Chump Change

by G. M. Ford

  “Oh . . . aah . . . I thought maybe I’d stick around here for a while,” he said.

  “Good choice,” I said. “What do you want to do about your car?”

  He’d already put some thought into it. “Figured maybe I’d put it on Craigslist,” he said. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

  I waved him off. “Sign the title and send it to me. I’ll collect the money and mail it to you.”

  He thanked me. Looked around.

  “This isn’t such a bad place to be,” he said.

  The temptation was to point out how it wasn’t that long ago he’d been telling anybody who’d listen how much he hated places like this, but, being the magnanimous sort, I decided to forgo the pleasure. Consistency is, after all, the hobgoblin of small minds.

  “You got it made here, kid,” I said. “Try not to screw it up.”

  I shoveled more omelet into my mouth.

  “What are you gonna do?” he asked, while I chewed.

  I washed it down, sat back, and said, “I’m gonna get me a room and go to sleep. Then, whenever it’s safe for me to be on the roads again, I’m going to get up and drive the hell home and stay there for a coupla years.”

  He got to his feet. Stuck out his hand. I pushed myself upright, grabbed his hand, and looked him in the eye. “You’ll do fine,” I said. “That whole thing that happened out there with Gordy . . . that wasn’t your fault. It was one of those times when circumstances conspire . . .” I blathered on for a while, trying to undo any harm I might have already perpetrated. Most of us are good enough at blaming ourselves. We don’t need any help.

  He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “We’re making a grease run out to the county landfill,” he said.

  I reached out and patted him on the shoulder. He put his hand over mine.

  “Take care of yourself, kid,” I said.

  He grinned. “Keith,” he said. “My name is Keith.”

  We shared a laugh, and then I watched the kitchen doors swing shut behind him before gingerly sitting back down to my breakfast.

  Jasmine came by and refreshed my water, but I was about done eating by then. Not that I was stuffed, but at that point, even chewing and swallowing seemed like a lot of work.

  I was paying the check when Irene stepped out of the kitchen.

  “Look what the cat drug in,” she said with a smile.

  Jasmine gave me my change. I slipped her a couple of bucks and pocketed the rest. Irene leaned into me. She smelled of new-mown hay. “You know . . . I was just thinkin I might never see you again,” she said. “Maybe kickin myself a little . . .”

  So was I. I have this way of rewarding myself for the smallest of things. It’s the childish part of me. The part that thinks it ought to get a cookie every time it has a boo-boo, and, standing there, beat up as I was, there was no denying that, as cookies went, Irene was top-of-the-line macadamia-nut chocolate chip.

  “I’d sorta resigned myself to the fact you weren’t coming back,” she said.

  “Didn’t think I was.”

  And then she reached out and touched me. She ran her fingers over my collection of bumps, bruises, and dog bites, as if she was cataloging them for future reference.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  I nodded. “Drove all night.”

  “Where you stayin?”

  “Figured I’d go back to the Holiday Inn.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I’m outta here whenever I’m fit to drive,” I threw into the silence.

  “Glad you came back,” she said.

  “Me too” leaked out of my mouth, with a little more sincerity than perhaps I would have preferred.

  “You shoulda told me you were coming back,” Fred said. “I’da held on to that check and given it to you in person.”

  “No hurry,” I said, shaking hands. “What’s going on with Olley?” I asked.

  “Took a turn for the better,” Fred said. “Spoke a few words this morning, I’m told. Sarah Jane made an offer on that house she’s stayin in. Owner snapped it up in a heartbeat. Be signed, sealed, and delivered by this time next week.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

  “She’s better off here in town.”

  I nodded.

  “Mind if I ask you a question, Leo?”

  “Shoot.”

  “What happened to Sarah Jane’s boy, Gordon?”

  I thought about it for a couple of seconds and concluded that the sad tale of Gordon Stanley shouldn’t go any further. I supposed there might be an object lesson in there someplace, something to be learned, something to make our lives better down the road, but I’ll be damned if I knew what it was.

  “Sometimes,” I said, “some of us get a little more than we can handle.”

  He nodded sagely. “Money’ll do that to a man,” he said.

  This is the part where I tell you how, when I first heard the tapping, I thought there might be beavers in the walls, or how I was dead asleep, dreaming I was at a tinker’s convention, and what with all the banging, I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

  That’d be bullshit, though. One tap on the motel room door and I knew exactly who it was. I wrapped myself in the floral polyester bedcover and mummied it over to the door. Didn’t bother with the peephole or any of that shouting “Who is it?” through the door, just pulled it open and, as expected, found myself looking at Irene.

  “You just gonna stand there?” she asked.

  I stepped to the side. Made a sweeping “come on in” gesture.

  She did. Walked right over to the chair beside the bed, sat down, and started pulling off her boots.

  I moved the DO NOT DISTURB sign from the inside to the outside of the door, double locked and bolted it. When I turned back to the room, she’d managed to lose the boots, the jacket, the blouse and was wiggling herself out of her jeans.

