American Blood

by Ben Sanders

  “Hello?”

  “Hey. It’s Marshall.”

  “Marsh. What’s happening?”

  “I think something’s come up. I’m not going to be able to finish this one.”

  He laughed. “You think something’s come up, or something actually has come up?”

  Marshall said, “Something actually has come up.” He paused. “Just personal stuff.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Quiet. “Didn’t know you had personal stuff.”

  Marshall didn’t answer. The door was open and he could hear the rain in its soft patter on the concrete outside. Smell of wet earth in the rain.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it. Just, you know. Everything all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He could have explained, but it wouldn’t have sounded rational. I want to find a missing girl, because she looks like someone I used to know. There was no way to pitch it as sensible.

  “All right. Well. Why don’t you just come by sometime when you’re ready and get your pay? You did a couple of days, right?”

  Marshall said, “Yeah, a couple of days. Thanks.”

  “Take care now.”

  The tone in his ear again. He fed some more change. It was a long time, but he still remembered the number for the apartment on Central Park West. For a few years he’d tried, and it would just ring and ring. Now just the tone. Every month another fruitless call and with them his faint hopes slowly dying.

  Nothing.

  The kid’s foot was up on the desk, dipping back and forth to some tune. Marshall hung up the phone and stepped back out into the rain.

  * * *

  A storm that night. He lay listening to it. Still no wind and through the window he’d left ajar came the clean smell of rain. Periodically the curtains backlit by lightning and then the crump of thunder lagging the flash.

  New York memories welling up, and he couldn’t keep them down. In bed with her, the pair of them lying tangled. Her hand slightly curled, a light touch on his chest, her hair splayed out finely.

  Marshall said, “We could leave.”

  Her smile just above him in the dark as she rolled toward him. The pause long enough he had time to hope. She said, “I told you I’d think about it.”

  “We could just do it.”

  She put her head on his shoulder. Warm breath as she laughed, a butterfly feeling, like it was too great a fantasy. “I promise I’ll think about it.”

  He put his hand on hers. She made a fist, perfect in his palm. He said, “What if something happens?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. What if something did.”

  Her face above him again. The quiet room even quieter with her hair touching him. She said, “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Rain on the motel roof. He sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, tried to focus on it. White noise to flood his recall. It took a long time. He thought about trying the New York number again. He didn’t, but it made the memories re-loop.

  Nothing’s going to happen.

  It was always the line he circled back to. He lay down again, hands over his eyes, as if blocking one sense might block the others.

  Far from home and a woman on his mind whom he’d never see again. He felt very alone. He knew this life was never the ambition.

  * * *

  Gray the next morning but no rain. He had the Silverado pickup with his site gear in the tray. He drove south on I-25 and exited near the center of town onto Comanche Road and turned east through light industrial. A quirk of perception had the road ahead terminating on a low rise at the very foot of the mountains. Cresting it, he grasped the true geography: mile upon mile of suburb lay ahead on the plain.

  Prosperity seemed to ebb as he worked east. Tired houses on dirt sections turned cracked and barren. Cars beset by rust parked in yards. He drove slow and scanned frontages as he went.

  It took him forty minutes to find the house. He recognized it from TV footage. Mustard-colored clapboard with a carport to the left with an old maroon Impala parked inside. A yellow knot of crime scene tape at one of the columns. Another in a branch at the other end of the yard. Blinds drawn behind the windows. He parked a hundred yards up the street on the opposite side and crossed on the diagonal.

  The front door was open behind an insect screen and beyond that a short corridor led into the house. Smell of cigarettes. He pushed the bell but it made no sound. He rapped on the siding near the doorframe.

  A moment’s wait, and then a short, heavy woman appeared at the end of the hall. The mesh screen obscured detail, but he could see her swaying as she approached, like her knees couldn’t offer much bend.

  “Maureen ain’t here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Who are you?”

  Marshall said, “I’m trying to find Alyce.”

  It sounded lame and naïve, even to his ears.

  She stopped maybe six feet from the door. The bulk of her blotting the light from behind so she was just a dark shape, like some charcoal rubbing on the screen. “You a news man or police?”

  “I used to be a police officer. I saw her on the television.”

  “Well, it’s kind of you to come by, but used to be ain’t much good. There’s some proper ones on their way soon so I think you’d best be gone. We got warned about busybodies.”

  “I’m sorry to hear she’s missing.”

  “I think you’d best be on your way.”

  He could see she wasn’t going to relent. He didn’t quite know what he’d expected. That he’d be invited in, all questions duly answered? He turned and walked back across the yard. When he reached the road he glanced back, but he couldn’t tell if she was still at the door. He crossed the street and got back into the car and waited.

  Thirty minutes later an APD cruiser pulled up outside. Two officers got out and walked to the entry. He guessed they’d visited before because they didn’t bother with the bell, just knocked on the siding. A moment later the screen opened and they filed solemnly in, hats held at midriff, heads slightly bowed.

  Marshall sat watching, a few options formulating.

  Another ten minutes and a tan unmarked Crown Vic came along the street and slowed and U-turned and parked behind the cruiser. A plainclothes cop got out and walked across the yard. Pants riding low under a big gut, a wide swagger to keep them in place. The weight of his weapon and backup clips weren’t helping.

