Suicide Season

by Rex Burns

  “I appreciate the offer, Uncle. But it’s premature on two counts—one, you’re not ready for the retirement farm yet, and two, Kirk and Associates isn’t ready to quit yet.”

  “Yeah. ‘Two counts.’ I keep forgetting you got some law school. Well, your old man was stubborn too. Ma said all us boys got Dad’s bullheadedness; I guess you got it too.”

  The difference between stubbornness and foolishness was the outcome. If Kirk and Associates survived, I’d be labeled stubborn and maybe admired; if it folded, foolish. But as I’d told Uncle Wyn, we weren’t dead yet, and the telephone might ring any minute with a client who needed help and, more important, who could pay for that help.

  But of course, it didn’t. The afternoon dragged on, and Uncle Wyn hung around as long as his arthritis would allow, talking baseball and relatives. When he left, I sat and gazed out the window at the snowfields that freckled the distant peaks and wondered if taking a vacation would save a few bucks. No. Camping in the office would be cheaper than camping in the hills, and I wouldn’t chance missing that telephone call.

  Gradually, the sounds of Wazee Street below our window grew louder with the increasing restlessness of quitting-time traffic. Overhead, the sculptress who had taken the place of the piano teacher pushed her acrylic creations back and forth across her studio. I never did understand why they had to be moved periodically or why she preferred working in the afternoons and evenings, but the muted thunder of casters punctuated every day about this time. There had been a period when we were too busy to notice that the piano teacher’s business had collapsed and she had moved out and the sculptress had moved in. Now the occasional rumbles emphasized the silence of the office.

  I had just trimmed the blinds against the afternoon sun when Bunch came back, wiping at his sweaty forehead with a wad of handkerchief.

  “Good God, it’s hot. And not a sniff of breeze.”

  “Uncle Wyn’s leg tells him it’s going to rain.”

  “Hope to hell his leg’s right. But I wouldn’t bet the house and kids on it.”

  “What’s the Hally Corporation want?”

  Bunch shrugged and settled on the corner of the desk, which creaked in protest. “They’re not all that sure. Probably end up with a closed-loop system, the kind any home security outfit can install. If they want to do the job right, it’s going to cost a hell of a lot more than I think they’re willing to pay.”

  Usually that meant the client would have a major retrofit—a lot of companies put up their facilities or bought cheap and then decided they wanted to add the kind of security system that should have been built into the structure initially. “Did you explain it to them?”

  “Yeah, I explained it. But the guy’s a real asshole—the kind who knows everything and listens to nothing.” Bunch caught my expression. “Don’t look so worried, Dev. I was my usual smooth self. Yes, I explained the options—the quick fix versus the right way. He said he’ll talk it over with his boss or whoever and let us know. A day or two, he said.”

  “He sounded over the phone like he was in a hurry.”

  “Maybe so. But he sure slowed down when I gave him a ballpark figure. He’s got people stealing him blind from the grounds and warehouse, but he’s more worried about the security costs than the losses. Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time somebody went through the motions and called themselves covered.”

  That was true enough. Penny-wise, and so on. “I suppose you went by the place where what’s his name, Nestor, works?”

  “A packing plant over in Swansea. Apple Valley Turkeys. No valley, no apples, plenty of turkeys. Including the guy I talked to. Says Nestor just stopped coming to work. Never picked up his paycheck, never signed out of the retirement fund. Just flat disappeared.”

  “How much did he leave?”

  “Three hundred seventy-two dollars and fourteen cents. A week and a half’s pay, plus the seven hundred in the pension fund.”

  We both knew what that meant: an unplanned disappearance. “Nothing in the John Doe file at Denver Police Department?”

  “I thought you didn’t want me wasting time on this one.”

  “A little legwork here, a couple phone calls there—that’s all it should take you, Bunch.”

  “Boy, you never forget a thing you don’t want to forget.” He gazed down into the heavy traffic and whistled a half-audible tune between his teeth. “I just hope it’s not what I hope it’s not.”

  “Did he have any enemies?”

