The Mexican Tree Duck

by James Crumley

  “Jesus fucking Christ” was all I could say.

  “Largest collection in private hands in North America,” somebody said.

  “No shit,” I said. It seemed to be the response the boys wanted. They grinned like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. “You inherit this from the General?”

  “Some of it,” Joe answered smugly. “The Sherman was our latest addition. Isn’t it lovely,” Frank said.

  “Lovely,” I whispered as I wandered into the arms of that past when America still believed in itself, when my father went to war, the war my mother blamed for his madness. I hope her memory forgives me, but I always blamed her. As far as I knew from my father’s war stories, nothing had happened in the South Pacific that would convince a fifth-generation Scotch-Irish Texan that he had been suddenly transformed into a member of a lost band of the Kwahadi Comanche. My guess was that he was loony before he left my mother’s house the first time, and that his later vision quests into the Far West were just excuses to keep moving. Mysticism as motion, a life I understood, I thought as I stopped beside a canvas-shrouded .50-caliber mounted on a tripod.

  “You boys have any ammo for this baby?”

  “Only about a thousand rounds,” Joe said.

  “And a class-three license?”

  “As legal as your car.”

  “I don’t have a car,” I said, “but I’ll take this. Nostalgic target practice, you know.”

  “We’ll give you a hand,” Frank said as he opened an ammo locker and lifted out a long skein of belted .50-caliber rounds.

  “What ever happened to the idea of nonviolence?” I asked the boys.

  “It only works against the guilty and the liberal,” one said, then the other led the way out the door, laughing.

  As a downy snow drifted in the gray dawn, Frank pulled the Paradise van up to Norman’s fortified gate. I scrambled out the rear doors, picked the lock with my most delicate burglar tool—a bolt cutter with three-foot handles—kicked the gate open, and leapt into the back of the van as it trundled past. Frank pushed it hard up the canyon road, as I had told him to do because the alarms were already clanging throughout the Snowdrifter complex. I held on to the .50-caliber, which I had anchored with seventy dollars’ worth of nylon straps and bungee cords, but Frank and Joe, too large to fit into their seat belts, tumbled about the cab of the van like large balloons that had lost their tethers. But they stuck it out, held on until we made the last corner, and Frank spun the van in a tight circle, skidding until the rear doors faced the school bus that protected the entrance. Then we waited.

  After a moment the alarms ceased their clangor and the Snowdrifters tumbled outside, armed and sort of alert. I suspected that Norman’s merry band might not be at their peak at dawn during the best of times, but this morning as they scrambled out of their holes and gathered in front of the bus as surly as a pack of rabid coyotes, they looked particularly bad. Coyotes might have arrived better dressed. Beater Bob was massively naked but for a shotgun and his socks, which seemed to have merged with the skin of his feet. Everybody else looked as cold and confused as the Donner Party just before their first catered lunch.

  The Dahlgren Boys, though, were as spiffy and organized as the VFW on parade, garbed in the height and breadth of military fashion in tailored camouflage fatigues, spit-shined jump boots, and varnished steel helmets perched like teacups on their giant heads. Frank and Joe dismounted as quickly as they could, the van rocking wildly on its springs, and I could hear the snow creak under their soles as they strode to the back of the van, crossed their arms, and faced Norman’s motley crew. The confrontation had all the weighty elegance of a sumo match, until a very grouchy Norman pushed through the crowd.

  “What the fuck do you fat boys want?” Norman screamed.

  “Our fish,” my boys answered calmly, “our fucking fish.”

  Norman considered that, clutching the assault rifle in his hands, then shouted, “You got ten seconds to get the fuck out of here!”

  “And you’ve got five seconds to get our fish out here,” Joe said. “One, two,” counted Frank, “threefourfive.” Then the boys grabbed the handles of the rear doors and slammed them open.

  When the Snowdrifters saw me behind the giant grasshopper shape of the .50-caliber, they simply stared, unable to move, as if faced with the ghost of John Wayne. Bad drug experiences do come true. I stuffed wax in my ears and settled the protective muffs as tightly as I could. When I hit the butterfly triggers, the gang paused for a nanosecond before seeking refuge in the six inches of snow on the frozen ground, their weapons flying out of their hands.

