Dancing Bear

by James Crumley

  The first round had flattened against his vest, but the second had caught him in the face, a black hole the size of a bee beside his nose, the flattened slug lodged somewhere beyond his brain pan. As I lifted him off the carpet and held him on my knees, the dark, echoing rattle had already begun. I said those empty words you give the dying—I’m sorry, I am a jerk, a fucking clown—but he didn’t hear me, heard only that windy rush down the last highway. When he got there, I closed his eyes, covered his face with his useless vest. Then went back to work.

  Just so we got off on the right foot, I put a round two inches above his bald head. “Just so we know where we stand,” I said, “you’re one nerve twitch from dead.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Get up and take your clothes off, slow and easy,” I said, and he did. He might have looked athletic in his expensive clothes, but naked he was just another skinny old man. “Tie Captain Faintheart’s hands behind him with your belt.” When he finished that, I ordered, “Outside.” Then we went out into the storm.

  After I let him sit cross-legged in the snow with his hands behind his head for a few minutes, I lit a cigarette, and said, “Answer quick, answer right. Maybe I won’t blow your fucking head off, maybe we’ll get through before you freeze to death.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, shivering, “anything you want. We can work something out. I promise.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Who’s Captain Faintheart?”

  “An EPA official from Denver, Sikes.”

  “And the blond guy with the big mouth?”

  “Head of security,” he said, “an ex-CIA cowboy, Logan.”

  “The Oriental gentleman?”

  “A representative of the holding company that owns EQCS.”

  “And what was supposed to go down up here tonight?”

  “We give the EPA official twenty-five grand and a list of dump sites where we can’t stand the heat,” he said, “and he makes sure we don’t get any.”

  “Nice business,” I said, “garbage. Who’s John Rideout or Rausche?”

  “Nobody. A driver. He picked up waste material on the East Coast, the Midwest, the South, hauled it out here.”

  “Cassandra Bogardus?”

  “She applied for a secretary’s job at our downtown office, and when Logan’s men checked her out, we discovered she wasn’t who she said she was.”

  “A reporter, huh?”

  “Not even that,” he said, “just a nosy rich girl who sometimes billed herself as a wildlife photographer, but when Logan found out her employment application was a fake, and that I had…ah—”

  “—been taken in by a pretty face and big tits?” I said, and he nodded. Scared as he was, he wasn’t generating enough body heat to melt the snow on his bald head. “You’re not the first,” I assured him. “Why plant all the arms and drugs on Rideout before you killed him?”

  “Logan killed him,” he said quickly, “Logan. To discredit anything he might have told the Bogardus broad. ‘Disinformation,’ he called it.”

  “And why try me?”

  “Nobody knew who you were at first, and Logan said he was just being tidy, but when we found out you were a security guard, I think he wanted to kill you out of contempt.”

  “Nice people you have working for you.”

  “They used to work for me,” he said sadly, “but somewhere along the way I discovered that I really worked for them.”

  “An innocent bystander?”

  “Sort of…”

  “You didn’t mind killing people at long range with your goddamned toxic dumps,” I said, “but when it got down to gunfire, you didn’t like it?”

  “Something like that,” he said, then added, “I don’t know how much more cold I can take.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “Where’s Sarah Weddington?”

  “Who?” he said, so confused and afraid that I knew he was telling the truth. As much as I hated it: the truth. “Who?” he asked again, pleading.

  “Nobody,” I said. “Help me get your driver and let’s go back inside.”

  “I can’t move,” he said, shaking so hard that the tiny drifts of snow scattered off his head and shoulders.

  “You better figure out a way to make it,” I said, then went around the corner and dug the driver out of the snowbank. By the time I had dragged him onto the porch and up to the front door, Tewels had made the first step. I dumped the driver inside the door, then went back out for Tewels and carried him into the back office. As he struggled into his clothes, I collected all the weapons I could find, even the grenades out of the pockets of Simmons’ vest, and made a sloppy pack out of the driver’s parka.

