The Final Country (12 page)

“That’s for damn sure,” I said. “Thanks for taking the time off to drive me over. I don’t think I could have made it without you.”

“No problem,” she said quietly, a stiff smile on her face. Then she started the car, saying, “I didn’t take off. I quit. For a while.”

“What?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly quit,” she said. “I just took an unpaid leave.”

“What did they think about that?”

“I sort of own the practice,” she said quietly, “so I don’t much give a shit what they think.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, wondering why she worked nights in her own clinic. Maybe she was trying to stay out of trouble, working nights. That’s what I had told myself back when I tended bar at night. I didn’t know. But she had said she was better in a crisis than in everyday life. Maybe that explained it. Since it seems a crisis always pulls into your driveway after midnight.

“There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know,” Betty said, a grim smile on her face as she eased out of the prison’s parking lot.

I wondered what those other things might be, but right then they didn’t seem very important.

“But about your back?”

“What?”

“You remember my friend Cathy Scoggins?”

“The ditsy broad who’s always stoned?”

“She’s a damn fine acupuncturist,” she said, “not a broad. Why don’t you let her work on your back?”

“Has she ever worked on you?”

Betty paused a moment, then said, “Not exactly, but she’s had good luck with some of my patients.”

“Dogs and horses and scabby calves?” I said. “Why not? Will she let me get stoned, too?”

“She’ll probably insist on it,” Betty said.

After a long pause, I said, “I don’t know what to say about you taking off from work.”

“Just say ‘thank you,’ you fucking idiot.”

“Thank you, you fucking idiot,” I said, but my heart didn’t seem to be in it, so I popped a couple of codeine tablets and leaned the seat back, and drifted off as quickly as I could.

* * *

We were hunkering over barbecue plates at Black’s in Lockhart before Betty asked me what I had learned from the Oates kid.

“Not much that makes sense,” I admitted. “I know that he’s doing too much time for the crime, and Steelhammer was the judge. But I’ve got this funny feeling about the shooting. I’d bet the farm that somebody else — probably this woman he dreams about — fired the second barrel into Dwayne Duval’s face that night.” And just that easily I picked up another chore: keep Enos Walker out of the execution chamber, get Dickie Oates out of prison, keep Betty Porterfield out of trouble, and keep my old ass out of jail. “Or something crazy like that,” I said, then drifted off into worrying.

“Well, that’s certainly an insane idea,” Betty said sharply, bringing me back. “What the hell’s that got to do with your troubles?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The only thing I know is that when I talked to Dickie Oates, it’s the first time I’ve felt like somebody’s telling the truth since I had a drink with Enos Walker.”

“Jesus, Milo, the kid’s a convicted killer,” she insisted. “He’d say anything, right? And Walker’s a stone criminal.”

I had to agree but I didn’t want to let that go by, and continued, “Sissy Duval told me that this Mandy Rae character and Enos Walker showed up in town with twenty keys of Peruvian flake and went into business. It sounded like they cornered the market for a while, and I can’t help but think that’s somehow connected. But I don’t know what it’s connected to. All I know is that nobody was trying to shoot me until I went looking for Walker. Which is a question I intend to explore at some length with Sissy Duval tomorrow.” Then I paused. “You said you knew those people a little bit?”

“A little bit,” she said. “Austin was sort of a large small town in those days. Everybody knew everybody. And you know I was a little crazy in those days.”

“Someday we’ll have to talk about those days.”

“Someday,” Betty said. “But first, your back. We can’t have a hard-nosed private dick being chauffeured around by his lady friend. Takes some of the glamour out of it.” Then she smiled tiredly.

“That’s for damn sure.” Then my cell phone buzzed in Betty’s purse. She tossed it across the table, and I answered.

“Bueno,”
I said.

“Milo, you son of a bitch,” Thursby said, “a fake Mexican accent doesn’t get you off that easy. I’ve got two messages from one of my less esteemed colleagues up in Gatlin County, one Jacky Ryman, who says he’s Richard Wylie Oates’s lawyer and who is threatening to haul me before the bar for client interference. First question, who the hell is Richard Wylie Oates? And two, what should I tell his lawyer?”

“I suspect Oates is doing a lot of hard time because Ryman is a jerk,” I said, “and tell the asshole that you’ve got a client who’s willing to finance a malpractice suit against him. Then tell him to messenger his case files over or you’ll subpoena them.”

