Carcass Trade (33 page)

“Of course,” I said, and stepped away to get it.

When I returned, she said, “I think Switchie killed him with a Gigli saw.”

“A what?”

“A Gigli saw. Robert sold it to him. Didn't even
give
it to him. Sold it.”

“Your
husband
knows Switchie?” I sat next to her.

“Sure. Switchie's taking classes at Orange Coast to become a stockbroker. Yeah,” she said, an edge back in her voice, “since he can't be a cop. He was all the time on the phone to Robert, getting tips.”

“What's a giggly saw?”

“This thin saw. Surgeons use it—well, before lasers. You drill two holes in a skull, and then you thread it in from underneath, and saw
up
so you don't hurt the brain. There's a little ring on one end you hold. Robert was showing it to Switchie one day.”

“And Switchie had to have one.”

She nodded. “Prisoners, CIA, they keep them in hollow shoelaces and belt buckles. When Switchie heard that, he gave Robert a hundred dollars for one. And he took it, the crumb.”

I thought about Rollie Pierson, the crude piece of carding wire found around his neck.

“Miranda—” I said, starting to urge her to leave with me again.

“I'm not afraid of him as long as I'm around Monty. But you shouldn't be here. There's no reason for you to be here.”

“Let's go check on Paulie,” I said. She looked me straight in the eye and got up.

Opening the car door, we climbed into the rich smell of my neighbor's dog pitched by late-afternoon heat. I took the dirt road up to the animal building, passing a small set of pens where three strange-looking turkey heads peeked over the boards and the silhouette of one lonely porker showed through the cracks.

“What about Simon?” I said.

“He's nobody.”

“Monty keeps interesting company,” I said.

The wind from the open window was shattering her bangs. “The only thing Monty did wrong was get acquainted with my husband,” she said. “It made him greedy.”

“Your husband's going to China. Why?”

“What?”

“Nathan told me. He found out somehow. It's business tied to Monty, isn't it?”

She pulled her foot up and kicked my dash and looked the other way out the window. She said, “He was supposed to take me.” The more I'm around humans, the more I'd rather be around pigs.

I pulled up behind a yellow backhoe not visible from the house and across the way from a grand hollow of earth with a pyramid of pipe stacked beside it like polished dinosaur bones. Ahead of the new green pickup was Simon's, with the tailgate down. We got out and walked to where Monty, Simon, and one of the workers I'd seen at the Avalos ranch stood near the large lump of Paulie Avalos. His torso was wrapped with the rope they used to pull him from the cellar of slime below the animal building. He was greenish brown from pig gop. His face, where it wasn't pasted with it, was red, the same color as victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, and I remembered Monty and Mr. Avalos talking about hydrogen sulfide and a rotten egg smell. The smell here was pig shit, but bearable.

The door of the building stood open. At ground level were two screened air intakes whose fan blades were motionless as abandoned windmills. In front, in the shadows, lay the still form of a smaller man. I'd seen enough bodies in my life to know he was gone.

Monty's hands and clothes were filthy, as were Mr. Avalos's and the other worker's. Monty was stripping off his shirt, when Switchie, his shades on and his black T-shirt showing bulbous arms, squatted by Paulie's head, bouncing on his heels. He balanced himself with one hand on the ground, fingers exposed at the ends of his black riding glove. “Paulie, you bean-eater pansy,” he said, “get yourself up here and get back to work.” A spill of blond hair arced over his forehead like a table saw blade. “You bug-fucking tortilla, get your ass up here. Come on, Paulie. Come on, my man.”

Mr. Avalos was standing bowlegged at Paulie's feet. He turned and looked far away in the direction of the road and said, “Aren't they coming?”

With his shirt off, Monty quickly wiped Paulie's whole head with it. For the first time, I saw that Monty had a hued hide also: On his back a Viking whipped a short team of polar bears pulling a Harley. He left the shirt under Paulie's neck for a prop, then pinched his nose and began blowing in his mouth. All the while, Simon, standing with his elbows back from his sides, was making painful faces.

Monty raised up and said, “Anybody know CPR?”