  “Any whiskey around?” I asked Tewels when he had his coat on. He reached behind the second shelf of books, ran his hand down it until he came up with a half-pint of vodka. He had a quick snort, then offered it to me. I shook my head, and he hit it again.

  “Guy that runs this place drinks,” Tewels explained.

  “Do they actually sell real estate?” I asked, and he nodded, sucking on the bottle. “They keep a camera in the office?”

  “Probably,” he said.

  I followed him as he checked the desks in the front office—he walked like a man who had played his last game of squash—where he found a Polaroid and three packs of film and a flash attachment. I took several pictures of Tewels and each of the dead bodies, with the maps and the lists and the money, with the sleeping face of the EPA official, used all the film. Then I cleaned up the table, rolling up the maps and the papers, checking the briefcase full of money. Tewels had fallen into a chair behind the table, still shivering, still sipping at the vodka.

  “Can you get this place cleaned up and dispose of the bodies?” I asked, adding, “Mister garbage man.”

  “I’ve never done it before,” he said, “but I know the drill.”

  “Listen,” I said as I unholstered the Browning, “I think you’ve been in the business from the beginning.”

  “The business?” he said, looking at the pistol.

  “Chop shops, stolen cars, the whole number, and when you saw a way to run drugs and arms and dump poison illegally, I think you jumped at the chance. The greed business. And if you try to pull this innocent-bystander shit on me again, I’m going to spend the next hour blowing chunks of you all over the room. Do you understand?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Let’s go back to ‘Yes, sir,’ ” I said. “I sort of like that.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, but didn’t mean it. I should have left him in the snow a bit longer. “Whatever you say.”

  “Can you clean up this mess without involving the law?”

  “No problem—sir.”

  “You better hope there’s no problem,” I said, “because this is how it’s going to be. These maps, these photos—they’re my get-out-of-jail free card, okay? As long as I’m alive and healthy, untroubled by people on my tail, and as long as all my friends are, too, you guys can go on with business as usual…” Tewels looked surprised. “What you do in your business, that’s the government’s problem, not mine. I got into this mess by accident, and tried to work it out to save my ass. We could have made a cheaper trade a long time ago, but you bastards were too busy trying to be tidy by blowing me away—”

  “Logan,” he said.

  “Logan’s ass,” I said. “And there’s one other thing—I’m taking the twenty-five grand and buying a contract on one of your children…”

  “Leave my children out of this,” he said, alcohol-warm now, “they don’t know anything about this-ah, side of the business.”

  “I’m buying a contract, and you better hope I live a long time, Tewels, and die in bed of natural causes because if I don’t, your business life is over, and one of your kids turns to mincemeat,” I said. “Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t try to get in touch with me,” I said. “I’ll see you at the Stanford-Washington State game in Pullman
a week from Saturday—wait by the main gate for me, alone—and let me know if you’re having any trouble arranging the details.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Pullman. A week from Saturday.”

  “Now I’m going to fix the telephones, and the transportation—I’ll leave the rotor of your rig by the sign post at the bottom of the hill—if I were you, I’d wait for at least an hour, warm up, before I went down for it. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, but his eyes were as cold as his heart.

  After I jerked the phone lines out of the wall and threw the sets into the snow, I loaded up the weapons and the briefcase. Tewels and I didn’t bother to say goodbye. After I went out the front door, I paused long enough to give myself some insurance against insincerity. I pulled the pin from one of the grenades and left it leaning against the front door, planning to take ten or fifteen minutes of his hour buried in a snowbank across the road. If he stayed put—fine, I would put the pin back in. If he didn’t—fine, too. After I lifted the distributor caps out of the rigs, I tucked myself into the snow across the parking lot.

