Plaster City (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco)

by Johnny Shaw

  “Is the real Bobby here somewhere? That sounded almost rational.”

  Bobby stopped his pacing.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I want to bust some heads. A lot. But I can’t waste my time busting heads for the fuck of it. I need to bust the right ones. Russell gets a pass for now.”

  “For now.”

  “Nothing’s pointing toward him. Fuck, nothing’s pointing anywhere. I’m reading these journals. Cops looking through her phone and computer. I need something, anything, pointing me in some direction. Then, watch the fuck out.”

  Becky poked her head in the open doorway, holding another plate of cookies. Bobby waved her in. She set the plate on top of the other one.

  “Russell finally ran out of sugar, thank God. This is the last one,” Becky said. “I know the baking is crazy town, but it calms him down. Russell’s as frantic as me. So if cookies relax him, cookies it is. They keep.”

  “We all deal with stress in our own way,” I said, feeling lame as I said it.

  “The group’s heading out in a few to put up posters,” Becky said.

  I grabbed a cookie, still soft from the oven, sweet and smelling of cinnamon. I shoved it in my mouth and chewed through the heat. I had a feeling cookies were going to be my dinner.

  “That Julie’s journal?” I asked through chews.

  Bobby nodded. “It’s from six months ago. Means there’s maybe one she has with her, one that’s missing. Cops breezed through it for names. Don’t got high hopes that I’ll get any clues. But won’t hurt. Considering how much I know about Julie, I’m at least getting a look into her head. Who she was—is.”

  Bobby softly cursed from his mistake. He avoided eye contact, looking toward the open closet door. “Reading these journals, the girl seems pissed off a lot. Mad as all hell. Really hates being poor. Like it hurts to live that way.”

  “She was angry. Lately, all the time. Just an angry girl,” Becky said, her all-business veneer disappearing.

  “She’s a teenager,” I said. “Isn’t that part of the deal?”

  “Julie’s different,” Becky said. “When she gets real mad, it’s like she’s capable of anything. I got my own issues with anger, so I know.”

  “Yeah, didn’t know when to bring it up,” Bobby said, “but she writes about you hitting her. Only a few times. She’s casual about it. Is that something we need to talk about?”

  “I didn’t beat her. If that’s what you’re asking. But Julie’s felt a slap.”

  The way Becky said it with a slight quiver in her voice ended that thread of the conversation. The room fell silent.

  I stared at the drawing of the insect on the wall. Growing up, we called that particular bug a stink beetle. I tried to remember the insect’s real name. One of those black, scarab-like little monsters that roamed the desert floor. It was different than the bird drawings, the pencil was light on the paper. Odd that the birds were drawn angrily while an insect whose primary defense was spraying skunk juice out its ass was drawn so daintily. Then I saw the signature.

  “Who is Angel?”

  Becky looked up. Bobby turned to her, expecting an answer.

  “From what I can see,” I continued, “Julie drew birds, like on the wall and on that notebook. She didn’t sign all of them, but a couple have her signature and they’re in the same style.”

  Bobby picked up the notebook and looked at the drawing on it. He ran his finger along the rough texture.

  I pointed at the drawing of the beetle. “But this one. The bug. It’s drawn different. And it’s signed, ‘From Angel.’ ”

  “You know any Angel, Beck?” Bobby asked, hope in his voice.

  “I don’t know any of Julie’s friends,” Becky said, shaking her head. “Since we moved to Indio, I haven’t met one. She has them. I think. She must. Talks to people on the phone, texts, but never had one over. If this Angel is a friend of hers, I don’t know him—her. Damn it, I don’t even know if Angel’s a boy or girl.”

  I said, “I know we don’t have her phone or computer, but is there another computer in the house?”

  Becky nodded. “Russell’s laptop is in my bedroom.”

  “Bobby said she was on Facebook, Twitter. Even if we can’t get into her account, we should be able to browse her friends. Maybe there’s an Angel in there. We get a name, we go old school, pull out a phone book, find the address.”

  Bobby clapped his hands once loudly, “Fuck yes. Let’s do it. Putting up fliers don’t play to my strengths. And if I sit around anymore, I’m going to break shit. Get on that computer, Jimmy. Give me something to do.”

