Bordersnakes

by James Crumley

  “You gotta think, man,” Sughrue said quickly.

  “We gotta work this out, O’Bannion,” I added, then helped him to his feet and made him look me in the eye. As best he could. His eyes were pouring tears into the sweat of his face.

  “You okay?” I asked. He nodded slowly as if his head weighed a thousand pounds. “Sughrue,” I said without looking at him, “go over there about a hundred yards, cut me a switch with more leaves than thorns, cut it below the surface of the sand, and cover up your tracks on the way back.”

  I heard Sughrue turn and walk away. O’Bannion knocked my arms off his shoulders, saying, “You’re so fucking smart.”

  “Smart keeps you out of jail,” I said, “and the fucking cops aren’t going to leave this alone. Not for a second. So we have to be smart. Okay?”

  O’Bannion nodded again, but the look he gave me would have frosted the balls off a lizard.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” he answered.

  Eventually he calmed down enough to let me cover the scene, carefully trying to conceal my tracks. It seemed to take forever. Then I trudged back up the sandy rise, brushing out my boot prints behind me. O’Bannion knelt in the sand, staring up at the winking stars in the black sky. Sughrue stood behind him, his shirt open for easy access to the Browning.

  “I’m going to give it to you straight,” I said, “and you’ve got to take it, then walk away.”

  “Fuck you,” he said without looking up.

  “You ever been inside, old man?” He shook his great stone head. “Then shut up and listen. Sit down and listen.” Sughrue and I helped him get comfortable on a nearby flat rock, then I gave it to him.

  “This is only a guess,” I began, “but it’s my best guess…”

  “And he’ll be damn close,” Sughrue said softly.

  “Tipton came to the door in his shorts, carrying the cellular telephone,” I said, “and somebody wearing running shoes shot him at least three times in the face with a twenty-two. Then stopped to put a round into the phone as maybe Tipton went for the shotgun, which was on the kitchen counter next to a dozen lines of pretty good cocaine. He didn’t make it. He took another three or four rounds in the lower back. That’s when he crashed through the side wall.

  “The killer walked through the house, which was stupid, because he left tracks in the dust…”

  “Fucking kid never was much of a housekeeper,” O’Bannion muttered. “Christ, I had to muck out the place every time I came up here…”

  “…then the shooter put several more rounds in Tipton’s gut, and one up close in his nut sack. Which just made him mad, as far as I can tell. Whatever, he ripped his shorts off, got up, staggered back into the shack and across it, where he took out the corner post on the back side, and fell down again. Then the killer kneecapped him. Twice. Tipton crawled back in the shack, destroyed the table, some chairs, a shelf of tapes and the player, crawled all the way to the front door. Where he gave out on the stoop.

  “There, the killer put two or three in the back of his head, one in his ear, maybe even one in the mouth, then the rest of the clip into his back. I don’t know in which order,” I said, then added, “They used one of those little Grendel carbines with a thirty-round magazine. They used every one of them. Wiped it clean and tossed it on Tipton’s back.”

  “Professional hit?” O’Bannion asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but whoever did it certainly wanted to make a point.”

  “I’ll give you guys a hundred grand to find out who did it,” O’Bannion said. “Or make it two hundred. Put it in escrow tomorrow morning. Plus expenses. Whatever you need…” Sughrue barked a quick laugh, hard and clipped, the sort of sound a coyote might answer. “What’s so fucking funny, kid?”

  “Actually, there’s a little more than that involved,” I said, “but thanks, anyway.”

  O’Bannion looked at me with his great head cocked on his thick neck almost to the breaking point. “Who the fuck are you guys, anyway?”

  Sughrue and I looked at each other and shrugged as the crooked, waning moon topped the desert mountains to the east.

  “I guess we’re your new best friends,” I said, then helped the weary old giant to his feet.

  As O’Bannion eased along before us, occasionally sobbing softly, backtracking our way to the gate, Sughrue and I brushed out our tracks as best we could by the shrouded moonlight. At the second rest stop, O’Bannion flopped to the ground about ten yards in front of us, his legs splayed like an abandoned doll’s.

