Plaster City (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco)

by Johnny Shaw

  I looked at my boy, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. I wondered what I would do if he went missing. I couldn’t fathom it. I didn’t want to.

  As much as I loved Angie, Juan was the thing that made everything make sense. The reason I kept my feet planted and took whatever shots came my way. I had never thought I’d become a father. Did so reluctantly. But two years later, I couldn’t imagine my life without him. As Pop would say, it doesn’t matter what we want, it’s what we do with what we have.

  “I have to go away for a little while, a couple days maybe. Okay?” I said.

  Juan stopped coloring and screwed up his face. Not tantrum-angry, but definitely mad. “I don’t want you to.”

  “I have to. Uncle Bobbiola needs my help.”

  “Why?”

  “His daughter Julie is in trouble. Nobody can find her. I have to help Uncle Bobbiola look.”

  “Maybe she’s playing hide-and-seek and she’s a real good hider.”

  “Maybe. I won’t be gone too long.”

  Juan’s brow wrinkled with concern. “How do I know you’ll come back?”

  “Of course I will,” I said. “I’ve gone away before. And I came back those times, didn’t I? I’m your father. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Juan thought about it for a moment. He picked up a crayon and squeezed it in his hand. He didn’t look happy, but he said, “Okay.”

  “Listen to your mom and Mr. More-Or-Less. Do what they say. Be good.”

  Juan nodded and returned to coloring Batman’s cape a blasphemous lime green. But he had lost his passion for it, going through the motions of filling the blank spots with random color.

  I chucked the gym bags in the passenger seat of my truck. Angie gave me a quick kiss, more of a see-you-soon kiss than a come-back-in-one-piece kiss.

  “Could be overnight, could be longer,” I said. “Depends on how things shake out. I’m only an hour and a half away. I just irrigated, but I’ll have Mike check on the fields if I’m longer than a day or two. I know money’s tight, but we’ll figure it out.”

  “I wish Buck Buck or Snout could go instead of you,” Angie said.

  I laughed. “Even if they were in town, you know that wouldn’t work. Becky called Bobby to look for her. Buck Buck and Snout would be gasoline on whatever nuclear explosion he sets off while searching. I can keep Bobby from getting into trouble.”

  “No, you can’t. When have you ever? That’s like trying to rope a tornado.”

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” I said, not selling it. And from the look on Angie’s face, she didn’t buy it either. Something told us both that this was going to get bad.

  Bobby Maves and Becky Espinosa met in kindergarten or first grade. Like most of the people we graduated high school with, we all went to grade school together.

  It wasn’t love at first sight. If I remember the story correctly, Becky beat the shit out of Bobby on the playground over a game of marbles. A few choice words and punches were exchanged over whether or not blocksies, jumpsies, and no-takesies could be used in conjunction with each other.

  Time passed and the fight was forgotten. With a graduating class of eighty-five at Holtville High, the dating pool ran shallow. Everyone knew everything about everyone, making everyone less attractive as the years went on. But nobody liked to dance alone and sex was more fun with a partner, even one you didn’t like that much. Eventually Bobby and Becky found each other in the rotation. They didn’t date for very long. Just long enough.

  Becky’s parents both worked as migrant field hands. So when they moved the summer after junior year, nobody thought anything of it. A lot of families spent half the year in the Central Valley or in Arizona, depending on what crops needed picking.

  Five years later, Bobby found out he had a daughter. A shocker for a two-kegs-a-week college student studying Ag Econ in San Luis Obispo. Becky needed cash and Bobby had access to student loans. She didn’t ask him for anything more than the financial commitment.

  Somewhere in the roughly ten years since, Becky had decided that Bobby should play a more active parental role. Not knowing how to handle the situation, Bobby made a weak effort to become involved in Julie’s life. He already sent money, what was left after the child support payments for his younger daughter—she’s a whole different story. He sent presents on birthdays and holidays. Those grew to occasional awkward visits.

