New River Blues (9 page)

‘Why don't you ask him that?'

‘Oh, I will. But – get all you can from Patricia, will you? Make friends, so she can spill the beans about the Henderson family circus. She must need somebody to talk to about now.'

Menendez looked up from his notebook. ‘Hey, you want me to ask her about the candy?'

‘The what? Omigod, Ray, with all that screaming I completely forgot about the candy! Do you think it's lost or—'

‘Take a breath,' Menendez said. ‘I turned it in to the DNA dollies when I brought the prints down.' By coincidence, all the DNA specialists in the Tucson crime lab were female, so male detectives called them ‘DNA dollies,' and pretended to think their specialty was slightly bogus. It helped salve their egos, which were bruised by not understanding what the hell those bright-eyed women were talking about. ‘So, shall I find out if Patricia knows where the dish belongs?'

‘Absolutely. Oh, Ray, you were brilliant to remember the candy.'

‘It's nothing,' he said. ‘Standard police procedure, plus great genes and once in a while I pop a few steroids.'

‘This ain't gonna cut it,' Nino told the overhead light. His earlier resolutions about grammar had evaporated and he was going downhill in other ways as well, lying in his unmade bed in his shorts at three in the afternoon, staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes. His room smelled like a winey swamp.

He needed to get up, take a shower, and get the hell out of town. But his head hurt so much he couldn't move without moaning. His stomach felt like it had been kicked by an elephant. He was sure the remedy was water, but every time he drank some he threw up again.

The most dismal part of this hangover was that beyond it lay something worse. As soon as he quit being actively sick and got up, he would have to face the old Yuma feeling – the fear, rage, and self-hatred that came from knowing he'd screwed up again and was going to have to pay for it with more hard time. Because caught or running, locked up inside or living under bridges, what difference did it make, really? Same old same old, Nino the dipshit running again. Fuck, he wanted to stop!

Some day maybe but not today. Today he had to run again, and he didn't know where to go.

Before the Yuma feeling there'd been the Sierra Vista feeling, the sick terror he'd carried around for months after a knife fight in a hotel kitchen there. That time he had to bite down on a toothbrush handle to keep from crying while he wrapped a towel around his arm, so the bandages would quit leaking blood while he bought a ticket on the bus.

And before Sierra Vista there'd been Willcox, the time he slammed a ladder into the face of the head picker in the pecan grove and ran.

If he thought long enough he'd work his way back to Bisbee where it all started, the day his grandmother yelled at him once too often. Big fucking deal over one broken egg on the floor. Why couldn't she cook it herself like he asked? But no, she had to sit there, humped up at the kitchen table sucking on a cigarette, saying, ‘Get home at meal times or go hungry.' Then when he dropped the egg he was trying to cook she snapped him with her dish towel and yelled, ‘Fool, you're just like your worthless mother!'

It felt good to throw the heavy iron pan at her head, yelling, ‘Whose worthless mother do you want me to be like, bitch?' His aim had been so much better than his judgment that day. But he had never believed she would actually do what she was always threatening, dial 911 with the blood running out of her cut lip and tell the sheriff to come take him away. When he heard the sirens coming he ran into the wash behind the house and hid in the mesquite, no jacket or nothing and it got cold out there when the sun went down. Shivering with cold, hungrier every minute, and thinking he was the worst age of all, fourteen, too young to hire and too tall to attract any sympathy. That was the first time he got that oops-too-late, hopelessly-screwed-up jolt of adrenalin and bile that he would later call the Bisbee feeling, the Yuma feeling. Over and over again, the same old feeling,
How did I get into this fucked-up mess?

That time in Bisbee, the HHS agent was way too overloaded to come looking for him. But by the time he realized that, he was gone. Just like he always was from then on, whenever trouble found him, gone down the road to try someplace new.

The DEA had not been too busy to look for him, later, and when he first got sent to Yuma he told himself that this hell-hole on the Mexican border was the worst mess yet. But later, coming out of prison with Pauly, for a while he felt like his luck had changed. Maybe he could get a fresh start in Tucson with somebody to watch his back for a change. And it worked out that way, at first – hell, Pauly even fed him, till he found Madge and this harmlessly crazy bunch of artsy-crafties at the theater.

