skeletons (27 page)

She laid down the gun, went to a dresser drawer, took out the revolver she had brought with her, turned it to see the number.

“40177,” she said.

“The matched pair.”

“Yes.”

“You might say thank you.”

Instead, she put one gun away, brought back the one I’d given her, sat down again, the weapon in her hands.

“Here,” I said. Reaching inside my jacket, I undipped the holster from my belt, tossed it and the Airweight onto the bed beside her. “Another one for your collection. It’s not loaded. I used the last bullet.”

She ignored it. “Why did my mother lose her mind?”

“Aren’t you interested in what became of Crossworth and Max?”

“Of course I am.”

“No you’re not. Not really. But I’ll tell you anyway. I intend to tell it all, Tyler. I’m pooped, yes, but still very high, and I have to come down slowly.”

She waited, revolver in her lap. It occurred to me we had not kissed when I entered the room. I scrooged down in my chair, laid my head back, stretched out my legs, and resumed. This time she did not interrupt till Pingo and I were gun-to-gun in the clock tower. “He said if I didn’t give him my car and let him go south of the border —if he were brought to trial—he’d spill it all. The lynching, your grandfather’s murder of your other grandfather, the blackmail, the names, the whole bit. So I shot him.”

“Shot him?”

“Jimmie the Kid.”

“He’s dead?”

“Very. I shot him with that Smith & Wesson, the last bullet. And not in the back. If I hadn’t, he’d have killed me. Then I phoned your father and told him he and Donald Turnbow and young Doc Shelley had four hours to clean up the tower, remains, ropes, and the works. He was grateful. I suppose they have by now.” I was sick of the sound of my voice. Of the whole shitty situation. I fell back on my infallible funnybone. “So. So as dawn the rosy-fingered steals the stars from the enchanted New Mexico night, our story ends. The tower of Harding Courthouse is as it was in the beginning and ever shall be, amen.”

My funnybone was fractured. The windows of the room were graying. I got up, turned out the lamps, sat down again, unnatural light. Like the light in the tower. And in my apartment the night two weeks ago she had offered to marry me again and have a family if I would private-eye for her. When I had taken her grandfather’s old gun from her case and played fast-draw. Jimmie Butters, gunfighter. And I recalled our strange second screw that night. Not an act of love but a long, serious conversation with a child. On and on, the girl putting questions to the man with her body. Innocent, urgent. What does the sea say? How far is it to a star? Where will I go when I die? Who am I? Are my father and mother really my father and mother?

“Tyler,” I said, “it’s time for my medals. Everything you sent me to look for I’ve found. Everything you asked me to do I’ve done. And
beaucoup
more. I’ve been over the hill and through the mill. Dragged under a car, humiliated in public, my Rolls shot full of holes. I’ve dug up graves and been up all night. I’ve seen sights that reduced me to tears. I’ve saved the reputations of some fine families. I’ve even killed for you. I’ve done my duty to you and God and my country. I’ve taken ten years off my life in two weeks. And it’s changed me. How, I’m not sure yet, but sure as hell not for the better. Anyway, I’m a hero. Look at me, Tyler. A goddamned hero. I’m your knight in shining armor, I’ve passed every test. How do I look?”

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“Not every one, Jimmie.”

“Name it”

“Me.”

“Oh, that. Who is Tyler Vaught. A pretty face in
Women’s Wear Daily?
Playmate of some of American lit’s most celebrated contributors? A name on a commuter ticket between Hell and the Hamptons?” I had to be very careful now, I had to keep it light. “Tyler, who we are is one thing we all have to figure out for ourselves. Or see shrinks. Or astrologers. Your father told me all he knew. So have I—told you. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. There’s no place you can Rent-an-Identity.”

She was looking at the gun again. I got up, yawned out a window at beautiful downtown El Paso in the dawn and beautiful downtown Juarez over the Rio Grande.

“In any event, the party’s over,” I said. “Goodnight, sweet Butters. May flights of angels sing thee to thy sink.”

I went into the John, ran warm water, did my face the favor of a matutinal ablution. What I had to say to her now would be safer said at a distance.

“I may have to stick around here a few days,” I said as though I were talking about the weather. “There might be an inquest on Pingo or something. It was self-defense, but I might have to appear, I don’t know. But you’d be bored. Why don’t you fly back to the Apple today?”

