Carcass Trade (13 page)

“
You
signed for it?” I noticed my brother's handwriting on the address sticker. Nathan had merely put “S. Brandon” on the label.

“They don't care who signs for it.” He paused for a moment as if wondering if he should let me open it in private, but stayed after I glanced at him.

I was tense opening it, wondering what on earth my brother could have sent, wishing he would let this thing with Miranda go, or at least let it take its natural course; wishing he'd return to his normal life; knowing he wouldn't.

Inside were pieces of shoe box folded over a picture torn from a magazine of a man and a woman on a motorcycle. Miranda's face came back clearly to me then. A note was attached to the page, from Nathan. It said, “Here's the piece of garbage she was sleeping with.” I was surprised at the vehemence of it. Earlier, when Nathan had mentioned she might be seeing someone else, his tone was level. He had even said, “You have to realize, people are people,” teaching little sister how the world worked.

I turned the sheet over and saw that it was torn from a biker magazine, February issue.

“What is it?” Joe asked.

“A picture of my sister-in-law, ex. That's Miranda.” She was smiling into the sun, a beaming, wholesome-fifties kind of pose. “I wonder who's the dude,” I added.

Joe took the page from me and read. Down at the bottom in print I hadn't seen because it was dark on a burnt sienna background were the words “
Tyrannis Tin is Blackman's latest knockout entry in this year's Invitational
.”

“Blackman,” I said. “That's the name the doctor gave us.”

Joe finished reading. “
Ten shades of green on the fatbob and fenders. Steel scrollwork like lizard scales or yer girlfriend's legs.
” Joe grinned.

“Gimme that,” I said, and took it and gazed at the face of the man in the photo.

He had flagrant black hair and a thick, maculated handlebar mustache that didn't hide the trenched smile lines curving above it. His eyelashes were so long they cast a shadow. He was hunky, raw, and handsome.

“Well, he doesn't look anything like her husband, that's for sure.”

“Likes variety, I guess,” Joe said. “Don't let that give you ideas.”

“You underestimate me. What'd you do with the telephone number Dr. Robertson gave us?”

“What did
I
do? You took it down.”

“I did, didn't I? Shit.”

“You give it to Fedders?”

“I don't think so. It must be in my notebook.”

“Give it to Fedders.”

“Right,” I said.

“What are you doing for lunch today?” He looked at his watch. “It's early yet, but—”

“I have to run an errand. Maybe tomorrow.”

“What's tomorrow, Thursday? I have to run an errand.” He stood closer. I could smell his musky after-shave, the one I bought him for his birthday. It had an effect. “You want to try for dinner tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

His eyes searched my face awhile. Someone passed by in the intersecting hallway. Joe inched back but as he turned to go, said under his breath, “Love ya, kiddo.”

And damn me, I looked at him and smiled. Only smiled. It was on my lips to make that first sound,
luh
. Love you too. But I couldn't, and maybe that said something. I turned and went back to my desk, where I opened drawers and looked at pencils. Closed drawers and straightened the stapler to be in line with my In-box. Picked a dry leaf off a small flower someone had brought me. And sat down, opened my notepad, and stared at the phone.

When the girl answered, she said hello and didn't give the name of the bar. I asked her what place this was, and she said, “The Python.” In the background was music with a heavy beat.

“Are you calling about the job?” she asked.

“Uh, yes.”

“Well, you should come in and fill out an application. Between four and five. No later. It gets too busy, okay?” she said, drawing out the last so she sounded like a bimbo. Totally.

“Four and five.”

“Right. Oh, and bring, like, a negligee, right?”

“I'm sorry?” I said.

“A negligee, a teddy. If you don't have one, there's some here, but most girls want to bring their own the first time. Like, they feel more comfortable and all. You
are
applying for a model, right?”

“Uh, sure. Who, uh, will I be interviewing with?”

“The boss. Mr. Blackman.”

“Right. What do they pay?”

“Well, I'm not supposed to say, but it's good, real good.”

What I was going to do I couldn't exactly put words to in my mind at the time. I knew, but didn't want to know. In retrospect, I think it must be like a man who knows he's going to see a prostitute when he's promised himself he wouldn't anymore.