  “Wish the fuck I’d thought to bring a beer,” Sughrue said. “How’s it going?”

  “I’m hanging in there,” I said, “but I’d sure as hell rather not seen that one.”

  “Mind if I ask how you knew the cocaine was primo?”

  “I rolled up a bill and did two of the lines,” I said. “It kept me from puking. Then I left the rest of the lines and stole his stash.”

  “Was that smart?”

  “Necessary,” I said, “which is sometimes the same thing,” and handed Sughrue the plump baggie.

  —

  The moon was almost down, the sun almost up when we reached the gate, half-crazy, double-tired from half-carrying O’Bannion’s bulk. The three of us emptied a six-pack and started on another in minutes. It picked up O’Bannion enough for me to get his private number and to tell him what to do before he collapsed into the backseat. I let Sughrue drive us back to the motel, then we crashed until we decided it was either wake up or die.

  Then it was back to LA as soon as we could safely check out of our respective rooms. Finally, we rid ourselves of the rented Subarus and tumbled into our beds at the Sportsman’s and stayed there, living on room service food and despair, with occasional side dishes of pool time and margaritas until O’Bannion had time to finish his chore.

  At one point, Sughrue turned to me while we were baking beside the pool to say, “Have you noticed that every time we look for somebody, we find them dead?”

  “I’ve noticed a few bodies along the way,” I said, “but at least none of them are us.”

  “Yet.”

  “Or O’Bannion’s,” I said. “Though he didn’t sound all that lively when I talked to him this morning, at least his lawyer’s faxing a copy of his cellular bill to the front desk. Said he had to get a lawyer to get the fucking telephone company to give him a printout of his calls on that number. And check the reverse directory.”

  “What about the body?”

  “Tomorrow. He’s going up tomorrow afternoon with an ex-cop buddy of his to find it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Why don’t you fly home for a week or so,” I said carefully. “Spend some time with the family while I hang around out here and check out Tipton’s telephone calls.”

  “Surely you’re not thinking about wandering around without backup,” he said.

  “I hate it when you call me ‘Shirley,’ ” I said.

  “Arlene,” he said, laughing, then lifted himself off the lounger, no longer quite so self-conscious about his scar. “I think I’d best stick to you, old man.”

  “We’re not joined at the hip, kid.”

  But we might as well have been. We picked up the fax, retired to the Lobby Bar, and tried to decide what to do next. After shaking our heads over the fax until our necks hurt, we still didn’t have a clue. Or maybe too damn many clues leading in too many directions to too many places we had already covered. According to the fax from O’Bannion’s lawyer, Aaron Tipton had made six calls from his cellular telephone. Two to Seattle, one to a hotel and another to a restaurant; two to a pay telephone in El Paso; and two to a Donell Wilbarger residence outside Austin, the bookie for whom Tipton had once worked as muscle. Tipton had received only one call at the shack. From another pay telephone in El Paso. Two days before he died.

  So we packed our gear, sat our butts in the soft leather seats, and drove east. On the drive I tried once again to talk
Sughrue into taking some time at home, but he refused. Unless I’d stop there, too. So I said yes. Then dropped him at the store late the next afternoon, telling him that I’d see him after I checked back into the Cuero Motel. But I left him standing there, hugging Whitney in the parking lot, while I headed for the interstate. Later, I knew he’d curse me and the fact that he’d never catch me in the old pickup.

  —

  Austin looked like a different place in the gray November rain. The norther had stripped the trees, seared the grasses, and washed the colors off the damp stone outcroppings. Even the pastel capitol building seemed pale and sickly in the ashen air. Just another midsize middle-western city locked into the embrace of early winter. Nothing I hadn’t seen before.

  “I hate even the suggestion of cold weather,” Carver D said through the dingy cloud of Gitanes smoke when I finished bringing him up to date over a dark table in Flo’s. He looked a bit washed out, too. “Anybody with a lick of sense would be down in ol’ Mexico loungin’ on the playa watchin’ the beach boys’ butts and drinkin’ brandy ’stead of this shit.” He waggled his pudgy fingers at the dim afternoon air.

