Carcass Trade

by Noreen Ayres

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Ray said. He looked at me as if trying to figure how serious I was. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “I warned you.”

  He said, “If your husband woulda lived, do you think . . . ? What do you think—?”

  “Ray? My turn to change subjects.”

  He lowered his eyes. His black hair gleamed under the light. When he looked back up, he was smiling. “Hey,” he said. “You know what happened to me today? A lady dressed in a suit, she flew by me while I was writing a guy up. Gives me the finger. How you like that?”

  11

  I met Nathan in Huntington Beach at the mouth of the long pier “rehabbed” in recent years to something yuppies could love. Despite it being a Tuesday, plenty of fishermen stood at the railings with their poles weighted downward from the tug of the sea. Like a spill of bright coins, the sun glinted brokenly off the water. I turned and pointed across the highway, suggesting a couple of great lunch places. He said, “Let’s walk first.”

  Midway down the pier, a small boy ran into Nathan’s leg, pasting my brother’s slacks with the wet rim of a half-eaten chocolate bar. With a where’d-you-come-from question in the boy’s unlit eyes, he stumbled and spun off. “Oh man, he got your leg,” I said.

  Nathan looked down at the chocolate transfer on his leg and then out at the horizon, as if he’d already forgotten why he looked.

  We stood at the rail, watching men in rubber wet suits ride the waves. He said, “Before I met her she never let anyone watch her sleep.” He said “her,” not needing to say her name. “She trusted me. Maybe she shouldn’t have. Who the hell knows anybody?” His knuckles showed through his pocket.

  “Why wouldn’t she trust you, Nathan?” I said it outright. No waver, no apology, but no accusation either. Sometimes you need to say things for your own confirmation, and sometimes if you do, you get reactions you didn’t expect.

  But Nathan’s thoughts were far away and he gave me no grim surprises. He said, “I called the son of a bitch myself.”

  “Her husband?”

  “You know what he says? He says, ‘She’s not your charge anymore, Montiel.’ What the hell kind of word is ‘charge’? Is that what he thinks of her, his charge?”

  “What difference does it make what words he uses?” I asked. “He’s not worried about her, that’s clear. That must mean she’s fine, she’s off doing her thing. Buying pasta makers in Italy.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me a damn thing, that’s what gets me. What would it hurt? I ask him, ‘Do you think I could talk to her, have her number over there?’ No.”

  “What’s she supposed to be doing over there?”

  “She’s got an aunt, cousins. I never met them.”

  “You think he knows about you two?”

  “Impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible.”

  “He doesn’t, that’s all. I ask him, ‘Have you heard from her or not?’ He tells me to get lost. I’ll go to goddamn Italy myself, I have to.”

  We turned to walk back. Ahead of us, a man rode a bicycle, though none were allowed on the pier. A little farther down, a bright wriggling thing whipped frantically on the concrete surface. Nathan stepped ahead and scooped up the fish. “Let’s give him back to his maker,” he said, and strode to the side to heave the tiny missile over.

  When he resumed walking it was as though he’d never lost focus. “I’m sick, Sammi, sick. I don’t know whether to scream or jump in the ocean. She’s gone. She’s just gone.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk like this before,” I said softly, trying to see his face, but he turned away and stepped again to the side to look over the long expanse of washed sand. A gull glided widely between us and a scattering of sanderlings line-dancing on the shore. “Nathan, I’ll see if I can talk to him. Just give me a day or two.”

  He pulled me to him sideways. That surprised me, since we are not a touchy family. He said, “I can’t wait that long.”

  “You can wait that long. Be patient.”

  “That was never my strong suit.”

  Nor mine, I thought.

  We ate Italian, though that might not have been a good idea, and left each other for separate parking lots after awkward talk about the national scene, our parents, and one cousin who killed himself in prison.

  When I got back to the office, on my desk was a copy of Dr. Schaffer-White’s report from the Blue Jay homicide. I turned pages and saw that Les Fedders was the dick on the case. So. Now we had two cases together. I’d had the misfortune of working with Les before, though on as lean a basis as I could. He’s given to gloating about how he can cover the “poppers” with no wad up his nose, poppers being corpses in that state of advanced putrefaction wherein the buildup of internal gases splits the skin like seismic violence. Teflon nostrils this detective says he has.

