“Your front door did not look forced,” said Taggart.
“Nor from what I could tell,” I said, “was anything disturbed, save for the vacancy of the tub. After discovering the body, I retraced my steps to the door.”
“Too bad you compromised the debris field,” she said.
“It is my home,” I said. “Imagine what you’d have to say if evidence of my presence weren’t all over it.” A more seasoned partnership would have covered the same ground in half the time. Taggart was done. Ebbersole did not want to let me go. “Any chance I could get something to put on my feet?” I said. “Definite chill in here.”
Flame’s real name was Linda Webber. She was nineteen years old, having run away from home in Norman, Oklahoma when she was fifteen. Her parents who neither of them I had learned from Taggart, uttered a sentence without including some reference to God, even if only by means of the pronoun His. They identified Linda via closed circuit video but refused to claim her body, allowing as how she had relinquished the privilege of being their daughter upon surrendering her virginity to a schoolboy prior to running away. That she had come to such a sad end, according to them, had been foretold by her Godless behavior.
I buried her next to Bumper.
Sister Althea Morgan Pearce, founder and charismatic leader of the storefront church, The House of the Lord, in The Bottoms, north of Elgin, east of downtown, stood with me and officiated. She was a large African-American woman who was the go-to individual for most everything in her neighborhood that might too easily be characterized as a ghetto. It was home to many dilapidated shanty-like houses that tottered on leaning brick piers. They were not so much sided or painted as they were overgrown. Sister Althea had found me shot and left for dead in her neighborhood on a previous case. She treated my wounds and nursed me back to health in her own home. Prayer was as natural to her as was breathing. We had adopted each other without ever having acknowledged the bond in spoken words.
After telling her about Flame, she did not wait for me to ask, but had simply asked when and where? I had been trained to be prompt. Althea had appointed herself shepherdess of far too many to have a moment of her time wasted. The unyielding parents in Norman could have learned a thing or two about faith and forgiveness had they been present to hear Sister Pearce send their daughter home. “You are part of God, precious, on your final journey. We are better because of you. We thank you for the life you lived. We hope you will be there to welcome us when we are called. We live in magnificent wonder of what you now behold. How blessed you are. How grateful are we. Peace, child, all is well. Amen.” Althea had taken my hand early. I squeezed it on her last word. She surveyed the sky above the trees. “It is done,” she said. “It is accomplished.”
I had heard those words before, when she had prayed over me as I lay in a perilous condition in an old metal bed in the room next to her kitchen. I knew not to disturb the peace until a new balance had been achieved, marked by a low and resonant hum arising from the center of her in the form of whatever spiritual took her in the moment; in this case In Everything We See. Her rich voice filled the cemetery.
I was not free of the guilt about Flame’s having been murdered in pointed message to me, but neither was I hobbled by it, thanks to Althea’s way of accepting what could not be changed. On the drive back to her house, I gave Sister Althea the story in broad strokes of what had brought us to the need for her to officiate over Flame’s grave.
“Is the child, Grace, safe?” she said.
“At the moment,” I said. “But I am worried.”
“If I am needed,” she said, “bring her to me. No child is ever harmed in my care.” I nodded.
“I have medicines to buy,” she continued. “I owe for supplies on a charge-a-plate I do not like to use. There are food stuffs to be purchased for several families.” I handed her my wallet. She took all of the large bills and left me with a five and two ones. “There will be prayer,” she said, “for the child.”
“Already,” I said, “I feel better.”
She said, “Are you hungry, Theodore?”
“Better not,” I said. “Can’t afford the time.”
“Fatback,” she said, “beans, jalapeño cornbread.”
I turned the ignition to off. “God help me,” I said.
After two generous helpings, we sat in her plank-walled kitchen and talked quietly. There was a young man asleep in the next room where I had recuperated not long before. Knife wounds evidently. Little had changed in the small row house built as part of a public works project early in the last century. They were disappearing fast to make way for the townhouses that were altering the look and feel of the city.
Althea was no stranger to the ghoulish market that had swallowed Allison. “They prey on young people,” she said, “who think that a thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
She tried to serve me another piece of rhubarb pie, but I had to wave her off. “It’s all on the fly,” I said. “But not with speed. Orchestration.”
“Evil floats,” she said, “just as it can march a hundred miles, or circle like slow carrion birds.”
“It’s all so ordinary,” I said. “Just disappears.”
“That motel,” she said, “with the bird’s name.”
I said, “The Sandpiper.”
“Yes,” she said.
We let that hang in the air a moment. I had become obsessed with a fiber of meat that had lodged between molars and was impervious to the tip of my tongue. Althea sat military straight, forward in her chair, eyes closed, and allowed stillness to trump the silence. Her young patient appeared at the door from inches away in the next room. As I had done in my time there, he had heard us, or, more likely, was driven mad by the smell of slowly cooked food.
Althea said, “And what are you doing out of that bed, young man, with all the blood you’ve lost?” He was of light complexion but was not white. There was a large bandage wrapped around his trunk and two separate ones on his left arm. There were uncovered stitches on his face glistening with ointment. He turned and slowly cleared the doorway. “The Sandpiper,” she said, returning her attention to me. I repeated the name again but not out loud. “I know what a sandpiper is,” she said, “but I have never seen one.”
