by Tower Lowe
“I’ll have what he’s drinkin’,” the guy said.
“Howdy,” Jake made friendly, “My name’s Jake.”
“I’m Johnnie Tru,” the guy said. “You new to town?”
“It is that obvious?” Jake laughed. “Actually I came through a month or so ago, so you could say I’m an old timer.”
“Could,” the Johnnie Tru smiled. “But I won’t”
On the other side of the room, a native couple ate hamburgers and two pudgy blond women sat in front of a pile of Mexican food, laughed loudly. At least they weren’t laughing at him, the way his father did, so for that Jake felt grateful and happy.
“You a tourist?” Johnnie wanted to know.
“Sort of,” Jake replied. “A woman I know is up here working. I came to visit her.”
“Where you live full time?”
“I’m a wanderer. Looking to start a bike shop somewhere out west.” This was his latest version of himself, basically the story he told Cinnamon when he got to Santa Fe.
“Gallup’s a good place to be. Not too many bike riders, though.”
“Figured that out on my last trip. I drank a few beers here at Sammy’s that time. Met a guy that owns that new gallery – Redemption.”
“That’d be Jerry.”
“Right. That’s his name.”
“He thought he might find a position for me here. Way back, I did some wood art.” Jake liked the sound of that—wood artist.
“There’s been a little mess here since then. One of the artists at Redemption got himself stabbed to death.”
“Yeah?” Jake predicted that was the man Cinnamon talked about. “What’s his name?”
“Lonnie – a native guy—pretty well known around these parts. He’s – was – a painter. Friendly fellow, liked to party. Sister’s a nice girl, too. Whole thing is sad. That gallery was making good money for those folks and it’s about time these local artists got some recognition. It was a real redemption for native artists here in Gallup. Now this.”
“Yeah? I think I heard about this. I met a girl in Santa Fe – short term thing – said she was coming here to look into some artist getting stabbed.”
“Look into it? What does that mean?”
“She’s some kind of part-time PI.”
“Name Cinnamon? Sidekick called Burro?”
A chill current ran up Jake’s spine. “That’s her name.”
“What do you know about those two?”
“Nothing. It’s just a sex thing, you know? You want to know about the PI thing, they got a website.”
“I’ll get my friend Jerry to do that.” Jake heard an alarm go off behind the bar, but it might have been his imagination.
“Anyhow, that stabbing was accidental.” Johnnie seemed calm.
“How’s stabbing an accident?”
“Ah, maybe he got in a drunken skirmish while he was in a blackout, then passed out and bled to death. Like happened to the Sex Pistols – you ever hear of those guys?”
“Syd and Nancy, the punk rockers from the 70’s?”
“Yeah. A buddy told me that story one night—I thought it was weird, you know? The two were a couple of drug addicts, but still, it’s hard to believe. Syd wakes up and finds Nancy dead in the bathroom, blood everywhere. He stabbed her, and she passed out from the drugs and bled to death. This Lonnie thing could be like that—a drunken accident, you know?”
Even Jake found this hard to swallow. But people like Johnnie were part of his adventure. Go with the flow, he thought, let Cinnamon and Burro take this stuff seriously.
He changed the subject to tell a long version of his bicycle shop story. He liked the way people responded to his plan to open a bike shop in Santa Fe. They thought he was an entrepreneur, a risk taker. People praised his idea, reacted to his disappointment that he couldn’t make a go of it in New Orleans. He was up and ready to text Cinnamon when a hand touched his shoulder.
“Hey, man. Surprised to see you back in town. I thought you’d be long gone.” It was Jerry.
Jake stayed long enough to repeat that he didn’t know much about the two PIs.
“Cinnamon’s a good time, is all,” Jake defended. “I don’t know anything about her business and I don’t want to.”
The cool bar air puffed out, the chill of guilt, when he left the building. The first thing he did was send a text to Cinnamon. Jake planned on telling her... as little as he could get away with, for sure.
