by CB McKenzie
What’s peculiar, Little Rodeo?
You know what peculiar is, Eryn.
Eryn Hage frowned. They had a peculiar relationship, the landlord said.
Rodeo waited but nothing more was immediately forthcoming from Eryn Hage.
Who did?
Him and that sister of his, said the landlord.
Peculiar in which direction, Eryn?
Just peculiar, she said. They were twins, you know.
Rodeo raised an eyebrow.
This is not my business, Eryn Hage said.
What’s not your business, Eryn?
Whatever was going on over there, she said. The landlord gestured with her tumbler in the general direction of the rental unit on the north end of the house.
I’m not following you, Eryn.
You seen those kids of hers? asked Eryn Hage.
No, said Rodeo. Why you asking that, Eryn?
If you’re investigating that Miller bunch then maybe you should take a look at those kids of Sisely Miller’s and give Randy a once-over while you’re at it.
What do you mean, Eryn?
Even though I appreciate his politics, Randy’s queer as a three-dollar bill and those kids of hers are a couple of inbred mongoloids if I ever saw them.
Sisely Miller’s kids aren’t by Judge Miller? asked Rodeo. You think Judge Miller has a wife and kids as cover?
You just cover your own ass if you are working for the Millers is all I’m saying, Little Rodeo. The old woman stood and started toward the front of her house. Rodeo put on his hat and obediently followed the old woman into the foyer and walked through the door she opened.
Good to see you, Little Rodeo, Eryn Hage said. I’ll call the TPD about getting you back into my place to snoop around.
I’m not sure you can speed that wheel, Eryn. Rodeo had turned to go, so Eryn spoke to his back.
You have no idea what an old lady is capable of doing in this world, Little Rodeo, the old woman said. You have no idea at all.
* * *
Rodeo knocked at the front door of the only other house on that block, a massive adobe nearly as large as Eryn Hage’s. THE BLUE HOUSE was painted above a front door that was as thick as a bank vault’s. This huge adobe house was painted periwinkle blue. With the August Arizona sun shining the residence resembled a child’s crooked drawing of a generic house on a summer’s day except for the two pink plastic flamingos in flagrante delicto near the crumbling front steps.
Multiple locks clicked as Rodeo tilted his hat back and stared up at another security camera. The heavy door opened and a thin middle-aged man in a kimono appeared. There was not a single hair on this man’s head, face or body to be seen. His features were delicate and his skin glowed in a medium shade of brown but his eyes were hard and black.
Howdy, Egg.
The man looked at Rodeo from head to toe.
You look like shit, Hot Rod.
That seems to be the standard opinion of me today, Egberto.
The hairless man stepped aside and Rodeo entered the adobe house and Egberto locked the safe door shut behind them.
And why are you here after months and months of us not seeing you?
Just in the neighborhood.
Bullshit.
Seeking neighborhood gossip then, Rodeo said.
That makes more sense for you, Egberto said. The man moved toward the back of the house and Rodeo followed. I am not seeing people at the moment since I have a show to get ready for. But you are welcome to an audience with the Porn Lord if he’s seeing people today.
How is Richard? Rodeo asked. I heard he was sick.
Going going … The host waved a hand backwards and forwards. Some days he is the same old Richard Dick as of old and some days he isn’t.
Which is better?
Egberto stopped in the middle of a big room, turned to Rodeo and shrugged theatrically.
The bad news is that Richard Dick is not the man he used to be. Egberto’s smile demonstrated perfect teeth. But that’s the good news too.
How is it today with him?
Richard is not feeling well of late but he got some new hash to smoke today. So it might be a good day for you, Rod. He misses company.
I thought you were his company, Egg.
I am, said Egberto. But you know how active he always was. Flitting and fucking here and there and everywhere. Richard Dick was never a one-man woman or a one-woman man.
The man turned and continued through a maze of interconnected rooms that were decorated solely with huge tapestry pillows and prayer rugs on the polished and stained concrete floors and oversized modernist paintings on the original adobe walls. Complicated culinary smells filled the air from the nearby kitchen.
