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.

City of Rocks –The Boot Heel Country

Last week, BJ Vinson left Albuquerque on his way to the M Lazy M Ranch in New Mexico’s Boot Heel Country (a piece of land acquired by the territory via the Gadsden Purchase signed by Mexico in June 1854). He made it as far as Columbus before I ran out of steam and ended the post. Columbus was actually one of the more interesting places we stopped because of the raid on the town by Pancho Villa’s forces on the morning of March 9, 1916.

Early the next day, our protagonist heads out for the Boot Heel and the ranch, as we’ll see in the scene that follows:

###

Ranchers, like farmers, generally rise with the sun, so I was on the road early Monday, breezing west along Highway 9 over a landscape dominated by creosote, locoweed, and wildflowers. The bright sky was spotted with scattered clouds. The blue silhouette of the Cedar Mountain Range shadowed the horizon.

The weathercast this morning had predicted a high of ninety-nine degrees, but the temperature had not yet climbed to that point as I drove into the country that had once sheltered the likes of Curly Bill, Old Man Clanton, and Dick Gray, desperados who hid out in the caves and canyons of the Boot Heel. Somewhere ahead of me was a black oak with large knotholes where the outlaws left messages for one another in what is still called Post Office Canyon.

I passed a sign noting I had crossed into Hidalgo County, a landmass of about 3,500 square miles populated by fewer than 6,000 residents; a place known for its large ranches. The Gray Ranch, which was now called by its original name of the Diamond A, was 321,000 acres—a staggering 500 square miles. Alongside that, the M Lazy M was a piker.

I turned south on Highway 81. The ranch was a fair drive from Hachita, the closest town, and as I had a considerable amount of work to do, I phoned Del to let him know I intended to take Bert Kurtz up on his offer to remain overnight. He wanted to clear it with the insurance company to make sure they wouldn’t consider it a conflict of interest should Mud Hen be involved in any sort of scam. He promised to call me back.

The M Lazy M lay hard against the Mexican state of Chihuahua just short of the Hatchet Mountains in the upper reaches of the Boot Heel. A cattle guard, flanked by a tall adobe arch bearing the ranch’s brand—two capital M’s, the second one lying on its side—marked the main gateway to the spread.

I paused to snap a photo of the entrance before heading down a well-graded gravel road toward what I assumed would eventually lead to the ranch house. I stopped several times to take pictures of the road and anything else of interest. Like crime scene investigators, PIs can’t function without loads of photos.

I traveled another ten miles with no sign of habitation; although white-faced cattle grazing in the distance identified this as a working ranch. At the end of the road, I encountered another fence, behind which loomed an odd-looking structure, one that appeared to have grown from a modest home into something of a monstrosity as succeeding generations of Muldrens left their stamp on the edifice, building first with wood, then with fieldstone and brick. The latest addition was in adobe.

The place was reminiscent of Gothic novel cover art, although the graceful cottonwoods and sycamores scattered about the broad yard softened the effect. Even so, their towering presence on this landscape of stunted bushes and twisted piñons was almost as bizarre as the building itself. They had obviously been carefully nurtured by the first M’s, possibly even the Lazy M, until they dwarfed every other living thing within sight.

I parked in the gravel circle before the house between a late model gray Lincoln and a vintage blue and white Corvette. Two big Dobermans trotted up to the car and regarded me solemnly. Just then, the front door opened. Bert stepped over the threshold and greeted me with a wave. I rolled down my car window a couple of inches.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Vinson. Bruno and Hilda won’t bother you unless I put them on guard. Now the ferocious beast in the house, I’m not so sure of.”

“Right.” I cast a wary eye at the large animals and stepped more briskly than usual toward the broad, shaded veranda. I offered Bert a hand. “Most people call me BJ.”

He accepted my shake with a smile, casting an indulgent eye on the dogs. “BJ, I hope you had a pleasant ride. Missed the hottest part of the day, anyway. Welcome to the M Lazy M Ranch, or as most folks call her…the Lazy M.”

###

That was BJ’s first view of the ranch and will be his first meeting with its owner, Millicent Muldren, called Mud Hen by just about everyone. After a rather contentious meeting, he prepares to take his leave of her and head back to Albuquerque. In the following scene, he learns of the City of Rocks for the first time … both “City of Rocks.”

###

“Do you have anything else to tell me?”

“No. I have to go now, BJ.” She glanced out of the window. “I see Luis has my gelding saddled. I have something to check out down at the City.”

“The City?”

“Have you been to the City of Rocks State Park north of Deming?” When I shook my head, she continued. “It’s something to see. As the name implies, it’s a city made of stone, complete with streets and alleys.”

At my doubtful look, she explained. “They say that about thirty-five million years ago, a big volcanic eruption called the Kneeling Nun spewed lava and ash and pumice for 150 miles. Over time, wind and rain and freezing and thawing have shaped it into what it is today, something that looks like a big damned city made out of solid rock sitting right out there in the middle of the desert.

“Well, when the Kneeling Nun blew, she threw some of that same stuff over on our patch of ground. It’s not as big as the one at the park, but when my grandpa first laid eyes on it, he said it looked like a damned city made out of rocks. It’s more the size of a village, of course, but Gramps always thought on a bigger scale, so he called it a city. The City of Rocks. When they made that place north of Deming a state park in 1952, my daddy thought about putting up a fuss since his family used the name first, but he never got around to it. So they’ve got their City of Rocks up there, and we’ve got our own down here. You should see it sometime.”

“I will, but right now I need to head back to Albuquerque. I’ve got to wrap this thing up. Good luck to you, Millicent.”

“Tell me something, cowboy. Do you think I had Quacky stolen because of the bet?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, Millicent, but for whatever it’s worth—I don’t.”

“Good.”

I stood at the window in the cavernous living room and watched as she mounted and rode off toward the southeast. She and the big piebald named Rufus she rode looked as if they were a single unit. Before they passed out of my line of sight, I noticed she had a rifle scabbard strapped to the saddle forward of her right knee. The boss toted iron just like the hands.

###

I hope these short scenes make for interesting reading. It sure was fun writing them. Best of all, I get to show the reader some of this great State of New Mexico.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Don

Next week: Time will tell.

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