“It’s too much…”
“Hush,” she said again. “And I expect you to be profligate with expenses and my credit cards.” I sighed, and she took it as a sign of my agreement. “If you do not mind my asking, Bud, how do you plan to do it?”
“Well, I was going to pick up one of the cars after tomorrow’s meeting,” I said, “but with this much money I can afford to hire some help to tail the other one, too.”
“I-I would rather you handled it alone,” Sarah said quickly. “You-you can appreciate my feelings.”
“Yes, ma’am, you’re the boss,” I said. “So tomorrow I’ll—ah, there’s an outdoor telephone booth on the corner of Virginia and Dottle. I’ll call to give you the number.”
“I don’t…I can’t…talk—I don’t like to use the telephone,” Sarah stammered.
“Will you be here, Gail?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging. “I wouldn’t miss this cloak-and-dagger action for the world. But why so far away?”
“So they won’t see my pickup on Virginia,” I explained. “Anyway, I’ll give you the number of the telephone in the booth, and you can call me to tell me which car is coming my way.”
“Right,” Gail said.
“And-and after that?” Sarah asked.
“I’ll tail whichever one comes my way, stick on them until I find out who they are,” I said, thinking about my bad luck that morning. “Then I’ll figure out some way to pick up the other one later.”
“Sounds real precise,” Gail said under her breath.
“Trust me,” I said, “it’s what I do for a living.” Or used to, anyway.
After a silence that seemed to last for minutes, Sarah finally said, “Thank you again, Bud.”
“For this kind of money you could have them killed,” I said, trying for a joke, but I didn’t get any laughs.
“Now,” Sarah said, standing slowly and leaning heavily on her cane, “I’m afraid you will have to excuse me. This hasn’t been one of my better days. I’m afraid I must retire.” Then she limped toward the door.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Gail said and helped Sarah to her bedroom.
While I waited I thought about my plan, which I had made up the moment Sarah asked me what I intended to do. If I wanted to get really fancy and modern, I could rent a directional mike and a couple of contact bugs, maybe even a movie camera. But, hell, old-fashioned and cheap would work on a cream puff of a job like this…
“Thank you for doing this for Sarah,” Gail said as she came back. “I know it sounds crazy, but this is the sort of thing that keeps her alive and kicking. How about that drink now?”
“You have any schnapps?”
“Schnapps? God, I don’t think so.” Gail walked over to the large globe and checked it out. “Nope. Bourbon, Scotch, gin, brandy—beer in the refrigerator downstairs.”
I hadn’t had many beers in the past two years, and suddenly all the work I had put into staying sober seemed a waste of time. “Damn right,” I said. We went down to the kitchen, where we had a beer, then another, and one of the bomber-sized joints I had lit for Sarah the other time.
“I know I’m trying to evade my problems,” Gail said after she threw the roach into the garbage disposal, “and I know I’ll start thinking about my father when I’m coming down in a couple of hours, and then I’ll get so goddamned mad I can’t see straight, and then I’ll cry…”
But she didn’t wait for the process to work itself out. She turned and hammered her fists on the edges of the sink as she sobbed. When I touched her shoulder she spun around quickly and huddled against my chest, still crying. One thing led to another, and a few minutes later we were on the kitchen floor, tangled in our clothes, involved in a frenzied coupling that had nothing to do with love or sex or even comfort, but two frightened, befuddled animals seeking a warm place to weep.
Afterward, as she hopped around trying to fit her overalls over her hiking boots, she said, “Goddamn, it’s nice to know I’m handling this like an adult. Shit.”
“What’s an adult?” I said, turning my back politely to look for my shirt, to keep from seeing her naked anger and grief.
“Jesus Christ,” she said, “you must lead an exciting life.”
“What?”
“Those scratches on your back,” she said. “An exciting life.”
“Or sordid,” I said.
“Shit, now I’ve made you sad,” she said. “Sorry.”
“No problem.”
“Want another beer?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I think maybe I should go.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Forty-seven,” I said. “Why?”
“Sometimes old guys get sad afterward,” she said.
