A VISIT TO THE CITY OF ROCKS

After last week’s weird post, let’s return to my novel, THE CITY OF ROCKS, for a visit to Doña Ana County. In the following passage from Chapter 2 of the book, our hero, BJ Vinson answers a midnight call and learns the man he’d interviewed earlier that day about a theft has been killed in an automobile accident. BJ is still not clear on the concept of why his client, a respected attorney, has him hounding a man named Liver Lips about the ducknapping ... er, theft of a duck. Our PI leaves his comfortable bed and his companion to head south and see if there’s any sign of the stolen property. The duck.

*****

THE CITY OF ROCKS

Las Cruces, the county seat of Doña Ana County, was a city of around seventy-five thousand perched on the Chihuahuan desert flats of the Mesilla Valley. This flood plain of the Rio Grande boasted pecan orchards, as well as onion, chili, and other vegetable fields. The city was also a rail center and the home of the state’s only Land Grant School, New Mexico State University. The stark, striking Organ Mountains rose abruptly to the east.

I parked in front of the East University Avenue headquarters of State Police District Four around 8:00 a.m. I wanted to follow protocol and have Dispatch let the officers on the scene know I was on the way.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled in behind a swarm of activity. Emergency flares blocked the westbound lanes of the highway. I pulled up to the uniformed patrolman diverting traffic to the eastbound lanes and identified myself. He used his shoulder unit to announce my arrival and then waved me over onto the shoulder. It looked as if the crime unit had about finished with their work. In the distance, I could see a banged up black Dodge Ram pickup upside down snug against the corridor fence. A man in civilian attire detached himself from a small group and started for me as soon as I got out of the car.

“Mr. Vinson?” I nodded. “Dispatch told me a PI from Albuquerque was on the way.”

“Detective Montoya? Good to meet you. I suppose OMI’s already taken Martinson away.”

“Yeah, the medics have come and gone. They took him a couple of hours ago. Forensics is wrapping things up now.”

“Why are they here? I thought this was an accident.”

“In my opinion it’s a crime scene. The investigating patrol unit spotted a second set of tires and what they thought might be foreign paint on the pickup.”

“He was forced off the road? Are you thinking homicide?”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking, but I don’t know if it was negligent or intentional. The stray paint’s hard to spot because it’s black, too. But it was enough for the patrol division to call us in on it.”

The detective was a small neat man with swarthy skin and piercing black eyes who looked as if he'd be more at home in a uniform. I judged him to be a couple of years older than my thirty-five. I’d be willing to wager he’d spent his entire adult life in the service—probably the military before going over to the state police.

“What’s your interest in Martinson?” he asked.

“He was suspected of theft. I questioned him briefly in Albuquerque yesterday afternoon. When my client called me last night and told me about the wreck, I came down to see for myself. Uh...was there anything unusual in the pickup?”

That got his interest. “Like what?”

“This is going to sound nuts, but he’s accused of stealing a duck. A very valuable duck, as it happens.”

“Quacky? He’s the one who swiped Mud’s bird?” He didn’t crack a smile. Apparently, they took ducknapping down here a little more seriously than I did. Of course, a homicide tended to wring the humor out of it—whether or not Liver’s death was connected to the duck.

“You know about that? I thought it took place over in Hidalgo County.”

“Yep, but the news is all over this part of the state.” The radio unit in his left hand blared. He spoke into the thing and then turned to me. “They’re removing Martinson’s vehicle now. They’ll be releasing the crime scene after that. You can walk it with me if you want.”

Black rubber on the shoulder marked where Liver’s vehicle had left the Interstate. It appeared to have gone airborne for a short distance before landing hard and rolling a couple of times, coming to rest against the fence. The detective pointed out a second set of less noticeable skid marks on the shoulder.

“I figure this is the vehicle that forced him off the road. Either that or some heartless SOB stopped after the accident and didn’t have the decency to call for help or try to render assistance. Of course, it wouldn’t have done any good. Martinson was dead before the pickup stopped rolling.”

Montoya led me over the verge and halted at a dark spot in the grass. “Martinson was ejected and landed here. He was probably traveling at a pretty good rate of speed. I noticed he was all bandaged up.”

“Yeah. The duck scratched him up pretty good; gave him a blood infection. I interviewed him at the UNM Hospital yesterday. What time did the accident happen?”

“Probably sometime after dark, but nobody spotted the wreckage until around midnight. Nobody mentioned a duck with a broken neck, but I’ll check with the forensics people.

Montoya got on the radio and determined the criminalists had found no sign of a duck or a feather or anything else indicating there had been a bird in the pickup. When he finished the conversation, he asked me to go back to Cruces and make a formal statement.

*****

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Meet Liver Lips Mortenson from THE CITY OF ROCKS

In my creative writing class, I advise against giving a detailed a description of the major character in order to allow the reader to see the individual as he or she wishes. The artist doing the cover for THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT originally came up with the figure of a bearded man representing BJ Vinson, my series protagonist. I told her he was clean shaven, and she came back with: “How was I to know. You never described him.”

However, as you’ll see in the passage that follows, I often paint some of the minor players in detail to give them life and character. I did that with Emilio Prada in ZOBOBRA and with a character named Richard “Liver Lips” Martinson in THE CITY OF ROCKS.

In the following (abbreviated) scene in Chapter One of ROCKS, BJ has his first meeting with a man suspected of stealing some valuable property from a ranch in New Mexico’s boot heel country. BJ is having trouble taking his job seriously because he can’t wrap his head around the “kidnapping” of a duck. Nonetheless, his client insists he accept the assignment because the bird was insured for a quarter of a million dollars. With only an ill-conceived idea of what’s really happening, BJ rushes to the UNM Emergency Ward where he’s told the thief is being treated.

