“He has an honest face,” Carolyn said, then touched my crooked nose with the tip of her finger.
Vonda Kay just laughed and put another strawberry into the machine. The two of us went way back, all the way to high school, and had served each other well over the years, safe harbors in our stormy domestic lives. Once we even took off at four in the morning to drive to Jackpot, Nevada, to get married, but somewhere among the cliffs of the Salmon River in Idaho we both realized that neither of our divorces was final. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately, but I knew Vonda Kay wasn’t mad at me. She had introduced me to Carolyn out of friendship.
When I finished blushing, I told Carolyn that I was no more honest than the next man.
“Which also means no less,” she said. “Except for the old C, C&K Railroad sections and your three thousand acres, Mr. Milodragovitch, I think I’ve got the Dancing Bear settled from the waterworks dam up the Hell-Roaring drainage and over the Diablos’ divide to the Stone River Reservation. We’re having a little trouble finding out who really owns the C, C&K sections, but when we do, I’ve worked out a swap of their sidehill trash timber and that old mine for a nice stand of second-growth pine down on Forest Service land in Idaho. What’s holding you up, sir?”
“You can call me Milo,” I said, “and I’m more than a little reluctant to give up my grandfather’s timber land for money, marbles, or match sticks, or even virgin ponderosa, but I wouldn’t mind discussing it with you up at my place.”
“What did you have in mind?” she asked, then sipped her martini, her eyes twinkling above the glass.
“Elk steaks cut off a dry cow killed this weekend,” I said, “a bit of blow, if you’re so inclined, and whatever.”
“You don’t look the type,” she said.
“For whatever?”
“For cocaine,” she answered. “You look like a cop.”
“And you, lady, look like a hell of a lot of fun,” I said, feeling a lot better already.
We settled our tab, got our change and Vonda Kay’s blessing, and Carolyn followed me up the canyon to my house.
—
She was fun, too. She walked around the cellar, drinking gin on ice and occasionally hitting the lines I had chopped on the top of the freezer, pouring me the odd shot of schnapps and talking about this and that while I butchered the right hindquarter of the cow elk. She didn’t act like I was insane when I pan-fried the steaks and made home fries and gravy, and she ate dinner with a good appetite, in spite of the coke.
“You’re pretty classy,” I told her as we took our coffee into the living room, “for a tourist broad.”
“You’re not too bad either,” she said as she poked at the crackling apple-wood fire, “if you’d just stop playing Gary Cooper.” Then she dug a fat bomber joint out of her purse, lit it, and said as she passed it to me, “Just in case.”
“In case of what?” I asked, and she gave me a wicked smile.
And wicked she was, that long, firm body gleaming in the firelight, sweet shadowed hollows, smooth skin, muscle tone worthy of an Olympic swimmer. She waited for a long time as we played to speak.
“I’ve got one rule,” she said, her voice in the darkness above me, “one rule you should know about.”
“No business in bed,” I suggested with a muffled voice.
“No all-nighters and damn few repeaters,” she said, moaning and moving under my tongue. “That’s how-how I keep my life simple. No-no baggage.”
She meant it, too. Sometime after midnight she gathered her clothes and hiked toward the bathroom. When she came back, freshly showered and dressed, she knelt beside me where I lay on the carpet like a gut-shot bear, bleeding where she had raked my back and thighs and ears, bleeding even from the scrape on my forehead. I meant to roll over to hold her, but the weight of her cool hand held me to the floor.
“What do you want for your timberland?” she asked.
“My grandfather’s timber,” I groaned, correcting her, “my grandfather’s.”
“He’s been dead for forty-three years,” she said, pressing on my chest, “and your name is on the deed.”
“What’s in a name?”
“Be serious.”
“Maybe I am.”
“How about more money?”
“Sure,” I said, “and a plaque in the middle of Camas Meadows with my grandfather’s name on it.”
“That’s easy.”
“And a suspension of the rules, too.”
“The rules?”
