Double Wide

by Leo W. Banks

  Roxy stepped into the Airstream and began fixing dinner. I showered, dressed in clean clothes, and sat at the table while she worked in the kitchen. Roxy uncorked a bottle of red wine and brought me a glass. I left it alone. My stomach still had me on milk.

  She poured a glass for herself and put it next to her on the counter. She sipped as she cut and seeded the jalapeno peppers and described the difficulty of finding kosher salt in Tucson.

  But the remainder of the ingredients had made it safely to my kitchen. She had minced garlic, Roma tomatoes, cilantro leaves, iceberg lettuce, chopped onions, and shredded jack cheese. She brought the cooked crab in a cellophane-covered bowl.

  “I cooked the crab at home before coming over,” she said.

  “You didn’t have to go to that trouble.”

  On the way back to the kitchen, she stopped behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. “Let’s see—what else? Wait, taco shells! Einstein here! I must be working too hard.”

  She poured herself another glass of wine and brought a plate of hard-shell tacos to the table and set them down and pulled her chair forward. “Dig in. This is a build-your-own feast. I love to eat, so there’s no guarantee they’ll be any left if you’re not fast.”

  I said it looked delicious. We ate as a night wind swirled outside. Chico lay beside my chair, his eyes raised and watching my every bite with primal interest. That was a message that his dinnertime had arrived as well.

  Afterward, Charlie came to the door to say that Angel had fallen asleep in his trailer. That was phase one of our plan. After that, Roxy was to go into his trailer unannounced, wake him up, and start in with questions about Rolando.

  Our theory was that the surprise and Roxy’s wiles might shake something loose. Before leaving, she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a loaf of bread to make him a sandwich.

  She said, “The real key to this plot is peanut butter and jelly. I mean, he’s a kid, right? To a kid, a PB and J is better than money.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  We walked down to the open trailer. Roxy went in first and turned the light on over the stove. That was my signal to step into the kitchen. Charlie was right about the rotted hole in the floor. A Sumo wrestler and his family could’ve disappeared inside it.

  I stayed out of sight with a view of Roxy and Angel through the doorway.

  The living room was dark. Angel slept in his underwear on his newspaper bed. With a glass of water from the kitchen, Roxy sat beside him, legs folded. Angel didn’t budge until she shook him by the shoulder, and he sat up quickly, the newspapers crinkling underneath him.

  He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “I know you. You’re pretty.”

  “You bet your life. I’m Roxy, remember. You can call me that.”

  He yawned again. “Okay.”

  “I have something important to ask you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need to know everything you remember about Rolando Molina.”

  Peering around the door frame, I could see Angel from the side, his arms on his folded legs. Clumps of dirt made elaborate hair castles on his head. The T-shirt I’d given him was torn every way a shirt could be torn. He yawned again and didn’t move or speak.

  “No one’s going to make you leave here if you talk to me,” Roxy said. “You understand that, right? You’ll be safe here as long as you want to stay.”

  The kid still didn’t speak. The air in the room was stagnant and hot.

  Roxy waited a long time and said, “You know, my real name isn’t Roxy. It’s Roxanne. I’ve never liked Roxy. Do you like it?”

  Angel nodded. Roxy smiled and said, “I’m glad you like it, because I never know. Are you sure you like it?”

  “It’s a cool name,” Angel said. “I like it. Honest.”

  “I’m glad. Here, I forgot about this.” She handed him the peanut butter and jelly sandwich wrapped in a paper towel. He grabbed a half and shoved it against the back of his throat.

  He chewed and said, “My mother was Magda and my sister was Trini. They’re dead.”

  “Do you miss them?” she asked.

  “Sometimes I can’t remember them too good. But sometimes I do.”

  “Somebody buried them, right?” Roxy said. “Made a sacred place where they can rest forever? Everybody needs a place in the ground. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Angel shrugged and ate more. Outside, the wind surged and whined and surged again. The trailer creaked on its blocks.

  “I watched your friend die,” he said. “Roscoe Rincon did it with his machete.”

