Other Voices in the Zozobra Incident (A Reprint)

Last week, we learned a little more about the protagonist of THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT, BJ Vinson, so I’d like to take the liberty of another re-post to take a deeper look into some of the other voices in the novel, starting with Hazel Harris, BJ’s office manager and surrogate mom.

                                                                                             

*****

At the time ZOZOBRA takes place, Hazel, a retired teacher and best friend of BJ’s deceased mother, is sixty-three-years-old. She stands 5’5” and weighs 150 pounds. She is plump, rather dowdy, gray-eyed, and considers it her responsibility to be a stand-in mom. Although he tweaks her nose now and then, BJ puts up with Hazel’s smothering because he is truly fond of her. Besides, she runs the office—and sometimes him—efficiently and makes sure the clients pay their bills… something BJ wouldn’t be nearly as proficient at doing. Plump, capable, and nosy, Hazel reminds him of that sassy maid of the same name in the comics and on TV who runs the fictional Baxter household. She doesn’t approve of his gay lifestyle but loves him like a son. We meet her throughout the series.

Delbert David Dahlman, known as Del to his friends and associates, is a slender, blue-(sapphire) eyed, blond with an athletic build (obtained in a gym). He stands 5’11” and weighs 160 pounds. Del possesses an eternally youthful appearance that seems to defy aging. A Chicago boy who attended the UNM Law School, he’s practiced mostly corporate and tax law in Albuquerque ever since 2001. He is an associate attorney with a large local firm named Stone, Hedges, Martinez, Levishon, etc.… or the Blahs, as BJ calls them. He is thirty-two-years old in 2006 when he comes to BJ and asks for help running down a blackmailer. He had met BJ in the line of duty, and when they were attracted to one another, they ended up living together in BJ’s home on Post Oak NE until BJ was seriously wounded in the right thigh by a bullet from an accused murder’s gun. During the long recovery, Del wasn’t able to handle the home nursing and allowed himself to be seduced by a handsome gigolo named Emilio Prada. The manner of the split-up makes it hard for him to come to BJ when he assumes Emilio is handing around some raw pictures. Nonetheless, he swallows his pride and asks BJ for help. Del also lives on throughout the series.

Emilio Prada is a twenties-something legal immigrant from Durango, Mexico. He is handsome in that way some Hispanic juveniles are prettier than their girlfriends, although “Milio” never grew out of it. Rather than work for a living, he uses his looks and slender, wiry build to make his money. He is amoral more than immoral. He sees nothing wrong with selling himself to men or women. In fact, he enjoys the seduction. When he meets Del Dahlman, he figures he’s found a goldmine… the answer to his dreams. Here is a handsome, successful man wealthy enough to take care of him for the rest of his life. Besides, the sex is good. But Milio likes to dominate his marks (and that’s what Del is) and oversteps the bounds of their relationship. When Del sends him packing, he takes some very graphic pictures of the two with him, the genesis of Del’s belief that Milio is behind the blackmailing.

But things are not as simple as they seem.

*****

Let me reaffirm my belief that readers are the greatest people on earth. Let me know what you think at dontravis21@gmail.com.

New Posts published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

A Scene from THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT

This week, let’s take another look at THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT. The following scene comes at the beginning of Chapter 5. Our PI, BJ Vinson, has called his client, Attorney Del Dahlman, to BJ’s office for an update on a talk he's had with the gay hustler Del believes is trying to use some racy snapshots for blackmail purposes. BJ derives a bit of pleasure out of delivering the message that the gigolo, Emilio Prada, has been using the photos to “prime the pump” with new johns.

******

Del still looked like an adolescent—great genes, probably. He was blessed with a comeliness that transcended male and female. It was a blend of both, I suppose. But for the first time since I’d known him, he had bloodshot eyes, a refreshing reminder he was merely mortal. The aroma he brought with him was hot, pungent coffee from the deli down the street, and the unidentified stimulus was a warm Danish.

He struggled to balance two plastic-lidded cups of steaming coffee and a white bakery bag, barely managing to set them on my desk without dumping everything all over my pale green Saxony carpet. I reached for one of the coffees as Del plopped into a chair across from me. Wordlessly, he opened the bag and took out a couple of warm cheese Danish.

“You look like hell.” I took a sip of the brew and laid one of the pastries on a napkin. “Damn, that’s good coffee.”