“Sure,” I said. “When you get the C, C&K sections, if you get them, give me a call…”
“On a telephone that doesn’t ring?”
“Come by the house,” I said. “I want to be one of those lucky damn few repeaters. A weekend in Seattle maybe?”
“All right,” she said, but somehow it sounded more like a threat than a promise.
“And one time on my grandfather’s grave.”
“His grave?”
“His ashes are scattered in Camas Meadows.”
“You son of a bitch,” she said, laughing. “Thanks for the evening—all of it, old man—and the next time we discuss this matter, I expect you to be serious.”
“Three times is about as serious as I get these days, love…”
She slapped me on the chest, kissed me, and left, her laughter and smell still warm in the living room, mixed with the fragrance of the apple wood, as I let the snowy darkness flow around my log house and over my eyes…
I woke around four, though, with a mild case of the cocaine jangles and a terminal case of the post-coital blues. The good ones always seem to get away, I thought, and second best is no way to love. Shit. As the child of two suicides, depression always hovered about me like a cloud while self-pity waited in the wings. I made myself get up and stumbled to the bathroom to take an old Serax left over from my hard-drinking days. In theory, it would ease the shakes. I went out into my backyard, anyway, to roll naked in the snow, to have a reason for the quivering inside. The front had passed, the sky cleared, and the temperature dropped into the teens. A sliver of moon tried, unsuccessfully, to compete with the stars.
After a long hot shower I wiped the bathroom mirror clear of mist and tried to talk to myself. “No all-nighters,” I said, “and no damn repeaters at all. Travel light. You’re forty-seven years old and you’re carrying more baggage than you need…” Then I had to laugh. Sometimes when you try to talk to yourself there’s nobody home. I knew all the signs, far too well, knew I was on the verge of something. Another marriage maybe, another failure at love with the first woman who would have me. Another life, another place, any place, any love.
—
Later that morning I was glad I woke up early and stayed awake. I was parked down the street from 1414 Gold before six o’clock, and at six-thirty a tall blond woman in a red velour robe stepped out of the front door, stretched backward so hard that her large, heavy breasts seemed to lift like wings, then bent gracefully from the waist like a dancer to pick up the Meriwether Avalanche-Express. She moved as smoothly as light wind across water, Cassandra in the morning, and when she bent, her long, straight blond hair rippled like gold off her shoulders. The spotting scope gathered the dawn light, and I could see her face, the high cheekbones of a model, the wide, firm mouth and dark eyes of a lover, the broad, unruffled forehead of a woman at peace with herself. I had tailed Carolyn Fitzgerald by mistake, and we had ended up in bed. I couldn’t help hoping that tailing this woman on purpose might lead to that same bedroom. Cassandra Bogardus stretched again, then walked barefoot through the snow to the pickup, empty of firewood now, started it and left it idling, then went back into the house without even brushing the snow off her feet. Tough, too. I liked that.
Half an hour later she came back out dressed like a model for an Aspen ski advertisement, carrying a shoulder bag and a large purse, then jumped into the pickup and roared away west on Gold toward the interstate. By the time she passed the remains of the turkey-
wreck debris, she was doing seventy. It looked like we were headed out of town, so I checked the glove box to be sure the company credit cards and the trip ticket were there, then I settled in two hundred yards behind her. What the hell, I could stand a bit of road time; but before I could get comfortable, she took the airport exit. Ten minutes later we were standing in the check-in line for the 7:48 flight to Salt Lake City. I heard the ticket agent check Ms. Bogardus through to Los Angeles, so I ducked out of line and called the colonel at home. He told me to stay with her and promised that backup help would meet me at LAX.
Since I didn’t want her to see my face too many times, I stayed in the downstairs coffee shop until the arriving passengers from Missoula disembarked. I waited five minutes after the final call for the Salt Lake flight, then dashed upstairs to claim my seat. Once aboard the airplane, I hurried to the rear with my head down, fell into an empty seat in front of the aft bulkhead, shut my eyes, then did a fair imitation of a man sleeping.
