A Nasty Piece of Work (4 page)

“We’re covering a bondsman named Neppi. His niece posted bail on someone you arrested named Emilio Gava. Miss Neppi thinks Gava may be about to jump bail, leaving her holding the $125,000 bag. Turns out the condo deed Gava’s girlfriend put up to cover the bond was phony. My company’s in for half of Neppi’s eventual loss, so they sent me out to jump-start the eventual investigation. According to the court records, you were the arresting officer.”

“Damn right I was.” Awlson moistened a thick thumb on the tip of a pasty tongue and thumbed through a loose-leaf desk calendar. “I’m also the chief prosecution witness. Stanley Malone over at the prosecutor’s office asked me to show up in court at ten o’clock on—where the hell is it?—uh-huh, the Friday after next Friday.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could walk me through the arrest.”

“Not much to walk. We staked out a joint called the Blue Grass, which is a seedy bar the other side of the tracks even though we do not have tracks in Las Cruces, if you see what I’m drivin’ at. The county narcs been tryin’ to close the place down for centuries but somebody knows somebody in the state capitol. At least that’s my take on the situation. On or about eleven on the night of the second, the Blue Grass is dark but not so dark you cannot see once your eyes get accustomed. I am nursin’ a drink at the bar. Officer Rodriguez is playin’ pinball near the door. Officer DiPego is feedin’ quarters into the juke which he claimed on his expense account and they refused to reimburse because they said he was listenin’ to the music for his own personal pleasure. In breezes the perpetrator, who we later identified as one Emilio Gava, age forty-two. He is an American citizen but central castin’ Italian, which is to say dark-skinned, lean and leathery, with what I would describe as a smirk but someone else’d likely call a smile pasted on his too-handsome face. Dark good looks, oily black hair swept back, good shoulders, narrow waist, head held at an angle as if he was hard of hearing in one ear, which it turns out he was—he’d been hit in the ear with a brick once when he tried to peddle protection on the wrong block. His eyes were busy flickin’ here and there takin’ in everythin’. I make him to be six foot even, one hundred seventy-five, and hit it on the nose. He is wearin’ a white silk shirt buttoned up to the neck, no tie, a dark green double-breasted jacket unbuttoned.”

“Was he carrying?”

“We see the open jacket and we think he may be, so we all have got our handguns in our hands when we make the arrest, but he turns out to be clean as a whistle. Where was I? He slides into a booth in the back near the toilets across from a skinny kid with long sickle-shaped sideburns and a three-inch knife burn on one cheek. We later identified the second perpetrator as one Oropesa, Jesus, age twenty-seven, a Chicano with a record as long as Interstate 25 from here up to Santa Fe. I make the kid to be five foot seven and a half, a hundred thirty-three. In the mirror behind the bar I see him glance around nervous-like, then he slips a small rectangular-shaped package—now listed as prosecution exhibit A—across the table. The first perpetrator slides a long white envelope—prosecution exhibit B—back across the table to the kid. I nod to Officers Rodriguez and DiPego and we move in and collar them in the act.”

“Did either of them resist arrest?”

Awlson smiled a razor-edged smile. It said,
You need to be real dumb to resist arrest if Sergeant Awlson is the arresting officer.

“How’d he take it when you read him Miranda?”

“Perpetrators all have got poker faces these days, you never know what they’re thinkin’, do you?”

“Then what?”

“The rest is pure routine. We cuff them and bring them in and photograph them and ink-pad them and hold them overnight. We let them each make one phone call on the house. By noon the next mornin’ they have both made bail and are out on the street.”

“Detective Awlson, you described Gava’s eyes flicking here and there and taking in everything. Everything but you. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but if I spotted you sitting at the bar I wouldn’t purchase cocaine no matter how dark the joint was.”

His eyes, which up to then had been squinting, slowly opened and he looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. “You ask all-right questions, Gunn. You been in the indemnity racket long?”

“Long enough to notice things that are as plain as the nose on your face.”

“My view is that I could pass for anythin’ from a travelin’ salesman to a travel agent. Officer DiPego chews gum and nods his head in time to the music for which he wasn’t reimbursed, so he looks like somethin’ that washed up on the tide. But Officer Rodriguez is fresh out of the police academy. He looks like an undercover detective tryin’ not to look like an undercover detective. To answer your question, maybe Gava isn’t as street-smart as you. To answer your question, maybe his eyes wasn’t accustomed to the dark in the Blue Grass. To answer your question, I don’t know the answer to your question.”