“Yeah, well, you look pretty, too.” He picked up the other cup and took off the lid.

“Speaking of pretty, I don’t think Emilio’s the one trying to yank your chain.”

Del froze with the cup inches from his lips. He put it back on the desk without drinking. “What are you talking about? He’s the only one who has the pictures.”

“Well, strictly speaking, that’s not true.”

Del shrank with mortification as I outlined my findings to date, alternating the delicious bits of narrative with tasty bites of pastry. His coffee cooled as he slumped in the chair, taking the verbal body blows without uttering a word until I finished my report.

“Harding?” he asked in a small voice. “Richard Harding of Premier Tank & Plating? How did he get his hands on them?”

“I’ll leave that to your powers of deduction. You must have some since you claim to be a lawyer.”

“Come on, I’m paying your bills. How did he get them?”

“That’s not germane to the investigation. I found them and retrieved them, and that’s all that matters.”

“Vince, you’re enjoying this way too much.”

I sobered—or pretended to. “Any reason Harding would want the upper hand with you?”

“None that I know of. I was the lead attorney in his plant expansion fight. Still represent him in a union matter. He ought to be cheering me on, not distracting me.”

“Way I figure it, he glommed onto a couple of the photos when he saw them. For leverage in case you had a disagreement.”

Del nodded. “Sounds about right. But he can’t do that now, right?”

“I recovered Harding’s copies of the pictures and deleted them from his computer. I’m no expert, but so far as I can tell, they’re gone. Before we leave Premier, there’s one other possibility to discuss.”

“What’s that?”

“The pictures were locked in Harding’s office. What if some of the help rifled his files and handed over copies to the union people?”

“Oh, shit!” Del exclaimed. “But wait, wouldn’t they just contact me and threaten to reveal the photos?”

“That makes sense, but maybe it’s like you said; you validate your vulnerability if you pay the five thousand.”

“I don’t think so. Demanding money is a patently criminal act. No law firm would be a party to that.” He paused before shrugging. “But you never know.”

“A law firm doesn’t have to be involved. Maybe the union people are doing it on their own.”

He dry washed his face. “So what do we do?”

“I’ll phone Harding to see if anyone broke into his computer.”

Del seemed to have lost his appetite for the moment, so I confiscated his Danish. No use letting it go to waste.

“By the way, assuming Emilio was the only one with the photos was dumb. He had to get the film developed somewhere, didn’t he? And you never considered he’d use the photos as bait for new johns?”

He groaned. “Never crossed my mind. Damn, who else has seen them?”

“Emilio gave me a few names, but I don’t know if he gave me all of them. He’s pretty active, and having one of Albuquerque’s leading attorneys as a satisfied customer isn’t hurting his rep any.”

“I’ll hurt more than his rep if I ever get my hands on the little shit.”

“In my book it would be justifiable homicide, but the justice system might take another view. Which brings us to the question of why aren’t you returning my calls? If it’s not important enough for you to respond, then it’s not important enough for me to pursue. Maybe we ought to forget about the whole thing.”

*****

How is Del going to react to that veiled threat? You'll have to read on to find out.

I had fun writing this book. Come to think of it, I usually find that I had fun penning a novel – after the agony of the actual writing is over, of course.

Thanks for being a reader and for perusing this post. Remember, I’m always pleased to hear from you.

Thanks,

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO AS IT APPEARS IN THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT

Last week, we visited THE BISTI BUSINESS and got a glimpse of Las Cruces. This week, let’s continue to look at New Mexico through BJ Vinson’s eyes and view the University of New Mexico as he sees it. In the following scene from Chapter 6 (Page 57) of THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT, our PI protagonist is tracking down one of Emilio Prada’s johns. Compromising photographs taken by the gay hustler have been used to blackmail BJ’s client, a prominent attorney.

*****

THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT

I phoned the office, but as Hazel had nothing pressing, I decided to tackle the next name on Prada’s list. According to the cross-reference directory in my trunk, one of them, Stephen Sturgis, was a professor at the University of New Mexico with a Far Northeast Heights home address. UNM was closer.

I entered the campus at Central Avenue and Stanford where John Tatschl’s bronze of the university’s Lobo mascot stood in eternal vigilance in front of Johnson Center. As a lifelong history buff, I knew UNM had opened in 1892 with a total of 25 students in a Victorian-style building isolated on the desert east of Albuquerque. Now it occupied approximately eight hundred acres totally engulfed by the city’s inexorable march to the heights.

