Double Wide

by Leo W. Banks

  “We wait. You and Cashmere Miller are the only ones who know about it.”

  “A story can protect you. It might get more law enforcement out here.”

  “You need to listen to me, Roxy. I’m telling you we wait.”

  She stood up, cracking her knuckles, moving up one hand and down the other. “I need to look in that freezer.”

  I gave her my red hoodie to wear against the rain, and told her to go out to the freezer herself. At that moment I didn’t like her much, didn’t like her attitude or her expensive sunglasses. She pulled the hood over her head, tugged the drawstrings tight, and went.

  I didn’t want to be standing at the freezer when she looked down at Rolando’s hand and had no reaction at all, or said something that masked what was hidden inside. Or worse, said something that confirmed there was nothing inside to hide.

  Roxanne Santa Cruz was like the women in my books, the way they all are, the way they have to be. Beautiful for sure. Eyeshadow too heavy, lipstick too red. That worked. She had luxurious hair and the striding, all-in walk that gave men water legs. That worked, too.

  And she had the right job, working people for information, manipulating them to get the best stories. All that was supposed to be a blind. Underneath, she was supposed to believe in people and that basic goodness should reveal itself in moments like this.

  Somebody once said I have a heart-of-gold problem, and maybe so. But I wanted her to come back feeling the awful weight of Rolando’s death, the darkness of it. Put a hand on my shoulder and tell me how sorry she was, maybe fight back a tear.

  Instead, she looked as if she’d seen nothing more upsetting than roadkill. At least she wasn’t whistling. I’ll give her that much.

  She flipped the hood back off her head and wiped rainwater from her face with her sleeve. She wiggled her shoulders out of the jacket and shook it like a bullfighter’s cape. “Wooo! It’s a wet one out there!”

  On light feet, she bounced to the refrigerator, bent down, grabbed a candy, bar and inspected the label. “I can’t believe you buy candy bars with nuts in them,” she said.

  “You like your chocolate straight, huh?” My mind was in a hundred places and that’s just what came out.

  “The nuts just get in the way,” she said, using her fingernails to pick the nuts out of the chocolate.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The next two mornings, Cash and I drove up the mountain to search for Rolando’s remains. As much as possible, we stayed on open ground, keeping a long view of the surrounding terrain and bypassing canyons and rock formations where Machete’s men could hide.

  On returning to the Airstream, I sat at my kitchen table and spread out my map and marked in red the routes we’d taken, to avoid doubling up the next day. I marked in green the routes I still needed to check.

  Oscar called. He said Fausto had taken Rolando’s death hard, Natty was still a mess, and he wasn’t able to leave either of them to return to Double Wide. He asked me to call Fausto and try to calm him down.

  After a pause, Oscar said, “Any luck finding my boy?” His voice was weak and unsure.

  “I’m looking every day.”

  “Be sure to keep an eye on him. I mean…out back.”

  “You know I will.”

  I called Fausto, got his message, and asked him to call me. Later on the second day, Detective Diaz drove up my entrance road. I stood with my shoulder against the doorjamb and offered a pleasant greeting. If I didn’t have Charlie, I would’ve invited him in.

  Diaz might’ve been the only man in Tucson outside of the downtown courthouses to wear Oxford shoes. Two-toned with brogue detailing. He had on a red pullover shirt two sizes too small, highlighting his nautilus arms.

  Someone had ironed his pleated chinos. My guess was him. While listening to a self-improvement tape in a spotless white T-shirt.

  “Carlos Alvarez,” he said, without any throat clearing. “He’s been arrested twice for assault and twice for drug possession with intent to sell. One of the assaults was with a dangerous weapon.”

  “Roxanne Santa Cruz said he had a sheet.”

  “Were you aware that Alvarez and Rolando Molina were friends?”

  I had no idea and said so.

  Diaz said, “On a hunch, I checked the Monterrey Sultans roster from two years ago. Turns out they played for the club at the same time.”

  “Plenty of guys play on the same team for years and can’t stand each other.”

  “You’re saying they weren’t friends?”

