So did I.
Thing was, I already had a lead. A strong one.
And shit, I needed a smoke.
Honestly, if Judd — Jonnie’s reputed boyfriend — wasn’t sixteen, I’d have happily beat his ass.
“Like, I don’t know where she is?” he said, absentmindedly wiping at his nose. “The cops already asked me.” His expression was one of pure derision. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes.
“Uh-huh,” I said. I was rapidly losing patience.
The girl beside him snickered. I flit my eyes over to her. She was no other than Jonnie’s buddy, Macina Begay, who was looking at me beneath her long, straight, black eyelashes with a mixture of fear and hatred.
I’d been to Jonnie’s school before I met with Betty, and a number of kids had told me that Jonnie had been partying for a while with this kid — Judd. Even his T-shirt annoyed me. It was a Metallica T-shirt, and when I’d first approached him with “Cool shirt,” he’d merely squinted quizzically.
They were in the alleyway between the 7-Eleven and the diner, right where their friends had said they’d be. When they’d heard me, they scrambled to put a number of certainly highly illegal substances into their pockets.
“Yeah, I think you know more than you’re saying,” I said. “And you’re going to tell me what it is right now.”
Macina snickered again and leaned back on the chain-link fence.
I closed my eyes for a moment, centered myself. Remembered that these two were young, poor — that Macina was just a Diné kid trying to make it in a highly unfriendly city — and changed tacks.
“Look. If someone threatened you? I can make sure they’re the ones who feel threatened.”
Judd scoffed, and whipped his long, greasy-brown locks over his forehead in one small motion. “Yeah, right.”
That right there told me something. Someone had threatened them.
“Aren’t you worried about your friend?”
They looked at one another, Judd turning away then, Macina’s glance moving down to her shoes.
I was getting closer.
“Whoever threatened you? I can take care of it,” I said, glancing around and then showing them what was under my jacket — a Ruger .327. It was new. Shiny. “I’ve made a lot of men regret a lot of things.”
Macina’s eyes grew wide, and a speck of admiration began to creep into them.
“And I know how to keep them quiet,” I said. “I do it for a living.”
Macina opened her mouth.
“No! Don’t,” Judd said to her, wiping at his nose again, the skin of his short white fingers wrecked with cleaning chemicals.
“She’s scary. And I’m worried about Jonnie. I think...” Macina trailed off.
“Don’t say that!” Judd rasped, a teary edge to his voice.
“Lady, you promise if we tell you what we know, we’re not the next ones to go missing?” Macina adjusted herself against the chain-link fence.
“Yes,” I said. “Believe me. Men are scared of me.”
Judd still seemed unsure, but I could tell my gun had impressed them both.
Macina sighed deeply. “We was here with Jonnie before she disappeared. And some older Indian guy — older than you — he come over here and started barreling her way. We hang out together in this spot all the time, party. We’re tight.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to break her flow.
“He was grabbing her arm, yelling at her, she was fighting him. Judd and me — well, we were telling him he better leave her alone or we’d call the cops. He laughed. He said—” Macina stopped, her voice breaking.
“He said,” Judd started, “that he was her dad and that there was nothing we could do. That he had a legal right to do whatever he wanted with her.”
God, hearing that made me sick. But it confirmed my suspicions.
“Yeah, and,” Macina began again, apparently recovered, “I guess we figured that was true. But still, Jonnie didn’t want to go with him, said, ‘You’re not even my dad!’”
I nodded. That made sense. If he’d come around after all these years, especially considering what a deadbeat he seemed to be, there was no way Jonnie would’ve gone with him easy.
“He told her then,” Macina continued, “that she better go with him or there’d be consequences for her mother. And that she better shut up about everything.”
That was odd.
“Mind if I smoke?” Macina asked.
I pulled my pack out, lit one for myself, then offered Judd and Macina one. I guess that meant I was contributing to the delinquency of minors, but these two seemed to know what they were doing with their lives. And who was I to judge? I’d started smoking at twelve. So had my mother. And hers.
Macina closed her eyes, and it was clear the cigarette was working its cancer-like magic, as she looked better, refreshed, a quick, hot line of smoke shooting out the left side of her mouth. I understood. I wanted to quit — was always quitting — but then the damn things would pull me back in.
“Then he told us he’d call the cops on us if we told anybody about what had happened.”
“You see her after that?” I asked, removing a stone from the bottom of my left boot — another gift from my latest sort-of-ex. He was gone. But the boots? Those I’d love forever.
“No,” Macina said. “Nobody did.”
I got a description of the guy from them then. Tall. Medium-brown. Short hair, hazel eyes. “Pretty Indian-looking,” Macina said.
“Gotcha. He indicate at all where he might be taking her?” I asked.
They both went silent. “All he said was he was taking her home,” Macina finally said.
Also odd. But perhaps that was his logic. After this, I was planning on running his name through the system — but I had a friend at Fond Du Lac, and reservations were small, tight communities. If George was there — or had made the mistake of telling a friend or relative about his whereabouts — I’d find out.
When I talked to Betty on the phone, she confirmed that the description fit her ex, George — except for the eyes. But they could’ve gotten that wrong. Heat of the moment. I also asked if he’d been abusive in any way. She had to admit that no, he hadn’t — but that his drinking had stepped up hard during her pregnancy, before he disappeared, and his angst over the kid so wild, that it made sense.
“One minute he’d be talking about how he was too young for all of this. How he just needed to get away. And the next, weeping over the idea of my ever being with anyone else, the idea of anyone else raising our kid. Kept talking about how blood ties don’t break.”
Sounds like a man, I thought, but didn’t say.
I was sitting in my hotel on Colfax, not far from the White Horse, thinking about giving up for the day and going over for a drink, when my phone rang.
I put my stale cup of coffee down and picked up.
“You wanted to know about George Labont?” It was my buddy. He was also an ex — one from many years ago who’d come through Albuquerque for long enough to hook up with me, before he decided he needed to go back home. We’d kept it cool, though.
I sat straight up. “I do.”
“Got a number for you.”
“Hello?”
My heart was beating like a rabbit’s. I’d called the number a few times, though nothing but straight to voice mail. He was either busy or he didn’t want to talk to nobody. I’d gone over to the White Horse for a beer — after a stop at a Mexican restaurant called Asaderos Mexican for a quick dinner. Nick the bartender was pleased to see me. Had been talking me up about all of the Natives that used to grace his doors, years ago. It was mainly a dead joint now — cats wandering in and out, occasionally jumping on the bar, looking for a treat or a pet.