Bordersnakes

by James Crumley

  I suggest we should change cars at the airport, perhaps pick up a four-wheel-drive unit. Milo glances at me as if I’m crazy. Like most Montanans Milo has never seen a snowbank he couldn’t bust through with a slick-tired worn-out beater and never seen an icy road he couldn’t drive.

  “You know,” I say, “lots of people here are going to remember this car. And you. I’d like to be sure that Whitney and Lester stay out of this shit.”

  “Christ, Sughrue, you live three hundred miles from El Paso.”

  “West Texas only looks big,” I say, “like Montana.”

  “You’re right,” he says, “I’m sorry,” then takes the airport exit.

  —

  At two o’clock the next morning, one of the bartenders from Mateo’s is facedown in a shallow snowbank and Milo is banging the other one’s head against the running board of a rented Jeep Cherokee in a parking lot in the Upper Valley, and we don’t even have a motel room yet. Shit, we haven’t even had dinner yet.

  I finally pull Milo off the bartender, shove him in the Cherokee, and flee through the blowing drifts down Doniphan to Mesa while the old man seethes with tequila and cocaine in the passenger seat.

  “Jesus,” I say, “there’s an all-night taco place at Sunland Park. And maybe we can come up with a couple of rooms down at that Holiday Inn across from the racetrack. Or maybe we should drive up to Las Cruces.”

  “Whatever,” he says. “I’m sorry, Sonny.”

  But it seems like a waste of time to forgive him. And God knows the bartenders probably won’t call the police.

  —

  The fax from O’Bannion’s lawyer only gives us the number of the pay phone and an address on the north end of Doniphan, and it takes us a little time to find the telephone hanging off the outside front wall of a neighborhood bar called Mateo’s. We play it cool, we think, hanging out and sipping slow beers at the bar for a couple of hours, checking out the scene, a mixture of Chicano and Anglo working-class guys who don’t have to go to work tomorrow, and chatting up the two bartenders, Rudy and Paul, who are splitting the shift behind the stick.

  We’re doing fine, I think, until the lanky blond cocktail waitress, a middle-aged charmer named Laurie, takes a shine to Milo, who leans on the bar next to her station.

  “You know,” she says to him while waiting for a drink order, “this white guy and this Mexican guy are takin’ a leak out back in the irrigation canal one winter night, and you know how guys are standing around next to each other with their dicks in their hands—they kinda gotta say somethin’ so the other guy don’t think they’re a fuckin’ faggot.

  “And you know, I’m sure, sir, how sometimes when you guys finish takin’ a leak, you guys kinda shiver, you know, and it’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass brassiere out back so the white guy really shivers. So he’s zipping up while the Mexican guy is still draining his lizard and he turns and says, ‘Pretty chilly.’

  “ ‘Thanks,’ the Mexican guy says.”

  Then Laurie grabs her tray and sails off into the melee while Milo laughs like a madman.

  “That’s the funniest joke I ever heard,” he says, sniffling.

  “I’ve heard it,” I say, then realize that the old fart has clipped a bit of Tipton’s cocaine and has been in the john shoving it up his nose. Neither telling me nor offering me any. Both bad signs. Sometimes, when a guy stops thinking of the blow as the people’s cocaine, he opens his mind to all sorts of greed and foolishness.

  Then he elbows me in the ribs and points across the bar. “That’s that tequila you’ve got, right? The one with the blue horseshoe?”

  “Herradura,” I say.

  “By God, let’s have a shot,” he says, then offers Laurie one when she steps back to the waitress station.

  “Let’s not,” I say, but it’s too late by then.

  —

  About ten I manage to slip out the back door and drive down the street to a convenience store, where I call the pay phone outside. After about twenty rings, somebody picks up.

  “Shoot,” a male voice says.

  “Tell them to call Tipton,” I say, and give him an LA number.

  “Gotcha,” the voice says, “but they still owe me for the last one.”

  “You’re covered,” I say, then hang up.

  Back in the bar, Laurie and Milo want to know if I’ve been outside freezing my chile in the snowstorm.