“I have another question. What were you doing hanging out at the Blue Grass?”

“We had an anonymous tip that a buy had been set up for eleven that night.”

“A letter?”

“A phone call.”

“Phone calls are usually recorded.”

He nodded carefully. “That’s correct.”

“Do you have any idea who supplied the tip?”

“It’s not anybody I’d want to break bread with. Listen up, Gunn, you know and I know and the wall over there knows that the tipster wasn’t a law-abidin’ United States of America citizen who overheard a conversation somewhere and wanted to help keep New Mexico drug-free. It was someone with a grudge against one of the perpetrators. It was someone who had somethin’ to gain by the arrest of one or both of the perpetrators. Gava and the Chicano kid were handed to us on a silver platter. Me, I am blue-collar, which is to say I never trust the contents of silver platters. If you want my opinion, the whole thing stinks.”

“It’d sure be interesting to know who phoned in with the tip.”

Detective Awlson’s scornful smile made a curtain call. Fan lines spread out from the corners of his eyes. It was easy to see he’d give his right arm to know the identity of the tipster. I decided to push my luck and asked him if I could get to hear the original phone call. On the theory that if you go hog, you might as well go whole hog, I asked if I could have a copy of the phone call. I told him about drawing a blank at the
Las Cruces Star
and asked for a copy of Gava’s mug shot.

Awlson let his glance drift over to the wall clock just as the minute hand thudded onto the hour. He pushed himself off the chair and shrugged his way into his shoulder holster and headed for the Records Department on the second floor. I fell in alongside him. “Nice digs you have here in Las Cruces,” I remarked. “It’s got lots of class.”

“They’re tearin’ it down in the fall to make way for another of them shopping malls. As if we weren’t drownin’ in shopping malls. We’re movin’ into one of those air-conditioned glass-and-steel doohickeys downtown. Word is they’re swappin’ our electric typewriters for word processors. First I hear that words can be processed. Live, learn. What the hell, I’ll add my IBM to the pile of Remingtons on the floor in case the newfangled computers crash, which is somethin’ I’m told they do if you look cross-eyed at them.”

“People in New Mexico kill for air-conditioning,” I said.

Awlson shrugged. “I’m not lookin’ forward to the move. Someone told me you can’t pry open the windows if you wanted to.” He snickered. “I s’pose they got our best interests at heart. I s’pose they don’t want us jumpin’ out in frustration.”

Six

I deposited messages on Ornella Neppi’s assorted phone numbers. She returned my call late afternoon. I did most of the talking but found myself leaving gaps between the sentences in the hope of hearing her voice. I suggested we meet at the new diner that recently opened halfway between Hatch and Las Cruces. “The word is out that the sirloins are thick as your thumb and charcoal broiled,” I said.

She agreed on condition that we go dutch, which made me think of Kubra and that joker whose name escapes me going dutch at the Campus Cave. I proposed a more imaginative way of handling the bill. “You can pay for the solids,” I said. “I’ll pay for the liquids.”

I was rewarded with a laugh.

“Does that mean yes?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “it means yes.”

On the way to the diner, I stopped at the hock shop on the street behind the Korean twenty-four-hour market and purchased a used Sony Walkman. Friday beat me to the restaurant—I spotted her Ford van parked around the side. She didn’t beat me by much—the hood over her motor was still warm to the touch. She was sitting in a booth at the back of the diner and waved when she saw me. I can’t remember if I waved back. Then again I can’t remember if I didn’t. Her lips thinned into a hopeful smile as I slid onto the banquette across from her. “So you must have news to bring me all this way,” she said.

The table top was transparent Plexiglas. I could see Friday had her sandals on. I could see she still didn’t paint her toenails. I could see the thin fabric of a washed-out skirt hugging her thighs. I ordered two glasses of house punch and, producing the Walkman, slipped in a cassette. Reaching across the table, I fitted the earphones over her ears and hit the button marked
PLAY
so she could hear the anonymous phone call that sent Detective Awlson off to the Blue Grass to arrest Emilio Gava and the Chicano pusher. Here’s what Friday heard.