  “I’m saying I had no idea. Rolando never mentioned Alvarez to me.”

  Diaz stood with one shoe resting on my bottom step, arms across his thighs. All I could think about was Rolando’s hand. Did he suspect I was up to something? Was he going to ask if he could have a look around?

  A morning breeze blew, not charging but steady. It whistled like the mailman through the junked cars stacked up behind Opal’s trailer.

  We listened to it together, until Diaz said, “My vic is found on a drug trail, he and Rolando Molina were friends and both had a drug history. Then Rolando turns up missing. When your job is making connections, I’d say we hit the jackpot here.”

  I nodded in agreement, because that’s what you do when you’re withholding evidence in the form of a human hand twenty feet away in your freezer. Diaz let the silence run on, staring right into my eyes.

  “I hope you find Rolando, Detective. I really miss him.”

  I spent the afternoon watching TV with Charlie and fighting off thoughts of Rolando, and the grinding sadness of his murder. I wondered about Opal. Still gone. She goes to town for some sidewalk sketching and poof, four days missing.

  In the kitchen I made tuna sandwiches with cut-up celery, lemon pepper, and minced onion flakes. Charlie and I ate our sandwiches under the TV and drank Tecate from wet cans while watching old movies and listening to the incessant hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo-hooooo of the mourning doves.

  They make that call every ten seconds or so in the summer, hour after hour throughout the day. You hear it, wait for the next hoo-hoo, the one after that, and on it goes until you’re paralyzed by it.

  At 4:00 p.m., Opal called. She was fine. She’d been at the Arizona Inn, the guest of a New York couple she’d met downtown. Hearing that, I launched and hollered at her for disappearing.

  “I don’t believe this. You’re safe in town? Why the hell didn’t you call?”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “What do you mean? You just called me. Borrow one.”

  “The people here are crazy rich, Mr. Whip. Not like you. Range Rover rich.”

  “I was afraid something happened to you.”

  Her voice fell. She sounded like she was cupping a hand over the receiver. “The Gelmans paid me a bunch of money. I’m not kidding.”

  “What’s going on? Where are you?”

  “The lobby.” Whispering now: “The people look at me funny.”

  I kept hollering until Charlie gave me a stare that said, “Do you mind? I can’t hear the TV.” Opal whispered some more before asking if I’d come pick her up, and I jumped into the Bronco and went.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Arizona Inn is old Arizona, an elegant, casita-style hotel set in the middle of a residential neighborhood near the university. It has lush flowerbeds, a beautiful swimming pool, and manicured grass over multiple acres and buildings. The color motif is sandstone pink, and it applies to the aging clientele as well.

  You see them tapping arthritic toes in the piano lounge. The women wear lots of turquoise and full moons of cheek rouge. The men are hairless cadavers with too-long fingernails and exploding bourbon faces.

  Opal was standing on the sidewalk outside the main building when I drove up. She held her easel and sketch gear under her arm.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Gelman are super rich,” she said, tossing her gear into the backseat. She climbed in front and jitter-bugged around. “They wanted me to do sketches and paintings and liked them so m
uch they took me all around to paint landscapes and stuff. They picked me up at the community center.”

  “I don’t care where they picked you up.”

  She was hard to reach in her excitement. “Are you still mad at me?”

  The driver behind me leaned on his horn. I waved and pulled out and went north on Campbell Avenue up to Speedway. The gunplay at Double Wide had me on edge. I kept checking the rear and side mirrors and drivers on both sides of me.

  I noticed a price tag clipped to Opal’s pant leg. The pants were red with a yellow dot pattern, loose fitting and down to her shins.

  “Ooops, forgot.” She yanked it off. “The Gelmans thought I could use some new clothes and took me to Target.”

  She pronounced it “Tar-jey.”

  “I’m styling now. They said I could get whatever I wanted. I found this cool blouse too.” From her pocket she pulled a wad of bills that practically overflowed her palm. “Look at this, just for painting lightning!”

  She bit her lip, stretched out her Jell-O arms, and chair danced.