“Push on his chest too,” I said, but that's all I could say because I hadn't ever done CPR myself. I couldn't take it anymore, started moving while I said, “I'll call,” and Monty tossed a quick nod and put his mouth to Paulie's lips and blew again.

In my car, I punched the right buttons but got a busy signal. That didn't mean it really was; it could mean that something interfered with the transmitting cells or that the carrier I used didn't cover this area. I drove for the house, found the yellow phone with workman's dirt on it, and this time got through.

Moments later Miranda came walking in, breathing heavily from the walk over. She sat on the coffee table and pulled off her half boots, emptying bits of dried grass. Bitterly, she said, “Switchie had something to do with this. I just know it.”

“There was a worker too,”I said in defense.

Shaking her head strongly, she said, “He had something to do with it.” Then she got up and went to the bedroom and brought back a candy tin filled with roll papers and purple Zac.

On the eastern side of Garden Grove, the “City of Youth and Ambition,” looms the Crystal Cathedral, offering Sunday services in English, Spanish, Korean, and Vietnamese. Beside its walkways lined with flowers and waterfalls, believers are baptized, married, trained, and buried, and when a baggy-clothed teenage tagger wielding a drill bit etched his calling card in seven thousand dollars' worth of windows recently, the deed made the news spots for two days.

Eighteen square miles of mostly mid-income, mid-age white people, it was developed with the help of Mexican
braceros
, Jamaican laborers, German prisoners of World War II, and diligent farmers of Japanese descent who were later shipped to internment camps. Its boundaries snake in strange configurations into neighboring cities such as Westminster, home to Little Saigon, the largest settlement of Vietnamese in the country. Garden Grove has been the Chili Pepper Capital, the Egg Capital, and the Strawberry Capital. Now it crawls toward another distinction, that of being number two, next to Santa Ana, for the highest crime rate in the county for cities of its size.

It was where Monty had his bar and it was where Les Fedders went to church, and it was where I wound up the night of the day Paulie Avalos got carted off to the hospital, a victim of manure pit poisoning. Monty said I didn't have to work, and then he did. When the ambulance arrived at the farm and took Paulie away, Monty stopped at the house, washed up and changed clothes, and told Miranda to ride with Simon to the hospital. Then he said to me, “Switchie says Jolene got sick and ain't goin' in. Go in for me, will you? Just for a little while.”

“Why? You said it wasn't going to be busy.” He glared at me like he didn't need another problem, and I said, “Okay.”

On the way to the Python I made three calls trying to find Joe Sanders and when I couldn't, I called the pager number for Captain Exner. I was almost to my turnoff when he rang in. He was having dinner with his wife. Suddenly I was ravenous. I told him what had been going on, hardly believing that in the last eight hours since I'd had lunch with Joe, I'd been to San Clemente to interview Rollie Pierson's sister-in-law, to Carbon Canyon where good bands play for bikers and I found Miranda, and then out to see Paulie Avalos slip in a manure pit at Monty Blackman's farm. The captain said go, go on to work like Monty said. I asked, “Captain?” Am I getting any backup on this?”

“Don't worry about it. We got you covered.”

Right, I thought. Believe that when I see it.

My nerves were frayed, I'd ripped the strap off the tangerine thing I was supposed to wear for my third change, and now I was wearing a bodysuit that made me look like Catwoman after a fight, holes everywhere. Customers were arriving in onesies and twosies, no office parties tonight. Two wore knit shirts with the logo from the Hard Rock Cafe. Who said the Chili Pepper–Egg-Strawberry Capital can't be as trendy as Newport Beach? I drifted along delivering my spiel to gin-logged men and the few high-haired women with them, when someone in the black shadows at a table caught my eye. When I took a second look, I nearly broke down and cried. When I came near, the hefty woman said, “Hi, friend. How you doin' tonight?”

It was Christine Vogel—make that Agent Vogel—and she was the last person I expected to see. She wore the kind of filmy, crinkly dress that looks like she washed it by hand and killed it by mighty twists before putting it on still damp. Golden tigers swarmed on it as though turning 'round and 'round to find their napping place.

