Spotted Cats

by William G. Tapply

  ‘I can see why it would.’

  ‘So why, Mr Brady Coyne, are you here, driving that godawful automobile, calling attention to yourself, throwing around big tips in West Yellowstone, Montana, asking me about Mayan art?’

  I looked him in the eye. ‘Because I heard you might have something to sell. If you do, I’m interested in buying.’

  ‘Where’d you hear this?’

  ‘Rumour. I need to know if it’s true, or if I’m wasting my time.’

  ‘You heard a rumour like this back East?’

  ‘I have sources all over, Tim.’

  ‘A couple names might help.’

  I gazed out over the water. ‘Martin Lodi, for one.’

  ‘Can’t say I know him.’

  I glanced at McBride. He showed no reaction.

  ‘What about Jeff Newton and Victor Masters?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nope. So you just hop a plane to track down these rumours like a man might go to the drugstore for a pack of cigarettes.’

  ‘About like that.’ I shrugged. ‘There’s always the fishing.’

  He stood up, put on his hat, and brushed off the seat of his pants. He clapped his hands and the two horses, which had been drinking from the lake, lifted their heads and began to amble towards us. ‘We best be getting back,’ he said to me. ‘You don’t want to miss a whole day of fishing.’

  On the ride back to the ranch McBride showed me the sites for the rest of the condos and the tennis courts and the heated pool and the health club. It was as if the previous conversation had not happened.

  We galloped the last few hundred yards, and I enjoyed the feel of the air rinsing my face and the bouncing rhythm of the horse beneath me. When we handed over the reins to Hank at the barn, McBride walked me to my Lincoln. ‘You’re welcome to stay for some lunch,’ he said. ‘But I expect you’re pretty anxious to go fishing.’

  I understood that this was a dismissal, not an invitation. I held out my hand to him. ‘I’ll think about your proposition,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘You do that.’

  ‘Thanks for the tour. And thank Jessica for the coffee.’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Surely.’

  I climbed into my car and backed out. Then I started up the roadway. From my rearview mirror I could see McBride standing there, tapping the side of his leg with his Stetson, watching me.

  I still didn’t know if he had Jeff’s jaguars.

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘I FIGURE,’ I SAID to Flask that night as we were eating at the Totem, ‘that if he has those jaguars, he’ll get in touch with me. I think I made it pretty clear what I was after.’ I carved another slice out of my prime rib and stuffed it into my mouth. Prime Western steer. Probably exactly the same thing I got at Durgin Park back in Boston. But it always seemed to taste much better out there in beef country.

  ‘Or,’ said Flask, spearing a French fry on his fork and pointing it at me ‘maybe you scared him off. Sounds like you mighta come on kinda strong.’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’s hurting for money. He thinks I’ve got lots.’ I shrugged. ‘Anyway, I did what I could. I don’t know what else I can do. All I want is to find out if he has the pieces. Then I’ll figure out what to do next. Down the line, I just want to look into the eyes of those guys who bashed in Jeff’s head.’

  Flask shoved the French fry into his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. ‘Folks around here are feelin’ mixed about him,’ he said. ‘They figure, on the one hand, if he builds his place out there, it’ll bring in a goodly amount of business. On t’other hand, they don’t like him much. Outsider. And they don’t like to see their open spaces dug up and built on. McBride’s pissed a lot of people off. They see what’s goin’ on with little Jenny there, and him with a young wife back at the ranch. Folks’re quick to judge a man around here, and slow to change their minds once they make ’em up. McBride’s taken a swipe at a married gal or two, and that don’t set well, neither. It’s a little town, Brady. Word gets around. Folks take sides quick. Friend of McBride…’

  I looked up. Flask was frowning at me. ‘Are you saying that because I went out there…?’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re either for him or agin him. That’s how they think.’

  I nodded and smiled. ‘And if you happen to be a friend of mine…’

  ‘I can pick my own friends,’ he said quickly. ‘And you’re one of ’em. Regardless of what folks might want to think. Still, I gotta live here.’

