The Final Country (19 page)

“She fought my boys like a wet cat till they got her hog-tied and locked in the corn crib in the dairy barn with a pile of unshucked ears I keep for the goats, then I told her about the rats and mice in the corn, and reminded her that wherever you find rats and mice, you’re bound to find rattlesnakes. Hell, she spent ten days in there drinking stale water and doing her business in a bucket, but she wouldn’t say a word. Though I was damn sure it was that fuckin’ Lomax who sent her. So we stashed her classic Jimmy pickup in an old line shack over there on the northwest pasture beside the catch pond.”

I remembered seeing the shack and the pond one of the times I had ridden one of Betty’s saddle horses over to the old man’s ranch.

“Hell, I had half a mind to bury it in the bottom of the pond ‘cause we’d just dug it, but that model is such a great truck, I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Then my hands dropped the bitch off in downtown Austin, and I tried to forget about the whole mess.

“Believe me, boy, these days when I have my evening whiskey, I lock all the doors and windows first,” Tom Ben said, then laughed bitterly. “And I keep waiting for that piece of paper to show up. That fuckin’ Lomax will get this place over my dead body.” He paused to light his pipe, then a snort of laughter blew out the match. “And not even then actually,” he added.

“Is this the woman?” I unfolded one of the head shots Carver D had scanned off the Lodge registration videotape.

The old man nodded, suddenly sad. “If that goddamned Travis Lee hadn’t come limping back from jump school all shiny in his uniform while I was still in Korea, everything would have been different.”

“Sir?” I said, confused by this sudden turn in the conversation.

“You didn’t know? Son of a bitch ran off with the woman I was supposed to marry when I got back from Korea,” he said, stood, then jammed his shapeless Stetson back on his head, and rolled on his old bow legs and frozen feet back to the veranda steps where he stopped and turned. “Betty said you gave away a piece of family land one time.”

“I kept enough to be buried in,” I said.

“What’d it feel like?”

“Since my great-grandfather had sort of stolen the land from the Benewah Indian tribe,” I confessed, “it didn’t exactly feel like a family place.”

Tom Ben thought about that for a moment, rubbed his chin, puffed on the stubby pipe, then said, “Goddamned little brother of mine brought home the mumps from high school, too, so there was never going to be any children for me, either.” Then he shook his head, grinned ruefully, then stepped into the shadows of his house.

I looked at the photograph one more time, folded it, and stuffed it back into my pocket, then stepped off the porch, and walked to the Caddy where Betty waited. I grabbed the manila envelope out of the front seat, and we stepped away from the car.

“I should have known she was a professional,” I said.

“He told you about the woman?” she said. “He must really like you,” she added. “He’s never even told me the whole story. Just hinted about it.”

“Right,” I said, “and he mentioned something about Travis Lee running off with his fiancée.”

She nodded sharply.

“What happened?”

“After a fling,” Betty said, “Travis Lee dumped her to marry a rich girl, and she committed suicide. Tom Ben never spoke to him again.”

“You mean your uncles never speak?”

“Sometimes through lawyers. Sometimes through me.”

“And you never said a word to me?” I said, amazed.

“Down here people aren’t raised to talk with your mouth full or about family stuff,” she said. I assumed that by “down here” she meant Texas, which seemed to have a different set of rules of family behavior than the rest of the world. “Why? Is it important?”

“At this point I don’t have any idea what’s important,” I said, “but it’s sure as hell interesting. Wait until I tell you why I’m late.” I handed her the manila envelope.

“You’re kidding,” Betty said after she discovered Gatlin County’s new approach. “How’s it feel? One minute behind bars. The next behind a badge.”

“Actually, I’m not going to wear it. I’m going to carry it in my pocket.”

“What now?”

“We’re going to cash this little check,” I said, “Then we’ll find out how Mrs. Lomax knew I was going by my place.”

When the electronics guy’s meter hit the peg, he had me drive the Caddy into a soundproofed and electronically baffled garage where he worked until late afternoon carefully and silently removing the bug from behind the dome-light casing, where it drew its power from the car’s battery. “State-of-the-art for this kind of equipment,” he said, “good up to a quarter mile.” Then he stuck it to the headliner inside a plastic thimble. “Should approximate the sound,” he said.

