Parrot Blues (20 page)

The interior of ABC was about ten degrees darker and fifteen degrees cooler than the exterior. I took off my shades and waited for my eyes to adjust. In the dimness, I saw a man standing next to a wall full of blinking but silent alarm systems. As he came into focus, I saw that he was short, broad and wearing a white shirt with the ABC brand on the pocket. His width came from muscle bulk, not fat. He had a flattop you could balance the phone book on. The person I saw fit the football player voice I'd heard. I could imagine him ramming his head into a line of padding and muscle.

“Are you Joe Brannigan?” I asked.

“You got it.”

“I'm Neil Hamel, Terrance Lewellen's attorney.”

“Right,” he said. “Pisser that Terry's dead. He was a first-class client.”

Over the phone his voice had a paramilitary terseness, but he turned nearly unctuous in person. The use of the diminutive “Terry” was a salesman's ploy. The alarm systems on the wall, I noticed, all had the prices on them.

“Here's my agreement with Terrance.” I handed it over.

He flipped to the back and saw Terrance's careless and distinctive signature, which had the peaks and valleys of an EKG graph. One glance was enough to satisfy him. “So what's this all about?” he asked me.

“My client died under unusual circumstances.”

“
Like what?”

“I found him dead in his bed yesterday morning with barely a mark on him.”

“Mighta been a heart attack.”

“Mighta. The OMI is looking into it.”

“Are the police gonna get involved?”

“That depends on what the autopsy turns up.” I could be terse myself if need be.

“What is it you want to know?” His lips barely moved as he talked. His eyes focused on me without a blink.

“I presume his alarm was hooked up here.”

“Yeah.”

“Did it go off Sunday or Monday?”

“No.”

“Was it on?”

“Probably. Terry paid for it; he'd want to use it. He'd put it on Home mode when he was in the house, on Away when he went out.”

“Can you tell from here what mode it is in?”

“No. It signals here when the alarm has been activated and we send somebody over to check it out.”

“Have you ever had to do that?”

“Nope. Sooner or later most clients set their systems off accidentally, but Terry never did.”

“The red lights in the hallway trace an intruder whether the system is off or on?”

“Yeah. But it has to be on for the signal to sound here or the alarm to ring.”

“Where did Wes Brown go the night your men tracked him?”

“He went home with a waitress from Midnight Cowboy.”

“Do you have her name and address?”

“Yeah.” He handed me a slip of paper. The woman's name was Katrina Cochran and her address was 150 Armenta Court NE, which would place her in the mid-Heights, not far from where I lived.

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded.

“When did Brown leave Cochran's place?” I asked him.

“In the morning.”

“Did your men continue to follow him?”

“No. We had instructions from Terry to call off the trace.”

That was what the ransom note had demanded—no security guards. “I have one more question.”

“
What's that?”

“Did ABC ever track Deborah Dumaine for Terrance?”

“That info's confidential,” he replied.

“You can tell me about Wes Brown but not about Deborah?”

“What goes on between a man and his wife is nobody else's business. That's the way Terry would want it. I gotta respect that. You live alone?”

It seemed to me that that was my business. “No,” I said, sticking to the KISS principle.

“You got an alarm system?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. My alarm system used to be my .38. Now it was my key-ring Punch, plus the Kid whenever he happened to be at La Vista.

“What kind?”

“A-1.” It was a lie, but he'd never know.

He scrunched his lips and shook his head, implying that A-l was inferior merchandise, but if he thought he was going to sell me an alarm system, he was mistaken.

“Thanks for your help,” I said. “I gotta go.”

The shade had moved away from the car that had parked under it. The Sandias were a herd of resting elephants. The steering wheel in the Nissan was hot enough to make me wish I'd worn gloves.

