“Any other name . . .”
The grin spread on his face. “Would smell as sweet.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
He shrugged. “Not really; I try not to pry into people’s business—a lot of them are here for that same reason, trying to disappear.” He glanced around. “Not that it’s going to last much longer anyway.”
“What’s up?”
“This office is scheduled to be closed next year, so I’ll be out of a job.”
“Can’t you just transfer to another office?”
He shook his head. “Too much of a free spirit; I don’t think I can take orders anymore.”
I smiled. “Me either.”
I picked up the basket and started toward the door, booting it open and ushering Dog out. “I’ll get the bin back to you before you close up for good.”
—
I dumped Dog and the young woman’s mail in the Bullet and trudged along in the hardened snow that was crusted on the side of the road toward the sign for the strip club.
I pulled my hat down a little harder and flipped the collar of my sheepskin coat up around my face in hopes of cutting off some of the wind.
As I got closer to the main building, I could see that it was one of those steel prefab ones with two windows and a small mudroom that gave a break to patrons before they entered the main structure.
There was a string of trailers behind it, an odd assortment mostly the size that hunters took to the mountains. Someone had sprayed letters on the doors, the first one marked B. I wondered where A was.
I cut off from the parking lot and waded my way toward the trailers and was about to reach the first one when a voice called out from the back of the brown steel building.
“You lookin’ for something?”
There was an enormous individual in the doorway, almost as big as me, heavily muscled—the kind of muscles you get in a weight room, or a cell block. A black T-shirt spread across his chest as he held the door open with one hand and studied me.
“I’m looking for 4661-A?”
He did the white-guy hair flip, and his long, blond locks flew away from his face. “Gone.”
I looked around as if he might’ve misplaced it. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced back at the nearest trailer with the B on the door. “What happened to A?”
“Burned.” Realizing I wasn’t particularly intimidated, he stepped out, still holding on to the door. “You know the whole alphabet?”
“My numbers, too.”
He nodded. “Good, that’ll make it easy for you to find your way out of here.”
I ignored him and continued toward the B trailer.
“Hey! Hey, I’m talking to you.”
“Yep, and I’m ignoring you.” I kept walking. “And unless I’m mistaken, that door in your hand is like the one at the back of my office, which is not a pass-through, which means if you let it close you’re going to have to deal with me in that T-shirt and then walk all the way around the building to get back inside.”
As I advanced on trailer B, I heard his voice just as the door closed. “Fuckin’ hell.”
I raised a hand to knock, but a frighteningly skinny young woman smoking a cigarette yanked the door of the rickety trailer open before my knuckles grazed it, leaving a shattered, etched glass storm door between us.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Hi, I’m looking for Jone Urrecha?” I threw a thumb toward the large building. “She was a dancer here?”
She pulled a polyester blanket from just inside, draped it over her shoulders, and inhaled. “Gone. You her dad or something?”
“Or something.” I smiled. “Do you have any idea where she might’ve gone, or—”
“Look, Mac, she’s gone, or something. Okay?”
I could hear footsteps crunching behind me and figured I’d better finish up before he got to me, so I gave her a wave. “Thanks for your help.”
The door closed in my face, the second in two days, and I turned just in time to see a fist roundhousing its way into the side of my head. I leaned back in the nick and watched as the big guy, who had put on a blue and gold letterman’s jacket, followed through and swung past, his momentum and a quick push from me sending him sprawling into the snow.
He recovered and moved faster than I thought he would and swung an elbow at me as he stood, but I palmed it over my head and gave him my best shot in the side, figuring that if that didn’t knock the air out of him, I was dead.
He collapsed sideways and fell awkwardly, and it was about then that I felt something very hard hit me in the back of my head. I pushed my hat back up straight and turned to look at the skinny woman with the cigarette between her lips who had been in the doorway but now was holding a cast waffle iron. “Ouch.”
She studied me. “You’re the first one to still be standing after that.”
I rubbed the knot at the back of my noggin. “I’ve got a hard head.”
She held the waffle iron at the ready. “Leave Thor alone.”
“Thor? Really?” I glanced at the big guy, who, having rolled over, was sitting up holding his ribs but showing no sign of wanting to stand, and then looked back at the woman. “He started it.”
“Yeah, well I’m finishing it.”
I held a hand out to the man on the ground. “Help you up?”
He brushed the blond hair away again and frowned. “Can’t—my knee went out.”
—
“I never understood why they called us offensive tackles; I mean, we weren’t allowed to tackle anybody.”
Sitting on a stool in Dirty Shirley’s bar, I tried to explain the nuanced aspects of our shared football position. “It’s from before, when eleven-man squads used to play offense and defense.”
He massaged his kneecap and manipulated it in hopes of getting the thing to go back into alignment. “Before my time.”
I sipped the can of iced tea the skinny woman from the trailer had given me as she polished glasses behind the bar and carefully watched me. “Mine, too.”
