Double Wide

by Leo W. Banks

  The doorbell was surprisingly loud. I found out why when no one responded, and I went to knock and saw the door ajar. I pushed it open. The hinges shrieked like a witch in trouble. I called out to Melody, got silence in return, and stepped inside. The house was dark except for a patch of light so far back it only made a faint appearance where I was.

  “Arthur Melody!” I called.

  No response.

  In my stories, the detective never turns and leaves when a door makes that sound. Everyone knows he should run. Everything’s going to hell and pretty quick, but the detective never stops, and neither did I.

  Brave and clueless. That’s me.

  I walked toward the light, through a dining room with a long table under a massive chandelier, into a one-window living room, dark with a closed-in feel. The chairs were black and red and way too big for the space. A sword hung on the wall. The white brick around the fireplace was clean. The magazines on the coffee table had been laid out in a perfect fan shape, probably in 1988.

  The room wasn’t a place someone lived in. It looked as if it had been decorated and forgotten by a bachelor who used it only to pass through on his way to work. The kitchen was the same, sadly clean. The refrigerator door was bare, no family pictures, not even a dog.

  But there was a photograph from Arizona Highways magazine of a coyote, jaw raised, howling from a mountaintop. What a great idea for a picture. I wished I’d thought of it.

  A sign hung on the rounded doorway at the back of the kitchen: “Welcome to Arty’s Fabulous Cactus Garden.”

  The doorway led into an oval-shaped glass walkway wide enough for one person going one way. It went back about forty feet to the light. I heard a sound at the end of the walkway. I called Arthur Melody’s name again, got no answer, and kept going.

  Farther down, a shadow moved in the light. I heard a loud humming and guessed a window air conditioner.

  The walkway opened to a large room full of folding tables, about twenty of them, covered with small cacti in plastic and ceramic pots. There were fledgling saguaros, fishhook barrel cacti, and teddy bear cholla, hundreds of them crowded together on the tabletops.

  At the back of the room stood a desk with a laptop on it, an open briefcase, and a paper shredder. Beside the desk was a standup safe, its door wide open. A man was removing the contents and stuffing them into the briefcase.

  He looked like his picture. Arthur Melody. I called his name.

  Again, nothing. I stood in the doorway and watched him. He had no idea I was there.

  He reached into the safe and drew out a silver handgun and a white substance wrapped in cellophane, about the size of a deck of cards. He put both items into a black drawstring bag.

  At his desk, he slipped a flash drive into his laptop and typed on the keyboard. He stood, folded his arms on his chest, nervously tapped a finger, and watched the progress bar.

  When he realized he had company, it wasn’t because he heard me. It was more a feeling. I could see that by way he lurched back as if in danger.

  Tall and lanky, he wore brown slacks and an ugly brown pullover shirt that hung loose on his shoulders. His arms were liver spotted, his face pallid.

  He fingered through the top pocket of his shirt to retrieve a hearing aid and inserted it. As he stared at me, the expression on his face went from fear and surprise to recognition. “You’re Whip Stark, the pitcher.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to go this way, Mr. Stark. It was an intriguing research project, that’s all.” He stopped talking and went back to stuffing more papers into his briefcase.

  But he stopped again as a new thought occurred to him. “I was the last person to see her alive. Except for her killers.”

  “You’re talking about Rosa Lopez.”

  “I just received word of her death. Someone called from the club. Skin.” He pointed to the phone on his desk as if that provided proof. “It’s just awful, awful.”

  I asked who’d called him.

  “A female, quite young, I’d guess. She was tipping me off. If I heard her correctly, they’re on their way here right now, and I’d better clear out.” He looked at the copy bar on the computer screen and made a hurry-up motion with his finger.

  He turned to me with his hands on his hips. “Rosa came here two nights ago. The television was on and we saw your appeal for Rolando Molina. I begged her to leave. I told her, ‘Go talk to Whip Stark.’”

  “Why me?”

  “Her boyfriend was killed near Double Wide.”