What’s cooking, Egg?
Egberto did not stop but spoke over his shoulder. Hatch peppers stuffed with homemade elk sausage. But Richard doesn’t eat much anymore and you won’t be here long enough to have lunch will you?
I won’t be here that long, Egberto.
Egberto led Rodeo past a huge Martín Montoya horse painting and a Jorge Frick color study and to a vintage pole ladder stuck through a hole in the middle of the ceiling of a small back room where he stopped and turned around. Rodeo stopped and looked up the ladder but Egberto stayed in place in front of it.
How’s your whore fiend Sirena these days, Rod? Egberto asked.
Sirena and I don’t keep in touch, said Rodeo.
Egberto gave Rodeo a skeptical look but shrugged.
Well, I know since Miss Prissy Tits is out of rehab she’s been boning the Professor next door, Egberto said. Though I gather he kicked the OD bucket today or yesterday or recently.
I don’t know who she was dating, Rodeo said. Not me.
Is that what you came to find out, Rod? Are you being a jealous man? Sirena can make a normal man a jealous man, you know. Even I was jealous of the bitch when Richard was fucking her.
The bald man put a hand on a rung of the ladder. I have endured as much from that bitch as have you.
We’re both grown men, Egg. We make decisions.
The bald man looked at Rodeo carefully.
I did not make the decision for Sirena to move in here and try to take my place. I went along with the decision but I hardly think I made it.
You could have left, Rodeo said.
Egberto shook his head. That’s the difference between you and me, Rod, the man said. I couldn’t leave.
* * *
Send our dear friend up the ladder now, please, Egberto! A cracked and thin voice came through the crawl hole in the ceiling as a wisp of gray smoke.
Egberto left the room. Rodeo climbed the ladder of converging poles and emerged on a lush rooftop garden decorated Moroccan style and rimmed by terra-cotta pots overflowing with large and healthy paddle plants, sharkskin agaves, topsy turvies, cherry coke and silver sawblades and multiple varieties of aloe and variegated and plain palms. A confederacy of satellite dishes were arrayed protectively around the rim of the garden. Rodeo stuck his head through the crawl hole.
Howdy, Richard.
An emaciated and terminally tan Anglo man in cutoff khakis used a little glass pipe to gesture at a low, cushioned bench. A faded-to-pink tank top promoting The University of Arizona Women’s Water Polo team was draped on the man as if on wire hangers. Thinned and dyed black hair hung in lank ringlets to his shoulders. Richard Dick smiled genially and then coughed convulsively, cleared his throat and relit his pipe. Once Rodeo was on the roof and seated the host bowed toward his guest from the oversized butterfly chair he seemed encased in.
I thought I recognized that gorgeous baritone. You want some very excellent hashish, Rod? I made it myself.
You know I don’t smoke it, Richard.
Richard Dick chuckled in his throat. It shocks me sometimes, Rod, that you still like me knowing how much you despise me.
I don’t despise you, Richard. I just don’t like the pretend “porn star name” you and Egberto gave me.
&
nbsp; True, it does not follow the rules of pet’s name plus mother’s maiden name, but your pet has no name and “Rod Grace” has a nasty but angelic ring to it. The porn king sniffed his stained fingertips. And you should have worked for me when I was doing fuck films, Rod. You had the right résumé, so to speak.
I don’t think so, Richard.
And yet Sirena Rae, the love of your life, worked for me for many years.
Sirena Rae was never the love of my life, Rodeo said. She was a girlfriend. And you had lots of women working for you, on the pole and in front of the camera. I have never been sure why she took root so much with you.
Really? Did you never fuck the woman? The porn king laughed hoarsely and stared at Rodeo’s exposed and abraded wrists. She had a dance scholarship to the University of Arizona. Did you know that?
Her daddy says she had an academic scholarship for geniuses to Arizona State.
At which university a pole dancer who can read probably would be a genius. Richard Dick laughed until he coughed. Sirena does draw that allegiance from some of us deluded fools. But Egberto is correct in this. She does not deserve our beloved attentions. Brilliant and fuckable as she is, she’s a shooting star.