  “None the employer knew about, which means jack-shit. I didn’t get a chance to talk to any people he worked with. Guy wouldn’t let me on the floor.”

  “Maybe we can do that tomorrow.”

  “Oh?” I felt his gaze. “What’s this ‘we’ stuff, white man? Aren’t you afraid it might cost you a dime?”

  “Damn. I forgot all about that.” Bunch was going to do what he wanted to anyway; if I was along, maybe I could keep the lost time to a minimum. Besides, I was bored out of my gourd too. “Can you find out who’s working homicide at DPD tonight?”

  “I already did. It’s Ashcroft.”

  I led the way to the door. “Let’s go talk to him.”

  My car was an Austin-Healey 3000 whose temperament became volatile on hot days in heavy traffic. But if the old girl didn’t like the long idles of rush hour, Bunch liked her even less. For one thing, the car was too small for both of us; for another, he thought it was yuppie kitsch. “Next thing, you’ll be telling me what kind of goddamn running shoes to wear, or the right color patterns for my jogging suit.” I told him I liked the car for two reasons: one, it was too small for both of us, and two, yuppies didn’t drive museum pieces that looked so ratty. Besides, if I kept it moving enough so the undersized radiator could do its job, it was quick to dodge through the lumbering sedans and trucks and easy to park when there wasn’t much curb space available. Bunch preferred his Bronco, which he said was big enough to let him sit without hitting his head and heavy enough not to pull to one side when he rode alone. And I have to admit that as the Healey lurched over the dips near the Police Administration Building, the shocks groaned and thumped in an agony that questioned its service.

  “Do you know Ashcroft?” In the several years since Bunch had left the force, a series of different administrations had speeded up changes in personnel.

  “I met him in the patrol division, but he was over in District Four.” Bunch shrugged, his shoulder bobbing against mine. “He might remember me. We’ll see.”

  I pulled the Healey into an open spot reserved for municipal judges. The courts closed at five, and the judges’ cars were gone by one minute after. Now a picket line of red and white warning signs watched over the empty curb. Down Fourteenth Street, a swirl of traffic swung around the greenery and Greek columns of Civic Center Park, with its winos and teenaged prostitutes of both sexes. Even this early they could be seen posing on the lawn just off the sidewalk, selling their flesh and hungrily eyeing faces in the stream of traffic that drained out of downtown. The main pickup time would come a little later, when dusk started to make details hazy, and the johns, bolstered by after-work drinks, felt less conspicuous in the dimness. But business was business, even in the sale of self, and a good hustler didn’t let a chance pass without trying. If luck was with them, they could turn enough tricks before prime time to cover the day’s overhead. Then the rest of the evening would be, so to speak, pure gravy.

  Nearer, a man pushing a grocery cart of belongings shuffled across Fourteenth Street and slowly sought the shade of an alley. A few steps behind him and ignoring the blat and hurry of traffic, a black and white dog, tongue and tail drooping in the heat, followed closely. Bunch eyed the man, who was draped in a heavy coat despite the temperature. “What do you think trickled down on him?”

  “It wasn’t what the politicians promised.”

  “Come on now—that’s his chosen lifestyle: shopping cart chic.”

  “Could be our chosen lifestyle if we don’t get a few
clients. Paying clients.”

  “Jesus. You and your one-track mind.”

  Across the car-filled parking lot reserved for people the city paid, bands of black windows, like eye slits in a visor, emphasized the towering block of the holding jail and the slightly smaller monolith of the administration building. The few stray figures around its entrances were dwarfed by the weight of the concrete above, and—in a weak attempt to soften the expanses of bare stone slabs linking the two buildings—a fountain splashed feebly against the trapped and radiating heat. The facade spoke of rigidity and power and especially of an unimaginative adherence to fact and rule. It was a stifling and a restrictiveness that had driven Bunch out of the police and ultimately into Kirk and Associates. It was the same burden of bureaucracy and bullshit that had made me leave the Secret Service. As we approached the glowering overhang above the glassed-in lobby, I could sense Bunch tighten himself against its atmosphere.

