Spotted Cats (23 page)

My addiction to cigarettes had saved my life.

Flask hadn’t been so lucky.

A tall man—six and a half feet, at least, I guessed, in his Western-style boots and ten-gallon hat—strode into the room. He had a long, thin face, deeply creased, with pale eyes that drooped on the outside corners, and wisps of white hair hanging around his king-sized ears. He reminded me of Lyndon Johnson. He stood in front of me, looking down.

‘I’m Sher’f Hawkins,’ he said.

I nodded to him, not trusting my voice.

‘You all right, son?’

‘My friend was in the car.’

‘You got a name for us?’

‘Brady Coyne. I’m from Boston. Out to do some fishing.’

‘Uh-huh. And the poor fella in the car?’

‘Flask Dillman.’

Hawkins removed his hat and scratched what I now saw was a bald head fringed with white. Without his Stetson he looked nothing like L.B.J. ‘Ol’ Flask,’ he said softly. ‘Be damned. Sure’n hell couldn’t recognize him in the car out there. What were you boys doin’ here?’

‘We were on our way to the Henry’s Fork for some fishing. I was out of cigarettes…’

He nodded absentmindedly. ‘So you come in and poor Flask stayed in the car. You leave the motor runnin’, did you?’

I nodded. ‘I figured I’d just be a minute. He was listening to the radio.’

The sheriff turned and looked out the window. An ambulance was pulling away. Its lights flashed but no siren sounded. They were in no particular hurry.

‘What happens now?’ I said.

Hawkins smiled without humour. ‘They’ll take Flask over to Judd’s funeral parlour, try to locate a relative. State police’ll want to have a look at your automobile. Somebody oughta have themselves a nice lawsuit outa this one, car blowin’ up like that.’

‘Flask has a sister in Ashton.’

He nodded. ‘That’s a help.’

‘What about me?’

He shrugged. ‘I’d get myself another car if I was you.’

‘I mean, do you need to question me?’

‘Why?’

‘A man was just killed.’

‘Hell, boy. You didn’t kill him.’ He cocked his head to the side and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling for a moment. Then he looked at me again. ‘Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t figure you did. Still, I’d just as soon you hung around a few days.’

I nodded. ‘My plane doesn’t leave until Wednesday.’

‘That oughta be just fine.’

I walked out of the building behind the sheriff. Most of his imposing height, I realized, came from his erect carriage plus his boots and hat. In stocking feet he’d be about my height.

I accepted a ride back to the Madison River Inn with him. I learned he hunted elk and pronghorn with scope-sighted high-powered rifles and fished for trout with spinning gear. Although he didn’t say it, I inferred that he believed fly fishermen were sissies, and somehow not the sort of folks who got blown up in automobiles. I also learned that he liked Flask, as did everyone else who knew him.

He let me off in front. ‘Any problem, Mr Coyne, you just give my office a call,’ he said before he drove away.

I lay on my bed for the rest of the morning studying the ceiling. I tried to organize my thoughts, which darted and buzzed in my brain like a swarm of hatching caddis flies. The crump of the explosion, the rolling power of the ball of flame that engulfed the car, the searing heat of it—they recalled Vietnam newsreels and, later, feature films, of the war I had not witnessed firsthand. I flirted with an understanding of the men I knew who had been there and made it back. They always seemed inarticulate to me when they tried to explain how their experiences had scarred their souls.

And I allowed myself to remember Flask, an ordinary, gentle, tragic little man, who loved the outdoors as much as any person I knew. I couldn’t pray for his immortal soul or meditate upon thoughts of eternity. But I could remember my friend well. It was the best I could do.

Had we taken his truck, he and I would be stalking big trout at this moment.

Had I turned off the engine before going in for a pack of cigarettes, maybe he’d still be alive. Or maybe the car would have waited to blow up later, with both of us in it.

Had I minded my own business and stayed in Boston…

I sat up. Enough what-iffing. I swivelled around, dangled my legs over the side of the bed, and reached for the telephone. I had to answer an overpowering urge to talk to Gloria and my sons.

I got the answering machine. I listened to her recorded message. Somehow I found comfort in it. I waited for the beep. I sighed once, then hung up.

