by Daniel Depp
Father Michael drained his scotch. He stood up and removed the half-filled glass from Spandau’s hand.
‘I’m throwing you out now,’ he said. ‘Go back to the City of Lost Angels and give everybody a break. And don’t go bothering Father Paul, he won’t talk to you again. Anyway the poor man can’t find his ass with both hands. I wouldn’t put much value in whatever he told you.’
The priest unlatched the door and held it open for Spandau. A cool early winter darkness had settled outside and you could hear the river across the road and trucks passing on the highway. Spandau suddenly felt lonely and reluctant to leave the cramped little trailer. The old priest knew what he was doing. Even his timing was impeccable. The old bastard had control from the beginning. He worked in his lecture and when Spandau was off balance he dumped his ass out into the snow. Spandau wondered if they taught that kind of nifty psychology at the seminary. Spandau felt like a fool now but he admired the old guy. He’d been manipulated, but on the other hand the old bastard hadn’t said anything Spandau wasn’t already bothered about.
Spandau went down the cinderblock steps into the yard, then turned and said, ‘Thank you for your help.’
The priest laughed. ‘Do you always make a habit of saying things you don’t believe?’ Spandau started to open his mouth again but Father Michael said, ‘It was a rhetorical question. Don’t bother trying to answer it. I doubt you even know the answer yourself.’
Father Michael stepped back and let the thin door slam shut. Then the light by the door went out and Spandau stood in the yard for a moment, lighting a cigarette and listening to the old priest moving around inside. Spandau wanted to knock on the door and argue with the priest to claim his rights as an honest man, a good man, a man to be trusted. Spandau didn’t owe the old bastard anything and couldn’t see why he needed the old man’s approval. This did piss him off. He was tempted to knock on the door but instead turned and walked to the car because the truth was that the priest was right. In regard to his being a good man – whatever the hell that was supposed to be – Spandau no longer knew.
THIRTY-FIVE
There was a motel he’d seen on Highway 299 coming into town that afternoon. He drove through Cheney – it was just past 7 p.m. and already the streets had rolled up. Most of the shops had closed on the main street. The diner and the convenience store and the supermarket were still open. As he drove past houses he could smell the smoke from the fireplaces and look through the windows at families having dinner. How long had it been since he’d sat down to a dinner with his family, with anybody’s family? It was with Dee and her parents just before her father Beau died. Thanksgiving on Beau and Mary Macaulay’s ranch near Ojai. Married nearly forty years and somehow still hugged and kissed like teenagers. Dee had grown up in a nest of love, had never known what it was like to live without it. Then came Spandau.
Spandau had married the boss’s daughter. He’d come out of the army with no prospects but a half-hearted dream of making a living on the rodeo circuit. Two years in Germany without even seeing a horse left him ill-prepared for staying on top of an angry one. By the time he’d worked his riding and roping skills back up to speed, he recalled what had driven him into the army in the first place. He wasn’t that good. He was okay, every now and then he won something. But it was never going to be enough to make even the months of travel worthwhile, much less pay for the broken bones.
Beau Macaulay was the stunt coordinator for a Western being filmed in Flagstaff. Somebody told Spandau they were looking for extras who could stay on a horse and come in sober on consecutive days.
Spandau showed up at a local ranch where they were casting the extras. In one corral they had gathered some of the local horses they were going to use in the film. There were a lot of people and trucks and film equipment being shuffled around and the horses were nervous. Spandau stood and watched the horses for a while. He noticed a big redheaded man watching him. Spandau was six foot two but this guy was four inches taller.
Spandau went over to him and asked if he knew how you went about getting a job as an extra. The big man looked him up and down and then pointed to a horse tethered to a fence post. The horse looked tired and irritable and shifted around uneasily.
‘You ever do any riding?’ the man asked him.
‘Rodeo here and there,’ said Spandau.
‘You any good?’
Spandau laughed. ‘Not much,’ he said.
‘You reckon you could run up on that horse over there and leap up over his hindquarters onto the saddle?’