  I cut another slice of beef. ‘If he calls me about the jaguars, that’ll tell me what I want to know. I’ll just say I’m not interested, I changed my mind, and put the authorities on to him. If he doesn’t call, I suppose I’ll never know. I’ll have done what I could. No need for me to spend any more time with Tim McBride.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Flask. ‘Not on my account.’

  ‘No. On my account. I’m ready for some fishing. So let’s talk about tomorrow…’

  I was sitting waiting under the broad portico in front of the Madison River Inn at nine the next morning, letting the warmth of the early sun wash my face, when Flask’s old pickup chugged and belched into the driveway. I picked up my fishing gear and went to the driver’s side of the truck. He rolled down the window. The stub of a hand-rolled cigarette drooped from his bottom lip. ‘Mornin’,’ he said.

  ‘A beauty,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we take the Lincoln.’

  He grinned at me. ‘You don’t think this old thing’ll make it over the divide?’

  ‘I know better than to insult a man’s truck. I’m just offering to drive. It’ll take us half, three-quarters of an hour to get over to Idaho. The Lincoln rides nice.’

  Flask didn’t argue, so we stowed our fishing gear on the backseat of the rented Lincoln and headed west on Route 20. Flask fiddled with the radio until he found a country-western station he liked. The Lincoln had a good stereo system. Front and back speakers. Graphic equalizer. Flask grooved on some banjo music. He jiggled his leg and tapped his fingers on his knee. It sounded pretty good to me, too.

  A few miles outside of town I patted my shirt pocket and muttered, ‘Damn!’ An Exxon sign loomed ahead. I pulled in beside the square, shingled one-bay garage, away from the pumps, next to a row of cars that had seen hard use. I threw the Lincoln into park, left the motor running, and opened the door. ‘Be right back. I’m out of cigarettes. Want anything?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Flask. ‘I’ll sit tight and listen to your radio.’

  I slammed the door shut and walked around to the front of the gas station. Hand-lettered signs in the window indicated that shiners and night crawlers were for sale, along with soft drinks and cigarettes, motor oil and antifreeze. The attendant, a bulky young guy wearing stained overalls over a T-shirt that probably was originally white, was leaning against a mud-streaked Blazer at the pumps, filling the tank and chatting with the driver.

  ‘Be right with you,’ he called to me.

  I waved and went inside.

  I stood there admiring the girl in the leopard-skin bikini who was posing with a set of heavy-duty shocks on the calendar, and I happened to glance out the window as the Blazer pulled away from the pumps and the attendant started my way. I was watching as he suddenly lifted off the ground and then seemed to throw himself sideways, simultaneous with the long hollow thump of the explosion. It rattled the wood-frame building and shook oilcans off the shelves and knocked me to my knees.

  It was over as suddenly as it had happened, but the roar seemed to echo and roll away towards the mountains outside. The silence that followed seemed absolute. I wondered if I had been deafened. I shook my head and staggered to my feet.

  I opened the door and went outside. The heat from the fireball beside the garage was a physical force that pushed me backward. I moved against the wall and edged along the sheltering side of the building until I could look around the corner.

  My rented Lincoln was a blacken
ed skeleton filled with rolling orange flames and spewing smoke. I started to sprint towards it, but the heat forced me to the ground. I began to crawl towards the car. My eyes ran wet, and my skin felt afire. I was on my hands and knees. I kept my head turned away from that terrible heat.

  ‘Leave her be,’ came a soft voice from behind me, and then I felt hands on my sides.

  ‘Let go,’ I mumbled, twisting away from him.

  His arms went around me. He half lifted me and dragged me away from the inferno that had once been my rented car, and that now, I knew, had become Flask Dillman’s pyre. I tried to hit backward at the attendant with my elbows, but I seemed suddenly to have no strength.

  ‘It’s only a car, mister. Lucky you weren’t in it.’

  ‘You don’t get it,’ I said. My voice came out a hoarse whisper. ‘Flask’s in there.’

  The attendant wrestled me to the front of the building and propped me into a sitting position against the wall. ‘Now you sit tight,’ he said. He left for a moment, and came back with a can of Coke. He squatted in front of me and held the can to me. ‘Drink this,’ he said.

  I did as I was told. The carbonation was harsh in my scalded throat.

