The Final Country

EIGHT

When the electronics guy's meter hit the peg, he had me drive the Caddy into a soundproofed and electronically baffled garage where he worked until late afternoon carefully and silently removing the bug from behind the dome-light casing, where it drew its power from the car's battery. "State-of-the-art for this kind of equipment," he said, "good up to a quarter mile." Then he stuck it to the headliner inside a plastic thimble. "Should approximate the sound," he said.

As I paid the bill for sweeping the Caddy, I whistled. "Shit, I'm in the wrong part of the business."

"Somebody's got to protect us against the government, man," he said. "They can read the newspaper headlines on your front porch and hear an ant fart if there's a telephone in the house."

"I'd like to get my hands on the creeps who put that piece in my car," I said as I counted off the last hundred-dollar bill. "Nothing personal, buddy. But I always thought you electronics guys jacked off too much."

"Gotta do something since we don't have to pound the shoe leather," the guy said, then laughed.

"Ex-cop?" I said.

"Shit, man, nobody can afford to be a cop these days."

I should have listened to him. Before I climbed into the Caddy, I pulled out my cell phone and started to check my voice mail one last time.

"Excuse me, boss," the guy said. "I wouldn't use one of those gadgets if I was worried about electronic surveillance. They're a pretty easy tap."

"Could I borrow your telephone?"

"Make yourself at home," he said. "But if you're interested, I can do better than that."

"How?"

"It'll cost you a bundle up front and a fairly stiff monthly fee – in cash – but I can come up with five scrambled cell phones. Of course they can only talk to each other."

"Perfect," I said.

The only message on my voice mail was from Gannon. He wanted me to call him on a land line.

"Don't' you trust your own people?" I asked without preamble when he answered.

"There's a prize in every Cracker Jack box," Gannon said, "and a devious heart in every fucking cracker down here. Where the hell are you?"

I gave him the name of the chain motel bar just off I-35 North.

"I'll turn the siren on and be there in thirty minutes."

"Why?"

"Now that we're colleagues, Milo, we should talk."

Gannon showed up looking very uncomfortable in a full-dress uniform. The leather straps of his Sam Browne belt stretched tightly over his jacket, as if he were restrained, and each time one of his new cowboy boots hit the floor, he grimaced as if he had just stepped on a thorn. He looked as if his cowboy hat hurt like a migraine.

"Joining the enemy?" I asked.

"You're now looking at the chief of patrol," he grumbled as he pulled up a stool to our stand-up table and ordered a cup of coffee. "Sheriff said either get into uniform or get gone. He didn't have to add that he'd prefer gone."

"What brought this on?" I asked.

"I think they're pissed because I didn't shoot you at the golf course," he said. "They let Culbertson go, too."

"Why?"

"Nobody tells me anything these days," he said.

"So what did you want to tell me?"

"If I were you, Milo…" Gannon started to say.

A lanky cocktail waitress with a smile like a classic Buick grille stopped at our table and waited until I removed the gray plastic case of cell phones so she could set our oversized happy hour drinks down. She wanted to run a tab, peddle plates of appetizers, work on her tip, and maybe even tell us the story of her life. Sometimes the friendliness of the natives drove me nuts. I threw a wadded fifty on the tray and told her to keep it. When she smiled, the Buick seemed to be speeding into my face.

"If I were you, Milo, I'd mail my badge back to the bastards. Preferably from a foreign country. They're setting you up for something."

"That's old news. Finding out what for will be half the fun. You have any ideas? They want me out of town and not looking for Enos Walker? Or they want me to finger the McBride broad? Or maybe they're planning to frame me for my own attempted murder? What the hell do they have in mind?"

"I don't have a clue," Gannon said. "And there's not a single rumor around the courthouse. That's the frightening part."

"Lomax owns most of the county," I said. "Maybe he's got something in mind?"

"I did some checking around," Gannon said, "moving easy and slow. Lomax draws more water than just owning the county. He's asshole buddies with every political bigwig from the new governor ' all the way up and down. But Lomax has been down in Central America for the past three weeks. Some kind of mine disaster. And with his clout, if he wanted you dead, buddy, you'd be meat fragments floating in cowfeed or recycled aluminum or holding up a bridge on some highway down in Mexico." Then he paused to rub his chin thoughtfully. He looked like a man polishing a middle-buster plow. "Do you have any chance at all to find the McBride woman?"

"I've got some notions," I said, "and in the past I've had some luck finding people. And having a badge might not make it any harder."

"Notions? What kind? What have you got in mind? Where are you going to look first?"

