Potshot

by Robert B. Parker

  "Pick up anyone from the Dell?" I said.

  Dark smiled.

  "Everybody we picked up was from the Dell," he said. "It's what we use for a ghetto, out here."

  "And?"

  "And she says none of them are the guys. She thinks."

  "Anybody else look at them?"

  "Nope."

  "He got shot in the middle of the day on the main street in Potshot and no one saw anything."

  "Amazing isn't it," Dark said.

  "You have any reason to believe it wasn't the way it's been described?" I said.

  "Nothing I know says it didn't happen that way," Dark said.

  "But?"

  "But nothing I know says it's right." Dark said. "You want coffee?"

  "No thanks."

  He got up and went to a coffeemaker on top of the file cabinet and poured himself some coffee from a stained pot, and came back and sat down. He took a sip and shuddered.

  "Goddamn that's awful," he said.

  "Glad I declined;" I said.

  "After you called," Dark said, "I checked on you in Boston. Got booted around a little. Ended up talking to a state guy named Healy."

  "One of my biggest fans," I said.

  Dark made a wobbling metz metz gesture with his right hand.

  "What do you think about Potshot?" he said.

  "A mess," I said. "What do you think of the police chief down there?"

  "Walker? Odd duck. I don't know how good he is but he's better than anyone else. The last two quit and left the area."

  "Always been a small force?"

  "No," Dark said. "For awhile they had an actual police force. Then one of them got killed. And most of the rest sort of dropped out and went away, one at a time."

  "Who killed him?"

  "Probably the Dell, but we have no evidence."

  "Why don't you roust them out of there anyway?" I said.

  Dark grinned.

  "I'm just a homicide cop," he said. "That's SWAT team stuff."

  "And why doesn't the SWAT team do it?"

  "Got no legal basis for it for one thing," he said. "Far as we can prove, nobody in the Dell has committed an indictable offense. And, just to complicate things, The Preacher claims that the Dell is a religious organization and any effort to control them is an abridgement of their religious freedom."

  "And no one wants to get into another Waco situation," I said.

  "You bet," Dark said.

  "So you think Walker is in the bag?" I said.

  "With the Dell? He's survived in a job that no one seems able to keep."

  "You feel the others were run off by the Dell?"

  "That's what I figure," Dark said.

  "And you can't prove it?"

  "Nope. Even talked to one of the previous police chiefs, fella named Mizell. He wasn't talking about anything. But he seemed to be living comfortable."

  "You think they bribed him?"

  "I had to guess," Dark said, "I think they did both. They told him if he stuck around they'd kill him, so he left. But to keep him quiet, they gave him a separation bonus."

  "But Walker has stayed," I said.

  "Yep. He's either tougher than a rabid skunk," Dark said. "Or…"

  "Or they like him just the way he is," I said. "Maybe they figured they couldn't keep running these guys off without one of them deciding to testify. They're paying them off anyway, so they got a guy they didn't need to run off, and paid him to stay and keep his mouth shut," Dark said.

  "Or maybe he's just stubborn," I said.

  "I'd be more likely to believe that if he was dead."

  "Cynical," I said.

  "Probably. You alone?"

  "No, I have a few friends with me," I said.

  "According to Healy you can't help yourself. You'll annoy The Preacher enough so sooner or later he'll take a run at you."

  "Guys just like to have fun," I said.

  "Well if they kill you, try and get them to leave clues around," Dark said. "I'd love to bust everybody down there."

  Chapter 38

  IT WAS TIME to confer with our employers, and, since we were hoping to keep our profile low, we invited them to our place. It was a still, hot morning. In the scrub above our house some kind of desert bird was making a raspy sound appropriate to the desert.

  Lou Buckman was the first to arrive. She pulled up in front of our house in a stripped-down yellow jeep with no top and no doors. She got out of the jeep wearing a big hat and riding clothes. A single blond braid showed below the hat, and her makeup worked beautifully with her face. Her eyes were very big and the color of morning glories. We were arrayed in a friendly manner, on the front porch, and if she found us daunting, she didn't show it.