  ‘Must’ve had a leaky fuel pump,’ he said. ‘I seen cars go up like that before. You’re a lucky man. Hell, we’re both lucky you didn’t park near the pumps, or we’d all a been blowed sky-high.’

  I looked at him. I felt tears coursing down my cheeks. The heat of the flames. Frustration. Agony. ‘My friend was in the car,’ I said.

  He stared down at me. ‘Oh, shit,’ he muttered. ‘Holy fucking shit. Look, mister. Don’t move, OK? I’ll be right back.’ He got up and went inside the building.

  I pushed myself to my feet and went to look at what was left of the Lincoln. The fireball had died, but flames still licked up around the sides and darted out from under the hood. I edged nearer, but the heat prevented me from getting close enough to see Flask.

  ‘Come on, buddy.’ The attendant’s hand grasped my bicep and tugged me away. ‘Nobody coulda got out of there. He’s done.’

  I let him lead me into the front room of the garage. I sat in a plastic chair and sipped from the Coke can.

  ‘I called the firehouse. They’ll be along in a minute.’ He frowned at me. ‘You OK?’

  I nodded. ‘You got it worse than me, it looked like.’

  He shrugged. ‘Knocked me down was all.’

  ‘What could’ve happened?’ I said.

  ‘Hard to say. She blowed up, ’bout all I know. That was a brand-new car, looked like.’

  ‘I rented it,’ I said irrelevantly. ‘Hertz.’

  ‘I’d sue the hell out of ’em.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I whispered after a minute. ‘Flask. Oh, Jesus.’

  I heard the sirens growing louder, and then an engine pulled in. The attendant went outside. I slumped in my chair and closed my eyes.

  A minute or two later I found a hand on my knee. I opened my eyes. A thirtyish blonde woman wearing a white jacket and blue jeans was squatting in front of me, peering at me. ‘You all right, sir?’

  I nodded. ‘My friend was in the car.’

  ‘We saw him.’

  ‘Is he…?’

  She nodded her head once. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Good Jesus.’ I felt the tears come again. ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘Let me get your pulse,’ she said. She put a cool hand on my wrist, frowned, and studied her wristwatch. Then she unbuttoned the cuff of my shirt. She pushed it up to my shoulder and strapped on a blood pressure gauge. She pumped it up and studied the dial. Then she nodded once and unstrapped it. She took a penlight from the pocket of her jacket and shone it into my eyes, bending close as she studied my pupils, her fingers gentle on my cheek. Her scent reminded me of the delicate Cape Cod mix of aromas from the forested garden that Lily cultivated for Jeff Newton. Salt air, raw earth, sweat, and flowers. That all seemed long ago and far away.

  ‘BP’s a little elevated, your pulse is kinda high, but I reckon you’re all right,’ she said, smiling. She gave my face a quick grandmotherly pat before she rocked back on her heels.

  ‘You’re looking for shock.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m shocked, all right,’ I said. ‘But I’m not in shock. The other man, the attendant. He was knocked down.’

  ‘My partner’s checking on him.’ She stood up. ‘You just relax for a minute. I think Sheriff Hawkins wants to talk to you.’

  My Coke can was empty. I patted my shirt pocket before I remembered why I had stopped at the gas station in the first place. Then it hit me all over again. I had parked beside the garage, left the motor running, and after I got out, the car caught fire and exploded. Had I not stopped, it probably would’ve happened with me in it, somewhere on the highway.

  My addiction to cigarettes had saved my life.

  Flask hadn’t been so lucky.

  A tall man—six and a half feet, at least, I guessed, in his Western-style boots and ten-gallon hat—strode into the room. He had a long, thin face, deeply creased, with pale eyes that drooped on the outside corners, and wisps of white hair hanging around his king-sized ears. He reminded me of Lyndon Johnson. He stood in front of me, looking down.

  ‘I’m Sher’f Hawkins,’ he said.

  I nodded to him, not trusting my voice.

  ‘You all right, son?’

  ‘My friend was in the car.’

  ‘You got a name for us?’

  ‘Brady Coyne. I’m from Boston. Out to do some fishing.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And the poor fella in the car?’

