The Final Country

  “Have you seen her?” I asked.

  “I picked her up at the airport,” she said coldly.

  “How is she?”

  “Mad enough to chew up ten-penny nails and shit upholstery tacks.”

  “I guess I just didn’t do what she wanted me to do.”

  “You’ve always been pretty good at that, haven’t you?”

  “You could say that,” I said.

  “Well, she’s my oldest friend, man, and you’re just some guy I did drugs with and fucked,” she said.

  “So I’m not on the old friend list, huh?” I asked, followed by an empty chuckle. Her silence was answer enough. “When she stops spitting tacks,” I said, “tell her to give me a call. I should be back by then.”

  Cathy just sighed, said she’d try, then added, “How’s your back?”

  “It’s there.”

  “I could give you another number.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same, honey,” I said, and this time I hung up without saying goodbye.

  * * *

  Molly’s face brightened when I showed up with two paper bags hanging from my hands. A bag full of sandwiches and salads from Central Market and a bag full of detective novels from Bookstop, but I wouldn’t let her look in the bags until I cleaned up her wound and replaced the butterfly bandages.

  Tough as she was, I suspected she’d be a whiner about this part. I loosened the butterflies with alcohol. When I tried to get to the hole in her ear, she squealed like a baby.

  “If you’re going to be a sissy about this,” I said, “I’ll bet I can find some tin snips and just cut the goddamned thing off.”

  “Well, it hurts,” she said. “I don’t mind big pains, but these little stinging things drive me as crazy as swamp skeeters.” She stayed quiet, though, until I finished the rest of the job. “What’s the verdict?”

  “You’ll live,” I said. “You’ve got good bones and great skin. You’ll be lovely into your old age.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Ask, and I’ll tell you.”

  “What did you mean about my Daddy knowing how unpleasant you could be?”

  “The first time I found him in Houston, he tried to kick me in the nuts while a crowd of drunks held me down,” I said. “The second time, he tried to hit me with a Scotch bottle. I broke his jaw and knocked out half a dozen teeth.”

  “Poor old Rollie,” she said, “he never had any luck, the cathead tongs took his arm, the drinking took his bar, then the government took his boat.” She broke into a thoughtful smile. “You son of a bitch, you remembered the address on the card, didn’t you?” I nodded. “When you took that old man down that way, I guess I should have realized that you had more than muscle between your ears.” I nodded again. “I wondered how the hell you found me.”

  “You dropped so many hints, lady, that it almost seemed you wanted me to find you.”

  “What an odd idea,” she said. “What the hell makes you think that?”

  “Just guessing,” I said. “And also just guessing that Rollie Molineaux isn’t really your father.”

  “He took my mother and me in,” she said quietly, “he gave me his name, raised me from a pup after she died, and he was always as good to me as he could be. He never judged me and he always tried to help. Whatever kind of trouble I managed to stir up. You can’t ask for more than that.”

  “He’s pretty tough for a one-armed guy.”

  “He’s pretty tough, period,” she said. “He and another guy beat a man to death in the parking lot outside the bar when I was a kid.”

  “The other guy wouldn’t be Jimmy Fish?” I said, guessing.

  “How the hell did you come up with that?”

  “Just a guess,” I said. “I’ve got to go out of town this afternoon and I can’t get back until about this time tomorrow.”

  “I get to go home then?”

  “You get to go home when I find out what the hell is going on.”

  “Oh, you’ll get tired of having me around,” she said. “Everybody does, eventually.”

  “You going to be all right?” I said as I handed her the bags.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I noticed that you slept on the floor last night. Somebody cleaned the critters out of the corn?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Don’t make too much noise,” I added. “Right now not too many people know you’re here. And I suspect your health sort of depends on some other people not knowing you’re here’.”

  “What the hell’s that mean?”

  “Some very heavy people went to a great deal of trouble to get me to come looking for you, honey,” I said.

  “Jeez, I thought you were just mad about your girlfriend.”

  “And her pistol.”

  “I told you, man,” she said, “I don’t know anything about that. I’ve done a lot of things in my life but I’ve never fingered anybody.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “You don’t want to know,” she said quietly, then hung her head for a moment, then lifted it brightly. “So who’s looking for me?” she asked casually.

  “A woman named Lomax,” I said.

  “I don’t know anybody named Lomax,” she protested, then leaned back.

  “Mrs. Lomax said you had something of hers.”

  “Since I don’t know who she is, I can’t think what it might be,” she said, thinking it over, and didn’t look up when I slipped out the door.

  I traded rides with Tom Ben again, then headed out.

  * * *

  Thursby was sitting on a bench outside the Hays County courthouse in San Marcos, just where his secretary said he would be.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” I asked.

  “Thinking about moving to California,” he said.

  “What?”

