A Nasty Piece of Work: A Novel Read online

  “What else did your grapevine tell you?”

  “That you look young but talk old. That you’d been a brainy homicide detective in New Jersey before the CIA talked you into becoming some kind of spy. That you never run off at the mouth about it. That you were sent packing without a pension after an incident in Afghanistan that never made it into the newspapers. That you took the fall for following orders you couldn’t prove had been given. That you were a troublemaker in a war that had enough trouble without you. That you came out west and went into the business of detecting in order to live in the style to which you wanted to become accustomed. That you’re street-smart and tough and lucky and don’t discourage easily. That what you do, you do well, what you don’t do well, you don’t do. Which is another way of saying you don’t buy into the notion that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

  “That’s one hell of a list.”

  “I have a last but not least: that you charge satisfied customers ninety-five dollars a day and unsatisfied customers zero. That nobody can recall an unsatisfied customer.”

  “Can you attach a number to your problem?”

  “I bet $125,000 of my uncle’s nest egg this guy wouldn’t jump bail. I worry that I’m losing the bet. I feel real awful about it.”

  “Just out of curiosity, you want to identify your grapevine?”

  She flashed another one of those apologetic half-smiles. “Hey, I’d better not. If I tell you, you might send me packing. That’s what my grapevine said. She said you were peeved at her for being too available. She said, psychologically speaking, you wore starched collars and liked ladies who liked men who opened doors for them. She said you’d been born into the wrong century.”

  Two

  Friday’s story, the reason she had turned up at the door of my mobile home, came out in disjointed bits, which I took to mean it hadn’t been memorized. Here are the bits, jointed: Ten days before, the police in Las Cruces had apprehended a white male name of Emilio Gava on drug charges. Seems as if police undercover agents had caught him buying cocaine in a bar. After his arrest, Gava was allowed to make a phone call from the jailhouse. At the arraignment next morning, an out-of-state lawyer in a three-piece suit turned up to defend him. Friday described the lawyer, who went by the name of R. Russell Fontenrose, as unattractive a male as she’d ever set eyes on. He spurned an offer to plea bargain and pleaded his client not guilty even though he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, as the saying goes. The judge, miffed to see a fancy-pants lawyer at the bar, set a high bail—$125,000. At which point a woman Friday took to be Gava’s lady friend turned up with a deed to a condominium in East of Eden Gardens.

  “Can you describe her?” I asked.

  “I’m not good at describing people,” Friday said.

  “Try.”

  The lids closed over Friday’s eyes as she rummaged through her memory. “She was roughly my height and build, with blonde hair that fell in bangs across her forehead.”

  “What about her eyes? Women always notice other women’s eyes.”

  “The single time I saw her, which was in my uncle’s office after the arraignment, she was wearing dark sunglasses.” Friday was looking at me again. “Lemuel, what do you know about the intricacies of bail bonding?”

  I had to admit what I knew could fit in a thimble.

  “Okay. Here’s the short course. Bail bondsmen—that includes bail bondswomen—require collateral for any bond over $5,000. If the collateral is real estate, they require double the amount of bail in equity. Equity is the difference between what the property is worth and the mortgage against it. A defendant’s personal property is not eligible, but the deed was in the woman’s name, which was Jennifer Leffler. She produced tax statements showing the property was valued at $375,000 and free and clear of mortgage, that the state and local property taxes had been paid up for the year. She paid the fee for the bond in advance in cash. I posted bail. Emilio Gava and Jennifer Leffler climbed into a utility vehicle and drove off.”

  “Sounds pretty cut-and-dried to me,” I said. “Where’s the problem?”

  Friday rubbed the cold beer mug against her brow as if she was suppressing a migraine. “The trial is two weeks from today. Day before yesterday my uncle asked me if I’d checked out the deed with the county records office. I’m new at this—I’m embarrassed to say it hadn’t crossed my mind. My uncle gave me the name of the clerk to call.”

  I saw where her story was going. “The deed turned out to be phony.”

