by DaveKearns
"Can I make a phone call?" I asked.
"Sure thing," Bullard said. "Tomorrow morning, when you're sober, you can make as many calls as you want. You’re too drunk to use the phone right now."
Bullard and one of the jailers took my wallet, watch, shoelaces, and belt away. Then they walked me back into the pen past a row of occupied cells. Men with hard, bored expressions watched me pass.
We were at the end of the row of cells, and Bullard grabbed my hair and held it while the jailer took the handcuffs off. I looked into the dim cell through the bars. A pair of steel beds were bolted to the wall on each side, one upper, one lower. The jailer opened the cell door and it was easier to see now: two men leaning against the wall at the back of the cell smoking cigarettes, a pair of giant legs dangling from the upper bed on the right wall. Bullard let go of my hair and slammed me between the shoulder blades with the palm of his hand. I hit the floor on my knees as the cell door clanged shut behind me.
I stood and wiped my hands on the front of my jeans. The cell smelled powerfully of body odor, fear sweat, and toilet. A single overhead light covered with metal mesh provided dim illumination. The men at the back of the cell watched me. I stared back for a couple of seconds before I went over to the bottom bunk on the left and sat on it.
The voice from the bunk across the cell was soft and threatening. "Get off my bed," it said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I looked up at the source of the voice. Even sitting, he looked tall. He had an oily red T-shirt with a picture of a wind surfer on it. His bare feet were black with grime. I got up from the bed and walked over to the bars at the front of the cell. I stood with my back against the bars, facing the smokers.
"I didn't realize it was your bunk," I said. "You weren't sitting on it." Now I understood why the other two were standing instead of sitting. The monster wasn't letting anybody else sit but himself.
"They're all mine, baby," the voice said. "You want a bed, you got to pay for it. I'm Bean. This is my house."
I watched the faces of the smokers. They looked amused. One of the smokers was skinny and wore bell-bottom jeans with dirty canvas tennis shoes and a blue cotton T-shirt. His face was pocked with acne scars and his blonde hair fell to his shoulders. The color of his hair looked like a dye job that had gone bad.
The other smoker was slightly shorter than me and wore black dress pants and a short-sleeved dress shirt. I guessed that he was about forty. He wore black penny loafers torn open at the toes with no socks, and his pants and dress shirt were filthy. He looked like he had played dress up at a rummage sale.
The man in black pants spoke. "What are you looking at, sister?"
"Nothing," I said, looking away.
"Mind if I borrow your shoes for a while?" black pants said.
"No can do," I replied.
"How about if we take 'em?"
"Try me," I told him, staring him down.
Black pants looked at bell-bottoms to see if he was willing to help. Bell-bottoms sized me up and told his friend "You're on your own."
Black pants watched me for a while, finishing his cigarette, then leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes like he was going to sleep.
I turned to look out the front of the cell and heard footsteps coming fast from behind me. As I spun around black pants hit me low, pinning me against the bars of the cell. He had his shoulder under my chin and started raining blows on my gut with his fists. I used the strength in my legs to rise up as tall as I could stand, and then came down with all my body weight with an elbow strike into the middle of his back. I heard him grunt and felt his body go slack, but by then bell-bottoms had joined in, catching me in the side of the face with a punch that sent my head bouncing off the bars. I went down with black pants on top of me. I heard bell-bottoms cursing and laughing about kicking my ass. Then black pants shoved off of me and tried to stand up. He made a loud groan and said through gritted teeth "My back. I think it's broken."
I half-stood, pulling myself up the bars with both hands. My left ear was ringing from being bounced off the bars, and I tasted the sick-salty taste of blood from loosened teeth where bell-bottoms had punched me. Black pants groaned like he was in agony before sitting back down on the floor of the cell. Bell-bottoms stood just past arm's reach, still laughing.
"You don't look so good,'' bell-bottoms said to me. "You sure you don't want to share those cool-looking shoes with my friend?"
The man who called himself Bean dropped from the bunk to his feet. He shuffled across the cell towards me. Bell-bottoms stood aside, snickering.
Bell-bottoms didn't get far enough out of the way and Bean backhanded him across the face hard enough to send him to the floor. The sound of the slap was like a gunshot, and the giant’s hand had moved so fast that I wasn't even sure I had seen it happen.
"I told you this is my house," Bean said. "I say what happens here." He pointed at me with a forefinger the size of a fat sausage. "You belong to me now."
By then I had my wits back about me. I felt the adrenaline pouring through my veins, making me feel as if I barely weighed anything at all. I spread my feet shoulder wide, bent my knees slightly, and waited for him to come closer. A little more…A little more.
