The Right Madness

  “Survive is about all,” I answered. “My dad cowboyed and Indianed out here when he came back from the war.”

  “What?”

  “About half the time he thought he was an Indian—sometimes a Cheyenne, sometimes a Sioux or a Comanche—but mostly he was just a saddle tramp, breaking horses, cutting wheat, and baling hay. I never saw much of him. Except in the summers. Hell, sometimes I didn’t even recognize him when he came home.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Nobody knows,” I said. “Maybe he just drifted off into one too many sunsets.”

  Claudia wouldn’t give me a hint about where we were going, but I didn’t much care. A road trip without a point, down one of the most peaceful bits of highway left in the country. Of course, from some of the roadside turnouts where we stopped, we could hear the distant thump and crunch of the bombing range beyond the distant mountains.

  Whit left several messages, but I was too confused to respond to them. My son didn’t want to talk to me, which hurt like a broken rib, but I left him alone as much as I could and kept the few conversations as short and mundane as possible. We’d driven this highway together, but he didn’t remember. But I wasn’t too worried. I knew that the first time I saw Les again, the love and laughter would rush right back. Each time I checked with the house sitters, the cats were more and more in charge. Lorna seemed to be asleep every time I called, which was fine with me.

  Outside Vegas, Claudia directed me over to Kingman, Arizona, where we picked up I-40, then over to I-17 down to Tucson, where we turned left on I-10 across the bottom of Arizona and New Mexico. When we turned right at Deming, I guess my face changed because Claudia asked me what was wrong.

  “Let’s find a drink,” I said.

  “I’m with you now, cowboy.”

  When we got settled on bar stools at a motel lounge, I admitted, “I’ve been here before, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant.” I didn’t think she needed to know about how my partner was tortured and forced to dig his own grave between Anapra and Columbus, then kill two men with a shovel and flee naked across the desert. When I finally found him in a Deming motel with a heroin monkey on his back, he still had a dead man’s hand under his pillow.

  “So Robert Guilder lives in Columbus or Palomas, huh?” I said. “Ain’t nothing else down here.”

  “Columbus,” she said. “In a house built next to an air park—runway and hangers and the whole nine yards.”

  “So what do we have on him?”

  “Very little,” she said. “He was allowed to resign with a full pension, but about the same time, his mysterious great-aunt in the Bahamas died and left him with a couple of million bucks. Maybe three. So he traded his little Cessna for a used Beechcraft King Air, a C90B, I think. He takes up the occasional sight-seeing group, but mostly he just flies around alone. Oh, and he traded his old wife from Havre for a blond giantess from Ukraine, an ex-officer in the medical corps.”

  “Any place to stay in Columbus?”

  “One motel, a bed and breakfast.”

  “Shit, I’d rather sleep in the car,” I said. “Maybe we should hang here a couple of days while I check him out, and you can put all your lawyer shit to use and hit the court-house. Then I’ll pay him a little visit.”

  “Don’t even think about leaving me behind.”

  “Right,” I said, but started planning a way to do it. “Let me have the address, okay?”

  She hesitated, but finally turned loose of it.

  We checked in at the motel where we were drinking—two rooms this time—and I rented a dusty brown Jeep so I wouldn’t show up in the tiny town of Columbus wearing Montana plates.

  We had flat enchiladas and half a dozen drinks for dinner, then a sweet tequila-laced good-night kiss, which almost became something else. But just sealed the friendship.

  Because I couldn’t get hold of my hacker friend in Boston, I had to spend most of the night chasing Robert Guilder around the cyberworld, spending money I didn’t have, loading my credit cards until they squealed like gored oxen. But he was boring as a lab coat. He had his work; he had his plane, which seemed the center of his life.

