In The Moon Of Red Ponies

Chapter 24

DARREL LEFT THE BAR and drove to his apartment on the river. He took a hit of white speed and washed it down with beer, then walked out on the balcony and looked out over the town. The rain had killed the fires and restored the glories of summer to western Montana. What a grand evening it was. He looked at the water coursing under the pilings on the Higgins Street Bridge, the glow of lights on the old Wilma Theater building, the red brilliance of the sunset among hills at the bottom of an azure sky, and he wondered how his life could have gone so wrong.

The answer was easy: He genuinely loved the place where he lived, but the place where he lived did not love him. And that’s the way it had always been. He had loved causes that didn’t love him. On all levels he had served people who had found him either odious or expendable, and the notion of being loved had long ago disappeared from his life.

Well, that was why hookers were invented, he thought bitterly, then felt both embarrassed and demeaned at the content of his own thoughts.

Get out of this funk, he told himself. He had never sought either pity or understanding for the life he had led. Years back, whenever he was asked why he kept re-upping in the Army, he had always replied, “It’s three hots and a cot, Jack.” You didn’t share your feelings with people who don’t pay dues. Let the fruits and tree huggers frolic in Golden Gate Park, he had always told himself. The men and women who protected them and would one day live in Valhalla required no recompense other than their own self-respect.

But for just a moment Darrel wondered what it would have been like if he’d had a wife or even a girlfriend like Amber Finley.

He went back inside, closed the glass door on his balcony, and forced himself to empty his mind of thoughts about Amber Finley. He opened another beer, bit down on another hit of white speed, and blew out his breath when he felt the rush take him. That was more like it.

He opened his computer file and began recording all the recent events concerning Karsten Mabus, Greta Lundstrum, Elton T. Sneed, and Johnny American Horse.

For a college guy, Holland didn’t seem too smart, Darrel thought to himself. The key to taking down Karsten Mabus was getting inside his compound. But even though Darrel had made Greta his personal snitch, he had not figured a way to put her inside Mabus’s place with a wire. Then American Horse had escaped from federal custody, which made him a likely candidate for the sniper shootings at Mabus’s ranch.

The only other viable candidate was Wyatt Dixon. But Darrel didn’t believe Dixon had the brains to get inside the property, shoot two men, and safely escape. It had to be American Horse. Or at least that was the case Darrel was going to make.

The shooting couldn’t have happened at a more perfect time. Now Darrel had the leverage he had lacked earlier. It was just a matter of convincing Karsten Mabus that Greta and her boyfriend, one Darrel McComb, a disgraced police officer with no moral bottom, had information that could prevent another assassination attempt on Mabus’s life.

He glanced at his breakfast table, where the tools of his trade rested like an ugly testimony to everything that he was: his Beretta, the sap he had beaten American Horse with, his cuffs, a switchblade knife, two miniaturized recorders with tiny microphones, a.25 hideaway and holster with a Velcro ankle strap, and a throw-down that had the serial numbers burned off.

Darrel finished recording the events of the last few days that were connected in any way to the homicides committed on the property of Johnny American Horse. He used the spell-check mechanism to correct any misspellings in the file, reviewed his prose for its accuracy and specificity, then decided to add another paragraph.

It read: “Please consider the following statement as my summation of my time on earth-Hey, I never had to sell shoes at Thom McAn.”

He exchanged the fourteen rounds out of the old magazine on his Beretta, inserting them into a new magazine with a taut spring, examined the surveillance equipment he had bought off an alcoholic P.I., and finished his beer out on the balcony. The sunset that had flamed at the bottom of the sky was almost gone, and a cool wind was blowing off the river. The evening shade had spread across the valley, the gold light on the eastern hills dying before his eyes, and he thought he smelled the autumnal odor of gas and dead leaves inside the wind. But surely fall had not already come, had it? Wasn’t there another summer concert and dance on the river tomorrow night?