I didn’t wake up until we were halfway to Salt Lake. I went to the john and washed my face, then wandered forward to thumb through the tattered magazines in the rack. On my way back I checked out the passengers. Cassandra Bogardus wasn’t aboard. Maybe she’s in the john, I told myself, or maybe you’ve been had. Then I remembered that when I was sitting in the coffee shop watching the disembarking Missoula passengers—as you do in airports, looking for a familiar face—I had seen a tall, erect gray-haired woman in a tweed suit who had looked oddly familiar. Now I suspected I knew why. There had been enough commotion around the white van in her neighborhood the day before—Abner, the police, my aborted U-turn—that it would have been a wonder if she hadn’t made my van. And she certainly had ditched me very neatly.
—
The colonel met my flight back from Salt Lake. He seemed tired but not too upset as I told him how the Bogardus woman had dumped my tail.
“Pretty goddamned smooth,” I told him again. “I’m sorry.”
“A one-man tail is tough,” he said as we walked out to the parking lot. “We just didn’t have enough information. That’s why I didn’t want to take the job in the first place, but I thought you would enjoy the work.”
“I’ll find the bitch,” I said, “and she’ll—”
“They have their own security people on it now,” he interrupted. “Ms. Bogardus is no longer our concern.” He coughed politely into an expensive deerskin glove. “I took the liberty of driving your pickup,” he said, “and I’ll take the van back to the office. Your paycheck, with the extra two weeks’ pay, is in the glove box.” We traded key rings. “And Mr. Haynes’s new television set is in the cab. If you wouldn’t mind…”
“Not at all.”
“Go someplace warm,” he said, “and enjoy yourself. We’ll talk about your job when you get back.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “You ought to take off yourself, if you don’t mind me saying so. How long’s it been since you wet a line, sir?”
“Far too long,” he said, smiling sadly, “far too long. I meant to get down to the Florida Keys for some bone fishing this year, but I don’t seem to be able to find the time.”
“It’s a long time to next year’s trout season, sir.”
“A long time, yes. Did you hear what happened up at Downey Creek?”
“No, sir,” I said. Downey Creek was the nearest blue-ribbon trout stream to Meriwether.
“That gold mine on the west fork,” he said, “they’re using some sort of acid process on the old tailings and one of their ponds broke…forty percent fish kill…Sometimes, Milo, I wonder what’s happening to this country.”
“Me too,” I said, and the colonel patted me on the arm and said goodbye.
“By the way,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “I believe this is yours.” He handed me my handkerchief, washed, ironed, and neatly folded.
“Thank you,” I said. “Would you do me a favor, sir?”
“What’s that?”
“If you find out what this Bogardus deal is about, will you tell me?”
“If I find out, Milo,” he said, then walked across the lot to the van.
As I drove back to town on the old highway, I wasn’t very proud of myself. Perhaps Sarah’s little job was just about my speed. Next day was Thursday. I decided to do Sarah’s job, to take her money, easy as it was, put it in a pile with mine and head south for the winter. Maybe for good. Even though I had been born and raised in Meriwether, it didn’t feel much like home anymore. Across town, the south hills had been gobbled up by developers, the softly rounded slopes layered with rows of ticky-tacky houses. Even with the pulp mill on half shifts and with the millions of dollars worth of scrubbers the mill had installed, the air smelled like cat piss and rotten eggs whenever the wind came out of the west, and the current rage for wood stoves was already filling the valley with a yellowish-brown haze, clotted thickly in the air like something you might cough up, and after a week of winter inversion, you would. All my favorite downtown bars were either closed or filled with children. Mahoney’s had become a place to buy expensive coffee, sweet European baked goods, and overpriced glassware. The Slumgullion was still on the corner of Dottle and Zinc, but under new management, and they didn’t serve brains and eggs or fried mush and fresh side pork anymore. Even all my old wino friends seemed to have disappeared.
