The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (124 page)

Seese had lapsed into dreamlike states while she was awake; she saw David’s face on Tiny’s body, which seemed to be bloating from the heat. This was cop fun; to display their trophy; this must be a big one. The police chief himself and the sheriff stood away from the blood at the back of the office and had listened as the detectives questioned Seese about the sequence of events.

Maybe David was dead and Monte was dead. Maybe she would soon be dead. The handcuffs and her arms bent back around the chair had caused her upper body to go numb. The police refused to let her use the toilet. Seese slipped into a trancelike calm, as if she had just polished off a pint of whiskey and a half a gram of coke. A strange form of exhaustion had agitated her thoughts while her body gradually became numb.
Yes
or
no; wet
or
dry.
Seese had not thought about the precise meanings of words since she quit school. Seese wet her pants and smiled as she saw how this had excited the police; they had left her handcuffed to the chair because this was what they had wanted. She had not overheard them discuss freeing her until three or four in the morning.

Finally Seese had passed out from exhaustion; she woke up when a sheriff’s deputy decided to unlock the handcuffs because her hands and arms had swollen. The police were rolling Tiny’s old-fashioned box safe out the door; behind them were the ambulance crews with body bags. Seese saw then that the dead narc had only been taken outside and left facedown on the floor by a pool table. His long blond hair was soaked with blood, but no one had bothered even to throw a bar towel
over him. She had assumed when they took the dead pig out of the office, they were taking him to his glorious reward; to lie in state at a local funeral home, then the police honor guard and twenty-one-gun salute at the graveyard.

Seese tried to figure it out. She wasn’t sure she trusted her own senses, but something seemed odd. The behavior of the others was not what she had anticipated; sheriff’s deputies and police whispered and walked past the corpse without looking down or stopping. When the police chief and the sheriff had arrived at the scene, they had studied the close-ups the police photographers had taken hours earlier, before the corpse of the cop had been moved from the office. Then Seese knew. The dead cop had been set up by his own people. Cops took care of their own kind if they stepped out of line. They had kept asking her if she was sure the undercover man had come in the door first because the department had certain guidelines and procedures to prevent confusion during police raids. Uniformed officers broke through doors first; undercover followed. Otherwise, suspects pulled guns the way Tiny had. Was she
certain
the undercover cop had come through the office door first? Yes, she was
certain.
Had he yelled “Police”? No, he had not yelled “Police.” Could she be mistaken? Wasn’t she snorting cocaine with the deceased that night, wasn’t she drunk as well? Was it possible she had not heard the officers come through the back door first? Maybe she had only imagined the undercover cop coming first. Then Seese knew. Seese got the picture.

Seese said nothing. She let them ask the questions over and over. Could she be mistaken? After all, she had old arrest records for misdemeanor prostitution in Tucson. Hadn’t the uniformed officers shouted “Police!” as they broke down the back door? Didn’t the undercover man shout “Police!” too as he came through the front door? Seese understood what they wanted her to remember; if her memory improved, they would be happy to see her leave town, and even the state, and she wouldn’t ever be asked to return to testify. In fact, they would recommend Seese leave Arizona and never return again, if she knew what was good for her. For all Seese knew, the police had shot their own man; Tiny had only fired once, and he might have missed. The police had sprayed Tiny’s office with bullets; stray bullets had torn big chunks out of the phone book on Tiny’s desk, and bullets had shattered the fake maple paneling like the plastic or fiberglass it really was. Police bullets had pierced the cheap plasterboard walls of Tiny’s office. Yes, her memory had improved; it was clear now, the uniform
cops had come through the door first. Then Seese had remembered Cherie and the other dancers and the customers who had been in the Stage Coach when the shooting started. She had not heard if there had been other injuries.

The police chief himself had talked to her alone in the backseat of his unmarked car. Seese had seventy-two hours to gas up and get out of town. If she was caught in Tucson after seventy-two hours, they had a list of charges they would slap her with; for starters, they had accomplice to felony murder. Seese did not know why she felt giddy at a moment such as that; she felt like laughing because the police chief did not want to get too close to her because she stank of her own urine and Tiny’s blood. She had watched how his eyes had examined her breasts and thighs; she wanted to laugh out loud. Luckily she had been a mess because the police chief looked as if he might like to fuck her.

She did not want the police to follow her so she did not call a taxi. Instead Seese had left on foot from the Stage Coach. She hurried across the frontage road. She was nothing to the police really; she wasn’t even a problem. Probably the police chief and sheriff were already riding together in the helicopter back downtown to prepare statements for the press. They were already erasing her. No woman had been in the office with Tiny, contrary to early reports. Seese imagined that by next week and the funeral, they would already have forgot the real reason the narc had got blown to kingdom come. By the time the big state funeral for the narc rolled around, they would only remember that the dead man had been a cop and one of their own, whatever else he might have been. All they would remember was the fat fucker at the titty bar had killed a good man.

Seese waited in the scrubby greasewood bushes that grew on the plain of old river gravel the city had bought for a park that was never built. She heard loud police radios in cars that raced over the bridge, and she wondered if the police were trying to follow her. She felt strangely relaxed and calm, certain she was safe, crouched in the sand, hidden by the greasewood as if she were a desert animal. The police would expect to find her hitchhiking down Interstate 10. Seese was shivering and could not stop. She did not feel either cold or afraid: it was as if the shivering of her muscles had been separate from her, from her real self. She stretched out on the ground under the greasewood; she was nauseous with exhaustion but still her eyes would not close. Her eyes were wide open and she knew she could not force her hands to cover her eyes. She saw the sandy ground close up with the tiny yellow
greasewood leaves scattered over it; she saw, only inches from her eyes, the gnarled, twisted trunk of the greasewood.

