Wrong Place, Wrong Time

by W. Glenn Duncan

  I gave him a chance to say something. He didn’t take it, didn’t even bitch at me. Hot damn, I was winning him over.

  “I’m working for her,” I said. I made a belated gesture toward Beth; the delay was almost Nixonesque. Gotta work on that. “However. Strange as it may seem to you, I do not get off on browbeating people twice my age. So I’m gonna give you your only chance to get rid of me.”

  Thorney looked up at that. Beth frowned. Ron looked interested. Not excited or anything, just interested.

  “You beat me at something,” I said to Thorney, “and I’ll go away.”

  Thorney frowned suspiciously. Beth started to say something, but Ron shook his head quickly.

  “Anything at all,” I said, “as long as it’s reasonable. For example, no arm-wrestling or foot-racing; I’m younger and stronger. And no flipping coins; that’s just blind luck. You have to actually beat me at something.”

  Thorney turned to Beth and said, “Where did you find this crazy bastard?”

  Beth shrugged and smiled tentatively. “He, uh, works in the same building I do. And, um, I …” She mumbled to a halt, shrugged again, and looked at me. You could practically see a big question mark on her forehead.

  “Come on, Thorney,” I said. “Put up or shut up. I don’t have all night.” I noticed Ron Woodland smiling to himself.

  The old man chewed his lip and eyed me narrowly. “I got an old set of throwing knives from—”

  “No way!” Beth said.

  “Not at each other,” I said to Beth. “At a target or—”

  “Got a target painted on a chunk of pine,” Thorney said in a confident tone. “We could—”

  “I don’t care,” Beth said. “No knife-throwing. None. Forget it, both of you!”

  Thorney offered to thumb-wrestle. He opened his eyes wide and smiled when he suggested it. I looked at his giant hands and thought about how easily my right thumb dislocated. I let Beth talk us out of thumb-wrestling.

  For a variety of reasons, she also vetoed contests based on bourbon drinking, tobacco spitting, age at loss of virginity, and who could field-strip a Colt automatic the fastest.

  “Well, hell, Beth, what do you suggest?” I said. “Slapjack? Trivial Pursuit?”

  Thorney said, completely deadpan, “We could go out to the bars; see who’s best at picking up broads.”

  “Thorney!” Beth looked miserable. “Oh, I don’t know … Hey, poker! That’s all rough and tough and macho, right? One hand of poker, okay?”

  Thorney looked at me. “That’s about all she’s gonna go for,” he said.

  Cards were not what I’d had in mind. A single, winner-take-all poker hand was pure luck, not skill. But I already wished I hadn’t started this stupid contest business in the first place, so …

  “Okay, let’s do it,” I said.

  Thorney hopped up and scuttled around the room with surprising agility. He pulled open drawers and pawed at shelves. “Cards, cards, lemme see now, where did I put—” He darted into the next room.

  Beth went after him. At the doorway she turned back, winked, and made a circular “okay” sign with her right hand. She followed Thorney then, and they clattered around looking for the cards.

  “What was that all about?” I said to Ron Woodland. He shrugged. Mr Excitable.

  “Come into the dining room, Rafferty. Thorney’s found the cards.” Beth came rushing back into the room. She was speaking too loudly. “This ought to be very interesting. Poker. Wow.” Her delivery was as phony as a telephone sales pitch, mostly because she was busy waving things at me with one hand and making shushing motions with her other hand.

  She held up two cards, both aces. “Come on now,” she said loudly. “Thorney’s ready to play.” She handed me the two aces and silently mouthed, “Win!”

  And I had thought Beth was such a nice girl.

  Chapter 11

  No doubt about it, this racket did things to your faith in human nature. Beth Woodland, a woman I’d known for years—well, sort of—wanted me to cheat at cards. To beat her dear old great-uncle Thorney.

  Of course, that seemed like a pretty good idea to me, too.