  Women, for me, have always been the most visceral reminders of how hardwired my species is. How we like to think of ourselves as logical decision-makers, who weigh the options, compute the odds, and then do the sensible thing, while, in reality, we just do what we’re programmed to do. We couldn’t do something else if we tried.

  Now . . . I don’t harbor any illusions about being a paragon of virtue. I might even be willing to admit I screw the pooch a bit more frequently than your basic John Q. Public type. But anybody tells me they could have stood in that room, wrapped in a scratchy bedcover, and not found their blood supply rapidly redeploying itself as Irene stepped out of her panties, well, far as I’m concerned, they’re either of a different sexual persuasion, stone blind, or a damn liar.

  The way Herbert Lean Elk told the story later, it was late in the afternoon, right before everybody went home for the day, when they found the first bone. The backhoe operator was taking his afternoon break and Herbert’s people were cleaning out their coolers and bagging up the empties when Winslow Travis started yelling from down in the dig. Everybody went hightailing it down there, Indian and Keeler alike.

  There they were, right down at the bottom of the hole. A lower jaw and what looked like a couple of leg bones. The jaw made it pretty obvious, even to the untrained eye, that this belonged to a human, not a mule deer like the Keelers wanted to say.

  The EPA boys set up banks of freeway lights and worked all night. Kept rotating fresh teams of the college kids in and out of the ditch until they’d sifted every ounce of dirt within twenty feet of where they found the first couple of bones. Found twenty-three pieces, altogether, including the top half of the skull, eye sockets and all.

  According to Herbert, things got a little tense for a while between his people and the Keeler crowd. Shouts and recriminations were hurled back and forth. A little strutting and pushing went on, but no real violence.

  About dawn, the eggheads from Boise State University showed up and took charge of the bones, boxing everything up and saying they’d have some preliminary findings in the next twenty-four hours or so
.

  By the time morning rolled all the way around, the EPA had slapped an indefinite hold on the project, saying nothing else could happen down there until they heard from the scientists, then declared the immediate area around the Future Home of the World Famous Eagle Talon Casino and Lodge off limits to any and all. Everybody outside the gate. Don’t call us; we’ll call you. Excavation party over.

  He told me how Roland Moon’s big black limo had sat up there on the butte all night long. How he kept sending Sonny Boy and Tyler Bain down to the dig to keep track of developments, but never got out of the car himself. Not once. How everybody’d wondered where the Pawnee had gotten to, but how nobody on the Keeler end was doing any talking.

  Once the Feds had locked them all out, tension once again reared its head. When the Indians started a ceremonial fire and began singing victory songs, the Keeler crowd took umbrage, instigating yet another round of shouting, pushing, and obscene invective, an outburst sufficiently worrisome to the EPA crew as to require stationing a pair of Lewiston PD cruisers on the scene, round the clock, for the purpose of keeping the peace, which was where things stood at the moment.

  Needless to say, I was otherwise occupied when the discoveries took place out at the casino site. About as occupied as I could ever remember being. So occupied I completely forgot about my onerous collection of cuts and contusions. We came up for air about nine-thirty that evening, ordered just about everything on the room service menu, including a couple of bottles of champagne, and then headed for the shower together.

  By the time the food arrived, we were squeaky clean, and Irene had snapped on the local news. KLEW 3. Your Action News Team in Lewiston, Idaho. First story out of the gate. EPA discovers human remains at the Future Home of the World Famous Eagle Talon Casino and Lodge. Project suspended indefinitely. But wait!

  BREAKING NEWS flashing in red on the flat-screen. Authorities now say that preliminary testing indicates the bones to be at least six hundred years old and are of Native American heritage. Cut to a plastic-pocket-protector guy from the Boise State University Anthropology Department, who says the same thing in twice as many words.

  Irene looked over at me in utter disbelief. “This means it’s over?” she asked.

  “Deader than a doornail,” I assured her. “The site has cultural significance now. Further construction would be a desecration of the Nez Perce tradition.”

  “Hoooooooey!” she yelled.

  Much as I would hate to admit I took advantage of someone’s moment of joyful vulnerability, that’s what happened. Matter of fact . . . several times.

  So when the tapping on the door started again at eight-fifteen the next morning, first thing I did was to feel around next to me in the bed. I figured maybe she’d gone out to get coffee or something and locked herself out . . . but no, Irene was right where I left her last night, curled up next to my left hip.

  I gave her a gentle shake. She opened her eyes and started to smile, when four very firm knocks rattled the motel room door. Irene was a quick study. She grabbed the bedcover and scooted for the bathroom, while I found my jeans and headed for the door.

  Chief Nathan Wilder and Captain Quincy Morgan, looking all pressed and official in the A.M. “Howdy, gents,” I said affably.

  They brushed by me and were eight feet into the room before Wilder asked if they could come in. I found my shirt on the floor and pulled it over my head.

  “To what do I owe the honor . . . ?” I asked.

