“Sure,” Jackson said. “Sure, that’s fine. Let’s do it.”
“Let’s see the bread,” Stacy said without looking at him.
The poor bastard had to cash a check and endure the bartender’s sly grin when he brought the bills. He handed the money to Stacy and chugged his third martini.
“You hold it,” she told him. “I just wanted to see it.” “My car’s right out front,” he said, falling over himself trying to be casual.
“My motel room’s at the airport,” Stacy said. “Let’s
hit it.”
“Right,” Jackson said, then turned to his hired friend. “Hey, man, let’s go.”
“Who the fuck’s that?” Stacy asked, holding back against Jackson’s hand.
“My driver,” he answered loftily.
“Is he going to hold your dick, man?” she said.
“I’ll be back,” Jackson said, and his friend sat back down quickly and ordered another drink.
I brushed the curly-haired wig out of my eyes and followed them outside. This was the only part where I had told Stacy what to say. I didn’t want her in Jackson’s car.
“Hey, man,” she said, “I got a rented car right there. Why don’t you follow me?”
“I’ll bring you back,” he offered grandly.
“What if I don’t want to come back here?” she asked.
“When I get through with you, honey, you’ll follow me anywhere,” Jackson insisted, ushering her into his Cougar.
I stood on the curb and watched them drive away, wondering where the hell Trahearne was with the other rented Ford. I kicked myselffor trusting the old man to wait outside, for not having another ignition key for Stacy’s rental unit. Five minutes later, Trahearne finally showed up, his big face flushed, a sorry smile twisting his lips.
“They took off, huh?” he muttered as I opened the door and shoved him from behind the wheel.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked as I gunned the car down the street and made the corner in a four-wheel drift.
“Listen, son, we left the whiskey in the other car,” he said, waving a pint of vodka at me, “and I knew we’d need a drink. We’re too old to do this kind of crap without a drink. So I went around the block to buy a bottle. What the hell difference does it make?”
“He wouldn’t follow her,” I said as I slipped through a yellow light ahead of a bus. “She’s in his car, and if they’re not at the motel when we get there, if he took her home or someplace else, I’m gonna have your ass, old man, and have it good.”
“Goddammit, C.W., I didn’t know,” he whined, then he changed his approach with the sort of clumsy grace drunks think of as quick-witted. “What the hell, boy, that little lady can take care of herself. You can be damn certain of that.” Then he slapped me on the shoulder again, hard enough to start the bleeding from torn stitches. I jerked the wig off and threw it on the floor at his feet. He picked it up and laughed, holding it out like a prize beaver pelt. “You looked like shit in this, you know,” he said, then sat it on his head like a hat. “Of course, I look like a million dollars,” he said, then laughed again. He reached over and ripped the phony mustache off and stuck it crookedly on his upper lip. “How’s that?” he asked, grinning. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Aw hell, come on, don’t be so damned serious. Have a little drink and try to relax.” He nudged me with the pint, and there didn’t seem to be anything else to do. “They got my Melinda, boy, and I don’t know what to do,” he said as I handed the bottle back. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Try doing just exactly what I tell you to do,” I said. “For a change.”
“You’re in charge,” he said, “but it better come out
right.”
“Wonderful,” I said, as I turned off Colorado onto 32nd through a service station.
When we got to the motel, the plum Cougar was parked in front of Stacy’s room. I left Trahearne in the car, told him to wait, then went in through the other room and the connecting door. Jackson was already in the saddle. Stacy’s eyes were pleading over his fat, pimpled shoulder. Before I could .get his attention by sticking a silenced .22 in his ear, he grunted and moaned, trembling, and Stacy’s eyes filled with tears. I clubbed him on the back of the neck with the automatic’s butt, then jerked him off her onto the floor and kicked him in the stomach hard enough to twist my ankle. I started to kick him again, but Stacy jumped out of bed and grabbed my arm.
