The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller

by Noreen Ayres

  There was a dancer named Linda who went by Lacey. I wasn’t that drunk. She, however, was gone. She took an ice cube from her drink. “Here, Smokey, rub this on! Got to make those little soldiers stand at attention.” Her five-year-old daughter was there, cutting paper dolls out of a book, but badly.

  I said she was stone-assed wicked and told another woman to cover little Julie’s eyes. I’m not proud of any of that, but that was the way it was. I knew I was coming to the end of my stay at Foxland. Perhaps that’s why I let myself get more than a little tipsy. I didn’t know where I would go, just knew it was almost over. I remember thinking maybe I’d use Julie’s scissors to snip off a red snake of hair and give it to somebody sweet as a goodbye gift.

  When it was my turn on stage, through the dim light I saw a man and his son I’d conversed with several times before. A good dad, bringing the son to distract him from recent widowhood. Every once in a while the son (his name was Donny) would thrust his fist into the air and cry, “Roll with it, bay-bay!” and “Rock it on down!”

  A hat. I had an enormous black velvet hat. Where did it go? I paid a hundred dollars for it, if you can imagine. Almost a week’s wages. Extravagant in every way. A long, wide, soft, hat. You can leave your hat on. I remembered a thick-necked guy with a hoarse voice yelling, “Give you every inch of my love!”

  One time the son was there without the father but with friends. At my break they called me over. One of them said, “Can I dance with you, can I wash your feet, can I wash your hair?” Can I wash your hair? I’d forgotten about that till now. The originality of it. The silliness of it. I confess, I was tempted.

  Any woman is four or five women, the writer said.

  That final night I went home with the father, but I remembered the son. Tan, blond, good shoulders—a lot like a younger Gil Vanderman, but a wilder look in the eyes. I wondered whatever became of him. “Rock it on, bay-bay! Do it up right!”

  I saw the father once afterward in a grocery store, but not the son. Donny, he said, was up north fighting fires. Maybe now, these days, like Gil he’s out teaching kids about birds. Flamingos. Pink ones. Or helping a little girl cut out dolls, badly.

  SIXTEEN

  ABOCA DE JARRO: This was the headline strung over the sketches of Doe One from Technology Park, Doe Two, the Nellie Gail. The Turtle Rock, Three, now known as Froylan Marcos Estancio Cordillo. Victor Minor Montalvo, the one with the good haircut, in the water near the river cane. The words appeared on the front page of a Spanish-language newspaper now smack in the middle of a conference table at sheriff’s headquarters: A BOCA DE JARRO: AT VERY CLOSE RANGE.

  Boyd Russell had doughnuts on the table, and an insulated pitcher of coffee, when I came in. Will Bright arrived and laid his folders next to ours. Piece by piece, we went over everything we had: photos, sketches, ballistics reports; diagrams, lists, printouts, hand-drawn maps. “Let’s have the newspapers run the sketch for Doe One again,” I said.

  “We can do that,” Boyd said.

  “That leaves the first one,” Will said, “and case 00-6272DC, Nellie Gail. Two ID’d, four unsolved.”

  “I ran those receipts from the wallet back to the store,” Boyd said, flicking his eyes up at me because it had been my suggestion in the first place. “Nobody remembered him. Zero on this one.”

  And so it went.

  That noon I took Joe flowers. The nurses wouldn’t put them in his room. I left them at the desk, where he had a view from his room, and just stepped inside the doorway. He looked wan and tired even in his sleep. A clear plastic tube ran under his nose and another into his left arm. “What am I going to do with you?” I quietly asked his sleeping form.

  His son at least now knew Joe was alive and was in fact improving. Jennifer phoned and told me that. Her voice was tight as a bow string. David still would not come home.

  I wasn’t done with flowers. On my way to my car I stole two daffodils for Trudy from around the fountain in the common area. I put them on her desk in a plastic sports bottle I found in her wastebasket and wondered if she’d see them before she left.

