Potshot (15 page)

In the back Vinnie looked out the window and said very little. Vinnie wasn’t much for small talk.

We stopped the first night at Hagerstown, Maryland, near the Antietam battlefield, and slept in a Holiday Inn. We drove south. We listened to Tony Bennett and Carmen McRea, Anita O’Day, Stan Kenton, Bobby Hackett and Johnny Hartman.

Going through West Virginia, near Martinsburg, Vinnie said, ‘You guys ever listen to anything recorded this century?’

Hawk said, ‘No.’

‘Don’t you have nothing like Pink Floyd, or Procol Harum?’

‘How ’bout The Ink Spots?’ Hawk said.

Vinnie shook his head and settled back to look out the window.

We drove down the horsy green Shenandoah Valley with the Alleghenies to the west and Blue Ridge to the east. We hit Knoxville that evening. We crossed the Mississippi at Memphis a day later. Fort Smith, Little Rock, Oklahoma City. I felt like Bobby Troup. Shoney’s, Shakey’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC. I felt my arteries clogging. Gulf, Mobil, Esso, Pilot. Truck stops with buffet tables where you could overeat vastly for maybe six bucks. Hawk and I had a running bet as to who could count the most desirable women. By the time we crossed the Texas panhandle I had already spotted two. Hawk said it wasn’t fair, that my standards were too low.

‘You have to adjust,’ I said, ‘to your environment.’

We went through Amarillo. Big John’s Steak House. Tucumcari. Uphill to Albuquerque. We slept in Holiday Inns, and Quality Courts, and Hampton Courts, and Motel Sixes. We drank coffee and Coke and bottled water. We pulled into rest stops and mingled with fat people who wore pink shorts and plastic baseball caps. I was leading the desirable women contest two to one. Sometimes the people wore plaid shorts and plastic baseball caps. They were of both genders, I think. Motor homes got in our way. They moved like odd beetles, slowly, hugging the edge of the highway, driven uneasily by aging people, many of whom were almost certainly wearing pink shorts. Big rigs with fifteen gears slowed us down on the upgrades, and tore past us on the downgrades, trying to make time, which as we know, is money. Small sub sandwiches, biscuits and gravy. Biscuits and sausage. Biscuits and sausage with gravy. Chicken fried steak with cream gravy.

‘Used to sleep with a woman was a professor at Harvard,’ Hawk said. ‘Red-headed woman. Taught
literature.
’

I was driving. Hawk was in the passenger seat. Vinnie was in the back seat gazing out the window.

‘She felt I was,’ and his voice deepened and his accent disappeared,
‘the perfect embodiment of untrammeled sensuality. Unrestrained
by the stale ethics or conventions of the state.’

‘I thought that was you,’ I said.

‘What the fuck she talking about?’ Vinnie said.

‘Meant she liked a lot of unusual ways to do it,’ Hawk said.

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ Vinnie said.

‘Nuthin’,’ Hawk said.

The next morning we came down out of the mountains west of Albuquerque, and by evening were in the desert.

The house was on the east edge of town, with a good view out the back windows of the Sawtooths to the east. It was a big sprawling place with a wide front porch. Bernard J. Fortunato was on the front porch when we pulled up. He was wearing a red-checked shirt and blue jeans and a cowboy hat and boots. A blue bandanna was knotted around his throat.

‘Who the fuck is that,’ Vinnie said, ‘Roy Rogers?’

‘It’s that tough little dude from Vegas,’ Hawk said.

‘Bernard J. Fortunato,’ I said. ‘We’re all gathering. It’ll be like
The Big Chill.
’

‘Just like,’ Hawk said.

‘About time you got here,’ Bernard said. ‘I been cooling my heels in this burg for a couple days now.’

‘Been shopping some,’ Hawk said.

‘Yeah. Hawk, how ya doing. Good to see ya again.’

I introduced Vinnie, who already had the rear lid of the Explorer open and was starting to unload. And we carried everything into the house. It was sort of shabby inside, but big. Six bedrooms and two baths upstairs, and a big study downstairs that would convert to a bedroom. There was also a living room, a dining room, a large kitchen, another full bath, and central air.

‘Furnished,’ Bernard said. ‘Six bills a month, large.’

‘Six grand a month?’ I said. ‘We better clean this up quick.’

‘Hey that’s with the furniture, all the pots and pans, all we got to do is pay the fucking utilities.’

‘Anybody else show up yet?’ I said.

‘The hard case from Atlanta pulled in yesterday,’ Bernard said. ‘Where do you find these guys?’