  Early the next morning I tried to send Claudia on a separate chore, but she refused. The day before, I had picked up a U.S. Geological Survey map of southern Luna County, a set of desert fatigues, and an aviation radio, so by good daylight I had my spotting scope settled on the back door of Guilder’s sprawling fake adobe house. He came out, a tall, pear-shaped man with a bad black toupee that glistened like a grease puddle on his round head. The light morning breeze didn’t wiggle a hair on his head. Hell, even his mustache looked fake. He went into the hanger and wiped down his aircraft with the loving care of a proud father, then checked the engines as carefully as if he were about to fly across the Atlantic. But as far as I could tell from the radio, he had filed a flight plan to Fort Stockton and back, without any stops. An old boy wouldn’t mess with dope smuggling this close to the border. The airfield’s only advantage was its closeness to the border, which was a singular disadvantage unless he wanted to run. He could run in moments.

  Guilder was the first one in the air, his craft lifting across the bottom of the Florida Mountains, but as the morning brightened, his neighbors drifted out to their hangers or pools, raised their American flags, and drank coffee while talking to the postman. I swear, though, that one old lady in a bright pink jumpsuit came out into her sculpted concrete backyard with a handful of little flags and proceeded to put them into little holes. Then she returned to the house for a cup of coffee, a golf ball, and a putter. She had a miniature golf course in her backyard. And by damn she was having a hell of a time. Every time she hit a hole in one, I could hear her laughter crackle through the clear desert air.

  Then the major event of the morning arrived, striding out Guilder’s back door. Larise Grubenko Guilder must have been well over six feet, slim but well muscled like a professional swimmer, with broad shoulders and thick, solid, beautifully sculpted thighs. Just about as much bad woman as a good man could want, and not wearing enough clothes to cover a mouse. The tiny suit almost perfectly matched her walnut tan. She had about four feet of golden, almost white, blond hair hanging across her broad tan shoulders. Breasts like high explosive nose cones rose proudly above washboard abs. Bulging calves and slim ankles completed the picture, slightly outlined by flashes of red on her lips, fingernails, and toes. I wondered what sort of nursing she had practiced.

  I let Claudia take a look. “My God,” she said. “What’s that?”

  “Probably a couple hundred grand’s worth of pussy.”

  “Don’t be crude,” she said, then I led her back to the Jeep and took her complaining mouth back to the motel.

  “Trust me,” I said, “you don’t want to be around this. Or know about it.”

  She accepted it, but she didn’t like it.

  Assuming that the desert fatigues gave me a slightly official look, I worked my way around to the front of the house, parked, strode officiously up the walk and hammered like a cop on the door. The old lady golfer stared at me through her window, shaking her head sadly. A sign I should have perhaps heeded.

  Larise opened the door wearing a loose, transparent wrap over her tiny suit and holding a pair of panty hose draped over her shoulder. The rest of the room was filled with Western movie paraphernalia.

  “What do you want?” she said sharply with only the barest hint of a husky accent.

  “I’m a private investigator from Montana,” I said, “and I’d like to talk to your husband.”

  “And I’d like you to sit down very carefully in that chair,” she said, nodding to a deacon’s bench along the foyer wall. But I didn’t do it.

  “Lady, I don’t know who the hell you think you are,” I said, “but it’s been a long goddamned time since somebody holding a pair of panty hose told me what to do.”

  She hit the side of my head with the doubled foot of the panty hose, which she had filled with
sand and bird shot. She might as well have shot me. I hit my knees like a God-sodden nun the first time she hit me. Then the second time I tipped over like a sack of loose sand, sand that ran in pretty puddles out of my head. My last thought was that she could hit pretty good for a broad on four-inch heels.

  TWELVE

  I SUPPOSE I thought I was going to wake up to the dulcet tones of a nurse or an angel, but the first words I heard were a sharp command: “Hold still.” Then the too-familiar feel of a suture pulling tight on my scalp. I opened my right eye slowly only to find myself blinded by an erect nipple behind the swimsuit top.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she demanded. “Blood is so hard to get out of silk.”

  I shut my eyes and seemed to drift away. When I came back, it was because she had popped an amyl nitrite capsule under my nose as she finished. Maybe I went back out because she popped another under my nose and shoved what tasted like three bitter Lortabs into my mouth. I came up like a snagged fish to discover that I was tied naked, spread-eagled, to iron bedposts. Larise had her wrap back on, for all the good it did.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  “You’ve got a very hard head, my friend,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, but I had to hit you twice. I expected you to be out for several hours. You’re a wonderful surprise.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s surprised,” I said, glancing at my naked body.