AT 1:00 A.M. THURSDAY, someone reported a fire burning inside Brendan Merwood’s downtown law office. Two fire trucks were dispatched, but when firemen and the security service searched the building, they found nothing out of the ordinary. By the time Brendan Merwood arrived at the scene, wearing his pajamas and bathrobe, the firemen were packing up to leave. Across the street, at the entrance to an alley, several homeless men had evidently started a fire in a trash barrel, and the firemen told Merwood the flames from the barrel had probably been reflected in the windows of the law office.

I’VE HEARD RECOVERING drunks and addicts say they treat their own minds like dangerous neighborhoods they don’t enter by themselves. All night I kept seeing the face of Elton T. Sneed and imagining the level of pain and fear he must have experienced before he died. How could I have been so foolish not to realize Mabus’s people would target someone close to Wyatt rather than Wyatt himself, considering the fact he had already shot or torn several of them apart?

Wyatt had told me Sneed’s death was on him. But it wasn’t. It was on me.

Whether I liked it or not, my guilt had joined me at the hip with a man I had once considered the most repellent human being I had ever known.

I woke in the false dawn, and without waking Temple I took a croissant and a carton of chocolate milk from the icebox and drove up the Blackfoot to Wyatt’s place.

It was cold in the canyon, the rocks up on the hillside pink inside the mist, a sliver of moon hanging above the fir trees. My boots clanged on the steel swing bridge, while down below the river roared like rainwater flooding through a stone pipe. I could smell the odor of woodsmoke from Wyatt’s kitchen and steak frying in a skillet, and I wondered briefly, considering the nature of my mission, if I would leave Wyatt’s property alive.

He met me at his back door, shirtless, barefoot, a blue-and-white-freckled coffeepot in his hand. He stared at me blankly, his face marked from a lack of sleep. I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. “You wear a hat in your house?” I said.

“If it suits me,” he replied.

“Can I come in?”

“I don’t give a damn,” he said, turning his back, flipping over the steak in his skillet.

“I told Karsten Mabus you had the goods from the Global job. I wasn’t going to let my family take your fall, Wyatt,” I said, standing no more than two feet behind him. I felt my mouth go dry, my hands open and close at my sides.

He forked the steak onto a plate and began browning three pieces of white bread in the skillet grease, his face bloodless, without expression, like a severed head upon a platter.

“Wyatt?”

“I heard you.” He sat down at the table and started eating, cutting his meat with his right hand, forking it upside down into his mouth with his left.

“We can go after Mabus on environmental issues. Maybe he’s violated federal laws in dealing with Saddam Hussein.”

“I done give up on your thinking skills, counselor.”

“I see.”

“All them government people belong to the same club. Play golf together, let each other in on stock market deals, diddle the same women. Think you’re gonna change that with some pissant civil suit?”

“I’m sorry about the reverend.”

“You didn’t have nothing to do with it. My farrier seen Mabus’s people up on that ridge where I found the lockbox. They seen them unshoed hoofprints and put it together just like you and that FBI agent, what’s-his-name, Broussard, done.”

“Where’s the lockbox?”

“Everything in it went FedEx last night for Dallas. It’s going to some people got a newspaper down there, one I can trust.”

“Which newspaper?”

He told me the name. I had to think a moment, then I remembered the publication. To call it right-wing was simplistic. At various times it had been an outlet for Birchers, members of the Paul Revere Society, and people who had used armed force to take over a county courthouse on the Mexican border. But that was not why I remembered the newspaper’s name. To my knowledge, it had been the first news outlet in the country to publish the fact that a United States senator from Texas was involved in a huge swindle of the USDA and perhaps even the murder of a state agricultural official. This same senator would become President of the United States. But even though there might have been substance to the story, it was ignored by mainstream media because of the fanatical reputation of the publisher.

“I think you just gave away the ranch,” I said.

He drank from his coffee cup and gazed out the window. “You was the shooter at Mabus’s place, wasn’t you?” he said.

“You never know.”

