Kissing Arizona (16 page)

‘What are you looking for?'

‘An accurate count on how many guns he owned, so we know we've got 'em all. Sarah, interview Lois's sister, get her to give you the names of other living relatives and get in touch with them, and talk to the children of the deceased again. We need more details about these people! Jason, go to the courthouse and get all the records of everything the couple owned: houses, boats, cars, land – anything. Look for liens, loans, partnerships. And Ray, get with Nicole and get the dead couple's personal computers, bank statements, tax records – let's see if we can find some funny business with the money. What else?'

Ray said, ‘How about grudges, flirtations, nutty politics . . .'

‘Any of those. Oscar and Ollie, better get back to the stash house murders. The drug evidence goes to the narcs but the homicides – we got pulled off them by the Cooper case, but they're still ours. So think back, what leads didn't you get to work before?'

‘Couple of neighbors we never found. And a girlfriend,' Ollie said, ‘and I want to talk to the fingerprint guys. I got some ideas about where to look for a match.'

‘And I never got to their vehicles,' Oscar said. ‘They're both impounded and I'd like to be there when they work them over.'

‘Go to it. The tox screens aren't back yet on either of these crimes and it'll be a long time till we get any help from DNA, so bring me something to feed the media while we wait.'

All the detectives began gathering up the records they'd brought to the table, piled them on their chair seats and began pushing the chairs back to their workspaces. In the middle of the racket, Sarah leaned across the table and asked Delaney, ‘See you a minute?'

He looked up from the records he was stacking, scanned her face for two seconds and said, ‘In my office?' She nodded and he got up and walked into his corner without another word.

That's another thing he's good at, she thought as she followed him in and closed the door, that ability to read faces quickly
.
She was beginning to think of time spent with Delaney as a kind of leadership boot camp.

He hated long, complicated preambles. When he started to twitch and blink, his next words would be, ‘What's your point?'

So before she even sat down in front of his desk she said, ‘I think I found a guy who can help us hand off that box of bones to DEA.'

EIGHT

W
hen the fat toke was finished Freddy O. looked at his watch, stretched lazily and said, ‘Well, ladies, I guess we better be gettin' along up the road, whaddya say?'

Bernice said, ‘Fine with me, baby.'

Stella, afloat on her smoky high, said, ‘Sure, honey, whenever.'

Freddy said, ‘Probably a little too breezy on the road with the top down, huh?' and put it up. When everything was clipped into place he looked straight across the seat at Vicky, serious for once, and asked her, ‘You got all your stuff with you? You ready to go?'

Vicky said, ‘Yes,' and waited for him to show her now how this was going to work. Was he some kind of a magician? But Freddy just smiled a small, contented smile, looking like a cat about to lick himself, and drove around the block to a gas station. ‘OK, Stella,' he said, as he parked by a pump. ‘Show time.'

‘All righty then.' Stella opened the car door, stretched her long legs out onto the cement apron and stood up in one lithe move. ‘Show time it is!' While Freddy gassed up, she walked into the station, carrying the large black patent shoulder bag Vicky had noticed on the back seat as they drove around.

Bernice stayed put, with her eyes on Vicky.

Vicky said, ‘Guess I better do that too,' and moved to open her door. But Bernice put a restraining hand on Vicky's arm and said, ‘Just wait till Stella gets back, honey.' Her voice was friendly enough, but somehow Vicky felt she had no choice.

She watched people dodging in and out of the gas station across the lanes of cars, but never saw Stella come back. Presently a slim young man in jeans and a black leather jacket walked up to Freddy at the pump and said something quietly. He had a brown Mexican face with broad cheekbones, two small gold hoops in each ear, and black hair, slicked back and oiled till it was shiny as . . . the patent leather bag he was carrying? Freddy looked him over carefully and nodded, and the two of them came over to her door and opened it.

‘Your turn, now, darlin',' Freddy said. ‘Stella here done turned into Dick, as you see. So now Bernice gonna take this bag and go in the rest room with you, and she'll help you get all fixed up nice so you can be Stella at the Border. You won't need that,' he said as she climbed out carrying her backpack. He moved to help her take it off but she held onto it fiercely, shaking her head and making little protesting noises. Freddy glanced around, saw a couple of people watching his group curiously, and seemed to decide her backpack was not worth a fuss in public.

