“What is it, Harlan?” she asked, poised in the door as if restricted from the living room by a force field. Her voice was tentative and younger than her years.
“Fella here from the guvmint, askin’ about Grady.”
“Oh, my,” she responded, immobile in the doorway.
“My name is Beckett, M’am,” Crockett said. “I’m with the Justice Department.”
“Oh, my,” she said again, frozen in place.
“I have some questions about your son.”
“Grady’s a good boy,” the woman said.
“Yes, M’am. Can we talk?”
She stepped back into the kitchen. “Coffee’s hot,” she said.
Taking the initiative, Crockett walked into the kitchen and sat at an elderly table painted in cracked white enamel. “Thank you,” he said. “Black is fine.”
Mister Hemphill ambled in and sat across from him. Mrs. Hemphill placed a large cup on the table in front Crockett and, even though there were two more chairs, continued to hover in the background between the table and the stove.
“What’s Grady done now?” Hemphill asked.
“What makes you think he’s done something?” Crockett countered.
“He’s my own son, and I hate to tell it, but ever since he come back from fightin’ them A-rabs, he ain’t been worth much.”
“Grady’s a good boy,” Mrs. Hemphill interjected.
“He’s so durn good, how come this feller here’s after him?”
“What makes you think I’m after him?”
“Why’n the hell else would ya be here?”
“I’m looking for him, Mister Hemphill. That’s different than being after him.”
“He tolt us he done work for the guvmint,” Mrs. Hemphill said.
The old man snorted.
“He’d come home and stay for a spell now an’ then,” Mrs. Hemphill went on. “Always had money. Then he’d just up and leave. We’d never know how long he’d be here or where he’d take off to.”
“An’ sometimes he’d be movin’ kindly slow,” the old man offered. ”Like he’d been hurt. Or his weight would be way down, or he’d be takin’ pills that he wadden gittin’ from no VA hospital.”
“He said that’s why he’d be out of touch with us for so long at a time,” Mrs. Hemphill said, nodding in agreement with herself, “an’ us never knowing where he was or what he was doin’. It was ‘cause he was workin’ for the guvmint.”
“Which guvmint?” Hemphill asked, exasperation taking over his tone. “That there’s the question. Which guvmint? They’s mor’n one gawddammed guvmint on this planet, Pat! Cain’t you git that through yer head?”
“Grady’s a good boy,” Mrs. Hemphill said.
Crockett pounced. “I can’t go into details here, folks,” he said. “I’m bound by the Official Secrets Act. It’s just that Sparrow, I mean Grady, has been out of touch a couple of weeks longer than he should have been. That is not his usual behavior and, to be honest, we’re a little concerned. Have you heard from him?”
Mrs. Hemphill seemed to grow a bit taller. “He always calls me on my birthday,” she said proudly.
“And that was…”
“The nineteenth.”
“Just last week?” Crockett asked.
“Yessir. He never misses my birthday.”
“Did he say where he was?”
“Nossir. I ast him, but he said he couldn’t tell me. He was on a mission. But he called on my birthday just like he always does.”
Crockett worked at controlling his excitement and took a sip of coffee. “Mister and Mrs. Hemphill,” he said, “it’s very important that nobody knows I’ve been here. That’s vital. And I have a favor to ask. If you hear from Grady again, tell him to contact Blackstone. That’s Blackstone. He’ll know what you mean.”
“Yessir,” Mrs. Hemphill nodded. “Blackstone. I’ll tell him, if he calls.”
Crockett stood and headed for the front door, the old man following behind. Mrs. Hemphill did not proceed past the kitchen doorway. Crockett paused before exiting to the porch.
“Thank you folks,” he said. “Both from me and the Justice Department.”
As he left the house, he heard Mrs. Hemphill’s young voice from the kitchen door.
“He always calls me on my birthday,” she said. “Grady’s a good boy.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Room With a View
Upon their arrival back at Ivy’s, Stitch and Crockett found Cletus in the kitchen, talking with Goody, as the old man zipped about in his wheelchair, taking some freshly baked bread out of the low oven.
“Go on with your meeting lads,” he said. “I’ll listen in, but I can’t abandon my present course. I must finish my meatloaf and get it in the oven. It requires at least two hours to arrive at perfection, and I want it done in time for evening sup.”
Clete grinned and shook his head, as Crockett poured himself coffee and Stitch retrieved a bottle of Guinness from the fridge.
“You got lucky and did some good work, son,” Clete said.
“I felt real shitty, conning those people,” Crockett said. “It’s gonna hit hard when the Feebs finally tell ‘em their kid is dead. The mother, a strange woman incidentally, is bound to confess I was there. That’s sure as hell gonna alert somebody.”
Maybe,” Clete said. “Maybe not.”
“You weren’t there,” Crockett said. “This is a down-trodden female, a captive of her kitchen, in blind motherhood denial.”
