Double Wide

by Leo W. Banks

  “Heavens, no,” I said. “I’m an intern.”

  She stared a moment longer before resuming her hunt for cigarettes. She bent over to pick up a pillow, and the sound was long and tight, like a geezer having a good laugh. Her pants had split in the rear, right down the middle seam. The sight confirmed why there were no visible panty lines beneath those white pants.

  Bunny spun around and sharp-eyed me as if I were responsible for what I’d seen. She had that exactly wrong. I was responsible for forgetting what I’d seen. Roxy jumped in with a cover remark, and Bunny’s attitude went away. She must’ve remembered what she did for a living.

  Roxy kept smiling with everything she had. “Can you tell us what Arthur was working on?”

  “Something doggone important. Arthur’s a genius.” She put a finger to her lips to help with her search. “I had those cigarettes five minutes ago.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a fresh pack of Camels. She peeled off the wrapper and knocked the pack against the heel of her hand to bring one out. She stuck it between her expensive lips. With the same hand, she produced a lighter and a flame, and stood before us drawing hard on the cigarette, grimacing, pulling her lips back against her teeth as she inhaled, her face tilted toward the ceiling.

  Roxy said, “Did he ever mention the agave plant?”

  Bunny gave an obvious shrug. “Everything with him was the agave. He got up in the morning thinking about the agave.” She puffed and blew and looked at us sideways. “But he went to bed at night thinking about me.”

  “Dear me,” Roxy said, and pretended embarrassment.

  Bunny waved blue smoke from her face. “But like I say, I stay out of his work.”

  “What about heroin?” Roxy said.

  “Arthur?” Bunny thought that was funny. The cigarettes had given her a lawnmower laugh, residual smoke shooting out her nostrils. “His idea of a wild time is having Dr Pepper with his Subway footlong. He’s a darling man, but heroin?”

  She folded her arm under her elbow and held the cigarette up near her ear, letting the tips of her thumb and pinky finger play with one another. Beside the couch sat two Nordstrom bags bulging with new clothes. The TV was a huge cinema-screen job. The shipping box was beside it, along with some plastic packing material.

  Roxy said, “If we could find him, we could fast-track this segment. Do you think he went back to his house?”

  “He’s scared to go back,” she said. “The other thing, he don’t look the same.” She grabbed the hair dye bottle off the table and held it out. “I dyed his hair black, what there is of it anyhow, and taught him how to put on makeup. A little concealer can work wonders, hon.”

  “I am aware,” Roxy said.

  “That’s why he left this morning,” Bunny said. “He was going to Walgreen’s to buy a new pair of glasses. Those magnifying glasses, for his disguise.”

  “Disguise?”

  “He’s not wearing the wire rims anymore,” she said. “I helped him put on makeup, too, and told him to buy black glasses that matched his new hair. Don’t you think they should match his new hair?”

  “It’ll sell the whole darn outfit,” said the cheery intern.

  Bunny put the hair dye back on the table and stared at it with a wistful look. “He walked out of here looking like William Holden. Whatever it is, I’m sure this trouble will work itself out.” Her thick shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “He don’t have a lot of friends. My Arthur was all work.”

  “If he comes back, you need to call us right away,” Roxy said.

  “What about my interview?” Bunny said. “I’d like to time it to my upcoming shows. Do you think we can do that?”

  “For sure,” Roxy said, and gave Bunny her card.

  Bunny went to the kitchen and came back with a card of her own. On it was picture of a pink rabbit and the words “Everybody Loves Bunny Slippers—the Comfiest Fit in Town.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  We walked down the street to the cars. Darkness had fallen. I felt out of sorts. July nights in Tucson will do that. The streets are empty and everything feels dead.

  Anybody with sense is in San Diego with their toes in the ocean, trying to stay cool, and the people left behind are in no mood. They’re stuck making sandwiches because the boss won’t let them go.

  I leaned against the Bronco. Roxy stood in the street opposite me.

