High Hunt (33 page)

I didn't see Stan until the next weekend. I'm not sure why, but I think I was avoiding him. When I called to make sure he was home, I got the distinct impression that he'd have preferred to keep it that way, but it was too late then.

He was growing a mustache, and it made his face look dirty. Stan didn't have the kind of face you'd want to put a mustache on. And instead of one of the usual sober-colored, conservative sport shirts I'd always seen him in, he was wearing a loud checkered wool shirt—outdoorsy as all hell, and on him about as phony as a nine-dollar bill.

“Well, Dan,” he said with a nervous joviality, “how the hell have you been?” As if he hadn't seen me in ten years, for God's sake.

“Fair, Stan. Just fair.”

We went on into his tidy little living room.

“How's old Cal?”

“He's coming along. His doctor's got him on a short schedule and cut him off on booze and cigarettes.”

“He gave me a damn bad scare up there, the poor bastard.”

What the hell was all this?

He fidgeted around a little, and our conversation was pretty sketchy. I wasn't sure what this he-man role he was playing
was all about, but I desperately wanted to tell him that it wasn't coming off very well.

“Oh,” he said, “I've been fixing up the den. I wanted you to see it.” He led me back to the room he'd identified as the study the last time I'd been there.

He'd redone the place in early musket ball. The rifle and his shotgun were hanging on the wall where they could collect dust, and there were hunting prints hanging all over the place. I could see copies of
Field and Stream
and
The American Rifleman
scattered around with a studied carelessness. The place looked like a goddamn movie set.

“I'm having that buck's head mounted,” he said. “How do you think it would look right there?” He pointed to a place that had obviously been left empty for the trophy.

“Ought to be OK, Stan,” I told him.

We went back into the living room and I listened to him come on like the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway for about a half hour or so.

Then Monica came in and suddenly it all fell into place.

“Did you pick up the beer like I asked you to?” he said to her, his voice cocked like a gun.

“Yes, Stan,” she said—rather meekly, I thought.

“Why don't you open a couple for Dan and me?”

“Of course,” she said and went on back out to the kitchen.

I watched Stan, who had never smoked, light a cigar. I wanted to tell him that he was overplaying it, but I wasn't sure how to go about it.

I sat around for another half hour or so, listening to him swear and give Monica orders, and then I'd had a gutful of the whole thing. I made an excuse and got away from them.

I suppose that what made the whole thing so pathetic was the fact that it was all so completely unnecessary. After her little misjudgment with McKlearey, Monica would have been pretty docile even without his big hairy-chested routine. Stan was saddling himself with the necessity of playing a role for the rest of his life. He'd get better at it as time went on. In a few years he might even get to the point where he believed it himself, but I don't think he'd ever really be comfortable with it.

I picked up Clydine and told her about it as we drove back on across town to my place.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I can't do a damn thing,” I said. “I sure as hell can't tell
him that McKlearey got to Monica, and that's the only way I could convince him that this act of his isn't the thing that put him in the driver's seat.”

“But if this is so unnatural for him,” she objected, “he's really no better off than he was before, is he?”

“No,” I said, “he isn't. He's still in a box—it's just a different box, that's all.”

“But you ought to be able to do something,” she said.

“Hell, Rosebud,” I said, “I didn't hire on as God. Last time I tried to walk on water, I got wetter than hell.”

She crossed her arms and glowered straight ahead. “I still think there's
something
you could do,” she said. “It's just awful to think about what they'll have to go through for all the rest of their lives.”

“Well,” I said in my best Hemingway manner, “don't think about it then.”

She didn't catch the allusion, and so she was angry with me for being an insensitive clod. You can't win.

When we got to my place, she was still steamed, so we sat around listening to records and not talking to each other. She sure could be stubborn when she wanted to be.

Then Cal called. “Dan,” he said, “I just got a call from one of the bartenders on the Avenue, and he said he just saw McKlearey.”