  Light traffic, no one around. The two vehicles just sitting there.

  Marshall waited for the cop to be admitted inside and then he got out of the Silverado and stepped to the rear and reached in and found his lockout tool. It was just a slender two-foot piece of flat steel with a hook-shaped cutout at one end. He slipped it from its plastic sheath and ran it up the inside of his sleeve, dropped his arm to his side with the tool standing on his curled fingers.

  Back across the road, pacing it slow, heart really going for it.

  He didn’t even bother with the cruiser. It was new and gleaming and decked out in loud livery and he thought there was a good chance it would have a loud alarm, too. He went to the Crown Vic. Ten or fifteen years old, smart but not state of the art. He cupped a hand and ducked and looked in the rear window, and then again through the front. Nothing in the back. In the front passenger footwell there was a black leather bag, unzipped. A file sitting there spine-down, a thick fan of paperwork just daring him. A takeout soft drink cup in an outrigger pocket and a balled wrapper on the seat.

  He walked around to the passenger side. It put his back to the house, but he wouldn’t be long. A car passed eastbound, and then another one westbound. No one slowed to look. He was just a guy standing by a car.

  Head pounding, a chill down his spine, neck hairs on edge.

  He let the lockout tool drop through his sleeve and caught the top of it midfall. Then he slipped the piece of metal hook-end first past the window, down into the door panel beside the handle. Ten seconds and he’d jimmied it. Door open, the
tool returned to his sleeve. Another ten and he was back across the street, paperwork in hand.

  * * *

  He drove two blocks over and parked to read.

  Pulse coming back in line, breathing steady.

  You could get addicted to this.

  He’d assumed the Crown Vic was an APD car, but it was a DEA case file. He’d just robbed a federal agent.

  There were notes from Albuquerque Police first up, dated only a couple of days ago. He knew missing persons reports could only be filed seventy-two hours after the fact. Today was Friday. Alyce Ray had been missing since Saturday, the report officially filed Tuesday. Six days gone and three days’ search time.

  There was a statement from one Maureen Ray. She claimed that on the Friday evening prior to her disappearance her daughter had been out visiting friends. Maureen Ray had been home alone in bed at the Comanche Road address when she heard her daughter enter the house at approximately two A.M. Saturday. She assumed her daughter went to bed. When she woke in the morning she found the girl’s bedroom empty. Purse and keys still in the room. Her car still out front. No other possessions unaccounted for. Just the girl herself gone.

  Photographs of the bedroom. A bed with a corner of the sheet turned back and the pillow dented. Approach shots of the house and the entry he’d just stood at. No sign of blood, no evidence of forced entry. Maureen Ray claimed an abduction had occurred, but APD clearly hadn’t been convinced. The prelims seemed cursory.

  He thumbed the remaining papers. There was a thick sheaf of color photographs, time-stamped late-evening Friday.

  2302. A blurred close-up of Alyce Ray, head turned, talking to someone out of shot. The next image provided context, Ray with three other women, all a similar age, strolling two by two on a sidewalk. A backdrop of cracked pink stucco and the four of them centered beneath a cone of light cast narrowly from above and the world beyond lost to the contrast.

  2303. The four of them waiting at what appeared to be the entry to a club. CALOR in red lettering on the pink stucco lintel. A doorman checking IDs, a four-shot sequence, girl by girl. The doorman alone at the entry looking back along the street, and Alyce Ray stepping past him to darkness in the room beyond.

  More images of people arriving. Singles and twos and threes. The sidewalk approach with the stucco behind. A Hispanic guy in his forties, dark hair swept back and a gray suit that caught the light in its creases. There was a computer printout a page over. Gray suit man was one Troy Rojas, a graduate of MCI-Walpole at Cedar Junction. He’d shot and paralyzed a state trooper up in Massachusetts in ’92.

  Marshall turned the page. Further printouts, internal DEA records listing all kinds of suspicions. Importation, manufacturing, supply. No apparent convictions. Current address unknown. Next of kin one Troy Rojas Jr. There was an Albuquerque address listed, together with a few credentials. Junior possessed similar proclivities to Senior, but he’d accrued some convictions: two separate counts of possession of methamphetamine, two ninety-day prison stints. One count of possession with intent to distribute that hadn’t stuck.

  Marshall flipped through. 2347. A photo of Rojas entering Calor. 2358. A trio of men entering single file. A blowup of the third man, followed by DEA records. Cyrus Llewellyn Bolt, thirty-nine years of age, the last twelve of them spent at the Federal Correctional Institution at Beaumont on a heroin trafficking charge. He was only five months out of prison. Current address unknown. He had an ex-wife over in Lubbock, Texas. The married/divorced dates implied they’d hitched and split while Bolt was still inside.

  Marshall browsed on. There was a daytime shot inserted out of sequence: a blurry image of a guy in a black cowboy hat. Jackie Oswald Grace, Calor owner, fifty-one years old. He had some possession charges dating back twenty years, a few trafficking suspicions a little more recently. He sounded like Cyrus and Troy’s kind of man.