  She smiled like the evil witch she was, then said, “Don’t complain. The stitching is very good, except for the ear—I had a little trouble with the ear—but the bleeding has stopped, and your ear won’t flap in the wind. Clean the wounds twice a day and leave them uncovered. I tried not to cut too much of your hair.”

  “How nice,” I said, “but you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for nothing. There’s nothing I can do to you or your husband. You should know that. You’re clean, green, and perfectly legal with the INS, and nobody can track his money past his dead great aunt in the Caymans. You’re completely safe.”

  “Safe,” she sneered. “Such a stupid American word.”

  “I just wanted to ask him a few questions. That’s all.”

  “Questions,” Larise spit. She didn’t seem particularly interested in anything I had to say. She just walked around, examining me like a boar trussed for the fire pit. “You know, this will be a first for me,” she said, still smiling. “First time unprofessionally, that is,” she whispered. “Professionally I’ve beaten generals until they pissed blood from their eyes. I’ve shit in their greedy mouths, peed on their fat faces. But now I’m free. And you’re the whore with questions.” Her laugh tickled my spine like a line of army ants.

  “My wife and I do this all the time,” I lied, sweating. “Nothing new to me.”

  “You have a wife?” she asked.

  “Wonderful lady. Happily married for years.”

  Larise’s smile said it all. You’ll never be the same. She dropped her wrap, discarded her suit like quilt scraps, then leaned over my crotch, her hair like smooth golden sand sweeping across my hips, her shaved crotch in my face. “You’ve got lots of scars,” she whispered. “I love a man with scars.” Then her tongue, soft as a feather, touched me. Somewhere in the distance, a doorbell rang, the washing machine throbbed like a sore thumb, and an aircraft took flight. “Lick me,” she said, “or I’ll bite your dick off.”

  There wasn’t a second when I didn’t believe her.

  Fear the fantasy that comes to life, my friend, fear it like death.

  It was only the middle of the afternoon when Larise helped me out to my Jeep in front of the house, but it felt as if years had passed, as if I had become a very old man recently. Even my freshly washed fatigues—bloodstains scrubbed desert tan again—felt as soft and cuddly as hospital pajamas.

  “Are you sure you can drive?” she asked as she patted me on the cheek and gave me a soft friendly kiss. “Remember, no questions for my husband. Never. The next time I won’t be so nice.” Her smile suggested whips, chains, and stiletto heels on my nut sack.

  “Right,” I whispered, then drove into the blinding sunlight. The old lady golfer gave me a look, but I don’t think it had anything to do with sympathy.

  Claudia wasn’t exactly sympathetic, either. In fact, she laughed all the way back to the border until I threatened to punch her. The only person who had any sympathy was the druggist across the border in Palomas who, for a ridiculous price, provided me with enough Vicodins to keep moving for a few days.

  When Claudia stopped laughing, she asked, “You resisted with all your heart, didn’t you, CW?”

  “I seem to remember something about that.”

  Claudia’s giggles became uncontrollable again, so I left her in the Jeep and huffed back to my room. She was right behind me. “I don’t know why I never thought about trying that approach,” she said between her fingers. Then she had a moment of control before it started again. “You didn’t come, did you?”

  “No,” I lied. Actually, the last time I’d come, I was convinced I’d come blood, but it was just tired postignition exhaust. My dick was so sore I had to buy a jock and sit down to pee. I felt as if I had been recircumcised. “Absolutely, not,” I added. “And I can do without that fucking smile.”

  “Take it easy, cowboy,” she said. “No regrets. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink, maybe even dinner.”

  “In El Paso,” I said. “Pack up. We’ve got to go to El Paso.”

  “What the hell’s in El Paso?”

  “A friend,” I said, “a man I need to talk to before I go back into that house.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said, and her smile faded like the sunset.

