The Mexican Tree Duck

by James Crumley

  Enough fresh snow had drifted through the shredded roof to cover the debris of the wandering life of a biker gang with a soft cold blanket. It looked like a New York alley after the next war. Beater Bob himself huddled under a blanket in the driver’s seat, his eyes sad and distant when he watched us leave.

  “I don’t know how people live like that,” Joe said as we stepped out of the bus door, brushing the snowflakes off his fatigues as if they were ashes.

  “You’ve always been such a prissy bastard, Joe,” Frank said.

  “You’re just saying that because you fell for that dirty little girl,” Joe responded.

  “I’m not the only one who likes little girls.”

  “At least Mona’s clean,” Joe claimed.

  “She smells like the turtle tank,” Frank said.

  “Boys, boys,” I interrupted. “Either shut up or give me another thousand dollars.”

  By god, they thought about it, but finally gave up their tiff, even though I could hear them fussing under their breaths as they heaved themselves into the front of the van. I climbed into the back, anchored the machine gun before I closed the doors. Norman stepped out of the bus door, followed by Bob, who looked like a major religious figure draped in his blanket.

  “Hey, Sughrue, ask those fat fucks if they want to sell their tank!” Norman shouted, then laughed.

  “Tell him that if he calls us fat fucks again,” Frank said, his voice full of love, lust, and rage, “we’ll deliver it personally.”

  “Damn fucking right,” Joe said, and he sounded as if he meant it.

  Out the back windows of the van, the cloud cover began to divide, blue sky glittering through the cracks. It looked like another wave of weather confusion for Meriwether: snow showers for breakfast, sunshine for nooning. I couldn’t keep from smiling.

  When the boys dropped me off at Sollv’s office, we waved goodbye as if we were old friends. The sound of aimed gunfire, however quickly over, sometimes does that to men. I took two steps toward the basement entrance, where the dead people once arrived, glanced at the courthouse clock, which said 9:45. Fuck it, a full day of Native American sunshine. The cash shifted in my vest pocket as I paused, then I dug into my shirt where I knew a small pile of crystal lay twisted into the end of a bit of plastic. Here I was way beyond the age of consent, looking fifty in the eye and still sleeping on somebody else’s floor, or embalming slab to be absolutely correct, so I jammed a tiny pinch of speed up my nose and hoofed it toward the Slumgullion for a bait of fried mush and fresh side pork. If I’d had a Corvette, I’d have driven it there.

  Even though I knew it wasn’t on the menu anymore, I walked in the back door and ordered it anyway. In a very loud voice. The early morning drinkers paused with their whiskey in the air and the poker chips gave up their rattle. The last time I’d stopped in the Slumgullion for breakfast, I’d gotten western with a couple of Canadian Bloods, but we made friends in jail. The short-order cook concentrated on a pair of eggs and the waitress wouldn’t look me in the eye. She kept her eyes down like an ex-con, which she was, seven-and-change for popping a cap on her father-in-law.

  “We ain’t got none a that,” she whispered, drifting away.

  “Ain’t your fault, honey,” I said, “but where’s the asshole who owns this place now? You, cookie! Who owns this shithole now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said to a pile of smoldering hash browns.

  “Some fucking yuppie from California, right, who doesn’t know shit from brains and eggs, fried mush from fresh side pork, and the next fucking thing you know, man, this will be a bread and break-the-fucking-fast haven for wino yups addicted to a good really interesting Chablis.”

  Then the bartender, an old friend and running partner in the detective business, strolled down the end of the bar. “Jesus, Sonny,” he said softly, “leave the fucking cook alone. You shout at him again and he’ll shit his pants and ruin everybody’s breakfast. Come over here. I’ll buy you a drink. We’ll talk about the old days when we were young and foolish, and able to afford it, instead of just foolish.”

  “Sounds like a deal,” I said. My old partner always had that effect on me; talking to him worked better than a handful of Valium. He poured us both shots of unblended Scotch and cracked me a bottle of Canadian beer for a chaser as I bellied up to the bar.

  He held up the shot glass, stared at it fondly, then dumped it down the drain. I sipped my shot. “How long’s it been now?” I asked.

  “Nearly two years,” he said, running his hand through his coal-black curls.

  “No, really,” I said.