  The .50-caliber fires a 500-grain projectile at 2,900 feet per second. It’s like being shot at with fishing sinkers. The six-round burst shredded the roof of the school bus and knocked half of the cedar-shake shingles off Norman’s front roof. It felt so good bucking against my hands I didn’t want to stop. Of course, I’d been up most of the night waiting for the excitement, and even the single line of crystal I’d done couldn’t account for the second six-round burst. That was just pure fun, pure rock-and-roll automatic fire.

  “Get the fucking picture, Norman?” I shouted into the sudden stillness after the echoes of the second burst tumbled out of the narrow canyon.

  After a long moment, Norman stood up slowly, brushed the snow off his overalls, shook his head like a defeated general, then almost grinned. “Let’s talk fish, you crazy fucker,” he said. I couldn’t even hear my own shout earlier, but I read his lips.

  A few minutes later, I leaned on the mantel of the fireplace as Norman laid a fire. The fat lady, still naked and unrecognized, now slept on the couch beneath a Hudson’s Bay blanket decorated by several sleeping rats. The rest of them clustered in a corner by the kitchen eating something I couldn’t imagine, but which I swear looked a lot like rat turds. Efficient little beasts, I thought as Norman lit the fire. He stood up to lean against the rock mantel, raised his coffee cup to toast mine. At the far end of the room Mary, less than modest in another baby-doll nightie, and the twins engaged in serious conversation in front of the fish tanks.

  “I guess it’s your action, man,” he said quietly. “I haven’t heard anything like that since Tet.”

  “I didn’t know you were a vet,” I said.

  “I didn’t know you were,” Norman said seriously.

  “Sort of,” I said. “I guess we were too busy doing drugs and having fun to talk about it. First Cav. Central Highlands. Sixty-seven.”

  “Fuckin’ graves registration,” Norman said. “Two Corps, sixty-eight. Fuck it, man. That’s how I got started in the business.”

  “Shit, I heard about you guys but I didn’t believe it.”

  “What the fuck, everybody else was making a bundle. Fuckin’ civilian contractors, Red Cross cunts, even the fuckin’ CIA runnin’ the poppy trade out of the Golden Triangle. Fuck it. The stiffs didn’t care what they carried back. They were already fucked.” Norman sipped his coffee. “Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

  “Didn’t John Wayne say that?”

  “He said lots of shit,” Norman said, “but what are we going to do now? With the fish shit?”

  “I don’t fucking know. All you had to do was play straight with me yesterday, Norman,” I said. “But you pissed me off.”

  “Yeah, well you pissed me off, too.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, fuck it. I’m sorry, too. I meant what I said about you going to work for me again, C.W.”

  “Let’s work this out first, okay?”

  Norman nodded seriously, as if we would talk about working for him later.

  “If you’ll pay the boys, I’ll talk them into leaving the fish.”

  “What the fuck,” Norman said, shrugged, then lifted a vial of coke out of his pocket. “One blast for old times’ sake.”

  I’d done more blow for old times’ sake in the last six months than I’d done on my own for the last six years, but it seemed impolite to refuse. So I nodded,
and Norman laid out two wormy lines on the mantel, which we promptly did. I sniffled, then turned to the other end of the room.

  “How the fish look, boys?” I shouted.

  Frank and Joe turned, confused, as if they had forgotten why we had come, then they gathered themselves and answered. “Beautiful,” Joe said. “Perfect,” Frank said, patting Mary’s arm, “she’s a wizard with fish.”

  “Fat fuck,” Norman muttered.

  “If he pays you, will you leave them here?”

  The boys looked at each other for a moment in mock seriousness, then at Mary, who grinned, then shouted back at me, “Only if we get visitation rights.”

  “Deal?” I asked Norman.

  “Fat fucks,” he answered, resigned.

  “Cash money,” I said, and he almost smiled before he headed toward the rear of the house.