  Back to the night shots.

  0031. Alyce Ray et al exiting, walking back the way they’d come. One of the girls unsteady on her feet, a friend at each elbow, Alyce Ray trailing, a handbag over each shoulder.

  0032. Bolt’s trio on the way out, headed in the same direction.

  0034. Rojas and another man in his thirties, following.

  Marshall closed the file. The images were all level shots, probably a standard DEA stakeout, a guy across the street snapping entry/exit photos. He’d done similar things before, a long time ago. He wondered how Albuquerque PD had got the DEA on board so soon. Maybe they knew the club was under surveillance and requested records when the name came up in questioning.

  It didn’t really matter.

  All he cared was that at midnight Friday Alyce Ray had crossed paths with two men known to the DEA and by morning she was gone.

  * * *

  He drove back east, keeping south of Comanche, not wanting to come across that tan Crown Victoria. Tired street upon tired street. He quartered blocks, driving slow so he wouldn’t miss the signs.

  It didn’t take him long. He passed a section host to two trailer homes, the structures joined in an L-shape, an awning off one side propped by tent poles. A Ford F-150 sitting on its rims in the yard. At the curb two kids in the front of an old Chevy Caprice, heads barely above sill level. Girl in the driver’s seat, boy beside her. He drove slowly past. These pale wide-eyed faces turning smoothly to track him. He pulled over and parked and shut off the motor and looked in his side mirror. The car framed end-on, apparently empty. And then the kid in the passenger seat craned round to look, just his silhouette against the windshield.

  Marshall said, “Please be wrong.”

  He got out. Dead quiet, not even a bird. The street just sitting there on a held breath while he did what he had to.

  He walked to the car. The girl’s window was down. She had perfect blond hair tied in a ponytail. She might have been nine years old. Marshall waited. The boy leaned across from the passenger seat to see his face and then he leaned back. Just the girl framed there, tiny on the seat, sitting on her hands. Blue veins webbed delicately at her temple.

  She said, “Hey.”

  Marshall smiled. “Hey.”

  “How much you want?”

  “Two grams, please.”

  “That’s two hundred.”

  She held out a hand, waiting for it. He reached in his pocket and counted the bills by touch off his fold and passed them to her. She fanned them like cards to check the balance and then handed them across the console to the boy. He popped his door and clambered out and ran off across the yard to the trailer.

  Marshall said, “How old are you?”

  The girl didn’t answer for a minute. A blank look on her face that could have been fear or surprise. She said, “Cain’t say.”

  “What’s your name?”

  She shook her head. “Cain’t say that either. Ain’t allowed.”

  “All right. My name’s Marshall.”

  She didn’t answer. He knew that one day she would look back and realize she’d paid a toll without even knowing. He looked at the trailer. It would be nice to know without doubt if one person’s end was another’s good fortune. But he just couldn’t call it. What’s to say a good deed right now isn’t just bad luck on a long fuse.

  A moment later the boy came back with his purchase. The girl handed it to him, and then the pair of them sat watching until he walked away.

  * * *

  Rojas Junior lived in a place off Lomas Boulevard Northeast. Marshall drove south on the Pan American Expressway and then cut over on Central Ave.

  The house was a newer design, clapboard with a tile roof, three grimed sedans in a lazy zigzag on the driveway. He parked at the curb and went and knocked on the front door. A guy in his midtwenties answered. Torn jeans and the neck of his T-shirt stretched and sloping off one shoulder and his hair trying to go everywhere at once. Gloom in the house behind. A dog was barking somewhere.

  Marshall said, “I’m looking for Troy.”

  The guy raked a hand through his hair. H
e cleared his throat. “Yeah. Me.”

  “Oh, right. I’m actually after your dad.”

  “He doesn’t live here.”

  “You know where I can find him?”

  The kid’s eyes narrowed. “What for?”

  Marshall said, “I got some stuff he might be interested in. If you’ve got a number or something.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Seen him at that club. Calor.”

  “How’d you find this place?”

  Marshall ignored the question and just dug in his pocket, brought out the clear baggie with the two grams of meth he’d bought that morning. “I just got some stuff I could show him. You know. I could even leave this with you if you want. I mean, I got a lot of it.”

  The kid wiped his brow. “Yeah, man. Sure, okay.” Quieter: “What have you got there, couple of grams?”

  “Yeah. Couple of grams.”

  The guy staring at the bag. Ten hits, if he was good with it.

  Marshall said, “You got a number or something. For your dad?”

  It broke the trance. He looked at the ceiling, a hand rubbing at his neck. Track marks up his forearm, matted over by scarring. “Yeah. Hang on. Yeah, I do.”

  “Well, why don’t you get it. And I’ll just leave all this with you.”

  Marshall jiggled the baggie in his cupped palm. The kid turned and walked away into the house, this funny mincing gait, nudging the wall as he went. Marshall heard thumps, drawers banging, cursing. He waited. A minute later Junior reappeared, a torn scrap of paper in an outstretched hand.

  “That’s his cell. You can get him on that.”

  Marshall tossed him the meth and then he was gone.

  * * *