  “Fuck you, Sughrue,” he said, then smiled. “I don’t count the days. I didn’t quit. I’m just resting. Sounds like you might give it a rest, too.”

  “Bad dreams,” I said, which was more than half-true, “but I’ve been sober since, since the musical incident. Nothing like sleeping in a morgue to give an old boy bad dreams and sobriety.”

  The bartender sniffed the air, then grinned and touched his nose lightly.

  “Had a beer and a bump with one of our old friends this morning,” I said, “but strictly in the line of duty.”

  He raised an eyebrow over a sulky Slavic eye, and I told him all about it. As you get older, old friends are a tonic, a blessing beyond counting. When I finished my story, he reminded me of the time we had gone to Japan to retrieve a champion Labrador retriever from a Japanese automobile executive who didn’t understand free enterprise until we held his head in his carp pond. But that’s another story. After I drank my second setup, I hooked a cab down to the Riverside Inn, checked in, ordered breakfast from room service, and fell into a lovely dreamless sleep before I finished it.

  Sometimes fun can be tiresome.

  Shortly after noon the next day, I found myself in Solly’s office yelling at Norman again. Never a good sign for me.

  “This is fucking crazy!” I shouted.

  Solly sat behind his oak desk, trying to look avuncular as he shook his head as if to suggest “abnormal” at the very least.

  “As far as I can tell, the police forces of three states, the FBI, the Secret Service, and probably the fucking CIA are looking for this woman, who you think might be your mother, and they can’t find her, so what makes you think I can?” I waved Norman’s collection of newspaper and magazine clippings in his face, then stalked across the office to stare at the shiny neighborhood. I had had a good night’s sleep, a nice breakfast, and even a good hike over to the office. I didn’t have any reason to be mad at Norman. Except that he was fucking crazy. “What makes you think I can find her?” I repeated.

  “I don’t know, C.W.,” he said quietly, “I just do.” Norman had left his colors at home; dressed in a flannel shirt and tweed jacket, he looked almost normal. Mary looked absolutely splendid in a sleek wool dress, panty hose, and green suede pumps that matched her dress exactly. The long sleeves of the dress even covered her tattoos, as the new makeup nearly did the hard lines of her pretty face. “I just do.”

  “Can you believe this?” I asked Solly, but he just played dumb. I consulted the clippings and turned to Norman again. “You don’t even really know if this Sarita Cisneros Pines is really your mother. I mean what the hell, man, she’s just the missing wife of the President’s special envoy to Mexico, and he’s not your father, but you think she’s your mother, right?”

  “I don’t think it, man, I know it.”

  “Sarita Pines,” I said to Solly, “sounds like a housing development, right?”

  “Goddammit,” Mary explained hotly, “Norman was six when she gave him away and he fucking remembers his mother.”

  “He doesn’t even fucking look Mexican,” I said.

  “She was half Irish,” Norman said.

  “Oh, that explains everything,” I said, “half fucking Irish. That’s makes it perfect, man. I’m used to clients lying to me, but usually the stories make a little sense. This is bullshit.”

  “What the hell you so mad about, man?
” Norman asked, leaning forward on the creaking leather couch. “Too much blow, or not enough? I got some right here, man, you need some.” Norman reached into the pocket of his sport coat.

  “Not in my office,” Solly said, “please.”

  Norman gave him a long, hard stare. “Sure, counselor, whatever you say,” he said finally. Mary put a hand on his arm as if to restrain him. “So what the fuck’s with you, Sughrue?”

  “Solly shifted in his chair, his plastic foot clanking against the side of the desk, and raised his hands, the scarred palm shiny in the diffuse light. “Norman, I would like to suggest that C.W. has plenty of reasons to be on edge about this case without you implying that he has a drug problem, which sounds a bit shitty coming from you, man, so why don’t you consider apologizing …”

  “Fuck that shit, Solly,” I said. I didn’t know who to be mad at. “Norman and I have been friends long enough so that we can do business without apologizing every fucking five minutes, okay? Right, Norman?”

  “Damn fucking straight, counselor.” Norman didn’t know who to be mad at, either.

  “Okay, fine,” Solly said, dropping his hands back to his lap. “Then let me see if I can’t cut through some of the crap …”

  Norman and I snorted like warthogs from hell. As if any lawyer ever cut through the shit when the clock was ticking.