  “I hear they’re easier to skin after they’re frozen,” Laurie says, then honks wildly like a wounded goose. My faithful Russian companion joins her.

  After about an hour of such hilarity I finally get Milo’s attention and hand him the Jeep keys.

  “Maybe you better do it,” I say, “while you can still drive.”

  “Try to relax and have a little fun, Sughrue,” he says, then stumbles toward the back.

  I guess I don’t care if he makes it this time, so I have a shot of Herradura of my own, but just as I finish it, the outside telephone rings. Rudy and Paul look at each other. After ten rings, Rudy grabs a pencil and paper, checks his shirt pocket for the earlier message, and heads outside. When he comes back a few moments later, he gives Paul a shrug, then they confer at the cooler, without, it seems, coming to any conclusion.

  Milo returns a few moments later. Laurie wants to know if he’s been playing in the snow.

  “I haven’t stuck my pecker in a snowbank since I left my third wife,” he says, then laughs and orders more tequila.

  “Remember what happened the last time you got drunk in El Paso,” I remind him, foolishly.

  “Don’t you fucking worry about me, little buddy,” he says, suddenly as sober and as mean as I’ve ever seen him. Then he nods to Laurie, and they disappear into the back rooms of the bar, only to return a few minutes later with shining eyes and snotty grins.

  She takes off at one o’clock with a sad smile and an empty promise to meet her at Carrow’s for breakfast. We manage to string out last call until we are the final customers in the bar.

  Milo guns his last shot, chases it with a swallow of beer, then stands and slaps a one-hundred-dollar bill on the bar. “I understand I owe you boys some money,” he says soberly.

  Rudy and Paul turn as one, Rudy from the cash register, Paul from the door. They aren’t big guys, or even particularly tough-looking guys, but they’ve pounded their share of drunks in their time, so they aren’t even vaguely worried or afraid.

  “What’s that for, sir?” Rudy asks. “You’ve already had last call.”

  “Twice,” Paul says.

  “For the telephone number,” Milo says.

  “I’m sorry, buddy,” Rudy says, “but if Laurie didn’t give you her number, I ain’t about to. Now let’s go.” He comes quickly around the bar.

  “For the telephone message,” Milo says. “You guys didn’t get paid last time. Isn’t this enough?”

  Rudy grabs the bill, stuffs it in Milo’s shirt pocket, and says, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, buddy, but let’s take it outside. Okay?”

  “Take it easy,” I say, “he’s just drunk.” Then realize that maybe I am, too. “We can talk about it tomorrow,” I say.

  “Right,” Rudy says.

  Milo is as docile as a kitten, letting Rudy lead him to the door, waiting silently for Paul to unlock it and usher us through. Then as we are all standing outside in the blowing snow, Milo tries once more for rationality.

  “Look, guys,” he says, “we know all about the telephone message drop. You can talk to us about it, even make a little bread on the side, but you can’t…”

  Rudy has had enough. He puts his hands on Milo, saying, “Get the fuck out of here, old man.”

  Rudy never even sees what hits him. Actually, neither do I. Milo bounces him off the front wall of the bar, breaking plaster with Rudy’s head, and tosses him like a piece of garbage into the nearest snowbank. Before I can stop Milo, he has Paul down in the parking lot and has banged the kid’s head against the Cherokee’
s running board so hard that I hope he’s not dead.

  But maybe it’s all an act. When I pull at his shoulders, Milo comes away easily and doesn’t resist when I open the passenger door and shove him inside. Neither does Paul, who’s still dazed when I pick him up and brush the dirty snow off his shirt.

  “You assholes be here at three tomorrow afternoon,” I say, “and we’ll figure this shit out.”

  “You fucking-A right we’ll be here,” Paul shouts, but he’s talking into the north wind, looking in the wrong direction.

  As I pull away, Rudy is gathering himself from the snow. And Milo is steaming in the seat beside me. Maybe it’s not an act.

  By the time we’re checked into the Holiday Inn with our bundle of tacos, Milo is calm enough to convince me to call Laurie at Carrow’s and apologize for our drunken absence. But even through the thick walls of our connecting rooms, I can hear the old man laughing drunkenly on the telephone. I’m glad Milo’s happy. Hell, I’m happy to be alive. Not to be in jail.

