The Final Country (13 page)

I called Carver D on my cell phone to leave a message for Hangas, asking him to take a gentle run at Eldora and a brief tour of the black community east of the Interstate for any word of Enos Walker.

“I’ll run her through my machine,” Carver D said, “and in half an hour, we’ll know her whole life story.”

“I don’t need her life story. I just want to know where her boss is.”

“Grist for the mill, Milo,” Carver D sighed, then laughed.

“And if you can handle it,” I said, “lend me fifty K for a couple of weeks. Put it into the Mad Dog’s offshore account.” Even though he lived like a hermit, Carver D was the last surviving member of a Texas family fortune based on those two popular commodities — pussy and politics — so unlike me he wouldn’t have any trouble coming up with fifty K in clean money.

“I thought the fair Phillip had advised you to depart these fair climes,” Carver D said.

“Yeah, but he didn’t mean it.”

“At his prices, man, he never says a word he doesn’t mean.”

“Tell Hangas I’ll call him when I get back tonight.”

“You going anyplace fun?”

“Someplace between Midland and Odessa, actually,” I said. “Wherever that is.”

“I know exactly where it is and I sure hope you enjoy it without hurting yourself,” Carver D said, then hung up.

I sat in the car, watching the cold rain splatter against the windshield, then I tried Betty on her cell phone. But it was busy, and I didn’t bother leaving a message. She was already deep enough in my troubles.

Since I couldn’t find a lead on Sissy Duval, I thought I ought to pay a call on Paper Jack, who had insisted that he knew the Molly McBride woman and who, according to the Lodge desk clerk, lived between Midland and Odessa. I still felt good after Cathy’s treatment, but not good enough to endure three hundred miles in the cold rain, so I went to the airport, dropped the rental car, hopped a shuttle to Dallas, changed planes, and landed at the Midland airport before dark. Just as the last light faded across the rain-dreary plain, I was parked in another rented car down the road from Jack Holbrook’s house when he came home from his oil well supply company. Jack lived alone in a three-thousand-square-foot house setting on five of the barest acres I had ever seen a few miles northwest of the Interstate between Midland and Odessa. I waited long enough for Jack to get a drink in his stomach and a second one in his hand.

“Milo, what the hell are you doing here?” Jack asked when he opened the door to my knock. The old man had changed out of his suit and into a baggy jumpsuit, a tattered sweater, and heel-shot slippers.

“I hear there’s nothing between here and the North Pole but a three-strand barbed wire fence. I want to get out of the cold and ask you a few questions about the other night.”

“Talk to my lawyer, asshole,” Jack growled, “because we’re filing charges.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” I said as I stepped around Jack’s bulk. “And lead me to a drink.”

Without too much grumbling, Jack led me to a large den at the back of the house. Jack flopped into a broken-backed La-Z-Boy. The room was crammed with fast-food debris and empty Wild Turkey bottles. A fuck movie played silently on a large-screen television standing in front of a gun case rack full of imported shotguns. I found a fairly clean glass and a dusty bottle of cheap Scotch on a battered sideboard.

“Trouble keeping a housekeeper, Jack?” I said as he raised the glass.

“Nobody wants to do a day’s work for a day’s pay anymore,” Jack said without taking his eyes off the screen. “Fuckin’ Meskins steal everything that isn’t nailed down, widow-women want to marry my money, and the women from my wife’s church keep trying to save my soul.”

“How long’s your wife been dead?”

“Since the day she died, asshole,” Jack said.

“You said you knew that young woman at the bar the other night.”

“I was drunk,” Jack said. “Otherwise, I would have broken your back.”

“You’re not drunk now,” I said standing over him. Perhaps the combination of drugs, pain, and legal peril had made my hair-trigger temper even more hairy. “And I’ve just gotten out of a train wreck, too, you old bastard.”

Jack half-rose from the chair, then waved his hand as if it was too much trouble to get on his feet. “You’re sure as hell on the prod,” he said. “But you’re damn near my age, Milo. You’ll find out what it’s like. Maybe it’s time to walk easy.”

“I don’t have time to walk easy, Jack. Talk to me about the woman at the bar.”

“I told you she was a whore,” Jack said. “A fuckin’ thousand-dollar piece of ass.” Then Jack smiled slightly. “Damn near worth it, too, as I remember.”

“Where’d you find her?”