  Ashcroft waited for us in the offices of crimes against persons. A tall man with narrow, curving shoulders, he accepted the fact of private investigators but he didn’t relish it. “You gentlemen want to come this way?”

  We followed him past the night clerk and into offices filled with two rows of metal desks. They were empty, the night shift already on the streets. Ashcroft, saying nothing, gestured for me and Bunch to find empty chairs.

  “You gentlemen want to see the John Doe files, that right?”

  “That’s right.” Bunch ignored the chairs and sat on one of the glass-topped desks. “How do you like the new chief, Ashcroft?”

  The homicide detective glanced up from the file drawer. “Fine. I’m sure he’ll be a fine chief. You gentlemen got a description of your missing person?”

  Bunch sighed—so much for old times and small talk—and nodded. “Hispanic male, medium height, slender build, twenty-six years old. Has a four-inch scar on the inside of his left forearm. Probably wearing a work shirt and blue jeans.” He handed the detective a tinted photograph of a young man smiling whitely at the camera. A scrawl in a lower corner read, “A mi tia con amor. Nestor.”

  He hefted a pile of manila folders from the drawer and set them on a desk. “Here’s the Hispanic John Does. The photograph probably won’t help much—most of these were pretty messed up by the time we found them.”

  “Right.” Bunch divided the stack into two piles and shoved one my way. The photograph in the first file showed a nude man lying face up on a gurney, suspended in a darkness that the flashbulb did not pierce. Puncture wounds made dark blotches in the paleness of his stomach, and part of his neck gaped open and glistened wetly in the flash. The face, distorted yet empty, showed lividity marks as well as the slightly double chin of a man older and heavier than Nestor. I turned to the next file.

  It took a while; there were a lot of photographs and—as Ashcroft said—some of the faces pictured had lost a lot of detail. I was half aware of the silence of the large office, a silence intensified by the tiny buzzing of fluorescent lights and then broken by the occasional jangle of a telephone. Once in a while, another detective walked between the rows of desks and eyed us with brief curiosity before talking with Ashcroft. From down the hall, the quack of the duty clerk’s television set made a constant background murmur. Bunch was more practiced at this type of identification, and he finished first. Ashcroft, trailing a telephone wire, talked to someone about an investigation and refiled the cases as we finished.

  “What about the metro and state lists?” Bunch asked.

  Still talking on the telephone, Ashcroft nodded and pulled more manila folders from a rack to lay on the desk. These were verbal descriptions rather than photographs. Filed chronologically, the lists covered unidentified bodies found in the cities and municipalities that surrounded Denver, as well as elsewhere in the state and region. We turned up two whose descriptions and probable dates of death matched Nestor’s, one over in Alamosa and one north of Denver in Weld County.

  “You gentlemen have any success?” Ashcroft finally hung up the telephone.

  “A couple possibles.”

  “Yeah?” The detective looked over my shoulder. Then he grunted, disappointed that the possibles weren’t from his case load. He gathered up the scattered folders and refiled them, then walked us back through the offices to the elevators. It was less courtesy than security, but now that we were leaving, he felt friendly enough to attempt a smile and some light banter. “You gentlemen can have the missing persons jobs. They’re nothing but headaches—a big waste of time.”

  “That’s what I keep telling Bunch.”

  CHAPTER 2

  A TELEPHONE CALL saved the long drive to Alamosa; their John Doe had been identified and claimed by relatives from California. The other was in the county hospital’s morgue at Brighton, an hour’s ride north of downtown. It was also an hour’s ride back.

  This time Bunch drove his Bronco. “You didn’t have to come along, you know.” He poked buttons on the radio, looking for his favorite country and western station.

  “Somebody has to keep you out of trouble. You can’t do it yourself.”

  The unidentified body was Hispanic and looked about the same age as Nestor. But the description had failed to mention that the deceased was missing his left eye and ear. “Hell, we didn’t know,” shrugged the sheriff’s deputy who had led us toward the body. “He got killed in a fight. It wasn’t until after the autopsy we found out they were missing before he was beat up.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” said Bunch, “you can see how old the scars are—the goddamn things are healed!”

