Biker Detectives Ride Again:

Biker Detectives Ride Again:
Death And Lies In New Mexico
One True Story

By: Dick St. Clair
Live Cheap-Never Die

Another hot summer. Detective Marone and I were once again in the wind-- looking for clues to life's major mysteries. Still convinced that riding motorbikes was the fastest way to penetrate the greatest mother mystery of them all. We just wished we knew what that was.

Marone had a theory: Put your nose to the wind and follow the scent. Every now and then-between girls in heat in Minnesota, silage in New York and Pennsylvania, and pig farms in Iowa- the smell of perfection became unbearably sweet. And the trail seemed to be leading towards New Mexico. Or was it just that the girls driving the Minnesota Mustang convertible were going that way. Well, maybe, but we never could prove it. They were in such a hurry to be somewhere that we lost their trail.

We didn't have to be anywhere...We didn't even want to be anywhere, which is why we kept on going, following the nose of the greatest of all detectives, Biker Marone. You might remember a story printed earlier about this bad boy-- how he can't keep his pants on if the biking gets to good.

Marone had been warned repeatedly by bikers on new Harleys about acceptable behavior. Once at a stop sign in Maryland, on an official H.O.G. ride, for no good reason, the great detective had dismounted from his machine, run to the head of the line, out of turn, unasked-- and just plain pulled down his pants. Then he ran back as if nothing had happened...with a grin on his face.

He claims he was severely punished for that display, by not being asked to go on the next H.O.G. ride. But it's never stopped him from his ways. You don't know when he's going to do it again. Because he's just bad. He knows better, he's been told, and he can't help it. That's what being a detective is all about. A great detective. Because you put your nose in places that other people don't even think about. Or you put other things in places... You just do.

That's where the mystery comes in. Because you don't know. You don't know why, you don't know what. You don't know shit. And you know you don't know. And you want to. So you get on your bike and go. You don't even know where you're going.

Well, we ended up in New Mexico this time. And when we got there, I found a couple people worse off than us...as far as dealing with mysteries. We'll be talking about this one town, Chimayo, in New Mexico. That's spelled C h i m a y o, and that's how you pronounce it. So speaking Spanish doesn't have to be a problem when you're there, even though you can't understand other people talking to you as if they're still in Spain. Just talk along and maybe they'll understand. If they don't, ride on, bro; eventually somebody will show you something you need to know. Maybe. If you're luckier than we were. But that's for later.

First let's talk about Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico. They're out there, and they're kinda close together. Less than a day apart anyway. At Taos Inspector Marone and I pull into a bike shop to get some parts. That guy there speaks good English, which we expected at this early stage; and he says, "Guess you're doing the Easy Rider thing, huh?" And we were, so we admitted it. I know we were looking good, good and dirty.

We were so busy traveling at the time, that we forgot to ask him about any mysteries. He didn't look like he knew any, anyway, though that could have been our own misconception; because when we asked him how to get to Santa Fe from Taos by taking mountain roads, he sounded more like a crystal ball scientist than a map. This is what he said:

"Go right- to the really big black cloud south of town, take a left. Take a sharp right near the hail storm. Take a left past the speed trap town. Pass through drugville, turn left near the abandoned trailer for the shortcut past the lake, and get on the main road south to Santa Fe. When you hit the five mile traffic jam, take a left, the next main right, pass all the half- million dollar adobe houses and it'll dump you at the only open parking space one block from the town square. There you'll meet two ladies from London at an outdoor taco joint who're doing the same thing you are. They're "riding the dog" cross country."

And they were, too--they were on a Greyhound bus trip to the east coast. But they were thinking they were gay, and we only had so much time to sit still; it gets dark at the end of the day. We needed to find a place to camp by nightfall.

Now one thing you notice when you reach the west. Mystery and prophecy might be interesting diversions, but water is essential. Back east all water does is dump on you when you're out riding, and it sucks on your tires. And that's bad. Out west it makes things grow, sweetens the smell of the sage and about a million other things you depend on for pleasure and convenience. If you're camping and you can do it near water, that's what you should do.