“I talked with some folks on the res. They seen two guys looked just like the ones shanked me headed up the road to Reverend Sneed’s house. I know where them yardbirds is at, Brother Holland. They’re fixing to have a bad day.”

“If I have knowledge you’re about to commit a crime, I’m required to report it,” I said.

He laughed to himself. “This from the man who capped them two security people on Mabus’s ranch?”

“See you around, Wyatt.”

“Hey?”

“What?” I said, looking back from the doorway.

“The trout start rising soon as the sun gets over the ridge. Sit down and have a cup,” he said.

AT 8:15 A.M. THAT SAME Thursday morning, Darrel pulled into a convenience store down in the Bitterroots, left Greta Lundstrum in the car, and called the office of Brendan Merwood on his cell phone. At first Merwood pretended not to recognize Darrel’s name, but Darrel knew that to be Merwood’s way of dealing with people whom he considered unimportant.

“I’m the sheriff’s detective with the big ears and buzz cut you called a liar on the stand a couple of times,” Darrel said. “I’m also the detective the department sacked as a drunk and general screwup.”

“How good of you to call. What can I-”

“I found out where Johnny American Horse is holed up. I can put him out of commission myself or-”

“Stop right there, my friend. You’ve contacted the wrong party.”

“American Horse used a thirty-thirty without a scope. Next time out, he’ll have a better weapon and blow hair on your client’s walls. You get on the phone and tell Karsten Mabus what I said. My number is on your caller ID. You have fifteen minutes.”

Darrel clicked off his cell phone and got back in his Honda. Greta looked seasick, her makeup on too thick, a dirt ring around her throat.

“You going to stand up, Greta. Get all other options out of your head,” he said.

“One day I’m going to fix you for this, Darrel.”

“You already did.”

“What do you mean?”

You betrayed me, he thought. But he let it go. “How’s the recorder riding?” he asked.

“Like a tumor, if that answers your question,” she said.

Five minutes later, his cell rang. “Where are you? We’ll send a car to pick you up,” Merwood said.

“Are you kidding?” Darrel said.

“You call it, then.”

“Your office. Tell Mabus to bring his checkbook, too.”

There was a pause. “When?”

“Twenty-five minutes,” Darrel replied. He clicked off his cell phone and dropped it on the floor of the Honda. “Piece of cake.”

“You really think Karsten Mabus is going to come downtown and write you a check?” she said.

“If he wants to stay alive. Wait here just a minute.” He went inside the convenience store and returned with a large container of black coffee. “Nothing like it to get the day started,” he said.

They drove into Missoula, passing the old military fort that resembled Scofield Barracks in Hawaii, where Darrel had once been stationed. They crossed the new bridge over the Clark Fork, one that was lined with carriage lamps mounted on stanchions. Down below, Darrel could see the smooth rush of green water through the pilings, rafters bouncing through the current, and off to the left a sandlot baseball diamond couched between the bridge and the riverbank. This might be a hard place to let go of, he thought. He rolled down the window and let the coolness and smell of the morning blow into his face.

“You look mighty pleased with yourself,” Greta said.

“When you add it all up and it comes out to zero, you got to take your kicks where you can,” he said. “That make sense to you, Greta?”

“I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” she replied.

He waited until they were at the red light before he stared directly into her face. “Say that again?”

“We had fun for a while, didn’t we? It wasn’t all bad,” she said. She let her eyes rove over his face. “Maybe there’s still time.”

The light changed. “You almost had me going,” he said.

He pulled into the alley behind Brendan Merwood’s law firm and parked between two nineteenth-century brick buildings. Then, with his large Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, he and Greta entered the back door.

Merwood had two law partners, but both of their offices were empty and the receptionist and secretary who usually worked behind a curved counter in front were gone as well. “Hello?” Darrel said.

Merwood stepped out of his office, porcine, solid, wearing a striped shirt with French cuffs, his brown skin shining as though it had been rubbed with tanning lotion. “Sit down. Please,” he said. When he smiled his mouth had the dislocated stiffness of a patient in a dentist’s chair.