Safe upstairs in the dusty attic room that went with the job, they had laughed till they choked at these clueless actors who talked endlessly and posed and took them at face value. For a few weeks they'd both been pretty contented here. They got hilarious again the day Nino reported how Madge said, ‘I think the theater might turn out to be just the right
lifestyle
for you, Nino.'

Madge was so full of shit it was a wonder he could move without sloshing over, but at the same time, the man undeniably had some kind of an edge, he knew
something
. Because look at him, way too young to be retired and yet he did nothing for a living. ‘Nada nada nada, my dear,' he said. ‘Work? Surely you jest.' And all the little actresses giggled and rolled their eyes. But Madge drove a very nice vintage sports car and hung with the people who seemed to run everything, people who lived in beautiful houses like that one last night. Thinking about that house and last night, Nino turned over and groaned.

He drifted into a doze for a few minutes, till Felicity walked in and touched his forehead with her dry, cold hand. He sat up and yelled, ‘What?'

Felicity made that tinkling sound that was her version of a laugh and said, ‘My goodness, did I scare you?' Which, since she weighed maybe eighty-seven pounds with her shoes on, made him feel like a hopeless dork. But at the same time she did her cute eye-squinch thing – that was Felicity's special trick, to make it clear you were a jerk but then sweeten it up some way so you'd be an even bigger idiot if you took offense. She could do all that with just two or three words and a nose wrinkle.

Nino asked Madge once, ‘What is it with Felicity? Even when she's doing me a favor she makes me want to break her face.'

‘Oh, well, sweetie,' – Madge called everybody sweetie, men and women, young and old – ‘don't take it personally, she does that to everyone.' He gave one of his forget-it waves, like shooing away chickens. ‘Felicity can't help it, she's passive-aggressive.' He liked to sum people up like that, in one or two words, boom. The theater director was an insecure bully, boom. The dance instructor was a fraud, bam. The celebrity-worshipping CPA volunteer who did the theater's books for free? Anal-retentive. And now Felicity was passive-aggressive, whatever the fuck that meant.

Nino repeated it to Pauly, asking, ‘You ever hear that expression?'

‘No, but if it means uppity snot,' Pauly said, ‘the silly old fag called one right for a change.' Pauly was pretty good at summing people up, too. Felicity, like every other female in Tucson under fifty, Pauly wanted to fuck all day. But since he knew he had no chance with her he just sneered past her and waited for the noise to stop.

Now she stood over Nino, vibrating with her strange mix of neediness and contempt, saying, ‘Don't worry, I only touched you to see if you were dead.' She handed him the glass she was carrying. ‘Drink this.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I have to get you going. Dress rehearsal in four hours and the stage is still set up for Sunday's matinee. And Pauly's not here to help us, remember?'

That made him sit up and drink the antacid. He had not dreamed that part, then – Felicity had been there. So why hadn't she called the police? And why would she expect him to fool around setting up the theater if she knew he . . . A dozen questions fought for attention and his brain felt like it was on fire.

When did the party get so out of hand? He remembered the fun, after the guests left and they started cleaning up – the music going and some silly dancing between chores. Then Madge passed around this big ballsy toke that had such a kick . . . but maybe it didn't mix very well with that last glass of wine. He'd been dancing with Felicity when he began to feel like his eyeballs had come loose and were rolling around in their sockets, getting a glance now and then but no longer able to focus.

But he couldn't connect that memory to whatever happened next. There was a blank space of nothing, and then Zack was shaking him awake on the floor somewhere upstairs in the dark, saying, ‘Nino, what the Christ have you done, man?'

Nino didn't know. He kept saying, ‘What? What?'

‘We were in the kitchen and we heard the gun,' Zack said. ‘Felicity, get the light, will you?' The light came on and Nino found that he was holding this big monster of a weapon, what was it? He let go of it but Zack said, ‘Oh, God, don't drop it,' and pressed it back into his arms. ‘Be careful,' Zack said, ‘it might go off . . . oh.'

