“Or cement it,” she said, her smile sweet with revenge, her laughter warm on her mouth as she kissed me.
It felt like a safe place, and who was I to disagree?
The next morning was rife with guilt, apologies, and recriminations over fresh bagels and smoked salmon, but enough of the sweetness and laughter of the night remained so we knew, in spite of everything, that whatever happened we weren’t through with each other.
My meeting with Agent Cunningham didn’t go quite as nicely.
First, we had to find a place where Cunningham was sure he wouldn’t be recognized, as if FBI agents were television stars, then a place where we could have lunch. It was impossible to estimate how many calories a day it took for him to keep that huge body running. Finally, we settled on an old bar nestled under the West Seattle bridge.
“This is the deal,” I said as he finished his second chili cheeseburger, and I slid the pictures and prints of the dead Ukrainians in front of him. “You find out who these guys are, then get out the word that they were about to roll over on their bosses, and make sure everybody thinks it’s a family hit. Then you get the tape back.”
“What happened to these guys?”
“Well, buddy, I shot the motherfuckers in my front yard.”
“What?”
“It was me or them,” I said. “And a story you don’t want to hear.”
“Jesus, what in God’s name did I do to deserve you in my life?” he said.
“You fucked that madwoman,” I said. “Whatever happened after that, you deserved.”
“Did you ever fuck her?”
“I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot alligator’s dick.”
“God, she was amazing,” he said, shaking his head.
“Was that before or after she stabbed you, kid?”
“Oh, fuck you, Sughrue, I’ll do what I can,” he said.
“You damn well better,” I said. “And there’s one more thing.”
“Jesus shit.”
“He wept, too,” I said. “I want this person’s passport number tracked. Call me.” Then I gave him the kid’s name.
“You son of a bitch,” he said.
I kicked him in the shin so hard he turned white and nearly lost his cheeseburgers. While his mouth was open with the pain, I slammed the heel of my palm under his chin. And he nearly bit the end of his tongue off.
“I told you not to call me that,” I said. “The next time, I’ll fucking hurt you. Thank your pissant Kansas god that I’m in a good mood today.” Then I stuck him with the check and left.
SEVENTEEN
DR. WILLIAM MACKINDERICK was right where I expected to find him. But he’d left the flat-rock patio out of the painting. And the table where he sat outside drinking tea and smoking a pipe, wrapped in a heavy knit sweater and a canvas coat against the misty weather. Hell, he even had a tweed hat on his head and a bottle of Lagavulin beside the tea cozy. Almost everything else was just the same. The dark, deep bay bound by the ancient hills. The ruined rock walls, the bogs, and the rocky quiraings rising like forgotten fortresses beyond. Down at the edge of the bay, a form in a yellow rain suit and hood fished very hard with a heavy saltwater rig, casting a weighted treble hook with dangling bait that looked like baby eels, then retrieving it quickly, fishing quickly and tirelessly.
The bay hadn’t been easy to find. Two weeks on a rented fishing boat out of Uig, stuck with two weathered Scots who almost never spoke, and when they did, their accents escaped me, so I had to guess at what the words meant. Even their hand gestures held a relentless economy. And when we shared my Scotch, their sips were so tiny they should have been tasteless. Midway through the first week, I realized I should have hired a pilot and a plane, but I knew I could never explain it to the captain or bear his disfavor. I’d eaten so much smoked fish, I didn’t bother to smoke. But the occasional langostino saved my life.
I’d taken the long way to the Isle of Skye—Hong Kong, Singapore, Rome, then London—wasted round trip tickets under different names each time, then made the long drive on the wrong side of the road up to Scotland and across to the island, then over to Uig to rent a boat.
I parked my rented Volkswagen on the gravel beside a new Land Rover in front of the cottage, then walked quietly around the house. But not quietly enough.
“Well, it took you long enough,” he said without turning.
“I guess I’m not too smart,” I said. “But my wife probably told you that.”
“I’m truly sorry for that,” he said. “How are things between the two of you?”
“None of your fucking business,” I said.
“So what are you doing here?” he said, still not turning as I walked over dry grass and damp stones to the table.