"You don't want to know."

"You're probably right," he said, but he didn't seem convinced.

"But I might need your help, Gannon," I said.

"You can count on me, sure, but I've got to walk easy. My job is hanging by a thread of gnat's snot," Gannon said quietly. "So call me, if you can figure out a safe way."

"I've got a clean cell phone," I said, digging one of the new telephones out of the case. "But you can't call me. I can only call you."

"Whatever," he said. "Detective work must be nice when you have unlimited funds."

"Believe me, man, I've paid for every dollar I've got. The hard way," I said, "and it's still the same job – sticking your face in a pile of crap and hoping you find a rose instead of a shitty thorn."

Gannon shook his head without smiling, gunned his drink, and shook my hand. "Good luck," he said. Then thumped out of the bar.

"You trust him?" Betty asked quietly.

"I don't know," I said, "I'm not sure I trust anybody anymore. Not even myself." But I was used to that sort of thing. "Your uncle said this deal sounded okay."

"Try to remember he's a lawyer," Betty said looking away. Which was exactly the same thing she had said when she first tried to talk me out of going into business with Travis Lee. And a version of what she had said when she changed her mind about the project: At least he's a lawyer.

After we stopped by Carver D's to leave him one of the scrambled phones, we drove southeast to spend the night in an old-fashioned roadside court outside Bastrop. Snug behind the rock walls, stretched on a lumpy double-bed, and covered by a blanket as thin as a sheet and sheets we could see through, Betty and I shared a doobie and a couple of beers. Because of the bug, our conversation in the Caddy had been limited to scenery, the deep insanity of far-right-wing talk radio, and other mundane topics. But once stoned, Betty had a lot of things to say as she snuggled against my shoulder.

Finally, she ran down, paused, then asked me, "Are you okay about yesterday? You know, the thing with Cathy?"

"Oh, yeah, that. I remember that." She slugged me in the ribs hard enough to roll me out of bed. "It was wonderful while it was happening," I admitted as I climbed back between the covers, "but thinking about it now – well, I'd rather not think about it right now." Then I paused, thinking about it. Then said, "Cathy is a friend, whatever, and you and I are together."

"You realize that I'd slept with her a few times before," Betty said, giggling, "but never with a guy around."

"How about a goat?"

"Italian dwarves," she whispered.

"Well, that's okay then."

Once we controlled our stoned giggles, we curled into each other slowly and softly, like walking wounded careful not to disturb our bloody bandages. Afterward, Betty still sitting on my hips, I felt her tears hot against my chest.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing."

"Tell me," I whispered, amazed all over again how quickly she could go from love or laughter to tears.

"Nothing, really," she said, then wiped her eyes, laughing again. "I'm just crazy like always."

"This kind of shit would make anybody crazy," I said, then shrugged, slipped into sweats and running shoes, grabbed my cigarettes and a beer, then stepped outside for a couple of smokes while she watched the news on the ratty television.

The night loomed clear and cold, the stars sparkling away from Austin's ambient light and in the heart of the dark of the moon. I was running on something slimmer than a hunch, and, right or wrong, I didn't want anybody dogging my ass.

"Can I ask a couple of questions?" she said as I came back into the motel room. "Just a couple?"

"Sure," I said, expecting another serious conversation about our future. But I was wrong.

"What are you going to do about the car?"

"I don't know," I said, hesitating. "We'll have to see if we can find out who's bugging us before we go to Stairtown."

"Stairtown?" she said, looking very confused. "Where's that?"

"The place where Cathy fixed Sissy's orgasms," I said.

"Oh," she said quietly. "And how are we going to do that?"

"We're going to lead the son of a bitch up a dead-end road," I said, "then beat the shit out of him."

But I was wrong again. It turned out to be a stout young woman operative in a white van loaded with what I guessed was at least ten thousand dollars' worth of electronic gear that I led up the dead end. Hoping that the guy who had swept the Caddy had been right when he told me that the receiver had to be within a quarter-mile to pick up the bug's transmissions, when we checked out of the motel that morning, we stopped by a hardware store for a battery, wire cutters, and a pry bar, then drove back country roads discussing a meeting with an important witness to the assault in Blue Hole Park, drove until we found the narrow dirt lane that dead-ended against a small county park nestled down by the river not too far from Smithville.

After I parked, I clipped the feed off the bug and hooked it to the small twelve-volt battery, set it in the thimble, stuffed the Browning under my arm and a set of cuffs in my vest pocket. I let the pry bar dangle under my shirt sleeve. Betty and I chatted aimlessly as we walked back up the roadside until we found the van pulled into the shallow ditch. The short-haired woman behind the wheel still had earphones on her head.

