The Final Country

FIVE

It took another full day of moving carefully between my bed and the Jacuzzi and gobbling pissy little pain pills before I could climb into Betty's pickup so she could drive me by the locker, where I gathered up enough drugs to allow me a little movement, then she dropped me at Carver D's house. Carver D had been burning cyberspace oil. He hadn't dug up anything more on Sissy Duval, except that she wouldn't come to the telephone or return messages and that after her husband's death, she had sold the bar and license to a chain of self-service laundries down in the Rio Grande Valley, a chain that was suspected of washing more than dirty shorts. They had kept Billy Long as a manager until his untimely death, then quickly gave his job to the pudgy bartender, Leonard Wilbur. Carver D had pulled the court files on the Dwayne Duval shooting. He had been killed by a college kid from Mexia, Texas, a Richard Wylie Oates, who, except for traffic tickets, had never run afoul of the law before and whose folks were even cleaner. Oates had been convicted of second-degree murder, with Steelhammer on the bench. The jury had sentenced him to a huge jolt of hard time, which he was still serving outside Huntsville. He'd done fifteen and had been twice denied parole. Enos Walker had an older brother living in Austin, a preacher. But he didn't answer his telephone or return messages, either.

"Looks like you've got your work cut out for you," Carver D suggested as he handed me the Molly McBride registration tape back, along with a sheaf of head shots of the lady in question. "You want to borrow Hangas?"

"Thanks," I said, "but as soon as I get my ride back, Betty's going to chauffeur me around."

"Y'all back together?"

"Together might not exactly be the right word."

"What's that mean?" he asked, wiggling in his antique chair so hard that I thought the wheels were going to pop off.

"You don't want to know," I told him. "You have any luck with the serial number on the piece in Betty's purse?"

"Got it as far as a gun dealer in Little Rock," he said. "Usually a dead end there."

"Well, thanks."

"It's great to be nosy for a purpose," Carver D said. "Watch your back, man."

"Just as soon as I can stand to look at it," I said. "Now call me a cab."

"You're a cab."

A couple of days later when Phil Thursby got back from Houston, where he had managed to plead a capital murder down to manslaughter-one even though the crackhead rich kid from Clear Lake had been caught on video and confessed to killing a Vietnamese convenience store clerk, he came into the bar while I was behind the stick giving Mike a much needed break. Thursby hopped on a stool, and shook his head slowly, almost painfully. Thursby had a high forehead above thick black-rimmed glasses and looked like a teenager playing a criminal lawyer in a high school play. But he had pale blue eyes, as restless and mad as a rabid dog's, a thin mouth like a knife wound, a curiously deep and soothing voice, and he was one of the best criminal lawyers in the state. Except for an occasional glass of Veuve Cliquot champagne and a nose for trouble, Thursby seemed to have no vices. He bought his suits off the rack in the boys' section at Penney's, still lived in the small frame house off Red River where he'd been raised, and drove a battered Toyota Corolla with neither a radio nor air-conditioning. Wallingford said the little bastard didn't need a radio because he listened to the voices in his head, or air-conditioning because he had liquid nitrogen in his veins.

"Remember, Milo, if Carver D wasn't your buddy, I wouldn't even talk to you," Thursby rumbled as I pulled a cork and filled a flute for him. He took a tiny sip, nodded as if he approved, then added, "as far as I know Steelhammer plans to dismiss your charges, but when the grand jury convenes, and with your history, unless you happened to be hanging on the cross next to Jesus Christ that day and he'll climb down to swear to it, Gatlin County will indict you. Tobin Rooke is almost as good as I am, but he lacks my convictions." Thursby allowed himself a flicker of a smile, larger than an eyelash, but not much. "He knows he really hasn't got a duck's fart chance of stinkin' in a blue norther to finally get you in prison," Thursby continued, "but it'll cost you a couple hundred K just to get it to a jury verdict, and believe me, they'll convict, so then it's another hundred for the appeal, with no guarantee that we can beat this before we can get it into federal court." Thursby paused, sipped at a single champagne bubble, then added, "You want the best free advice I've ever given?"

"My father always told me free advice usually wasn't worth what it cost," I said. "What do you want for a retainer?"

"To hell with that. Sell everything you own," Thursby said, ignoring me, "and learn to speak Portuguese."

"Brazil?"

"You'll like it there," Thursby said, "the women are pretty and the drugs are cheap." Then Thursby took another tiny sip of the champagne, hopped off the stool, and turned to leave. "Let's start with fifty thousand."

"I'm too old to move again," I said as I waved him back. "Give me a couple of days," I said quietly as I leaned over the bar, "and I'll come up with the money."

"Clean?"

"As clean as I can make it. But if it isn't, will you take that case, too?" I asked.

"Not my style," Thursby said flatly. "Put it in my overseas account. You've got the number."

"If you had a sense of humor," I said, pushing a standard PI contract across the bar, "you'd be dangerous."

"Dead wrong," Thursby said as he signed it so I would at least have a little confidentiality coverage and left, saying, "Don't abuse this. I don't want to have to defend this thing in court."

Later that afternoon, as predicted, Judge Steel-hammer dismissed the charges and released the bond, and the Sheriff's Department released the Cadillac and the Airweight. Of course, when I picked them up, the Beast came back with a location beeper under the gas tank and the Airweight with a broken firing pin. Gannon stopped by after work, so I complained to him about the alterations in my machinery. He just leaned on the bar as if trying to decide what to drink.

