Junkyard Dogs

by Craig Johnson

  He nodded but didn’t look particularly concerned. “So, what brings you fellers up this high?”

  “Mr. Polk, I’ve got a—”

  Santiago interrupted. “You mind if I use your bathroom, Mr. Polk?”

  He sipped his coffee, and I noticed that the bandage on his thumb was smaller but still evident. “Felix. I told your boss here, just Felix.” He gestured toward the doorway. “Powder room’s back there.”

  Sancho disappeared, and I figured he was casing the other rooms to see if Carla Lorme might be stashed in plain sight. I stretched my face and looked at Polk in the silence of the kitchen. “Lots of snow last night.”

  “That’s for sure.” He seemed uninterested in the conversation and smirked into his mug. “I was about to throw together a little breakfast; you fellers want anything?”

  “No, thanks. I think we’re fine.”

  He looked up and smiled in a personable way. “You’re sure? I got eggs I picked up from a woman over in Tensleep, fresh as the day is old.”

  “That’s okay.” The Basquo reappeared, and I turned back to Polk. “Felix, we had a situation where a woman was kidnapped last night.”

  Once again, he didn’t look overly concerned. “Really?”

  Sancho stood, leaning against the refrigerator, and ignored the mug of coffee meant for him. “Yes, sir, and the only remarkable distinction that we have is that the man who participated in the abduction had a bandaged thumb.”

  Polk’s eyes drifted to mine and then back to Saizarbitoria. “Uh-huh.”

  The Basquo unzipped his jacket and hitched his thumbs in his gun belt. “Well, you have a bandaged thumb, Mr. Polk.”

  The machinist made a comical face but kept his eyes on my deputy. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  Saizarbitoria was on a roll, so I let him continue talking to Polk. “Were you here last night?”

  His eyes switched to me but had lingered on Santiago long enough to telegraph his displeasure at Sancho’s line of questioning. “Where the hell else would I be in a blizzard?”

  “Is there anybody who can corroborate that statement?” The Basquo’s voice sounded a little strident, and I judged that some of it was general annoyance and some of it was aimed at Polk.

  “Statement, huh?” He put his coffee down. “What? You here to arrest me?” I studied the man’s face, and it was like there was something wild playing behind it, attempting to break through the skin.

  I scooted my chair back and cleared my throat to get his attention. “Felix, we’re not accusing you. We’re just trying to get an accurate understanding of your whereabouts last night, say around nine o’clock?”

  He looked me directly in the eye. “You go to hell.”

  We all sat there in the statement’s afterlife. There are few enough things I do really well, but one of them is the ability to outwait someone in conversation. Polk looked sideways at his arm and then spoke. “I plowed my road out last night just before dark, and that’s the only time I’ve stirred from this cabin.” He looked back at Sancho. “And no, there aren’t any goddamned witnesses.”

  Santiago shifted his weight against the refrigerator, and I thought for a moment he was going to try and slap his cuffs on the man. “You seem agitated, Mr. Polk.”

  “Damn right I’m agitated. I lose my thumb and suddenly become public enemy number one.” He stood, carried his mug to the counter and refilled it, momentarily out of the Basquo’s line of sight—and then he winked.

  I sat there for a few seconds, making sure I’d seen what I thought I’d seen.

  He moved back toward the table but stood there with his mug and stared at Saizarbitoria in defiance.

  “Felix, did you just wink at me?”

  He looked surprised and worried at the same time. “What?”

  It was quiet in the kitchen.

  “Did you just wink at me?”

  “No.”

  It was a blatant lie, and I could see from the expression on his face that he knew I knew it. “Felix, you did. Just now, when you were pouring your coffee.”

  “What? No I didn’t.” He stood there glancing back and forth between my deputy and me. “What?” Suddenly, his shoulders sagged, and I became aware that he’d been tense enough to hold them in that fashion since we’d arrived. “God damn it . . .” His head dropped, and he stared at the floor.

  “Mr. Polk?”

  His voice bounced off the linoleum floor. “Well, how much of an outlaw do you want me to be?”

  It was my turn to be a little dumbfounded. “Excuse me?”

  He threw out his hands, and I saw Sancho reach for his sidearm. “For the kid, here? I’m supposed to be playin’ like I’m some kind of criminal, right?”

  It suddenly dawned on me that Felix Polk had been performing a role I’d partially assigned him in my last visit. I couldn’t help myself and started laughing. Both he and Saizarbitoria looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles. “Felix . . .” I cleared my throat and carefully wiped my sore eyes. “Um, my deputy knows that the thumb we found was yours.”

  He looked at the Basquo. “He does?”

  “Yep.”

  Polk shook his head in a dismissive manner and reached for something at his back and under his heavy shirt. “Well, damn it to hell.” A snub-nosed .38 clattered onto the kitchen table.

  Saizarbitoria had his semiautomatic out faster than a quick-draw artist could paint a line and had pinned the large man against the counter with a vicious reverse wrist-lock. “Don’t move!”

  I was up as quick as my high-mileage body would allow and rested a hand on Sancho’s shoulder. “It’s okay, he’s—”

  Polk pushed away from the counter, but Saizarbitoria planted him firmly, kicked his legs out, and held the Beretta at the man’s head. “I said, don’t move!”

  “The damn thing’s not loaded!”

  I kept my hand on my deputy’s shoulder. “Let him go.”