  I said, “She knows where he is and exactly what the trouble is. She’s lying her ass off.”

  “She’s protecting her man. I admire that.”

  “Her man or her meal ticket?”

  “Same thing.”

  “She acted like Melody’s in charge, and she does what ‘my Arthur’ wants. Did you see that two-thousand-dollar big screen and those bags filled with clothes? She’s big time into his bank account.”

  “Don’t get righteous. She’s a stripper, and strippers are users.”

  “If you asked him, he’d say he loves her. The other way around? No way.”

  Roxy rocked her head with a maybe, maybe-not expression. “Love is a high bar. Melody’s having the time of his life. Whether it’s real or not isn’t important, whether it lasts or not isn’t important.”

  Roxy stood with her hands in her back pockets. She looked down one end of the street, and then the other. Her expression became thoughtful.

  “I’ve seen it before,” she said. “An older man with money who never had a family or luck with women starts going to a club and, for the first time in his life, gets female attention. Now he’s feeling things he’s never felt before. His whole world is new.”

  She took another random look around. “Confidence is quite a thing. So what if he’s paying for it. Let him have it.”

  “They both get what they want—is that the idea?”

  “There’s no ‘forever’ in strip clubs. All those dancers have is tonight.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this.”

  Roxy grinned like she had a secret.

  I caught on. “Don’t tell me. You?”

  “I climbed the pole way back when.”

  “You stripped?”

  She held up an indignant hand. “Don’t be a beast. I danced.”

  “I’m impressed. The change you made getting into TV must’ve been huge.”

  “Not really. Stripping and TV have a lot in common. I still manipulate people to get a rise out of them.” Roxy rocked her head. “Only in TV the lighting is better.”

  I asked if she had a stage name, and she said yes, the coolest stage name ever. She invited me to guess what it was, but I didn’t get the chance.

  From down the street came the sound of a truck’s engine rumbling to a stop. I saw a black pickup pull in front of Bunny’s and thought little of it. But Roxy kept looking toward the truck. The more she stared, the more tense her manner became.

  The truck door slammed shut as someone got out. That made me look again, but I didn’t get far. Roxy stepped forward, setting her feet outside mine and leaning full against me with her palms flat against the Bronco.

  She covered my body with hers and pressed her lips to mine. She held that position and said, “Keep kissing me.”

  “Do I have a choice?” With my mouth otherwise occupied, my voice sounded like it came through a pillow.

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  I hadn’t had a fresh idea all day, couldn’t get my mind to dredge one up. I had plenty of ideas now. The kiss went on, until, without taking her lips from mine, Roxy turned her head slightly and looked over her outstretched arm down the street again.

  She said, “I’ll bet that’s the guy.”

  “What guy?”

  The question hung there as Roxy bought her eyes to mine and stared, holding the pose for a full half minute. She kissed me on the lips again, this one a slow, tender kiss, not a mash job. She pulled away reluctantly and stared some more with a look of pure surprise. “I didn’t mean to be so forward,” she said.

  “
Not you. You’ve never been forward in your life.”

  “But I’m all right with it. And you—you’re alive after all. I can feel it, Prospero Stark.” She looked down the street again, seemed reassured, and lowered her arms. “I don’t think he recognized you.”

  “Do you mind telling me who we’re talking about?”

  “You described Mayflower’s sidekick. Little fire hydrant guy with a crewcut.”

  “Ed Bolt.”

  “I think he just went into Bunny’s house.”

  When my head stopped spinning from the blood rush, the first sensible notion I had said that Mayflower and Bolt were trying to find Melody too, and that meant Bolt was likely one of the men at Melody’s house the night I was there.

  And these same two, when they couldn’t find whatever they were looking for, drove out to Double Wide and trashed the Airstream and the Bronco.

  Roxy and I walked down the street through the glow of one streetlamp and into the darkness beyond it to Bolt’s truck, a black Chevy Silverado. In the tailgate were three holes, dead center and in tight grouping, bull’s-eyes on a truck fleeing in the dark.