"You're lucky you're not dead," Gannon chuckled, "and the Caddy stashed in a chop-shop in Nuevo Laredo."

"I'd forgotten how lucky I was," I said. "Thanks for reminding me, Capt. Gannon."

"Call me Jimmy."

"Not yet," I said. "You're still on duty."

"Not now," he said.

"Well, we still haven't had that drink."

"Last time I saw you, Milo, you had them all," Gannon said. "I'll have whatever your lawyer drinks."

"I do that sometimes," I said as I filled two flutes with some of Thursby's champagne, "but I seem to remember an offer of help."

"I think I offered to help you pack."

"How about something else?" I asked.

Gannon lifted his glass and his eyes narrowed as he frowned. "What's in it for me?"

"Enos Walker," I said. "Lalo Herrera is coming out of retirement to cover my shifts and manage his sons and the bar, so I can give this my full attention."

"What the hell's Walker got to do with Rooke's death?"

"Damned if I know," I admitted, "but it sure seems like my troubles started there."

"What do you want?"

"The case files on the Dwayne Duval shooting. That's all."

"That was before my time," he said. "I think the state boys handled the investigations back then. I'd have to sign the files out."

"Whatever happened to interdepartmental cooperation?" I said.

"Not my department," Gannon sighed, then we clicked glasses. "But I'll see what I can do."

"Please," I said quietly.

Gannon savored the champagne. "Here's to the good life."

"And a copy of those files."

I didn't really have any real hope that Gannon could or would get them to me, but it seemed like a good idea to get him in the habit of at least trying to do favors for me. We finished the flutes, then he walked slowly out, as if the single glass of champagne had made him wistful.

Gannon was barely out of the bar when Travis Lee stepped through the door and pulled up a stool at the end of the bar next to the glass wall over the hollow. At least he set his cowboy hat on the bar, so I didn't have to point out the sign prohibiting umbrellas. He smiled, ran his fingers through his thick gray hair as if to remind himself that he still had it.

I held up the champagne bottle.

"A headache in every swallow," he snorted. "Turkey on the rocks," he said. "A double. And a beer back."

After I got his drink, I poured myself another glass of champagne. No sense in losing the expensive fizz. As I lit a cigarette, Travis Lee bummed one off me. "I didn't know you smoked."

"Haven't had one in twenty-five years," he said, then hit the cigarette so hard that he burned a half-inch of it into ash. "Damn, that's good."

"What's up?" I asked.

"Oh, I was just in the Lodge, so I thought I'd stop in and see how your back's coming along and remind you that we have a chance to make a lot of money very easily and very quickly," he said.

"I got some other stuff on my plate right now," I said.

"What? Tending bar?" he said.

"I'm just giving Mike a few days off so he'll cover my shifts while I try to dig out from under this load of crap that has fallen on me," I said. "Phil says I've got about three weeks."

"Where are you planning to start?" he asked, but he didn't sound either interested or confident.

"First I'm going to talk to the kid that shot-gunned Dwayne Duval."

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Oddly enough, he seemed interested now.

"I don't know exactly," I admitted. "It's just a place to start." I didn't tell him that Sissy Duval had lied to me. If you can't follow the money, I thought, perhaps you should try to unravel the lies. "You didn't know this Duval character, did you?"

"I bought a drink or two off him in the old days," he said. "I've known his widow since she was a kid."

"Sissy?"

"Yeah," he sighed, then tossed off the Turkey. "She used to be a pistol. Haven't seen her in a while." Then he looked at me as if he knew I had. But I didn't say anything. "You think Duval's death is connected somehow to the, ah, young woman who, ah…" He paused to sip on his beer. "That killing was a long time ago."

"I don't know," I said. "Every case has to start somewhere," I added, "and what's the point of being a private eye if you can't follow a hunch. If I believed in a rational world, maybe I'd still be a cop."

Travis Lee looked at me as if I were insane, finished his beer, and my cigarette, then said, "Well, son, call me when you come back to the rational world." Then he picked up his cowboy hat, set it on his head carefully, and strolled away like a man without a care in the world.

Since I was Phil Thursby's investigator, I didn't have any trouble getting an appointment with Dickie Oates. The prison officials hated Thursby almost as much as they were frightened of him, so they even let me talk to Dickie in a small conference room. Somewhere beneath the hard-ass con who sat down across the table from me, I could see the lanky, snaggle-toothed lop-eared kid with a round, open face that Oates must have been at the time of the Duval killing. But now Oates was all busted knuckles and scars. A crooked nose parted his face, and dark shadows lurked deep in his bright blue eyes. All in all, though, he didn't look too bad for all his years as a guest of the Texas Department of Corrections. But we both knew the real story was worse than his face and body showed.

"So why the hell is Phil Thursby interested in reviving my appeal?" Oates asked, smiling cynically. He didn't have to ask who Phil Thursby was. "My fuckin' lawyer ain't."

"Look, Mr. Oates," I lied as I opened a leather legal-sized notebook, "we don't know if he's interested or not. Right now. But he has a team of interns who do nothing but read transcripts and old case files. One of them pointed out that there seemed to be something missing in your story."

"Like what?"

"Why don't you tell me the story," I suggested, "and I'll see if it's there."

For the first time, Oates smiled slightly, scratching at his left eyebrow, where a new scab nestled, then he locked his hands on the table, eager now, hopeful, it seemed, for the first time in a long time.

