by Chris Bauer
The U.S. marshal produced his badge at Naomi’s condo door, raised it to the eyehole and announced himself. “Deputy U.S. Marshal Edward W. P. Trenton, Your Honor.”
Naomi straightened the top half of her most comfortable travel ensemble, a conservative business suit in charcoal. She glanced at a wall clock, then the mirror. Ten a.m. The marshal was right on time.
Mr. Trenton was tall and wide, the eyehole showing the lower half of his face while it exaggerated his width, spreading it east and west inside the high rise’s hallway.
Naomi’s first reaction when she opened her door? He would have trouble fitting into the seat on the plane, even in business class. Zippered up to his chin, his blue windbreaker sported a U.S. Marshals Service five-pointed tin star emblem left of center. His tan slacks strained at his thighs. She didn’t know how much of what was under the windbreaker was him and how much was weaponry, but he was bulky. A weathered, copper-brown Native American face disguised his age, which looked to be anywhere from late thirties to early fifties. Her eyes lingered on his face, entranced by him and his one earring, a small, black bear claw. She wondered if they’d assigned him to her because of his ethnicity. She opened the door wider.
“My goodness, Mister Trenton, where are my manners? How nice to meet you. Please come inside.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He removed his tan Stetson to enter her home. Naomi was tall, and yet he towered over her. His bulk filled the vestibule, leaving a lot less room in there for their shared presence. She gestured, and he proceeded down the length of the hallway. He stepped aside at the end to let her pass.
“Your Honor…ma’am…” Mr. Trenton kneaded the brim of his Stetson, taking it on a nervous spin. “I want you to know I asked for this detail, and I’m honored I was chosen.”
“I see,” she said, smiling. “I too am honored, Mister Trenton, and humbled. It will be rewarding to serve you and the rest of the American people. Thanks so much, in advance, for your help. I hope I won’t be too much trouble.”
“I expect you won’t, ma’am, and I’ll make sure no one else will be either.” With this, the sparkle of hero-worship in his eyes switched off. Replacing it was expressionless, all-business, bodyguard brown.
Her baggage was ready to go, four large luggage pieces plus one trunk and a carry-on, all on wheels, some of which maybe should have been shipped. Her intention had been to have a law clerk assist them for their ride to the airport, but the Marshals office said no, they would handle the arrangements. Deputy Marshal Trenton looked large enough that, with her help, the two of them would have been able to handle her stuff with a few trips, but apparently that wasn’t how this was going to go.
“There’s another marshal waiting downstairs, ma’am,” he said. “He’ll accompany us through the boarding process.” Mr. Trenton barked into a two-way handheld radio. His associate’s response was immediate: “Roger that, Toes.”
“Roger that, Vernon.” Mr. Trenton addressed Naomi. “Ma’am, Deputy Marshal Vernon is on his way up to help with the bags. It’s best we keep one arm unencumbered.”
She nodded, but she was still processing the exchange. One word of it, to be specific: “Toes.” A Native American name perhaps. She’d save her question for her getting-to-know-you chat onboard their three-hour flight to Dulles.
SEVEN
“Forget the drink,” Judge told Chigger, his host. “I gotta go. My stink is starting to offend my dogs.”
He had faxes to read and a murder suspect to find, a shower to take, and forty winks to catch. Plus, “My partners need to eat.”
“There’s food in the house, somewhere,” Owen said. “Look. Judge. I know my way around Dallas. I can help you find your bounty. Stay for one drink.”
Owen reemerged from his house with a bottle of Jose Cuervo, some shot glasses and an institution-sized bar of Hershey’s chocolate. He poured and they sipped, the two leaning against Owen’s abandoned truck lawn ornament. They sipped some more. They were big shot glasses. Owen opened the candy, broke off two chunks. Instead of handing one to Judge he raised his arm, was about to toss them to Judge’s canine deputies sitting at attention near his front door. Judge grabbed his hand.
“Damn it, Owen, no chocolate for the dogs. It’s toxic.”
“Huh. Wow.” A slight nod of his head. “That explains some things.”
Maeby and J.D. lingered near his open front door, seated next to each other on their haunches like they’d just filed in for morning reveille. Hungry eyes, the both of them.
