by Tower Lowe
“They charge for dating?”
“A customer pays the website to find a date, and sets up dinner...it all looks legitimate, Alice – but, it could be prostitution, cleverly hidden.”
“Then all Jerry’s money didn’t come from creative computer imagery he learned at college, but from prostitution? And Redemption is to assuage his guilt.”
“No. If it were that, Lonnie might have understood. I believe that Redemption is a fraudulent front business for money laundering. Jerry and his partners are using Redemption to legitimize the money they earn from Pleasingly Plump paramours.”
Alice stared at Mirage.
“Lonnie found out and that’s the real reason he wanted to close Redemption,” Mirage completed her story.
“Lonnie planned to publicize Pleasingly Plump Paramours and Redemption as a fraud?”
“Exactly. Jerry killed him to stop it. I believe he stabbed Lonnie that night at the party. Maybe he had Johnnie do it for him, but either way, once Lonnie decided to close the gallery, he was a dead man.”
“I don’t know. Couldn’t Jerry pay Lonnie to keep quiet, or something less...final?”
“Lonnie wasn’t like that. He wasn’t going to stay silent over this, and he wasn’t going to let Redemption stay in business when it was laundering money for a bunch of rich white pimps.”
“You taking this to the police?” Alice shook inside at the idea.
“Not on your life. Those guys don’t care about Lonnie. I’m taking it to Cinnamon and Burro.”
∆
Not Some Monster Murderer
Holly sat at her front window and watched the sun creep over the distant horizon, shimmering light onto a few stark trees and sparkling the dull Gallup sand to golden nuggets, a promise of brilliance that she rejected for this day. It was 5 a.m. and she was done covering for Jerry.
Jerry stirred an hour later. The toilet water rushed through the downstairs pipes. A door creaked and soft footsteps puffed on the carpeted stairs. Holly’s gaze fixed her husband with a pure pool of anger.
“Lonnie found out, didn’t he? He found out you were using his precious Redemption to launder money from a prostitution ring.”
Jerry stopped at the bottom of the stairs, eyes circled in a mauve blue that matched a glaze on the shawl of the native maiden. The two stood facing Holly, paired in grief. Holly expected a fight, but she recognized defeat in Jerry’s posture as he leaned against the stair railing.
“Lonnie guessed it, babe. Blue Dog told him about the dating site, and Lonnie looked it up. He knew what it really was, and he guessed it was the source of all the money we poured into Redemption. I was angry at Lonnie for making such a big deal about the girls, okay? Everything was going so well. You and I had the money we needed to live comfortably and get everything we wanted for Clark. Life was good.” With this, Jerry walked into the kitchen, put the heel of both palms on his temples, and crumpled into an oak spindle chair across from Holly. “I screwed up, babe.”
Holly recognized the self-pity mixed with what might be honest grief. She remained silent, struggling to suppress her rising anger.
Jerry took the opportunity to wallow in more sorrow. “At first, I denied the whole Pleasingly Plum Paramours scheme – said it really was a dating site for big girls—but Lonnie was smart – he knew. I tried to talk to him, asked him to leave it alone for a while—let me shut it down slowly. Lonnie wouldn’t listen. He said I lied to him, which I didn’t—really. Redemption was helping the three of them sell art and live better lives. Art critics and international fame would soon follow, I told him. He said the money came from pimps. What difference did that make? But he didn’t see my point at all. He was my bud, Holly, Lonnie was my bud for years. But he blamed me for everything, said I’d ruined the chance for real artistic success for all of them – too extreme, you see – Lonnie was always too extreme in these things.”
“You got in a fight?”
“Yeah, we got in a fight, but no, not like you think – a screaming match. I challenged him. I told him of course the money was illegal – did he really think I could make that kind of money with computer graphics? I told him to get real – CGI is full of rich kids with influential parents and ties to the film industry. My family, we were regular guys painting scenery – putting out invoices and getting them paid. Sure, it was good enough money when my dad was coming along. It’s nothing now. My family doesn’t have any special ties – even if we did, I’m not good enough at the graphics. I told him that, Holly. I admitted it. I’ve got no talent. The website is my talent. I came up with the idea playing around with a, uh – some women friends.”