  “We’re being homered in the courtroom so bad that I’m letting one of my junior partners handle the cross examination of the local idiot deputy who put three rounds in my client, who fit the drug runner profile in his little, pointy head, at a phony traffic stop,” Thursby said. “One of them missed him completely and killed his girlfriend.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Unfortunately, he had just enough marijuana in the trunk of his old Camaro to make it a felony possession. The deputy said my client resisted, which is stupid because the kid has a tremor from brain damage in a car wreck. The death of his girlfriend makes it a capital murder. Interesting case,” he said. “We’ll beat them like a monkey’s dick on appeal, but I’m getting tired of dealing with these idiots.” Then he sighed, shook his head, and suddenly looked like an old man. “Speaking of idiots,” he continued. “I glanced through the Oates case file. Something’s wrong, Milo. I know Steelhammer can’t be bought, but he was new on the bench then, and he might have been handled. The whole thing stinks like your lazy brother-in-law’s shorts.”

  “I was just on my way to Huntsville,” I said.

  “I’ll call ahead,” he said, “to see if I can’t ease the way. Tell the kid we’re going for a new trial.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll cover the cost.”

  “Save your money,” he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder toward the courthouse. “I’ll do it like this one. For fun. And headlines.”

  “I hope you have some.”

  “So where do you stand with Sylvie Lomax?”

  “I haven’t talked to her yet,” I said. “I’ve got the McBride woman stashed in a safe place, but she’s not talking. I’ll cut her loose before I give her up to Rooke or Lomax.”

  “Not a wise decision,” he said, “but one I approve of highly.”

  I left Thursby sitting there, his short legs swinging in the air. His feet didn’t quite touch the ground, but his balls surely did.

  * * *

  After a troubled, almost sleepless night in a local motel not too far from Huntsville, I went out to the prison unit where Dickie Oate
s was lodged. Thursby’s call hadn’t eased my way at all. I had to use my Gatlin County DA’s badge and a threat of a lawsuit to get an interview. More than my welcome had changed. This time we talked through thick Plexiglas with worn telephones in an oddly empty visiting room. Dickie Oates, who looked ten years older, sat down quickly, picked up the phone, then placed his other hand against the barrier. I read the ballpoint message on his palm.

  “Can you do that, man?” he said. “My folks will pay you back. That’s the only way I could get out of the ad-seg.” When I looked confused at the term, he added, “The hole, man.”

  “You got it,” I said, nodding to the officer who stood against the wall behind Dickie Oates. But the CO’s face was as blank as the wall. “Cooley,” his nametag said. “Two things,” I said. “Phil Thursby’s office will be in touch with you shortly. He’s going to try for a new trial.”

  “Great,” he said. “What’s the other thing?” I unrolled the picture of Amanda Rae Quarrels against the Plexiglas. “That’s one of them.”

  “One of them?”

  “Before they put me in the hole,” he said, “I had this guy on the yard — a shrink in on a drug rap — hypnotize me. There were a bunch of women there, kicking the shit out of that Duval asshole when he went down. I was on the ground by then and I was still there when the shotgun went off the second time.” Then he paused. “Does that help?”

  “Sure,” I said, “sure.” Though I didn’t have the vaguest idea if it helped or not. I didn’t even know what it meant. “What did you do to get put in the hole?”

  “Looked at somebody the wrong way,” he said. “That’s all it takes these days.”

  “Hang tough, kid,” I said, then left.

  * * *

  The Attitude Adjustment was a bunkerlike cinder block bar set in the middle of an asphalt parking lot just off the Interstate across the Madison County line. Although it wasn’t quite ten o’clock in the morning, I had trouble finding a parking place among the pickups and four-wheel-drive units sporting Department of Correction parking stickers. The off-shift. COs who filled the bar all stared at me when I opened the front door. Pool players hung over their shots, their heads turned, many drinks paused in midair. I tried not to look guilty but the looks on their faces suggested that I failed. I found an empty table in the darkest corner I could find. The cocktail waitress, a tall, skinny woman with stringy black hair, showed up quickly, her bony jaw working at a piece of chewing gum.

  “What can I do for y’all, partner?” she asked.

  “A can of Coors,” I said. “Is Ramona Cooley working today?”

  “I’m Ramona,” she said. “You got something for me?” I nodded, but she took off for the bar, her tray winging before her. She was back in a moment with my beer. When she leaned over to set it down, she popped out her gum, and stuck it under the table as she whispered, “Stick it there.” Then louder she said, “You passin’ through or visitin’?”

  “Heading for Houston,” I said.

  I stuck the envelopeful of cash to Ramona Cooley’s gum, then drank my beer rather quickly and uncomfortably. She brought me another without being asked. The envelope went away with her. People had stopped looking at me with narrowed eyes, so I stopped chugging my beer. She brought me a third, again without being asked. I gave her a ten and told her to keep the change. But she made change anyway, leaning over me as she counted it out.

  “Cooley’s worked inside a long time, buddy, and he thinks Dickie Oates is bein’ screwed,” she whispered, “and we hate to take the money. But you know how it is. Thanks a bunch, hon.”

  I finished my beer, left the change, and walked through the silent stares.

  TWELVE

  The copy of the file on Dickie Oates was still at Carver D’s, so I stopped there when I got back to Austin. The fat man was oddly somber and sober, sitting in his antique wheelchair, warming in the sun broken by the live oak branches.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “You look like something the dog threw up and the cat drug home.”

  “Petey just got accepted at Harvard Business,” he said.