"Hello, darling," I shouted into my hand.

Betty walked to the back of the van to cut the valve stems off the rear tires with the wire cutters. The woman swept the earphones off her head. I knocked on the window, but she wouldn't roll it down.

"I believe this belongs to you," I said, holding up the bug. When she still didn't roll the window down, I set the bug on the thin, rough pavement and raised my boot heel. "No?" She wasn't impressed, so I slipped the pry bar into my hand, popped the door, then reached in to stick the pistol under her nose.

"All right, you son of a bitch," she said as she climbed out of the van, her hands not raised very high or very convincingly.

When I frisked her, I didn't find a weapon of any kind, so I holstered the Browning, backed up a step, and dangled the bug in front of her face, asking, "Does this belong to you?" She didn't want to answer, but when she reached for it, I snapped one cuff around her wrist, then the other to the door handle.

"Shit," she said, then tried to kick me in the shins.

"Lady," I said, "you can either behave or you can take a little nap. At this point I don't give a damn which."

"He means it," Betty said as she handed the wire cutters to me.

The woman decided she wanted to behave so she remained silent as I disabled the van – popped the hood to cut the cable to the oversized battery and the fuel line – and disrupted her communications. I tore the mobile telephone out of its cradle, dumped the batteries out of the cell phone, then snipped every wire I could find in the back of the van. "That's criminal vandalism, buddy," she said when I finished.

"You want to call the sheriff, lady?" I said, more angry than I intended to be. "He knows you're conducting illegal electronic surveillance in his county, right? I'm going to call him as soon as we find a telephone. I'll just bet he'll be happy as a pig in shit when he sees all this stuff. Probably ' hasn't got a bit of it in his office."

The woman just looked at the ground, scuffling the gravel with her jogging shoe. "Please," she whispered.

"You an ex-cop?" I asked.

"Ex-Army," she admitted.

"Who hired you?"

"I work for a firm," she said. "They don't tell us who the client is."

"Must be cheap bastards to make you work this gig alone," I said. "You are alone, aren't you." She didn't glance over her shoulder. "You got a card?"

"I just send the tapes in, man," she said, then the woman dug her wallet out of her jeans pocket and handed me a card.

"Doris Fairchild, Poulis Investigations, Dallas," I read aloud. "How long have you been on me?"

"Since the night after you were arrested."

"Shit," I said. "Tell your fucking boss that I'm a cranky old bastard and I'm really pissed. I'll be standing in front of his desk one of these days. Soon. You got off easy, lady," I said. "Given my attitude, I'm likely to gutshoot the next one of you assholes I run into."

"Lucky?" she said, glancing at the van.

"Lady, if you'd been a man, I would've broken both your arms and burned your van," I said. "I'll call a tow truck when we get back to civilization."

"Thanks a lot," she said, sarcasm thick in her voice. "You can shove your fucking chivalry up your ass."

"Listen," I said, "I hate you lazy electronic sneaks. So don't push your luck."

I threw Ms. Fairchild's cell phone into a patch of prickly pear the size of a small house, tossed her the key to the cuffs, then Betty and I walked silently back to the Caddy.

"You're really angry, aren't you?" Betty asked as we climbed into the car. When I didn't answer, she said, "I guess so."

"Last straw, I guess," I said and punched the Caddy hard back up the potholed road. I passed the van so fast that it rocked with the draft. Doris Fairchild shot us the finger.

"I don't think that's happened to me since junior high," Betty said quietly.

I sighed, chuckled, then slowed down. "And how long's it been since you've done it?"

Betty paused, then answered, "I don't think I've ever done it."

"Cathy said you were kind of stuffy."

"Well, fuck her," Betty said, then punched me on the shoulder.

"You gotta stop pounding on me, love. Remember my back."

"Your back was all right last night."

"I was faking it."

We laughed all the way to a small country store at a crossroads. I stopped, used the pay telephone while Betty grabbed us some coffee and doughnuts.

"You call a tow truck?" Betty asked as we drove away.

"Actually, I called the Bastrop County sheriff's office," I said. "I don't know who's fucking with me, but I'm tired of it."

"What'd he have to say?" Betty asked.

"Well, he didn't say thanks," I said. "At least now I know how the shooter followed Renfro and me to the golf course the other night. And that's probably also how the Lomax party knew to meet me back at the Lodge yesterday. But I still don't have the vaguest notion why the Lomax family or the county would want Sissy dead. Or me. Or Renfro."

