Plaster City (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (11 page)

“Nothing is going to come back to my family. We’re only looking for a missing girl.”

Tomás shook his head, smiling. “You crack me up. The way you see the world.”

“I’m not some naïve schoolgirl, for fuck’s sake.”

“You think because you’re on some heroic mission to find a missing girl that everyone will want to help. You’re all motive, no information. Without knowing who’s doing what and why, you don’t know who has what to protect. There are as many bad people in the world as good. It’s an even split.”

“Bobby backs me. I back him.” I flicked my cigarette into the swimming pool. It fizzled briefly when it struck the surface.

Tomás laughed. “I don’t know if I should admire your loyalty or pity your stupidity.”

“Probably both.”

Sitting in the dim light of the Date Palm Motel parking lot, I was stalling. I wanted to call Angie, talk to her, but it was too early/late. It was hard to believe only twenty-four hours earlier, Bobby and I had been drinking and frog gigging on a ditch bank. I lit a fresh cigarette off the one I was smoking. At this rate, I was going to need to buy another pack.

I could see the light behind the thin curtain of the motel room. I considered sleeping in my truck and dealing with everything in a few hours. Or joining the two Mexicans at the other end of the lot, who sat on their tailgate, drank beers, and laughed too loud. They looked like nice enough guys. I wanted to know what was so funny. But it was time to sack up, be a friend, and tell Bobby the truth.

When I walked into the room, Big Piwi and Bobby turned from the table, but returned to what they were doing. Big Piwi had toilet paper sticking out of both nostrils. As funny as it looked, I didn’t dare laugh at the sight. They played poker, using store-bought cookies as chips. Big Piwi put an Oreo in the pot. Bobby took it out and placed it back in Big Piwi’s stack.

“I keep telling you,” Bobby said, exhausted, “Oreos are five. If you want to call, you need to bet ten. That’s two Oreos or a Chips Ahoy.”

Big Piwi folded and ate a Chips Ahoy instead.

“Good to see you boys playing nice,” I said.

“My blood got hot. It does that,” Bobby said. “But even I’ll only slam my head into a brick wall so many times before I give up or pass out or go out to the shed and find my jackhammer. And The Thing That Should Not Be had a big bag of cookies under the seat. Seriously, I haven’t had a Nutter Butter since I was eight.”

Big Piwi rose from the tiny chair, leaving its legs sharply bowed, a wonder that it hadn’t collapsed under his weight. He raked all the cookies on the table into his cookie bag with his forearm and walked out the door without a word.

Bobby got up and stretched. “The whole time you were gone, I couldn’t get him to shut up. Talk about a chatterbox. Then you get here and he clams up.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course not. Fucker didn’t say a word. Nothing. The only sound he made was when he farted. That was a major communication breakthrough. It smelled like the mole poblano from Elvia’s.”

“Why did I need to know that?”

“Thought you might find it interesting. It was unusual.”

I walked to the closet and leaned my back against it. “Look, Bobby. We got to talk.”

“Are you breaking up with me? After all these years?” Bobby smiled. Then he studied my face and his smile faded. He sat down on the edge of the bed, the weight of his legs practically giving beneath him.

“Oh, Christ. Is she dead? She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“What? No. Is that what my face looked like? No. Sorry. No. I don’t know, but no, I didn’t find that out.”

Bobby let out a big breath. “Okay. What then?”

“There’s a video. I saw Julie—”

“Stop. I don’t want to know what kind of porn she’s in. It’s enough you saw it.”

“No. Jesus. She’s not dead and it’s not porn. Let me finish, for Christ’s sake.”

“You suck at this shit, bro.”

“You’re not helping.”

Bobby finally let me talk. I told him what I had seen and what I had learned from Tomás. As he listened, his face was stone. I couldn’t even see him breathe. It was disconcerting. Bobby usually expressed his emotions in real time, never much mystery to how he was feeling.

“Not what I was expecting,” Bobby said. “Fucked up. Did you watch it?”

“Part of it. It was like a preview. Tomás is going to find the whole thing. Send me the link or file or whatever.”

“Did she look like she was forced?”

“Hard to say. Even if it was for money, she’s being used.”

“She won?”

“Definitively. Knocked the other girl out cold.”

“Of course, she did. She’s my kid.”

“We should tell the cops. It could be important.”

Bobby stood quickly. I flinched.

“What’re they going to do? Nothing. You, me, and fucking Morales: that’s the only people that need to know. And Becky. I’ll tell her. Tell the cops, not only does everyone know, including the papers—cops don’t keep secrets—but might spook whoever we’re looking for.”

“It’s not really a secret. It was playing at the party. It’s on the Internet. It’s out there. You can’t get rid of it.”