  “Be all too happy to drive you, boss,” Hangas said, his smile the brightest point in the joint.

  “Irony is wasted on fat people,” Carver D said quietly, staring at me, “and advice on fools.” Then he paused. “Ain’t you livin’ a bit large, Mr. Milodragovitch, after the events of your last visit?”

  “Just stirring up the shit,” I said, “see which floats and which sinks.”

  “Love it when shit happens,” Hangas said, his grin broader. At least he was happy to see me.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Carver D asked, ignoring Hangas.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but that’s how I work.”

  “Well, you’re damn well overpaid for it.”

  “You want to tell me why you’ve got the red ass, Carver D?”

  The fat man’s sigh sucked all the air out of the room. He lit a new cigarette off the smoldering butt of the old one, then picked up the bourbon bottle at his feet and made it bubble. “Success,” he said finally.

  But I just waited.

  “Goddammit, I’ve kept that pissant little newspaper afloat for twenty years on my family’s ill-gotten gains—Galveston whorehouses, East Texas land frauds, and the sweat of illegal aliens—but for the last five years, the son of a bitch has made money…”

  Again I waited.

  “And last week a syndicate of alternative rags just offered me more money than I’ve got in it. Even countin’ all the years of losses.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I asked.

  Carver D heaved himself out of the chair and waddled toward the restroom. “Who the fuck knows?” he muttered over his shoulder.

  Hangas answered for him. “All the years of hard living have caught up with him finally,” Hangas said softly. “He fainted last week while they were putting the paper to bed. Doc told him to quit drinking, smoking, and staying up late at night with teenage boys.”

  “So he’s thinking about taking the offer?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “What do you think, Hangas?”

  “Me?” he said, then laughed. “You know, Milo, my people been working for his people since before the War of Northern Aggression,” he said with a slow grin, then sipped at his beer, “and Mr. Carver D, he took me in when I give up the Corps and put all six of my children through college. They’re all professionals now—two doctors, two lawyers, a CPA, and a set designer at the San Francisco opera—and they all ask me, ‘Daddy, what for you driving that fat ugly white boy around every day?’ ” Hangas set his beer down carefully, then stared at me. “A man retires from what he loves, it’s just like a death sentence,” he said, “and I love that fat ugly white boy and he loves that paper.”

  “You tell him that?”

  “Why, hell no, man,” Hangas chortled, “he’d fire my ass in a New York minute.”

  “Waxahachie,” I corrected him, and we laughed.

  We were still chuckling when Carver D came back from the john.

  “I tell you what, gentlemen, a swollen prostate ain’t nothin’ to laugh about,” he said, then slumped heavily into the chair. “Fuck it, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he added, groaning, then added, “then live till he dies. What the hell you and that crazy Sughrue want now?”

  “Sughrue’s all the way out of this part,” I said.

  Carver D stared at me for a moment, then smiled. “At least there’s some good news,” he said, then laughed until he almost cried.

  —

  According to Carver D’s sources, the former bookie, Wilbarger, had gone legitimate recently and was a major silent partner in several cable franchises around central Texas and an upscale development in the hills west of Austin, Castle Creek Country Club Estates, executive homes built around a thirty-six-hole championship golf course. But he still lived like a gangster, surrounded by stone walls, electronic security systems, and well-dressed hoods.

  —

  Carver D suggested that breaking into a bank might be easier than talking to Donell Wilbarger. And even that would be easier than breaking into the encoded information on the floppy disk I had taken from Ray Lara’s laptop. As far as his skateboard punk could tell, the disk couldn’t be copied, or even read again without the proper password, or it would destroy itself. The Lara killings were still buried at the cop shop as a murder-suicide for some reason that none of his police contacts could explain.