  THREE

  According to Facebook, Julie only had one friend named Angel. The profile picture on the account was a drawing of an insect. He (we found out it was a he) had a last name unique to the area. Which was a minor miracle, considering it could have been Ramos or Garcia or Lopez or any other common Mexican surname.

  Twenty minutes later, Bobby and I were south of Indio in the town of Thermal, parked in front of the address of the only De La Cueva listed in the Indio & Vicinity phone book.

  Thermal, California. No irony in the name of the almost completely Mexican suburb of Indio. Thermal is always hot. Death Valley hot. Year-round. Hot, shadeless, and fucking miserable. One of the reasons is that Thermal is one hundred feet below sea level. Closer to hell than most any place on earth. When you live in Thermal, you can’t get any lower. Unless you dig.

  The buildings looked like they had always been a part of the desert landscape. White stucco structures the color of bleached bones. Red terra cotta roofs the same deep hue as the clay ground.

  The sun had set, but it wouldn’t be dark for another hour. The De La Cueva house sat on the edge of a residential area, the backyard bleeding into the bare desert. Brown Bermuda grass died in the shadow of the building. Light glowed from inside the house, visible behind the closed curtains. A sun-faded burgundy Chrysler LeBaron sat in the driveway. A bungee cord held the dented hood down, the driver’s side door was primer gray, and duct tape kept one of the mirrors in place.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  “Plan B,” Bobby said.

  Bobby pulled his Plan Bs from under the seat. That’s what he called the two fifteen-inch long, one-inch thick steel pipes that he kept in his Ranchero. Each had an end wrapped in electrical tape for grip.

  “Are those necessary?”

  “You rather I bring a gun?”

  “We don’t know nothing about this Angel. Probably just some teenager. He’s artistic. No reason to go in hard,” I said. “We’re here to talk. At least, until we know something.”

  Bobby turned to me. “When it’s your daughter, Jimmy, you can run the show. You can make the plans. You can even tell me what to do. But it’s my girl. We’ll do this whichever way I think will bring her home. Whichever way.”

  “Fine, so long as you remember that’s what we’re trying to do. You go vigilante, bust down doors, stir shit, and you’ll end up in jail. We’re here to find Julie, not get arrested. Not prove anything. Not even punish anyone involved.”

  “You’re wrong on that last one. We’re definitely here to punish. If someone took her. If that’s what’s going on. If something squirrelly’s going on. Then they’ll pay,” Bobby said. “I know you’re sensitive, cry when you step on a bug, but this ain’t baby seals or whales or unicorns. This is real life.”

  “Do you even listen to the shit you say?”

  “How could I listen to it? I’m saying it. I’m going to put this out to you straighter than Lee Marvin. If you’re not up for some mayhem, I can’t have you here, can’t have you hesitating when shit goes sideways. I need to know you got my back.”

  “You know I do. I just don’t see why you have to bring those fucking things. It’s overkill. Someone could get hurt.”

  “As long as it’s not me, you, or Julie.”

  I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say, because there was no way to win the argument. Bob
by’s stubbornness was an immovable force.

  “It’s my show,” Bobby said. “You can wait in the truck if you’re not up for it.”

  “I’m in. If just to make sure you don’t kill no one,” I said. “Now if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were stalling. So unless you need to paint your toenails, can we get on with this?”

  Bobby banged on the door with a Plan B. Each knock left small indentations in the cheap wood. He stepped back a foot, the pipes behind his back.

  The door opened. Bobby tensed.

  A five-year-old boy wearing only white underwear, one hand still on the knob, looked up at Bobby and then me and then back at Bobby. Mexican with a bowl haircut, he didn’t look that much different than my own son.

  “Your hair is like a Santa,” the boy said to Bobby, “but your face is like a butt.”

  A quick laugh slipped from my mouth. Bobby shot me a look. I shrugged. “Kid’s got timing.”

  “Your face is a butt, too,” the kid said to me. “A punched-up butt.”

  Bobby snorted out a thin laugh. “Cute kid.”