∆
Jubilant, Horrifying, Irresistible
“Look, Drew, business is booming in our Redemption funding scheme. Life is good.”
“It’s too easy. I never trust easy money.”
“Your superstitious—bad karma, that. Maybe we deserve the good life.”
Drew cleared his throat and sipped bitter coffee. They were sitting at The Grounds Café, a tiny coffee shop set in front of a house on Route 66. They ground the beans fresh, kept the place clean, got a small crowd and stayed open ‘til 7pm. What more could a coffee addict like Drew ask for?
He was talking to Blue Dog about Redemption. Blue Dog was Drew’s oldest friend. The two met while attending USC law school, and Drew had followed his friend off plenty of steep cliffs. They tried cocaine and hash together...then sold it for a profit. Much of Drew’s success came from money Blue Dog dusted up on the side in less than legal enterprises. When they were 28 years old, these little side operations delighted Drew—like he and Dog were smarter than god. Maybe that was the cocaine talking. Because now that Drew was pushing 50, these little sidelines were starting to seem stupid. He didn’t enjoy them. He had kids, for one thing.
“What if the boys find out?” he asked Blue Dog.
“Another way of looking at it, Drew my friend, what if you can’t afford to send the boys to the college of their choice? What will they think about that?”
Drew nodded. Good point. His oldest son wanted to go out east to Brown University – his youngest to some small art school up north that cost a fortune.
“Quit worrying. I got this under control,” Dog insisted.
And that was true, too. Blue Dog operated under a golden cloud of luck and good fortune. When he needed money, he came up with a scheme, the scheme worked and nobody got caught. But there was another issue, now. Blue Dog and sex were becoming a problem. Blue Dog loved women, and who cared about that when they were both 26 and hot for every woman who crossed their path. It was normal. But it didn’t seem so normal now. The two men were in their 50’s and fat. Young women were not as interested, and Dog’s sex behavior stood out, got to be a lot more risky. Drew stayed faithful to Pat these days. He loved her. Sex with every passing girl didn’t work for him. And these women Blue Dog was after now – it was all kinky, sex addiction behavior. Drew suggested as much to him back at the office, and that got a wild response.
“Addiction, man? They got a twelve step for sex addiction? Let me into that. Love to hear those stories. As long as we can have sex, Drew, we’re alive. What do you mean dangerous? I use protection, bro. And kinky? You make me laugh. Don’t knock it ‘til you tried it, I say.”
“It’s not about morality, Blue Dog,” Drew persisted. “It’s about taking unnecessary risks. And not the risk of AIDS – although I think you’re in denial about that risk. It’s about losing your career, you’re family, maybe even your freedom. You take things too far, and you have a million excuses, but you are playing a very dangerous game. Your behavior is the same behavior as an addict.”
Blue Dog laughed loud, a deep belly laugh that stretched out into the hallway in front of his office. “There’s no such thing as a sex addict, bro – it’s human biology. Perfectly normal.”
“It’s not normal when you are taking big risks like that. It’s not normal when it puts you in jail.”
“Drew. I don’t believe it. You’ve become a prude. A Protestant.” Dog looked at Drew in a funny way, and then he said. “You know what? It’s okay. Good for you, good for Pat. But don’t expect me to j
oin you, okay bud?”
That was the end of it. Massive denial, Drew thought. Yet he kept taking the money, didn’t he? Every phone call, Drew picked up and followed his buddy. Maybe I’m addicted to Blue Dog, he thought. He woke up plenty of mornings in a sweat after dreaming he was trapped on an island, drowning in an ocean of money. Drew was scared of his old friend. He was scared to stop taking the money, and scared to keep taking it.
He’d been thinking so deeply there in the little coffee shop, downing the caffeine, staring out at the orange landscape that poured in through the window, that he didn’t notice Blue Dog get up and head to a corner by the bathroom. He’d been on his cell phone for a few minutes now. Drew felt a sour pain shoot up his gullet as Blue Dog headed back to the table.
