Dancing Bear

by James Crumley

  As it turned out, he looked very nervous in the vested tweed, so I bought him a full-length leather overcoat, something a pimp or an actor might wear, and he felt okay again. So we went to work, Simmons tagging me around town while I looked for Carolyn Fitzgerald.

  She didn’t have a listed telephone number, nor, I found out for twenty dollars, an unlisted one either. When I tried calling her at the Friends of the Dancing Bear, they said she didn’t come in too often, but took my message to call Mr. Sloan at the Riverfront. Thinking perhaps Vonda Kay might know where she lived, I went back to the motel bar when it opened at ten, the lady bartender told me she had called in sick.

  “So she’s at home?”

  The bartender looked at me for a long time. Although she was dressed in ruffles and lace and made up like an actress, she had those hard bartender eyes. If it had happened, she had seen it.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “I’ll give her a call.”

  “I can’t give you her number,” she said.

  “I’ve got it, babe,” I said, “and if I miss her at home, tell her Milo stopped by.”

  “Oh, you’re Milo,” she said, glancing about the empty room, then leaning across the bar. “Listen, she’s on a tear. She called me at ten last night, drunk out of her mind, and asked me to cover her shift for a couple of days, so I don’t know where she is. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then went up to the room to call Vonda Kay’s favorite bars.

  I caught her day-drinking at the Doghouse, and when she came to the phone, she was mumbling drunk. “Winter, winter,” she kept blubbering, “I can’t stand another goddamned winter alone, Ralph.” Ralph was an ex-husband twice removed. When she finally understood who I was and what I wanted, she lurched out of tears and into cursing. “Why don’t you want to know where I live, bastard, why?” Then she hung up. By the time I drove out to the Doghouse, she had left. I called some more bars without luck. Lady bartenders live a tougher life than anybody knows.

  As Simmons and I went back out to our cars, I stared across the lot at the EZ-IN/EZ-OUT, but it looked permanently closed, the plywood panels, gleaming like raw meat in the gray light, looking as blank as dead faces. I thought about the two kids in their reindeer pajamas, about the Benniwah kid locked in the maximum-security cell in the hospital, about the two hunters who probably had their lawyers after my ass at this very moment.

  “You okay?” Simmons asked through his open window.

  “Sure.”

  “Where now?”

  “The cop shop,” I said, and he frowned. I climbed in, locked the 9mm automatic and the .38 Airweight in the glove box, stuffed the M-11 to the bottom of the knapsack beneath a dirty sweat shirt, then went to see Jamison.

  “Goddamn, Milo,” he said as I walked into his office, “you are looking prosperous. Come into the money?”

  “Don’t be a jerk,” I said.

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” he said, smiling. Although he hadn’t treated me with active disgust as often as he used to, it was odd, after all the years of enmity, to see him smile at me as if he were actually glad to see me. It made me uncomfortable, made me feel the cell doors clank shut.

  “Why?”

  “I wanted you to be the first to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I asked the colonel to let me be the one to tell you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “He’s opening a new office in Portland,” he said, “and I’m going to run it…”

  “And?”

  “And Evelyn and I are getting back together.”

  “She dumped Captain Organic, huh?” I asked, and he nodded. “What happened?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” he said thoughtfully. “Hell, I was never sure why she split in the first place, but, anyway, she said she hit him in the face with a two pound T-bone and he ran away.”

  “She always did have a way with words,” I said. “Congratulations. I guess.”

  “Thanks,” he said, “and I’ve got some good news for you.”

  “I could use some.”

  “But don’t tell anybody it went down this way, okay?”

  “What?”

  “The Blevins brothers, those upright citizens with the vigilante turn of mind who blew up the EZ-IN/EZ-OUT the other night…” he began, almost happy. “Well, they’re not pressing charges against you, and they’re not filing civil suits against you or Haliburton Security, and they’re not going to Deer Lodge Prison.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “What about the Indian kid?”