The Hertz people not only gave me another car to use, but they delivered it themselves all the way from the airport in Bozeman. They brought another Lincoln. Two of them came, one in the Lincoln and a second man in a little Chevy to drive the two of them back to Bozeman. I told them I really didn’t like Lincolns that much, that the Chevy would be fine. They insisted I keep the Lincoln. I had no spirit to argue with them.

I wondered if I’d soon have a visit from a slick young man with a liability waiver he hoped to persuade me to sign.

Flask’s sister came up from Ashton Monday morning and took Flask home with her in an urn. I got to Judd’s an hour after she had left and didn’t like myself for feeling relieved that I’d missed her.

I wandered around West Yellowstone all afternoon. I visited every fly shop in town. I made a pain in the ass of myself, buttonholing all the clerks, asking about current insect hatches at the rivers, the flies they recommended to match them, tying techniques to make those flies, anything that occurred to me. All my fly-fishing gear had burned up in my car. I supposed someday I’d mourn that loss, too.

What bothered me was that I had no desire to go fishing.

I stopped at most of the bars between fly shops. There are lots of bars in West Yellowstone.

I avoided the Totem.

After a while I found myself able to avoid thinking too much about what had happened.

And so I passed the entire day.

I was having breakfast on the patio the next morning, Tuesday, wondering what to do with myself on this my last day in West Yellowstone, when I saw Sheriff Hawkins approaching me. A younger man was with him.

‘Mornin’, Mr Coyne,’ said Hawkins.

‘Good morning, Sheriff.’

‘How you doin’ today, son?’ The sheriff squinted at me.

I nodded. ‘OK. Better.’

‘Well, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘This here’s Mr Langley. He’s from the state police up to Bozeman.’

I shook hands with Langley. He wore a summer-weight suit and carried a briefcase. ‘Coffee, gentlemen?’ I said.

Hawkins shook his head. ‘Not me.’

But he sat down at my table, and so did Langley. ‘I don’t mind,’ said the Montana state cop.

A waitress came over and refilled my cup. I asked her to bring one for Langley, and she returned with it in a minute. After she left, Langley said to me, ‘How are you feeling, Mr Coyne?’

I shrugged. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Bad experience.’

‘It was.’

‘You got any enemies out here, Mr Coyne?’

‘Why?’

‘Just asking.’

I shook my head. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘What about Mr Dillman?’

‘I don’t think so. I can’t imagine Flask having an enemy. There was nothing to dislike about him.’ Hawkins was watching me placidly, nodding.

‘I hate to contradict you,’ said Langley.

‘What do you mean?’

‘One of you’s got an enemy, all right.’

‘I don’t see—’

‘Your car,’ interjected Hawkins, ‘was blowed up.’

‘Well, sure,’ I said. ‘It caught fire and exploded. I know that.’

‘No,’ said Langley. ‘It was blown up, Mr Coyne. Dynamite. It was wired.’

I frowned and shook my head. I had already thought of that and rejected it. It happened in movies, not in real life. It happened to mobsters and DEA agents, not gentle fishing guides and Boston lawyers. ‘That can’t be right,’ I said. ‘It would’ve blown up when I turned on the ignition if it was wired. We’d been driving for ten or fifteen minutes before it caught fire. There was a gas leak or something. Otherwise—’

Langley reached across the table and put his hand on my arm. ‘Slow down, Mr Coyne. Listen. The way it was rigged, one of the wires was wrapped around the tailpipe. When it heated up, it melted the plastic coating on the wire, and then the wire made contact with the pipe, which completed the circuit, and…’ He shrugged.

‘You’re trying to tell me that somebody was trying to kill me.’

Langley nodded. ‘You or Mr Dillman. Yes.’

‘They wanted it to happen somewhere on the highway, where it would look like an accident.’

‘That’s how we figure it,’ he said. ‘The way it was rigged, it wouldn’t go off for ten or fifteen minutes, enough time for you to drive out of town and get into the country. Your car would explode, go off the road, probably smack into a tree or roll over a few times. Most likely, no one would actually see it happen. When it was found, it would be in flames, of course, but it’d just look like reckless driving, like it caught fire after it crashed. Out here people drive fast. Too damn fast. Wide open spaces, all that. No way to patrol our highways. We have these kind of accidents. Probably no one would ever think to examine the wreckage too close, looking for a bomb, if it had happened that way.’

‘Where I come from they’d sure as hell examine it.’

He shrugged. ‘This is Montana.’

I shook my head slowly. ‘Jesus,’ I whispered.

