The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller Read online

  I felt guilty for not telling Joe what his son said about his roommate. But a confidence is a confidence, and that’s that.

  “I mean, we already had the sex talk, what, five years ago,” Joe said. He took my hand and said, “Do something to your hair?”

  “Washed it.” I gave him a nuzzle.

  “How novel,” he said. The curve of lines by his deep-socket eyes and the rich smell of his skin set me to amorous thoughts.

  When I clicked back in, Joe was saying, “He’s busy enough. He’s into a game called Go. Chinese. You play with little stones. I’ve never seen it. Besides that, he’s doing this conservation project near Culver and Michelson, in there. So it seems like everything’s going all right.”

  “David will be fine. He probably wants to hit you up for a loan for his gambling debts.”

  “He owes me for tires.”

  I smiled. “He told me about that.”

  “He did, huh? Was I ever that dumb, I wonder?”

  “Probably.”

  The server brought our meals: halibut and halibut.

  “Tell me,” I asked Joe, “what do you know about Boyd Russell? He’s the investigator on my two Does.”

  “Russell? He’s okay. Nothing exactly faulty. Just no imagination, no creativity.” He looked down at his drink. I had the feeling there was more he wasn’t telling me.

  “What else?”

  He paused, then said, “The way he conducts his private life.” He regarded me with half-closed eyes. “Has Boyd hit on you yet?”

  “Boyd? No,” I said, laughing.

  “Watch him next time you’re on an investigation with him. He spends a lot more time interviewing the women than the men.”

  I slipped along the leather booth, closing the space. “Yeah? How about losing this joint, you and me? You been hit on, buddy.”

  The moon rode low on the bluffs near the bay as we drove. Joe had a CD of Carly Simon’s “Boys in the Trees” playing, a favorite of mine. When we reached my place he hauled out a package wrapped in red tissue paper, twisted off with a red curly ribbon. He brought it into the house and set it on the coffee table, then took a seat on the sofa.

  I unwrapped it, exposing a stuffed Tasmanian Devil dressed in a leather biker jacket and a red bandanna. “Remind you of anyone?” Joe asked. It did: a certain biker of the felon variety: One Monty Blackman from a case two years earlier, Harley rider, bar owner, pig farmer, smuggler, general all ’round rough trade.

  When I looked at Joe, he had a hand on his stomach again.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Water would be good.”

  On my way to the kitchen I put on music I bought because I knew Joe would like it: Linda Ronstadt, songs of the Forties. Joe was on the balcony looking over the bay when I came back. The inky bay was glossed with the cast light of local businesses along the coast. He stepped back in and sat at the counter and said, “C’mere,” tapping his leg.

  I did, and put my arms around his neck and whispered, “Thanks for Taz.”

  “Don’t mention it, lady.” He gave me a kiss, and just as it was getting interesting, he said, “You know, babe, I think I should call it a night.”

  “Already? You want a Tums or something?”

  “I think I’ll just go on home.”

  “Tomorrow night, then.”

  He paused, then said softly, “Hey, kid. You’re not neglecting your other friends for this old man, are you?”

  “In the first place,” I said, “I don’t know any old men. And in the second, no.” I got off his lap but stood close.

  His palm ran up and down my leg. “You know if you ever want to date someone else, it’s all right, don’t you?”

  I gave the leg of his stool a kick.

  He said, “Just making sure we covered that ground.”

  “We have. Before.”

  “Just so you know you’re a free agent.”

  “What about Boyd Russell?”

  “You want to date him?”

  “I’m saying, you don’t like it that he sleeps around.”

  “He’s married. That’s the difference. I only want the best for you,” he said.

  “Then you’re wishing for what I already have.”

  He got up to go. “We have that wedding Saturday.”

  “Right,” I said. “Sunday I’m going on an Audubon cleanup. To help clear out invasive plants down along San Juan Creek. That’ll kill the morning, but you want to do something later?”

  “Boy, you sure plan far ahead.”