"Okay," Oates began, "so I'm playing pool in this joint with a bunch of my frat bro's, and somebody started bitching about table roll and scratching on the eight ball or some shit. Nothing too loud, just guys mouthing, when this coked-up asshole who said he owned the place threw us out.

"So what the hell, we had words, but we went. I was the last one out the door and stepped around the corner to take a leak between the wall and my pickup, and while I got my pecker in my hand, this fucker slams my face into the rock wall with his forearm. When I turned around, he blasted me good…" Oates touched his crooked nose.

"When I hit the ground, he put the boots to me. Pretty hard. Till some women pulled him off, three or four of them, then one of them helped me to my pickup."

"What do you remember about that woman?"

"Not much," Oates said. "Tall, lots of hair, blond maybe, nearly as fucked up as the guy."

"What did she say to you?"

"Nothing much," Oates said. "Apologized, sort of, called him an asshole. That sort of shit."

"She suggest payback?"

"Yeah, well, maybe," Oates said, frowning again. "Ain't you leading the witness, Counselor?"

"Ain't my problem. Your shotgun, was it in the gun rack?"

"Not a chance, sir," he answered. "It was my Daddy's quail gun, and I wouldn't hang it up in a rack like some asshole redneck. I had it in a case behind the seat." Oates shook his head sadly. "When that little detail came out in court that was the end of any talk about a manslaughter plea. My lawyer said I was lucky the prosecutor didn't go for first degree. The jury was filled with Gatlin County corporate crackers. They would have given the needle for sure."

I knew from the courthouse rumors that Steelhammer had a record of coming down hard on college students who came into his county to break the law. Then because I didn't have any other questions, I asked, "You ever do any cocaine back then?"

"Shit, man, it was Austin," he grumbled. "Back in those days ever' third sorority girl had 'I Love Champagne, Cadillacs, and Cocaine Cowboys with Cash' tattooed under her pubic hair."

"Ever buy any out of Duval's Place?"

"Not me," he said. "There was a rumor that the guy who bought for the frat house got his product there. But, hell, I didn't know shit from wild honey in those days."

Then I wondered, "This lady you were talking about, she say anything else?"

"Sometimes when I dream about it, man, she does," Oates said. "She asked me if I had a gun in my truck."

"When you dream about it? Spare me the psychological bullshit," I said. "I know you've got more time on the couch than a retired hound dog."

"That couch shit doesn't happen much in the Texas Department of Corrections, man. Not much," Oates said seriously, refusing to be denied. "But I dream about that night all the time, almost every night when I can get to sleep, so how the hell am I supposed to remember what really happened? In the dream, most of the time, she calls him over, so I think he's coming after me again, and, man, I was already fucked up. Four cracked ribs, two broken fingers on my right hand, a crushed nut, and my nose, well, it felt like it was touching my ear. So I up and shot the motherfucker when he came after me. Once in the guts, then once in the face."

"In the face with the second barrel?"

"That's what they said."

"They said?"

"At the trial."

"You don't remember?" I asked.

"Not really," Oates whispered, shaking his head. "The first shot hurt my hand and my head so much, I don't remember the second one. Hell, for a while it looked like the bastard was gonna pull through, but he already had some kinda sinus infection, and it got into his brain. So that fucked the dog for me."

"You don't remember anything else about the women?" I asked as I closed the notebook. "I don't remember a single woman on the witness list."

"You know how it is. My lawyer couldn't find anybody who admitted they were even there. Not even my friends." Oates sucked a tooth and shook his head. "You think you can do anything?"

"All I can do is try," I said, then handed Oates a card. "You remember anything about the woman, even dream anything, you call me collect."

"You mean that?"

"Sure," I said. "Sometimes we don't remember things until we're talking about it."

"Thanks," Oates said. "I'll try not to take advantage of the offer."

"Take care," I said, resigning myself to collect conversations with Oates.

"Next time, bring in a lungful of smoke," Oates said quietly. "Secondhand smoke is the only kind we get in here."

"Right," I said, then started to leave. "How do your parole hearings go?"

"Man," he said, "I don't know. I don't have a record out in the world and not much bad time in here, but they treat me like I'm a fuckin' serial killer or something. That snakefucker of a prosecutor has showed up every time." Then he paused, a sly look flitting across his face. "You're the dude that killed his brother, ain't you?"

"It was an accident," I said. "And they dropped the charges."

"Those Gatlin County assholes," he said. "Those corrupt bastards will find some way to nail you."

"Maybe not," I said. But I didn't have any more hope than Dickie Oates did when I left.

When I climbed stiffly into the passenger seat of the El Dorado, Betty turned from behind the wheel and considered me. "We gotta do something about that back, Milo," she said. "Pills and hot tubs don't seem to be doing a bit of good."

"That's for damn sure," I said. "Thanks for taking the time off to drive me over. I don't think I could have made it without you."

"No problem," she said quietly, a stiff smile on her face. Then she started the car, saying, "I didn't take off. I quit. For a while."

"What?"

"Well, I didn't exactly quit," she said. "I just took an unpaid leave."

"What did they think about that?"

"I sort of own the practice," she said quietly, "so I don't much give a shit what they think."

"I didn't know that," I said, wondering why she worked nights in her own clinic. Maybe she was trying to stay out of trouble, working nights. That's what I had told myself back when I tended bar at night. I didn't know. But she had said she was better in a crisis than in everyday life. Maybe that explained it. Since it seems a crisis always pulls into your driveway after midnight.

