The Big Bitch

by John Patrick Lang

  “ ‘Exigent circumstances’?” I threw up my hands “What you have is an end run around the Fourth Amendment. Speaking of the Fourth Amendment, what did you do, leave it in your other pants?”

  Hobbs laughed and then directed me toward the living room.

  “That’s good, Holiday. I’ll remember to use that next time. In the meantime I want to introduce you to someone, but hey, I think you two have already met. You see, not only did we have your house under surveillance, we were watching you. Until you left town. If this asshole here hadn’t been such an obvious tail you might have made our guy.”

  Sitting on the couch was the man from the airport—the one I had punched. A uniformed policeman stood next to him and Manners stood to the other side. Tonight the man was wearing a T-shirt that revealed arms with both gang and prison tattoos.

  “Holiday, say hello to Silvestre Muñoz. Approximately an hour ago Silvestre was seen breaking through the back window of your house. As I said, your place has been under surveillance and so we saw the forced entry. We also discovered that our perp here is a member of Cortez’s parish in San Pablo and acquainted with the late priest. Silvestre has been reluctant to talk but I’m confident he will.”

  “I don’t say shit, maricón,” Silvestre spat out.

  “If you’re going to call me a faggot, at least have the courtesy to do so in my native tongue.” Hobbs slapped him across the face. Hard. Then he backhanded him just as hard,

  “In English, por favor,” he said. “Call me a faggot.”

  Silvestre just sat there. Hobbs slapped him again even harder. And then he backhanded him twice. Silvestre’s head bobbed from the punches like a boxer’s speed-bag. Hobbs lifted his hand to strike again.

  “You a faggot, a’right,” Silvestre said, still defiant.

  “See how easy it is to be courteous?” Hobbs said. “See how little it takes to be polite? Now that you’re talking, tell me why you killed the priest.”

  “I didn’t kill Father Jesus. I never kill a priest.”

  “You never kill a priest. You’d knock over the pope for two cartons of cigarettes and five bags of crack,” sneered Hobbs.

  “I don’t never kill no priests. I’m clean.”

  “You’re dirty. You were born dirty. Parasitic leeches on the ass of civilization like you have been born dirty since the Stone Age, and every generation, it suits you better to be born dirty. Trash like you doesn’t evolve, it devolves, becoming viler and more violent, until you have become an unnamed subhuman species much closer to an insect than a man. You are dirty. You were born dirty, and you’ll die dirty,” Hobbs’ voice grew more strident as his skin darkened from its usual pink to a crimson tone. “Now you’re going to tell me why you killed the priest. And then you’re going to tell me why you creeped this house.”

  Hobbs leaned over him, a foot from Silvestre’s face.

  “I don’t tell you shit.”

  “You still owe the state three and a half years. I’m personally going to drive you back to San Quentin tonight and tuck you in with your daddy. Your daddy’ll be glad to see you. Happy to have his bitch back to suck his dick and toss his salad.”

  “I ain’t no bitch.”

  “You’re a punk and a bitch. It took Holiday here one punch to knock you out. You’re gonna spill what little guts you have. Now!”

  Manners said in a tone suggesting support, “Silvestre, your cooperation here could result in you walking on a parole violation. You committed a felony tonight; you still have three years and four months on your armed robbery conviction. Help us out and you can help yourself.”

  “So you the good cop and he the bad cop?” Silvestre said, cocking his head from man to man.

  “I’m not a bad cop,” said Hobbs. “I’m an evil cop. Or as some people have said about me: I’m medieval.” Hobbs clamped the handcuffs down tighter until Silvestre cried out. “Fuck! That’s police brutality.”

  “Don’t lecture me on police brutality. I teach a graduate course on the subject at the university here. I hold nineteen international copyrights on excessive force. Asshole, when it comes to police brutality, I am the exclusive West Coast wholesale distributor.” He tightened the handcuffs down until Silvestre’s wrists began to bleed.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. “Police brutality! Fuck you, faggot!”

  Hobbs nodded his head at the uniformed policeman and Manners. They quickly left the room.

