In Gallup, Greed

by Tower Lowe

  “Clean operation? I told you from the start. That house on Cactus Drive is brick and mortar, Jer, brick and mortar. A real building where the johns take the girls. Remember the whole idea was to run the website from right here in New Mexico because here it’s, technically-speaking, legal? I mean, we’re laundering the money, to be safe, but we were also protected because of New Mexico law. I told you the house ruins all that. And you said, ‘Nobody’ll ever know.’ Now people know. Now two private detectives know.”

  “All right. All right. I can see that. But, really, you’re the one who has the key Johnnie, so you must be the one that let them in the house.”

  “I did not let those two in the house. I was taking Jake over there to show him how to let the customers in because I never wanted anything to do with the house in the first place. I was glad to give it over to Jake. I didn’t give those two detectives the keys, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Slow down, bud.”

  “I’m not slowing down. I left you at Lonnie’s to supposedly keep looking for any evidence about Pleasingly Plump Paramours or evidence we used the house down the street for prostitution – in case Lonnie knew about that place. Did you find anything? Or did you even look? Maybe you went the back way to the house where Cinnamon was and tried to slice her throat.

  “Whoa, whoa, man – hold those horses up right there man. I didn’t try to slice that woman’s throat. No way, man.”

  “Jer, one more cliché and I’ll kill you. If you didn’t try to kill Cinnamon, why did you let those two investigators into the house?”

  “No. What? You got the only keys, Johnnie, that’s the deal we got. Let up, okay. First Holly jumps all over me, now you. Nothing. I did nothing. They...one of the guys left the door open, maybe.”

  “I check it whenever they leave. That’s the main reason I wanted to turn the whole thing over to Jake. I get tired of checking up on those guys – making sure the cleaning lady came, the doors are locked, the windows shut. Makes me feel like a desk clerk.”

  The waiter slipped his head through a crack in the door. “Drinks on the house, guys. Can I come in?”

  Jerry waved the waiter over. “Thanks, man”, he said, staring at two Jack Daniels, straight up, on the tray. “This is what we need, man, cool down a little. Thank the boss.”

  Johnnie pushed his drink away. “It’s 10:30 in the morning, Jerry.”

  “Lighten up, Johnnie, for Christ’s sake.”

  Johnnie sucked up the stale air, pursued another subject. “So what’s Holly on about?”

  “She’s got this idea in her head that Clark stabbed Lonnie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s making her crazy.”

  “You think she gave the key to those two?”

  “No. I never told Holly about the house. You know that.”

  “I don’t know nothin’. You think Clark stabbed Lonnie?”

  “No...don’t be ridiculous. He’s a kid.”

  “I know that.”

  “Holly threw me out – again. She’s hysterical. No reason for that. Holly wanted the money as much as I did—as much as Lonnie, Nez, Lolo. We went into this gallery idea together – to help out the artists, to help out Clark with his brain injury. Lonnie turned against us – that’s what happened.”

  Tension drew a line above Johnnie’s brow. He returned to the controversy. “What do we do about those two detectives being in the house?”

  “You said Jake was there with you?”

  “He went off with the two of them because Cinnamon had this cut from falling in the yard – or that’s what she said. Not sure what the truth is.”

  “Jake went off with them? Well, there you are. Give him a call. Tell him to find out what those two were doing in the house, Maybe they were in the yard fooling around, could be there’s a romance between the two.”

  “Not everybody is like you, Jer.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Johnnie? Everybody likes sex. Don’t kid yourself.”

  Johnnie reclaimed his glass and shot back the whole contents, one swallow. The whiskey did improve his mood. Jerry didn’t look like such a big damn asshole after a glass of Jack. “They could have been looking at the landscaping,” he conceded doubtfully.

  “Yeah. Santa Fe types. The landscaping. Yeah. Call Jake.”

  So Johnnie went along encouraged by more straight shots. He called Jake, and drank another Jack Daniels. Go Johnnie Go popped up on the speakers, and he laughed right along with Jerry about Chuck Berry using his name and all that.

  The bicycle boy showed up pretty quick, meaning Jake was probably in the front of the bar himself, drinking off the morning drama. Johnnie should have known that.