  “I suspect he will,” Jamison said sadly.

  “Too bad.”

  “You’re right,” he said.

  “That doesn’t sound like you,” I said, “and I can’t believe you’re resigning, either.”

  “You know, Milo,” he said, leaning back in his swivel chair and lacing his fingers behind his neck, “I can’t quite believe it either. You told me years ago, you remember, that I was carrying too large a burden of morality to be a good cop, and, you know, you were right.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “That,” he said, “and I think you also asked me out into the hills for a round of fisticuffs. Several times. Maybe I would have been a better cop if I had gone with you.” I didn’t say anything, more than uneasy with this new Jamison. He had tried like crazy to be my friend all the years when we were growing up, while we were playing ball together at Mountain States, while we were in Korea in the same outfit. We had even gone into law enforcement—his term—together; he had joined the police department the same month I went to work for the sheriff. It had taken a long time for him to understand that I didn’t much give a damn about enforcing some laws, and even longer for him to forgive me for my attitude. “So what was it you wanted?” he said after the long silence.

  “A favor. Or two.”

  “If I can.”

  “I need you to run a couple of names through your computer hookup.”

  “Not a chance,” he said nicely. “You know that.”

  “What do you have on that van they pulled out of Blue Creek this morning?” It hadn’t made the paper yet, but the radio news was full of wild reports about bullet-ridden vans, burned bridges, and drug wars.

  “It will be in tomorrow’s paper,” he said, fingering a sheet of computer print-out, “and on tonight’s news.”

  “What?”

  “No vehicle identification number,” he said, “no engine block number until we get somebody over from Helena to do an acid test, stolen plates—you know the scenario. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” I said.

  “Goddammit, Milo,” he groaned, “you draw trouble like honey draws flies.”

  “Or shit.”

  “Right,” he said. “You coming to the ball game?”

  “If I can.”

  “Try,” he said. “Here’s your ticket.”

  “Thanks.” I put the ticket carefully in my wallet. “I will try.”

  “Buddy will be glad to see you.”

  “I said I’d try.”

  “And if you figure out a favor I can actually do,” he said, “let me know.”

  “I will,” I said, and we left it at that.

  —

  After we dropped Simmons’ rental unit at the motel, and since there didn’t seem to be anything else to do, we spent the rest of the day drifting with the storm around Meriwether, up and down the snow-covered streets, looking for Carolyn Fitzgerald’s Mustang, looking for Vonda Kay, occasionally checking the motel for messages, without luck, rolling past the dark Bogardus house, the even darker Weddington mansion, doing cocaine and schnapps and worrying until I was half-crazy, maybe full-bore bull-goose loony.

  Anyway, just after dark I parked the Blazer in my next-door neighbor’s driveway, with something really insane in mind. I saw her come to the window to see who had pulled in, so I went to the front door and knocked.

  “Milo,” she said when she o
pened it, “you look beautiful. Come on in. Where have you been?”

  “Maybe in a bit,” I said. “Can I leave my rig in your driveway for a few minutes?”

  “Of course,” she said, giving me one of her wild, thin-lipped kisses, all teeth, tongue, and suction, which nearly pulled me into her house. “Oh, do come back,” she said as I turned to leave, patting the Airweight under my arm. “You know how much I love it when you’ve got your gun on.”

  “Sure,” I said, wishing that I didn’t know how she felt about it, wishing I had lived a somewhat saner life. “Sure.”

  I went back to my house. Simmons and I got in through the cellar door and gathered up down parkas and sleeping bags, clothes, my .30-06 elk rifle, a Ruger .44 magnum autoloading carbine, a 12-gauge riot shotgun, my grandfather’s .41-caliber derringer, two pairs of snow pacs with flannel liners. Simmons, as crazy as I was, kept stifling giggles, and when I would mouth “Bugs” at him, he had a bigger giggle to choke. It took two trips, and on the second I picked up my chain-saw case, and Simmons kept his fist stuffed in his throat until he got control of himself, then he whispered, “We’ve got enough arms to start a goddamned war, man, but if we’re getting into Texas Chain-Saw Massacre, I’m getting out.” Then he had to hold his jaws shut to keep the laughter inside.

