Blue Lonesome

15

Sheriff Espinosa looked at him as if he were either drunk or demented. “That’s the goddamnedest story I’ve heard in years,” he said.

“Every word is true.”

“Herb Mackey died four weeks ago. Heart attack. First thing we did was destroy his snakes, and his place has been closed up ever since.”

“I had no way of knowing that,” Messenger said. “I believed the man on the phone; why wouldn’t I? And I told you, they covered the lower half of the highway sign — the words Rattlesnake Farm and the Closed sticker over them. I tore the burlap off before I left.”

“Still doesn’t make much sense.”

“Look at me. You think I hit myself on the head? Scratched my hands and arms, ripped and dirtied my clothes? All just to come in here and file a false report?”

“For all I know,” Espinosa said, “you were in a brawl. Put your nose in somewhere it wasn’t wanted.”

His head still ached and the anger in him had risen close to the surface. He bit back a sharp reply and replaced it with, “Go out to Mackey’s then. Look around. Those two snakes are still in the pit, along with God knows how many more.”

“Proving what? They could’ve crawled in there on their own. Diamondbacks and sidewinders grow like weeds in this country.”

“So you’re not going to do anything.”

Espinosa leaned back in his chair, making the swivel mechanism creak. The only other sound in the Sheriff’s Department at City Hall was static from the dispatcher’s radio. Messenger had caught the baked apple just as he was about to leave for the day; now he was beginning to think he shouldn’t have bothered coming here at all.

“What would you have me do?” Espinosa asked at length. He had his pipe out and was loading it methodically with black shag-cut tobacco. “Two men, you said, but you didn’t get a look at either of them and you didn’t recognize the voice on the phone or the voice of the one who spoke to you at Mackey’s. I don’t suppose you noticed the license plate on the pickup?”

“No. I didn’t pay much attention to the truck. I thought it was Mackey’s, that it belonged there.”

“What make and model?”

“I’m not sure. American-made, I think.”

“What color? What year?”

“White. Not old but not new either. It had a broken radio antenna, I remember that much.”

“American-made, white, not old and not new. You know how many pickups in this county fit that description, even with the busted antenna?”

“All right,” Messenger said.

“And there’s still the point of the whole thing. Why would these two men go to all the trouble of trapping or buying two or more rattlers, luring you out there, and then blindsiding you and locking you in with the snakes? There’re easier ways to warn a man to mind his own business.”

“It was more than a warning. They didn’t care if I was bitten and died in that pit.”

“You weren’t bitten and the odds were that you wouldn’t be, unless you landed on top of one of the critters.” Espinosa paused to light his pipe. He liked the taste of the smoke; a small smile appeared around the teeth-clamped bit. “Besides, if you had been bitten, you’d likely have survived. Not many people die of rattlesnake bites, Mr. Messenger. It’s a myth that they do.”

“Maybe so, but some people do die. And the ones that don’t get deathly sick. I tell you, it was more than a warning. It was attempted murder.”

“Why would anybody around here want you dead?”

“You know why, Sheriff.”

“Stirring up a matter better left alone is hardly cause for attempted murder.”

“It is if I’m right and somebody other than Anna Roebuck is responsible for those two killings. That person is afraid I might get at the truth.”

“Who? Got any ideas about that?”

“All I know is, I’ve had warnings from John T. Roebuck and from Joe Hanratty and Tom Spears.”

Espinosa’s eyes took on a glass-hard shine. “You saying it could be John T. wants you dead?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m giving you information so you can do your job.”

“John T.’s great-grandfather was one of Beulah’s first settlers. Him and his family are the best friends this town has ever had. I know John T.; known him all my life. He’s never harmed a single person, not one.”

Then why do his sister-in-law and Jaime Orozco dislike him so much? Why is his wife a drunk? Why did he come on to me like Brando playing the Godfather?

Messenger said, “And I suppose Hanratty and Spears are Godfearing pillars of the community, too.”

“They’re not killers.”

“Neither was Anna Roebuck.”

Espinosa stared at him, hard, for a clutch of seconds. Messenger matched the stare with an unblinking intensity of his own. “You know what I think, Mr. Messenger?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea. Quit my crusade and get out of town while I’m still alive.”

“That isn’t what I was going to say.”

“Different words, maybe, but the same message. Another warning. Well, I’m sick of warnings and I’m damned if I’ll stand still for an attempt on my life.”