  “Pay attention, Silvestre, I’m gonna show you something.” Grabbing Silvestre by the hair, Hobbs lifted him up from the couch, pulled his head back, and slammed his face full force into the wall. I could hear the crushing of nose cartilage and the chipping of either teeth or bone as a picture fell off the wall and crashed to the floor. Hobbs pulled him around, revealing a face that was bleeding from eyebrows, nose, and mouth. With his right hand, Hobbs gave him a karate punch in the solar plexus. Silvestre retched and vomited on himself as he fell to his knees. Hobbs picked him up and asked again if he was paying attention. As he stood him straight up, he delivered a left hook square in his testicles. Silvestre fell to his knees, making gurgling sounds.

  “Hope you’re paying attention, Silvestre, ’cause this right here, this is police brutality.”

  “Jesus, Hobbs, make yourself at home. Just take out a wall if needs be,” I said to Hobbs, who ignored me.

  Silvestre gasped for air like a hooked fish flopping on a boat deck. He made a choking sound, and then gasping, said, “All I come here for is the key. Just the key.”

  I stood there repulsed as he fell forward unconscious into a pool of his own blood, spittle, and vomit.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I walked over to the battered Silvestre. “Jesus Christ, Hobbs, do you see what you’ve done to this guy?”

  “If it bothers you so much, Holiday, don’t look.”

  Hobbs caught his breath and then bellowed, “Manners, get the first aid kit and patch him up. Then throw him in the shower. I’m not done interrogating him.”

  “Like I mentioned, just make yourself at home, Hobbs,” I said, pointing to the disheveled state my house was in now after the search and subsequent struggle with Silvestre.

  “Thanks, Holiday. It’s the cooperation of good citizens like you that makes the Berkeley Police Department the model operation it has become,” said Hobbs with a supercilious smile.

  Two uniforms picked up Silvestre and took him into the bathroom. Manners approached Hobbs. “Just got off the phone with his PO. Guy was pissed I woke him up.”

  “Fuck him,” said Hobbs. “So?”

  “Says that the reason the parole board let him out early had a lot to do with Father Cortez. Seems Cortez ran an outreach program for Catholic convicts at San Quentin, and Silvestre was a member of the group. According to Father Cortez, Silvestre had a genuine religious conversion.”

  “A genuine religious conversion? Oh, really? What’s the name of this outreach group? ‘I’m born again ’til I get out again’?” laughed Hobbs.

  “I don’t know, but his parole officer says in four months Silvestre has never missed a weekly meeting with him, that he’s been working steady, and that he never failed a piss test.”

  “Okay. Look in on him. Get him patched up and conscious.”

  I turned to Hobbs. “Do you really think he killed Jesus?”

  Hobbs pulled a silver flask out of his briefcase and took a long swig. The heavy smell of whiskey almost made my eyes water. “No. I doubt he even knows anything material to the murder. But he does know something about Cortez—which, in general, is more than I can say for you or me—and he probably knows something about the money. But let’s talk about Muriel.”

  “Muriel?”

  “Yeah, who do you know named Muriel?”

  “Muriel?” I shrugged.

  “Good-looking guy like you must have at least six Muriels in his little black book.”

  “I don’t have a little black book. And I don’t know anyone named Muriel.”

  “Corte
z ever mention a woman by that name?”

  “Never mentioned a woman ever that I recall.”

  “You guys are drinking buddies for a year and you never discussed women?” Hobbs demanded.

  “I didn’t say that. But keep in mind he was a priest. And a very secretive man, as I’ve said. And as you subsequently found out. I suspected he had a woman somewhere, but I never asked and he never told.”

  “Holiday, I notice you have a whole bookshelf full of classical literature.” He stood up, took down a copy of Balzac’s Le Père Goriot and flipped through it. “Do you read it, or do you just show it off to get laid?”

  “Both.”

  “All right, then what do you know about Apollinaire?”

  “The poet?”

  “Yeah. What do you know about him?”

  “What is this?” I said, taking the novel from his hands and putting it back on my shelf. “Jeopardy the Home Game?” I’d had my fill of Horace Hobbs.