  “I dialed the home phone number Emilio Gava left with me. I got a recorded announcement saying the line had been disconnected. I drove out U.S. 70 to East of Eden Gardens to look at the condominium listed on the deed. According to the concierge, Gava rented the condo from its owner, an Albuquerque real estate investment company. The condo itself was in one of those new communities that seem to spring up overnight—”

  “Replete with minimalls and minigolf and all-weather tennis courts. Been there. Seen ’em.”

  “The Gava-Leffler condo was dark. They’ve obviously skipped out on the bail. Look, I know it’s a needle-in-a-haystack situation, but I thought you might give it your best shot…”

  She let the thought trail off. I nodded at her beer mug. She nodded no. I thought about her problem, and mine. Here’s what I said: “The chances of tracking down a bail jumper in two weeks and bringing him back to court are slim.” Here’s what I didn’t say: I was having the usual cash flow problems, bills were piling up. With summer not far away, the air-conditioning unit in the Once in a Blue Moon could use reconditioning. My vintage Studebaker needed four retreads and a new suspension. The Afghan orphan I’d adopted, Kubra, was winding up her first year at a junior college in California that charged $5,500 a year tuition and another $2,500 for room and board. Then there was Friday herself, hunched forward on the couch, reaching down to absently massage the ankle of one naked foot. Touched by something in this cracked Wedgwood of a woman that was broken and needed mending, I heard myself say, “Why not?”

  Her face brightened and I caught a glimpse of what she might look like without the weight of the world on her shoulders. “You’ll try?”

  “I’m not guaranteeing results.”

  She thrust a hand into her astronaut knapsack and came up with an item clipped from the back pages of the Las Cruces Star about the drug bust and the arraignment and release on bail of one Emilio Gava. In the article, he was described as a retired businessman. “Too bad they didn’t publish a photo,” I remarked.

  “There was a Star photographer taking pictures on the courthouse steps,” Friday remembered, “but I guess they didn’t think Gava was a big enough fish to publish it.”

  I walked her through her involvement with Emilio Gava and Jennifer Leffler a second time, jotting down weights and heights and ages and hair colors, jotting down places and dates and the names of judges and bailiffs and officers of the court. I copied the address of the Las Cruces condo that she’d gotten off the phony deed. I marked down the various addresses and phone numbers where Friday could be reached. Her uncle ran his bond company out of an office on the second floor of a 1930s brick building around the corner from the Las Cruces courthouse. Ornella Neppi herself had a place in a fifties garden apartment community on the edge of Doña Ana north of Las Cruces. Suzari Marionettes operated out of a secondhand Ford van and a PO box in Doña Ana.

  I snapped my spiral notebook closed. Friday stood up. “Can I use the facilities, Lemuel?”

  For the life of me I couldn’t imagine what facilities she was referring to. My confusion must have been draped across my face because she looked me in the eye and said, “So, hey, I need to pee.”

  “Uh-huh. Sorry. I’m a bit thick at times.” I steered her to the bathroom at the back of the mobile home, then ducked into the bedroom to change into a pair of faded khaki slacks, a frayed but serviceable Fruit of the Loom and my running shoes without socks. I was collecting the empty beer mugs when
Friday returned from the quote unquote facilities looking more delectable than a field of wild honeysuckle.

  “This is quite a mobile home, Lemuel. You live in the lap of luxury. All the inlaid mahogany, all the Italian tiles—where’d you find it?”

  “I bought it at a fire sale when one of those film studios in Hollywood went under. I suppose nobody wanted it because it was so big. They told me it was custom built in the thirties for Douglas Fairbanks Jr. when he was filming The Prisoner of Zenda on location. I think it was the first all-aluminum mobile home ever made, and a very fancy one at that. Which accounts, among other things, for what you call the facilities and I call the john.”

  “You like living in a mobile home?’

  “When you move into a suburb you’re surrounded by strangers. When you move into a mobile home park you’re living with family.”

  I accompanied Friday outside and down the walkway to the road. “What is it about walking barefoot?” I asked.

