The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller

by Noreen Ayres

  Binky was sitting on the bed when I came back. She wore a gray nightshirt with Bugs Bunny in full-toothed grin on the front, and gray slippers with blue inner linings. The bed was turned back for only one person. The pillow was propped up as if she’d been watching TV before we came in, and indeed, the set was on, volume low, tuned to Star Trek on Channel 13. She backed up on the bed and tucked her legs under her.

  David said, “We’re here to help you.” Her eyes shifted to him and held.

  When Tamika spoke to her in Spanish, the girl shook her head vigorously, clearly alarmed.

  “Interpret,” I said.

  “I asked if she is being kept here against her will.”

  I had taken one of the two chairs in the room, Ray stood, and Tamika sat on the edge of the bed. Binky kept glancing at Ray with something I read as fear.

  Tamika said something to her, fast, urgent. Then she turned to us and said, “She’s coming with us. I told her that. She can stay at my place.”

  “What about Angela?” I said, concerned for her too.

  Ray said, “We take one thing at a time.”

  Tamika got up and opened drawers in the small dresser in the corner. Binky stayed frozen in place. I found two plastic grocery bags in a drawer and handed one to Tamika, and as she stuffed things in them from other drawers, I went into the bathroom and got Binky’s toothbrush and a small, flowered cosmetics bag. I glanced at the condoms—the same brand as those I found in the coffee packets in Turtle Rock—and took those too.

  Then I went to the open closet-space opposite the bathroom and got a pair of sneakers, two folded tank-tops, and a clump of underpants off the shelf. A long red sweater was on a hanger. I pulled it off and brought it to Binky, who was now standing by the bed but cowed by Tamika’s relentless energy as she slammed drawers, drew off a pillowcase, and filled it with clothes she couldn’t fit in the plastic sack. David helped Binky put on the sweater. Then she got down and pulled from under the bed a pair of brown moccasins.

  Now her expression was set to a timid determination. She crossed over to the other side of the bed and tipped up the lamp on the nightstand, retrieving a small sheaf of folded money, and thrust it into her sweater pocket. When she turned again to look at us, a shadow of a smile came over her face.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ray led the way. Tamika, with her plastic sacks in tow, walked beside Binky, and David and I brought up the rear. When we were almost to the archway, two men angled toward us from between the office and the first motel room.

  Binky stopped, still as a bird sighting a cat, then stepped to the other side of Tamika while Ray slowed and his face grew hard.

  The larger man called out, “Hey! Pucha!”

  Binky whimpered.

  “Hey, yourself, man,” Ray said.

  The larger man wore a dark leather jacket and a beige shirt, and had a tight, mean face. The smaller one had both his hands in his jacket pockets. I kept him in my sight, watching for cues.

  Light from motel signs glowing on his leather jacket, the bigger one said to Ray, “Where you goin’, Pancho?”

  “No trouble, man,” Ray said. “We’re just going to our car.”

  “Fuck you are,” lemon-face said. No one moved. I’d look back later and say it was a Mexican stand-off, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time. “That one don’t go with you,” the guy said, thrusting his chin Binky’s way.

  David said, “Is your name Izzy?”

  The man stared, then made a move past Ray and Tamika to reach for Binky. Ray jammed over and grabbed the guy’s shirt in a fist, nearly lifting him off the ground, and shoved him away.

  I pulled Binky back and stood in front of her. The little guy kept shifting weight, not sure of himself, keeping an eye on David. David moved closer to him. Then the big one came at Ray.

  Ray blocked a punch, then his left flew out and slammed into the jerk’s jaw so hard a string of spit laced over the dark air. The man landed quick and hard, unable to spare his head from the asphalt. It hit like a boot dropped on hardwood.

  The little one had no impulse to join the fray. He backed up, palms forward while Ray was leaning over the first one, who was still down but trying to rise.

  Ray dug into the gonzo’s arm with plier-like fingers just above the elbow. The punk yelped so hard it rang around the court. “I don’t have nothing, I don’t have nothing, fuck you, man!”