  Hobbs threw up his hands, his face reddening again. “What this is is a homicide investigation! An investigation that seems to have captured the interest of nearly fucking everyone from the bishop to the governor’s office to Fox News to the so-called alternative press. A case that is long on heat and short on evidence. A case that is just now bringing attention to my history of what they like to call ‘unorthodox detective work.’ A case that will soon, if it isn’t already, be looking into your funny little yesterdays. Shit neither of us needs. So like they say on the TV cop shows, we can do this here, or down at the station with you handcuffed to a wall.” Hobbs’ face turned from crimson to scarlet, and his eyes bugged. “I’m asking you again, who the fuck is Apollinaire?”

  I was tempted to ask if his police department had ever heard of Google or Wikipedia, or if Hobbs had had his library card suspended. But I wasn’t certain whether he was bluffing or not, or exactly what he was capable of. I decided to humor him.

  “Captain Hobbs,” I said, “you’ve got me all wrong. I am always happy to cooperate with the police when it comes to dead French poets. Having said that, here we go: Apollinaire is a dead French poet. He is generally grouped with poets like Lautréamont and Éluard—members of the surrealist movement. In fact, Apollinaire, who wrote from the turn of the twentieth century until he died of the flu at the end of World War I, is often acknowledged as the man who coined the term ‘surrealism.’ What else do you want to know?”

  “Who reads Apollinaire?”

  I wanted to respond that naïve nineteen-year-old college sophomores who get seduced by their beautiful forty-year-old French Lit professors read Apollinaire. But I rarely discussed Angelina Ashe with anyone, and I wasn’t about to do so with Horace Hobbs. It was a half a lifetime ago, but still the mention of Apollinaire or Lautréamont brought back a wave of bitterness. Angelina, with all her fetishes, and all her self-absorption, still haunted my dreams like a painting by Magritte or a film by Buñuel.

  “I don’t think he is read in high school, so I am guessing that he’s studied on the undergraduate or graduate level. Whatever the point is, Hobbs, why don’t you get to it?”

  He sat down on the couch again, reached into his battered briefcase, and pulled out a plastic evidence bag.

  “Here’s the point. Open it up. There aren’t any usable prints.”

  I pulled out a leather-bound copy of Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire. As I thumbed through the book I came upon my favorite poem, “The Song of the Poorly Loved.” A Post-it with an arrow was stuck close to the middle of the book, and I opened it to the poem “Marzibel.” One side of the book was French the other English. On the English side someone had highlighted a few lines in yellow marker. Lines to the effect that most people, no matter their station in life, were neither the masters of their fates nor the captains of their souls.

  “Read the inscription on the cover page,” said Hobbs.

  I turned to it. In almost perfect penmanship was written:

  Jesus, I will never forget that weekend in La Jolla, or the way you copiously quoted Dante while I systematically misquoted Apollinaire. Here is a book to set the record straight. And, for the record, while I know we cannot have forever, there is a part of me that will be forever Jesus Cortez.

  Loving you truly,

  Muriel

  I handed the book and the evidence bag back to Hobbs. He said, “I’d say whoever this Muriel is, he was putting something in her mouth besides Holy Communion.”

  “I wouldn’t phrase it as elegantly as you, Hobbs, but it does seem like a romance.”

  “Romance? What it seems like to me is that Father Cortez was taking his vow of chastity just about as serious as the rest of his priesthood colleagues do these days.” He took a swig from his flask. “With the possible exception that this Muriel is likely a consenting adult. Not to mention a female. But whoever or whatever she is, we need to find her. Our so-called handwriting expert puts her as a female in her thirties.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah, we. In looking through more than five hundred books Cortez owned, we found nothing personal in any except this one. I already told you that he left no personal correspondence, address book, or anything like it. One reason we don’t know who the killer is is that we don’t even know who the victim is. Like blind mice, we’re scurrying around feeding on scraps. Scraps like Silvestre. This Muriel has got to know something we don’t. Pillow talk can tell you a lot. Hell, maybe she’s even the shooter, but whatever else, I trust you’re going to find her.”