******

Katrina Cochran lived in one of the mid-Heights developments that convince you there's no there here in Albuquerque. The houses had all been built around the same time. Mid-fifties, I'd say, when the Duke City first started to grow and suburban developments represented security. Now Albuquerque is sprawling all over the West Mesa and climbing the Sandias' foothills. Security is represented by gated communities, razor wire, alarm systems, killer dogs and semiautomatic weapons. The houses on Armenta Court were undistinguished frame stucco. An adobe house is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It makes you feel sheltered, but a cheap frame stucco lets the wind goddess in through the windows and it rattles when an airplane flies overhead. An adobe house has a long life, and when its time is up sinks slowly back into the ground from where it came, but the houses on Armenta Court were not aging well. The neighborhood had begun to slide from middle class to lower middle class to below the poverty line. There were some tall trees on Armenta Court, some low bushes, a bunch of dogs and bikes.

I went in the early evening, before Katrina Cochran was likely to have left for her waitress job. The dog who met me at 150 was a small, champagne-colored mutt with a sharp and annoying bark. He circled my shoes and yapped at my ankles, making me want to drop-kick him across the yard. “
Cállate,
” I said.

The
woman who came to the door did not strike me as a woman who would interest or be interested in Wes Brown. She looked neither rich, beautiful nor gullible, and she was bigger than Wes. Her brown eyes were close together and shrewd. She wore a shapeless body-concealing lavender dress, and she was smoking a cigarette.

“Hello?” she called, turning the greeting into a question.

“Hi,” I replied.

“Quiet, Buster,” she yelled, silencing the dog long enough for me to introduce myself.

“My name is Neil Hamel. I'd like to talk to Katrina?” I said, working in some up talk myself.

“She's taking a shower now, getting ready for work. Can you wait?”

“Okay.”

“Come on in.”

As she held the door open for me, the dog darted into the house, sending an area rug flying. He did a four-pawed slide across the living room with his claws scraping at the wooden floor and slammed into an armchair in the far corner. He yapped again and crawled behind the color TV, which featured Oprah.

“Shut up, Buster,” the woman said. A cough lurked in her gravelly, smoker's voice.

“Shut up, Buster,” growled another voice in a near-perfect imitation of the woman. The dog's antics had kept me from noticing a green and yellow parrot that perched in a cage in the corner. Buster whimpered, crawled behind the TV and shut up. He hadn't listened to the woman, but the bird cowed him into obedience. The bottom of the parrot's cage was littered with sunflower seeds, bird shit and feathers.

“Name's Ellen,” the woman said.

“Is that your parrot?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Katrina's. She's my roommate.”

What the hell, I thought, why not leap right in? Ellen looked like a sensible woman. “Did she get it from Wes Brown?”

“How'd you know that?”

“I know him.”

Ellen hit the Mute button on the remote. Oprah mouthed silent words. With the TV muted I could hear the shower water running steadily in the background. “You know Wes?” Ellen was surprised. Could be I wasn't rich or beautiful enough to be of interest to him either.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Don't get me started on him.” She lit another cigarette, snapping the lid of her lighter shut and watching me with hungry hawk eyes.

“Why not?” I asked, lighting a butt of my own and establishing, maybe, a mutual addiction
rapport.

“Their relationship—if you want to call it that—is a couple of sandwiches shy of a picnic. You know what I mean?”

“Not exactly.”

“Brown has a zipper management problem. The number of women he's slept with in Albuquerque could fill the Pit. Katrina is the latest in a long string of women he's used. He comes up here every two weeks, sleeps with her, does his business, goes back to Door. She pretends he's working for her, fixing up the house, and gives him money when he needs it. Does this house look like it's been fixed?”

Not to me it didn't. “Does Katrina have that much to give?”

“She's a waitress.” Ellen shrugged.

I'd seen Wes Brown's stash; I knew he wasn't broke. With the ransom money, he'd be rich. So why did he take money from Katrina? To stay in practice? “Does Katrina ever go to Door?”

“Rarely.”

“Was she there last weekend?”

“Not that I know of.”

The water stopped running and the pipes clanged as Katrina turned off the faucet. Ellen peered at me. “Why you askin' about Wes Brown? You're not a friend of his, are you?” She'd trusted me long enough to vent the top layer of her steam, but doubt was entering into her voice now that Katrina's appearance was imminent.

