Death Without Company (15 page)

I watched the rainbow threads of grass shimmer in a gentle summer gust that traveled across the middle fork of the Powder River with the swell of something beneath. It rolled like the ocean, moving with a quality that was sensual and female. There was a moist, weighty warmth, not in the scorching of the summer sun, but in the laden air the grass trades for carbon dioxide. Heavy riches.

I was floating now, even though I was lying deep in the swaying stalks. The sky was without a cloud. It was late, though, because the light was parallel to the earth and flat.

I could feel the heat burning through my limbs, easing the ache of my throbbing joints and loosening the tightness in my muscles. As the tendons in my neck relaxed, I felt my head slip to the right, and I could see someone lying beside me. I knew who it was before I could really see her; the scarf that I had seen before trailed across the seed heads of the buffalo grass and back to her hand. I was so close I could make out the texture of the material and the quality of the work.

She knew I was watching her. Her profile was sharp against the light of the sky, and the angles of her face planed the colors of the late afternoon like a prism. I felt the breath catch in my throat at the wonder of her and knew that everything I had heard was true. After a moment, she rolled over and looked at me with those dark eyes, a plucked piece of grass between her teeth. She smiled and reached a hand across to touch my shoulder. Her fingers were light, and a shiver went through me; the coolness of her spread like a welcome cloud on an overly sunny day.

She looked toward the mountains, as if she were trying to think of how to say what she wanted to say. After a moment, she looked back, pulled the thick sweep of hair from her face, and withdrew her hand as she rolled over and supported herself. She was still wearing the blue-and-white spotted dress, the one Lucian had described. She had trouble steadying herself, and it was only then that I noticed she was very pregnant. Her hand came out again, slowly, as if she didn’t want to frighten me. The slim fingers wrapped around mine and lifted my hand toward her. A few clouds appeared like solemn voices and broken hearts.

 
 
I started, caught my hat against my chest, and sat up with my weight on my arms. I stared into the small amount of light from the hallway, pulled my pocket watch out to read the time, and took a deep breath; I’d only been asleep for an hour or so. I could feel a cooling sweat at my throat and decided I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep so I reached down slowly to pick up my coat where it had fallen and placed my hat on my head. I was a little unsteady at first but walked out to the main part of the room and turned the corner to check on Saizarbitoria. He was still sleeping, and I had a brief twinge of jealousy; oh, to be twenty-eight, clear of conscience and young of body. “In the May-morn of his youth, ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.” I wondered how the kid was with Shakespeare.

Dog followed as I made my way to my office and then curled up beside my desk and fell fast asleep; he didn’t have a care. Something was bothering me though, in the recent scheme of things, and the first thing I could think of was Isaac’s car. The old Mercedes was in miraculous condition; why had the brakes failed? In the few words that had passed between us, he had said that they hadn’t worked. It was crazy, but a lot of things were as of late. I got an empty Post-it from Ruby’s desk and wrote a note to Saizarbitoria to go over to Sonny George’s tomorrow and check the Mercedes’s brakes for tampering. I stuck the note on his handcuffs, still locked to the door.

I absentmindedly plucked Sancho’s Post-it from the doorway of my office, walked around Dog, and sat at my desk. It was the middle of the night, and I was too awake to sleep. I looked at the Post-it in my hands, noting that the last time Sancho had called the notorious Charlie Nurburn was at 9:32 P.M. The kid was courteous to a fault.

I looked at the phone and figured what the hell, he’d be home. As I dialed the number, I entertained the thought that there wasn’t anybody who better deserved to be woken up in the middle of the night. It rang four times and then picked up. I started to say, “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department, I’m sorry if . . .” but stopped speaking when I realized it was the answering machine. Charlie Nurburn introduced himself, apologized for being unable to answer the phone, and then invited me to leave a message after the tone. All was as it should be, just another voice on another answering machine.

The only thing was that it was the voice of Lucian Connally.

7

The stamped plate made a god-awful noise as it clattered across the counter and came to rest beside the little chrome cradle that held the menus, ketchup, mustard, and salt and pepper shakers. “You know what that is?”