“Women friends.” Holly’s voice was dull. It was an old argument, and not one she wanted to resolve today.
Jerry rushed on to keep her quiet, change the subject. “I told Lonnie the only way to make money like this today is to be in a shady business. But, look, Holly I explained the special situation here in New Mexico. ‘Don’t you read the news?’ I asked him. ‘Remember that college professor who set up a prostitution website and got away with it. He won his defense because New Mexico law requires a brick and mortar building. There has to be an actual building or physical setting where the prostitution occurs – where the buying and selling takes place. We don’t have that – only the website. So technically, here in New Mexico, this kind of thing is legal. See, Lonnie, I said – so you’re not doing anything illegal – not really immoral either, bud, I said. Because everybody likes to have a little sex, a little innocent fun, and nobody in the gallery is some kind of fundamentalist hard-ass Christian that doesn’t believe in a toss in the hay, cleaning the pipes, like that, right?’”
Holly blew air out of her lungs, exhaling her anger and betrayal like acrid marijuana smoke, cleansing her lungs and her mind, willing her mouth to be still.
Jerry sensed the wrong turn in his argument and hurried on. “Lonnie didn’t buy it either. He threatened to close down Redemption and tell everybody where I was getting the money. I told Johnnie to take care of it for me. Make it clear to Lonnie he was out of a job. We planned to buy him out, so he had nothing to lose. He could tell a cleaned up version of the truth to the other artists – that he didn’t like the buyers, felt like it wasn’t what we started out doing, like that. Isn’t that what exactly what Lonnie did tell everybody? So I think he planned to go along with it – really, Holly he did...I think he planned to go along with it.”
“But Clark stabbed him to death, so we’ll never know? Or you stabbed him to death, and you let Clark take the blame?”
“What? Come on, babe, it’s me, Jer. I’m not a monster, here. Man. How can you say that, babe?”
She sat, still, trying to remember a Jerry who wouldn’t do that. He was a young, skinny Jerry, back in her youth. She smiled at that Jerry for a moment.
He jumped on it. “See, babe, see. It’s me. The Jerry you love and trust – not some monster murderer.” He hesitated, his eyes moving, searching an inward place. “And not Clark, either, no. Clark didn’t murder anybody, of course.”
“Then how did he get blood on the t-shirt he wore to Lonnie’s that night?”
“What?” Jerry was caught in a tornado of ideas beyond his control. Thoughts picked up dust and debris from the past and slammed it into the present. Pain pulsed in his right temple, and he stood up.
“There was no blood on his shirt when I brought him back here, Holly. You’re having a mental breakdown.” He moved into the kitchen, started opening cabinets.
Holly watched him, heard the coffee maker being filled and saw him pass by with dark roasted beans and the grinder. She waited in a sunbeam from the disc now high on the horizon. The maiden, the lovely sculpture she chose to watch over the house, kept a silent vigil over both of them, but Holly felt the woman’s discomfort, her longing for harmony. Water gurgled and the rich, bitter odor filled the room.
Jerry returned to the room and the topic. “There was blood on his t-shirt?”
“Clark
went back to Lonnie’s house that night—after you brought him home. You knew that. We both knew that because we saw the bike parked in a different place the next morning. It had to be that Clark went back to the party, and I think he confronted Lonnie. He didn’t confront him about your lousy business deal. What does Clark know about prostitution or laundering money? He’s twelve. No. Our baby boy hated Lonnie because he believed it was Lonnie that took you away from our family. He tells me that all the time. He constantly blames Lonnie. He blamed him that night. Clark sliced stupid Lonnie to death for taking you away.”
No, babe, no....”
“And the irony is that it wasn’t Lonnie that took you away, was it? The women and the alcohol took you away. Or you took yourself away and turned your own son into a murderer.
”Jerry crossed his hands back and forth in front of her face, x-ing out Holly’s words. She followed him as he stumbled over to the coffee maker, stopped the drip and filled his cup, drowning his face in the dark brew.