“I'm not a friend. I, um…” I began winging it, not having thought this part through yet. “I'm a lawyer.” I handed her my card. Usually, that shuts people up; nobody trusts a lawyer, even their own lawyer, but Ellen liked to talk and she did not like Wes Brown. “I'm investigating the death of a client that Brown knows.”

“Is it a woman?”

“No.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I didn't think Brown knew anybody
but
women.”

“No male friends, huh?”

“None that I've ever heard of.”

“So what is it that women like about the guy?” I asked. “He's not bad looking, but…”

“They think he's a cowboy.
He's
always on remote, but his body's available. You know what I mean?”

Actually, I did know. I also knew that particular combination has a fatal attraction for some women. It's a way of having a man in your life without the responsibility. Instead of acting out your own
need
for distance and independence, you pick a guy who'll do it for you. I knew what the outcome always was, too—too much of not enough. “What's the business he comes up here for?”

“All I know is he goes to the bank, then he goes to Midnight Cowboy, gets drunk and waits for Katrina to get off work.”

“Does she work on Sundays?”

“No; it's her night off.”

“Was he here Sunday night?”

“I guess. I was visiting my mother in Springer. He and Katrina were having breakfast when I got back Monday morning. Surprised me. Usually he's here on Saturday morning.

“What time did you get back?”

“Eleven.”

The dog yapped and scooted across the floor. “Bad dog, Buster,” the parrot hollered. Katrina stepped out of the bathroom. She'd gotten dressed in record time, but she hadn't had much to put on. She was wearing her Midnight Cowboy waitress uniform: a white miniskirt with gold stars on it, red cowboy boots, a blue vest, a white cowboy hat, a belt with a pair of holsters packing toy six-shooters. Her boots made her about the same height as Brown. I wondered which hand she used, the left or the right. Her knees had dimples and the skin under her upper arms was flabby. Her face was round, her eyes big and brown, her hair hung down her back as straight as an Apache's but without the body or the gloss. She was several years younger than me and Ellen, but still too old for the uniform. The attraction for Brown didn't appear to be money or beauty, so what was it? That she'd do his dirty work? That she'd provide a pillow?

“Hey, Buster,” she said, reaching down to pet the scruffy dog. Her tiny skirt flipped up behind her. “Hi, Alex,” she said to the bird. “Oh, hello,” she said to me. “I didn't see you there.” Her wide eyes gave no indication that she'd ever seen me before. Maybe she hadn't, or maybe she was a good actress. She
was
wearing a costume.

“What's your name again?” Ellen asked me.

“Neil Hamel,” I said.

“Neil wants to talk to you about Wes.”

“Oh?” said Katrina, shaking her head and flipping a lock of hair across her shoulder. The dog yapped again. “Shut up, Buster,” she said. “What do you want to talk about?” There's a thin line between fear and hostility, and her eyes were walking it.

“I want to get in touch with Wes, and I was wondering if you know where he is.”

“Why would I know that?”

“A friend of mine saw you together at Midnight Cowboy.”

“Why do you want to get in touch with him?”

“
I'm a lawyer.”

“He works for me,” she said, too quickly. “Around the house.” I figured that was the cover story they'd worked out to explain where Brown's income came from. Maybe she thought I was an IRS lawyer, but Brown's tax problems weren't on my agenda yet.

“A client of mine died under mysterious circumstances,” I said. “Wes had some dealings with the client. I was wondering if Wes had any information that could help with my investigation.” It was bullshit; what I really wanted to know was if she'd been Brown, the loner's, assistant, the night I was in Door.

“What's your client's name?”

“Terrance Lewellen.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He's married to Deborah Dumaine.”

“Never heard of her either.” She did a little two-step and tugged at the rope under her chin that held her cowboy hat in place. Why the nervous gestures? I wondered. Because she was lying? Because she thought Deborah Dumaine was another of Wes's conquests? Both?