*****

I had no trouble locating Martinson in the waiting room at the hospital. Liver Lips. The young man's nickname described him perfectly. His thick, purple-hued oral projections drew my eye like a magnet. It was only later I noticed he was skinny, seedy, and carried a generally disreputable air. Gray eyes darted here and there as if he were constantly searching for a bolt hole. The man’s scalp glistened through thin strands of frizzy blond hair. Whether talking or listening or simply idle, his dark tongue periodically snaked out to wash those heavy lips. Seldom had I been so thoroughly repulsed by another’s physical appearance.

He looked at me blankly after I handed over my card and introduced myself. “A private eye, huh. What you want with me?”

“I need to ask you a few questions.” I nodded at the bandages covering his forearms. “What happened?”

“Had a fight with a thorn bush. Frigging bush won.” He went for humor, glancing up through thin, colorless lashes to see if it had worked.

I pointed to the red veins snaking up out of the white bandages just short of his elbows. “Thorn bushes didn’t give you that infection. That’s blood poisoning. You want to tell me about stealing a valuable…bird.” If I’d said “duck” I’d have burst out laughing.

“Don’t guess I know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t think the Sheriff of Luna County would have sicced me on you if he was just guessing.”

“Hidalgo,” he blurted.

“What?”

“Sheriff of Hidalgo County.”

“Okay, now that you’ve admitted you know all about the theft, tell me about it.”

“Didn’t admit nothing.”

“You know where the abduction…uh, theft took place. Stop wasting my time. What did you want with a prize duck named….” I stopped, unable to call a bird by that ridiculous name.

“Quacky Quack, the Second,” he said. “That’s what old Mud Hen calls her. Ain’t that a hoot?”

“Mud Hen?”

“Millicent Muldren. Everbody calls her Mud Hen.”

“Why’d you steal her duck?”

“Who says I did?”

I improvised. “About everybody in the countryside. Police chief, sheriff, Ms. Muldren. There’s a warrant out for your arrest. Talk to me, and maybe I can do something about that.”

Old Liver Lips wasn’t as dumb as he looked. Those blood-suffused appendages quivered a couple of times before he squared his thin shoulders. “Ain’t nobody gonna arrest me. Who’d press charges on something like that?”

“Well, Mud Hen for one, and the insurance company for another.”

“Insurance company?”

“You didn’t know the owner had insured her property.”

“Shoot, I guess there ain’t no insurance company in the world that’d insure a frigging duck.”

I didn’t know much more than he did, but I couldn’t let up on him now. “Then you’d guess wrong. They’ll insure soap bubbles if you pay the premiums. You give me what I want, and I can take care of the warrant.”

“Like what?”

“Like what have you done with Qua…with the duck?” His eyes slid away as he opened his mouth and licked his lips. I held up a hand. “Don’t bother to deny it. You’re caught flat-out. Man-up and admit it. Where’s the duck?”

Liver Lip’s shoulders twitched. He did that rapid blinking thing and twisted his neck to loosen it up. A bead of sweat worked its way through thin tendrils of blond hair and trickled down his forehead. It looked muddy by the time it reached the corner of his eye. “I give her to somebody that wanted to play a trick on Mud Hen.”

“Who was this somebody?”

“If I give up his name, he’ll get me in trouble. And he can do it, too.”

“So can I. A world of trouble. You’ve already given me enough to report to the insurance company. You’re the chicken thief, Liver Lips. And they’ll come after you hard. You have any idea how far they’d go to keep from paying out all that money?”

“How much money?” His attitude changed. If Liver Lips had a crafty side, this was it.

“More than you can ever repay in your lifetime.” I built on the fiction I was spinning. “They’ll see you prosecuted for grand theft. What does your record look like? Probably penny-ante, right? Well, you made the big time with this.”

“For stealing a duck?”

I stared at the raunchy-looking man and wondered if this was an act. “Answer my question. Who hired you to steal the duck?”

“Hired?”

Jeez. The guy hadn’t even been paid. He’d done it as a favor, or else someone had leverage on Richard Martinson.

“Who told you to take the duck? Who’d you give it to?”

“Her.”

“Her?”

“It’s a her. The duck, I mean. Quacky—”

“Yeah, I know. Who’d you give her to?”

Liver Lips crossed his arms over his chest and hugged himself tightly. “Oh, shit! I hurt, man. They supposed to be getting me something for the pain. And the infection, too. I gotta go check on it.”

“Okay, we’ll go together. Maybe I can help.”

“I can do it.” It came out as a whine. “I ain’t no kid that needs babysitting.”

Despite his objections, I trod on his heels as he walked toward a counter. They’d made some big-time changes at the UNM Emergency Center since I was here last. It was now housed in a new building called the Pavilion. But I was pretty sure this wasn’t the outpatient pharmacy. Liver Lips was getting ready to make a move. He did, but it wasn’t the one I expected; probably not the one he anticipated, either.

He turned a corner and bumped squarely into a burly Albuquerque cop. Back-pedaling, he held out his hands. “Sir, this here guy won’t leave me alone. Can you make him stop pestering me?”

The six-foot-two officer transferred his irritated look from Liver Lips to me. His shoulder unit belched static, but he ignored it. “What’s going on?”

I took a quick peek at his nametag. “Corporal Hines, my name is Vinson, and I’m a licensed PI. I’m going to reach for my ID, okay”

I whirled as the outside door crashed open. A man and a woman rushed inside with a little girl nursing a bloody hand wrapped in stained towels. Hines brushed by me to see if his help was needed. When I turned back to confront Liver lips, he was nowhere in sight. I made a quick sweep of the hallways, but he had disappeared. Maybe Liver did have a crafty side, after all.

*****

Thanks for reading. Be happy to hear from you.

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