  “Look, you want to disappear, go ahead and disappear,” I said. “I don’t know why I should care. Can you tell me why I should care?”

  Opal made a pouty face and tilted her head toward me. “Because you wuv me?”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “You’re a good white man, Mr. Whip.”

  “I’ll print that on T-shirts. Whip Stark, a helluva white man.”

  As we neared the Silverbell intersection, the last one before climbing the mountain, Opal said, “Let’s stop at Albertson’s. I want to spend my money.”

  “How about saving some? You owe me two months’ rent, remember.”

  “I’m gonna buy a case of Pepsi and all the imitation crab I can carry.”

  We shopped. I pushed the damn cart. I kept thinking I could be watching TV. I could be at the dentist. Hadn’t been bowling in a while.

  Opal walked down the aisles, stopping to give every item close inspection. The smallest ones went into her pocket instead of the cart. Each time I made her take it out of her pocket and put it in the cart. In her pocket, she had a small screwdriver she’d snatched from Target. I dropped that off in frozen foods.

  I said, “What’s wrong with you? You know the cops got warrants out for you.”

  She paid no attention. The sketch money had her skipping down the aisles like a kid on Halloween.

  That night at my place, I made imitation crab cakes with brown rice and salad. Dessert was orange sherbet with plastic spoons. Opal gripped the spoon in her fist and stabbed at the sherbet like she was trying to kill it. She broke three spoons.

  After eating, she peeled some bills off her stash and paid her rent. I almost fell over.

  On the way back to her trailer, she said, “I was too scared to ask the Gelmans to use their phone. That’s how come I didn’t call you.”

  Charlie got himself set up to sleep on my foldout. He flipped on the overhead TV and worked hard to position his gin bottle on the floor just so, allowing him to reach for it without leaning over too much and refill his paper cup.

  I went back to my bed and tried to sleep. Every time I got close, I heard Charlie’s exploding laugh, which started with three quick door slams, became a partially clogged drain, and finished up with the whine of a bad radiator.

  He fell asleep with the TV on. I went out and turned it off, thought about pressing a pillow over his face, and went back to reading my book instead.

  Next morning, Cash and I prowled Paradise Mountain again. If sweat were a clue, we had a bucketful. But nothing else. I was beginning to think Rolando wasn’t on that mountain.

  At the Airstream, I updated my maps and left another message for Annie Patterson.

  Roxy called after supper. “Hey, Phenom, do you know where the Humane Society is?”

  “Sure, out near the end of the Country Club Road.”

  “When can you get here? I have a lead on the good Dr. Melody.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Humane Society sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood that might’ve been the place to be in the 1950s. Now it just looked run down and neglected. No sidewalks because the city forgot to build them, and no lawns because the water bills would crush the mailboxes.

  I got there at 7:00 p.m. Roxy pulled up behind me a minute later. She had a photograph showing Professor Melody and a blond woman with massive hair canoodling at a cocktail table.

  She looked topless, although it was hard to tell. The photograph couldn’t contain her breasts. They started under her chin and plunged down through the remainder of the shot in an impressive topple of flesh.

  Melody and the woman had their cheeks pressed together. He was smiling like he’d won the lottery. She was smiling like the boss had gotten off a groaner at the morning meeting.

  Roxy said, “I swiped this off a bulletin board at Skin. She performs there from time to time, the biggest draw they have.”

  “Melody’s girlfriend?” I said.

  Roxy pointed. “See that house down the street? All lit up? That’s hers.”

  The house was painted purple and yellow and had a two-pillar front porch with bright red lights on both sides of the door. There was a red Cadillac in the carport, maybe ten years old.

  But what caught my eye was the large flag flying over the roof. It had a pink rabbit on it.

  Roxy saw me looking at it. “That’s her logo. Her name is Bunny Slippers.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said.

  “She markets herself under the Bunny brand. She’s a legend in the trade. A girl at Skin tells me Dr. Melody moved in with her three days ago.”

  “He flees his house and runs into the arms of his stripper girlfriend, Bunny Slippers.”