As I paid the bill for sweeping the Caddy, I whistled. “Shit, I’m in the wrong part of the business.”

“Somebody’s got to protect us against the government, man,” he said. “They can read the newspaper headlines on your front porch and hear an ant fart if there’s a telephone in the house.”

“I’d like to get my hands on the creeps who put that piece in my car,” I said as I counted off the last hundred-dollar bill. “Nothing personal, buddy. But I always thought you electronics guys jacked off too much.”

“Gotta do something since we don’t have to pound the shoe leather,” the guy said, then laughed.

“Ex-cop?” I said.

“Shit, man, nobody can afford to be a cop these days.”

I should have listened to him. Before I climbed into the Caddy, I pulled out my cell phone and started to check my voice mail one last time.

“Excuse me, boss,” the guy said. “I wouldn’t use one of those gadgets if I was worried about electronic surveillance. They’re a pretty easy tap.”

“Could I borrow your telephone?”

“Make yourself at home,” he said. “But if you’re interested, I can do better than that.”

“How?”

“It’ll cost you a bundle up front and a fairly stiff monthly fee — in cash — but I can come up with five scrambled cell phones. Of course they can only talk to each other.”

“Perfect,” I said.

The only message on my voice mail was from Gannon. He wanted me to call him on a land line.

“Don’t’ you trust your own people?” I asked without preamble when he answered.

“There’s a prize in every Cracker Jack box,” Gannon said, “and a devious heart in every fucking cracker down here. Where the hell are you?”

I gave him the name of the chain motel bar just off I-35 North.

“I’ll turn the siren on and be there in thirty minutes.”

“Why?”

“Now that we’re colleagues, Milo, we should talk.”

* * *

Gannon showed up looking very uncomfortable in a full-dress uniform. The leather straps of his Sam Browne belt stretched tightly over his jacket, as if he were restrained, and each time one of his new cowboy boots hit the floor, he grimaced as if he had just stepped on a thorn. He looked as if his cowboy hat hurt like a migraine.

“Joining the enemy?” I asked.

“You’re now looking at the chief of patrol,” he grumbled as he pulled up a stool to our stand-up table and ordered a cup of coffee. “Sheriff said either get into uniform or get
gone.
He didn’t have to add that he’d prefer gone.”

“What brought this on?” I asked.

“I think they’re pissed because I didn’t shoot you at the golf course,” he said. “They let Culbertson go, too.”

“Why?”

“Nobody tells me anything these days,” he said.

“So what did you want to tell me?”

“If I were you, Milo…” Gannon started to say.

A lanky cocktail waitress with a smile like a classic Buick grille stopped at our table and waited until I removed the gray plastic case of cell phones so she could set our oversized happy hour drinks down. She wanted to run a tab, peddle plates of appetizers, work on her tip, and maybe even tell us the story of her life. Sometimes the friendliness of the natives drove me nuts. I threw a wadded fifty on the tray and told her to keep it. When she smiled, the Buick seemed to be speeding into my face.

“If I were you, Milo, I’d mail my badge back to the bastards. Preferably from a foreign country. They’re setting you up for something.”

“That’s old news. Finding out what for will be half the fun. You have any ideas? They want me out of town and not looking for Enos Walker? Or they want me to finger the McBride broad? Or maybe they’re planning to frame me for my own attempted murder? What the hell do they have in mind?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Gannon said. “And there’s not a single rumor around the courthouse. That’s the frightening part.”

“Lomax owns most of the county,” I said. “Maybe he’s got something in mind?”

“I did some checking around,” Gannon said, “moving easy and slow. Lomax draws more water than just owning the county. He’s asshole buddies with every political bigwig from the new governor ‘ all the way up and down. But Lomax has been down in Central America for the past three weeks. Some kind of mine disaster. And with his clout, if he wanted you dead, buddy, you’d be meat fragments floating in cowfeed or recycled aluminum or holding up a bridge on some highway down in Mexico.” Then he paused to rub his chin thoughtfully. He looked like a man polishing a middle-buster plow. “Do you have any chance at all to find the McBride woman?”

“I’ve got some notions,” I said, “and in the past I’ve had some luck finding people. And having a badge might not make it any harder.”

“Notions? What kind? What have you got in mind? Where are you going to look first?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“You’re probably right,” he said, but he didn’t seem convinced.