‘I pick them up at Tony Robbins Seminars,’ I said. ‘Where’s Sapp?’

‘Out running,’ Bernard said.

‘It’s a hundred and ten thousand fucking degrees,’ Vinnie said.

Bernard shrugged.

‘What have we got for bedrooms?’ I said.

‘Sapp’s upstairs, front,’ Bernard said. ‘I took the couch in the den. I’m compact, and I don’t sleep much anyway.’

‘Compact,’ Hawk said.

We took our luggage, left the other gear on the floor in the living room, and located ourselves in bedrooms. I took a front bedroom where you could overlook the town. There was a double bed with maple headboard and footboard and fluted posts with wooden flames at the top at each corner, a maple dresser and a disreputable looking gray-and-black steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. The windows had shades, but no curtains. Normally when I travel, I don’t unpack, but I was going to be here a bit, so I put my stuff in the maple bureau, and went back downstairs. Bernard, Tedy Sapp, Hawk and Vinnie were sitting on the wide porch in the cooling evening, having a drink.

‘You want something?’ Bernard said.

He had set up a little drink table on the porch, with ice in a bucket. I made myself a Scotch and soda and sat down.

‘I guess you’ve all met.’

‘We have,’ Sapp said. ‘Two more coming?’

‘Yeah, driving over from L.A.’

‘Desert cools off good in the dark doesn’t it?’ Sapp said. ‘Georgia it’s hot all night.’

‘Hope the a/c keep pumping,’ Hawk said.

‘It don’t I can fix it,’ Vinnie said.

‘You know how to fix air-conditioners?’ Hawk said.

‘Anything,’ Vinnie said. ‘Cars, machine guns, phones, TVs. I can fix shit.’

We all looked at Vinnie as if he had just come out of the closet. He shrugged. We drank our drinks and sat quietly. The desert air was clear and the stars were bigger than I was used to. A night bird kept chirping something that sounded like ‘tuck-a-hoo.’

I felt like singing ‘Home on the Range.’

‘You hungry?’ Sapp asked.

‘The drive out was a movable feast,’ I said. ‘Why would we be hungry?’

‘I made a meatloaf,’ Sapp said, ‘and there’s some beans.’

‘Well aren’t you the homebody,’ Hawk said.

‘Yeah. Bernie hated my pink apron,’ Sapp said. ‘Straight guys are so fucking straight.’

‘Bernard,’ Fortunato said.

‘There’s biscuits, too,’ Sapp said.

I was in the Chiricahuas County Sheriff’s Department talking with their chief homicide investigator. The room was cinderblock. The windows were tinted. The air-conditioning was high. The metal desk and chairs and file cabinet and small conference table were forest green, perfectly complementing the light green walls. All of it was brightly lit by a bank of overhead fluorescents, which perfectly complemented the sunlight coming in through the windows. The chief investigator’s name was Cawley Dark. He was a thin, leathery-looking guy wearing starched blue jeans and snakeskin cowboy boots, a white oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a Glock 9, high on his waist just in front of his right hip. On the forest green metal bookcase behind his desk was a big photograph of three teenaged girls clustering around a blond horse with a white mane.

‘Buckman was shot three times,’ he said. ‘With a 9-millimeter weapon. We did an autopsy, couldn’t match the slugs to anything. Wife says he was threatened by some people from the Dell. We say, “Who?” She says, “I don’t know.” We say, “Would you recognize them?” She says, “Certainly.”’

‘Pick up anyone from the Dell?’ I said.

Dark smiled.

‘Everybody we picked up was from the Dell,’ he said. ‘It’s what we use for a ghetto, out here.’

‘And?’

‘And she says none of them are the guys. She thinks.’

‘Anybody else look at them?’

‘Nope.’

‘He got shot in the middle of the day on the main street in Potshot and no one saw anything.’

‘Amazing isn’t it,’ Dark said.

‘You have any reason to believe it wasn’t the way it’s been described?’ I said.

‘Nothing I know says it didn’t happen that way,’ Dark said.

‘But?’

‘But nothing I know says it’s right.’ Dark said. ‘You want coffee?’

‘No thanks.’

He got up and went to a coffee maker on top of the file cabinet and poured himself some coffee from a stained pot, and came back and sat down. He took a sip and shuddered.

‘Goddamn that’s awful,’ he said.

‘Glad I declined,’ I said.

‘After you called,’ Dark said, ‘I checked on you in Boston. Got booted around a little. Ended up talking to a state guy named Healy.’

‘One of my biggest fans,’ I said.

Dark made a wobbling metz metz gesture with his right hand.