After a long silence, Thursby said, “You’ve learned a lot from me, Milo, and I’ve not yet noticed a bulge in my bank account.”

“I’m having trouble with my back,” I said.

“Fix it,” Thursby said, then hung up.

I handed the cell phone to Betty. “Why don’t you see if your friend can work me in this afternoon? It’s bad enough that I’m stupid, I don’t need to be crippled, too.”

* * *

Cathy Scoggins lived in a high-dollar development off Bull Creek Road in a large limestone-and-glass house that sat on the top of a ridge with a view in all directions. “She didn’t get this place practicing alternative medicine,” I suggested as we pulled into the driveway behind a brand-new Lexus. “Or that rig.”

“She’s a witch,” Betty said. “She married well, several times, and divorced even better.”

“But she forgot to get any furniture out of the deal,” I said as we walked in without ringing or knocking. Except for large pillows and small Oriental rugs, the hardwood floors ran unimpeded to the stone-and-glass walls.

“Furniture just gets in the way,” came a voice from behind one of the pillows, then a small woman with a smoky halo of wild dark hair shot with gray and dressed only in a black bodysuit popped up, an agile shadow against the late afternoon sky. “I like to keep my life simple,” the woman said.

She embraced Betty, shook my hand, then led us upstairs, where she not only didn’t have much furniture — a massage table, a wet bar, and a Chinese armoire — she had almost no interior walls. Although I knew Cathy Scoggins was middle-aged, she looked like a hyperactive teenager. She stood under five feet tall, and obviously had the metabolism of a ninety-six-pound hummingbird. She ate like a horse, drank like a sailor, and smoked dope like a stove, but as far as I could tell, nothing had any effect on her. She probably chattered like a monkey when she talked in her sleep. When I hesitated to take off my underwear in front of her, she slapped me on the butt with a tiny hand, and said, “Milo, if I had as many pricks sticking out of me as I had stuck in me, I’d look like a porcupine, so drop your drawers, sailor, and climb on the table.”

I grumbled as a giggling Betty helped me out of my shorts and onto the padded table, where I sat on the side, surly as a hungry bear and terribly aware of the large scar on my abdomen running like a crooked arrow from my bruised chest almost to my limp dick dangling from the gray hair of my crotch.

Cathy touched the scar lightly, the question in her dark eyes.

“Gutshot,” I explained.

Within moments, Cathy had fired up a crystal glass bong, let me have three large tokes of terrific marijuana, rolled me onto my stomach with minimal effort, and with her nimble little fingers found every muscle in my lower back that was as sore as a boil.

“What the hell did they do to you?” Cathy said.

“A stun gun,” I said.

“More than once, I’d say,” she murmured.

“Nazi bastards,” Betty muttered from the corner.

“Let me work out some of the knots first,” Cathy said, then began working at my neck and shoulders with her strong, tiny hands. Minutes after my first sigh and almost so quickly and easily that I didn’t really notice it, she had smoothed the tight muscles of my back and had a dozen needles or more sticking in various parts of my body. Then she stepped back to admire her work. “That should do it,” Cathy said quietly as she rattled in the armoire. “How’s it feel?”

“I can’t feel a thing,” I admitted grudgingly as I suddenly slipped toward a doze, sniffing at some sort of sweet smoke that wasn’t marijuana. If only my hippie ex-partner could see me.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Cathy said, laughing. “Remember. The old jokes are the best.”

“Talk about porcupines,” Betty said from the corner of the room, which was the last thing I remembered until I woke as Cathy removed the needles. I could swear that some of them didn’t seem to want to be pulled out.

“What the hell?” I said as she pulled out the last two, which seemed even more reluctant than the others. I felt some sort of electric pull as my skin tented as Cathy lifted the needles.

“Hold still,” Cathy said once the needles were out, moving her hands in the air over my back. “I’m sweeping your aura clean.”

I probably wouldn’t admit it, even under torture, but I felt something, a rippling of skin, a shifting of muscles as Cathy’s tiny hands swept over my back.

“What color’s his aura?” Betty asked after a stifled laugh.

“You don’t want to know,” Cathy said, then slapped me on the butt lightly.

“I’ll be damned,” I said as I sat up and swung my legs off the side of the table without help, an errant erection poking its wary head out of my crotch.

