Potshot (18 page)

‘Maybe they were bridge partners. Morris only tells me what I need to know.’

‘And his connection to the Dell?’

‘Same answer,’ Ronnie said.

‘So Morris sent you all the way out here just to tell me it was okay to do what I was going to do anyway?’ I said.

‘We had no way to know you was going to do it,’ Ronnie said.

‘What the hell was I doing here, then?’

‘Maybe shagging after Mrs Buckman,’ Ronnie said.

‘With half a dozen thugs?’

Ronnie smiled. It was a thin gesture, but unexpected.

‘Maybe to hold her down?’ he said.

‘I’ll be damned, a romantic underneath it all.’

Ronnie hitched up a pant leg, and crossed his right leg over his left. He bobbed his right foot a little, looking at the toe of his shoe as if it were interesting.

‘Morris says he’d like to make a financial contribution to the project,’ Ronnie said.

‘Which project is that?’ I said.

‘Snuffing the Dell.’

‘How about Mary Lou?’

‘Leave her on her own.’

‘You mean don’t look after her?’ I said.

‘Let things develop,’ he said. ‘Stay focused on the Dell.’

‘How much of a financial contribution is Morris likely to make?’ I said.

‘You could pretty much name it,’ Ronnie said. ‘If you can deliver.’

‘But no manpower,’ I said.

‘Nope.’

‘Why not?’

‘Morris figures you don’t need it.’

‘How flattering,’ I said.

‘Chollo and Bobby Horse are good,’ Ronnie said.

‘You are too kind, señor,’ Chollo said.

Ronnie nodded at Hawk.

‘This guy’s good,’ he said.

Hawk registered nothing.

‘You can tell?’ I said.

‘I can tell,’ Ronnie said. ‘You too.’

‘You know anything about Dean Walker?’

‘Police chief out here, isn’t he?’

‘Know more than that?’

‘Nope.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I’m alert,’ Ronnie said.

‘What about Mark Ratliff?’

‘Movie producer,’ Ronnie said, ‘except he don’t produce no movies.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Nope.’

‘And how do you know about him?’

Ronnie smiled the thin smile again.

‘Alertness,’ he said.

‘I’m pretty alert myself,’ I said. ‘And I notice that Morris is hiring me to do what he said he’d kill me for a month ago.’

‘Things change,’ Ronnie said.

‘But you wouldn’t know why?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Ronnie said. ‘Like I said, Morris only tells me what he thinks I need to know.’

‘Why don’t I believe you?’ I said.

‘Because you’re a cynical and suspicious guy?’ Ronnie said.

‘That must be it,’ I said.

We sat. Hawk leaned. I tried to think of some clever way to trick Ronnie into telling more than he wanted to. I couldn’t. I was cynical and suspicious, but not that bright.

‘Tell Morris that I will decline his kind offer, and if anything happens to Mary Lou Buckman I will come to L.A. and fry his ass.’

‘I’ll pass that on,’ Ronnie said.

He got up and headed for his car. Hawk watched him all the way. Chollo didn’t move but I realized he was watching Ronnie too. Ronnie went around his car and opened the driver’s-side door. He looked back at us.

‘Have a nice day,’ he said.

Then he got in the car and closed the door and backed it slowly out of the driveway.

It was Bernard’s turn to cook breakfast. He valued presentation. He always put out a tablecloth and matching flatware. He put the juice in a pitcher and the milk in another. No cartons on the table. He served the meals from the counter instead of slopping the food out of the cooking pan at the table. Today he was serving apricot pancakes with syrup made from some sort of cactus pear.

‘Bernard,’ Tedy Sapp said, ‘you sure you’re straight?’

‘Damned right I’m straight,’ Bernard said. ‘Anybody says I’m not I’ll fight him.’

Sapp grinned.

‘When a gay guy calls you queer, it’s not an insult,’ he said.

‘You think I wouldn’t fight you?’ Bernard said.

‘I think you would,’ Sapp said. ‘Just not for long.’

Bernard put three pancakes on a dinner plate and brought it to the table.

‘Well you just mess with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll find out how long.’

Sapp’s grin grew wider.

He said, ‘I wouldn’t mess with you Bernard.’

Bernard put my pancakes down in front of me. They were carefully arranged on the plate so that they didn’t overlap. I put just enough honey on and cut off a bite and ate it.

When I had swallowed, I said, ‘You can really cook for a straight guy Bernard.’

‘Don’t you start with me,’ he said.