  “It never gets too weird,” Roxy said, as we approached the house. Lights shaped like pink rabbits lined the brick walkway. I thought I should hop.

  Roxy said, “All these dancers dream about being actresses. They love the camera. Let me do the talking.”

  In response to our knock, the front door opened a tiny crack, and cigarette smoke rushed out. In the space, I saw one big, tired blue eye and crow’s feet that had walked a long, long way.

  “Hello, Miss Slippers,” Roxy said. “Would it be possible to get a few minutes of your time to talk?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “Arthur Melody. We’re researching Professor Melody’s groundbreaking work.”

  She hesitated. “Well, Arthur is very famous.”

  The door stayed in the same position, not an inch wider. Bunny’s eye studied us. “Can you tell me who you are?”

  “I’m terribly sorry. I’m Roxanne Santa Cruz, Channel 7 News. This is my intern, Mr. Stark. It’s his first day.”

  “Howdy,” I said, and finger waved.

  The door opened a little wider. That put two eyes before us, along with greasepaint eyebrows, puffy cheeks, and deep slashes around her mouth. Her lips had been done and the work left them preposterously thick.

  But the hair was the thing. It went straight up, consuming a dangerous amount of airspace. The color wasn’t natural, more bedsheet white than actual blond. Standing atop her head in a stiff, excited, frizzed-out pile, it looked like a wildland creature that died scared.

  Bunny stayed stingy with the door until Roxy held out her ID on a lanyard, the station logo prominently displayed. The door opened a bit wider.

  Roxy said, “We were hoping you’d go on camera to talk about him. We’d need to hear from people who know Arthur well.”

  A hurricane wind practically tore the door off its hinges, and Bunny thrust a hand out for Roxy to shake. Her eyes searched past our shoulders. “I don’t see a cameraman.”

  “This would be a preliminary interview,” Roxy said. “We’d give you time to prepare for the real thing, of course.”

  “I always freshen up before seeing my public,” she said.

  “Absolutely,” Roxy sai
d.

  The living room was cramped, with a couch taking up most of the wall under the front windows. A coffee table stood in front of it and a big-screen TV in front of that. A foldout table bumped against the far wall. On top of it were five Styrofoam heads with different colored wigs on them, a makeup mirror, and various small bottles, lipsticks, creams, and lotions.

  Bunny motioned for us to sit on the couch before realizing the seats were filled with assorted clothes and work papers. The papers were piled atop a tan briefcase that looked like the same one I’d seen at Melody’s house.

  “Glory be, don’t look at the mess. I’ve had Arthur three days.” She moved the papers and the briefcase onto the floor to make room. “I’m telling you, that man.”

  “We’ve been trying to reach him,” Roxy said. “Do you know where he went?”

  “Yes, I do. Walgreens.”

  “Walgreens?”

  “He went to Walgreen’s yesterday and didn’t come back. There’s a bad situation at his work.” Bunny showed us her palms as if to remove herself from the matter. “He doesn’t want me to know about it, no matter how many times I ask. All I know is that some men are very eager to talk to Arthur, only he don’t want anything to do with them.”

  Roxy put on her innocent voice. “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “Arthur thought it was smart I didn’t hear about it, and Arthur knows best,” she said. “The poor man, he was so nervous. I told him, ‘Arthur, you have to relax, hon. You don’t have to talk to nobody you don’t want to.’”

  Bunny had on white pants that stopped just below the knees, drawstrings dangling lower from there. The pants were so tight they showed her shape in unobstructed outline. She wore a half top that stopped midway down her stomach. For breathing room, she’d left the top button of her pants undone, and her gaping bellybutton filled the V. It looked like an infant yawning.

  The bra beneath the loose pullover worked hard to contain her breasts. They heaved this way and that as she scavenged for cigarettes.

  “Out of sorts about what?” Roxy asked.

  “Rosa Lopez, for one thing,” Bunny said. “She was a living doll, that one. Arthur was crazy about her, too.” She stopped and pointed at me. “Do I know you from somewhere?”