The apostate, p.3
The Apostate, page 3
“Well, sure, I guess.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Dave headed for the door. “Ralphie, see if you can get a photo of the victim. You can send it to me somewhere along the road.”
“Socorro,” Ralph called out to the retreating figure of his partner. “I’ll send it to my buds in Socorro.”
The door slammed shut, leaving Carol staring at Ralph in disbelief. “Goodness, did you get the name of the typhoon that just blew out of here?”
“You know, Dave. When he gets a hunch….”
“He always follows up.” Carol completed the sentence.
“Always.” Ralph smiled his thin smile.
FIVE
BOBBY EARL HAD them pull off in Willcox and go through a fast food drive-thru. He had Mary Beth order two double cheeseburgers, fries, and an Orange Slice for him, a hamburger, fries, and Mountain Dew for her.
“What would you like, mister?” Mary Beth turned toward Michael.
“To hell with him.”
“He’s gotta eat something, Bobby Earl. What’ll it be, mister, a hamburger, cheeseburger?’
“I’m a vegetarian.” Michael deigned to say.
“What?” Bobby Earl exploded.
“I don’t eat meat.”
“I know what a vegetarian is, you butthole. A vegetarian? How stupid is that?”
“You have to respect everyone’s right to their own way of eatin’, Bobby Earl.” Mary Beth allowed.
“Could I have a fish sandwich?” Michael took in Mary Beth’s plain, pretty face and benevolent smile. How in the world, he wondered, did she get hooked up with this crazy boy?
“Fish?” Bobby Earl laughed. “Fish? You ain’t no vegetarian. What the hell is that?”
“I don’t eat meat.”
“The hell you don’t. What exactly kind of vegetable is a fish, huh, Mister College Professor?”
“Oh, hush, Bobby Earl.” Mary Beth intervened. “If he wants to call himself that, he can. I’ll order you a fish sandwich, mister, and some fries, too. Want a Coke to go with it?”
“Water’ll be fine.”
“Jeez.” Bobby Earl sniffed. “Probably wants some of that goddamned Perrier or stupid Evian or something.”
“Plain water’s okay.” Michael noted Bobby’s pronunciation of Perrier as Perry-er and Evian as E-vee-an. He was surprised the boy even knew what they were.
“I reckon,” Bobby Earl went on, “that Evian spring must be pretty big cause it’s in ever stupid store in the whole United States. You yuppie bastards can drink all of it you want.”
“Hush up, Bobby Earl.”
“It’s still stupid.”
They ate their food on the way to Lordsburg, Michael doing the best he could with his hands bound. Bobby Earl made Mary Beth take the business exit so he could use a gas station restroom. He was only gone a few minutes, but Michael used the time to try to talk Mary Beth into letting him go.
“I can’t do that, mister.” She apologized. “Me and Bobby Earl would have to decide that together.”
“Did you decide together to kidnap me back in Tucson?”
“No, sir. It was Bobby Earl’s idea.”
“Then you can let me go.”
“No, sir, I better not. ’Sides, we’re on our way to get my baby girl in Fort Smith.”
“Fort Smith. Is that down in Arkansas somewhere?” Michael didn’t really remember the region’s geography very well. It had been a long time since he’d been in that part of the country.
“Yes, sir, it’s in Arkan… well, you never mind where it is.”
“What made you pick me, anyway?”
“Just luck, I reckon.”
“Luck?”
“You parked right next to me at that mall there. And we seen you had a lot of money in your billfold.”
“Lots of people had money at the mall.”
“Yeah, but Bobby Earl seen the way you checked me out, and he wanted me to smile real sweet at you when you came back. I didn’t exactly know that we was goin’ to take you and your car. Well—maybe your car. And you did have a lot of money.”
Over four hundred dollars, Michael reminded himself. He remembered coming out of the mall and walking back to the car. The girl was at the back of their old car. She was smiling and standing with one arm on her hip. Her soft print dress clung to her breasts and hips, and Michael remembered thinking of Faulkner and Dewey Dell from As I Lay Dying.
Fecund, that was Faulkner’s word for these girls. Child bearers they were. Sexy, women-children whose fecundity could swallow a man right up—and not spit him out. Before Michael had known it, the stupid boy had jumped him and put a pistol in his ribs, and the wild flight from the El Con Mall and Tucson had begun.