  “Carlos Alvarez.”

  “Yes.” Melody looked at me helplessly. “I didn’t know what else to tell her. She went on and on about his murder. Raving! In my home yet! You were a way to be rid of her, frankly.”

  He leafed through a folder and tossed it away. It skidded across his desk onto the floor, the papers scattering. He didn’t seem to notice. He rubbed his forehead and said, “I’m very sorry about your missing friend. Truly I am.”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’m leaving before the thugs arrive at my door! Or the police! I’d rather not speak to either one, so I’m destroying evidence!” He leaned forward with his palms flat on the desk and hung his head. “Isn’t that what criminals do?”

  “Something tells me you’re not a criminal, professor. Those papers you’re shredding—what are they?”

  Melody didn’t answer. He jerked open a drawer and tossed more files into his briefcase. “I’m a distinguished botanist!” he said, as if answering voices in his head. “If I’d known these men were gangsters, I never would’ve agreed to this. You must understand!”

  He took a few shaky breaths. “I went along because I was a fool. But I saw it as a fascinating challenge. At my age to have something like this come around, well, I suppose it was thrilling. I won’t lie, the money was outstanding.”

  “Professor, I need you to calm down and tell me what you were hired to do.”

  “Why, make dreams come true, Mr. Stark. But I’ll have nothing more to do with this sordid enterprise. I’ll destroy all of my research, and we’ll see what they do then. Without their holy grail, we’ll just see!”

  I repeated my question, and he would’ve kept talking, but the sound of a car door slamming in the street stopped him. We looked at each other with expectant faces, waiting for some follow-up sound to provide more evidence.

  Whispering, Melody said, “Don’t the police normally announce themselves?”

  The silence thickened as we waited. The next sound was the front door creaking open—those hinges again. Melody’s face turned white as a wedding dress. He slammed the lid of his briefcase, snapped the locks, grabbed the drawstring bag, and sprinted out the back door, flipping off the lights as he exited.

  The room fell into blind darkness. No time to run.

  I would’ve had to cross the room and get out the door, and that meant navigating the desk and a maze of tables. Hard to do when you can’t see. I leaned with my back flat against the wall, the doorway to my left.

  Two male voices. Footsteps moving through the house.

  They came closer, wasting no time.

  I reached onto the table and grabbed the first ceramic pot my hand found. It held a six-inch teddy bear cholla. That was good luck. As cacti go, the teddy bear is the perfect close-contact weapon. The spines grow so densely they obscure the main trunk and branches. They’re thin, unyielding, and needle sharp, every one of them capable of slicing human flesh.

  When a man appeared in the doorway, I thrust the business end of the teddy bear deep into his neck, right below the ear. He let out a tortured scream, then a series of them, each higher than the one before.

  I shouldered him into his partner, and with my eyes now adjusted to the darkness, bolted out the back door.

  Forty feet of backyard led to an open gate in the wall at the back of the property and a narrow alley. To my left, the wall broke to make room for a garage. At that mom
ent, Melody’s car rocketed out of the garage and slammed into a garbage can, sending it airborne and nearly clocking me. His back bumper stopped inches from my knees.

  The professor’s left arm, visible only as something white against the night darkness, reached out the driver’s window and seemed to arc over the roof, after which the professor spun his tires, tossing dirt and gravel everywhere.

  His big white car peeled away. His bumper sticker said, Saguaro You Today?

  My attention turned to the agonized cries inside the house, made by a man trying to pull cactus needles out of his neck.

  If you live in the desert long enough, you’ve walked unwittingly into one of those ornery specimens. Even when it’s an accident, the experience can cause a grown man to wail like a child. Done intentionally, it causes thoughts of bloody revenge.

  I ran down the alley to the neighbor’s wall, bellied over it, and doubled around to the front. Not bothering to open the door, I hopped into my driver’s seat and gassed it.

  As I roared away, I checked the rearview and saw nothing. It looked like a clean getaway.

