“You’re right. But it used to be.”
“Sometimes I think you’re crazier than me, Jamison.”
“Sometimes I think so too.”
“Then maybe you can understand my side. I don’t give a shit about the law.”
“What sort of world would it be, Milo, without law? Can’t you—”
“Don’t you understand,” I interrupted. “I don’t care about the world, man, about the law. That shit takes place on television, man, not in my life. The World. The Law. That doesn’t have anything to do with my life, man, and Simon died in my life. I want the smack dealer too, but when I find him, I’m gonna blow his fucking head off and then call the Law. Understand?”
“I thought you might feel that way,” he said, coming up with that odd smile again. “I guess I just wanted to be sure.”
“What?”
“I don’t want this one to go to court, Milo, it’s too goddamned important, but if I turn up the guy, I’ll have to arrest him. Same with the state boys. But you might just blow him up, and if you’ve got a good story, you might get away with it.”
“I’m not sure I believe you, Jamison.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t even know if I believe myself, but we won’t know for sure unless we try. Will we?”
“That’s damned slim,” I said, remembering Reese’s line, “but what the hell. Why not?”
“So give.”
“Okay. You were wrong about the Duffy kid. He wasn’t just hooked, he was dealing.”
“I knew that,” he said tiredly.
“Then why bullshit me?”
“Because I thought he was the main man and that the supply would dry up with him dead. But either he was in with somebody else or they picked up when he died. Either way, there’s still junk all over town. I just can’t figure why he killed himself.”
“Maybe he didn’t,” I said, not really believing myself. “Somebody got pretty excited when I started poking around. Simon got killed, Muffin got framed, and I got the shit kicked out of me.”
“Are you sure about the Swartz cousins?”
“Yeah. The one with a broken nose wanted to kill me, but the other told him that they weren’t supposed to.”
“That figures. And there’s this other thing. Remember the vague description of the longhair maybe coming out of Reese’s house?”
“Sure.”
“Well, the Swartz cousins were seen talking to a guy who might fit that description, and—”
“And you’ve been turning the town upside down looking for him but can’t come up with him,” I said.
“That’s what I can’t understand, Milo. This town ain’t that big. I’ve busted a couple of street pushers, but they didn’t know anything.”
“What kinda smack?”
“That’s another problem. It ain’t Mexican.”
“That’s what Reese said.”
“Oh, he talked to you, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, “he forgave me for being a hick cop.”
“What else did he say?”
“Two things. That this was strictly amateur stuff, and that the smack probably came out of a police locker.”
“That’s what I thought too, but we’ve checked every police force in the Northwest, and came up empty.”
“Check again.”
“We are.”
“Did they make a brand on the brandy in the vomit on the stairs?”
“How’d you know about that?”
“Where you getting your help nowadays, Jamison?”
“Huh? Okay, I see. Outa Cracker Jack boxes, I guess. But, no, we haven’t made a brand yet. We sent it to the police lab in Twin Forks, but they haven’t called back. Identified the soda, though. Came from the local distributor. He delivers to every bar in town that has a speed gun. You know how many bars that is?”
“No.”
“Twenty.”
“So that’s probably dead, huh?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “And, hell, the vomit could have belonged to anybody.”
“Or it could have come from our long-haired friend. Maybe he has a weak stomach.”
“Like an amateur?”
“Right. So what else do we have?” I said. Jamison noticed the we and smiled.
“Well, I didn’t bring my notes, Milo. I didn’t know I was gonna need them. I didn’t know if I’d have the nerve to do this.”
“I don’t want to make you worry, man, but I don’t know if I’ll have the nerve to finish it,” I admitted.
“You did all right with the dude in the alley.”
“That was different.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens, huh?”
“Right.”
“So let’s get after it,” he said, standing up.
“What’s this, a race?”
“Sure. I’m gonna work like a son of a bitch. Just as soon as I get back from this little fishing trip.”
“You may be crazy, Jamison.”
