Phantom Banjo (14 page)

The old Brose Willie used to know would have
made some remark but the one in the fez just looked uncomfortable
and nodded. The last stragglers from the reception sat in their
thrumming cars, patiently awaiting entrance to the highway while
Brose and Willie walked toward the truck, the wind whipping up dust
and dandelion fluff, old leaves and new bugs, filling the air with
ozone and a whiff of smoke—too much for a trash fire—maybe a big
brushfire from a roadside clearance project.

They followed Burt's Mustang and the van
shared by the other three farther away from the center of town, out
toward Lake Austin. They reached one of the new shopping centers
and a condo development in which each unit looked like someplace
Shakespeare could have lived, except that it was cloned several
hundred times over and stacked and bunched together. Somehow among
all of these, down three roads, past linear acres of parking lot,
two swimming pools, and a golf course, Burt turned into a parking
spot and motioned them to park opposite, next to what would
probably soon be yet more condos but was presently a baseball
diamond.

Willie didn't much care what they did. He had
caught up enough on his sleep that he could keep his eyes open, but
the world was still as blurry as if he'd had too much to drink and
his bones felt like so many cooked noodles.

He tried to figure out what the hell it was
he was doing here, driving up to a Tudor tract house in the middle
of Texas with a black ex-blues man in a fez and a couple of
accordion players.

A woman with yards of model-quality legs
stretching from the hem of her cutoffs to the mottled carpet looked
up from her vacuuming when they came in. "Hah there, swee'pea," she
greeted Burt in a thick West Texas twang. Then she saw the rest of
them. "Brose," she said, "how you bin? The kids are out messin'
with that flop-eared dawg you give us."

Brose grinned. Willie shook his head in
wonder. Brose had changed his style but not much else.

"Honey, you seen my Croatian songbook?
Funniest thing happened today ..." Burt's voice rose above the
greetings of the others. For the first time Willie noticed that his
accent wasn't Texan. There'd been so many people from the East move
in a few years ago, when computers first became a big thing. Then
the bottom dropped out of oil and a whole big segment of the Texan
population migrated elsewhere, some of them to the East, so accents
were more homogenized than they had once been. Evvie-Ann
high-stepped across her vacuum cleaner to a big hutch meant for
fancy dishes but filled with books.

"I think it's in here, sweetie pie. And, oh,
look, this here come in the mail for you today. Them're the guys
you played with back in Pittsburgh, aren't they?"

She brushed a lank lock of dishwater-blond
hair from her forehead with her hand, leaving a dark smudge on her
brow. Burt meticulously removed the staple from a
dot-matrix-printed flyer photocopied onto flimsy white paper.

"Yeah. Brose, you knew some of these guys,
didn't you? Josh Grisholm, Sam Hawthorne, that Buchanan woman that
used to be in all those protest marches? They're having a sort of
memorial concert for them next week."

"Sure 'nuff?"

"Yessir. Looks like a big deal. God, I wish I
could go. My old band, the Povatitsas, are going to play, and a
bunch of the other ethnic bands, Italian, Irish, Fillipino,
American Indian. And whoever survived the crash and whoever else
they can talk into coming I guess."

Brose caught Willie's eye. "Let me have a
look at that, will you, Burt?"

* * *

Crazy Ruthie the Dog Lady allowed as how she
might like that Brose fellow, but she'd had enough of silly Willie
for a while and who the hell was the woman Sam Hawthorne had called
after he was dead?

Gussie didn’t look pleased to be interrupted
in the middle of her story, but Crazy Ruthie was so used to people
not looking pleased at her she didn't even notice. "I want to know
what kind of a nut gets crank calls from people claiming to be dead
and then goes back to sleep?"

"Whaddayou care?" Pete asked. "You ain't had
a bed or a phone since you can remember."

"That's got nothin' to do with it."

"Why don't you shut up and
let Gussie talk?" Tony asked. He hadn't been feeling so good lately
and the gentle smile was more often a snarl, except while he was
listening
to the story. "You 're nothin'
but a flea-bitten old bitch, you pain in the ass."

