Eagle didn't look at the buzzer, only at his client, who did not seem happy to see him. 'My name is Ed Eagle,' he said. 'I'm your court-appointed lawyer.'
'Never heard of you,' Joe Big Bear replied.
'You know a lot of lawyers?'
'Nope.'
'That could be why you've never heard of me. Ask around the yard.'
'Where's the other lawyer they sent?'
'He blew his brains out in the courthouse men's room.'
'I didn't think he had enough brains for that.'
'Maybe he didn't.'
'What do you want?'
'The question is, what do
'I want a steak and fries and a six-pack of beer,' Big Bear replied.
'First things first,' Eagle said. 'Mind if I call you Joe?'
'Suit yourself. What do I call you?'
'Mr. Eagle will do.'
'What tribe are you?'
'I'm from an eastern tribe.'
'I never met a court-appointed lawyer that was worth a shit.'
'I thought you didn't know any lawyers.'
'I've met a few, but I wouldn't say I know them.'
'It's like this, Joe: when the court calendar is crowded and the legal aid people are stretched thin, the judge will appoint local lawyers to handle cases.'
'How'd you pick mine?'
'I got the short straw.'
Big Bear managed a derisive laugh. 'I've had a few of those.'
'Yeah,' Eagle said, removing Big Bear's file from his briefcase, 'I've been reading about you. Let's see: arrests for assault, domestic battery, public drunkenness, DUI and now for a triple homicide.'
'One: I never assaulted anybody who didn't assault me first; two: the domestic battery was a lie made up by a woman I yelled at, once; three: I wasn't drunk in public, I just pissed off a cop; four: on the DUI my blood test put me at.081. How drunk is that? Oh, and five: I never killed anybody.'
'Oh, well, then, you're a saint. They didn't put that in your record.'
'They didn't put any convictions in there, either, did they?'
'No,' Eagle admitted, 'they didn't. Tell me something about yourself.'
'Born on the reservation; educated there, sort of, through high school, did a stretch in the marines, came back here.'
'What kind of discharge did you get from the corps?'
'General, under honorable conditions.'
'Who'd you slug?'
'A shavetail lieutenant, right out of Annapolis. I did thirty days.'
'Why'd you slug him?'
'I asked him not to keep calling me 'Chief.' He forgot.'
'How do you earn your living?'
'I'm a shade tree auto mechanic, except there ain't no shade trees, to speak of. I take my tools and go to peoples' houses and fix their cars.'
'You any good at it?'
'There are a lot of crates around Santa Fe that would have already been compacted, if it hadn't been for my work. People get their money's worth.'
Eagle tapped the file. 'Says here you killed three people with a shotgun. You want to tell me about that?'
'You want the long version or the short version?'
'The short one.'
'A guy was fucking my girl and a girlfriend of hers. That was my job. I came home to my trailer and found them splattered all over the bedroom, and I called the cops.'
'Tribal or local?'
'Local. I don't live on the reservation. My trailer's parked out near the airport by that junkyard, which I like to think of as my parts department.'
'Who was the guy?'
'I didn't recognize him; he didn't have a face.'
Eagle glanced at the file. 'The name James Earl Hardesty mean anything to you?'
'Jimmy? Was that who it was?'
'Says here.'
'Yeah, I know… knew him. We both drank regular at a bar called the Gun Club out on Airport Road. I didn't have nothing against him.'
'Until he screwed your girl?'
'Well, if I'd known about it, and I ran into him at the Gun Club, I might have taken a pool cue to his head, but I wouldn't have killed him. It's not like she was a virgin.'
'Your call to the cops came in at six-ten p.m. last Wednesday?'
'That sounds right. They were there in two minutes and asked me a lot of questions. Then two detectives showed up, looked around and arrested me.'
'Where were you before six-ten? Tell me about your day.'
'I left my trailer about seven-thirty, had breakfast at the IHOP on Cerrillos Road, fixed a guy's car out on Agua Fria-that took all morning; I ate lunch at El Polio Loco; I got a call on my cell phone about a job off of San Mateo-a fan belt was all it was. I went to Pep Boys for the belt, then put it on the car. I always check out a car for other things wrong, so I pointed out a couple things to the owner, and I fixed those, so he'd pass his inspection test. I didn't have any other work for the day, so I stopped by the Gun Club for a beer around four-thirty and shot a couple games of pool, then I went home.'
'Who saw you at the Gun Club?'
'The guy I played pool with, but I didn't know him; never seen him before. I took ten bucks off him, so he'd remember me. The bartender knows me; his name is Tupelo.'
'From the Gun Club, it's a short drive home. Did you stop anywhere?'
'I picked up a bottle of bourbon at the drive-thru, that was all.'
Eagle tapped the file again. 'Says here they found your fingerprints on the shotgun and gunshot residue on your hands.'
'It was my shotgun, so it would have my fingerprints on it, and I picked it up off the floor and set it on the kitchen counter, so I might have gotten some residue on my hands. When they tested me, they found it on my right palm.'
'Nowhere else?'
'Nope.'
'How fresh was the scene?'
'Not all that fresh; I couldn't tell you how long, but some of the blood had dried.'
'Did you get any blood from the scene on yourself or your clothes?'
'No, sir; I backed right out of that bedroom when I saw the mess inside.'
'Step in anything?'
'That's possible, but if I did, I didn't notice it.'
'I'm going to need the names of the people whose cars you fixed.'
'Look on the front passenger seat of my pickup. It's parked outside my trailer. I've got a plastic briefcase there, and there are two pads of receipts inside. There's one name on the last receipt in each of them; address, too.'
'Anything else you want to tell me, Joe?'
'Can't think of anything. Any chance of getting out of here?'