“I’ll be goddamned,” I said.
“Why?”
“Six, maybe seven years ago, a little hippie chick said the same thing to me.”
“Maybe it’s true,” she said as she opened another beer.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said, “thanks for being kind to Sarah…and to me.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, but I didn’t feel like I had been kind, not even once in my life. “I hope your father’s all right,” I said, kissed her cheek, then carried myself and my life home.
Chapter 5
The next afternoon I called Gail from the phone booth at the corner of Dottle and Virginia to make sure that she and Sarah were set. They were, Gail on the telephone, Sarah on the balcony with her binoculars. I had mine, too, around my neck and hidden under my down vest, even though I couldn’t see the meeting place from my angle. I told Gail to stay on the line to keep it open, which she did, but she wasn’t interested in any chitchat. Maybe the night before had embarrassed her, maybe she wanted to forget it.
I kept the booth occupied by opening the paper to the Houses for Rent section and pretending to make calls. I wondered what sort of response I would get from landlords if I were an unemployed sawyer with three children under six, two tomcats, an un-spayed female German shepherd, and a wife who worked as a barmaid. I probably couldn’t rent a house with a gun.
But while I was waiting I got a good look at the driver of the little yellow Toyota Corolla as he waited to make a left turn off Dottle onto Virginia. Lank blond hair, acne scars across a tired, bony face—a sad face rather than troublesome. As he disappeared down Virginia, I remembered Sarah telling me that they always parked on opposite sides of the street, which probably meant the woman would be coming my way. But Gail came on the line and told me the guy had made a U-turn and parked facing in my direction.
Although I couldn’t see down Virginia very far, I could make out a group of young girls trying to build a snowman on the front lawn of a sorority house while a gang of young boys pelted them with snowballs. As I watched, one of the new blue automated garbage trucks with EQCS, INC. painted on its bed turned into Virginia and worked its way slowly out of sight, the arms of the loader doing its job on the fifty-five-gallon drums. It looked like some sort of prehistoric monster dreamed up by a cartoonist who had taken one too many acid trips.
Sometimes I didn’t know what to think of a world where garbage had become big business, where dumps had become something called landfills, a world where some of our garbage was so terrible we had to consider burying it in salt domes or launching it into outer space—
“The woman’s here,” Gail said, interrupting my thoughts.
“Ask Sarah what kind of car.”
“A little blue one,” she answered after a moment.
“Great,” I said. “License number?” In the silence I felt the old juices begin to flow. But when Gail gave me the number, she didn’t sound too sure about it.
“The guy’s walking over to her car,” Gail said. “Now he’s running back to his car, he’s coming your way.”
“I got him,” I said, then hung up quickly and ran to the corner with my binoculars in hope for a gla
nce at the woman’s car. I had time for a glimpse of a little blue Subaru with Montana plates, Silver Bow County, Butte, and the back of the woman’s head in a blue-and-white striped ski hat, then I raced back to my pickup and waited for the man in the yellow Toyota Corolla.
When he turned right on Dottle, heading north, I was waiting for him, and I tucked the pickup into the traffic five cars behind him. After he crossed the bridge, he made several left and right turns in the downtown area, and I nearly lost him, but he didn’t seem to know the one-way-street grid in Meriwether, and he ended up behind me heading west on Main. I watched his blinkers, wondering how I would catch him if he turned, but we went straight out Main to the interstate entrance. He signaled for the westbound ramp, so I went east in front of him, went a quarter of a mile, then whipped an illegal U-turn across the median, spraying snowy mud and grass behind me, praying that no cops were around. Then I punched the old pickup westbound. The four-barrel carburetor on the 302 engine screamed like a tornado as it sucked down gasoline at about six miles to the gallon, and we caught the Toyota five miles west of town.
