by Manuel Ramos
I agreed with my sister and said I’d see her the next afternoon.
Then I texted Jerome Rodríguez. I assumed he answered from his trendy coffee shop in the RiNo district of hipsterish Denver. We set a time to meet that evening.
I spent most of the day at my office. A few hours were rough. Anxiety built up in me again, and more than once I had to leave the building and walk a few blocks.
The Lewis Building, where I had my office, sat on a corner of South Broadway, several blocks from the Englewood city limit, further south, and Antique Row, to the north. A long way from Wheat Ridge. It wasn’t convenient, but it was what I could afford. The building’s history included a speakeasy in the basement during Prohibition and a high-tone bordello on the top floor in the fifties. The place had a checkered past, and that sealed the deal for me when I hunted for office space.
Englewood was another town like Wheat Ridge that had been swallowed by Denver without losing its formal status as a separate government. The area, nicknamed SoBo, was relatively untouched by the Denver construction spree and development mania. Old structures survived, such small businesses as car washes, dive bars and used car lots. When the detective racket slowed down, I sometimes spent too much time across busy Broadway in the Blind Bat, one of the joints that had been serving beer and live music since the turn of the century, a Denver rarity.
The day dragged on. When I could no longer take the gas fumes of Broadway traffic and I stopped walking in circles around SoBo, I busied myself with catching up on what I’d let pile up while I was in Cuba. I had bills to pay, invoices to mail and reports to write. Nothing I really wanted to do. More than once I nodded off at my desk. I didn’t take that as a good sign. If I got serious about sleep and laid down on a bed, no doubt I’d toss and turn until I had to jump to my feet. I just couldn’t win.
Around six-thirty, I hooked up with Jerome at his house.
The large Victorian looked almost the same as when I’d first stepped into the place years before. It sat on a hill near the Willis Case golf course. The yard was cluttered with various landscaping projects or repair jobs, all half-finished. Materials and tools were scattered everywhere. For a sec I flashed on the thought that Jerome would never finish the projects now that Parkinson’s had become a part of his life.
The inside walls were covered with art, mostly Latino and Latina artists. Latinx artists, as Corrine would’ve said. At least one of the paintings was new to me. It was a colorful montage of superhero and cartoon characters, interspersed with iconic symbols of the Chicano Movement. Mickey Mouse pointed at César Chávez’s silhouette; the huelga eagle tormented Batman; the brown power clenched fist gripped Bugs Bunny; and Quetzalcoatl, feathered serpent god of Mesoamerica, serenely looked over the mad scene. I knew without checking that the artist was Denver’s Carlos Frésquez.
Jerome sat on his leather couch. A stack of books was perched on a small table next to the couch. His left foot tapped the carpet.
“There’s beer in the fridge,” he said.
I helped myself to a Bohemia, then sat on his recliner.
The place carried a bachelor vibe: dark colors, minimal knickknacks, dusty shelves. It’d taken years for Jerome to finally own a home. He was entitled to keep it any way he wanted.
“You should’ve listened to me,” Jerome said. “You need a vacation, a break. You’re falling apart. I see it in your face.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I was okay when I returned to Denver. Just tired.”
“Shit builds up, then something triggers the anxiety and it lays you out.”
“Must’ve been the meeting with Hudgens. That guy bugs the hell out of me.”
“He’s not my favorite either, but it sounds like he’s trying to do the right thing. You gotta give him that.”
Jerome and Corrine had talked earlier, so he knew the general outline of what we were up to and who the players were.
“Maybe. I find out for sure tomorrow. We’re supposed to drive down to Springs, confront this Alito guy, then meet back up here with Denver cops.”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Thanks, but Corrine and Soapy are tagging along. I don’t think they trust me to be alone with Hudgens.”
“Corrine is the smart one of your parents’ kids.”
“Screw you. Anyway, it’s mostly her plan. If it goes like we think, Hudgens gets arrested, and the police go after Alito for assorted crimes.”
