Carcass Trade

by Noreen Ayres

  I reached under his waist and flipped open the ashtray and said, “Ray, you keep your gum in the ashtray.” When he leaned away, I got Dentyne for myself from an already opened pack.

  “Oh yeah, I do, don’t I?”

  Ray said, “Lemme see that picture of Blackman again?”

  From an envelope between the seats I took the page from the biker rag that Nathan had sent me. Ray looked, but turned the page over and focused on a photo I’d seen before and forgotten, of a woman’s breast glowing with a gold nipple ring, the mound garlanded with a tattoo of a flowery vine.

  “There’s a whole other world out there, Raymond.”

  He complained when I lapped the page over and put it back in the envelope. “Give me that back. If I can’t go in, I have to have something to look at.”

  Grinning, I handed him the envelope. He tucked it between the seats himself. “Well, here goes,” I said, my hand on the car door. “Wish me luck, good buddy.”

  “You’re not out in thirty minutes, I’m in.”

  “Thirty-one,” I said, and got out, glancing back as he settled down in the seat, all hard muscle and man. He gave me a thumb-up, and I slapped the fender of his car as I went by.

  ***

  When I shoved on the nose of the python with the heel of my hand, the door opened to a well of darkness. I couldn’t understand how any customer could see to order. The place smelled yellow, as in beer. As I stood in the entryway, the sound of an airconditioning unit in need of new blower bearings clattered away.

  There were about twelve, thirteen people in the place, one a Hispanic woman with masses of hair and very heavily made-up eyes, blowing a blue column of smoke that got lost between the ceiling beams. The two men at her table were talking with each other, their temples almost touching.

  I threaded my way through the tables, thinking the establishment didn’t look like much of a biker bar, if that’s what it was supposed to be. It looked more like a low-grade rendezvous spot for middle-aged managers on their way to a murky affair. From somewhere in the back came the mournful notes of Jennifer Warnes singing “Restless.”

  The man behind the bar had a pate that picked up the gleam reflected in the mirror. He wore round wire-rimmed glasses and looked to be about sixty.

  I stood between two stools and said, “Howdy.”

  “What’ll you have?”

  “A Mr. Blackman. Monty Blackman?”

  The bartender made a quick swipe on the counter with his bare hand and looked at his palm a moment before wiping it on his jeans. On the back of his wrist was a tattooed blue anchor with U.S. NAVY under it. Jabbing two fingers toward a recessed doorway across the room, he answered, “In there.”

  “Navy man,” I said, glancing at his wrist.

  The boredom broke. “Seventeen years.”

  “My father and brother were Navy,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  Made a new friend. I waved, smiled, moved off.

  In a sort of alcove were two rust-colored doors on the right, one with a pink metal cutout of a curvaceous woman, the other a tin-punched replica of The Thinker on a commode. On the walls were framed circus posters of tattooed men and women standing in stiff poses, and a cartoon-style painting of a snake curled atop twenty numbered eggs, with the caption “Hell yes, I’m on welfare.”

  A dime-store sign on a third door said OFFICE. I knocked. A deep voice said, “Yeah?” and I turned the knob.

  Inside were three men, the one to my left a Mexican with his stomach slid off onto the top of a three-drawer filing cabinet as he leaned against it. He was the biggest Hispanic I’d ever seen, and over his low forehead was a perfect widow’s peak.

  Beyond him, against a paneless window crisscrossed with fresh boards, was a man about my age with a raw, hard face. His thumbs were caught in his rear pockets, and his jaw worked slowly over a piece of gum as he looked me up and down. I looked back and worked my gum the same.

  Near the center of the room and leaning back in a wooden desk chair that swiveled was Blackman himself. He was wearing a black shirt with a picture of a skeleton riding a Harley, over which were the windblown letters Ghostrider. Monty’s beard was streaked with gray, and I appreciated the trouble he had containing his full head of hair in a ponytail. His forehead was short and his nose was narrow until it flared at the bottom dramatically, as if he were ready to say something provocative, good or bad.

  “I like the name,” Monty said. “It suits you.” He spoke the name I gave him on the phone: Brandy. Brandy Brandon, because I thought what would it matter, these clowns are probably about as clever as the back of beer cans.

