A World the Color of Salt (8 page)

“And they got them for what this time?”

“Bunch of traffic wants, rack o' fines. Gonna cost 'em a fortune, looks like. Your pal Svoboda was all over it, though. I saw him at the ATM half an hour ago. We bank at the same place, that's how I know. He'd been in on another arrest of these boys and does not like them at all.”

“They could hold them, then, couldn't they, even on just the citations?”

“They'll be outa there like shit through a chute on just a traffic want. You know that, Smokes.”

Yes, I knew. The proliferation of drugs makes for a housing shortage. Burglars, car thieves, and the like breathe fresh air scant hours after they're arrested. In by six, out by midnight, still enough time to steal a car to get home. “Hey, Raymond, where are you anyway you're reading me this? Why aren't you out here in your
mogambo
wheels getting some of these assholes out of my way?”

“Well, where are
you
?”

“Barely past Edinger.”

“That's a tricky section there.”

“Tell me.”

“Listen, you want to come by take a peek at the boys? I'll escort. We can go in one car to the party, you want.”

I felt myself sit up and take notice. “By the jail? Sure. Sure.”

His tone was gentler now, more serious. “I know you got a thing about this case, right?”

“Right.”

“Don't say nothin', don't do nothin'. Just peek.”

“I could love you, Raymond. You're great.”

“I know,” he said. So cute.

The freeway opened up like a fist unfolding. I said good-bye to Raymond, my mind racing. They grabbed two guys who'd done stop-and-robs. So what? What they boxed 'em for was traffic cites. But you never know. Why not take a look? What's to lose?

The traffic stalled again. I was creeping by the Crazy Horse, the big-time country-western club just off the freeway where
performers whose names get recognized by people who don't even know country pack 'em in in spite of tickets costing more than a good pair of shoes.

Lifting the handset on the car phone again—hell, I could afford it: How much worse is it than all the dollars blowing out my exhaust pipe to do a keratotomy on the ozone?—I reached Patricia.

“You wanna go to jail and a party tonight?” I said.

There was a short pause, and then: “Sounds like love to me,” she said, and giggled.

The Dugdale brothers did make an impression. The tall one's voice sounded like a steel drum dragged over gravel.

This was Roland Gene. He did not have a ponytail. Neither did the other one. I thought, These must be the wrong guys.

Thirty-one and “little brother” to Phillip, Roland reminded me of nothing more than a good-time boy, a man who makes his living in the sun, his fun in the dark. Maybe a carpenter or a cowboy—anything but a robber and a killer. I looked for boots. Emilio said they wore cowboy boots. But Roland Gene had on black running shoes and a gray quilted vest over a light-blue shirt. Didn't look like anyone but a Southern Californian to me.

We were at the sheriff's station, not the jail, and the Dugdale brothers were not in custody, only detained. I learned this after going to the jail with Patricia and talking to the gate deputy, who had not signed any Dugdales in. Raymond had it wrong. And Raymond didn't escort me after all, because at the last minute he called and said he had to take Yolanda somewhere. He said, “Call Svoboda, he'll get you in.” So I did. Gary's shift, I knew, was over, so it surprised me when he told me he was on his way down to the station. He could be off cashing in on double-dinner coupons, feeding on spaghetti with his wife, who enjoyed food as much as he did. Raymond said Svoboda was all over this, and I guess he meant it.

On the way over, in Patricia's car, she said, “Wow, people are going to ask what did you do on the weekend, and I'm going to tell them I went to Club Jail. Neat, huh?”

She was dressed in party clothes: black bolero jacket over a
hot-pink dress, high heels and black stockings—and on those antelope legs, the combination would make men run into walls. I worried a bit about her, that I shouldn't have brought her here. Then thought better of it. What could it hurt, and it might just let her understand some things.

The watch commander let us go down to the observation room after okaying it with Svoboda, who'd answered the phone down there. While the deputy was making the call, Patricia hung back, flattened against the wall where both cadets and deputies manned the counter and telephone bank, and that was good, I suppose; but she could hardly be invisible.

Gary was waiting for us, to usher us into the room with the two-way mirror.

“Hello, ladies,” he said, back to the door, twisting the door handle with his left hand. “The movie has started.”