‘Why would Morris Tannenbaum send Ronnie here?’ Chollo said.

‘I figure he got double-crossed,’ I said.

‘By who?’

‘Everybody involved.’

‘Which is who?’ Hawk said.

‘I’ll get back to you on that,’ I said.

‘He has many resources,’ Chollo said. ‘Why not send Ronnie and some people out here, straighten it out himself?’

‘Why,’ I said, ‘if we’ll do it for him?’

‘Why does he wish to pay us for something we’re going to do even if he does not?’

I looked at Hawk.

‘’Cause he been double-crossed,’ Hawk said. ‘And he can’t let no one do that and get off. So he wants it to be him paid us.’

Chollo looked at me. I nodded.

‘Be my guess,’ I said.

‘You have not ever met the man.’

‘Magical, ain’t it?’ Hawk said.

‘So why not permit him to pay us?’ Chollo said.

‘Step at a time,’ I said. ‘First let’s shove The Preacher a little.’

‘About time,’ Vinnie murmured.

Hawk looked at him. Vinnie shrugged and didn’t say more. Vinnie looked up to Hawk.

‘We going to go in after them?’ Chollo said.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘We interfere with their ability to do business, see what it brings us.’

‘You think you can get them to bargain?’ Sapp said.

‘He thinks he can get them to tell him who killed Buckman.’

‘He does?’ Sapp said.

‘That how he is,’ Hawk said.

Bernard came from the counter with his own plate of pancakes and sat down. He tucked his napkin into his collar, and picked up his knife and fork.

‘Why’s he care who killed Buckman?’ Bernard said.

‘Hawk’s right,’ Chollo said. ‘I worked with him before, what was the name of that place where we found the broad?’

‘Proctor,’ I said.

‘Yeah, Proctor,’ Chollo said. ‘Up outside Boston. When I was up there with him, he worried about things that the rest of us don’t worry so much about.’

Chollo looked at Sapp.

‘’Cept maybe him,’ he said.

‘That’s a mean thing to say to me,’ Sapp said.

‘Today’s Wednesday,’ I said. ‘The Preacher and his associates come in to town on Thursday and collect money from the town.’

‘You going to brace them then?’ Sapp said.

‘He won’t do nothing that simple,’ Vinnie said.

‘We’re going to watch them,’ I said. ‘See who they collect from, and when. Then we look around town and figure out, knowing the collection pattern, we see if we can develop a game plan, which does not involve shooting a bunch of civilians while we’re bracing them.’

‘See?’ Vinnie said.

Bobby Horse had said nothing, eating six pancakes in the process. Now he looked up.

‘Good plan,’ he said.

‘Might make sense,’ Hawk said. ‘We go in today, look around.’

I had just poured a second cup of coffee. I added milk and a lot of sugar and stirred it carefully.

‘It would,’ I said. ‘But not as a group. Just drift in individually, maybe couple guys together.’

‘I’ll go in with Tedy,’ Bernard said.

‘I’d be honored,’ Sapp said.

‘What you going to do?’ Hawk said.

‘How do you know he’s not going to go in with us?’ Bernard said.

Hawk smiled and didn’t answer.

‘I’m going to go and talk with Mary Lou.’

‘’Bout time,’ Hawk said.

‘It is,’ I said.

The Rattlesnake Cafe was long and narrow with an open kitchen to the right and high-back wooden booths along the left wall. The ceiling was tin. The booths were painted with desert scenes. The tabletops were Mexican tile.

Mary Lou Buckman and I sat in the first booth, and I, mindful of Wild Bill Hickok, sat facing the door. We were reading the menus. Among the choices were a chicken breast sandwich on sourdough bread with sprouts; blackened salmon; a Desert Burger with green chili relish; and a Cactus Club Sandwich.

Bernard J. Fortunato’s apricot pancakes were sticking grimly to my ribs, and, an oddity for me, I wasn’t very hungry. Mary Lou decided on the Desert Burger. I ordered the Cactus Club, to be sociable. We both had iced tea.

‘What is the occasion for this lunch?’ Mary Lou said. ‘Not, of course, that I’m not thrilled to see you.’

She was wearing a white baseball cap, the kind where you can adjust the size by moving a plastic strap in the back. Her blond hair was spooled through the adjustment opening and hung in a long braid to her shoulders. Her dark blue tank top revealed a little self-effacing cleavage, and I had noticed when she walked in that her white shorts were well fitted.