  "Good morning," she said.

  "Good morning."

  I introduced her to the other men.

  Bernard J. Fortunato said, "I got coffee. You want some?"

  "Yes, thank you," Lou said. "That would be lovely."

  Bernard hustled off as if he were going for the Holy Grail. Lou stood on the porch and looked at us.

  "There aren't very many of you," she said.

  "But what there is is cherce," Hawk said.

  "Cherce?"

  "Choice," I said. "It's a line Spencer Tracy used about Katherine Hepburn."

  "Oh."

  Lou still looked at us.

  "You do look dangerous," she said.

  "Senorita," Chollo said, "that is because, as we say in my country, we are dangerous."

  "What is your country?" Lou said.

  Chollo grinned at her.

  "Los Angeles," he said.

  Lou leaned her admirable little butt on the railing of the porch. Bernard came back and gave her coffee. She thanked him and held the mug in both hands and sipped. Behind her a Ford Expedition pulled into the yard and a Dodge Van, and a big Chrysler Sedan. Our employers got out, warily, as if it might be an ambush, and gathered uneasily in front of the porch. J. George was there on the left looking prosperous and affable.

  In fact, all four of them looked prosperous, and they bore with them the aroma of self-satisfaction that prosperity brings. The mayor stood next to J. George, then Barnes the lawyer and Brown the banker. I stood beside Lou Buckman on the top step of the porch facing them. My posse was ranged along the back wall of the porch, seated, most of them teetering their chairs back so that the front legs cleared the floor.

  I looked down at the group. I felt a little like Mussolini. Maybe I should have folded my arms.

  "Me you know," I said. "From my right, Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Chollo, Bobby Horse, Tedy Sapp and Bernard J. Fortunato."

  The quartet looked as if they thought that The Preacher and his crew might be preferable. Luther Barnes spoke first.

  "Could we have full names, please?" he said.

  "Certainly," I said. "Hawk, your full name, please?"

  "Hawk."

  "Thank you. Chollo?"

  "Chollo."

  "Thank you."

  Barnes was not amused.

  "I just think we have a right to know who we're paying all this money to," he said.

  "You're paying it to me," I said.

  Roscoe, wearing a panama hat, probably felt the need to say something official sounding.

  "I feel there should be some legal foundation for this venture," he said.

  I stared at him.

  "This group has no legal foundation. It's a group of professional thugs, hired by you."

  The group was quiet.

  Then Henry Brown said, "I'm a businessman, and, a goddamned good one. In all the years of business I never hired a man I didn't know his background."

  "Good for you," I said.

  "Damn it," he said, "that's no answer."

  Sitting on the porch, Chollo took out a handgun and casually shot a small branch off a tree to my right. He did it again, and then again, chopping the branch back further with each shot.

  "I am a simple peasant, senor," Chollo said in his stage Mexic
an accent. "That is all I have for background."

  The gunshots lingered, resonating in the hard dry heat. Our employers looked at the tree limb. When they looked back at Chollo the gun was out of sight. Chollo smiled pleasantly. No one had anything to say for a time until the successful businessman spoke again, somewhat more softly.

  "They won't know we're involved, will they?"

  "They probably will," I said. "They seem to know a lot."

  "But might they retaliate?"

  "We'll protect you," I said.

  "Seven of you?"

  "Not all of us at once," I said. "We try to be fair."

  Luther said, "I don't think you realize how serious this is."

  I snapped.

  "Goddamn it, you hired a bunch of thugs to come out and protect you, and we get here, and good heavens, we seem to be thugs, and now you're all in a goddamned twidget about it. You can let us find out who killed Lou Buckman's husband, and clean out the Dell, or you can live with what you've got. We'll just find out who killed her husband. And go home."