"There's a lot of things about me you don't know," Betty said, a grim smile on her face as she eased out of the prison's parking lot.

I wondered what those other things might be, but right then they didn't seem very important.

"But about your back?"

"What?"

"You remember my friend Cathy Scoggins?"

"The ditsy broad who's always stoned?"

"She's a damn fine acupuncturist," she said, "not a broad. Why don't you let her work on your back?"

"Has she ever worked on you?"

Betty paused a moment, then said, "Not exactly, but she's had good luck with some of my patients."

"Dogs and horses and scabby calves?" I said. "Why not? Will she let me get stoned, too?"

"She'll probably insist on it," Betty said.

After a long pause, I said, "I don't know what to say about you taking off from work."

"Just say 'thank you,' you fucking idiot."

"Thank you, you fucking idiot," I said, but my heart didn't seem to be in it, so I popped a couple of codeine tablets and leaned the seat back, and drifted off as quickly as I could.

We were hunkering over barbecue plates at Black's in Lockhart before Betty asked me what I had learned from the Oates kid.

"Not much that makes sense," I admitted. "I know that he's doing too much time for the crime, and Steelhammer was the judge. But I've got this funny feeling about the shooting. I'd bet the farm that somebody else – probably this woman he dreams about – fired the second barrel into Dwayne Duval's face that night." And just that easily I picked up another chore: keep Enos Walker out of the execution chamber, get Dickie Oates out of prison, keep Betty Porterfield out of trouble, and keep my old ass out of jail. "Or something crazy like that," I said, then drifted off into worrying.

"Well, that's certainly an insane idea," Betty said sharply, bringing me back. "What the hell's that got to do with your troubles?"

"I don't know," I said. "The only thing I know is that when I talked to Dickie Oates, it's the first time I've felt like somebody's telling the truth since I had a drink with Enos Walker."

"Jesus, Milo, the kid's a convicted killer," she insisted. "He'd say anything, right? And Walker's a stone criminal."

I had to agree but I didn't want to let that go by, and continued, "Sissy Duval told me that this Mandy Rae character and Enos Walker showed up in town with twenty keys of Peruvian flake and went into business. It sounded like they cornered the market for a while, and I can't help but think that's somehow connected. But I don't know what it's connected to. All I know is that nobody was trying to shoot me until I went looking for Walker. Which is a question I intend to explore at some length with Sissy Duval tomorrow." Then I paused. "You said you knew those people a little bit?"

"A little bit," she said. "Austin was sort of a large small town in those days. Everybody knew everybody. And you know I was a little crazy in those days."

"Someday we'll have to talk about those days."

"Someday," Betty said. "But first, your back. We can't have a hard-nosed private dick being chauffeured around by his lady friend. Takes some of the glamour out of it." Then she smiled tiredly.

"That's for damn sure." Then my cell phone buzzed in Betty's purse. She tossed it across the table, and I answered.

"Bueno," I said.

"Milo, you son of a bitch," Thursby said, "a fake Mexican accent doesn't get you off that easy. I've got two messages from one of my less esteemed colleagues up in Gatlin County, one Jacky Ryman, who says he's Richard Wylie Oates's lawyer and who is threatening to haul me before the bar for client interference. First question, who the hell is Richard Wylie Oates? And two, what should I tell his lawyer?"

"I suspect Oates is doing a lot of hard time because Ryman is a jerk," I said, "and tell the asshole that you've got a client who's willing to finance a malpractice suit against him. Then tell him to messenger his case files over or you'll subpoena them."

After a long silence, Thursby said, "You've learned a lot from me, Milo, and I've not yet noticed a bulge in my bank account."

"I'm having trouble with my back," I said.

"Fix it," Thursby said, then hung up.

I handed the cell phone to Betty. "Why don't you see if your friend can work me in this afternoon? It's bad enough that I'm stupid, I don't need to be crippled, too."

Cathy Scoggins lived in a high-dollar development off Bull Creek Road in a large limestone-and-glass house that sat on the top of a ridge with a view in all directions. "She didn't get this place practicing alternative medicine," I suggested as we pulled into the driveway behind a brand-new Lexus. "Or that rig."

"She's a witch," Betty said. "She married well, several times, and divorced even better."

"But she forgot to get any furniture out of the deal," I said as we walked in without ringing or knocking. Except for large pillows and small Oriental rugs, the hardwood floors ran unimpeded to the stone-and-glass walls.

"Furniture just gets in the way," came a voice from behind one of the pillows, then a small woman with a smoky halo of wild dark hair shot with gray and dressed only in a black bodysuit popped up, an agile shadow against the late afternoon sky. "I like to keep my life simple," the woman said.

She embraced Betty, shook my hand, then led us upstairs, where she not only didn't have much furniture – a massage table, a wet bar, and a Chinese armoire – she had almost no interior walls. Although I knew Cathy Scoggins was middle-aged, she looked like a hyperactive teenager. She stood under five feet tall, and obviously had the metabolism of a ninety-six-pound hummingbird. She ate like a horse, drank like a sailor, and smoked dope like a stove, but as far as I could tell, nothing had any effect on her. She probably chattered like a monkey when she talked in her sleep. When I hesitated to take off my underwear in front of her, she slapped me on the butt with a tiny hand, and said, "Milo, if I had as many pricks sticking out of me as I had stuck in me, I'd look like a porcupine, so drop your drawers, sailor, and climb on the table."