Crazy Ruthie said she would sic her dogs on
him when she saw him again and Pete hollered at both of them but
Gussie said, "That's it."

"What?" everybody asked.

"I was tryin' to decide how to tell you about
Anna Mae Gunn and that's what a lot of people said about her. Not
old, not flea-bitten, but maybe a hard-bitten bitch, and absolutely
and quite intentionally a pain in the ass. General Mortimor Boron,
who was her friend Sylvia's boss, hated her. So did her own boss,
but he was better at keeping secrets since he was by way of being
in the secret-keeping business, so he was smarmy nice to her in
spite of not being able to stand her."

"Well, if she was such a pain why did Sam
want her to organize the whing-ding?" Crazy Ruthie challenged with
her chin stuck out so it almost touched her nose.

"Yeah, if first Mark, then Willie had his
banjo, why didn't Sam ask one of them to do it?" Pete demanded.

"Dummy," Tony said, "Sam was dead. He knew
that first boy he gave the banjo to was dead."

"That must have been it," Gussie said.
"Thanks, Tony. Of course, Sam would have known since they'd be dead
together and everything. And he'd never ask Willie MacKai. Willie's
a nice enough fellow in his own way but he was doin' good to
organize himself into openin' a pack of smokes, much less
organizin' anybody else. And Sam wasn't the kind of man who got to
know everybody real well and earlier in his life, somehow, he'd
gotten to know Anna Mae Gunn. She would never win any popularity
contests, but she had organized the Annapolis festival for three
years running and done a little agenting on the side, besides being
a fine singer of Native American chants. And she was tough and
thorough and a large part paranoid, which was a very sensible way
to be in those days and qualified her real well for the job, though
even she couldn’t have known just who was watching her movements
and just how interested they would be."

* * *

General Boron didn't know much about Anna Mae
but he didn't like small, dark, foreign-looking women on principle.
Never mind that Anna Mae's darkness was because she was half Native
American. She was always swift and sharp, didn't smile much, and
had a hysterical intensity that let the General know without ever
talking to her much that she was a troublemaker. His secretary,
Sylvia, was more what a woman ought to be, tall and elegant and
silver-blond. What she saw in that skinny rubber band of a woman he
had no idea. So he was both interested and annoyed when the Gunn
woman popped into the office and handed Sylvia something and Sylvia
went to the copy machine. He casually made a trip to the latrine,
and on the way glanced at what was emerging from the machine. As he
expected, it wasn't official business.

He'd have to discuss this with Sylvia. The
Gunn woman was messed up in some kind of Indian squabble a few
years back and she was subversive. He couldn't see why Brett kept
her around. She was a goddamn spy and he was sure of it. When he
read the flier, he was even surer, and he called Brett at once.

The call was interrupted by Sylvia, who
wanted to know what the invoice for all the gasoline and gelignite
was for. "Field maneuvers," he told her shortly.

Too damn bad but something would have to be
done about Sylvia too. The General grabbed his hat and left the
office, strolling casually down the mall until he reached an
outdoor pay phone and dialed a coded number. "Nick? Boron. I've
found something that relates to that little project of ours. My
secretary and some friend of hers are behind it. I think it's a
matter for the civilian authorities though. You got a man? Good,
good. Glad to be of service. Have 'em fire off a round for me."

CHAPTER 8

A kid stood loitering by the fence post where
the corduroy road turned off from the county road to Brose's place.
The kid had a shaved head with some kind of drawing on it, and wore
jeans with no shirt or shoes.

Brose leaned out the window. "Hey, Morris,
what's goin' on? Need a lift?"

"Oh, I coulda got me a lift, okay. In a cop
car. Just thought you might like to know, my man, that the heat's
down at your place. Somethin' about a horse and some dude who—" He
peered around at Willie. "Uh—just thought you needed to know."

Brose picked up the pistol Willie had brought
with him and began inspecting it while he thought. "You come down
here alone?" he asked Morris.

"Naw, me and Bubba and Joe-Ed got a ride from
South Congress, thought we'd come see you just for the hell of
it."

"You know the drill. Where the feed is, the
medicine. Me'n Willie gotta go do something. You guys stick around
and take care of the critters?"

