“Sounds like a deal,” I said. As do all people who keep secrets professionally, Mac knew too many, and had a way of making anything he said sound like a deal.
Although he was several years past fifty and had played two softball games in one day, Mac still carried his stubby body with an athlete’s strut, a sense of easy strength in his oddly shaped frame. Like Babe Ruth, he didn’t look like he could hit the ball, but he could; and he had a winner’s confidence in his carriage as he walked the twenty feet from the hot tub to his room. He’d earned that strut. In spite of a torn ACL in high school, he had been a small-college all-American linebacker in his youth, a ranked amateur squash player in his middle years, and now was probably the best softball player over fifty in Montana. Even with a twisted knee, his play at shortstop—two doubles and a seventh-inning home run—earlier that evening had won us the state title in the O.F.S. League. Over Fifty League, they called it. Old Farts Softball, we said.
Our wives had endured the semi-final game earlier that hot afternoon, thinking as everyone did that the Old Goats had come as far as they could, farther than they had ever dreamed. We were bound to lose to a team of very athletic peace officers from Billings, fundamental Christians to a man, their eyes untroubled by doubt, drugs, or even rumors of strong drink. Our defeat seemed so certain that we had made dinner reservations at the Redbird for that night.
But Satan kept the score book that day. Their starting pitcher walked four men in a row before giving up as many dink singles. Then the short-stop, short fielder, and center fielder, mad with frustration, crashed together chasing a high, lazy pop-up. The result was a separated shoulder, a serious concussion, two lost teeth, and four more runs for our team. For them, everything went to hell after that. The next inning, their catcher and the umpire collided face to face, then rushed off to St. Patrick’s ER to have their noses removed from their cheeks and recentered in their faces. In the fourth inning, they were forced to recruit two drunks from the stands to save themselves from a forfeit. When the ten-run mercy rule was applied after the fifth inning, they were truly thankful to leave the arena. Christians, 0; Old Goats, 21. So much for dinner reservations. Our wives elected to skip the night game final in favor of a soak in the hot tub and room service dinners in their rooms. We were so stunned by our win that we didn’t argue with them.
Mac paused at the sliding glass door of the bridal suite. “Actually, give me an hour,” he said, his broad grin shining in the shadows. Mac and Lorna weren’t newlyweds, but new enough to still have fun with the notion.
I answered with a wave and a smile of my own. My friend’s grin was as happy and excited as a puppy’s when he turned to go in to his young wife. Unfortunately, my smile felt as if it had been gouged into my face with a rusty nail. The scrap of fabric I had snatched from the water was the top of Lorna’s swimsuit.
As the sliding glass door rumbled shut, the laughter from the young men’s table took on a sharp snicker that I didn’t much like. I finished my beer, tossed the empty can into the cooler, then climbed out of the hot tub. As I walked past the chuckling table, I clipped one kid’s knee with the cooler, hard, then stumbled into the table, spilling drinks all over the other two. Apologizing profusely and promising to call room service to send them a round of drinks, I trotted over to the motel’s side entrance, trying not to limp.
A small revenge, I realized, but I knew the indignities facing an older man married to a younger woman. I was fifteen years older than Whitney, but I still had most of my hair, and it was blond and didn’t show the gray like the blue-black curls that draped Mac’s head and his rakish goatee. He was twenty years older than Lorna, but she looked so young, the age difference seemed greater. She had wide-set wild green eyes, a cap of deep red hair, and the clear skin of an Irish child.
My wife, on the other hand, carried herself like a woman wise beyond her years. A finely etched set of crow’s-feet, shadows left from our time hiding in the hard sunlight of the slickrock desert and later in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, flanked the fierce and determined intelligence shining from her deep blue eyes. And I suspected, like many beautiful women, Whitney had never looked like a child. Just as I suspected that Lorna wouldn’t stop looking like a child until she was suddenly very old.