“But I might need your help, Gannon,” I said.

“You can count on me, sure, but I’ve got to walk easy. My job is hanging by a thread of gnat’s snot,” Gannon said quietly. “So call me, if you can figure out a safe way.”

“I’ve got a clean cell phone,” I said, digging one of the new telephones out of the case. “But you can’t call me. I can only call you.”

“Whatever,” he said. “Detective work must be nice when you have unlimited funds.”

“Believe me, man, I’ve paid for every dollar I’ve got. The hard way,” I said, “and it’s still the same job — sticking your face in a pile of crap and hoping you find a rose instead of a shitty thorn.”

Gannon shook his head without smiling, gunned his drink, and shook my hand. “Good luck,” he said. Then thumped out of the bar.

“You trust him?” Betty asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m not sure I trust anybody anymore. Not even myself.” But I was used to that sort of thing. “Your uncle said this deal sounded okay.”

“Try to remember he’s a lawyer,” Betty said looking away. Which was exactly the same thing she had said when she first tried to talk me out of going into business with Travis Lee. And a version of what she had said when she changed her mind about the project: At least he’s a lawyer.

* * *

After we stopped by Carver D’s to leave him one of the scrambled phones, we drove southeast to spend the night in an old-fashioned roadside court outside Bastrop. Snug behind the rock walls, stretched on a lumpy double-bed, and covered by a blanket as thin as a sheet and sheets we could see through, Betty and I shared a doobie and a couple of beers. Because of the bug, our conversation in the Caddy had been limited to scenery, the deep insanity of far-right-wing talk radio, and other mundane topics. But once stoned, Betty had a lot of things to say as she snuggled against my shoulder.

Finally, she ran down, paused, then asked me, “Are you okay about yesterday? You know, the thing with Cathy?”

“Oh, yeah, that. I remember that.” She slugged me in the ribs hard enough to roll me out of bed. “It was wonderful while it was happening,” I admitted as I climbed back between the covers, “but thinking about it now — well, I’d rather not think about it right now.” Then I paused, thinking about it. Then said, “Cathy is a friend, whatever, and you and I are together.”

“You realize that I’d slept with her a few times before,” Betty said, giggling, “but never with a guy around.”

“How about a goat?”

“Italian dwarves,” she whispered.

“Well, that’s okay then.”

Once we controlled our stoned giggles, we curled into each other slowly and softly, like walking wounded careful not to disturb our bloody bandages. Afterward, Betty still sitting on my hips, I felt her tears hot against my chest.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

“Tell me,” I whispered, amazed all over again how quickly she could go from love or laughter to tears.

“Nothing, really,” she said, then wiped her eyes, laughing again. “I’m just crazy like always.”

“This kind of shit would make anybody crazy,” I said, then shrugged, slipped into sweats and running shoes, grabbed my cigarettes and a beer, then stepped outside for a couple of smokes while she watched the news on the ratty television.

The night loomed clear and cold, the stars sparkling away from Austin’s ambient light and in the heart of the dark of the moon. I was running on something slimmer than a hunch, and, right or wrong, I didn’t want anybody dogging my ass.

“Can I ask a couple of questions?” she said as I came back into the motel room. “Just a couple?”

“Sure,” I said, expecting another serious conversation about our future. But I was wrong.

“What are you going to do about the car?”

“I don’t know,” I said, hesitating. “We’ll have to see if we can find out who’s bugging us before we go to Stairtown.”

“Stairtown?” she said, looking very confused. “Where’s that?”

“The place where Cathy fixed Sissy’s orgasms,” I said.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “And how are we going to do that?”

“We’re going to lead the son of a bitch up a dead-end road,” I said, “then beat the shit out of him.”

* * *

But I was wrong again. It turned out to be a stout young woman operative in a white van loaded with what I guessed was at least ten thousand dollars’ worth of electronic gear that I led up the dead end. Hoping that the guy who had swept the Caddy had been right when he told me that the receiver had to be within a quarter-mile to pick up the bug’s transmissions, when we checked out of the motel that morning, we stopped by a hardware store for a battery, wire cutters, and a pry bar, then drove back country roads discussing a meeting with an important witness to the assault in Blue Hole Park, drove until we found the narrow dirt lane that dead-ended against a small county park nestled down by the river not too far from Smithville.