Good, now I know.
Freddy's game, whatever it was, evidently depended on looking cool. He kept his self-satisfied smile on his face but his eyes were very businesslike as he nodded to Bernice.

Bernice took her hand in an apparently friendly gesture but held onto it firmly as they walked into the crowded, noisy station together. There was only one ladies' room and they had to wait. Bernice continued to hold her hand as they stood in line behind a thin woman in very tight jeans. When the door opened and the thin lady went in, Bernice moved them close to the door to guard their place. Vicky was uncomfortably aware that one of the clerks was watching them off and on, probably wondering about the mismatched pair holding hands. But Bernice just glanced around coolly and hummed a little tune. The instant the thin lady opened the door Bernice grabbed it and pulled Vicky inside.

‘Now,' she said, ‘you gonna have to take that backpack off so I can pat you down.'

Vicky slid the backpack off but held the strap tight in her left hand. She flinched when Bernice's strong hands took hold of her shoulders. Bernice said, ‘Nothing personal, you dig? Just gotta make sure you ain't packin'.' The strong hands searched her torso, paused at her crotch and Bernice said, ‘Oh, it's that time of the month, huh?' Vicky nodded, blushing. ‘Hey, better to get it than not to get it, huh? Don't worry, honey, that's as personal as I'm gonna get.'

Vicky watched the top of Bernice's spun-sugar wig as she patted her way around the buttocks, down the thighs and past the knees. She grunted a little, getting down to Vicky's ankles, and when she spoke again her tone was not so friendly.

‘Now this here has got to go, sugar.' She squinted up at Vicky. ‘You gonna fight me when I take it off?'

Vicky hung her head, looking embarrassed, and said, ‘No.'

‘Good girl,' Bernice said. ‘Where's the buckle? Oh, I see – Velcro. Hmm. That's a pretty nice little lash-up.' She held up the flat canvas holster with the narrow stiletto handle peeping out the top, pulled the blade out and admired it for a few seconds before she put it back and dropped the whole thing in her purse. ‘OK.' She stood up in one lithe motion and yanked the backpack out of Vicky's left hand.

Vicky cried out, ‘No!'

Quick as a snake, Bernice's long hand wrapped around her throat, so tight she couldn't breathe. She leaned close to Vicky's ear and hissed, ‘You don't want to make a fuss and have people come in here askin' questions, do you?' Her big dark eyes watched Vicky shake her head an inch each way – all she could manage with her neck in a vice.

‘Good,' Bernice whispered, ‘because soon as I find out you ain't got any weapons in here I'll give this back to you and we'll be on our way, OK?' She watched a couple of seconds longer and asked again, ‘OK?' and Vicky, for whom the room was going dark, nodded as much as she could and Bernice let her go.

Vicky stood wheezing quietly as Bernice went through the backpack, found the birth control pills and nodded approvingly, wrinkled her nose over three crumpled pesos and dropped them back in, rummaged through the energy bars and extra shoelaces, looking disgusted. When she found the bobble-headed figure in the bottom of the pack she held it up and asked, ‘What's this?'

‘A keepsake from my friend back there,' Vicky said, looking down and away from Bernice's pitying smile.

‘He gave you a bobble-head toy?'

Vicky said, defiantly, ‘It was all he had!' She put on her most sincere look, hoping Bernice wouldn't pull the head off and see the wheel and flint of the lighter.

‘Gave you his last worthless gadget, huh? You got some taste in men, kid.' Bernice dropped it back in the bag. Still unsatisfied, she looked down at Vicky with her head cocked like a curious chicken. ‘Why'd you make such a fuss about hanging onto this old backpack? Ain't nothing in it worth a damn.'

Vicky said, ‘It's private, though.' She put on the stubborn-as-a-brick look that usually worked with principals.

‘Your very own private junk, huh?' Bernice snorted derisively as she handed it back ‘OK, let's get to work.'