  He only waited five minutes and came out carrying a scoped hunting rifle—I should have checked the other office; I shouldn’t have threatened his children—came out in such a hurry that he didn’t even hear the handle pop off the grenade. Maybe I had seen too many dead people lately, maybe I didn’t want it to end like this—whatever, I rose without thinking out of the snow, screaming “Get down!” into the wind. But he made his choice, turned and fired from the hip, plowing snow at my feet, and he was working the rifle bolt when the grenade blew him off the porch. Even lying sodden and bloody in the snow, his hands searched for the rifle as I ran the twenty yards to him.

  “No deal,” he whispered as I knelt beside him, “no deal.”

  “That’s the trouble with your business,” I said, “there’s always somebody ready to make a deal.” But I don’t think he heard me.

  Chapter 13

  There is this little lake down in Wyoming, outside of Pinedale, Fremont Lake, and it is supposed to be nine hundred and some odd feet deep. After I called the night emergency number for EQCS and finally got hold of the assistant director of security and told him he’d better get a cleaning crew for a blood bath up to the real estate office, I headed home by way of Fremont Lake.

  Two nights later, by the light of the waxing moon, I sat in the dark center of the lake in a small rubber raft dropping firearms over the side, dropped them all, then the ammo and the grenades, the rest of the cocaine, and a half-full pint of schnapps into the cold black water.

  I had heard once that a colleague of mine down in the Southwest, a private investigator by the name of Shepard, who, when asked by a journalist if he carried a gun in his work, replied, “Hell, no. If somebody wants to shoot old Shepsy, they’re gonna have to bring their own gun.”

  Me too, Shepsy, me too.

  Then I went back to the motel in Pinedale where I had been lying low watching television, the newspapers and an unopened half-gallon of vodka sitting on the dresser. Some of us had made the news, right, but only after the cleaning crew had dealt with the garbage. Tewels’ yacht had been found floundered in the Juan de Fuca Strait, his body missing, supposedly lost at sea, along with the director of security and a distinguished Oriental businessman.

  I waited a day, then called Sarah’s number in Meriwether, but when Gail answered, I hung up. I didn’t want to talk to them yet.

  A few days later I saw the EPA official’s picture in the Denver Post above his obituary. His heart had failed him, it seemed. None of the other deaths had been reported, the bodies probably run through an automobile crusher, then ground into pellets and shipped to Japan. Or gone to sea in a floating incinerator. Simmons, God rest his soul, deserved better than that, to be treated like junk, then built into a Toyota or something. But I was going to have to live with that, and wonder if he might have lived if I hadn’t been so far behind the cocaine.

  Washington State and Stanford played their football game while I was in Pinedale, but it wasn’t on television, so I didn’t see it. According to the newspapers, though, my son had five tackles, sacked the quarterback twice, and blocked an extra point. The Tewels boy had caught three passes and scored the winning touchdown on a reverse. I wished the boys a better world than their fathers had made.

  For another week or so, I wandered around Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, leaving copies of the maps and papers, a few of the Polaroid prints, and detailed tapes in safe-deposit boxes and with small-town lawyers. Occasionally I called Goodpasture down in New Mexico to see if he knew where the fat lady sang, but she hadn’t called. And I didn’t open the vodka.

  I found myself beginning to like motel rooms too much, spending too much time staring at my stubby gray beard in crooked mirrors. It was time to come out of the cold. When I called the new director of security at EQCS, I congratulated him on his promotion, then we made our deal, slightly different from the one I had made with Tewels, now that I had seen the dump sites marked on the maps, but business as usual. My untimely death wouldn’t close them down, but it would cut into their profit margin.

  A Mexican stand-off, as Charlie Two Moons had said.

  Finally, the fourth or fifth time I called Goodpasture he had a number for me, an all too familiar number, so I headed north home with Mexico on my mind.