He looked at the rusted metal and the small amount of dirt that had shaken loose from its surface, took a sip from his cup, and then placed it back on the half ring of spilled coffee on the counter. “That is a license plate, an old one.” It was early in the morning, and it had taken me awhile to find him. There was nobody in the place, but I took the seat diagonal to him across from the cash register. I was very angry, and I thought that if I sat a little away, it might keep me from grabbing him by the throat. “You know where I got it?”

He took another sip of coffee as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “Off a car, I suspect.”

I got up, moved around to his side, and sat on the stool next to him; it would be hard to grab him by the throat from where I had been before. “You got a story to tell me?” I unbuttoned my sheepskin jacket and pushed my hat farther up on my head.

My own cup of coffee appeared to my right. “The usual?”

“The usual.” She disappeared, and I turned back to the old sheriff. He kept sipping his coffee and staring at the bee collection above the grill. “I wanna hear the one about an answering machine and a vacant room in Vista Verde, New Mexico. I wanna hear the one about your buddy Sheriff Marcos DeLeon down in Rio County, who’s been taking care of the W-2s and social security. I wanna hear the one about an abandoned Kaiser lodged in the embankment of the Little Powder since 1951.”

“52.”

I leaned back and breathed for the first time since entering the little café. “Keep talking, I’m all ears.” It got very quiet, and you could almost hear the water running below the frozen surface of Clear Creek, which flowed alongside the Busy Bee.

“Yer all nose not ears.” He sat the coffee cup down and swiveled his head around to look in my general direction. “What’s the ME say?”

“Not a thing until you tell me about Charlie Nurburn.” I pulled my pocket watch out of my jeans: 6:37 A.M. “I’ve got all day but, this being a Thursday, you’ve probably got an appointment.”

It took him quite a while to come out of the stillness that overtook him, get his coat on, and position his prosthetic leg. I waited as he zipped up an old Carhartt, far too light for the weather, and placed his hat on his head. “You . . . can go to hell.” The heavy glass door swept shut, allowing a gust of snowflakes to skitter across at my boots. I watched as they melted.

“I hear hell’s nice this time of year.” She reached down and studied the license plate as I stared at the floor. “Want some advice?” She continued on course and ignored my warning look as she always did when I needed ignoring. “Go easy.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m trying.” She had held off on the usual and watched me as I rebuttoned my coat. I took the time to sip my coffee; I figured I could catch a one-legged old man in a snowstorm.

When I got outside, he was gone. “Damn.” I watched the vapor of my breath whip past me as I looked up and then down. Nobody. The streetlights were still on, and there was only one set of tire tracks on Main Street. It was about then that I fell back on one of my old Indian tricks and followed the only set of footprints on the snow-covered sidewalk other than mine. I opened the door of my truck, which was parked outside the Busy Bee, and let Dog out. I figured I needed backup.

The tracks stopped in front of the Euskadi Hotel, and the snow was pushed back from the door like the broken wing of a fallen snow angel. I pulled the handle and saw him sitting there, filling his pipe from the beaded tobacco bag. The jukebox was crooning Frank’s “Ave Maria,” and he was at the table in the center of the room, looking very fragile and alone. “Get the hell outta here.”

I stood and looked at his silver belly hat that rested crown up on the white tablecloth; it was still in good shape and was probably the last one the old sheriff would buy. Dog didn’t move. We looked at each other and then back to him. “Dog is cold.”

He shifted his weight and turned away from the door as he zipped up the bag and laid it on the table along with the keys to the building. “The dog can come in, but you better damn well go.” He patted his leg, and Dog was there in an instant. The gnarled old hand gently smoothed the fur behind his ears. “You don’t care who you hang around with, do you?”

The door swung shut behind me as I walked over and sat at the other side of his table and adjusted the plastic flowers so that we would have an unobstructed view of each other. I unbuttoned my coat and waited for a good long time, breathing the warm air. I wanted to start asking questions again, but it was too close and raw. I sat the license plate on the seat beside me, looked at the keys on the table, and settled on another subject. “So, you’re the one who owns the Euskadi?”