  Becky and Julie had lived in Twentynine Palms, which was far enough to make it an effort. But a move to Indio a little over a year ago had brought them close enough to nullify most excuses. The problem was that Bobby was Julie’s father, but he was never going to be her dad. Julie had become a young woman, his absence already felt. She was who she was going to be.

  I had only met Julie once. A quick stopover on our way to a boxing match at Pechanga. She had no interest in meeting her father’s friend, so our interaction was brief. I wanted to tell her that the Misfits shirt, tongue and nose ring, and super-short shorts really played into a predictable stereotype. Individuality through conformity. A look that screamed, “I’m different in the same way this gigantic group of other people are different.” But teenagers have to be teenagers. As long as trouble didn’t become permanent in the form of addiction, a kid, or death, that rebellion was a part of becoming a real person. Kids have to act grown up before they grow up.

  Hopefully Julie was acting out in a predictable way. But it was hard not to think of the other scenarios. Too many news stories and movies of a kid gone missing to not expect the worst. All those loonies that made a parent’s skin crawl. They were out there. And the desert was like a psycho-magnet to the worst predators. The nefarious potential of wide-open spaces, no neighbors, and unmarked graves.

  The drive from Holtville to Indio took less than two hours. Through Imperial, Brawley, and the US Immigration checkpoint in Westmoreland, the route ran along the western shore of the Salton Sea. I took in its aroma: the smell of anchovies mixed with rancid cottage cheese. I would’ve taken the odor as a bad omen, but it always smelled that way. I didn’t even bother to play the radio, letting my mind wander. I went over the last conversation I had with Bobby before he headed out without me.

  “Becky said Julie’s been gone five days already. She’d done it before—never more than a day or two—so she didn’t think much of it. Called the cops two days ago. Me, today. They’re on it, she says, but forgive me if I don’t show a shit-ton of confidence in the Indio PD or Riverside Sheriff or whatever group of country cops got the case.

  “Julie’s gotten wilder in the last year. Back sass. Coming home drunk. Tats and piercings. Loser boyfriends. Older boyfriends. Pot in her underwear drawer. Fights. Like father, like daughter, I suppose. Except she’s straight-A’s. Smart as shit. Don’t know if that makes it worse or better. Worse probably, because it means she does stupid shit, but she ain’t stupid. Smart enough to know better.”

  “Lots of us manage to be smart and stupid at the same time,” I said. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  Bobby didn’t answer for a moment. “Six, seven months. How fucked up is that? I don’t barely know her.”

  “It’s always been an impossible situation.”

  “If you think that me not being around’s got nothing to do with that bad girl shit, you’re a dumbass who slept through college.”

  “When did you crack open the Freud? She’s independent, does her own thing. Sound familiar?”

  “Except her keys, clothes, phone, all her stuff was still at the house. She hasn’t posted anything on Facebook or Twitter or any of that teenage shit. Her last message on Facebook said, ‘He treats me like a woman. Knows I can take a punch as hard as I can throw one. That’s all I need.’ ”

  “Shit.”

  “I’m going to find out who the fuck that fucker is and fuck him up. Pardon my fucking French.”

  That’s why I was drivin
g north. Bobby’s sentiment was solid. It was his plan of attack I worried about. To talk to Becky. See what she knew. Go through Julie’s stuff for clues. Talk to Julie’s friends. Find out who was who. Then fuck up the fucking fuckers. I felt sorry for anyone in Bobby’s path.

  Indio might be known for the Coachella Music Festival and a stretch of Indian casinos, but the bulk of it is lower-class residential neighborhoods filled with people who work for a living.

  Becky’s house was a nondescript, salmon-colored box in a concrete brick neighborhood. Squat, mostly dead palms passed for topiary along the walkway. The rest of the front yard was dirt, a big swath of uneven brown. Three cars filled the driveway, the third poking into the street.

  The man who opened the door was in his early forties. More Palm Springs than Indio, he was tall, tan, and in shape, easy to picture bounding over a tennis net. He wore an apron that said “Kitchen Bitch” on the front. The apron, his pants, and his hands were all dotted with flour.

  The aroma of cookies or brownies, something sweet and chocolaty, wafted from inside the house. Not exactly the smell I was expecting. Although, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting any smell except a general house smell.

