“What sort of mess?”
“I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Okay,” he said. “Are you going to find out who tapped my lines?”
“Yes, sir,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
“Then you’re back on payroll as of yesterday.”
“Save your money, sir.”
“If you’re not working for me, Milo, I’ve got to call the FBI about this.”
“I’m working for you, sir.”
“Good,” he said. “And I’ve got some bad news for you…”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“After twenty-four hours with no activity at the Weddington house, Milo,” he said, “I took the liberty of entering the house—we handle the alarm system—and nobody was there.”
“Maybe they left town,” I said, hopelessly.
“Not as far as I could tell,” he said. “Both vehicles were in the garage, no signs of packing, no signs of a struggle, nothing, and when I checked with airport security, nobody remembered them taking a flight.” When I finished cursing, the colonel coughed, then added, “Remember, Milo, that I have a rather large organization, if you need any help.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, “but this one has to be mine.”
“Good luck,” he said.
“I’ll check in tomorrow night, sir, same time,” I said, and we rang off. Then I called the airport, made reservations on a morning flight to Butte, hoping to pick up the trail of the woman in the blue Subaru. Waiting for morning made for a long night.
Chapter 7
They sell picture postcards all over Montana bearing the legend “The Most Beautiful Sight in Montana.” It is a picture of Butte in the rear-view mirror of an automobile. Butte isn’t a pretty sight, coming or going. The great maw of the Berkeley Pit is eating the old town right off its mountainside, digging for copper they ship to Japan to be smelted. In many ways it is a sad city, a crumbling monument to both the successes and the failures of unbridled capitalism, seduced and abandoned first by the copper kings, then by the international conglomerates, but even as it dies, the old city still lives, filled with perhaps the best bars in a state of great bars, and rich with an ethnic mixture of Irish and Finns, of Poles and Mexicans. No true son of Montana can deny a deep fondness in his heart for the grand old whore, and a lot of people, myself included, don’t think you can qualify as a native son unless you have spent at least one St. Paddy’s Day in Butte.
But it is no place to be confused and depressed on a bleak and cold November afternoon. The north sides of the reddish, gray boulders up the mountainside shadow scraps of snow as dingy as a wino’s sheets, the cold winds cut with a metallic edge, and the sky is the color of snot.
—
Only one place in Butte rented Subarus, and I didn’t even have to bribe the woman behind the counter to get a look at the rental agreement for the dates in question. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the name, but I was: Cassandra Bogardus.
Blind horse on a merry-go-round, back to my hometown, where not even my rich man’s suit would hide me. I turned in my T-bird and rented the blue Subaru—cheap irony at half the daily rate—then went out to the mall on the Flats, looking for a new image to carry me home. A blond frizzy wig with a matching mustache, a double-knit lime-green leisure suit, Hush Puppies, an order pad, and a seventy-five-dollar twenty-pound Bible.
I made it back to Meriwether just before dusk, prime time for door-to-door salesmen, checked into the Riverfront, then drove over to the north side. Unless my hunch was completely wrong, the bad guys knew about the meetings between Cassandra Bogardus and Rausche, knew where she lived, and more than likely had somebody watching her house, and mine too, so I thought I would try to sell the Good Book, check out the neighborhood, and hope that I could find the watchers to watch them myself. I parked a block down from the Bogardus house on Gold, tucked the huge Bible under my arm, and began to ring doorbells. I chatted with a lonely old woman, survived the outrage of a drunk, got asked for my city business license by a young housewife, and took an order for a Bible from a puffy-faced middle-aged man who looked as if he had just been released from one of the rubber rooms over at Warm Springs.
As darkness fell, bringing with it a light snowfall, I came to the Bogardus house. Since no lights showed behind the windows, I could pass it by without drawing attention to myself. I tried to look confused and Christian, dejected as I sighed and crossed over to the other side to call on Abner’s house to hire some surveillance of my own.