He pointed at me again and said "Look at me when I'm talking to you." His finger was about 2 feet from my face at that point. His body odor was zoo-exhibit intense.
"Okay," I told him. Then I popped his extended finger with a palm strike that dislocated his finger and bent it back like a broken French fry. His face twisted in pain and he sucked a lungful of air through his teeth.
"Last chance," I said. "Leave. Me. Alone."
There was murder in his eyes as he came for me. He pulled his good hand back to throw a punch as I snapped a kick under his left kneecap. Bean cried out in surprise, and as he started to go down on that side and I hit him with a left cross to the jaw. I felt the shock all the way into my spine when I connected.
Bean went down with a grunt and stayed down, moaning and writhing, holding the knee I'd kicked against his chest. "I'll kill you!" Bean cried "I’ll kill you. I swear I'll kill you!"
Chapter Thirty-Five
I listened to Bean's labored breathing and swearing. Bell-bottoms was up off the floor, and he and black pants didn't look as sure of themselves now. Then the door to the cell burst open and two guards came in with nightsticks.
One of the guards pointed at me with a nightstick and said "You! Out!"
I left the cell, and the two guards led me back past the cells toward the booking desk. I guessed that they were going to put me in a different cell, but they took me back through the doorway into the booking area, where Esto stood against the desk in his pressed cotton shirt.
"Ready to go?" he asked. "I post bail."
"Hell yes," I said. "Thanks. How did you know I was in here? They wouldn't let me make a phone call when they brought me in."
"I was on my way to the liquor store," Esto said. "I saw that cop hurting you. I want to help. I knew you would be here."
"I'll pay you back, I promise," I said.
"I know you're good for it," he said.
The officer behind the booking desk pushed a manila envelope with my name on it through the slot in the grille. I picked it up and we started for the stairs with me shuffling along in my jogging shoes. I could put my belt and shoelaces back on later. I just wanted to get out of there.
"I don't understand why you're arrested for drunk driving," Esto said. "You don't seem drunk."
"It was Bullard, the son of a bitch. He said I was drunk so he’d have an excuse to arrest me and make me spend the night with psychos in the drunk tank."
"Bullard?" Esto said. "I think maybe I catered a party at his house one time."
"I hope the bastard got food poisoning," I said. Esto looked hurt.
It was dark as we went out through the front door of the police building. I felt pretty good about the fact that I was outside walking around. The knuckle
s on my left hand were swelling fast and my head hurt like hell, but I didn't mind. At least I wasn’t in jail.
We climbed into Esto's gigantic silver Caddy, and we were off. I slid my belt through the loops in my jeans and started lacing up my shoes again.
"I really need to get the back to my restaurant," Esto said. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all," I said. Esto moved the Caddy smoothly through the other traffic. It was almost perfectly silent in the car and the ride was waterbed smooth.
"Esto," I said. "I really appreciate you helping me, but I've got to admit I'm curious about why. You barely know me. Why go to all the trouble?" He looked serious, and thought for a few seconds before responding.
"My wife and I, we cannot have children," he said. "If I did have a daughter, I would like her to be like Michelle. She is very beautiful, but she has modesty. She is very intelligent, but she doesn't think too hard about things. I want good things for her."
"Okay."
"If you seen the other gringos Michelle has taken up with, you'd understand," Esto said. "They treat her bad. When she was a waitress, one of them brought his new girlfriend in to humiliate her. Now, you seem like maybe you treat her right. So, I watch out for you. Maybe you return the favor by treating her right? Okay?"
"Esto," I said. "I think I'm in love with her. You don't have to bribe me to be nice to her."
"Ahh," he said. "Music to my ears." He turned the car into the narrow alley that ran behind the strip mall that held his restaurant. He parked the Caddy near an unmarked gray door and we got out. He popped the trunk and we each picked a case of liquor out of the trunk of the car.
The back door opened onto the kitchen where two cooks were working up dinners for customers. The smell of onions and frying meat and chicken was heavy and sweet. We put the cases down on the floor. Esto grabbed a knife off a cutting board and deftly slashed open the cases. He pulled a couple bottles from each box and started for the door to the dining area. He put his backside against the door to push it open and said to me, ''You want anything from the bar?"
"How about a cup and some ice?" I said.
He smiled and was gone. I watched one of the chefs for a couple of minutes while he chopped fresh vegetables and cooked up strips of steak at the same time, all the while keeping up a busy patter in Spanish with the other cook. His hands were a blur on the countertop.
Esto reappeared with a couple of tumblers full of ice. He pulled a bottle from each of the liquor boxes we had carried in.
"Let's go to my office and talk," he said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Esto's office was just large enough to hold an ornate hardwood desk with a high back leather chair behind it and a simple metal chair with a missing foot peg. The chair rocked a little when I shifted my weight, but I didn’t mind. I knew I could have been in jail all night with the losers Bullard had found to entertain me.