A trash can sat just inside the side entrance. I started to stuff the top of Lorna’s swimsuit deep into the refuse, then changed my mind, and walked down to our room. The hallway was filled with the wails of the losers and the cheers of the winners. A room service tray with a half-eaten club sandwich and an empty coffee pot sat outside our door. Whit must have heard my key in the door because she was standing just inside, waiting for me, the deep laugh lines flickering around her wide mouth.
“Are you guys ever going to stop acting like kids?” she said, smiling and shaking her head. Then she gave me a long kiss and a hug hard enough to make me flinch. In our league, base runners weren’t supposed to try to run over the catcher. But sometimes they forgot. “Aren’t you guys ever going to grow up?”
“We’ll start working on it tomorrow,” I said, when we disengaged.
“I’ll believe it when I see it, CW,” she said. “Tomorrow?”
“Tonight we’re going downtown.”
“And here we are with a room all to ourselves,” she said, grinning. Our son, Les, had gone to basketball camp back in Minnesota. At twelve he thought softball nearly as boring as baseball and football. He was a basketball fanatic. Pro basketball. “You mind if I keep working?” Whit asked, and she really meant it. She sat back down at the desk. That was one of the many things I loved about her: she always meant what she said. “If I get through this brief tonight, we’ll have all day tomorrow to ourselves.”
“A brief hurrah, huh?” I said. Her flight wasn’t until eight the next evening. “All too brief.”
“I wish you wouldn’t take it that way,” she said, looking into the gray screen. “I’m getting a late start at this lawyer thing, and this job is a chance to skip a few grinding years.” Then she added, “Anyway, we’ve survived worse times than this.” Her new job in Minneapolis was a good one, right, and her mother needed help with her aged father, true enough, and sure as hell we had survived worse times. “It’ll be fine,” she said.
“I’ll get a dog,” I said, “and wear out an airline seat.”
“Thank you,” she said, wrapping a slim, manicured hand around my wet knee, but her eyes were already back at the screen.
“I’ll be back before closing time,” I said.
“I’ve heard that before,” she said. “Is Lorna going?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Too many vodka tonics and too much sun this afternoon.”
“Did you see the size of that blister on her thigh where she missed with the sun block? Jesus.”
“I try not to look at Lorna’s legs,” I said. Even though they were long and lovely, often she seemed a bit too proud of them, too ready to show them off.
“Liar,” Whit said as she gently slapped the back of my knee. “I used to envy her that beautiful white skin. Until I found out that she doesn’t tan. Hell, she doesn’t even bother to burn; she’s so pure, she blisters.” Then she patted me on the ribs again, laughing. “Are you sore? That asshole ran into you pretty hard. I thought that was against the rules.”
“I held on to the ball, honey,” I said, “and that’s all that counts.”
“You’ll never grow up.”
“I’ll be as sore as a boil tomorrow, but we’ve got at least an hour before the pain starts.”
“You’ve got an hour, cowboy,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“All work and no play, makes Jack—” I started to say.
“My name ain’t Jack, dude,” she interrupted, laughing again, “and if you think I’m dull, I can fix that in a heartbeat.”
“No, thanks,” I said.
She went back to her laptop, and I stepped over to the telephone to order a round of drinks for the boys at th
e pool.
“What the hell was that about?” Whit said without looking up.
“I stumbled into a table coming back from the hot tub.”
“Time to take up golf?”
“I was thinking of chess,” I said, but she was already deep into the brief. I showered and changed, trying not to think about why the top of Lorna’s swimsuit was floating around the hot tub, and trying not to worry about what Mac wanted to talk to me about.
“Eat something,” she said by way of good-bye as I left. Since the day I’d been gutshot down on the border, eating had lost a lot of its charm.
Actually, Whitney had brought Dr. William MacKinderick into our lives. She had been trying to run a pro bono diminished capacity defense for a fourteen-year-old Benewah teenager who had hitchhiked off the reservation down to Meriwether, where he’d stuck six inches of sharpened screwdriver into the neck of the first bartender who wouldn’t serve him a drink. The kid was lucky the bartender hadn’t died. Whit was sure that the kid suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and had no more control over his emotions or actions than a rabid coyote. Of course, in this new world, the state wanted to try the kid as an adult for attempted murder. Mac was the only psychiatrist in Meriwether who volunteered his time as an expert witness. The case dragged on forever, but they finally got the kid remanded to Warm Springs for treatment instead of Deer Lodge Prison, where he would have become just another piece of red meat.