Zack had turned a little, toward the bed, and stood with his mouth open, staring. ‘Omigod,' he whispered.

Nino saw the blood then, the two naked bodies on the bed. He started to gag, but he never finished that because he saw the funny little earring with the dangle, and that stupid ring with the missing stone, and his heart stopped. He felt his chest tighten, he couldn't breathe, the room whirled. He sucked air desperately and yelled, ‘Pauly!'

Zack clapped a hand over his mouth and the two of them, Felicity and Zack, grabbed an armpit apiece and got him out of there. He remembered getting dragged downstairs, but he must have blacked out again when they got outside. Some time later he was getting out of the catering van at the side door to the theater, and Zack was telling him to sleep it off, whispering, ‘I'll get rid of the gun.'

That part must have been a dream, wasn't it? He sat up on the hard little bed above the stage, drinking Felicity's hangover remedy and wishing he knew for sure. Alcohol sometimes made him hostile, he knew that, but then, face it, almost everything made him hostile sooner or later.

Not Pauly, though. He'd hardly ever been even seriously annoyed by Pauly, who was a dork but a good-hearted dork and somehow comforting to have around.
So why did I go get that gun?
Zack had showed him the gun rack earlier, coming back from the help's can. He'd said, ‘You want to see something fancy, look at this,' and turned on the light in the den.

But why would he go back out there and take that big gun off the rack, carry it upstairs, and shoot old Pauly and their fancy hostess . . .
They were just having a
nice hump on that big expensive bed.
Why would I shoot them for that?
He shook his head and the room whirled. He closed his eyes and whispered, ‘Before when I hurt people, there was always a reason.'

‘I'll come back tomorrow,' Zack had told him as he helped him up the stairs to his room, ‘and we'll figure out what to do.' But what was there to figure out? Nino just had to run. If he could get up the nerve to go outside.

What he needed right now was the kind of courage he would get from a cold beer and a joint, and then another cold beer and a lift out of town. All of which he might have been able to find, he thought, even with a crippling hangover, if his old buddy had been here to help. But Pauly was up there in bed in that elegant house with his face blown away.

Why, though?
Why did I go and kill that silly little turd?

FIVE

S
arah's cell phone rang as she walked away from Menendez' cubicle. Jason Peete, talking from some noisy space with voices all around him, said, ‘Sarah, you downtown?'

‘Yes. What's up?'

‘Well . . . you know Delaney told me to look around for the gun.'

‘And you found it?'

‘No, but I think I found the cupboard where it belongs. There's a paneled den at the back of the house on the first floor, has a gun rack full of hunting rifles and skeet-shooting guns and ammo, and a space at the top for a bigger weapon. Double-ought shells for a shotgun but the gun is missing.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, indeed. Gone gone gone.'

‘Well, that is very interesting. Nice timing, Jason, I'm just about to start talking to the husband, I'll ask him where it is. Call me if you find it, huh?'

‘Without even pausing to scratch,' Peete said

She went on down the hall to the ‘good' interview room, where Henderson waited, stolid in an overstuffed chair. She'd hoped he might feel a little nervous by now, but instead he was beginning to look numb.

‘Let's start with your whereabouts for the last couple of days,' Sarah said, turning a page on her legal tablet. ‘And nights,' she added, watching sideways to see if he took offense. He showed no reaction, staring blankly into the corner of the room. ‘When exactly did you leave Tucson?'

‘Uh . . . Friday afternoon. Late, maybe five o'clock.'

‘And you went directly to Phoenix?'

‘What? Oh, yeah, to Phoenix. To a . . .' He paused so long Sarah considered checking the pulse behind his ear. Finally he roused, took a deep breath, and said, ‘conference.' Finishing the sentence seemed to get his gears unstuck. He sat up, shuffled his feet, sipped his coffee.

‘At a hotel?'

‘Yes.'

‘Which one?'