“This Alito could be dangerous, or his cousin, or the guys who work for them. You sure I shouldn’t come along? And why meet with Alito anyway? Hudgens’ confession should be enough for the cops to at least bring him in. What’s the point of the face-to-face?”
“Hudgens needs it, he says. He’s paying me to go with him, so I let him do it his way. I’m working for him, if you can believe that. And if I’m with him, it’s easier to keep track of him. I’m taking him in, if nothing else.”
“Be careful, Gus. You’re playing without looking at your hand. You don’t know much about these guys. They could be total whack jobs who won’t be fazed by wiping out you and the other three. Alito has a track record for being a pig and a bully. You might end up spilling more blood, maybe your sister gets hurt. You’ll wig out for sure if that happens.”
“I thought of that and today I talked long and hard at Corrine, but you know how that went. At least they’re not going in the restaurant with Hudgens and me.”
“That’s good.”
“We should find Alito at the restaurant. Soapy told Corrine she saw an online review of the place that mentioned the lively, joke-telling manager, Don Allen, who’s at the front desk every night it’s open. It’ll be dinner time, so the place should be busy. Hudgens will call him out, say his peace in front of customers, which should keep Alito and DiNunzio under control. We hope. Meanwhile, Corrine will call 911 to get Colorado Springs cops on the scene. They should be around before Hudgens makes his speech. If it works out, the cops can make sure Alito doesn’t disappear. If we don’t end up in the Colorado Springs jail, when we get back to Denver, Hudgens finishes this . . . whatever it is, by turning himself in to Denver law.”
“Man, that sounds like a lot of ‘ifs.’ You sure you don’t need my help?”
I looked at my old friend with something like affection. The man trembled and limped. He faced a major fight with a serious disease. He’d aged ten years in a few months. Yet he was willing to go along with me, one more time, on another of my crazy and likely dangerous escapades simply because we were friends. And because we were friends, I knew I couldn’t put him at risk.
“Thanks, pal. We’re good. This thing in Springs is just to help Hudgens deal with his conscience. It’ll be over in five minutes. The biggest variable of the plan is that we spook Alito and he manages to skip out and disappear again, this time for good. But, you know what? I don’t think I care, as long as Hudgens is locked up and pays for what he did. I’ll settle for that. For now. Soapy will find Alito again, if necessary.”
Jerome leaned back on his sleek sofa. He clenched and unclenched his hands. He stopped his constantly moving foot.
“You may be right,” he said. He didn’t look at me. “You and Corrine have this. You don’t need my help.”
Of course I needed his help. He knew it, I knew it. The trek to Colorado Springs was foolish, unnecessary. Hudgens and I would walk into Alito’s home turf, where he was a respected boss, with nothing more than crazy accusations spouted by a homeless addict. The play was ripe for Jerome to be at my side.
“We’re cool,” I said. “I’ll come by tomorrow night and let you know how it shook out.”
“Yeah, you do that. Be careful, dude.”
He sat on the couch with a book in his lap. Something about living a full life with Parkinson’s.
“Any good?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It’s a slow read.”
I finished my beer and left.
— Chapter 22 —
ODYSSEY
>
I drove up to the curb in front of my house at seven forty-five. I sat in the running pickup, in the dark. I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t want to watch TV. I had nothing to do unless I drove the several miles back to my office and put in another three hours of paperwork drudgery. I thought about dropping in on Hudgens at Corrine’s house and going over everything again. I didn’t move. My mind was stuck in neutral. Whatever had been wrong with me had not cleared up, not completely.
Ah, the life of a private eye—this private eye at least. I didn’t fool myself. I wasn’t finding the cure for cancer. I wasn’t busting terrorist cells or carrying kids out of burning apartment buildings. Mostly, I schlepped in the dark for people who wanted to expose the secrets of others or do all they could to keep their own secrets hidden. Often, I was nothing more than a delivery man, or a gofer. I accepted my fate, since most of the negative crap in my life was self-inflicted. I made choices and paid the price for the bad ones, or drifted with the flow of the good ones, rare as those might be.