“Yeah. You know what I was thinking about on the way over here?”
“No,” I said, expecting nostalgia.
“Evie has this cat book and she told me once what the Turks used to do with adulterous wives.”
“What’s that?”
“They’d sew them up in a canvas sack with a cannonball and two live cats, then heave it into the sea,” he said pleasantly.
“Goddamn.”
“Yeah,” he said calmly. “Cover your ass, Milo.”
“With both hands,” I said as he walked to the door. “You sure we got the right man?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as uneasy as I felt holding Jamison’s hunting license.
“Oh, yeah. You should’ve seen the money the Swartz cousins were carrying. It was junkie money, Milo, ragged and dirty, stinking with filth,” he answered, his voice filled with disgust.
“If you say so. Say, what about Muffin?”
“What about him?”
“How about pulling in the warrant?”
“Let’s wait till it’s over, okay? It’ll look better.”
“I hope that your boys don’t decide to get trigger-happy if they arrest him.”
“Tell him not to run.”
“If I see him.”
“Right,” Jamison said. “Good hunting.”
There didn’t seem to be anything for me to say, so I nodded as he went out the door.
—
The trouble with sudden changes in people is that it’s difficult to know if the change is real or just a moment’s whim. I didn’t know if I should believe Jamison. Maybe he was just playing some sort of game, using me to find the dealer. But like he said: we wouldn’t know unless we tried.
I still didn’t know where to begin, but I left anyway. As I passed the pay phone in the bar, I remembered Muffin, but when I went to make the call, I couldn’t remember the number, so I had to go up to the office. When I got there, I called the answering service. Muffin hadn’t called again, but Mrs. Crider had. Several times, each message more urgent than the one before. The last one threatened physical harm if I didn’t see her right away. I called her, but she insisted upon seeing me, so I promised to run out before lunch. Freddy had called too, and I called him back on the mobile unit.
“What’s up?”
“We got some kinda trouble, Milo. The lady slipped the tail.”
“How?”
“Went into a café and ordered a big breakfast, then left her sweater at the table and went to the john—I thought. But she went out the back door. This lady’s been around.”
“Are you still at the café?”
“No. She came back about thirty minutes later in a cab, paid for the meal, got her sweater, and went home.”
“Check the cab company, see where they picked her up.”
“Already did. The driver picked her up at a pay phone next to that tourist information booth east of town.”
“Well, hell, if she was only gone thirty minutes she didn’t h
ave time to do much, so don’t worry about it.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about, Milo. I want to know who dropped her off at the phone. Why don’t you check the girl in the information booth.”
“Why not.”
“How you doing?”
“I’m alive.”
“Thanks to the backup piece, Milo.”
“Right, Freddy, thanks for that.”
“Well, watch yourself.”
“All right,” I said and hung up before he could give me any more advice.
I didn’t care who Wanda of Wild Rose Lane balled in her spare time, but I knew Freddy would hound me for days if I didn’t stop and ask a few questions. It was on the way to the Crider house anyway. And right next to a pay phone. I had a belt from the office bottle and found the telephone number of the hunting camp owned by the fence Muffin worked for. The fence was a Charlie Pride freak, and the jukebox in the camp bar didn’t have any other singers on it. If Jamison only knew, I thought, how smart Muffin and I really were. At least Muffin.
—
The young girl behind the counter of the tourist information kiosk looked like she had been chosen for the job to make a good impression on the tourists. She had one of those lovely model faces that shouted Fresh, Clean and Cheerful, that sells toothpaste or gives head with the same wooden sincerity. But the girl didn’t go with the face: she was working stoned out of her mind, blown away and happy about it.
“Yes, sir, what can I do for you today?” she inquired as I stepped up to the counter.
“Let’s fuck.”
“Wow,” she wailed, then broke out in giggles. “Outa sight. But what would the Chamber of Commerce say?”
“What do they say about you coming to work stoned?”
“Nothing, man, my daddy is the president.”
“Great. Say, you see that pay phone over there?”