Holly gave in to her fury at last. “Get your fill of coffee and get out.”
“I didn’t kill Lonnie. I...Clark didn’t kill him. Or I don’t think Clark killed him. Look, maybe it was Johnnie, okay? He’s got a mean streak in him. I say it’s Johnnie. Not Clark.”
“Get out.” Holly repeated and fled the kitchen, the expensive coffee, and Jerry. She fled past the quiet maiden, up the carpeted stairs and into Clark’s room, empty because the boy was out with a friend. She sat on the edge of his bed and let tears fall on the dark blue boy cover she bought for him when he was ten, and she held onto his innocence; she held tight to hope.
∆
Greed and Deception
Blood, pouring, like ocean water from the bottom of a night deposit bag, red money, the blood of businessmen, not rich in blood cells and iron, rich in capital and profits. Burro tossed to the other side of his motel bed, groaning lightly, moving away from the images of money and blood and, now, unstopped, of tormented gray brain cells. Not scrambled any more but twisting, wriggling, trying to escape the tight constraints of the same night deposit bag, an orgasmic mass of gray, tightly trapped in canvas.
“I deserve my new life,” a deep voice lamented. “I will make my way out.”
Burro rose up, sighted the bathroom mirror, grabbed his Dopp kit, and stumbled forward, needing an emergency dose of Risperdal, his antipsychotic medicine. He found the bottle, twisted the cap, and a small dose slipped down his throat like a tiny, white, miracle. Maybe this pill will give me jerky muscles in old age, he thought, but it will save my sanity for now. He stumbled over his discarded jeans, threw himself on the bed He needed chamomile tea to calm his nerves, but he felt too sick to get and make it in the hotel coffee pot. He tried to force his mind away from the blood and brains onto other, more reasonable thoughts.
Momma. Who in Gallup knew that Cinnamon was chasing Momma? And who knew enough detail about how she felt to trick her into a meeting at a strange address? Mirage knew...Alice. Stabbing pains in his right temple – blood, like orange juice, pulpy, exploding from gold bullion, the brain watching now, weeping. Jake. Jake knew, too, and he was walking with Johnnie, like they were old friends. How did Jake know Johnnie? That was an odd connection. Burro couldn’t imagine Alice or Mirage wanting to fool Cinnamon. Mirage wore a confused aura, a black cloud soaked in deep purple water, that rained bruises. But Mirage actually knew Momma and seemed to like her. He didn’t think Mirage would try to trick Cinnamon or have her stabbed. As for Alice, she was possibly Cinnamon’s half sister. She wore a lost aura, an abandoned child, but he sensed no menace there.
He groaned again, feeling dizzy. Dizziness was good, it meant the medication was taking effect. Blood spurted out the front of the gallery door, a pasty, hamburger-red concoction oozing like lava under the warm pine. The stained glass squares burst out, scattering colored glass on the warm ooze and cash began to blow like snow from the newly created openings. Burro seized his head with his hands. If only sleep would come and the tension ease.
The gallery was at the center of Lonnie’s death and the attempt on Cinnamon’s life. Money and blood burst out of his visions, the sinister smell of sex took over his hotel room, swerving from erotic to a sulfa based rotting odor, as if corpses collapsed beneath the hotel bed were decaying in a mid-day heat. The dizziness gave way quite suddenly to sleep and wild dreams. A monster in the shape of a knife chased Cinnamon and Burro through intricate Freudian hallways, threatening to eat them both or hurl bottles of acid at their feet. Even amidst these dreams, though, Burro felt a medicated peace return, and he was released back to the gods of sanity and form.
Loud pounding, and muffled moans disturbed his sleep. Burro pushed against the noise, fearing a return of the visions.
“BURRO, for God’s sake.”
He stirred again, sensing that the noise was real, not a hallucination.
“OPEN UP! ARE YOU OKAY?’
It’s Cinnamon, he thought, and sat up quickly, feeling dizzy as his head rose in the air. But the faintness left quickly as blood rushed back to his head. He moved softly across the room and opened the door. Cinnamon lurched inside.