Espinosa asked tightly, “What’re you planning to do about it?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not leaving Beulah with my tail tucked between my legs, the way I’m supposed to.”

“That mean you’re looking to cause more trouble?”

“What it means, Sheriff, is that I’m staying until one of us finds out who tried to kill me tonight. And who really murdered Dave and Tess Roebuck.”

In his car in the City Hall parking lot he slid a random jazz tape into the cassette player, turned the volume up loud. Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, a short-lived combo but still among the best ever. Opening press roll by Zutty Singleton on the drums that ended in a series of hard, fast rim shots to set the tempo. Straight, simple pattern woven by Louis’s magical trumpet and Fred Robinson’s trombone, Fatha Hines on the keyboard creating contrapuntal harmonics and then an amazing run of rich chord progressions. Jimmy Strong’s clarinet developing a wail that matched the piano note for note, chord for chord, then fading to let Fatha carry the sweet, hot harmony. New Orleans-style twenties jazz that soothed him, kept his rage from boiling over the edge of control.

He had never been this angry in his life. And why the hell shouldn’t he be: Nobody had ever tried to kill mild-mannered Jim Messenger before. But it was a blind anger, without direction or focus. The baked apple would do nothing to track down the men who had lured him to Mackey’s; he would have to do it himself if it was to be done at all. But how? Not a detective, not a hero, just an out-of-his-element CPA with a midlife compulsion and a frustrated mad-on. How, for Christ’s sake?

Louis’s trumpet was dominant now, one of his celebrated solos: hard, powerful, and so dirty-sweet and low-moaning it made you ache to hear it. Brilliant departure on... was that “Wild Man Blues”? No horn man had never blown as hot as Armstrong. No horn man had ever been able to improvise like Armstrong—

Improvise, he thought. Improvisation.

The soul of jazz. “One person’s mad concept balanced against the correct counterbalance of restraint and understatement” — he’d read that somewhere once. Three kinds of melodic improvisation: soloist respects the melody, with the only changes the lengthening or shortening of some notes, repetition of others, use of atonal variations and dynamics; the melody is recognizable in the soloist’s rendition but its phrases are subject to slight additions and alterations; soloist departs entirely from the melody, uses the chord pattern of the tune rather than the melody as a point of departure. Broad musical definitions for what was really indefinable. Still, if you were trying to explain the concept to someone who knew nothing about music, you could simplify it into a more or less apt capsule definition: Improvisation is that which is bold and unpredictable.

Soloist respects the melody; soloist departs from the melody. Bold and unpredictable, either way. But no soloist can work completely alone. He has to have rhythm and harmony and syncopation — backup help, input from sidemen that may also be bold and unpredictable.

When you looked at it that way — didn’t the same thing apply to him, his life? For all of his adulthood hadn’t he been a frustrated soloist playing the same written chords over and over again without departure or assistance, straight through toward the end? The only “mad concept” he’d ever had was the one that had led him here to Beulah.

And didn’t the same apply to the situation he was facing now? Hadn’t he been approaching it in the same linear, uninspired fashion that he’d approached his life? Yes, and it would be useless to go on that way; he’d never get anywhere without help and a change in method.

He’d given his life edges. Time now, by God, to give it a little bold unpredictability.

He promised himself that if he slept badly, or awakened with a severe headache, he would go to the hospital for X rays first thing in the morning. Head injuries were nothing to fool with; they could be serious, no matter how minor they seemed at first. But he slept all right, and felt reasonably well when he awoke — just a dull throbbing in his temples and some tenderness to the touch. No concussion, then. It had been shock as much as the blow itself that made him fuzzy-headed and cockeyed those first few minutes in the pit.

He drove rather than walked to the Goldtown Café for breakfast. His appetite was good; another positive sign. He caught Lynette Carey’s eye when he walked in; she acknowledged him with a brief nod, but she didn’t smile and she didn’t look his way again. Nor did she serve him, despite the fact that he made a point of sitting in her section. No help there. Not that he’d expected any, as poorly as he’d handled the meeting with her in the Saddle Bar.

Two possible allies, then. One was Jaime Orozco. Messenger felt certain Orozco would do whatever he could to help clear Anna’s name, but his resources were limited. The other possible ally and best hope was Dacy Burgess.

He would go talk to Dacy first, as soon as he finished breakfast. Try to convince her that the plan he’d developed last night was worth risking. She had more to gain than he did if she agreed. The trouble was, she also had more to lose if the scheme backfired.