‘You mean like Roy Rogers?’
The man nodded.
‘Well,’ said Spandau, ‘I can’t see any reason anybody would ever want to do that. But if I did, and you don’t hobble that horse, he’s more than likely going to kick the shit out of me when I grab his ass.’
‘It never made any sense to me either,’ said Big Beau Macaulay. He pointed to a woman with a clipboard standing near the table where extras were lined up to be interviewed. ‘You go over to that scary looking woman right there and tell her Beau says you’re hired. If she starts giving you any shit tell her to come and see me.’
The woman did indeed start giving Spandau shit. Spandau listened to her for a while and then started to leave.
‘Where you going?’ Beau asked him.
‘She told me I didn’t look right.’
‘Did she say why?’
‘She said I looked more like a New Jersey club bouncer than a cowboy.’
Beau looked at him for a few moments, then stared at the ground and huffed and shook his head. ‘You stay right here,’ he said to Spandau and went over to a tall man sweating behind a pair of expensive sunglasses. It turned out to be the producer.
‘Dino,’ Beau said to the man, ‘I want you to watch something.’
Beau went over to where a tall, striking auburn-haired woman and two young and athletic but unruly looking men were sitting and talking under a marquee. One of them was tall and the other was a little shorter. Both looked slightly crazy and no one you’d like to mess with in a fight.
‘Who wants to be a goddamn cow?’ said Beau, and the taller man laughed and got up.
Beau picked up a lariat and walked over and handed it to Spandau. ‘I want you to get on that horse yonder – the right way – and when this poor ugly sumbitch,’ he put his hand on the young man’s shoulder, ‘takes off running I want you to rope him before he reaches the other side of that paddock.’
‘Neck or feet?’ asked Spandau.
‘Whatever you feel like. Just don’t kill him because, stupid as he is, I need him.’
Dino said, ‘If there’s anybody from the fucking bond company walking around, they will ram a power drill up my ass.’
‘Goddamn it, Dino,’ said Beau, ‘it’s a cowboy picture, ain’t it? Let’s pretend we’re not all a bunch of Santa Monica pansies.’
Spandau took the rope and got up onto the horse. He moved him around a little, saw how he reacted to the reins touching his neck and the shift of Spandau’s weight. He was a good horse. Spandau let out a loop of rope and nodded to Beau.
Beau said to the temporary cow, ‘Don’t make it easy for him, we want a little show,’ and sent the man off at a dead run. He waited until the man had a more than fair head start and then gave Spandau the high sign. Spandau kicked the horse and flew through the open paddock gate. The man looked over his shoulder at Spandau coming down on him and began to bob and weave. Cows don’t bob and weave quite so much as a man and Spandau was worried more than anything else about the guy accidentally running under the horse. He gave the man just enough space to where he could throw the loop and have it fall no lower than the waist. As it was when Spandau reined the horse the rope cinched on the still running man and yanked him sharply backwards onto his ass. Spandau jumped off the horse fearing busted ribs or a snapped back.
The guy lay there but looked up at Spandau and said a little breathless, ‘Well shit, you’re not going to pig me, ar
e you?’ Some of the buttons had snapped off his shirt but he looked fine. The man got up and waved toward Beau. Suddenly there was all this cheering and clapping. Spandau had forgotten the whole place was watching. The human cow, whose name turned out to be Rodney, shook Spandau’s hand and they walked together back to where Beau and the producer stood at the gate.
‘Moo, goddammit,’ Rodney said to Beau as they approached.
‘At least I found something you’re good for,’ Beau said to him. ‘Hamburger.’
‘Next time you want a cow,’ Rodney said rubbing his midriff, ‘find a cow.’
‘Can you fall off a horse?’ asked the producer.
‘I do it all the time,’ said Spandau. ‘I guess I could figure out how to do it on purpose for a change.’
