Portraits and Observations (61 page)

I showered, set a bottle of brandy beside my bed, climbed under the covers, took the telephone off the night table, nestled it on my stomach, and dialed the Oregon number that I had been given. Jake’s son answered; he said his father was out, he wasn’t sure where and didn’t know when to expect him. I left a message for Jake to call as soon as he came home, no matter the hour. I filled my mouth with all the brandy it could hold, and rinsed it around like a mouthwash, a medicine to stop my teeth from chattering. I let the brandy trickle down my throat. Sleep, in the curving shape of a murmuring river, flowed through my head; in the end, it was always the river; everything returned to it. Quinn may have provided the rattlesnakes, the fire, the nicotine, the steel wire; but the river had inspired those deeds, and now it had claimed Addie, too. Addie: her hair, tangled in watery undergrowths, drifted, in my dream, across her wavering drowned face like a bridal veil.

An earthquake erupted; the earthquake was the telephone, rumbling on my stomach where it had still been resting when I dozed off. I knew it was Jake. I let it ring while I poured myself a guaranteed eye-opener.

TC:
Jake?

JAKE:
So you finally made it back stateside?

TC:
This morning.

JAKE:
Well, you didn’t miss the wedding, after all.

TC:
I got your letter. Jake—

JAKE:
No. You don’t have to make a speech.

TC:
I called Mrs. Connor. Marylee. We had a long talk—

JAKE
(alertly): Yeah?

TC:
She told me everything that happened—

JAKE:
Oh, no she didn’t! Damned if she did!

TC
(jolted by the harshness of his response): But, Jake, she said—

JAKE:
Yeah
. What did she say?

TC:
She said it was an accident.

JAKE:
You believed that?

TC:
From what she told me, it seems the only explanation.

JAKE:
She doesn’t know what happened. She wasn’t
there
. She was sitting on her butt reading magazines.

TC:
Well, if it was Quinn—

JAKE:
I’m listening.

TC:
Then he must be a magician.

JAKE:
Not necessarily. But I can’t discuss it just now. Soon, maybe. A little something happened that might hasten matters. Santa Claus came early this year.

TC:
Are we talking about Jaeger?

JAKE:
Yessir, the postmaster got his package.

TC:
When?

JAKE:
Yesterday. (He laughed, not with pleasure but excitement, released energy) Bad news for Jaeger but good news for me. My plan was to stay up here till after Thanksgiving. But boy, I was going nuts. All I could hear was slamming doors. All I could think was: Suppose he doesn’t go after Jaeger? Suppose he doesn’t give me that one last chance? Well, you can call me at the Prairie Motel tomorrow night. Because that’s where I’ll be.

TC:
Jake, wait a minute. It has to have been an accident. Addie, I mean.

JAKE
(unctuously patient, as though instructing a retarded aborigine): Now I’ll leave you with something to sleep on.

Sandy Cove, where this “accident” occurred, is the property of a man named A. J. Miller. There are two ways to reach it. The shortest way is to take a back road that cuts across Quinn’s place and leads straight to Miller’s ranch. Which is what the ladies did.

Adios, amigo.

Naturally, the something he had left me to sleep on kept me sleepless until daybreak. Images formed, faded; it was as though I were mentally editing a motion picture.

Addie and her sister are in their car driving along the highway. They turn off the highway and onto a dirt road that is part of the B.Q. Ranch. Quinn is standing on the veranda of his house; or perhaps watching from a window: whenever, however, at some point he spies the trespassing car, recognizes its occupants, and guesses that they are headed for a swim at Sandy Cove. He decides to follow them. By car? or horseback? afoot? Anyway, he approaches the area
where the women are bathing by a round-about route. Once there, he conceals himself among the shady trees above Sandy Cove. Marylee is resting on a towel reading magazines. Addie is in the water. He hears Addie tell her sister: “I’m going to swim around the bend and sit on the waterfall.” Ideal; now Addie will be unprotected, alone, out of her sister’s view. Quinn waits until he is certain she is playfully absorbed at the waterfall. Presently, he slides down the embankment (the same embankment the searching Marylee later used). Addie doesn’t hear him; the splashing waterfall covers the sound of his movements. But how can he avoid her eyes? For surely, the instant she sees him, she will acknowledge her danger, protest, scream. No, he obtains her silence with a gun. Addie hears something, looks up, sees Quinn swiftly striding across the ridge, revolver aimed—he shoves her off the waterfall, plunges after her, pulls her under, holds her there: a final baptism.

It was possible.

But daybreak, and the beginning noise of New York traffic, lessened my enthusiasm for fevered fantasizing, briskly dropped me deep into that discouraging abyss—reality. Jake was without choice: like Quinn, he had set himself a passionate task, and his task, his human duty, was to prove that Quinn was responsible for nine indecent deaths, particularly the death of a warm, companionable woman he had wanted to marry. But unless Jake had evolved a theory more convincing than my own imagination had managed, then I preferred to forget it; I was satisfied to fall asleep remembering the coroner’s common-sense verdict:
Accidental death by drowning
.