“Say,” Mary Beth’s voice was sweet and friendly, “what kind of professor are you? I mean back at the university. That is where you teach, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. I teach literature.”
“Oh, that must be exciting.”
“Yeah, sometimes. It can get boring, though. You’d really have to ask my students.”
“You must be awful smart. Me and Bobby Earl, well we never graduated from high school neither one of us.”
“Is that when you got married and had the baby?” Michael edged his tied up hands toward the door handle.
“Lord, no.” Mary Beth laughed. “Me and Bobby Earl ain’t married. I was married to another boy from my hometown. He’s my little Marcie Kay’s daddy. I met Bobby Earl after I got divorced.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been painful. Divorces can really hurt.”
“Yes, they can. You have one?”
“No, I haven’t.” Michael tried to open the back door silently. “But I can imagine.”
“It was bad enough.”
Mary Beth turned her head to gaze forlornly out the front side window. Michael made his move. He shoved the back door open and pushed himself out, right into Bobby Earl’s chest.
“Goin’ somewhere, piss face?” The boy dug the .38 into Michaels’s ribs where no one else could see it.
“Shit.” Michael exhaled deeply.
“Shit is right. You screwed up, teacher boy.”
Dragging Michael back into the car behind him, Bobby Earl resumed his position behind the panic-stricken Mary Beth.
“I’m sorry, Bobby Earl, we was just talkin.’ I didn’t think he would try to get away.”
“Shut up.” Bobby Earl feinted a backhand at Michael who doubled up and cringed. “Just shut up and drive.”
SIX
BY THE TIME Dave Bishop passed Socorro and was nearing Truth or Consequences, the shadows of the short winter day had lengthened almost to the highway. He had not left Albuquerque immediately as Carol and Ralph no doubt thought he had. Instead, he’d dropped by his house to check on some old files he had there and to pick up the clean little Colt .380 he rarely carried, much less shot. In fact, he’d only fired it at a range a couple of times, but it was a beauty. Light recoil, accurate, easy to handle. He didn’t know why he felt he should carry it now, but it was part of the hunch, and he was always one to follow hunches. He found it safer that way.
But now it was getting later in the day, and he hadn’t heard from Carol or Ralph, so he decided to find a motel and rest for the night. Make some calls, see what was cooking. He found an inexpensive place on the north end of town, and after getting a bit to eat at their greasy spoon café and resting for a while, he made his phone calls.
He called his mother’s place first and was surprised to get her answering machine. Carol must’ve taken off early to go shopping with her, he thought. He left an “I love you” message for his mom telling her not to worry, he’d be back probably tomorrow, and that he was sorry he had to renege on their shopping date.
“Talk to you soon, Mom.” He told the recorder and then hung up.
A call to the office also got a machine. He let Ralph know where he was, the phone number of his room, and to call him if he heard anything on either of their cases.
Stretching and yawning, he turned on the television from the bed. He clicked around the dial a few times with the remote until he landed on a local news broadcast from Las Cruces piped through the cable system at the motel. He had it on for background noise and was half asleep again when the station picked up a live feed from a station out of Tucson. As soon as he heard the word Tucson, Dave popped up wide awake. It was a woman reporter, and she was covering the carjacking scene that had occurred earlier in the day.
Dave filtered out the reporter but greedily absorbed the visual images. They showed where the incident occurred while eyewitnesses talked over the footage, and Dave laughed to see the old junker apparently left behind by the kidnappers. An old rattletrap Chevy. One for one, Dave congratulated himself. The next image of interest to Dave was the police artist’s sketch of the abductor.
“Bobby Earl, Bobby Earl.” He spoke out loud to the room. “Why don’t you just announce to the world who you are?” He laughed again and addressed the image on the screen. “Maybe get a haircut, different clothes—never occurs to you, huh, boy crook?”
The report then focused on the victim of the carjacking, with his tearful wife pleading for the criminals to release her husband. Dave edged forward on the bed hoping they would show a picture of the guy. This Michael Wright fellow. And then they did. Dave slapped his legs and let out a hoot.