“Not a clue,” Jack said. “But it had to be someplace where they had gambling. Vegas, Lake Charles, Reno, Mobile. Any place but Indian reservation casinos; they’re all run by some fucking guy named Guido Running Deer. That’s about all I do these days. Drop five or ten grand at the tables, get drunk, then find a thousand-dollar hooker.”

“How long ago was it?” I asked, thinking that Lake Charles rang some distant chime.

“Old lady’s been gone three years,” Jack whispered. “Had to be since then. After my heart attack, damned Edna wouldn’t let me go to the pisser alone. Always thought I’d go before her… Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? And sometimes you don’t die.” Then Jack sat up straight. “How’s your drink, ol’ buddy? That’s pretty shitty Scotch, ain’t it? Let me get my clothes on, and we’ll drift over to the Petroleum Club. Everything’s top-shelf there.”

I thought it over for at least a second. “Why the hell not? I can’t get a flight out until tomorrow morning, anyway.”

But it turned out to be a late afternoon hangover flight. I kept the lonely old man company through the evening hours in the ghostly climes of the Petroleum Club, then sat up listening to complaints about the oil business long past midnight, hoping he’d either pass out or remember where he’d met the McBride woman before he died. Or I did. But I didn’t learn anything else.

Except to be reminded the next morning once again that hangovers at my age were crippling beasts. And airplanes were no place to endure them.

* * *

Hangas, the solid mass of his body perfectly draped in a tailored black suit that wasn’t quite a chauffeur’s uniform, met me at the gate when my flight arrived about dark-thirty. “You don’t look all that chipper, Milo,” Hangas said. “Can I buy you a couple of these overpriced airport drinks?”

“Let’s go someplace where I can have a cigarette, too.” I had called him before I climbed on the plane to see if he had talked to Eldora. He said he didn’t have much to tell me, but he knew by the sound of my voice that I could use a lift.

Half an hour later, we were bellied up to the lobby bar at the Four Seasons Hotel, a place where we could talk in the anonymous crowd. Hangas, who had never completely recovered from a tour as a Marine guard at the embassy in Paris, had a glass of an estate bottled Haut-Medoc while I went back to the smoky hair of the Scotty dog that had bitten me.

“If Enos Walker’s in town,” Hangas said after he tasted the wine and nodded to the bartender, “nobody’s seen him. And a lot of folks down here know him. From his basketball time. He was big stuff when he transferred down from Oklahoma City College. Until he went bad and got kicked off the team. According to his brother, the preacher.”

“You get a chance to talk to Eldora?” I asked.

“That Mrs. Grace, she’s one fine-looking woman,” Hangas said, then paused to savor the wine.

“And about your age, too,” I suggested.

“Perhaps a mite older and more serious than I prefer,” Hangas said, smiling. “I’m too busy taking care of Mr. Carver and keeping an eye on my younger children to have time for any serious women.”

“I thought your youngest two were already in college?”

“One at Rice, one at Baylor. But college is the most dangerous time,” Hangas said seriously. “Waco one weekend, Houston the next, and I’m sort of involved…”

“Both places?” I said, but Hangas just smiled as serenely as a black Buddha. “So what did Eldora have to say?”

“Not much,” Hangas allowed, “but I got the distinct feeling that she was a bit worried and didn’t actually know where Mrs. Duval had gone.”

“I don’t like that.”

“I don’t think Eldora does either,” Hangas said. “You want me to ask her again tomorrow?”

“Day after tomorrow,” I said. “If she’s really worried, you’ll know for sure.”

“Sounds good to me,” Hangas said as he finished the wine. “Mr. Carver says you’re in some deep shit. If there’s anything I can do, please don’t forget to call.”

“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “I’ll get the drinks, then grab a cab.”

Hangas nodded politely, then eased through the crowd as easily as a shade in spite of his size. I had another before I settled the check, slightly surprised that Hangas’s glass of wine had cost almost twenty dollars.

“Good price for a glass of wine,” I said to the bartender. “Grapes mashed by virgin feet?”

“Some folks have taste —” the bartender started to say.

“Right,” I interrupted, “but usually they pay for their own drinks.”

“— but Mr. Hangas has great taste,” he added with a gentle laugh.

* * *

When I taxied back to the Lodge, I found Betty in my room, wearing a silk nightgown I’d never seen, and propped up on my king-size bed, drinking Negra Modelo out of the bottle and eating shredded beef taquitos as she watched a rented movie.