[Male voice] “Awright, awright, I want to report a crime that’s going to be committed.”

[Voice of female dispatcher] “Please state your name and give us a phone number where we can get back to you if we need to.”

“I don’t got a name, I don’t got a phone number. I don’t want to get involved. I am just an ordinary citizen reporting a crime, is all. Take my woid for it, huh? I heard dese two jerks talking in a bar. A Chicano is selling five ounces of uncut cocaine to some guy at eleven tonight.”

“Sir, we need to have your name. I can promise you your identity will be protected—”

“You’re chasing rainbows, angel. Nobody never found a pot of gold chasing rainbows. You wanna know where the sale is going to take place or you don’t wanna know, which is it?”

“Sir—”

“Awright, I have not got all night. What do you say we put this show on the road, huh? The merchandise changes hands at a joint called the Blue Grass in Las Cruces. At eleven. The seller is a kid with sideburns, a Chicano. The buyer is in his early forties, dark skin, dark hair, Italian.”

“Sir—”

“The Blue Grass in Las Cruces. At eleven.”

At which point the phone line went dead. Friday handed me back the earphones. I asked her if she recognized the voice.

Friday nodded carefully. “I recognize the way he pronounces the word ‘awright.’” She turned away to stare out the window for the time it took to clear cobwebs of confusion from her brain. When she finally turned back, she looked like a deer pinned in the headlights of a car. “Shit,” she said. “Excuse my language.” She shook her head in disbelief and said “Shit” again. “When I posted bond for Emilio’s bail, he called me angel—it’s him, it’s Emilio Gava.” She leaned toward me—I couldn’t miss the groundswell of her breasts visible over the bodice of her low-cut blouse—and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Why would Emilio betray himself to the police?”

I said the obvious. “He wants to get himself arrested. He wants to be inside a jail.”

She asked the obvious. “If he wants to be in jail, why is he jumping bail?” Then she leapt to what ordinarily would have been the obvious conclusion. “I know—he wants his fifteen minutes of fame. Getting arrested is one way of getting your picture in the newspapers.”

“Except his picture wasn’t in the newspapers,” I reminded her, and I told Friday what my pal at the
Star
had said. “Just before the paper went to press someone phoned up the city editor, who pulled the picture. When my friend tried to find copies of Gava’s photograph in the newspaper’s morgue, they were missing. Ditto for the Las Cruces police station—the Gava file, which should have consisted of a mug shot and fingerprints, was empty.”

Friday squinted in concentration. I was becoming familiar with her several moods. “Someone’s protecting him!” she burst out.

“Bull’s-eye, little lady.”

The middle-aged waitress, her eyebrows tweezed down to two thin pencil lines, her hair parted in the middle and pulled back into twin ponytails, each one tied with a candy cane ribbon, brought our sirloins and a Chianti Classico with fake plastic straw covering the bottle. The sweater she was wearing—the restaurant was air-conditioned and cool—reeked of camphor, which reminded Friday of the summers she spent in Corsica, where she’d been sent when her grandfather was still alive. Like many Corsican peasants, he’d chewed on camphor for health reasons. “Hey, you don’t ever want to cross me,” Friday said. “I come from Corsican stock.” She said it with laughter in her voice, but a dark cloud at the back of her eyes suggested she was not making small talk.

I kept the tone light. “Are you armed with more than the usual arsenal of female weapons?”

“I hope for your sake you never find out,” she shot back. This time there was no hint of laughter in her voice, only the cloud at the back of her eyes.

Over dessert, Friday admitted she was curious to know my first impression of her. “Aside from the bare ankles,” she added, “what did you see?”

“Aside from the bare ankles … hmmm.” I bought time sipping my Chianti. “I saw a female of the species who rationed her smiles, as if the supply was limited. I saw a female of the species who seemed nostalgic for things she never experienced.”

“Such as?”

I tried to make it seem like harmless banter. “Such as men who wear starched collars and open doors for ladies.”

Suddenly she was very alert. “Are you making a pass at me?”

I grinned innocently. “Am I trying to become friends with you? Sure. Am I trying to get you into bed? If we become friends, that has to be a possibility over which you always have a veto. But for now, the answer is … no.”