I grumbled as a giggling Betty helped me out of my shorts and onto the padded table, where I sat on the side, surly as a hungry bear and terribly aware of the large scar on my abdomen running like a crooked arrow from my bruised chest almost to my limp dick dangling from the gray hair of my crotch.

Cathy touched the scar lightly, the question in her dark eyes.

"Gutshot," I explained.

Within moments, Cathy had fired up a crystal glass bong, let me have three large tokes of terrific marijuana, rolled me onto my stomach with minimal effort, and with her nimble little fingers found every muscle in my lower back that was as sore as a boil.

"What the hell did they do to you?" Cathy said.

"A stun gun," I said.

"More than once, I'd say," she murmured.

"Nazi bastards," Betty muttered from the corner.

"Let me work out some of the knots first," Cathy said, then began working at my neck and shoulders with her strong, tiny hands. Minutes after my first sigh and almost so quickly and easily that I didn't really notice it, she had smoothed the tight muscles of my back and had a dozen needles or more sticking in various parts of my body. Then she stepped back to admire her work. "That should do it," Cathy said quietly as she rattled in the armoire. "How's it feel?"

"I can't feel a thing," I admitted grudgingly as I suddenly slipped toward a doze, sniffing at some sort of sweet smoke that wasn't marijuana. If only my hippie ex-partner could see me.

"No shit, Sherlock," Cathy said, laughing. "Remember. The old jokes are the best."

"Talk about porcupines," Betty said from the corner of the room, which was the last thing I remembered until I woke as Cathy removed the needles. I could swear that some of them didn't seem to want to be pulled out.

"What the hell?" I said as she pulled out the last two, which seemed even more reluctant than the others. I felt some sort of electric pull as my skin tented as Cathy lifted the needles.

"Hold still," Cathy said once the needles were out, moving her hands in the air over my back. "I'm sweeping your aura clean."

I probably wouldn't admit it, even under torture, but I felt something, a rippling of skin, a shifting of muscles as Cathy's tiny hands swept over my back.

"What color's his aura?" Betty asked after a stifled laugh.

"You don't want to know," Cathy said, then slapped me on the butt lightly.

"I'll be damned," I said as I sat up and swung my legs off the side of the table without help, an errant erection poking its wary head out of my crotch.

"You folks want me to leave you alone?" Cathy asked.

"Milo's on a case," Betty complained.

As quick as a dragonfly, Cathy's hand flew at my dick and thumped it with her middle finger as she might a watermelon. It throbbed once, then disappeared. "I hope that's not permanent," I said as I hopped off the table. Amazingly, not only was the pain in my back gone, but my chest didn't hurt much at all either. Even the nagging burn of the spent.25 round's path through my guts seemed eased. "I'll be a son of a bitch," I said.

"You'll be a dead son of a bitch," Cathy said quietly, "if you do too much of that cocaine."

"What?" I said, reaching for my clothes. Cathy pressed one finger lightly into my back behind the liver. I flinched as if she had stuck a knife in me.

"You haven't done too much blow, but it's a bit too close to pure to be completely safe. Where the hell did you get it? I haven't felt anything like that in years." I didn't think it was any of her business, so I didn't answer. Betty looked worried and started to say something. But Cathy continued quickly, "Doesn't matter. Just don't do too much, man, quit when it's gone, and don't be buying none of that shit they sell on the street these days. I'll see you next week. You'll be okay for a while, but your back's a real mess. So we need a couple more sessions."

"What do I owe you?" I asked as I slipped back into my clothes and boots.

"Stop being such a dour son of a bitch," Cathy said, glancing at Betty. "Life's too short to be taken that seriously."

"I'm Slavic," I said. "I'm supposed to be dour and serious."

"You feel more like a black Irishman to me," Cathy said, laughing.

"That's the American mongrel peeking through," I said.

"Wear something warm on your back for the next few days. A sweater or a down vest or something like that." I must have looked confused. Cathy pointed out the glass wall with the northern exposure. A dark band hovered on the horizon. "Cold rain by dark. Freezing rain by midnight."

"Thanks for the news."

"And the next time you want to talk to Sissy Duval," Cathy said, "call me, and I'll go along. She owes me big-time." I assumed that Cathy and Betty had been talking while I had my little nap.

"Owes you?"

"I fixed her orgasms," Cathy said without a smile.

"I'll keep that in mind," I said.

"So will I," Betty giggled from the corner.

"It's happy hour," Cathy said. "One martini never hurt anybody."

By the time we left, my back felt so good I climbed into the driver's seat without thinking about it. "Are you all right?" Betty asked.

"My back feels like the train wreck never happened."

"I was thinking about the three martinis," Betty said.

"Three martinis never hurt anyone my size," I assured her. "Besides, we've got a police escort." I nodded toward the unmarked car parked down the street from Cathy's driveway. We hadn't had any trouble losing the Gatlin County district attorney's investigator on the way to Huntsville, but as soon as we got back in range, the unmarked car latched on to our tail.

"What's wrong with your orgasms?" I asked as we drove away.

"Where'd you get the cocaine?" she replied.

"I took it off a dead man," I said, hoping she would take it as a joke, knowing she started having trouble with her orgasms after she killed the man who raped her.

