Joe Jinx

 How about a little flight of fancy for this week? Sometimes I feel like I’m the guy in the story.

*****

JOE JINX

     Joe Jinx isn’t really my name. It’s actually Joseph Rastankowski. With that moniker, you’d think I’d be an ethnic type with loads of rich Eastern European cultural history riding my back. I’m not. Until you learned my name, you’d take me for an Englishman or a Scandinavian. Just an ordinary all-American guy… except for one thing.

     The best way to explain that one thing is to say “don’t ever get behind me in a grocery store checkout line. “Inevitably, something goes wrong. The cashier’s machine goes on the blink. The cashier goes on the blink. The customer can’t find her money or sends a kid to pick up something she forgot while everyone else fiddles and fidgets. Something.

     It started way back in high school when I was playing sandlot baseball with some of the guys. I was racing to catch a high pop up fly when the wind caught the ball. I yelled for Auggie Hixton to get it, but he was kinda slow getting set, and it went right through his hands and popped him on the forehead. Laid him out flat and raised a goose egg like a third eye two inches above the real ones. Things went south fast after that. Actually, I think the guys were just using me as an excuse when they goofed up, but it wasn’t long before it started to take on some heft. I was called Typhoid Joe for about three weeks before someone settled on the name that followed me for the rest of my life: Joe Jinx.

     My rep got so bad that everyone started begging me to skip our varsity ball games. Afraid I’d jinx them. One year during the state championship game, our quarterback gave me ten bucks to go to the movies or someplace… anyplace except the football field.

     My sophomore year in college, my dorm mates bought me a blonde—a little older than the coeds we usually ran with—as an inducement to pass up the basketball finals. As you’d expect, that one didn’t work out too well. The rubber broke, and I spent a few anxious weeks thereafter, but I never heard anything from the girl… er, woman.

     Even college debaters got in on the act. My roommate at the time was on the team and threatened to strangle me in my sleep if I didn’t keep my distance from Frocton Hall where they were holding the regional finals. Even so, they still blamed me when our guys were eliminated in the first round.

     I don’t even play chess, but the college chess club shoots daggers my way ever since I walked past the room where they were holding their eliminations. At that precise moment, one leg of a long table where there were six matches going on collapsed and dumped boards and pieces all over the place.

     Of course, the condition survived my college years. My associates at work refused to fly with me on business trips after we had to exit the airliner cabin on one of those rubber slides when an engine caught fire. I tried to point out how lucky we were that it happened before we left the runway, but no one was buying it.

     The boss always finds important chores that have to be done immediately anytime he has an important staff meeting coming up. That’s most likely because during the last one I attended the bottom to the coffee pot dropped off and spilled scalding hot liquid all over his thousand-dollar conference table and dribbled down onto his two-thousand-dollar suit pants. I felt that was terribly unfair, even though I was the one pouring him a fresh cup at the moment of the Pyrex failure.

     Fortunately, this hasn’t impacted my personal life much other than spending a lot of time in slow-moving lines. Well, I guess I that’s not really true, either. I’m still single, you see. Was supposed to get married right before Christmas last year, but that went up in smoke when Felicia—that’s my ex-fiancée—came over just as I was putting away the blow-up doll the guys gave me at my bachelor’s party in lieu of a hooker. Don’t know why she wouldn’t believe me when I told her it was their idea of a joke. Maybe it would have gone better if I hadn’t been standing in my briefs when she walked in.

*****

I sincerely hope you did not recognize yourself in this little bit of fluff. Keep on reading, because readers are the greatest people in the world. And feel free to contact me at  dontravis21@gmail.com.

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

An Imaginary Conversation... or Was It?.

 As some of you know, I’m in the middle of some significant dates that have to do with my late wife. This morning, something sparked a conversation with her in that half-awake/half-asleep twilight zone, so I’m not certain if I dreamed what follows or concocted it in my own head in wakeful moments. In the end, it doesn’t matter much, does it? The reverie (that’s as good a term as any) began with my awareness of her presence.

     “I’ve got a birthday coming up, you know,” she said.

     “I know. And we just had another significant date pass. Last month was the seventh anniversary of your—”

     “Don’t call that an anniversary. An anniversary is something you celebrate. You don’t celebrate somebody’s death. Or maybe you did! Maybe that was your own personal emancipation day or something.”

     “They let you keep your red hair up there, didn’t they?” I sighed, or at least I think I did.                    "According to Merriam-Webster, an anniversary is something you remember or celebrate. The day I lost you was a significant day for me.”

     “I imagine,” she said. “That was the day you realized you’d have to wash your own clothes and cook your own food and keep your own house. How’s that working out?”

     “Okay, I guess. Couple of false starts with the clothes. Eat out of the freezer.”

     “Out of a cookie jar, most likely.”

     “Well, that, too," I admitted.

     “Never did understand that one. You ate the sweets, and I got the diabetes.”

     I dream-shrugged. “Don’t know what to say.”

     “How about the housecleaning thing?

     “Don’t want to talk about it." I paused for a minute. “Uh… d-did it hurt?”

     “Did what hurt? The diabetes? Have you forgotten already?”