Nothing. I could see her reflection in the mirror, seated on the bed. I toweled briskly. “And when you get back, why don’t you scout an apartment? Your own apartment?”

Nothing. And I had thought it would be like dropping a bomb.

“Tyler, did you hear me?”

She was playing with her grandfather’s gun, weighing it in her hand, turning the cylinder. Suddenly the mirror over the washbowl became an opaque screen.

White dots of light. Sensors relaying signals to me.

“Tyler, you’re not listening.”

“Why did my mother lose her mind?”

“Tyler listen. What I’m saying is—I don’t think we’re in love any more. I don’t think you’ll be happy living with me any more. I’ve done everything I could for you, but you’re not satisfied.”

“No I’m not,” she said.

“You never will be.”

“Because you haven’t told me. Why my mother lost her mind.”

“Your father told you. At great length.”

But this time, unlike the other two, the white dots were scattered, bidirectional. In no meaningful sequence.

“You’re lying,” she said.

“No I’m not,” I lied.

“What I’ve needed to know all my life you won’t tell me. I hate you for it, Jimmie.”

I hung up the towel.

“Two men have died for me. I killed them, really. You lived, you know, and won’t say. God I hate you.”

Mirror replaced screen. Dots disappeared. I had got no read-out except that of danger, which I didn’t yet understand. But I couldn’t stay in a stupid bathroom. I walked out, sat down in the chair, based elbows on knees, chin on folded hands, looked directly into those great gray gorgeous eyes.

“Don’t,” I said. “Not after what we’ve had together. I’m the one who’s been through the wringer lately, not you. I’m the one who should be bitter, but I’m not. I’m just sorry as hell, Tyler. For me and for you.”

Could have bitten off my compassionate tongue. Because her face hardened. I had seen that face before, shuddered at it before. On the wall in an old courtroom. A face I thought she had smashed to a skeleton of canvas and paper, paint and wood.

“Tell me, Jimmie.”

Then. Preknowledge. Just as I had known in advance her mother’s key would admit me to the tower—just as I had known in advance where Pingo Chavez would hide— I knew now what she would do.

“If you don’t, I’ll kill you, too.”

She was standing, Buell Wood’s 40178 in both hands, pointed at me. She took one step. Placed the muzzle of the .38-caliber, double-action, self-cocking Navy Colt against my forehead.

Of course. Inevitable. With the blood of those two bygone antagonists boiling in her veins. With the endless civil war being waged between her chromosomes. Oh, I could tell her if I wanted to. I could be a cowardly son of a bitch and say okay, baby, I christen you Miss Incest of 1946. The God’s truth is, Judge Charles Slocum Vaught Sr. raped your mother and you are the result. That’s right—your grandfather was your father. That’s why your mother’s been in the bin thirty years. That’s why she wouldn’t ever see your father, isn’t it? That’s why you wouldn’t be a daughter to them, isn’t it? That’s why you suckered us three poor bastards into coming out here, isn’t it? Because you know—deep down you’ve always known—just the way you’ve known since you were a child what was in that clock tower—but you wouldn’t let yourself remember till you saw it again last night—and you wouldn’t let yourself believe this till somebody said it out loud. Judge Charles Slocum Vaught Jr. was unable last night. But there, I just have. Said it. So you decide. If you can handle who Tyler Vaught really is, I’m glad. If you can’t, take a trip to San Carlos and you and your mother can cut out paper dolls together the rest of your lives. But I won’t say it, Tyler. Out loud. Kill me if you have to, but I won’t. Crossworth might have, Sansom surely would have, but not me.

Because I’m a gent. I believe in things like mercy and goodness and opening doors for ladies and courage and honor and wearing a necktie, I truly do. This may be a dirty world, but I refuse to litter it with one more tin can of gutlessness, one more scrap of finagle, one more cardboard box of the easy-way-out. I’ll keep your secret even from you, and no matter what, just the way I’ll keep your father’s and his father’s. So blow my obsolete brains to bits and be damned, Tyler. B. James Butters dies A DECENT MAN.

“I’ll kill you, Jimmie,” she said.

“Do that,” I said, my back to the wall. I disdained a blindfold, locked my eyes open wide. “I’m already dead,” I said. “At least who I used to be is. So do it.”

Time stopped.

My heart hung by a rope.

La Mierda de Dios.

