by DaveKearns
"Where does this road go?" I asked.
"Nowhere, really," she said. "It just goes until it runs into the dunes and stops. This is nearly the end of it."
She did a lazy U-turn across the sandy soil and pointed the Jeep back at the highway. A moment later a pair of white eyes glared back at us from the trail ahead. A long-eared jackrabbit froze in the high beams. When we were nearly upon it the rabbit jumped back into the darkness and was gone.
We reached the highway, bumped up the embankment onto the road, and headed back towards Alamogordo. The tires must have needed balancing because the car seemed to vibrate when she pushed the speed above sixty. I watched her drive, checking out her profile in the light from the instruments. She had a fine straight nose and a soft round chin, but the angle of her jaw was sharp. She wore small turquoise earrings that tapped against her neck when the car shook. I could still feel the softness of her hip against mine from our walk back to the car. I wanted to hold her again and I wondered if I would get the chance.
"Are you still hungry?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Is Mexican food okay?"
"Sounds good."
"Well, you're in luck," she said. "I know just the place."
I watched the road then, thinking about the previous night's drive. I had done 80 or 90 most of the night, flattening a half dozen jackrabbits in the Texas panhandle. They would start across the highway and then freeze in my high beams as if they were waiting for me to run them down. I knew that I would put the car in a ditch if I tried to swerve around them, so I just held my course and tried not to think about what was happening when I heard the thump under the car.
We cruised down a long gentle grade into town. The lights of the city loomed ahead like an apparition. Street lights arced away from the highway on both sides, trailing off into darkness the farther away from the highway they were. The glow in the sky to the west must be the air base, I thought. I hadn't realized how far out of town we'd driven.
We reached the 10th street intersection and headed back east through what looked like an old downtown. No buildings over one story tall, and you could hear the music coming out of clubs. The sidewalks were spotless, with awnings hanging from the storefronts to provide shade during the day. It was Friday night, and young men in pickup trucks called out to friends driving up and down the short strip of businesses in that part of town.
Michelle went through a light, continued a couple of blocks, and then turned left onto a residential street. We headed east past a quiet row of single family homes and reached an intersection with a convenience store and a small strip mall. There was a karate gym, an arts and crafts shop, and a blank storefront with a dull pink neon sign that read "Esto's." Business seemed to be booming. We got the last parking space in the lot.
We climbed out of the Jeep and walked over to the whitewashed storefront with the neon sign. I had never seen a more anonymous restaurant. It looked like they were trying to hide from customers.
"How did you find this place?" I asked.
"I used to work here," she said.
I held the door open for her, and a flood of light and raised voices spilled from inside. The tables had white tablecloths on them, the carpet on the floor was a deep red, and posters of Cancun, Mazatlán, and Acapulco hung on the walls. The restaurant was busy. A bar with four wicker stools in front of it was against the wall on the right. A woman with glossy black hair piled high on her head ran a rag over the bar countertop.
A barrel-chested Hispanic man in a white pressed shirt with graying wavy hair and an exasperated expression approached us with a pair of menus in his hands. He slapped the menus against his palm impatiently. Then he recognized Michelle and produced a broad smile.
"I thought you were mad at me," he said. "How come you never come by any more?" She returned the smile.
"Esto, I was just here a couple of weeks ago."
He shrugged. "It seems like forever. And who is your friend?"
I held my out my hand and introduced myself. He shook my hand with a grip that could turn bones to powder, and without letting go he leaned close to me and spoke so quietly I could barely hear him over the noise in the restaurant. "Be nice to her," he said.
He turned and headed toward the back of the restaurant. "Follow me," he said over his shoulder.
We trailed him back to a table by a large salt water aquarium. Brightly colored fish darted back and forth between neon-colored corals and the surface. Esto pulled Michelle's chair out for her and laid the menus on the table in front of us. He signaled a waiter, told us to enjoy our dinner, and hurried off.
A waiter arrived a moment later with ice water, tortilla chips, and a ceramic bowl of salsa. His hair was black and pulled back into a pony tail by a rubber band. He was young, and like Esto he wore a spotless white pressed cotton shirt. His skin, like Esto's, was mahogany colored. He gave Michelle a smile.
"Good to see you, Michelle," he said.
"Hi, Tony. Nice to be back."
"Would you like something to drink before dinner?"
Michelle ordered a Margarita. I asked for a beer.
Tony said he would be back to take our order. I picked up a menu and began scanning the entrees. The menu was bilingual, with both Spanish and English descriptions. I was ready to choose the Chile Verde, but I thought I'd ask Michelle what was best.
When I looked up from the menu she had already made her choice and laid the menu on the table. She took a sip of her ice water and gave me a smile.
"What's the best thing to order here?" I asked.