     “No, I remember all that. I meant when you… you know, passed. Died.”

     “What do you think? Ripping a soul outa one place and shipping it to another.”

     “Oh.”

     “You always were a wienie when it came to pain. To be honest, I don’t remember much about that part of it. Took too much effort to adjust to the new reality. And boy, does it take some adjusting.”

     “Tell me about your new reality.”

     “I'm not allowed. You’ll just have to wait and find out for yourself. Of course, you might not even end up where I am.”

     “Where else would I go?” I dream-saw a flash of undulating red and got a whiff of brimstone. (which is puzzling because I have no idea what brimstone smells like). “Oh,” I said.

     “Besides, I’d rather talk about the birthday coming up. It’s March 13, you know.”

     “How could I forget? You even named one of our dogs Three-thirteen.”

     “Should have named the other one Four-Eight so you’d have remembered our anniversary.”

     I didn’t want to rehash the disagreement we’d had over what day our wedding anniversary fell on, (she’d been right, it was the eighth, not the third), do I went back to the birthday. “Just think, in ten more day’s you’d have been—”

     “Shut up!”

     “Wow, you still are red-headed, aren’t you? Anyway happy birthday.”

     “Thank you. You have any plans to come on up anytime soon?”

     My heart lurched so hard the bed shook. “Why, do you know something I don’t?”

     “No, we aren’t privy to things like that.” She switched subjects the way she always did. “How are      the boys?”

     “Don’t you talk to them?”

     “They’re all wrapped up in their own lives. They don’t have time to lollygag around and let me in.”

     “To answer your question, they’re… well, they’re the boys.”

     “Still like that, huh? Well, give them my love.”

I’m not sure that I got to answer her. I blinked my eyes open, and the room came into focus. It was just another day. Although I have to admit, my mood was lighter than it usually is during my “dark quarter,” which is what I call February, March, and April of each year.

*****

Keep on reading folks. And feel free to contact me at dontravis21@gmail.com.

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

More from THE LOVELY PINES

Thanks to all who sent expressions of sympathy after my blog about my Blue Time. Appreciate them very much.

This week, I’d like to give another short scene from my “work in progress” novel called THE LOVELY PINES, which will be the fourth in the BJ Vinson Mystery Series. (Can’t tell you how excited I am about working with Dreamspinner Press on the reissue of THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT and THE BISTI BUSINESS as well as the initial release of the third novel, THE CITY OF ROCKS, starting in the fall of this year.)

The following scene from Chapter 1 is the opening of the story. Regular readers will recognize BJ Vinson as the viewpoint character.

*****

THE LOVELY PINES

Albuquerque, New Mexico

     The dapper gentleman my secretary, Hazel Harris Weeks, ushered into the office spoke with a slight European accent. “Grüezi, Mr. Vinson, I am Ariel Gonda. It is good to finally meet you.”

     Taking grüezi to be a German word for “hello” or “howdy,” I stood to accept the proffered handshake as my mind grappled for the meaning of his greeting. Then a memory dropped into place. Ariel Gonda was the corporate Treasurer of Alfano Vineyards in Napa Valley. I’d run across his name during what I mentally referred to as the Bisti Business, but I had never actually met the man before. If I recalled correctly, he was a Swiss national, so the word in question was likely Swiss German.

     “Mr. Gonda, how are Aggie and Lando doing?” I referred to the two Alfano brothers to let him know I’d made the connection.

     “They are well, thank you. At least, they were when I last spoke to Aggie. I am no longer with the organization. I am now one of you. That is to say, a bona fide New Mexico citizen.”

     I smiled inwardly as he neatly covered his tracks. It’s best to be precise when drawing comparisons to a gay confidential investigator. “Welcome to our world, Mr. Gonda.”

     “Please call me Ariel. As you can see, I have become Americanized. In my native Switzerland, we would never have arrived at first names so swiftly. I find the informality refreshing.”

     “With pleasure, if you’ll call me BJ. Please have a seat and tell me what I can do for you. Unless, of course, this is a social call.”

     “Would that it were. Unfortunately, it is your services as an investigator I require at the moment.”

He settled into the comfortable chair directly opposite my old-fashioned walnut desk and glanced around the wainscoted room. I detected a gleam of approval in his pale blue eyes as he studied pieces of my late father’s cowboy and western art collection adorning the light beige walls. He brought his attention back to me, a clue he was ready to discuss business.

     I took a small tape recorder from my drawer and placed it on the desk. “Do you mind if I record the conversation?” With his consent, I turned on the device and dictated the time and place and participants in the meeting. “Now, why don’t you tell me about your problem?”

     He cleared his throat. “The matter that brings me here is a break-in at my winery last week.”

     “What was taken?”

     “Nothing that I can determine.”

     “Vandalism?”

     "Merely some papers in my office and lab disturbed. But nothing was destroyed or taken, and there are some quite valuable instruments in the laboratory."

     I tapped my desk blotter with the point of a gold and onyx letter opener fashioned like a Toledo blade. “Valle Plácido doesn’t have a police force, so I assume you reported the break-in to the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office.”