  Beth gave me the two aces, I palmed them as well as I could, and we went into the dining room. Thorney sat at an ornate dining table, scowling and shuffling cards. I sat down opposite him. In the process I dropped the aces into my lap. Rafferty, the riverboat gambler. All I needed was a beaver hat and a waxed mustache. Good grief.

  Beth stood near a large sideboard, chewing her lip. Ron ambled into the room; she threw him a quick smile.

  “Howdy, stranger,” I said to Thorney. “Aren’t we supposed to have our guns on the table? And long black cigars in our mouths so we can scowl at each other through the smoke?”

  He said, “You wanna make jokes or play cards?” Grouchy tone, intimidating look; the old goat was trying to psyche me out.

  “Name it,” I said, “and you better stop pestering the school-marm, too.”

  “Not funny,” he said. “Five-card stud. There’s only the one bet, no need for openers.” He shuffled once more, reassembled the deck, and plunked it down in the center of the table. I cut it, then watched while Thorney dealt. I had the sudden thought that Clint Eastwood could have played this scene much better than I was handling it.

  My cards weren’t the worst stud hand ever, but they weren’t all that good, either. At least, they weren’t good enough for a sometime poker player like me to be confident. King of spades, jack of clubs, ten and eight of diamonds, five of hearts.

  Across the table, Thorney didn’t look too happy with his cards, either. Hah! I figured that sly old man could have four aces and he’d still look like that.

  All in all, it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave things to chance.

  I did some card-snapping and hand-curling and ferocious squinting—all that show-biz stuff—while I lowered my hands below the tabletop, dropped the five and eight, and replaced them with the aces Beth had slipped me.

  I kept up the scowling and snapping and such to get the cards back up again, then slapped them facedown on the table and said, “Hey, this is a sudden-death stud hand. What are we fooling around for?”

  Thorney put his cards facedown, too, and tapped them with one finger. The general effect was like thumping them with a salami. “Together,” he said. He flipped over and spread out his cards. So did I.

  I had a damned good stud hand now, thanks to Beth: pair of aces, king, jack, ten.

  Thorney had a great stud hand: three aces, ten, seven.

  Whoops.

  Beth goggled, reddened, then pointed and rushed at Thorney. “You … you cheated, you …” She reached down into his lap, came up with two cards, and threw them onto the table. A ten and an eight, both hearts.

  How about that? He had sandbagged aces, too.

  “Thorney, I’m ashamed of you,” Beth said. She had her fists on her hips, and she looked like an angry kindergarten teacher. Ron Woodland chortled softly. That was probably as close as he came to unbridled hysteria.

  Thorney glared at all of us, unrepentant.

  “Well, goddamn,” I said, “there goes another great idea right down the tube.” I picked the discarded five and eight out of my lap and threw them on the table.

  Beth blushed and turned away.

  I took my illegal discards and rearranged my hand to the way it had been dealt. Then I did the same thing with Thorney’s cards.

  I was back to king, jack, ten, eight, five. Thorney had ace, ten, ten, eight, seven. Both hands were a useless mixture of suits.

  “Your pair of tens is too good for me,” I said. “You won yourself a little peace and quiet, Thorney.”

  Ron Woodland shrugged; Beth said, “Wait a minute, Rafferty …”

  Thorney still hadn’t said anything. He peered at me closely.

  “We had a deal,” I said to Beth. “Cheating was stupid—for both of us—but when you back out that part of it, Thorney won. I’ll go.”

&n
bsp; Thorney said, “Just hang on one goddamn second there. I’ll tell you when I’m ready to collect my winnings.” He looked at Beth, Ron, and me in turn, then shook his head. “Dumbest thing I ever heard of, but …”

  The old man rose slowly, with his huge knuckles rammed against the tabletop. He glared down at me. “You think you could keep a civil tongue in your mouth? If I was to let you hang around here?”

  “I doubt it very much.”

  He nodded. “I expect that’s right. What about that celestial navigation thing? You really want to learn or were you just trying to butter me up?”

  “Being able to locate yourself on earth by measuring angles in the sky seems almost magical to me. I repeat: I will pay you to teach me how to use a sextant. Name a price.”