Beau and Rodney walked Spandau past the sour casting assistant over to the marquee. She didn’t look at either Beau or Spandau but you could see the muscles in her neck tightened like cables. Beau didn’t smile until he’d passed her and she couldn’t see it. That was the sort of man he was. Beau never rubbed your nose in it but he never told you a third time either.
The young woman and two men stopped laughing as Rodney came up.
‘Looks like you might have damaged one of your udders there, Bessie,’ the girl said seriously.
‘It does my heart good to see a little doggie run free like that,’ said the shorter man. ‘Reminds me of my days on the plains with Buffalo Bill. Anybody ever tell you you got that heifer’s trot down to a tee, that cute little sway in your hips?’ and started singing ‘Don’t Fence Me In’. Everybody joined the serenade.
‘Kiss my ass,’ said Rodney, climbing up onto the table and lying down.
The girl reached into a cooler and pulled out a can of beer and slid it into a sleeve that looked like Coca-Cola. She sat it on Rodney’s chest, then bent over and kissed him gently on the lips. She went back to the cooler and brought faux sodas to Spandau and Beau.
‘You proud of yourself?’ the girl said to Beau. ‘You’d have looked like a damn fool if he hadn’t roped him, wouldn’t you?’
Beau popped the cap on his beer.
‘He didn’t think he could do it, he wouldn’t have got on that horse. Anyway you know I never make mistakes, even if I’m not always right.’
‘You’ve pissed off old Miss Sunbeam anyway, which is all you wanted.’
‘I just eased that stick out of her bunghole an inch or two,’ he said. ‘Now maybe she’ll quit crossing me. Fresh out of some back east drama school, not knowing shit from Shinola about a goddamned thing, much less who is and who ain’t looking like a cowboy.’
‘Don’t get worked up.’
‘I ain’t getting worked up,’ he said. ‘You call your mother and ask if they got my truck fixed yet?’
‘You can pick it up this afternoon. You could quit being a cheap old Scots codger and just buy a new truck.’
‘I have owned this truck since 1965. I restored it and have replaced two engines and just about every nut and bolt with my bare hands. I’d be doing it again right now if I wasn’t stuck out here in the middle of God’s Country or wherever the hell we are. Anyway it was your mother that broke the goddamn axle. I keep telling her it ain’t no jeep.’
‘Isn’t it about time to go home?’ Rodney said from the table. ‘That hotel’s got a hot tub and I’m going to get a bottle of wine and soak until the rest of my body is as wrinkled as my scrotum.’
‘That is quite an image and I for one do not thank you for it,’ said the other man. ‘I was thinking about a steak but now I don’t know if I could keep it down.’
Beau pulled out a railroad watch and checked the time. ‘Pack it up,’ he said.
Beau picked up his battered briefcase. Rodney and the other man, whose name turned out to be Dale, gathered up their belongings and each grabbed a handle of the cooler, heading for the parking lot.
‘Does this mean I’m hired?’ Spandau asked, standing there lost with the beer can still unopened in his hand.
‘Lord help me,’ said Beau to himself as he walked off, ‘another dumb one.’
The girl picked up several empty cans and fast-food wrappers and carried them to a trash bin. She came back and checked around to see nothing important remained. You could see she was used to doing this. Finally she looked at Spandau and smiled.
‘Be here in the morning at seven,’ she said and walked away.
Tall with auburn hair and the bluest clearest eyes Spandau had ever seen.
Delilah.
Dee.
He didn’t know it yet, but that peculiar feeling worming its way through his chest was love.
THIRTY-SIX
As he drove out of town onto the highway he noticed that he’d picked up a sheriff’s car. There were no lights and they kept back a way but they were there. Spandau pulled into the motel parking lot and the car went on past. Probably nothing. He was a stranger in town and likely they were just running his plates.
He pushed the buzzer outside the motel office. In a minute a sleepy middle-aged man in a bathrobe came to the door.
‘Didn’t mean to wake you up,’ said Spandau.
‘Fell asleep watching TV with the cat in my lap. Happens every time,’ he said. ‘No matter.’
