Bad Country: A Novel (25 page)

You know Tank, Jr. and Annabeth are divorcing?

Sorry to hear about that, Eryn.

The woman drank from her tumbler as if she were alone.

Where’s your dogs at, Eryn? Rodeo asked.

Well, about two weeks ago MacArthur got loose in the garden and drank up all the saucers of beer I’d left out for the slugs to die in then he keeled over and never got righted again. So I guess you could say MacArthur drank himself to death just like a good Irishman. Skinny’s in the hospital with some kinda liver troubles. But not from drinking. Still her liver is swelled up like a pate goose’s. Some kind of intestinal worm or something.

Pookie?

Pookie died last year. When you were here on Convent, living across the street with that awful Molina girl.

Rodeo stared at his hands.

I don’t care how good-looking that girl is or how much money her daddy has, Sirena Rae Molina is just trash, Little Rodeo. And now her daddy’s been murdered. The old woman looked cross-eyed at Rodeo. I guess you heard about Apache Ray?

I did, Eryn, Rodeo said. It was bad news to me.

The pair sat still and silent. Rodeo waited.

What can I do for you, Rodeo? Eryn finally asked. What’s your business?

Let me in the far apartment, the one Tinley Burke was renting from you, Eryn.

Eryn nodded her chin into her chest. His sister talked to me about that, the landlord said. Told me you were working for her. Working for the Judge, actually is what she said. She likes to hold that Miller dagger on a thin string over your head, doesn’t she. The question was rhetorical.

That all right if I snoop around then, Eryn?

You’re a private investigator, aren’t you? So that’s what you do, I guess. Snoop around and annoy people. She shrugged. Since I know you, it’s fine for you to go in there soon’s the police are done. Hell, stay till the end of the year, I don’t care. Rent’s paid and I could use some help around here now that that Burke fella’s gone.

I appreciate it, Eryn, but I got my own place now.

Piece of shit house in the middle of no place, what I heard, she said.

Rodeo glared at the old woman but she did not notice. He started to work.

Mrs. Miller said you let her in the apartment this morning, Eryn? he asked.

That’s right. I usually wouldn’t intrude on my renters like that but the little woman insisted, so I let her in.

Where was Burke when y’all found him, Eryn?

On the bed in the middle room, Eryn said. Choked to death on his own vomit I imagined from the looks of him. I didn’t get too close but I have seen like before.

Did Sisely Miller get close to him? Rodeo asked. Did she go in the house?

She didn’t get close to him. In fact that woman went right past her brother in the middle room and looked all over the front room then she ran past me and out back and started dialing her phone, calling her husband from the sound of it. Didn’t even call the police.

Who did call the police?

I did, Eryn said. I went back over to my place and called 911 and I just stayed right here in my own house after that. I don’t know what she did over there and I do not care to know.

Did she say anything memorable to you?

Said something to me about something being stolen but I can’t protect everything in the neighborhood, said Eryn Hage. There’s a thief in almost every house around here, you know that. Most of them lawyers or doctors these days, so there’s probably less retail theft now that the Mexicans are mostly gone but more wholesale theft now that the lawyers have moved in. The old woman took another drink. I tell my renters to get renter’s insurance. That’s what it’s for.

How’d you feel about him, Eryn? Rodeo asked. Professor Burke?

The landlady shrugged. Not one way or the other, Eryn Hage said. He was real quiet at first when he moved in. Stayed inside his place mostly. Lately he’d been drunk a lot from what I see in the recycle bin but he never gave me any troubles that way and you know I lived around drunken cowboys and drunken Indians my whole life, so he wasn’t any better or worse than any other man I ever had staying with me. He was houseproud and kept the place really nice what I could see of it. Kinda anal about keeping the place nice actually and even worked in the yard and kept up the pool. The woman wrinkled her brow. I thought at first that he was probably just queer. But then he had some woman over there time and again and I think they were going at it pretty good.

Do you know who this woman was, Eryn?

I didn’t care, she said.

He took care of the property you said, Eryn? The in-law house and the storage sheds and such?

I don’t get outside much anymore, so I gave him the run of the place, Eryn Hage said. He was cleaning up the outbuildings for me, he said. You know I got sixty years of accumulated junk around this place. His rent was paid upfront and he left me alone and I left him alone. You can’t hear nothing much through this adobe, you know, so whatever he did or didn’t do over there was none of my business as long as he didn’t damage my apartment.