  Somehow the life seemed drained out of El Paso. Maybe it was the new fence or the border patrol units lined up along the rio, perhaps the whore of NAFTA. Sometimes it seems as if the whole world is becoming a third world country.

  We checked into the Holiday Inn at Sunland Park. I grabbed an overpriced half-warm beer out of the room’s minibar while Claudia took a long shower. I’d seen all the naked women I wanted to see for a long time, so I stepped outside. Sundown still hovered along the horizon. The ranges of the Potrillos and the Floridas rose in sharp relief against the fading pink. I knew that if I could see around the motel, the Thunderbird would be growing into flight across the face of the Franklin Mountains. As the air cooled, the rocks released their heat as softly as the breath of a sleeping child. A magic moment. But I knew better than to look east to the Asarco towers or south to the ever-burning dumps of Juarez—the desperate poverty, the murdered women from the maquiladores, the tons of drugs waiting to move. There must be a better way to run the world.

  Or perhaps I had just fallen into an abyss of dishonor, ruined and dirty. By a bought Ukrainian whore. Now I wanted a shower. Fuck the stitches. Like the lady said, I have a hard head.

  Claudia was nearly dressed when I came back in, dropping a soft, green jersey that held her like an embrace over black panty hose. Then she slipped into green suede heels, her green eyes glittering. I felt like a rat on the run.

  “I’ll meet you in the bar,” I said, perhaps more curtly than I meant. But I wasn’t into my apologetic mode yet.

  I washed the blood out of my hair and watched the bloody foam course down the gutshot scar and the rest of my ruined body. There should have been tears, too, but I was still angry. If I lived long enough to become an old man, I was going to be a mess. But they hadn’t got me yet. I’d been older a few hours ago, but now those old Scotch-Irish redneck genes had taken over. Plus a couple of Vicodins. I was a fistful of random trouble again.

  Claudia was sitting at the corner of the bar, surrounded by horse trainers and horse turds, as I walked up. She excused herself, picked up her purse, and headed for the bathroom. I shouldered through the clot of middle-aged boys and took Claudia’s seat.

  “Hey, buddy,” the biggest one said, “somebody’s sitting there.”

  “No fucking shit,” I said over my shoulde
r to the big one. Then I added to the bartender, “You might as well call the ambulance now, ’cause I’m gonna kill the big one first.”

  The chicano bartender turned white, and I spun my stool to face the big one. He was wearing one of those polyester western suits with fake stitching and a pair of cheap cowboy boots. I felt a drip of water, or blood, drift down the side of my cheek. I guess that made my point. The group muttered and nattered and stuttered back to the tables.

  “He’s just crazy,” I heard somebody say.

  “No fucking shit,” I repeated, then stood up off my stool. Chairs scraped, but nobody moved toward me.

  Claudia stood suddenly before me, wiping the blood off with a bar napkin. “What the hell are you doing?” she said. “Sit down before we get thrown out.”

  “Separating the shitheels from the shitheads,” I said, but I sat down. I ordered us shots of Patrón tequila and bottles of Tecate.

  “Should you be drinking like that, with your head, you know?” she said.

  “What is today?”

  “Saturday, I think,” she said, and the nervous bartender nodded quickly.

  “Well, I’ve been humiliated, lied to, fucked over, and run around,” I said. “My wife is living in fucking Minneapolis, my best friend is either dead or a murderer, and I’ve got a very bad headache. Nothing I can do tonight can fix it or fuck it up. So let’s find me a hat, hire a limo, and paint the town.”

  Claudia smiled like a teenager contemplating her first night out, clicked my glass, and agreed.

  It wasn’t a stretch, but it was a classic Lincoln Continental with suicide doors, and the driver took us places we had never dreamed of being in. Back and forth across the border, dancing and drinking and eating and singing. Julio’s, the Kentucky Club, del Norte, some salsa place. Then he brought us back at daylight after a menudo breakfast.

  We slept in the same bed that day and spooned, both occasionally shivering through bad dreams. We were shy with each other that afternoon, oddly without hangovers, but still pals, and still on the hunt.