“It’s all right,” she said, “it’s all right. It doesn’t matter.” Then she shook my arm hard. “It doesn’t matter. Really.”
“I’m sorry we were late,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said again.
“It does to me,” I said.
“My fault entirely,” Trahearne apologized grandly as he came through the connecting door, “all my fault, honey, but it couldn’t be helped.”
Stacy took one glance at Trahearne, then one step, and she slapped him so hard she nearly knocked him down. “You drunken piss-ant,” she whispered, then slapped him again.
“What did I say?” he wondered as she raced past him into the other room. Then he saw Jackson naked on the floor. “Lemme get my hands on that son of a bitch,” he roared as he moved toward Jackson. I hit him on the point of the shoulder with the butt and he sat down on the bed. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“Just sit there and shut up,” I said.
“Goddamn it, it’s my wife they took, you son of a bitch, it’s my wife,” he said.
“If you don’t shut up,” I told him, “it’s going to be your widow. I thought I told you to stay in the car.”
“It’s my wife,” was all he answered, then he made himself comfortable on the bed, sighing, “I always fuck it up.”
I took a roll of strapping tape and bound Jackson at the ankles, knees, wrists, and elbows, then I stuffed his dirty sock in his mouth and locked it there with a loop of tape around his neck. As I worked, I heard the sound of Stacy brushing her teeth and showering in the other room’s bath. The noise of her toilet went on long enough to get Trahearne’s attention.
“I never do anything right,” he whined.
“I told you to shut up,” I said. “Get off your ass and give a hand with this piece of shit.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, then giggled, covering his mouth with a finger. It was like trying to deal with a two-hundred-fifty-pound fifty-seven-year-old baby. I couldn’t understand how Catherine or Melinda found the patience or energy. Hell, I couldn’t even understand how Traheame found the energy to be such a bastard. At least he got off the bed, grabbed Jackson under the arms, and before I could help, carried him into the bathroom and deposited him in the tub. “Was that okay, sir?” he said with a Gary Cooper smile somehow fitted on his moon face. Schizophrenia—that was the word I had left out. Trahearne sober and during certain stages of drunkenness was a sad old man with a hell of a load of character, but during other stages of his drunks, he was a two-hundred-fifty-pound fifty-seven-year-old schizophrenic child.
” ust get the hell out of here, okay?” I said.
“I’m all -ight now, he said. “I know I’ve been a fool and an idiot but I’m all right now. We’ve got business to tend to, I know, and I’ll slow the drinking down, drink myself sober. I’ve done it before. So have you. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Just stay out of the way, then,” I said.
“Of course,” he said, sounding as sober as Oliver Wendell Holmes. “This is your show.”
“What now?” Stacy said as she walked into the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a black sweat shirt.
“Go back in the bedroom,” I said.
“I signed on for the duration, man,” she said, suddenly resolute, “and after fucking that creep, if you blow his brains out, I deserve to watch. I earned it. Shit, if you did it, that would be a ray of sunshine in my life.”
“You are the sunshine of my life,” Traheame crooned, then sipped from the vodka.
“Let
’s have some of that,” Stacy said as she jerked the pint from his hand.
I guess I grinned without meaning to and shook my head without thinking about it. When I saw Jackson’s face, he looked like a man in the clutches of the Manson Family, and I didn’t blame him.
“Are you going to tell me where she is?” I asked him, and he made the mistake of shrugging. “Get me the telephone book,” I said to Trahearne.
“The phone book?” Stacy went into the bedroom and brought it back.
I lifted Jackson’s feet and sat them on the thick book. His genitals had balled up in his crotch and they looked like some vital organ that had slipped from his body. I stood up and took the .22 out of my belt.