  “I love sand. I love earth. I love the earth. I’m frightened of leaving it. I’m superstitious about feeling the pull of gravity under my feet. It reminds me that I’m earthbound.”

  I searched her face. She wasn’t making a joke. “That’s an unusual superstition,” I remarked.

  “Oh, I have the usual ones, too. I’m superstitious about the number thirteen. I’m spooked by thirteen people eating at the same table, I won’t set foot on the thirteenth floor of a building even if it’s numbered fourteen, I won’t walk on a Thirteenth Avenue or drive on an interstate numbered thirteen or take a plane on the thirteenth day of the month.”

  With the kind of suppleness one associates with cats, Friday slipped the sandals onto her feet, then angled her head and stared at me for a moment. “So I think I enjoyed meeting you, Lemuel,” she said finally.

  “You’re not sure?”

  There was a quick little shake of the head, a petulant curling of the Scott Fitzgerald underlip. “I’m not sure, no.” Suddenly a cloud flitted across her features and she was swallowing emotions. She looked like one of those modern females wrestling with the eternal problem of how to give yourself generously and keep part of yourself back in case the giving doesn’t work out. “So you never know who someone is the first time you meet them, do you, Lemuel? You only know who they want you to think they are.”

  “That already tells you something important.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll call you.”

  “Yes.” She frowned. “Okay. Call me.” She ducked into the beat-up Ford van parked in the shadow of a stand of Mexican pinyons and waved once through the open window as she drove off. I watched the Ford until it turned onto the interstate and was lost in the swarm of traffic. Why did I feel as if something important had happened? I retrieved the rake leaning against the tree and, turning back toward the Once in a Blue Moon, followed the prints of her naked feet down the pathway, raking the sand behind me as I went. It was a trick I’d picked up from an Israeli colleague in Peshawar—the Israelis raked the sand around their camp every night and then inspected the track for footprints first thing at first light.

  Three

  “Yo, Gunn? It’s me, it’s your daughter, it’s your adopted progeny.”

  I kicked off my running shoes and settled my lean, mean six-foot carcass onto the yellow couch, the phone wedged between my right ear and the shrapnel scar on my right shoulder, my hands clasped behind my head, a moronic ear-to-ear grin plastered across my moronic face. “God damn, it’s good to hear your voice, Kubra.”

  “It’s good to hear yours, Gunn.”

  Since she’d gone off to junior college, my daughter’s phone calls had become a regular Sunday morning feature, which was when the long distance rates were bargain basement. Thanks to strings I’d been able to pull with a former American ambassador to Kabul, Kubra had been one of the three hundred or so Afghan refugees allowed into the U.S. of A. She had registered at school under the name on her certificate of American citizenship, Kubra Ziayee, but she had signed up for courses, had introduced herself to classmates, using Gunn, which tickled me to tears. When she phoned me Sundays she called herself Gunn, and pronounced it with a certain belligerent intensity, as if a lot of unspoken sentiments were hanging on the name. I got the message and it warmed my heart, which was a part of the anatomy I seemed to be losing touch with.

  “How was your week, little lady?”

  “I aced a bio exam and lucked into a part-time job with a veterinarian named Cunningham. It’s not much—I scrub up after the dog and cat clients—but it’s a foot in the door, and it won’t look bad on my application when I apply to vet school. Besides which it’ll sure help out in the cash-flow department. Until further notice, I can make do without the check you send every month. Mr. Cunningham’s promised to let me look over his shoulder when he performs operations. What’s up with you, Gunn? You haven’t beat up on anyone since that motorcycle cop in Santa Fe told you to keep your hands where he could see them? Jesus, Gunn, what do you have against keeping your hands where someone can see them?”

  I educated her, which is what you do with people you love. “It wasn’t what he said. It was how he said it.”

  “He said it the way a policeman says dialogue he memorized. Boy, did you have a hard time squirming out of that one. You could have lost your detective license.”

  I had to smile. “To answer your question, I finally got around to pumping out the septic—”

  “You’ve been threatening to do it since Christmas. Has any work come your way?”