The old Corolla was covered with rusty dents and almost all the glass was cracked but the little car went fine, and I had to keep the foot-feed almost to the firewall to keep him in sight. Both saddle tanks were full, but if the guy was on his way to Washington, I would need gas before we got there. On the interstate west of Meriwether there weren’t many exits, and I knew where they were, down to the mile marker, so I could stay way behind him between exits, then catch up to watch for a turn. Twice he got off the interstate, then went across the intersection and back up the westbound ramp. He still thought he might have a tail but didn’t have the slightest idea how to shake one. Mostly, I just kept heading west, ignoring his fakes, wondering what the hell was going on, wondering what the woman had said to him to make him think he was being tailed. Flee! All is lost! My husband knows everything! Maybe. Or Run for your life! The killers are on the loose. Maybe not. Who knew? Certainly not me. I just knew that if something didn’t happen soon, I was going to lose him.
East of Missoula, I switched tanks. West of Missoula, he signaled for a turn onto Highway 93, then headed north toward Flathead Lake, Kalispell—the Canadian border, maybe—Sand-point, Idaho, or the back road into Spokane, Washington. I didn’t know but I had to go with him, tailed him up the black ice on Evero Hill, but when he slowed down and eased into the lot of the Evero Bar across the road, I went past like a man with Canada on my mind.
As soon as I could I turned left onto somebody’s private road, dashed into a stand of pine trees with my binoculars. Although the sun had dropped behind the farthest edges of the mountains, enough light remained glowing in the clear sky so that I could see the man as he came out of the Evero Bar with a six-pack of Oly dangling from each hand. He stood in the parking lot, drinking a beer and watching the traffic. Then he climbed back into his car and headed back south toward the interstate, crossed it and pulled into a truck stop. I parked in front of Fred’s Lounge, watched him until he walked into the café, sat down at the counter, and picked up a menu, then I drove like a madman toward the Missoula airport to rent another vehicle.
I wanted something that would go but ended up with one of those new General Motors front-wheel-drive cars the Arabs shamed Detroit into manufacturing, a car with all the guts of a moped.
When I got back to the truck stop, a waitress was pouring the blond guy another cup of coffee, so I drove over to Fred’s, went in to buy a bottle of schnapps, a handful of jerky, and a roll of Turns. While I waited in the rental car, I had a small toot off my knife blade, a shot of schnapps, and a piece of tough dried jerky. Now I was ready. A real Western private eye again, completely outfitted.
—
We went back to Missoula on the old highway, then south on the 93 bypass. He drove slower now, picking his teeth and drinking a beer as we skirted Missoula in the fading light. He seemed convinced that he had lost any sort of tail, and his overconfidence gave me the break I needed to maintain a one-man tail at night. We went south on 93 to Lolo, then west up Highway 12 along Lolo Creek toward Lolo Pass and the Idaho border along the old Lewis and Clark Trail, along the Nez Perce escape route. Before we reached Lolo Hot Springs, I passed him, then pulled off on a Forest Service road, disconnected a headlight, then picked him up and followed him one-eyed over the pass into Idaho along the Lochsa River to Clearwater Crossing where the Lochsa and the Selway merge to become the Clearwater. When he stopped at Syringa to take a leak I went past him again, reconnected the headlight, and got behind him as we wound down Highway 12 toward the Snake River and the Washington border.
At Kooskia, though, he changed direction and turned left on Idaho 13, going south, and a few miles later he turned left again on Idaho 14 up the crooked course of the South Fork of the Clearwater, which we followed sedately almost all the way to Elk City, where he pulled off into the parking lot of a small motel with a NO VACANCY sign clearly displayed. I had no choice but to go on by, turn around beyond the next curve, then go back with my lights out.
Although it was only a bit after eleven, the motel and café were dark, the little Toyota nowhere in sight. I didn’t know what all these people were doing in Elk City this time of year. It wasn’t on the way to anyplace. On the west side of town the paved road ended, and a dirt road led over the Bitterroot Mountains to Connor, Montana, but the first snowfall of the season had closed the road. Maybe it was elk season in Elk City, I thought, laughing as I crept around the shadowed parking lot.
Finally I hid the rental car behind a camper, then took off on foot looking for the yellow car, which I found about fifty yards up a dirt road beyond the motel, parked in front of a small cabin. I saw his shadow moving aimlessly across the window curtains. I slipped out of my boots and eased across the pine needles, the sharp rocks, and the patches of snow around to the back of the cabin, where I peeked inside through the flimsy curtains.