“You don’t know where she is?” I asked. He shrugged again, and I said, “Okay.” I let the automatic dangle from my hand as I waited for the sound of a jet making its final approach over the motel. “Last chance, ” I said before the noise got too loud for him to hear. He shrugged again. “You know I’m not going to kill you, don’t you?” I said. He shook his head, but his eyes smiled. He might be a piece of shit but Jackson had some balls on him. Either that or he was more frightened of his business associates than he was of me. That was a real mistake on his part. When the landing jet swept over the motel, I leaned down and pumped two rounds into his right foot. Blood splashed over the telephone book and the bathtub, as red as Jackson’s face was white.
“Jesus Christ,” Traheare muttered as he sank onto the toilet. As he slumped, Stacy leaned over the sink and vomited with a single quick motion.
“I’m all right,” she said, then she rinsed out her mouth. “Shoot the fucker again.”
“You didn’t have to shoot him twice,” Trahearne said.
“Once to get his attention,” I said, “and once to let him know I was serious.” Then I looked down at Jackson. “I am serious, you know.” Without waiting to see if he believed me, I jerked him up and shoved the telephone book under his butt. “You understand?” He nodded quickly.
“I don’t like this,” Trahearne said.
“Then get out of the room,” I said without turning around. He didn’t leave. Then I tapped Jackson under the chin with the silencer. “Now, the first thing you have to get straight in your mind is that you’re through in this town. This part of your life is over. Either you leave this room dead or you leave it having told me where Betty Sue is, which won’t make your friends happy, so give up this part of your life right now. Get your mind straight on that. We’ll even buy you a ticket, but get this part out of your mind right now. Okay?” He didn’t nod, he jerked his head up and down in a blur. “Now I’m going to take the gag out, and you’re not going to make any noise at all, right?” As soon as his head quit bobbing, I took out my pocket knife and sliced the tape over the sock and tugged it out. He moaned with amazing restraint. I took the vodka from Trahearne and gave Jackson a quick hit off it. “Now can you tell us where she is?”
“Yes, sir,” he whispered.
“Where?”
“This guy I work for, Mr. Hyland—I think maybe you met him up in Fort Collins once—he has a house between Evergreen and Conifer, a big red brick colonial on the west side of the road on a three-acre lot. You can’t miss it. Up there it sticks out like a sore thumb, and he’s got his name on the mailbox.”
“She’s there?” “Yes, sir.”
“What kind of security has he got?” I asked.
“Security?” Jackson said, looking very confused. I gave him another sip of vodka.
“How many men does he have guarding the place?”
“Guarding the place?” he asked. “Oh, yeah, well, when they’re shooting—”
“Shooting?” I interrupted.
“Yeah, you know, making a flick,” Jackson explained to me. “When they’re shooting, Mr. Hyland has a guy on the gate and another dude walking the grounds. To keep the neighborhood kids away, you know—kids don’t have any respect for private property anymore, so Mr. Hyland has Petey and Mike sort of watch things when they’re shooting.”
“What about the big Mexican?”
“Torres? He’s Mr. Hyland’s personal man and he’s always next to him,” Jackson said.
“Don’t they know we might try to take her back?” I asked.
“I don’t think they know who you are,” Jackson said, trying to be as polite as possible. “I know I don’t.”
It didn’t seem necessary to explain who we were, and as I glanced around the crowded bathroom, I wasn’t all that sure myself.
“How did they know where to find Betty Sue?” I asked.
“Her daddy, you know, out in Bakersfield,” Jackson said. “He knows some people we know and he got this postcard—we thought she was dead—I mean, that’s what we heard a long time ago, and that’s what you said after they roughed you up—so anyway, when her daddy’s friends called about the postcard, Mike flew up to Montana and followed you down.”
“Great,” I said. I didn’t even bother to tur around to give Trahearne a dirty look. He cursed under his breath and walked back into the bedroom. “Do they have Betty Sue locked up?”
“I don’t think so,” Jackson said. “They’re shooting tonight.” “Tonight?”
“Yeah, they rent the equipment to use in the daytime at Hyland’s ad agency, so they have to shoot at night.” “Cheap bastards,” Stacy muttered. “Has he got a fence around the place?” I asked. “Yeah, a chain-link fence,” he answered. “Any dogs?”