"Well, sure but . . ."

"Don't eat everything in the fridge and be
sure and belt the damned thing back up, okay?"

"Okay."

"You got any money on you?"

"Some."

"How much?"

"Angie's new squeeze laid fifty on me to get
lost."

"Lay it on me and get lost here."

"Rent?"

"A loan. Snot-nose kid like you don't need
fifty dollareses nohow."

Willie had been quiet through all of
this. Brose looked back and in the shadow of the cab saw Willie's
eyes flicker, shining like those of a cornered fox. He caught
Brose's glance and rubbed his jaw with one hand. "Sorry to drag you
into this, pal. Fact of the matter is, though, I'm not sure
how
I
got into it.. Or what
it is. I cannot believe the police saw that wreck and saw Mark's
body and assumed I had something to do with his death. What the
hell do they think I did, pulled him out of the wreck, then bopped
him with a blunt object? Why? I mean, maybe that rattler was right
and givin' him a drink wasn't exactly recommended in the first-aid
book but hell, I didn't know nothin' about it and I sure didn't
know he was so bad hurt. Besides, I just poured the stuff for him,
not down him."

Brose nodded and didn't say anything more
until they were halfway across East Texas. Part of the reason he
didn't was that Willie had gone back to sleep, his chin sinking
into his chest until he caught himself suddenly and threw his head
back, snorting, where it lolled against the back of the seat. Brose
kept the CB tuned to the police channels but heard nothing. They
hadn't exactly talked about where they were going but Baltimore
seemed as good a place as any. Brose knew a woman who might help
them out. Willie no doubt knew several more. The important thing
was to get there in one piece. People had gotten killed coming and
going to festivals a lot these days. That's what this one seemed to
be all about.

He took the back roads and drove throughout
the night, then woke Willie up.

"Let's pull into an all-night grocery
someplace before you go to sleep," Willie suggested. "Get us some
coffee. In case they have my picture on TV. Shit, when I think of
all the times I wanted my picture on TV and then to get it this
way. Hell of a time to suddenly get photogenic."

They sat in the truck and drank the first cup
of coffee before Brose returned to the store for a second cup,
which he handed to Willie. "Thanks, buddy. No more for you?"

"I'm goin' to sleep. 'Sides, that shit's bad
for your blood pressure, or ain't you gettin' old like the rest of
us?"

"Older by the minute," he said. "You got any
tapes in here?"

"Glove box."

"Bother you if I play one?"

"Nope."

He popped a tape into the player. It got
halfway through the first number before the singer's voice deepened
and slurred. Brose tried to pop it but it wouldn't budge. When it
finally did, tape looped across his hand in a bright brown ribbon.
He threw it on the floor and kept driving.

They changed places many more times before
hitting the outskirts of Baltimore two days later, somewhere around
four in the morning, when they saw the hitchhiker.

Willie's first impulse was to stop and pick
up the wet, weary-looking woman. His second impulse was to forget
it. He did not really believe Mark was dead, though he had seen the
body, seen the wreck. He did not really believe a rattlesnake had
accused him of murder and an ornery horse had carried him to meet a
whore who was apparently part of some grand conspiracy. He did not
honestly believe his problem with the police was anything that
couldn't be cleared up by knowing the right people or that Lenny
would be even angry enough to fire him once he understood that none
of it had been his own fault, that all this stuff just seemed to
happen—if it had happened, and if it hadn't, there was nothing to
explain, was there? Except how was he out here on the road to
Baltimore with a man he hadn't seen in three years, a banjo, a gun,
and a collection of broken Styrofoam coffee cups and paper nacho
trays? Whatever was going on, dream or real, he wasn't entirely
sure he was ready for the next installment.

But the headlight beam threw into harsh
relief the drooping blond head and the shoulders slumped under the
weight of a backpack. And as he drove a little ways past, he
thought there was something familiar about the woman, which,
considering the number of women he'd known at one time or another,
wasn't too unlikely. So he pulled over and honked. Brose roused,
mumbling. In the rearview mirror Willie watched the woman's head
snap up and the way she shifted the wet backpack as she broke into
a run.