  "I can't pay all of you," Lou Buckman said.

  Hawk grinned at her.

  "No charge," he said, and looked at the other men. Vinnie nodded first. Then Chollo nodded, and Bobby Horse, and Sapp, and, after a pause, while I could almost see him thinking it over, Bernard J. Fortunato.

  "So," I said, "there it is. You want us to clean up the Dell say so. You don't, beat it."

  "If you stay and help her they'll think we are involved anyway," Luther said. "They know everything that goes on in this town. They probably know we're here."

  "Not my problem," I said.

  "Unless we pay you."

  "Like you told me you would," I said.

  The attorney turned to his associates. I thought that the level of self-satisfaction in the group had declined a bit.

  "He's got us over a barrel," the lawyer said. "We'll have to pay him."

  The mayor said, "Another way to put that, I suppose, is that we are living up to our end of the deal."

  "Whatever," Luther said brusquely. "I'm good for my share."

  "The bank is prepared to pay you, as well," Brown said.

  No one spoke. I looked back at my crew. They showed nothing.

  Then Tedy Sapp said, "There goes the Dell."

  Chapter 39

  LATE IN THE afternoon, I sat in Dean Walker's office, enjoying the a/c. One of his patrol cops was at a desk up front doing paperwork, with a translucent Bic ballpoint. "You know the Dell collects protection money from town businesses," I said.

  "Know it, yes; prove it, no."

  "Do they have a regular collection schedule?"

  "Every Thursday."

  "So why not catch them doing it and bust them?"

  The patrol cop stopped writing for a moment, then continued.

  "Several reasons," Walker said.

  He had his feet up on the corner of his desk, dark leather cowboy boots gleaming in the sun that filtered in through the tinted windows in the front.

  "One," Walker said. "They do it privately, in somebody's office with the door closed. Two, even if I arrested somebody, there'd be no witnesses, and I couldn't hold them. Three, there's forty of them and five of us."

  I nodded.

  "I didn't know you knew Lou Buckman from L.A.," I said.

  Walker didn't register anything, but he took a moment to answer.

  "You've been investigating," he said.

  "You lived in her neighborhood."

  "I did," Walker said.

  "And you were a cop there," I said.

  "Un-huh."

  "L.A. or Santa Monica?"

  "L.A. I was a detective. Ramparts Division."

  "So how'd you end up here?" I said.

  Walker shrugged.

  "It was time to stop being a big city cop," he said. "Hell it was time to stop being a cop altogether, but I didn't know how to do anything else."

  "Well at least you've reduced the scale," I said. "The Buckmans have anything to do with you coming here?"

  "They had a little business out here summers. They mentioned there was an opening."

  "Perfect," I said. "Did they mention the Dell?"

  "When I took this job the Dell was just a bunch of stumblebums squatting in the old mining shacks. They didn't turn into a problem until The Preacher showed up."

  "You happen to remember Lou Buckman's maiden name?" I said.

  "Allard," he said. "Mary Lou Allard."

  "Nice woman," I said.

  He nodded.

  "Nice woman."

  "You know Mark Ratliff in L.A., too?"

  "Yep."

  "You know how he ended up here in the same town as two of his neighbors in Santa Monica?"

  "Must have heard about it from Lou and Steve," Walker said. "Like me."

  "And he wanted to get out of the Hollywood rat race?" I said.

  Walker smiled.

  "He was trailing the other rats by considerable," Walker said.

  "What kind of guy is he?"

  Walker shrugged again.

  "Hollywood guy," Walker said.

  "I heard he had a fling with Lou."

  Walker's face hardened. I could see the lines deepen on either side of his mouth.

  "That's a fucking lie," he said.

  I nodded.

  "The best kind," I said.

  "He was shagging around after her at a couple of parties we went to. But she brushed him off. Stevie was going to punch his lights out."

  "We?"

  "We what?"

  "You said `we' went to a couple of parties. You married?"

  "Divorced."

