Carcass Trade

by Noreen Ayres

  “How come nobody told me?”

  “You’re never around.” Hm. “There was something funny about the front teeth,” he said.

  “What’s funny?”

  “They were decalcified.”

  “And what significance . . . ?”

  “I’m not sure. What you get with real bad heat, I guess. Singer kept asking himself, ‘Now, why have these teeth decalcified already?’ He takes out the box of jaws every time he comes in. It sits by him all day while he’s working other cases.”

  “Do you know if there was anything else with the teeth? Fillings, like that?”

  “Yeah. There were fillings.”

  “Great, Oskar. Thanks a bunch.”

  “I don’t know for what.”

  Doug was in Les Fedders’s office. I was surprised they were both still there, quitting time being fifteen minutes ago. I could tell by looking at Les that he still hadn’t been briefed about what went on at the Avalos farm, and I didn’t want to be the one to do it, sit there and be grilled by him and waste time.

  “Doug,” I said, “whaddya know?”

  “Not a whole heck of a lot.”

  “See, he admits it,” I said, winking at Les.

  In Les’s office was the standard-issue metal office furniture, but over the chair hung a picture of the old Coca-Cola, the giant fluted bottle with the sensuous shape, and an equally voluptuous blonde, seamless teeth, curled lashes, one knee dipped in that Marilyn pose, standing in a bathing suit next to it.

  Doug sat with one ankle up on the other knee, fiddling with his sneaker shoelaces. In his other hand was a sheet of paper partially filled in with names in boxes, a basketball play-off pool. His black hair gleamed as if he’d just sprayed it with oil.

  “Well, there’s one thing new,” I said. “The morgue says Singer put the teeth together and they’re flawed. Miranda Robertson’s charts showed not one cavity, as you know. His teeth are not only filled, they’re chalky in the front.”

  “I thought we already concluded that victim was not Miranda Robertson,” Les said. Nearby, a vase of bloated bloodred roses sat on top of a file cabinet.

  “Yes, but this just makes it more solid.” I was thinking of Nathan, looking forward to telling him. “The Rollie Pierson case,” I said, “you talked to somebody but not the wife?”

  “Yep. The sister-in-law. What’s up?”

  “Have you got her name?”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  Doug studied his basketball chart.

  “I just wondered, are you going out there for an interview?”

  “It’s down in San Clemente. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Can I go along?”

  “You got a list of twenty questions?”

  “I don’t have anything special to ask. Just interested. But I don’t want to get in your way, Les.”

  “No problem.” He glanced at Doug. “Won’t that interfere with your new job?” He grinned.

  Doug grinned too, said, “I heard about that.”

  “About what, Doug?”

  “About you doing the model bit.”

  “That was supposed to be on the QT.” Who would tell? Joe wouldn’t tell.

  Les lowered his eyes, then looked up.

  “Hey,” Doug said, “they got any Western dancing out there? I go every night, different place. I can do twelve line dances now.”

  “Good for you, Doug,” I said.

  When I got home, I called Ray Vega. I just wanted to hear my friend’s voice. He said it was his day off, was why I couldn’t get him earlier. He said, “Let’s get together for dinner.”

  “What about Francine?”

  “What about her?”

  “Aren’t you spending nights off with her?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Monty wants me at the Python at eight.”

  “You’re still on that?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll eat first.”

  “I don’t know, Raymond. I’m exhausted. I should try to get a nap.”

  “How can you say no to a man like me?”

  “I don’t know. It is hard to understand.”

  He did an imitation of Andrew Dice Clay that always had me laughing; I went around saying it to myself half the time: “Treat me like the pig that I am.” Then he said, “How ‘bout if I come around after, give you a ride in my new pickup? We can go to a show after. What you want to see?”

  “Ray, I would like to talk to you . . .”

  “Great. And I get to come in this time. You wouldn’t let me before.”

  I was weakening now, wondering while I picked off four ants veering behind my kitchen faucet as I walked the room with the phone if I should just let him. I must have sighed.

  “How’s the case going, anyway?” he asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”

  His voice took on another tone. “What is it, Smokes? What’s up?”

  “I saw a murder.”

  “What?”

  “I witnessed a murder out at a ranch in Norco. I told you about the guys in the office the day of my interview, right? One of them killed a customs agent, an undercover. Slit his throat in a shed. I saw it, Ray, through an open window.”

  In the silence that followed I could picture my friend’s perfect face take on that calm, resolute set, that expression that would not reveal if he was about to level his nine at you or tell you to hit the road, guy, and stay out of trouble, the long lashes half closed, the mouth not needing much motion. After a bit, he said, “Hey, girl.”

  “I know.”

  “Who else is UC with you?”

  “No one.”

  “You’re the UC? It?”

  “I’m it. The captain’s supposed to put some plainclothes on it, but I haven’t seen ’em yet. Maybe I’m not supposed to.”

  “What’s being scammed, if customs is on it?”

  “The contraband is . . .” It was still hard to say. You expect a hard laugh on the other end. “Ray, you ready for this? It’s swine semen. That’s what they’re smuggling. Whoever has the best semen has a market edge.” I waited a second. “You forgot to laugh.”