  TWENTY-NINE

  My heart pounded as I drove home that starless night. Thunderstorms plotted above the solid cover of clouds. Their intrigues produced only a far-off cannonade and scattered raindrops on my windshield. I broke multiple traffic laws rumbling through the populated part of the city.

  After the freeway, I broke many more as I barreled into the mountains, thinking about Rolando’s hand in my freezer, his body missing, and no clear idea why he was murdered.

  Easy does it, Stark. Slow down and let the mind work.

  Carlos Alvarez delivered the hand to my door. He wanted me to do something about Rolando’s murder, but didn’t live long enough to see any result. Moments after driving away, someone caught up to him on that mountain trail and shot him twice in the head.

  Rosa Lopez heard of her boyfriend’s death, and she, too, tried to reach me.

  Same story. Counting Rolando, three killings. Not to mention two strip club mutts bracing a scared-as-hell professor with a revolver in his go bag.

  Somebody had a lethal interest in keeping people quiet.

  Nearing 11:00 p.m., I arrived at Double Wide. The first thing I did was check Opal’s trailer. She was still gone and that didn’t help my nerves. Bundle came running, doing his usual coming-home dance. I fed him and Chico and checked on Charlie to make sure everything was fine, and I checked on Cashmere Miller with the same purpose and result.

  In the Airstream, I got a water bottle out of the refrigerator and went back to my laptop, sitting open on the counter opposite my bed. A quick Google search told me this would take time. Arthur Melody had a ton of hits.

  I learned right away that he had a nickname: Mr. Agave.

  Tequila is made from the agave plant. They cut away the plant’s swordlike leaves to reach its whitish-yellow heart, the internal crown known as the cabeza. Those hearts are fermented to make tequila.

  Different species of the plant grow all over southern Arizona and Mexico. But tequila only comes from the blue agave found mainly in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

  One of the websites pictured a cabeza. Its exterior was white and green in a checkerboard pattern exactly matching the balls Machete’s men were loading into trucks.

  Well, well. Melody played baseball his freshman year at the University of Texas. That was a surprise. He looked less like a ballplayer than Winston Churchill.

  After half an hour, I had the basics.

  The agave is quite a versatile plant. The Aztecs used it to make pulque, a sacred drink in their rituals, and its components are still used in Mexican folk medicines. Its leaves produce a thick sap that can treat toothaches, snakebites, open wounds, inflammation, and even syphilis.

  Drug companies around the world have jumped on the agave and Professor Melody was a leader in that research, his work funded by a German company called A. A. Bildenson.

  I found a story saying Melody had traveled to the Mexican Sierra Madre to study how shamans of the ancient Huichol tribe used the agave for its narcotic properties, the feelings of calm and contentment it produced in those about to have their hearts ripped out in ritual sacrifice.

  Ah, the old days.

  I said to myself, “Contentment similar to a heroin rush.” I thought of Melody’s last remark, “Making dreams come true,” and of the white substance he dropped into the drawstring bag.

  A theory formed.

  The smugglers hired the professor to make a new drug, possibly a heroin substitute, and that was the connection to Paradise Mountain. They needed the agave that grew on the mountain.

  If the substance could be produced in a US lab or even a garage, the cartel wouldn’t have to grow and harvest poppies, turn it into a salable product, package the product, and smuggle it across the line. Everything would be easier, and the profit margin would stay the same or increase.

  Reading about the agave got me thinking about tequila.

  Toward the end of my career, I played winter ball in the little Mexican mountain town of Saltillo, a charming, lost place above the chaos and bloodletting of Coahuila, a drug-trafficking hub. The team was the Saltillo Saraperos—the Serape Makers.

  After games, I’d go out with Rolando and a few others. Our favorite spot was a five-table cantina called Mort’s, run by a four-hundred-pound American ex-pat from Oakland. He listened to the games on the radio and had tequila shots ready when we came in.