Preknowledge. Just as I had subconsciously known all along where my pen pals were buried—just as I had known in some dark chamber of my mind that it must come to this in the end—I knew that she would pull the trigger now.

SHE DID.

I called Alvah Helms from a phone booth in the lobby at 6 A.M. as promised. He was still in Harding, where Border Patrol HQ reached him for me. I told him I had shot and killed Pingo Chavez in self-defense and he could find the body on the stairs leading to the clock chamber in the tower of Harding Courthouse.

“What was he doing up there?”

“God knows.”

“All right, we’ll see to it. Sorry about this. But you might like to know we corralled some of his key people at the ranch and we have tails on three of those vans in three different states. And say, you were right about those graves, too. We found the remains of two white adult males, one recent, one there for awhile. Who did you say their names were?”

“Philip Crossworth. Max Sansom.”

“Let me put ‘em down.”

I spelled them for him.

“And you think Chavez?”

“I know Chavez. And probably some of his goddamned deputies.”

“Probably. Well, we’ve got an assistant AG on his way down from Santa Fe. When he gets here he’ll go to work on ‘em.”

“Have him grill hell out of one named Harley. Really sweat him. He gave me a speeding ticket.”

“Harley?”

“Harley.”

“You still carrying a load of guilt?”

“Sure am.”

“Don’t. Snack died with his boots on. If we have to go, that’s how most of us would like to.”

“He didn’t have to. Does—does Annie know?”

“Yes. I had one of my men go to the house last night. Then I called her myself, an hour or so ago.” Alvah Helms cleared his throat. “She’s a dandy, that girl. Took it very well.”

“She’s a librarian.”

“Oh.”

“What about the boy?”

“He’s young.”

“So was I. How long will I have to stick around here? I need to get back to New York.”

“Go. You’ve earned home leave. I doubt there’ll be an inquest on Chavez. As to the two homicides, the writers, that depends. But I’d go. I’ll put in a word with the AAG. If the state of New Mexico wants you, they’ll find you. You could maybe do a deposition.”

“Then I’m going.”

“I’ll keep in touch, let you know how this winds up. What’s your address?”

I supplied.

“Thanks. Thanks for everything, Butters.”

“Helms, I owe the government for a gun. I gave away that Airweight.”

“Forget it. What’s a gun?”

My luggage was in the car, which I’d left in the Paso del Norte garage across the street. I rented a single, put in a wake-up call for noon, crashed and burned with my clothes on, was waked. I asked for the desk, was told that Tyler Vaught had inquired about morning flights to New York, had checked out in time to make one departing minutes ago. I then dialed the only Snackenberg in the book.

“Annie? Jimmie Butters. You don’t have to talk. I just wanted to say that this has really torn me up. Totaled me. I’m partly responsible, as you know.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Well I am. Is there anything—anything—I can do for you?”

“No thank you.”

I’m leaving for New York now. Driving. Can I please come back this fall and see how you and Ace are doing?”

“No.”

“Next winter?”

“No.”

“Whatever you say. May I please phone you once in a while and ask?”

“If you like.”

“Oh God I’m sorry, Annie.”

“Goodbye.”

On the freeway heading north out of El Paso I took the Porfirio Diaz exit and found a shop and sent flowers. YELLOW ROSES. TEXAS.

3:03

Past Seventy-third Street, between Fifth and Madison. Coiffeurs Piccolo Mondo, where elegant dames have their hair done and play backgammon. An art gallery, Les Miserables. Little old ladies wearing boots and eating ice cream cones and walking their dogs. Garbage piled in black plastic bags. A Cadillac limousine perpetually double-parked.

When I got home, after four nothing days on the road, Tyler had evacuated my apartment. No note, not even an auburn hair on a pillow, not even a souvenir pair of panty-hose hung in the John to dry. For which I was grateful.

I took the Rolls to Rodney at once, for servicing and repair of the bullet holes. He said that except for her wounds, the campaign had probably been good for the old girl. I replied I hoped it had been for somebody.

I resettled into my digs and toughed it out in the city all summer.

I had a book to write, and only half of the first draft of the first chapter on the page. I’d left Frisby buzzing around the ceiling of the TWA terminal at JFK, exchanging travel tips with his buddies. He was due to catch the next flight to London, then transfer to British Airways outbound for Nairobi, with a refueling stop at Cairo. But I soon found I couldn’t get him off the ground. BLOCKED.