I tried to remember but could not honestly say that I had either. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I want to say yes, I’ve seen one.”
“I am without doubt that I have not,” she said. A smile blossomed between us. “The Sandpiper. It’ll be one less thing.” Her revere over never having encountered a sandpiper was her way of communicating to me what it was she had seen that I should do next.
Thirteen
The Sandpiper Motel was on Scott Road, south of Elgin, on the perimeter of the University of Houston College Park campus. Fried chicken, barbeque, medical uniforms, gas stations, psychic services, and convenience stores were stand-alone businesses along the west side of the street for several blocks. On the east side was the university’s baseball stadium. Lots of bus service, and four lanes of north-south automobile traffic connecting I-45 to the fading mansions on Braes Bayou.
The Sandpiper had seen better days; or, perhaps it was maintained to look that way. The decay of its asphalt parking lot not the least of its decline. It was a two storied stucco building the color of mud. The structure wrapped around four sides of the lot parking lot just inside a slatted iron gate that remained open but which could be rolled closed, turning the motel into a fortress not unlike the Alamo. The four ramparts of the flat roof could easily become defensive positions with the advantage of height.
Once inside the enclosure all sense of Houston faded away and I felt secluded and protected on the one hand, yet trapped and imprisoned on the other. While getting in was not a problem, getting out might be tricky if hatches were battened and siege declared. I approached the office door which was secured behind more of that slatted iron. There was an outside registration counter in a covered alcove, with a glass window, a mechanized
extension tray, and a microphone and speaker system similar to a drive-through teller’s window at a bank.
I depressed a call button and a muscular Hispanic man stepped up to the microphone. He had tribal tattoos down either side of his neck from behind each ear, disappearing into his tight, short-sleeved jersey that revealed his devotion to the gym. A gold chain rested loosely over the jersey’s neckband at the bottom of his throat. His neck was thick and was made to look long by having closely clipped hair around the sides of his skull, crowned by a dense oval of black hair on the top of his head. “May I help you?” he said. His skin was the color of latte, but without luster.
“I’d like a room,” I said.
He looked beyond me and turned to check what I assumed was a video. “Are you alone?” he said.
I said, “Yes.”
“What do you want?” he said.
I said, “I’m not sure.”
The weight of his gaze got heavier as he appeared to digest whatever visceral information about me the moment offered. “No vacancy,” he said.
I turned back toward the parking lot and scanned the numbered doors. The doors were stacked on top of each other in the same vertical lines of longitude around fortress Sandpiper. There was a balcony that provided access to the second story rooms. I said, “I’ll take room eighteen.”
“No vacancy,” he said. He blinked slowly and set his jaw in a manner that indicated there was not going be any vacancy no matter how many rooms were available.
“I’ll wait,” I said.
“No loitering,” he said.
“I’ll be sure not to loiter,” I said, “but I do intend to wait.” I returned to the Chrysler and leaned against the right front quarter panel facing the check-in window. My arms crossed over my chest. I did my best to appear at leisure.
An aloe green Saab pulled into a spot in front of room twelve. A man with a bay window belly got out with a young girl in a tube dress that was barely legal. They approached the window and in a matter of moments walked back toward the Saab, past it, and directly into room twelve without first unlocking the door. In keeping with the easy-to-get-in, hard-to-get-out presumption I’d had earlier, I stepped up off the asphalt and through the unlocked door of room eighteen, where I resumed being at leisure some more.
There was a king size bed with a light blue spread. A chair. Mirrors on every wall and on the ceiling, offering maximum reflection of whatever might take place on the mattress. There were retractable restraint shackles available at all four corners of the bed.
There was an inner alcove against the inside wall that separated the bedroom from a long resin vanity counter with a molded sink. More mirror on the wall above that. There were condoms, personal lubricant, antibacterial soap, and antiseptic mouth rinse in a tray on the counter in front of the mirror. Behind a door to the right was a small inner room that housed the toilet and bathtub. A large slender wall heater was affixed to the wall at the open end of the tub.
I walked back into the bedroom and noted candlestick wall sconces on each of the four walls mounted on top of the mirrors. One would have been sufficient. I figured the sconces to be cover for digital recording devices, visual and audio, with which I was likely being monitored. I sat on the end of the bed and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, again going for relaxed yet determined. I anticipated the company of more than one individual, momentarily, who would likely not be out to wish me well.
When the door opened and a young African-American girl stepped across the threshold and seductively closed the door behind. Her hair was short, straight, and heavily gelled. She wore frayed denim cut-offs that exposed the bottom of her buttocks, a sports bra, and pink plastic flip-flops on her feet. “I’m Pepper,” she said.
“Sweet or hot?” I said.
“Up to you,” she said, as she walked toward me, and without stopping slid onto my lap. Astraddle my thighs and dropped into provocative whisper, “Maybe we could try for both.”
“I just want to talk,” I said.