  “Naw,” he said. “The only thing I need is time and you can’t pay me that. I’ll teach you.” He straightened and held out his right hand.

  I stood up and took it. We shook. My god, he was strong.

  He squeezed even harder. “Reckon you can stand it, being around a—what was that you called me?—a ‘snarly old fart’?”

  I squeezed back. It was a good thing he wasn’t twenty years younger. “No problem,” I said. “We’ll hang out together, suck up the Geritol, maybe beat up on snot-nosed little pukes.”

  We gave up on handshaking before we hurt each other, and we all had a drink. Actually, Thorney and I had two.

  Later, as the Woodlands and I were leaving, Thorney showed us how to find the constellation Orion and its navigational stars, Rigel and Betelgeuse. And Sirius, off to the side.

  Fantastic!

  Chapter 12

  “Hotstud McGoodbuns?” Hilda said. “She called you Hotstud McGoodbuns?” Then she rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. She was probably trying to make me think she was laughing.

  “You sure know how to take the fun out of early-morning pillow talk, babe.” I got up, went to the window, and looked outside. Seemed to be a nice day shaping up. Inside, however …

  “Hotstud Mc—” Hilda chortled as she came up briefly to breathe. She said something else, too, but the pillow muffled it. Probably just as well. I went to the kitchen for coffee.

  Despite Hilda’s attitude, I carried a cup back to the bedroom for her. “You don’t deserve this,” I said, “but I’m willing to turn the other cheek. Uh, let me rephrase that …”

  She turned red and barely managed to put the cup down without spilling it. Back to the face-in-the-pillow giggles. Sometimes the woman has absolutely no self-control.

  Ten minutes later I was in the shower, halfway through a stirring rendition of “They Built the Ship Titanic,” when Hilda came into the bathroom. She knocked on the glass shower wall. “Leave it running, please,” she said. I backed up against the glass and wiggled. She made a noise like a cat gargling and left in a hurry.

  One for my side. About time, too.

  Breakfast was a delicate affair. Hilda and I carefully avoided words like bottom and but and so on. I’d never realized there were so many words like that. Or how many of them began with b.

  By nine-thirty I was headed across town, hot on the trail of Luis Ortega. And, I hoped, the elusive Toby Wells.

  The address from Ortega’s layaway receipt was a small apartment building painted an unfortunate shade of green. The paint had flaked away from the concrete block structure in several places. The timber trim didn’t even remember when it was painted last; it had weathered to an even gray. As apartment buildings go, it was not what you’d call uptown. On the other hand, it was considerably more uptown than the sprawling housing projects in other parts of west Dallas.

  Ortega had supposedly lived in apartment C, but the name on that mailbox was M. Hermosa. Undeterred, I went searching.

  There were two floors, with two apartments on each floor. C and D were upstairs.

  The two apartment doors faced each other across a combined breezeway and stairwell. When I knocked on the C door, the D door opened first. A man—short, muscular, twenty-sixish—planted himself in his doorway and watched me.

  The C door opened. A Hispanic woman in her early twenties smiled at the man in his doorway, then said to me, “Yes? May I help you?”

  Her face tapered from a wide forehead to a narrow chin. She had small features but large eyes. She was handsome, not pretty, and she was one of those people who exudes restraint and maturity.

  “My name is Rafferty,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for information about a man named Luis Ortega. This was his address once.”

  She said pleasantly, “There is no Luis Ortega here now.”

  “I know that,” I said. I stood slightly sideways to her so I could watch the man across the breezeway. He hadn’t moved or said a word.

  The young woman kept smiling. Her face was composed, but I had the impression she was working at it. “Didn’t you look at the mailboxes?” she said. “The name on the mailbox is not Ortega.”

  “Dogged determination in the face of all obstacles,” I said. “It’s sort of a personal creed with me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

  “How long have you lived here?” I said. “Maybe I’m wasting your time.”

  She looked from me to the man, then back to me. “A year. A little more, perhaps. Why?”