  “Thanks. I like yours,” I said.

  Monty kept the smile as he waved an arm toward the Mexican as if to sweep him out the door, saying, “Paulie, you go raise a little hell, get your mind off the ditch, and we’ll see you in a few days.”

  Paulie said, “You want me dig your pit Saturday?” His thumb scraped at the tip of his middle finger to tear the nail off. When that didn’t seem to work, he bit it in one hard nibble and spit the chitin onto the floor.

  The blond guy at the back said, “Stay off the sauce, Paulie, will ya? We’ll get that sumbitch dug. You need to rest that whiskey dick awhile anyways.” The blond shifted his eyes in my direction and back again. Some men test you that way. I looked steady at him, chewed my gum, thought, Jerk.

  Paulie turned his face into the light where the drooping rims of his lower lids showed fiery and the shine on his full lower lip grew brighter.

  “I ain’t got no whiskey dick, you asshole,” he said. He looked at me too, but soon averted his eyes and turned to leave. Monty waved the blond one out too, and as the guy was closing the door behind him, he bent low and looked at me and winked.

  Monty said in his soft voice, “Paulie owns an excavation outfit. He dumped his bucket the other day, nearly scared himself to death. Best way’s to kid him back on.” His eyes were the color of his faded denims. “Now, you ready?”

  “I guess so.”

  He handed me a good-sized, multicolored, quilted satchel. I pulled the Velcro apart and looked in. Inside were several choices of garments a girl would be lucky if she got to leave on long enough to sleep in.

  “Pick whatever you want. Then come on back here in a minute. I got another girl coming in at five.”

  “You won’t need her,” I said, and opened the door.

  In one of the three stalls in the ladies’ room I dumped the contents on the floor and decided against the thing that looked like only a red V of lace from shoulder to crotch. Ditto the thing that seemed like a see-through corset. Settling on a red lace body stocking whose roses looked like they might cover the critical parts, I toed off my shoes and peeled off my top and skirt, and wondered if this was where the regular models had to undress. I came out, looked in the mirror, afraid someone would come in at any minute, and afraid of what would be looking back.

  My heavens. If my friends could see me now.

  Back in the stall, I put the other garments and my street clothes in the bag, except for a black satin robe which I slipped into, and came out again.

  Running water on my hands, I gave volume to my hair by squinching it up with wet fingers, took out my gum and put it in a paper towel, sucked a deep breath, and went back into Monty’s office without glancing around to see who might notice, walking into the smell of a newly lit cigar, something better than a Hav-A-Tampa.

  Monty was in the same position as before in front of the desk, levered back in the chair. He said, “Over there, darlin’,” indicating a hard wooden chair next to the filing cabinet Paulie had leaned upon.

  Sitting down, I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them; then crossed them again, feeling naked and totally moronic. Was it Halloween?

  He waited a long time, eyes tracing my face and hair, looking at my face and not my body, as if he were pondering. “Stand up now, will you,” he said.

  I stood, tried to look languid.

  “Take the
robe off and walk over there,” he said, though there was hardly any distance to walk across.

  How did I do it when there was a stage? I tried to remember. But then, there had been a stage, and the setting then had a removed, performance quality to it.

  Walking toward the metal oscillating fan, I thought, Oh, this is good. The air teased the ruffly robe. When I turned to go back, I untied the belt, allowing the fabric to fall away, and yes, pulling my shoulder back for a better profile. Monty’s chin was up as he slowly nodded, his eyes lowered. The thinker.

  He said, “What would you say to growing out your hair?”

  After I stopped to look at him, he added, “And you could do much better with the makeup. I got a girl could show you how.”

  “There’s something wrong with my makeup?”

  “Yeah. It makes you look cheap.”

  Back in Raymond’s new Roadmaster, I said, “We’re in the wrong business, Ray. I can make three hundred dollars in a couple of hours.”

  “I know some ladies can do you one better.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “How was it?”

  “I felt a little silly is all. They might need me evenings too. I could do my day job, come here at night. Think the department will make me give up the money?”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

  “Now there’s a novel idea.”

  “I was peekin’ in the window.”

  “You were not.”