  “It’s because I haven’t had a weekend in so long it seems like a vacation.”

  At the door Joe said, “I’m supposed to go look at cars with David Sunday. He’s trading up. Old Dad here may have to be making the payments even though Dave says he got a raise at the bookstore. Did I tell you he’s working in the college bookstore? Stacking books.”

  “Right.”

  “I asked him if he was reading any. He says sure. Then he tells me a joke he read in one, which was not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “You going to keep it to yourself?”

  “Hm?”

  “The joke.”

  “It’s an Aggie joke. Texas Agricultural. Nerd-U,” he said. “So this Aggie was trying to light a match. The first one doesn’t work. He throws it away, tries another. That one doesn’t light either. Throws it away. Strikes a third. Poof! It fires. He blows it out, says, ‘That’s a good one. I gotta save it!’ ”

  “Oh moan.”

  “You asked.”

  I stood on the front balcony and watched him go to his car. A corner floodlight gave luster to his silver hair, and his brown leather jacket shone like rich mud as he walked and juggled his keys hand to hand.

  FIVE

  I had a training class the next morning at nine that had been set up six weeks before. There’d still be enough time to meet Ray Vega for a little pre-work plinking at a range that lets cops come in early. On the way, my cell phone rang.

  “Smokey, Ray,” he said.

  “How’d I know it would be you?”

  “I can’t make it this morning.”

  “You jerk,” I said.

  His voice gravelly, he said, “You never had a hard night?”

  “Plenty of ’em, but I don’t stand up my friends. You’re gettin’ old, Ray-boy.”

  “On that you may be right,” he said. “What the hell am I? Thirty-one, Jesus. I gotta snag some sleep. Hey, you ever get that gun you were going to?” I pictured him sitting on the side of his bed in his shorts, head in his hand, phone clamped to his ear.

  “Yeah, I bought it. Five-shot snubby. What’s it to ya? You can’t get your ass out of bed to come see.”

  He sighed or yawned again, and said, “That hurts.”

  “Cry me a river.”

  “I’m thinking of getting me a new backup,” he said. “What kind’d you say?”

  “I already told you.”

  “I mean, what kind.”

  “Smith Airweight. Spurless.”

  “Like it?”

  “Gun’s great. Shooter’s terrible.” He yawned again in my ear. “Go back to bed, Raymond.”

  “Nah, I gotta get up. Hey, Smokey?”

  “What?”

  “You should see this new girl…”

  “Oh no, Raymond. Not another one.”

  “You have to meet her. She’s special.”

  “They’re all special, Ray. You notice a pattern there?” A slow sedan listing to one side pulled ahead of me, causing me to change lanes. “Two cars on a long run of nothin’, and this guy has to pull in front of me. Where are you when I need you?”

  “Shoot ’im,” Ray said.

  “Now there’s an idea,” I said.

  “Hey, this girl?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh man. She’s hot.”

  “I don’t need the details, pal.”

  “Can you hang on? I gotta get a drink of water.”

  “No, I can’t hang
on. I’m coming up on Camino Capistrano.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, her name’s Tamika. She’s a guess-what.”

  “What would that be, Raymond?” My tone wasn’t patient.

  “A stripper. Down in Oceanside.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Yeah,” he said cheerily. “What do you think?”

  “I think you should be tied up and whipped hard.”

  “You want to come do it?”

  “Goodbye, Raymond.”

  “Hee-hee,” he said.

  Off the freeway, I drove the quarter-mile down a road known only to shooters and people in search of nursery plants, kitchen tile, or getting their fenders fixed.

  Sweeps of willow, mulefat, and oleander bushes waved in the wind on the left side of the road. The thick stands were perfect bedding-down places for illegals coming up from the southern border. Sometimes those voyagers crossing the tracks that zipper between the road and the distant cliff-side misjudge the speed of a train, and a tech like me is called out. Once, a man with an urge to self-destruct drove a shiny new car onto the rails and sat there, waiting. Ray says there’s nothing like train deaths for mayhem, forget your mere murder. No one can imagine, he says. Problem is, I can.

