$200 and a Cadillac

XXVII



All night, the pieces churned inside him: the dog’s piss running through the dust on the tire; the wheel ruts in the sand in the desert; the tee-pee of baseball bats in the corner by the door; the curvature of the dent in the aluminum frame of the dead man’s backpack. Then there was Ron’s strange and nervous tone. The conversation replayed itself in an infinite loop, posing the same question over and over: Why would a forklift driver move from Houston for a job driving a forklift? Surely there were forklift jobs in Houston. Loading and unloading trucks had very little to do with the oil industry. All of it seemed connected in ways that made no sense, but persisted nonetheless.

After a fitful sleep, Mickey lurched up from unconsciousness knowing immediately that it was Ron, without entirely knowing why. He sat upright in the bed, wondering why he hadn’t seen it sooner. And almost as soon as it seemed clear he was overwhelmed with doubt. Didn’t it seem absurd? How could he be sure? There was nothing about Ron Grimaldi that seemed suspicious—certainly nothing that suggested he was a killer. What would the motive be? It made no sense at all.

But Mickey couldn’t help thinking about it. At his kitchen counter, making coffee, he ran through everything he knew about Grimaldi, which he realized was next to nothing. The guy moved to town a few years before. He worked at Monarch. He coached baseball. He was quiet and kept to himself and never caused any trouble of any kind. In nearly every way, Ron Grimaldi was a model citizen, at least by Mickey’s standards. Keep your mouth shut, keep to yourself, don’t bother anyone. If only everyone were like that.

In the Suburban, he thought about the footprints in the sand memorializing the young man’s final moments. Then he remembered the stink of the rotting body. Mickey winced at the thought of it. Disturbing memories of death floated through his head. He shook them off as he ran into his office to grab the file.

Jimmy looked up from the counter and checked his watch. “Bit early for you, isn’t it, Chief?”

Mickey grunted and went through to the back, snatched the file off his desk, and flipped through it on his way back down the hall. There was virtually nothing in it but a few grisly Polaroids, a brief medical report from Dr. Kramer, photocopies of the kid’s ID, the background check, the parents’ address, and the notes from the brief but painful conversation he’d had with them.

Jimmy looked up again when Mickey came back into the room. Mickey lingered at the end of the counter, thumbing through the file, and then closed it and asked, “What do you know about Grimaldi? The baseball coach?”

Jimmy scratched at his wide, square jaw and then folded his arms across his chest. “Seems like an alright guy. Guess I never thought about him much. Quiet. Keeps to himself.” Jimmy raised his eyebrows and shrugged. What else was there to say?

“You remember when he came to town?”

“Not really.” Jimmy took a drink from a Remington Firearms coffee mug and added. “Been here four or five years I guess. Something like that.”

“Yeah. I guess it’s been about that long.” Mickey set the folder on the counter and put his hands on his hips. “You hear about the 911 we had last night?”

“Carl said something about it when I came in. Said it was an erroneous call or something. No big deal.”

“It was at Grimaldi’s house. We went though the place. Didn’t find anything. But he seemed kind of strange. I guess it got me thinking about the guy and I realized I really don’t know anything about him.”

Jimmy rubbed one of his cheeks with the palm of his hand. Thinking. Feeling the stubble that was already coming through the skin at eight in the morning. He was the kind of guy who had to shave again in the evening if he was going out. “That’s not so strange. I mean, what do you know about anybody really?”

“Where would you guess he was from?”

Jimmy thought it over. “Back east, I guess. New York … New Jersey. Looks like a guy from Brooklyn. Not that I’ve ever been there. But you know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I know exactly what you mean.” Mickey squinted and shook his head. “But he told me he moved here from Houston, for a job at Monarch, driving a forklift.”

Jimmy laughed. “Man, times must be hard in Houston.”

“That’s just it. I’m not so sure they are. It’s not like he’s an oil rig guy or something like that. He’s a forklift driver. There weren’t any jobs driving forklift in all of Houston?”

Jimmy took another gulp of coffee and smiled. “What’s got into you, Chief? Maybe the guy likes peace and quiet. All kinds of weirdoes end up out here.” Jimmy motioned toward Mickey with his chin and smiled. “Hell Chief, you’re living proof of that.”

Mickey chuckled and turned to leave. “F*ck you, Jimmy. And stay near a radio in case I call. I’m going to check out our friend Grimaldi a little more. Something’s not right.”

It was a twenty minute drive out to Monarch and Mickey tried to piece it together, but couldn’t. Why would it be Grimaldi? What reason could there possibly be? So a guy moves from Houston to the desert and drives a forklift. So what? It was like Jimmy said, lots of strange people ended up in Nickelback.

He pulled into the big parking lot and drove up and down the rows of parked cars. He found Grimaldi’s truck on the far edge of the lot, parked up against the fence, facing out at the wide desert, like a prisoner staring freedom in the face. Mickey pulled up behind it, blocking it into the parking space, as though the empty truck might somehow make a break for it.

And then he sat, staring at the back of the truck, thinking through the implications of what he was about to do. It was the same problem police officers around the country faced every time they had a hunch. Every time intuition suggested something they just couldn’t shake, they were confronted with one simple fact: intuition wasn’t evidence. Probable cause to do a search required evidence and the evidence couldn’t be gathered without the search. The policeman’s Catch-22.

Mickey tried to come up with something. He studied the tread on the tires. It could be the same tread he saw in the dust in the desert. But how many other trucks in this same parking lot had the same tires? Half of them? Hell, they all bought their tires at the same place.

He thought about the stack of baseball bats near Grimaldi’s door. He thought about moving across the country for a job driving a forklift. Speculation. Nothing more. Intuition wasn’t evidence, it was only a suspicious guess. Mickey knew he didn’t have probable cause to search the truck. He knew if he found anything inside it, he wouldn’t be able to use it in court.

Mickey looked through the chain link fence, out across the desert. It was a big place. A lot of things could happen to people out there. He thought it through again. There were ways to deal with evidentiary problems. This wouldn’t be the first time he had to deal with something like that. Justice came in many forms in the desert. “F*ck it,” he whispered under his breath. Then he opened the door and got out.

He jimmied Ron’s door and had it open in about five seconds. He did a quick visual survey of the inside of the cab. Nothing on the bench seat. A little trash on the passenger side floor. A map and some other papers on the dash. All the surfaces were coated with a film of dust, which was normal in the desert. Most people made little effort to keep their cars clean. There was no point.

Mickey leaned in across the seat and opened the glove box. It was crammed with typical stuff, a stained owner’s manual, a wad of napkins, nothing of interest. Then Mickey ducked his head under the steering wheel and looked under the seat. He moved an empty beer bottle and an old baseball bat rolled out onto the floor mat.

Mickey’s face hovered above it, staring at the cracked, weathered wood. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t uncommon for someone to keep a bat under their seat. In his years as a cop—especially in Los Angeles—he’d seen a thousand of them. He’d even been chased by a few. But in all those years, he’d never found one more interesting, never wanted to see one so badly.

Mickey stood up and studied it in the bright sunlight. The wood was porous. It would absorb all kinds of stuff: water, sweat, grease, oil, blood. Anything it came in contact with. Mickey grinned, stuck the bat in a plastic bag, and went to find Paul Kramer.