  Sitting in the Airstream that night, I thought about those happy nights in Saltillo, and to my surprise, the memory gave me a taste for a shot. In the kitchen, I had a tequila bottle that I’d bought in Jalisco. It survived the cut when I moved into the Airstream. I rinsed the dust out of a shot glass and poured.

  Bundle barked, a lone “woof” somewhere way out in the desert. I went to the door and whistled, and in a minute Bundle came to the bottom of the steps.

  “It’s late for excitement, boy,” I said. “Go lie down.” Bundle trundled off. He spent the night sleeping on the floor in my empty, doorless trailer.

  Up on the mountain, I saw headlights shining through the darkness, a vehicle winding its way down from Gates Pass.

  The clouds were breaking up, and a few renegade raindrops had gathered on the hood of the Bronco, where they fetched down the starlight and sparkled. What a sadness when a summer storm fails to deliver and you see it churning away, forever gone.

  I threw down the tequila and read more about Professor Melody and his agave research. After ten minutes, I was thirsty again, and for the first time in years, I poured a second shot.

  Reading about succulents was ruining me. Happens to everybody.

  When I passed the kitchen door this time, the headlights had disappeared behind the mountain dark. I thought nothing of it. The car had fallen into a depression between the hills where the road went to hide, and in a moment, it would straighten out and cough up the car again.

  Too tired to read anymore and not ready to sleep, I stepped outside and walked down Main Street, past Charlie’s trailer. It felt good to be under the sky, feeling the breeze on my face, feeling the slight numbing action of the tequila on the bottom of my feet.

  Chico hopped along at my side. But he kept looking up at me and circling as if in warning. The hair along his spine stood up, a backward-running ridge from head to tail.

  “What’s going on with you, boy?” I said.

  The tequila told me there was nothing to worry about. But tequila always says that.

  After a few more steps, I heard a single rifle shot. There was no mistaking it. Knowing that sound too well, Chico squealed in fright and hopped away seeking cover.

  I froze where I stood. Tension bolted down my arms and legs. I felt like a paper target at the gun range, waiting for the next round. Unlike a paper target, I didn’t have to stand there and get plugged full of holes. I turned and ran back toward the Airstream.

  THIRTY

  Seconds later I heard three m
ore shots, short, sharp cracking sounds without much staying power. Then the rifle exploded a second time and the mountains tossed the sound around in descending echoes.

  The varying tone of the shots meant different guns, and different guns meant a gunfight. I saw muzzle flashes and heard Cashmere Miller shouting.

  Running past Charlie O’Shea’s trailer, I saw a pickup truck launch out of the wash behind my place, four wheels off the ground, headlights dark. The front end came out so high the driver was looking at the sky before the truck fell to the ground.

  It bounced loud and hard on big tires, bounced a second time a little softer, and spun violently in the dirt to swap ends.

  In the darkness I saw Cash’s distinct form, his bony, crooked, question-mark form, running straight toward the truck. The driver hit the gas, and the engine roared, sending the truck spinning down the exit road.

  In a calm, fluid motion, Cash fell to one knee, tucked the rifle against his shoulder, lowered his face to the stock, and wiggled for a comfortable fit as he found the sight. He let several seconds pass before squeezing off three rounds at the bumper.

  He lowered the rifle and watched the disappearing truck. “Mama’s gonna need bodywork.”

  I asked what happened.

  Cash said, “Heard something and came outside. Seen a guy going through your Bronco and not too gentle.” He brushed at his clothes and shifted back and forth on his paddle feet.

  Charlie O’Shea ran down the street wearing checked boxer shorts and a T-shirt declaring him the world’s best granddad. “Somebody want to tell me what’s happening? Sounds like a shooting war going on out here!”

  “Hostiles,” Cash said. “Two, near as I could see.”

  “Christ a-mighty. You okay, Cashy?” Charlie said.

  “The best,” Cash said. “One was poking through the Bronco and the other was tearing apart the Mayor’s domicile. I hollered and seen them running. Couple shadows.” Cash spat in the dirt. “Couple shadows was all I seen.”