  But that doesn’t last long. And the news isn’t all bad.

  —

  The first piece of good news is that the DEA agents actually knock politely on our motel doors instead of breaking them down, which gives Milo time to dump the remains of the coke on the carpet and grind it with his foot, swallowing the wadded-up paper of the bindle, and gives me a long moment to lock the Airweight and the Browning Hi-Power inside the plastic carrying case. Unless they had real bad-guy warrants, we were fairly clean.

  The second bit of good news is that they sent the suits. Or at least the sport jackets. Badly fitting ones designed for house apes instead of gorillas. But they ask for ID, say please before they casually toss the rooms, and don’t cuff us for the ride down to interrogation.

  They don’t take us to the federal building. They take us to their compound, where they try to impress us with the technology they use to protect the border against the dreaded influx of drugs, stuff that didn’t work worth a shit in Vietnam, either, then they lock us in separate clean, anonymous rooms and ply us with fairly decent coffee and greasy doughnuts. After a couple of hours, they drive us back to the motel before checkout time without asking me any questions. They act as if they already know all there is to know about me. And they probably do.

  When I first came to El Paso, the DEA already had my name in their computers, thanks to a fucking lie from a drug lawyer in Meriwether who was supposed to be my oldest buddy from the war. Setting me up like a ninepin. Then when Joe Don Pines, that scum-sucking pig with more shadowy government connections than a Mexican power plant, went out his office window, the government bastards put a permanent star beside my name. But lucky bastard that I am, I came out of the mess with no warrants and Baby Lester on my hip.

  —

  At the motel, Milo doesn’t say a word as we load our gear and check out, doesn’t have anything to say until we finish our huevos rancheros at Victor’s Cafe, then he says, “So much for keeping our heads down, Sughrue. Those assholes at Mateo’s can wait. Let’s go to Seattle.”

  “Can I at least call home?”

  “Just don’t tell her where you’re going,” he says calmly, then grabs the check and heads for the door.

  —

  It may be winter in El Paso, but Seattle is having something like Indian Summer on the edge of winter. When the flight circles into the landing pattern, the snowcapped Cascades and Olympics gleam in the moonlight, Rainier shines like another moon being sucked from the heart of the mountain range, and the Sound stretches among the dark islands like a sheet of hammered silver. Milo had made some calls while we laid over at Salt Lake and arranged for a rented Cadillac and two rooms at the Inn at the Market with the Milton Chester ID, the hotel to which Tipton placed one of his calls. The other, placed a few minutes later, had been to a restaurant, Campagne, which turns out to be just across a small courtyard from the hotel. As we check in we can see that the bar is still open, so Milo suggests a nightcap.

  We ride up in the elevator to stash our gear, and I point out that Milo hasn’t said a word about the DEA interrogation.

  “Later,” he says, and leaves it at that.

  The small bar is fairly lively for midnight in the middle of the week, but we manage a couple of stools at the end of the bar, and Milo orders a couple of double baits of the Macallan, which makes the curly-headed blond bartender smile.

  “The twelve-year-old or the eighteen, sir?” he asks.

  “The twelve,” Milo says. “Six ice cubes.”

  “That’s my drink,” the bartender says.

  “So let’s all have a taste,” Milo suggests. And we do.

  The customers seem mostly upscale and attractive kids, art and advertising yuppies perhaps, except for two large middle-aged men at a table who are sharing several bottles of champagne with a young girl with a notebook who seems to be interviewing them. The two guys—one in a chambray work shirt, the other in a ratty sweater—don’t fit the scene, but they seem perfectly comfortable in it. They’re either rich or famous or both. One of them has a wild eye that doesn’t seem to point the same way as his face; the other, a large crooked nose with the same problem.

  In the lull as the bartender changes the CD from Etta James to Johnny Cash, I hear the young girl ask, “Is it true that you guys once ate a whole deer by yourselves?”

  The men chuckle in unison, then the one with the nose answers, “It was just a little deer.” Then laughs wildly and orders another bottle of expensive French champagne.