When Seese and Cherie had worked for Tiny, the police used to find dead whores dumped in the greasewood flats near the bridge. Naturally whore killers didn’t take the trouble to haul the bodies very far; Seese had hidden deep in the greasewood thickets where people could hardly get through. Seese lay on her side and stared at the river gravel; the ground resembled a map with villages and cities marked with pebbles of varying size as one might expect to see, if one could fly over a map instead of the earth.

How cool it felt to lie on the ground with the greasewood for shade; in a few hours the sun would be high enough to penetrate the thin shade. Seese knew she’d have to move, but by then, the police would be gone. Seese wished she had her picture of Monte with her then because something had happened. Probably it was exhaustion, but she was having difficulty remembering Monte’s face. Her memories of his face as a newborn had blurred together with her memories of Monte on the day he had disappeared. Even the strange dream Seese had had of Monte as a much older child had become part of her memory, and she cried because she could no longer remember how Monte looked.

Seese took deep breaths to help her relax and remember. She rolled over on her back and saw the bright blue sky through the spindly branches and twigs. A mother always remembers; a mother never forgets. Tears filled her eyes. She had to remember. She had to remember because she had to find Monte. Nothing else mattered. In the distance, she heard police radios and car doors slamming. She knew she should be alert for footsteps, but it had been as if her veins were flooded with morphine, and she felt powerless to move. Dying was like that, easy and natural as breathing out and in. If the police found her, she would never know; a bullet in back of the head and she would simply not wake up. That was fine with her; she didn’t want to be awake anymore. In her dreams she could be with Monte and with Eric again. In her dreams she could forget she had lost everything; she wanted to sleep forever.

When Seese woke, her face and body had been sticky with sweat, and tiny black ants had been crawling over her feet and hands. She jumped up and brushed off the ants. She rubbed the skin on her legs and feet through torn panty hose. The dried blood had worn off her shoes and left only a dark stain. Seese imagined Tiny’s corpse as a pig’s carcass with a man’s head; she could feel an invisible film of rancid oil
on her ankles and feet, wherever Tiny’s greasy blood had touched her skin. She could hear the rush-hour traffic on Interstate 10 and on Silverbell Road. The cops who had been searching for her would have finished their shift. It was almost nine
A.M
. Seese tried to wash up a little in the river so she could use the pay phone at the 1-10 truck stop without attracting attention. The water felt so cool Seese had been tempted to drink some; she had expected the water to stink like shit, the way the air smelled near the sewage treatment plant. But all she had been able to smell had been the terrible odor of Tiny’s blood as she tried to wash off her shoes and feet in the shallow water.

STERLING WOULD NEVER forget the morning Seese had not returned from town, and Ferro had learned his friend was dead. Lecha had rolled herself out to the kitchen in the wheelchair to get her medication. She had asked Sterling if he knew where Seese might have gone, then she had gone back to her bedroom. Sterling had been bundling up the garbage in the kitchen while Zeta sat at the table with Ferro and Paulie watching the morning news on TV. Ferro had been drinking from his cup of coffee when suddenly he had let the cup drop from his hands. Coffee had splashed the wall, and broken pieces of the cup scattered across the tile floor. Zeta and Paulie had both looked at Ferro, but Sterling saw Ferro’s eyes were fixed on the TV screen, and the close-up photograph of a handsome young man with blue eyes and blond hair. The video report that had followed showed the interior of a dingy bar and two corpses in body bags leaving the bar one after the other. Ferro had bellowed like a wounded animal—“No! No!” Sterling heard Lecha’s telephone ring, and then Lecha had called his name. “Sterling! Sterling! Quick!”

Sterling had wanted to alert Lecha to the developments in the kitchen, that someone Ferro knew had been killed, but Lecha had been in a hurry. She gave Sterling the keys to the old Lincoln and slipped a
pistol from under a pillow into her purse. Then she got out of bed in her red silk robe and stepped into the wheelchair. She had seemed healthy enough to walk, and she wasn’t crippled. She rolled herself around in a wheelchair; for sympathy and to fool the cops, she said, but still, Sterling had felt something was odd.

In the kitchen Paulie was on his hands and knees wiping up the spilled coffee; Sterling saw the paper towel had spots of blood where Paulie had cut himself on shards of the broken cup. Zeta had her arms around Ferro, who stood rigidly, resisting her comfort, shivering as if he were about to explode. Sterling saw wet streaks down Ferro’s pale, fat cheeks. Lecha had looked at Ferro and Zeta, and at Paulie; Lecha had seen Ferro was upset, but Sterling knew her mind was on the phone call, and they had to hurry. Lecha had not told him, but Sterling thought he knew: it was Seese who had just called. Lecha didn’t want Zeta to find out Seese was in trouble. Zeta had focused all her attention on Ferro as she tried to console him, and she did not look up even when Lecha and Sterling came into the room. Paulie had kept his head down, but Sterling saw the tears in his eyes.

Zeta could not stop the stampeding horses that had scattered in all directions—that had been her nightmare after the police shootings. Now Ferro had gone off with Paulie. Paulie wanted to park a junker car loaded with dynamite next to the Prince Road police substation. Zeta had seen the expression in Paulie’s eyes; Paulie wanted more than anything to prove his love to Ferro now that the rival was dead. Paulie’s devotion had only made Ferro’s grief more fierce and Zeta was afraid Ferro might want to follow his boyfriend to the grave. Zeta’s grief had surprised her, and she felt a terrible pain in her chest as if her grief had crowded her heart against her ribs.

She and Calabazas had been fools. Their lives were nearly over and what had they done? What good had all their talk of war against the United States government done? What good had all their lawbreaking done? The United States government intended to keep all the stolen land. What had happened to the earth? The Destroyers were killing the earth. What had happened to their sons? She loved Ferro; she didn’t want him to die.