“Look, I’ve got no problem if they want inside the house,” Owen offered. “Nothing in there they can hurt. We’ll head inside in a few, rustle something up for them.”
Maeby sniffed, anticipating an order, her sawed-off terrier tail and her butt both wiggling double-time. J.D., his pointy Shepherd ears making him a full head taller than Maeby, sat motionless as a Marine boot recruit.
“No chocolate bars on the floor?” Judge asked. “No open D-Con boxes or anything?”
He chuckled, thought a moment, said no to both. Judge focused on Maeby, made eye contact with her, told her with a head nod it was okay to go inside. She vaulted through the open front door into the house. J.D followed, his filthy leather leash attached to his collar trailing him.
“Why not take off the leash?” Owen asked.
“It keeps him from getting nervous, like a security blanket. Less nervousness means less aggression, fewer accidents.” Since they were sharing, “Why the cowboy outfit?”
“Yeah, well, why not a cowboy outfit? I’m supporting my team and it gets me on TV. Plus it’s sentimental. See, I once auditioned for Wrestlemania…”
Judge heard about the outfit’s history, how Owen had channeled midget wrestler Cowboy Bob Bradley from the fifties.
“Called myself Cowboy Black Bart. Cracked my skull open during the audition. They didn’t pick me, but they let me keep the outfit.” He sipped, smiled, his eyes losing their focus while savoring a memory. “I was also a rodeo clown for two years, and I tried midget bowling, too. It’s actually safer. You get to wear a helmet.”
Wrestling, rodeo clowning, and midget tossing. Owen was a walking cliché.
He sipped more, stayed maudlin. “Now that I think about it, it wasn’t just a few years back. More like twenty. Wow. What an idiot. Live and learn, huh? In my defense, back then I figured I’d be dead by now.”
A societal misfit with a death wish at a younger age. Judge had no problem empathizing.
“Then I took me some readin’ and writin’ classes, learned me some news reporting skills, and the rest is local sportswriting history. So tell me about this woman you’re after.”
“A former schoolteacher from Tulsa.” Judge mentioned her bogus prescriptions for controlled substances, and that she’d jumped bail, “and now this thing with the Native American kid and his mother at the trailer park, and the murder of a church pastor.”
“Like I said, Judge, I know my way around. When you pick up your gun today we’ll get more info from the Chief of Police.”
A commotion inside the house turned Judge around. Through the front bay window they saw a brown blur hurdle an end table. A large black blur followed, knocking over a lamp. The first blur was Maeby. The second wasn’t J.D., it was a cat. A huge one.
“That’s Bruce,” he said, chuckling into his near-empty glass. Maeby bolted out the front door, snorted, all fired up; she headed back in for round two. She was the best Marine military working dog partner Judge had ever had, even though she was on the smaller side. He pushed off from the truck, called her name, then heard something else inside crash into pieces.
“That,” Judge said, “is my cue to check on her.” They headed inside.
If the outside seemed like a bizarrely sculpted shrubbery garden, the inside was something completely different, like a fun house at a carnival. Low wall hangings and a mirror all hung on for dear life in the living room, and a jagged crack in the room’s drywall ran floor to ceiling, from eith
er a foundation problem or an earthquake. A footless sofa, two legless wing chairs, multiple step stools. A huge litter box sat on the tile floor in the utility room, something Judge smelled before he saw. In the kitchen the cabinets, counter and an island table were normal height, with a kick stool with wheels at rest in front of the sink. J.D. was eating from the cat’s bowl.
Maeby bolted past them into the family room and snapped at a wall shelving unit with home theater speakers, the topmost shelf no more than four feet off the floor. The cat hissed from his perch there, the shelf’s low height another shrimpy-person room feature, the shelf looking even closer to the floor because of the tall cathedral ceiling. Maeby, with the spring of a kangaroo, leaped for the cat and knocked a speaker down. The cat bolted, exiting the house through the partially open sliding glass door, onto the patio. Maeby scratched at the slim opening, smacked her lips and grunted, her standard plea for wanting out.
“Don’t do it,” Owen said. “It’s crazy out back.”
He heeded Owen, grabbed Maeby’s collar, and commanded her to shush. She relaxed, which gave him time to absorb the surroundings. Whatever was outside, it couldn’t have been much crazier than in here.
