Bloodville (9 page)

Col. Charles Scarberry listened intently to the report Captain Mat Torrez made to him by phone from the general store in Villa de Cubero at 5:30 on the afternoon of Monday, November 20. Torrez said Frank and Delfina Fernandez confirmed that the person in the photograph of Larry E. Bunting was the same person who drank Wild Turkey whiskey in Los Cerritos Bar at about seven-thirty on Saturday evening, November 18th. Not only that, but Frank and Delfina provided agents Spurlock and Valverde with the names of four other women who were in the bar when the suspect was there. Three of them were able to make positive identifications from mug shots of Bunting as the man in the bar. The fourth one said all gringos looked alike to her. State Police criminal agents transported the witnesses to Los Lunas and all five picked Bunting out of a lineup arranged by Don Wilcoxson. Flossie Rice and Nettie Buckley also identified Bunting as the killer.

And there was more. Doc took Bunting's shoes back to Budville and showed them to Flossie. Her identification of them was not positive but she confirmed that they were identical to the type of shoes worn by the killer. Nettie agreed.

―What about the gun, Torrez? You find the gun?‖
―No sir. Troy McGee was out with a couple of Boy Scout troops and some Job Corps people walking the roads in every direction. They didn't find anything.‖
―You search the car? You know I want that car searched from bumper to bumper.‖
―We didn't search it yet.‖
―Why not? Goddamnit, I told you….‖
―I talked to Jim Mitchell half an hour ago. He just then had got the warrant signed. We'll search it first thing in the morning.‖
―What the hell‘s Mitchell got to do with you doin' your job?‖
―Wilcoxson said he wanted a warrant before we touched the car. Jim got a warrant from the J. P. there in Grants. That's all.‖
―You don't work for District Attorney, Torrez. You work for me and I told you I wanted that goddamn car searched and it don't require no approval from Wilcoxson, Mitchell, or anyone else. Now I want that fuckin' car searched, and yet tonight. Is that clear?‖
―Can't do it, Chief.‖
―Why the hell not?‖ Scarberry yelled.
In his mind's eye, Mat could see Scarberry's face turn red and beads of sweat pop out on his bald head. He saw the muscles in the colonel's face and neck tighten and his eyes squint down to threadthin lines. The captain smiled to himself. ―Mitchell has the warrant in his pocket and he is on his way to Albuquerque. He won't be back until morning. He said he‘d meet Spurlock, Vee and me in Grants at eight o'clock in the a.m.‖
―I just told you that I don't give a good goddamn about Mitchell and his warrant. I want that car searched, and I don't mean tomorrow morning, either. I mean yet tonight!‖
―I guess, Colonel, that I'll just wait and do it like the DA said, and that's what I‘ll report to Chief Black when I talk to him in about five minutes from now.‖
―What are you doin' talking to the chief?‖
―I got a message to call him. Just following orders is all.‖
―Just get the goddamn job done, Captain,‖ Scarberry said through clenched teeth and he slammed down the telephone.
Mat purchased a new pint of vodka before he returned to his room. He half filled a plastic cup with coffee from Spurlock's Flash Gordon thermos bottle and started to add vodka. He changed his mind and poured the coffee back into the thermos and stashed the booze under the mattress beside an empty bottle. He got into his car and drove east on the Old Road past the Budville Trading Company before he made a U turn and parked in front of the Dixie‘s Place. His day's work completed he felt as though he deserved a nice cold bottle of beer. Or two. All he ever drank in public was beer. Sundown an hour gone left behind a cool evening of clean mountain air. Mat had no need to call Sam Black. The chief hadn't left any message but Scarberry didn't know it and wouldn't ask. Dixie‘s Place was empty except for the old lady, Kathryn McBride, who ran the place.
In years long gone by, Dixie‘s Place had been one of the flashiest tourist traps on Route 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles. The long, low, pink-colored building, decorated with what White people considered Indian symbols, was home to armadillos, Gila monsters, rattlesnakes, scorpions and tarantulas, all kept in glass cages surrounded by shelves of gee-gaws that tourists incredibly bought for souvenirs: tin ash trays and copper trinkets, plastic bows and arrows, imitation deerskin moccasins and brightly colored picture post cards, all of it emblazoned with Zia Indian sun signs or caricatures of roadrunners, both popular symbols of the state of New Mexico.
Several years before 1967, absentee owners allowed the place to deteriorate and tourists stopped stopping. Soon it went on the market block and Bud Rice bought it. He set the snakes, scorpions and tarantulas free—Virgil Vee told Spurlock he thought Bud did it out of professional courtesy—and closed the souvenir shop. He closed the restaurant too and boarded up the west end of the building. Bud kept the liquor license and bar and leased them to an old horse trader named Jess Ross who housed a half dozen thoroughbreds in some old mule barns out behind the main building. Ross hired old man Teodoro Tafoya to mind the horses, sweep out the place and tend the bar as needed. Ross spent most of his time sitting on a particular bar stool drinking tumblers of straight bourbon whiskey. One morning Tafoya found Ross with his head down on the bar, his face in his own vomit. The old man thought Ross had passed out. It had happened before. But he wasn't just unconscious. He was dead.