  I saw her in the hallway later. She said, “I got your flowers. Thanks, but you don’t have to keep doing that.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  “Well, you don’t have to, really. I mean, the thing is, I’m allergic. I gave them to the receptionist.” We laughed.

  I said, “Listen, Homicide would like another sketch of the Doe from Nellie Gail. Could you do that?”

  She said, “I didn’t do that one very well.”

  “Nobody’s criticizing you.”

  “I knew it when I did it,” she said.

  “You had things on your mind.”

  “I’ll have it tomorrow.”

  When I left, I patted her arm and later hoped that wasn’t a lame, condescending, or pitying thing to do.

  Fifteen minutes before quitting time, Joe called. “Hey,” I said, “are you supposed to be making phone calls?”

  “I’m going nuts in here,” he said. “Vega just got off the phone or I’d be ready to call it quits.”

  “I’ll be down to keep you company.”

  “Better not. I’m going in for more tests in a while.”

  “This late? More tests?”

  “Nothing serious, don’t worry.”

  “What time should I come? Around dinner?”

  “Don’t come tonight, babe, if you don’t mind. Dave’s coming. I’d like a little time alone with him.”

  “Tell him I said hello.”

  “I guess he’s been pretty upset. Guess I’ll have to get my rear in gear and get outta here, huh?”

  “How poetic. That rhymes.”

  “I been thinking of growing a beard, getting a beret.”

  “Today’s poets shave their heads, pierce their nipples, and get tattoos.”

  “Guess I’ll skip that, then,” he said.

  Saturday morning, when I saw him around nine, he was asleep again. He looked no better than before and now his cheeks were as fiery red as make-up on a daft woman.

  When his eyes opened, he said, “Hi, Sourpuss.” I knelt beside him. He stroked my hair. I gave way for a moment with tears.

  “Hey, who’s the patient here?” he said.

  Seating myself back in the chair, I said, “I’m a jerk,” and wiped away a tear. “You’re looking great,” I lied. “How do you feel?”

  “Punctured, pinched, molested, mad as hell.”

  “You’re supposed to be calm. Want those blinds open more?”

  “Leave them,” he said, and pointed to a partition behind which lay another patient.

  “I miss you, you rotter.”

  He folded the top edge of his sheet. Smiling, he said, “I had a dream. Like Martin Luther King.”

  “A dream?”

  “I was free.” He cut his eyes over to me. “I could fly.” The telephones were ringing softly at the nurses’ station. I heard his room companion whose every breath ended with a little whimper, the water dripping in the lavatory, the hum of fluorescent lights, the random clicking of machines next to Joe with green, red, and amber pixels glowing. “I messed up, Smokes,” he said.

  “Healthy eating, more exercise from now on,” I said.

  “Might as well kill me now.”

  I stroked his legs. “I brought you flowers. They’re out at the desk.”

  He gave me an imaginary kiss. “How are things at the lab?”

  “Peachy keen. You don’t need to know what’s new at work.”

  “I suppose everybody’s standing around talking about me and not doing diddly worth of work.”

  “Hah. They were bidding for your parking space.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes. I looked around to see if any nurse was about to tell me I’d overstayed my time. Then his gaze was on me. “This old man’s screwed up your life, hasn’t he?”

  “They need to give you juice for your head in that tube,” I said.

  “You should be hanging out w
ith guys zonked on pro football. Not sick old fuckers like me.”

  “I should go, let you rest. How ’bout I sneak you in some booze and pizza later?”

  “Baby?” He gave two pats on the bed, and I sat. He said, “Don’t change.” I bent to kiss him. “You smell great,” he said.

  “You smell like Lysol.”

  “Latest fashion aroma. Take care of yourself,” he said.

  “Me,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Want water? A cloth? A…a…”

  “Nothing. Get outta here.” I stood, wanting to think of something more I could do.

  Then he said, “I should’ve ID’ed him right off. I’ve beaten him before. I’ll beat the sucker again.”

  A few steps away I turned mid-step to a low wolf-whistle; looked back once more just as Joe edged his chin away and shut his eyes. I could still see the smile.

