Steven Havill: Dead Weight

Regardless of what he did on duty, his living habits were none of my business, and I had no intention, despite what I had told Carla Champlin, of placing myself in any formal fashion between Thomas Pasquale and his landlady. I had told Carla that I would talk with Thomas, and that was a promise easy enough to keep.

After the cool of Carla Champlin’s house and tea, the heat inside the car was enough to take my breath away. The patrol car started, hesitated, and then settled into a rough idle as the air conditioner compressor kicked in. I winked a trickle of sweat away from my left eye and jotted a quick entry in my log, then tossed the clipboard on the seat and pulled 310 into gear. It promptly stalled.

I cursed a string of abuses as the engine cranked rapidly with that high-pitched, jingling sound of a motor well past its prime. With the windows buzzed down, I waited for a few seconds and tried again with the air conditioner off, and this time was rewarded as the engine caught.

Three blocks later, at the intersection of 6th and Bustos, a small yellow idiot light on the dash flickered on, the temperature needle hovered in the red, and the engine sighed into silence once again. I drifted the car over to the curb and stopped. Several abortive efforts to start the damn thing produced only an additional sheen of sweat on my forehead.

As if she’d been listening, Gayle Torrez’s mellow, cool voice said, “Three ten, Posadas. Ten-twenty.”

“Three ten is disabled at the corner of Bustos and Sixth,” I snapped into the mike, and then took a deep breath before I added, “Call Manny at the county yard and tell ’em that he’s got a dead one that needs the wrecker.”

“Ten-four. And, three ten, there’s a gentleman here who’d like to speak with you.”

“Ten-four,” I said, and rummaged through the litter on my front seat to find my cellular phone. I punched in the number and Gayle answered on the first ring.

“Just a moment, sir,” she said to me, and I could hear voices in the background. I heard Gayle say to someone else, “No, sir, this is fine. He won’t mind,” and then another voice said, “Sheriff?”

“This is Gastner.” I wondered what it was that I wouldn’t mind.

“Sheriff, this is Arny Gray. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

I laughed. “That depends, Doc. What can I do for you?”

“I’d sure like to talk with you for a bit,” Arnold Gray said, and his voice dropped a couple of decibels.

“Well, I’m a captive audience at the moment,” I said, and wiped a trickle of sweat off the end of my nose. If I didn’t make a move soon, I was going to be a puddle. The nearest business was just a few steps away, and I knew that Kealey’s Kleaners and Laundry was air-conditioned. I started to heave myself out of the car.

“I heard your radio call,” Gray said. “Let me swing by there and pick you up. Then we can have a glass of iced tea or something at the Don Juan.”

Dr. Arnold Gray, a chiropractor whom I had always thought to be the smartest of the five county commissioners, leaped several notches upward in my estimation.

“That is, if you’ve got the time,” he added.

“I’ve got the time. I’m right at the intersection of Sixth and Bustos, beside the dry cleaner’s. I’ll be looking for you. And I appreciate this, believe me.”

“Won’t be but a minute,” Gray said, and switched off. I took the phone and locked the car, the sun hard on my back as if someone inside Kealey’s were holding the pressing table to my shoulders.

The young lady behind the counter at the cleaner’s looked teary-eyed, as if she might have been sniffing the cleaning fluid. Maybe it was just midsummer allergies or a wrenching romance novel that she’d been reading. She smiled brightly and nodded at me.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I’ve got a ride coming to pick me up,” I said, and waved at 310. She looked out the window, puzzled. “It broke down,” I added. “If you see anyone trying to steal it before the wrecker gets here, wish ’em luck for me.”

“Oh,” she said.

I didn’t know her name, and although her name tag said Judy, that didn’t ring any bells. Royce Kealey had owned the place for all of the thirty years I’d been bringing my weekly load of shirts there, and I knew Judy wasn’t family. Trying to know every living soul in a tiny village became an occupational hazard after a while. If I worked at it hard enough, I could be a walking gazetteer of who was who in Posadas County, New Mexico. Not that it all mattered much in the great scheme of things.

“Would you like a drink of ice water or something?” Judy asked, and I shook my head.

“You’re a sweetheart for asking, though,” I said.

In less than two minutes, a white Continental slid to the curb. I turned to the girl as I headed toward the door. “Thanks.”

“You have a nice day, Sheriff. Come back and see us.” She sounded as if she really knew who I was, and that puzzled me even more.

Arnold Gray touched the electric door lock button of the Continental just as I reached the curb.

“Hot, eh?” he said when I opened the door.

“It’s a dry heat,” I replied as I slid into the cool leather. I slammed the door, and the armrest cracked my elbow hard enough to make me wince.

“So’s the Sahara,” Gray said, and pulled the Continental away from the curb. “Patrol car broke, eh? Just like you said it would.”

I grinned. “You’ve got a good memory,” I said.

Two meetings previous, I’d given the county commission hell for not allowing adequate funding for four new vehicles beyond the one already in the budget. Somehow, the concept of police cars actually wearing out was a novel idea, even though every county in the United States went through the identical process on a routine basis.

Two of the commissioners, Gray and Janelle Waters, had been in favor of spending whatever it took to buy the new units. They were a minority.

“How many miles on that thing now?” Gray asked cheerfully.

“A hundred and eighty-seven thousand,” I said, and reached out a hand for support as we wafted into the parking lot of the Don Juan de Onate Restaurant, just six blocks west of Kealey’s Kleaners. “I’m the only one who drives it,” I added. “I don’t let any of the road deputies use it.” We pulled into a parking place in the shade of the building. “I move slowly enough that it can keep up with me…most of the time. But you didn’t take time out from cracking bones to talk about old cars. What can I do for you?”

Arnold Gray frowned and shoved the car into park. “Let’s go inside and find a quiet corner.”

In midafternoon of a July Tuesday in Posadas, that wasn’t hard to do, even in the most popular restaurant in town.

The place was cool as a refrigerator, and the bright yellow plastic booth benches were downright cold. I slid in until I could turn sideways and lean against the dark wood wainscoting.

Even as I came to a comfortable halt with one arm stretched out across the back of the booth, JanaLynn Torrez appeared around the partition.

My undersheriff’s cousin grinned but otherwise refrained from mentioning that I’d left that very spot not an hour before.

“What can I get you gentlemen?”

“Two iced teas?” Gray said, glancing at me. I nodded.

She disappeared, and Arnold Gray leaned both forearms on the table. He had either hemorrhoids, gas, or something serious nagging at his insides. I pulled my arm down from the booth and straightened up, attentive and serious.

“So what gives?” I asked.

“God, I hate this,” Gray said, and grimaced. He looked off to the right at the empty tables surrounding us.

I shrugged. “Just say it, then.”