Carcass Trade

by Noreen Ayres

  I slid to the ground as the sand tornadoed about us, and put my arm over my eyes. My blouse was tearing away with the chopper wind. I clutched it, and when I rose and turned and dropped my arm, I saw Simon nearly blowing off his own small feet, clubbing his thighs with dreadful grief.

  35

  Joe and I sat with Miranda Robertson and Les Fedders in an interview room the next day at noon. Her hair was folded into a white snood, one of those net things from the forties. She wore a black linen jacket, cream slacks, and shoes, and could have passed for a lawyer. How was it that this was the woman who sat on a softail only two days before?

  I asked, “Why did you report the car stolen?”

  “Because I thought it was. I let her use it to go to the Ontario airport. She flew up to Fresno for something, was coming back the same day.”

  “What’s in Fresno?”

  “Monty asked her to. She needed money, Monty needed something delivered to Fresno. Her husband usually made the trips, or Switchie, but her husband hadn’t come home for three days. When she didn’t show either, and Monty wasn’t telling me anything, I reported it stolen.”

  “There was a gun in the car. Was it yours?”

  “No.”

  “A little Sundance Boa, with the number drilled off in two places. You’re sure?”

  “I don’t know how to use a gun.”

  “Was Arleta afraid of somebody?”

  “Of course she was afraid of somebody. Her husband was gone. She didn’t know then that he was dead, but I think she guessed it. Switchie killed Rollie because he ripped him off, and that meant he ripped Monty off, and Switchie wouldn’t get his commission.” She moved in the chair, and I thought I caught a faint whiff of purple Zac.

  Les said, “This Arleta. She have breast implants?” He looked at me, I gave him a glare, and his face fell into deep folds.

  Miranda shifted in her chair and said, “Rollie was a jerk. Arleta, she was pretty once, but she was fortysomething and losing it and didn’t quite know how to piece it all together, you know? Like she would wear T-shirts with big holes cut in them like a teenager and her figure wasn’t all that great to begin with, kind of straight up and down like a board. She did something about it, I mean she was getting lippoed and lifted and . . .” Miranda looked at me, and I slipped one hand onto her chair back.

  “But fortysomething’s forty something, and she didn’t know how to take care of her teeth and her hair was dyed too black and she had fat knees. But she was pretty, honest, in her own way. She could laugh at herself. I liked that.”

  “The husband . . . ?” Joe asked.

  “He made fun of her all the time. I think that’s why she did all that stuff to herself.”

  Why did you? I thought, and was mad at Nathan.

  We kept Miranda there for an hour before she asked for coffee. At the break, I walked with her to the rest room, and it was there that she told me about Robert, how he fit into the whole thing. I had her repeat it for the video when we got back to the interview room, and she did well considering the emotional complexities involved.

  At one point Les Fedders stopped her and asked, “So let me get this straight. Switchie was into smuggling stuff for your husband. Or for Monty?”

  “Robert and Switchie owned stock in the biotech company. But they couldn’t do diddly without Monty’s product. Pork producers pay them all sorts of money under the table. Robert was taking product to the Chinese.”

  I looked at Les, and Les looked at Joe, and finally I said, “Miranda, did you know a man named Quillard Satterlee?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Small, white hair. Beard. Rode a red—”

  “The red pan? Oh yeah. Monty hates that bike. Way too much chrome.” Then, as if I were watching the time-lapsed unfolding of a rose, I saw the conquest of understanding on Miranda’s face. Her eyes fixed on me. “He’s the one,” she whispered.

  “The one what?” Les asked.

  “The one . . . the one. . . .”

  I said, “The one Simon hauled off in his truck?”

  She nodded. Two bright red spots showed on her cheeks.

  Joe said, “He was a customs agent.”

  “I heard Monty on the phone to Switchie. He said, ‘He was a fucking fed?’ like that, and I thought he was talking about Arleta’s husband, but after a while I knew it wasn’t, and I suppose I didn’t want to know any more. I just closed my ears. I heard Monty call Simon and ask to use his truck. Over pigs. Pigs!”