     “I did. However, since nothing was taken, they decided it was a case of adolescent mischief and closed the investigation—such as it was.”

     “Apparently, you disagree with that conclusion. Have there been other incidents?”

     “Certain small things have occurred. Things I would not have noticed were it not for the earlier break-in.” He paused to lean back in the chair and cross his legs in a less formal manner. Covering the lower portion of his face with a palm, he pulled his hand down over his chin and neck as though smoothing a non-existent moustache and beard. “I suppose I can best explain by telling you that two days following the actual burglary, if that is the proper terminology, I noticed some of my tools and equipment had been moved.”

*****

Why in the world would a "nothing" break-in send a winery owner to a Confidential Investigator? Of course, the forcing of a hasp (as we later learn was the method of entry) indicates a serious effort to get into the place, but if nothing was taken or destroyed, why go to the expense of an outside investigation?

I hope this piques your interest in the book. I’m having fun writing it.

Thanks for being readers. Keep it up! Feel free to contact me at dontravis21@gmail.com.

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

Short Story Time - My Personal Hero

How about a short story this week. Here's one I wrote awhile ago. Might even have been published somewhere in a longer form. Hope you enjoy.

*****

MY PERSONAL HERO

Whenever talk turns to superheroes, my mind never goes to comic book characters like Superman or Batman. I automatically think of Wesley DeVille. You see, he’s my own personal hero. He’s also a super guy, so that qualifies him as a superhero. He doesn’t fly or catch bullets in his teeth or a cut a fancy figure like Captain This or Super That. He’s just plain old Wes.

I met him five years ago at the Ram and Boar, one of Albuquerque’s gay bars, when I was twenty-one and cocky and going through my flaming gay period. Don’t get me wrong! I don’t have anything against Auntie Gertrude behavior, but it wasn’t me … not the real me. It was just a phase that didn’t last long.

I was sitting at a corner table with a couple of friends when he filled the doorway for a moment before moving into the bar. At first, I took him for a politician because of the way he worked the room. At the time, I wasn’t impressed by anything except the size of the guy. I’m a shade under six feet, and he towered over me by four or five inches. I couldn’t help but admire the bulky shoulders and corded arms. His heavy, flat pecs looked like they should throw him off balance, especially since his torso quickly tapered to nice, trim hips and a bubble butt. Above the neck he was wholesome, pug-nosed, and freckled. But I’d never considered Mr. Universe types to be sexually attractive.

“Now that’s something to see!” Dave observed worshipfully. Dave was probably my closest friend at the University of New Mexico.

“If you like brick outhouses,” I came back, a little surprised at my own caustic tone. “Who is he?”

“Name’s Wes DeVille. He works construction. He’s an engineer or a foreman or something like that.” 

I shook my head. “Engineer? Hell, he can’t be any older than we are.”

“Twenty-four,” Gracie, the girl sitting with us, said. “Six-five, fifty-four-inch chest, thirty-two at the waist, and thirty-five at those dreamy hips. Oh, and two-twenty-five packed pounds.”

Dave and I looked at her in amazement. “How do you know all of that?” we demanded in unison.

“We had our own Mr. Gay contest in here a couple of months back. I got to see all that glorious flesh covered only by a skimpy scrap of cloth. He won—hands down.”

 “So what did he win?” I asked.

“A crisp, new hundred-dollar bill. He turned around and spent the whole thing buying everyone drinks. Oh, my,” Gracie panted, putting a hand to her bosom. “Here he comes. If he speaks to me, I’ll just faint.”

But she didn’t. She merely blushed when he called her by name and grasped her dainty hand in his. After fumbling around a bit, Gracie remembered to introduce us.

“This is Dave Deaver. He’s a transfer from New Mexico State this semester.” She turned to me, “And this other dude is Alan Schalk.”

“Uncertain servant,” Wes responded, apropos of nothing.

“Huh?”

“Sorry. I’m into names. Alan’s Celtic for uncertain. And Shalk is German for a man who works for another—a servant. That doesn’t describe you to me.”

“Uh, what should my name be?”

“Maybe Jonathan for God-given and Saroyan.”

“Which is?” I prompted.

“Armenian for mountain prince.”

I blushed as I blurted, “I’m pre-law.”

“Good for you. The brotherhood needs good lawyers.”

“Uh, I guess so.” Being a gay rights lawyer was a new concept for me. I was more attuned to piling up loads of filthy lucre and establishing a power base for something or the other—I hadn’t decided what as yet.

Wes asked to join us and pulled up a chair next to mine. The magnetism of his presence drew a few others to our table. Wes held court for the next hour, buying a round of drinks, talking with everyone, giving equal time to each, and discussing whatever subject that arose on equal footing—nothing condescending about this guy
 Deep into that enchanted evening, a sudden commotion at the door drew our attention. A young man reeled into the room, gave an exhausted gasp, and collapsed in the vestibule. The room fell quiet, and then everyone made a dash for the figure lying on the floor. It was evident he had just suffered a beating. Cries of shock and anger and anguish filled the big room.

“Damn!” Wes swore loudly. “They’re at it again.” Without a moment’s hesitation, he tore out the door.

“Who’s at what?” I asked Gracie, aware of the look of fear on her face.