  “Point well taken, gentlemen,” Solly said, grinning, then glancing at his Rolex. “So let me put it this way. I’m not on the clock. I’ve got a lunch in a few minutes, if that’s all right with you gentlemen. So let’s get down to the nut-cutting, boys.” Either Norman or I nodded. “Hazelbrook, how much money do you have to put into this project?”

  “Midget,” Norman said, and Mary stood up, rocking sexily on her unfamiliar heels, opened her purse, took out a pile of money, and tossed it on Solly’s desk. It landed with a wonderfully solid thump. “Forty K,” Norman said, “plus whatever the fuck you need.”

  Solly asked the right question. “Clean?”

  “Pris-fucking-tine,” Mary said, her lip curled. “You could eat off it, Mr. Rainbolt. Which is more than I can say about your desk.” Mary drew her finger across the front of Solly’s desk as if she were on a white-glove inspection. I didn’t see any dust, but Mary blew something off her delicate fingertip.

  “All right, C.W.,” Solly said, not even glancing at the money as he dropped it in his desk drawer, “I’d suggest that you accept Mr. Hazelbrook’s word that he is convinced that this woman is his mother, whom he hasn’t seen since he was six years old, and join the government in its search for her. If you have any objections, personal or ethical, please let us know. Now, please. So I can get to lunch.”

  “Goddammit,” I said, then turned back to the cold window. My breath clouded on the glass. Beyond the window a half-moon glowed in the blue-white sky. I hadn’t worked in a long time, and I really wanted to work again. No more bartending, no more sleeping on a slab, no more Solomon Rainbolt in charge of my life. Not that Solly had been a pain in the ass; he’d been a prince; but I didn’t want to work for a prince or a pain in the ass; I didn’t even want to work for Abnormal Norman Hazelbrook; but it might be like working for myself again.

  “Fuck it,” I said as I turned around. “Contract city.”

  And Solly drew them out of his desk.

  Twenty minutes later, I had cash money in hand for expenses, the keys to Norman’s extra VW van, which looked as if it had spent the last twenty years in storage but which he promised was as sound as a Swiss franc, a handful of clippings, an invitation from Solly to stop by his house on my way out of town, and a sweet kiss warm on my cheek from Mary, which excited me more than I could understand. The weather stayed warm while I packed my gear. Or maybe it was just my old heart pumping again.

  PART TWO

  AT THREE THAT afternoon I finished packing for the mad road trip. Norman’s supposed sainted mother was married to a world-class Republican, so the weapons went on top of the load: the old dependable Browning High-Power, the new S&Ws, a .38 Airweight and a double-action 10mm semiautomatic, a Mossberg Bullpup 12-gauge, and my favorite spring-loaded sap. Then I sat down on the footlocker to run through the clippings one more time.

  While I shook my head, one of Solly’s endless series of leggy blond legal secretaries clicked down the cement stairs in wonderfully high heels. They all wore them, as if Solly had convinced them that women as lovely as they were deserved to suffer. But I never heard one of them complain. I also never found out if Solly ever bedded one. I knew I hadn’t. Quite frankly, they intimidated me. All the way down to my scuffed boots.

  This one, particularly. She was always nice to me. Nothing more frightening than a beautiful woman when she’s nice to you.

  “Mr. Sughrue,” she trilled politely. “Mr. Rainbolt just called. His lunch plans have changed slightly, but he really wants you to stop at the house before you leave town. He said you knew where to find both the house key and the Scotch whisky.”

  “Gee, I don’t have any idea … You wouldn’t know, would you?”

  “Of course not,” she said. Then the perfect trace of a smile flirted with her perfectly painted lips.

  I knew it was impolite to watch her hips stretching the warm folds of her skirt. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, I wanted to ask her along for the ride. Lord only knew when a working PI might need a legal secretary who looked like a swimsuit model. Then she stopped at the door and gave me a smile that made me feel like a tomato worm. And a teenager again.

  “Good luck, Sonny.”