  “As a matter of fact, a lady bail bondsman came by with a predicament. She posted bond on a guy who was caught buying cocaine. She’s pretty sure he’s skipped. She stands to lose $125,000 if he doesn’t show up for the trial.”

  “And you stand to gain some cash flow if he’s brought in. What does the damsel in distress look like?”

  I laughed into the phone. “Would you believe buck teeth, straw hair, cross-eyed with a lisp and a limp?”

  “You’re pulling my leg, Gunn. That’s not the kind of moth that turns around your flame. Hey, don’t do anything foolish, huh? I mean, don’t run any risks, don’t climb out on any limbs. You adopted me but I also adopted you. You’re the only adopted father I have.”

  “There’s no way you’re going to lose me.”

  “Yeah. Well. Uh.” I could hear her clearing a frog of anxiety from the back of her throat. “I met this dude—”

  I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. “What dude? Are you—?”

  “Am I what?”

  “You know what. Ah, hell, Kubra, are you sleeping with him?”

  “Oh, boy, what is it with adopted dads that they see their adopted daughters as eternal vestal virgins? The answer to your not very discreet question is, not yet. Get a life, Gunn. The dirty deed is bound to happen sooner or later—”

  “I vote for later.”

  Her sweet tinsel laughter tickled my ear. “I’m not ruling out sooner.”

  If I couldn’t reason with her, I figured I could scare her. “A day doesn’t go by without another story on venereal disease turning up in the Albuquerque paper.”

  “I’ve read all those stories, Gunn. They even handed out a pamphlet in the home economics class. Statistically speaking, it’s not the problem.”

  “Look, Kubra, the bottom line is, before you sleep with someone, get to know him. As long as he’s not scoring for the sake of scoring, it can work out. I just think you’re still kinda young.”

  I heard the groan work its way down the tube. “Jeeeez. I’m seventeen and a half a week from Tuesday.”

  “If you’re still figuring in the halves, you’re young.”

  “Don’t tell me you never scored for the sake of scoring, Gunn.”

  “When I want to work up a sweat, I pump iron or septic tanks.”

  “Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent pure! Darn it, Gunn, what are we fighting over? Ted and I haven’t got past the handholding stage. We go dutch on milk shakes in the C
ampus Cave and talk about Elizabethan poetry and Oriental religions and NBA basketball. He walks me back to the dorm. We kiss in the shadows under the awning. Can you deal with that, Gunn, or you figuring on turning up with your shotgun?”

  “I don’t touch shotguns anymore. When I touch them they have a nasty habit of going off.”

  She laughed. “Love you.”

  “Me, too, little lady.”

  “Call you next Sunday. Bye.”

  “Next Sunday. Hey, if I’m not here, my accountant in Las Cruces will know where to find me.”

  I couldn’t miss the snicker. “Your accountant, right. She’s the one who scores”—another snicker—“I mean keeps score when your bank balance dips into the red. Neat legend. Bye for now.”

  “Bye.”

  Four

  I put in a call to a photojournalist pal at the Las Cruces Star named Lyle Leggett. Leggett was a thin man in his late forties who, without malice aforethought, managed to look ten years older. It probably had a little to do with not shaving. It probably had a lot to do with not caring. Several years before, when we’d both been younger and fitter and less concerned about mortality, I’d let Leggett, who was freelancing out of Islamabad, tag along when I slipped across the Pakistani badlands into Afghanistan with a cargo of Kalashnikovs lashed to the sides of pack horses. At the time some CIA genius had decided we ought to be arming friendly tribesmen against the Taliban. (I use the word “friendly” in its loosest sense.) Leggett sold the spread to the Associated Press and eventually won a Columbia School of Journalism photojournalist prize, which, true to form, he’d turned up to collect with a tie hanging loose around his neck and the top button of his wrinkled shirt unbuttoned. Last time our paths crossed, in a bar around the corner from the Star a year or so back, I’d been surprised how much hair Leggett had lost. What little he had left seemed to have been pasted across his sun-peeling scalp one strand at a time.