"Maybe it's his wife," she suggested.

"If she wanted me dead, why did she send me after the McBride woman? I don't know. Hell, I saw her up close. She's way too young to be involved in the Duval shooting," I said, "and too rich to bother with dealing cocaine. Besides rich people don't bother killing people in public places. They just disappear them. It's not worth the trouble or the risk. Shit, love, I don't know. Where's the nearest big town in the other direction?"

"Probably San Marcos. Why?"

"I need to look a little different."

After our purchases in San Marcos, we checked into a motel to prepare me for my visit to the Caldwell County courthouse in Lockhart. It took longer than it should have at the plat office because the old woman helping me was full of chatter. She had grown up when there was still a bit of town left in Stairtown. I was glad I had taken the time to buy a cheap suit and a theatrical quality fake beard and wig. She was bound to remember me.

So the sun was still high in the western sky, pale behind a thin haze, when we reached the turnoff to Stairtown between Lockhart and Luling. The sharp stink of sulfur and crude oil filled the air. I checked the county map again, then eased up a small, crooked country road. At first, it was just a pleasant rural drive – small farms, a church, a creek – but as the road rose up a shallow rise, we saw the first pump jacks of the small oil field with its maze of lease roads. It took a while, but finally I found a wide spot to park high enough to give me a view through the spotting scope of Homer Logan's lease.

The shack sat among abandoned oil field equipment – rusted tank batteries, draw-works engines that hadn't run in years, wooden pipe racks filled with tubing and rods, and a slush pit. Sissy Duval's BMW was parked beside the shack. Nothing moved behind the thin curtains, or on the surrounding land. I drove down to the turnoff, left the Caddy idling on the road while I checked the tire prints on the dirt track to the shack. The foreign treads of the Beemer had been in and out a few times. A larger tire, from a pickup or a van, had been in and out once.

"We're not going in?" Betty asked as I drove away.

"I'm going in alone," I said. "Later tonight. I gotta get some stuff first."

"You're not going in there without me," she said.

"You can either stay in the motel room," I said, "Or I'll lock you in the trunk."

"You would, wouldn't you, you son of a bitch?"

"You ain't seen nothing yet."

"I've seen enough," she said, flaring. "I'll just call a cab and follow you."

"Listen to me. Please," I said. She nodded slightly. "The only thing that scene lacks is a flock of buzzards circling overhead," I said. "It's going to be hard enough for me to make sure that I don't leave any trace evidence. I don't have time to worry about you, too."

This time she nodded as if she understood.

So I dropped her at the motel, rented another car for cash from a lot just down the block from the motel on the outskirts of San Marcos, bought dark blue coveralls, a large and a small flashlight, surgical gloves, an extra roll of duct tape, a roll of electric tape, and two pairs of huge socks.

At three A.M., dressed in coveralls, my running shoes covered by the socks, I crept out of the rented junker and slowly up the side of the dirt road by the thin flashlight beam. The shack was dark and silent, the door unlocked. I sat in the doorway, slipped the other pair of socks over the dusty ones, then began a careful search. Except for Sissy's traveling mess, the small cabin was empty. Sissy had found some cocaine. About half a quarter-ounce bindle remained among the clutter of cut straws, smudged glass surfaces, and glasses of unfinished vodka. Also, a hypo and some used works.

Then I searched outside among the machinery and empty tool sheds until I found the outline of a body mostly buried in an old slush pit, at the edge of the crumbling dirt bank. A light brown crust covered the darker mud below, and it was unmarked except for long scratches beyond the arms and two pieces of discarded water pipe, which I assumed they had used to hold the body down in the mud. I risked the big flashlight long enough to spot a stand of streaked hair waving above the sun-blackened neck. The lighter mud had been in the sun long enough to dry and crack. There didn't seem much point in checking the body. Whoever had killed her had killed her in broad daylight, gotten her toasted on the coke, and held her face in the mud until she stopped struggling.

I went back to the shack and spent another hour cleaning up the cocaine traces with a bottle of bleach I found under the sink. Then' I shoved the rest of the cocaine into my pocket, and the works into a trash bag that I carried away. Whatever happened, this wouldn't go down as an accidental overdose or a psychotic episode, so they would ' have to mount a full-scale investigation. Just in case I never found out what was going on, or if I got killed before I did.

The search of the Beemer didn't take long and only yielded a telephone number without an area code on a piece of paper crumpled around a hunk of chewing gum in the ashtray, which I shoved into the same pocket with the cocaine. I drove the Beemer into one of the empty sheds, then left.