“Not what I meant,” Clete went on. “I don’t think the FBI will want to be associated with this at all. They’ll probably let the local law tell the parents and sugar coat the whole thing. I doubt if they’ll tell anyone how or why he was killed. They don’t want that can of worms opened any more than it already is. If Mom’s as hinky as you think, she might be up to writin’ letters to everbody from her congressman on down.”
“That makes sense,” Crockett said.
“Any word on the phone call?” Stitch asked.
Clete grimaced. “Not yet. Montero and them can’t help on a thing like this. It’s out of their jurisdiction. I called a guy I know who knows another guy, an’ so on. Should be able to come up with somethin’ without a warrant or the phone company even knowin’ he’s around. Tomorrow, or maybe late today.”
“If this works out to some sort of suspicious location,” Crockett said, “we have to figure that wherever Hemphill called from could be where Metzger is.”
“Sure as hell the next place to, like, go to lookin’ for the cat, anyway,” Stitch offered. “If the dude was, like, tied up with the mob an’ shit, an’ ratted their asses out, that fucker has got to be somewhere that’s like, mob remote, ya know? That rules out New York, Chicago, an’ a bunch a other places, man. The fuckin’ mob is everywhere.”
Clete grinned. “Put yourself in his place,” he said. “Where would you go if you were in his shoes?”
Stitch thought a moment. “If I was in that cat’s shoes, dude, I get my ass to Camaroon or someplace. If I was wearin’ boots, it’d be Iceland or points fuckin’ north, ya know? Maybe OZ. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Dude.”
“You think the FBI has stuck him in some kind witness protection?” Crockett asked.
“I doubt it,” Clete said. “Why should he trust ‘em? They turned over his wife, for chrissakes. And once they passed him on to the U.S. Marshals, he’d be a stranger in a strange land. According to Carson, money’s no problem for the guy. If I was him I’d disappear myself and not let anybody know where the hell I was.”
“Out of the country?”
“Not ‘til he settles his hash with Carson.”
“So you think he, and not the Feebs, recruited the hitters that came here?”
Clete nodded. “I would have. We figure that Boster is on his payroll. Boster could take care of that kinda thing for him. He sent those two ol’ boys after you, didn’t he?”
“I’m sure he did,” Crocke
tt said.
“An’,” Clete went on, “them two is probably the ones that dusted poor ol’ Beckner down at that lake.”
“Sure.”
“There ya go.”
“So you think he’ll be ready when we go after him?”
Clete smiled. “He’ll be ready,” he said. “That ain’t the question. The question is, will he be ready enough?”
“Situational flexibility, Lads,” Goody piped from his position by the oven. “Freshly sliced homemade bread if you’d care to indulge. Made it myself, you know.”
After dinner the group broke up. Crockett, missing the freedom and space of the atrium, found his way to the library and flopped into an armchair with two fingers of scotch to aid in his physical and mental digestion. Goody’s meatloaf was destined to be praised in song and story. Concrete plans could not be made until Metzger’s whereabouts was confirmed. When limited to little or no action, one of the ways Crockett’s stress manifested was needless over-thinking. He was so engaged when he realized Carson was standing beside his chair. He hadn’t noticed her come into the room.
“Hi,” he said looking up at her. She had changed into a light yellow, man’s broadcloth shirt with the tail out, over khaki walking shorts. Her mane was pulled back into a ponytail. Her only visible makeup was light lip-gloss. She looked clean and scrubbed and wonderful.
“Hi, yourself,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were standing there.”
Carson smiled. “You didn’t even notice my big entrance,” she said. “That’s a blow to my girlish ego.”
“And just what are you up to?” Crockett asked.
“I came to take you away.”
Crockett raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“Un-huh. Let’s go for a walk.”
“A walk?”
“It’s a pretty night. Reasonably cool, a nice breeze, and I need some star time.”
“Uh, might not be the best thing to expose you outside the house.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“I’m not worried about me.”
“Of course you’re not. Get up.”
“Carson…”
“I’ve been very good about being cooped up all this time, Crockett. I’ve done everything you said I should do, and nothing you said I shouldn’t do. But now, I’m going for a walk. People go for walks. I would really like for you to come along, but whether you do or not, a-walking I shall go.”
“Another bull-headed female,” Crockett said, getting to his feet.
Carson smiled. “We all are, sweetie. And you love it.”
Nudge squeezed by them as they left by the front door and trailed along behind when they turned right to circumnavigate the house. The grass was damp, dimly lighted by half a moon occasionally interrupted by thin and scudding clouds. In the distance a whippoorwill battled with the night. It was humid, but cool enough to make it bearable. Carson took his hand as they walked, occasionally dragging a toe as she looked upward into the night.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” Crockett said.
“That’s what I brought you for. I’m looking at the stars. What are you looking at?”
“You.”
Carson smiled. They covered a few more yards before she spoke again.
“Crockett,” she said, continuing to look upward, “you do realize that, at this point in time, I’m pretty much in love with you, don’t you?”
Crockett’s heart dropped in an extra beat. “How could you not be?” he asked. “The head cheerleader always falls for the quarterback. It’s a rule.”
