The Hemingway Thief

by Shaun Harris

  Dutch pushed the door open and we spilled out onto the top of the mesa. A field of stars exploded over our heads like fireworks. At this height we could still see a small glow to the west that may have been the lights of Tequilero. To the south there was nothing, just darkness. In the north there was a larger glow, and I told myself it was Chicago. Finally, I turned to the east. I could make out the Sierra Madres as an inky blot where the stars ended.

  A man sat at the edge of the mesa, on a wooden deck chair with his back to us and his feet propped up on an overturned straw basket. He wore a rust-colored duster that he gathered around him like royal robes, and his matching Stetson sat on his head like a crown. His fingers were laced behind his head over silver hair long enough to flip over the duster’s collar. A gun belt with twin .45s lay next to the basket. The .45s’ custom handles were silver, to match the man’s hair. I didn’t need to be told that this was our host, Elmo, great-great-grandson of John Wilkes Booth.

  We had apparently interrupted dinner. At the other end of the mesa, a man in a leather apron was swaying along to Exile on Main Street and flipping steaks on a grill made from an oil drum cut in half. I caught the smell in my nostrils and my stomach lurched. I hadn’t eaten since the small sandwich the day before. There was a long table where a dozen or so diners were involved in various stages of their meal. Some were dressed in dirty T-shirts, others in chambray work shirts, but they all wore shoulder holsters.

  “You boys hungry?” Elmo asked, turning around in his chair. We managed to grunt an affirmative. Elmo nodded to Dutch, who dashed over to the grill master and whispered something at him. Elmo stood up and turned his chair around, pulling it close to the fire pit between us. He waved his hands at a couple of empty chairs and we took them.

  “Welcome to the camp. It isn’t the Ritz, but we’ll try to make your stay comfortable. Elmo,” he said, and tapped his chest with his thumb. His accent was old, southern, and aristocratic, but the gentility had been watered out of it, like a good bottle of booze cut just once too often. In the firelight I could see he had one of those faces that was impossible to put an age on.

  “Thank you for having us, sir,” Grady said after we introduced ourselves. We didn’t bother with aliases, but we gave only our first names. We had agreed in the car it would be better to ease into why we were here, and we didn’t want Milch’s name to give us away. Dutch arrived with our plates. He explained the sizzling steaks were javelina and the stuff that looked like sliced green potatoes was baked agave cactus. We set the plates on our laps and dug in. Conversation ceased and Elmo just smiled, enjoying us enjoying our meals.

  “Ebbie,” Elmo said, while tugging at the end of his drooping mustache. Milch looked up from his meal but kept stuffing cactus in his mouth. “Not a popular name among people your age.”

  “No, sir,” Milch said through the chunks of meat and cactus.

  “I knew another Ebbie,” Elmo said. “Good friend of mine, used to live not too far from here. Come to think of it, you look like him. You any relation to Ebenezer Milch?” We stopped eating, and a piece of javelina dropped from my open mouth. So much for easing into it. Elmo took a look at our expressions, bent his head back, and let out a deep, belting laugh.

  “He was my grandfather’s brother,” Milch said.

  “I see,” Elmo said, wiping a small tear from his eye. “And you’re looking for him?”

  “We’re doing research for a book,” Milch said. Digby had felt it would be best not to let too many people know about the suitcase. He trusted Elmo, but he hadn’t been in the camp for some time and he couldn’t vouch for everyone there. We decided a book would be good cover. At the very least it was consistent with the lie we’d been telling all along.

  “You’re a writer?” Elmo said. Milch shook his head and pointed at me.

  “Him,” he said. Elmo had a look like he had sniffed a carton of milk way past its expiration date.

  “And you’re writing a book on Ebenezer?”

  “On Hemingway,” I said. “I came across Ebenezer’s name in my research and I tracked down the younger Milch here. Just following a lead.”

  “You came all the way out here for a lead?” Elmo said, eyeing me through the flickering flames. “That’s a pretty in-depth book.”

  “I try to . . .” I started, but Elmo cut me off.

