The Fourth Durango

Chapter 16

Although the name chiseled into the polished granite slab above the entrance read, “Durango Civic Center,” no one ever called it anything except City Hall. Built on the site of the old City Hall, which went up in 1887 and fell down in 1935 during the earthquake, the new City Hall had been completed with WPA money in June of 1938, its golden anniversary now slipping by ignored and unremarked.

It was a solid-looking three-story granite building that B. D. Huckins liked to describe as a gray footlocker with windows. Including its parking lot and Fire Engine Co. No. 1 (there was no Engine Co. No. 2), the Civic Center took up nearly half a block of prime real estate on Noble’s Trace.

The Trace, as everyone called it, was the only thoroughfare in Durango that resembled a boulevard and the only one that curved, twisted and wandered through the city from its eastern limits to the Southern Pacific tracks on the west. All other streets-except those up in the foothills-ran straight as a stripe from east to west and north to south.

Noble’s Trace took its name from a Louisiana gambler called Noble Clark, who, with his Mexican prostitute wife, Lupe, had founded the settlement 148 years ago, naming it Durango after the one in Mexico from which Lupe had fled during the 1835 plague of scorpions.

With the reluctant and lackadaisical help of some Chumash Indians, the couple built the first structure in Durango to have four walls and a roof. It was a half-timber, half-adobe building that contained a combination trading post, tavern and bawdy house. It burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances twenty-three months later, roasting to death both Noble and Lupe Clark and two unidentified male customers.

The old trail that had wound through the mountains, the foothills and down to the ocean was still called the Trace because no one had ever thought there was any real need to name it anything else.

As its chiseled-in-stone name asserted, the Civic Center was home to all of Durango’s municipal services. The mayor, the chief of police and the city treasurer were all up on the third floor along with the treasurer’s hive of bookkeepers. On the second floor were the courtroom and the chambers of the city’s municipal judge who was elected every four years. Down the hall from him were the elected city attorney and his two appointed deputies-plus two clerks, a bailiff, three secretaries and the aging part-time court reporter and full-time gay activist who, although growing deaf, was still too vain to wear a hearing aid. The fire chief worked out of his office in Fire Engine Co. No. 1.

The Civic Center’s ground floor was reserved for the city’s walk-in trade. Nearly a third of it was occupied by the police force and the jail itself, which afforded six cells and a drunk tank. The rest was given over to bureaus where citizens could pay taxes, fines and water bills; obtain marriage licenses and file for divorce; register births and deaths; apply for building permits and easements; and, if so inclined, which few were, attend the weekly meetings of the Durango City Council.

Shortly after 9:30 A.M. on that last Saturday in June, Chief of Police Sid Fork was leaning back in his banker’s swivel chair, his feet up on his walnut desk, listening to a report from his two homicide detectives, Wade Bryant, the too-tall elf, and Joe Huff, who, to Sid Fork, was always the professor.

After Bryant stopped talking, the chief said, “Twenty-twos, huh?”

“First choice of the dedicated professional,” said Huff.

“It’d kind of help if we had a motive,” Fork said. “I mean, why would some pro-hitter, up from L.A. or maybe down from San Francisco, pump a couple of rounds into old Norm and not even bother to empty the register?”

“What a good question,” Bryant said.

“My, yes,” said Huff.

“Well?”

“Because somebody paid him to,” Huff said.

“So who’s the somebody?”

“Now there you’ve got us,” Bryant said. “Joe and I’ve been worrying about that very thing. So this morning we get up early, even though it’s Saturday, and drop in on the new widow to, you know, make sure she’s okay and hasn’t stuck her head in the oven or anything, and maybe even ask her a question or two. Well, we get there about eight this morning and guess what?”

Fork yawned. “She wasn’t there.”

“Right,” said Bryant. “So Joe here says, ‘Let’s try the Blue Eagle because maybe she’s down there either going over the books or drowning her sorrows.’ So we drive down to the Blue Eagle and guess what?”

“That’s guess what number two,” Fork said.

“We almost couldn’t get in is what,” Huff said.

Fork nodded, as if pleased. “Packed, huh?”

“Four deep at the bar,” said Bryant. “Well, two anyway. And behind it was Virginia herself, drawing beers, pouring shots, smiling through her tears and playing a lively tune on the cash register.”

“I told her she’d probably take in at least a thousand,” Fork said. “Maybe even fifteen hundred.”

“Your idea then?”

“Better than staying home, wandering around those fourteen rooms and chewing holes in her hankie.”

“Well, we finally make it up to the bar,” Huff said, “catch Virginia’s eye and Wade says something commiserative such as ‘How’s tricks, Ginny?’ and she tells us how grateful she is we’ve dropped by and that the first round’s on the house.”

“So you never got around to asking her about who might’ve sent the shooter?”

“Didn’t seem like the moment,” Bryant said, “what with Condor State Bank on one side of us and Regent Chevrolet on the other.”

“Kind of a wake, was it?” Fork said.

“Kind of.”

