Desert Discord Read online

  Saskia drove west on 4th Street a few miles per hour above the speed limit and turned north on Beechnut Draw, a wide, trough-shaped avenue set lower than the surrounding neighborhoods (it was designed to serve as a creek during heavy rains) and then east on Millard and into her parents’ driveway. She looked at her watch—twenty-three minutes by her count. Oh well. Better call Arnold, then get the film back to the theater.

  She walked through the front door and into the living room, and found her mom standing by the little phone table, the receiver to her ear, writing on a pad of paper. She glanced up as Saskia entered.

  “Wait!” Ramona said. “She’s not at work, she just walked in!” She held the phone out to Saskia, distress on her face. “It’s Doug,” she said. “He says your friend Andy’s in the hospital.”

  Saskia took the phone. “Doug? What? What’s happening?”

  “I just tried to call you at the theater,” Douglas said. “Your boss said you were running some kind of errand. Somebody at the Duro hospital called looking for anybody who knows Andy. They said he’s in intensive care. Some men attacked him and another guy last night.”

  “Oh my God!” said Saskia. “How bad is he?”

  “Well, I don’t really know. They beat him bad. They said he’s not conscious. The other guy is basically okay, and the police are talking to him. The hospital called the orchestra office, and they gave them this number. I told them his father’s business is listed in the phone book, so I hope they called him.”

  “Do the police know who did it?”

  “I don’t think so. Some shitkicker punks. Andy’s friend gave them a description. He said there were three guys.”

  “Oh, God!” said Saskia. “Okay, I’m driving over there right now.”

  “I’ll come as soon as I can get away,” said Douglas.

  Saskia took her car keys out of her purse, but fumbled and dropped them on the floor.

  “Wait, sweetie,” said Ramona. “I’ll drive. We’ll go in my car.”

  They drove away quickly, leaving Saskia’s sedan parked on one side of the Piedman driveway.

  Across town, Arnold Ziegler waited in vain for the prearranged signal. There would be no seven o’clock showing of Midnight Cowboy.

  Simon Frost was still in his black tuxedo pants and white shirt, now scuffed, with blood spots on the front and on one sleeve. Except for a few minutes of exhausted sleep on a waiting-room couch, he’d had no rest in over thirty hours. There was a bandage on his forehead.

  Two uniformed police officers were there. One asked questions, the other took notes.

  “What time did you say you reached the park?” asked the first officer.

  “I’ve told you twice,” said Simon. “It was around eleven.”

  “And you decided to walk around Murchison Park?”

  “That’s right.”

  The second officer wrote.

  “Why did you choose that particular park?” asked the first officer.

  “It’s right across the street from Blocker Auditorium.”

  “What were you doing in the park?”

  “Just talking. We had been to a party at a friend’s house. We decided to walk around the park before he took me home.”

  “You and Mr. Zamara decided to walk all the way around Murchison Park at eleven at night.”

  “Yes, sir.” Simon closed his eyes and felt the bandage on his head. He had a throbbing headache and wished he could take something for the pain. The nurse told him that aspirin was a bad idea because it might make his wound bleed. He had received two stitches in the emergency room.

  “All right. How long would you say you were in Murchison Park before you saw the assailants?”

  “After we walked around the park once,” said Simon, “we saw the pickup truck coming toward us on Planter Street. It drove past us and slowed down, and somebody yelled something at us, but then they kept going.”

  “What did they say when they yelled?”

  “I don’t know. Just something like, ‘Hey, boy.’ Something, something.”

  “Just ‘hey, boy’? Nothing else?”

  “One of them might have yelled, ‘Give me a kiss’ or something like that.”

  “So, what did you do?” asked the officer. “Did you think these guys were making a threat?”

  “Maybe,” said Simon. “But we weren’t worried. We were on the inside of the cyclone fence.”

  “Did you yell anything in reply?”

  “No. We just kept walking.”

  The officer took notes.

  “All right, where did the attack occur?”

  Simon was tired of answering the same questions over and over, but he saw no other way they would let him go home.

  “We were walking north on 23rd Street, toward the auditorium parking lot, where we left the car.”

  “Were you still in Murchison Park?”

  “No, we had left the park. We were between the street and a long fence that runs behind some backyards. The pickup truck came up behind us, and three guys jumped out and surrounded us.”

  “You said they were white men, right? How old?”

  “Young. Younger than us. Older teenagers or early twenties, I really don’t know. It was dark. Two of them were wearing cowboy hats, I think. They surrounded us and started yelling at us, then they started beating us. One of them took away my oboe and took it out of its case and hit me on the head with it, then broke it on the sidewalk. It was a four-hundred-dollar instrument.”

  The officer looked up. “You had your musical instrument with you?”

  “That’s right. I had my oboe and Andy was carrying his violin.”

  “In Murchison Park, at eleven o’clock at night?”

  “We didn’t want to leave them in Andy’s car, because the trunk doesn’t lock. We figured it’d be safer to just carry them. Obviously, that turned out to be a bad idea. They broke my oboe, but Andy pitched his violin over the fence so they couldn’t get it.”