“Son of a gun. It must be the holiday season. It’s two for one night. Two for the price of one. C’mon, baby, just come this way.” He leaned back and clapped his hands. “Unbelievable, unfrappin’ believable.”
SEVEN
“THAT WAS A lousy little town.” Bobby Earl grumbled when they were back on the interstate leading east away from Lordsburg. “Nothin’ but Mexicans. The whole country must’ve moved up here and took it over or something.”
After the outburst it was quiet in the car for a good spell. Mary Beth concentrated on driving, Michael on not doing anything to make Bobby Earl mad, and Bobby Earl on twirling his pistol like a movie outlaw. Then, suddenly, he had an idea.
“Nesto.” He exclaimed, pointing the .38 at a sign indicating Deming was the next town coming up. “I just remembered Nesto lives in Deming. We’ll get us a cheap motel and hole up for the night there. I’ll see if I can get ahold of Nesto.”
“Who’s Nesto?” Mary Beth glanced at Bobby Earl in the rearview mirror. “Ain’t that some kind of Mexican name? I thought you didn’t like Mexicans.”
“Who said that?” Bobby Earl sniffed. “Me and Nesto did time together in that county jail in Oklahoma. ’Member when I was in there?”
“I don’t remember nothin’ about no Nesto.”
“He’s okay. You get up there, take the first exit into that Deming. We’ll get a place. I’ll call Nesto. He always knows what’s up.”
“How you gonna get his number?”
“Don’t you worry it none. If he’s around, I’ll find him. I’m lucky that way.”
I hope the hell you’re not, Michael thought, envisioning what kind of friends Bobby Earl might have made in jail. But less than an hour after they had found a fleabag motel in west Deming, where the manager asked no questions and conducted his business from behind a window made of extremely thick glass, Michael’s fears and Bobby Earl’s luck were both realized. Michael heard the rumbling of a powerful car engine just outside the motel room, the slamming of two car doors, and then a loud banging on the door. Bobby Earl had Mary Beth get up and open it, and in stepped Nesto.
He was stocky, thick bodied—approximately in his mid-twenties. His coal black hair was barely fuzz cut length, maybe growing back from being shaved. He had on a pair of expensive-looking basketball shoes, dirty, pleated pants, and a T-shirt that revealed several tattoos on his arms and chest—one of which was the La Raza symbol Michael associated with the United Farm Workers. Caesar Chavez’s old union. Michael had a feeling Nesto hadn’t been a member of the UFW.
The new arrival wore the ubiquitous Generation X goatee and had a two or three days’ growth of stubble on the rest of his face, which, except for a scar above his left eye, a mean looking mouth, and red, crazy eyes, would have almost been handsome. As it was, he was a tough-looking, scary character. Michael tried to avoid looking directly at him.
Behind and to the side of Nesto appeared a jittery white boy about Bobby Earl’s age. He was short and scrawny, wearing greasy blue jeans and a frayed flannel shirt. His face was acne scarred and almost hairless with a crooked nose, thin mouth, and wild, darting eyes. He wore his hair in thin braids like some of the rap artists Michael had sometimes seen when he was surfing through the cable channels in the safety of his home. If Nesto was mean and tough, this guy was sneaky and unstable and very dangerous.
“Who the hell is that?” Bobby Earl wanted to know.
“Hey, good to see you again, too, bro’.” Nesto’s voice was deep, tinged with the classic accent of a person who had first learned Spanish and then English.
“Who is that?” Bobby Earl’s hand hovered over the .38.
“Take it easy, Bobby E.” Nesto smiled. “He’s cool. He’s my partner. Name’s Carl D. He just spent too much time with the brothers, that’s all. Thinks he’s Coolio or something.”
Nesto reached out his hand, which Bobby Earl finally shook, all the while looking at Carl D.
“Shit.” Bobby Earl pronounced it as “shee-it.”
“Yo, homes.” Carl D. offered his hand. “This is a fly run you be clampin’.” Bobby Earl declined the offer. Carl D. shrugged his shoulders.
“What the crap did he just say?”
“Chill, B.E.” Nesto raised a hand palm outward. “He just digs whatever action you got goin’ here.”
