Short Straw (4 page)

“It’s Cupie.” He sounded very tired.

“What happened, Cupie? I’ve had the Mexican cops looking for you.”

“The bitch shot me, that’s what happened! I was handing her the phone, and she pulled out this little gun, maybe a .25, and got off a round.”

“Are you badly hurt?”

“I was in the process of ducking when she fired, and the bullet went right through that piece of flesh between my neck and my shoulder, you know? I bled like a stuck pig, but it wasn’t too bad. I got back to my hotel and told the desk clerk I’d been robbed. He got me a doctor who, for an extra fifty, didn’t see a need to call the cops. He patched me up and gave me a shot of penicillin and some Percodan. I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner.”

“That’s all right. You take it easy, you hear? If you’ve lost a lot of blood, you’ll need time for your body to replace it.”

“Aw, I didn’t lose all that much; it just looked awful. People on the street ran from me until I could get a cab. You’re gonna owe me for a new suit, though.”

“Bill me. Now take a day or two off before you start moving around again.”

“The first thing I’m gonna do is find me a piece. I’m not going after that lady unarmed, I’ll tell you.”

“I’m astonished to think she would do that; I would have warned you, if I’d thought she’d get violent. Was she alone?”

“Yeah, she was. I was sitting in the lobby for an hour or so—the desk clerk had told me she was upstairs, alone—and she came down and left the hotel. I followed her, and she turned into an alley and turned around to face me. That’s when I called you.”

“Let me know when you decide on your next move, Cupie. I take it your cell phone is still working.”

“Yeah, I’m talking on it. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’m gonna get some sleep.”

“Good night, then.” Eagle hung up. “He’s all right,” he said to Wolf.

“That’s good news.”

“Flesh wound; he’s still on the job.”

Wolf stood up. “Well, I’m going to go home and get some sleep; I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

“So have I,” Eagle said. “I’ve got to meet with a client.”

Seven

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY, EAGLE VISITED THE SANTA FE
County Detention Center. He parked, went through a door marked
VISITORS
, and through another marked
ATTRONEYS.
He gave his card and the name of his client to a guard, signed in and was shown to a small room, bisected by a table and containing three plastic chairs, two on his side of the table. He sat down, opened his briefcase, set it on the spare chair, extracted a yellow legal pad and took out a pen. Though he took few notes, the pad seemed to be expected of him by clients.

After a ten-minute wait, during which he reflected on his absent wife and the nature of her absence, a guard brought in a prisoner. He was a thickly built man of about six feet with a buzz haircut and dark, leathery skin, wearing a sour look. He was handcuffed to a chain around his waist, and Eagle could hear another chain rattle each time he took a step.

“Unhook him,” Eagle said to the guard.

“Can’t. Policy.”

“Policy is that attorneys can talk to their clients without benefit of restraints.” It was his experience that prisoners were more talkative when they were not chained.

The guard unhooked the man and left the room, taking the chains with him. “There’s a buzzer on the wall if he attacks you,” he said, as the door closed.

Eagle didn’t look at the buzzer, only at his client, who did not seem happy to see him. “My name is Ed Eagle,” he said. “I’m your court-appointed lawyer.”

“Never heard of you,” Joe Big Bear replied.

“You know a lot of lawyers?”

“Nope.”

“That could be why you’ve never heard of me. Ask around the yard.”

“Where’s the other lawyer they sent?”

“He blew his brains out in the courthouse men’s room.”

“I didn’t think he had enough brains for that.”

“Maybe he didn’t.”

“What do you want?”

“The question is, what do
you
want, Mr. Big Bear?”

“I want a steak and fries and a six-pack of beer,” Big Bear replied.

“First things first,” Eagle said. “Mind if I call you Joe?”

“Suit yourself. What do I call you?”

“Mr. Eagle will do.”

“What tribe are you?”

“I’m from an eastern tribe.”

“I never met a court-appointed lawyer that was worth a shit.”

“I thought you didn’t know any lawyers.”

“I’ve met a few, but I wouldn’t say I know them.”

“It’s like this, Joe: when the court calendar is crowded and the legal aid people are stretched thin, the judge will appoint local lawyers to handle cases.”

“How’d you pick mine?”

“I got the short straw.”

Big Bear managed a derisive laugh. “I’ve had a few of those.”