Abner was not happy, to say the least, when he opened the door to a Bible salesman. He cursed and tried to slam it in my face, but I shoved my way into the living room.
“Don’t swing, Mr. Haynes,” I said, once I had shut the door, “it’s me, Milodragovitch.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “you look like one of those homos on TV.”
“You got a glass of water,” I said. Even on the cold day in the light suit, sweat poured from under the wig. I tossed it and the giant book on the couch, took off the window-glass horn-rims, and sat down, trying to wipe the sweat out of my hair.
“Are you undercover?” he asked seriously, tugging furiously at the drooping ends of his mustache.
“I’m under something,” I said. “How do you sleep, Mr. Haynes?”
“What?”
“How do you sleep?”
“How the hell does anybody sleep when they’re sixty-seven,” he grumbled, then narrowed his eyes as if he suspected I might try to sell him a dose of sweet rest.
“Working men never sleep worth a damn after they stop working,” I said, “that’s why retirement is such a damned hard job.”
“You can say that again,” he said, pulling at the straps of his undershirt in the warm room.
“How would you like to work for me?”
“Doing what?” he asked, lifting his large hands and flexing the fingers.
“See that house over there,” I said, leaning over to open the drapes slightly, but the angle of the porch cut off the view, so I led him into his neat bedroom, where the side window had a clear shot. “That one there.”
“Where the big blonde lives?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “How long has she lived there?”
“Since the Johnsons went to Alaska this summer.”
“The Johnsons? Who are they?”
“He teaches wildlife biology out at the college,” he said, “and she grows organic vegetables. What about it?”
“Can you see it good?” I asked, remembering his mistake with the sign on the van.
“I’m just old,” he growled, “not blind.” I looked at him for a moment. He shrugged, went into the living room, and came back wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. “All right,” he sighed, “I can see it good.”
I explained that I wanted him to keep an eye on the house for me, not on any particular schedule, just watch it and call me at the motel day or night if he saw the blond woman come in, or anybody else around the house.
“Just watch it, that’s all?” he asked.
“Don’t watch it all the time,” I said, “just take an occasional glance at it when you’re awake, maybe every fifteen or twenty minutes. That’s all I ask.” He looked disappointed that I hadn’t asked more of him, so I added, “And I’ll pay you the same thing I would pay a professional operative.”
“How much would that be?” he asked, shuffling his slipper against the worn rug.
“One hundred dollars a day,” I said, “a three-day minimum in advance.” I couldn’t tell if it was the money I counted out or the phrase “professional operative,” but the old man leapt at it.
“You mind if Yvonne helps?” he asked slyly, sneaking a glance at the old oak bed.
“As long as she keeps her mouth dead-tight shut,” I replied as seriously as if I were the reincarnation of J. Edgar himself, but laughing on the inside. Old Abner still had some
healthy vices left in his worn, wiry frame.
“You’ve got my word on it,” he said, reaching out his hand.
As I shook it the thought of Sarah and Gail missing hit me again, and the laughter inside died. “I mean it about Yvonne not talking,” I said.
“You’ve got my word,” he repeated.
“Day or night,” I reminded him as I went back into the living room to don my shoddy disguise, “and if I’m not there, leave a message for Mr. Sloan—”
“Phony name, too,” he interrupted. “Damnation, I thought this only happened on TV.”
Me too, I thought. I slapped the old man’s shoulder, picked up the Bible and my wig, then left. When I hit the steps—splayfooted on the foam soles, with a smile so smarmy it would have made a dog puke—I paused long enough to curse a world that teaches a man to work until he can’t live without it, works him nearly to death, then shoves him out to die.
—
Although with the five grenades and the two submachine guns I had enough firepower to start a coup in some small Central American country, I wanted my own guns and some backup, and since I couldn’t pick up my mail without getting tagged by the bad guys, some cocaine. Purely for my nerves. All three, for my failing nerve. I went back to the motel to change into something warmer and less gaudy to wear while I broke into my own house, but the telephone was ringing when I went into the room. Old Abner on the job. He said he could see what he thought to be a flashlight moving around inside the Bogardus house. I went to check it out.