The next morning Betty ran out to the ranch to check on her animals, so I slipped into the Lodge's airport van and rented a car when I got there. I didn't want Gatlin County following me when I called on Sissy Duval. No sense helping them make a case against me. I thought about picking up Cathy or the dead man's cocaine, but it wouldn't have mattered. Eldora answered my ring with a frown, as if she expected someone else.

"Mr. Electrolux. I don't know what you did to Mrs. Duval," she chattered nervously, blocking the doorway and making me stand in the cold rain, "but last time you paid her a visit, she spent the next three days in bed. Then decided she needed a vacation. She's gone away. On a long trip."

"Where?"

"None of your business," Eldora answered, an anxious smile flittering across her face. Then she tried to smirk, but that didn't fit either.

"Thanks," I grumbled, thinking I should have brought Hangas. Texas wasn't the South, but some people were still Southern.

"She say when she's coming back?"

"No, sir."

I realized that I'd have more luck squeezing gold from a whore's heart than getting Eldora to talk to me. So I went back to the rented Taurus. I waited in the plain brown sedan until Eldora, just as I expected with Sissy Duval gone, took off before lunch. I followed her new Ford station wagon to the HEB grocery store, then to a small, well-maintained frame house in West Travis Heights.

I called Carver D on my cell phone to leave a message for Hangas, asking him to take a gentle run at Eldora and a brief tour of the black community east of the Interstate for any word of Enos Walker.

"I'll run her through my machine," Carver D said, "and in half an hour, we'll know her whole life story."

"I don't need her life story. I just want to know where her boss is."

"Grist for the mill, Milo," Carver D sighed, then laughed.

"And if you can handle it," I said, "lend me fifty K for a couple of weeks. Put it into the Mad Dog's offshore account." Even though he lived like a hermit, Carver D was the last surviving member of a Texas family fortune based on those two popular commodities – pussy and politics – so unlike me he wouldn't have any trouble coming up with fifty K in clean money.

"I thought the fair Phillip had advised you to depart these fair climes," Carver D said.

"Yeah, but he didn't mean it."

"At his prices, man, he never says a word he doesn't mean."

"Tell Hangas I'll call him when I get back tonight."

"You going anyplace fun?"

"Someplace between Midland and Odessa, actually," I said. "Wherever that is."

"I know exactly where it is and I sure hope you enjoy it without hurting yourself," Carver D said, then hung up.

I sat in the car, watching the cold rain splatter against the windshield, then I tried Betty on her cell phone. But it was busy, and I didn't bother leaving a message. She was already deep enough in my troubles.

Since I couldn't find a lead on Sissy Duval, I thought I ought to pay a call on Paper Jack, who had insisted that he knew the Molly McBride woman and who, according to the Lodge desk clerk, lived between Midland and Odessa. I still felt good after Cathy's treatment, but not good enough to endure three hundred miles in the cold rain, so I went to the airport, dropped the rental car, hopped a shuttle to Dallas, changed planes, and landed at the Midland airport before dark. Just as the last light faded across the rain-dreary plain, I was parked in another rented car down the road from Jack Holbrook's house when he came home from his oil well supply company. Jack lived alone in a three-thousand-square-foot house setting on five of the barest acres I had ever seen a few miles northwest of the Interstate between Midland and Odessa. I waited long enough for Jack to get a drink in his stomach and a second one in his hand.

"Milo, what the hell are you doing here?" Jack asked when he opened the door to my knock. The old man had changed out of his suit and into a baggy jumpsuit, a tattered sweater, and heel-shot slippers.

"I hear there's nothing between here and the North Pole but a three-strand barbed wire fence. I want to get out of the cold and ask you a few questions about the other night."

"Talk to my lawyer, asshole," Jack growled, "because we're filing charges."

"Don't be an idiot," I said as I stepped around Jack's bulk. "And lead me to a drink."

Without too much grumbling, Jack led me to a large den at the back of the house. Jack flopped into a broken-backed La-Z-Boy. The room was crammed with fast-food debris and empty Wild Turkey bottles. A fuck movie played silently on a large-screen television standing in front of a gun case rack full of imported shotguns. I found a fairly clean glass and a dusty bottle of cheap Scotch on a battered sideboard.

"Trouble keeping a housekeeper, Jack?" I said as he raised the glass.

"Nobody wants to do a day's work for a day's pay anymore," Jack said without taking his eyes off the screen. "Fuckin' Meskins steal everything that isn't nailed down, widow-women want to marry my money, and the women from my wife's church keep trying to save my soul."

"How long's your wife been dead?"

"Since the day she died, asshole," Jack said.

"You said you knew that young woman at the bar the other night."

"I was drunk," Jack said. "Otherwise, I would have broken your back."

"You're not drunk now," I said standing over him. Perhaps the combination of drugs, pain, and legal peril had made my hair-trigger temper even more hairy. "And I've just gotten out of a train wreck, too, you old bastard."

Jack half-rose from the chair, then waved his hand as if it was too much trouble to get on his feet. "You're sure as hell on the prod," he said. "But you're damn near my age, Milo. You'll find out what it's like. Maybe it's time to walk easy."

"I don't have time to walk easy, Jack. Talk to me about the woman at the bar."

"I told you she was a whore," Jack said. "A fuckin' thousand-dollar piece of ass." Then Jack smiled slightly. "Damn near worth it, too, as I remember."

"Where'd you find her?"