  We let her compose herself, and then I said, “We still don’t know why Switchie would murder Arleta.”

  “What if he was after me?” Miranda said. “It was my car.”

  Les Fedders said, “We still don’t know if Switchie did murder Arleta. Maybe Monty did.”

  “Oh no, oh no,” Miranda said. “He’d never do that. Not Monty. It was Switchie going after the money Rollie lifted, I’ll bet, thinking she had it. Not Monty. He couldn’t do a thing like that.”

  Joe said, “We got a whole lot of people betraying other people here, don’t you think? Under the circumstances, who can you trust?”

  And Miranda’s face burned even brighter.

  The autopsy took place without me. You don’t do the ones that seem too personal unless you have a stomach of tempered steel. Even for Switchie, I’d allow him his privacy. Switchie. Brained by a boa, so to speak. I felt sorry about his fate. Or tried to. The manner, but not the outcome.

  As for Simon’s snake, she fared well. Either the chopper vibration made her think of one humongous ground squirrel, or Simon’s blow unkinked her, for she slid off Switchie and winnowed away into the chaparral none the worse for wear. A month later, I read about another constrictor who killed his owner. The man had failed to wash his hands after handling a guinea pig.

  Whatever had happened to my humorless deputies? They continued to be humorless, to the point that when I saw them the afternoon of Switchie’s demise, I thought they were on the brink of suicide. They’d been driving around in circles trying to find me, the cellular phone wouldn’t work, and then, because neither of them was old enough to have much experience with manual transmissions, they gave too much clutch to the temperamental repair truck and soaked the spark plugs into a righteous stall. They called for aerial from a pay phone.

  That night, still trembling, I called Nathan and told him his Miranda was found. From there on, it was up to him what he wanted to do about it.

  Two nights later, L along with Joe Sanders, my pal Ray Vega and still another girlfriend (this time a blonde named Missy), and Agent Christine Vogel, went out to a bar in San Bernardino where rowdy female customers take off their bras through their blouse sleeves and throw them over the chandeliers.

  I had a Fuzzy Navel and two of Christine’s Widows, and let Joe drive me home. Captain Exner said to call him the next morning, but I passed in favor of corn.

  Corn is dirty work. The ribbed leaves, blasted with road goo and grimy jet fallout, will wipe you with rough black dust. Anywhere else I wouldn’t be able to pick corn at the beginning of June, but farmers in Southern California force crops into false seasons. I was 260 paces from the access road—you pace off or you lose your way. The corn stalks towered overhead. Though I was between two busy freeways, nothing but a mean eagle could find you here.

  The wire handle of the bucket dug mercilessly into my finger creases. I set the bucket down for a moment and still picked more. I’d found a good spot the paid pickers had missed, and though I’d been there for more than the two-hour limit for volunteers, I didn’t want to leave. No room in the pail, I speared two ears in each shirt pocket, and one down the elastic tunnel where three days ago my microphone had been. Loaded this way, I could have passed for a chesty scarecrow.

  The sun beat hotly through the morning haze. I was sealed in sweat and beginning to itch badly from the fuzzies, those nearly invisible hairs corn leaves give off. I started working my way back to the road, off-balance with the weight of the bucket,
barely able to prevent a turned ankle on clods the size of saucers. But then I’d find myself straddling rows instead of pacing forward, peering through the silk-sounding leaves at the next row. Everywhere I looked I spied a missile without worms in the kernels or aphid gunk turning the tassels to slime. I wanted to announce my find to the other volunteers, but in this large field they couldn’t hear.

  I knelt by the white plastic bucket and adjusted the cobs so they’d efficiently fit, two dozen green cigars in a clown’s mouth. Enough. But the stalks were so laden, and I was so greedy for more. I stacked the corn in a pyramid then, like pipe, and promised myself to pace off carefully so I could find them again after emptying my bucket of treasure in the waiting truck. I straddled the next row and looked. Firm cobs everywhere. Grasping one, I tested diameter and sponginess. Fat and firm, that’s the ticket. That’s what the Beulah Land lady told me the first day I picked, only she winked with a secret, and I laughed.

