by Don Bullis
―Do me a favor, Debbie, if anyone asks, I don't know anything about any of this. I'm on my regular day off, too.‖
―You got it, Captain. By the way, is there anything on catching that guy that killed Bud and Miss Brown?‖
―He is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. I understand they're looking for him in Oklahoma and St. Louis but so far, nada.‖
Mat drove 138 miles from Gallup to Albuquerque in less than two hours. He knocked on Doc's door at the Crossroads Motel just before noon. Doc opened up and stood neatly dressed before his boss.
―Thought you might be by, Cap. How about we go up to the Wine
Cellar for a cheeseburger and a beer. We allowed, ain't we?‖ ―We‘re allowed,‖ Mat said.
―You drive,‖ Doc said.
They sat in a dim/dark booth in the Wine Cellar with a pitcher of beer between them.
―Ok, Doc. Tell me what happened to Freddy Finch.‖
―Freddy fuck up, did he?‖
―Don't toy with me, Doc. You said you expected to see me today. That could only be so because you expected that I would hear about Freddy and want to talk to you about it. Tell me about it.‖
―All I know is that Herman called me this mornin‘ and said Freddy got collared by APD bluesuits and locked up for D & D.‖
―Herman had to call you and tell you about it? I called Chief Shaver from Gallup and he said all he knows is what the report says. I asked him what Freddy's blood alcohol level was and he said they didn't do a blood alcohol test on him. That says to me they didn't do it because they already knew the result would be zero zip.‖
―Gee, I don't know, Cap....‖
―Which also says to me that the whole deal was a set-up. So I ask myself who would do such a thing and by applying the M. A. O. investigative method I find that Agent Doc Spurlock and Officer Herman Budwister had Motive, Ability and Opportunity, especially motive. Then I learned the arrest was made in the parking lot of the Fair Plaza Shopping Center and I recall that the Wine Cellar Lounge is located right here in this very shopping center. Did you and Herman happen to stop in here last night?‖
―Matter of fact, we did stop for a beer or two. I was riding with Budwister. No state car involved.‖
―And you didn't see a thing in the parking lot, did you?‖
―Not a thing, Cap.‖ Doc washed down a bite of his burger with a swallow of beer. ―Let me take that back. When we left, they was a car in the parking lot with the door open and the light on. You reckon that had anything to do with it?‖
―You know the gloves are off now, don't you?‖
―Tell you the truth, Cap, I don't much give a damn. First place, Scarberry can‘t touch me. I can prove where I was all last evenin‘.‖
―I thought you might.‖
―And besides that, if Festerin‘ Freddy says Herman or I laid a finger on him, he's a damn liar. We never touched him.‖
―I never thought you did, but that doesn't mean....‖
―Let me just finish up my thoughts here, Cap. The other reason I don't much care is that I've just about had it with the State Police. I done my two weeks of down time, and I didn't bitch about it, either. I admit I busted the rules. I knew I shouldn't let Herm drink that beer in my police car. So I paid a price for havin‘ my head up my ass. Then I come back to work and what's the first thing I notice? Ol' Freaky Fred doggin' me agin. Makes it mighty damn hard to do work when you know you got some son-of-a-bitch peekin' over your shoulder all the time.‖
―Believe me when I tell you I did not know that Scarberry put Freddy back on you. I'll talk to the chief and see if I can get him called off. Of course, after he gets out of jail, he might not be too anxious to follow you around any more.‖
―I appreciate that, Cap, but here's the thing: I just don't give a damn. While I cooled my hash down there in Roswell, I got a chance to talk to the sheriff and the District Attorney. Sheriff got an opening right now for a deputy, but I can't get too excited about serving subpoenas and eviction notices. He said after the election he was thinkin' about puttin' on an investigator. I pretty much got dibs on it. DA don't have no opening for investigator right now, but he's a friend of my daddy. Said he'd keep me in mind. Besides that, I ran into an old friend of mine from my bull ridin' days. Glen Franklin. He's been ropin' on the Rodeo Cowboys tour for the past few years. He's up by more than eleven thousand dollars this early in the year. Hell. I can rope calves as good as he does. 'Specially with a little bit of practice.‖