The famed Santa Fe architect, John Gaw Meem, designed many of its original buildings in the Pueblo style. Today, the campus is an eclectic, enchanting potpourri of primitive and modern design styles: California Mission, Spanish Territorial, modernist, and postmodern. Exposed vigas, sloping exterior walls, and rammed-earth balustrades in warm tones stood adjacent to raw concrete and steel girders. Extruded aluminum facings and colored glass walls coexisted with a Kiva and the Estufa. Smith Plaza’s broad tiered levels and massive stone fountain drew the campus together as a cohesive unit of higher learning.

A lady in the administration office consulted a directory and sent me to the Communication & Journalism Building near the northwest corner of Central Avenue and Yale. Sturgis was a professor in the School of Journalism where Paul Barton was a student. Another coincidence?

That’s the bad part of this job; it feeds paranoia. We all have some, but it seems a generous dose is virtually a prerequisite for a PI license. Unable to contact the professor, I left my card with a message asking him to phone. Then I spent the remainder of the day attempting to run down more of Emilio’s johns.

*****

The purpose of this exercise is to paint a picture of UNM as a visitor would see it for the first time, not to engage the reader in any breathless action sequences. I sometimes ignore the advice to “leave out the parts no one wants to read” to indulge in creating word pictures. Forgive me for the weakness.

I continue to believe that readers are great. So keep on reading, reading, reading.

I’m always pleased to hear from you but I think I’ve shot myself in the foot by sharing a direct email, because no one ever comments on the blog. Wouldn’t hurt to give it a like or a comment after you’re had a look-see.

Thanks,

Don

New Posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Another Look at The Zozobra Incident

Screwed up again, folks. Set it for PM, not AM, sorry.

This past Friday (August 29), the Burning of Zozobra described in my novel, The Zozobra Incident, took place in Fort Marcy Park in Santa Fe. This year, the puppet was larger, bare-chested, and went to his doom on the Friday before the opening of The Santa Fe Fiesta rather than the traditional Thursday night conflagration. The authorities used drones to overfly the park and take a count of the crowd. They came up with a record figure of 40,412. And that didn’t include some 2,000 police and other law jurisdictions. We’ve had a pretty good monsoon season, so the monster burned and fireworks lit up the sky without too much worry about resulting wildfires.

Martin Brown Publishers have been promoting the book on Facebook recently, and that plus this year’s burning made me take another look at the novel.

The following is the beginning of Chapter 2. BJ, our intrepid investigator, decides to look for Emilio Prada, the male escort believed to be attempting to blackmail Del Dahlman, at the place Del first met the gay gigolo.

#####

     A little after ten that night, I squeezed my anonymous white 2003 Chevy Impala between two extended-cab pickups in the overflow parking lot across the street from the C&W Palace. The C&W on East Central Avenue was Albuquerque’s biggest country and western boot-shuffling joint. This was where Del originally met Emilio, so it was a good place to start after a database search failed to turn up current information on him. That was no surprise; the kid probably lived around town with friends and johns.

      I pushed through the heavy door and ran into a wall of cigarette smoke, deafening music, and shrill conversation that turned the interior of the nightclub into a health nut’s worst nightmare. Bluegrass doesn’t go down well with many opera fans, and I was no exception. My parents, both of whom had been teachers, had exposed me to plenty of Offenbach, Mozart, and Verdi, and it took. The Tales of Hoffman and The Magic Flute and La Bohéme had preserved my sanity during the long convalescence after the shooting. A country-western band was a world away from those old masters—maybe even a galaxy or two.

     My snakeskin cowboy boots and white Stetson were sufficiently western to allow me to skip the mother-of-pearl studded shirt and the tight denim pants. It was a matter of comfort, not snobbery. Cowpoke duds, especially trousers, were too restrictive for my taste.

     After buying a vodka-rocks at the long bar, I circled the massive barn-like joint, stopping occasionally to talk to acquaintances. The C&W was a hetero place, but there was enough eye contact to spice up the evening, even though I had no intention of making a connection. One slender, athletic guy twirling a pretty coed around the dance floor caught my attention. I invested a few minutes in watching him as I tried to figure out where I’d seen him before. Eventually, I gave up and resumed prowling. After an hour of jostling by clumsy drunks and out-of-control dancers, I was ready to call it a night when—bingo. There he was.