‘What do you think about Potshot?’ he said.

‘A mess,’ I said. ‘What do you think of the police chief down there?’

‘Walker? Odd duck. I don’t know how good he is but he’s better than anyone else. The last two quit and left the area.’

‘Always been a small force?’

‘No,’ Dark said. ‘For a while they had an actual police force. Then one of them got killed. And most of the rest sort of dropped out and went away, one at a time.’

‘Who killed him?’

‘Probably the Dell, but we have no evidence.’

‘Why don’t you roust them out of there anyway?’ I said.

Dark grinned.

‘I’m just a homicide cop,’ he said. ‘That’s SWAT team stuff.’

‘And why doesn’t the SWAT team do it?’

‘Got no legal basis for it for one thing,’ he said. ‘Far as we can prove, nobody in the Dell has committed an indictable offense. And just to complicate things, The Preacher claims that the Dell is a religious organization and any effort to control them is an abridgement of their religious freedom.’

‘And no one wants to get in to another Waco situation,’ I said.

‘You bet,’ Dark said.

‘So you think Walker is in the bag?’ I said.

‘With the Dell? He’s survived in a job that no one seems able to keep.’

‘You feel the others were run off by the Dell?’

‘That’s what I figure,’ Dark said.

‘And you can’t prove it?’

‘Nope. Even talked to one of the previous police chiefs, fella named Mizell. He wasn’t talking about anything. But he seemed to be living comfortable.’

‘You think they bribed him?’

‘I had to guess,’ Dark said, ‘I think they did both. They told him if he stuck around they’d kill him, so he left. But to keep him quiet, they give him a separation bonus.’

‘But Walker has stayed,’ I said.

‘Yep. He’s either tougher than a rabid skunk,’ Dark said. ‘Or…’

‘Or they like him just the way he is,’ I said.

‘Maybe they figured they couldn’t keep running these guys off without one of them deciding to testify. They’re paying them off anyway, so they got a guy they didn’t need to run off, and paid him to stay and keep his mouth shut,’ Dark said.

‘Or maybe he’s just stubborn,’ I said.

‘I’d be more likely to believe that if he was dead.’

‘Cynical,’ I said.

‘Probably. You alone?’

‘No, I have a few friends with me,’ I said.

‘According to Healy you can’t help yourself. You’ll annoy The Preacher enough so sooner or later he’ll take a run at you.’

‘Guys just like to have fun,’ I said.

‘Well if they kill you, try and get them to leave clues around,’ Dark said. ‘I’d love to bust everybody down there.’

It was time to confer with our employers, and, since we were hoping to keep our profile low, we invited them to our place.

It was a still, hot morning. In the scrub above our house some kind of desert bird was making a raspy sound appropriate to the desert.

Lou Buckman was the first to arrive. She pulled up in front of our house in a stripped-down yellow jeep with no top and no doors. She got out of the jeep wearing a big hat and riding clothes. A single blond braid showed below the hat, and her makeup worked beautifully with her face. Her eyes were very big and the color of morning glories. We were arrayed in a friendly manner, on the front porch, and if she found us daunting, she didn’t show it.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘Good morning.’

I introduced her to the other men.

Bernard J. Fortunato said, ‘I got coffee. You want some?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Lou said. ‘That would be lovely.’

Bernard hustled off as if he were going for the Holy Grail. Lou stood on the porch and looked at us.

‘There aren’t very many of you,’ she said.

‘But what there is is cherce,’ Hawk said.

‘Cherce?’

‘Choice,’ I said. ‘It’s a line Spencer Tracy used about Katharine Hepburn.’

‘Oh.’

Lou still looked at us.

‘You do look dangerous,’ she said.

‘Señorita,’ Chollo said, ‘that is because, as we say in my country, we are dangerous.’

‘What is your country?’ Lou said.

Chollo grinned at her.

‘Los Angeles,’ he said.

Lou leaned her admirable little butt on the railing of the porch. Bernard came back and gave her coffee. She thanked him and held the mug in both hands and sipped. Behind her a Ford Expedition pulled into the yard and a Dodge Van, and a big Chrysler Sedan. Our employers got out, warily, as if it might be an ambush, and gathered uneasily in front of the porch. J. George was there on the left looking prosperous and affable. In fact all four of them looked prosperous, and they bore with them the aroma of self-satisfaction that prosperity brings. The mayor stood next to J. George, then Barnes the lawyer and Brown the banker. I stood beside Lou Buckman on the top step of the porch facing them. My posse was ranged along the back wall of the porch, seated, most of them teetering their chairs back so that the front legs cleared the floor.