Mac could afford the time. Before he’d left a successful practice in Seattle after the scandal surrounding his divorce and quick marriage to Lorna, who had been one of his patients, Mac had written four best-selling, down-to-earth self-help books: Other Peoples’ Troubles; Your Demon Family; I’d Be Okay if You Weren’t Such a Mess; and They Need You as a Witness. They were funny, practical, without cant or pretension, and full of absolutely practical advice about changing behavior. Mac believed that whatever method helped, in each individual case, was the right method and that most people’s problems were caused by listening to friends and family. The psychiatric world was suspicious of him because he refused to belong to any school and had the gall to suggest that most people needed therapy, not because of their personal demons but because they allowed the other people in their lives to be demonic. Enough readers, though, loved Mac’s advice so much that he never had to worry about money again.
Lorna had grown up in Bigfork, Montana, the late child of a retired runway model and a mediocre professional golfer, so her move back to Montana had satisfied her family. And Mac’s practice in the small city of Meriwether had seemed to suit him perfectly. Until the malpractice suit.
The suit had gone on for a year when it became clear that an eyewitness was needed. Mac’s lawyer, Ron Musselwhite, recommended me. Captain Fucking Bloodhound to the rescue. It cost Mac thousands of dollars and me six months of my life, but I finally came up with a witness, and the malpractice suit was settled last winter. During the breaks through that long, hard time, Mac and I became confidants, then drinking buddies, then close friends.
When I got to the Depot that night, it was full of men and women still in their sweaty softball uniforms and plastic spikes. Because of our winters, it often seemed that summer softball was a religion in Montana, the only religion to which I had ever belonged. Some of the guys I saw from the Old Farts League had changed clothes, but their faces glowed with the same inner light as the kids’. We were past middle age, perhaps almost old, but we were still swinging the bat. And thanks to the miracle of modern technology, occasionally hitting one out of the park.
Mac was sitting on a tall stool at the corner of the bar beneath the chalkboard that displayed the beer and wine list. He wore olive khakis and a dark cashmere sport coat over a white knit shirt. I felt like a bindle stiff in my jeans, Slumgullion’s T-shirt, and Old Goat’s windbreaker. As I worked the rest of the way through the crowd, Mac tapped the kid beside him on the shoulder. The kid gave up his stool happily and moved back into a clot of standing players. I knew that Mac had bought the kid and his friends a round of drinks to save me a stool. The two pudgy young blond girls from the pool were billing and cooing on the stools beside me.
“I saved you a place, darling,” Mac said as he slapped my cheek when I sat down. The kids nearby gave us a look, then shook their heads and laughed. “You want a drink?” He had an almost untouched martini in front of him, a drink I usually avoided like sin, but it looked clean and cold and perfect for the moment.
“I’ll have one of those,” I said.
“Todd,” Mac said in a normal voice. But the bartender heard him and looked up alertly. I was fairly good company in bars, but Mac made himself a neighborhood within minutes after climbing on a bar stool. “A Bombay Sapphire martini for my friend, please.”
While the bartender made the drink, I looked around the bar. As had happened too often recently, all the women looked very young, impossibly pretty, and sharper than the popper on a blacksnake whip. But I was with Mac, a member of the neighborhood, so my openly admiring stares were met with smiles instead of frowns.
When my martini came, I raised it to Mac. We clicked glasses. “Victory,” I said.
“Unless it’s victory over death, my friend,” he said, “it’s as empty as an old man’s condom.” He stared at the clear drink, his face deadly serious.
“Excuse me,” I said, trying not to think about the piece of Lorna’s swimsuit in the inner pocket of my windbreaker. Or her bare breasts. Or her legs. “Jesus, I thought this was supposed to be a celebration.”