“I thought I came here to kill you,” I said. “But you’re such a pathetic son of a bitch, I don’t have the heart for it. Giving you your life is punishment enough,”
“I knew you’d dig it all out, Sughrue,” he said. “I guess in some way, I wanted you to know.”
“Save your psychobabble, asshole,” I said. “You’re going to need it in court. What’s your key?”
“The game when Gil McDougal hit Herb Score in the eye with a line drive,” he said. “Yanks, Indians, 1957.”
“I should have guessed that you’d pick a tragedy, a time when real men suffered,” I said.
“It’s a child’s game,” he said, “a useless fact now that Landry’s dead.”
“Kirk Gibson. Dodgers, A’s, 1988,” I said. “Landry’s key.”
“How the hell did you know that?”
“Luck and geography, buddy,” I said.
“Jesus wept,” he said, turning now, a small .32 semiautomatic in his hand. “If you’re not going to kill me, my friend, will you have a tot of whiskey with me?”
“Why in the hell would you go to all this trouble to steal that money?” I asked. “Don’t you have enough already?”
“It’s a lot of money,” he said. “And once you’ve had money, you don’t know when enough is enough.” He raised the whiskey bottle, then smiled, the little grin he’d sported as he rounded the bases when he’d homered that last summer night when all this had started.
“Shove your tot up your ass,” I said, knowing that if I knocked that grin off, I wouldn’t stop. “I’m not your friend.”
“I’ll second that,” Lorna said behind me as she came around the corner of the house, followed by Georgie Paul and two other very familiar people.
They must have parked down the lane and stayed off the gravel as they’d walked down to the house. Shit, I was the world’s worst private investigator. Somehow they had followed me around the world. But then, of course, they did have the FBI giving them a hand. I never had a chance of losing them.
Lorna had dressed for the weather, glowing in a light gray designer rain suit with a matching tam and wellies. Everybody else looked like rags discarded into an alley in the East End.
“Wonderful,” I said. “All is saved. The Feds are here.” Morrow and Cunningham didn’t even bother to look ashamed, although Cunningham did try to hide his parabolic mike behind his leg. “Oh, dear, I guess they’ve been seduced by big money and bad pussy.”
Pammie slapped me so hard I had to sit down in one of the cold metal chairs. When I got my wits about me, I picked up the bottle, slipped the cork, and had a long pull.
“Enjoy it, you asshole,” Lorna said. “It’s going to be your last.” Then she added to Mac, “Why don’t you have one, too, honey pie, because you’re as dead as he is.” Then she shoved Cunningham. “Kill them!” she screamed. “You said you’d kill them when we had the keys.”
I suppose cold-blooded murder hadn’t been on the training roster at Quantico because Cunningham hesitated. However, Lorna didn’t. She grabbed his Glock off his belt holster and let off a round that nearly took his dick off but only grazed the front of his muscular thigh. It was enough to put him down, though, pitching him into Pammie and taking her down with
him. As Lorna turned toward her husband, the fisherman on the beach turned, too, her hood flying off, casting her heavy treble hook at Lorna, screaming, “No!” The thick leader took a turn around Lorna’s neck, then the hooks snagged deep into her cheek. When Marcy Miller heaved on the rod, she nearly tore off the left side of Lorna’s face. Lorna fired a single round before she collapsed. But that was enough. The .40 caliber round gutted her husband, slicing across his abdominal muscles as neatly as a scalpel. When he lifted his sweater, shiny blue-gray loops of intestine spilled out. He didn’t even try to shove them back into his body.
But Marcy Miller did when she rushed up from the beach, weeping and screaming until I pulled his sweater down and put Marcy in a chair. Then I picked up Cunningham’s gun and, just in case, lifted Pammie’s as she hovered over Lorna. She was calm enough to stop the bleeding, but didn’t seem to notice when I took her piece. I threw Mac’s shitty little .32 into the bay. I had accounted for all the guns now. Georgie Paul looked as if he wanted to run, but once again the bloodshed had frozen him.
“Come here,” I told him. “Come here and sit down.” He came as obediently as a child in military school. “I want you to take this young lady back to the States,” I said, “and care for her as if your life depended on it. Because it does.”