Sissy Duval had lied to me and she probably was, as Cathy said, a frivolous woman, but she deserved a better death than this. Another chore on my tool belt.

Back in the motel room, I hesitated to tell Betty what had happened, but she quickly asked, "She's dead, isn't she?"

"I think two guys came in a truck," I said quietly, "and knocked her out – probably in some way only a forensic pathologist can discover, if they're lucky – then filled her with coke, tossed her into the slush pit and held her face in the mud until she smothered. They'll probably write it off as just another cocaine accident."

"Why? How? What for?" she stammered. "Nobody knew we were looking for her. Except Cathy."

"Don't start doubting your friends," I said. "But Sissy damn sure knew something somebody didn't want me to know," I added calmly. "Maybe about Mandy Rae. Maybe Enos Walker. Maybe something entirely different."

"What now? We can't call the Sheriff's Department, can we?"

"They're going to have to figure it out without my help. Another day in the sun, maybe the buzzards will find her," I said.

She wailed again, her teeth chattering as she hovered near shock. I wrapped her in all the blankets in the room, got a little Scotch down her throat, and held her until she stopped trembling, then started the long drift into an exhausted sleep.

"What now?" she muttered sleepily.

"Houston," I said. "Then on to Lake Charles."

"What?" she asked, waking briefly.

"Molly McBride went to a great deal of trouble to convince you that she was from San Francisco," I pointed out, "and to convince me she was from New Orleans. But I remember the Houston address on her phony lawyer card, and she let something slip about Lake Charles. I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that I can pick up her trail one place or the other."

"I don't want a fucking doughnut," Betty said, wiping at her eyes. "I want ham and eggs and redeye gravy on my grits."

"I'll buy you a boxcarful if you'll just smile again."

She did. For a second before she plunged into sleep like a woman leaping off a bridge.

Driving toward Houston on I-10 after a breakfast stop to eat and dump my garbage bag, as Betty napped curled in the back seat, I called Hangas to ask him to keep an eye on Eldora Grace in the hope that he might be around when she got the bad news. He told me that she hadn't been home the last two times he stopped at her house. I suggested she might be staying at Sissy's place. Hangas said he would try there.

As I drove, I found myself in another world of shallow rolling hills broken by thick, dark broadleaf forests, which after a few hours gave way to industrial chaos, nothing like the open spaces of the Hill Country. I'd never been in East Texas but I suspected that it was going to be different from anything I knew anything about, more like the South than the West.

Houston seemed to be the world's largest construction site combined with the world's worst traffic jam, all of it plopped down with neither rhyme nor reason among as many shacks as tall shining buildings, all buried in an uncommon grave under a humid, shallow sea. Even the Caddy's air conditioner couldn't keep the hot, heavy, stinking moisture out of the car.

When I pulled off the freeway, I parked in a residential area, then opened the Houston street map. Betty climbed over the seat, rubbing her eyes.

"What's up?"

"I told you. The McBride woman swiped her phony calling card out of my shirt pocket when she snagged a cigarette."

"Or when you had it off," Betty said. I tried to keep my face grim. "You did take your shirt off, didn't you?" she asked, grinning as she poked me in the ribs.

"But I remember the address," I continued. "Navigation Boulevard. Sometimes people make mistakes when they make fake business cards." Then I paused. "I took my shirt off but not my socks," I said, grinning, too.

"That's disgusting," Betty said. "Like one of those old black-and-white porno films." I glanced at her. "I'm not as stuffy as some people seem to think."

I shook my head, chuckling, then wound south toward the ship channel and Navigation Boulevard. The address turned out to be a rundown joint with black-painted windows called the Longhorn Tavern, the sort of place where, when I parked the Caddy in front, I imagined I could hear the hacking coughs of day-drinkers, the snicker of switchblades swinging open, the metallic click as the hammers of cheap revolvers were drawn back.

"It'd be easier if you stayed in the car," I said, "and without argument." Betty glanced at the place, then nodded solemnly. I took a picture of Molly McBride from the glove box, then climbed slowly out of the car, and trudged up the sagging steps of the tavern. I wondered if my pace looked as ancient as it felt.

Inside, every bar stool was filled, every bleary eye aimed at the morning game shows murmuring on the two televisions at either end of the bar. The clientele seemed to be an interracial cross-gender mob of the unemployed mixed with the unemployable: construction workers, semi-retired whores, shore-bound sailors, longshoremen, and street-level drug dealers. Even in scuffed boots and faded jeans, I felt overdressed because I wore a clean shirt. I found a small space at the front of the bar next to a fairly clean fellow about my own age with one arm of his khaki shirt pinned to his shoulder. It seemed the safest place.

