Plaster City (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco)

by Johnny Shaw

  “It’s not like that, Jimmy. I’d help if I could, but I’m a Holtville cop. There’s three of us. We don’t investigate things. We don’t barely got files. We drive around, give tickets, roust illegals and hobos in the park. We’re like the town security guards. Mall cops do more police work.”

  “But you can put in a request or something?”

  “They’d ignore it. If I start to nose in on an investigation up in Indio—I’m not even in the same county—they’re going to wonder why, but mostly they’re not going to care a lick. You need someone up there, or at least in the Imperial Sheriff’s Department, or maybe Federal. Do you know any G-Men or Homeland Security? Bobby’s a good guy. But you’re asking the ball boy to hit a home run. Ain’t going to happen.”

  “All right, man. Thanks.”

  I didn’t know a G-Man, but I did know someone in the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department.

  And that’s how I ended up driving to Indio with Griselda Villarreal, Deputy Sheriff and Bobby’s ex-girlfriend. I hadn’t seen her since before they broke up a couple months earlier. She looked the same. I wondered if she aged at all. She could still pass for sixteen and I’m pretty sure she was older than me. It wasn’t just her height—she was only a scoonch above five feet—it was the softness of her features. But I never let that fool me, she was a badass. I had seen it firsthand on more than one occasion. She had to be. Not only was she a female cop in the Imperial Valley, but she dated Bobby Maves.

  While I possessed a natural distrust for the police, I trusted Gris implicitly. So I told her everything. Even information that I definitely shouldn’t have told a law enforcement officer, considering the number of crimes that had been committed so far. I even told her about Julie shooting Bobby, a secret that I had divulged to a few more people than was probably wise. But if I was asking for her help, I was going to be on the level. This was my show now and the only way I could do it was my way. She agreed to meet with me, but wouldn’t agree to help until she talked to Bobby face-to-face.

  I had gotten word from Bobby that he had been moved from the detention ward to the non-locked-door recovery area. The owner of the garage refused to press any charges, most likely due to a call from Hector Costales. And while the police threw some threats at Bobby, they had no real interest in pursuing a few misdemeanor charges. Bobby had been shot. They figured that was punishment enough.

  So Griselda and I drove to Indio, the Salton Sea on our right and the desert all around us. The second time inside of the week that I had gotten the chance to ride in the front of a police car. I would’ve asked her to run the siren and the light, if I hadn’t’ve gotten that out of my system tooling around in Ceja’s cruiser.

  “Thanks, Gris,” I said, breaking up a long silence. “I know I’m putting you in a weird position telling you more than the other cops, but you’re family. You have every right to report me or arrest me or walk away, but please don’t.”

  “The police aren’t your enemy.”

  “Not most of the time. But they are when you do a bunch of illegal shit,” I said. “Even if you got a good reason. And when a father’s daughter shoots him, best to handle in-house. Doesn’t seem like there’s an upside to getting outsiders involved.”

  “But you can’t handle it. Even if you find Julie, extract her from whatever bad situation she’s in, what happens then?”

  “Jump off that bridge when I get to it. I can always bring the cops in later, after I’ve fucked everything up myself.”

  Griselda shook her head and let out a small laugh.

  “Here’s the crazy thing,” I said. “When I’m around Bobby, I’m the sanity, the voice of reason. God help us, I’m the brains of the operation. But then I get around real people like you, I can actually see how berserk we both are.”

  “Once a troublemaker always a troublemaker,” she said. “I’m glad you called. Instead of kicking down more doors, punching the closest face, and getting your ass shot or stabbed or whatever.”

  “Yeah, that strategy hasn’t been working the best,” I said. “When was the last time you saw Bobby? Have you seen him since . . . ?”

  Griselda didn’t say anything for a while. I stared out the windshield, feeling like a jerk for asking. It had been meant as small talk, but the talk had grown big fast. She spoke without looking at me.

  “He broke up with me, you know.”