Kathryn McBride and her twenty-five year old granddaughter, Karen, arrived a day or two later with deputy sheriff Lupe Soto in tow. The elder McBride announced that the thoroughbreds actually belonged to her and Deputy Soto produced official looking paperwork to prove it. Jess Ross also owed Mrs. McBride a considerable sum of money and she could prove that, too. She told Bud that she and Karen would take over Jess‘ liquor inventory and lease. Bud agreed. He didn't care who operated the bar as long as he got his rent on time. Mrs. McBride did nothing to improve the place and spent her days puttering around the bar, serving drinks, in her blue nightgown and pink housecoat. Karen McBride tended the horses.
While Joe Garcia‘s saloon a quarter mile west did about ninety percent of Budville‘s booze business, Dixie‘s Place was sometimes busy, especially on those evenings when tall, very attractive and very blond, Karen tended bar. The young woman felt comfortable in a 36 D cup bra, when she wore one. With her western-cut shirt, open by three or four snaps, she sometimes favored male customers with a stingy glimpse of what made her shirt pook out in front the way it did.
Mat didn‘t know any of that when he mounted a stool and leaned his elbows on the bar. Small and unattractive, the saloon had an Lshaped bar with the short end, which would accommodate five stools, just inside the door to the right while the long side extended along the far wall. The end of the room to the left was closed off from the rest of the building by some old bed sheets pinned together and strung up on a length of clothesline. Patrons were obliged to pass through the sheets to get to the rest rooms. The whole place was musty and motheaten. Mat put a dollar bill on the bar and ordered a bottle of Hamm's beer.
―You one of the cops working on Bud's murder, are you?‖
―Yes ma'am. State Police. Criminal Bureau.‖ He took a long pull on the bottle.
―I didn't know cops could drink when they worked.‖ Mrs. McBride wasn't rude and she made the remark as if she had a genuine interest in cops drinking on duty.
―I'll tell you,
señora
, I've been on this case for close to forty-eight hours straight, but I‘m not working now. I am off duty.
¿Esta bien?
‖
―Fine with me. Beer's on the house. Keep your money.‖
―Thank you.‖
―That guy was in here, you know.‖
―What guy?‖
―The one that killed Bud and Blanche. Right over in that booth there.‖ She pointed to the middle one of three red, plasticupholstered, booths arranged along the wall adjacent to the front door.
Torrez took one of the Polaroids of Bunting out of his shirt pocket. ―Him?‖
―That's him. Looks just like that drawing the other cop showed us. It's him all right.‖
―When would that have been?‖
―Why, Saturday afternoon, of course. Not long before he went over there and killed Bud and Blanche.‖
―Was he alone?‖
―Oh, no. He was with the Indian woman. And an Indian boy.‖
―What did he have to drink?‖
―Beer, I guess. She's the one came up to the bar and got the drinks. I don't do table service, you know. She got two beers and an orange soda. I remember that. She had on a red car coat. She did it twice. I thought the beer was for him and her and the orange for the boy. I couldn't swear to it, though. A lot of the Indians let their kids drink beer, you know.‖
―No whiskey? You didn't serve them any liquor?‖
―No. I'd remember that.‖
―And what time would it have been?‖
―Oh, I don't know. Five o'clock. Maybe six. I don't pay that much attention to the time. No real purpose to it out here in this forsaken desert. Hour to hour, day to day, it‘s all pretty much the same, but I do remember November 18. At least
something
happened around here on that date.‖
―That is a fact, ma‘am, and thank you for the help. I appreciate it and I‘ll pass it along to my agents. How about another beer?‖
―Too bad about Blanche, though.‖ Kathryn McBride put a beer on the bar. ―I‘m the only one around here that called her Blanche; I‘m the only one old enough. Every one else called her Miss Brown. I guess that‘s a carry-over from her school teaching days. Nice lady, she was. Bud Rice was a different matter altogether. Despicable man.‖
A tall very pretty girl came into the room through a door at the end of the bar that led to the living quarters in the rear. She leaned against the back bar and folded her arms under her large breasts.
―This is one of the officers working on the murders,‖ Kathryn McBride said.
―Mateo Torrez,‖ the captain said as he stood up.
The younger woman stepped forward and extended her hand across the bar. ―Karen McBride. Pleased to meet you.‖
First smitten by her large breasts and then by her astonishing good looks, Mat took her warm hand in his. ―Likewise I‘m sure.‖
An elderly Indian man came in from outside. Bent with age, he walked slowly and he carefully took a seat two stools down the bar from Torrez. Long braids of gray/black hair, tied at the ends with red and blue flannel ribbons, fell nearly to his waist. The old man nodded and smiled pleasantly at Mat and Karen. Kathryn McBride poured him a glass of Garden DeLuxe tokay wine without being asked.