"Not a clue," Jack said. "But it had to be someplace where they had gambling. Vegas, Lake Charles, Reno, Mobile. Any place but Indian reservation casinos; they're all run by some fucking guy named Guido Running Deer. That's about all I do these days. Drop five or ten grand at the tables, get drunk, then find a thousand-dollar hooker."

"How long ago was it?" I asked, thinking that Lake Charles rang some distant chime.

"Old lady's been gone three years," Jack whispered. "Had to be since then. After my heart attack, damned Edna wouldn't let me go to the pisser alone. Always thought I'd go before her… Life's a bitch, ain't it? And sometimes you don't die." Then Jack sat up straight. "How's your drink, ol' buddy? That's pretty shitty Scotch, ain't it? Let me get my clothes on, and we'll drift over to the Petroleum Club. Everything's top-shelf there."

I thought it over for at least a second. "Why the hell not? I can't get a flight out until tomorrow morning, anyway."

But it turned out to be a late afternoon hangover flight. I kept the lonely old man company through the evening hours in the ghostly climes of the Petroleum Club, then sat up listening to complaints about the oil business long past midnight, hoping he'd either pass out or remember where he'd met the McBride woman before he died. Or I did. But I didn't learn anything else.

Except to be reminded the next morning once again that hangovers at my age were crippling beasts. And airplanes were no place to endure them.

Hangas, the solid mass of his body perfectly draped in a tailored black suit that wasn't quite a chauffeur's uniform, met me at the gate when my flight arrived about dark-thirty. "You don't look all that chipper, Milo," Hangas said. "Can I buy you a couple of these overpriced airport drinks?"

"Let's go someplace where I can have a cigarette, too." I had called him before I climbed on the plane to see if he had talked to Eldora. He said he didn't have much to tell me, but he knew by the sound of my voice that I could use a lift.

Half an hour later, we were bellied up to the lobby bar at the Four Seasons Hotel, a place where we could talk in the anonymous crowd. Hangas, who had never completely recovered from a tour as a Marine guard at the embassy in Paris, had a glass of an estate bottled Haut-Medoc while I went back to the smoky hair of the Scotty dog that had bitten me.

"If Enos Walker's in town," Hangas said after he tasted the wine and nodded to the bartender, "nobody's seen him. And a lot of folks down here know him. From his basketball time. He was big stuff when he transferred down from Oklahoma City College. Until he went bad and got kicked off the team. According to his brother, the preacher."

"You get a chance to talk to Eldora?" I asked.

"That Mrs. Grace, she's one fine-looking woman," Hangas said, then paused to savor the wine.

"And about your age, too," I suggested.

"Perhaps a mite older and more serious than I prefer," Hangas said, smiling. "I'm too busy taking care of Mr. Carver and keeping an eye on my younger children to have time for any serious women."

"I thought your youngest two were already in college?"

"One at Rice, one at Baylor. But college is the most dangerous time," Hangas said seriously. "Waco one weekend, Houston the next, and I'm sort of involved…"

"Both places?" I said, but Hangas just smiled as serenely as a black Buddha. "So what did Eldora have to say?"

"Not much," Hangas allowed, "but I got the distinct feeling that she was a bit worried and didn't actually know where Mrs. Duval had gone."

"I don't like that."

"I don't think Eldora does either," Hangas said. "You want me to ask her again tomorrow?"

"Day after tomorrow," I said. "If she's really worried, you'll know for sure."

"Sounds good to me," Hangas said as he finished the wine. "Mr. Carver says you're in some deep shit. If there's anything I can do, please don't forget to call."

"Thanks for the ride," I said. "I'll get the drinks, then grab a cab."

Hangas nodded politely, then eased through the crowd as easily as a shade in spite of his size. I had another before I settled the check, slightly surprised that Hangas's glass of wine had cost almost twenty dollars.

"Good price for a glass of wine," I said to the bartender. "Grapes mashed by virgin feet?"

"Some folks have taste -" the bartender started to say.

"Right," I interrupted, "but usually they pay for their own drinks."

"- but Mr. Hangas has great taste," he added with a gentle laugh.

When I taxied back to the Lodge, I found Betty in my room, wearing a silk nightgown I'd never seen, and propped up on my king-size bed, drinking Negra Modelo out of the bottle and eating shredded beef taquitos as she watched a rented movie.

"Looks like you've adjusted nicely to the twentieth century," I said as I kicked my boots off.

"It's not that I don't like it," Betty said. "It just wears me out sometimes."

"You mean you'd rather chop kindling for the cookstove and pump a Coleman lantern for light," I said flopping beside her, "than call room service."

"Most of the time," she said. "You remember calling me last night?"

"I don't recommend knee-walking nostalgic drunks more than once or twice a year," I advised. "I was homesick."

"I could tell," she said. "You must have asked me a dozen times to go to Montana with you. But not until spring."

"And what did you say?"

"Maybe. If you're not in prison," she said. "Or working some idiot case."

"Thanks," I said, slipping my arm under her neck and my mouth next to her ear, a new easiness between us. "Anybody call but me?"

"Fucking phone rang all day long," she said. "Until I finally turned it off. My Uncle Trav and Phil Thursby want you to call them at their offices tomorrow. Something about money."

"What?"

"Uncle Trav said he wanted to talk to you about that investment thing and Phil wanted a retainer."

"Wonderful."

"And some guy named Renfro wanted you to call him back no matter what time you got in. He said it was very important."

"Renfro? I don't know anybody by that name. He say what he wanted?"