  “Okay. So how did you escape the attack?”

  “I ran. I ran across the street to that little store, the Diamond-Eight. I asked the clerk to call the police. One of the guys followed me across the street, but he went away when he saw the clerk on the phone.”

  “I see.” The two officers conferred quietly, and the one taking the notes showed something to the inquisitor. He took out a sheet of paper. “According to the dispatcher’s logbook, the store clerk called the police at 12:06. The arriving officers checked the park, found Mr. Zamara injured, and called for the ambulance at 12:40. Mr. Frost, there’s something that doesn’t add up.” He looked up at Simon.

  “What doesn’t add up?”

  “You say you got to the park around eleven, and the records say you were attacked an hour later. Exactly how long does it take to walk around Murchison Park? Were you crawling?”

  “We walked around the park twice,” said Simon.

  “Why?”

  “We were talking! Jesus!”

  “About what?”

  “Stuff!” exclaimed Simon. “Personal stuff. What the hell difference does it make to you?”

  The officer who had been taking notes put down his pad of paper and came over to Simon, crouching right in front of him, his face about a foot away.

  “Boy, one thing you do not do with us … never … is use disrespectful language. We do not appreciate a smart-mouth attitude.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Simon. He wasn’t sure what for.

  – 11 –

  The Zamaras Won’t Be Leaving Soon

  Pauline was the most emotionally effusive Zamara, but her father was a close second. Jesus sat in a chair at the end of Andy’s bed in the ICU, wiping tears from his eyes, compulsively pulling and twisting the ends of his gaucho mustache. Pauline was mostly cried out. Peggy didn’t cry. It was her job to keep it together, ask the right questions, and pay attention to what the doctors and nurses said.

  Both Punchy and Pug had come by the hospital for a while, but there
was nothing they could do, so they had returned to work. Pug’s wife Sherry had visited too and brought flowers, but she didn’t stay.

  Andy was hardly recognizable. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. His face was bruised and swollen, especially on his left side. On that side of his head, a large swatch of his beautiful black locks had been clipped and shaved away, to allow for a thick bandage. His right arm was splinted and wrapped. Dr. Nathan Albert was being as reassuring as possible while trying to explain Andy’s condition.

  “Besides the broken arm and the concussion, he has two hairline fractures of his skull that radiate out from his left eye socket,” said Dr. Albert. “There appears to be a little bit of bleeding in his brain, but so far we don’t think we’ll need to do anything about it. Of course, if the pressure gets worse, we will.”

  “What would you do?” asked Peggy.

  “It sounds horrible, but it’s really very simple,” said Dr. Albert. “We would drill a small hole in the cranium somewhere back here.” He indicated an area on the left side of Andy’s head. “Then we would put in a shunt, which is basically a little valve we can use to drain out excess blood and fluid. In a severe concussion like this, the real damage comes from pressure building up on the brain. But, so far, we don’t think that is anything to worry about. We are going to watch him, though.”

  “When is my boy gonna wake up?” said Jesus. It was more of a lament than a question.

  “He was partially conscious in the ambulance and was able to answer basic questions, like what day it is and who’s the president. Also, he was able to follow instructions to wiggle his fingers and toes, and that’s a very good sign. One of the reasons he’s asleep is we gave him some medicine to keep him from being agitated while we were working on him. It will wear off slowly, and then we’ll see. He should begin to regain consciousness after some time; I just can’t say when.”

  The doctor stood up. He had other responsibilities.

  “If he does start to wake up, just let him know you’re here and encourage him, but don’t try to push him. These kinds of head injuries can take a long time to recover from. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks. Once he gets fully conscious, we can assess his condition and go from there. You know, there’s nothing you folks can do in here right now. I’d suggest you’d all be more comfortable in the waiting room. The nurse will let you know if there’s a change. I’ll be back around in a couple of hours.”

  The doctor walked out briskly. No Zamara moved. After a few seconds, Jesus let out a little cry, buried his round face in his handkerchief, and sobbed. This proved contagious for Pauline, who started weeping again. Peggy just sat by Andy’s bed and waited silently. While Saskia and a few other friends were kept out in the waiting room, the immediate family wasn’t going anywhere.

  The many beeps and pings and wooshing noises of the Intensive Care Unit kept up continually, each with its own distinct rhythm.

  Jerry De Ghetto, Douglas, and Reed stood on the dusty, rutted road that ran behind the Fairchild property. The sun was fiercely bright. Douglas wore a floppy hat, but the other two were bareheaded and getting baked.

  Weeds over two feet high grew in the middle of the road. On the far side was a line of little hills of dirt and debris, leftovers from road construction, topped with tall weeds. Beyond that was open prairie, interrupted here and there by old weathered fence posts and broken iron pipes sticking out of the ground.

  “Let’s go check something out,” said De Ghetto. He walked south along the road to the property that was catty-cornered to Douglas’s. There was a marker post, and beyond that, a rusty and distressed metal fence with tumbleweeds and plastic bags caught at various points. “This is the corner of the property. According to the map, it’s a hundred-fifty feet wide and goes back two hundred feet. The fence sits just inside the property line on both sides and twenty feet back from the road in front. There’s also a fence across the back, but it’s missing in places.”