  “I’m laughing.”

  “They cross borders with it both directions. Blackman’s maybe smuggling precursors too. Pig semen. That’s what the customs agent got killed over.”

  “Motherfuckers.”

  “I’m supposed to take his place, sort of. Since I was already there, like, because of my brother’s ex-wife. It’s weird, Raymond.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “Sometimes I’m scared.”

  “You should be. You saw this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, babe.”

  “It was bad.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’s not that I’m so afraid for my life.”

  “Hey, you definitely should be. This sounds—”

  “It’s not that. Did I ever tell you, Ray . . . ?”

  I seldom told anyone, maybe five people in my life. I started again. “Did I ever mention my mother was pretty sick there for a while?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “When I was little. Maybe till I was about fourteen.”

  “What are you talking about, Smokey?”

  “She’d go off her cork.”

  “How?”

  “It made me strong, Raymond. I’m telling you. It made me strong. I’ll kill somebody messes with me at a certain point, I really will.”

  “That’s healthy. What’s the problem? You okay?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re okay. But I’d like to know why you don’t have backup.”

  “Captain Honcho’s busy with a deputy who forced a friendly blowjob on a civilian.”

  “Oh man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’ve got somebody else planted,” R
ay said. “They wouldn’t leave you out there alone.”

  “They wouldn’t mean to.”

  “Where’s Joe in all this?”

  “Sympathetic. Worried. When you think of it, though, look: If Monty suspected anything he could’ve already aced me easy. I was alone with him since.”

  “You packing?”

  “How can I? I’m either wearing biker shorts or Victoria’s Secret.”

  “You can do better than that.”

  “I will. Don’t sweat it.” And then, for no rational reason I could have given at the time, I said, “I guess I would like you to come along tonight” I wouldn’t let Joe take me or pick me up, but I let Ray. Later I thought maybe I wanted Monty to see me with someone else, see that I had lots of friends and at least one with a lot of muscles. “Are you happy?”

  “What’ll he think, me coming in there with you?”

  “We’ll find out, won’t we? But don’t blow it for me, Raymond. Be cool.”

  “I’m always cool. Know what? Some girl told me the other day I looked like a Mexican version of Tom Cruise.”

  “Oh, way better than that, Raymond.”

  When I hung up, I poured myself a Southern Comfort and put on an old Lacy J. Dalton tape, maybe her first. Wanted to hear her sing about hard lovin’ and good times. Tried to match her unmatchable voice.

  28

  Ray was hanging tight to a bottle of beer, leaning back with those sweet penny-colored eyes leveled at me.

  “This is from Takki,” I read from the prompter card in my palm. “It’s washable silk, acetate lace, very easy care.” Ray grinned and sipped his beer. I moved on. The man at the next table liked Jolene better, his eyes on her three tables over. She and I alternated floor strolls with two other models.

  When I arrived earlier, Monty hadn’t come in from an errand yet. But Paulie Avalos was sitting fat-bellied at the bar talking to Howard, giving me glances but not threatening ones.

  In the office, where we were changing till Monty arrived and forced us into the ladies’ room, Jolene was slipping a black thing with spaghetti straps over her head. I said, “Here. You need this,” and gave her a brilliant blue robe that lit up her dark hair and blue eyes. The robe was supposed to go with a shortie I was wearing, but I decided to go out without it. I had on a black satin sleep suit and shoes with pom-poms at the toes.

  “Thanks,” she said, trying it on. “Say, did Monty tell you he’s going to get dancing in here? Topless. Would you do it?”

  “Not me. This is all he gets.”

  Jolene opened the door just as the model with the fullest figure came down the hallway. She bumped a new watercolor of an African-American woman standing with feet spread as she spoke to the clouds, two snakes wrapped from ankle to thigh, teasing tongues in the middle. We passed by, and the model’s perfume bowled me over. “That’s Coral,” Jolene whispered, “Can’t stand her.”

  “Why not?”

  Jolene shrugged a shoulder as we stood for a second before going out onto the floor, me looking at her new shiny ducktail haircut and both of us checking the crowd. At the back of the room Ray’s white jeans gleamed under the table. He looked like he belonged. The hair was maybe too coplike, the mustache too trim, but a handsome, confident piece of manhood all around.

  To Jolene’s back I said, “You still thick with Switchie? I don’t see him here tonight.”

  “Jeez, I don’t dump ’em that soon. And I mean he’s not half bad.” She tossed her head as she left me, saying, “Oh, honey,” in a way that was supposed to tell me something about Switchie’s prowess in bed. The song that started was by the mother-daughter Judds, licking up a raunchy harmony. I always got their names mixed up. The mother looks like one of those porcelain dolls sold by Heritage Collections, four payments plus shipping. The daughter’s a beauty too but somebody else’s child, different face and body shape. I could picture her and her mom on the tour bus offering each other the last French fry, and fighting and loving each other to death. Then the mom got sick and the daughter sings alone or duets with Clint Black. And rides Harleys.