Near Santa Fe the map only shows one large body of water- a reservoir. There's a very thin black road that goes near it. And... it's a state camp ground. Good news for the weary. Only it took us three hours to find the spot and a hundred tries of asking people. By the time we tracked the place down, it was black night. To our discredit, the inspector and I each were positive that the only reason we hadn't gotten there much earlier was because the genius we were with was incapable of getting his brain to work right. We'd both said as much.

I admit it. We fell for the trap. We later discovered after some expert snooping that the locals had figured it this way-- the only way to keep tourists like us (and there are bunches of travelers in the area) from taking over their water supply with overcrowding was to turn all strangers against each other. They did this by supplying road signs that led nowhere or led to a dead end area which was unmarked. If that didn't do the trick and someone happened to get to the water by blind luck, they were stopped cold by other signs with false information. Eventually all campers would kill each other bickering themselves to death and just disappear. It's a good plan and not exactly illegal by local standards.

The scheme was working on us. Try asking some citizen in nearby Chimayo for directions to the lake, if you can. They won't send you there. If they're in a car, they'll speed up or roll up their windows and look the other way. Why's that? Because there's a war in the area. Spanish Catholics on one side; the drug culture on the other. Jesus and Mary--or heroine- powerful enemies. Why won't they talk to you? If they can't trust their neighbors, why should they trust anybody?

It was fast growing dark, and we needed to know what road to take. I started pulling over cars; so did Marone. Grown men ran away when they saw our bikes. I blamed Marone; he blamed me. It was real dark by now and we were lost in the war zone. Nerves were raw. Eventually, we passed a road in the hills, over a steep twisting pass that was in the vicinity of no other place we'd been, so Marone declared it was the way to go. No sign. I followed. I couldn't think of any more excuses not to. His lights descended steep into a winding canyon. I smelled his brakes burning and I was cursing. Then a truck roared past from below and nearly ran us into the ditch. I yelled at him, with little effect.

Right after that, the sound of jet ski motors came out of the dark. The road forked in four directions. A sign with one word -camp- and an arrow. By ten o'clock our tents were staked out fifty yards from the jet skis and the lake. Yelling and laughter, truck engines and voices. We were the only campers in thirty miles of the place. Marone muttered something about being murdered and robbed by heroine addicts. So much the better.

Instead, the next morning we woke to warm, shining sand and dirt, smells of cedar and sage. The lake beckoned for an early swim, except for one big white sign with the black writing: NO SWIMMING. DANGEROUS. UNDERTOW. KEEP OUT! Nobody else was there, although the parking lot was built for bus loads of tourists. The detective and I talked it over. Though neither of us had heard of a damned-up lake having any manner of undertow, we took the sign at its word. God knows why, since all other local signs had proved liars.

Sure enough, because we'd slept too late and the park authority had been able to extract his overnight camping fee from us, he was willing to admit that the sign was fake. Local fishermen put the notice up to keep outsiders from disturbing the fish. The park guy claimed if he tore it down, his friends would just put it back up. Case solved.

After retracing our night's blind wanderings from the highway up a spiny ridge of the mountain, Marone and I ran into a small mountain settlement, Truchas, perched high inside other ranges northeast of Santa Fe. It was the cemetery at Truchas that grabbed our attention. Not because the place was high up and saturated with crystal clear highland sunlight, the deepest blue skies and whitest of clouds. It was the death we saw-- in the middle of the day.

Right on the edge of the road we found the fenced off grave of a young man and a woman-- killed in a motorcycle crash. The bike, a chopper, was reconstructed as a memorial from iron and parts. An inscription described their passion on a gold locket which dangled from the handlebars. Plastic flowers lined the perimeter of the plot. Flowers covered all the other graves at the cemetery as well.

While detective Marone and I peered into the plot for clues, piecing together the story of the bikers' demise, who should appear but two grave robbers. Unlikely they should be thieves, because they had no grave robber insignia, or even a truck. They drove a Saab with Maine license plates sporting one of those little red lobsters that imitates a scorpion on a hot day. But larceny was in their blood. Maybe it was just curiosity, and they couldn't stand the excitement. Whatever caused them to snap, it happened right in front of us.