Patricia slid into the room ahead of us. We took seats in the folding chairs in front of the window. Patricia hugged herself under her bolero.

“Don't be nervous.”

She made a face. “How can I not?” and gave a little laugh.

The interview room was plain, a table, some chairs. Two detectives in street clothes. Normally, suspects and witnesses are interviewed separately, so they won't automatically match stories, but the brothers were pulled in only on traffic wants. It was sort of an exploratory, and I was sure the brothers knew it if they'd been around at all, and apparently they had.

Svoboda leaned in from a chair behind us. He said, “The guy at the table—he look like a guilty little shitter to you?”

I whispered, “After a while they all look like guilty little shitters.”

“Lovely business we're in, ain't it?” He looked at Patricia, but her gaze was glued to the window.

I wanted to hope these were the perps, but so far things just didn't fit. Emilio had said a ponytail; there was no ponytail. He said the suspects were both big; the Roland guy was, but the seated one, his brother Phillip, was five-eight, by the sheet. I wondered what they'd been driving when they were picked up. And what about a red baseball cap—had they found one? As far as weapons, I knew it'd be too much to
hope for, and if they'd had weapons, their asses would be in a holding tank right now.

The big one's voice: “When you boys gonna let us pay up whatever we owe, get something to eat? We told you, we been working, we got the money. We been clean. Regular square-bones citizens now. Ain't we, Phillip?” Roland stood against the wall facing us, one leg kicked back, arching his back every once in a while as if he'd just got off a long haul. At the end of the table, on the left, Phillip slowly nodded in agreement. Down two chairs on Phillip's side was a detective in a pink shirt, and across from Phillip another detective with a puffed rim of dark hair beneath a mound of smooth pate.

Patricia whispered, her eye on Roland, “How come they let him walk around like that? Aren't they afraid he'll do something?”

“Like jump somebody?” I shook my head no. They do, sometimes, but this pair didn't seem likely, not with this little informal get-together.

Phillip George was slender, but with a squarish, puffy face, as if he were on cortisone or something. He was thirty-seven, had darker hair than his brother Roland, almost black and slicked straight back, like Michael Douglas in
Wall Street
. Emilio had said the men in the truck had brown hair. Did Phillip's hair qualify as brown? Roland's you could call brown, but there were light edges. Phillip wore a plain white shirt and black pants. I couldn't see his feet to check for boots. When he talked, it was softer—and scarier. What sent a chill through me I don't know, even now. It was just a thing that, even through a crackly mike and behind a trick window, told me these two were bad company.

Roland said, “So what about it? You checked us out, where I been workin'. I give you my goddamn travelogue where I been the last six months. I even mail the postcard to my probation officer, right on time, every month. Ask her. I'm a good boy now.” He smiled a slow, crawling smile. He dragged on a cigarette, tilting his head up, and I thought just then he looked like the actor who used to play in
The Rifleman
, high cheekbones, boxy jaw. The voice kept coming, like a dog beginning to growl. “I'll tell you who I been ballin', that what you want—she don't cost much,” Roland smiling now.

“Clean it up, Dugdale. Tell me this: You're on probation, you're such a good guy, why don't you pay your traffic fines?” the detective said. “That could irritate the system just a little bit, don't you think? We could push you on that one quite a bit, bud.”

“When's the last time you slammed, Roland?” The detective in the pink shirt was talking now. “Hm? Or are you just snortin' these days?” The detective in the pink shirt stood up and came toward the mirrored window, looking at himself, or seeing if today you could peer through, see who was there or wasn't.

Patricia reflexively pulled her shoulders in and nudged her chair backward.

The man in pink was nice-looking, eyes at a slant the way they make some people look kind. He turned to face the brothers, waiting for an answer.

Roland gave a swing of his head, pushed off from the wall, and said, “Man, you assholes gonna keep us up all night, aren't ya? I got commitments, man. I gotta be places.” Stepping over to where his brother sat, he pulled a chair away and slid it near the wall and sat down, swinging his head some more, propping his right arm on his knee. Then he squinted at the pink detective as if he just thought up a truth: “You all need to get a life,” he said.