  “Hey, Jake, good to see you.” Jerry jumped up, more hyper than ever, not even slow from the booze – slapped Jake on the back a little too hard, started pushing right away – pure Jerry.

  “We’re glad to have you on our team, Jake. You already look like a quarter millionaire, way you hold yourself, man. Money sits well on you.”

  Jake sat at the table, no talk, only a look around at the shadows and the dust.

  Jerry kept pushing. “Johnnie says you saw what went down at that little house on Cactus Drive this morning.”

  “I was there.” Jake didn’t sound too excited. A muscle in his left jaw pulsed and he stared at the empty scotch glasses.

  “I keep wondering how those two detectives got in my rental house. You know anything about that?”

  Jake took that bait. “You want to know why Cinnamon went to that house? I’ll tell you then. Cinnamon was invited there to meet her mother. She got two bogus invitations at the Hampton Inn front desk. When she got there, a man tried to slit her throat.”

  For once, Jerry was still and silent.

  “Any idea who it was Jerry?”

  “No, Jake, I don’t know anything about that,” Jerry jumped in his seat. “First Lonnie and now this Cinnamon from Santa Fe. I don’t get it, Jake. Doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I think you get it,” Jake’s voice whistled through pressed lips. “You get exactly what happened. I didn’t make Cinnamon leave town, so you decided she needed to die. I bet you’re hiding a big secret, Jerry. If I were more of a man, I’d hang around and find out what that secret is. I’m a coward, though, so I’m on the road again, like one of those songs they play in this joint.”

  Jake walked right out of the back room, through the front of Sammy’s, empty but for a couple of blown out old men, and hit the street with his bike. He was headed back to Santa Fe, maybe even New Orleans. Jake was not the kind of guy who got into legal trouble in an unruly town. He cut out fast, an act he knew well.

  Johnnie and Jerry sat in the back room and ordered one more round. Neither said much. Johnnie figured he didn’t want to know, and Jerry figured he needed to take action before the whole deal exploded right there on Highway 118 in the middle of Gallup.

  ∆

  Listen to Her Angels Now

  Dark tree shadows shimmered in the amber glow of the Gallup street lamps as Lolo pulled her silver art from the trunk of the Lexus 350. She liked to bring the work in at night, when no other artists were around, and Jerry was safely off at Sammy’s Bar and Grill, laughing at bad jokes with Johnnie and maybe Nez, if he was in the mood. Tonight, of course, she was acting on hope and habit. Lolo worried Redemption was doomed to close. Funny, because she thought at first that with Lonnie gone, all the others would want to keep it open. Jerry wanted to keep it open, especially since he had those beefy buyers to pay lots of money for the art. Now Lolo faced a grating truth: the gallery might close because Lonnie was gone.

  On top of that, there was the problem with the knife stowed under Mirage’s mattress. It caused Burro and Cinnamon to think she stabbed Lonnie. They knew Lolo was angry with Lonnie for wanting to close the gallery, a motive, in their minds, for murder. Of course, Lolo never wanted to kill Lonnie – what Lolo wanted was the ability to stand strong in a situation and not let what ot
her people thought of her matter so much. Lolo had tired of waiting for life to go her way – she believed in seizing opportunities and forcing life to work for her.

  She put the box cart down at the front of the gallery, and stood for a minute, looking up at the tall pine door and thinking about the contents of the three boxes. They contained three different silver pieces. One, a chafing dish, a yard in height, held an eternal flame that burned beneath a dish stamped with stylized arrows and lightning bolts. Pierced silver plates accompanied it, doily thin, with an Edwardian-themed design that contrasted with the southwestern native design of the chafing dish.

  The other two works were simpler. The second one was a covered dish, stamped in geometric turtles and kachinas that danced beneath stylized Japanese waves. The bottom represented a delicate Edwardian design, light and sinuous, a contrast to the geometry of the lid.