Avoiding the stir in my blood, I went down the hall and got a drink of water. I read the bulletin board. Two people wanted rideshares from Lake Elsinore. Two people had to-die-for rooms to rent in houses near the beach. One person was going to have to practically give away a nearly new Mercury Cougar. I went to the rest room, and while washing my hands looked in the mirror longer than I normally do. Could I still pass? It had been nearly half my life ago since . . .

I went into Joe's office. On his desk was a plastic bloodshot eyeball weighted so that someone like me could roll it around, and while it wobbled over the desktop its blue iris and dark pupil would continue to stare straight up.

“Couldn't stay away from me, huh?” Joe said.

“That's about it,” I answered, smiling slightly. Then: “Joe, how much trouble do you think I'd get into if I went to check on this Morris Blackman myself?”

“Have you totally lost your mind?”

“Oh thanks.” I clutched the eyeball. I had given it to him for his birthday in February. I wondered if it would bounce off his chest.

“Have you forgotten you came close to losing your job last year for the same thing?”

“My personal involvement had nothing to do with it. Whacking someone did.”

Joe just sat there and looked at me. His eyes traveled my face again, wobbling.

My boss, Stu Hollings, is shapeless in middle age, wears an ovoid, expressionless face topped with scant hair, a man who seldom makes more conversation than needed but when he does it's often the right string of words. I suppose whatever he does all day is commendable because he seems to get along fine with the director and the undersheriff, but I don't have much of an idea what it is. Whatever he does, he has power of decision over my career, so I had to tell him what I wanted to do on the Carbon Canyon case. With more trepidation than I liked, and with Joe Sanders sitting next to me in Stu's office, I matter-of-factly said I wanted to put extra time on a case that had a slim connection to my own brother. It probably amounted to nothing, I said. But would I be interfering? Would anyone be disturbed?

My boss looked at me a long while, with nary a wobbly eyeball. “This feels like its getting to be a habit,” he said.

“What's that, Stu?”

“Your tendency for getting personally involved.”

“I wouldn't call it a tendency,” I said as pleasantly as possible, trying to keep calm. “It can't be a habit if I don't choose the events. The events came to me, I didn't go to them. I mean, I don't want to be defensive here, but what happened last year on the Dugdale case happened because I was trying to find a friend. That's all. I have a feeling anyone,” saying this without breaking my gaze, “with means and training would want to do the same. Anyone.”

He pursed his lips, glanced at Joe and then at the wall. Said, “Details?”

I breathed a small sigh of relief and went over the case, telling him the car was registered to Miranda Robertson but all we had was a torso to talk to. He said, Oh yes, he heard about that one. I told him that as yet we didn't have a report from Meyer Singer regarding the recovered teeth and jawbones, nor did we possess dental charts to match against because Miranda Robertson was supposedly not missing. Joe and I had talked to her husband, and Dr. Robertson claimed his wife was still quite alive.

“What is it you want me to approve?” He didn't say it to give me hope. He just wanted more information. Directly over and behind his head, the tip of a Lockheed fighter plane showed from a framed print. It looked like a little cap on Stu's smooth dome. On a file cabinet was a framed photo of his grandson and a glass chimney of foil-wrapped Kisses.

“I
feel
for my brother. He still loves her. Their divorce wasn't that troubled. I mean, I'd just like to put my brother's mind to rest. If I could go hang out a little with some people she knows. . . .”

Joe said, “The doctor is not what you'd call the most convincing. Would she be violating department rules? I guess that's the bottom line.”

“The bottom line,” Stu said, “is would she be getting in hot water with me.”

I could hear the tightness in Joe's voice but didn't know if Stu did: “Well, I guess that's why she's in here.”

Stu leaned forward and fanned his office phone directory with one thumb. He turned his attention to me. “How would this affect your other work?”

“How's it affecting it now?” I said cheerfully. “Anyone complain?” He had no gripe, I knew that.