  I got down on one knee, eye level with the kid. “My name’s Jimmy. Santa here is Bobby. What’s your name?”

  “Miguel.” He eyed me suspiciously.

  “Nice to meet you, Miguel. Is Angel home? We’re friends of his.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes we are. Can you get him for us?”

  “You’re not Angel’s friend. Angel doesn’t have friends. Not buttface Santas and not stupidhead liars.”

  Miguel slammed the door in my face.

  I looked up at Bobby. “Do you have a Plan C?”

  I knocked again. This time a squat Mexican woman answered the door. Low to the ground with Indian features, she was one of those women who was definitely over forty, but beyond that, it was anybody’s guess. Maybe forty-five, maybe seventy-five. She dried her hands with a kitchen towel and looked at me with complete neutrality.

  “Hi,” I said with a smile so big my face hurt. “My name is James Veeder. This is Robert Maves. We’re looking for Robert’s daughter, Julie Espinosa. She’s missing. We were hoping to talk to Angel De La Cueva. He and Julie are friends. Is he in, by any chance?”

  “Qué?” the woman said.

  “Fucking hell,” Bobby said. “As sidekicks go, you suck.”

  “I’m used to being the hero. You’re usually the sidekick.”

  “Stop the stupid train,” Bobby said. “I have never been a sidekick in my life. I’m too awesome for sidekick status. I am the everyman hero of my awesome movie, a badass NC-17 action comedy with heart called Bobby Maves: The Art of Asskickery and Woman Conquesting. You, on the other hand, are the main character for some arty-farty Eurotrash indie flick, one of those three-hour borefests that you’re always making me watch with a lot of shots of rainy sidewalks and nothing happens, but at least there’s tits. Something called Leaves and Sorrow or some equally shitty title. If this is True Grit, you’re Glen Campbell.”

  “Qué?” the woman said again.

  Bobby handed me the Plan Bs. He pulled Julie’s school photo out of his back pocket and held it up for the woman. “Esto es mi hija. Es ida. Soy preocupado muy. No la podemos encontrar. Me puede ayudar? Debemos hablar con Angel.”

  “Sí, sí, sí. Mi hijo está en la casa,” the woman said, waving us inside. We followed her into the house. Every few steps she turned and gave us a little wave, making sure we were behind her.

  The house needed some repairs, but it was impeccably clean. Cracks in the walls and some water stains on the ceiling, but no visible dust and a lemony smell. The home of someone who was doing their best despite what they had to work with. We walked through the living room where Miguel played a video game and down a short hall. The woman stopped in front of a closed door.

  “Aquí,” she said. I reached for the knob, but the woman put a hand on my forearm, stopping me. She held out her other hand. I gave her a confused look, and then looked down at my hands, which held the two tape-wrapped fighting pipes.

  “Lo siento,” I said, handing over the pipes. Bobby and I both looked appropriately embarrassed to have brought such vicious weapons into anyone’s home. She turned and walked down the hall. As she turned the corner, she gave one of the pipes a surprisingly lithe ninja swing and a high-pitched “Hi-yah!”

  “Am I getting my pipes back?” Bobby asked.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Anything else of mine you want to give away?”

  Bobby pushed me aside and opened the door without knocking. In the bedroom, a thirteen-year-old kid looked up from a drawing pad. He lay on the bed lit only by a desk lamp. He didn’t look scared. He looked like he was used to a lack of privacy.

  “Hi, Angel,” Bobby said, “I’m Julie Espinosa’s dad. You’re going to talk to me.”

  Angel didn’t stop drawing. From my angle, it looked like it was a grasshopper or maybe a praying mantis, something leggy with bulging eyes. Cute and fascinating from afar, but a monster up close.

  The room would probably be referred to as the master bedroom by a real estate agent. But with two beds pushed up against opposite walls and a folding table covered in engine parts taking up most of the central floor space, the room felt cramped. It smelled of grease and armpits.

  Unlike Julie, the kid didn’t hang his drawings on the wall. Only pages torn from lowrider and motorcycle magazines, featuring topless or bikini-clad chicas and white trash models pulled straight from their double-wides. Models in those magazines were like no other. There was something about the girls that was hard, surly, and working class. Girls that ate ribs, chewed tobacco, fought dirty, and had no idea what Pilates was. My kind of women.