“Outa sight, man.”
“Slow down, babe. Did you see a cab pick up a woman there about an hour ago?”
“You some kinda cop, man?”
“A private investigator.”
“Wow.”
“Did you see the cab?”
“You gotta be kidding, man.”
“Yeah. Have a nice day.”
“You too, man,” she said, smiling prettily.
As I walked away, two women who looked like physical education teachers, burdened with cameras and maps, strode up to the booth to ask about the most scenic route to Canada.
“Walking, driving, flying, or by bicycle?” the girl asked cheerfully.
The counterculture revolution had done something for America: it let a lot of young people handle idiot jobs by getting stoned. As I got in the rig and stuffed the automatic under the seat, I wondered why I wasn’t stoned myself.
As I drove east up the valley of the Meriwether River, past the golf course where my family home had come to rest, the morning sun exploded in my face, shattering my windshield with light. The undulations of the river, as it wound through the willowed flats, sparkled like liquid silver. An old man, distinguished and gray, outfitted out of an Eddie Bauer catalog, stood thigh-deep at the verge of a dark, shaded pool, his waders sturdy against the rushing water that thrust upon them, then divided in picturesque wakes. He stood in the shade below the cut bank, but his fly line looped and whistled in the sunshine like a burning wire. I wished him good fishing. Until I saw his station wagon beside the highway, his out-of-state plates. Then I wished him gone. And a fence built around the state.
You don’t fish anymore, Simon’s ragged voice nagged inside my head. You haven’t fished in years.
Leo and I went to Idaho for steelhead last year, I complained.
Fucking tourist.
—
When I knocked on the front door, Mrs. Crider met me carrying a large baby straddled on her cocked hip. Over her shoulder I could see two more children and their playful debris, their faces long and sad like their father’s, their eyes shining with the same lonesome hope. But Mrs. Crider’s eyes were blank, clouded with anger or grief, like the sky before a snowstorm.
“I’m here,” I said lamely, after a long silence made unbearable by her eyes.
“Should Ah lead a cheer? Ah been callin’ you for a long time.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been—busy.”
“Looks like you been damn near killed,” she said quietly, her hand brushing an errant strand of hair from her face. Then she gave it back to the child, gave him a raw, bony knuckle on which to teethe.
“That’s what they say.”
“How’s the other fella look?”
“I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“That’s what Ah hear,” she said. “And Ah also hear you found Elton that night you lied to me.”
“I’m sorry about the lie, but lies seem to be an occupational hazard in my business.”
“That so? Like your face?”
I nodded.
“Maybe you’re in the wrong business.”
“I’ve thought about that.”
She didn’t reply, but in the silence, examined my face with her hard, black eyes. I had been so busy feeling responsible for Simon’s death that I had neglected the guilt festered around Elton Crider’s. Her eyes took care of that, though. I doubted that his death had anything to do with the Duffy kid’s, except for his grief, but under those eyes I became responsible. Before I could apologize again, the two thin boys in the living room began to argue loudly about some vague rule in their children’s game, their voices rising shrilly. She turned and spat a single nasal command as sharp as the slap of stove wood against bare thighs, a flat, inchoate sound, which they obeyed instantly, falling as silent as stones, the gravely pale eyes swinging toward their mother, then away, like the eyes of small animals fleeing the rush of headlights on a nighttime country road.
“ ’Scuse me,” she said, then stepped back into the hall. She came back with a black folder that held a slim packet of paper and handed it to me.
“What’s this?”
“Ah’m not sure ’xactly. It belonged to that Duffy trash. Ah found it when Ah cleaned out Elton’s desk,” she said as she moved out the door and shut it behind her. “Let’s walk a bit.” She led me across the patchy lawn; I followed like a whipped child. She wore a gray sweat shirt, clean but stained with the bleached remains of oil and grease, and a pair of faded blue pedal pushers left over from another time. Beneath the thin fabric, the muscles of her legs rippled strongly. Her bare feet had seen rough use, suffered badly fitted shoes and rocky trails, but when they touched the grass and earth, they seemed elegant in their confidence and strength, as certain of their power as were her swaying hips. And she carried her head proudly, as if she were a valuable gift. I felt a terrible pity, not for her, but for the confusions of sex.