     Emilio Prada wasn’t making much of an effort to hide. He looked like a million dollars dancing with a well-stuffed woman who could have been his mother. That roomy bosom was probably where he intended to rest his head for the night. I thought of Emilio as a kid but knew from his APD jacket he was twenty-two. He’d come up legally from Durango, Mexico and had a record for petty stuff, nothing that would get him deported. He didn’t seem to be married, and it apparently didn’t matter to him which way he swung, just so long as the swing was profitable. I guess that earned him a “bi” rating.

     The handsome shit was dressed all in black, including a ten-gallon hat shoved rakishly back to expose dark, unruly curls. A scarlet hatband, a red belt, and a bit of crimson on his alligator boots added the only traces of color to his outfit. On him, it was dynamite. He danced easily, confidently; the same way he’d behaved while he was living in Del’s room in my house. If Emilio harbored doubts about anything, it wasn’t apparent. He counted on charming his way out of any trouble hovering over the horizon.

     When the number ended, he gave his partner a hug and a peck on her plump cheek before leading her away through the crowd. I scrambled straight across the dance floor as a twang of guitars and a bang of drums announced the next song. Trying to elude the grasp of cowgirls bent on dancing—or more likely desperate for a companion for the night—I lost the odd-looking pair for a moment before spotting Emilio holding out a chair for mamacita, like the gentleman he was not. Then he took one of two vacant chairs across from her at a long table filled with Hispanics.

     Now, I’ve got bushels of Latino friends and don’t admit to a prejudiced bone in my body, but just as there are whites and then there are whites, there are Hispanics and then there are Hispanics. These guys were the latter. Nonetheless, I took a deep breath and slipped into the vacant chair beside Emilio.

#####

We’ll leave BJ walking into a dangerous situation. Hope he comes out of it okay.

Thanks for reading, and let me hear from you.

Don

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Albuquerque’s Far Northeast Heights

Whenever I visit my friend B in Albuquerque’s Far Northeast Heights, I am reminded of a passage in The Zozobra Incident where our hero, BJ Vinson, hauls Emilio Prada, the supposed bad-boy in the novel, to the extreme northeast heights area in search of someone who might have stolen the negatives of a group of explicit snapshots that show BJ’s client in several compromising poses. For those of you who have not yet reached a certain age…yes, there was a time when  you obtained photographs by developing and printing a roll of celluloid film impregnated with images you were interested in seeing. Take a look at the following partial scene:

###

     I glanced at Emilio sitting silently beside me in the Impala. He was leading us down a meandering road in the remote Far Northeast Heights. Lampposts were infrequent. My headlights were the only bright spot in the deep night. Sandia Peak with its corona of blinking, red-tipped TV antennas and the Cibola National Forest crowded us on the east. The Sandia Indian Reservation blocked the way north.

     This was one of the ritzy sections well outside of the city limits where front yards were left desert-wild, except for cement driveways snaking across the hardpan to anchor the buildings to the roadway. Most of the landscape was vacant, but an occasional rambling house hunkered down beside some dusty road with a name like Black Bear Lane or Calle del Oso. Albuquerqueans were big on bears.

     Although it occurred to me that the good-looking creep might be planning something, it was more likely he was simply lost. It was hard enough finding an address out here in the daytime, much less at midnight.

     “Crap,” he mumbled. “It all looks different.”

     “You leading me around by the nose?”

     “Naw, I swear man. I figured I could find the guy any time I wanted.” His teeth gleamed in the faint moonlight as he smiled weakly. “He give me a hundred-dollar tip. But this don’t look familiar.”

     “Okay, you’re coming home with me for the night. I’m going to lock you in the basement. We’ll try it again tomorrow.”

     “You can’t do that. That’s kidnapping or something.”

     “Maybe so, but that’s the way it is.”

     “Go on down the road. Let’s try some more. I got a woman waiting for me, man.”

     “She’s long gone by now. But we’ll give it another few minutes.”

     As we plowed on through the darkness, the first car we’d seen in an hour of wandering the foothills came roaring up on us from the rear. Its sudden appearance made me nervous, but the massive Caddy Escalade roared by in a cloud of dust as I pulled to the side of the road.

     “That’s him!” Emilio threw a wiry arm toward the windshield. “That’s the dude’s big tank.”

     “You sure?”