  The third piece, packed only an hour ago, was yet another tea service, two large matching filigreed pots on a platter, with a miniature teapot in the center. The miniature was inlaid with turquoise and mother of pearl, fanned out in the traditional Zuni sun-face. The expense of the silver, let alone the hours of work she put in, justified Jerry’s high six figure sales. Lonnie argued with her, saying that the price was outrageous, the designs “interesting” but not brilliant – but what did Lonnie know about being a silversmith? Nothing. He worked in an entirely different medium, soft pastels, using three-dimensional artifacts to pull the work from a flat landscape to a multi-dimensional idea of the conflict between spirit and modern life. He was a folk artist in his way, not impressed by the precious nature of silver, the centuries of envy and praise that gave the metal it’s allure. The dinner tools of the wealthy and the coins of everyday shoppers were created in silver. She liked the contrast and mystery of the metal. In all it’s incarnations, silver represented value. Not so with Lonnie’s pipe stems, or velvet flowers. Sure, he used those items in original ways to counter the vision of traditional landscapes with the mundane or trivial, but it wasn’t silver – silver gave off a message before the artist began to work. Or so she had tried to explain to Lonnie a million times. And a million times he disrespected her point of view and wandered off on a provincial tour of Lonnie and his own folksy idea of art.

  It wasn’t like she wanted him to die—not exactly. She wanted him to shut up about her art, and she wanted him to keep supporting Redemption. Was that too much to ask? Apparently, because the night of the party, all the talk from Nez was about how Lonnie planned to quit and take Redemption out with him. Lolo honestly believed Lonnie talked like this to insult her. She was the most successful artist, the one with the most expensive items on display, and he was jealous. Plus, Lonnie never understood her. Before Redemption, he never had much money, but he got by, and, as far as Lonnie was concerned, that was enough. Lolo thought that Lonnie lacked ambition. He had no vision of a better life. That was the key for Lolo. Her mother was Zuni and her father was an Anglo working in Los Alamos. Both of her parents sizzled with ambition. Her mother sat up late at night, creating new designs in her bracelets and necklaces, and her father invented one mathematical model after another, seeking a new way to define the universe. Lolo explained to Lonnie once that it was her parents who inspired her, made her reach for the moon. He laughed. “We know what inspired you, Lolo—your dad’s money. You are afraid to be poor like you were when your parents divorced and you had to live a crumbling adobe here in Gallup. Fear inspires you.”

  Lolo tipped up the carrier and headed for the tall wooden entrance to Redemption. The memories made her want to haul all three boxes into the street and watch cars run over them. Or, better yet, exchange her work for Lonnie’s and do the same thing with those paintings of his. See how he liked that. Only he’s dead now, she remembered, experiencing a moment of regret.

  A dim light came from inside the gallery, a precaution instituted by the alarm company. They were LED lights, giving off a purple-green haze throughout the building, as though the art inhabited one of the tiny plant aquariums her mother used to keep on the den floor. Breathing deeply, she glanced up at Nez’s oil wise man, his wrinkled forehead and warm brown eyes welcoming her. Nez liked her and the silver plates and teapots. That’s one of the reasons she felt so bad about throwing the beer bottle – and so many people witnessing the act. Drinking at those parties always got out of hand. Plus, she was angrier at Lonnie than at Nez, so why did she throw a bottle at Nez?

  Lolo had trouble remembering what started the fight by the fireplace. She clearly remembered the crash of the bottle, a gasp from Mirage, who stood across the room next to Jerry. The two arrived moments before she launched the bottle at Nez. Mirage was sleeping with Jerry, of course. Lolo thought her a fool to have sex with a man like Jer. But then, Lolo made foolish choices about sex, too.

  She walked over to one of her L-sections, rounded the corner into the cubby, and stooped to unload the boxes from the cart. She pulled out and saved the shredded fiber paper she preferred for protecting her pieces in transit. Her thoughts wandered back to the party and her own foolish choices. Loneliness explains sex with strange men, Lolo thought. Why else did I sleep with that creepy guy the night of the party? Her memory was vague on that, too.

  After Lolo threw the beer bottle, Jer started an argument with Lonnie. They took it into Lonnie’s room, and then Jerry stomped out of the house. After that, Mirage went into Lonnie’s room. She stayed there for a long time, and Lolo drank water at the kitchen table to try to sober up. Johnnie and Nez were by the fire, both staring into it and downing Johnnie Walker Blue.

