Liars Anonymous

by Louise Ure

“Jessie! Get up!”

  I patted down my cockatoo hair and pulled on the clothes from last night, smelling the mingled musk of cowboy sweat and semen as I dressed.

  I was cranky. “What is it?” I said through the screen door.

  “I need help with some information we got back from HandsOn.”

  “Ask them. I don’t work there anymore.” I turned back toward the kitchen and the empty coffeepot.

  Deke opened the screen and invited himself in. “Here, I brought you this.”‘He handed me an industrial-sized cup of coffee. “Thought you might need it.”

  “Thanks, but…” How did he know I’d need coffee in the middle of the morning? Had he seen me pick up the cowboy in the bar?

  “I came by late last night, saw the V-dub in the driveway but couldn’t get an answer from you.”

  “I got the truck back.” I didn’t like the notion of Deke or anybody else in the Tucson Police Department checking up on me. I detoured to the ugly yellow chair in the living room and Deke took a seat at the dining room table.

  “Here’s the data we got back from HandsOn,” he said, leaning across the empty space between us with a stapled sheaf of papers.

  I flipped from the graph on the first page that showed the velocity and braking speed, past the car diagnostics, to the weight distribution and tire pressure chart in the back.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “That page, the one you’re on…what does that mean?”

  I scanned the graph and the chart below it.

  “It means that his tires were properly inflated for the load he was carrying.”

  “Is that all?”

  “He had something else in the car.”

  “Where do you see that?”

  “Look here.” I grabbed a pencil off the dining room table and circled two numbers. “This one’s Markson. A hundred and eighty pounds. And there’s no weight in the front passenger seat.”

  “So?”

  “But right here,” I continued, “is something weighing fifty or sixty pounds in the backseat.”

  “His luggage, maybe? We didn’t find any in the trunk.”

  “Only if he puts a seat belt around that suitcase.” I circled the line on the chart that proved it.

  There were lots of things that Markson could have had in the backseat—luggage, paint or tile samples for his houses, a heavy briefcase. Groceries or office supplies. But I would have put most of those things in the trunk, safe from prying eyes, if nothing else.

  And why belt them in? Maybe they were fragile and he didn’t want them rolling around. Ceramic tiles? Bottles?

  I would have loved to ask his wife if he carried heavy stuff in his briefcase. Hopefully that would be Treadwell’s next stop. He was still shaking his head when he left.

  I drained the coffee he’d brought and made the call I should have made yesterday.

  “Raisa? Can I come by today? I may need help again.”

  Raisa Fortas was the Pima County public defender who’d been assigned to my case three years ago, after I’d fired my father’s choice of lawyer. She stood only four-foot ten, had a pronounced mustache, and chain-smoked Karelia Slims from the Ukraine. She also breathed fire in a courtroom, cowing both county attorneys and the juries with what she called “babushka guilt”: “You think Jewish or Catholic mothers can guilt-trip you? You’ve never heard it in Russian.”

  She’d never asked if I’d killed Walter Racine. Instead, she showed me the evidence and the witness list that the prosecution had prepared and said, “Which of these is going to be a problem for me?” We’d gone through the list item by item. The phone calls I’d made to Children’s Services and the cops about Walter Racine? That could help the prosecution prove motive, but nothing else. They’d done a cursory investigation and said Walter Racine was not a child molester. Did she have to worry about them coming up with the gun? Not a problem.

  She told me to come downtown at noon and we could get together for lunch. I squeezed the truck into a space in a public lot off Stone and met her in front of her office. She was lighting the tip of one thin cigarette from the glowing ember of another. She made it look like a magic act.

  “Madame Public Defender,” I said with a smile. She held her arms wide, a lit cigarette in each hand, the handle of her cane hooked over her forearm, and offered herself for a hug. When she stepped back from my embrace, I saw the anger in her eyes.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She shrugged. “I really needed this smoke. Just got a lesser charge for this sweet little Mexican girl whose baby died while she was trying to cross. But she should never even have been prosecuted.”