“Yeah,” Eagle said, removing Big Bear’s file from his briefcase, “I’ve been reading about you. Let’s see: arrests for assault, domestic battery, public drunkenness, DUI and now for a triple homicide.”

“One: I never assaulted anybody who didn’t assault me first; two: the domestic battery was a lie made up by a woman I yelled at, once; three: I wasn’t drunk in public, I just pissed off a cop; four: on the DUI my blood test put me at .081. How drunk is that? Oh, and five: I never killed anybody.”

“Oh, well, then, you’re a saint. They didn’t put that in your record.”

“They didn’t put any convictions in there, either, did they?”

“No,” Eagle admitted, “they didn’t. Tell me something about yourself.”

“Born on the reservation; educated there, sort of, through high school, did a stretch in the marines, came back here.”

“What kind of discharge did you get from the corps?”

“General, under honorable conditions.”

“Who’d you slug?”

“A shavetail lieutenant, right out of Annapolis. I did thirty days.”

“Why’d you slug him?”

“I asked him not to keep calling me ‘Chief.’ He forgot.”

“How do you earn your living?”

“I’m a shade tree auto mechanic, except there ain’t no shade trees, to speak of. I take my tools and go to peoples’ houses and fix their cars.”

“You any good at it?”

“There are a lot of crates around Santa Fe that would have already been compacted, if it hadn’t been for my work. People get their money’s worth.”

Eagle tapped the file. “Says here you killed three people with a shotgun. You want to tell me about that?”

“You want the long version or the short version?”

“The short one.”

“A guy was fucking my girl and a girlfriend of hers. That was
my
job. I came home to my trailer and found them splattered all over the bedroom, and I called the cops.”

“Tribal or local?”

“Local. I don’t live on the reservation. My trailer’s parked out near the airport by that junkyard, which I like to think of as my parts department.”

“Who was the guy?”

“I didn’t recognize him; he didn’t have a face.”

Eagle glanced at the file. “The name James Earl Hardesty mean anything to you?”

“Jimmy? Was that who it was?”

“Says here.”

“Yeah, I know…knew him. We both drank regular at a bar called the Gun Club out on Airport Road. I didn’t have nothing against him.”

“Until he screwed your girl?”

“Well, if I’d known about it, and I ran into him at the Gun Club, I might have taken a pool cue to his head, but I wouldn’t have killed him. It’s not like she was a virgin.”

“Your call to the cops came in at six-ten
P.M.
last Wednesday?”

“That sounds right. They were there in two minutes and asked me a lot of questions. Then two detectives showed up, looked around and arrested me.”

“Where were you before six-ten? Tell me about your day.”

“I left my trailer about seven-thirty, had breakfast at the IHOP on Cerrillos Road, fixed a guy’s car out on Agua Fría—that took all morning; I ate lunch at El Pollo Loco; I got a call on my cell phone about a job off of San Mateo—a fan belt was all it was. I went to Pep Boys for the belt, then put it on the car. I always check out a car for other things wrong, so I pointed out a couple things to the owner, and I fixed those, so he’d pass his inspection test. I didn’t have any other work for the day, so I stopped by the Gun Club for a beer around four-thirty and shot a couple games of pool, then I went home.”

“Who saw you at the Gun Club?”

“The guy I played pool with, but I didn’t know him; never seen him before. I took ten bucks off him, so he’d remember me. The bartender knows me; his name is Tupelo.”

“From the Gun Club, it’s a short drive home. Did you stop anywhere?”

“I picked up a bottle of bourbon at the drive-thru, that was all.”

Eagle tapped the file again. “Says here they found your fingerprints on the shotgun and gunshot residue on your hands.”

“It was my shotgun, so it would have my fingerprints on it, and I picked it up off the floor and set it on the kitchen counter, so I might have gotten some residue on my hands. When they tested me, they found it on my right palm.”

“Nowhere else?”

“Nope.”

“How fresh was the scene?”

“Not all that fresh; I couldn’t tell you how long, but some of the blood had dried.”

“Did you get any blood from the scene on yourself or your clothes?”

“No, sir; I backed right out of that bedroom when I saw the mess inside.”

“Step in anything?”

“That’s possible, but if I did, I didn’t notice it.”

“I’m going to need the names of the people whose cars you fixed.”