She’s just a woman, said Rodeo. The world is half full of them as you know better than me since you use women for your living.
Richard Dick coughed against the smoke escaping from him. Actually I use men’s desires for women to make my living, he said. But it remains that Sirena was one of my best “Dick’s Girls.” Sirena had a national following, as you know. She traveled the strip club circuit much as you used to travel the rodeo circuit.
I don’t see me riding saddle broncs for a living and Sirena riding poles for a living as equivalent, Richard, Rodeo said.
Probably because a good stripper or porn star always makes more money than a good rodeo cowboy. Though their careers probably end as sadly. As did yours.
Rodeo unfolded himself from the settee and moved to the terrace wall that faced the property line of Eryn Hage. He peered toward Eryn’s house but little could be seen through the thickness of mesquite tree branches from the Hage side but a glimmer of the swimming pool. Rodeo kept his back to his host.
Sirena’s father was just murdered, Rodeo said.
She probably killed Apache Ray herself, Richard Dick said. She certainly threatened to often enough when she lived with us.
I’m sure Sirena’s a suspect but I imagine the sheriff’s death was more likely a drug hit or maybe some unofficial payback for something the sheriff did or didn’t do in his official capacities, said Rodeo.
You don’t suspect Sirena?
Ray ran a pretty clean county and that can make a sheriff a lot of real enemies.
You didn’t answer my question, Rod.
The ones you love are usually the ones that kill you in the end, Richard. I do believe that.
And you know Ray was loaded. And you know as well as I do that Sirena hates, hated her father and loves money, said Richard Dick. And she’s too lazy to ever do any real work.
I don’t know much about the Molina finances, Rodeo said. I do know that Sirena Rae and her father had a complex relationship. And she is the laziest woman I ever met.
Sirena would hire somebody to brush her pretty teeth for her if she could afford to. Richard Dick smiled at his joke but then frowned at something else. During one of her confessional phases when she was living with us, Sirena told me Ray molested her when she was a kid. Do you believe that, Rod?
She did become a stripper, Rodeo said. But I’m not in any position to judge the relationship Ray and Sirena had, Richard. Ray always seemed pretty solid to me. Rodeo looked over his shoulder at his host then looked back into the trees.
Sirena told me once that Apache Ray wanted you to be his son-in-law, Rod. And that’s why she hooked up with you in the first place, to please her father. So maybe your “relationship” with her was part of her bad daddy complex?
Water under the bridge, Rodeo said. He turned toward his host. You spend a lot of time on this rooftop, Richard. You ever see anybody over there at Eryn’s rental place, in the northside apartment?
Ah, now we come to the real reason for your visit, said Richard Dick. He sounded disappointed. Information, the blood of your industry. You come to drink my blood.
Rodeo turned to look at his host and raised an eyebrow.
You know I seldom stir from my throne once I am ensconced, so there’s little I can tell you even if I cared to, Rod.
But you pay attention, Rodeo said.
Truly, I still do, Richard Dick said. I’m not sure why I persist in doing so, but I do.
So?
So at times I might have smelled a slight scent of White Shoulders, perhaps? Orange blossoms? And of cigarettes, foreign and domestic. And heard distant strains of Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Bach. And sounds of pleasure and of pain.
Rodeo steadied himself against the balustrade of the rooftop terrace.
When, Richard?
You know that in my opiate haze time and space and memory are often irrelevant, Rod. And if you or anyone else, official or otherwise, would expect me to testify to any of this recollection of mine in any court of law in America … The man waved a liver-speckled hand in the air to dismiss his testimony.
I’m not looking for a court appearance, Richard. Rodeo turned back to look at Tinley Burke’s apartment. But you think it was Sirena over there?
My sense of smell is still excellent. The man stared at the sky for a while and then sniffed his fingertips as if he had lost a memory in them and could recall it with enough focus. Richard Dick’s Sense of Smell … The man sniffed his fingertips again as a strange habit. I’m still good on this most primary sense. He nodded to himself. So I’m sure it was Sirena over there at least on several occasions during the last few weeks or months.