  Back in the Blazer, though, it broke out, and neither of us could stop until long after the tears had come. My next-door neighbor came out of the house to see what we were doing, but I gave her a toot off my fist and sent her back inside with empty promises.

  “Where you going now, dad?” Simmons asked as I climbed out of the rig one more time.

  “One last thing,” I said, a short burst of laughter barking into the sideways snow.

  Thinking about the grenade under my seat in Idaho, I went back inside, muttering, “Booby-trap me, bastards,” all the way. I carried the crossbow upstairs to the kitchen, cocked it and ran a string off the back-door handle through a cabinet-door handle, then to the trigger, and set the bow on a kitchen chair aimed at the back door. Then I unscrewed the hunting point off the bolt, cut a hole in an old handball, and stuck it on the end. That would make the bastards think twice about messing with me again, and maybe they would want to talk when they finally realized what a sneaky bastard I was. I opened the front door, slammed it, turned on the television, rattled my old couch, then slipped quietly out through the basement.

  Back in the motel parking lot I decided I had had enough time looking like somebody else, and Simmons kept tugging at his tie as if it were attached to a hangman’s knot, so we went up to the suite and put on normal clothes. It felt great, especially after another toot, so we rushed down to the bar to catch the tag end of the Happy Hour.

  Sometimes when hard work fails, luck succeeds. Carolyn Fitzgerald sat at the bar holding a beautiful martini. Lord, how I wanted a martini, but one would be too many and ten thousand wouldn’t be enough. I perched on the stool beside her, motioned Simmons to the other side, and ordered a cup of coffee. Working-time again, and me in no condition for it.

  After we exchanged trite pleasantries, and I realized that she wasn’t all that pleased to see me, I said, “I need to talk to you. Privately. I’ve got a room upstairs. You can carry your drink up there.”

  “What about?” she said.

  “Business.”

  “The last time I saw you, Milo, you were more interested in jokes than business,” she said, “and from the size of your pupils, I assume you’re going to be even funnier now.”

  “Damn right,” I said and picked up her hand as if I were admiring her bevy of rings, then guided it to the place under my arm where the Airweight nestled like a snake in a skull. “Serious business.”

  “My God,” she whispered.

  “Laugh,” I said, “smile, and bring your drink. My friend behind you is carrying an even bigger gun.”

  Her hollow laughter followed a bitter smile, but she came, and I could tell she hated every step of the way. The strap of her purse kept slipping off her trembling shoulder, and even though she held her drink with both hands, by the time we reached the door of the suite, all the gin had splashed out to run like crystalline tears over the turquoise and silver, the sapphire and ceramic of her rings.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, once we were locked in the room, “I’m terribly sorry, but this is damned serious.”

  She didn’t answer but tossed her empty glass on the bed, flopped into an easy chair, and buried her face into her bejeweled hands, her long red fingernails digging into her forehead. I told Simmons to go into the other room. He looked like I felt, like a man coming down off stone-crazy giggles into the black maw of reality. Finally Carolyn raised her head, smiled like a woman resigned to a fate worse than death, and clawed some cigarettes out of her purse.

  “I didn’t mean to lose it like that,” she said through a streamer of smoke, “but guns scare the hell out of me. Three years ago I was raped in my apartment in D.C., at gunpoint, so I’m still a little touchy.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I’m sorry…Shit, I guess no man ever understands that sort of violation. Unless he’s been gang-raped in prison…”

  “That happened to you?”

  “No, no—I didn’t mean that. I’m just trying to say I’m sorry, but you didn’t seem inclined to talk to me, and—”

  “And you’re drug-crazed.”

  “Truth be known.”

  “I hope you have a good reason for this,” she said, a good, tough lady gathering herself.