“Looks like you’ve adjusted nicely to the twentieth century,” I said as I kicked my boots off.

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Betty said. “It just wears me out sometimes.”

“You mean you’d rather chop kindling for the cookstove and pump a Coleman lantern for light,” I said flopping beside her, “than call room service.”

“Most of the time,” she said. “You remember calling me last night?”

“I don’t recommend knee-walking nostalgic drunks more than once or twice a year,” I advised. “I was homesick.”

“I could tell,” she said. “You must have asked me a dozen times to go to Montana with you. But not until spring.”

“And what did you say?”

“Maybe. If you’re not in prison,” she said. “Or working some idiot case.”

“Thanks,” I said, slipping my arm under her neck and my mouth next to her ear, a new easiness between us. “Anybody call but me?”

“Fucking phone rang all day long,” she said. “Until I finally turned it off. My Uncle Trav and Phil Thursby want you to call them at their offices tomorrow. Something about money.”

“What?”

“Uncle Trav said he wanted to talk to you about that investment thing and Phil wanted a retainer.”

“Wonderful.”

“And some guy named Renfro wanted you to call him back no matter what time you got in. He said it was very important.”

“Renfro? I don’t know anybody by that name. He say what he wanted?”

“He said he couldn’t say over the telephone,” Betty said, then reluctantly added, “he claims to be a friend of Sissy Duval’s. A good friend.”

“I expect Sissy’s got loads of good friends,” I said, snuggling closer to Betty’s soft, warm body.

“This one sounded more like her hairdresser than her boyfriend.”

“Maybe I’ll call him. Tomorrow. Maybe he’s got work for me,” I said. “I don’t seem to be making any money working for myself.”

“And some woman who wouldn’t leave her name wants you to find somebody for her. But she wouldn’t say who,” Betty said. “She said she’ll keep calling.”

“Just what I need. More clients.”

“You just use your clients as an excuse to be nosy,” Betty said. “And me as a place to relieve your hangovers.”

“Not every time,” I said as I slipped the gown off her small breasts. “Not every time.”

“Okay,” she said, chuckling as she slipped the rest of the way out of the gown. “Just this once.” Then she paused, naked in my arms. “I know you hate this,” she added softly, “but we have to talk about the Molly McBride thing…”

“She conned me,” I said. “I fucked her, and it nearly cost me what’s left of my life. What’s left to talk about?”

“Well,” Betty said as she rolled away, then spooned against me, as if it was easier to talk to the drapes than me. “I slept with her five or six times…”

I clenched my tongue between my teeth to keep silent. “How’d it start?”

“At a meeting of the Preservation Society,” Betty said. “She asked me for some background over a drink… and as soon as you came back from Montana you dove back into this idiot detective thing, and we seemed to be in the midst of an endless and silent fight, so much for so long, I guess I’d given up on us, and one thing led to another. I guess you know how it was.”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

“You knew that I’d done it before… during the bad times… But this was different. More intense. At first, I felt terrifically guilty,” Betty said, “so I was a bitch. Then I convinced myself that you were leaving, so I didn’t feel guilty at all, which made me even more bitchy.”

“I guess I should have noticed.”

“Listen, I love you,” she said, “and I know you love me. I even love the way we love each other. But I hate the life you live.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it, “but it’s the only life I’ve always enjoyed, the only one I can bear to live. And it’s far too late to change. But you were half-right about one thing.”

“What’s that?” she asked, the sneer loud in her voice.

“This bar thing was a mistake,” I said.

“Well, that’s wonderful news,” she said. “Since I told you not to go into business with my uncle.”

“Only once,” I said, but she didn’t smile. “And it’s not him,” I continued. “I’m used to being at home in a bar, and the people who come in here aren’t my people. I got tired of them and taking care of business. I guess I felt that I had to go back to my kind of work or roll over and die.”

“And it nearly killed you,” she said sharply.

“Ah, fuck it,” I said, thinking our moment had passed, and began to disentangle myself from her.

But she turned, rolled into my arms, weeping, and said, “No. Fuck me.”

Afterward, I slumped into a brief nap, then woke out of a dream I couldn’t remember, the hangover still jangling through my nerve sheaths. So I eased out of bed and into my clothes, then picked up the cell phone and Renfro’s number, and went down to the bar, had a drink, then returned the call.