“I need you to go to work for me again,” he said abruptly, his voice almost inaudible beneath the crowd noise.
“No,” I answered without hesitation. “I don’t think so.”
“You won’t even think about it?”
“The last gig almost killed me, partner,” I said. “I didn’t shit right or sleep through the night for months after all that time on the road. And you know how I feel about working for friends.”
“You’d be working for Ron Musselwhite,” he said as he pulled out a cigar and snipped off the tip.
“Can’t smoke that in here, dude,” said a passing blond waitress with massive energy and a dangerous edge to her laughter, who quickly lost the edge, then slipped into a happy voice that defined her personality. We were the entertainment in her world.
“Can I at least chew on it?” Mac suggested.
“Anytime, dude. Anytime,” she said, then swept on past with a tray full of drinks.
“Look,” he said, leaning toward me. “You won’t have to leave town, and I promise it will be an easy job. I’ll pay twice your usual rate.”
“What the hell?” I said. “We live in the same town, man. We even live in the same neighborhood. We have drinks at the Scapegoat at least twice a week, right? So why did we have to drive all the way to Missoula, play two softball games in the same goddamned day, and come down to this madhouse so you can offer me a job?”
“You always had a great perspective on the obvious,” he said. “The timing seemed right. Whitney’s on her way back to the Twin Cities—”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Sughrue, I need your help. A professional and personal favor.”
“Jesus fucking wept,” I said, then sighed, and gunned my martini, then waved my glass at the bartender. Of course, he ignored me. Mac raised his finger and Todd was there in a microsecond.
“Another?”
“For him, please,” Mac said, then turned to me again. “Look, this is worse than the malpractice suit. Far worse.”
“It’s always about you, isn’t it?” I said as I picked up my second martini. Gin had always made me silly. “It’s never about me,” I said, probably louder than I meant. Now the kids shifted gently away. We were almost alone in the crowd.
“If I worked for you,” Mac said, perfectly calm, “it’d all be about you. But when you work for me, by definition, it is about me, my friend.”
I didn’t say anything, just looked at m
y empty martini glass and wondered how it had gotten empty. “Goddamn,” I said to no one in particular, “I fucking miss drugs.”
“Don’t we all,” Mac said. “How did you get here?”
“My dad was pretty fucking crazy when he came back from WWII,” I said, “and my mom was an Avon Lady who loved gossip.”
“The Depot, man,” Mac said. “How did you get to the bar?”
“I walked,” I said. “I knew you’d stay sober and give me a ride back to the motel.”
“I’m glad I’m dependable, CW,” he said.
“I’m dependable, too,” I said, “in my own way.” I pushed the third martini aside, ordered a rack of ribs and a glass of water, then bummed a cigarette and a light from the young woman on the stool beside me. She didn’t seem to mind so I assumed that she belonged to the clot of kids drinking on Mac’s tab. She gave me an almost empty pack of Dunhills and a box of Swan matches. “Just keep them.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Just one more I don’t have to smoke,” she said. The young woman had a thin, pleasant face and fair, almost creamy, skin. And the same accent as an old friend of mine, a Chicano dog trainer whose mixture of Mexican and Southern accents gave him one of the best storytelling voices I’d ever heard.
“Thanks,” I said again. “Where are you from?”
“Billings,” she said. That’s what her jacket said.
“You didn’t get that accent in Billings,” I laughed, but she turned away. Old guys get used to it. So I turned to Mac. “So what the hell’s up?”
Then he told me. Unfortunately.
Most of Mac’s patients dealt with their problems with drugs or group therapy, but he still had seven patients in old-fashioned long-term analysis. Like all his records, the notes and tapes of these sessions were tightly controlled. But shortly after the conversion from tapes to minidisks, his secretary had discovered that somebody had broken into either the office or the files and copied the stack of minidisks. There was no evidence of a break-in, and the secretary only caught on to the fact that the minidisks had been copied when she was checking the computer logs for something else entirely.