  By the time Norman came back, Mary and the Dahlgrens had joined me. I fed the fire while they discussed various filtration systems. I kept an eye on the teeming rat pack still cluttered around their bowls by the kitchen door. Norman strolled into the room, handed me a bundle of bank-banded hundred-dollar bills. “Six K,” he grumbled, “paid in full with interest.” Then he stalked toward his Lazy Boy.

  The money made me jolly. “What do you feed those rats, Norman?” I said.

  “Friends,” he said, stopping long enough to glare at me. “Fuckin’ friends.” Then he flopped into the chair and picked up his forty-function remote.

  When I handed the bundle of bills to Frank, I noticed that Mary was shaking her head sadly at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “I think you hurt his feelings, C.W.,” she said.

  I took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. “Well, excuse the fuck out of me. There ain’t nothing worse than a fucking sensitive biker to ruin an old boy’s morning.”

  Frank handed the money back to me. “It’s yours,” Joe said.

  I kept one bundle, handed the others back to Frank. “This is plenty,” I said. “Let’s call it even.”

  Then Mary suggested, “Maybe you should apologize.”

  I slapped the bills against my palm as if I might be thinking of how to apologize. “Since everything worked out so well, Mr. Sughrue,” Frank said, making points with Mary, “maybe you should take the young lady’s advice.”

  I took another bundle from Frank’s hand. “That’s my price,” I said shortly, “for apologies. I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry I almost can’t stand it, you silly fucking assholes.”

  Nobody argued with me. In fact, nobody even looked at me. I stuffed the bread into the pockets of my down vest, then gave the crowd one more chance to say something before I stomped into the kitchen to grab two beers out of the reefer. I opened them both and carried them back out to the video area, where I flopped on the couch next to Norman’s chair. I didn’t care if I sat on a rat or two. Norman was relentlessly searching the channels with his remote when I offered him one of the beers.

  “It’s amazin’, man, how much shit there is out there wandering the cosmos,” he said, then shook his head at the offered beer. “Too early for me, man.”

  “Too fucking early for technological philosophy,” I said. “I’ll drink the motherfucker.”

  “Jesus, man, you’re on a short fuse.”

  “Old age,” I said. “Everything’s hairier and closer to the ground, man, and either less or more serious.”

  “Right,” Norman said, looking very nervous. “You ever fire one of those fifties before?”

  “Not in this life or that one.”

  “You didn’t fire any practice rounds?”

  “Norman, they must cost five dollars apiece.”

  “Jesus,” he sighed, “that makes me nervous.”

  “That was the whole point, asshole,” I said.

  “Damn it, Sughrue, you shouldn’t a-done it that way.” Norman sounded wounded and serious. “You shouldn’t oughta.”

  “You should’ve paid attention the first time,” I said. I had money in my pockets, blow in my nose, and Norman by the nuts with Mary flirting wildly with the twins.

  “You sure got my attention,” he brayed, then laughed wildly. “Got all my attention, dude, but you fucked up Bob’s sex life forever.”

  “Forever?”

  “Claims he lost his little prick in the snow.”

  “Sucked it right up inside him,” I suggested.

  “Bob’s the horniest fat person I ever met,” Norman said, glancing over his shoulder at Mary and the Dahlgrens. “I don’t like the way those fat boys are looking at Mary.”

  “They’re harmless,” I said without conviction. “They only care about fish and firepower.” Norman raised a small chuckle. “They got a goddamned Sherman tank,” I said, “a working Sherman tank.”

  “Jesus,” Norman said, then paused to consider that. “That’s hard to call, even for me. Shit. How much did they pay you for all this?”

  “Five bills for talking to you yesterday,” I said, and Norman smiled proudly. “A grand for shooting over your head, and a grand for apologizing to you.”

  “I don’t remember any apology.”

  “Don’t hold your fucking breath.”

  Norman liked that one better, a great deal, in fact. “Not bad wages,” he said when he stopped laughing.

  “Almost legal, too,” I said, “but I’m usually cheaper.”

  “And almost worth it, too.” This time I laughed with him, but when we quit, Norman looked at me seriously again. “Hey, man, how much you charge me to find somebody?”

  “Who?” I said, hitting my beer.