  “I mean traveling through this terrain,” Elmo said, and leaned in close to the fire until it was difficult to tell where the flames ended and his face began. “Risking your life all for a name you came across in your research. I would think this lead would have to be pretty goddamn special. Pretty fucking goddamn special. In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d say it was more than just a lead you were after.”

  “Shit,” Grady said, and tossed his empty plate into the dirt.

  Elmo smirked and crossed his legs.

  “Yeah, shit,” he said. “I’d say a couple of things you boys are short of is a good story and good manners. Here you boys are in my camp as a favor to Sully, and the first thing you do after I give you a home-cooked meal is lie to me?”

  “If it makes you feel any better, it was Sully’s idea to lie,” Grady said.

  “And it isn’t a lie,” I said. “I am a writer and I am writing a book.”

  “It’s the truth,” Dutch said. He stepped between us and hopped over the fire. He pulled something rectangular from his jacket pocket. Elmo took it and turned it over in his hand. When Dutch stepped away, the firelight caught it and I could see my Scottish vampire detective with one of his various love interests in his arms. It was the same one Digby had been reading. So that answered the mystery of what he had given to Dutch. There were a few pages that Digby had dog-eared, and Elmo flipped to them. He turned the book to face the fire and I could see black handwriting in the margins.

  “This you?” Elmo said, holding up the book. “You Toulouse?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. Elmo leaned forward and stared me down over the flickering flames. He stayed that way as the wind came up off the desert and the dust swirled around the small circle we sat in. He drew whatever conclusion he was looking for and tugged his hat down on his head.

  “You writing one of these books?” he said, holding up MacMerkin’s Folly.

  “No.”

  “Nonfiction then?”

  “Yes.”

  “About the Hemingway thief?” The moment he said it out loud, I realized that it was exactly how I thought of Ebenezer Milch, the First. I saw the name in my mind, written in Courier New, capitalized and complete with the definite article: The Hemingway Thief.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, if you’ve come here looking for the Hemingway thief,” Elmo said, folding his hands in his lap. “Then you must be looking for his goddamned suitcase, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “We’re sorry about the subterfuge,” Grady said. The word sounded awkward coming out of his mouth. One of those cop words like “ascertain” or “perpetrator.” Words they used often, but didn’t understand outside their narrow purview. “But Digby felt it was best to keep this operation on the old need-to-know, you know?”

  “Who the hell is Digby?” Elmo said, shooting a hard look at Dutch. “You told me Sully sent them?”

  “He did,” Dutch said. “He goes by Digby now.”

  “That boy,” Elmo said, and laughed. He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head again. “He’s got more names than a phonebook. Got so many names, he gives them to other people. Like his girl, Pieta, goes around calling her La Dónde. Way I was brought up, you called your lady darling or sweetheart. You don’t call her something sounds like some Mexican time-share.”

  “We’re not trying to screw anybody is what I’m saying,” Grady said, trying to stay on topic.

  “I understand, son,” Elmo said. “It pays to be careful. But careful can get you killed, too. Don’t go around lying to people offering help. Don’t be rude to new friends when you already got enough enemies.”<
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  “You mean La Dónde,” I said.

  “For one,” Elmo said.

  “Some rich guy up north’s gotta hard-on for these boys,” Dutch said. “Hired La Dónde to do the job.”

  Elmo lifted his Stetson and scratched his forehead.

  “That so? You boys are pretty much dead then,” he said, and sucked his teeth. “Pieta doesn’t fuck around. If there’s a contract on you, it’s a done deal.”

  “Digby said we’d be safe here,” I said. “Are we?” Elmo patted the pockets of his duster, settled on one, and pulled out a marbled meerschaum pipe. He took his time lighting it with a wooden match. When he was done, he blew the match out and flicked it into the fire.

  “You are,” he said. “Pieta could be standing right next to you, and as long as you’re in my camp she won’t lift a hand against you.”

  “How do you know?” Milch said.

  “Didn’t Sully tell you what this place is?” Elmo said, sweeping his hand around the top of the mesa.