They rounded the end of the house and started down the west side, picking up an additional southern breeze.
“I mean it,” Carson said.
“That’s just proof that you need to get out more.”
They continued on, shuffling slowly through the night. When they turned back east, Carson spoke again.
“You scared of me, Crockett?”
“Sure.”
“Ha. At least you’re honest.”
“It’s not that I wanna be honest. It’s just that my memory isn’t good enough to let me lie.”
“Why are you doing all of this? Why are you risking your life to help me? Until just a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t even really know each other.”
“I can’t afford a white horse and a suit of armor. This is the next best thing.”
“When you get defensive, you almost always fall back on humor, don’t you?”
“I prefer likeability to honesty. Less painful.”
Carson stopped and looked at him. “Want me to tell you why you’re doing this?” she said.
“No.”
“Because Ruby would have wanted you to.”
“Aw, geeze.”
“Just the truth.”
Crockett didn’t reply.
“Well,” Carson said, “here’s some more. Ruby isn’t here, Crockett. Ruby is dead. But you’re not. And if the fact that I’m in love with you scares you, that’s tough. That’s not a fear you can conquer. That’s a fear you just have to accept and deal with.”
She began to walk on. Crockett trailed her, half a step behind. When they passed the rubble of what had been the atrium wall, Carson sat down in a lawn chair. Crockett took a seat beside her.
“That’s progress,” she said. “I didn’t know if you’d stop or keep on going.”
“I wasn’t sure either.”
“Shows a lot of bravery, ‘cause you know I’m not done yet.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Crockett, both of us are real short on love right now. For the first time ever since you met her, you have no chance with Ruby at all. None. That possibility is history.” She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts and let her words soak in.
“I have no life,” Carson said. “Everything I have come to be used to is gone. And I’ll never get it back. Never. Not after all this. My life is history. Both of us are going to have to start over. Until we can, we have very little but each other. I’m not asking for a church wedding and a honeymoon in Niagara Falls. I’m asking for real honesty and acceptance, and that’s what I am prepared to give. I deserve it and so do you. Get down off the horse and take off the armor, Crockett. You’re perfectly safe.”
Carson stood up and looked down at him. “I’ll be in my room,” she said. “Not your room. My room. This time, if there is a this time, you come to me.”
Crockett watched her walk away, Nudge picking his way through the damp grass behind her, and huddled in his chair, nearly afraid to move. He stayed that way for some time, until things settled in. Finally, with nearly a start, he collected himself and looked about.
“Be a fool not to,” he said, and followed Carson’s path around the end of the house.
A hundred feet away, Martin Carroll “Stitch” Winkler, Goody’s seven-millimeter magnum rifle in hand, stood up from where he’d been lurking behind a lilac bush.
“Far out,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Info on an Ex
Crockett left Carson sleeping the next morning, and ambled downstairs feeling more centered than he had in days, even before Ruby was killed. Clete and Satin were drinking coffee at the table and grinning at each other.
“Hi, kiddies,” Crockett said, patting Satin on the head as he passed behind her on his way to the coffee pot. “You two doin’ all right this morning?”
“I’m good,” Satin said. “You seem, uh, chipper.”
“I been worse.”
“South Dakota,” Clete said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s where the Hemphill’s phone call came from. South Dakota.”
Crockett’s eyebrows went up. “South Dakota? Jesus. I thought Metzger was a city boy.”
“Wal,” Clete drawled, “if’n them thar cities ain’t safe fer ye, yew best be a-gittin’ yer ass out in the country somewhars. Besides, we don’t know if Metzger’s out there or not.�
�
“Out where?” Crockett said. “Where in South Dakota?”
“You are gonna love this. A place called Lickskillet Lodge on Cotton Gulch Road.”
“C’mon,” Crockett said, taking a seat at the end of the table.
“No shit. It’s now owned by a company called Beacon Properties. And before you ask, I don’t know who Beacon Properties is, an’ I don’t know where Cotton Gulch Road is, but I’m workin’ on it. Shouldn’t take too long.”
At that moment, Clete’s satellite phone went off. He looked at the display. “This could be it,” he said, and wandered off into the dining room.
Satin looked at Crockett and smiled. “How ya doin’?”
Crockett glared at her. “Who wants to know?”
“You’re twinklin’, big guy,” Satin said. “Your eyes are shinin’ and you got rosy cheeks.”
“I went to high school with Rosy,” Crockett said.
“Did ya?”
“Yeah. She had a sister named Sweet.”
“Ah. Cheerleader?”
“Pep club. Inspired many a young running back, as I recall. She was very peppy.”
Satin laughed. “You are so full of shit, Davey. Good to see ya.”
“Good to see you, too, sweetheart.”
“Am I to assume that you and Carson have reached some sort of understanding?”
“I have no control over your assumptions.”
“Well, have ya?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes!” Satin said, pumping a fist. “I told her she’d have to kick your ass to get you movin’. Ha!”
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