  De Ghetto climbed up the far side of the road and onto the property. Pulling out a handkerchief, he swiped the dust off his black shoes.

  “Look what I found,” said De Ghetto. In a shallow depression between the fence and the future Saturn Road was a small concrete dome with a hinged metal lid. He lifted the lid to reveal a water meter. “See, there’s water. They put in the main line two years ago, but they’ve never used any of the hookups. I counted five of them on this block.”

  “Are they actually connected to real water?” asked Douglas.

  “They are indeed,” said De Ghetto. “These are live meters. All we need is to attach a heavy-duty hose to the other side, turn on the meter with a key wrench, and voilà! Good, hard West Texas water. Turns teeth yellow, but it’s capable of growing plant life.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Reed. “Suppose we do this and start using the water like you’re saying. Don’t you think at some point somebody at the city is going to notice that water is going missing?”

  “Very unlikely,” said De Ghetto. “Nobody from the city comes out here. Really, who’s gonna read this meter? Nobody. There’s no reason they would. These are undeveloped properties. Hell, they’re not even gonna put in telephone poles until somebody decides to build, and that may be years. As far as the amount of water you would use, compared to the whole west side of Duro, it’s literally a drop in the bucket. It won’t be noticed.”

  “Still,” said Douglas, “planting out in the open like that—somebody is bound to notice rich, green plant life out here in the middle of Stinkville.”

  “Let me show you where I was thinking,” said De Ghetto. He walked over to the cyclone fence, in the center of which was a six-foot gate with a broken top bar. A padlock was on the gate, so rusty it would never open again. They climbed over the broken center of the gate and walked onto the tract. There were lots of sharp desert plants, thistle and prickly pear, and a few medium-sized mesquite trees.

  He led them fifty feet farther north, over a low rise. Walking around a thick stand of mesquite, they descended to a wide, flat depression covered in red, dusty soil. Behind that were the remains of the back fence, with a couple of breaches eight feet wide, and beyond that was open prairie. Just behind the fence were some old broken wooden posts sticking out of the ground.

  “That,” said De Ghetto, “is what’s left of an old windmill. There was a water well here. Forty or fifty years ago, somebody was trying to farm this place.” He bent over and scooped up some dry soil in his hand. “The soil is pretty deep, maybe a couple of feet. Deep for around here, anyway. This is where you should grow your bushy Cambodian grass. You do it with water courteously provided for free by the city of Duro, and most important, you do it away from your own property, on land you don’t own, and out of sight from a road nobody drives on.”

  Douglas looked around 360 degrees, scanning the horizon. It was true that from down here in this low spot, nothing civilized was visible. “I guess we could think about this,” he said.

  “Think fast,” said De Ghetto. “It’s June already.”

  They hiked back to the house on Jupiter. It was the hottest part of the afternoon. Reed, who was the lightest complexioned among them, was already pink from sunburn.

  “If you want, we can get started right away,” said De Ghetto. “I have a buddy who has some two-inch hose and some water tools. We could hook up the water to the meter and then run it under the fence and hide it so it’s not obvious. We could even start on it today.”

  “Can’t today. I have to go to the hospital,” said Douglas.

  “Why?” asked De Ghetto. “What’s at the hospital?”

  “My friend Andy. He got beat up bad last night. They knocked him unconscious and kicked him on the ground.”

  “What?” said De Ghetto. “That nice fiddle player? Who would beat him?”

  “Asshole shitkickers,” said Douglas.

  “Shitkickers,” agreed Reed.

  “I told Saskia I’d go out and visit,” said Douglas. “She’s there now
. I can’t believe they’d do that to a guy like Andy who can’t defend himself. When I find out their names, those fuckin’ cowboys are going down.”

  “Down,” said Reed.

  “Well, that’s a piece of shit,” said De Ghetto. “Hey, if there’s any way I can help, I will. When you find out who they are, I know some people who can make life unpleasant for them.”

  “When I find out, I’m gonna shoot ’em,” said Reed calmly. “But thanks for the offer.” He dropped a burning little stub of cigar into the sand and stepped on it.

  – 12 –

  The Fiddle in the Tree

  It was eight thirty Sunday evening, but the summer days are long. It was still light when Ramona parked her car on the shoulder of 23rd Street, and she, Saskia, and Simon Frost got out. Simon had missed a symphony performance for the first time since he joined. He had no working oboe.

  “Right here?” asked Ramona.

  Simon looked around and across the street at the little convenience store to get his bearings. “It was a little farther down,” he said.

  Simon led the way, scanning the ground. After a moment, he bent down and picked something up. It was a reed from his oboe.

  “Oh, God,” he sighed.

  A ten-foot-high chain-link fence ran along this section of 23rd Street. On the other side were the backyards of the houses on Sapphire Avenue, a relatively upscale neighborhood in Duro. In most places, a thick hedge grew up against the fence to create a visual barrier and muffle the road noises. Simon walked up to a place in the fence and tried to peer through.