When the bartender, an enormous black woman with scarred, ham-sized fists and the wary eyes of a street fighter, lumbered down to my end of the bar, I ordered a bottle of Lone Star, trying to fit in.

"No bottles," she rumbled. "Nothin' but cans," she added as she cracked one for me.

Looking around, I agreed with the bartender. I wouldn't put anything resembling a weapon into the hands of this crowd, either. Not that the bartender would need one. "Thanks," I said, shoving a ten at her. "Keep the change," I said, then pulled the picture out of my jacket pocket. "You haven't seen this woman around here, have you?"

"Annie," the one-armed guy on the stool murmured as he spun to face me.

"You ain't a fuckin' cop, are you?" the bartender asked, tugging on her ear with the thick fingers of her right hand.

"I'm a private in -" was all I got out of my mouth before the large woman threw the straight right at me. I tried to shove my stool backward to slip the punch, but the one-armed guy stuck his boot against my stool, and the large fist slammed against my forehead, hard enough to knock me off the stool. I hit the floor, rolled, then stumbled backward all the way across the room. The bartender shouted, "We don't allow out-of-town pigs in here, do we boys?" Then half her customers swarmed me. My last clear thought was that I was going to die, with perfect irony, at the hands and feet of a crowd of winos.

Then it was all bar-fight confusion and chaos. Tables and chairs, teeth and hair, blood and primal grunts. It seemed I remembered the one-armed guy kicking viciously at my crotch. And that I'd never been quite so happy to hear the sounds of sirens and hoping they were coming for me.

I came back to the world sitting on a rickety chair at one of the dirty tables. Two young cops – one black, one Chicano – wearing surgical gloves swabbed delicately at my bleeding face, Betty and the bartender hovering in the background. The rest of the bar had cleared as if by magic.

"How are you doing, buddy?" the black cop asked.

"I've been worse," I said after I had checked my teeth and nose, then the rest of my face. A fairly deep gash in my left eyebrow. Another long shallow one under my chin. A dozen fingernail gouges. "Nothing a couple of butterfly bandages can't handle," I told the cops. "Sore ribs. Both pupils the same size, I hope." Betty nodded. "And it feels like they missed my nose and nuts." My right fist echoed with the memory of at least a single solid blow.

"You got any ID, buddy?" the Chicano kid asked, seemingly uninterested in my injuries.

I dug out my real driver's and PI license. Luckily, I'd left the badge case and the fake ID in the trunk of the Caddy. This was no time to have a badge. The photo of Molly McBride had disappeared.

"So what happened in here?" the black kid asked.

"Ah, hell," I said quietly, "we're on our way to New Orleans, and I'd heard that an old skip I've been chasing for a couple of years had been seen in here. Guy named Bill Ripley. Thought I'd stop in and ask. Guess I asked the wrong guy. My fault entirely."

"You see any of your attackers?"

"It all happened too quick," I said. "The bartender tried to stop them, but there were too many, too fast."

"Recognize anybody, Annie?" the black officer asked the bartender.

"Place was plum-full of strangers this morning, Officer."

"Guess the fleet's in," the Chicano officer snorted. Then he handed me a stack of sterile pads and a roll of gauze tape. "It would be a good idea to get out of this part of town, sir. Why don't you let your wife drive? They have a lot of good doctors on your way. Over in Beaumont, maybe."

"Sounds good to me," I said, then I stood up, forcing myself not to wobble. "Thanks," I said to the bartender, who gave me a hairy eyeball and a sneer. "Let's go, honey," I said to Betty, as blandly as a tourist, then put my hand on her shoulder and let her lead me to the safety of the Beast.

"What the hell happened in there?" Betty asked as she eased out from the curb.

"I got knocked down by a fat woman," I answered, "and damn near kicked to death by an alcoholic mob."

"But why?"

"They don't like strangers, I guess," I said. "You call the cops?"

"They were roaring by when this guy tumbled out the front door."

"Great. At least I got in one shot," I said, checking my face in the visor mirror. "Let's get the fuck out of this town," I said. I gobbled a couple of codeines, then used Betty's Swiss Army knife scissors to trim some butterfly bandages to try to seal the cuts on my face.

"It's about ninety miles to Beaumont," Betty said. "You going to bleed to death?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because you're going to have some stitches when I get there."

"No fucking way am I going to sit around some goddamned emergency room."