You have no ideas about who visited him?

I had some ideas but I don’t know or care about any business that went on over there that’s not my business.

Anything else you can think of, Eryn? asked Rodeo. Anybody been lurking about or any yelling in the days or screaming in the nights?

General Patton could be shooting mules in my living room and I wouldn’t stir after I take my pills in the evening.

What are you taking, Eryn?

Oxycodone, she said. You want some? Your broke back still acting up on you?

She reached to the side table and picked up an unlabeled prescription bottle and shook it at Rodeo as if it were a rattle.

No thanks, Eryn, Rodeo said. He waited a beat. You give any Mexican oxys to Tinley Burke?

The woman looked at the pharmacy bottle. Oh, you know. Now and again. She shrugged and put the orange plastic bottle on her side table. I saw him out back last week or so and he complained he couldn’t sleep lately and his back was stiff from carrying something or other, so I gave him a little handful.

Anything else about him, Eryn?

Like what?

Like anything peculiar, said Rodeo.

What’s peculiar, Little Rodeo?

You know what peculiar is, Eryn.

Eryn Hage frowned. They had a peculiar relationship, the landlord said.

Rodeo waited but nothing more was immediately forthcoming from Eryn Hage.

Who did?

Him and that sister of his, said the landlord.

Peculiar in which direction, Eryn?

Just peculiar, she said. They were twins, you know.

Rodeo raised an eyebrow.

This is not my business, Eryn Hage said.

What’s not your business, Eryn?

Whatever was going on over there, she said. The landlord gestured with her tumbler in the general direction of the rental unit on the north end of the house.

I’m not following you, Eryn.

You seen those kids of hers? asked Eryn Hage.

No, said Rodeo. Why you asking that, Eryn?

If you’re investigating that Miller bunch then maybe you should take a look at those kids of Sisely Miller’s and give Randy a once-over while you’re at it.

What do you mean, Eryn?

Even though I appreciate his politics, Randy’s queer as a three-dollar bill and those kids of hers are a couple of inbred mongoloids if I ever saw them.

Sisely Miller’s kids aren’t by Judge Miller? asked Rodeo. You think Judge Miller has a wife and kids as cover?

You just cover your own ass if you are working for the Millers is all I’m saying, Little Rodeo. The old woman stood and started toward the front of her house. Rodeo put on his hat and obediently followed the old woman into the foyer and walked through the door she opened.

Good to see you, Little Rodeo, Eryn Hage said. I’ll call the TPD about getting you back into my place to snoop around.

I’m not sure you can speed that wheel, Eryn. Rodeo had turned to go, so Eryn spoke to his back.

You have no idea what an old lady is capable of doing in this world, Little Rodeo, the old woman said. You have no idea at all.

*   *   *

Rodeo knocked at the front door of the only other house on that block, a massive adobe nearly as large as Eryn Hage’s. T
HE
B
LUE
H
OUSE
was painted above a front door that was as thick as a bank vault’s. This huge adobe house was painted periwinkle blue. With the August Arizona sun shining the residence resembled a child’s crooked drawing of a generic house on a summer’s day except for the two pink plastic flamingos in flagrante delicto near the crumbling front steps.

Multiple locks clicked as Rodeo tilted his hat back and stared up at another security camera. The heavy door opened and a thin middle-aged man in a kimono appeared. There was not a single hair on this man’s head, face or body to be seen. His features were delicate and his skin glowed in a medium shade of brown but his eyes were hard and black.

Howdy, Egg.

The man looked at Rodeo from head to toe.

You look like shit, Hot Rod.

That seems to be the standard opinion of me today, Egberto.

The hairless man stepped aside and Rodeo entered the adobe house and Egberto locked the safe door shut behind them.

And why are you here after months and months of us not seeing you?

Just in the neighborhood.

Bullshit.

Seeking neighborhood gossip then, Rodeo said.

That makes more sense for you, Egberto said. The man moved toward the back of the house and Rodeo followed. I am not seeing people at the moment since I have a show to get ready for. But you are welcome to an audience with the Porn Lord if he’s seeing people today.