She thought for a moment. "Do you like steak?"
"Love it."
"Probably the chili steak. It's hot, but it's very good."
I said okay and laid my menu down as Tony arrived with the drinks. He sat Michelle's margarita on the tablecloth in front of her and he poured my beer into a heavy chilled mug. When he finished, he asked if we were ready to order.
Michelle ordered first. "Blue corn enchiladas," she said. At first I thought she was joking, but the waiter nodded and waited for me to order. I ordered the chili steak.
Tony said "Muchas Gracias" and went to turn the order into the kitchen. I took my first sip of the beer. It had a slightly bitter flavor that I liked a great deal. I squeezed a lime into it and took another sip.
"How long did you work here?" I asked.
"About three months. I was here last summer, before I started grad school." She dipped a small chip into the salsa bowl and popped it into her mouth.
"Oh? Where at?"
Michelle crunched on the chip for a few seconds before she answered. "I started the MBA program at New Mexico State in Las Cruces. I had to quit after a few months to help support my family."
"I’m sorry."
Michelle took a sip of her margarita, thinking. She put the glass down and rotated it, twisting the stem of the glass in her fingers. "My mom had a car accident and couldn’t work for a while, so I needed to do something to help. I have an accounting degree and won a scholarship to go to N. M. State, but it only paid for part of the tuition. Between my mom and me we were watching the bills stack up, so I decided to go to work at the quarry. The pay is pretty good, and I can use my accounting degree there and get more experience. What about you? Your brother said you're a businessman. Is that right?"
I put my beer down. "I track down people who borrow money from banks and then disappear. If I can find them, I get a commission from the bank that lent them the money."
"That sounds interesting."
"It can be frustrating, too. Some people are pretty tough to find. If you have a lot of cash to start with and don’t want to be found, you can hide for quite a while. A lot of what I do is computer and phone work. That’s the most efficient way to find people."
"You're a detective."
"It's not that glamorous," I said. But if she wanted to think I was a detective that was okay with me.
"Do you like it?" she asked.
"It's oka
y. I like trying to find something that's lost. Sometimes the pay is pretty good, too. It depends on how much they took and how desperate the bank is to find them."
"We have complimentary careers," Michelle said. "I know how to balance the books for a businessman, and you know how to track him down when he steals the cash and makes a run for it." She gave a small laugh. "How did you get started?" she asked. She was so beautiful and she was looking at me in such a direct, interested manner that I would have told her my darkest secrets had she asked.
"I was a loan officer at a bank. I’m not an accountant, and I got a psychology degree in college, but I know the bank president from family connections, so he took me on anyway. I started as a teller and eventually became a loan officer. It isn’t that hard to look at an application and figure out which loans will get repaid and which ones are guaranteed losers. Well, I made a loan to someone that seemed like a sure thing. The customer was completely convincing that he was good for the money, so I approved the loan." I took another sip of the beer. "It was for enough money to buy a restaurant franchise and put it in a mall in a nice part of town. He made a couple of payments and then nothing. I started getting nervous and went looking for him. He had cleaned out his house, and the restaurant was still an empty storefront. It was a big loan. I either had to get the money back or they would have fired me at the bank."
"Did you find him?"
I nodded, thinking about the confrontation I had with him. Dillon Burns was his name. I caught up with him in the parking lot of a motel in Amarillo, Texas. He was putting his suitcase into the trunk of a new maroon Lincoln. I had hit him about kidney-high with a body block that knocked him into the trunk. I grabbed his ankles and rolled his legs inside. Then I slammed the trunk lid shut and went to find a phone to call the cops. He had the keys with him in the trunk so we had to call a locksmith to get him out. The cops wanted to use a crowbar, but as far as I was concerned the car was bought with bank money, so as custodian of that asset I insisted on waiting for the locksmith.
"Did you get the money back?" she asked.
"Most of it," I said. "He had spent some of it on a car and on horse racing. The car just had a few thousand miles on it, so we got most of the money back on that. The rest of the cash was in a suitcase. The bank was happy with the overall result. That's how I got my start."
I drained my beer and set the mug down on the tablecloth. The light in the restaurant seemed to have a sharp edge to it. The alcohol was hitting me hard, catching me on an empty stomach. Tony arrived with our dinner and we ordered another round of drinks.
Conversation came easily over dinner. Michelle was animated when she talked, gesturing with her hands frequently and sometimes smoothing out the tablecloth with her fingers when she described problems at work. At one point I reached out and rested my hand on top of hers on the tablecloth. I just looked at her, straight into her dark brown eyes. Her skin flushed a little at her cheeks, crimson under the brown. She smiled and looked down. Then I let go of her hand and she went on as if nothing had happened, just chattering away.