  Cashmere Miller, protector of Double Wide, dangerous man, dead shot.

  “I don’t think the guy saw us,” I said. “Let’s pull behind the Silverado and wait for him to come out.”

  “All right, a tail job. I had a feeling this was going to be a fun night.”

  Roxy positioned the Audi well behind the black Silverado and we sat watching Bunny’s front door. The silence dragged on, full of thought and calculation, each of us measuring the new information and coming to our own conclusions.

  Roxy was the first to speak. “I have a suggestion. How about we drive up to Sullivan’s, get a steak and a nice dessert, and forget about this business. To spice things up, I might even tell you my stage name.”

  “Not a chance.”

  She looked away, and said quickly, “It’s obvious Max Mayflower’s on the same trail we are. He’s trying to find Dr. Melody and the contents of his safe, which he and Ed Bolt presume you possess, correct?”

  “It’s a misconception.”

  “A lot of people get hurt because of misconceptions.” She tapped her fingers anxiously on the dash. “All I’m saying is this thing is looking bigger than you know. And more dangerous. I don’t think you’ve accepted the idea that your friend was smack in the middle of it.”

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  “Okay, say it’s legit that Rolando Molina was helping Fausto get to the big leagues,” she said. “What’s he doing mixed up with guys like Carlos Alvarez and Max Mayflower? Unless he was part of the smuggling operation on that mountain.”

  “Mayflower’s on his way to becoming one of baseball’s top agents,” I said. “Does it make sense he’d jeopardize that by smuggling heroin? He’s too smart for that.”

  “Smart jumps out the window when the money’s right. Thinking of your theory, if they can manufacture some drug without the trouble of moving it across the border, why not? And your pal—let’s face it. You can’t trust an addict.”

  She was making sense, and it ticked me off.

  “Listen, Phenom. You stuck with Rolando through his cocaine trouble. You paid for his rehab, and now he’s back jamming up his life again, and you’re back sticking up for him. Sometimes you reach a point with people where you cut your losses and walk away.”

  “Rolando was my friend.”

  “I knew you’d say that. You never do anything easy, do you?”

  “Not if there’s another way.”

  Roxy let out a breathy sigh. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for fucked up. That’s my life story. And this thing is majorly fucked up. I mean, Machete nearly chopped your head off. These are seriously bad people and the chances of it turning out good for either of us are miniscule, especially you. At least I get a story out of it. You get worked over again by your best friend and maybe shot at by Ed Bolt.”

  “Stop talking, will you. We’re doing this.”

  “Goddamn, I think I’m falling for you.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  We sat in Roxanne Santa Cruz’s Audi and waited. The night inched along, a slow plodding in the warm darkness. From inside the Humane Society, we heard desperate dogs howling in their pens. They couldn’t afford San Diego either.

  Half an hour later, a man walked out of Bunny’s house. I squinted through the windshield. “It’s Ed Bolt, all right.”

  Moments later, we were two cars behind the Silverado and following it up Campbell Avenue into the Catalina foothills. The road bends back and forth through a luxury neighborhood with plenty of saguaros, ironwood trees, and mesquites sheltering big homes set back along poorly lit side roads.

  About three-quarters of the way to the top, Bolt turned west onto a gravel path. Roxy let him go and drove on past. We couldn’t follow him onto a ten-miles-per-hour road and not be spotted. She continued to the next street and waited, taking a guess at how much time Bolt would need to park and enter whatever house he was looking for.

  We doubled back, turned onto the gravel, and followed it for a dark, twisting mile back into the desert, checking driveways on both sides. We couldn’t find the Silverado. The driveways all made long circles back to mysterious homes. The Silverado could’ve been on the far side of one of those driveways, invisible in the darkness.

  On our second trip along the road, I spotted something on my side that Roxy had missed the first time through. It was a mailbox in the shape of a baseball cap.

  I said, “Here, here. Stop here.”