“I’m sorry. About your husband,” I said to her back.
“Seems only right,” she answered without turning.
“What?”
“Since it was your fault,” she said, stopping and facing me.
“I—I understood it was an accident.”
“Mister, Ah may not have a fancy education but Ah ain’t dumb. Elton wouldn’t have it known for the world but he was pure country, and he could drive when he couldn’t walk. He didn’t go in that river without some kinda help. That’s why Ah called you.”
“Why?” I asked, afraid of the answer, unable to lift my heavy face to meet her eyes.
“To hire you to find out who done it—”
“Oh no. I’m—busy—I haven’t recovered from the beating,” I said, but the look on her long face disagreed.
“And when you find out who, Ah want you to kill them. Ah don’t know how much money you’d want, but Elton had some insurance at the college, and that oughta—”
“Mrs. Crider, what makes you think you can hire me to kill somebody?”
“You owe me,” she said, then walked away into the shaded pine trees beyond the lawn, the sleeping baby riding easi
ly on her hip.
“What?” I asked as I caught up to her and grabbed her elbow. She glanced at my hand, and I turned her loose. “What?”
“The lie.”
“No,” I said, but she paid no attention, unwinding her fingers from the baby’s fist and reaching up to touch my damaged ear.
“That there ear ain’t never gonna heal right,” she said, her fingers easy and smooth on my ear as she stroked it lightly, almost as if she thought her hand could heal. “Never. My Uncle Ab on my mother’s side had an ear like that. Some fella came up side his head with a beer bottle ’cause Ab was messin’ with his wife. Ab stuck his pocket knife in the other fella. Killed him dead. Ab got this funny-lookin’ ear and a striped suit. He gets a letter near ever week from this fella’s widow.”
“No,” I said again, moving her hand away from my ear.
Bars of sunlight fell across the carpet of pine needles. Glints of red sparked off her black hair. The child stirred in the silence, his hands and mouth searching blindly for the gnawed, chapped knuckle. She let him take it, and he was quiet.
“You owe me,” she said.
“Lady, you’re crazy,” I said, which made her smile benignly.
“When it’s over, y’all come on out and tell me all ’bout it. Ah like mysteries, watch ’em on TV all the time.”
“There aren’t any mysteries.”
“Ah’ll be a-lookin’ for you,” she said, then walked back toward the house. As I followed, banging the folder against my leg, I wondered if she had learned that walk on television too, or in some more elemental place, and I wondered how Elton Crider ever got up the nerve to leave her. She stopped at the front door to watch me walk to my rig.
“Y’all come back, yah hear,” she said, mocking herself. Then added in a hard voice, the accent lost beneath the mixture of command and promise, “When it’s done.”
The words felt like a rough hand on my shoulder, shoving me into the front seat, reminding me of all the sore spots. I drove away, afraid to look back.
—
“Look, man, don’t give me no bullshit,” Muffin said after I had explained that the smack charges were sure to be dropped. “Just come up with the bread.”
So I explained everything again, sorry now that I had stopped at the open telephone booth next to the tourist information kiosk. I had chosen that pay phone because the girl behind the counter had been the only pleasant thing that had happened to me all morning. But it had been a mistake. She was busy with the tourists, who stood around the kiosk as if they were waiting for a tour bus. Only one couple, a gray-haired man and his wife, wanted to use the telephone and they had the decency to stand far enough away so they couldn’t overhear me. There were a number of small children who lacked any decency at all. I guess it was the face, but I wished that they were frightened instead of curious. It seems to take something really terrible to frighten children today, and it seemed that I was curious instead of terrible because I couldn’t make them go away. I couldn’t make Muffin believe me either.