“No shit? I thought he'd blown town.”

“I really don't much give a damn what he does,” Cal said, “but I sure as hell want to get that goddamn pistol back from him. I could write it off on the three days' pay I owe him from the car lot, but the paper has got to be straightened out.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I see what you mean.”

“Are you busy right now? I tried to get hold of Jack, but he's out delivering a camper trailer.”

“What do you need?” I asked him, glancing at Clydine. She still wasn't looking at me.

“Somebody's gonna have to run him down—somebody who knows the score. I can't get away until later, and I'm afraid he'll go back in his hole before then.”

“You want me to find him?”

“Right. Just tell him to come by the shop. I want him to pick up all this shit of his anyway—and tell me what he wants done with his goddamn deer.”

“Which way was he going?”

“God, I really don't know.”

“I'll just have to hunt him down then, I guess,” I said.

“Thanks a lot, Dan.”

“Sure, Cal.”

I hung up and went back to the dinky little living room.

“Do you want to play private detective?” I asked her.

She brooded for a minute or so, probably trying to decide whether it would be more fun to keep sulking or to find out what I was talking about. I couldn't quite make up my mind whether I wanted to give her a good solid spanking or a big kiss right on the end of her little snoot.

“What do you have in mind?” she finally asked, not really wanting to give up the good pout she had going.

“We've got to go find McKlearey,” I told her.

“Old Creepy-Jarhead himself?”

“That's our man,” I told her. “He's got a hot gun, and we've gotta get to him before the fuzz do or before he pulls a caper with it. Our client would find that pretty embarrassing.” I lit a cigarette and squinted at her through the smoke.

“Have you been watching television?” She laughed, unable to help it.

“It's a big case, baby,” I said, putting the Bogart accent on even more thickly. “Every shamus in town would give his eyeteeth to get a piece of the action.”

“OK, Knuckles,” she said toughly, standing up and hitching up her blue jeans. “Let's go run down the subject. We gonna rub 'im out when we find 'im?”

“Not unless we have to,” I said. “You got your .38 handy?”

She took a deep breath, cocked one eyebrow at me, and gave me a long stare over her upthrusting frontage. “I've always got
my
38 handy,” she said.

“You nut,” I laughed. “Let's go.”

We went out to my car and began bar hopping back down the Avenue toward town. Some of the bartenders knew McKlearey and some didn't, so it was pretty hit and miss. I still wasn't sure which way Lou was going, and I couldn't be sure if he was still on the Avenue or if he'd cut on over toward Parkland or what.

“We'll try the Patio, and then I'll do what I should have done in the first place,” I said.

“What's that, Knucks?” she said.

“Go back to my place and use the phone and the yellow pages.”

“Clever,” she said. “I can see how you got your rep as the best private nose in the business.”

“Eye, baby. It's private eye—not nose.”

“Whatever,” she said and then laughed. I guess she'd gotten over her mad.

Lou was at the Patio. He was sitting in a booth alone, with a pitcher of beer in front of him. His left arm was in a sling, and his hand had a professional-looking bandage on it.

“Hey, there, Lou,” I said with a heartiness I didn't really feel. “How the hell have you been?”

He looked up at me, his eyes kind of flat, as always.

I introduced him to Clydine, and he invited us to join him. He had that gun on him. I didn't see it, but I could almost smell it on him. I wished to hell I hadn't brought my little Bolshevik along.

“Where in hell have you been, Lou?” I asked him after the bartender brought the pitcher I'd ordered. “Nobody's seen you since the hunt.”

Something happened back behind his flat, empty eyes. Suddenly he was all buddy-buddy, friendly as a pup.

“Christ, man,” he said, “I been in the goddamn
hospital
.” He waved his bandaged hand at me. “I picked up a damn good case of blood poisoning in this thing.”

“No shit?” I said. “I knew it was giving you some trouble, but I never even thought about blood poisoning.”