  Roxy pulled up short of it. Without prompting, she saw what I was talking about and laughed. “I’d say we found Max Mayflower’s house,” she said. “What, is he ten years old?”

  “I don’t see Bolt’s Silverado.”

  “What’s that car beside the house, the white convertible?”

  “Chrysler LeBaron. My agent owned one. Nice ride.”

  She stared. “Looks like there’s a road looping around behind the house.”

  “Got it. Okay. Through that gate.”

  “Bolt probably lives in a guest house back there.”

  She killed the headlights and we sat looking at the house, as much of it as we could see behind two sheltering Aleppo pines. It was single story, not new, probably built in the 1970s. It was made of sturdy brick—red brick, not adobe.

  From one side to the other, it rambled a long way over what had to be fifteen rooms, probably five baths, a nice fireplace, and a newly remodeled kitchen with black-granite countertops.

  Anchoring the west end of the property was a three-car garage separate from the house. On the east, there were two tennis courts set on ground much lower than the house itself. A bright light glowed in an arched picture window left of the front door.

  Roxy said, “That’s good living right there. What’s the plan?”

  “We knock on the door and see what happens.”

  “You think Mayflower will talk?”

  “He didn’t when I hit him up outside the ballpark.”

  “A bold and pointless exercise, I like it. I’ll need makeup.” Roxy bent the mirror and leaned into it for a full facial inspection.

  “You do the talking this time,” I said. “I have an idea how to make the approach.”

  She looked across at me, her expression hard. “Don’t tell me how to ask questions. I’ve been doing this a long time.”

  She groped in the backseat for her purse, set it down in her lap, zipped it open, thrust her hand inside, and fished around to retrieve something. It sounded like varmints in a cereal box. The hand came out with lipstick that she applied in slow swipes at pushed-out lips. After each pass, she checked the mirror to assess the success of the effort and, finally satisfied, dropped the lipstick back into the purse.

  I thought she was done, but no.

  Next, she groped for her hairbrush, and for a full minute fought to yank the brush down through the tangles in her hair, prompting an impressive cussi
ng spree with damnation of monsoon humidity and uncooperative hair in general.

  Done with that, she returned the brush to her purse and did a final mirror check that included running the tip of her little finger over her roller coaster lips.

  A second time I thought she was ready to go. Not yet.

  She loosed the purse varmints again to retrieve a package of wipes. She grabbed one from the pack with her fingertips, gave her hands the once-over, and returned the package to her purse. No one has ever conducted an interview without disinfecting their hands.

  She zipped the purse shut, returned it to the backseat, opened the driver’s door, put a foot out, looked back at me with supreme annoyance, and said, “Are you ready or what?”

  Walking toward the house, I said, “Hang on. I want to see who owns this LeBaron.”

  “Is that really important right now?”

  “I don’t like loose ends.” The car was unlocked. I found the registration slip in the glove. “Lily Lee Summers. Age twenty-eight. Lives right up the hill here.”

  I read the address to Roxy, she scribbled it in her notebook, and we proceeded to Mayflower’s front door.

  I said, “Okay, how’re we going to do this?”

  She threw me another hot look. “You mean how am I going to do it?”

  “I’m not a traffic cone. I’m in this, too.”

  “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to jump right in, okay? Tell Mayflower I’m doing a story, and I suspect Rolando’s disappearance is connected to the murders of Rosa Lopez and Carlos Alvarez. See what shakes loose.”

  “Are you sure that’s the way to go?”

  “What the hell, are you getting cold feet?”

  “We’re talking about a guy who might be involved in heroin smuggling.”

  She stopped. Her face was flushed. “I know exactly what we’re talking about. Don’t tell me what to do. I’ve interviewed bigger jackoffs than Mayflower and come out of it just fine.”

  She’d gone nuclear in a blink. I began to think the idea of confronting Mayflower wasn’t so smart after all. But trying to get Roxy to back away at that point seemed frankly dangerous.