The Final Country

  “Who wants to know?”

  “The district attorney’s office,” he said. “Among others.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re supposed to check in every day.”

  “Nobody told me,” I said.

  “Consider yourself told.”

  “Consider me checked in.”

  “And they want —” was all I heard before I turned the phone off and rolled over to finish my nap.

  * * *

  A couple of hours later, as I stood in a long, hot shower, I wondered where this was going. No closer to an answer, further from Betty. All the money my father had left me and all the money I’d stolen from the contrabandistas hadn’t changed my life that much. I stayed in hotels where the hot water didn’t run out in the middle of a shower now, and drove a Cadillac instead of a beat-up Toyota rig. But now a Toyota Land Cruiser cost damn near as much as a Cadillac. And there was no place in the world for me to buy a new body. As far as I could tell under the solid beat of the water, this one had given up on me. I didn’t check too closely but I couldn’t find a place that didn’t throb like a boil the size of my fist.

  To hell with it. I had a quick room service breakfast, another couple of codeines, then decided I needed to keep my head down for the next few days. I stopped at the front desk to extend my stay, then called Hangas at home.

  Hangas’s family had worked for Carver D’s family in various forms and functions since Reconstruction. Hangas’s father had been a foreman for one of the family’s construction firms in Houston, and the summer after Hangas had graduated from high school, he’d been banging concrete off forms on an August afternoon as hot and muggy as a barber’s towel when Hangas had thrown down his shovel, told his father that the family had been in thrall to these white motherfuckers long enough, by God, and he was off to join the Marine Corps. The old man just shook his head, smiled sadly, and wished his youngest son the best of luck. But during his twenty years in the Corps and after four children, Hangas had mellowed. When he retired to Austin after his wife had died, Hangas had no qualms when Carver D, whose house had just been blown up by an angry state senator who lost his seat because Carver D’s paper, The Dark Coast, had exposed the senator’s affinity for beating up prostitutes, asked Hangas to hire on as a bodyguard. During their years together, Hangas had prospered, and he and Carver D had become more than friends. My ex-partner had been friends with Carver D when they were in the Army at Fort Lewis and the friendship had been extended to me. Carver D and Hangas had made me part of their world from the beginning. So Hangas was waiting on the front porch of his sprawling brick ranch house off Enfield Road when I drove up.

  “You look a little bit rough, Milo. You okay?” Hangas asked as he climbed into the Caddy.

  “I’ve been better,” I said. “But I’m still moving.”

  “What are you planning to ask the Reverend Jonas Walker?”

  “I’m not going to ask him anything,” I said. “I’m just going to tell him what happened.”

  * * *

  The Reverend Jonas Walker made his younger brother seem small. He was at least seven years older, two shades lighter but with the same light blue eyes on either side of an even larger hooked nose, plus he was bigger, a soft-spoken giant of a man in sweats with short gray hair and a matching beard. He met us on one of the composition basketball courts next to the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, a huge flagstone, tin-roofed church and basketball complex beyond the Interstate deep in East Austin. He did not seem pleased to see us, sweating heavily and dribbling a basketball as he confronted us.

  “As I told this gentleman the other day,” the huge man said to me so softly I had to lean into his shadow, “I’ve had no contact with my errant brother in many years. I left that life long behind me, many, many years ago.”

  Hangas and I glanced at each other. If Jonas Walker had walked on the wrong side of the street, he’d been luckier than his little brother. His name didn’t show up on any of the criminal records that Carver D could access.

  “I just have a favor to ask,” I explained. “If you should hear from him, would you please tell him that I’ll testify and I’ll find the goddamned bartender and make him stand up in court and force him to tell the truth.”

  “The truth should not be forced,” Reverend Walker said quietly. “And please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain in front of me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “With my help, at the very least your brother can cop a manslaughter plea.”

  “How much time will he have to do? I don’t think he likes doing time.”

