DIRTY SALLY
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2
(Continued)
It
was past eighty degrees in the shade of the underpass.
I stood watching as Dr. Margaret Hay, a tall, slim
woman of about sixty, with white hair and the leathery
skin of an old farm girl. Wearing a breathing filter,
rubber gloves, a lab coat over a T-shirt and jeans
and sneakers, she crouched by the remains and gently
brushed away sand. The victim's head, arms and legs
were neatly sliced off, bones sawed away and sanded
to keep us from matching the saw. They'd cut the flesh
away from her midsection, revealing her ribs and internal
organs, like a map of her own anatomy, and left only
the skin over her breasts and pelvis. Someone was
very thorough, and very neat. Hay zipped the bag and
ditched the mask. "Adult female," she growled,
facing the body. "Dead a few days I think, but
she landed here before dawn. She's still cold."
Hay turned to me. "Welcome back."
I
glanced at the remains. I saw lots of victims: shot,
stabbed, mutilated, sexually assaulted before death
and after, the endless barrage of horrible sights
and smells that follows every cop and medic home at
night and keeps us company as we dream. But no one
on my watch ever went to this kind of trouble. Until
now. He might have tortured her on any of the body
parts he cut away, but the cutting we could see was
neat, methodical. A Satanist might take one or two
parts. An inadequate personality might take a souvenir.
This guy was organized. Kill site separate from the
dump site. No face, no teeth and no fingerprints.
Once
they called Hay in after a tornado. Countless livestock
were picked up, gutted and tossed by the twisting
wind. She had to go through mounds of rotting organs
and tell the locals which were human. No one beat
Hay for professional distance—she didn't cry
and she didn't make grisly jokes—but today she
pulled her jaw a little tighter than usual.
Hay
said, "From the skin tone and body hair I'll
tentatively say Caucasian. I'll know more after the
examination."
"When's
that?" Hay looked under her eyebrows at me. "you
can follow me back to my office. If you have no plans."
She liked Joey better than she liked me, a common
sentiment.
On
the way to the car I decided to look for the guy I
saw earlier in the crowd, the one who looked like
Joey. But when I got closer, he was gone.
- - -
I
mounted my brown '83 Impala Narcmobile, a vehicle
with a command presence as subtle as a bIue-and-white
blaring its sirens in Harlem, and headed west along
East Twelfth. Charlie Sector: Spanish East Austin.
Low-cost housing built way east of the Interstate,
the way the city planned it in 1922, so that even
if segregation was outlawed, we'd never integrate.
Little houses, some run-down, some painted bright
colors like carnival booths. Mothers hustling kids
off to school. On the side of the library, a mural
of African masks and Aztec gods represented a multicultural
America that exists only on the sides of libraries.
Repo houses with boarded windows, bodegas advertising
“WIC Vouchers Accepted,” Planned Parenthood,
the black college, storefront churches and mortuaries.
Liquor stores and gun shops, white-owned.
Most
of the cops here requested El Barrio detail, particularly
this strip of East Twelfth where the action is, where
junkies go to score, where hookers proposition you,
shouting "Here it is, baby!" as you pass
by at thirty miles an hour, where the graft is rich.
Public
radio sang the blues: "0ne in five Americans
live in poverty, a twenty-nine percent increase over
1979. In Texas, ninety-two percent of the poor are
African American and Latino." Texas, from
the Indian Tejas, meaning 'friendly.' "Thirty-six
percent—" I switched to the oldies: "... all you wanna do is ride around, Sally—"
anything so long as it wasn't news. Through years
of traveling Austin's daytime and night-time worlds,
I'd developed an intimacy with the town, a marriage
of sorts—while the news reported the cursory
assessment of a first date.
When
I was in college in the seventies, pipe-dreaming about
my future as a gang-busting G-man, Austin was still
a sleepy town—no big employers besides the university
and the state government, and by law, no polluting
industries and no building tall enough to hide the
Capitol. In the eighties, hi-tech industries came,
changed the laws and grew the town vertically. Houston
yuppies broken by the oil bust rolled in, begging
for jobs they weren't qualified for. A Hooverville
of cars and shacks sprang up behind the offices of
the daily paper. By the time the aftershock of the
oil bust made its way to Austin in '86, the skyscrapers
were complete, and mostly empty. Nouveau homeless
from all over the state drifted into the town famous
for its beauty and its social programs; they sat on
the Capitol lawn and waited, just waited, their grimy
clothes cooking pungent in the broiling heat of the
six-month Texas summer.
My
father's mob "connections" had landed us
both here in 1968 when I was fifteen and on my way
to a Golden Gloves boxing championship and for all
I knew, the Olympics. ("Wake up, we're leaving
the state. Now!") Nine years later, the
same connections would keep me out of the FBI.
After
high school I joined the service, two years as an
MP in Frankfurt,
back to Austin for college on the GI Bill. Dad drifted
around the country, making friends with cab drivers,
pool hustlers and other late-night entrepreneurs,
so said the unsigned postcards he used to send, postmarked
St. Louis, Kansas City, Vegas: "Met a guy, working
on an entertainment deal." A year later: "St.
Louis didn't work out. Got something you might want
to get in on. Will call with details. Someone said
you got married." The postcards trailed off around
'83.
Spring
of my senior year at UT, I warmed up to the receptionist
at the local FBI and called her every few days about
my application. In June she greeted me with, "Dan,
I'm so sorry," and, "It's not you, it's
your father." The FBI didn't trust me to help
them destroy the mob that destroyed my family. I sat
by the river, watched the crew practice. A college
graduate with a spotless military record and as of
that week, a new wife—Amy, my college sweetheart.
Small and shapely, blond hair in a flip, Bambi eyes,
cherub cheeks, peaches smell, everything in place.
A pixie Donna Reed in a peasant blouse. She was my
first "good" girl, and I'd resolved to be
a good husband, whatever that was. Screw the Bureau.
The police force would jump at me. I'd be in charge
in no time. How hard could it be?
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