  Back in town, I waited a few days until I could catch all of them at Sarah’s at once. It was one of those gray, still afternoons when the light seemed filtered through old glacial ice, but I could see their shadows moving against the sheer drapes of the solarium. I slipped the front-door lock and eased up the stairs. Pausing at the top, I could smell the sweet stink of marijuana, herbal tea, and freshly baked cake, and could hear their laughter, that stoned laughter I knew too well myself, laughter without cause or purpose, and I guessed that on an afternoon much like this one, the ladies had gathered and come up with their insane plan. Somehow they would save America from toxic waste and corruption, and I would be their stooge, dance to their lies, dream of love in their arms. I didn’t have the heart to be angry.

  Without sunlight, the large room seemed adrift on some Arctic sea as I stood in the doorway. Carolyn saw me first, rose from the wicker couch, moved two steps toward me, then turned, her face in her hands, and went to the far corner of the room to stare at the weak light. Cassie suddenly became very interested in the pattern of the Oriental rug at her feet, and Gail busied herself picking up cake crumbs with her fingers and lifting them carefully to her mouth. Only Sarah Weddington had the guts to look at me, and even her eyes kept slipping away.

  “Hello, Bud,” she said quietly. “Would you like a drink?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  “An explanation, darling?” Cassie asked lightly as she lifted her lovely face, one eyebrow arched.

  “It’s not necessary,” I said.

  “Take off your coat and stay awhile,” Gail offered with false hospitality.

  “I won’t be here that long,” I said. “I just came by to tell you ladies how it’s going to be.” I walked over and tossed a list of names and addresses on the coffee table between Sarah and Cassie.

  “What’s this?” Cassie said. “I don’t know any of these people.”

  “They’re the innocent bystanders,” I said, “the children. And you and Sarah have twenty-four hours to set up trust funds—don’t be stingy—monthly payments until they’re twenty-five, then the rest of the money goes to them. Okay?”

  “Of course, Bud,” Sarah said, looking at the names.

  “Now just a minute, darling,” Cassie said to Sarah. “Who are these people, anyway?”

  “A teen-ager in a foster home in Denver,” I said, “two little girls in Casper, two little boys, and a little girl with a cancer behind her eye on Vashon Island…”

  “Rideout’s,” Cassie murmured. “What is this—blackmail?”

  “Let’s just call it conscience money, okay?” I said. “I’ve seen your Dun
and Bradstreet rating, love—you can afford it.”

  “Not if you don’t explain, darling,” she said softly.

  “If I do that,” I said, “then you’ll either have to go to the police or become an accessory after the fact to half-a-dozen assorted felonies.”

  “Leave Cassie out of it,” Sarah said, almost weeping. “I’ll take care of it, Bud, for the memory of your father…”

  “Just leave my father out of it,” I said more harshly than I meant. “Please.”

  “My conscience is clear,” Cassie said, almost laughing as she touched her smooth, lovely throat.

  “I’ll help however I can,” Carolyn said from the window. “I wasn’t in at the beginning, but I could have stopped it—should have stopped it.”

  “Can you forgive us, Bud?” Sarah said weakly, her fingers kneading at her temples.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “You dug up my father’s memory, old woman—”

  “Oh, to goddamned hell with your father’s precious memory!” Gail shouted as she stood up and kicked the corner of the coffee table, splashing tea out of the china cups. “My father’s dying…everybody dies, eventually. That’s not the point.”

  “What is?” I asked.

  “Those bastards,” she said, “they poison the air, pollute the ground water systems—thousands of children will die needlessly, horribly. Have you seen pictures of them? Their skin rots, their blood fails, they’re born dying. Don’t you care?”

  “I guess so,” I said, “but I do know that because of this dumb stunt you pulled, eight people died in front of me. Maybe a few of them deserved it. I don’t know. That’s not my decision to make. Or yours. You people made a terrible mess and now you have to clean it up.”

  “Eight?” Cassie said thoughtfully, smiling. “And how many did you personally blow away, Mr. Milodragovitch?” At the window, Carolyn turned as if to say something, but kept her mouth tightly shut. “How many?” Cassie demanded sweetly.