My boss looked at Joe, two middle-aged men passing evaluations back and forth. Joe and I had tried to keep our relationship discreet without actually trying to hide anything. I didn't think anyone really cared if we were dating; it's just that neither of us needed comment or speculation. But you never knew about the older types.

“As far as policy on this thing,” Stu said, “that's really not a problem. If you're clear with Homicide. . . .”

“I'm clear.”

“Some people think for UC work, the closer the connection, the better. Cops do it all the time. You just don't see it in the papers. One thing though,” he said.

“What? Whatever. I'm just grateful.”

“Don't take this as an opportunity for hotdogging. Nothing like that.”

“No, no. Understand.”

“I can't pay you overtime.”

“Not a problem. Suppose I need to take a couple hours off in a day, though. Is that—?”

“It's a case. Account for it the way you would any other case.” He picked up some papers, then glanced at me over his glasses, our cue to leave.

I tried not to be too effusive when I said thanks, but when I got up, I rocked the chair hard against the wall, then checked to see if it left a mark.

Outside, Joe said, shaking his head, “Girl, you get the damndest things out of men.”

“Oh come on now.”

“You do.”

“Yeah? Well, I didn't get lunch out of you, now did I?”

He sucked in his cheeks, grinned, patted his pockets for keys.

Monty said I didn't have to bring a thing, just myself. I liked his voice on the phone, soft, a little raspy, like the singer Michael McDonald's.

It was the day after the girl on the phone told me there was a job opening. Before I left the lab I talked to Les Fedders again and learned he'd actually done a little casework. He knew a deputy who told him Morris “Monty” Blackman had done federal at Terminal Island for possession of an auto shotgun and a Remington he said shouldn't have counted because it jammed nearly every time he fired. But it did count because he was on parole at the time, so Monty went up for another year, prequalified by a prior. Now he was owner of a goin' bar in Garden Grove that featured young ladies in lingerie at lunchtime, and I was prepared to go ask for a job there, shaking and thinking I'd look like a damn fool twice over.

Joe said he wanted to go with me, but he got caught up in a high-profile officer-involved shooting case, and I was just as glad. I felt freer by myself. I'm three-quarters loner and prefer doing things without having to wait, bargain, or report.

But I made the mistake of telling Ray Vega. Since Ray's shift didn't start till seven, he'd meet me at four, delighted to supervise, he said, reminding me the glorious city of Garden Grove is not as idyllic as its name would suggest, Ray remaining, after all, a cop, even if it is a freeway jockey, a rider of the asphalt range. He'd pick me up in his almost-new car.

As far as mentioning it in the first place, I wouldn't have except the situation seemed funny; because in the wacky seventies, in a mostly harmless club owned by a man who never treated me unfairly and who looked the other way at my not yet being eighteen, I, you could say, unwore glamorous garments for a living. So that when Ray asked me on the phone, Whatcha up to, Smokes? and I said, Ray, you wouldn't believe, out it came.

We found a space at the curb two car lengths down from Monty's Python, the restaurant and bar that looked like a single-story, ranch-hand bunk-house along a strip of computer fix-it shops and hamburger joints. The place was easy to spot because of the painted python on the door, whose gigantic copper slitted eyes seemed to smile as the constrictor licked its lips. Through the overcast day, a blue-green neon sign polished Ray's black hair and the tight knot of his cheekbone as he sat at the wheel and even from where we were I could see the pale parts of the snake on the door and feel its come-hither grin.

I said he'd have to stay in the car.

“No way! I'm here to see girlies, and if I can't see girlies, I'm going home.”

“You dope.”

“You hurt my feelings.”

He made me grin. “If I'm not out in thirty minutes, come on in and order a drink or something. But I will be.”

“You come into my back room looking like that, you won't be out in thirty minutes.”

I looked down at myself. “This getup isn't all that sexy. In fact, it isn't at all.” I had on a scoop-necked, raging violet shirt and skirt with cinched pink belt, Mervyn's, $4.95. My jewelry was clunky gold and my stockings light enough you wouldn't think I wore any. On my feet were the only heels I own, black, showing a lumpy toe pattern. Cheeks rosy, and eyes made up to be, well, smokey.