  We have a couple of more drinks waiting for the bar to clear out, as it does just before last call, except for the two guys at the table, abandoned by the young girl.

  “I hope last call is a little calmer than last night,” I say.

  “So do I,” answers Milo, then motions the bartender to fill our glasses one last time. When he’s finished, Milo asks, “Were you working last Thursday night?” The bartender nods. “Do you remember somebody staying at the hotel getting a call just before midnight?”

  Before the bartender can say anything, the answer comes from behind us. “That’d be that Howdy Doody motherfucker, Jim,” the bent-nose gentleman says. “Ed Forsyth,” he adds, unnecessarily, “but he left yesterday.”

  —

  “The fucking DEA acts like they know everything,” Milo says later as we have a final drink in his room, “but they don’t. They’re running some kind of scam on us. I just can’t figure out what it is. Plus, they offered me a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  “Right,” he says, then pauses for a long time. “I roll over on you and I walk. On everything. Whatever everything is.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told them my lawyers could whip their lawyers,” he says, chuckling. “But they bought it too quick, too easily. They’ve got something else in mind.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, and that worries me. But they did suggest something pretty strange,” he says, then takes a long pull on the Scotch.

  “What?”

  “They think your shooting is connected with my money.”

  “That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

  “They’re not stupid,” he says, “just narrow-minded.” Then finishes his drink. “So we have to think about it.”

  “That’s never been our long suit,” I tell him, and he laughs as he hasn’t in days. “And there’s this, too,” I add. “What’s the connection between Eddie Forsyth and Aaron Tipton? I can’t figure that out.”

  “Well,” Milo says, “let’s see. Connie’s married to a banker with shady connections. Connie’s dead, crooked brother-in-law is both a banker and connected to one of the border familias. Maybe Western art and banks are good places to hide drug money…Shit, I don’t know.”

  “So why kill the fat woman? Keep her from singing?”

  “And blow off her fingerprints and teeth,” Milo adds. “And Tipton. Nothing fits, dammit. And I don’t see any way to come up with the answers.
Much as I’d love to bounce Eddie around again, he ain’t the kind who’s gonna give us shit.

  “Maybe I’ll just ask him straight,” he says, “I’ve had a little luck lately not being either cute or mean.”

  “You mean like last night?”

  “Oh, hell, those assholes didn’t know anything,” he says. “They’re just a dead drop. And I lost my shit. I told you I was sorry. If you want, I’ll go back and apologize.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  Then the telephone rings.

  “Who the hell could that be?” I ask, but Milo just answers the telephone and tells the caller to hang on.

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “See if you can’t get us on the early Delta flight, and I’ll drop you at home tomorrow,” he says. “And try to get a nap.”

  “You’re the boss,” I mutter as I go out the door, but Milo is already lost in his phone call.

  And I discover that I don’t mind the idea of home at all. Not one bit. Then it comes to me that perhaps Milo didn’t tell me the whole story about his encounter with the DEA. But after his interrogation at the hands of the Kaufmann brothers, I’m careful about asking him any questions.

  PART FIVE

  Milo

  Sughrue and I had dozed on the flight to Salt Lake, then again on the shorter hops to Albuquerque and on to El Paso. He hadn’t even put up a token resistance when I dropped him at the store. So when he invited me to stay for an early dinner at the Lionheart, I accepted.

  It was sort of a silent aimless meal. Since we didn’t know anything, we didn’t seem to have much to discuss. Whitney picked at her food and Baby Lester colored his placemat. Sughrue had gathered up a handful of newspapers at the store—Alpine, Fairbairn’s slim weekly, Midland, Odessa, and El Paso—and rattled through them as we ate.

  “So what do we do,” he asked, “if Howdy Doody won’t talk to you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, suddenly tired to the bone. “Maybe we should take a vacation. Stuff you and Whitney and Baby Lester in the Beast and let you guys show me this country,” I said. Baby Lester liked the idea better than Whitney did. “I could get to like this desert shit, you know. Maybe we should call up Kate, too. Take the kid to dinner, then fly her to Montana. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe we should all go to Mexico for a real vacation.”