  Jennifer Sanders was outside the elevator when I reached the first floor. She said she’d like to talk, so we went to the basement cafeteria and had coffee at one of those shiny Formica tables whose legs can never find the floor all at the same time.

  She was a brunette with a tender translucence to her skin.

  “David says he’s got a new apartment,” she said, “but he didn’t give me his number and I forgot to ask.” She reached beneath the table to get her purse, and pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims. “I know. Nobody smokes anymore. They’ll probably throw me out of here,” she said, looking around.

  “We can go outside,” I said.

  “Maybe we better.”

  She got up, tucking the cigarettes back in her purse but keeping the unlighted one tucked in her palm. “Joe used to hate it, my smoking,” she said, with a nervous smile. “Even though he did at one time.” She offered me one, and I shook my head no.

  A tunnel led to the street. Outside, she lit up and drew in a long breath and exhaled upward into the limbs of a bottlebrush tree whose trunk was a raceway for ants.

  I saw the Nellie Gail, the ants making their curved way around Juan Doe Number Two.

  “I have to go to work pretty soon,” she said. “Real estate is weekends and nights, a hazard of the profession.”

  “I remember now, you’re in real estate.” I felt funny talking with the ex-wife of my lover, revealing in even the slightest that she’d been the topic of any conversation between Joe and me.

  Perhaps she felt it too, because she said, “Listen, I, uh, know this is awkward. But you don’t have anything to worry about.” She drew in another long hit. “You had nothing to do with Joe and me, I know that. If it wasn’t now, it’d be then. If it wasn’t then, it’d be now. It was a long time coming.”

  “Thanks for saying so.”

  “I want to ask you a favor.” She massaged her elbows, cigarette intact. “If my son comes to you, do your best for him.”

  “Of course. But I can’t see him doing much of that.”

  “David and I have been close, closer than he’s been with his father really, except this last year or so. It might be because of college, the need to break away. Each of us has to do it, sometime in our life. Now this, with his father. It might be too much. Maybe now’s the time when David needs to draw to another adult.”

  “I’m sure he’ll always need his mother.”

  She cut her eyes at me. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”

  “David likes you,” she said, and took another quick hit off her cigarette. Then she reached forward to stub it out on the tree trunk, not noticing she’d caused a catastrophe on the ant speedway. “The senior and the junior mother figure,” she said. “Is that a cruel thing to do to a boy, or what, two mother figures?”

  I smiled, and just as I started toward her to give her a consoling embrace she saw it coming and turned away and tugged open the door against the air conditioner suck.

  Mrs. Langston knocked on my door about five. She’d come over to borrow sugar, honest to God, just as neighbors used to in the good old days. She heard my guinea pig whistle and looked in the laundry room and said, “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “They eat these little guys in South America,” I said.

  “No! How could they?” Mary said, now brave enough to lean forward and push a forefinger over its head between the ears. He let his mouth drop open, showing his tiny bucked teeth. “I gave up consuming anything with a face some time back,” Mrs. Langston said. “I thought if I just ate veggies it would change my arthritis. It didn’t, but what the heck. How’s your friend Joe?”

  “He’s better.”

  Her face drew down, then she said, “I lost one husband to a stroke, another to a heart attack.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “They were good men, too.” Her face brightened. “My third husband, he was a kick in the head. Always kept me laughing. Kept other women happy, too. Him, I gave a heart attack.” Her eyes fairly sparkled. “How’re we coming on the Does?”

  Does. Because of me she was using the language.

  “Not very far, not very fast,” I said.

  “Well now. You all better get with the program, huh?”

  “I’ll see to it we do that,” I said as she turned to go.

  “You do have some fun once in a while, don’t you?” Her head was cocked like Columbo just before he asks the last question that will lead to the killer’s confession. “Because if you don’t,” she said, “you’ll regret it one day. Remember that.” She shook a warning finger. “Listen to one who knows,” she said earnestly before she shut the door.

  SEVENTEEN

  “How’s that old ticker today?”