  Mirage emerged from Lonnie’s room looking miserable, and that’s when Lolo offered to walk her home. Mirage was upset. She explained why as they started the walk.

  “Lonnie’s quitting and he’s moving to California.”

  “Lonnie’s not moving out of Gallup. He loves it here – his whole family is here, his friends.”

  “He says he can’t stand it anymore...that he doesn’t want to be anywhere near the gallery or anyone involved with the gallery. What’s the big deal? Why is he so upset?”

  “Relax, Mirage. He had too much to drink. Tomorrow he’ll forget all about it.”

  “He says Redemption is corrupt. What does he mean by that?”

  “I’ll talk to him later. Don’t worry.”

  “No.” And here, Mirage sat smack down in the alleyway.

  “Get up, honey. You need to go home and sleep it off.”

  “No. I’m staying right here. Not going anywhere.”

  She couldn’t get Mirage up off the ground, so she started back to Lonnie’s house. That was crazy, she thought now while she unpacked the silver items from their cases. Mirage wasn’t safe sitting there in the alley. But, at the time, she simply walked to Lonnie’s house as if it was the most natural thing in the world to leave your girlfriend all alone in the dark, sitting in an alley. Mirage could have been assaulted.

  Lolo shivered. Back at the house, she noticed the door lock was broken, which was crazy, because she didn’t remember locking the door in the first place. Maybe Jer or Johnny locked up – they were both paranoid about theft. Then Lolo did something she wished she hadn’t done, and something she never planned on telling anyone. She went in to see Lonnie. Clark was in the room with his arms around Lonnie who was swimming in blood. She rushed out of the house and ran down the street, finally settling into a walk, vaguely decided to stay at Mirage’s place. That’s when she ran into the creep. She was upset, of course – crying. He comforted her, rubbed her hair in his hands.

  “I love the smell of you.”

  They’d done it once before. Why not get some comfort on this cold, fruitless night, she figured. Lolo had the keys to Mirage’s place so she had sex with the man who was really a complete stranger – then passed out. Lolo woke up awash in regret for the sex. At first, she didn’t remember leaving Mirage in the alley. When she did remember, she figured Mirage had gone back to Lonnie’s. It was all part of the party scene
. Forget about it.

  Lolo shook her head as if to clear away her thoughts about the party and leaving Mirage alone.

  “The art is what matters,” she said aloud to an echo in the empty gallery. Here, among the outcomes of her work as a silversmith, was the real world. In the shimmering light of the LEDs, Lolo felt safe. Lolo liked the dim green, so she didn’t bother to light up the gallery or the L-shaped cubicle where she stood. She opened up the glass case that held her smaller works and carefully placed the covered dish there. Then she walked back to the office, opened up the computer, and designed commentary for the teapots. She grew tired, very tired. Not able to think clearly, she gave up the writing and went to lie down on the couch in the conference room, where she fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming of silver angels, pierced by arrows, flying nervously through the gallery, swooping under the wizened native man, and over her body, crying out to her in warning. But Lolo was too tired to be warned. Far too much had happened for her to listen to her angels now.

  Thus she missed the creak of the high gallery door, the squish of footsteps in the entryway, a brief turn on and then off of the gallery lighting system. All she knew, for now, were her dreams.

  ∆

  Value Transfers

  Mirage and Alice sat in the corner of The Grounds Café, picking at a shared turkey on sourdough. Both drank black coffee.

  I ordered the same.

  “Burro’s back at the hotel resting.”

  “Is it the visions?” Alice asked.

  “Brought on by stress from my encounter with a man with a knife.” I explained to both of them what happened at the house on Cactus Drive, watching closely to see how each one of them reacted.

  “Was it the man who killed Lonnie?” Mirage was excited.

  “For God’s sake, Cinnamon, are you okay?” This from Alice.

  “First, I think it is the same person, and second, I’m okay, ” I answered. It was impossible for me to say if they were lying and actually arranged the near stabbing. Either both of them were good actors or they were my friends who wanted to help me find Lonnie’s killer and Momma. I chose the latter.