I believed I was good at my job. I did my best for all my clients, whether they could pay me a twenty-five-grand retainer in cash, or only promise to make it good in the future, sometime, whenever.
I called Ana Domingo, the police community liaison who had sent Hudgens to me. I told myself that she ought to know what had happened with her referral. That was a lie.
She answered quickly, and when I heard her I immediately remembered the nights we’d spent with each other, locked in sexual combat, sweating, groaning, cursing and hollering. She said “hello” with the amber voice that had whispered vulgarities in my ear, that had taunted me with fantasies and that had finally said goodbye and good riddance when she found someone else.
“This is a surprise,” she said.
“I thought you should know. Leo Hudgens might resolve his problem tomorrow. Thanks for the referral.”
“I’m happy to hear that, Gus. I don’t know everything about him, but the way he acted I assumed he needed someone who could be discreet. That’s you, for sure.”
“Good old discreet Gus. You bet. My lips are sealed.”
She laughed.
I waited for her to say goodbye or to keep the conversation going. It was up to her. I’d enjoyed my time with her. I was surprised and, I hated to admit it, hurt when she moved on. She hooked up with a cop from Mexico who helped me work through a situation that came to me by way of Luis Móntez, the now-retired lawyer. Ana had been a part of that case. It didn’t end well between us. When I called, I was betting against the odds that it hadn’t really ended.
“You sure?” she said, finally. “Nothing I could do to unseal those lips? There was a time when your lips weren’t the only part of your body that needed opening up.”
Ana was nothing if not a tease. I must’ve caught her between boyfriends, or all she had planned was a slow TV night.
“Or yours, as I recall.” I said it without thinking.
She giggled. “Same old Gus. You talk a good game. You got any follow-through?”
“Can I come over? I can give you more details about Hudgens.”
“Fuck that. Come over, but leave Hudgens in your pickup. We have other things to do.”
I drove to her apartment.
We spent the first fifteen minutes getting reacquainted. We agreed that nothing much had changed in our lives since the last time we’d been together. We also admitted that our personal lives sucked, and then we promised each other that we were only filling dead space with one night of fun, and nothing more.
I spent the next two hours with no thought of Hudgens or Kino or anything else about my business. I don’t know why she wanted me that night, and I didn’t care. We had one thing on our minds and we got to it almost immediately. Ana was good, and my mind didn’t wander much from the task at hand. The occasional vision of Marita passed through my enriched imagination. Soapy also popped up for a brief but intense minute or two, but Ana always brought me back. We finished, satisfied with ourselves.
We tried to talk, but we knew it was futile, a useless gesture. What we’d had was gone, and the one-night stand, really a two-hour stand, would not bring anything back. Not that a return to old times was what either one of us wanted.
We climbed out of bed and dressed. Ana offered me a drink, and I thought for a minute that I would accept. I didn’t, though, and she didn’t insist. I kissed her goodnight. It was almost chaste after what we’d been through in her bedroom. We both promised to call.
It felt like a hurried goodbye, and I didn’t want to be rude, so I walked slowly to my truck, casual, easy. I turned to wave good-night. She was gone, her door closed.
Almost at the same instant that I turned the key in the ignition, my phone buzzed. Corrine.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Is Leo with you?”
“Hudgens? No. Why? What’s wrong?”
“He didn’t show up when he was supposed to. I’ve been waiting all night. He was scheduled for a shift at the shelter, then we were going to grab a burger and chill out the rest of the night. But he’s not here, and I can’t get a hold of him.”
“Did you try Soapy?”
“Yeah. First thing. She hasn’t seen him. He was going to check in with her, but that never happened either. She’s coming over. I thought I’d ask you, but I knew he wouldn’t be with you.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“Aren’t you worried? What if Alito knows what he’s up to? What if . . . ”
“That’s nonsense. How could he? This guy Hudgens realized that it was really happening, and now he’s running. He’s either on the road or junked up in an alley. I knew that guy was bullshit.”
