By Jim Rix
[Editor’s Note: As the date of publication approached, billboards around Phoenix, Arizona started announcing the arrival of the book that would blow the cover off the Ray Krone case.]
I contacted Tex using a New Mexico area code. I reached him in Moriarity, a small town in the mountains east of Albuquerque. After listening to my rendition of the snaggletooth murder, Tex assured me that he could be of help—on the street level. For a fee, he would go undercover, solve the crime and “walk Ray right out of jail.”
The fee was less than would be required for Ray’s defense. Tex required an up-front retainer and the rest when “Ray walks.” While this solution seemed to be a long shot, a gamble, I thought it would be worth a try. If Tex were successful, Ray would be a free man. If not, a few dollars would be lost…
Tex was retained.
As the appointed time for my meeting with Tex approached, I became apprehensive. While his books purported to be nonfiction, I wondered if they really were? On the morning I was to catch the flight to Albuquerque I woke up with the inclination to call it off. While sipping a cup of coffee, I studied the cover of a.k.a. NARC. It depicted a stocky Tex in a red shirt and blue jeans, wearing a Stetson hat and dark glasses, sporting a full beard. A bowie knife and revolver were tucked into his belt, secured by a rodeo-size buckle. He was standing in cowboy boots, leaning against a Mack truck with arms folded and legs crossed. It was not a photograph but an artist’s rendition.
In previous conversations Tex had mentioned that he was no longer on good terms with his co-author of a.k.a. NARC, Raymond Angus. Remembering that Mr. Angus lived in Phoenix, I opened my Phoenix phone book and found his name in the white pages. He answered on the first ring. After I introduced myself, Mr. Angus verified that indeed there had been an altercation with Tex over royalties and movie rights to the book. Some years later a TV series appeared entitled “18 Wheels of Justice” and loosely based on Tex’s escapades.
With this bit of assurance, I made the plane and was in Albuquerque that afternoon. I could still bail out, I thought, if the meeting didn’t go well.
Tex met me at the arrivals curb. He appeared as on the cover of a.k.a. NARC, except without the beard and, to my relief, without the knife or gun. The Mack truck had been replaced with a beat-up pickup. However, as I jumped into the truck’s cab, I noticed a .38-special resting on the seat.
Now, I’m not comfortable around guns. This uneasiness stems from an incident that occurred when I was a preteen and my older brother and I were playing cops and robbers. We were at a friend’s house, each armed with a BB gun trying to shoot each other. I positioned myself behind a tree in the back yard. My brother appeared out of a second story window and fired several times, missing his mark. After his volley, I took aim and fired. My eye followed the BB on its upward trajectory. It passed over my brother’s gun barrel into his aiming eye. Fortunately, gravity had worked its magic, sufficiently reducing the BB’s energy to where no real damage was done. However, later that day at home, where guns were outlawed, the law being Mom, word arrived before I did that I had almost put out my brother’s eye. I was disciplined many times in my formative years, like having my mouth washed out with soap when I said something I shouldn’t have. Whippings were saved for special occasions. This special occasion was one of my two most memorable shellackings. The other occurred when I lost my brand new baseball—it was also accompanied by a soaping. Although dad had passed away when I was seven, his belt remained. Its presence during a lecture guaranteed an attentive audience. Although the lecture was repetitive, short and to the point—”You are never to play with guns!”—Mom’s delivery was one of her best, and I listened well.
I kept the peacemaker that rested near Tex’s hip in the corner of my eye the entire time the truck was moving. Before we could sit down to talk, Tex needed to check in with one of his local operatives, Mississippi Mike.
We pulled into a huge vacant lot surrounded by trees adjacent to a freeway. It appeared to have been at one time a shopping center, now demolished. Observing that there was no way out other than the way in and that there were no buildings of any kind visible, I wondered what was going on. Holding tightly to the package that contained more cash than I’d ever assembled at one time, I thought to myself, I do believe Tex is going to get paid!
As we rambled across the lot, the gun grew in stature, now looking to be .44 in caliber. To my relief, a campsite became visible through the trees at the far end of the lot. Mississippi wasn’t in. Tex explained that he had sent Mike undercover as a homeless person to get some information on a case he was working on in Albuquerque.
At a truck stop, over a lunch of cheeseburger for Tex and tuna sandwich for me, we discussed the case. Rather than have Tex start from scratch, I would set him in the “right” direction. By now I’d learned more about Trish and Lu. Chris Plourd had discovered that DNA testing suggested that the pubic hairs found on Ancona belonged to an American Indian. Lu was Navajo.
Tex agreed to center his investigation on them. He would immediately go undercover and, over the weekend, would locate Trish and Lu. He wanted to meet with me again the following Monday in Phoenix. Tex moves quickly, I assured myself. I parted with the package containing the cash and assorted pictures and material pertaining to my suspects.
Arriving Monday morning for the appointed rendezvous, I noticed that the license plate was missing from Tex’s pickup truck, replaced by what appeared to be a registration sticker in the rear window. Tex mentioned that he always operated this way while undercover so that he and his truck could not be traced. The .38 special was no longer visibly present as we began traveling the streets of Phoenix.
Tex had arrived Friday afternoon and immediately gone into action. When Tex goes undercover he really goes undercover. For the next three days and nights he checked out several massage parlors in the vicinity of the crime scene. He had learned that there was a large prostitution ring operating out of massage parlors throughout the Southwest, from Louisiana to Arizona. The trademark of these parlors was that they were all painted the same color. Tex verified this fact by giving me a tour past three or four of them. At the last one, he backed into a parking space, left the motor running and said, “Wait here.” He’d met someone inside the night before whom he’d recruited to find the whereabouts of Trish and Lu.