‘That would be one reason,’ I said. ‘The other is that I’m your employee. It seems appropriate for me to report to you now and then.’

She had applied her makeup so adroitly that she looked as if she wore none, except her eyes were bigger and her lashes were thicker than God had intended. She still smelled of good soap, and her tan was still even. Except for the plain gold wedding ring on her left hand, she wore no jewelry.
In memoriam
.

The food arrived. The Cactus Club contained chicken, tomato, bacon, and lettuce, but no cactus.

‘Very well,’ she said, and smiled a little, ‘report.’

‘I’ve been to L.A.,’ I said.

She had a bite of Desert Burger in her mouth. She raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

‘There are several people there who allege that both you and your husband fooled around.’

She blushed. It had been so long since I had seen someone blush that it took me a moment to be sure what she was doing. She swallowed, and took her napkin from her lap, and patted her mouth with it, and put the napkin back in her lap.

‘Steve and I had an open marriage,’ she said.

‘People allege that a couple of the people you fooled around with are Mark Ratliff and Dean Walker.’

She stared at me without speaking for a time.

I waited.

Finally she said, ‘Why do you feel the need to investigate my private life?’

‘It’s what I do,’ I said. ‘I investigate stuff.’

‘It is not what you were hired to do.’

‘While I was in L.A. a big old ugly hoodlum warned me to stay away from you or he’d kill me.’

‘My God.’

‘He also told me to stay away from the Dell.’

Mary Lou seemed to have forgotten her Desert Burger.

‘What does this all mean?’ she said.

‘It means that a guy who pretty much runs the rackets east of L.A. is interested in you and the Dell. It means that two men, at least, who knew you, ah, intimately, appear to have followed you out here.’

‘They didn’t follow me.’

I nodded.

‘I never had anything to do with either one of them.’

‘Guy who warned me off is named Morris Tannenbaum,’ I said.

‘I never heard of him,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what all this is about.’

‘I’m just reporting,’ I said. ‘And this is what I’ve got to report.’

‘Well it doesn’t feel that way,’ she said. ‘It feels like you are accusing me.’

‘Of what?’

‘I don’t know of what. Do you think I killed my husband?’

‘It would have been sensible, when you hired me to look into his death, if you’d told me a little more about your past and its connection to your present,’ I said.

‘I don’t even know what that means,’ she said.

She seemed like she might cry soon.

‘I’m alone here. A gang of thugs killed my husband. I turned to you for help. I had nowhere else to turn.’

‘What do you suppose is out here that would interest Morris Tannenbaum?’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘The racketeer,’ I said. ‘Remember?’

‘Oh. Yes.’

‘What would be his interest?’

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘You worked once for the DWP in L.A.,’ I said.

She stared silently ahead, not making eye contact. Then she began to moan softly.

‘I wanted you to help me,’ she said between moans. ‘Why won’t you help me?’

‘You had a job in water resource,’ I said.

‘I can’t do this,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’

She stood up and walked out.

It was cooler once the sun went down. Hawk and I sat on the front porch of The Jack Rabbit Inn drinking Coors beer from long-neck bottles, and looking at the darkening street.

‘So Mary Lou told you shit,’ Hawk said.

‘She told me I was the only one who could help her,’ I said.

‘Probably the first guy she ever said that to.’

Hawk was wearing faded blue jeans and a copper-colored silk tweed jacket over a white shirt. His mahogany-colored cowboy boots gleamed with polish. Everything fit him flawlessly. I knew that he was wearing his gun at the small of his back so as not to break the drape.

‘I’m very special to her,’ I said.

‘Un-huh. She say anything about Walker and Ratliff?’

‘She said they weren’t intimate.’

‘We believe her, don’t we?’ Hawk said.

‘There’s a lot she isn’t saying,’ I said.

‘We knew that ’fore you talked with her,’ Hawk said.

‘Well, we know it again,’ I said.

‘Skilled interrogation be the keystone of detective work,’ Hawk said.

‘Yes it be,’ I said.

‘Snooping around town work pretty well too.’

‘The Dell came in for collections?’ I said.

‘Un-huh. Two Jeep loads. Actually one a Jeep, the other one an old Scout, don’t even make anymore.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ I said. ‘What time?’

‘10:20 in the morning,’ Hawk said.

‘Not early birds,’ I said.

‘Still got themselves a worm though.’

‘Preacher come with them?’

‘Casper the ghost,’ Hawk said. ‘Skinny? No hair?’