  Roxy cocked her head in a listening posture.

  “The men were screaming. Rincon’s men,” Angel continued, his voice a child’s whisper. “They were scared because Rincon was crazy, swinging his machete. The blood was going everywhere, like a hose. And Carlos Alvarez tried to stop him, but it was too late. Everybody was running away.”

  Roxy and Angel sat close together in the empty room, two shadows in faint light, two soft voices sharing the same breath. Roxy asked what they were fighting about.

  “Roscoe Rincon was breaking the deal,” Angel said. “He was opening a new trail and didn’t want nobody using his land up there.” He pointed toward the mountain and Paradise. “He owned it. Rincon owned it.”

  That sounded right. When smugglers bleed and fight their rivals to “own” a trail, they don’t give it up, even if they’re moving to a new location.

  Angel continued, “Rincon wasn’t giving out no more of that plant and Rolando was mad. He needed it. He come all the way up from Monterrey with Carlos and said, ‘You give me more. I have to have more!’ Like that. That’s what started the fight. Roscoe Rincon wouldn’t let nobody tell him what to do on his trail.”

  “What’d they do with the body?” Roxy said.

  “Rincon told Carlos to put the pieces into bags or he was going to kill him too.”

  “He obeyed, right? I sure would, a guy like that.”

  “He hid the hand,” Angel said. “He covered it with brush and got it later.”

  “After that, you and Carlos delivered the hand to Whip, here at Double Wide?”

  “Uh-huh. Carlos was going back to Paradise to kill Roscoe Rincon, but Roscoe Rincon was waiting for him on the trail.”

  Now I knew. Finally and irretrievably I knew. The truth closed in on my throat, making it hard to breathe. I already had a good idea how Rolando had died. But Angel had watched it unfold, had seen the blood and the wild swings of the machete and his unadorned account had a powerful finality to it.

  Roxy said, “This is important, Angel. Tell me what happened to the body.”

  “Roscoe Rincon told one of his men to put the bags into Rolando’s truck and drive it far away so nobody would see the smoke. He burned up the truck with your friend inside. Rincon don’t want his enemies on Earth no more, so he burns them. He likes fire.”

  “Where’d they take the body?” Roxy said. “I need to know.”

  Angel kept eating the sandwich. When he was done, Roxy handed him the glass of water. He drank it and wiped his mouth with his arm.

  “I should’ve made two sandwiches,” Roxy said. “How about I make you another one when we’re done here?”

  The kid didn’t respond. Roxy reached through the darkness and put her hand on his shoulder. “Angel, you need to tell me where they took the body. Rolando needs his sacred place. Just like Magda and Trini.”

  “Somewhere. I don’t know,” he said. “They threw the bags in a truck and drove off. Everybody else was leaving too. Leaving that mountain altogether.”

  “In Rolando’s truck?”

  He nodded. “Yes, a red pickup. But I don’t know where they went to. Honest. Somewhere far away so nobody could see the smoke. That’s what Roscoe Rincon said.” He sat motionless, seemingly awaiting some sign that he’d upheld his end of the bargain. “I told you what you wanted. I can't leave here. Roscoe Rincon will kill me for sure.”

  “That’s all you know?”<
br />
  Angel nodded.

  Roxy considered for a moment and nodded back. “Okay, I guess that’s a yes.” She got up and started for the door.

  “Wait—you’re not going to make me leave, right? I can stay?”

  “Yeah, you’re good. As long as you’ve told me everything.”

  “That’s it. I swear.”

  She looked at him for a long time. “Hang here, and I’ll get you that sandwich, kiddo.”

  SEVENTY

  Roxy made a second PB and J and brought it to Angel. She came back to the Airstream, got out my expensive tequila bottle and a shot glass, and sat with me at the kitchen table.

  She said, “Well, you think he told the truth?”

  “Not everything. He knows where Rolando is. I’m sure of it.”

  “The kid’s cunning, Prospero. Really hard to read. Sorry. I did the best I could.”

  “I promised Oscar I’d find him, and I will.”