  “And that’s bad? Isn’t an MBA a license to steal?”

  “He won’t let me go with him unless I stop drinkin’, man,” he said. “So I’ve stopped. You stopped once, didn’t you?”

  “I took a ten-year break,” I said.

  “How’d you do it?”

  “Smoked a lot of dope, drank a lot of tonic water,” I said, “read a lot of books, saw a lot of movies, and found the extra time hard to fill.”

  “You were tending bar, weren’t you? Didn’t that make it harder?”

  “Hell, I worked all the time because the people on the other side of the bar showed me where I was headed if I didn’t slow down.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine life without Petey,” he said, “so I’m gonna give it a try.”

  “Good luck,” I said. And meant it. “Hangas going with you?”

  “No. Hangas has too much family down here,” Carver D said, then chortled. “He’s gonna handle my affairs down here. Gonna be my bidness manager. Take care of things till we get back.” As if cheered by the notion of coming back home, Carver D smiled. “So what the hell do you want, Mr. Nosy?”

  “Dwayne Duval’s autopsy report,” I said.

  And there it was. From ankle to scalp, Duval’s body was covered with more than fifty fading contusions.

  “Looks like somebody tried to kick the asshole to death before they shot him,” Carver D said. “Makes you wonder.”

  “Makes me wonder where Enos Walker was that night,” I said as I thumbed through the rest of the file. No matter how hard I looked, no female names appeared on the witness list, just Billy Long and one of Dickie’s frat buddies. Of course, Long was inside and Dickie’s buddy was around the corner in the parking lot on the side and just heard the shots. They claimed they never saw any particular women. “Makes me wonder what he was doing.”

  “According to the stuff that wasn’t in the trial record, I’m guessing he might have been pretty close to Tulsa,” Carver D said. “Maybe waitin’ for a cocaine delivery around that time.”

  “What about his brother?”

  “That’ll be a little harder to dig up,” the fat man said. “Call me in a couple of days.”

  “Maybe you should do this computer thing professionally,” I suggested.

  “And take all the fun out of it,” he said, then laughed as he wheeled himself toward his office.

  As I left, I realized that Carver D wasn’t the only one who needed Petey. Shit, I was going to have to find another silent partner to help me launder the drug money. Which made me think about Travis Lee, so I returned his call.

  * * *

  Travis Lee’s wife, who had died in a car wreck some years before, had left him a rambling house that sprawled along the crest of a small ridge overlooking one of the string of lakes along the Colorado River, a large but ordinary house except for the view. Travis Lee hadn’t changed the house in the years since his wife’s death, except to fill it with enough junk to start a Civil War museum. I had been to a couple of parties at his place — without Betty — but his’ friends were either too young, too old, or too Texas to be interested in anything I had to say.

  Travis Lee waited out on the patio, a new pair of custom-made alligator boots propped on a small table. The boots and their matching belt gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. At this angle, his golden buckle looked more like a golden frog than a snake. He lifted his can of Tecate in my direction as I came out the back door. “Thanks for coming out,” he said, a grin large on his face as he waved at his Chicano butler standing by the back door to bring us a beer. “You ain’t been exactly religious about returning my phone calls lately.”

  “I’ve been busier than a whore at a meat cutter’s convention,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “You know, son, I’m just an old country boy,” he said as he started his routine.

  “Spare me the preface,” I
said, grinning as I held up my hands in surrender. “I told you, Travis Lee, I just don’t have the time to worry about investments now.”

  “Spare me,” he said. “At some point, you’re gonna have to piss on the fire and call the dogs.”

  “Trav, I’ve been long on busy, and you’ve been short of details,” I said. “You think we could talk about this later? Then maybe my voice mail won’t be quite so full of bullshit.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his face large with concern. “Sorry to hear about you and Betty. Women come and women go, but business lasts. How much money you got in that offshore bank?”

  “Enough. Why?”

  “If you’ve got a million to lend me for thirty days,” he said, ruffling his wild white hair as he stood up, “I can move it just across the street and turn it into three million clean and clear in a New York bank. We can split the profit down the middle.” When I didn’t answer, he added, “I’d even be more than willing to put up my share of the Lodge as collateral.”

  “Hell, man, if it goes bad, I don’t want to end up with a fucking motel,” I said, laughing. “I don’t even want the bar, if you get right down to it.”

  “Hell, boy,” he said, laughing and slapping my shoulder, “I thought you loved that place.”

  “I do,” I admitted. “But it’s always full of the wrong people.” And in the wrong part of the world, I thought but didn’t say. “Besides, the kind of profit you’re talking about can only come from insider trading or drug deals, and I don’t need that kind of heat.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Travis Lee said, still grinning. “I wouldn’t do anything like that. Straight property deal, and we’re covered all the way down the line anyway.” He could tell I didn’t like the sound of that. “And speaking of heat, there’s another damn good reason to consider this deal,” he said. “You might be needing a dose of clean cash. Like^ I started to say, I’m just a country boy, but I’m aware that you and that kid have been washing cash through the bar.” ‘

  “I’m just a country boy myself,” I said, “and even if I was running a laundry, it’d just be chump change, and I’d be covered like your Granny’s ass.”