  “I was.” Ray was smiling, one hand on the dead steering wheel.

  “The window, it so happens, was boarded up where I was doing my thing.”

  “Maybe I had a periscope.”

  “Drive me out of here, you creep.”

  Ray started up but couldn’t pull out into traffic. It was almost six o’clock. The sky in the west was taking on that glow of muddy gold you remember from a kid when you walked out of the matinee and worried about if your mom would believe the movie was that long.

  I said, “There were a couple of real heartthrobs with Monty in his office. Mexican guy, owns an excavating business. Big, by the name of Paulie. He was talking loaders and tampers to the other one on the way out. The other one, no-name with a chip on his shoulder. Blond, muscular, late twenties.”

  Ray found his chance to move out, his jaw still working on the Dentyne. “What was Blackman like?”

  “A certain type of woman could go for him.”

  “Oh Christ.”

  “You should hear you, Raymond.”

  “Hear me what?”

  “I didn’t say I could go for him. He’s a jerk. He said I didn’t know how to do my hair and makeup. I thought I looked pretty good.”

  Raymond smiled at that. “He hire you?”

  “He said check back tomorrow.”

  “What number’d you give him?”

  “None. I said I was moving, wasn’t hooked up yet. That’s why he said to check back tomorrow.”

  “What’re you going to do when you’re supposedly moved in?”

  “I’ll worry about that later. There’s lots of excuses why I wouldn’t have a phone.”

  We drove to the supermarket parking lot two blocks down where I’d left my car. A black-and-white sheriff’s unit oozed onto the lot with no lights and accelerated quickly down a row of cars. I said, “Wonder what that’s all about.”

  “Some turkey thought he could slip a free bottle of JB in his drawers.”

  Ray drove forward until we could observe what was going on in case the deputy needed help. The officer who got out of the car was about six feet tall, and the man he stopped was a twiggy twerp in a white T-shirt and tan cutoffs who didn’t look the type to have a weapon on him, but you never know. Ray pulled into a slot, and as we talked, we kept our eyes on the activity.

  “So you’re going through with this modeling thing.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “I knew a guy once, worked undercover for ATF. He slept with women for the job, you know, and wound up losing his wife.”

  “I don’t have a wife, Raymond.”

  “How much do you care about this sister-in-law of yours, anyway?”

  “I care about my brother. But it’s not only that. The whole ball of wax. She’s young. She’s probably mixed up. Maybe I was that way once.”

  “Maybe?” Raymond’s forefinger kept crossing his lips like a windshield wiper as he watched the deputy roust the twerp.

  “Let’s say it matters just a whole bunch how I feel about murder. If it’s Miranda in the car, and if it is murder, that pisses me right off, right? If it’s not Miranda in the car, and she’s hanging with the wrong folks, maybe I can help straighten that out.” Then I said, not even worrying whether Raymond was listening, “Maybe I can’t either.”

  The kid was handcuffed now but giving the deputy a hard time. I could tell by the way the kid was shifting his shoulders, and the expression on his face.

  I kept talking, since Ray wasn’t. “I remember her saying some kind words to me once on the phone when I was having some ‘female trouble’ and Nathan knew about it from my mom. It surprised me.”

  Ray wasn’t listening, and I didn’t care. I fished for aspirin in my purse. If I found any, I’d down them dry. I looked up just in time to see the kid spit at the officer, the gob catching light as it flew into mid-air; watched the cop jump back and then slam forward, bouncing the kid off the car, boosting him on the buttocks with his knee four times as another patrol car pulled up.

  “I hope he L.A.’s the little shit,” Ray said.

  “L.A.’s him? As in Rodney King?” I asked, referring to the amateur video heard ’round the world.

  “You bet. L.A. his ass, the buttwipe spit on me.”

  “You mean,” I said, “like a personal thing?”

  “Yeah, yeah, like a personal thing. One time I—” And then he stopped, looked at me, and said, “You trying to make a point or what?”

  “Who, me?”

  “What’d you say the name was you gave Blackman?”

  “Brandy Brandon. Kinda cute, huh?”

  He leaned way forward to rest his arm on the wheel, put his chin on top of his hand; then, with his right, reached back to grab mine again, and said, “You ever want to get serious, don’t forget I’m in line, okay?”