  “They said she killed her baby?”

  “Yeah, because they couldn’t catch the damn coyotes who brought them over. It makes me so damn mad.” She picked a piece of loose tobacco off her tongue.

  “She wouldn’t give them up?” The coyotes are “human jackals” who take money from immigrants who want to cross the border, then often leave them locked in sweltering trucks or alone without water in the desert.

  “She didn’t know any names. Or, if she did, she was worried about what they’d do to her family in Mexico.”

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “She got caught in a tug of war between the mother and one of the coyotes.” She took a long drag off the cigarette. “Like a rag doll, the poor thing.”

  The horror of what that mother must be going through, I thought. In trying to save her daughter’s life, she’d killed her.

  Raisa linked her arm through mine and guided me down the street to a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop. “What’s up with you? Are you in trouble again?”

  “I’m not sure.” I told her about my new life in Phoenix, about hearing Markson’s car accident and the beating, and about Len Sabin’s interest.

  “You should have shut up the minute they had you in that interview room.”

  “I know. But until Sabin read me my rights, I still thought I was helping them.”

  “Horse pucky. You should stop helping them and start helping yourself. And they should have known that you were represented by counsel.” She draped a paper napkin over her knee and picked up the pastrami sandwich she’d ordered.

  “Still? Even when they’re talking about a different murder?”

  “Even more important then. You tell them to call me next time.”

  I promised I would. It was probably just a courtesy on Raisa’s part. She couldn’t represent me until I was charged with a crime and then asked for a public defender. Or maybe there was some carryover if she’d represented me once before. I didn’t know, but was grateful for the backup nonetheless.

  She leaned on me on the way back to the County Legal Services Building, her limp a bit more exaggerated than I’d remembered, her hair a bit grayer than it had been. But I’d changed, too, since that time, both inside and out.

  “Watch out for Len Sabin,” she said when we parted. “I’ve had a couple of cases against him since your trial. He still thinks of you as the one who got away.”

  Raisa’s warning was still ringing in my ears when I turned into the driveway at Bonita’s house. I considered backing up and pulling away when I spotted Sabin in the webbed chair on the front porch.

  He got up and sauntered toward the truck.

  “Ms. Gammage,” he said around the candy in his mouth, and ignoring my desire for a new life with a new name.

  “What a surprise, Detective.” I got out of the truck but kept my distance.

  “Just thought I’d let you know that we’ve confirmed Markson’s time of death.”

  “Then you know I had nothing to do with it.”

  “On the contrary. The injuries he got in that beating Friday night had a lot of time to bruise up. He may not have been shot until much later, maybe even the next day.”

  What? He thought I somehow arranged to be on the receiving end of Markson’s phone call on purpose? And then came to town to kill him? Not even the mo
st prosecution-friendly judge or jury in the state would believe that.

  “Saturday,” he went on. “When you were in town. Hanging around the place we found his car. And then right there when somebody else gets blown up with a car bomb.”

  “You remember my attorney’s name, don’t you, Detective? Raisa Fortas? Contact her if you have any other questions for me.”

  I brushed past him and unlocked the front door, but didn’t stop shaking until I heard his car pull away.

  Where had Markson been between the time I heard that beating on Friday and when he was shot? He hadn’t been in a hospital, although he would surely have needed one. And if they were going to kill him anyway, why had they waited until the next day to do it?

  Maybe someone had been holding him for ransom. That would explain Emily Markson’s not calling the police immediately when she heard from her husband on Saturday morning. If she’d really heard from him at all. Had it been a call from the kidnappers instead of a call from New Mexico?

  Unless…maybe I’d heard somebody else get beat up that night and Markson was in on it. Just because his body had bruises and injuries doesn’t mean that was the beating I heard.