  That evening I had Mrs. Langston over for a shrimp salad and very fresh corn, and gave Farmer a stripped cob to roll all over the kitchen floor until he figured out it could actually be something good to eat and broke it in a million pieces.

  The next Monday afternoon I got a summons. Doug Forster and I were huddled over his desktop analyzing the language of a section of the evidence code that took up thirteen pages. Doug’s first court appearance in which he’d have to testify as an expert witness was Wednesday, and he was nervous.

  I read the memo and said, “The captain wants a confab. Think he’ll pay me overtime?”

  Doug said, “Think he’ll give me a raise after I play Tom Cruise in court? Ask him for me.”

  “Sure, Doug. In a horse’s patootie.”

  At my desk I gathered my purse and jacket, shoved a couple of folders in the drawer, locked up, and went by Joe’s office on my way to the parking lot. I told him where I was headed, and he smiled like he knew what it was all about as he pushed back his chair and locked his hands behind his neck.

  “You’ve heard something. Is he going to reprimand me? He and the sheriff are waiting to hand me an unpaid leave?”

  “Paranoia becomes you,” Joe said.

  “Why would he be wanting to talk to me now? Our meeting’s tomorrow at nine.”

  Joe shrugged, said, “Who knows? Get out of here. I’ll call you tonight. We’ll watch the game together.”

  “Deal. I buy the pizza.”

  “No argument. No pepperoni, either.”

  On the way over, I kept thinking about how Morris “Monty” Blackman was not going to have to pay enough. Monty was the one who put things in motion. He was the one who gave opportunity to the likes of Switchie. Whatever they got him for, it wouldn’t be enough.

  I was thinking these things, wondering if, on a more positive side, the captain had better news, clearer developments from some other source, to offer me today. But why would he be telling only me? What about Joe and Les Fedders and my direct superior? There was a fifty-fifty chance, I figured, the news would be bad. I calculated how many months I could live on my savings. I’m canned.

  When I walked into Captain Exner’s office, Agent Vogel was sitting in one of two chairs in front of the captain’s desk. She was wearing a yellow dress under a brown jacket, her shoes a bright yellow too. At the end of her sleeve was a big brown bracelet painted with miniature suns, and she carried the same small purse I know she stole off some teenager in her house.

  “Hi, Smokey,” she said, that same kindness in her tone and eyes that hooked me the first time. “How’s the snake charmer?”

  “Dancing to a different flute player, I guess.”

  The captain told me to have a seat, the merest smile on his face. “You might like to know the latest developments. Christine?”

  “We had a search warrant for the farm, and we went in. Our man himself was G.O.A.”

  “Gone on Arrival,” the captain said, “but Les Fedders is calling him to come in and talk to us.”

  “You think he’ll just come in?”

  “They do. They’re curious, or they like to play with you.”

  “Your captain here isn’t telling you everything,” Agent Vogel said. “He found a judge on a golf course and got him to sign another warrant so we could execute in Blackman’s home in Garden Grove and at the bar.”

  “So that’s why he didn’t call me to come in to work,” I said.

  She laughed. “We’ve got computer disks too and a ton of paper to go through, but I want to tell you something: I can chase a whisper in a big wind when my mind’s put to it. And I will nail that guy. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as a good felony slam.” She paused, all expression leaving her face for a moment, and then said, “And then there’s for Bernie.”

  She saw me looking at the floor. “What’s the matter?”

  “He’ll bond out before midnight,” I said. “When you do get him, he’ll walk. He’s smooth.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, honey,” she said kindly, and glanced at the captain. She was not that much older than I, I had guessed, but she seemed to hold the right to call me honey.

  The captain said, “Miranda Robertson is coming in tonight. She should be here about now.” He looked at his watch.

  Christine winked. “The girl got religion. She went to see Avalos in the hospital. Walked in when your investigator, Les Fedders, was there. He led her down the hall, laid on the sugar, and in a minute she was telling him stuff she didn’t know she knew.”

  It was hard to picture Miranda free of herbal fog and walking in to visit Paulie Avalos. But I know that people come to light at different times and in various ways, and I was hoping that whatever my brother, Nathan, saw in her at one time was pretty strong in the admixture yet.