She closed the toilet seat, pulled several items out of her patent leather bag and stacked them on the seat: hairspray, lotion, a make-up kit, soap and a washcloth, two towels and Stella's blond wig.

Stella's sexy top and shorts were much too big for Vicky. Bernice said, ‘Sorry, kid, I don't have nothing along in your size.' Vicky silently thanked her luck. Bernice dusted and tugged, making Vicky's cotton shirt and jeans a little neater. Using the washcloth, she cleaned Vicky herself up a little, with rough efficiency the way you'd clean a balky child. Vicky didn't want to feel that hand around her throat again so she submitted, stone-faced. When Bernice finished cleaning she slapped the wig on Vicky's head and secured it with pins. When Vicky squeaked, she said, ‘Which one?' Vicky pointed, and she reset the pin.

Opening the make-up kit, she handed Vicky a passport and said, ‘Hold it open to the picture now, so I can get this right.' Glancing occasionally at Stella's passport photo, she made sure the curl over the forehead echoed the picture, applied lipstick and eye make-up, and ended with blush that emphasized the broad Mexican cheekbones Vicky shared with Stella/Dick.

‘See there? You Stella now,' Bernice said, showing her in the mirror. Vicky's eyes got wide when she saw how much she was changed. Forgetting her growing fear, she flashed a big smile at the mirror. Bernice's lips twitched and she said, ‘Yeah, you hot stuff now, huh?' Vicky thought Bernice took a certain amount of pride in her work as the designated jailer/hair stylist.

‘Now, we ain't gonna have another chance for quite a while,' Bernice said, ‘so I'll turn my back and you take a wiz, huh?' When Vicky was done she said, ‘Face the door now and don't peek, hear? Got to have my privacy while I pee.' When the hard stream began, Vicky managed one quick glimpse under her arm, and saw that Bernice was standing up.

The big change had only taken fifteen minutes, but even so there were people knocking on the door before they came out. A woman with two small children muttered ‘stupid whores' as they passed her, and all the women behind her gave them dirty looks as well. But the waiting women didn't have time to fight, they were intent on getting in to relieve their bladders. They didn't notice that the two who came out were not quite the same as the pair that went in, and the clerk who'd been watching them before was too busy now to see them at all.

When they got back to the car Dick was sitting in front with Freddy, so Vicky got in the back seat with Bernice. Freddy looked her over, nodded to Bernice and said, ‘Nice job.'

Approaching the gate, Freddy said, ‘You each need to be holding your passports now.' Bernice pulled them out of the black bag and handed them around. Vicky got the one that had been Stella's. Stella was now Dick and had a new passport.

They idled along in the long, slow-moving line of cars and trucks approaching the gate. It was mid-afternoon, the winter sun was sinking quickly toward the horizon and the urgent need to get through these gates and get on with life had begun to rise off the purring vehicles like mist from a swamp. In the windows, the attendants' voices grew sharper as the tension rose. Vicky thought she could hear, in her inner ear, the whispered prayers,
Don't let anybody blow a tire . . . go into labor . . . fire a gun.
And running under those prayers like smoke was the sweaty realization that even if they all behaved perfectly, this jam-up was going to take a while.

Vicky felt her heart beat hard against her ribs. She imitated her three companions, who sat quietly, models of good behavior. By the time they reached the gate, the line behind them stretched back out of sight. A well-groomed lady in a white shirt with patches took their passports, compared them to the people in the car and asked Freddy, ‘Where were you born, sir?'

‘New York.'

‘And where are you going today?' looking at Dick.

‘Back home to Tucson, ma'am.'

She glanced briefly into the back seat. Her face indicated she thought there was no accounting for tastes. ‘Have a nice day,' she said, handing back the passports and waving them through. They were silent as they drove away, silent as they passed the small shops along the roadway north of the border. When they were out of Douglas, rolling along Highway 80 toward Bisbee, Freddy O. said, ‘Well, peeps, that went well, don't you think?' and he and his two companions chuckled contentedly.

‘See, Vicky,' Freddy O. said, switching his butt around, getting comfortable as he set the cruise control, stroking the satiny teak wheel of his fancy car with his big hands, ‘a while back I figured out that the best place in the United States for a black man is on the Mexican border.'