  But once, on a case in 104-degree summer heat, I watched a gag wrestle in Les’s throat when a coroner’s tech pulled on the arm of a corpse left too long in a car behind a building and the arm came away at the seam. Dick of the Year saw me catch the reaction, and ever after he gets a dig in when he can.

  I no sooner had him on the phone than he said to someone in the background, “What was the score on that fingerprint, Jesse? ‘B’ quality? That’s good enough for me. I’ll sign off on it.”

  He returned to me. “We got a hit on a serial bank robber. Dumb shit’s going to federal quicker’n hell can scorch a feather. He left his prints on a checkbook cover.”

  “Les, you wouldn’t happen to have the campground case on your desk?”

  “That one down off Ortega? Yeah, I do.” I heard the smack of folders. “I got there right after you frenzies left.” Frenzies—his word for forensics people. “That was a pretty one, wasn’t it? Le’s see . . . Rollie Wilson Pierson, age fifty-five, housepainter. Arrested for public intoxication four times. Two unpaid traffic cites. That’s it. Trudy Kunitz says she doesn’t think we can get anything off the duct tape. Just a big smudge. But I’ll tell you something. Whoever messed him up was a skilled practitioner of martial arts.”

  “How do you know that, Les?”

  “Experience.”

  I should have leveled him myself, stealing the doctor’s evaluation. But I wanted to ask him a favor, and I was working up my courage. “Have you talked to the family yet?”

  “By phone.”

  “Anything there?”

  “I talked to a sister. The wife’ll be giving me a call.”

  My pencil kept rolling off the desk. I checked the nicks and scratches on my desk to be sure I wasn’t the victim of a midnight swap.

  “How about our canyon Jane, Les? What have we got on her?”

  “You asking me to go through all my cases with you, Smokey, or what?”

  “I was on the scene, Les.”

  “But you’re not responsible for the investigation. What is it you want to know?”

  “I just wondered if anyone had talked—”

  “No ID’s been made on the canyon case.”

  “I know that, Les. But there was a name on—”

  “Stolden. Guy says the car’s stolden.”

  “Yes, we knew that. The ‘guy’ . . . You talked to someone, then?”

  “A Dr. Robertson. That same day. Friday.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “Okay, Les, I want to tell you something.” And then I went into the story of how the Caddy in the canyon belonged to a woman named Miranda Robertson, and how my brother was married to a woman by that name a few years back. How my brother was supposed to meet with her, some business-type stuff, I lied, only she never showed up and he didn’t want to call her husband. Then I asked Les if he minded my coming along if he makes a visit.

  “I’m not going to make a visit. There’s nothing to make a visit about. A report was already taken in L.A. for the stolden car. The wife made it herself.”

  “And you talked to a sister? Her sister?”

  “Uh . . . the
doctor’s sister.”

  “What if, Les, what if that was Miranda Robertson in the car?”

  “Then we will have our interview. You work with the coroner’s people and get us an ID. When that happens, and if it turns out to be your relative, I’ll put him under a bulb and drive bamboo up his fingernails if you want. But right now I don’t have time to go on field interviews for an if and a maybe when all we have is a stolden vehicle. You know the guy, check?”

  “Well no, not exactly.”

  “No matter. Your brother doesn’t want to call him, call him yourself.”

  “Hey, Les.”

  “What?”

  “Is that permission?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

  I’d never tell him, but I owed him one.

  “What if I sort of dropped in on him? Would that be all right? I’ll take along Joe Sanders.”

  “Take whoever you want. Just don’t do it on my budget. I don’t want to hear from Fiscal you did it on my nickel.”

  “No prob, Les. I won’t even bill the department overtime.”

  “Ciao,” he said.

  Ciao. Italy on the brain.

