Detective Deke Treadwell pulled the cruiser to a stop next to my truck, well away from the cottonwood tree. The dust rolled toward me like a knee-high red carpet.
“You still driving a patrol car, Deke?”
“The garage was a little short of working vehicles this morning.” He opened the driver’s door, swiveled to the side, and placed both feet squarely on the ground before attempting to stand. Once up, he hitched his pants with both hands and shook his head.
“I should have known I’d find you here.”
“Why’s that?”
“You could get yourself in the middle of any mess, even as a kid. Remember when you ran away? Made it all the way to Nogales? You must have been all of twelve or thirteen.”
“Eleven. And the bus driver marked my ticket with a heart-shaped cutout.” Mom had just brought Bonita home from the hospital, and the twins were only two. It was my birthday, but like every other day, I was expected to take care of my brothers and sisters. Just one more day of feeling like the outsider looking in, the seventh leg on a six-legged bug, no more remarkable than any other day, but to an eleven-year-old, devastating.
Treadwell’s straw cowboy hat didn’t go with the dark suit. In seeming recognition of the fact, he took it off and slapped it against his leg.
“Remember how your mother always said ‘We had three girls, and three boys, and Jessie’? You were always a pistol.”
That alien life-form again. Prettier than my brothers. Stronger than my sisters. The first child, but a child kept at arm’s length. “How did you know I’d be out here, Deke?”
“I didn’t. I came out to take some pictures in daylight.” He reached back inside the car for a camera. “Looks like we have a car thief on our hands, if nothing else.”
But was that car thief a villain or a victim? At least the cops were still looking for him.
“Is there any news on Markson?”
“His wife says he’s fine. He’ll be back next week. But we still don’t know who the guy in the car was, or where he’s gone.”
I couldn’t get that voice out of my head. The man had sounded tired, resigned, slightly pissed off. I’ll check with the other guy…
“Your officer said there was blood everywhere. I don’t see any.” I hadn’t been all the way around the tree, but if there had been a fight, it would have taken place somewhere near where the tail-light had been broken.
“Probably all soaked in by now.”
“Did you take a sample of it last night?”
“Give us a little credit, Jessie. Of course we did.”
Good. That way they would be able to confirm that it wasn’t Darren Markson’s blood. And maybe they could find out who it did belong to.
“Take a look at this.” I handed him the wadded-up Kleenex. “I found them in that crook in the tree—right there.” I pointed and Treadwell craned his neck to follow my arm.
“Yeah, I think so. I think somebody threw a rope up there.”
“Probably kids putting up a tire swing.” He folded the tissue and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
“Only if they did it in the last twenty-four hours or so. That wood’s still raw.”
“I’ll get somebody up there to take a look at it.”
He seemed uninterested, as if a fight among car thieves didn’t merit much attention from the police. There was nothing else I could do here. “See you later, Deke.” I stepped toward the cars.
His voice stopped me. “Jessie? Are you staying in town for a while?”
I shook my head without turning around.
“I thought maybe you and I could go see your folks. Together, I mean.”
Maybe if I was quiet long enough, the question would evaporate like the high-altitude rain that never reaches the desert floor. Maybe not.
I kept my face turned away from him.
He waited a beat. “Where are you staying?”
“At Bonita’s house, off Fort Lowell.” I gave him her address and my cell phone number. “It’ll probably just be for tonight, though. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Think about it. I’ll go see them with you.”
I nodded, but it wasn’t in agreement.
Treadwell returned to his scrutiny of the ground around the tree trunk and I moved toward the cars.
Six feet from the bumper of my truck there was a cardboard drink coaster that was cleaner looking than the rest of the litter. Right about where the mysterious Luisa had gone down. It was round. Dos Equis brand. With a handwritten note in a circular pattern around the edge. I knelt and pocketed the coaster while Treadwell had his back turned.
It may have been the kind of evidence the detective was looking for, but I was pretty sure it hadn’t been there when I’d pulled up. And I didn’t know if Luisa had anything to do with what I’d heard on the HandsOn call anyway.
All I knew was that someone who automatically gave a false name with no thought whatsoever was my kind of liar. And Treadwell didn’t seem to know anything about that kind of woman at all.