The Venetian blinds were closed, the soft tones of the walls, carpet, and furniture even softer in the muted light, the interior of the office humming with the sound of the air-conditioning vents.

“Where’s Mabus?” Darrel said.

Merwood didn’t answer. Instead, three men wearing business suits came out of Merwood’s conference room. Darrel remembered having seen one of them at his health club, a silent, lean-bodied man with silver hair who had smacked the heavy bag with murderous intensity.

“What’s this?” Darrel said.

“We need to make sure everybody’s operating in a pristine environment here,” Merwood said.

“You know the routine,” the man with silver hair said. His accent was East Coast, from the streets, an over-the-hill wiseass who’d moved west after the collapse of the Mob, Darrel thought.

Darrel set down his coffee container on the counter, then placed his hands on each side of it. He spread his legs slightly, looking back over his shoulder. “I’m carrying, so don’t get excited,” he said.

He felt the man with silver hair pull the Beretta from the holster clipped onto Darrel’s belt and slide the sap and switchblade out of his side pockets. The silver-haired man’s hands groped Darrel in the scrotum, between the buttocks, between his thighs, and down both legs, retrieving the.25 hideaway and its Velcro-strap holster from Darrel’s right ankle.

“This guy’s a walking torture chamber,” the man with silver hair said.

But Darrel was not paying attention to the man with silver hair. He was watching the other two security men as they searched Greta Lundstrum. They had told her to place her hands up against the wall and spread her feet, but they seemed to avoid touching her body in an invasive way, at least to any greater degree than was necessary. One man gingerly touched the inside of her thigh and stepped back.

“You want to deliver it up?” he said.

“Look the other way and I might,” she said.

With her back to them, she lifted her skirt slightly, bent over, and untaped the recorder Darrel had put on her earlier.

“We were hoping to have reciprocal trust here, Mr. McComb, but that fact seems to have eluded you,” Brendan Merwood said.

“That’s a recorder, not a wire. It’s just backup. This isn’t a sting,” Darrel said.

“And you want to sell Karsten Mabus the whereabouts of Johnny American Horse?”

“That pretty well sums it up. But right now I need to use the can,” Darrel said, tapping the rim of his Styrofoam coffee with his fingernail.

“Do you believe this fucking guy?” one of the other security men said.

“Don’t use that language in here,” Merwood said. He blew out his breath. “Go with him.” He gestured with his thumb toward the office restroom.

The silver-haired man and the one whom Merwood had corrected for his profanity went inside with Darrel. But Darrel did not go to the urinal. Instead, he began unbuckling his pants as he entered a stall.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the man with silver hair said.

“I got to take a dump. I had clam linguine and a few brews last night. Want to hang around, be my guest,” Darrel said. He squatted on the toilet and blew a gaseous explosion into the bowl.

When Darrel and the security men came out of the restroom, Brendan Merwood was talking on the phone. He said something into the receiver Darrel couldn’t hear, then replaced the receiver on the carriage.

“How much do you want for your information?” he asked.

“I’ll take that up with Mabus,” Darrel replied.

“Are you serious?” Merwood said.

“I told you he was a hardhead,” Greta said.

“These gentlemen here will take you to see Mr. Mabus,” Merwood said. “Go out the back door, if you would.”

“I want my twenty-five, my nine-Mike, my blade, and my sap back,” Darrel said.

“We’ll sack ’em up for you,” the man with silver hair said. “Let me have your keys.”

“What for?” Darrel said.

“There’s a guy outside who’ll drive your car. You come in ours,” the man with silver hair said. He eased back the receiver on Darrel’s.25-caliber automatic and looked at the round that was seated in the chamber. He laid his arm across Darrel’s shoulders, tapping him good-naturedly with the pistol. “This is gonna work out, believe me.”