  “Luis Ortega is dead. I’m looking for the man who killed him. I need your help.” Off to my right, the short man shuffled his feet once and sighed.

  The woman dropped her head and nodded. “I know Luis is dead,” she said.

  The short man said, “Maria, don’t—”

  “It’s all right, John.” Then, to me: “Come in. I don’t think I can help you, but …” She stepped aside and I went into the apartment. The short man came, too. He whispered something to her, she whispered back in a soothing tone.

  She introduced herself as Maria Hermosa. The short man was “John, from next door.” She left us in the small living room while she made coffee and scurried around in the kitchen. I sat; John from next door sat, too, and he glared at me.

  Despite the state of the building exterior, Maria Hermosa’s apartment was immaculate. The paint was fresh, the furniture, what there was of it, was spotless. There were icons on a table and religious pictures on the walls, mostly the kind of pictures with big thorns and blood and halos like flat gold plates.

  Marie hustled in. She had a tray loaded with coffee fixings and a plate of tiny pecan cookies. John glared even harder. He probably didn’t want to share those cookies with me.

  Maria began to hostess the hell out of our impromptu conference. She distributed cups, filled them, offered cream and sugar, and spoons and napkins and cookies, fiddled with this and adjusted that. When she started to rearrange the cookie plate for the third time, I said, “What is it about Luis Ortega that frightens you?”

  She shook her head. “No. You are wrong. I am not frightened. I am ashamed.”

  “Aw, Maria,” John from next door groaned. “You don’t have to—”

  She silenced him with a gentle wave of her hand. He slumped in his chair and gave the ceiling a nasty look.

  Maria Hermosa folded her hands in her lap and looked at me. “Luis Ortega used to live here. With me.” She swallowed. “He was my husband.” Another swallow, deeper this time. “Common law.”

  “Maria, don’t do this to yourself.” John sounded like a man in pain.

  “No,” Maria said to him gently. “It’s all right. It helps me, truly.” She turned to me and went on. “We were not married in the church. Luis would not. He said it was old-fashioned and we should grow up. Be more like the Anglos, Luis said.” Maria’s serene expression turned wistful. “Luis said the love words, too, and he gave me things, little gifts. Not expensive things, but small things, things of the heart. I was a very stupid woman. I listened to my heart, not to my head, and I let Luis bring me here. So we called ourselves married. Like the Anglos who are not old-fashioned.”

 
; Maria looked around the room for a few seconds. “At first it was wonderful. Each morning, Luis would walk with me to the bus stop. I was so proud! Luis would wait with me and wave as the bus drove off. The other women on the bus would tease me about how my man walked around with his head in the sky because of his great love for me.

  “While I worked at the credit union, Luis would work, too, at cleaning the swimming pools. He said. He told me how hard he worked and how he put his pay in the bank, in the special account for us. And he said that was why we must use my pay for rent and groceries and the expenses of living. So his pay would make the special account grow fat.”

  Maria bit her lip for a half second, then said, “That was what Luis told me, but it was not true. None of it. Two, sometimes three, days each week, Luis would not go to clean the swimming pools. He would go to places where the coyotes go, to bars and pool halls and to places to watch women without shame do things I do not like to think about. There was no special account at the bank, either. Luis would drink and gamble and waste his pay, then he would come back here in the afternoon to tell me his lies.”

  I asked, “Why do you think Luis was killed?”

  She shook her head. “I do not know. In such places, the men fight. Sometimes they cut each other with knives. But that is not how Luis died, I think.”

  “How did you find out about Luis?”

  Maria’s eyes closed for a beat. “One day my girlfriend, Margarita, came to me crying. She had a new job—she is a maid—at a very fine house out near the lake. And on the third day, when a man came to clean the pool, it was Luis. He did not see Margarita, but she saw him and she saw how Luis and the woman of the house acted toward each other.

  “She did not tell me then,” Maria said. “She waited until Luis had been there three times to clean the swimming pool and she saw, with her own eyes, how Luis and that puta behaved; like the animals in the field and brought me this great shame.”