“Gay bashers!” she shrieked. “They’ve been hanging around the sweet bars and beating up the guys as they come and go.”

“I’m gonna go check things out,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt.

UNM’s main campus was only a few blocks down Central Avenue, and many of the guys walked back and forth. About a block down the street, I saw three college students headed for the U with Wes trailing along about fifty feet behind them. Just east of the campus there’ a small police substation made out of a converted diner on a small triangle of land. It is closed at night, but still it was a police station.

And that’s where the gang of gay-haters launched their attack. Four figures suddenly bolted from cars parked on the north side of the station and quickly bore down on the three college students.

If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed a man of Wes’s size could move so quickly. He took two running steps, three bounding leaps, and landed on the back of a buzz-cut hood preparing to slam a ball bat against the head of his victim. Instead, the gangster slid face-down across ten feet of concrete and banged, head-first into the building.

Wes didn’t waste time waiting to see what happened to the thug. He swiped one of the other attackers off the back of another victim and turned to meet the other two as they shifted their attention to him.

Wes seemed to grow before my very eyes. He towered above the others, causing them to falter a moment. A mistake. He plowed into them, sweeping them off the sidewalk and dumping them into the street. Central Avenue  is Albuquerque’s main east-west drag, and the two had to scramble to get out of the way of onrushing traffic. Pausing only to grab their two fallen fellows, they limped across the street to their cars. Wes chose not to pursue them, but I saw his eyes locking onto the license plates of the two vehicles racing up Monte Vista.

The whole thing had been surrealistic. Not a word had been spoken. It was as if a reel of a silent film had played out before me. The traffic on Central hadn’t even slowed. It was as if nothing extraordinary had taken place on that cool autumn night. But it had! I witnessed it.

And big, hulking Wes DeVille had instantly become my personal hero.

*****

Well, that’s it for this week. Hope you got a little enjoyment out of the post. You keep on reading, and I’ll keep on writing.

Be happy to hear from you at dontravis21@gmail.com.

It’s that Blue Time of Year Again

Betty Morgan

Most of my friends know that I have a difficult period each year during the months of February, March, and April. I lost my wife Betty to pneumonia and renal failure on February 12 in 2009. That was one month and one day short of her birthday (March 13) and about two months shy of our fifty-first wedding anniversary. Ergo, my “blue quarter.”

It is interesting to note how my feelings have changed in the intervening seven years. I recognize now what I did not comprehend at the time. My reaction to her death was almost despair, which could be said to be normal. But from this distance, I understand it for what it was. Selfish grief. Apart from missing a companionship built over a long period of time, I can see now that my reactions centered around my losses. I couldn’t cook… who was going to feed me now? Who would wash my clothes, my dishes, keep me presentable? (I’ve always been something of a slob.) See to the upkeep of the household?

My grief didn’t mature into a true sorrow for the loss of Betty until probably the first anniversay of her death. Then I began to appreciate the things she brought to our relationship rather than simply resent the loss of them. Perversely, that made her loss more keenly felt than when I was wallowing in self pity. Ironic that I had to stop resenting the loss of her contributions to the marriage before I could really appreciate them. Human nature… or just Don’s nature? I honestly don’t know.

I’ve chuckled with friends over the fact that Betty and I couldn’t agree on a lot of things, including the year we came from Denver to Albuquerque. I thought it was 1961; she insisted it was 1963. Judging from our younger son’s birthday (he was born in Albuquerque), she was likely right. We also disagreed over our wedding date. She was certain it was April 8, and I knew for dead fact it was April 12. Our marriage license had been misplaced, so eventually she sent to Denver for a copy. Guess what? My dead fact was a dead duck. We were married on April 8 back when they were still using the Julian calendar. The two dates I have never confused were the day of her birth and the day of her death.

The picture above is not one of my favorites because of the background the photographer chose. Betty had bright, copper-red hair which doesn’t show up in the photograph. In the actual picture, she’s holding our younger son on her lap when he was about a year old, but I had to crop it. Grant is taller and stronger than I am these days, and he’d tear my head off if I were to show him in that pose.

So I’ll be a little quieter and more restrained over these next three months. Not as much so as in prior years, but my meloncholy will never totally disappear… just become more bearable. I miss you, Betty Darlene Claiborne Morgan.

*****

Thanks for indulging me for a personal moment... again. Please keep reading and feel free to contact me at dontravis21@gmail.com.

Don

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

Took a Little Trip to the Emergency Room

Courtesy Commons.wikimeida.org

Last Thursday, I learned how to slip past the crowded waiting room and slide straight into a bed at the Emergency Room. “I think I’m having a mini-stroke” does the trick quite well.

A few weeks earlier, I was sitting in front of one of the VA Medical Center’s Neuro Psychologists taking tests and answering questions for better than three hours as a result of expressing concern to my regular caregiver about grappling for words (a bad sign for a writer) and forgetting why I walked through one door into another room. That occasioned all sorts of activity, including this intensive interview/grilling/testing session.

 In the midst of our "play time," a second doctor wandered into the psychologist’s room and started asking about some of the things on my medical record, one of which was a couple of episodes where my vision went spotty for 30 minutes or so.