How is Richard? Rodeo asked. I heard he was sick.

Going going … The host waved a hand backwards and forwards. Some days he is the same old Richard Dick as of old and some days he isn’t.

Which is better?

Egberto stopped in the middle of a big room, turned to Rodeo and shrugged theatrically.

The bad news is that Richard Dick is not the man he used to be. Egberto’s smile demonstrated perfect teeth. But that’s the good news too.

How is it today with him?

Richard is not feeling well of late but he got some new hash to smoke today. So it might be a good day for you, Rod. He misses company.

I thought you were his company, Egg.

I am, said Egberto. But you know how active he always was. Flitting and fucking here and there and everywhere. Richard Dick was never a one-man woman or a one-woman man.

The man turned and continued through a maze of interconnected rooms that were decorated solely with huge tapestry pillows and prayer rugs on the polished and stained concrete floors and oversized modernist paintings on the original adobe walls. Complicated culinary smells filled the air from the nearby kitchen.

What’s cooking, Egg?

Egberto did not stop but spoke over his shoulder. Hatch peppers stuffed with homemade elk sausage. But Richard doesn’t eat much anymore and you won’t be here long enough to have lunch will you?

I won’t be here that long, Egberto.

Egberto led Rodeo past a huge Martín Montoya horse painting and a Jorge Frick color study and to a vintage pole ladder stuck through a hole in the middle of the ceiling of a small back room where he stopped and turned around. Rodeo stopped and looked up the ladder but Egberto stayed in place in front of it.

How’s your whore fiend Sirena these days, Rod? Egberto asked.

Sirena and I don’t keep in touch, said Rodeo.

Egberto gave Rodeo a skeptical look but shrugged.

Well, I know since Miss Prissy Tits is out of rehab she’s been boning the Professor next door, Egberto said. Though I gather he kicked the OD bucket today or yesterday or recently.

I don’t know who she was dating, Rodeo said. Not me.

Is that what you came to find out, Rod? Are you being a jealous man? Sirena can make a normal man a jealous man, you know. Even I was jealous of the bitch when Richard was fucking her.

The bald man put a hand on a rung of the ladder. I have endured as much from that bitch as have you.

We’re both grown men, Egg. We make decisions.

The bald man looked at Rodeo carefully.

I did not make the decision for Sirena to move in here and try to take my place. I went along with the decision but I hardly think I made it.

You could have left, Rodeo said.

Egberto shook his head. That’s the difference between you and me, Rod, the man said. I couldn’t leave.

*   *   *

Send our dear friend up the ladder now, please, Egberto! A cracked and thin voice came through the crawl hole in the ceiling as a wisp of gray smoke.

Egberto left the room. Rodeo climbed the ladder of converging poles and emerged on a lush rooftop garden decorated Moroccan style and rimmed by terra-cotta pots overflowing with large and healthy paddle plants, sharkskin agaves, topsy turvies, cherry coke and silver sawblades and multiple varieties of aloe and variegated and plain palms. A confederacy of satellite dishes were arrayed protectively around the rim of the garden. Rodeo stuck his head through the crawl hole.

Howdy, Richard.

An emaciated and terminally tan Anglo man in cutoff khakis used a little glass pipe to gesture at a low, cushioned bench. A faded-to-pink tank top promoting The University of Arizona Women’s Water Polo team was draped on the man as if on wire hangers. Thinned and dyed black hair hung in lank ringlets to his shoulders. Richard Dick smiled genially and then coughed convulsively, cleared his throat and relit his pipe. Once Rodeo was on the roof and seated the host bowed toward his guest from the oversized butterfly chair he seemed encased in.

I thought I recognized that gorgeous baritone. You want some very excellent hashish, Rod? I made it myself.

You know I don’t smoke it, Richard.

Richard Dick chuckled in his throat. It shocks me sometimes, Rod, that you still like me knowing how much you despise me.

I don’t despise you, Richard. I just don’t like the pretend “porn star name” you and Egberto gave me.

True, it does not follow the rules of pet’s name plus mother’s maiden name, but your pet has no name and “Rod Grace” has a nasty but angelic ring to it. The porn king sniffed his stained fingertips. And you should have worked for me when I was doing fuck films, Rod. You had the right résumé, so to speak.