Bordersnakes

by James Crumley

  As Sughrue and I climbed out of the Beast, the men stared at us with the narrow eyes of land barons who have just caught some peasant interlopers. Then Kate popped out of the backseat and both men smiled broadly. Within moments, the vaquero had picked up Kate’s baggage and the General had Sughrue and me gathered around the table with mugs of dark, chicory-laced coffee served by a darkly silent, stone-faced woman with bright blue eyes who seemed not to approve of us. Then the General sweetened our coffee with expensive brandy and began to whip us with charm.

  Brigadier General Kehoe, U.S. Army, Retired, a tall, lean gentleman of the old schools—West Point, Georgetown Law, and the War College, among others—had the soft-spoken, slow cadences and sweet gentility of a southern poet. The General had spent most of his career at various embassies throughout Central America, so he had the graceful manners of a diplomat rather than those of a military man. Within moments of being introduced to him as Kate’s benefactors, friends, and working private investigators, the General had Sughrue and me babbling like enlisted men in the presence of their commanding officer.

  I found out things about Sughrue’s nine years in the Army that I’d never known. And discovered, much to my chagrin, that in spite of my Korean War experience and the fact that the General wasn’t much older than me, I was still deferential to a fucking officer. Sometimes our basic training betrays us.

  We were thick as thieves and in the middle of our third cup, more brandy than coffee now, when Kate came back out on the porch trailed by a preppie kid, an old rumpled drunk, and her older sister, Suzanne: a taller, more rounded version of Kate, elegant in black and silver—high-heeled boots, tight leather pants, and a soft, draped sweater gathered at the waist by a silver concho belt. Her short jet-black hair framed a striking face of light toffee and Irish cream, widely spaced metallic green eyes, and a generous mouth as red as fresh blood. When Suzanne stepped through the screen door, Sughrue knocked over his chair and I spilled my coffee as we rose for introductions.

  The introductions were short and not very sweet. Kate let us know that Suzanne was writing and directing a western movie, and the kid trailing her, who looked like an Ivy League sophomore and whose name we missed, was the first AD and an assistant producer. And the rumpled drunk turned out to be Sam Dunston, a Hollywood icon who had written and directed a dozen wonderful westerns. I shook his hand and told him how much I loved his movies.

  “I know,” he said, “I know. You thought I was fuckin’ dead. Hell, everybody thought I was dead. I even thought I was dead…”

  Murmuring something about script changes, Suzanne took Dunston’s arm to lead him back into the house. Sughrue and I had been examined, found wanting, and dismissed by a superior being. On that note, the General’s fabled charm failed him.

  “Goddammit, Suzanne,” he growled. “These men are Kate’s friends and my guests. The least you can do is make a little polite conversation.”

  After a long uncomfortable silence, Suzanne gave her father a look that would have frozen a rattlesnake in midstrike, then said quietly, “Father, the air out here reeks of brandy and violent militaristic nostalgia. Two of my least favorite topics of polite conversation. So if you don’t mind, I think we’ll return to our work.”

  Dunston burst into the next silence like a man looking for a drink. “You know, General Kehoe, making a movie is a little like starting a small war…” But Suzanne had him firmly by the elbow, and his last words were lost by the slamming of the screen door. Which left the preppie kid on the porch. He lifted his small hand in an apologetic wave, then hurried after his boss.

  The General muttered some vague apologies, grabbed the brandy bottle, then almost ran to the Dodge pickup, and was nearly out of sight before Kate caught her breath.

  “I told you they didn’t get along,” Kate said, close to tears. “And Suzanne’s been working toward this movie all her life…”

  “You want to go to El Paso with us?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered quickly. “No, now that I’m here I better stay. I’m the only one who can make peace when they’re like this.” Then she bit her painted thumbnail. “It’ll be okay. Really. At dinner tonight he’ll go down to the cellar. He’s got a really great wine cellar, you know, and try to impress her, you know, like always, so we’ll drink nine hundred dollars’ worth of wine, and drive out to Momma’s grave in the moonlight, then everything will be all right…”

  Kate kept reassuring us all the way out to the Caddy, then made me promise again that I’d take her to Montana. Which I did promise.