The Saab arrived and pulled off the road just ahead of our own grave-site investigation. A man and a woman, in the prime of middle-age decline, walked to the cemetery and pointed at the profusion of plastic flowers which the townspeople placed around the graves of their relatives. Both the man and woman returned to the car for a short time but didn't leave. Then the woman got out. She looked around, hurried toward the nearest grave-site and grabbed an armful of flowers. The man opened the trunk of the car; she tossed them in; he slammed it shut; they quickly got back in the car and drove off.
"What do you make of that, inspector Marone?" I asked, after the dust settled and the car disappeared in the distance.
"Well," he said...pausing to consider, "obviously, they weren't able to get what they wanted..."

"What did they want?" I said, thinking he must be on to something.

"Who can say.....So what the hell, they figured they may as well leave with something they need."

"Plastic flowers."

"Apparently."

"What would they need 'em for?"

"That's the mystery, now isn't it."

"You mean, you can't always get what you want."

"Exactly. So sometimes just take what you need."

"No, no, that's not it," I searched the memory files... 'You don't always get what you want, but you might just get what you need-- sometimes you just might get what you need'."

"That's what I said."

I laughed and took a closer look at the dead girl's locket, right next to the fence. "You're full of shit, Marone."
"It all adds up."

"You know, you're in the wrong business. You ought to be a politician instead of a detective. The way you lie, it sounds at first like you might know what you're talking about."

"Think so? My family's political. My grandfather was a judge. Until they disbarred him."
"What for?"

"On hot days, he used to wear his robe with nothing on underneath."
"No kidding. Not a bad idea."

"Yeah, he was fearless. Except he got caught one August. That was it; the game was up."
"....O.K....I'm not gonna ask."

"Yeah you are."

But I didn't. I was on to him this time. I went back to taking photos of the dead guy's bike and the flowers. Marone might be smart as a scent detective, but you can't trust him when he needs to be bad.

We had to leave that place before we were done. Some locals drove by, then stopped and set up a watch on us. I guess they thought we'd steal a brake cable or two off the fake bike. We rode into Cordova to see the old Spanish church in the town square; then did the same thing at Chimayo, where they have a place in this chapel to leave your crutches and wheel chairs-- after you've been healed from your sins.

I told Marone he should take the cure here from ignoring the truth. He refused. Said he was an EX-Catholic, had turned away from truth out of necessity. He'd have nothing to do with faith. Only dealt in facts. Claimed to have reasons, but I knew better than to let him get started on me again. I admit, though, I was still curious about the end of that other story, with the disgraced judge.

Next thing I know, Marone is scooping up some "sacred dirt" out of a hole in the floor of the chapel and stuffing it in film canisters he had on him. 'For his mother and his wife.' The sight made me go soft, so I asked him. "All right, I'm gonna ask."
"I told you." He scooped up one more load of dust. After we left the chapel, we saw they had a new pile of dirt out back that they'd just dumped with a back hoe.

"How did they catch the judge, Marone?"

"...It seems a local priest was on trial for weird advances toward the son of a parishioner. The case had become a civil suit. My grandfather was Catholic, by the way. After the jury had taken the solemn word of the priest over the emotionally tangled kid, my grandfather closed the proceedings, stood up on his chair and mooned the priest. Asked that priest if he thought the sight of his ass was nearly as degrading as what had happened to a little boy's faith. He hoped it was."

I didn't say anything at first. I was confused. "Huh. I thought this was a joke," I said to him.

"It was. I mean it is. But not really. You want more facts?"

"Yeah, I do."

"That's a good dream I used to have. About the judge. The fact is....I was the kid. But the thing never made it to trial. Nobody ever even knew. Who'd believe a little kid."

"You never told anybody?"

"Never did. But those people scare me still, worse than grave robbers... that's something you can believe."

Detective Marone and I rode north out of Santa Fe territory. There were more clues to be had. We needed all we could get.

LIVE-CHEAP-NEVER DIE, MUDAFKA

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