  Jolene was beautiful in the black and blue, I had to give her that. She stopped at a table under a soft ceiling light, touching the table with one long white forefinger, lips glistening red as licked suckers as she spoke to the man, and I thought the guy, still in his necktie, was going to need CPR.

  I drifted over to Raymond’s table. He’d changed brews for himself, rolling the bottle by the neck to show me the label. Mexicali Rogue it said. He smiled, and his left knee swept back and forth like a pendulum.

  “Made in Ray Vega’s bathtub,” I said.

  His gaze fell to my breasts, and I felt self-conscious around him for the first time.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Paulie Avalos swivel on the barstool as if deciding to leave, go belt somebody, or find the rest room. Then he settled down again, putting both fat arms on the bar, and stood again and reached clear over the bar and pulled out from under there somewhere a package of potato chips. I pointed him out to Raymond, said he was an accomplice to the killing of Bernie Williams. “But don’t look now, dammit,” I said, and Ray played the game of just another drunk flirt.

  I followed Jolene, ready for her next change.

  In the office the other model, Coral was dropping a chartreuse shortie on. She had auburn hair down to her shoulders, and she was a sturdy forty. I didn’t know what Jolene’s problem was. I thought the woman was pretty. Comfortable. Some men like them that way.

  At the closet I closed my eyes and picked. Near gagged when I saw it, but I put it on, read the tag from the shop owner, and left before the other two women did. The brief glances I got when I paraded my spiel sagged my confidence. I homed in on the table with the Mexican and the Mexican ale. “This is from Donna Waters,” I said, referring to the lacy thigh-grazing violet thing I was wearing that looked to me more like a circus costume than a nightie, “and it sells for seventy-five ninety-five.”

  “I’ll bet it does,” Raymond said. At least he appreciated it.

  He said something else, and I said, “You say what?” Someone in control of the music dug the Judds. Now the younger Judd’s rich voice graveled loudly and I leaned closer to Ray to hear.

  Ray pushed his chair back a little, gave me that look again that now I recognized, the one he’d give a stranger in a different bar. “Smokey, you’re too much,” is what he said, and squeezed my fingers as I got ready to make my way back for the last change.

  A girl who looked like she ought to be riding horses, her hair braided in back and her healthy good looks just a little flushed from changing, came out wearing a floral satin. New kid on the shift. I wanted to send her to her room; kick the stuffed animals off your bed and do your homework.

  When I was back for another change, Jolene came in. We had lingerie scattered all over the place. Monty’s desk looked like an underwear bin. Jolene said, “Is this all? We’re going to be repeating ourselves,” as she pushed in the small closet where Monty kept the clothes. “He should get us more. Why’d he have four of us if this is all?”

  “Here, put this white one on. I’m done,” I said. I’d found it piled down on the floor of the closet and I’d thrown it over the file cabinet.

  “You want to go hustle that dark dude.”

  “What dark dude?”

  “The one in the white jeans.”

  “I came in with him.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and sang a song about loving the night life, and boogied over to the chair where my own clothes were. I’d come in jeans, the blue boots, and a white knit top that slung off both shoulders in a wide band. I wasn’t wearing a bra, and certain things had showed like hard buttons, so in the truck with Raymond I’d kept my jacket on; it was black and businesslike, hitting me below the hip.

  “Monty know about this guy?”

  “He will now.”

  “You’re going to get him all pissed. Is that what you’re trying to do?
”

  “I’m just livin’ my life.”

  She fastened herself into the outfit I’d handed her that seemed made of snowflakes and whalebone, and then leaned over to get her breasts balanced in just so. Under the fabric, her nipples were dark moons. “Hm,” she said. “This is nice.” Out of a red brocade overnight bag she took a white garter belt and white stockings and put them on. I struggled with my boots. When I straightened back up and Jolene was all together, I had to say she was stunning.

  The door opened and in came Full Figure Franny. She ducked back out just as quickly, saying, “Oops, full house. I’ll go to the john.”

  Jolene said, “What she’s doing is eating Twinkies and counting the dimples on her ass. She knows she’s too big for what we got left.”

  “You talk about me that way behind my back?”

  “Shit no. I’ll tell you to your face.”

  “Where’s Switchie tonight?”

  “Why you wanta know?” Jolene made sure her hair was staying tucked behind her ears. As she did, her diamond or fake diamond earrings caught the light.

  “I just wondered.”

  Now she was powdering her nose with the compact she swiped out of the healthy woman’s hand earlier and never gave back.

  ***

  It was almost midnight when Monty came in. Wearing his Levi jacket over a black knit shirt, and with his hair ponytailed back, he strode right for me and Jolene while we were standing in the alcove dressed in our street clothes, ready to leave. She was looking for a quarter to call and find out why Switchie wasn’t here yet. Paulie was gone. I glanced over to see if Raymond was still alive. With no dancing and most of the patrons not showing any sign of misdemeaning, he did seem half asleep. The server had not picked up his last empty, so there were two bottles in front of him.

  “I’ll get you a quarter,” I told Jolene, moving toward Howard by the cash register and out of Monty’s approach. But Monty was already blocking the way. “Hi, girls. You do good tonight?”

  “What you missed,” I said.