I nearly missed them when they came out the back door of the Bogardus house and slipped through the snow-dark shadows of the side yard and out a gap in the hedge. Two guys in jogging suits, their hoods up and snugly tied to hide their faces. I tagged them at a distance as they circled the block once for show, then went into a small frame house east on Gold and across the street, on the same side as Abner’s. I started to go up to the front door and try to get them to order a Bible, but even if I hadn’t left my red-letter edition in the car, I just didn’t have the nerve. Not without some help, whiskey, or cocaine. Just following them had filled me with trembling fear. I knew where they had set up the surveillance and could deal with them later, so I went after some nerve.
—
My next-door neighbor’s driveway was empty—his rattletrap pickup had taken him to his night-bartending job, and her Corvette had carried her out on the town to boogie—so I parked there, vaulted the back fence and went into my house through the cellar door. Very quietly. I meant to take all my guns out of the house, but by the time I removed the false panel my hands were shaking so badly that I only took three handguns—the Browning 9mm, a .357 Colt Python and an S&W five-shot, hammerless Airweight .38—the shoulder holsters for them, and a box of shells for each. I strapped myself into the Browning in the cold basement air, but it looked like a thick steak under my arm beneath the thin leisure-suit coat, so I changed to the .38, trembling, then I crept up the cellar stairs, opened the door to the kitchen and slammed it hard, then went back out through the cellar door.
Outside, I dashed across the street, dove into a clump of snow-heavy creek brush and waited. The bastards had my house bugged, just as I thought. Within two minutes a light-blue van arrived and parked right in my driveway just as if it belonged there. Two men who moved like professionals went into my house, one through the front, one through the back, so quickly I knew they had already had keys cut. I wondered if they were supposed to kill me there, or take me for a ride and kill me later.
After they had checked out the empty house they came outside, stood around as casual as tourists, discussing the vagaries of electronic surveillance. In the streetlight I could see their faces—the small dark dude in the pickup and the large guy who wanted to get Western in the Porsche when I messed up their pretty four-man tail in Seattle. Huddled in the snowbank, I wished I knew what to think. Too much cocaine, though, too much fear. I didn’t want to think; I wanted to run, never think again.
When they turned around and left, I ran across to the Subaru and tailed them around the park to the apartment complex at the south end. I watched them go back to their apartment, made a note of the number, then dug into my wallet for the Snowseal last of it right off the paper. It didn’t help. And stopping wouldn’t help either. Maintaining the buzz, that was my only choice. Otherwise, as scared as a street punk on his first mugging, I was going to kill somebody. And soon. And probably the wrong person. I headed for the Deuce and Raoul, the dealer, the little car fishtailing across the snow-covered streets.
—
Raoul was amused by my disguise, when he finally recognized me, and further dismayed when I dragged him out into the alley behind the Deuce by the lapels of his leather coat. When I had him in the shadows, I jerked him back and forth so hard that his leather hat fell into a pile of frozen dog shit. He protested, and I lost it for a second, slapped off his red sunglasses, and ground the lenses into the bricks with my Hush Puppies.
“Jesus shit, Milo,” he whimpered, “take it easy.”
“What the fuck are you afraid of, Myron,” I hissed, “some jerk off the street?”
“Okay, man, okay,” he said, wiping my spittle off his face. “I made a small error in judgment, okay, man, I thought those crazy bitches would be easy on you if they thought you weren’t anybody, that’s all, just some guy off the street, okay. What did you want me to say—that you used to be the man, that you’re an alcoholic who has occasional lapses into cocaine psychosis?”
“Right,” I sighed, trying to get a handle on myself. “I’m sorry. Too much shit going down, okay. I’m sorry.”