  When I pulled up to the square structure that housed the shooting range, I was still annoyed that Ray stood me up, but I had to smile at the thought of his last words to me on the phone. Ray with a stripper. Just like him. A stripper. Bless his little ol’ heart.

  Because, once upon a time, I myself had been a dancer on a low-rent stage—in Vegas, home to the bummed out, broke out, beered up, or bratty. Maybe I qualified as that last. I was a dancer, exotic, as they say. Get right down to it, a stripper, true and blue. Ray knows about the history, has the decency to refer to it only once in awhile and then only when we are alone. I was seventeen when I started. It was me. It wasn’t me.

  Today it seems simply not important. Murder is. Justice is. Serving and protecting, like Ray Vega and thousands of others do every day, is. If Ray-my-virile-buddy-Vega wants to date a stripper, well, we’ll just let him.

  I shot the Glock first and did pretty well on a target of a man in black silhouette, giving him a belt line and a happy-face, then took out my new “spurless” revolver with the hammer shrouded in the frame so it can’t snag on clothes when used for a pocket gun. It was a long, hard trigger pull. When the gun finally fired, the muzzle-lift was so fierce the cylinder-release tore skin off my thumb-knuckle. I’d be shooting out street lamps before I’d knock over a bad guy. A young guy behind the counter in the check-in room was watching me through the glass. He put on a set of ears and came through the double doors into the gallery. “What you got there?” he shouted.

  “S-and-W. It’s cute, but I can’t shoot for shit with it,” I said, and offered the gun to him.

  He aimed one-handed and fired five dead-center in the ten. “You’re not used to the size,” he yelled. “It’s got a hell of a long trigger pull.” Then he emptied the cylinder while holding the weapon upside down and pulling the trigger with his pinkie. The tight circle he cut was at the edge of the bullseye, three-o’clock, but a hell of a hole. He gave the gun back and said, “Anytime,” then went down the row to see who else needed help or humbling.

  Annoyed at myself, I clipped on a clean target, switched to the Glock, ran a new target out to fifteen yards, and cookie-cut the center so the backstop shone through like a camera lens.

  From there I drove to sheriff’s headquarters, just a couple of blocks from the lab, and sat through a class on audiology, otherwise known as forensic audiology, in a conference room cold as the morgue. I heard about waveform analysis and replication of acoustic events and waited for it to be over so I could warm up. Trudy Kunitz, another lab tech, sat beside me. She did a lot of police sketches of suspects for public release.

  When the class finally broke we talked a while out in the sun. Trudy had confided in me two weeks ago that she had tested positive for HIV. She was the sort to buy into the think-it-away school. I couldn’t let her off without asking if she had the second test, intended to serve as a check.

  She rubbed her arms for warmth, the sleeves of a heavy black sweater traveling up and down. Her glasses winged out thickly at the sides to correct for severe astigmatism. She said, “In my whole life I’ve had seven dates. Seven,” she said, holding up fingers. “I’m thirty-four. Seven dates, two…events…and I get this.” She shook her head. “I was a virgin till I was thirty, Smokey. No justice, not in this world. And it wasn’t Katchaturian, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I thought you liked him there for a while,” I said.

  “I had two lunch dates with him. He stiffed me for both. ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’, right? Shame on me. Shame on me,” she said, and turned to walk back.

  I said, “I hear he’s working for some magazine, writing articles on guns. I didn’t even think he could spell.”

  She said, “Maybe you only need to spell ‘Bang!’ ”

  “You want to do lunch?” I asked.

  “Can’t make it,” she said, her silver-daisy earrings swinging. “I have a post-post. A drive-by, courtesy of the Sixth Street gang. Then I have to take another blood test. Do you know how mortifying it is to even go in? These fascist women, sitting there talking to you like you’re a little kid. The one who told me? She was younger than me! Heartless little Nazi. Tells me while she’s shuffling papers. I had to ask her to repeat it, couldn’t believe what she was saying, like she was saying go pick up a prescription or something. I didn’t even like the sex. One time. That’s all it takes. Shit. Let’s go.”

