30th, District Court Judge Paul Tackett appointed
Attorney Parker Pratt to represent Billy Ray White.
Max Atkins worked hard at becoming the Badman of Budville. Flossie Rice leased Dixie‘s Place to Joe Garcia in the summer of 1968 after Katherine and Karen McBride moved back to Albuquerque. Garcia hired old man Ted Tafoya to run the place. Nearly eighty, stoop-shouldered and gray, old Ted walked in a slow shuffle. He kept the place as spotless for Garcia as he had for Jess Ross. Ted liked having something to do, people to talk to, although he took a good deal of ribbing from regular customers about not having
gran chichi's
like Karen McBride.
Max Atkins showed up late one afternoon, half drunk and with his pistol stuck down in his belt. The old
cacique
from Acoma was Tafoya‘s only other customer just then.
―I ain't drinkin' alone,‖ Max announced to
Señor
Tafoya. ―I want me a bottle of Coors Beer and a double shot of Cuervo Gold tequila and I want the same thing for that old redskin.‖ Tafoya, in his slow and steady way, poured for Max. The Indian stood up as if to leave. ―Hold on Chief. You drinkin' with me or I'll by-god know the reason why not.‖ Max banged on the bar with the butt of his pistol. The old Indian resumed his seat as Tafoya poured him a shot of tequila. The cacique drank.
―You put that on a tab for me, Tafoya. I‘ll get it later.‖
―Joe Garcia said I should not run tabs,‖ Old Ted said.
Max leaned across the bar. ―You listen to me, old man, Garcia might lease this place, but Flossie and me still own it. You run the fuckin‘ tab and I‘ll take care of Garcia. You understand me?‖
Ted didn‘t want any trouble with Max. ―
Sí. Yo comprende
.‖
―Talk English when you talk to me, beaner,‖ Max bellowed. ―I want every son-of-a-bitch that comes in that door to get a shot and a beer on me and I don't want to see that old dog-eater's glass empty, neither.‖ He tossed off the remains of a shot of tequila and old Ted refilled the glass. ―And you better not cheat me, neither, greaser. I can count how much booze you pourin'.‖
Customers came and went. Late afternoon became evening and tequila flowed. One bottle emptied, another opened and it nearly gone, a third stood ready on the backbar. By full dark, a half dozen regular drinkers leaned on the bar sharing Max's largesse and the old Indian moved unsteadily to a booth. Soon enough Max noticed the old man passed out and laying face down on the red plastic-covered seat. Max tossed back his drink and banged his shot glass down on the bar.
―Fill'er up again Toyota. I'll be right back.‖
Max trotted across the road to the trading post and returned shortly carrying a small paper bag the contents of which he placed on the table in front of the oblivious Indian: a pair of scissors, a straight razor and an aerosol can of shaving cream. He turned and bowed to the other drinkers and then he went to work. With the scissors, ceremoniously, he snipped off each of the Indian's long braids and held them before him like trophies for all to see. Then he sprayed shaving foam all over the Indian's head and with the straight razor he began removing hair by the handful. He made a bad job of it, but succeeded in shaving the cacique's head. Only a few copses of hair remained, along with several small cuts oozing capillary blood. The old man slept through it all.
Max wiped the razor and his hands, both covered with blood-pink shaving cream and swatches of hair, on his pants leg. ―Plain to see who does the scalpin' around here, ain't it?‖ He laced the long, iron gray, braids together using the bits of flannel cloth tied around the ends of each. He threaded them through the trigger guard on his pistol. ―Keep that cactus juice comin' old man,‖ he said, but most of his audience left anyway. The show was too much. Even for them.
Non-Indian folks around Budville and Cubero never saw the old cacique after that night and only a few ever knew—and Max was not one of them—that the old man died less than a month later while he rested on a black lava rock near a small piñon tree festooned with eagle feathers high above town in Mt. Taylor's Vítores Cañon. The Acoma Indian people knew. They all wondered why white people acted the way they did.