―I hate to think about you leaving the State Police, Doc.‖
―I ain't leaving the department, Cap. The department left me on the selfsame day when Charlie Scarberry became the deputy chief. He wants to spend his time grab-assin' the troops in general, and me in particular, instead of doin' police work, I reckon its time for me to find another place to earn my chuck. It wouldn't be so bad if there was any chance things'd change, but hell, Scarberry could hang-in for another five, six years, or even longer. He might even get to be chief permanently, then where in the hell would I be? I guess you know Patsy and me is split-up. She took the boy and moved back in with her folks.‖
―I was sorry to hear it.‖
―It ain't like we're gonna divorce but she won't have livin' in a house trailer in Gallup no more, only bein' able to see her folks two, three times a year. She said the State Police expects us to live like trailer park trash and she's done with it. There ain't much chance of me gettin' a transfer, is there?‖
―Not much chance. I cannot argue with anything you say, Doc, but as a favor to me, I wish you‘d stay on until we close out the Budville case. You‘ve done all the work and if you leave you know as well I do that the investigation will end. I don't have time to handle it. I guess I'm appealing to your sense of tenacity.‖
―I don‘t know how much help I‘ll be. Wilcoxson won‘t even talk to me. I guess he thinks he don‘t need any more help.‖
―I‘ll talk to him,‖ Mat said.
―Ok. But like I say, Cap, probably be winter before I'd cash out anyway. I just wanted you to know that as of right now, I'm on a KMA contract with the State Police.‖
―KMA contract?‖
―Yeah. KMA. Kiss My Ass. The next time Scarberry screws around with me, he can kiss my ass, and I'll be long gone. Them's the terms of a KMA contract.‖
First thing on Monday morning, Mat Torrez called Chief Sam Black and respectfully requested that Deputy Chief Scarberry be ordered to discontinue surveillance of officer Spurlock. The chief replied that such an order had already been issued.
Later that Monday afternoon Scarberry had a meeting with Freddy Finch. Spurlock was not to be followed in the future, —at least not closely followed—the deputy chief said. All of his paperwork, however, was to be examined with a critical eye and his activity reports were to be confirmed by outside sources. A synopsis of Spurlock‘s workweek would be made to Scarberry each Friday afternoon. Same thing applied to Mat Torrez.
CHAPTER V
On Friday, August 2, 1968, the rodent-faced pimp who worked at the Dago Rose whorehouse in East St. Louis made his monthly visit to the General Delivery window of the local Post Office. Welfare and unemployment checks mailed out at month's end would be available and those brown government issued envelopes were the only pieces of mail he ever received. A lot of other people were on the same errand that hot and humid summer day and the long line moved slowly as the lone clerk searched through alphabetical bundles of mail for each patron. The line wound past a large bulletin board upon which were tacked lists of postal rules and regulations, parcel post rates, assorted public notices and a half dozen wanted posters. The little pimp later told the FBI that good citizenship made him read the posters. The one on the upper right got his attention.
WANTED BY THE FBI FOR DOUBLE HOMICIDE/ARMED ROBBERY
Billy Ray White
ALIAS:Billy Ray Stirling, Larry Dedrick, Eric Lee Kendrick, Billy Ray West, Rudy Hill, Bill Alexander
Billy Ray Lavonne, Ja
ck Wheeler, Bill Sterling
Birth Date: February 11, 1943 Birth Place: New Orleans, Louisiana Description:White Male
Height: 5' 11½‖
Weight: 164 pounds
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue/Hazel
Build: Slender
Complexion:Ruddy
Tattoos:
Upper right chest: Cross with ―MOTHER‖ under it Upper left chest: Cross with ―BILLY‖ under it
Subject is wanted in connection with the homicide of H. N. ―Bud‖ Rice (54) and Blanche Brown (81) which occurred on November 18, 1967, at Budville, New Mexico, during the course of an attempted armed robbery. Subject is known to have criminal contacts in New Orleans, Louisiana, St. Louis, Missouri, and Miami, Florida, as well as Albuquerque, New Mexico. Subject previously served time in the Federal Correctional System where he was considered an escape risk.
Subject added to TEN MOST WANTED list
March 28, 1968
SUBJECT MAY BE ARMED.