When?
I confuse my days, Rod. And even the hours of my days. I am an unreliable witness in extremis.
How long was she going over there, Richard? Rodeo turned back to look into the local treetops. How long was Sirena over at the Professor’s?
Only for several weeks, said the man. She always parked in the back. She was driving something large and rumbly.
You think Burke had other women while he was in residence at Eryn’s?
By scent I would say that there was at least one other woman who visited regularly, said Richard. Once or twice a month from the time he moved in. Always at night.
What was the other woman’s scent, Richard?
Jil Sander of some sort, I would say. And she smoked cigarettes, but not Sirena’s Marlboros.
Was this woman coming to see Tinley Burke when Sirena was over there too?
Not at the same hours, but during the same weeks, yes.
Rodeo turned to his host and leaned his hip on the low wall, crossed his arms on his chest.
Did you know Burke’s second woman?
Richard Dick shook his head. But both the unknown woman and Sirena parked in the back where they couldn’t be seen coming or going.
You think it was his sister that was the Professor’s other visitor?
You have such a prurient mind, Rod. I like that. When Richard Dick shook his head his long ringlets moved like fringe. I don’t know your Professor’s sister. I did not even know Tinley Burke except to recognize his voice.
Who was he talking to?
Eryn, usually about the garden or grounds. Occasionally himself. Sometimes I could hear him sobbing on his back porch when he was obviously in his cups or muttering as he rummaged through Eryn’s old mother-in-law shack in her backyard. The man on his rooftop sat contemplatively for a minute. But it may have been his sister. I do like that thought, I must admit.
His sister, Sisely is her name, is married, Rodeo said. To Randy Miller, the former judge.
Well … there’s married and there’s married. Richard Dick relit his pipe once again and waved a hand through thick smoke. Though currently a prominent member of th
e Tea Party I believe the good Judge Randy Miller used to be a rather circumspect member of the Tea Bag Party. I would consider that ironic but that it’s not. Richard Dick squinted toward the open trapdoor in the ceiling of his house. You could ask Egberto about Randy Miller, he said. I believe Egg might have … serviced Judge Junior back when Egg was still in the escort industry. Richard Dick paused. Though I would prefer that henceforward you not drag my consort and myself into any cesspool you might be currently trolling through. The days the Egg and the Dick have together are regrettably limited and we would prefer to spend these final days alone. Or entertaining real friends.
Thanks for the information, Richard, said Rodeo. I appreciate it.
We would truly welcome a real social call from you, Rod. Egg has become quite the chef lately. I believe his chicken enchiladas would compete favorably with Mi Nidito’s. Richard smiled slightly then grimaced. But if you mean to ever return for a real social call you should probably phone to make an appointment. Richard Dick inclined his head toward the ladder in the hole in the ceiling of his house, clearly dismissing his guest. Take care descending, my Hot Rod. It’s a desert down there.
* * *
The sun was tilting west fast as Rodeo’s old Ford 150 rattled over the ribs of the gutted dirt road named Elm Street. Even though Rodeo had only been gone a couple of days, his place felt more deserted without his dog in tow. He parked and went to the storage shed where he started his generator. Then he unloaded his gear into the casita, turned on his AC unit and the swamp cooler in the house and went back outside and crawled up the ladder onto his roof with binoculars and his rabbit rifle, a notch-scoped Savage rimfire .22.
This was the best time of the day to see bobcat and coyote and peccaries around his place and even an occasional coatimundi but Rodeo saw nothing this evening not even the hares and jackrabbits. A flash high on the nearby hillside caught his eye and he aimed the binoculars up into the Theatine Mountain range. He scanned the long trail up the side of the hill toward La Entrada but could identify nothing.
He slid down the aluminum ladder and reentered the house which had cooled by now to tolerable temperature. He took a short tepid shower, put clean sheets on his single-sized bed and locked his place down. He cleaned and reloaded his 9mm Glock and put it under his bed then spun the cylinder on the S&W .38 and put his father’s revolver atop his mother’s Bible before he crawled naked under the thin sheet and went to sleep.