Another Man's Moccasins

“Nope.” I felt like I should be making some effort, so I tried to continue the conversation. “Did I tell you about James Dunnigan? ”

“What about him?”

“He thinks his mother makes coffee for him in the mornings. ”

Sancho nodded, a little puzzled. “That’s nice.”

“She’s been dead for almost thirty years.” I sipped from my chrome cap-cup. “Den told me that he bought one of those coffeemakers with a timer and that he explains it to James every day, but every morning James thinks his dead mother makes the coffee.”

A moment passed. “You think he’s dangerous?”

I smiled at the Basquo; he was so serious. “No, I was just making conversation.”

“Oh.” He set his mug on the desk and leaned in. “After Maynard, we go over to the Hole in the Wall Motel and check out Tran Van Tuyen?”

“Yep.”

“I just got the skinny on the Utah receipt. I think you’re going to find this interesting.” I glanced up at the clock and figured we had an easy five minutes for more conversation before the bartender arrived, if he got here on time. “There’s no telephone number on the receipt, so I called up the Juab County Sheriff’s Department, faxed a copy, and got a deputy to run over there and see what she can find out. She called me back and reported that it’s not actually a repair shop, but more of a private junkyard alongside the highway. She said when she got there and found the mobile home in this maze of junk, after being chased around the place by assorted dogs, goats, and a mule ...”

“Okay.”

“... there’s a guy standing outside the trailer, and a woman throwing what appears to be all his stuff at him. The deputy asked him what was going on, and he said that he doesn’t know, that she’s just crazy. The deputy showed him the fax of the receipt, and he said he’d never seen it before. Now, along with most of this guy’s worldly possessions that have come flying out the door was a checkbook, which the deputy picked up and casually compared with the handwriting on the receipt. Dead match. She showed it to the guy as they’re dodging the next salvo, and he admitted that he might just remember the girl. He described our victim and said she rolled up to his gate with a busted water pump and that he fixed it and sent her on her way.

“Sounds plausible.”

“Now, I’d told the deputy about the quarters and that the girl probably didn’t have much money, so she asked him how the Vietnamese woman paid for the repair...”

“She had sex with him.”

The Basquo stopped and looked at me. “How did you know?”

“She used the same morally casual bartering system with the Dunnigan brothers.”

He studied me for a second more. “Well, that certainly establishes a pattern.”

There was the sound of a motorcycle and a knock at the glass pane, and Santiago got up to get it. He opened the door, Phillip Maynard came in, and Saizarbitoria gestured toward the empty seat to my left. The bartender sat, and he looked like he needed it. He looked like he had been up all night.

“How are you, Phillip?”

He sniffed and readjusted in his seat. “I’m good, a little tired. . . . What is all this about?”

“Phillip, I made some phone calls back to Chicago and got some information relating to some incidents that involved you on Maxwell Street, where you’re originally from?”

He looked at the manila folder lying on the edge of the desk. “Uh huh.”

I nodded toward the envelope. “I don’t have to tell you what’s in this, but we both know how seriously some of the charges could be interpreted—two cases of unlawful entry, larceny, one domestic charge, and a restraining order that’s still being enforced.”

“Look, that was a bullshit deal and...”

I held up a hand. “Phillip, hold on a second.” I allowed my hand to rest on the file. “To be honest, I don’t care about any of this. It tells me that you’re no Eagle Scout, but as long as you keep your nose clean in my county, we’ll get along fine. But we do have a problem.” I let that one sit there for a moment. “I think you might’ve lied to me yesterday, or at least you didn’t tell me everything you know. Now, is that the case?”

He shifted in his chair. “Yeah.”

“So, why would you do that?”

He shrugged and sat there, silent for a while. “He paid me.” “Who did?”

“The guy.”

I could feel Saizarbitoria watching me as I questioned Maynard. “Tran Van Tuyen?”

“Yeah, him; the Oriental guy at the bar.”

“Asian, Vietnamese to be exact. What did he say?”

“He asked about the girl the day before yesterday, then came back in and gave me a hundred bucks to not mention his name.”

I glanced up at Sancho, who snagged his keys from the desk and quickly went out the door. “What kinds of questions did he ask?”

“Just if I’d seen this girl or heard anything about her. He had a photograph of her.”

“Did he call her by name?”

“Yeah, it was something like Packet.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Maynard thought and then shook his head. “Just that he knew the car was hers and that she’d run away and he was looking for her.”

“Nothing else?”

He shook his head again. “Nothing, and that’s the truth, Sheriff.”