  The officer’s neck grew red and he glared up at Bunch. “You know this greaser or not? If not, quit wasting my goddamn time!”

  “We wouldn’t have wasted our own goddamn time if you knew your goddamn job.”

  “Come on, Bunch. Let’s not waste any more goddamn time.”

  The officer yanked the rubber sheet over the victim’s face. “Fucking rent-a-cops!”

  “This is what the taxpayers get for their money? Jesus, no wonder private enterprise is taking over.”

  Now the big man swerved the Bronco out of 1-70 traffic onto the York Street ramp. The black of prairie surrounding Brighton had given way to clusters of lights that marked shopping centers and malls and finally became the steady flicker of city-glow. But here, beneath the elevated freeway and its concrete sky, the lights were dim and distant, and the brightest of them came from the modest neon of an occasional neighborhood bar. Interspersed among the black emptiness of fenced storage yards, a few small houses showed some life after dark. But most of the area had been cut up for commercial use, and the shops were closed for the day: salvage, electrical repair, automobile painting, generator rebuilding. It was one of those old, dying neighborhoods whose residential role had been sold out to industry, and what houses were left for people to live in were ill kept, grimy, and forlorn.

  “There it is—that two-story on the corner.” I pointed toward the narrow frame house whose lapped siding was punctured by two rows of windows.

  “Looks like an army barracks.”

  Mrs. Gutierrez had reluctantly given Bunch her relative’s address. It was, she said, a place where a lot of her countrymen roomed, because the owner, Senora Chiquichano, was Salvadoran and the refugees felt more comfortable with their own people.

  “By refugees, she means illegals?”

  Bunch shrugged. “That’s my guess.”

  We looked at the gabled end of the building. A tiny covered porch marked the entry, and four windows—two up and two down—were the only relief in the end wall’s blankness. The patch of lawn had long ago surrendered to bare dirt. A few scraps of paper rolled in the night wind across a sparkle of broken glass to catch on a sagging and well-used tricycle. From somewhere in the swaybacked building came the wail of a baby, and through another thin wall we heard the inevitable chatter of a television with its canned laughter and bouncy, happy advertisements. The torn screen door hung half open into a hallway sm
elling of urine, and the light from a dim bulb at the far end showed a row of doors leading away beneath stairs that lifted into the shadows of the second floor.

  “You want to take the upstairs?” Bunch jerked a thumb upward. “I think I’m too heavy. I might fall through.”

  It wasn’t that farfetched: I felt the floor joists tremble and quiver as I climbed the creaky stairs. At the first door, my knocking was followed by a tense hush. Then a voice asked, “Quién es?” and I sensed a figure hovering behind the gritty wood.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Calamaro, please.”

  “No hay.” Then in half-English, “No es any Calamaro aquí.”

  “He’s a man who lives downstairs. Room four. No soy la policia, no soy la migra. Abierte, por favor. Es muy importante.”

  Whether or not he believed I wasn’t the police or immigration, he was curious. A lock rattled, and the door opened the length of a chain to show the dark eye and pockmarked flesh of a man somewhere in his late twenties. Despite his youth, he looked as if he had been working since he could walk. At his knee, another brown eye peered upward, this one above the smooth, round cheek of a child.

  “The man is missing. Disappeared. His aunt, Senora Gutierrez, asked me to look for him. Do you know Mr. Calamaro?”

  “A little bit. No much.”

  “Can you tell me when you saw him last?”

  “Maybe last week. Two weeks. I don’t know.”

  “Did he seem worried? Aprensivo?”

  “No sé. We no talk much, you know.”

  “Aren’t you from El Salvador too?”

  “No!” A flash of anxiety crossed the eye, and the door wavered.

  “Wait!” I shoved one of Kirk and Associates’ business cards through the closing slit. “If you see Calamaro or hear anything about him, please call. It won’t get you in trouble—I’m not the police.” The door shut, leaving a tiny corner of white cardboard trembling against the paintless wood.