Owen was a hoarder, at least in this expansive family room, which showed like a small movie theater at a local twenty-screen Cineplex Judge knew back home. A path led to the sliding glass doors, and a narrower path led to an entertainment center with a large flat screen and a home theater system, but that was the only area where the floor was visible. Next to the wider path, a sofa with only one of its cushions empty of debris left room enough for one person to sit. Or, if you were Owen, maybe room to lie down. Everywhere else were keepsake dolls in display boxes. Madame Alexander Collectibles, on shelves, in leaning box piles, toppled box piles, empty box piles, plus a mass grave of doll carcasses and body parts that reached almost to the cathedral ceiling in a far corner, looking like a pile of zombies clambering to get over the castle wall. Behind the fireplace screen and looking out at them, mixed in with some charred wood, were unboxed Cinderella dolls, their faces caked in soot and pressed against the glass, their eyes open and terrified. Boxed Dorothys, Glindas, thumb-sucking babies, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, lollipop girls, Belles, and a Scarlett O’Hara were scattered throughout the room scape, their white, black, brown, yellow, and Smurf-blue faces all frozen in patented doll pouts.
“Mom’s stuff. One of these days I’ll get rid of it. And no, she’s not mixed in there with it. Her ashes are on that shelf over there.” He pointed to a shelf low on the wall, nearest the floor. From what Judge could see she had company, four urns in total. “Hers and her cats.”
There was doll hoarding in evidence here, and then there was food hoarding, with the overpowering smell possibly attributable to recent cooking but probably not. Pizza boxes, liquor bottles, Arby’s wrappers, Wendy’s wrappers, Mickey Dee’s, Burger-Whop. Maybe Owen wasn’t the doll hoarder, but he did live like a pig.
“Ball Park hot dogs in the fridge. How about I throw some on the grill for them? The coast looks clear, so we can go out back now.”
He fired up the barbecue on the patio. Judge wasn’t worried about Maeby accosting Owen’s cat, either inside or out, nor was he worried about the abandoned-lawn-tractor-Maytag-appliance-automobile graveyard that started a few feet beyond a paver patio overgrown with weeds. Owen lived in what could have passed as the equivalent of a combination amusement park, petting zoo and Texas safari. What most concerned him were the large animals whose shapes were visible on the horizon. Left of center a hundred-plus yards away, beyond a cannibalized Chevy Camaro, were grazing cattle. Right of center, in a separate fence enclosure next to the cattle, was a bull, a big one, gray, with massive white horns. Judge shielded his eyes and squinted to get a better look.
“Don’t worry about my neighbor’s cattle,” Owen said. “They’re all fenced in. The bull…he, um, sometimes isn’t.”
“How’s that happen?”
“He rushes the split rail fence every once in a while, sometimes busts through it. It’s electrified, too, on both sides of the wooden rails. I’ve found him out back here, goring my old John Deere riding mower. One time I caught him mounting the rear of the Camaro, all pecker-happy. Whenever he gets loose I get my neighbor on the line and he sends his cowhands over here pronto. So far, no damage to the house.”
Not like anyone would have ever noticed. Under Judge’s breath his Tourette’s had gained a foothold, an oldie-butgoodie.
“…wooly bully, wooly bully, wooly bully. Watchitnow, watchit…”
He picked up J.D.’s leash, pulled him into an embrace. A quick pet of his furry head; Judge’s anxiety dissipated.
Maeby wandered the yard unleashed in search of Owen’s cat Bruce. The smell of wieners on the barbecue drew her back to the patio. She and J.D. sat side-by-side in observance of the sizzle and pop coming from the grill, with Owen as chef.
“The bull’s name is Señor Quixote,” Owen said, rearranging the grilling meat. “A rodeo bull sent to stud. He’s my buddy.”
“Your buddy?” Judge said. “Interesting.”
“Well, more of a love-hate thing but yeah, we’re buds. Like I said, Señor Q’s not intimidated by high voltage. Me neither, as it turns out. When I’m drunk.”
Ah. The tasers at the football game. Given the number of times they’d zapped his small body with no apparent side effects, Owen had to have been more of a freak than met the eye. Or maybe the dead brain cells he’d accumulated from his drinking acted as insulators.