  “Cassandra Bogardus.”

  “Cassie?”

  “I need to see her.”

  “You don’t need to jerk me out of the bar at gunpoint,” she said, “just to see Cassie. From what I understand of her life, men get to see her just about whenever they want—never as long as they want, but just about whenever.”

  “Not like that,” I said. “I just need to talk to her.”

  “Don’t you all.”

  “Shit,” I said, unfit for human conversation, thinking that perhaps Carolyn didn’t know anything worth knowing.

  “I’ve got her telephone number,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette and lighting another, “and her address.”

  “So do I. But she’s never home.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “What is?”

  “You, Milo, your gun, your friend with the crazy eyes, and wondering how you know I know Cassie.”

  “I was watching her house the day I met you here,” I said. “I followed you here thinking you were her.”

  “And just why the hell were you supposed to be following her? If you don’t mind my asking?”

  “You know, maybe it was a real coincidence,” I said, “but so many strange things have happened lately, cause and effect have gotten all confused in my mind. Truth is, lady, I don’t have any idea what’s going on.”

  “That makes two of us, buster,” she said and clicked her long fingernails against the surface of the small table beside her. I felt the scars on my back itch, the flesh tremble with the old gunsight fear.

  “I need to see her,” I said. “People are trying to kill me, and I think she knows why.” I walked over to her chair, leaned over her and took out the Airweight, set it on the table next to her hand, and backed away. “I can’t hard-ass answers out of you, babe—maybe it was just one night, but it was a night—and if you know where she is, I’m asking you, please call her, tell her I need to talk to her.”

  “Maybe she’s hiding from you,” she said softly through a billow of smoke as she moved the revolver away with the backs of her fingers. “Ever think about that?”

  “Maybe she’s hiding from me,” I said, sitting down on the bed. “Sometimes it doesn’t help to know who you’re hiding from. Whatever, you’ve got the gun, you set the meeting, I’ll come alone, unarmed—you can strip-search me if you want,” I added, and the idea made laughter bubble in my throat.

  “Can I use your phone?”

  “Sure.�
�

  “You go in the bathroom, shut the door, and turn on the shower,” she said casually, and I obeyed, leaving the .38 on the table, even though I felt unbalanced without its comforting weight. It seemed that I spent an hour in the bathroom, sitting in the steamy air as the shower flowed, but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before Carolyn knocked on the door.

  “You can come out for a bit, lover boy,” she said without a trace of a smile to soften her coarse features.

  “Any luck?”

  “She’s supposed to call back in fifteen minutes.”

  “You want a drink while we wait?”

  “A Beefeater martini on the rocks.”

  I went into Simmons’ bedroom and asked him to go down for drinks. Back in my room, I sat down across the table from Carolyn.

  “I would appreciate it if you would put that away,” she said, staring at the ugly little .38. I tucked it back under my arm. “You’ve killed people, haven’t you?”

  “In Korea,” I said, “when I had to. I didn’t go out of my way looking for it, though. Spent ten years as a deputy sheriff without firing a serious shot. Seven years ago I shot two men who were trying to kill me.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “Now or then?”

  “Both.”

  “At first it makes you numb to keep you from being sick,” I said, “then it makes you sick and sad, then you get over it.”

  “How?”

  “The same way you get over anything, I guess. Time passes, you become a different person. You’re thinking about the rape, aren’t you?” She nodded, lit a new cigarette on the butt of the old one. “Would you have killed him?”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I don’t want to kill anybody. Ever.”

  “I feel the same way.” I was thinking about how careful I had been not to shoot at the guys in the van even when they were shooting at me.

  “Why?”

  “Enough people die in this world without my help, and I don’t think I can stand it anymore.”

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “Tell me about Cassandra Bogardus.”

  “She’s the toughest woman I’ve ever met,” she began softly. “I think she would have killed my rapist, or died trying…but I don’t really know her that well.”