“Hell,” he said, “I had a red streak an inch wide goin' up my arm all the way to the armpit. Man, I was flat outa my head by the time I got to that VA hospital up in Seattle.”

“So
that's
why you took off so fast,” I said, helping him along.

“Shit, yes, man,” he said. “I was about halfway outa my skull even up there—with the fever and all. I knew damn well I was gonna have to get to a doctor in a hurry.”

“Christ, Lou,” I said, “you should have said something.”

“I didn't think it was that bad at first.”

Clydine was watching him closely, not saying anything. I think she was trying to fit Lou into all the things I'd told her about him.

I passed Sloane's message on to him, and he said he'd take care of it.

“Hell,” he said, “as far as that deer goes, you guys can just go ahead and split it up. I don't care that much about venison myself.”

“I suppose we could give it to Carter,” I said. “After all, he didn't get to go.”

“Hey, there's a good idea. Why don't you just give it to Carter?”

“Tell Sloane when you drop by the shop,” I told him, nailing down that point again. I wasn't sure how much it was going to take to separate Lou from that gun. “Oh, Cal says to tell you he'll let you have the pistol for what he owes you from the lot, but he's gotta get the paper on it straightened out.”

That seemed to make Lou feel even better. He got positively expansive.

After about a half hour Clydine had to make a run to the ladies' room.

“I bet I acted pretty fuckin' funny up there, huh?” Lou said while she was gone.

“You weren't raving or anything,” I said carefully, “but sometimes you didn't make too much sense.”

“It was the fuckin' fever,” he said. “You know, from the blood poisoning. I can only remember about half of what went on up there.”

“Hell,” I said, “it's lucky you were even able to walk, as sick as you were.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I was pretty far gone, all right. I bet I
said
a lotta wild stuff, too, huh?”

“Most of it was pretty garbled,” I said. I was walking right on the edge and about all I had to defend myself with was a ballpoint pen.

“Guy'll say fuckin' near
anything
when he's out of his head like that, won't he?”

“Hell, man,” I said, “you were having screaming nightmares, and you were talking to yourself and everything. I'm not kidding, old buddy, we thought you were cracking up.”

He laughed. “I'll bet it scared the piss outa you guys, huh?”

“Shit! We were waiting for you to start frothing at the mouth and biting trees.”

“Yeah, I was really gone,” he said. “Did I ever say anything about the Delta?” He asked it very casually—too casually.

“Nothing that made any sense,” I said. “You said something about how you used to think about snow when you were out there.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I remember that—not too well, of course, but I remember it. Did I mention any names while I was out my head?”

“I think so,” I said, “but I didn't really catch them.”

Clydine came back.

“I'm gonna blow this town,” Lou said. “Winter's comin' and the rain bugs me.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it can get pretty gloomy around here.”

“And I gotta work outside, too. I can't cut bein' penned up inside. I think I'll cut out for Texas or Florida or someplace. I just came back today to get my gear together.”

“Be nice down South this time of year,” I agreed. “Make sure you see Sloane before you go though, huh? He's pretty worried about it.”

“Sure,” he said, emptying his glass. “Hey, tell Jack I'm sorry about givin' 'im such a hard time up there, huh? Chances are I won't get a chance to see 'im before I take off.”

“Sure, Lou,”

“I probably won't ever be comin' back up here again,” he said. “That probably ain't gonna hurt some guys' feelin's.”

“Oh,” I lied, “you haven't been all
that
bad, Lou.”

He laughed, the same harsh raspy laugh as always. “Look,” he said, “I'm gonna have to take off—if I'm gonna see Sloane and all. Just forget anything I said up there, huh—about the Delta or anything, OK?”

“What Delta?” I said.

He grinned at me. “You're OK, Danny—too bad we didn't get to know each other better.” He stood up quickly. I could see the bulge of the gun under his jacket. “I gotta run. You take care now, huh?”