  "Grounds?" I said.

  "She knows, and I know," Walker said. "You don't need to."

  "What is your ex-wife's name?" I said.

  "Same answer."

  I nodded.

  "When you've got one that works, may as well stay with it."

  "I'm sick of talking to you, pal," Walker said. "Beat it."

  Arguing with him about that didn't lead anywhere. The patrol cop was still concentrating on his report sheet so hard that I wondered, as I left, whether it might begin to smolder.

  Chapter 40

  WENT BACK to the house. On the front porch Hawk and Tedy Sapp were doing push-ups. It looked like an interesting contest, since both of them appeared able to do push-ups forever.

  Bernard J. Fortunato had drinks set up on the table on the porch. There was Scotch and vodka and soda and tonic, a cooking pot full of ice, and some lemons sliced in wedges and a large soup bowl of peanuts. There were no napkins, but he had put out a number of neatly folded paper towels. Vinnie was drinking Scotch on the rocks. Chollo and Bobby Horse each had vodka and tonic.

  "This is taking too long," Hawk said.

  He and Sapp looked at each other and grinned and stood up at the same time.

  "Not bad," I said to Tedy. "Not many people can stay with Hawk."

  "Not good, either," Sapp said. "Nobody ever stayed with me before."

  Sapp made a couple of Scotch and sodas and handed one to Hawk. I went in and got a can of beer and came out and sat on the porch railing with one foot hanging free.

  "Chollo and Bobby Horse went off somewhere in the car," Bernard reported.

  I looked at Chollo.

  "I went up and reconnoitered the Dell," Chollo said, "with my faithful Indian companion."

  "How'd it look?" I said.

  "Hard to get to," Chollo said.

  "I know."

  "And they got sentries out all night."

  "I assume you weren't spotted?"

  "Spotted? Senor, I was with the great Kiowa scout, He-who-walks-everywhere-and-is-never-spotted."

  Bobby Horse had no reaction. It was as if he didn't hear us.

  "Silly question," I said.

  "I maybe found a way to get above them and shoot down."

  "Can you find it again?" I said.

  Bobby Horse drank some vodka and tonic.

  "I a
m a Native American," he said.

  "Oh, yeah," I said. "I forgot. Can you show me?"

  "If you can walk as softly as I can," Bobby Horse said.

  He never smiled. I never knew for sure how much of his white-man-speakum-with-forked-tongue Indian routine was schtick. I was pretty sure most of it was. I looked at his bare chest.

  "Tomorrow you can take me and Hawk up there," I said.

  He nodded. His upper body was bunched with muscle. There was a white scar that ran across the coppery skin of his chest, from near the left shoulder almost to his bottom rib on the right side.

  "You been out all day with no shirt?" I said.

  He nodded again.

  "Don't Native Americans get sunburned?" I said.

  "Use 'um sunblock."

  Chapter 41

  IN THE MORNING I called Fresno State University and said I was planning to hire Mary Lou Allard, and asked about her undergraduate career. The registrar spoke with enough accent for me to know that English was her second language. "Ms. Allard graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology," she said.

  "Date?"

  "June 3, 1985."

  "Is there anything else you can tell me about her?" I said.

  "No sir, there is not."

  "Thanks anyway," I said.

  I then called information and asked for Walker in Santa Monica. My question was too hard for the electronic apparatus to which I had asked it, and after a few clicks and bleeps I got a live female voice.

  "What listing, please?"

  "Judy Walker in Santa Monica," I said.

  "What state please?"

  "California."

  "Do you have a street address?"

  "No."

  There was a moment of silence in which I knew I was being disapproved of.

  Then she said, "One moment, please."

  A mechanical voice came back on and gave me a telephone number. I broke the connection and dialed the number. She answered on the third ring.

  "My name is Spenser," I said. "I'm a detective working on a case out here in the desert. I understand that your ex-husband is the chief of police in Potshot."