When we were ready to leave the restaurant, Esto refused to let us pay for the meal. I have never had a problem with people giving me things, so I didn't fight it. Esto gave Michelle a hug and shook my hand with the same pipe-wrench grip. I massaged my fingers on the way to the car, checking for broken bones. I got a step or two ahead of Michelle and opened the driver’s door for her.
"You're quite a gentleman for a bounty hunter," she said in a mocking tone.
I closed her door and went around to my side of the car. For once, the upholstery felt cool. Michelle dug through her purse looking for her car keys. Her long hair fell forward, further obscuring her vision. I opened my door a couple of inches to turn the dome light on. A few moments later, Michelle pulled the keys from the purse. "There you are!" she said.
I shut my door, realizing that she was a little drunk from the margaritas. She shoved the key into the ignition, started the car, and we managed to get out of the parking lot without hitting any parked cars. I reminded her to turn on the headlights when we got to the first stop sign.
"Oh," she said. She didn't sound particularly bothered to have forgotten.
She hummed a tune that I didn't recognize as she drove back towards the interstate. When she turned the Wagoneer north towards my hotel we could see flashing lights from police cars up ahead. Rotating blue and red strobes flashed wildly, flooding the interior of her car with alternating colors. Traffic slowed to a crawl as we got closer to the police cars. The problem seemed to be on our side of the road. Oncoming traffic was still moving okay.
"Someone must have had an accident," Michelle said. She drove with apparent concentration, keeping both hands on the steering wheel.
A highway patrolman waved traffic around the wreck with a flashlight. Several highway patrol cars and local police cruisers blocked the right lane, funneling traffic down to a single lane. An ambulance sat at the front of the line of cruisers with its back doors open. It had a pair of brilliant white lights mounted above the doors, illuminating the road with a hot gray light.
As we passed the wreck, I twisted in my seat to get a look at what had happened. A blue Camaro had jumped the curb and plowed into the corner of a paint store which fronted onto the highway. The nose of the car was flattened against the wall of the store. I wondered why they needed so many police cars for a wreck. Then I realized that the wreck was my car.
"Stop the car!" I shouted.
"What?" Michelle said. She sounded stunned.
"Stop the car! That's my car back there! God dammit!"
She pulled the Jeep over to the curb about fifty yards past the ambulance. I jumped out and jogged back. A patrolman holding a flashlight stopped me short of the wreck.
"Sir, this is a crime scene," he said. "Return to your vehicle. Now!"
I pointed at the wreck. "That’s my car," I said.
"Really? Were you here when this happened?"
"No."
"Did you give someone else permission to drive your vehicle?"
"I had a flat out on the road to the quarry. I asked the service station on the highway to tow it in."
"Wait here a minute," the trooper said. I watched him go over to the wreck and talk to another uniformed officer.
Michelle appeared at my side, holding her purse. "What happened?" she asked.
"Somebody from the gas station totalled my car. Son of a bitch."
A stream of radiator coolant trickled across the pavement into the gutter. The hood of the car was peeled back against the windshield from the force of impact. Broken glass from the shattered headlights littered the pavement. I shook my head, wondering if my insurance company covered me if someone else was driving the car. If not, I was going to sue the service station for damages. Where the hell was the driver, anyway?
The trooper returned. "Sir, the Sergeant would like to see you over at the car."
"Wonderful," I said. I wondered if they managed all car wrecks in Alamogordo like three-ring circuses. I stepped forward with Michelle at my side, but the trooper held his palm up to stop her.
"Ma’am, please wait here," he said. Michelle objected, but I told her I'd be right back.
I walked over to the car. The combination of adrenaline, exhaustion, and alcohol made me feel as if I were floating towards it instead of walking. As I got closer, the officer stepped away from the wreck and walked over to me, obstructing my view of the damage. He had a short crop of copper colored hair, was a little taller than me and broad-shouldered. He wore a pressed black uniform with grey trim and a gold badge over the breast pocket. His name tag read "SGT. BULLARD."
"I understand that this is your vehicle," Bullard said.
"That's right."
"Did you loan it to someone?"
"No, I had the service station near the quarry tow it in to fix a flat." I looked past the cop to the wreck.
"DMV registration shows it belonging to Delorean Harper. You're Harpe
r?" He pulled a small spiral notebook from his shirt pocket and began writing in it with a silver pen.
"That's right," I said. The driver's side door of the car was peppered with small dents. I wondered what the hell could have caused that.
"Mister Harper, which station towed your car in?"
"The one just this side of the air base. It's got a new paint job. Red and white, I think. I don't remember seeing a brand name." The windshield looked red. Maybe the beacons from the police cars were playing tricks on my eyes. I wished they would turn the damn things off.
"What time was that?"
"About five, I guess. Look, where’s the driver?"