  As we drove away, she stood in front of that lonely house on the plain, waving goodbye like a little girl. In the distance, her father leaned against his pickup at the top of a slight rise. He seemed to be looking back at the house.

  “Jesus,” Sughrue said, then sighed. “I’d hate to leave my worst enemy out here.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “You live out here.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but I’m the only crazy person living at my house. Did you see that housekeeper look at Kate? Like Kate was a housefly and she was the swatter. And her father is obviously as nervous as a chicken in a dog run.”

  “I sort of liked him,” I said.

  “Fucking officers. And, Jesus, did you catch the big sister act? Her shit don’t stink or melt in her mouth,” he said. “But by God I’ve seen that woman someplace. I just can’t think of where…”

  “Maybe on the silver screen,” I suggested. “She’s good-looking enough.”

  “She looked mean as a blacksnake whip to me, man, with a barbed-wire popper,” he said, then paused. “Hey, if you don’t mind, I’d like to spend a night or two at home. Okay?”

  “Okay by me,” I said. “But I’m going on to El Paso. I’ve already got a reservation at the Paso del Norte tonight.”

  “What the hell are you going to do in El Paso?”

  “Just nose around gently,” I said. “You got a way to get to town?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll ride in on the Frito Bandito. You sure you don’t mind?”

  “Nope,” I said. “It’ll take me a while to cover all my chores. Transfer some cash, put some Texas plates on the Beast…”

  “No,” Sughrue said. “Register it in New Mexico. Use my P.O. box number in Chamberino, or Teddy Tamayo’s address in Las Cruces.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wanted to check with Teddy anyway. And Jack Soames, and Carver D’s cyberpunk boyfriend.

  Sughrue smiled again, almost a whole man, as we passed an ostentatious barred gate marking the fake entrance to the Castellano Ranch.

  “You know,” I said. “Dunston made a wonderful cavalry movie called Demon Ride.”

  But Sughrue wasn’t listening. “I know that goddamned woman from someplace…”

  When I dropped him in Fairbairn at the store, Whitney was glad to see him. She was so effusive and Sughrue as shy as a mountain Apache, I excused myself to use the pay telephone outside. It was time to check messages back in Meriwether.

  “Anything?” Sughrue said as he unloaded his gear from the Beast.

  “Nothing,” I lied. Whitney looked as if she could use him around the house for a couple of days, so I drove away, leaving them with smiles as tentative as neon in the sunshine.

  I stopped in Alpine for a beer and to use the telephone again. I had some messages at home—a bundle of them from my old pal Jamison, Meriwether’s police chief, and two from the FBI—which didn’t lead me to expect good news.

  Jamison told me that some cop named Soames on the El Paso force had called last week to check up on me. “Milo, I told him the truth,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I told him that you were all right,” he said, “as long as you kept your hand off the bottle and your nose out of the coke. He mentioned you were drinking when he saw you last.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’ve had a drink or two. Even a bit of blow…”

  “Don’t tell me.”

/>   “It’s out of your jurisdiction, asshole,” I said. Jamison and I were friends. For a long time. But not always. He had married my favorite ex-wife, and I owed him for raising my son. “And thanks, buddy.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “But then the calls got serious three or four days ago. Somebody killed his brother, Milo, and now he really wants to talk to you.”

  “Which brother?”

  “He didn’t say,” Jamison said. “But he did mention that whoever pulled the trigger—two in the back of the head, one in the ear, and one in the mouth—had tied him to a chair and cut the rest of the fingers off his right hand…”

  “Shit, fucking shit,” was all I could say. “Why don’t you call him back, Jamison, tell him I’ll meet him in Teddy Tamayo’s office in Las Cruces at five tomorrow.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not,” I said. “But if I’m in trouble, it’s with the family, not the law. Jesus wept fucking blood. What the hell does the FBI want with me?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “They found your banker buddy’s girlfriend.”

  “Great,” I said. “Did she have my money?”