“You folks want me to leave you alone?” Cathy asked.

“Milo’s on a case,” Betty complained.

As quick as a dragonfly, Cathy’s hand flew at my dick and thumped it with her middle finger as she might a watermelon. It throbbed once, then disappeared. “I hope that’s not permanent,” I said as I hopped off the table. Amazingly, not only was the pain in my back gone, but my chest didn’t hurt much at all either. Even the nagging burn of the spent .25 round’s path through my guts seemed eased. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” I said.

“You’ll be a dead son of a bitch,” Cathy said quietly, “if you do too much of that cocaine.”

“What?” I said, reaching for my clothes. Cathy pressed one finger lightly into my back behind the liver. I flinched as if she had stuck a knife in me.

“You haven’t done too much blow, but it’s a bit too close to pure to be completely safe. Where the hell did you get it? I haven’t felt anything like that in years.” I didn’t think it was any of her business, so I didn’t answer. Betty looked worried and started to say something. But Cathy continued quickly, “Doesn’t matter. Just don’t do too much, man, quit when it’s gone, and don’t be buying none of that shit they sell on the street these days. I’ll see you next week. You’ll be okay for a while, but your back’s a real mess. So we need a couple more sessions.”

“What do I owe you?” I asked as I slipped back into my clothes and boots.

“Stop being such a dour son of a bitch,” Cathy said, glancing at Betty. “Life’s too short to be taken that seriously.”

“I’m Slavic,” I said. “I’m supposed to be dour and serious.”

“You feel more like a black Irishman to me,” Cathy said, laughing.

“That’s the American mongrel peeking through,” I said.

“Wear something warm on your back for the next few days. A sweater or a down vest or something like that.” I must have looked confused. Cathy pointed out the glass wall with the northern exposure. A dark band hovered on the horizon. “Cold rain by dark. Freezing rain by midnight.”

“Thanks for the news.”

“And the next time you want to talk to Sissy Duval,” Cathy said, “call me, and I’ll go along. She owes me big-time.” I assumed that Cathy and Betty had been talking while I had my little nap.

“Owes you?”

“I fixed her orgasms,” Cathy said without a smile.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

“So will I,” Betty giggled from the corner.

“It’s happy hour,” Cathy said. “One martini never hurt anybody.”

* * *

By the time we left, my back felt so good I climbed into the driver’s seat without thinking about it. “Are you all right?” Betty asked.

“My back feels like the train wreck never happened.”

“I was thinking about the three martinis,” Betty said.

“Three martinis never hurt anyone my size,” I assured her. “Besides, we’ve got a police escort.” I nodded toward the unmarked car parked down the street from Cathy’s driveway. We hadn’t had any trouble losing the Gatlin County district attorney’s investigator on the way to Huntsville, but as soon as we got back in range, the unmarked car latched on to our tail.

“What’s wrong with your orgasms?” I asked as we drove away.

“Where’d you get the cocaine?” she replied.

“I took it off a dead man,” I said, hoping she would take it as a joke, knowing she started having trouble with her orgasms after she killed the man who raped her.

* * *

The next morning Betty ran out to the ranch to check on her animals, so I slipped into the Lodge’s airport van and rented a car when I got there. I didn’t want Gatlin County following me when I called on Sissy Duval. No sense helping them make a case against me. I thought about picking up Cathy or the dead man’s cocaine, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Eldora answered my ring with a frown, as if she expected someone else.

“Mr. Electrolux. I don’t know what you did to Mrs. Duval,” she chattered nervously, blocking the doorway and making me stand in the cold rain, “but last time you paid her a visit, she spent the next three days in bed. Then decided she needed a vacation. She’s gone away. On a long trip.”

“Where?”

“None of your business,” Eldora answered, an anxious smile flittering across her face. Then she tried to smirk, but that didn’t fit either.

“Thanks,” I grumbled, thinking I should have brought Hangas. Texas wasn’t the South, but some people were still Southern.

“She say when she’s coming back?”

“No, sir.”

I realized that I’d have more luck squeezing gold from a whore’s heart than getting Eldora to talk to me. So I went back to the rented Taurus. I waited in the plain brown sedan until Eldora, just as I expected with Sissy Duval gone, took off before lunch. I followed her new Ford station wagon to the HEB grocery store, then to a small, well-maintained frame house in West Travis Heights.