“Bull riding,” Judge repeated. He drilled a stare at Owen’s distant bull friend, grazing in his pasture. “The most dangerous eight seconds in sports. Or so they tell me.”
“And they would be right,” Owen said. “Very violent. Even worse when a rider isn’t thrown. The ride ends, the horn goes off, the rider bails. Not a favorite time for the bull, ’cause he knows he lost. The horn can trigger some major acting out. Real ornery fuckers at that point. Here. Check this out.”
Owen retrieved his phone from his pocket, held it out so he could see the keypad. He shot his guest a look. “My ringtone is from my rodeo clowning days. This key right here. It’s a crowd pleaser. Great alarm clock, too. Be ready to get your dogs in the house.”
He eyed his bull buddy in the distance, poised his thumb over a phone key then pressed it. A tinny air horn blast exploded from the phone, something obnoxious fans used at sporting events like hockey and basketball games, and reminiscent of televised rodeo events where a horn or buzzer signified the end of a bull or bronco ride, that it was time for the rider to disengage, and try to stay alive while doing it.
The bull raised his head at the noise, snorted, bucked his eighteen hundred pounds and rear legs skyward a few times, then took a run at the fence, looking generally pissed. He retreated after breaching one of the fence rungs.
The back of Owen’s arm found its way across Judge’s waist, ready to push him back through the door and into the house. He lowered it, the threat neutralized. “The high voltage wire stopped him. We’re good for today. So who gets the first hot dog?’
He was going to a lot of trouble to feed the dogs when all they really needed were bowls of kibble back at the B&B. And Judge needed to get on the trail of the bail-jumping teacher-murderer.
Screw it, Judge decided. His deputies had been cooped up in the van all last night. A pound of charred wieners tasted better than dry Pedigree from a bag.
Crammed against one of the sliders, on the inside looking out, and with the crush of the family room doll pile pressing against it from behind, a cardboard box with a freakish-looking doll in it stood on end at floor level. Thin white face, almost gaunt. Glasses on the bridge of her nose. White doily collar above a black robe. A gavel in her hand. Next to this doll, also in a box, was a Madame Alexander Pocahontas.
“Owen. That doll there, in the glasses. Who’s she supposed to be?”
“TV Judge Judy. Limited edition. Nine hundred bucks. Quite a coinci
dence right there, those two dolls side-by-side. Swear to God they’ve been next to each other like that for years, way before the Supreme Court nomination.” He rolled the hot dogs over with the spatula. “These Ball Parks look good to go.”
Judge had no idea what coincidence he was talking about. Owen retrieved two plates from under the barbecue and squinted at them. He rubbed each with his shirtsleeve like he was doing the dogs a favor and glanced at Judge for a reaction; Judge nodded.
Owen deposited six hot dogs onto each dish, lowered the plates to the patio. Maeby and J.D. pounced.
“Tell me about this coincidence thing with the dolls,” Judge said.
“You don’t know? A big deal around here, at least to the Indians native to these parts. The newest associate judge installed on the U.S. Supreme Court is a Native American, from Texas. First Native American ever to serve on the Supreme Court. You want any of these?”
Maybe Judge had heard that, what with there being a public hearing on her nomination. Federal, now Supreme Court associate justice Naomi Coolsummer, was in her mid-forties or thereabouts. “Pass.”
Owen forked up a charred hot dog, blew on it, chomped off an end and chewed. He tore off a second bite. His mouth open, he chewed while he talked, leaving nothing to the imagination about what was going on in there.
“She’ll be in session with the heavyweights when the fall term starts next week. She’s young; hot looking, too. Plus, get this.” An animated Owen shook the fork while he talked about a Texas abortion case on the Court’s fall docket. “If there’s any chinks in Roe v Wade, this case could find them. Big-time judicial landmark case drama, coming right up. Gonna make history, dude.”
An alcoholic hobbit waving meat on a fork knew more about current events than Judge did. His grade school nuns would be spinning in their graves.
Owen wasn’t done. “She’s a liberal, too. Replaced the conservative justice who just retired. I’m not expecting Roe to be overturned. She should maintain a pro-choice majority, but it’ll make for some great theater. I also wanna get to D.C. to see some of the cases argued this year. Saw a few of them before. They’re awesome.”