―What do you think they'll do with that sailor?‖ Karen asked Mat, leaning her elbow on the bar and resting her head on her hand.
―Maybe he‘ll go to the gas chamber," Mat said, pleased to be able to talk to the pretty girl. ―We have good evidence. Eyewitnesses. And they are backed up by other people that saw him in the area. Clothes he had on when he was arrested are just like the clothes he wore when he did the robbery. Especially his shoes. I think we have the guy dead to rights.‖
―You got the wrong one.‖ The Indian spoke haltingly, quietly.
―Beg your pardon?‖ Mat said.
―You got the wrong one.‖
―How do you know?‖
―This sailor is not the right one. You will have to work some more to find the right one. Many people think they know who did this killings, but it was not the husband of my niece‘s daughter. If you work hard enough, you will find the right ones.‖ He raised his glass and drained off the wine. He put the glass carefully on the bar, nodded slightly, and shuffled out the door and into the night.
―Who was that?‖ Torrez asked the elder McBride.
―I don't know his name. Someone said he's a
cacique
or whatever they call it over on the Acoma Reservation. He comes in four or five times a week, usually in the afternoon. Sometimes he has two or three glasses of wine. This is the first time he's ever said anything.‖
―I don't know what he thinks he knows,‖ the captain said, ―but he's wrong. We got the right guy.‖ Mat wasn't sure whether he was trying to convince the McBrides, or himself.
The old lady fixed herself an exotic drink made up of a half dozen ingredients, all containing alcohol. She sipped a bit of it, like a connoisseur. ―Ah,‖ she said smacking her lips, ―just right. I'm going in the back now. With a cop here, I won't worry about you, Karen. You close up whenever you want to. I'll be asleep five minutes after I finish this.‖ She took another sip and disappeared into the kitchen.
Karen put another dripping bottle of beer in front of Mat and opened one for herself before she walked around the bar and sat down on the stool beside the officer. She turned sideways and leaned her elbow on the bar again. ―Married?‖ she asked.
―Widower. My wife‘s been dead for a long time. Almost ten years. Cancer. She was very young. I have a daughter, Nita. She's twenty years old and beautiful, like her mother in many ways. A senior at UNM and very bright. I'm very proud of her.‖
―Never married again?‖
―Never have. My job and Nita both keep me pretty busy. How about you? Seems to me life would be a little boring for you out here in the boondocks.‖ Torrez had a hard time keeping his eyes off her breasts which were less than a yard from his face. A Spanish word from his youth came into his mind:
forro
. Beautiful, sexy, woman. Whoever coined the slang word had Karen McBride in mind.
―A little boring, but not bad, really. Besides, it's just temporary. Grandma will give up this foolishness in a couple of months and we'll go back to Albuquerque. She promised to make it up to me. A trip somewhere, or something.‖
―What are the two of you doing out here in the first place?‖
―I live with my Grandma. My mom died when I was eight and my dad's busy in Alaska looking for gold, or something. I haven't seen him in ten years. Grandma needs me and we get along fine. She lost a bunch of money on some horse deal she had with old Jess Ross. I don't know what it was, but she's determined to get some of the money back by selling Ross‘ liquor inventory a drink at a time. It‘s just not in her nature to let someone get the best of her, even if he's dead.‖
Mat finished his beer. ―It has been very nice talking to you, Miss McBride, but I think I‘ll go get some sleep.‖
―My name is Karen. Have another beer. It's on the house.‖ Karen set up two more bottles of Hamm‘s.
Mat was more than happy to spend a few more minutes with Karen. ―How about boyfriends? No boyfriend to keep you company out here?‖
―No boyfriend.‖
―You should have plenty of chances.‖
―Lots of chances. Mostly from men who are little boys who only want to get into my pants. They never interested me much. The little boys, I mean. I enjoy a real man getting into my pants once in a while. You interested in getting into my pants, Mateo Torrez?‖
Torrez felt his face get blazing hot and he couldn‘t manage to say a word.
―Well,‖ Karen said, ―how should I say it? Is it better for me to say that I'm interested in you getting into my pants, or should I say that I'm interested in getting into your pants?‖
―Yes,‖ Torrez said.
She laughed. ―Yes what?‖
―Yes,‖ Torrez said again, smiling, and he leaned over and kissed Karen on the mouth. He felt warmth in his loins as their tongues touched. She did, too.
―Grandma sleeps like a plank,‖ Karen said, ―so we don‘t have to worry about being bothered.‖ She put her hand between his legs.
―I‘ve got a better idea,‖ Mat whispered into her ear. ―Let's go to my room where we can make all the noise we want to.‖
Karen put six beers in a paper bag. They locked the door behind them and Mat drove a mile to the motel at Villa de Cubero.