  Ray prepared to mash him again.

  “Enough,” I called to Ray. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Tamika’s Spanish vowels were tripping in that ripple-brook way, soft words, trying to placate.

  Feeling for a weapon on the downed guy and coming up empty, Ray called him something in Spanish, then turned and approached the twerp David was covering. Ray shoved him and in an instant gained a control hold, then patted him and pulled a ditch-gun out of his sock. I got a sick knot in my stomach. It just as easily could have been drawn and used.

  The little guy started chattering, “Okay, okay, okay. Lea’ me ’lone, man. I done nothin’ to you.”

  “Shut up,” Ray said, and tucked the gun under his own shirt in back.

  Lemon-Face rose on one elbow and whined, “Why you messin’ with my gir’fren?”

  “You mean her?” Ray said. “She your friend? You his friend?” Binky stood frozen. “I don’t think so. Now get outta here. Go on!” Ray said, and moved like he was going to give the punk a kick. The punk scrambled up and hurried off with the other one. A few yards away, they both spat curses our way.

  “Ask her who those guys were,” Ray told Tamika. He was checking the car mirrors to see what might be coming up on us.

  She did, and Binky paused ever so briefly, then said, “Julio.” She looked down as if sorry to be giving up the name or sorry for a memory. “D’other one Izzy.”

  “Izzy! That’s him! The coyote,” David said. “I knew it!” He craned his head to look back, but we were too far away by now. In Binky’s small face was the resigned dread of a kid watching for foot shadows to break the light under a bedroom door.

  We sat like a family in Tamika’s living room. Impressionist prints of women in pastels and parasols hung on the walls. Tamika, a woman of contrasts.

  Ray was getting a big soda bottle to put on the coffee table, and a large bag of chips ripped down the middle, while Tamika brought glasses. Binky spoke with a sadness in her voice. I’d give the girl credit. Stressed or not, she tried to use English. “I know Izzy…hijos,” Binky said.

  “Since you were kids,” Tamika said.

  “Si. He go way. But…I see mas.”

  “Ask her his full name,” I said.

  Before she could, Binky answered, “Hector Corona Lizzaraga.”

  “Hector,” I said.

  She nodded. She told Tamika that Izzy was her brother Humberto’s age. Hector was getting to be a big-shot in her village from his activities as a smuggler of persons. One time, Humberto decided to cross the border in the hope of sending money back to the family. Everything was so going well, until Humberto was killed by the Norte Americanos one night, in one of the gullies. “Bery bad mans,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. From then on, Hector’s price for getting people across went up. But Binky believed she should take her brother’s place. For her mother, it had been the first time she could buy blankets for everyone.

  David, sitting across from her, whispered, “Blankets.”

  She said, “Izzy…loco,” her lips quivering. “My fren’,” Binky said after a few moments, “Fue asesinado.”

  Tamika glanced at Ray.

  Even I got that one. “Who was that, Binky?”

  She wiped her nose on her red sweater, studied her lap for a moment, then said, “Her name Nita Estevez.”

  Ray hadn’t known about Nita Estevez. It was a county case, nothing he’d be privy to. “A month ago,” I said.

  Binky nodded. Bunny teeth protruded in a fold between the sweater edges. Her face was heart-shaped, giving all the more effect to her
helpless, childlike appearance.

  “We’re going to protect you, Binky. You know that, don’t you?” I said. “Do you know who murdered your friend?”

  “Izzy.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Bery mad.”

  “What was he mad about, do you know?”

  Softly, with a furtive glance toward Dave, she said, “He mad she no wanoo fock guys.”

  It was after two when I got home. Tomorrow I’d call the guys at Homicide and deal with whatever criticism was due. For now I was too exhausted to think.

  I had three messages on my answering machine. I pressed the button and let them play. The first was from Mary Langston. She wondered if her grandson could come see the guinea pig. The second was from Joe: “Checkin’ in, kiddo. Call me in the morning. I may get turned loose tomorrow. Love ya.” Joe, using the L word, which we don’t do…so much commitment. Joe, coming home!