  I walked over to Civic Center Square, on my way to a hotdog wagon. Office people, lawyers, clerks, and clients, were emptying from the buildings for lunch. I bought a chili dog and a lemonade and sat on a cold bench with a pigeon perched on the other end.

  He hopped down and waddled away but was back soon, with a mate. She was a beauty: black spots on soft white. Rock doves, they’re called. They stood in front of me and sort of purred. Sucker that I am, I plucked bread and tossed it. In a flash, more birds landed. I licked the chili off one end of the bun and tossed more bits to them. Mistake. Half a dozen sailed in this time, dodging between people to head my way.

  When I got back to the lab, I completed log sheets, made sure my lifts and print cards were in order, and was about to go to the computer when Stu came by. “You need to go out to Turtle Rock,” he said. “We’ve got a dead male Hispanic. Timmins is tied up, King’s at a doctor’s appointment, and Kunitz I can’t get hold of.”

  “Another one? Is it a Doe?”

  “If it’s a Doe, you phone me. I don’t know if it’s a serial or what, but I am not a happy camper here. I want thoroughness here, right?” I was about to come up with an appropriate answer when he asked, “Where were you this morning?”

  “Audiology seminar, headquarters.”

  He frowned, recalling, then said, “You know where that’s at, Turtle Rock?”

  “No problem, Stu.”

  “You could see if Sanders is free to go along.”

  I nodded, not sure if Stu didn’t trust me for the job alone or what, but not wanting to give it much thought, either.

  Joe was on the phone when I came by. When he got off I said, “I’m on my way out to a case,” I said. “Stu says you’d be good company.”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “Turtle Rock.”

  “That’s near David’s school,” he said, straightening his desk to leave. “We talked this morning. He said one of his roommates has been ripping software programs off the internet. Trademarked programs. That makes it illegal. I told him to give the jerk an ultimatum: Knock it off or move out.”

  I was pleased David confided in his dad. Joe’s forehead was still pinched. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why are you frowning then?”

  “I’m not frowning. It’s how you look when yo
u get my age. You’ll learn.”

  “If that’s a bid for pity, it’s wasted.”

  He got up and removed his jacket from the back of the chair. “I could have told him to report his roommate to campus police. I should have. I’m slipping. But you get to thinking, we got cases like this,” he said, nodding to the phone, “and cases like your Does, and who gives a shit about some software programs?”

  “Life in the big city,” I said, rising.

  “Eight million ways to die,” he said. “Who said that, anyway?”

  “The eight million? Mystery writer,” I answered.

  “Eight million. We’ve got what?”

  “Two-and-a-half.”

  “Two-and-a-half million ways to die in this county. Most of them are not going to be by someone else’s hand, and by someone we’re supposed to trust, like this Dana Point asshole.” He tapped a file on his desk. “Who’d you say wrote that, the eight million?”

  I dug for my sunglasses. “Lawrence Block. He’s got this guy named Scudder, a reformed drunk walks around New York doing favors for friends.”

  “Good writer?”

  “I like him.”

  “How much you think a guy like him makes a year?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I should quit,” Joe said, “write books.”

  “Mysteries?”

  “Nah. I don’t much like fiction.”

  “What, then?”

  “Beats me.”

  “That could be a problem.”

  He pulled out the middle drawer of his desk. “Who’s on this from Homicide, you know?”

  “Will Bright.”

  “That girl’s case…” he said, and struggled for the name.

  “Nita Estevez,” I said.

  “That’s the one.” He stared at me the moments it took him to remember that night I spent complaining in his arms about how I couldn’t get anywhere on that case, and how Will Bright wasn’t giving it any more time until new leads turned up.

  “Little Crane,” I muttered as we headed out the door.

  “Beg pardon?” Joe asked.

  “Nevermind.”

  SIX