This unknown doctor had reviewed my recent brain MRI and was concerned these episodes might be signs of mini-strokes. This prompted a warning from him that in the event of a stroke, I should get to the emergency room immediately because after three hours, the effects of a stroke are irreversible. (He didn’t tell me how successful they were at reversing them if I got there within the time limit.)

Soooo… when I had a vision problem on the morning that fated Thursday, I scooted on down to the ER where I uttered those magic words that had me flat of my back in the MRI machine within twenty minutes of passing through the ER’s admitting door.

After that, they plowed a ditch in my vein and planted one of those IV things (whether they needed one or not) and pasted a couple of dozen terminals all over my chest and sides for an electrocardiogram. (And don’t ever let anyone tell you they are painless. Maybe the test is, but removing those devils from your tender flesh certainly isn’t.) My blood pressure measured a whopping 188/61, but that was perfectly normal for someone being so manhandled. It had nothing to do with my medical episode, I’m convinced.

After that, a nice nurse came in and had me do ridiculous things like touching my nose and her finger and the like. When she had her quota of fun, an ER doctor appeared and had me do the same things all over again. Then nothing. And nothing. My three hours were running out fast and they hadn’t done a thing to reverse my condition unless playing pitty-pat with a nurse and a doctor was some sort of curandero medicine I wasn't familiar with.

Sometime after that crucial third hour had elapsed, two doctors walked into the room and announced they were from Neurology. Okay, maybe these guys could save me from becoming a living vegetable. Guess what? All they wanted was a game of pitty-pat, too. I guess word of my prowess at the sport had made its way around the hospital. At any rate, they excused themselves and said they needed to consult.

They consulted away the fourth hour, likely sealing my fate. Eventually, they returned and told me I wasn’t having a stroke.

“There’s a name for your condition, but it’s not a stroke.”

“What about my vision problems? That’s the fourth time that’s happened in the last 6 months.”

“Strokes are not the only thing that cause that.”

“But I wasn’t able to talk normally.”

“Yes, but if you’d had a stroke, you wouldn’t be able to call up the words you wanted. You were just mispronouncing words you wanted to say.”

“Well….”

“Strokes aren’t the only thing that cause that.”

“I couldn’t make sense out of the words I was reading at the time.” I tried to keep from sounding petulant.

“Yes, but you could make out the words. Probably wouldn’t have been able to do that if you’d had a stroke. Besides the MRI was negative.”

“Okay, so it wasn’t a stroke. What was it?” 

“You had a migraine condition.”

“A what?" Was there too much scorn in my voice? "I didn’t have a headache. I never have headaches.”

“Yes, we know. That’s in the record.”

“But a migraine is nothing but a headache. A super-duper headache.”

“Not always. At any rate you can get dressed and go home. There’s no treatment required.”

I went home halfway convinced they were discharging me in the midst of a fatal stroke and absolutely certain I wasn’t having a migraine headache. But when I looked up Migraines on the internet, lo and behold, there it was. An Acephalgic Migraine (also called the silent migraine) has all the symptoms of a migraine minus the headache.

The kicker to the whole thing came when my youngest sibling (he was born minutes after his twin) called the next morning to update one another on family news. Naturally, I launched into the story of my ER visit. Before I even got to the end, he interrupted. “You had a migraine.”

I gasped in astonishment. “How did you know?”

“I’ve had them for years.”

“But I had no headache?”

“I don’t either.”

Son of a gun!

*****

I don't know about you, but I've noticed of late that if I didn't have medical, dental, optical, and laboratory appointments, my social calendar would be mighty thin.

Guys and gals, thanks for being readers. Keep it up! Feel free to contact me at dontravis21@gmail.com.

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

A Little Something from the Fourth Novel in the BJ Vinson Mystery Series

Given that DreamSpinner Press is into the publication process for the BJ Vinson Series (the first book is due out somewhere around September with the other two to follow at four-month intervals), I thought I’d give you something from the fourth book with the working title of THE LOVELY PINES. 

This novel, presently a work in process, takes place in 2009 and is set in and around the Albuquerque area of New Mexico. The story begins as our intrepid sleuth, BJ Vinson, receives a visit from an individual he had run across but never met during the Bisti Business. Ariel Gonda, a Swiss national, has left the Alfano Winery operation in Napa Valley and purchased the Lovely Pines Winery in the tiny, fictitious settlement of Valle Plácido a little north and east of Albuquerque. He has come to see BJ because of a break-in at his winery.

 I chose this scene from the beginning of Chapter 2 because it shows some of the history of the area… a subject that is terribly interesting to me.

*****

THE LOVELY PINES

     I drove to Valle Plácido directly from the house the next morning, saving a trip downtown and then a run back north. In a bucolic mood, I took the old Highway 85 to Bernalillo about fifteen miles north of Albuquerque.

     Bernalillo was an interesting town, at least to history buffs like me. The area had been more or less continually inhabited for probably close to 1,000 years, first as an indigenous Anasazi town, and later by the Spaniards when they arrived in the Sixteenth Century to claim it as a trading center and military outpost. The settlers who founded Alburquerque—somewhere along the way, the city lost an “R” from its name—had begun their historic journey from here.