“Calm down, Gus. We gotta look for him. He could be hurt. If he’s afraid, we’ll have to deal with that, but don’t go off half-cocked. Come over here and we’ll think this through.”
She hung up.
I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. The pickup lurched forward, then died.
“What now,” I mumbled.
I turned the key again and the engine growled. It wouldn’t catch. I jiggled the key, cussed. I wondered what I’d done to offend the cosmos.
The corner lit up and a pair of headlights glowed in the intersection. The late model sedan, probably a Camry, turned in my direction. I watched it speed towards me. It did not slow down. The headlights went dark, but the car kept coming. It swerved crazily as it bore down on me. I braced for whatever was coming, I gripped the wheel, pressed my legs into the floor. My jaw clenched.
At the last second, the lights went back on and the car angled away from me and my pickup. As it passed, I saw the laughing faces of two young boys and a girl.
I took my time and finally started the pickup. I drove to Corrine’s.
Corrine believed something bad had happened to Hudgens. I was convinced he’d folded like the chickenshit I knew he was. Soapy was neutral. She wasn’t invested in him like Corrine or me. She couldn’t find him with her computer, which diminished her interest in finding him at all.
We talked for a half-hour before we agreed to search for Hudgens. For Corrine, it meant confirming that the worst had not happened. For me, it meant confirming that he was as worthless as I thought.
The first thing I did was to call Jerome.
“Weren’t you just here?” he asked instead of saying hello.
I quickly described the situation.
“You need some help?” he said.
“Right. You have any ideas? The three of us are going to sweep through as many places as we can. You know any to check?”
The phone was silent for a few seconds.
“One,” he said. “On the Platte. A tent city, but it’s only a few tents. Lot of cardboard and old blankets. Guys who won’t stay in a shelter, vets who can’t handle people or noise. It’s that kind of place. I’ll drive over there, give it a look.”
It didn’t surprise me that Jerome knew all about a homeless camp along the banks of the P
latte River.
“You can’t go by yourself. I’ll go with you.”
“No. Stay with Corrine and Soapy. I know a couple of guys who’ll go with me.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know them. They’re in one of my PD exercise classes.”
That stopped me for a sec. “They can do this?”
“Why not? One guy was a helicopter pilot, military and commercial. The other does martial arts in addition to the PD classes. He’s a black belt to the nth degree. Something like that.”
“And he’s got Parkinson’s?”
“All three of us. I figure we can handle one homeless camp. We won’t cause any trouble.”
“And they’re ready tonight?”
“They owe me. I’ll call you when we finish with the camp. With a little luck, your guy will be there. Can you send me his photo?”
I could, and I did. I was curious about what favor he’d done for his exercise buddies, but that had to wait.
Corrine, Soapy and I squeezed into my pickup and started our odyssey through places that we knew only because we drove by them at rush hour and saw the lines of men, women and children waiting for a meal with a prayer, or a dry mattress, or a bottle of water and a minute of peace.
We looked for him at the shelter where he volunteered. Nothing. We checked the Rescue Mission kitchen. Nada. We talked to people gathered at the offices of the Coalition for the Homeless, and on the littered sidewalks along Lawrence Street and Twentieth Avenue. No sign of Leo Hudgens. We visited alleys, bridges along bike paths, park benches. We talked with panhandlers holding cardboard signs at major intersections. Most of the time we were greeted with blank, even hostile stares. No one had seen him, no one admitted they knew him. We asked for him at emergency rooms of the midtown hospitals and waiting rooms of urgent care centers. Our last stop was the city jail. Another blank.
The guy had disappeared into the gray world of the dispossessed, a world that none of us knew anything about, and that seemed as strange as if we’d crashed onto a lost and unforgiving alternate planet.