Dead Silver

12

I got to Darcy's new apartment about seven-thirty next morning to help Madbird move the couch he was giving her. The place was in a complex near the Fairgrounds, one of several that had been built in that area in recent years. He was already there, parked at a building entrance, leaning back against his van sipping coffee. The couch was in the rear, protruding out a couple of feet with the doors roped tight around it.

There was no sign of Darcy, or of her boyfriend, Seth Fraker. Whether either would show up remained to be seen. When I'd talked to Madbird last night, the situation stood like this:

He'd called Darcy to ask for Fraker's help moving the couch. Predictably, she'd tried to deflect him, but he was firm. A lengthy negotiation ensued, the more complicated because Darcy was in the middle.

Fraker replied that he'd be glad to work with us, but his schedule was jam-packed.

It would only take a few minutes, Madbird pointed out, and Fraker could choose any time.

Fraker couldn't think of a single available slot. He was at his office every morning by eight o'clock sharp, he was booked for lunch and dinner meetings, and he worked late into the evenings.

And so on, until Darcy decided she didn't want the couch after all. She-meaning Fraker, who had probably whispered this to her-would buy a new one instead and have it delivered.

Madbird then informed her-and my mental ear could hear his patience-worn-thin, Marine drill instructor voice-that the couch was already loaded in his van and he was damned if he was going to take it out again. We'd bring it to her place at seven-thirty next morning; if Fraker wasn't around to help, we'd leave it on the sidewalk, and it was her problem from there. That was the last I'd heard.

I knew this was no longer about Madbird wanting to meet Fraker. Now he wanted Fraker to meet him. There would be a message delivered-that if Fraker thought of Darcy as a play doll, she was a doll that came with a very unsettling attachment. It wouldn't involve anything crude like threat or overt menace; it would be conveyed mostly through Madbird's sheer presence.

I drove on into the parking lot and pulled my truck up beside his van.

"Need some of this?" he said, holding up his coffee cup.

I nodded thanks. I usually brought my own, but my routine had been thrown off by Professor Callister's funeral. I'd had to shower-I usually waited until after work to wash off the day's dirt-and then root around to find some decent clothes, which I hadn't had the foresight to do last night.

Madbird handed me his steel thermos, which had been dropped off buildings, used as a hammer, and run over by trucks, and looked every bit of it. I rummaged in my front seat for a cup, blew the sawdust out of it, and filled up. The coffee was fragrant and strong, and if the old thermos didn't exactly keep it scalding, it was still a nice hit in the gray morning chill.

"I came a hour early to scope it out," Madbird said. "Fraker's rig was here. I parked down the block and watched. He snuck out about twenty minutes ago."

"No flies on him."

"Maybe he's just putting on a act like he ain't sleeping with her. Let's give it a couple more minutes and see if he comes back."

We unroped the couch, an old but handsome piece with plum-colored upholstery, and set it on the pavement. In truth, it wasn't all that heavy; Madbird and Hannah had loaded it into the van, and he and I could have got it up the stairs without too much sweat.

Instead, we sat down on it to finish the rest of his coffee, like a couple of old-timers settling in to pass the day by watching the world go by.

"Kind of feels like when I was hitchhiking around after the service, sleeping on park benches," Madbird said.

"Anybody who sees us is going to be thinking, There goes the neighborhood."

"Yeah, well, they ain't got all that much to brag on here."

We'd both put in a fair amount of time working on apartment complexes like this one and the others around it-long two-or three-story rectangles with low-pitched gable roofs, the rough-sawn plywood siding known as T-one-eleven, and equally generic interiors. But they were comfortable if they were decently kept up, and no doubt it was a dream come true for Darcy. She'd been living at the Split Rock Lodge, in an aging bunkhouse where employees could rent rooms for next to nothing. But it was bare bones and cramped, with shared facilities and no privacy beyond the thickness of a door.

"You know what the nut is here?" I said.

"Darce wouldn't tell me, but Hannah found out. Seven twenty a month, not counting utilities."

In other areas that wasn't much, but by Montana standards, it was steep. With utilities, cable, and phone, it would be close to a grand. She wasn't making much more than that.