Darrel thought he could smell the sweat and deodorant in the man’s armpit. For a second Greta’s eyes settled on his, gleaming with victory.

AFTER I LEFT Wyatt’s place on the Blackfoot, I went to the office and tried to work. But it was no use. Why did I want to even pretend I was an attorney? My deeds had proved over and over again that I was little different from Wyatt Dixon or Darrel McComb. There was no psychological complexity waiting to be discovered at the center of my life. The truth was, I lusted to kill. It was cleaner, easier, and simpler than the drawn-out processes of the law. Jailhouses and prisons are filled with people who are ugly and stupid and who probably deserve to be there. But rich guys don’t stack mainline time, and men like Karsten Mabus, no matter what they do, never ride the needle. So why not kick it on up to rock ’n’ roll? I told myself.

I was almost convinced by my own rhetoric when Hildy, my receptionist, buzzed my phone. “I’ve got Amber American Horse on the line. Want to take the call?” she said.

I hesitated, then said, “Put her on.”

“Billy Bob?” Amber’s voice said.

“Are you on a cell?” I said

“Yes.”

“My phones are probably tapped. Get off the cell and use a land line. Call me in fifteen minutes at a place where the bindle stiffs smile at you from the walls. You hearing me on this?”

She paused only a second. “Make it a half hour. I have to drive. It’s dangerous,” she said.

“Hey, cowgirls never get the blues,” I said.

“What?” she said.

But I hung up the phone before a trace could be made, then went out the back door of my office and down the alley to Higgins Street. I walked past a newsstand and the Oxford Bar and crossed the street to Charley B’s. The walls inside were hung with the work of a West Montana legend, Lee Nye, who had been employed there as a part-time bartender in the 1960s and whose photographs of seamed, wind-burned faces were like a pictorial history of the American West and the landless blue-collar men who had built it.

The phone behind the bar rang five minutes after I arrived. The bartender picked it up, then handed it to me. “Hello?” I said.

“It’s Amber,” she said.

“How’s Johnny?”

“His arm’s better, thanks to Darrel.”

“To Darrel McComb?”

“That’s why I called. We’re going to split for Canada. I wanted to thank Darrel for what he did. I’ve treated him unfairly.”

“I’m just not reading you.”

“You don’t have to. You see my father?”

“No,” I replied.

“If you do, tell him I said good-bye.”

“Don’t hang up.”

“This is a great country, Billy Bob. But the bad guys are going to grind you up.”

“I’m still your attorney, remember? How did McComb help Johnny?”

But she had broken the connection.

IT WAS UNWINDING fast now, but I didn’t know it, either because I was too close to my own problems or perhaps because I still did not appreciate the level of fear that Karsten Mabus could instill in others.

Just before noon, Romulus Finley came into the office. He looked stricken, as though he had just been informed an incurable disease had spread through all his organs. He stood in my doorway, his lips moving soundlessly, dried mucus at the corners.

“You want a glass of water, Senator?” I asked.

He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. He sat down in front of my desk, looking about uncertainly. “Have you heard from my daughter?” he said.

“Yes, I did. This morning,” I replied.

“She called here?” he asked, his face lifting expectantly.

I didn’t answer. At that moment I was convinced that not only did I have a tap on my line but Finley knew about it.

“Where did she call you? I’ve got to get word to her,” he said.

“About what?”

“Everything. I think she’s in harm’s way,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “She’s mixed up. Her mother was an alcoholic. That’s why all these problems started.”

“I don’t know where Amber is, sir.”

I waited for him to speak, to make the admissions that would perhaps change his life and perhaps even save his daughter’s. He looked hard at me, but his vision was focused inward on thoughts that only he was privy to. The moment passed.

“Well, I’ll just find her, then,” he said, rising from his chair. He glanced around the room like a man who was lost in the middle of a train station. “Her mother wouldn’t stop drinking. I tried everything.”

“Senator, is there someone I should call?”

“No,” he said. “There’s no one. No one at all.”