  Roxy poured herself a shot and held it high. “I like your optimism.” She drank it down and made a tequila face. “I’ve never understood the fascination with this stuff. With tequila, you go along, and all of a sudden it’s four in the morning, you’re missing a shoe, and you have no idea what went wrong. That doesn’t happen with a civilized drink like Chivas.”

  “Civilized,” I said. “There’s a disappearing concept.”

  “I know that was brutal, what you just heard about Rolando. But now we know what happened.”

  “We’re looking for a torched red truck somewhere in the badlands of southern Arizona with a body inside. How many of those do you suppose there are?”

  “With the drug war the way it is, dozens,” Roxy said. “But we have a lead—a red truck, maybe an F-350.”

  “I can verify the make easy enough.”

  Roxy grabbed the tequila bottle and was about to pour another shot and stopped. “Why am I drinking this? I’ve got Chivas in the Audi. Silly girl.” She went out to her car, got the Chivas, poured two inches, and sat down again.

  She held the glass with two hands at her mouth and tipped it back for a sip. “What about Dr. Melody? Let’s call him at the Mustache Room and talk him into coming back.”

  “Won’t work. He’s too scared. He’s got some explaining to do about what he was up to. Bonheimer said that paper he wrote was baloney.”

  “You think he was scamming the scammer?”

  “He was up to something.”

  I went to the door and looked out, which I did about every half hour. Storm clouds had tracked in on the wind, and a light rain was falling. In the kitchen I poured a glass of milk and stood with my back against the counter, sipping and thinking.

  Roxy watched, nursing her drink at the table.

  I said, “The only way we get Melody back here is if Bunny talks him into it. The bait is the publicity.”

  “We get to him through her?”

  “If she knows cameras will beam her face all over the country, she’ll convince Arthur that talking to the media is the right thing to do.”

  Roxy nodded in agreement. “She’ll stand right up there with him.”

  “But we can’t do it over the phone. It’s got to be in person. They can’t avoid you if you’re standing there.”

  “Me? You want me to go to Las Vegas? Mr. Beasley in accounting will love that.”

  “I can’t leave here. It’s too risky. You’re good at working people. You’re hard to say no to, Rox.”

  She raised her shot glass. “To my special talent.”

  She sipped. I drank some milk. The wind bumped around outside, and the rain made a faint whispering sound.

  “I have a question, Prospero.” Roxy swept her hair off her face and turned sideways, one leg stretched all the way out along the bench seat. She held the glass along the top of her thigh and gave me a playful look.

  “Why does my special talent work on everybody but you?” She wiggled her foot, the red shoe half-on, half-off, and barely clinging to her toes.

  Before I could answer, the door opened without a knock, and Charlie O’Shea stepped inside, Cash right behind him. Charlie smelled like a distillery. He sat at the table next to Roxy. Cash pulled out a loaf of bread, made himself a peanut butter sandwich, and stood next to me at the counter.

  He stared at the floor and made smacking noises as he chewed.

  Roxy looked like she couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “Thought I’d take a walk,” Charlie said. “Yes, sir, see what the mayor of Double Wide’s up to this rainy night.”

  He spotted Roxy’s Chivas bottle on the table. “What have we here?” He picked it up and inspected the label. His eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. “A fine beverage indeed, and that’s no fooling. Cashy, grab me a glass, by gub.”

  Charlie opened a cabinet door and moused around inside. “Glass or mug? We got both.”

  “I like my beer in a mug. Not scotch. Scotch I want to see through the glass.” He seemed quite certain of that.

  “He’s got plastic cups,” Cash said. “How about a plastic cup?”

  “Red or blue?”

  “You got a choice there too. He’s got red, he’s got blue. Wait, there’s Dixie cups.”

  “Dixie cups! Impossible!” Charlie evidently found Dixie cups unacceptable.

  Cash said, “You throw ’em away when you’re done. You don’t have to clean nothing.”

  “Like you ever cleaned anything in your life. I’ve seen your place.”