I stopped for a six-pack on the way back to Bonita’s, choosing Dos Equis, as if the purchase of the right brand might work as a talisman in unraveling the mystery of the dropped coaster. As parched as I was, I decided to save the beer till after my workout. I shouldn’t have been drinking the stuff anyway; it added fat instead of muscle. Now I’d have to add more cardio to counteract it.
I looked around at the detritus that Bonita had left behind. Two bulging black garbage bags and a straight flush of empty pizza boxes in the corner. Eight cardboard boxes full of clothes and household goods that Martin would come by to pick up. Dust bunnies the size of grocery carts underneath the dining room table.
I sat down in the ugliest but most comfortable armchair I’d ever seen. As wide as a boat, with flaring arms that took up an extra three feet, it was a faded yellow fabric, with cigarette burns near the back, and a bright serape thrown over the seat cushion. Clearly, household furniture wouldn’t count for much in Bonita’s list of assets. Equally clearly, she wasn’t getting her security deposit back.
I pulled the coaster from my back pocket and flattened it out on my thigh. It was a creamy tan, with the brand’s XX marking, the face of Montezuma, and a circular pattern of Aztec art. I held it closer to read the penciled note around the edge. It was fluidly written and very light. Probably a woman’s handwriting. Juanito’s 1900 F. Nineteen hundred could be an address or a year or a price or even a time, if anybody who was part of that note had a military background. But lots of my Latino friends in high school had used twenty-four hour time, too. Juanito could be somebody’s name or business. And the F? Maybe an apartment designation or part of a name. But if it was a first initial, it wasn’t my Luisa. Someone she was supposed to meet?
Bonita had taken her laptop with her, so I started low tech, with the phone book. It was quite likely that Juanito was a first name, and that would be no help at all. But I checked the J’s just in case it was a last name. No Juanitos were listed.
The yellow pages wouldn’t do me any good if I didn’t know what kind of business “Juanito’s” was. Maybe. Maybe. I went back to the white pages and flipped to the section that listed businesses alphabetically.
Yes. A bar called Juanito’s near Ajo Street in South Tucson. The address wasn’t 1900, but a bar and a beer coaster seemed to go together rather nicely. Maybe I’d found the right Juanito’s. And if 1900 was a time and meant seven p.m., I still had time enough for a quick lower-body workout before I had to be there.
I pawed through Bonita’s leave-behinds in search of gym equipment. Nothing solid enough or heavy enough. I finally found what I was looking for in the backyard. Two empty five-gallon plastic gas cans with handles. If I filled them about two-thirds full with sand, they’d be the perfect weight. There was an old apple crate that would work as a step and I could bungee-cord the two gas cans to a five-foot metal pole I found by the back fence to make a barbell. I checked to make sure that no neighbors had a good line of sight into the backyard, then stripped down to my underwear.
I started with squats and step-ups, adding sand to the jugs until my legs shook with fatigue after three sets of reps. Two bungee cords tied together made an ad hoc jump rope, and I alternated abdominal crunches and obliques with five minutes on the rope.
At the end, I was sweating from places I didn’t know I had pores, and was as winded as if I’d run all the way to Nogales.
One more set of gas-can squats before I celebrated, holding a hose over my head and bringing blessed relief.
It was time to meet Juanito.
A smart woman in Tucson should still think twice before showing up alone in a bar at night, especially on the south side of town. I didn’t want to look too approachable.
I spiked my hair with American Greaser, the only beauty product I use, and put on my favorite “keep your distance” T-shirt that said: SOME DAYS IT’S JUST NOT WORTH CHEWING THROUGH THE RESTRAINTS. The tattooed jacks around my biceps were clearly visible.
That was the first ink I got, lovingly drawn by an inmate named Lisa just before I got out of jail. She’d rigged an ink tube and needle onto the handle of an electric toothbrush, resulting in a primitive tattoo starter kit. I’d originally agreed to a more clichéd barbed-wire design, as Lisa said that was the only thing she could draw very well. But when the pain started ratcheting up, I chickened out. “Don’t draw in the wire. Just make each barb look like the kind of jacks we used to play with,” I told her, wiping away my tears.
“There,” she’d said, dabbing at the last of the blood. “Much better than a tramp stamp or barbed wire.”
I agreed.