  By way of an answer, Nathan Wilder pulled a file folder out from under his arm, walked over to the desk, and began laying black-and-white photographs faceup on the surface. Halfway over to have a look, I knew from his facial expression that whatever it was, wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  Morgan looked at the bathroom door and then back at me.

  “Occupied,” I said.

  He gave me a smile thin enough to pass for a scar.

  I looked down at the photos. The backseat of a stretch limo. Roland Moon and the supposed Mrs. Moon, Jeannie Palmer. Heads thrown back, mouths agape, each of them shot several times in the face and forehead. Wilder did the voice-over.

  “Boulder City, Nevada, PD found them this morning about six A.M.”

  He laid out two more pictures.

  I threw a glance at the new images, but my eyes were repelled by the sheer barbarity of the carnage.

  “Tyler Bain was in the trunk,” Wilder said. “From the condition of his remains, the Boulder City PD surmise that whoever did this got ahold of him first and . . .” He looked for the proper word. “Looks like they spent quite a bit of time encouraging Mr. Bain to tell them where they could find his employer.”

  “There’s parts of him they haven’t located yet,” Morgan said.

  “What about Rockland?” I asked.

  “Nobody’s seen him since yesterday morning,” Wilder said. “I’ve had patrol go through all his usual haunts, but he seems to have gone to ground.”

  “You want to tell us where you were last night?” Morgan asked.

  “Right here.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got somebody who could confirm that.”

  “Matter of fact, I do.”

  I watched Wilder decide whether or not to take the high road. He must have had a pretty good idea who was in the bathroom. I mean . . . it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes. The PTA van was parked right outside the door, and Wilder was the kind of cop who knew who drove what in his town.

  He looked at me like I was something stuck to his shoe, so I answered the implied question, without being asked.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” I said.

  Long silence.

  “I’d keep an eye out for Rockland, if I was you,” he said finally.

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Go home,” Wilder told me for the second time. “I see you anytime soon I’m likely to start inventing reasons why you shouldn’t be out on the street.”

  I kept my mouth shut, followed them outside, and shut the door behind me.

  “Chief,” I said.

  They both turned in my direction.

  “Could I have a word with you, Chief?”

  They passed a “What’s this idiot want?” glance, before Morgan walked off.

  “What?” Wilder asked.

  “You fill Rockland’s deputy job yet?”

  “Why?”

  “The young man I came to town with . . .”

  “Keith Taylor.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s got a degree in criminal justice. Used to be a cop.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do.”

  “And you’re thinking . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “How’s about cause he’s in love?” I said.

  He very nearly smiled.

  “Then how’s about because he was a good cop,” I said. “And he’ll do a good job for you.”

  “Why’d he leave his last assignment?”

  “Urban life didn’t appeal to him.”

  He didn’t believe a word of it, so I went for the big one. What the hell? It worked with Rebecca.

  “Besides which . . . you owe him,” I said. “He saved your bacon back in that alley.”

  He gave me a look that would have wilted spinach, and then stalked off.

  I stepped back inside the room and locked the door. Irene’s head was poking out the bathroom door. “Did I hear that right?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Roland, Cassie, and Bain.”

  “Jesus,” she said as she came back into the room, dragging the bedcover behind her. She sat down on the bed next to me, stark naked.

  “Gotta be careful who you borrow money from,” I said.

  We were silent for a moment.

  “Well,” she said. “That’ll take the bloom off the rose, won’t it?”

  “The rose was great,” I said.

  She started rounding up he
r clothes and putting them back on. “Can’t tell you how much I enjoyed that, Leo,” she said as she pulled on the second boot.

  She walked over and kissed me hard on the mouth.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Believe me,” I assured her with a grin, “the pleasure was mine.”

  She bopped me on the arm. “See,” she said. “That’s why I was sorry I let you get out of town without sayin a proper goodbye.” She found her purse and looped it over her shoulder. “Mosta the men in this world . . . you show em a good time and they’re standing by your mailbox when you go to work the next morning, which really, really, really don’t work for me.”

  “No white picket fence?” I asked.

  “I think I’m duration averse,” she said. “I mean . . . I like rollin around naked as much as the next woman, but that don’t mean I want to buy a couple of recliners and start watching Dancing with the Stars.”

  “Then you’ll be pleased to know I’m going home,” I said.

  She kissed me again, harder this time, and then walked out the door.

  First day I was home, it rained buckets, so I just stayed in the house and licked my wounds all day. About quarter to five in the afternoon, I got a call from BLOCKED, which is nearly always some telemarketer trying to sell me some crap I don’t want, and which I never answer. For some reason—boredom, I suppose—on that particular day, I pushed the answer button. “Leo here,” I said.

  “Waterman?”

  “Yeah . . . who’s this?”

  “This is Sergeant David Downing.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “From—” he began.

  “I remember.”

  “What’s going on with Keith Taylor?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “I got a reference request about him. From Asotin County. Seems he’s applied for a deputy’s job down there. They asked me for a recommendation.”

  “You give him one?” I asked.

  “Best I could, without getting fired.”

  “Why call me?”

  “He listed you as a personal reference.”