  “I don’t know, but it’s also certainly possible that he might walk on a self-defense plea,” I said. “Billy Long obviously pulled the piece on him. I can testify that your brother didn’t have it on him when he went into the office and a piece like that will probably have an ATF paperwork trail leading directly to Long.”

  “And what’s your interest in this?”

  “I’m not sure you’d understand, sir.”

  “Try me,” Reverend Walker said, his voice no longer quite so soft. In fact, he sounded a bit like his brother.

  So I sighed so deeply it hurt my back, then tried to explain to the giant about the bear cub’s spit and Enos Walker’s hard-timer breath.

  “That’s about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Reverend Walker said, glancing down at the end of one of the four basketball courts where half a dozen lanky kids were shooting baskets, “so I’m gonna assume you don’t have any ulterior motives in this matter. But if I were to hear from my brother and I happened to see you in my congregation some Sunday morning, maybe we can work something out.”

  “Man,” I said as I dug down for another deep and painful breath, “I’ve never been in church on purpose in my life and I’m not about to start now. What the hell, he’s your brother, not mine.”

  “Sounds like you could have used some church time, brother.”

  “If you can’t teach morality without superstition or hope without false promises of eternal life, brother, the human animal probably has outlived its usefulness,” I said as I handed Reverend Walker a card. “You can leave a message on my voice mail,” I added, then walked away.

  As we climbed back into the Beast, Hangas said quietly, “That’s pretty cold, man.”

  “Learned it in college,” I said. “Besides, if I’d folded, he would have lost any respect he might have had for me after that damned story about the bear cub.”

  “Hell, I understood it perfectly,” Hangas said, then chuckled. “Hey, man, can I ask you something kind of personal?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you ever find yourself praying in Korea, old man?” Hangas asked.

  “Praying, shitting my pants, and crying for my mother,” I had to admit. Hangas and I had survived the first of the stalemate wars. I’d spent three months in combat; Hangas had endured three years.

  “But it didn’t last?”

  “Not too long after I ran the first clip through my M-l,” I said. “Or maybe the second.”

  “Does that mean firepower is God?” Hangas asked, chuckling again.

  “It’ll have to do for this world, until something better comes along.”

  “Eldora Grace now?”

  “She thinks I’m a vacuum cleaner salesman,” I said. “Or something worse. I’ll leave that one to you. Be sure to let her know that I’ve got Sissy’s getaway money. And let me know how she responds to that.”

  “Voice mail?”

  “Ain’t modern life grand, Hangas?”

  * * *

  Since it seemed that Renfro’s internal injuries were still causing him trouble, he still hovered between’ the conscious and unconscious worlds when I glanced into his room. A woman who looked remarkably like Renfro and a small, bald man with a ponytail hovered over his bed. So I left without bothering them. I had a couple of hours before I was due at Cathy’s. I found a convenience store, bought a couple of beers and an Austin American-Statesman i
n which I checked the classified ads for firearms and used the pay phone. In less than two hours I had collected a twelve gauge Winchester Wingmaster pump with a full choke and a three-inch chamber, a .22 American derringer, and a Ruger Mini 14 carbine to stash in the trunk of the Caddy in case I needed some unregistered firepower, and still had enough time to slip by the Blue Hollow Lodge to retrieve one of the cocaine bindles from the emergency light before I drove over to Cathy’s.

  SEVEN

  Betty’s pickup and Cathy’s rig were parked in the driveway, so I parked behind them, limped up the steps to ring the doorbell. When the tiny Judas gate opened in the door, I could see Betty’s blue eyes smiling at me. She let me in quickly, double-locked the door, then held me tightly, whispering apologies against my lips. I could smell the mota and wine on her breath, could feel the smiling laughter on her face. It made my old heart sing.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “First, I badger you into letting me share your troubles, then first time I get scared, I turn on you. I’ll forgive you, if you’ll forgive me.”

  “Not necessary,” I said, meaning it. “But no more running away, okay?”