“No,” Marcy blubbered, “I killed my mother. I told her not to fuck him. But she didn’t listen. I killed her.”
I remembered that horrible moment in Mac’s office, standing where she must have stood watching through the storeroom grill. I took hold of her shoulders, shook her until she faced me with open eyes, then lied as hard as I could, which was pretty hard by now, then said, “You didn’t kill your mother. Believe me, you didn’t, and this gentleman here is going to pay for some real therapy until you realize that. It was just a bad dream that Mac gave you. You did not kill your mother. You weren’t even there.” I couldn’t tell if she believed me, but she stopped screaming and trying to gather the slithering guts of Dr. William MacKinderick.
Then I turned to Georgie Paul. “You got it, my friend?” I said “Be goddamned sure you’ve got it. And you’ll never see me again.”
“Look,” he said, holding his palms up in surrender. “I pray to God I never see you again.”
Then I took out the list of keys. “How many are right?”
“All of them but mine,” he said. “Try Barry Bonds’ first home-run game. What are you going to do?”
“Well, buddy, I’m going to take the rest of my million dollars,” I said. “And I’ve got a friend who will put your stolen money to good use. He has a history of that sort of behavior. The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and perhaps a few radical groups who’d like to cut your capitalistic nuts off. Is that okay? A bit more attractive than a federal slam for the rest of your life. A small price to pay.”
“I guess so,” he stammered, “but what do we do about all this shit?”
“Hey, the keys are in the ignition of Mac’s Land Rover,” I said. “Get Marcy’s bag and passport and get the hell out of here. Now. We’ve got a couple of FBI agents and a dying international fugitive, and if they can’t cover their asses, there’s no hope for us.”
When they were gone, Mac whispered, “Thank you, man. Now why don’t you put me out of my misery?”
“Hey, motherfucker,” I said. “Just be glad there ain’t no coyotes in Scotland.” Then I emptied the piece-of-shit Glocks and tossed them on the ground. “I’ll send the police,” I said to them. “You assholes figure it out. Cover your ass. You’re trained for that.”
Then I left like a dog in the night, pushing back through the mist that before Glasgow became a rain so hard that sheep were falling down. What the hell, Glasgow had an airport, Hertz could find the Volkswagen, and I could fly someplace warm and sunny where the women were brown and naked, full of laughter, and didn’t give a shit if you loved them or not.
But like a bad dog, I went home to a winter as cold as a madman’s imagination. I learned to live in Whitney’s house and call it mine, sometimes. I saw Lester whenever he had the time to spare. It seemed like only seconds before he was taller than me, as tough as his father but full of his mother’s delightful laugh. I knew that someday I’d have to tell him the truth about how he came into the world, how his father forced his mother into whoredom, how she escaped, and how she’d died in an ambush gone wrong. And how I’d killed his father.
Whitney and I went through with the divorce, but we’ve almost become friends again as we talk about when and what to tell Lester. We’re trying to learn to forgive each other, but we walked across too many graves to get here. I’ve never been able to tell her the truth about Mac and his greedy, rotten heart. Somehow it doesn’t seem worth the trouble now. Whit and I are still a bit edgy around each other, and neither of us refers to that last part of our marriage or our lives. We carefully stay away from it.
I see Claudia from time to time. She seems to be filing lawsuits against every company who ever misused Butte, and she seems to be having a great time. After some dancing around it, we slept together again. But we don’t talk much about the past. Sometimes, when we’re together, the bad times come back, and we do more weeping than fucking, but the connection is still there, like an old rope, frayed but still strong, remarkably strong.
And sometimes I drive to Seattle to see Lindsey Porter. She’s the only other person who knows the whole story. Except for Musselwhite, who listened without much comment, just a small threat to drop me off his client list if I didn’t behave, then a rib-cracking hug, and some more Kiowa mojo about eating dogs. Lindsey and I have talked about making something more serious of our lives together. But the web of lies and secrets hanging between us is too thick and tangled to stumble through, so mostly we just enjoy what we have, and hope for the best.