I said quietly, almost laughing, “You're my undercover?”

“You wouldn't want to see any of this uncovered, honey,” she said, and winked.

Looking over at Howard the bartender looking over at us, I said, “Who will I say you are?”

“Say I'm your sister. Your sister, not your mother.” She smiled in her twinkly way.

“I was going to leave soon,” I said.

“Do anything you want.”

In Monty's office, I climbed into my jeans and pulled on my pig farm–smelling top when Coral, the fat model, came in. Pale as mashed potatoes, all colors on her became a bright vengeance. The gown she wore was a clean turquoise that set off her cinnamon hair. Earlier I'd learned that the young, baby-faced model was her daughter. “You and your girl can grab the rest of the tips, Coral,” I said, “I'm going home.”

She said that was really, really cool of me. “It's not the best of work, but it's better than some, you know what I mean? She's got college and she just can't earn enough working at Burger King.”

I shrugged a shoulder and said, “It's all the carcass trade, one way or another, right?”

“Thanks,” Coral said. “We should go shopping sometime.”

“Maybe so,” I said, leaving, holding the door just a crack and adding, “Take care now.”

Agent Vogel by this time had a drink in front of her, something dark amber. I sat down with her. “Mind if I put out the candle?” I said, and proceeded to top the candle cup with an ashtray. The flame diminished and died, and when I removed the ashtray, a blue wail of smoke fled out the top. Over the bar the new TV Monty had installed was tuned to a music video,
Song of the Harlot
, by Violet Burn.

“Should we leave?” I asked.

“Wait awhile.”

“You're not concerned?”

“Not at all. Best thing is to look natural, like you have a life.”

“You heard what happened today?”

“I heard Paul Avalos had a close call. The other one's too dead to skin. Excuse me,” she said. “My humor. You just hang in there. You're doing good.”

“Was the ambulance a mistake?”

“How could it be? You had to. This Switchie person was there?”

“Miranda thinks he had something to do with it.”

“What did you get out of her?”

“She says Switchie killed a man named Rollie Pierson. It's a case we haven't told you about because we had feelings but the connections didn't add up. I think she knows about Bernie Williams too. She said a guy named Simon, little guy, carries around a snake, says he hauled a body away. Things went fast after that. I didn't get to talk to her alone again.”

“We're gonna get him. Will you see her tomorrow?”

“I don't know. She went off with Monty.”

“This Monty,” she said, her tone quiet, her eyes serious, “we've had women who fall while they're under. You okay on that?”

“Me and Monty?”

“Just checking. Anyone who looks good in a mug shot I say is minefield-dangerous.”

“What are you drinking, Christine?”

“A Black Widow. Rum and Southern Comfort.”

“It must be a double,” I said.

I was home, sound asleep, when the phone rang. “Did I wake you?” Joe asked.

“Uh, no.”

“Forgive me. Go back to sleep.”

“No, I . . .”

“Why is it nobody ever admits they were asleep when they were asleep?”

“Well, I'm awake now.”

“You wouldn't want some company, would you?”

I looked at the clock. “What are you still doing up? It's midnight.”

His voice was soft and halting. He told me he was worried about me. He'd been asleep off and on, but since the last waking, zero.

“Come over,” I said.

And later, in the bedroom, when he made love to me, it was as if he just couldn't get to the bottom of that well.

“One puzzle piece that was off the table is now back on,” I told Captain Exner the next morning. Joe had left a half hour before.

“I'm not crazy about that development.”

“Well, we can't put her back in the bottle though, can we? Miranda
was
disturbed, which, under the circumstances, is understandable. But I don't think she'd spout off about me. And if she did, I think I could handle a cover story. I took an acting class once, believe it or not.”

“Remind me of that if I ever need a friend in court,” he said, and it was the first time I realized he had a sense of humor. “It's dicey. How'd it go last night? Blackman show up?”

“Not while I was there. I worked a few hours and left. Agent Vogel came in.”

“She told me. Her husband likes the place. I guess you got a heavy model there?”