“Exactly,” Bobby said, “so let’s not advertise. It’s only important that people that know Julie and Beck and me don’t know. Most people that watch it see anonymous girls and move to the next batch. Like the way you look at porn stars, like they live on another planet. Not like people. As long as we don’t give reason to link Julie with that video, no one’s going to do it themself. You can’t find something if you don’t know to look.”

“You sound calm and rational, Bobby. It’s fucking with me a little. A lot.”

“I don’t feel calm. But, of all the things it could’ve been, this ain’t the worst. Hell, is it even illegal? And the fact it was playing at that douchebag’s house means I got a direction to head in. It’s fucked up, but that video might help us find Julie.”

“You’re right. Finding her is the main thing.”

“It is,” Bobby said. “That’s why I need you to step away from the closet, so I can get my guns.”

I shook my head and squared my feet. “I don’t think so, Bobby. We’ve been running ragged. I let you take your guns, you might kill someone.”

“Not really your problem, Jimmy. And I don’t want to be a dick and bring up old business, but you’ve done more killing than me. My body count is still at zero. The only thing I’ve ever killed is my liver.”

“That’s a cheap shot. Bringing up the past. What happened out in the dunes, that was different.”

“The only thing was different was that it was about you, not me. I might got a rep as some insaniac, but you got more blood on your hands than me. I watched you kill a guy. Deserved it, sure, but makes you a shitty role model to be the angel on my shoulder.”

“I can’t let you have the guns.”

Bobby looked at the ceiling, then back at me. “Go home, Jimmy. Go back to your family. To your quiet life. Quit trying to fucking save me. I was fine for the dozen years you were gone, and I didn’t ask you to come out here. Never asked you to help me. This is my family, my problem. You’re in my way.”

“First off, fuck you. Second, that ‘I didn’t ask you to come here’ bullshit don’t fly. You call my ass anytime you need a chaos buddy on one of your drunken escapades.”

“Mavescapades.”

“Shut up. You know how many times in the last twenty-four hours I wanted to get in my truck and drive home, and how shitty I felt for considering it? You didn’t have to ask me to come out here, you fucking asshole. And I didn’t need permission. Someone has to protect you from your dumbass, fucked-up idiotness. And third, fuck you again. You almost hurt my feelings.”

“I’m going to count to three. If you’re still standing in front of that closet, I’m going to kick your ass. Don’t want to do it. Won’t be a dick about it. But one way or the other, I’m leaving with my big bag of guns.”

I shifted my hands and got in a sideways stance. “Don’t bother to count. I know getting all the way to three might be a challenge. I ain’t moving, fucko. If the only way to keep you from getting hurt is to fight you, I’m your huckleberry.”

“Nice reference.”

“Thanks.”

“Seriously. Move. I’m not playing.”

“Neither am I.”

“Okay then.”

The battle that followed was epic. Though there were no spectators to appreciate the fight, the display of violence was for the ages. Bobby moved for the closet door. I stood my ground. Our conversation no longer required words. It was time to talk with our fists. A flurry of punches flew, both of us standing toe-to-toe, waiting for the other to fall. So evenly matched, only a mental error would name the victor. Trading hard shots, forearms deflecting blows, dueling in the small space. The sound was deafening, the fury furious. At one point, Bobby blocked my spinning roundhouse kick and used my forward momentum to judo me against the wall. But like a jungle cat, I used the wall to push off, coming right back at him like a spider monkey.

I’m fucking with you. None of that happened. Bobby kicked my ass. With shocking ease.

I don’t think I even got a punch in. What little I remember of the historic beatdown was brutally efficient. Bobby didn’t hurt me any more than he had to, just enough to take me out. Like a surgeon kicking someone’s ass surgically. I wish I could have seen it, but I was too busy getting knocked unconscious.

When I woke up, my face and ribs hurt like hell. I lay on the ground staring at the cottage cheese ceiling, in no hurry to go anywhere. I finally sat up feeling a little nauseous, but I kept the sick in check. Luckily I was out of cigarettes or I would have been an idiot and lit one, which most likely would have turned my intestinal rumbling into a volcano (if that’s too subtle, my vomit would have been the magma).

I stood, got woozy, sat back down, took a few deep breaths, and tried again. I had a light headspin, but I wasn’t going to topple. I opened the closet door, confirming what I already knew. The big bag of guns was gone.

“Fuck it,” I said.

I rolled up my sleeping bag, gathered my gear, gave the motel door a hearty slam on the way out, and headed home.

SEVEN

I made it to Salton City, halfway home. I pulled over into the dirt lot of a closed fruit stand, rows of date palms behind it. Painted with a roller on the side of the yellow building, it read,
D
ATE
S
HAKES
-F
RESHEST
.
The leaning structure looked just as run-down as when I was a kid. On our rare out-of-town trips, Pop and I would stop at that stand and get date shakes. It’s funny how my city friends made faces when I mentioned drinking date shakes. Dates are delicious. Ice cream is delicious. Both are sweet. Ergo, sweet and delicious. Maybe it’s because dates are brown and if you close your eyes, they have the texture of cockroach. But still, it’s not marmite.