  Deke Treadwell said they had taken blood samples out in the desert the night they found the car. He had no reason to tell me the results of those tests, unless you counted friendship as an excuse.

  “Deke?” I said into the phone.

  “Now don’t start in on me about Len Sabin, Jessie; he’s just got a bug up—”

  “It’s not that, although I wish you could call him off. Remember those blood samples you guys took the night you found Markson’s car? Was it his blood?”

  He waited long enough to tell me that friendship didn’t weigh quite as much as professionalism, then finally coughed up the answer.

  “Yeah, it was his.”

  So much for the Markson-as-villain theory. I may not have been there for the whole opera of his death, but I sure heard Act One.

  “And somebody else’s,” he added.

  I took advantage of a free introductory day at a local gym to work out my frustration, pushing myself to do both upper-and lower-body workouts since I didn’t know when I’d get another chance to get my hands on real equipment again. It was much more civilized than sand-filled gas jugs, although I cringed when I heard Stabbing Westward’s “Save Yourself” crashing through the sound system. That was too close to the truth. I managed a hundred pounds on the incline bench press and did extra sets of leg extensions and leg curls, just for the pain of it.

  Back in the truck, I was draining one of the gym’s free bottles of cold water when I glanced in the rearview mirror, my attention caught by the vertical hop of the car behind me.

  It was a classic low rider—a Cutlass from the late seventies by the look of it—with an airbrushed black pearl finish. It must have had a hell of a hydraulic system, as the driver made it hop like a jack-in-the-box as we waited for the light to change.

  Four guys in the car, all slunk down like they were in easy chairs. Three of them had bandanas folded like caps over their heads and tied in back.

  We made it another six blocks before a light stopped us again. This time the low rider pulled alongside me. Gold spoke wheels and whitewall tires.

  The guy in the front passenger seat turned and stared at me. Latino. A teenager. No emotion but steely resolve in his eyes. I wasn’t about to get in any mad-dogging contest with him so I turned away, but not before I saw his bare hand come up above the window frame, fashion itself into the shape of a gun, and finger-shoot me in the head.

  “Pow,” he mouthed as his hand jerked with the imagined recoil.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Are you still looking for Carlos?” the voice asked.

  “Who is this?” There weren’t many people who had my cell phone number.

  “Guillermo Ochoa. We met yesterday at Carlos’s house.”

  I wasn’t likely to forget him. “I thought you’d washed my number away.”

  There was a smile in his response. “Not before I committed it to memory…So you came by the house again?”

  Jesus, I’d just entered myself in the Dumb Question contest. I might as well have been wearing a “bimbo” sign.

  “Have you heard from your brother yet?”

  There was a long pause, then, “No. I was hoping you had something new on your end.”

  “Not really.” Where should I start? With HandsOn? Or my murder trial? Felicia’s beer coaster? Or the identification of Markson’s body?

  “Can we get together?” he asked. “Maybe if we swap stories…I’m getting worried about Carlos.”

  I wanted to swap more than stories with him. We agreed to meet for dinner at Mariscos Chihuahua. I was tempted to ask for a couple of hours to go get my hair done, get a make up lesson, buy new clothes and get my teeth whitened, but agreed on seven o’clock.

  I pawed through the clothes in my suitcase until I came up with a halter top and jeans that made me look five pounds thinner and five years younger. Those, plus a substantial application of American Greaser to spike my hair, would have to do. I pulled the shirt tight at my waist. You couldn’t see the body of the dragon tattoo that sat right at my tailbone—just the scaly tail that crawled up my spine. That ink had hurt a hell of a lot more than my jailhouse jacks, but I was used to pain by then.

  I didn’t know if I could trust Guillermo, but he was my only potential source of information about Carlos, and Carlos was my best link to Felicia’s death. That, of course, could track back to Markson’s death and Len Sabin’s reason to come after me.

  I’d pump this guy for as much information as I could get.