I held some of the ice against the knuckles on my left hand. Esto poured us a couple of tall drinks and after we toasted to not spending time in jail, I gunned down a couple of big swallows from my glass. My head still throbbed painfully from the blows I'd gotten in the cell, and my leg had a knot on it the size of a golf ball from where Bullard had clubbed me with a nightstick.
Then I remembered I was supposed to be up at Michelle's and I asked Esto if I could use the phone. He nodded and I got her number out of my wallet and dialed.
"Hello," she said. Her voice sounded tight over the phone.
"It's Del," I said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for dinner. I was thrown in jail this evening."
"Well imagine that," she said. "How was it?"
"It was pretty damn terrible. I said I was sorry, what's the problem?"
"I'll tell you the problem, Del. You told the police about our looking at those personnel records, didn't you?"
"Yes," I said. "I had to."
"Well, my boss had a visit from Sgt. Bullard today, who told him that I was interfering with a police investigation. He had the copy of Ray's personnel file with him that we made."
I swallowed.
"I told you that I'd get in trouble if people found out I was copying that stuff. Dean said things like that make the quarry liable for lawsuits. Now I'm suspended without pay for two weeks. Dean said if my mother wasn't his friend he would have fired me."
"I'm really sorry, Michelle. I had to tell them to get them to help me."
"God," she said. "Not that again." I heard crying in the background.
"What's wrong with Rosalie?" I asked.
"Not that it's any of your business," she said. "We found one of the doors open this evening and Colonel is missing. Now Rosalie can't find your damned golf ball, either."
"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Go to hell," she said. And then she hung up on me.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I put the phone back in the cradle and took another pull off the drink. Esto had an electric clock on the wall behind his desk featuring a picture of a waterfall and an old mill. It was nearly nine.
"What's the matter," Esto said. "Michelle is angry with you?"
"I almost got her fired," I said. He looked puzzled and I explained. "I think a policeman and some men who worked at the quarry were involved in my brother's death," I said. "I asked Michelle to help get evidence, but it got her in trouble. She trusted me and I blew it."
"No one is perfect, my friend," Esto said. "She cares for you. She'll forgive your mistakes."
"How can you know that?" I asked. "You only saw us together one time."
"I saw the way she looks at you," he said. "When a woman looks at a man that way, that's it!" he said. "She loves him and mistakes don't change that. Don't give up on her so easily."
"I'm not so sure,'' I said. "She just told me to go to hell."
"That means nothing. Hardly a day passes without my Celeste wishing me into the fiery pit!"
His face was so sincere that I burst out laughing. "You're an insane optimist," I said.
He put his arms out palms up and said "I have to be."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"If I miss one loan payment, my restaurant it will be taken from me," he said. "If I don't have a good month each month, I might as well not open the doors."
"What kind of loan do you have?" I asked. I had never heard of a bank foreclosing after one missed payment.
"A very expensive one, my friend. No bank would make me a loan, so I go to man who will loan money. But the loan is very expensive."
"A loan shark," I said.
He nodded. "I make just enough each month to make payment, no more."
I didn't tell Esto that I had been a loan officer at a bank and that I had turned down dozens of small businessmen like him for loans, sending them to the loan sharks for their money.
I took a small sip of my drink. It felt warm in my stomach now, and my aches were fading.
"But that is not your problem," he said. "Let us talk of other things." He picked up my bottle and poured another inch into my glass. I didn't think I would drink any more. I felt wasted from what I had drunk to that point.
"Esto," I said. "Did you tell me you thought you catered a party for Bullard?"
"Yes, last winter. For about twenty people, I think."
"Can you tell me about it?"
He shrugged. "I get a call from a man who called himself Bullard. He say he want to 'put on a feed,' I think, at his house on a Saturday night. I tell him I would send our menu for him to look at, but he says that the food must be authentic, not what we serve here. He say he has guests from across the border."
Esto took a sip of his tequila. He seemed full of energy and his eyes were clear. His metabolism seemed unaffected by the alcohol.
"My cooks come in early that day and they make a beautiful meal. I took it out to his house at about six. He show me place to put the food and pay in cash. Then I leave." Esto had an odd look on his face as if he had thought of something that troubled him.
"Wh
at's the matter?" I asked.
"Well, the other people there for the party looked very tough, and they spoke only Spanish. I remember I was surprised these men would know a rich white man. But there were two dancers waiting outside that night by my car, waiting for the party to start. Women who take off their clothes for men, you know? One of the women asked me if I wanted to have a private party with her before Bullard's party started." He had a mischievous smile.