I dug my phone out of my pocket and tried Bobby’s cell. It went to voice mail.

“Bobby, if you get this, stop what you’re doing. I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is, stop. Sit on the ground, call me, we’ll go from there. Don’t move, don’t shoot anyone, and if you do, for the love of Edwige Fenech, don’t kill them. Just don’t. Call me, damn it.”

Of all the places Bobby might head, the most obvious was Driskell’s. According to Gabe, Julie worked for Driskell. He made the movie and was into some bad shit. Bobby would want to finish their conversation, and knowing Bobby, even if he couldn’t get information from him, he would still feel the need to punish.

It was still too early to call Angie. I don’t know if she would know what to do, but I sure as hell didn’t. I turned my truck around and headed back north.

Driving back to La Quinta, I hoped the feeling in my gut was an overreaction. As much of a complete barbarian as I paint Bobby, his violence had limits. Didn’t it? He wasn’t a killer. He was a brawler. Bar brawls existed to battle his boredom, but nothing had been at stake before. With his daughter’s life on the line, who knew what he was capable of? And he was hauling around a big bag of guns.

The sun hadn’t risen, but its orange glow illuminated the streets of La Quinta. Other than a couple overzealous joggers, an old guy in slippers and pajamas angrily walking his Shih Tzu, and a group of Mexican laborers staking the good spots in front of the U-Haul, the streets were empty. As I drove down the main road, the streetlights turned off.

Calle Tlaxcala showed no signs of life. I pulled in a couple houses down from Driskell’s. I could see his Hummer at the end of the block. It was still ugly and stupid. No sign of Bobby’s Ranchero.

I pulled out my fresh pack of smokes. I already wished I hadn’t bought it. I wished a lot of things. I wished Bobby hadn’t kicked my ass. I wished Julie hadn’t gone missing. But I knew how much good wishing did. The last time I made a wish and it came true was my eighth birthday and two days out of its package, I had destroyed my GI Joe Transportable Tactical Battle Platform Playset with an M-80 and some lighter fluid. Cobra Command won that day. Wishes might come true, but that doesn’t mean you can’t blow them to shit.

I got out of my truck, lit a cigarette, and walked as casually as I could to the circular driveway in front of Driskell’s house. Like the ashes at the bottom of a fire pit, all the remnants of the party were on display. Bottles, cans, and red Solo cups littered the small patch of grass. Someone had pulled a dick move and run a knife through part of the trampoline, leaving a huge slit. Nobody would have been doing much jumping anyway with the amount of vomit that had pooled in the tramp’s lowest spot. I half-expected to find some prone bodies passed out in the yard or hedges, but apparently the battlefield had been swept for casualties.

The front door stood wide open. I let myself in, immediately stepping on a used condom. I scraped it off on the step. The house looked empty. Television voices—not live voices—came from the back. Muffled and strange, like they were broadcasting from overseas via ham radio.

The living room was a spectacular disaster. I felt for the crew of domestic workers that would undoubtedly be charged with returning the place to its original state. How do you fix a broken narwhal horn? Super Glue? The local narwhal horn repair shop, Narwhally World?

I followed the sound through the dining area and kitchen to the back room where Bobby and I had seen Tomás and Driskell talk hours earlier. The wall-mounted television played the same girl fight/gonzo porn loop. A too-young girl on her knees gave POV head to the cameraman. I would say that there was sadness in her eyes, but that would be me putting it there. There wasn’t anything in her eyes, dead with acceptance. The screen had a crack in it, the sound distorted and ghostly.

I would have preferred looking at anything other than that poor girl, but my other option was the dead body in the middle of the room.

“Damn it, Bobby,” I said softly.

Craig Driskell’s body slouched off the edge of the couch, his bathrobe open wide to reveal his doughy, nude body underneath. I didn’t see any gunshot wounds and I wasn’t interested in getting any closer, but he was very dead. The skin on his torso was discolored in shades of purple, green, and yellow with bruises and still-wet blood, but it was his head that was all wrong. It looked like it had fallen in on itself, misshapen like a clay pot collapsing on a potter’s wheel. And while the features of his crushed cranium could barely be described as a face, Driskell’s wide-open eyes stared through the distortion.

Fists could have done that kind of damage, but it would have taken a long time. More likely a bat or a pipe or the butt of a gun. Someone had bludgeoned and stove in Driskell’s head to the shape of a deflated basketball.

Dark blood speckled the couch fabric, small patches here and there. Whenever I think back, I imagine flies landing in the blood and on the wounds. I don’t think there were any, but that’s how I remember it. The room smelled like beef stew and feces.