     “Yeah. That’s him, I tell you.”

     “Emilio, if you’re lying—”

     “I ain’t. I swear. Follow the Caddy.”

     Half a mile farther down the dusty road, the vehicle turned left at an intersection that was invisible until you were practically through it.

     “That rock. I remember that rock.” Emilio jabbed a finger at a huge boulder on the far side of the roadway. “Yeah, remember that rock.” The excitement in his voice convinced me he was on the up and up—at least for now.

###

B’s locale no longer resembles the neighborhood described above. She lives on a paved street with a signpost clearly identifying it by name. She has neighbors on all sides of her. Indeed, the only similarity that remains is many of the yards are left “desert-wild.” Cacti proliferate.

However, B lives west of Tramway Boulevard (which is mentioned later in the same scene). The fictional address in the book lies east of the four-lane artery. So I meandered to the other side of Tramway when I returned home the other day. There are changes there, as well, but I found a section that is still pretty well represented by those descriptions in Zozobra.

Those of you who can should take a drive through the area sometime soon before that part of Albuquerque’s history is left behind in the dust of progress.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading, and let me hear from you.

Don

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Other Voices in The Zozobra Incident

 Today…or rather tonight…is the annual Burning of Zozobra, a historic event which plays an important part in the book. I had planned to be present and participate in the festivities, but my recent back surgery put an end to those aspirations. Would that I could be there! 

Last week, we learned a little more about the protagonist of The Zozobra Incident, BJ Vinson, so I thought it might be fun to take a deeper look into some of the other voices in the novel, starting with Hazel Harris, BJ’s office manager and surrogate mom. 

At the time the Zozobra Incident takes place, Hazel, who is a retired teacher and the best friend of BJ’s deceased mother, Frances, is sixty-three-years-old. She stands 5’5” and weighs 150 pounds. She is plump, rather dowdy, gray-eyed, and considers it her responsibility to be a stand-in mom. Although he tweaks her nose now and then, BJ puts up with Hazel’s smothering because he is truly fond of her. Besides, she’s runs the office—and sometimes him—efficiently and makes sure the clients pay their bills…something BJ wouldn’t be nearly as efficient at doing. Plump, efficient, and nosy, she reminds him of that sassy maid of comics and TV who runs the fictional Baxter household. She doesn’t approve of his gay lifestyle, but loves him like a son. We meet her throughout the series. 

Delbert David Dahlman, known as Del to his friends and associates, is slender, blue-(sapphire) eyed, blond, and trim with an athletic build (obtained in a gym). He stands 5’11” and weighs 160 pounds. Del possesses an eternally youthful appearance that seems to defy ageing. A Chicago boy who came to the UNM law school after high school, he’s practiced mostly corporate and tax law in Albuquerque ever since 2001. He is an associate attorney with a large local firm named Stone, Hedges, Martinez, Levishon, etc…or the Blahs, as BJ calls them. He is thirty-two-years-old in 2006 when he comes to BJ and asks for help running down a blackmailer. He had met BJ in the line of duty, and when they were attracted to one another, they ended up living together in BJ’s home on Post Oak NW until BJ was seriously wounded in the right thigh by a bullet from an accused murderer’s gun. During the long recovery, Del wasn’t able to take care of the home nursing and allowed himself to be seduced by a handsome gigolo named Emilio Prada. The manner of the split-up makes it hard for him to come to BJ when he assumes Emilio is handing around some raw pictures of Del and himself. Nonetheless, he swallows his pride and asks BJ for help. 

Emilio Prada is a twenties-something legal immigrant from Durango, Mexico. He is handsome in that way some Hispanic juveniles are prettier than their girlfriends, although “Milio” never grew out of it. Rather than work for a living, he uses his looks and slender, wiry build to make his money. He is amoral more than immoral. He sees nothing wrong with selling himself to men or women. In fact, he enjoys the seduction. When he meets Del Dahlman, he figures he’s found a goldmine…the answer to his dreams. Here is a handsome, successful man wealthy enough to take care of him for the rest of his life. Besides, the sex is good. But Milio likes to dominate his marks (and that’s what Del is) and oversteps the bounds of their relationship. When Del sends him packing, he takes some very graphic pictures of the two of them with him, the genesis of Del’s belief Milio is behind the blackmailing. 

But things are not as simple as they seem. 

Next Week: More voices from The Zozobra Incident.