The police detective hypothesized, “Maybe he had a partner. Maybe they had an argument; something led to a falling out. But who knows? Maybe there’s a civilian hero out there.”
So, Leo liked the sound of it, The police detective, and the phrase played in his mind, The police detective, The homeless detective, The police detective, The homeless detective, The homeless crime solver, like he was a house cat in an office with Private Eye on his door tag. His secret weapon was — Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Racial epithet. Racial epithet. What kind of crime solver am I? What kind of human being am I? What kind of human being am I not? He felt doubtful. He felt awkward. Ha, maybe I shouldn’t feel so scummy. ’Cause it worked, and the killer was a white guy, anyway. He felt unheroic.
That night, back in his trailer, he zero/voided, and as the sickness, the strangeness, and the surreptitiousness of it all caught up with him, Leo Malley began laughing, laughter that pierced the dark, laughter that resembled breaking into midnight song. Disbelief ceded to astonishment. Astonishment ceded to ridiculousness. Lucky that he was going to be okay, by the sardonic laws of the heroic survival of the alcoholic fitless. Very, very lucky that his best gal at Wendy’s slipped him twenty bucks. Lying bedded, he opened his palm in the darkness, and deftly unhooked a painkiller from his five-pack. The popped can went psssst. Camo beer. Camo beer.
Sos Sex
by Hida Viloria
Casa Alegre
The place is silent as I walk through the open barbed-wire gate, down the driveway toward the new-looking Big Wheel I’ve seen sitting, unmoved, at least a dozen times from the safety of my passing car. It, and the toys beside it, seem like they were dropped by playing children unaware that they would never be returning to put them away. Or by someone who wanted to give the impression that kids live in the house. After weeks of watching it during daylight hours I’d still never seen any sign of kids. Or of anyone, for that matter.
I step as quickly and quietly as possible toward the back of the property. I made sure to park my car down the block, out of sight of the house, in case they have surveillance cameras. I’d also put on the long blond wig I bought as a disguise a few blocks before turning down the street and parking.
I’m 5'3" and skinny, which makes me little by American guy standards. I figure between that and the wig, as long as I keep my head down I’ll look like a long-haired white guy (instead of a Latino guy with a short black fade) or possibly even a white girl. Which is good because if what I think is going on here really is, I definitely don’t want the sick fuckers knowing who I am.
It all started with Erica. Well, to be fair, it was winter that started me down this path. I’d been looking for an escape from the lethargy that had descended upon me with the falling of the leaves. My motivation, my very life force, seemed buried, like the earth, and I’d sunken so deep into my subconscious that speaking to anyone other than my dog had become difficult.
Somehow driving made it better. It made me feel like I was going somewhere. Even though I was literally just spinning in circles, needlessly burning precious fossil fuels like a fucking moron.
Every morning I woke up to the Santa Fe sunshine and another promise of productivity. I had my morning coffee and toke to motivate the mind, and then whipped out the ol’ laptop. Hell, sometimes I’d even bring it with me somewhere to make me feel like I was really working.
Most Monday mornings I’d end up at Betterday Coffee, the closest café to me. I’d plant myself with my laptop, notebook, breakfast burrito, and visions of lining up a week’s worth of work. Over the years, I’d inadvertently learned enough carpentry to convince people I knew shit. That, along with my Dartmouth degree and my small size — ideal for getting into tight crawl spaces — had made it easy for me to find a steady flow of fairly well-paying work as a property appraiser.
It’s not the worst job in the world, but it’s nothing to write home about either, and it slows down drastically in the winter. So I often found myself distracted by one of my online addictions or the clientele. The Betterday crowd typically consisted of a surprising number of ethnically diverse, model-looking millennials among mostly retired, white, former hippies. Young and old, modern meets rustic — like Brooklyn hipsters practicing animal husbandry.
About a month ago, I was there hoping to feel inspired about follow-up e-mails and scheduling, but found myself immersed, instead, in real estate listings. They’re one of my aforementioned online addictions, along with camper vans and tiny houses. That day’s distraction: a reasonably priced three-bedroom, two bath on Hopi Road, with an open house.
I love open house days in Santa Fe because it’s easy to hit a bunch of them. The city’s actually not that small geographically speaking, clocking in around the same size as Manhattan, the stomping ground of my twenties and early thirties, but its population is tiny by comparison — just.12 percent of Manhattan’s 1.66 million.
What you lose in anonymity you gain in the ability to get anywhere you want to go in twenty minutes or less.
The lack of traffic and gigantic sky had lured me back to the City Different six months ago. Five months later I met Erica at the Tuesday afternoon open house on Hopi Road.
I wasn’t really interested in buying the house — didn’t even have the money yet — but I was interested in her the moment I saw her. She was the definition of svelte in tight black Prince-style pants that flared a bit at the bottom and a black, semi-see-through lace top that showed off her long, lean figure. Her face resembled what a pretty female Cheshire cat might look like, with a wide smile, mischievous to the point of making one momentarily wary.
It was her sharp green eyes that most intrigued me. When she fixed them on me I got the strong impression she knew things. Mysterious things that evade most folks’ perception.
I sensed this for a second and then it was gone, replaced by real estate banter. How long the place had been listed, what the owners were hoping to get for it, why it hadn’t sold yet. That one was easy enough to answer. The layout was bizarre, including a grand staircase leading to a basement (a rarity in the Southwest), with two tiny, windowless rooms entirely carpeted from floor to ceiling.
Outside, there were decks off the dining room and master bedroom, but they were both covered with thin, worn Astroturf. The yard was barren, with a very well-secured dog run in one corner — and, in the other, a concrete storage shed so short it looked like it had been made for little people. The padlock on the door was unlocked so Erica and I peered in. It was empty, and just tall enough to sit up or crawl around in.
“Guess that’s the gnome hovel,” I said to Erica, and she laughed.
We agreed it was weird and started to walk away when the graffiti visible directly above the shed, painted on the concrete wall of the taller shed on the neighbors’ side of the fence, caught my eye. I walked back to make out the lettering.
SOS, it said, then below it, Sex and ME_ _. I couldn’t make out the last two letters.
Whaaat?
“Oh my god, why does it say SOS and Sex on there?” I asked, no longer laughing. “That’s so creepy! Do you think somebody was trying to let someone know about what was going on inside that shed?”