  “I think you softened her up,” Agent Vogel said. “Then, of course, Les also told her about you. About what happened when you played snake with Switchie. You know, for such a young person, she sure has stomach problems.” Christine shook her head, the pink folds of her neck in competition with each other.

  The captain said, “She’s married to a doctor. He should be able to give her something.”

  “Grief,” I said.

  In his navy suit and pale yellow tie, the captain and the customs agent looked ready for a photo opportunity. He was telling me how the evidence code says a wife cannot be compelled to testify against her husband, but it doesn’t say she can’t testify voluntarily or offer information.

  Soon after, sure enough, my own boss, Stu Hollings, walked in. He came with a man from my building, a man who works Photo Doc with a fancy camera.

  As Mrs. Langston often tells me, not all luck is bad. That evening when I went to get Farmer for his run, I got to tell her that just before I left the captain’s office, my boss came in with a surprise. He stood with a photographer and directed the taking of several pictures with me, the captain, and Christine Vogel in front of the brown chalkboard. That was just preliminary, he said.

  Then he told me I had a date with a ceremony at the end of the month: I would be awarded a Medal of Valor for meritorious service and special courage in a situation of special danger.

  Christine Vogel sat with dimpled hands rounded off on the chair arms and bounced one knee up and down under her dress as if she wished she were the one to tell me, a lively grin on her face. “Hey,” she said. “The job has mucho trabajo, poco dinero.” Much work, little money. “You take your bouquets when you can.”

  That mild night after Farmer was bedded, I lay stretched on the couch whispering to Joe over the phone as he mournfully informed me he had to go out to a scene and would miss watching the game with me and celebrating my news with champagne. Later, I trundled my little Toyota over to the Balboa peninsula and walked alone down the pier.

  At the end, I had a cup of coffee and a piece of pie at Ruby’s Diner and watched the brilliant white moon rise in its helium splendor. A pouty-beaked seagull sat on a pier lamp and looked in at me, waiting. And on the way back, above the stir o
f ocean stammers, I thought of the small victories. How, tonight in a neighborhood in Anaheim, a citizen flashlight patrol walked the streets in a visible message to drug dealers, to reclaim Sabina Street, Pauline, Topeka, and Olive. How they had spread donated bags of fertilizer in their parks to keep the dealers away. They would do what it took, receiving no public recognition in the form of medals for special courage. They stood up for choice, the choice to do a right thing rather than a wrong.

  And still on the pier, I remembered Nathan even in the midst of his agony, scooping a fish off the boards and giving it back to its maker. I went to my car with a feeling of peace, and inspiration, and in my own unspoken way, gratitude.

  Within days, Paulie Avalos admitted knowledge of a vehicle over the side of a North County canyon. He had yet to give over both names of the two who tossed in a can of racing fuel and rocked the Cadillac off the road edge with a lady who liked to dress young and suck citrus already dead in it. She had a .25-caliber bullet through her ear canal, a slug that escaped even Doug’s able sifting. Paulie wouldn’t identify the second cyclist, but readily gave up the name of Switchie Ralph D’Antonio. Maybe it was Paulie himself, and maybe it was Monty.

  Joe Sanders and I dropped in at the Python one night, just two lovers out on the town. Monty had his girls in his usual rainbow of stretch-lace chemises and baby-doll delights. There was one black satin number worn with thigh-high nylons designed to look like boots that Joe said he wouldn’t mind buying, and I asked him whether for him or for me.

  When Monty came out of the back room, he took his time talking to a girl at a table in a tight turtleneck dress with the shoulders cut out, and then eased over our way, a brown Sherman cigarette dangling from his lips, the full hair free and glowing under the colored lamps. More of it foamed out of his cool blue shirt open to midchest. He sat backward on a chair and said, “So how’s the cop business these days?”

  Father Time, next to me, answered, “Quiet as a dead hog, I guess.”

  I looked at Joe, then Monty, who was deciding he had better things to do and was rising up out of his chair, and I said, “Now don’t that just beat all?”