“I got worried about your visions. All the stress.”
“They got bad. I’m okay now, though. I think I figured a couple of things out.”
“Like who tried to slit my throat?”
“Not that. Who knows enough about Momma to trick you into meeting them at that Cactus Drive Street house?”
“Who?”
“Jake.”
“Why Jake?” Cinnamon stared at him.
“You told him about Momma, right?”
“Yes.”
“You trust him, so you let him into your secrets. Jake knew you would go to that house on the chance that you might actually see her.”
“Why would Jake want me dead?”
“He knows Johnnie, and that means he certainly knows Jerry. Maybe Jake is working for them.”
“He is. He told me that. Jerry offered him Mirage’s job managing the gallery.”
“He told you that?”
“And Jerry and Johnnie wanted him to get me to leave Gallup.”
“And he agreed.”
“Romance isn’t my strong point,” I admitted.
“Did he rig the stabbing incident to scare you into leaving?”
“He says not. He says that’s not how he operates.”
“He must have met Johnnie and Jerry when he arrived here Tuesday. How did they get him to turn on you so quickly?”
“Money.”
“Do you really trust him?” Burro asked
Cinnamon hesitated, pulled her curls back with both hands. “I did. I even thought...”
“That he loved you?”
“I entertained the idea. And, yes, I told him how much I wanted to find Momma. I thought he wanted me to help him buy a bike shop and build up the customers. I...thought, for a moment or two, I might give up on finding Momma and live my own life instead. To tell the truth, since he’s been here in Gallup, he’s been distant, unsupportive. I figured out it wasn’t love. I hadn’t gotten far enough to think it was betrayal.”
“Yeah.”
“But it could be. It could be.”
“I think he’s the source of the Momma information. Maybe he accidentally gave that information to Lonnie’s killer.”
“I think that’s more likely.”
“What happened with the vision?”
“For one thing, it became an hallucination. Awful. Blood and brains, voices – the smell of sex. I thought about the stabbing to get myself out of it.”
“You smelled sex?”
“I’m not sure it has anything to do with Lonnie’s stabbing, but it might. What’s going on here is more than a drunken fight and a stabbing. Lonnie found out about an illegal transaction of some kind. The prices for the art, the fantastic success of the gallery, none of it adds up.
”I tried to tell Jake that. He said I was exaggerating.”
“He’s not what he appears to be,” Burro stated the obvious.
“I’m not even sure what he appears to be. First, he appeared to be a great lover and a possible partner. Then he appeared to be a great lover and a lousy support system. Now he appears to be something between a pathological liar and a murderer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it doesn’t really matter. He’s a date. Not a long lost mother.”
Burro gave a soft smile.
“You stay here and rest more,” Cinnamon proposed. “I scheduled a meeting with Alice and Mirage at The Grounds Café. Mirage has some new information about Redemption to give us. I’ll stop by after.”
Burro agreed. As he drifted back into dreams, he watched a high ceiling enveloped in green light drop down – fast—and trap Cinnamon and Lolo underneath it, holding them, squirming, while 20 dollar snowflakes fell from the sky, burying the two women in a moneydrift of greed.
∆
Blown Out Old Men
Beer songs, Lonnie used to call them—loud country crooners going on about sexy tractors or brassy rock and roll clichés like the one playing now—All You Need is Love. John Lennon’s iconic voice wafted through Sammy’s this morning, serenading Jer and Johnnie into the backroom.
“Keep the door shut,” Johnnie blasted the waiter.
Then he told the Jer the whole story. “That Cinnamon woman and her assistant with the blond braid stumbled out of the place like they lived there or just got out of a nasty party. She had blood dripping from her neck. Jake freaked. He’s a little coward, you ask me.”
“Jake’s backin’ out on us? Nah, man. Bad news bummer.”
“This is real, okay, Jerry. Cut the jargon. This isn’t a problem with a painting or one of the girls doesn’t like her John. Those two are private detectives. I’m asking you how they found out about the whorehouse?”
“No, no...it’s not a whorehouse, Johnnie—for Christ’s sake. We run a clean operation, man.”