  Norman’s extra VW van was one of those camper models, a deep shiny blue, but with a ton of cash in my pocket I knew that my idea of camping out was going to be staying at a motel without room service. My duffel, footlocker, and random gear didn’t even cover the kitchen-carpeted floor. It wasn’t bad. Even had a tiny televison. Everything was spotless, which I attributed to Mary, who, I noticed as I adjusted the rearview mirror, had left a lip-print on my cheek.

  I wiped it off as I cranked over the engine and found first. Then I popped the clutch. If I had been paying attention, I might have noticed the oddly smooth sound of the engine, the crisp linkage of the transmission, and the small radar detector on the dash. Instead, I gunned the engine and popped the clutch, which lifted the front wheels off the pavement, ran two stop signs, and nearly threw myself into the back of the van where my gear had tumbled.

  First chance I had, I parked and opened the engine cover in the rear. The transverse-mounted V-6 lurking behind the cover had never been anyplace near a Volkswagen factory. How perfectly Norman. He couldn’t do anything normal if he tried. I wondered if the bastard might be hiding behind an elm laughing up his rat-infested sleeve as he watched my hog-on-ice driving style.

  When I had asked Norman why he had an extra VW van, he had responded, “Nostalgia, my man, pure nostalgia.”

  For what? I wondered as I climbed back in the driver’s seat and fastened the seat belt tightly.

  A brand-new Toyota 4Runner pulled up behind me, and Norman climbed out, shouting, “Hey, Sonny, you best watch La Gloria Azul or she’ll eat your lunch for breakfast.”

  “You wouldn’t want to trade rides, would you?” I said.

  “You’re already sittin’ in my favorite ride, man. Once you get used to her, you’ll love her like I do.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You need anything, Sonny, or find any fun you can’t handle, check the bottom of the glove box and give me a call, you hear?”

  “Right,” I shouted, then tried to run over his foot as I tore out of the parking place, roaring down the road, his laughter ringing behind me.

  Solomon Rainbolt lived up the Hardrock Valley in a log mansion built by a Swedish architect for a Hollywood actor whose career hadn’t survived his first rush as a Brat Pack second banana. After the actor became pudding, Solly picked up the house for a song; the actor sang until he was blue on a Washington state cocaine distribution bust; Solly kept him out of the
walls at Walla Walla and kept the house.

  The drive wasn’t a long one, just long enough for me to ease into the scenery, an old Montana addiction. Under all that baby-blue sky it could have been July, the early snows simply bad dreams. But the cottonwoods and creek willows were seared with borders of yellow, and the western larch on the mountain slopes yearned to shed their needles one more time.

  Young men find spring the time of renewal, but those of us with a few beers under our belts and even more miles on our butts find spring to be simply a false promise of greenery destined to wither, a flowered, frenzied promise never meant to be kept.

  In the clear, hot sunshine of autumn, the promise of winter waits just inside the shade of the pines, a vow always honored. Whatever winter brings—aching bones, starving elk, frozen children—we’ve got this moment of blue clarity. Western Montana at its best.

  The tourist horde had departed, the streams ran low around the sun-bleached rocks and driftwood, the pools sparkling with the soft drift of your fly, the lurking mouths of trout. Things worth the dying. In Montana, too, you’re even free after death. Sort of. If you don’t want it, the professional vultures can’t embalm your husk or saddle your kith and kin with fancy satin-bedded coffins. Your people can just wrap you in a wagon sheet and drop you in a hand-hewn hole in the backyard. Then retire to the nearest bar to remember you in stories, and remember you until the stories become the children you never bothered to have.

  Somebody once said, Hell is other people. Of course, they neglected to point out which other people, and seemed to forget that the obverse is true. Maybe Heaven is our people, and Montana our place.

  A few miles up the Hardrock, a string of slow traffic clotted the highway. I spotted a small opening, downshifted, blasted past the traffic like a blue windowpane acid flashback, then throttled back to lead the pack, slow and easy, happy with the road.

  The whole situation, however, left me a bit concerned. Clients always lie to you, one way or another, omission or commission, and you have to take that into account, try to work around it, try to figure it out. Even though Norman was what the authorities called a career criminal, as if some of them were just doing it for a hobby, I had never known him to lie to anybody but the cops. Until I knew better, I had to assume that Norman was convinced that this woman, Sarita Cisneros Pines, was his mother and that he wanted her at his wedding.