  ‘Flask Dillman.’

  Hawkins removed his hat and scratched what I now saw was a bald head fringed with white. Without his Stetson he looked nothing like L.B.J. ‘Ol’ Flask,’ he said softly. ‘Be damned. Sure’n hell couldn’t recognize him in the car out there. What were you boys doin’ here?’

  ‘We were on our way to the Henry’s Fork for some fishing. I was out of cigarettes…’

  He nodded absentmindedly. ‘So you come in and poor Flask stayed in the car. You leave the motor runnin’, did you?’

  I nodded. ‘I figured I’d just be a minute. He was listening to the radio.’

  The sheriff turned and looked out the window. An ambulance was pulling away. Its lights flashed but no siren sounded. They were in no particular hurry.

  ‘What happens now?’ I said.

  Hawkins smiled without humour. ‘They’ll take Flask over to Judd’s funeral parlour, try to locate a relative. State police’ll want to have a look at your automobile. Somebody oughta have themselves a nice lawsuit outa this one, car blowin’ up like that.’

  ‘Flask has a sister in Ashton.’

  He nodded. ‘That’s a help.’

  ‘What about me?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’d get myself another car if I was you.’

  ‘I mean, do you need to question me?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A man was just killed.’

  ‘Hell, boy. You didn’t kill him.’ He cocked his head to the side and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling for a moment. Then he looked at me again. ‘Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t figure you did. Still, I’d just as soon you hung around a few days.’

  I nodded. ‘My plane doesn’t leave until Wednesday.’

  ‘That oughta be just fine.’

  I walked out of the building behind the sheriff. Most of his imposing height, I realized, came from his erect carriage plus his boots and hat. In stocking feet he’d be about my height.

  I accepted a ride back to the Madison River Inn with him. I learned he hunted elk and pronghorn with scope-sighted high-powered rifles and fished for trout with spinning gear. Although he didn’t say it, I inferred that he believed fly fishermen were sissies, and somehow not the sort of folks who got blown up in automobiles. I also learned that he liked Flask, as did everyone else who knew him.

  He let me off in front. ‘Any problem, Mr Coyn
e, you just give my office a call,’ he said before he drove away.

  I lay on my bed for the rest of the morning studying the ceiling. I tried to organize my thoughts, which darted and buzzed in my brain like a swarm of hatching caddis flies. The crump of the explosion, the rolling power of the ball of flame that engulfed the car, the searing heat of it—they recalled Vietnam newsreels and, later, feature films, of the war I had not witnessed firsthand. I flirted with an understanding of the men I knew who had been there and made it back. They always seemed inarticulate to me when they tried to explain how their experiences had scarred their souls.

  And I allowed myself to remember Flask, an ordinary, gentle, tragic little man, who loved the outdoors as much as any person I knew. I couldn’t pray for his immortal soul or meditate upon thoughts of eternity. But I could remember my friend well. It was the best I could do.

  Had we taken his truck, he and I would be stalking big trout at this moment.

  Had I turned off the engine before going in for a pack of cigarettes, maybe he’d still be alive. Or maybe the car would have waited to blow up later, with both of us in it.

  Had I minded my own business and stayed in Boston…

  I sat up. Enough what-iffing. I swivelled around, dangled my legs over the side of the bed, and reached for the telephone. I had to answer an overpowering urge to talk to Gloria and my sons.

  I got the answering machine. I listened to her recorded message. Somehow I found comfort in it. I waited for the beep. I sighed once, then hung up.

  The Hertz people not only gave me another car to use, but they delivered it themselves all the way from the airport in Bozeman. They brought another Lincoln. Two of them came, one in the Lincoln and a second man in a little Chevy to drive the two of them back to Bozeman. I told them I really didn’t like Lincolns that much, that the Chevy would be fine. They insisted I keep the Lincoln. I had no spirit to argue with them.

  I wondered if I’d soon have a visit from a slick young man with a liability waiver he hoped to persuade me to sign.

  Flask’s sister came up from Ashton Monday morning and took Flask home with her in an urn. I got to Judd’s an hour after she had left and didn’t like myself for feeling relieved that I’d missed her.