  “Everyone’s in the living room,” the man said. “I have cookies in the oven.”

  And on that, he went back into the house without saying anything more, leaving the door open. I heard voices, the muffled hum of a small crowd.

  There were eight people in the living room, evenly divided between men and women. They organized stacks of fliers with Julie’s picture on them.

  Becky Espinosa stood up and gave me a quick hug. She wore jeans and a halter top and didn’t look much different than high school. Other than her eyes, which revealed she hadn’t slept in days.

  I realized that I only really knew Becky from back when. I didn’t know who she was anymore, if I ever did. In school she had been a cheerleader, smiling and nice. But her chipper demeanor was like a politician’s promise. You wanted to believe it, probably some truth in there, but you knew it was mostly bullshit. In addition to being on the cheerleading squad, she had also been a Precious Girl. The Precious Girls were a lipstick and razor chola gang that frightened the whole school—girls and boys, students and teachers. Even the hard-core hairnet and top-button vatos stayed clear of the Precious Girls.

  “Christ, Jimmy,” Becky said. “What happened to your face?”

  “It’s nothing. At least, nothing worth talking about.”

  “Bobby didn’t tell me you were coming. Thanks. We can use all the help we can get.”

  “Of course. Is he here?”

  “He’s in the back, looking through Julie’s things. I can go get him for you.”

  “In a bit,” I said. “How you doing? I mean, considering. Shit, I don’t know what I mean.”

  “Worried, pissed at myself that I didn’t take it serious sooner. But what can I do now? Trying to do whatever helps find her. And hope that brings her back.” She turned and spoke to the flier crew. “When you get done with those, pull out that stack of maps and break each map into neighborhoods. Last thing we need is all of us canvassing the same place. We got ground to cover.” She turned back to me. “Don’t know if any of this will help, but if I don’t do something, anything, I’ll lose it. I want to cry, punch someone, and give up, but none of that will do any good.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “It was nothing special. I was leaving for work. She was eating breakfast. Nothing strange. Nothing memorable. We’d had plenty of fights, but not this time. I can’t figure it. Every few minutes I look toward the front door and imagine Julie walking through it. I wouldn’t even ask where she went, what happened. I don’t care. I’d hold her.”

  Becky gave my arm a squeeze. “I’m going to go find Bobby for you.” She walked down the hall into the back of the house.

  The flier crew seemed to have the flier situation under control, so I looked around the room. My eyes immediately went to the framed school photos of Julie on the TV. Maybe a little heavy on the eye shadow, but she didn’t have the full raccoon that some kids go for. She was even smiling in what looked like the most recent photo. Julie was light-skinned Mexican, pretty like her mother, but with the same mischief in her eyes as Bobby. No doubt she was his daughter.

  The rest of the room felt as spare as a jail cell. No art on the walls. No plants. A couch, a table, the TV, and a bunch of folding chairs. An air-conditioning box unit in the window cranked full blast. It had the feel of a squat. Not a home, but a place to get out of the heat.

  When two people finally looked up at me, I decided to engage. “Hi, I’m Jimmy. Friend of Becky’s and Bobby’s. From high school.”

  The crowd said hello or gave a nod, then went back to the fliers. From what I could tell, they were taking some from one stack and putting them in another stack, but I know next to nothing about fliers. I got the sense they were doing things just to do them. Better to be busy than idle, even if busy wasn’t productive.

  The man in the apron came into the room with a plateful of brownies. The flier crew gave theatrical moans and held their stomachs.

  “No more, Russell,” one said. “We’re full up.”

  “You?” Russell said, offering me a brownie.

  I never turn down free food.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a brownie off the plate and shoving half of it in my mouth. I made mmm sounds and nodded.

  “I should have introduced myself at the door, but nobody likes burnt snickerdoodles. I’m Russell. I’m Becky’s boyfriend.”

  I shoved the rest of the brownie in my mouth, wiped my hand on my pants, and shook his hand. “I’m Jimmy. Friend from high school.”