  My thoughts flipped to David, sleeping on Ray’s couch now. Knowing I could hear the next message from the machine, I drifted in to the laundry room to check on Motorboat. His blond head was sticking out of the log, nose working hard against the shadows: That you?

  I bent over the cage and lifted the lid. His pod-seed eyes were as intense as a madman’s. “It’s me, little guy. Just me.” I pinched some alfalfa out of the nearby sack and lowered the stiff stems in. Ever-Ready beastie snatched the stalks, which jerked now in motion like a nervous green mustache.

  The voice on the third message took me a moment to place: Gil. For a moment I felt disoriented, even intruded upon. “Thought I’d just say hi,” he said. “Been thinking of you a lot. Wanted to ask if you’d like to go out to Hemet this weekend, see a train museum.”

  I walked back into the kitchen to hear the rest.

  “ ’Course I don’t know if that sort of thing would interest you at all. But give a call. We could take in Palm Springs, great about now. And hey, you know what? Some group is moving the heron nests. Too much doo-doo and fish heads raining down. Moving them with a crane and a truck. Audubon’s trying to make them wait till the hatchlings are grown, but in case the city wonks do anything funny, a bunch of us are going down to stage a protest under the pines. Want to join us, be a heron hero? Now if that doesn’t get your interest, what would?”

  Gil finished with, “Really, Smokey, I’d use just about any excuse to see you again. Call me?” Pushy, this guy. But I smiled. I could be a heron hero, but I could also be a fool. Not now. But sometime. Gil. Joe. Don’t think about it.

  I fell into bed and awoke an hour later, seeing Nita Estevez with her battered body; smelling the smell; hearing Binky whimper, and the Doe on the hill raising his head and spilling blood from his mouth as he stared at me.

  I got up and drank water and gazed at the darkened bay, then went back and forced myself to see flowers blazing along the bluffs where a developer generously spread seed before he mangled the tract with two-story boxes covered in Spanish tile.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I walked into Stu’s office and pulled a chair directly in front of his desk. “Stu, you can fire me, you can fire me two weeks from now, but I have to tell you something you’re not going to like. And I have to ask you for something at the same time.”

  He looked up over new granny glasses and put his pencil down. “Let’s have it,” he said, and not irritably.

  I handed him a chart I made before leaving the house:

  It took him a while to absorb. He asked a fair number of questions. “Please, Stu, this can’t get back to Joe.”

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  I was breaking a boy’s trust and feared for his father as well, but I said, “I’ll trust you to know the right time.”

  Stu sat back and put both hands on the arms of his chair. “Smokey, I don’t know if you know I am married to a woman of Mexican heritage.”

  “No, Stu, I didn’t know that.” Just pick me up off the floor.

  “I’m not going to waste time chewing on you, even though you deserve it. What I want you to do is get in touch with the investigators on these cases without delay.”

  “I will. I know it’s time. But can you understand—”

  “About Joe?” He brushed his bald head and said, “Do you think this happened from teaching kindergarten?”

  “Thanks, Stu.”

  “Now, what about this boy of Sanders’s? Has he ever been in trouble with the law?”

  “Never…er, that we know of.” Stu looked at me skeptically. “I mean, I guess nothing surprises me any more.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In the keeping of a CHP officer friend of ours.”

  “Well, I hope he’ll whack some sense in him. Now get to work, Brandon. You think this is a social club?”

  “Thanks, Stu. Thank you very much for understanding,” I said, getting up and sliding back the chair.

  “I didn’t say you were off the hook. We’ll talk later.”

  “Right,” I said, and turned to leave, and looked back and said thanks again.

  Joe wasn’t getting out today. “I blipped when I should have blapped,” he said. “They want to keep me a while longer.” He sounded depressed. He also asked if I’d seen David at all. I told him I thought David was spending some time with Ray Vega. “They hit it off, huh? Terrific.”