“Dogs?”
“You know, guard dogs,” I said. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “Hyland hates dogs.”
That reminded me. “Did you go with them after Betty Sue?”
“I drove the car, that’s all,” he said. “I didn’t go up the hill. I wouldn’t shit you, man, not about’ that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Listen, I’m going to cut your hands loose, and I want you to draw me a layout of the grounds and a floor plan of the house,
okay?”
“Could I have another hit of that vodka first?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, then cut the tape and let him hold the bottle himself. When he finished his drink, he held the pad on his knees and drew for me. “Do your best,” I said.
“I’ll try,” he muttered, then wet the pencil lead with his furry tongue.
“Act like your life depended on it,” I reminded him, and he applied himself to his task with renewed vigor. When it was done, he handed it to me. It wasn’t bad. “Only three doors?” I asked. “Front, back, and garage? No patio doors or sliding doors or French windows?”
“Right,” he said.
“Where do they film?” I asked.
“In this downstairs bedroom here,” he said, pointing it out with the eraser.
“Okay,” I said, “you’ve done great so far. Now I’m going to leave you here in the company of this young lady …”
“I’m not staying here for a minute,” Stacy said.
“Like I said, I’m going to lock you in the trunk of our car, and if everything goes well, we’ll put you on a plane in the morning.”
“Couldn’t you just take me to the hospital?” he asked. “I wouldn’t call anybody.”
“You jerked me around once,” I said, “and you’re sleeping in the trunk until tomorrow morning.”
“I guess I can understand that,” he said.
“Good,” I said, then I cleaned up his foot. Both wounds were through and through, and the bleeding had nearly stopped when I went to work on his foot.
“You reckon it’s fucked up pretty bad?” he asked as I wrapped gauze around it.
“You’re going to limp for lying the rest of your life,” I said. He nodded as if that were a system of justice he understood. “Will you get me his clothes?” I asked Stacy. She snorted but she went to get them, then tossed them on the floor and went back into the bedroom.
As I helped Jackson dress, I asked him, “Why did they go to all this trouble? Not over a five-year-old doctor’s bill
.”
“That was part of it,” he said as he limped into his pants, “yeah, but the forty thousand, that was what pissed them off.”
“The forty thousand?”
“You don’t know about that, huh?” Jackson said with a superior smile. “Tell me,” I said.
“When Betty Sue split, she hit the till for forty K, man, and Mr. Hyland, he had to make it up out of his own pocket. He’s gonna work Betty Sue until he figures he’s made his bread back, then he’s gonna dump her down a mine shaft.”
“Nice people,” I said.
“Just good business,” Jackson said.
Instead of knocking a wad of his teeth out, I gave him two codeine tablets left over from my last visit to Colorado.
“What’s that?”
“For the pain,” I said.
“You know, it’s amazing, but my foot don’t hurt all that bad,” he said as he gingerly pressed the ball of it against the bathroom floor.
“Take the fucking pills,” I said, and he did.
By the time Trahearne and I carried him to the car and stuck him in the trunk with a blanket and pillow, Jackson was nodding away and calling us “Mummy.”
“What’s going to happen to him?” Trahearne asked as I slammed the trunk lid.
“If we’re alive tomorrow morning, we’ll give him a head start on his friends,” I said. “But if we’re dead or in jail or in the hospital, he’ll probably die locked in that trunk. Hell, even if everything goes like it’s supposed to, he’s probably a dead man already.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Not a bit,” I said. “He’s a piece of shit, man, and he lied to me. I gave him every chance I could, and he still lied to me, so fuck him.”
“I lied to you too,” Traheame said, looking away toward the shifting lights of the airport.
“Yeah,” I said, “but that’s the difference between you and him.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s worth killing and you’re not,” I said, then I went back into the motel room and left him standing outside.