     In one of those odd coincidences, Albuquerque is the governmental seat of Bernalillo County, while Bernalillo is the seat of Sandoval County. Go figure. Today, some 7,000 or so souls reside there, about seventy percent of whom trace their roots back to Hispanic origins. My father was fond of telling me that in the old days every bar in the town—and there were plenty of them—was adjacent to a service station because it was illegal to sell liquor on Sundays back then. Of course, the filling stations remained open, and a thirsty motorist was usually able to get something besides oil and gas. The present day town fathers like to say Bernalillo is the gateway to the Jemez Mountain Range to the west and the Sandias to the east.

     At the north end of town, I hung a right on Highway 550 and crossed over I-25, climbing steadily toward the mountains. Before long, I passed through another former Anasazi settlement renamed Placitas, which meant Little Town. With its large adobe homes tucked into folds in the foothills or hanging on the slopes, Placitas had managed to bring some of the famed Santa Fe style south.

     Shortly after leaving the town limits, I entered an even smaller settlement about whose history I had no knowledge—Valle Plácido. All I knew of the place was that people had been growing grapes and making wine here for centuries. New Mexico was one of the earliest wine making centers in North America.

     As instructed by Ariel Gonda, I turned north on a well-graded gravel road and saw the Winery about 500 yards ahead of me. My first impression was of a French chateau plopped down in the middle of New Mexico. As I grew nearer, the image was reinforced. I passed over a cattle guard behind an impressive black, wrought iron gate anchored to a solid four-foot stone wall stretching off in both directions. I assumed it enclosed the entire place, or at least the ten acres of the winery. The wall would probably have stopped a tank but provided little protection from stealthy intruders afoot. The vineyard sat off to the east.

     Up close, the stately house did not seem so foreboding, less of a Gothic manor harboring psychopaths and star-crossed lovers. House, of course, was a misnomer. It truly was a chateau, even though it was small by European standards. I judged it to be three floors of around 1,500 square feet each. The gray stone from which it was constructed wasn’t native rock. The copper Mansard roof had a cloudy, green patina. Doors, windows, and the roofline beneath the gables were all framed in brown brick.

*****

It is amazing how often we drive down familiar roads and streets giving little or no thought to what has happened on those roads before our passage. Not every site must have seen a famous battle or sparked a revolution to have significance. The fact that the small New Mexico town of Bernalillo was founded and abandoned a thousand years ago by an indigenous people, reclaimed by Spanish settlers, and then come under the authority of Anglo conquerors is meaningful. Many New Mexicans, both native and adopted, have little appreciation of the fact that our state is one of the oldest wine-producing areas in what is now the United States. Fascinating.

I’ll make a deal with you. You keep reading, and I’ll keep writing. Feel free to contact me at dontravis21@gmail.com.

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

Who Changed? Me or the Movies

creative commons, Wikimedia.org

I was often unable to find anything of interest on television during our recent holiday season, so I found myself watching a number of old movies, including three Thin Man flicks on the Turner Classic Movie Channel. I remembered them as marvels of sophisticated comedy based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel. I had always liked William Powell, and Myrna Loy was “Woman” for me when I was growing up. To my amazement, I only managed to watch one complete film and about ten minutes of the other two before realizing that either someone had futzed around with these classics or else my idea of sophistication… not to mention comedy… had changed. Chasing around after an alcoholic drink no longer filled the bill. And the mystery seemed to solve itself when no one was watching… including William Powell.

However, the activity called up a memory from July 2004 when I was lying in the Albuquerque VA hospital recovering from the prior day’s exploratory Laparotomy, which is a fancy way of saying the surgeon ripped me open from stem to stern and yanked out 20 cms of my jujunium. The only thing I understood about the last part of that sentence was “20.” That’s simple enough, but what the hell is a jujunium? I never knew I had one, much less 20 cms of it. Was there anything left? Would they have to install some kind of pump to handle all my juju juice? But back to my suffering.

Pain-wracked and lethargic, I huddled on my bed imprisoned by raised and barred sides. A myriad of needles pierced my right arm. One was for a saline drip, another was for something that escapes me, a third held a big gadget that let them take blood samples without sticking a big hypodermic needle in me every time some vampire got hungry and needed a sip of blood. The fourth one, in my opinion, was simply to piss me off.

To fully comprehend my situation, there are a couple of things you need to know about me. First, I am needle-phobic. Point a needle at me and my skin cells become so tense a nurse must make at least two... and more often three… tries before striking the desired vein. Add to that the fact that I have an extremely low tolerance for pain. By way of example, there have been times when I equated waste elimination with the pain of childbirth. My wife tried to disabuse me of that, but she had no idea of the agony I was enduring at the time.

And finally, there’s my relationship with blood. Blood is just fine when it stays where it’s supposed to be, snug in some vein or artery and properly covered by a thick layer of epidermis. I can remember people speculating on why veins (even the word makes me queasy) appear blue when they are filled with bl… uh, that red stuff. I never cared to learn the answer. Veins can choose any color they want so long as they remain leak-proof.