“Well, tell him to talk English. I ain’t into all that ‘brother’ bull.”
“Whatever, dude,” Carl D. drawled. “Y’know what I mean?”
Jesus, Michael prayed to the savior he didn’t believe in, if you’ll just get me out of this.
“So,”—Nesto and Carl D. came on into the room and closed the door behind them—“introduce us to your friends.”
“Dig.” Carl D. added.
“They ain’t my friends. The girl’s mine. That turd over there belongs to the car we got outside.”
“Holy crap.” Nesto shook his head. “You got him in Tucson?”
“How the hell you figure that?”
“We listen to the cop radio out here, bro. They was talking about this carjackin’ of some guy in Tucson. Is that you, man? Is that him over there?”
“Maybe.” Bobby Earl played it coy. Nesto laughed and smiled at Michael. Carl D. busied himself with checking out Mary Beth. “Hey,” Bobby Earl yelled at him, “she’s mine. Don’t be messin’ with her.” Carl D. raised both hands in surrender and backed over to a chair by the room’s ratty little TV and sat down.
“What’s your name?” Nesto turned to Mary Beth.
“Mary Beth.” She turned away from Nesto. Across the room, Carl D. messed with the TV dials but kept taking sneak peeks at Mary Beth.
“She’s mine,” Bobby Earl reiterated.
“We got that,” Nesto agreed. “What’s the weenie’s name over there in the corner?”
“I don’t know. I call him Professor. He’s some kind of teacher or something. Who gives a big one?”
“His name’s Michael.” Mary Beth drew brief scrutiny from both Nesto and Bobby Earl.
“Well, Professor Michael,”—Nesto laughed—“you got yourself quite a little classroom here, huh?”
Nesto and Bobby Earl walked over to Michael. Carl D. got up and began edging toward Mary Beth, all the while acting like he was checking out the interior design of the room.
“Whad’ya say, white bread?” Nesto addressed Michael. Michael didn’t know what to answer, so he kept his mouth shut. “Why don’t you give him to us, man?” Nesto suggested. “We’ll take care of him for you.”
“Looks like real fresh meat, homes.” Carl D.’s eyes were glued on Mary Beth as he got closer and closer to her. “Y’know what I’m sayin’?”
He reached inside a pocket of his flannel shirt and extracted a straight piece of blue glass rounded at one end. Then he dug in the other pocket and came out with a small piece of what looked like murky crystal. He showed them to Mary Beth with a leering smile.
“Bobby, my man.” Nesto was negotiating. “I got the most righteous .357 mag. S and W Model 66, four inch barrel. Very cherry. I’ll swap it to you for white bread here.”
Bobby Earl checked the .38 he had tucked down into his pants. A guy could really blow stuff away with a big .357. The little .38 wasn’t diddly. But it was all he could manage at the time.
“I don’t know, man.”
Michael, the object of the bartering, closed his eyes.
“Naw.” Bobby Earl finally declined the offer. “I need him for if the shit comes down.”
“If the shit comes down, Bobby, man, they’ll waste his ugly ass, too. Don’t be foolin’ yourself.”
“Yeah, but….” Bobby Earl glanced over Nesto’s shoulder at Carl D. “Hey, asshole, I done warned you to keep away from her.”
“Chill, homes.” Carl D. stepped back, prepared to fire up his crack pipe. “Just wanted to see if she was wantin’ to get high.” Bobby Earl moved at Carl D., but Nesto stepped in the way.
“Calma, Bobby.” He put his right hand against Bobby Earl’s chest who swept it away with his left. “Sit down,” Nesto ordered Carl D. without looking around. Carl D. sat back down by the TV, but he still kept an eye on Mary Beth.
“I’m cool, y’know what I’m sayin’.”
“You better stay that way, motherfucker,” Bobby Earl threatened.
“Listen, Bobby.” Nesto tried to calm him down. “Take it easy. You’re upset now. I know this thing’s been tough on you. Runnin’ the road and all. Tell you what, me and Carl D’ll bail for a while. We’ll get you some food and drink and stuff. Then we’ll come back in a little bit. How’s that sound?”
“You can come back.”
“Dig. You mind if I bring my ’ho back with me?”