“And where’d you play?”
“USC.”
“Leather helmets?”
I sighed. “Back in the sixties.”
“Wow. What was your record?”
“Undefeated, my freshman year.” I took my hat off and rested it on the bar brim up to make sure whatever luck was there stayed there. “Beat Wisconsin 42–37. Then we didn’t win another big one till the year after I graduated.”
“Oh.”
Curtis “Thor” Hansen was from North Dakota and looked like he’d fallen off the road-show truck for Li’l Abner, aside from the Viking haircut and the acne on his neck. I’d thrown his arm over my shoulder and limped him around the building and back inside where he’d offered to buy me a beer. “What about you?”
“The Fighting Irish, Notre Dame—even had a tryout with the Seahawks.” He gestured toward his knee. “Then this thing blew out on me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “I scored a thirty on the Wonderlic and they were looking at me for the third round—”
The skinny woman asked. “What the hell is the Wonder-whatever-it-is?”
The kid smiled broadly. “It’s a short-form cognitive abilities test that the NFL Combine uses as a predraft assessment—limited to twelve minutes, only about two to five percent even complete the test.”
I gestured toward the offending joint. “Why didn’t you get it fixed?”
He smiled a sad smile. “No money, and the repair to the damage was iffy at best, so nobody would take the chance.”
I kept my eyes on him, my expression neutral, the same one I used to give my daughter when her explanations for youthful transgressions were found wanting. His eyes da
rted away but then returned to mine. “What?”
I continued to say nothing, just staring at the acne on his neck leading down his back and into the T-shirt.
The skinny woman called out to him. “Curtis, you sure you don’t want something to drink?”
“No, Kay—I’m good.” He watched her for a moment and then came clean. “Steroids.” He blew air from his lips in an unattractive noise. “Some speed . . . Nothing everybody else wasn’t doing, but I got caught.”
“Are you clean now?”
“Oh, yeah.”
It really wasn’t my business.
I pulled the piece of paper from my pocket and unfolded it, handing it to him. “Know her?”
He took the poster I’d gotten from Lorea and nodded. “The Basque Rose, Jone, yeah . . . She worked here for a while.” He looked up. “She was kind of hard to miss.” He looked at the poster. “We used to run together . . .”
Kay’s voice sounded from behind me. “Just run, huh?”
He looked past me at the woman, who was finished playing at washing glasses and was now resting an elbow on the bar and pouring herself a stiff vodka without the rocks. His eyes went back to the poster. “Yeah, just running.” The knee pained him again, and he winced as he shook his head. “The sister came by here a couple of times.” He glanced up at me. “That where you got this?”
“Yep.”
“I figured you were some kind of cop.”
“Sheriff, actually.”
He looked surprised. “Really?”
I nodded. “I’d show you, but it’s in a new leather holder and I’d just drop it on the floor.” I glanced down at the thick and highly suspect shag carpeting. “And to be honest, I don’t know where this floor has been.”
He glanced around. “I do, and I wouldn’t get too close to it.”
“What happened to her?”
“She just disappeared; got off work late, around two or three, and when I went to go knock on her door to get her to go for a run the next morning she didn’t answer.” He gestured toward the back. “Her car was gone, so I figured she was just out doing errands—but she never came back. A day or two later I busted open the door and all her stuff was gone.”
I leaned on the bar and draped an arm on the surface. “Did a detective by the name of Gerald Holman ever come by here asking questions?”
“Couple of times, yeah.”
I looked at him questioningly. “Only a couple?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Just curious. What about another detective by the name of Richard Harvey—tall, thin guy with a handlebar mustache?”
“Nope.”
“You’re sure?”
He shook his head. “Well, didn’t talk to me, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t here.”
“What happened to the trailer?”
“What trailer?”
“4661-A, Jone Urrecha’s trailer.”
Kay interrupted. “Tommy sold it.”
“I thought it burned.” I turned to look at her. “Who’s Tommy?”
She gestured to the building as a whole. “The owner.”
“And where is he?”
She smiled. “Usually comes in around five.”
Curtis gestured with a hand to get my attention. “It’s not what you’re thinking—”
“And what am I thinking?”
“That there’s something going on. Tommy doesn’t charge the girls anything but buys and sells the trailers all the time as a sideline.”
The voice spoke from behind me again. “Tommy has a lot of sidelines.”
I spun my hat. “And burns a few of them, too.”
“Huh?”
“4661-A.”
Curtis smiled. “Space heater; nobody got hurt.”
“Glad to hear it.” I glanced back at Kay, but she ignored me and sipped her drink. I stood and walked over to the kid. “Pick up your leg and put your ankle on your knee.”
“What?” He looked at me for a moment and then did as I said.
“Now push down on your knee and twist your foot and stretch it out with your other hand.”