Sid Fork turned his head to stare out the window. “I can remember when a guy died, his relatives and neighbors and friends’d gather round after the funeral with a ton of food, a lot of it fried chicken and baked ham, and the widow’d be standing there, all in black, shaking every hand and agreeing that yes, indeed, the late Tom or Harry sure did look natural and weren’t the flowers just beautiful?”

“When the hell was this?” Bryant asked.

“Twenty-five, thirty years ago,” Fork said, turned his gaze from the window and asked Bryant, “So what’d you come up with-if anything?”

Bryant licked his lips, as if pre-tasting his answer. “A possible eyewitness.”

Fork dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward. “Who?”

“Father Frank from St. Maggie’s.”

“Wonderful,” Fork said, putting his feet back up on the desk. “Our whiskey priest.”

“He’s been dry awhile,” Joe Huff said. “Going to AA and everything.”

“How’d you get on to him?”

“He was hanging around outside the Eagle this morning, afraid to go in, when Wade and I came out.”

“Afraid of the booze, huh?”

“Probably,” Bryant said. “So Joe asks how’s it going, Father? And he says just fine except he thinks maybe he’ll come back and pay his respects when Virginia’s not so busy. Then he looks at me and I can see him telling himself no, yes, no, yes-until finally he says he thinks he noticed something oddish last night. Don’t think I ever heard anybody say oddish before.”

“Me either,” Joe Huff said.

“Anyway, it seems he’d been to a meeting-”

“AA meeting?” Fork said.

Bryant nodded. “But it didn’t take, or something somebody said rubbed him the wrong way, or maybe the bishop’d sent him a cross little note. Who knows? But anyhow he was kind of upset so he decided to walk off whatever was bothering him. And he’s down there on North Fifth when he sees this other priest looking at the puppies in Felipe’s window.”

“Sheplabs, aren’t they?” Fork said. “Cute little fellows.”

Joe Huff took over the report. “Well, you know how Father Frank goes around in a T-shirt and jeans most of the time. But he says this other priest is all in black and has a wrong-way collar on and everything. So Father Frank thinks the other guy’s visiting or just passing through because he’s never seen him before. And he also thinks the other priest might like to drop by Pretty Polly’s for coffee and doughnuts. So he’s about to cross the street and invite him when the other priest turns and almost runs the other way.”

“Toward the Eagle?”

“Away from it. So Father Frank sort of steps back into Klein’s doorway, which is pretty deep, because he doesn’t want the other priest to get the wrong idea.”

“What wrong idea?”

“I’m a Baptist,” Huff said. “How the hell should I know? You want to hear some Bible Belt stuff about what priests and nuns do? Curl your toenails.”

“Just tell me what happened, according to Father Frank.”

“What he claims he saw and heard is this,” Wade Bryant said. “He says the other priest scoots down the sidewalk, stops, spins around like he’s just remembered something, then makes a beeline for the Blue Eagle.”

“What time is this?”

“He thinks about eleven-twenty.”

“What time the AA meeting end?”

“Nine-thirty, but he hung around another half an hour or so for the cookies and coffee.”

“And then went on his hour-and-a-half walk.”

“Walking past bars, I expect,” Huff said. “Testing temptation.”

“But this other priest,” Fork said. “He went in the Blue Eagle.”

Huff nodded.

“So what’d Father Frank do?”

“He hung around some more,” Bryant said, “waiting for the other guy to come out because he still thought they might go have coffee and doughnuts together.”

“Where’d he hang around?”

“Cattawampus across the street from the Eagle,” Huff said.

Fork closed his eyes, as if drawing himself a map of the intersection. “Marvin’s Jewelry,” he said. “Another deep doorway.”

“Father Frank says he uses doorways like that because he doesn’t like to be seen hanging around street corners at night,” Bryant said.

“Let’s get to the odd stuff,” Fork said. “He see anything?”

Bryant shook his head.

“He hear anything?”

“He thought he heard somebody clap inside the Eagle.”

“Clap?”

“Clap.”

“Once?” Fork asked. “Five times? Fifty times? What?”

Bryant grinned. “You know, Sid, that’s exactly what I asked him myself.”

“And?”

“And he said they clapped just twice.”

“Then what?”

“Then the stranger-priest hurries out of the Eagle and jumps in a van that drives off in a hurry.”

“What’d Father Frank do then?”

“He says since he didn’t have anybody to drink coffee with, he went home and went to bed.”

“What’d this other priest look like?”

Bryant nodded at Joe Huff, who pulled out a small notebook, turned some pages and read what he had written. “Short. Very short legs. About five-one. Forty to forty-five. Also fat. Round like a ball. Gray hair, cut short. And ugly. Porcine.”

“Porcine?”

“Piggy-looking. He had one of the noses that turn up and aim their nostrils right at you.”

“What color were his eyes?”

“Father Frank says he wasn’t close enough to tell,” Bryant said. “But he was close enough to see that the guy looked piggy.”

“What about the van?”

Bryant shook his head with regret. “No license number or make because Father Frank says he can’t tell a Buick from a Ford. But he did say it was pink.”

“Pink?”

Bryant nodded.

“Well,” Fork said. “That’s something.”