  The first few minutes at the restaurant were awkward—me sucking down a creamy horchata, him stripping the wet label from a bottle of beer he’d ordered before I got there.

  “Do you prefer Guillermo or Bill?” was my most incisive question.

  “Guillermo. Bill’s just the English version, not my real name.” He said he worked for an equipment rental place. “Generators, loaders, just about any tool. That wet saw at Carlos’s place was one of ours.”

  I told him about HandsOn and getting the call from Markson after his car had been hit. I omitted any reference to my life in Tucson before that.

  When the waitress came by again, Guillermo asked for the fiery shrimp endiablados. I ordered fish Culichi style, hoping that the creamy green sauce wouldn’t be as hot.

  “Why do you think Felicia went out there?” I asked after telling him about my first run-in with the teenager.

  “It was a special place for her and Carlos. He was doing the framing on some new houses going up out there after her father fired him from the bar, and she’d meet him at the arroyo when she could get away. I think it’s where they really fell in love.”

  “You think that beer coaster was meant for Carlos?” I’d told him about the note written on the edge of it.

  He nodded. “I’m sure of it. But if she wanted him to come to the bar, it must have meant that her father was keeping close tabs on her. I can’t imagine any other reason she’d risk having her father see Carlos.” He paused. “It also means that he’s been gone a lot longer than I thought. I was supposed to help him on the house starting on Wednesday. When he hadn’t shown up by Thursday, the day I met you, I was getting worried. But now it looks like he might have been missing since last Sunday when you found Felicia at the arroyo.”

  “Tell me about Carlos. What’s he like?” I picked at the french fries that were glistening with sauce from the fish.

  “I’m the big brother, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Sometimes Carlos does all the protecting.”

  He took a long swig of beer.

  “We didn’t move to Nogales until I was twelve. Carlos was six. Before that, we lived in this little piss-water town in Chihuahua. Our biggest adventure was going down to the arroyo, pretending to be conquistadores or banditos, flailing around with cholla cactus branches like they were whip
s. One day, we’d followed a branch of that dry creek bed for hours, and we’d wandered away from anything we recognized and got lost. Night got cold. I got a fire going. Picked some of the barrel cactus buds…”

  I waited while he peeled another beer label.

  “They call that Desperation Fruit, you know that? The barrel cactus? Sometimes it’s the only thing available to eat in the winter, and man, we were hungry. Anyway, our parents didn’t find us until the next morning. I kept Carlos distracted by telling him stories—happy endings, you know? No ghost stories—until they came to get us.”

  He pushed his plate away, nothing but shrimp tails left.

  “Just a few years later, it was Carlos telling me stories with happy endings. We’d moved to Nogales and life was rougher there. Carlos got tough fast. Pretty soon he was the one with all the answers.”

  I pictured the sharp peaks surrounding Nogales like the walls of a coliseum around the gladiators. And just like that arena, the fighting was done at street level—by gangs, scam artists, pimps, and coyotes.

  He shook his head at the memory.

  “Six years younger than me—skinny as a rail and carrying this big, splintery stick around—and all the time telling me that things would be okay, that he’d protect me.”

  I began to see why Felicia had loved him.

  “Where do you think he is?”

  He shrugged. “Nobody in the family has heard from him. I’m going down to Nogales tomorrow. See if the Braceros know anything.”

  “Want some company?”

  His mouth tightened. I knew he wasn’t looking forward to confronting the gang he’d tried to leave behind.

  “No, you shouldn’t—”

  “I want to.”

  And I knew just what to bring as a party favor.

  My father taught all seven of us kids to shoot. He’d say, “If I’m going to keep guns around the house, I want you to know what to do with them. And what not to do.” My mother, who already disliked the fact that he was a police officer, did not take well to these desert target practice sessions.

  I’d done fine with the Glock like the one my dad carried every day, but less well with the sniper rifle. I didn’t need a two-foot barrel and sight to find those hubcaps I was aiming at anyway.