Of course, when it comes right down to it, blood isn’t as bad as needles or the pain of sutures or the other stuff because while I have an unpleasant moment or two upon its appearance, that is generally followed by a more or less instantaneous nap. And even if the sight of the thick, oozing stuff doesn’t render me totally unconscious, at the very least I’m in that never-never land where I don’t really give a crap.

But enough of that. Back to the experience I was about to reveal. A day or so after my life-threatening surgery, I was lying back in my bed bored to tears, suffering quietly and heroically with my blood safely coursing through its proper channels… when suddenly, something captured my attention. My total attention. A great big bubble of air detached itself from the saline bottle and plopped into my drip-line.

That’s where the old movies kicked in. How many times have we watched a sinister film character make his (it’s almost always a he) way into some sleeping innocent’s room to inject air into the patient’s IV and then sneak out without being seen? Shortly thereafter film pandemonium breaks out. An ominous screeching of monitors. A horrified nurse screaming as if she’d never seen a hospital emergency before. Raucous Codes Blue or Red or Dead.

Anyway, as I watched this humungous blob of air lazily make its way down the line, my initial reaction was calm curiosity. That didn’t last long.  I was watching Death approach. I didn't have time for calm. I sat up… which diverted me momentarily from my panic… and fumbled for the call button. Couldn’t find it. Should I yell and disturb the poor sap in the other bed? Jerk the needle out of my arm? Oh, crap no! That would hurt. So I calmed down and took matters into my own hands. I very deliberately flicked the hose to break up the bubble.

I succeeded. That ominous thing exploded into a thousand tiny fragments that wouldn’t harm a fly. I slumped back, weak but proud. I had done what the U. S. Army had taught me to do. Take decisive action. I clearly remembered from back then that every time I recovered from a swoon, I’d been able to staunch the flow of that strawberry colored stuff gushing from a splinter in the finger or a scrape on the knee.

Then I took another look at the IV. A funny thing was happening. As the cloud of tiny air pockets drifted down the line, they started to collect. Just a few at first. One joined with another to make a bigger bubble. Then others melded with that one. Good Lord! It was going to end up bigger than ever.

I closed my eyes and awaited the arrival of Fate. How long would it take to kill me after entering my bloodstream? Was this a vein or an artery. A vein. That meant it would go directly to my heart. Wouldn’t have to go through my toes and fingers before reaching the Grand Old Pump. Arm to heart. Splat! Would it hurt much? Damn those old movies, anyway. I wouldn’t have known what was coming had it not been for them.

As the re-formed pocket of air… seemingly much larger now… finally disappeared from sight, I closed my eyes and tried to compose a prayer. Better to go out that way, wasn’t it? But all I could think of was “don’t let it hurt!”

I woke up an hour or so later when the nurse came in to take a blood sample. I was tempted to let her know about eluding the tentacles of Fate, but decided Gary Cooper would have kept his escape from Death to himself. So that’s what I did.

*****

Hope I didn’t horrify you with that absolutely true spine-tingling tale of death and danger. You probably have some of your own to relate. But I seriously doubt yours were as perilous as mine.

Keep on reading. Keep on writing. And keep on submitting. If you feel like it, drop me a line at dontravis21@gmail.com.

See you next week.

Don

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

DSP Publications Begins Work on Republishing The BJ Vinson Series

As regular readers of this blog know, DSP Publications acquired the rights to the BJ Vinson mystery series during last year’s holiday season. They have already begun the process of getting the basics out of the way (learning about the author, general thrust of the series, type of series -- these are associated, stand-alone books featuring continuing players which can be read in any order -- and that sort of information).The beginning of the editorial procedure on the first book is set for May 10. I understand publication follows the editorial process by around four months. So hopefully, we’ll see the new Zozobra Incident somewhere around September or October of this year. Except, it probably won’t be The Zozobra Incident by then. DSP has already alerted me they may change the titles of the novels.

At any rate, I chose a scene from Chapter 12 of The Zozobra Incident for this week’s blog post. BJ is uncomfortable with his recent suspicions about the new man in his life, Paul Barton. In the following scene, a telephone conversation with Gene Enriquez, his former APD partner, he’s relieved to learn that a witness has not been able to identify a photo of Paul’s as a suspect in the case. When he asks for the photo back, BJ discovers all may not be well, after all.

*****

THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT

“Yeah. Will you return the pictures to me? I need Prada’s for the file, and I’d hate for Paul’s to get into your system for no good reason.”

“He’s already in it. Don’t tell me you didn’t check for a sheet?”

“Of course not!” Then I screwed up my standard of ethics by asking why he was on record.

“Nothing serious. Drunk and disorderly at an off-campus beer party. Got into a fight with another guy, barely missed being charged with assault.”

“Oh, crap. Is it still pending?”

“Naw. He got fingerprinted, mugged, and slammed into a cell overnight. But the judge let him go with a warning.”

“When was that?”

“A year back. Nothing before or since.”

“Thanks. I owe you.”

“Man, do you ever. But there’s more. One of the guys in the Gang Unit tells me Barton flirted around with one of the gangs back in high school. There’s no evidence he actually joined, but there was some sort of blood connection, I gather.”