"He said he couldn't say over the telephone," Betty said, then reluctantly added, "he claims to be a friend of Sissy Duval's. A good friend."

"I expect Sissy's got loads of good friends," I said, snuggling closer to Betty's soft, warm body.

"This one sounded more like her hairdresser than her boyfriend."

"Maybe I'll call him. Tomorrow. Maybe he's got work for me," I said. "I don't seem to be making any money working for myself."

"And some woman who wouldn't leave her name wants you to find somebody for her. But she wouldn't say who," Betty said. "She said she'll keep calling."

"Just what I need. More clients."

"You just use your clients as an excuse to be nosy," Betty said. "And me as a place to relieve your hangovers."

"Not every time," I said as I slipped the gown off her small breasts. "Not every time."

"Okay," she said, chuckling as she slipped the rest of the way out of the gown. "Just this once." Then she paused, naked in my arms. "I know you hate this," she added softly, "but we have to talk about the Molly McBride thing…"

"She conned me," I said. "I fucked her, and it nearly cost me what's left of my life. What's left to talk about?"

"Well," Betty said as she rolled away, then spooned against me, as if it was easier to talk to the drapes than me. "I slept with her five or six times…"

I clenched my tongue between my teeth to keep silent. "How'd it start?"

"At a meeting of the Preservation Society," Betty said. "She asked me for some background over a drink… and as soon as you came back from Montana you dove back into this idiot detective thing, and we seemed to be in the midst of an endless and silent fight, so much for so long, I guess I'd given up on us, and one thing led to another. I guess you know how it was."

"Yeah, unfortunately."

"You knew that I'd done it before… during the bad times… But this was different. More intense. At first, I felt terrifically guilty," Betty said, "so I was a bitch. Then I convinced myself that you were leaving, so I didn't feel guilty at all, which made me even more bitchy."

"I guess I should have noticed."

"Listen, I love you," she said, "and I know you love me. I even love the way we love each other. But I hate the life you live."

"I'm sorry," I said, meaning it, "but it's the only life I've always enjoyed, the only one I can bear to live. And it's far too late to change. But you were half-right about one thing."

"What's that?" she asked, the sneer loud in her voice.

"This bar thing was a mistake," I said.

"Well, that's wonderful news," she said. "Since I told you not to go into business with my uncle."

"Only once," I said, but she didn't smile. "And it's not him," I continued. "I'm used to being at home in a bar, and the people who come in here aren't my people. I got tired of them and taking care of business. I guess I felt that I had to go back to my kind of work or roll over and die."

"And it nearly killed you," she said sharply.

"Ah, fuck it," I said, thinking our moment had passed, and began to disentangle myself from her.

But she turned, rolled into my arms, weeping, and said, "No. Fuck me."

Afterward, I slumped into a brief nap, then woke out of a dream I couldn't remember, the hangover still jangling through my nerve sheaths. So I eased out of bed and into my clothes, then picked up the cell phone and Renfro's number, and went down to the bar, had a drink, then returned the call.

Renfro showed up so quickly, I suspected he had been waiting in his car outside the Lodge. He was a tall, bulky, but slightly effete man who couldn't talk without fluttering hands and a nervous giggle.

"So Sissy is an old friend of mine, you know," he said as he pulled up a stool next to mine, "and she asked this favor, you know, so I said yes. I'd go by myself, but she insisted I bring you along for protection."

"Protection? From what?"

"It didn't make much sense, really. She said somebody's been following her," Renfro said, "and now that she's shaken the tail, she just wants to go away." Renfro patted a large envelope in his inside overcoat pocket. "And not come back for a while, you know." Then he spread five hundred-dollar bills in front of my drink. "She said to give you this. Okay?"

"How'd she get hold of you?"

"Called me at work on my cell phone," Renfro said. "From a pay phone, I think," he added. "She was worried about bugs on her phones."

"Should be all right," I said. "Okay, I'll go with you. I've got a bone to pick with her."

"You want to talk to her?"

"She fucking lied to me."

Renfro laughed. "If every man Sissy had lied to got to talk to her, it'd wear the hide off her little pink ears, you know." Then he laughed again. "She did mention something about that, though."

"Good. I'll hold the money," I said, "and if she wants it, she has to talk to me."

"I suppose that's okay."

"So where are we supposed to meet her?" I asked, then finished my drink.

"I'm not supposed to tell you that," Renfro said, "until we're there."

"We'll take my ride. We have to make a stop at my gun locker on the way."

"What for?"

"Well, it seems that I've pissed off somebody around here," I said, "so I'm not going off in the darkness with somebody I don't know without a Kevlar vest and my favorite piece under my arm."

"Wonderful," Renfro said, laughing and clapping his large hands. "I haven't played with guns since sixty-eight." I raised an eyebrow. "I was a company clerk with the Marines in Hue during Tet. We were all on the line. Even the cooks. We beat their asses silly that time, you know, had the war won, then the politicians sold us out. Chicken fuckers."

"That was a long time ago," I said, "and I'll bet you haven't fired a round since then."

"You'd win the bet," Renfro said, then shoved the five bills at me again. "Sissy told me she owed you at least this much. The price of her lie." Then he pulled the envelope out of his coat and handed it to me. "This is her getaway money."

"I wonder where she's going?" I said.

"Not very far," Renfro said, laughing as he stood up. "It's only ten grand, and a woman with Sissy's tastes can't get very far on that."