Staring at the body, it didn’t seem real, like a scene in a movie. I felt separated from the reality and had no idea what to do next. A dead body will do that to any normal person.

Finally, it flashed in my head—what I needed to do. I needed to get the fuck out of there.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets, trying to remember what I had touched. The front door had been open, I had walked through the house. Nothing. I hadn’t touched anything. I’d take any luck I could get. But had Bobby touched anything? Then I realized, with the party the night before, it didn’t matter. The place would be covered with hundreds of random fingerprints, footprints, and probably a dickprint or two.

A sound came from the living room. A footstep and a grunt.

“Goddammit! That’s just gross,” a male voice shouted.

Whoever was at the front door either stepped on the same condom as me, a different condom, or something equally disgusting.

I didn’t wait to find out. I jumped down the three steps into the dead-man room. The thick shag made no sound on landing.

“Police! Anyone home?” the voice said. “We received a call about a disturbance. One of your neighbors reported yelling, loud noises coming from this residence. God damn, what a mess. Is anyone there? I’m coming inside.”

There was only one other door in the room. I darted past Driskell’s carcass, hopscotching over the blood on the carpet. Without looking back I opened the door with the heels of my hands and stepped into a long hallway. I ran to the end, the farther I got from the room with the dead body, the better.

At the end of the hall, I reached the master bedroom. Animal prints, chiffon, Roman columns. And yes, there were mirrors on the ceiling. I had to give it to the late Mr. Driskell. He had awful taste, but he was consistent. There was also a full-size stuffed grizzly bear and a large mosaic three-dimensional penis, for the record. But the only thing I cared about was the sliding glass door that opened into the backyard.

I faintly heard the cop at the other end of the house wretch and say, “Holy shit.” I was out the door, in the backyard, over the short concrete brick wall, and on the fairway of the fourteenth hole in thirty seconds flat. I leaned against the wall, completely out of breath from the half-minute of activity. I was embarrassed for myself. Without clubs or a cart, I probably stuck out like—well, like me on a golf course, but luckily it was early enough that all the golfers were still working the front nine. I made my way along the course and back to the main road without being seen.

I cautiously walked past the intersection that led down Calle Tlaxcala, just a regular neighborhood guy out for a stroll. The police car sat parked in front of Driskell’s driveway. The cop fast-walked out of the house and slumped down in the driver’s seat, leaving the car door open. He took some deep breaths with his head at his knees. Then he straightened, found the radio receiver, and called in.

In five minutes there would be a bajillion cops pulling fibers and canvassing neighbors. I had to get my truck off the street before they got there. Even the dumbass La Quinta cops would eventually get curious about the vehicles on the street. Especially one that had no good goddamn reason being there.

With the speed and posture of an old man, the young cop stood and walked back to the front door. He didn’t look happy about it. The moment he was out of sight, I booked toward my truck. I had to get out of there quickly. On my first attempt to get my key in the driver’s side door, I dropped my key ring. When I reached to pick up the keys, I accidentally kicked them under the truck. Of course. I dropped and dug around until I found them. When I rose, I realized the door was unlocked. I climbed inside, ducked down, and peeked over the dash to make sure the cop was still inside.

“Oh crap,” I said.

I was facing the wrong way down a dead-end street. I couldn’t imagine a fuckeder situation. To hell with it. I started my truck, threw it in reverse, and backed out of Calle Tlaxcala way too fast. At the intersection, I expected a car to turn onto the road and crash into me. But sometimes the bitch of a Fate that throws bad luck at me misses. I fishtailed onto the main road, threw the truck into drive, and headed east. Away from the death house.

I drove until I realized that I didn’t know where I was driving. Five miles later, I pulled into the parking lot of a Circle K. I bought a bottle of Sauza and two packs of smokes. (At this point, who was I kidding?) I drank tequila from a paper sack and smoked three cigarettes back-to-back-to-back sitting on my tailgate.

I tried Bobby again, but he still wasn’t picking up. I didn’t want to leave anything incriminating on his voice mail.

“Call me back, Bobby. Goddamn it. Call me, you fucker.”

Driskell was dead. And while I couldn’t see Bobby entering the house guns blazing, I could picture him losing his temper and beating someone bad. If he had found out something else about Julie, something even more fucked up than the fighting, who knew what he was capable of. It wasn’t like there were a whole slew of better suspects than the guy who had gone to the dead guy’s house to assault him.

What had happened in that room?

And where the fuck was Bobby?

Friendships start in strange ways. Single moments bond two people together. Or does it happen over time? As an adult, I have met people and known within minutes that we would be friends if we spent time together. It’s a sense, an instinct. But as a kid, it had everything to do with timing and the moment. Bobby and I had gone to the same grade school, but it wasn’t until sixth grade that we became friends.