EXTREME CAUTION IS ADVISED.
Before first light on Saturday morning, August 17, 1968, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Illinois State Police and the Madison County Sheriff's Department surrounded an apartment house in Wood River, Illinois. The plan was simple and standard procedure. Officers waited for dawn‘s light to allow them recognize one another as they moved in on the suspect, while it was much too early in the day for a pimp like Billy Ray, or any of his whores, to be up and about. Experience taught that sleeping suspects rarely resisted being taken into custody, while those who were awake and alert, often did. The operation went into motion at just past six a.m.
Billy Ray White lived with the knowledge that the cops would come for him one day. Too many robberies cluttered his back trail. Some, he knew, would be forgotten by local cops and others would fall through the cracks of ever-changing police administrations. But sooner or later some cop would connect Billy Ray with one of his heists and the cop, arrest warrant in hand, would be around to see him. Billy Ray thought he was ready. His apartment occupied half of the second floor of a large old, renovated, farmhouse. His bedroom at the northeast corner had a window that opened onto the porch roof. He figured that with fifteen to thirty seconds of lead time, he could get out the window, drop down behind a hedge then sprint a hundred yards to a woods beyond the house before anyone knew he'd been there and gone. He‘d practiced it several times, in the dark, late at night when he thought no one would see.
Billy Ray White and Jimmy Claire got drunk the evening of August 16th—stoned on Acapulco gold, too—and they took turns with Billy's whores when the girls didn't have paying sexual partners. Jimmy finally passed out on the living room sofa and Billy Ray took Lady Lydia to his bed. No one in the apartment had been asleep yet two hours when Madison County sheriff's deputies slammed the apartment door open with a small battering ram. Never in his adult life—except in jail—was Jimmy Claire without a gun on his person or close by and on that Saturday morning he had a Model 10 Smith & Wesson .38 police special stuck down between the cushions of the sofa. He slept with his hand wrapped around the gun's butt. The doorjamb gave way with a crack like a thunderclap and Jimmy Claire sprang bolt upright, gun in hand. The deputies didn't pause to ponder Jimmy's intentions and simultaneously opened fire. Two ugly little holes appeared in his bare torso—one an inch below his right nipple and the other an inch above his navel—and his body jerked spasmodically as a third bullet gouged flesh from his left arm above the elbow and the fourth slug took him square in the forehead blowing away the back of his head and spraying blood, bone and brain matter all over the sofa and wall. The officers at first thought they'd shot Billy Ray and looked no further into the apartment. They unwittingly gave Billy Ray, drunk as he was, time to get into his trousers, jam his own gun into his hip pocket and take his practiced route out the window and down off the roof. He stepped from behind the spirea hedge, just beyond the corner of the house, ready to run for the woods when he felt something cold and hard jab him in the bare back. He instinctively reached for the pistol.
―Touch it you son-of-a-bitch and I'll cut you in two!‖ An Illinois State Police officer racked a round into the pump shotgun's chamber for emphasis.
Billy froze in his tracks with his hands up as more than half a dozen other officers appeared from the woods and from around both sides of the house all with guns drawn and aimed at him. A heavy-set young deputy sheriff took Billy Ray's pistol and another police officer slammed the wanted man hard in the back with an open hand and sent him sprawling face down into the wet grass. An officer's knee in the neck and another officer's knee in the small of his back pinned him as handcuffs were ratcheted tightly into place around his wrists. Strong hands jerked him back to his feet and held him. He faced a placid looking man wearing a snap-brim hat, gray three-piece suit and a blue and red stripped necktie.