The bald detective at the table pushed a coffee cup slowly away from him with the back of his wrist, leaned forward across from Phillip, and clasped his hands together. He said, “You got commitments too?”

Phillip stared back. His shirtsleeves were rolled three turns up. Beneath the right one I saw blue-green scallops peeking out.

I said, “Peacock.”

Patricia's head turned to me, her eyes asking if I'd slipped a gear.

Svoboda nodded.

I said to her, “Peacocks. They get peacock tattoos so the eyes of the feathers hide the needle marks. Dragon eyes or spotted snakes are good too.”

The bald detective kept at him. “Did you win the Lotto, Phillip? Where you get your money? Your brother here's been
working. Where you get your money? Nice shirt. Nice ring. Buy that on credit?” He waited for the man with the slicked-back hair to answer. The man in the slicked-back hair held his gaze.

Roland was rocking now, front chair legs grazing the floor. “Lady pays him for his pretty face.” He grinned. He was the only one.

Phillip, seated sideways facing the bald detective as if he and the detective were going to table-volley a wadded-up piece of paper to pass the time, slid his thumbnail over the lip of the table and stared as if he'd as soon put the guy's head down a toilet.

“Who says he got money?” Roland threw in. “Hell, he's into me five hunnerd and I know I'm gonna have to kick his Okie ass to get that.”

The bald detective ignored Roland, just held the gaze on Phillip. I was looking at Roland's neck, where the light-tipped hair brushed across the high collar of his vest. Long enough for a ponytail? I didn't think so.

The detective asked Phillip, “What kind of primer you use under enamel?”

Phillip looked up at the ceiling and wiped his whole face with both hands. I wondered how many times he'd been asked the question before we got there.

“You know,” the bald detective said, “I could use some painting done. My kid's room. Wife tells me she can't find a painter to do the room, the one room, nothing else. Must be a million women can't find a painter to do one room, huh?”

Phillip said something I couldn't make out. With Svoboda's heavy breathing, I almost didn't hear the rest. Then: “I said I found work. I did two jobs.”

Svoboda practically in my ear now. “Guilty as hell,” he said. “If he thinks he's stare-crazy now”—meaning
stir-crazy
—“wait till I get through with him.” He glanced at Patricia, but Patricia's gaze never trailed off the tall handsome dude behind the glass.

I whispered, “What's the story on him? You busted these guys before?”

“He's a hype, a two-piece-a-day hype. He's been doing crime since fifth grade. I gave him a bunk in Theo Lacey for
a year. I bombed him on
two
robberies, one he yanks an old lady's wig off and pulls her around the store by the hair at the bottom of her neck, right here.” He pointed to the top of his collar. “Then he gives her the shoe. She falls, breaks her hip, two months later she dies, but the DA don't want to bring up murder charges, the asshole's doing time already for some other shit thing and the two-eleven not even calendared yet.” His mouth twitched in disgust and then he settled his arms on his knees.

Patricia looked over at me now. She'd glanced back before too, listening to this, listening to what was going on in front of us, as if learning something new about me, and I wondered how to tell her it's okay, I'm still me. Bad things go on, good people clean it up, and most of us even lead normal lives.

While Svoboda was talking, other things we didn't catch were said in the room, and then the bald detective said, “You don't know the names of the contractors, and you don't know where your jobs were. Now, how do you expect us to treat you nice when you
bullshit
us, Phillip?”

Phillip was quiet for a time, then he said, “I don't remember.”

“Where'd you get those jobs?”

“Off a bulletin board.”

“Off a bulletin board. Right. Where's the bulletin board?”

“I don't remember.”

Roland Gene slapped his legs and said, “Jesus, I'm starvin', I got a headache. You guys don't ever eat? I want a goddamn lawyer. I want to see the goddamn
judge
, you keep us here any longer. My brother's back hurts him—he told you—his
back
. Phil's sitting there being a hero, pain crawlin' up his spine, what do you care? Let us the fuck out of here or book us, for Christ's sake. Be a sport. Sport.” He dropped the chair down with a thunk and locked eyes with baldie, and baldie's weight rested on his forearms as one hand went over the other and a game smile grew on his face.