  Even though I was the only other one in the car, it took me a second to realize that Griselda was talking to me. It was the way she had said it, distant, almost a question.

  “What?” I said.

  “I don’t know what he told you, but it was Bobby who ended it.”

  “He didn’t tell me that. He didn’t tell me anything. I couldn’t get him to talk about it, always changed the subject or made some joke.”

  “There’s a side of Bobby people don’t see. You might be one of the few that does, but I don’t know. I saw a part of him that he didn’t show to many. Not just a vulnerability, but something more reflective.”

  “I catch it in fits and starts, but usually I get the Bobby Show.”

  “The Mavescapades.”

  “He loves a good portmanteau, that guy. After you two broke up, that’s all I got, until this with Julie. Now he’s off the chain. Like a sad Tasmanian devil or a depressed Hulk. His emotions changing every second and him catching up to them five minutes later.”

  “I hate that he’s hurting. That he’s alone with this. I still care about him.”

  “I got no right to ask, so feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up and mind my own business, but why did he break it off?”

  She shook her head. “Some bullshit about not being good enough for me. About holding me back. And if I wasn’t going to do anything about it, he had to. We’d been together more than two years. He woke up and decided that he was ruining my life, that I was letting him. He was even sober when he explained it. But I stopped listening after a while. It all sounded like excuses. Like an attempt to use logic to explain the illogical. Maybe he believed it. Maybe he was scared of the commitment. The only thing I know was that no matter what I said, he had an answer. His mind was made up.”

  “Yeah. When Bobby commits to a thing, he’s like a pit bull with a rib eye. Try to take it away.”

  “It got to that point where trying wasn’t going to change a thing. He wore me down and it wasn’t worth the fight. It was just done. And that was it.”

  “If he wanted to get back together, try again, would you?”

  “He really hurt me,” Griselda said. “I want to help how I can with Julie. Past that—I can’t answer your question, because I don’t know.”

  We pulled into the hospital parking lot with that in the air. I couldn’t imagine how Griselda felt—what she was thinking—seeing Bobby for the first time since they broke up. And I couldn’t imagine how Bobby was going to react.

  I probably should have called him to tell him I was bringing her.

  “What’s she doing here?” Bobby said, “I told you we weren’t involving her. We were keeping her out of it.”

  Griselda stood behind me at the door to Bobby’s room. He currently shared it with an empty bed, which gave us some privacy. Bobby didn’t have as many tubes in him as before, but his shoulder was mummy-wrapped and it looked like he couldn’t move his left arm if he tried.

  “We were keeping her out of it,” I said, “but as soon as I took over this blunderfuck, that gave me the authority to ask whoever I wanted for help.”

  “I don’t want her involved.”

  “I’m standing right here, Bobby,” Griselda said. “Don’t talk about me in the third person while I’m in the same room.”

  “But you literally are the third person,” he said loudly.

  “You should’ve come to me right away. Even if we aren’t together, I still care,” Griselda shouted back.

  “Guys?” I said.

  “I knew if I asked for your help that you’d put your job, yourself at risk. That’
s the reason we broke up.”

  “Guys?” I said again, trying to be heard over their rising volume.

  “We didn’t break up. You broke us up. I didn’t have a say.”

  I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled loud enough to wake a coma patient three doors down. Griselda and Bobby turned to me, hands going to their ears. It was speech time.

  “I’m helping you, Bobby, but damn it, I don’t want to. If you don’t like how I do this, zero is the exact amount of fucks I give. Hell, I haven’t even got to the point where I know what I’m doing.

  “Putting rules and shit on how I find Julie limits my effectiveness. I get to ask whoever I want for help. And since the only people I know are a ragtag bunch of misfits, which works in the movies, I’m going to reach out broad. One of those misfits is Griselda. She not only cares, but she’s smart and tough and a fucking cop. If that hurts your precious widdo feewings, suck it up, cowboy.