A can of Dinty Moore beef stew with the top cut out sat on the stove bubbling. The guy dumped the bottom third of a Tabasco bottle and two eggs into the boiling stew. Whatever sort of trouble he might be involved in, he couldn’t be all bad—he cooked a lot like me. Kept house much the same way, too. Newspapers, magazines, paperback books, and dirty clothes lay in heaps all over the one-room cabin; the bed looked as if it had been slept in by a man with bad dreams; and the garbage had overflowed its can onto the dusty floor.
While he waited for the eggs to cook, he kicked his dirty clothes into one pile, then stuffed them into a plastic garbage bag. He emptied the small dresser and put his clean clothes on top of the dirty ones, glanced around the room to see what he had missed, then shuffled the rest of the trash into a corner. The smell of the beef stew slipped through the walls of the clapboard cabin, and my stomach grumbled so loudly that I had to get away from the window.
After I picked up my boots I went back to the motel and sat in the car waiting for him to leave, making my supper out of schnapps, jerky, and Turns. After half an hour, though, the Toyota still hadn’t come down the track, so I went back up. The little car was still parked in front of the dark cabin, and when I leaned against the outside wall I could hear the snuffles and snores of a beery sleep, which left me looking at a long night.
I thought about it a bit, then hiked on up the dirt road to where it ended against a bulldozed hump beyond the next switchback. I walked quietly back down to my car, picked up the small traveling bag I had remembered to move from my pickup to the rental unit—winter emergency road gear, a space blanket, a bag of hard candy, matches, a toothbrush, a pint of schnapps—then crossed the highway to the river to clean up in the cold, rushing water.
An hour later I moved the car up to the dead end, where he couldn’t spot it, turned it around, then took the space blanket and the pint of schnapps back down the hill until I found a hollow beneath a dead-fall ponderosa where I curled up, planning to balance the occasional shot of schnapps with the odd toot of coke, hoping to sleep a little b
ut lightly enough so I would hear the guy when he started his car in the morning.
It had snowed up the South Fork, too, but not as much as it had over in Montana. High clouds swept overhead, flirting with the snickering slice of moon, and in the shadows of the lowing pines, the patches of snow glowed and faded and glimmered like dying phosphorescent creatures jerked from the bottom of the sea. All around me the pines creaked and sighed in the wind like mourners. I couldn’t tell if I trembled from the cold or from the excitement of working again. When I smoked, I cupped the match and hid the cigarette the way I used to that long winter on the line in Korea, and although I don’t remember sleeping, I remember dreaming of the war. All through the night, it seemed, shadowy figures rose from the snow and moved silently past my position, and when I woke just before dawn as the guy slammed shut the front door of the cabin, I rolled over reaching for my M-1 and was amazed in my sleepy confusion to find it wasn’t there.
Sleeping in the cold on the ground was not something I did well at my age, and when I tried to stand up, my joints groaned like truck axles packed with frozen grease. Even before I got to my knees I heard his car door bang shut, the starter grinding angrily against the resistance of the cold engine, the pump of the accelerator hard against the floorboard. On my knees, I heard the muffled bang, then threw the space blanket aside and stumbled downhill through the brush.
The explosion had blown all the glass out of the small car, popped open both doors and the trunk lid, and when I got to the man, his face was covered with freckles of blood, his shirt and jacket tattered on his chest. There were smoldering bits of seat-cover fabric and clots of cotton stuffing on his naked shoulders. When I reached for him, I saw a gaping hole in the floor. His left leg was gone below the knee, his right above, and blood gushed from the nerve on his cheek, and most of his fingers were stubs, the pink, pork-chop flesh not bleeding yet. When I reached around his chest to pull him out and away from the biting stink of gasoline, he grabbed my left arm with what was left of his right hand. He could not stand to be moved. After a few seconds, while he held me so tightly with the maimed hand that I couldn’t run either, he died, and his hand fell quivering from my elbow.