Right, I thought, south for the winter, for all the winters. I knew a dope dealer in Tucson who always needed a new bodyguard, and an ex-con in Albuquerque who owned a used-car lot and always needed a salesman also licensed to do repossessions. Right!
—
Old Abner was like a kid at Christmas when I took his new television set out of the box. It was a Sony, and when I turned it on, he stared, entranced by the bright, sharp colors, then he broke into a jig, clapping his hands and dancing around the room in his flopping slippers. I had a vision of Abner and Yvonne transfixed for days in front of the endless soaps as a surly Tyrone lurked outside the windows.
On my way out, Abner caught me on the porch, grabbed my arm, thanked me again, and asked, “Are you really one of those private eyes?”
“I used to be,” I said, trying for a mysterious air, then I split.
Back at my house I tried to call Sarah, but the line was busy. I thought about a drink but decided to get ready to leave instead, half afraid that if I didn’t pack now, I would never get out of town when the time came. I stripped all my guns, cleaned and oiled them, put them all, along with my poacher’s crossbow, behind the false panel in the basement. Then I finished quartering the elk, wrapped the front quarters, put them in the freezer, and took the remaining hindquarter over to my next-door neighbor. She wasn’t home, so I left it on the front porch. I went back to try Sarah’s number again. Still busy. I had a shot of schnapps, then packed. Before I knew it, I was through. All my worldly goods, everything I would need for an extended visit, fit into two B-4 bags, a duffle bag, and one cardboard whiskey box. Now I was ready. When I finished Sarah’s job, I could throw my crap into the back of the pickup in five minutes, and five minutes later I would see Meriwether in my rear-view mirror.
No all-nighters, damn few repeaters, no baggage, traveling light.
When Gail finally answered the phone, she didn’t sound very happy to hear my voice. I apologized for missing our drink.
“Fuck it,” she said. “What do you want?”
“To see Sarah.”
“You going to work for her?”
“Guess so.”
“She’s resting now. Why don’t you come by about four.”
I agreed, and she hung up without saying goodbye.
—
This time I wore my old boots and a down vest and parked my truck right in front of the old McCravey mansion. Gail stood in the driveway, her daypack full of books on top of a Honda Civic. She looked as if she had been standing there for a long time, and her face looked red and chapped, her eyes watery with the cold.
“I’m sorry I was so abrupt on
the telephone,” she said, “but I had just spent an hour talking long distance to my mother, and she took forty-five minutes of small talk to tell me that my father’s in the hospital.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Lung cancer, they think.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I keep meaning to quit smoking myself.”
“He didn’t smoke,” she said, “he worked in a shipyard on the West Coast during World War II. Goddamned asbestos. The fibers curl up in your lungs like heartworms. Goddamned government.”
“That’s too bad,” I said lamely.
“Well, I am sorry about being so short on the phone.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Maybe we can have that drink after you talk to Sarah,” she said. “I read about the excitement the other night, in the paper.”
“I don’t read the newspaper,” I admitted.
“Don’t you care about what’s happening in the world?”
“What’s the world?”
“A fucking insane asylum,” she said, then laughed bitterly and rubbed her eyes. “Let’s go see Sarah.”
When we got there, the gray afternoon light seemed to fill the solarium like a light fog. Sarah looked tired, and when I leaned over to kiss her cheek, her hand trembled on my arm.
“It’s so nice to see you, Bud,” she said. “Would you like some coffee? Or a drink?”
“No thanks.”
“Gail tells me that you are going to-to do this bit of eccentric nonsense for me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That’s very kind of you,” she said, then reached into the pocket of her dark-blue dressing gown and withdrew the envelope and handed it to me. “I’ve changed my mind slightly, though…”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“The five thousand is your fee,” she said, “and we will settle the expenses later.”
“That’s too much, way too much.”
“Hush,” she said. “Don’t argue with me, young man. I never let my employees disagree with me.” Then she chanced a weak smile. Over by the French doors, Gail laughed her way into a coughing fit. “Except for Gail, and I fear she is a hopeless case.”
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