It took awhile but, after lighting his pipe and taking a few puffs, he answered. “Hahhm.” After smoking for a while longer, he spoke. “Came up fer sale back in the sixties and bought it for a song. Brought Jerry Aranzadi in as the vocal partner and to run the place; only way to keep it on the up and up, and he doesn’t steal too much.” He took a deep breath. “Still the only place in town where you don’t get offered a blueberry beer.”

“Jerry’s Basque?”

“Yeah, he’s one of them high-altitude Mexicans.”

I smiled; it was a common phrase in these parts. “It’s always been a nice place.”

He looked down at the dog’s head, which he continued to pet. “They used to bring ’em through here, the Basquos. Kind of a halfway house for sheepherders.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “They’d sponsor a Basquo to come over by contacting the Wyoming Range Association, put the herder’s name in, and pay five hundred bucks to cover the immigrant’s travel expenses. The Range would check the fellow out, and if he hadn’t pitched any bombs into any cafés they’d run ’im through a quota system. Usually it was a relative, somebody they could count on. They’d deduct the money out of their pay once they got here. Poor bastards only made about thirty a week; took a while.”

I waited a moment and glanced over at the bar back, which continued to insist on older and gentler times. “You met here on Thursdays?”

“After Charlie was dead.” It took a moment, but he smiled. “We never got remarried. The Basquos are pretty hung up in that religious stuff, but I think I got her to understand that she was missing something. I’m just not sure if I got her to understand that it was me.”

I waited a respectful moment before asking. “Lucian, what happened?”

He stared at his arm on the table, his fingers brushing the brim of his hat. “Do you think I killed Charlie Nurburn?”

I continued to look at him and thought about what the old outlaw was capable of, the stories I’d heard, the stories I knew. “Right now, yes, I do.” I sighed and thought about Dorothy’s advice. “Lucian, I don’t particularly want to get into a pissing contest. You had to know I was going to discover all of this, you trained me too well.” I thought about Mari Baroja, Isaac Bloomfield, about Lana and the pack of lawyers soon to be snapping at my heels. I placed my elbows on the table and rested my chin on my fists. “Do you know she has a granddaughter here in town?”

“Yes, I do.” His look continued to darken. “You’d be amazed at the things I know.”

“No, I wouldn’t, Lucian. I wouldn’t be amazed at all. I’ll tell you what I would be amazed by, you telling me what the hell happened fifty years ago.” I didn’t move, just leaned on my fists and stared at him. I took a deep breath and went easy. “For me to know what’s happening now, I need to know what happened then.”

He nodded almost imperceptibly as something old and brittle broke loose. I watched as it fell into the river of memory and slapped against the rocky cliffs of Lucian’s mind. “What good would it have done?” His eyes took on a long dead look. “What good would it have done for a woman like that to go to prison for the rest of her life?”

 
 
I listened as Lucian’s voice carried us back to a summer night in the middle of the last century. I can still play it back in my mind, like a home movie that is grainy and overexposed. The film slips with the clattering of spanners in the works as a thin man comes home late one cloudy night, a mason jar half full of clear liquid still dangling from his fingers as he fumbles with the knob on the door. The jar slips and busts on the uneven steps with a loud pop, shards of glass and homemade liquor falling through the cracks of the warped and cupped wood. Cursing, he continues to fumble with a latch that has been locked since early in the evening.

There are three children in a bed at the backside of the little house, illuminated by the flashes of lightning along the Big Horns; two are three-year-old girls, twins, with their arms wrapped around their bony knees. They are clutching a threadbare star quilt between them; its floral pattern fades like distance. There is a boy who is a little older. He sits at the foot of their bed, unmoving, but holding a large hammer as best he can in his shaking small hands.

There is a slam against the door as the man throws himself against it in an all too familiar rage. This is the pattern, the framework to which these children have accustomed themselves. They shudder in fear and try to remain silent. A promise made and a promise kept in an attempt to keep the bad from being so bad.