“Hey man. I got a cheer-up for you.”
“No. I’ll wait at the hotel.”
“Come on. You need it.”
As always, as ever, since he met him at the tender age of 24, Drew followed Blue Dog out to the car and down the dusty, sunlit Gallup streets to Johnnie’s house to get the key to hell. Or the closest thing to hell on earth that Drew knew – one of Blue Dog’s distasteful, jubilant, horrifying, irresistible, exhilarating, death defying, deeply troubling adventures.
∆
A Gesture of Love
Thirty minutes after I got the text from Jake announcing his arrival in Gallup, the aqua bedcovers were twisted to one side and Jake’s hot back was pressed into my nose, drowning my senses in sweat and the smell of chai. His breath came slowly, and I daydreamed of a million nights with my skin pressed against his and my loneliness and obsession with Momma fading over years into quaint memories. Jake stirred, his long back curving towards my breasts. I sighed a sigh of comfort and belonging.
Jake reacted, up on one arm. “I hear that sigh. You’re worried Mirage killed her brother, will go to prison, and then she can’t help you find Momma.”
I laughed. “No, silly, it was a sigh of comfort.”
“Oh, that.” He reached around to touch my hair.
“But,” I sat up, too. “I did spend the afternoon at Redemption Gallery talking to Mirage. I don’t think she killed Lonnie.”
“Nah...seems unlikely. I went to a party like that one time in New Orleans. Whiskey flowed like wine. There was dancing, laughing, fighting, crying, the whole bit. I woke up the next morning in Shreveport with a broken arm. No idea what happened. If I’d been stabbed in the gut, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.” The way he said it, I doubted the story was entirely true, but I got his point.
“Still, Jake. It was an assault on your person.”
“Yeah, but I don’t feel like the guy who broke my arm should go to jail. I don’t even remember what happened, kind of like those punk rockers, Syd and Nancy, you remember that story?”
“Vaguely. He stabbed her, right? And she passed out and died?”
“Right. I was into that story. A punk rock phase.”
“Really? You don’t seem like the punk rock type. But, Lonnie’s stabbing might have happened like that. Except for the money and scrambled brains.”
“Burro’s vision.”
“His visions are right a lot of the time.”
Jake flopped back onto the pillow. “You and Burro aren’t here to solve a murder. What about the real work you came here to do – in Yanaha school?”
“We’re also here as private detectives, Jake – hired by Lonnie’s sister, remember?”
Jake’s rejection of Burro and me as private detectives annoyed me, but I kept quiet.
“You already know Mirage didn’t stab her brother.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Okay. But you admit your have work at the Yanaha school.”
“Burro and I took care of that.”
“That’s fast.”
“We’ll go back on Thursday.”
“Then you’re not really done with that job yet.”
I watched the muscular line of Jake’s shoulder curl forward as he rose to put on jeans and a dark blue cotton t-shirt. It doesn’t matter if he understands about Mirage or Lonnie, I thought. He’s my lover, not my business partner.
Jake tossed my khakis, sleeveless shirt, and blue print sweater on the bed. “Let’s catch dinner at Earls,” he said casually. “You can tell me what all about the clues to Momma instead of this murder stuff.”
I resented it, I admit it. But he smelled like Momma and he wanted to talk about Momma. So, resentment in tow, I drove Jake to Earls and ordered homemade potpie while Jake ordered fried chicken. My resentment faded a little when he listened to my story about Mirage, Alice, and Momma.
“Burro and I were working a civil rights case – and by coincidence, a kidnapping – in Roswell when we found out about Alice and Momma.”
“How?”
“A friend of our was kidnapped...”
“Man, you’re kidding? You and Burro attract crime.”
“It seems like that – which is why we got our detectives license,” I snarked.
“I know. I was a little harsh,” Jake apologized.
“A little,” I acknowledged. But looking over at the blue eyes and the strong line of his jaw, I gave up my anger. He’s a lover, I told myself. Not a mentor. Let him think what he likes.