  —

  Keeping my profile high, posing as a prospective buyer with more money than sense, and dropping the Wilbarger name as often as possible, I made an appointment with one of the sales agents, Irene McDormand, a lovely, highly buffed middle-aged divorcee wearing more gold than a television actress, who sat me in a pink golf cart and gave me the grand tour of the estates and golf course.

  All the houses fronted on the golf course, all came with pools, and the smallest ones had at least three thousand square feet of living space. I couldn’t imagine who could afford to live like this. From what I’d read in the local paper, Austin was surviving the slump in the oil business with a surge of Silicon Valley clones, rising neatly from the ashes again. But I didn’t know how anybody lived the way they did. Hell, all the people I knew were criminals, drunks, and bad-dog lawyers. I didn’t really know anything about normal life and supposed I was a bit long in the tooth to find out about it now. But as Irene showed me how they lived the good life in central Texas, I found myself thinking about it. Thinking even about golf. God, I’d not only lost my purpose but perhaps my mind.

  Then I nearly blew the whole afternoon’s work as we puttered past Wilbarger’s elegant fortress. “Mr. Wilbarger must live there,” I said. After which Irene suddenly remembered a pressing engagement that would woefully interfere with the rest of the tour and our tentative dinner plans.

  But as I drove past the manned gatehouse, the guard told me that Mrs. McDormand had called and asked me to wait. Irene showed up in a pink and gold blur, breathless and extremely nervous, to inform me that perhaps we could meet for a late dinner at a place on the other side of the lake, Hudson’s on the Bend, where we could dine on exotic game over a couple of bottles of really good wine. Who was I to deny her? What the hell, I’d gotten Wilbarger’s attention without gunfire. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Or a needle up the dick.

  —

  Hangas covered my back outside while Irene and I dined on lies and quail, antelope pâté and wild boar medallions. Not only was the dinner great, she plied me with three bottles of a fair Texas vintage and so much steamy implied sex that I nearly forgot what I was doing. Once again. Even with two of Carver D’s giggling buddies, whom he claimed ran a tae kwon do academy, watching our every move from a nearby table.

  As we lingered over coffee and cognac, Irene excused herself to go to the bathroom, leaving her sweater and purse. An act that seemed oddly familiar.
At least she hadn’t offered me a blow job.

  A tall, athletic type wearing a cashmere blazer and a neatly clipped moustache over a hard grin stood up from a nearby table he shared with two of his bodyguards, two large gentlemen who affected Birkenstocks and Glocks, limped over, and sat down in Irene’s chair without asking. He stared at me without speaking. I tossed him the leather folder with the dinner check in it.

  “What the hell is this?” he said as he caught it.

  “From the looks of your operation, Wilbarger,” I said, “you can afford it.”

  Wilbarger chuckled, then said, “Jesus, Milodragovitch, do you have any idea how little your life is worth right now?”

  “I’d say with your juice you could sell me out for about ten grand,” I said. “But given the trouble I could cause, it would hardly be worth it.”

  “Snap my fingers, dude, you’re a puddle of piss and puke.”

  “It’s been tried,” I said, and found myself smiling as if I meant it. Perhaps I’d been infected with the Sughrue disease. Life was the ultimate insult. “And found wanting.”

  “I’ll just bet it has,” he said, then slapped the folder against his long thigh. “So what the hell do you want with me, old man?”

  “Aaron Tipton,” I said. “And don’t call me ‘old man.’ ”

  “I knew somebody would be coming around,” he said, “asking about the asshole, but I expected the law dogs, not some crazy old…boy.” This time he laughed deeply, then tossed the check folder to one of his thugs, telling him to take care of it. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. “Then you tell those dangerous little faggots over there to relax, and I’ll tell you a little story.”

  I nodded, but Carver D’s friends had stopped giggling and were so tightly strung I could almost hear their trained muscles humming.

  After the waitress brought new cognacs, Wilbarger launched into his tale. “First off, man, the word on the streets had it that you were looking for the dudes who tried to ice your buddy, then you somehow came up with Ray Lara and the money laundry scam out at the Pilot’s Knob Bank. Ruined their whole deal and dealt them a ton of grief, right?”