"You may not have to," Betty said, then reached for the cell phone in her purse as I reached for the codeine bottle again.

Stunned by the codeine, I didn't exactly pay much attention to where Betty led me in the medical office complex next to the Beaumont Hospital, but when she hugged the tall, black doctor with a short gray beard before she introduced us, I knew exactly where I was.

"Warren Reeves," the doctor said as he shook my hand.

"Good to meet you," I said. And I meant it. Reeves and Betty had been engaged when she had killed the black kid who had raped her. Reeves had stuck by Betty all through the troubles afterward, but her guilt had driven a wedge between them that no amount of love could extract.

Reeves led me into the examining room filled with children's toys, cleaned me up quickly, and deadened the cuts. Then hit me with tetanus and antibiotic shots. "I hope I remember how to do this," he said, "but from the look of your face it doesn't need to be plastic surgery. This isn't your first rodeo."

"I only agreed to the needle work because she made me," I said. "She's a hard woman."

"Don't I know," Reeves responded, grinning.

"You boys want me to leave the room while you talk about me?" Betty asked.

"I love it when she's shy," I said.

"Me, too," Reeves said, then began stitching.

Afterward, Reeves refused payment, but I stuck five hundred dollars in his pocket. "Donate it to your favorite charity."

"You sure y'all won't stick around for dinner?" Reeves said to Betty. "I know Anna and the kids would love to see you. It's been too long."

"Milo's hot on the trail of something or other," Betty said. "Maybe on the way back. I'll call."

"Do that," Reeves said. Then to me, "Any doctor can take those stitches out for you."

"I can do it myself."

"Of course you can," Reeves said. "Just sterilize the fingernail clippers before you do it."

We laughed, shook hands again, then I left Betty and Reeves to make their goodbyes alone. But Reeves shouted at me before I got out the office door. "You sure you won't spend the night? The guest house is always ready, and there's forty pounds of blue cat in the freezer."

I was suddenly very old and tired, the pain of the beating seeping through the drugs, and the invitation so warm and generous. "Why the hell not? Lake Charles ain't going anywhere."

Later that night, Reeves and I, stuffed with catfish and hush puppies, loafed on the patio listening to the frogs and insects sing along the brackish slough that stretched just behind the dark screen of thick brush at the edge of the yard. Domestic sounds came from the kitchen – the rattle of pots going into the dishwasher, the soft murmurs of the children, and Anna's lilting voice, her accent a charming mixture of French, Vietnamese, and Southern – Reeves and I sipped Cognac and smoked good Havanas.

"Keeps the mosquitoes off," Reeves said quietly as if apologizing for the cigar.

"Maybe for you," I said as I slapped one on my wrist, leaving a large freckle of blood on my skin and an odd pain in my hand. "I think they're using me as a drug smorgasbord. At least they're easy to kill. Too fat and stoned to fly." I slapped another one on my forehead.

"You been rustling cattle?" he asked.

"No. Why?"

"Looks like you've been butchering a calf with a chain saw."

"Don't believe I've ever had that pleasure."

We chuckled softly, then sat quietly for several minutes, listening again to the buzz saw of the night. Then Reeves said, "Betty's as happy as she's been in a while. You should be proud."

"If I thought I had anything to do with it, man, I might be proud," I admitted, "but sometimes I think she's just a slave to her moods."

"I blame her folks for that," Reeves said. "Distant father. And a mother who should have been on lithium."

"She never talks about them."

"Her old man wasn't my favorite person, but he was interesting," Reeves said. "Really the last of the great country doctors. House calls and the whole number. Also, a great mechanic. He could stitch up your ranch hand, tune your pickup truck, pull a calf, then take a flat of free-range brown eggs in payment. But the money changed all that."

"Money?"

"He patented an improvement to a surgical staple gun or something that made him a considerable fortune. Then the gravel company that owned the dump truck that hit her folks head-on settled a heavy piece of change on Betty," he said. "Lord knows her mother's ranch never made a dime after they gave up deer leases."

"Her father wasn't your favorite person, "though?"

"He was a hard son of a bitch," Reeves said. "Betty told me that after her first menses, he never touched her again. Never a hug, never a held hand, never even a hand ruffling her hair, or an encouraging word. She was a mess when I met her. Nobody could live up to Dr. Porterfield. Same kind of charmingly arrogant Southern jerk as her lawyer uncle."

"Travis Lee?"

"You know the old boy?"

"We're sort of partners," I said.

"Well, I'd surely watch him," Reeves said. "He started off as the sort of lawyer who'd start a fist-fight just to drum up clients, then graduated down to politics, and further down to shady land deals."