  “Right now, I’m going to go out to the waiting room and read two-year-old Golf Digests while you two do your best impersonations of grown-ups and reach some sort of fucking accord. I’m not asking you to get back together—although you’re idiots if you don’t. What I am asking is that you work it out so that you can be in the same room together. So that we can work together.

  “I don’t want to see either of your fucking faces until the treaty is signed.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. I turned and walked out, feeling good about my speech, particularly the “ragtag bunch of misfits” line. I always wanted to say that. Although I wished that it wasn’t true.

  While I tore a recipe out of a Good Housekeeping magazine (five-ingredient brownies made in a coffee mug in the microwave!), Becky and Russell walked into the waiting room. They saw me and came over. I folded the page and put it in my shirt pocket. I gave Becky a brief hug and shook Russell’s hand. He held a stack of Julie’s journals in the other one.

  “If I haven’t already said it,” Becky said, “thanks again for your help. And I’m sorry about last night. I lost it.”

  “Completely understandable,” I said. “And I ain’t done. With Bobby laid up, I’m going to keep looking for Julie.”

  Becky turned to Russell and then back to me. “As much as I want her home, she obviously doesn’t want to be there. Even if you find her, what then?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  I didn’t tell her that I thought Julie was in Plaster City. It was still conjecture and I didn’t want to get her hopes up or open the door to any rash actions. Instead, I said, “I’m getting more people to help. We’ll be meeting soon. Coming up with some sort of plan. Both of you are welcome to be there.”

  “Definitely,” Russell said. “Not sure how I can help, but if I can I will.”

  “Why are you out here and not in the room with Bobby?” Becky asked.

  “Bobby’s with a friend. A Sheriff’s Deputy for Imperial County. Unofficial visit. She’s helping.”

  “Griselda?” Becky asked.

  “Yeah. I didn’t know if you knew her.”

  “We’ve never met. Bobby’s talked about her. I thought they broke up.”

  “They did.”

  Twenty minutes later, Griselda walked down the hall toward us. I introduced her to Becky and Russell. Griselda told Becky that she was sorry to hear about her daughter and would do everything she could to help. Becky thanked her. They were both way too formal, the real story in their eyes. Becky and Griselda sized each other up, which was funny as they were both physically similar. Bobby definitely had a type.

  “Well, we should be getting on our way,” Griselda said.

  “Thanks again,” Becky said.

  They awkwardly shook hands, and Becky and Russell walked down the hall toward Bobby’s room. I started toward the exit, but Griselda stopped me with a light smack to the arm.

  “Did you really catch Bobby and her boning on her kitchen counter?”

  I wish I could have seen my face, because whatever my reaction looked like, it was funny enough to bust up Griselda. And she wasn’t an easy laugh.

  “He told you about that?”

  “Bobby decided that if we were going to work through things that he had to come completely clean.”

  “He’s all-or-nothing.”

  “I actually asked him not to tell me everything, but once he got rolling . . . I’m not sure what he sees in her, but with all those emotions confusing him, I can see how it could happen.”

  I didn’t have the heart or stupidity to point out how similar she and Becky were physically, so I shifted the conversation. “So are you two going out again? I mean, did you . . . ?”

  “Slow down, tiger.”

  “But you’ll help?”

  Gris nodded. “Yeah. I’ll help.”

  “Now comes the hard part, figuring out how to get into Plaster City. We have to know for sure if Julie’s there.”

  “Someone has to see her. Actually see her there. Without eyes on Julie, there’s no probable cause. I can’t do anything on hunches and guesses.”

  “There’s got to be some way to get in there,” I said.

  “Plaster City doesn’t have any residents beyond the gang that’s there. And it doesn’t sound like we’d be able to turn someone inside the gang. What we could use is someone who lives out there with their ear to the ground. Only freaks and weirdos skew that far out of town, but that’s a tight-knit group. And for all their paranoia and crazy, they’re a curious bunch. Not much gets by them. We need a desert rat.”

  I laughed at the idea that popped into my head. I stopped laughing when I realized I was going to go through with it.