  Bobby sat down on the corner of the bed. He spoke in a soft, even tone. “Look, Angel. Nobody has seen Julie in five days, almost six. I’m worried about her. Her mom is worried about her. Have you heard from her, seen her, know any of her other friends? I need your help.”

  Angel looked up at Bobby, but his pencil continued to draw. “Julie hasn’t been over in a while. I don’t know where she is. I hope she’s okay. Really.”

  “Do you know any of her other friends?” Bobby asked.

  “We’re not friends. Julie would never be my friend.”

  “You’re friends on Facebook.”

  “Facebook isn’t real friends.”

  “She has a drawing of yours on her bedroom wall.”

  That made Angel smile. “Really? She put it on her wall?”

  “Yeah, a stink beetle,” I said, happy to contribute.

  “Pinacate beetle,” Angel corrected.

  “That’s right. I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of that bug’s real name.” I’m sure he was right, but I had never heard the word pinacate in my life.

  “Jimmy, you’re killing me here,” Bobby said, giving me his shut-the-fuck-up look. He turned back to Angel. “Were you in a drawing class together or something? Study buddies?”

  “She used to come over a lot. We talked sometimes. But she never came to see me.”

  Loud motorcycle exhaust shook the walls and drowned us out. The headlights from the bikes flashed over the closed curtain.

  “Julie comes over to see my brother Gabe and his friends. That sounds like them.” Angel set down his pencil and drawing pad. He got up and lifted a corner of the curtain to look out. “You need to go. Come back when it’s just him. You need to run.”

  It won’t come as a surprise. Running wasn’t in Bobby’s playbook. Running was the thing the other guy did. Running and bleeding. Too many John Ford movies had etched their way into his psyche, developing a clear—if skewed—definition of what it was to be a man. I, on the other hand, while an avid fan of classic Hollywood cinema, understood the difference between real life and make-believe. That it wasn’t unmanly to be civilized. To avoid confrontation rather than start it. At least I told myself that when my fight-or-flight instinct screamed flight.

  Or maybe
my face still hurt from getting pummeled by Ceja. I still hadn’t passed that tooth, and I wasn’t excited about the thought of it.

  Bobby marched out the front door—and like an asshole, I was right behind him—as the three men got off their motorcycles. Or I should say, boys. Ranging from seventeen to twenty, their faces all had smooth, boyish looks. They tried for something harder, but the softness of youth betrayed them. Mexican or mixed Mexican, each boy sported a stylishly shaved head. I wondered if bald men got angry when they saw kids with obviously full heads of thick hair shaved off on purpose. Like tap dancing in front of a man with no legs.

  They were all ripped in that way that only the young can be. Defined muscles covered in tattoo sleeves, though they would have been more intimidating if one of them had been taller than five seven. Two wore wifebeaters and one—just because—was shirtless. The two with shirts had sleeveless jackets, Los Hermanos patches on the back. They could have been a boy band, if their expressions didn’t telegraph the enormous chips on their shoulders.

  “Should’ve grabbed my Plan Bs back,” Bobby said under his breath. “If this uglies up, the one on the right is yours. You handle that?”

  I wanted to say no and get the fuck out of Dodge. Instead, I nodded.

  “Don’t go back on your heels. Balls of your feet,” Bobby said.

  “I’ve done this before.”

  “I know. I’ve seen you. Thought a few pointers couldn’t hurt.”

  I glanced around the yard for a potential weapon. Hoping for a shovel, garden hoe, or even a decent-sized rock, I found nothing. I mentally prepped myself for some eye-gouging and ball-kicking. Unfortunately, with their shaved heads, hair-pulling was off the table.

  “Hey,” Bobby said, “how you doing tonight? Which one of you tough guys is Gabe?”

  The alpha of the pack broke off from the other two and strutted toward us. He would have had a baby face, except for his eyes. The distrustful eyes of a kid who grew up poor. The look of unkept promises and abandoned dreams. Santa had stiffed him one year too many.