  “Okay, Raymond. That’s a deal.”

  14

  Les Fedders pulled his shoulders back as he came out of Joe Sanders’s office, spying me and asking, “How’s tricks, Trixie?”

  Behind him, Joe was bent over work on his desk. He looked up and gave me a wink and grin, then burrowed back into his papers. I walked down the hallway, Les following.

  “That your costume in there?” Les said. He knew by the tag and the color of the tape that whatever I had in the evidence bag was on its way back to Property.

  Hefting the sack as if it held dog doo, I answered, “Men’s pants. Guy had a truck lowered on him while he was putting on rear shock absorbers.”

  Les said, “Only he was the shock absorber.”

  “Aren’t human beings wonderful?”

  Without a change of expression, Les said, “The Prince of Darkness is a powerful foe.”

  I looked to see if he was smiling, but he wasn’t.

  “They sprayed liquid Drāno on him, in the crotch.”

  “There’s a message there.”

  “He’s not dead. He’s in IC with a collapsed lung and a runky case of pneumonia, not to mention the damage to his unmentionables. But he won’t tell anybody who did it. Give him a few weeks. His posse will pop ’em, and so it goes.”

  I stopped for a drink of water at the fountain and half expected Les to be gone. But he was still there, his scalp between the reddish hairs shining brightly and his pork chop ears fiery and translucent. He said, “How’s the new job going? Planning on leaving us for tips yet?”

  “Oh right. I bought a house in Brentwood.” I’d worked at Monty’s the night before, Thursday, from seven to ten.

  “He make
a pass at you yet, that guy?”

  “It’s probably a little early for that.”

  We walked by the Print room, Trudy Kunitz at the ready to collect a sheet off the fingerprint-image printer. On the glass separating her from us were new stick-on letters that read HOMICIDES ’R’ US. I laughed.

  Les was saying, “Are we wastin’ our time here, or what? Should we just go jump this guy Blackman?”

  “I can handle it, don’t worry. I have to run now, Les. Busy, busy.”

  He nodded, put a hand on his chin while the other clutched his elbow, as if to keep his long jaw from smiling too much. “It would be good if you can get something for us out there, Smokey.” But bless his heart, old Les can give hives just by breathing. He said, “I may come check out that titty bar myself.”

  “You’re such a smoothie, Lester. I’ll bet your date book’s just all filled up.”

  “I do my best.”

  “By the way, how’s the dental going?”

  “The Jane? Dr. Robertson sent charts for his wife. Perfect teeth. She goes in for cleanings, that’s it. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree myself, Smokey.”

  “What do we have from Meyer Singer?”

  Les shook his head. “He just converted to an HMO. He has so much business he don’t know what to do. He’s coming in to work on it tonight.”

  “That’s a problem with contract people.”

  “Remember one burned up in a trunk last year, that hooker with dentures?”

  “What about her?”

  “He ID’ed that one in six weeks, even out of state. ‘Course she had something funny with her palate, but we’ll get this one too. You know your canyon crispy critter had fake maracas, don’t you?”

  “What, Les?”

  “Phony begonias. Your sister-in-law have phony begonias?”

  “I don’t know, Les.”

  “Mm,” he said.

  Each day, I spend my best, fresh hours studying the awful continuum of human failure; and in so doing, it is easy to believe that people under any pressure succumb to the dark side of choice. But now and again I have an opportunity to set myself right. I go to the fields to glean.

  It was Saturday, and it was lima beans. By eight-thirty I was in a field off Sand Canyon Avenue a few miles from my house. Limas can live on nearly nothing but fog. Bean fields used to spread for fifty miles up the coast, a part of it near here called Beanville. Today there is barely room for a bean. Silos have become motel rooms; outfitting sheds, restaurants. In the few remaining fields, vintage harvesters can still be seen trolling the rows against the skyline, speaking of a different time, not easier, perhaps, but simpler. What the harvesters miss, we gleaners gather for the food kitchens. The practice comes from an instruction in Leviticus: “. . . when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field . . . thou shalt leave them for the poor and for the stranger.” And so, on this morning already too warm, I stooped and picked, and hoped to find a mooring.