Seth Fraker had to be covering it, and there was clearly more, or less, to his generosity than pleasing a girlfriend. He couldn't very well have shacked up with Darcy in her bunkhouse room. I didn't know what his own living arrangements were for the legislative session, other than that his family wasn't with him, but whether he rented or owned a house, his neighbors would know who he was. A lady visitor like Darcy would be highly visible. But in an anonymous place like this, he could come and go unnoticed with both the comforts of home and the pleasures of philandering.

"Looks like we're on," Madbird said. We stood up.

Darcy was hurrying down the building stairway toward us, closing the cover of her cell phone. She was an eyeful even this early in the morning-wearing a bright red nylon workout suit, the kind that looked like neon pajamas. She gave us her big beaming smile and hugged Madbird. The dynamic was clear-she'd lost her fight to keep this from happening, so now she was working on damage control.

"Thanks for doing this," she said. "Seth will be here in a second."

Right on cue, Seth Fraker's pickup truck came rolling in and parked beside us. He opened his door and jumped out briskly, wearing an outfit that astonished me even more than Darcy's-brand-new Carhartt overalls. I wondered if he'd bought them for the occasion.

He was in his mid-thirties, six foot plus and athletically built. He came at us with a comradely grin and firm handshake, projecting sincerity, although the impression was somewhat undercut by a baseball cap pulled down low and wraparound sunglasses that looked like the Darth Vaderized windows of his truck. I couldn't see much of his face except his very white teeth.

I'd been betting he wouldn't show, but Madbird had gauged him correctly. He could justify his evasions up to this point, but this one would have been a flat-out admission of cowardice. His ego and confidence in his status had won the day.

But behind his glued-on friendliness, he was still nervous, and pissed that he'd been maneuvered into this.

"I've sure been hearing a lot about you," he said to Madbird, with a trace of blustery challenge.

"Surprised you had the time to listen," Madbird said. Ignoring Fraker's fading grin, he stepped to a corner of the couch. "Let's do it."

He and Fraker took the upstairs end, harder because they had to climb backwards. Fraker made a show of lifting more than his share, and Madbird let him. Darcy stepped in beside me, and she was a strong young woman; with the four of us, we had the couch up the stairs and inside her apartment in no time.

Our physical effort had momentarily set aside the real business of this event, but once we dumped the couch, unease hung in the air as loud as gunfire. Darcy was still smiling, but there was no offer of coffee and donuts. She wanted us out of there.

But Madbird started prowling, poking around in the chaos of half-unpacked boxes that littered the floor.

"You still got that set of china Gramma Maude give you?" he said to Darcy.

She hesitated, then said, "Sure."

"I'm asking 'cause I don't see it."

"It's somewhere." Her voice was taking on an edge. "Look, I've got stuff all over the place. I can't carry everything around with me."

"You ever hear from her?" Madbird said, still picking through the boxes.

"Gramma Maude?" she said warily. "What are you talking about? She died."

"Yeah, I know. I put her ashes in a elkskin bag and hung it in a tree."

Darcy spun around, hurried into the bedroom, and shut the door hard. Madbird walked out of the apartment without a glance at Seth Fraker, who had watched the exchange like he was frozen in place, except for his mouth opening slightly.

As I started after Madbird, Fraker recovered enough to turn to me.

"Is he a little crazy?" he said.

"He's a lot crazy."

"You work with him, right? He must make sense to you."

"More than I make to him."

"Hearing from a dead grandmother?" Sarcasm was creeping into Fraker's tone. He wanted to get back what he felt he'd lost, and I was a safer target than Madbird.

"He was talking about people messing around where they don't belong," I said. "Not knowing jack shit, but thinking they do."

His face, from the little I could see of it, took on a haughty look. It warned me that guys like him had all the juice, but that kind of shit also angered me almost as much as it did Madbird.

"I don't care for the way you put that," he said.

"Must be close to eight. Time to lose that bunny suit and head to your office."

The corners of his mouth turned down in a way that suggested he could be really unpleasant.

"You've got quite an attitude," he said. "That why you got your face smashed?"

In fact, the purple crescent scar under my left eye had come from a light-heavyweight boxing match years ago. Attitude hadn't figured in at all.

"It's a private story, Congressman-only for friends," I said, and walked on out of the apartment.