“That’s the only thing I don’t do,” she said.
“The only thing?” I said.
“Would you like to fuck me up the ass?” she said, an invitation in her eyes. “I’m very clean.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “How long have you been here?”
“Just walked through that door,” she said, “didn’t I?”
I said, “How long have you worked here?”
“Let’s make every moment count,” she said. “Clock started the minute I came inside the room.”
“Are you in danger?” I asked.
“Only if I can’t make you show hard very, very soon,” she said.
“I don’t want sex from you,” I said.
This puzzled her, though she stayed put on my lap and pulled away for a longer look with her hands clasped behind my neck. “They can send a boy,” she said, “if that’s what you’d prefer. We could party.”
“Do you have family?” I said.
She smiled easily, lifted an eyebrow, and said, “You must be writing a book.”
“Are you safe?” I said.
“Clean as a whistle,” she said, “guaranteed.”
“What’s your real name?” I said.
A hint of confusion came into her face. “I told you,” she said, “Pepper.”
I said, “I mean your birth name.”
“Mister,” she said. “You don’t get it. I’ve got to do something. Let me blow you.”
I said, “No.”
Disbelief held her in its grip for several moments after which she tried seductive again, with a push. “Why do I get the feeling,” she said, “you’re going to want to pull out and come on my face?”
“Can you dance?” I said.
“My specialty,” she said and was on her feet and moving as though she were being taken from behind. She started to remove her clothes.
“Just dance,” I said.
“Gonna have to call you Dancer,” she said, “aren’t we?” What her movement lacked in artfulness more than made up for in mimetics beyond provocative, dead into skank.
I was sure there were those who might find her slow grind appealing if what they required was vividness over imagination. “How many like you are there here?” I said.
“Ain’t no one like me,” she said. “I am spicy-special.”
“Are you and the others housed here?” I said.
She stopped dancing for a moment, tossed her head in frustration, and started moving again descending to the floor in a squat as if impaling herself, sexually, on an invisible partner. “Help me out, Dancer,” she said, “start touching yourself, or get up and move with me.” Her sexuality played on her own degradation.
“Do you want out of this place?” I said.
She stopped again and stood up. “Who are you?” she said.
I said, “My name is Ted Mitchell.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’re Dancer. It’s how we do here.”
“I’m a Private Investigator,” I said.
She said, “I thought you asked for me.”
“Pepper,” I said, “do you need help?”
“Dancer, honey,” she said, “we going to fuck or not?” I shook my head in the negative. “What do I do now?” she said to the room. The candle lights in the wall sconce on the front wall between window and door came on. Pepper fled the room, leaving the door open behind her. The light on the wall went out.
I sat for another moment and waited. The signal for her to vacate made sense if they were going to send someone else in with a different intention. I waited some more. The door remained open. I got up and shut it. If nothing good was coming in, I wanted at least a moment’s notice. I locked the door, turned away from it, and discover a pony-tailed offensive lineman standing with his arms stretched overhead, leaning with his hands against the archway that separated the bedroom from the lavatory facilities. His slow and easy smile telegraphed the enjoyment he took in his
work, which he was about to demonstrate for my benefit. “Let’s party,” he said.
He stepped toward me with enough relaxed confidence to give me a split second to dive to the floor, roll forward toward him, and complete my cannonball tumble with an upwardly thrust heel directly into his genitals.
The sound he made was not so much a grunt as it was an instant deflation of everything he had in his lungs. It doubled him over in my direction and allowed me to collide the top of my head with his chin, the jaw bone in which I believe I felt give way. I returned to my feet with gathered velocity and sent him headed in the opposite direction, falling backward now toward the molded resin sink and counter unit topped by the wall of mirror.
Time slowed momentarily as I gauged that he was going to crack his skull against the edge of the counter right before he did in fact crash against it, which made it bounce just enough to crack the mirror like a road map. The arrogance of his languid confidence had my gratitude as I waited to see if he was going to get up. He did not.
I thought I might have put a strain on my back in heaving him about in search of weapons. There were none. He did have a small LED flashlight in a rear pocket which, upon first feeling it I thought might be a knife. I slipped it into my own pocket. He was not dead but he did have a gusher of a wound at the base of his skull. Too, there was that likelihood of a broken jaw.
I moved into the inner part of the bathroom behind the door, where the commode and bathtub were. There was no drop-down hatch in the ceiling. There were vinyl finished Masonite panels affixed to the bottom portions of the walls topped by aluminum edging somewhat higher than could be considered chair-rail molding. Nothing gave way when tapped or pushed. I recalled the combination heating and cooling unit underneath the window in the main room which made the tall corroded wall heater at the foot of the tub suspicious. Pushing did nothing. But a pull on the grate over the heat coil swung open like a hinged door.
Where, earlier, upon entering the enclosed parking lot that had allowed the bustling city to fade away, now, as I explored the passageway behind the heating unit, all became redolent of Alice, a rabbit hole, and an alternate world that allowed even a sense of the motel itself to fade. It was dark, which explained the LED flashlight that, for its size, produced abundant light.
Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4) Page 9