  Doing the dishes that evening, I had the classical music station on when I heard the announcer say he was going to play Rossini’s overture to the Italian Girl in Algiers. I let my hands drip into the sink while I listened to the music rise and fall and watched an Ana’s hummingbird at the feeder outside my window. As I listened, I pictured Miranda Robertson in Italy, her long chestnut hair loose, her skirt of many colors breaking in her strides. Maybe she was this very minute dancing well with a John Travolta type.

  Joe was to pick me up in a little over an hour, and we’d drive to Beverly Hills to see Dr. Robertson at eight that evening. Deciding to use the time to burn some calories, I went over to Mrs. Langston’s to see if I could talk Farmer into a walk. Yeah, like talking water into running downhill.

  Mrs. Langston was limping ahead of me, coming back from getting her newspaper. “How are you today, Mrs. Langston?”

  “Oh hi, Smokey. Well, today some people would say I was an old lady. You know, we Americans think we can fix everything. But everything’s not fixable. It just isn’t.” She burrowed a thumb into her thigh.

  “Your doctors . . . ?”

  “Sometimes you just have to make peace with yourself and realize there’s a whole lot of stuff doctors don’t know. That doesn’t make them bad people. They just don’t know it all.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “You want some onions when you come back? I cooked up a whole bunch of them because they were growing beards.”

  “No, thanks, Mrs. Langston.”

  “I wish you’d call me Mary.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Farmer’s toenails were already scrambling on the door when we opened it. His owner reached for his leash and said, “You guard Smokey now, you good for nothin’, adorable, nasty nuisance, you.” Then she took his head in both hands and kissed him between the eyes.

  Halfway into our walk, the dog found something in the bush. Instead of pointing, he whined and wagged his tail. A tiny, furry, blond thing with a rounded nose and floppy ears that looked like rose petals was hunkered in the grass. Slowly, I reached down and picked it up, amazed that it let me. No tail, its rump looked like a 1980 Seville, no trunk space.

  “What are you?”

  It peeped, then began to shudder. No, purr. It purred in my hand, and dropped a pellet.

  “Let’s see what your new mommy’s going to think you are,” I said, referring to Mrs. Langston.

  ***

  “Joe, it is so cute. You have to come see it.”

  “I know what they look like. David had a guinea pig. Where are you going to keep it?”

  “It’s in the bathtub now.”

  “With water?”

  “No, silly. I’ll get a cage tomorrow.”

  “They’re work,” he warned.

  “How much work can they be?”

  A guy flashed his lights behind us, and Joe moved out of the fast lane. Joe tends to drive like an old lady, no offense intended. When we arrived at Dr. Robertson’s, a corner clump of pink begonias succumbed to his right rear tire, but he didn’t know it and I didn’t mention it.

  “What if he’s an asshole, Joe?”

  “You said you talked to him.”

  “I did. He sounded okay this morning. But what if he changed his mind?”

  “What if Mexico cedes to the United States? Forget this could have anything to do with your brother’s ex-wife. It’s just another case, with a peculiarity.”

  The doctor was wearing a green polo shirt and white shorts, and his legs were tan all the way to his toenails. Over his left brow his blond hair dipped in a foppish wave.

  “Come on in. We’ll watch our polluted sunset out on the patio.” We walked out onto a wooden deck that curved around the house out of sight. It looked down on a wooded canyon. He served us strawberry daiquiris already in a pitcher as the sun became a penny in the horizon’s gray slot. “Miranda is not the most responsible person in the world,” he said with an apologist’s grin. “I mean, she said she’d call . . . Detective Fedders is it . . . ? but I doubt she did. She was going to Vienna. Always in a hurry.”

  “Is there anyone else who might have talked to her in the last few days?” Joe asked.

  “Mm-m. My sister.”

  “Does she have parents in town?”

  “You aren’t taking my word for it? What is this, anyway?”

  “Detective Fedders told you, didn’t he, that a corpse was found in your wife’s car?” Joe said this quietly, respectfully.

  “Yes. That’s unfortunate. Who was he?”

  “We don’t have that information yet. We don’t mean to upset you,” Joe said, raising a hand the same way Peter Falk does when Columbo is acting like a doofus. “We’re just trying to be thorough.”