  “What?” Griselda asked.

  “I know someone out there. In that part of the desert. Outside Coyote Wells. You thought Bobby was pissed for bringing you here, he’s going to lose his shit when he finds out I asked his father for help.”

  “I didn’t even know his father was alive. He never talks about him.”

  “Yeah, there’s a reason for that.”

  It’s a strange feeling to get lost in the desert. The forest makes sense, all those trees blocking the view. But in the desert, it was the redundancy of the landscape that got me all turned around. Technically, I guess I wasn’t lost. There had really only been the one dirt road. I could make my way back, but that didn’t mean I knew where I was.

  Relief hit me when the buildings came into view. There were a bunch of them, all part of one collective grouping. A compound that consisted of a double-wide trailer, a large hay barn, corrals and pens that held a number of different animals, and about a dozen small sheds that made me think that shed-building might be Rudy’s hobby.

  I pulled onto the long gravel driveway that led up to the double-wide and parked my truck under a big jujube tree. A wooden deck had been built in front of the trailer with a tattered blue tarp duct-taped to posts for shade. The uneven deck dipped dramatically at one corner. The man sitting on one of the deck chairs didn’t seem to mind.

  Rudy Maves put a hand over his drinking glass and waited for the dust that my truck kicked up to settle. When it did, he took a long drink and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. His eyes never left me as I climbed out of the truck and walked toward him.

  Rudy looked like he had aged fifty years in the roughly fifteen since I’d last seen him. Floating somewhere around sixty years old, the drinking and the desert sun had darkened and cracked his white face a deep tan. The darker skin made him look much more like Bobby. And, of course, he had the same bone-white pompadour that Bobby had, only higher with enough pomp to act as a visor, shading his eyes. More than one National Enquirer Elvis sighting could probably be chalked up to Rudy Maves.

  I looked for some way to get up onto the deck. There didn’t appear to be any stairs and it was about four feet off the ground.

  “Ain’t no steps. You got to want it,” Rudy said in lieu of a greeting. “Wood porch is an easy build. A box, really. Steps takes talent. Going to fetch a pool ladder
when I can find one used.”

  I put my back against the deck and lifted myself to a sitting position on its edge.

  “Careful, son. It’s been a long while since two people’s been up on here.”

  “I trust your craftsmanship.”

  “After I told you I couldn’t build steps? You ain’t so bright, are you? I ain’t never built nothing that didn’t eventually collapse.” Rudy squinted at me for a moment. “I know you.”

  “I called, but the phone just rang.”

  “Yeah. About an hour ago. I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to talk to.”

  “I’m a friend of your son’s. You might remember me. Jim Veeder.”

  “Sure. You two was joined at the hip, always getting Bob in all kinds of trouble.”

  I couldn’t help but let a laugh slip out at that.

  Rudy gave me a disappointed look, but continued. “Big Jack’s boy. I remember your old man better than you. Morales was his bar. Rough place in my day. Don’t think I ever left that place without a wound of some kind. Tough son of a bitch, your old man. One time, he knocked me unconscious, out cold, one punch, because I said that Lee Marvin was a bad actor.”

  “Sounds like Pop.”

  “Funny thing was, I was thinking about Lee Van Cleef when I said it. Just too drunk to get my facts right. Never faulted him for it, but just the same I didn’t argue screen talent with him no more. How is Big Jack?”

  “He died. About two years ago.”

  “Sorry to hear it. Barroom legends never get their due. There should be a museum. I’ll include him in my prayers tonight. You want an Arnold Palmer?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” He didn’t offer me a seat, so I stood with my hands in my pockets.

  “Minerva!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Arnoldo Palmero, por favor.”

  Rudy turned back to me. “You want ice?”

  I shrugged.

  “Con hielo,” he shouted. “If there’s spit in it, you can have mine.” Rudy smiled and I saw even more of Bobby in his face.

  “Looks like you got some animals out here. Where does the water come from?”