  The introductions out of the way, neither of us had anywhere to go with the conversation. We stood in silence, both of us staring at the platter of brownies in his hand.

  “Any news?” I finally asked. “About Julie?”

  He shook his head. “We’re going to flier tonight. Be sure to grab a stack. The police are talking to her school, but it’s summer, so I doubt that’s going to help. I teach there, so if the other faculty knew something, I would know. The police seem to be taking it seriously, but how much can they do?”

  “Any leads at all?”

  Russell shook his head. We went back to our awkward silence, watching the group do their flier-stacking. Seriously, what the fuck were they doing with those fliers?

  Becky popped her head out from the hall. “Bobby’s back in Julie’s room. Second door.”

  I grabbed another brownie and headed toward the back of the house.

  Julie’s room didn’t look like the stereotypical teenage girl’s room. Or maybe it did. What the hell did I know about teenage girls or their rooms? Was I expecting stuffed animals, unicorn posters, and a frilly bed skirt? The room looked more like my college dorm room, down to the Iron Maiden Killers poster. Unlike the stark living room, the walls were covered to the ceiling. Heavy metal and punk posters. Stolen street signs. Some police tape trimming. Original drawings, mostly of birds, but one of an insect, close-up and creepy.

  The furnishings were sparse: a bed, a desk, a desk chair, and a dresser. All very used with chipped edges and corners rounded by wear. Cables and wires snaked from the back of the desk where a computer must have been.

  No photos. Not a single picture of Julie or her friends or any boyfriends.

  If I were a TV detective, that might’ve meant something. But I was an idiot, so it only made me more aware of the limits of my ignorance. The lack of photos felt significant, but I didn’t have the experience to work it out. Or maybe it was nothing. Do kids print out photos anymore? Or do they just store them digitally on their phones and computers?

  Bobby sat on the edge of the bed, reading from a spiral-bound notebook. The same dark pen drawings of birds adorned the covers—crows or ravens. Like the drawings on the wall, the artist had really pressed into the paper, the pen digging deep furrows. Bobby glanced up,
set the notebook on the bed, stood, and stretched his back. A plate of cookies sat on the desk. He took one, stuffed it in his mouth, and paced the small room like a tiger in a cage.

  “Want one?” Bobby nodded toward the cookies.

  I shook my head.

  “Dude, eat some. There’s like five more plates in the kitchen. Russell’s going to graduate to pies soon,” Bobby said. “I’m keeping an eye on him. Don’t know if I trust him. But the fucker can bake. Science teacher, so I’m sure he measures real exact.”

  I grabbed a cookie and ate it. “I thought Becky was the cook. Didn’t you used to call her ‘Betty Crocker’ in high school?”

  Bobby shook his head. “A bad joke. Nothing to do with baking. Not really funny now. Probably wasn’t then.”

  “What was the joke?”

  Bobby shook his head, disappointed in himself. “I called her ‘Betty Crocker’ because she was ‘ready to spread.’ ”

  Whatever the opposite of laughing was, that’s what we did. We stared at each other, feeling the weight of a bad joke in the room.

  “Yeah, not so funny now,” I said.

  “You mean because she’s the mother of my missing daughter? Yeah.”

  “We were idiots then.”

  “Not like now.”

  I gave Bobby a weak laugh. “Cookies make the house smell good.”

  “I was out there, helping with the fliers, but not my thing. I mean, it’s cool that the neighbors and Becky’s friends or whoever the fuck those people are want to help, but, man alive, they’re annoying.”

  “What about Russell? What do you know about him?”

  “Becky says he’s all right, been together a year or so. I’ll admit it, I want to take him out behind the shed and see what’s what. Ain’t no secret a piece of wood can’t get out of an ironed shirt. But I know I’m suspicious ’cause of all the flicks I’ve seen. In a movie, the more straightlaced the person, the more likely he’s a perv or freak or whatever. But for real, no reason to think he’s more than what he seems. It’s not like the cops are grilling his ass. He’s just the dude that bangs Becky. And she ain’t stupid or a victim. If she says he’s okay, I got to trust that. Still, I got my eye on him.”