“Look on the front passenger seat of my pickup. It’s parked outside my trailer. I’ve got a plastic briefcase there, and there are two pads of receipts inside. There’s one name on the last receipt in each of them; address, too.”

“Anything else you want to tell me, Joe?”

“Can’t think of anything. Any chance of getting out of here?”

“Let me check out your alibi, and we’ll see. How much bail can you raise?”

“Not much.”

“Well, if your alibi checks, you might not need bail, but I’d plan to spend the weekend in here.” Eagle tossed the file and the pad into his briefcase, stood up and offered Big Bear his hand. “You’ll be hearing from me.”

“Okay,” Big Bear said.

Eagle left the jail and went back to his car. Big Bear’s story was simple enough to check out. If he wasn’t lying, why hadn’t he already been released?

Eight

O
NE THING EAGLE COULD GET DONE BEFORE MONDAY:
the Gun Club was no more than a quarter mile from the jail. He parked out front and went inside. It might as well have been midnight, for all the light in the place. It seemed entirely lit by beer signs. At the end of the bar, a sign over a doorway said, simply,
HELL.
Eagle didn’t want to go in there. The lunchtime crowds were digging into their beer and pork rinds, and the bartender was busy. Finally, he came to Eagle’s end of the bar.

“What’ll it be, sport?” Broad southern accent.

“You Tupelo?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Name’s Ed Eagle; I’m Joe Big Bear’s lawyer.”

“I already told the cops; you want me to tell you, too?”

“Please.”

“Right. Joe got here Wednesday afternoon around four-thirty-something, shot some pool with a guy I’d never seen before, had a couple of beers and left around six o’clock.”

“Describe the other pool player.”

“Short, scrawny, dark hair under a baseball cap, couple days’ beard.”

“What did it say on the baseball cap?”

“Who knows?”

“How was he dressed?”

“Dirty jeans, checkered shirt.”

“How’d he pay?”

“American dollars. We don’t take nothing else.”

“Anything you didn’t tell the cops?”

Tupelo shrugged. “Did Joe waste those folks?”

“Not if you’re telling the truth.” Eagle gave him a card and a twenty-dollar bill. “Call me if you remember anything else. I’ll be in touch. Appreciate your time.” Eagle went back to his car, glanced at his watch and drove slowly toward the airport. He passed a liquor store with a drive-up window. Just for the hell of it he turned in and stopped.

“Yessir?” the clerk asked through a bulletproof glass window.

“A fifth of Knob Creek, please.”

The clerk went away, came back with the bottle, stuffed it into a paper bag, took Eagle’s fifty and gave him change through a slide-out cash drawer, like at a bank.

Eagle drove back to Airport Road and continued his journey. He turned left at the sign for the airport and noted the large automobile graveyard on his right, a sight he saw every time he drove out to visit his airplane. Just past that was a battered house trailer with a new-looking green pickup parked out front. He turned in. The trailer door was sealed with police tape. Eagle looked at his watch: eight minutes since he’d left the Gun Club. He got out of his car and into the unlocked pickup; the briefcase was there, just as Big Bear had said.

Eagle opened it and found the two pads. Apparently, one was for credit card payments, the other for cash. Joe was filing a tax return but not reporting everything. He also found a receipt from the liquor store with a date and time stamp that said last Wednesday, 6:06
P.M.

He broke out his cell phone and called both of Big Bear’s Wednesday clients, taking the numbers from the receipts. The guy on Agua Fría backed Joe’s alibi, and Eagle left a message on the other guy’s answering machine. If he came through, his client was looking clean.

Still, he’d need the medical examiner’s report on the time of death and the detectives’ report. That wouldn’t happen until Monday. He did some grocery shopping and drove home.

As he turned onto his road from Tesuque, he noticed a black car with darkened windows behind him, and when he turned into his drive, past the stone eagle that marked the entrance, the car followed him in.

Eagle got out of the car with his groceries and stood, waiting for his visitor to emerge from the black car. After a moment, the car door opened, and the driver got out. He was not a big man—maybe five-eight and a hundred and sixty pounds—and he was dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, silver belt buckle, black shirt and a flat-brimmed black hat, pinched at the top like a World War I campaign hat. The face under the hat was brown and smooth, the expression impassive.