"I thought he was too rich for that kind of sleazy," I said.

"Last time I was over in Austin, an old friend of mine suggested that Wallingford had taken a bath in the last oil glut, mis-read the computer boom, and was badly overextended. Very badly."

"When was that?"

"I don't know. Five or six years ago."

"Hell, I'm supposed to be suspicious by nature. And profession," I said, "so I had my lawyer go through the contracts. Travis Lee's always come up with his share of the payments. And he is Betty's uncle."

"I've been wrong before."

"And I've misjudged a few women."

"And Betty a few men…"

"The rape?"

"Not just that," Reeves sighed. "After her mother and father were killed in the wreck, she took off two years before she started medical school, and I suspect she ran a little wild, cocaine cowboys and that ilk. In fact she just eased back to a semi-normal life when…" Reeves paused, puffed on the cigar, then blew a perfect smoke ring into the humid air. "Ah, hell, the rape and the killing and all the troubles afterward."

"Troubles?"

"She put five rounds in the guy's back. If he'd been white, and if she couldn't have afforded Phil Thursby," Reeves said, "she would have done hard time. And she knew that. She was guilty, and nothing I could do or say seemed to ease that guilt. She quit medical school, ran wild again until she went to vet school somewhere in California, then left the twentieth century and moved out to the ranch.

"I didn't see her again until Anna and I got married. And as far as I know, you're the first man she's been involved with for any length of time for a long time," Reeves added, then paused again. "I suspect it hasn't been easy."

"Since people started trying to kill me, she's been a lot easier to be around," I said.

Reeves gave me an odd look.

"I haven't exactly lived a citizen's life. Now my chickens are coming home to roost. Turns out they're turkey buzzards."

Betty and Anna stepped out of the kitchen, arm in arm, smiling.

"If you ol' boys done gossipin' 'bout us girls," Anna said to her husband, "the children are in bed and waitin' for their Daddy to read to them."

Betty said, "And I should get my patient into bed."

Reeves and I stood, shook hands, and I said seriously, "Thanks for everything, Doc."

"Anytime, man, anytime."

We made our good nights, then Betty slipped her arm around my waist and I draped my arm over her shoulder as we walked slowly through the thick grass, slick with dew and littered with shards of streetlight, to the small guest house at the back of the yard.

"You're walking heavy tonight, honey," Betty said.

"Long day."

But Betty went to sleep first. So I slipped into my jeans, popped a couple of pain pills, found a couple of beers in the refrigerator, grabbed the cell phone, and stepped into the muggy night and fog knee-deep on the damp grass. Time to call Carver D to see if I could find out if Sissy Duval's body had been found without actually asking him.

"Did I wake you up?" I asked when he answered.

"It's hard to tell these days if I'm sleeping or awake, old man."

"Anything happening back in that world?"

"Nothing much. Where the hell are you?"

"Beaumont."

"Lord, you're making tours of the classiest cities in Texas, aren't you," he said, laughing. "Midland. Odessa. Beaumont. Don't forget Waco and Van Horn." Then I heard the sound of the bourbon bottle splashing. "By the way, I heard an ugly rumor to the effect that you have joined the enemies of official repression," he said. "Surely a lie, Milo."

"Nope."

"Now why would you go and do something like that?"

"Trying to keep my tired old ass out of jail."

"Hope it's worth it," he said. "And hope it actually works."

"Well, it hasn't caused me any trouble yet."

"Speaking of trouble. What have you been up to?"

"Drinking, fistfighting, and running up my expense account," I said.

"Sylvie Lomax might have been able to shove you down Tobin Rooke's throat," Carver D said, "but I know that skinny son of a bitch never approved an expense account."

"Well, I can try," I said. "But I need another favor. Check out a Doris Fairchild who works for Poulis Investigations in Dallas. That's who had my Caddy bugged. And while you're at it, partner, why don't you start building me a file on the Lomaxes."

"I'll see what I can do," Carver D said. "You stay in touch."

"Right," I said. "Did Hangas have any luck talking to Eldora Grace?"

"Hell, he can't even find her."

I clicked off the phone, hoping I wasn't going to have to find some way to report Sissy Duval's death myself. Then I opened my second beer, lit a last cigarette, and watched the smoke drift in the murky air while the mosquitoes feasted on me until, bloated with blood and stoned on codeine and Cognac, they fluttered fat and happy into the thick grass. For a long moment, I envied their simplicity. Eat, drink, try to fly, fall to soft earth, and sleep.