Carcass Trade (37 page)

Authors: Noreen Ayres

“Hi, Smokey,” she said, that same kindness in her tone and eyes that hooked me the first time. “How's the snake charmer?”

“Dancing to a different flute player, I guess.”

The captain told me to have a seat, the merest smile on his face. “You might like to know the latest developments. Christine?”

“We had a search warrant for the farm, and we went in. Our man himself was G.O.A.”

“Gone on Arrival,” the captain said, “but Les Fedders is calling him to come in and talk to us.”

“You think he'll just come in?”

“They do. They're curious, or they like to play with you.”

“Your captain here isn't telling you everything,” Agent Vogel said. “He found a judge on a golf course and got him to sign another warrant so we could execute in Blackman's home in Garden Grove and at the bar.”

“So
that's
why he didn't call me to come in to work,” I said.

She laughed. “We've got computer disks too and a ton of paper to go through, but I want to tell you something: I can chase a whisper in a big wind when my mind's put to it. And I
will
nail that guy. There's nothing quite so satisfying as a good felony slam.” She paused, all expression leaving her face for a moment, and then said, “And then there's for Bernie.”

She saw me looking at the floor. “What's the matter?”

“He'll bond out before midnight,” I said. “When you do get him, he'll walk. He's smooth.”

“Don't you worry about that, honey,” she said kindly, and glanced at the captain. She was not that much older than I, I had guessed, but she seemed to hold the right to call me honey.

The captain said, “Miranda Robertson is coming in tonight. She should be here about now.” He looked at his watch.

Christine winked. “The girl got religion. She went to see Avalos in the hospital. Walked in when your investigator, Les Fedders, was there. He led her down the hall, laid on the sugar, and in a minute she was telling him stuff she didn't know she knew.”

It was hard to picture Miranda free of herbal fog and walking in to visit Paulie Avalos. But I know that people come to light at different times and in various ways, and I was hoping that whatever my brother, Nathan, saw in her at one time was pretty strong in the admixture yet.

“I think you softened her up,” Agent Vogel said. “Then, of course, Les also told her about you. About what happened when you played snake with Switchie. You know, for such a young person, she sure has stomach problems.” Christine shook her head, the pink folds of her neck in competition with each other.

The captain said, “She's married to a doctor. He should be able to give her something.”

“Grief,” I said.

In his navy suit and pale yellow tie, the captain and the customs agent looked ready for a photo opportunity. He was telling me how the evidence code says a wife cannot be
compelled
to testify against her husband, but it doesn't say she can't testify voluntarily or offer information.

Soon after, sure enough, my own boss, Stu Hollings, walked in. He came with a man from my building, a man who works Photo Doc with a fancy camera.

As Mrs. Langston often tells me, not all luck is bad. That evening when I went to get Farmer for his run, I got to tell her that just before I left the captain's office, my boss came in with a surprise. He stood with a photographer and directed the taking of several pictures with me, the captain, and Christine Vogel in front of the brown chalkboard. That was just preliminary, he said.

Then he told me I had a date with a ceremony at the end of the month: I would be awarded a Medal of Valor for meritorious service and special courage in a situation of special danger.

Christine Vogel sat with dimpled hands rounded off on the chair arms and bounced one knee up and down under her dress as if she wished she were the one to tell me, a lively grin on her face. “Hey,” she said. “The job has
mucho trabajo, poco dinero.
” Much work, little money. “You take your bouquets when you can.”

That mild night after Farmer was bedded, I lay stretched on the couch whispering to Joe over the phone as he mournfully informed me he had to go out to a scene and would miss watching the game with me and celebrating my news with champagne. Later, I trundled my little Toyota over to the Balboa peninsula and walked alone down the pier.

At the end, I had a cup of coffee and a piece of pie at Ruby's Diner and watched the brilliant white moon rise in its helium splendor. A pouty-beaked seagull sat on a pier lamp and looked in at me, waiting. And on the way back, above the stir of ocean stammers, I thought of the small victories. How, tonight in a neighborhood in Anaheim, a citizen flashlight patrol walked the streets in a visible message to drug dealers, to reclaim Sabina Street, Pauline, Topeka, and Olive. How they had spread donated bags of fertilizer in their parks to keep the dealers away. They would do what it took, receiving no public recognition in the form of medals for special courage. They stood up for choice, the choice to do a right thing rather than a wrong.

And still on the pier, I remembered Nathan even in the midst of his agony, scooping a fish off the boards and giving it back to its maker. I went to my car with a feeling of peace, and inspiration, and in my own unspoken way, gratitude.

Within days, Paulie Avalos admitted knowledge of a vehicle over the side of a North County canyon. He had yet to give over both names of the two who tossed in a can of racing fuel and rocked the Cadillac off the road edge with a lady who liked to dress young and suck citrus already dead in it. She had a .25-caliber bullet through her ear canal, a slug that escaped even Doug's able sifting. Paulie wouldn't identify the second cyclist, but readily gave up the name of Switchie Ralph D'Antonio. Maybe it was Paulie himself, and maybe it was Monty.

Joe Sanders and I dropped in at the Python one night, just two lovers out on the town. Monty had his girls in his usual rainbow of stretch-lace chemises and baby-doll delights. There was one black satin number worn with thigh-high nylons designed to look like boots that Joe said he wouldn't mind buying, and I asked him whether for him or for me.

When Monty came out of the back room, he took his time talking to a girl at a table in a tight turtleneck dress with the shoulders cut out, and then eased over our way, a brown Sherman cigarette dangling from his lips, the full hair free and glowing under the colored lamps. More of it foamed out of his cool blue shirt open to midchest. He sat backward on a chair and said, “So how's the cop business these days?”

Father Time, next to me, answered, “Quiet as a dead hog, I guess.”

I looked at Joe, then Monty, who was deciding he had better things to do and was rising up out of his chair, and I said, “Now don't that just beat all?”

Eight months later, after Monty Blackman had run out of excuses and time, he was making metal shelves and cabinets for the military in a controlled environment by day, and purging his stargazing habit by night through a wire-reinforced window of his 7- by 10-foot shared cell, top bunk, in the building guards know as the Incentive Unit at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, County of Los Angeles.

ALSO BY NOREEN AYRES

A W
ORLD THE
C
OLOR OF
S
ALT

COPYRIGHT

AVON BOOKS

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The Hearst Corporation

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New York, New York 10019

Published by arrangement with the author

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-7040

ISBN: 0-380-71572-4

EPub Edition November 2014 ISBN 9780062376893

CARCASS TRADE
. Copyright Â© 1994 by Noreen Ayres. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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