  “Quiet as a horse-thief after a hanging.”

  “Why doesn’t that answer sound as good as it should?”

  “Listen, do me a favor tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Get in touch with Harold Raimey. Ask if he can check the trunk of the husband’s car, will you? I know he’d need another warrant, but it’d sure be nice if hubby had some old tennis shoes stuffed in a gym bag back there that match our shoe impressions on the plywood.”

  “You’re incorrigible, but I will. Should I drop by today?”

  “Know what’s weird?” Joe asked. “They tell you to cool it on the visitors, yet I’m looking at two ugly faces right now, two old colleagues from up north. They’re in town for a trial, so what do they do but come bother me,” he said. I could hear them in the background giving him a bad time. “Why don’t you come after work tomorrow night,” Joe said. “We’ll have a game of volleyball on the beach.”

  Gil Vanderman. I forgot he was going to call. He told me his mother makes a fabulous asparagus salad and put the sweet-voiced woman on the line. “Hi, Smokey. This is Ivalyn.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ivalyn.”

  “Gil’s father and I would be very pleased to have you over. The herons are something to see.”

  Gil was twirling a long-stemmed lily between his fingers when I met him on the sidewalk outside a café on Balboa Island. He handed it to me as he commented on my looks, then said the bouquet of mixed flowers he held in the other hand was for his mother.

  “Anyone who’d bring flowers to his mother gets my vote.”

  “I told you I was a good guy,” he said.

  He wore nutmeg wool pants and a blue chambray shirt open at the neck. A gold watchband showed at his wrist. He seemed a little nervous, and I was surprised at that. He said we’d better get going so we’d still have light.

  We were underway across the channel, the water green, the Torrey pines on the island ahead cutting black shapes out of a sky still ripe with gold. Airplane lights drifted inland, while a gull curved oceanward looking for a last morsel. Gil pointed and said, “You can just make out the nests.” And I could. Eight giant ones, three feet across, Gil told me.

  He nosed the boat up to a small dock jutting out from a deep, tailored lawn whose grass was sprinkled with tiny white flowers
. A red brick pathway ran up its middle. I was impressed. A place where dreams come to settle.

  Gil’s parents came out of the house and stood on the deck and waved. His mother’s dark hair was swept white at the sides. She cut an elegant figure in an Indian cotton dress with a silver belt and silver sandals. Gil’s father could have passed for a heavier “Crocodile Dundee.”

  “I’ve been holding out on you,” Gil said. “My dad, that nice old guy up there?” he said, motioning with his head. “With the little pot belly and reading glasses? He’s a retired judge. I mentioned you one time, and he recognized your name. He told me you work at the crime lab.”

  I felt somehow exposed. I rubbed my arms against the chill.

  Mrs. Vanderman fed us shrimp scampi over rice, baked spinach with yellow squash and parmesan, and the salad: asparagus with a creamy dressing of cilantro and lime. For dessert, lemon mousse. We talked about her work as a magazine editor, the bankrupt county, the recent fires, the earthquakes, birds, and Gil’s astonishing—by his mother’s words—work in photography. I acknowledged my job in the crime lab, and Gil’s father spoke briefly about his life as a judge but seemed content leaving it at that.

  After dinner, Gil stood by the fireplace holding his wine glass, rich fire colors lighting his hair, the wine, the glass, as soft music played. His mother served chocolates and his father offered liqueur. For a while I didn’t think about murder. Or Joe. Or his anguished son.

  At my car, standing there after I unlocked the door, Gil said, “Would you come back to my place, Smokey?” He touched my cheek with the side of a finger and pressed his forehead to mine. “I have etchings,” he said.

  “No thanks, Gil.” He was sweet and he smelled wonderful, and I’d had an evening I was grateful for. More, I was charmed. A man who brought you to his parents right off. Where did you find that any more? “Thanks for a great evening, Gil. I really appreciate it.”

  I got in. He immediately brought his knuckles to the glass and knocked. I rolled the window down.

  “What, Gil?” I said, laughing.