Myron took a deep breath, let it out easy, closed his eyes like a man chanting his mantra silently. “Jesus,” he said, “when you did my glasses, I thought I was next…Are you okay?”
“Shit.”
“I think you gave me whiplash,” he said, but he smiled. “What can I do for you, man?”
“I brought your cut,” I said as I stuffed the roll of bills into his pocket.
“Keep it,” he said. “I’m out of this. All the way. I talked to the fat lady, and I’m out. I don’t know what you did, don’t know what’s going down, but I’m out.” He handed me the three thousand back.
“Keep it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Okay, fuck it,” I said, counting off five bills. “I need a quarter-ounce, okay?”
“You be hurting, huh?” he said softly. “Sure. But this is too much bread.”
“For the glasses,” I said. “The price of stupidity, okay?”
“Only for you,” he said, reaching down to pick up his hat. “Thank God for cold weather and frozen dog shit. I’ll catch you inside in half an hour or so.” Then he paused, and added, “Maybe you ought to wait someplace else, Milo.”
“Why?”
“You ain’t exactly dressed for the Deuce, man.”
“Fuck it.”
“It’s your party, man,” he said, then hustled down the alley.
Inside, I tried to ease through the crowd politely, but when I went past the head hog of the local motorcycle gang, I stumbled over my Hush Puppies and jostled his beer. He was leaning against the end of the bar, daring somebody to bump into him, copping feels off passing ladies, hoping to start a fight so he and his tawdry minions could take some poor drunk dude back into the alley and put the boots to him. He looked at me as if I were some sort of subhuman species.
“What the hell, buddy,” I said under the bluegrass stomp, “you never seen a Bible salesman before?” The .38 felt warm under my armpit as the blood rose. Goddammit, I thought, I knew I was going to kill the wrong person. Back off. But before I could apologize, he did. In his own way.
“Hey, dad,” he said, hitching his balls, “you best take it cool and easy.” Then he sauntered off toward the pisser.
Sitting at the bar, trying to nurse my shot of schnapps, which must be something like nursing hemlock, I saw the armored-truck driver, whose name I couldn’t rem
ember, at a table near the back door with three other aging mountain hippies. He had been under fire, wounded in Vietnam, and I knew he was at loose ends. Maybe he wanted to work backup for me. If I could just remember his name.
Raoul came back during my third shot of schnapps, eased up to the bar beside me and bummed a cigarette, and when he handed the pack back, I knew the quarter-ounce was inside.
“Thanks, man,” he said, letting the smoke drift slowly out of his mouth. Under his breath he added, “Try to remember, Milo, that sometimes you eat the bear, but sometimes the bear eats you.” It is something they say in Montana; I think it means that life has consequences. Raoul adjusted a new pair of red shades, shook his head, and went about his business.
I gunned the shot in front of me, walked toward the back door, and stopped at the table where the unemployed armored-truck driver sat. “Hey, dude,” I said and tapped him on the shoulder, “remember pulling down on me in front of Hamburger Heaven the other day?” He stared at me for a long time, then nodded and smiled as if he was sorry he hadn’t blown me away. “Let’s talk some business,” I said, “outside.” Then I moved toward the door.
“In a minute,” I heard him say.
But as I waited in the alley, watching the tiny crystalline flakes float in the blue light from the street lamps, the tall, slouching bulk of the biker strolled out the back door and headed toward me, walking slowly, like a man with a mission.
“Hey, man,” he said as politely as anyone in his position could, “you ought not brace me like that, man, not a man like you.” When I didn’t say anything, he scratched his chest beneath his jacket. “I may not look it now, man, but I was brought up Pentecostal, and I’ve still got respect for believers, but a man like you ought not to be in a place like this. I’m lost, man, but you got a chance. Don’t backslide, not like me, man; go back to the one true—”
“I’m federal heat, son,” I interrupted, holding the double-knit jacket open to show him the .38, “and you best be about your own business. Now.”
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