He let Spandau into the office and allowed him to pay with a credit card. He gave Spandau the key and told him where the room was and no, sorry, they didn’t have that internet thing.
‘And if you want to smoke,’ said the man, ‘you either got to go outside or hang your head out the window.’
Spandau reparked the car outside his room. Still no sign of the sheriff’s car. He went in and tossed his suitcase and his computer bag onto the bed. He was hungry and thinking about where he might eat, but called Pookie on his cell phone.
‘Where are you?’ he said when she answered. ‘Is Leo with you?’
‘The answer to the first part of your question is that I’m home and soaking in a hot bath surrounded by aroma-therapeutic candles. I feel no changes but they cost a fortune and I think I’ve been hoodwinked,’ she said. ‘This sleuthing business is hard work and I’m going to have to wear flats, how boring. The answer to the second part is that yes, Leo is here, but he’s safely on the other side of a locked door reading Paris Match and waiting to take me out to dinner. By the way I’m fine, thank you.’
‘How’s Dee?’
‘She’s holding up pretty well. We’ve got a nice list of people and places. Tomorrow we talk to the sister. Still no news from Charlie but we didn’t really expect it, did we.’
A few dead moments.
‘No,’ said Pookie, ‘we didn’t talk about you. She didn’t mention it and I didn’t bring it up.’
‘Things are complicated enough as they are,’ he said.
‘I’d feel so much better if your voice weren’t all syrupy with disappointment. Anna loves you too and I’m afraid you’re going to screw this up. Yes yes, none of my business. The zipping of the mouth. Umf.’
‘Listen, before you drag Leo out and spend all his money, I want him to use some of those computer smarts we’re supposed to be paying him for. I’m texting you the name of a website. It’s for the Catholic church here. I want him to scan it and check any references to a Father Michael and places in Oregon. I’m looking for family friends, fishing spots, whatever. Then I want him to call me back.’
‘He’ll have to use my laptop,’ she said lamely.
‘So what?’
‘I don’t want him nosing through my computer,’ she said. ‘My diary is on there and there’s my Facebook stuff with all my friends.’
‘Humor me,’ said Spandau. ‘I’m up here at the Bates Motel waiting for Anthony Perkins to show up in a wig.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘but if he ends up stalking all my girlfriends on your head be it.’
‘Oh come on. Leo is a boy scout.’
‘Nevertheless, he’s been prowling around outside the door and I’ve had to stick tissue in the keyhole.’
‘He’s probably just worried about you going up in a blaze of aromatic wax,’ he said. ‘What’s he doing in your apartment in the first place?’
‘I told you, he’s taking me out to dinner. He’s been completely dull about it all day. I had to say yes just to shut him up and anyway it’s that new French place on La Cienega. He had to stop and buy a sports jacket. Thank god I was with him.’
‘Don’t you feel just the slightest bit sympathetic?’
‘Of course I do,’ Pookie said. ‘I’m taking this huge chance that people will actually see us together.’
Spandau rang off and was putting on his jacket to go out to forage through Cheney for dinner. There was a loud and firm knock. Three large sheriff’s deputies filled the doorway.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but may I see your driver’s license?’
Spandau actually started to ask why, but he knew why, and it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. He took out his wallet, handed over the license.
‘Is this your license, sir?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And your name is David R. Spandau?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And you are a California resident?’
‘Yup.’
‘And is this your correct address? Is the information on this license correct and up to date?’
‘That’s right. Okay, I’m going to bite and ask why you’re here, like I don’t already know.’
‘Would you mind telling us your profession, sir?’
‘I’m a turkey-sexer.’
‘Pardon me, sir?’
‘I sex turkeys. You know, I hold up the turkeys and I check to see if it’s a girl turkey or a boy turkey. Most people don’t know how specialized this is. It’s often very hard to tell.’
‘It has come to our attention that you’ve been representing yourself as a –’ he checked a small notebook – ‘researcher for HBO.’
‘Actually I do both. When I’m on the road for HBO I try to take advantage of any turkey farms in the area, just to keep my hand in. So to speak.’