  “I promise,” she said, stepping back so I could see her face. “But you have to promise not to treat me like a child.”

  “A child?”

  “No more trying to protect me, okay?”

  “That’s going to be a little bit harder.”

  “Listen, you son of a bitch,” she said, stomping her foot, “I’ll never see forty again, I don’t qualify as a vestal virgin, and you may be from Montana but you’re not Gary Cooper.”

  “Love,” I said, “that’s a deeply stoned metaphor, but I’ll do the best I can to do whatever you want.”

  “You’ll do whatever I say?” she asked, laughing, her lovely face turned to the ceiling.

  “Within reason.”

  “To hell with reason,” she said. “Say yes. Or leave.”

  “Yes.”

  “And uncross your fingers.”

  I did.

  “Cathy’s ready to fix your back again,” she said. “You shouldn’t be taking off on long trips while your back is in such a mess.”

  “I can sure as hell go for that,” I said and let her lead me upstairs into the lowering sun that burst through the glass wall with the western exposure, its bright shafts hanging in the smoky air like golden bars. But Cathy was not imprisoned. She flitted about the large, open room like a happy bat. Within moments she had me stoned senseless, naked, and stretched on the table. When she got a full view of my back, she didn’t say anything, just sucked in her breath.

  “What kind of drugs do you have in your system?” she asked calmly.

  “Four codeines, three beers, and two short lines,” I admitted dreamily.

  “You got any more of that blow?” she asked.

  “Inside pocket of my vest,” I said. I heard the search, a couple of lines chopped and snorted — maybe even one by Betty, who never did coke — then Cathy touched the new bruise softly.

  “What the hell did you do? Run into a bulldozer?” she said.

  “Probably a light-loaded and suppressed five-point-six-millimeter round.”

  “Jesus,” she sighed. “That’s good blow. Makes me remember why I gave it up. Almost worth losing my license for.”

  “You don’t have a license,” Betty chuckled from the corner.

  “I have a degree from the London school,” Cathy said smartly, “and an idea.”

  “What?” Betty asked.

  “Leeches,” she said.

  “Leeches?”

  “I can have that bruise improved in a half-hour or so,” she said. “If you can stand the sweet, squirmy little guys.”

  “Shove a couple more codeines down my throat, and let the squirmy little bastards loose.”

  The leeches felt like small strips of liver wriggling on my back, then no feeling at all. Even as Cathy removed them. Then she went back to the needles again. I didn’t feel them at all.

  Except for the smell of that even stronger incense, that was just about the last thing I remembered until Cathy slowly removed the needles. Once again they seemed to want to remain in my skin. My back felt wonderful, and I had another errant erection that almost hurt as Cathy flipped me over. Before I had a chance to even consider it or think about it, Cathy’s mouth slid, wet and warm, over me, once, then twice, then so swiftly I didn’t have time to protest, she slipped out of her leotard and mounted me, the slippery, tight hold of her cunt sliding quickly over me, gripping me like a living beast. I opened my mouth to say something, but what I’ll never know, because the pink shadow of Betty’s thigh swung over my face and her soft red pubic hair covered my mouth. My tongue, with its own volition, darted into the wet darkness, and I was lost in their dream for as long as they wanted.

  Golden moments: the women lying side by side beneath me — Betty pale as a pink rose and as comfortably erotic as a sultan’s odalisque, and Cathy as brown as a sunburnt bone and slippery as gristle — as I lapped and humped and snorted like a puppy; once paused inside Betty’s softness while Cathy sat backward on her face, tiny, sharp teeth darting at my nipples; and that wonderful moment when all three of us convulsed in the throes of a single giant orgasm.

  Other moments of startling clarity: still sitting on Betty’s face, Cathy shoved a long nipple into my mouth, shouting “Bite!” then came again like a freight train, and I realized that these women had made love before; when Betty came under Cathy’s mouth it was as if a long cool sigh had rippled a crystalline pond; and when I came inside Cathy’s tight cunt, Betty covered my mouth with hers in a long gentle kiss that almost eclipsed my orgasm.