‘So let me ask you again,’ said Langley softly. ‘Who’d want to do that?’

I sipped my coffee. McBride. He was the only candidate. I decided not to tell this to Langley. Not yet. I wanted to work on that idea for myself first. ‘I suppose there are people who don’t like me,’ I said. ‘Maybe some of them are even enemies. But someone who’d want to kill me? Anyway, they’re all back in Boston.’ I spread my hands. ‘I don’t know.’

Langley nodded. ‘That’s a hard one, I realize. Listen. You think on it. We’ll talk again.’

He stood up and Hawkins followed suit.

‘Mr Coyne,’ said Hawkins, ‘I want you to be careful. Best if you stick close to the Inn for a few days.’

‘Are you trying to frighten me?’

‘Mean to say you ain’t frightened yet?’

I tried to smile. ‘OK. I hear you.’

‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Langley. He and Hawkins turned. I watched them walk away.

I had one more cup of coffee. Then I left the table.

I went up to my room, sat on my bed, and called Delta Air Lines. Then I called my office.

‘Julie, it’s Brady,’ I said when she answered.

‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to tell me. The fishing is so terrific you’re staying another week.’

‘You’re half right. I’m coming in Saturday, not Wednesday.’

‘Oh, brother,’ she said.

‘It’s not at all what you think.’

‘Of course it isn’t.’

‘Julie, I’ll tell you about it when I get back.’

‘You’re supposed to be in court Thursday.’

‘Who’s the judge?’

‘Crowell. Your favourite.’

‘The Berger thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know what to do.’

‘I ought to by now.’

‘Thanks, Julie.’

I heard her sigh. ‘Well, you must really be having fun.’

‘You bet.’

I
FELT FOOLISH GETTING
down on my hands and knees and twisting my head around to check the undercarriage of my replacement Lincoln Town Car, but feeling foolish didn’t stop me. I also lifted the hood and looked around among the engine parts. The fact that I wouldn’t know a bomb from a catalytic converter didn’t stop me from doing that, either.

And the fact that I found nothing that looked as if it was designed to kill me didn’t stop my heart from pounding for the fifteen minutes it took me to drive out of town to the turnoff to McBride’s ranch. After bumping over the gravel roadway for a few minutes, I figured that any dynamite wired to my car would have gone off if it was going to, and I began to relax.

I swung on to McBride’s driveway for the long, curving descent to his ranch. The road wound tightly through low scrub. It was barely wide enough for one car to pass, so I went slowly. I didn’t want to meet McBride head-on at a corner. I wanted a different kind of meeting.

As it was, I nearly crashed into the brown Pontiac station wagon that had stopped in the middle of the driveway. I sat there for a minute, resisting my city-bred impulse to lean on my horn, before I noticed that the wagon’s hood was up. This time I turned off the ignition before I climbed out of my car.

I went around to the front of the Pontiac. A man was bent at the waist, leaning into the depths of the engine. Both of his hands were reaching down into its guts. He was working with some sort of tool.

‘Problem?’ I said.

The man grunted without looking at me.

‘I’d offer to help,’ I said, ‘but I know absolutely nothing about engines.’

The man said nothing.

I cleared my throat. ‘Think you’ll be long here? Something I can do?’

He grunted again. It sounded like a curse. I could sympathize. It was a lousy place to have engine problems.

‘Look,’ I tried again, ‘if we can push your car to the side a little so I can get by, I’ll go down to the ranch and phone for help for you.’

The man muttered something and turned his head to look at me.

‘You look familiar,’ I said. ‘The Totem, right? You’re a friend of Tim McBride.’

It was one of the two Indian types I had seen the night I met McBride. Up close the man looked more Mexican than Indian. He was squat, big-bellied, round-faced, with dark liquid eyes that I couldn’t read.

‘And you,’ he said in the careful English of someone who had studied it but used it rarely, ‘are Meester Brady Coyne.’ His Spanish accent was heavy.

I nodded. ‘McBride must’ve mentioned me to you.’ I stepped closer to him and held out my hand.

The man straightened up and withdrew his hands from the bowels of the engine. He showed me the tool he had been using on it. It was an automatic pistol.

I smiled. Then I frowned. ‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

‘That ees not important.’

‘Am I supposed to reach for the big sky or something? Is that how we do it out here in the Wild West?’