―Your name Billy Ray White?‖
―No. Kendrick. Eric Kendrick.‖
The agent took a folded document from his inside coat pocket. ―That'll work just as well. This reads Billy Ray White, also known as Eric Lee Kendrick, et al. I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have here a warrant for your arrest charging you with illegal flight to avoid prosecution from the state of New Mexico on charges of murder and armed robbery. I am required by provisions of the United State Supreme Court decision of 1966 known as Miranda v. Arizona to familiarize you with the rights afforded you by the Constitution of the United States.‖ He cleared his throat and recited: ―You have the unqualified right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney and to have him present during questioning by law enforcement personnel. If you ....‖
―I understand all that shit. I read the newspapers.‖
―Do you wish to waive your right to silence?‖
Morning air chilled the half-naked suspect and his bare feet were
cold and wet from dew, but Billy Ray wouldn't let any FBI pig know he was uncomfortable. ―What the hell‘d you say I was charged with?‖ ―Let's see here: murder, two counts, and armed robbery. You're a very tough guy, Mr. Kendrick. One of your victims was an eighty-two year old woman. Threaten to throw her dentures at you, did she?‖
―That's a humbug beef. I never killed nobody. I ain't got a thing to say to you pigs. Get me a lawyer.‖
―If that's the way you want it.‖
―That's the way I want it, screw. What'd you do to Jimmy?‖ The agent smiled. ―He won't be helping you, or anyone else for
that matter, to rob loan companies and auto parts stores anymore.‖
Officers arrested Lady Lydia and another whore sleeping in the apartment and charged them both with harboring a fugitive and aiding and abetting a felon. The local prosecutor released them later the same afternoon. He told the sheriff he had much more to worry about than a couple of two-bit trollops. In his days as a young defense lawyer, the prosecutor had represented Lydia Bohannon in court on a prostitution charge. She‘d paid his fee in trade. He remembered her fondly.
Sheriff Ed Moss provided Billy Ray, as a federal prisoner, a cell all to himself in the Madison County Jail. On the following Wednesday, the U. S. Attorney for Illinois relinquished the prisoner to local authority which continued to hold him on the New Mexico warrant.
MADISON COUNTY, ILLINOIS
Office of Sheriff E. W. Moss
August 22, 1968
Mr. Donald J. Wilcoxson
Assistant District Attorney
Second Judicial District of New Mexico Albuquerque New Mexico
Dear Mr. Wilcoxson
This is to let you know that I hold in my custody at Edwardsville Illinois a subject by the name of Billy Ray White and other names and according to the FBI he is wanted by you on your warrant #68-970 for murder and other high crimes and he has refused to waive extradition from my jurisdiction to New Mexico so you must be
gin extradition proceedings within five (5) days of this letter or I will have no discourse but to release this said known criminal Billy Ray White back into the population of our state which I do not want to do as I am sure you can appreciate and understand and I can't hold him on Missouri charges either.
Sincerely
E.W. Moss Sheriff
Lady Lydia called on Billy Ray at the Madison County Jail the first visitor's day after his arrest.
―Sorry to see you in here, honey,‖ she said. ―I miss you.‖
―Well, you better get used to it. It'll be a while before I get out of this shit. How bad the pigs do Jimmy?‖
―One of the girls said they shot him about ten times. I don't know for sure. They had his body gone and all before I got back to the apartment. There was so much blood and stuff on the sofa the landlord got rid of it. All over the wall, too, and a couple bullet holes, too. Poor Jimmy.‖
―Yeah. Poor Jimmy. Damn pigs. They didn't have to kill him. Hell, he never hurt nobody. It must be some big deal to get on the Ten Most Wanted List. I figure they sent fifteen cops to get me.‖
―There was twenty-one cops from three different departments. The one that brought me in told me. He also took me home. I gave him a tumble in the sack and a little oral action for his trouble. He said they been watching you for three or four days. Somebody ratted you out and told the FBI where you were.‖
―I figured somebody did because me and Jimmy ain‘t pulled anything since January or February.‖
―Don't you wonder who it was?‖
―It don't matter. Could've been any one of a hundred guys.‖ ―It matters to me, honey. You shouldn't have to be in here and
Jimmy shouldn't be dead. I'm going to find out who did it and cut his prick off.‖
―How you gonna find out?‖
―Same cop I was telling you about. He'll find out for me. He liked that French job I gave him. He said he never had it before.‖
―The thing is, Lydia, I'm gonna need your help. I been thinkin' this over and I'm gonna need witnesses to prove I was right here in East St. Louis last fall. Around Thanksgiving. See, I'm gonna fight this extradition and if I can show that I was right here, maybe they won't send me back to New Mexico in the first place. It's worth a try anyway. Hell, I did a couple little jobs out there in the Wild West, but I didn't kill nobody.‖