  “I can understand that.” He seemed to settle. “Let’s go back inside. Once the sun goes down, the air cools right off.”

  We made ourselves comfortable on plush green leather couches with nowhere to put our glasses. When two people go on an interview, one tries to keep eye contact with the interviewee, the other takes notes. I set my glass down on the floor and withdrew a notebook.

  Joe asked, “Do you think you could provide us with your wife’s dental records, Doctor? Just to—”

  The doctor said, “Excuse me,” and stood up. I thought he was leaving us. He went instead to a side table across the room and picked up the gas tank, seat, saddle, and control panel handset of a replica Harley-Davidson telephone. While he punched buttons, he said, “My wife would not like her privacy invaded in that manner. Would you?”

  And then: “Is Morris there? Tell him to call Dr. Robertson when he comes in, will you? Thanks.”

  Coming back, he said, “I’ll have someone call you. A man who’s doing a job for us. We’re into weekend motorcycle riding, see. Matter of fact, he’s down your way. Garden Grove.”

  As he sat down, he focused on me awhile. I kept my gaze steady, did not look away. I wanted to ask him if his wife had breast implants, but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. He picked up his drink and said, “This man does marvelous metal and paint work. I know he spoke to Miranda himself last evening. She’s faxing him a postcard of a wallpaper design she saw in a castle, actually. She wants it on her tank. She rides too. Morris Blackman. I’ll have him call you.”

  “How about if we call him?” Joe said.

  “Fine.” He gave us a number and said, “That’s for a bar he owns. I don’t have his home phone.” What I interpreted as an irritated twitch by the mouth transformed itself rapidly to a smile.

  “Our records show your wife reported her car missing two weeks ago. Does she know about what happened to it?” Joe asked.

  “Oh yes. She really loved that old clunker. She had that car since she was a teenager. It really blew her mind when it was stolen. I think that’s partly w
hy she went back to Italy. When I told her the condition they found it in . . . well, she was sort of prepared for it, you see, with it being taken in the first place. She didn’t say much at all.”

  Joe asked, “Where was it taken from?”

  The doctor’s eyes went wide, like a bad actor imitating surprise. “Right out in front of our house.” His brow creased. “I don’t believe she locked it, is what I think. Definitely not a material girl. She goes to the market, leaves her purse in the cart,” he said, shaking his head. “Money, credit cards. She’s been lucky so far. People have returned it.”

  “Dr. Robertson,” I said, “your wife wouldn’t have any reason to carry a weapon, now would she?”

  “A gun? Oh my no. She’s down on guns. Why do you ask?”

  “A handgun was found in the car.”

  His body movements were jerky, and he swished the remaining daiquiri in his glass before drinking it. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. Certainly whoever took the car would likely be the type to have a gun.”

  Joe said, “So, you have no weapons yourself.”

  “I’ve seen the long-term neurological damage from gunshot wounds. I think you’re far safer in the long run relying on your wits in a confrontation. Some of my colleagues are arming themselves these days, but not me. Guns have no place in a physician’s life.”

  Joe thanked him for his time and stood to leave.

  The doctor shook our hands and repeated his offer to help. He’d have Miranda call soon.

  Back in the car, I said, “Well, he’s a phony phallus, ain’t he?”

  “You noticed.”

  “But is he lying to us or to himself?”

  “He lies to himself about how far he jogs around his own exercise room.”

  “Then you believe him.”

  “People who lie to themselves have no problem lying to others. I think he knows his wife is having an affair. I think he wonders if she’s off having another one right now with some slick Italian prince.”

  While we were stopped at a light, I looked out the side window. On top of the traffic pole sat a crow, watching its mate down on the sidewalk tear at a burger wrapper. Each night I give myself one bird to look up in my books before falling asleep. I thought of the raven, delivering jawbones to Doug. I thought of the killdeer, bearing her young out in the open, hiding the evidence by dragging the shell pieces away, then shrieking and flapping in a distraction display. A noisy plover, the book says, vociferus part of its name. Kill-deeah! Now as I rolled my window down, the top crow twitched its head toward me and riveted me with his stare. One to watch, one to discover.