  “A woman.”

  “You already got a woman, Norman.”

  “This is different, Sughrue.”

  “Fuck, you’re serious,” I said, sitting up and brushing the rats off my legs. Norman nodded slowly. “Somebody local?”

  “Nope. Long-distance,” he said.

  “I don’t know, man,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I’m out of practice. Sometime in the late seventies people stopped running away. Or people quit looking for them. I haven’t chased anybody in years but bail jumpers, and I hate that shit.”

  “Bad guys, huh?”

  “Their families. Boy, you see their families, you understand where they all come from,” I said. Norman looked uneasy but I ignored it. “Last time I got shot at, man, some dude’s mother laid down on me with a twelve-gauge through her apartment door. Missed me by a cunt hair. I heard the safety click. Killed the old boy across the hall, though. Now she’s doing hard time and her ratfuck son’s still running.”

  “This won’t be like that. How much do you charge?”

  “I don’t know, Norman.”

  “You don’t need the bread?”

  “Sure, I need the money.”

  “So give me a figure,” Norman said.

  I dragged something out of the air. “Three bills a day, expenses, a bonus if I find this woman.”

  “Okay,” Norman said.

  Clearly, I hadn’t made a living in the private investigation business because I had never asked for enough money. I considered strolling back over to the Dahlgrens and taking the rest of the six thousand. But I didn’t.

  “I don’t even have a ride anymore, Norman.”

  “I’ll loan you one of mine.”

  “Fall won’t last, Norman, and I don’t do scooters in the wintertime.”

  “I wouldn’t let you on my hog, asshole,” he said, smiling, “but I got a ride for you.”

  “And I’d have to have a written contract.” I knew that would stop him.

  Norman paused in his cosmic channel search, leaving us with something that looked like Olympic-class boredom, Greek music videos. “I don’t like that much, man. Don’t you trust me? Let’s just do cash and a handshake.”

  “Cash is fine, man, but I need a contract,” I explained. “I trust you, but if anybody asks, I need the paper.”

  “Shit.”

  Then I had a bright idea, dumbfu
ck me. “You know what we can do, man. Come in tomorrow, hire Solly, let him hire me, and you’re covered.”

  Norman shifted in the chair. I noticed that several rats scurried from under the recliner. Who said they never learned?

  “I know he’s your asshole buddy, man, but I haven’t trusted that son of a bitch since I lost all that meth on the Canadian deal,” he finally said.

  “What Canadian deal?” I asked.

  “I lost a bunch of shit and two brothers when I was dealing with one of Solly’s draft-dodger clients,” he explained. “He wasn’t involved,” Norman said quickly, “but I just don’t trust him.”

  “He’s a lawyer; you’re not supposed to,” I said. “You trust your lawyer?”

  “Right fuckin’ on.”

  “Then let him do it,” I said.

  “I don’t want him in this, man.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know which is more complicated,” I said. “Lawyers, guns, or money.”

  “Warren Zevon,” Norman said. “Okay, Solly can do the papers.”

  “Great. Who you want me to look for?” I said.

  “My mother,” Norman said quietly. I have to admit that it never occurred to me that Norman might have a mother. “Mary and I are going to get married, man, and she wants my mother there. I guess I do, too.” Norman started at me a long time, then dumped a small pile of cocaine on the web of his thumb. I hit it, then he did himself the same favor. “Are you up for it?”

  “Sure,” I said, “why the fuck not? Where do I start?”

  Norman ducked his head. “I got these newspaper clippings, man, and all the shit from the orphanage in Texas. A buncha shit.”

  “Bring it tomorrow,” I said, suddenly tired as I finished the beer. “Okay?”

  “Thanks, man,” Norman said, and I shook his oddly tiny hand. “Thanks.” Then he stood up. “Mary, let’s have some grub.”

  Mary paused, nodded, then glanced at the twins.

  Norman interrupted her thought. “We can’t afford to feed those fat fucks.”

  Mary apologized to the boys, who looked as if they wanted me to take my apology back, and they made their farewells full of promises to visit the fish in both places soon, then we eased out through the ruined bus.