  “You mind the medics now. I’ll come see you soon as I can.”

  “Latuh, gatuh,” he said.

  I met Boyd Russell for lunch at a sandwich shop downtown. He said, “What’s this about?” as we were walking to get in line.

  “I know someone who knew the Capistrano Doe. Not well, but knew him. This person was also acquainted with the Doe found in Turtle Rock, Will’s case.”

  “Yah?” he said, then studied the menu board over the heads of three other customers in line. “Who is it?” He was wearing a yellow shirt with his brown suit. In the angle of the sunlight, the channels in his chin and lip looked like beard growth.

  “There’s more,” I said, and waited till we got our sandwiches and sat outside. I felt relief, yet a certain dread.

  Boyd took out a pen and notepad after we sat down. “Who is this guy? I’ll give a call.”

  “Well, Boyd, there’s a little problem there.” He looked at me, pen poised. “You know Joe Sanders.”

  He nodded, giving me a funny look. “Of course.”

  “Right. Well.…”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Not perfect. I’m worried, matter of fact. He was supposed to be released today. Then something kept them from it.”

  “So Joe’s the one knows these dead taco-burners?” He laughed to acknowledge the idea was absurd.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “It may be, though, his son does.”

  Boyd took a copy of the chart I compiled and promised to keep it to himself for the time being. He’d run checks on Hector Lizzaraga and Binky Jalindo. He said I should, however, be prepared to have him and Bright interview David shortly. I was grateful to him for the breathing room. Somehow I didn’t expect it from him. “This Binky,” he said, “we’ll want to talk to her too.”

  When he was done with his lunch, he leaned back in his chair and yawned. He pulled out a pack of Camels, tapped one out, and said, “Not much sleep last night.” Then he looked at me and asked, “You ever been married?”

  At the end of the day I ran into Harold Raimey. “Give that old geezer Joe Sanders a message for me, okay? I’d call him myself, but my wife’s waiting on me, we’re going up to Arrowhead.”

  “Sure, Harold.”

  “Tell him we got hold of Charles Dobson’s exercise shoes. Got a good match to the plaster cast y’all made. It’s not enough yet to send invitations to the hangin’, but we’ll get there.”

  “I know you will,” I said.

  “Give ’im a kiss for me, too,” he said, waving as he walked off.

  I dialed Joe’s number just before leaving and got no answer.

  On the way home I stopped to get g
as and bought three lottery tickets even though the big pot had been won the night before: 20 million to a leaf raker who says he’ll keep working just because he loves his job.

  At home I tried Joe again. No answer. I rang up the reception desk. It took a while for the woman to look up the room record. Joe had been moved again. “Where to?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid he’s gone back to IC.”

  I was at Hoag Hospital in twenty minutes. I’d blown through the yellows at intersections and was angry at the slow pedestrians making their way on the crosswalk to the hospital front door.

  I got blocked at the nurse’s station by ICU. The nurse asked who I was looking for. When I told her, she said, “Not just now. Why don’t you call in the morning?”

  “I will call in the morning. But I’m here now.”

  “I just gave him his meds. He’s about gone,” she said, then realized how dire that sounded. “Asleep,” she said.

  “If you just gave him meds, he must still be awake.”

  We stared at each other, a war of emotion over profession.

  “Are you a relative, Miss…?”

  “Look, it’s only a little after seven.”

  “I have seven-thirty-five.”

  “He never goes to sleep this early.”

  “Are you his daughter?”

  “A friend.”

  “Why don’t you talk with the doctor tomorrow?” she said. “I think that’d be a better idea.”

  I could tell her the better idea I had. But didn’t.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Ray was home, off-watch/on-call. He said, “We lost Binky. She slipped David when he went to his old apartment to get clothes.”

  “Damn! Where’s David?”

  “He’s here. You want to talk to him?”

  “I guess. Jeez.”

  “He’s in the john. When he comes out.”