“Which gang?” I asked with my heart in my throat.

“Probably the Santos Morenos. That was their turf, even back then. I can check it out if you want.”

“No, thanks. Let me do it.”

I hung up and processed what I had learned. The system snares a lot of young men for one thing or the other, and Paul’s charges hadn’t been serious. A wake up call was probably what he needed at the time.

The other thing bothered me, but maybe it shouldn’t. Every kid in Albuquerque was exposed to a gang like the Saints sooner or later. And in Paul’s part of the South Valley, half the people were related by blood or marriage. The fact Gene’s contact was vague about the details was both good and bad: Bad because whatever brought Paul to his attention was enough for him to remember it years later. Good because it meant Paul hadn’t been seriously involved with the Saints or any other gang.

*****

Hope you enjoyed the glimpse into Zozobra. As always, let me close by urging you to keep on reading and by inviting you to contact me.

See you next week.

Don

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

PI Clients Are Not Always Pleasant

Let me start off by repeating an alert from Michael Goddard, Software Engineer for Google Friend Connect:

________________________________________________________________________________

An update on Google Friend Connect

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post) that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they'll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

Then he adds that this change will take effect on January 11, 2016.

_________________________________________________________________________________

I chose the following scene from near the beginning of Chapter 1 of THE BISTI BUSINESS for this week’s post for a couple of reasons. BJ is working late one evening when he receives a phone call from an individual looking for his son who is overdue from a vacation trip to the great State of New Mexico. The passage makes plain that confidential investigators occasionally end up dealing with clients they don’t personally like and just as in any other profession often come face to face with bigotry. It also points out that PIs generally prefer to deal with attorneys as clients because lawyers realize what the rest of us do not: PI’s are information gatherers, not detectives who go around solving crimes… except in fiction… such as THE BISTI BUSINESS. The scene also allows me to highlight some of New Mexico. Enjoy.

*****

THE BISTI BUSINESS

“How about Norville?”

“That bastard’s a dyed-in-the-wool pansy, and he’s contaminating my son.”

I bit my tongue at the sophomoric outburst. “For your information, Mr. Alfano, I’m pretty ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ myself. I think you need to call someone else.”

“Now wait a minute.” Anthony Alfano obviously was not accustomed to getting the brush-off. “I know all about you. And except for that—nonsense—you’ve got a good reputation. You can move in both the straight world and the gay world. You’re the one I want. Find my son, Vinson, and send him home to his mother and me.”

“It’s Mr. Vinson.” Might as well set the bigoted SOB straight right at the beginning.

“All right, Mr. Vinson, score one for you. Are you sure you’re gay? You don’t sound it.”

“Does your son?”

“No, but—”

“But in your dreams he’s not twisted, right? How about Norville? Am I looking for a flaming queen?”

“Of course, not. Lando wouldn’t hang out with someone like that. No, I’ve got to admit, looking at Dana Norville, you wouldn’t suspect.”

“Then how can you be certain?”

“I did a quick background check on Norville when the two of them started bumming around together, and the guy was clean. But when they…uh, got close, I took another look and found the man Norville had been shacking up with before he latched onto my son.”

“Very well, Mr. Alfano, I’ll look into the matter. I’ll do it for Orlando and Dana, but you’re going to be footing the bills.”

He promised to have his secretary in California call Hazel tomorrow with the credit card information for my retainer and to provide anything else we requested. I asked him to email color photos of the two men. If they were as close as he believed, there would be a few around somewhere. He also gave me his son’s cell and pager numbers.

After hanging up, I tapped my desk blotter with a gold and onyx letter opener fashioned into a miniature Toledo blade. I sighed aloud. The Alfano case had all the hallmarks of developing into a nightmare. Working for attorneys was easier; they understood the process. Private individuals had a warped idea of what a PI did, which was nothing more or less than gathering information. But I was committed, so I might as well make the best of it.

I returned to the visual meditation of the landscape outside my window. As nature’s glow dimmed, man-made lights came alive: amber lampposts, white fluorescents, flamboyant neons, yellow vehicle headlights reflecting off wet pavement, and far in the distance a tiny spot moving slowly across the sky—one of the aerial trams hauling patrons up Sandia Peak’s rugged western escarpment to the restaurant atop the mountain.

By leaning forward, I caught the faint, rosy underbelly of a western cloudbank, the lingering legacy of a dead sunset. Was that what had drawn Orando and Dana to the Land of Enchantment? Spectacular scenery and surreal sunsets? Or was it our rich heritage of Indian and Hispanic art? The two were history majors, and Albuquerque had a long history. It was approaching its 300th birthday, while Santa Fe and many of the nearby Indian Pueblos had longer lifelines.

 *****

 As previously noted, BISTI, along with THE ZOZOBRA INCIDENT and THE CITY OF ROCKS will soon be published by DSP Publications, an imprint of DreamSpinner Press. The titles of the novels may be changed, but they will still represent the adventures of BJ Vinson and his partner, Paul Barton.

Keep on reading, guys. I always look forward to hearing from you.

See you next week.

Don

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