I got to Juanito’s bar half an hour early. It was white-painted brick and as small as a childless couple’s home, sitting alone in the middle of a tiny dirt parking area. There were two cars and a pickup truck already in the lot. I pulled in and made a U-turn, leaving the nose of my truck pointed out.
Pushing on the wooden door, I stepped inside and waited while my eyes adjusted. The setting sun was still a good inch above the Tucson Mountains behind me, but that meant a blinding glare coming through the front windows at about shoulder height. Dust swirled through the beam, bisecting the room into shadow and light.
It was a narrow room, with a scarred wooden bar along the right wall, a handful of rickety stools, and a painted concrete floor. The customers were all at the mismatched tables along the left: one group of four card players, and two Latinos at another table who’d pushed their chairs back against the wall and sat side by side.
No sign of my Luisa. I took a stool at the bar.
“Cerveza.”
The bartender, a middle-aged Hispanic man with long sideburns and full lips, tapped the Tecate spigot and raised his eyebrows in question. I nodded.
The pantomime over with, he placed a beer coaster on the bar and the full glass on top of it. “Four dollars.”
I paid without complaint. The Dos Equis beer coaster was the same kind I’d picked up at the tree.
One of the wall-sitters got up to put money in the jukebox. An old-fashioned mariachi ballad, full of trumpets and strings and ululation, began to play. None of that edgy, hip-hop narcocorrido stuff here.
Gradually the room got used to my presence and conversation started up again, most of it in Spanish. I couldn’t understand it all, but got the idea that one of the card players was looking for a place to stay tonight since his girlfriend had kicked him out. Another, named Marcos, had just signed on for another month with a construction company.
Nobody mentioned Luisa or any other woman with an L name.
An older Hispanic couple came in, nodded politely, and took the two stools next to me. The man ordered for the woman without asking: a sign of either a long history together or an inconsiderate date. He called her Cara, but I wasn’t sure if that was an endearment or her name.
How could I find out if someone here was the F I was looking for? The jukebox mariachis finished another plaint of lost love.
“¿Como está Felicia?” the woman beside me asked of the bartender.
I choked on my beer and lost his reply in my coughing. Felicia! And if she used a nickname, it might be Licia, the word that almost came out when I asked her name. She was both the F name and the L name I was looking for, and she’d been leaving a message for someone to meet her here at the bar.
I toyed with my drink and waited, sure now that I was in the right place.
One of the card players left and two more showed up to join the table.
A few minutes after seven, the door to the storage area in the back of the bar opened and a narrow, dark head poked through.
She spotted me at the bar and turned to run. I jumped to my feet. “Felicia!”
I followed her through a narrow passageway clogged with cleaning products and liquor bottles, and out a back door that stuttered and slapped behind me.
There was no trace of her. I rounded the building at a full gallop, nearly colliding with the bartender, who’d come out the front door to watch the chase.
A car started up behind the tamarisk trees to my right, but by the time I reached the street it was already out of sight. I’d lost her.
I climbed in the truck, started it, and turned in the direction that Felicia/Luisa had gone. The bartender watched me go, a cell phone held to his ear as I pulled away.
Not knowing what kind of car I was looking for, all I could do was scan the vehicles around me for Felicia’s profile. I didn’t even know if she was in a car by herself.
A family in a blue pickup. An elderly black man in an equally old Cadillac. A teenager with rap music booming from a Toyota. For a moment I thought I’d spotted her in a white sedan that pulled into a Circle K on the corner, but when the driver got out, it was a long-haired boy. When dusk turned to night, I called it quits and returned to Bonita’s house.
I helped myself to a cold Dos Equis on my way through the kitchen, then turned on the bug light on the back porch and perched gingerly on the rump-sprung chaise lounge. The breeze died away.
At least I knew who F was now. And where to find her.
If I’d guessed her age right, she’d be too young to be a patron at the bar. But she could sure be family. She had the same gracefully arched eyebrows and full lips as the bartender. His daughter, maybe?
But I still didn’t know what she was doing at the arroyo. It had to be a good thirteen, fourteen miles from the bar. Was she there to meet someone? To leave a beer-coaster message for someone? And did she have anything at all to do with the accident or the fight on Friday night?
“What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into, Felicia?” I asked the bottle.