  “He told us it was like a halfway house for the Monte’s reformed criminals,” Grady said. Dutch laughed and slapped his knee. Elmo grinned.

  “It’s become something like that I guess,” Elmo said. “But not for the first hundred or so years this camp existed. Back then they did some pretty heinous things; terrible things I can’t take back. So now I offer a place for people who are tired of all the killing and violence. It’s that simple.”

  “So you guys just sit around being all peaceful?” Milch said. “Pardon me if I don’t quite buy it.” I gave him an elbow.

  “We don’t just sit on our asses, son,” Elmo said. “There are a lot of folks out here in the Monte need help. Decent people don’t know how to protect themselves.”

  “Jesus, we’re staying with the Magnificent Seven,” I said.

  “Sure, it’s why they’re so heavily armed,” Grady said. “But tell me, Elmo. Are you Yul Brenner or Brad Dexter?”

  “I don’t follow,” Elmo said.

  “It’s just that your operation seems expensive,” Grady said. “How do you pay for it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Why would I mind?” Elmo said, pulling deeply on his pipe. “We farm, Grady. We eat most of it ourselves and sell the rest to pay for supplies.”

  “I don’t know many crops that sell well in these parts,” Grady said. “At least not the kind you eat.”

  “We have a healthy marijuana crop, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Elmo said.

  Grady smiled and shook his finger at Elmo. “That’s what I’m getting at,” he said.

  “Is that a problem?” Elmo said.

  “I’m not sure,” Grady said. “You tell me this place is a safe haven from the Monte. You tell me you guys are a band of do-gooders out to do good. OK, but you grow and sell an illegal crop, a crop responsible for most of the violence you claim to despise.”

  “You need to widen your perspective,” Elmo said. “Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We have good product and don’t step on anybody’s toes, so the cartels leave us alone. We trade with some of the local narcos, and they take it from there.”

  “And you think people aren’t killing over your product once it leaves your camp?” Grady said.

  “I’ve seen you smoke more weed than the entire cast of Pineapple Express put together,” I said.

  “That’s my weed that I grow myself, or I get it from someone I know who grows their own,” Grady said. “The cartels don’t get any of my money.”

  “But you’ll take some of theirs, is that it?” I said. Grady gave me a dirty look. I knew I had gone too far. I had no idea why I went after him like that. Just as he probably had no idea why he had laid into Elmo. Maybe we just hated hypocrisy. Maybe we were just fucking exhausted and a little cranky. I put my hand on my friend’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I followed it with a nod and, thankfully, he returned it. I hoped too much damage hadn’t been done.

  “Look, Grady, it’s not a perfect situation, I’ll grant you that,” Elmo said. His pipe had gone cold and he took the time to relight it. When the bowl glowed, he pointed the stem at Grady. “If you were here forty years ago, you’d be saying different. The history of this camp is a dark one. I’ve pulled it by the neck against the current of evil waters. Considering where we started, this place is fucking Xanadu.”

  “Yeah, we heard the story about your grandfather,” Grady said.

  “Take it easy, Grady,” I said. He bit his lip and held up his hands.

  “It’s alright, Coop. Ignoring the past’s the best way to make sure it comes around again,” Elmo said. He picked up a long stick and poked at the fire. Sparks popped into the air and swirled around us like fairy dust. “It’s my great-great-grandfather you’re talking about. My grandfather killed a lot of people too, but no presidents.”

  “Digby told us the whole story,” Grady said, ignoring my stare. “Booth escapes the Union Army brigade sent to find him. White House covers it up with a stand-in body. Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me.”

  “Sounds like bullshit to me, too,” Elmo said. “It’s possible the John Wilkes Booth who founded this camp was just a good storyteller, and the story he liked to tell made people think he’d done something important, even if it was killing Lincoln. You have to understand though, a story like that, it carries a lot of water in these parts.” He took a pull on his pipe and let the smoke drift lazily past his lips. “There’s another fable going around says I’m the reincarnation of Jesus Malverde, patron saint of desperados and bandits. I don’t like it, but it’s useful, so I use it. Legends have power here. There are grown men, tough men, killers, who won’t sleep outside without gathering brush around them to keep El Chupacabra away. People don’t respect much around here, Mr. Doyle. They certainly don’t respect life—but they respect legends.”