I could see the immediate relief in his face as his knee popped back in place. “Oh, wow!”
I slugged down the rest of my iced tea like Philip Marlowe, rested the empty can on the bar, and picked up my hat. “You say Tommy shows up around five?”
The kid stood, looking more like his Thor Asgard self. “You want me to say you stopped by?”
“No, I’ll introduce myself.” We shook hands, and I went around a sticky brass railing and down the steps. “Little known fact: offensive tackles score higher on the Wonderlic than any other position.”
“No shit; better than quarterbacks?”
“Better than quarterbacks—average of twenty-six.”
He thought about it. “So, I’m above the average for the highest-rated position?”
“Looks like.”
He waited a moment before asking. “You ever take the test?”
I slipped my hat on and started out the door. “Not in the NFL.”
—
I sat in my truck outside the Sixteen Tons, the best and only bar in Arrosa. There wasn’t anything to munch on since Dog had eaten the remainder of the ham, the red and gold foil remnants lying on the passenger-side floor mat.
He looked at me, completely unrepentant.
“You could’ve saved me a little.”
I spent my time on stakeout leafing through the files, looking for something, anything, that would connect the three women. I rested them against my chest, also wondering why it was that Gerald Holman, if he was so upset by the disappearance of Jone Urrecha, had visited her residence and place of employ only twice. It was easier to understand why Richard Harvey hadn’t made the trip to Arrosa, in that he was trapped in a basement with the cry and hue of Inspector Holman’s career coming to rest upon him—like he said, shit rolls downhill.
After a few moments, I saw the inspector general come out of the post office, lock the door, and start toward my truck. I rolled the window down as he stood by the Bullet.
Dave Rowan glanced at the SIXTEEN TONS sign. “The bartender says to tell you that you’re bad for business.”
I rested the files on the center console. “I’m hoping not to be here for much longer.”
“So is he.”
“You know this Tommy who owns the strip club?”
“Some; I’m the one who sorts the mail and puts it in the box for Thor.”
“The bouncer?”
“Yeah.”
“Seems like a nice kid.”
He stared at me for a moment. “You’ve obviously never seen him knock somebody down and kick their head for five minutes.”
I glanced at Dirty Shirley’s and the lurid blonde on the sign, thinking the kid might not be completely off steroids. “Bad news, is he?”
“Yeah. Sometimes in the afternoon, if his victims can’t find anyone else to call them a cab or an ambulance, they crawl into the post office.”
I sighed. “Does the owner of the strip club live around here?”
“No, or they wouldn’t have their mail delivered to a P.O. box.”
“Good point.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the intersection, where a familiar Cadillac Escalade EXT rolled through the stop sign. “Speak of the devil; you can ask for yourself.” He gestured with a hand and sounded like a sick Ed McMahon. “Heeeeeere’s Tommy!”
I hit the ignition, flipped on the light bar, and pulled out as Rowan stepped away. “Thanks.”
I was on the tail of the Cadillac and even blipped my siren before he could get to the parking lot of the strip club, but I guess he figured he was close enough that I wouldn’t mind if he pulled in there.
He sat, wait
ing patiently, as I got out of my truck and straightened my hat the way the HPs always did, bringing my aluminum clipboard along just for appearances’ sake.
The motor on the Caddy was still idling, and he had his license and registration hanging out the open window as I approached. I thought it was a little odd that he had on fingernail polish. “Hey, I . . .”
Snatching off the sunglasses, worn despite the cloudy day, the driver barked, “Do you know who the fuck I am?” As it turned out, Tommy was a Tommi with an i and a middle-aged woman with a massive pouf of reddish hair and a formidable chest.
I studied her for a moment, as if I were trying to remember where, exactly, we had met and then gestured toward her sign. “Dirty Shirley.”
She lit a cigarillo and shook her head, unimpressed with my performance; her voice was like a foghorn through 60-grit sandpaper. “Very funny.”
I gestured toward the only crossroad in Arrosa. “You didn’t come to a complete stop at that sign back there.”
She took a drag and blew the smoke toward my face, but the ever-present wind snatched it and forwarded it to the Black Hills. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope, and with it being in the proximity of the elementary school over there, it could be a hefty penalty—”
Tommi interrupted me. “Do I know you?”
She probably wasn’t as old as she seemed, but the alcohol, tobacco, and hard living had rolled up her odometer. “Probably not, and I don’t know you—I thought we’d established that fact.”
She studied my face, and then her eyes dropped to my chest in search of a badge. “You’re really a cop?”
I began copying the information from her ID, just in case the conversation didn’t improve. “I am.”
She sucked on the small cigar again, as if it were life affirming. “Around here?”
“Pretty much.”
“Not for long, bucko.”
It was about then that I decided to give her the ticket. I’d just pulled her over so that I could start a conversation, but the chances of that seemed slim, so I held up a finger before she could continue. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery Page 6