  * * *

  After they were done with me, and I had recovered enough to pee, I slogged to the john, then rejoined the naked women on a pile of pillows against the western wall where we sipped vodka on ice and smoked dope until full dark. “By way of apology,” was the only explanation Betty bothered giving me; “you can’t leave me behind now,” her only reason.

  “A little fun never hurt anybody,” Cathy suggested.

  “What if I’d died?” I asked, holding up a glass of Absolut. Suddenly, recalling what the Molly McBride woman had told me about clear whiskey and her father in Lake Charles.

  “We would have chopped you open with an axe, filled you with rocks, and dumped you in Town Lake,” Cathy said. “Parked your pimp car on Ben White with the keys in it, stolen your clothes, snorted your cocaine, and fucked your friends. Assuming you have any left.”

  “Right,” Betty said, laughing, open and happy.

  “A good thing I kept my wits about me.”

  We chattered, as aimlessly as baby birds, until the sliver of moon scratched the top of the dark sky.

  * * *

  Late the next morning, bleary-eyed in spite of a long, tangled sleep, over a breakfast of chicory coffee, fresh fruit, and stale croissants, Cathy asked me, “Have any fun, cowboy?”

  “Make that ‘cowpoke,’” Betty said.

  “Never done that before,” I admitted.

  “Never?” the women asked in unison.

  “Had a chance once,” I said, “but had to turn it down.”

  “Why?” they asked, but when I didn’t answer, they rambled along without me.

  But I couldn’t help but think about the time I’d turned down a chance to sleep with two women. At the end of a long, tiresome domestic case back in the late sixties — one of my first — when I caught the young married woman with her lesbian lover in a Billings motel, both of them Meriwether high school teachers, she offered me their bodies whenever I wanted, if I’d just give her the pictures, and if I’d lie. If it got to court back in those days, she was sure she’d lose any claim to her children to her creep of a husband who headed the education department at Mountain States College. If I slept with the women, both solid Montana women, I’d feel obligated to lie. That didn’t feel right. So I tossed her the film, gave the professor his retainer back, and walk
ed away from the whole thing. Over the years, I had watched the young woman’s children grow up rather nicely, then once they were off to college, she divorced her idiot husband, moved with her lover to Portland, and as far as I knew, lived happily ever after.

  Unlike me, who always had wondered what it would have been like. And now that I knew, oddly enough, I felt slightly used, the memory blooming into a seed of doubt that clouded the lovely memories of the night. But these women — one who loved me, one who thought I was Irish — had no bones to pick with me. So I shook it off, poured more coffee, and took out a cigarette.

  “Outside, cowboy,” Cathy said gently.

  I nodded and took my cup of coffee into the small enclosed patio off the kitchen that overlooked the dam-bound Colorado River. Betty said she needed a shower, and left as Cathy cleared the table. Outside it was as if clouds hadn’t been invented yet. The high blue sky glistened like a baby’s first tooth. Only the shadows held any trace of the norther as the morning blossomed with sun-warmed air. I was on my second cigarette when Cathy came out with the coffee pot to join me. She took the cigarette from me, had a long drag, then blew a series of perfect smoke rings that hung for a long time in the still air.

  “You service other people’s addictions well,” she said as she handed me the cigarette.

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  “You know, Betty and I have been friends all our lives,” she said without preamble, “and I hope you have some idea how much she loves and depends on you, old man, and how hard this is for her. Maybe you should think hard about giving it up.”

  “It’s too late to quit,” I said, wondering again why everybody wanted me to stop the investigation.

  “I don’t know exactly what’s going on with your troubles,” she said, “but please take care of her. Please.”

  “She’s already made me promise not to protect her,” I said, then laughed.

  “What did you say?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I was lying,” I admitted, laughing again, washing the shadows from the edges of my mind. “I’ll keep her as far away from the trouble as I can. You can count on that.”