“How did you find out about Alice?” Jake continued.
“There was a note in the trailer where our friend was held, and the note said, ‘Alice—I’m moving on to Carlsbad. Find me at the caverns. Cinnamon.’”
“Your mom wrote that note?”
“So it turned out. Momma was staying in that trailer. Later, found Alice in Carlsbad. It was Alice that led us to Gallup, because she knew Momma stayed with Mirage before and after Dr. Stuart died.”
“Why did Momma leave you and your father? I thought Virginia was one of those conservative, religious places where people don’t run off and get divorces.”
“She never even got a divorce. One day Momma was gone. Daddy never knew where she went – or he never told me if he did know. Gramma knew, as it turns out, but when I was a kid, she told me Momma ran away and didn’t want anything to do with me or Daddy.”
“That was mean. Then you found all those letters?”
“Locked in Gramma’s closet. There were twenty letters from Momma. All from New Mexico – all addressed to me.”
“What kind of closet?”
“A plain old bedroom closet. The funny thing is, I sat in front of that closet doing homework every night for years. Gramma used to oversee my work, correcting my mistakes, explaining things. And all that time, as I sat there, missing Momma, her letters were two feet away.”
“Kinda strange your Daddy didn’t show the letters to you, or at least tell you about them.”
“He claimed to be as surprised as I was.”
“And Gramma? What was her excuse?”
“I couldn’t ask her, obviously. I’m angry about it, of course. I think she hid the letters because of the conservative ideas you were talking about. Gramma thought Momma running off like that was immoral, plain wrong. Possibly she thought Momma didn’t deserve a daughter or a family.”
“Why save the letters, though? She must have known you’d find them when she died.”
“I can’t answer. It’s a mystery, and not one Burro hallucinates about.”
“What will you do if you find Momma?”
A small native woman passed our table, displaying a turquoise and black lion fetish. The tail was curved playfully back up over it’s body, like a house cat.
“How much?” Jake negotiated the price, then handed me the small creature.
“What does it mean?”
“How do I know?” Jake laughed. “I’m not Zuni. But it’s a lion, brave and curious. Looking for its Momma.”
I decided to think it was gesture of love.
∆
Doesn’t Love Me
Holly threw her son’s backpack in the trunk of the CR-V. “How do I know you’ll be okay in a regular cla
ssroom?”
“Know.” Clark struggled with the language that once came so easily to him.
“I want what’s best for you, don’t you get it?”
“Treat me like dummy.”
Holly sucked air into her lungs. Don’t react. Don’t react. She learned this strategy in trying to deal with Jerry and the drinking. It was starting to come in handy with her twelve-year-old son. Oh God. How would she survive another six years with him?
“I love you,” she chose simply.
It was lucky, because then tears ran down the pale skin beneath his eyes.
“Not fair. Joe there. Blind. I’m not blind.”
“True.”
“Not dumb.”
“True.”
“Then why not with other kids?”
“True, again. We’ll talk about it with Dad,” Holly promised.
Her son turned his head, looked away from her out the car window. “Dad not care.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” Another strategy for dealing with Jerry. Don’t disagree and don’t defend.
Silence took over the space between them, a vast, quiet field of time and intentions. Holly met Jerry when she was 20 and he was 25. Jerry was handsome, fun, and successful. He came from a Hollywood family, and she thought that was good because there would always be money. Her family never had enough money when she grew up in L.A. Her dad drank all day and her mom was a teacher in the local elementary school. Life with Jerry was supposed to be different. It was different, all right.
Clark remained quiet and Holly reflected back on the party in Gallup where she met Jerry. She was visiting a distant Aunt on a trip to Gallup. She found out about the party at the mall, a large empty shell now, but full of kids back then. Right as she entered the door of that party long ago, she spied Jerry, tall, angular, spirited – at the center of a group of local artists. She moved near them, and heard Jerry telling stories from the movies. Out of the blue, he introduced Holly.
“This is Lola. She’s an actress, and we’re in love.”