  “You trust me? To find her?” I moved from the hall doorway where I had been standing over to where Hobbs sat on my couch.

  “I trust everyone to act in their own self-interest. And you cannot have forgotten that whoever knocked over a priest in broad daylight wearing his Roman collar knows who you are, and you are in jeopardy until you find out who he, she, or they are. We have looked at both his parishes, and started running down the obvious databases, but we have no lead on this Muriel. So you, who I am still convinced was connected to Cortez from day one, will have to find her.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I am likely to have another homicide. One that is likely to be far less high profile, with less public interest, and less of a pain in the ass than this one. Get the picture, Holiday?”

  “I’m getting a lot of pictures,” I said smiling and shaking my head. “This Muriel issue is just like the money. The information about the money was never released to the press, and I heard the latest about this case on the radio coming from the airport. No mention of any person of interest or witness named Muriel. You’re providing a civilian with confidential police information on a homicide. Not to mention beating a person of interest unconscious. You’re not real big on procedure, are you, Captain?”

  “Procedure? You think I closed major cases with procedure?” He tipped his flask up and then drained it, leaned forward, and said, “If I’d followed procedure in my career, at least a half a dozen murderers would still be on the street, and do you know where I’d be?” He spat out a short, dark laugh. “If I’d followed procedure, today I’d be the chief of police of Philadelphia.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I pulled up an old Philadelphia Enquirer article about Hobbs in his glory days. He’d surreptitiously joined a chapter of Mensa to catch a killer. Not only did he pass the IQ test, but he also caught the murderer. I believed it. Just as I believed him to be a high functioning alcoholic brute and boor who became more unlikable the more you got to know him. What I didn’t buy was his theory that I was somewhat connected to Jesus Cortez or his people before I even met the murdered priest. His theory was thin, and I couldn’t find a way to support it. And I wasn’t ready to saddle up, join the posse, and go hunt down Muriel—although I had to respect her taste both in men and poetry.

  What I had to agree with was that we didn’t really know who Jesus Cortez was. The only personal effect that he’d left behind linking him to anyone or anything else on the planet was a book of poetry
. Even when drunk, he’d been a guarded, private man, vague about his past, a man with a secret that he guarded as if his life depended on it. And it probably had. So who was he? Who killed him and why? And who was this Latino gangbanger stalking me and breaking into my house? I felt like I had been drafted into a Theatre of the Absurd drama—one I didn’t want to play a part in.

  Manners and a uniformed patrolman walked Silvestre back into the room. The bridge of his nose was heavily taped and butterfly bandages were above both eyes. His bottom lip seemed to have swollen to twice its size, and when he gasped at the site of Hobbs, his mouth revealed a missing tooth.

  “Keep him away from me,” Silvestre cried. He stared at me as if asking for protection as I stood between him and Hobbs, who was still seated on the couch.

  “Had enough police brutality?” asked Hobbs. “Me, too. So tell me who killed the priest.”

  “I don’t know nothing! I didn’t kill no priest, don’t know who did. Swear to God!”

  “Why don’t you swear to something you really believe in. Like your ass, because if you don’t start talking to me you’ll be wearing your ass for a hat. So let’s start from the beginning: there you are on the road to Damascus, and you see the light and hear the voice of Jesus calling you to pick up the cross of salvation? Right?”

  “No. I wasn’t on no road. I was in prison.”

  “And who says patriotism, not religion, is the last refuge of the scoundrel?” laughed Hobbs. “If you want to wave the crucifix to keep you from incarceration, you had better start staying awake in Bible studies, Silvestre. Let me quote to you from the Book of Proverbs.” Hobbs rose, approached Silvestre, and pretended to grab him by his testicles. Silvestre twisted in his chair and shrieked.

  “If thou canst seize his balls, then surely thou hast seized his heart, mind, and tongue,” Hobbs said as he leaned closer, and then added in a low, cold, quiet voice, “Start talking to me, you convict cocksucker, or the next sacrament you receive will be Extreme Unction. Why are you in this house? Why were you following Holiday?”