After a time that seemed much longer than necessary, Tex emerged in the company of a young woman. She pointed down the street and said something. Tex tipped his hat and jumped behind the wheel. “We’re looking for a red Ford pickup,” he said anxiously as we hurriedly exited the parking lot and headed in the indicated direction.
Tex changed lanes and streets a few times before abruptly turning into the parking lot of some dive bar pointing out a red pickup parked in back and saying, “There it is!”
“But it’s a Toyota,” I observed, to which Tex instantly responded, “Look out! We’re being follered,” oblivious to my comment.
We continued down an alleyway at increasing speed before returning to the streets of Phoenix. After zigzagging through traffic for awhile, Tex found an on-ramp to Interstate 10. After ten miles or so, it was apparently “safe” because Tex slowed to seventy-five miles per hour.
We left the freeway and pulled into a roadside diner. It was lunch time. “Going undercover is rough,” Tex commented as he perused the menu. “I’ve had nothing but fast food hamburgers for three days. Today I’m going to have something different.” He ordered a chicken fried steak.
Tex looked the part of a bounty hunter. He had scars on the back of his neck and on one side of his face. His nose had clearly been broken a few times. A noticeable limp, possibly in both legs, kept him from moving very fast—at least in boots.
Tex did not appear to be in the best of health. His plate was devoid of anything green. I consumed a bowl of soup and a plate of salad. Tex’s colon began speaking, its loose translation being, “How about a vegetable? I’m dying down here!” In the past I had been mildly “lectured” a few times on the benefits of vegetables.
After the steak disappeared, Tex outlined what he’d uncovered so far. Trish was not involved in the crime and had moved to Bullhead City, an Arizona town across the Colorado River from Laughlin, Nevada. Both Lu and Ancona had been part of the prostitution ring, and Lu still was. The ring periodically and routinely moved its “girls” between parlors. Lu had been ordered by a ring leader to kill Ancona. She had committed several other ring-related murders. Tex had the name of a cab driver who had been at the bar the night of the murder and knew what happened. He would send one of his agents in Florida to New Jersey to find this cabbie. The cab driver’s name would not be revealed until he’d been located.
I was relieved to be back in my rental car. Doubts were rising about Tex. The red pickup truck or who might be following us was never explained. I feared I had made a hasty decision, no doubt influenced by the presence of his partner, the .38 special, which I was thankful had remained his silent partner. But the bet was irretrievably on the crap table. The dice were in the air. I hoped for a seven. Snake eyes would not surprise me. If it proved to be the latter, I would chalk this adventure up to experience, rationalize that I’d been taken for an amusement ride and try not to dwell on the price of the ticket.
Snake eyes it would be. Over the next several weeks Tex and I were in touch by phone. Stories changed and did not jive with each other or with the facts of the case as I understood them. The cab driver was never mentioned again. Try as I might, however, I was not able to confirm or refute any of Tex’s claims. Then, surprise of surprises, he would need more money—”to relocate two families”—”children were involved.” The appointed time for the next installment came and went. I received an anxious call from Tex.
“It went priority mail yesterday,” I fibbed.
Relieved, Tex assured me that the case was progressing on schedule and would be completed within two months. He would need the final payment at that time.
“So you’ll walk Ray out then?” I said, reminding Tex of the original deal.
He’d forgotten. “I never said I’d walk Ray out.”
“What will I get, then?”
“Righteous affidavits from non-felons,” he answered.
“Ooookay,” I said, ending the conversation. The “Dear Tex” letter was posted later that day.
Earlier in the week I’d received a call from Mike Pain. “I just got off the phone with Trish. She’s moved to Lexington [Kentucky] to be close to family. She apparently has breast cancer.” I had kept Gene appraised throughout my adventure. Hearing of it from Gene, Mike had taken it upon himself to locate Trish.
Tex made several attempts to be reinstated. But Lexington’s a long way from Bullhead City. His last report was taken by my answering machine, “Trish and Lu are not involved. I know where the clothes are buried. You should be looking for Sugar and Hot Lips.”
In the meantime Chris Plourd had been continuing his limited investigation and had discovered some interesting facts about another Mike—Tennessee, presumably no relation to Mississippi. Tennessee Mike was a neighbor of Ancona who had been seen at the bar the night of the murder. His name was mentioned only once in the police reports. I did not consider Tennessee Mike to be a viable suspect because I assumed from his Hispanic surname that he was Caucasian and therefore could not have donated the pubic hairs. But Plourd had in his hand a copy of an employment application filled out by Tennessee Mike with the American Indian box checked. Since he had not been named as a suspect, his Styrofoam bite impression had not been taken. Further investigation would discover much more about Tennessee Mike. I wondered if he was left-handed?
When I enthusiastically asked Chris Plourd if I could help investigate Tennessee Mike, he replied, “I’ve saved a much more important task for you. I want you to find Sugar and Hot Lips.”
It would be some time before I would be allowed to forget the Tex episode. Like Ray Krone, I would patiently have to wait on the Arizona Supreme Court.
[Editor’s Note: Jingle Jangle is still in print and can be ordered through Amazon. (The author’s Amazon vendor’s name is “The Book Abides.”) Autographed copies can be arranged. Let us know.]
| Copyright © 2015 by Jim Rix |
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