I don’t know what happened after I left Skye. I don’t even know if Mac died, but I suspect he survived. Whatever happened, it didn’t make the papers. There was a rumor that he and Lorna were living in seclusion in Switzerland on the last of his money while they tried to put the side of her face back together. But nothing solid ever came of the rumor, so I left it alone. I mailed the tape to Cunningham, and since it didn’t come back, I assume he and Pammie are still FBI agents, working for the Yankee dollar. Cops get to be human, after all, learn from their mistakes, like all of us, and I wish them well. I suspect they’ll be better people now. At least more careful.
Maybe even the group of greedy whore-dog businessmen are better people, too, for being almost caught. Who knows? Greed is a tapeworm. Shit you can’t get out of your body. Whatever Marcy thinks about her mother’s death remains locked between the walls of her shrink’s office. Thanks to Georgie Paul, that asshole, I do know Marcy is doing well in college. She’s got a full scholarship to Wharton and is looking at Harvard Law. Hey, cheap irony. I save her life, she becomes the enemy. That’s cool. Life is more important than ideas.
And me? Well, hell, I try to stay home more often playing with the cats and doing the scut work that comes my way—depositions, employee thefts, domestic disasters—but I don’t go hunting for lost people much anymore. The women tell me that after all these years I haven’t even found myself. Of course, I haven’t looked all that hard, yet.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The title of this novel is taken from Richard Hugo’s wonderful collection of poetry, The Right Madness on Skye. The final stanza is quoted below.
Tell Harry of Nothingham stop and have the oxen relax,
I want off at the crossroads. That’s as far as I go.
I was holding my breath all the time. Didn’t I fool you?
Come on, admit it—that blue tone I faked on my skin—
these eyes I kept closed tight in this poem.
Here’s the right madness on Skye. Take five days
for piper and drum and tell the oxen, start dancing.
Mail Harry of Nothingham home to his nothing.
Take my word. It’s been fun.
&n
bsp; About the Author
James Crumley was born in Three Rivers, Texas and spent most of his childhood in South Texas. He served three years in the US Army before teaching at University of Texas at El Paso, University of Montana and University of Arkansas. He passed away in 2008.
His private eye novels featuring Milo Milodragovitch and C. W. Sughrue are regarded as masterpieces of contemporary crime fiction, praised by Dennis Lehane, Ian Rankin and George Pelecanos. He was awarded the Dashiell Hammett Award for Best Literary Crime Novel and the CWA Silver Dagger Award.
Also by James Crumley
ONE TO COUNT CADENCE
THE WRONG CASE
THE LAST GOOD KISS
DANCING BEAR
THE MEXICAN TREE DUCK
BORDERSNAKES
THE FINAL COUNTRY
* * *
1
* * *
THERE’S NO ACCOUNTING for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time. For nearly eight years the only way to get a divorce in our state was to have your spouse convicted of a felony or caught in an act of adultery. Not even physical abuse or insanity counted. And in the ten years since I resigned as a county deputy, I had made a good living off those antiquated divorce laws. Then the state legislature, in a flurry of activity at the close of a special session, put me out of business by civilizing those divorce laws. Now we have dissolutions of marriage by reason of irreconcilable differences. Supporters and opponents were both shocked by the unexpected action of the lawmakers, but not as shocked as I was. I spent the next two days sulking in my office, drinking and enjoying the view, considering the prospects for my suddenly very dim future. The view looked considerably better than my prospects.
My office is on the fourth floor of the Milodragovitch Building. I inherited the building from my grandfather, but most of the profits go to a management corporation, my first ex-wife, and the estate of my second ex-wife. I’m left with cheap rent and a great view. At least on those days when the east wind doesn’t inflict the pulp mill upon us or when an inversion layer doesn’t cap the Meriwether Valley like a plug in a sulfurous well, I have a great view. From the north windows, I can see all the way up the Hell-Roaring drainage to the three thousand acres of timber, just below the low peaks of the Diablo Range, that my grandfather also left me. And from the west windows, if I ignore the junky western verge of Meriwether, the valley spreads out like a rich green carpet running between steep rocky ridges. On the north side of the valley, Sheba Peak rises grandly, holding snow until the heart of summer, as white and conical as the breast of a young woman, a woman conceived in the tired dreams of a dirty miner, a dream only gold or silver might buy.