  “Sounds like a convenient excuse for bullshit,” Grady said.

  “So you like stories,” I said, trying to salvage the situation. “We have that in common. Ebenezer too I bet, huh?”

  “Oh yes,” Elmo said. “He did indeed. And he loved to talk about his time with Hemingway in Paris.”

  “Where’s the suitcase?” Milch said.

  “Jesus, Milch,” I said. “How about some tact?”

  “I’ve got no use for tact, Coop. I like a man who says what’s on his mind,” Elmo said, and turned to Milch. “You think you have a claim on the suitcase?”

  “I’m the last Milch. I think that makes it mine.”

  “Perhaps,” Elmo said. I was having a hard time getting a read on him. At one moment he seemed like your typical rural macho man with his guns and cowboy hat. Then he would smirk and it would remind me of the look my dad always had after he said something particularly wry and witty. He was playing with us, but not like a cat with a mouse. It was different. He had the information we wanted, he knew it, and he wanted us to work for it. It was like a teacher forcing a student to use the encyclopedia rather than just handing out the answer. It was irritating.

  “Did he have the suitcase when he came here?” Grady asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it?” Milch said, and it sounded more like a demand than a request.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” Elmo said. He leaned back and his eyes drifted to the stars.

  “Why the fuck not?” Milch said, and pounded his fist on the arm of his chair.

  Elmo sighed, but before he could answer, the walkie-talkie on Dutch’s belt squawked and a few staticky words came through in Spanish. Dutch replied and tapped Elmo on the shoulder.

  “Juan thinks you should see this,” he said. Elmo nodded and eased himself out of his chair. He wrapped his gun belts around his waist.

  “You fellas should come along,” he said. “This concerns you too.”

  If the top of the first mesa looked like a Texas Fourth of July, then the second one looked like a beachhead on D-Day. Wires were strewn across stump-like telephone poles. A small radio
station was set up on a couple of overturned apple crates. A jerry-rigged shelter made up of sandbags, canvas, and tent poles housed a couple of men sitting over a boiling pot of coffee. They were dressed in fatigues, the sleeves crudely hacked off at the shoulders, and the legs at the knees. The coffee smelled of chicory.

  Elmo nodded to the men and strode to the western edge of the mesa, his duster rolling and flapping in the wind coming in over the desert. A large black man in the same cutoff fatigues as the coffee drinkers was leaning against a platform constructed from plumbing pipes and plywood. The platform was covered with a dull, brown webbing, which I assumed was supposed to be camouflage. The man stood up when Elmo approached, and pulled back a flap of canvas so that we could see onto the platform. There was a pile of rags dumped over the length of it, and extending from the far end was what looked like a thin piece of pale-grey pipe. Elmo hunkered down into a squat and poked the rags with his binoculars.

  “Juan,” he said. The rags moved almost imperceptibly, and I would have chalked it up to the wind if a voice had not followed it.

  “Spotted the rooster tail from the truck about ten minutes ago, Elmo,” the pile of rags said in a squeaky voice that denoted neither gender nor age. “Just got to the rock. Black Ford Explorer.”

  “How many?”

  “Three outside the truck. Can’t see inside. You got the bitch, you know, out in front. Some big fucker in shades. Old man standing next to the truck dressed like Jungle Jim.”

  “That’s Thandy,” Grady said.

  I looked out into the inky black night and imagined the decrepit bastard and La Dónde out there. In my mind they were demons with black smoke for bodies and the heads of something so evil I couldn’t put a name to it. I shivered.

  “How close to the rock?” Elmo asked.

  “Close, but she knows where it is. You can tell she’s avoiding it. She’s checking the tire tracks now. Pointing out where Sully went. Talking it over with the old man.”