An hour later I was wide awake, a victim of jet lag. Awake but weary, fretful; and hungry, starved. Of course, due to my prolonged absence, the refrigerator contained nothing edible. Soured milk, stale bread, black bananas, rotten eggs, shriveled oranges, withered apples, putrid tomatoes, a chocolate cake iced with fungus. I made
a cup of coffee, added brandy to it, and with that to fortify me, examined my accumulated mail. My birthday had fallen on September 30, and a few well-wishers had sent cards. One of them was from Fred Wilson, the retired detective and mutual friend who had first introduced me to Jake Pepper. I knew he was familiar with Jake’s case, that Jake often consulted him, but for some reason we had never discussed it, an omission I now rectified by calling him.

TC:
Hello? May I speak to Mr. Wilson, please?

FRED WILSON:
Speaking.

TC:
Fred? You sound like you have a helluva cold.

FRED:
You bet. It’s a real granddaddy.

TC:
Thanks for the birthday card.

FRED:
Aw, hell. You didn’t have to spend your money just for that.

TC:
Well, I wanted to talk to you about Jake Pepper.

FRED:
Say, there must be something to this telepathy stuff. I was thinking about Jake when the phone rang. You know, his Bureau has him on leave. They’re trying to force him off that case.

TC:
He’s back on it now.

FRED:
I’m damned surprised the Bureau would let him go back there. Jake’s the fairest-minded man I’ve ever met. There’s nobody in our business I respect more than Pepper. But he’s lost all judgment. He’s been banging his head against a wall so long he’s knocked all the sense out of it. Sure, it was terrible what happened to his girl friend. But it was an accident. She drowned. But Jake can’t accept that. He’s standing on rooftops shouting murder. Accusing this man Quinn.

TC
(resentfully): Jake could be right. It’s possible.

FRED:
And it’s also possible the man is one-hundred-percent innocent. In fact, that seems to be the general consensus. I’ve talked with guys in Jake’s own Bureau, and they say you couldn’t swat a fly with the evidence they’ve got. Said it was downright embarrassing. And Jake’s own chief told me, said so far as he knew, Quinn had never killed anybody.

TC:
He killed two cattle rustlers.

FRED
(chuckles, followed by a coughing fit): Well, sir. We don’t exactly call that killin’. Not around these parts.

TC:
Except they weren’t cattle rustlers. They were two gamblers from Denver; Quinn owed them money. And what’s more, I don’t think Addie’s death was an accident.

FRED:
That’s Jake’s story.

TC:
No.

FRED:
It’s just something you worked out by yourself?

TC:
More or less.

FRED:
All the same, that
is
Jake’s story. Hang on, I gotta blow my honker.

TC:
What do you mean—“that
is
Jake’s story”?

FRED:
Like I said, there must be something to this telepathy stuff. Give or take a lotta little details, and that
is
Jake’s story. He filed a report, and sent me a copy. And in the report that’s how he reconstructed events: Quinn saw the car, he followed them …

The Bureau’s in a tough spot. They have to take Jake off this case. He’s disqualified himself. Oh, he’ll fight them! But it’s for the sake of his own reputation. Safety, too. One night here, it was after he lost his girl friend, he rang me up around four in the morning. Drunker than a hundred Indians dancing in a cornfield. The gist of it was: he was gonna challenge Quinn to a duel. I checked on him the next day. Bastard, he didn’t even remember calling me.

Anxiety, as any expensive psychiatrist will tell you, is caused by depression; but depression, as the same psychiatrist will inform you on a second visit and for an additional fee, is caused by anxiety. I rotated around in that humdrum circle all afternoon. By nightfall the two demons had combined; while anxiety copulated with depression, I sat staring at Mr. Bell’s controversial invention, fearing the moment when I would have to dial the Prairie Motel and hear Jake admit that the Bureau was taking him off the case. Of course, a good meal might have helped; but I had already abolished my hunger by eating the chocolate cake with the fungus icing. Or I could have gone to a movie and smoked some grass. But when you’re in that kind of sweat, the only lasting remedy is to ride with it: accept the anxiety, be depressed, relax, and let the current carry you where it will.

OPERATOR:
Good evening. Prairie Motel. Mr. Pepper? Hey, Ralph, you seen Jake Pepper? In the bar? Hello, sir—your party’s in the bar. I’m ringing.

TC:
Thank you.

BARTENDER:
Jake Pepper! Somebody for you. Hello, mister. He wants to know who is it?

TC:
A friend from New York.

JAKE
’
S VOICE
(distantly; rising in volume as he approaches the phone): Sure I have friends in New York. Tokyo. Bombay. Hello, my friend from New York!

TC:
You sound jolly.

JAKE:
About as jolly as a beggar’s monkey.

TC:
Can you talk? Or should I call later?

JAKE:
This is okay. It’s so noisy nobody can hear me.

TC
(tentative; wary of opening wounds): So. How’s it going?

JAKE:
Not so hotsy-totsy.

TC:
Is it the Bureau?