  “Don’t think so,” Jamison said. “They picked up her body floating in the Copia River. Up in Cocachino County in Northern California. A week ago Friday night, I think.” He shuffled some papers, then found the date and told me. “Some fishermen saw her come off the bridge. But she was dead when she hit the water.”

  “How long? And how?”

  “About four hours,” he said. “Somebody tied her hands over her face, then tried to blow her head off with a twelve-gauge. You got an alibi?”

  “Sure,” I said. I’d been prowling the Laras’ house that night. “Sughrue was with me.”

  “Who’d believe that criminal son of a bitch?” he asked. “And what the hell are you doing hanging around with him?” Then he paused. “Oh, fuck. You guys aren’t looking for Andy Jacobson, are you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You lying sack of shit,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Somewhere in Texas,” I said, and hung up.

  I went back to the bar, toyed with my beer. And with the notion of going back to get Sughrue. I had made the mistake of using Rocky’s name at the Pilot Knob bank, and I’d face that music by myself. But on my turf, not Jack’s. I had a second drink, then called Teddy Tamayo to set up the meeting. He didn’t like it, but he was my lawyer. Then I got out the map and looked for a road into Las Cruces that didn’t take me through El Paso. It didn’t look easy, but I found a way. It was easier, though, than looking Jack Soames in the eye was going to be. Walking the borderline.

  —

  Teddy Tamayo was, as I came to find out, one of the most honest and upright men it had been my honor to meet. And not just for a lawyer. Teddy was dead solid straight. But even he advised me not to tell Jack the whole story. I did, though. Sat there with Jack hating me as the light faded in Teddy’s office and told it all. Even taped it. And gave Jack the tape.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” I said as he dropped the tape in his shirt pocket. “I never had a brother, Jack, so I don’t know what it means to lose one. It was my fault, and whatever you want to do with me…well, it’s okay with me.” Then I handed Jack my father’s old Colt Army revolver that had gotten him expelled from Harvard and a new box of .45 rounds I had bought that day. “It’s registered to me. And given my family history, the law won’t have any trouble believing in my suicide.”

  Jack had sat silently through the long story, the hate coming off him in waves. Now he stood and slammed his hand into Teddy’s solid adobe wall, then turned, pointed his finger at me, and said in a harsh whisper, “Let’s take a ride, you son of a bitch.”

  I quieted Teddy’s protests and went with Jack.

  When we got to the freeway in Jack’s unmarked unit, he turned west instead of east, and we rode without a word. All the way across New Mexico to the Arizona line, where he turned around and drove back to Las Cruces, where he parked in the lot behind Teddy’s office next to my car and handed me the pistol and the box of shells.

  “You took one hell of a chance, man,” he said.

  “It was the only one I had,” I admitted. “If I’d run or whined, you’d have popped me. Eventually.”

  “Fuck, I still may,” he said. “Rocky was a criminal all his worthless life. Shit, he wouldn’t even pay his fucking child support. The family had to stop gathering at Christmas ’cause Rock and I would get in a fight every time. But goddammit, he was my little brother. Shit…” Then Jack leaned his head against the steering wheel. “I think I know who we’re looking for, now. Xavier Kaufmann Hurtado. You put it all together for me. But he lives in Mexico. If I lure the fucker across the border, will you pop him?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I gave that up.”

  “Not even to save your own ass?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Shit,” he said, then raised his head. “What about your partner?”

  “He thinks he would,” I said, “but I don’t know…He might beat him to death, but I don’t think he would drop the hammer in cold blood. Hell, he couldn’t even pop Joe Don Pines, and he really hated him.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” Jack mused. “How did he get the bastard to jump out that window?”

  “I never asked,” I admitted.

  “Well, who the fuck is going to do it?” Jack hissed.

  “Let’s get him across the border first,” I suggested, “then maybe we can draw straws.”

  “Let’s hope Rocky didn’t give him your name before they cut off the rest of his fingers,” Jack said. “ ’Cause you’re my bait, amigo.”

  “Okay,” I said. Which is how I went into the drug business.