  Roxy tapped an annoyed finger on the table. They settled on a glass. Charlie poured himself an inch, drank it in a swallow, poured another, and the conversation moved along in the same general way, the topic switching to baseball and whether Mike Trout or Mickey Mantle would win a footrace.

  After his second scotch, Charlie banged the glass down on the table and stood up. “Time for Matlock.” He threw open the door, raised a hand over his head, and gave a loose-armed wave. “Nighty-night, you people.”

  Cash finished his peanut butter sandwich and made another. When Roxy saw that, she fingered the loose shoe back onto her foot, grabbed her Chivas bottle, and walked out. I followed her down the steps.

  At the Audi, she said, “Life doesn’t have to be as cold as you make it, Prospero. When you figure out what you’re running from, let me know.”

  Surprised and unsure what to say, I stumbled through a few beginnings. Then: “I never know what I’m going to have company.”

  She gave me a frustrated look. “I’ll talk to my boss about Vegas and let you know.”

  Roxy got behind the wheel and gave the engine a triple revving that sounded like a lion roaring, and then she was gone in a hurry. That’s how a romantic night at Double Wide ends, with brake lights escaping up a mountain road.

  I went inside, got my phone, and dialed her number. It rang and rang.

  “Come on, pick up! Pick up!”

  I stood in the rain and the darkness thinking that Roxy was a situation I was going to have to handle. And I had no idea how to do that, any more than I knew what I would’ve said if she’d answered the phone.

  The easiest choice, ballplayer preferred, would have been to scatter the Airstream with torn clothes, scare the hell out of the birds with the standard cries, and see what the morning brought. The dangling shoe almost sealed it for me.

  But something happens to a man after thirty. A certain caution takes over. Her drinking factored into my thinking, mainly for what it said about the demons she was escaping. They must’ve been something. I have a few of my own and no reason to believe that hers and mine would play well together.

  Just from a practical standpoint, it never works when side of a relationship likes to put it away, and the other has two drinks and next morning he’s a corpse, walking around trying to find his keys. There’s nothing to talk about and the jokes don’t translate.

  Not loving liquor is a gift. It keeps you out of bad situations on dark sidewalks after midnight. When you’re young and not part of the action, yo
u wonder what you’re missing. After thirty, you realize you’re not missing anything.

  It helps you relax and makes the nights shorter, with fewer black eyes. What I had left inside, the part that was still whole and functioning, was hardly enough for me, and I couldn’t see how it would be enough for someone else.

  That was the scoreboard. Roxy was smart, lovely, and weak, and I was empty. Not a combination to ensure happiness, even for a couple of weeks.

  But something surprised me. I cared for her and didn’t see that coming.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Game week dawned. To keep my legs strong, I got up each morning and put on my Red Sox T-shirt and jogged Double Wide’s perimeter, Bundle beside me and the Glock on my hip.

  I thought a lot about Sam. I’d asked Micah Alan Gabriel if he could arrange for Sam to listen to the radio broadcast of the game at the jail. I thought it would boost his spirits to remember better times, for him and for me.

  Maybe he could listen and believe there was still hope. Gabriel said he’d get it done.

  The cicadas screamed all week long. Whatever problem you have, cicadas make it worse.

  Roxy finally called on Friday night.

  “I’m in the parking lot at the Mustache Room,” she said. “I worked this place when I was seventeen. I forgot all about it until I walked in the door.”

  “Seventeen? That can’t be legal.”

  “I started earlier than that. I basically went from homeroom to the pole. They’re gonna do a movie about me someday.”

  Sirens blared in the background, the mood music of the Strip. The pounding beat from inside the club sounded like distant artillery.

  Roxy said, “Arthur’s inside. He says his reputation will be ruined if he talks.”

  “It’s the only way to save it. Maybe his life too.”

  “Bunny’s working him hard like we figured. But this is going to be tough.”

  “We need him at that press conference, Rox.”

  “Doing my best. Hey, speaking of comebacks, if the Moustache Room offers me a job, you think I should take it?” She gave a Chivas laugh. “Ciao, baby.”