  —

  Sughrue didn’t show up at the Paso del Norte for four days. When he did he looked like a new man, looked as if he had even put some flesh back on his hard bones. I don’t know what I looked like after four days in bed, sick with a spiritual flu. The only good news was that I couldn’t stand the taste of whiskey. Thought perhaps I’d never be able to stand the taste of whiskey again. When I finished telling Sughrue the story, he put his half-finished beer on the coffee table, where it sat until we checked out of the hotel.

  —

  It wasn’t hard for me to look and act like a drug dealer. I’d known enough of them over the years, even worked for them when money got short. Working for drug dealers was one reason I had a pretty good fake set of identification that claimed I was a retired deputy sheriff from Grand Forks, North Dakota, back when it seemed I might have to run for the border at any moment. Using that paper, I rented a Mercedes convertible and an ostentatious modern house off Scenic Drive above El Paso, splashed a lot of expensive money and cheap talk around the local hangouts and nightspots that Jack suggested. Looking for Xavier Kaufmann. I had to snort a lot of cocaine with people I didn’t know, or even like very much, as usual. And lie a lot. And not drink too much.

  At first it seemed like a lark, coke without a dozen cocktails, a drug experience I’d missed in the old days, but after a few days it began to seem like a real chore. But I maintained. As did Jack, who took a bunch of comp time, and Sughrue, who stuck to him like a cocklebur, and three retired cops Jack said he could trust—they took on the tedious chore of surveillance for the first three weeks. I wore a directional beeper in my shoe, and they stuck with me. But just about the time they got bored, I got drunk.

  Which is how I ended up in the desert west of El Paso digging my own grave, barefoot. While Xavier and Rogelio Kaufmann Hurtado and their walleyed thug watched. With my backup nowhere to be found.

  —

  I had started the evening at El Cuerno Oro, a local hangout out on the edge of the desert that seemed to cater to both DEA agents and drug smugglers. Jack had told me that my fake name, Milton Chester, had finally shown up on the DEA computer with more bel
ls and whistles than Sughrue’s, and Jack suggested I should stop by the Golden Horn at least once a night. Dutifully, I did.

  Just after sundown the place was almost empty. None of my new coke buddies or my future narco pals were around. Just a couple of cattle ranchers at a table and a blonde in a suit at the bar, her purse hanging off the back of her chair, her wallet open in front of her. Between the coke and the anxiety of waiting for somebody to try to kidnap or kill me, I’d lost ten pounds and twenty years. And any interest in sex, I thought. So I said fuck it and ordered a Bombay martini. Which my trembling fingers sloshed over the rim of the glass before I got it to my lips.

  “Terrible waste of good gin,” said the blonde, but I just nodded, gunned the martini, and ordered another. As the bartender fixed it, I went to the john to fix my nose in the hope that the trembles might cease.

  They did. So I drank the one I had, then ordered another. To sip on. When I tried to pay, the bartender nodded toward the blonde.

  “It’s my birthday,” she said, then slid her wallet down the bar, open to her California driver’s license. “Take a look,” she said. “I hate to drink alone on my birthday.”

  I guess I knew better, but I looked anyway. No bells went off, so I let her slide onto the stool beside me. She had large, friendly eyes and a wide, generous mouth, and she smelled of money. “Come here often, sailor?” she asked, and I made the mistake of laughing.

  Four or five martinis later, when she said quietly, “How would you like to get laid on my birthday, honey?” I laughed again. But she didn’t. She just smiled.

  “Where?” I said, glancing around at the now empty bar.

  “We could start in the ladies’ room,” she whispered, leaning her unfettered breast heavily against my arm. She was naked under the suit coat.

  “Shit,” I said, stupidly. “What could happen to a guy in the ladies’ room?”

  “You could come in my mouth,” she murmured closer to my ear, then drew my hand under her skirt, up her silky leg to her crotchless panty hose, where she was wet and warm. “There’d be no harm in that, would there?” Then she stood up, and with a final nice touch, left her wallet open on the bar, her purse still hanging on a bar stool, and walked toward the restrooms.