  He didn’t look at me but eased the pressure. Polk turned, and the look on his face made it clear that he saw little humor in the situation. The Basquo released him completely, then stepped back, still holding his sidearm beside his leg. “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  I put a hand out to keep Felix Polk where he stood, still leaning against the kitchen sink. “It’s my fault. I think there’s been a mistake, and Felix here thought that I wanted him to do more than I really did.”

  Sancho still held his Beretta at the ready. “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you about how we found out whose thumb it was pretty quick, but I asked Mr. Polk to keep it quiet so that we could give you something to do.” I sighed and glanced at Felix, whose face was almost as red as mine. “Understandably, he decided I was still plying that ruse and he needed to play along.” I turned to Polk. “But I didn’t mean that you should be playing with guns.”

  Polk folded his arms and looked at Saizarbitoria. “I thought I was going to get my damned head blown off.”

  The Basquo’s eyes came up slowly as he holstered the sidearm. “I’m sorry, Mr. Polk. I had no idea.” The dark pupils darted to me as he reached past me, picked up the Smith & Wesson revolver, and flipped open the cylinder. He checked to see if it was empty, then slapped it shut and rested it back on the kitchen table. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  I followed him into the main room, and he fiddled with the doorknob. “I’m going to head back out to the truck.”

  “Look, Sancho . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” He turned the knob, stepped out into the cold, and closed the door behind him.

  I stood there for a moment, feeling like a complete idiot, then turned and walked back into the kitchen. Polk was at the sink and was watching Saizarbitoria as he rounded the corner of the cabin and disappeared into the fog and snow. “Tough kid.”

  “Yep, he is.”

  One of his hands came up from the sink and covered his face as he turned toward me. H
is shoulders shook, and it took a few seconds before I realized that he was laughing. “You know, I haven’t been handled like that in a long time, and I gotta tell ya, I thought I was gonna piss myself.”

  He continued to laugh, and I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “Ah, don’t be silly. Nothing to it.” He let out a deep sigh along with, I’m sure, the remainder of the tension his body held. “Looks like he might’ve taken it a little worse than me.”

  I looked out the kitchen windows but couldn’t see much. “Yep. He’s been having a rough time as of late.”

  Polk nodded. “I’ll go out there and apologize to him if you think it’ll do any good. I don’t want him thinking that you had this all set up—I just thought this was what you wanted me to do.”

  “It’s not your fault. I should’ve said something when we came in. I apologize again.”

  “My own damn fault. Hell, I’m the one that did it. I figured I was overplaying my hand with the revolver, but I didn’t know how far you wanted to go.”

  I sighed. “Not that far.”

  “Yeah.” We both stood there, and it was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. “They still looking for me down in Travis County?”

  “No.” I sat at the table. “The sheriff down there said that the statute of limitations had run out.”

  “That’s pretty reasonable of ’em.”

  “I thought so, too.” I took a deep breath and looked up at him. “So, you were here last night?”

  He took a second to respond. “Oh. That part was real?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, yeah. I was.” He sniffed. “I haven’t gotten to the point in the winter where I have to go down and kidnap women yet.”

  “Yet, huh?”

  He smiled and cocked his head. “Winter’s long this high.”

  “This winter is long everywhere.” I smiled back at him, but the sadness in my chest was dragging me down. “I better get out there and see what I can do to repair the damage I’ve done.”

  He stepped across the room and kicked the leg of the chair I’d occupied. “Have a seat and drink the rest of that cup of coffee. I don’t think it’ll do any of us any harm to take a little time and cool down.”

  We both sat, and he refilled our mugs.

  Polk nodded into his. “Amazing what your mind can do to you, isn’t it? When I got diagnosed with the cancer, I was living in a trailer about forty miles out of town and kept thinking that all my ol’ buddies would come out and see me. You know, nothin’ special, just show up with a six-pack and shoot the shit.” He sipped his coffee. “I sat out there in a lawn chair, smoking cigarettes and starin’ at my empty driveway for a couple of months. I’d go into town for my chemo and think I oughta call up so-and-so and see if they’d like to go bowl a couple frames, but I never did.” He nudged the revolver on the table. “Went out and bought this thing and got to the point where I convinced myself that if any of the sons-a-bitches showed up out there, I was gonna shoot ’em myself.” He studied the Model 36 on the table. “After a few more days, I figured there was really only one person that needed shooting.”

  He set the mug down and looked up at me. “Sold the place a week later, pulled up stakes, and got the hell out.”

  “Sounds like you made the right decision.”

  He thumped the table with the hand that was missing a thumb. “I’ve gotta go take a leak and rather than do it down my pant leg, I’m gonna use the head.” He patted my shoulder. “I’ll walk back out there with you and apologize to the young feller; it seemed like a dirty trick, and I’ll make sure he knows it wasn’t your fault.”

  I watched as he walked past me and took a right at the bookcases; after a few moments I could hear him relieving himself—he hadn’t closed the door.

  He was right—it was amazing the things you got used to, living alone.

  I looked around the tiny kitchen and wondered if this was how I would end up, a rogue male pushed off from the rest of the herd, walking around in the same clothes for weeks, eating food out of cans, and forgetting to close the door when I went to the bathroom.

  It wasn’t an attractive thought.

  I listened as the water in the sink came on. Maybe things weren’t as bad as they appeared; at least Felix Polk still washed his hands.

  It was more than possible that I was going to lose the Basquo, and that made me sad. I thought about what Vic had said about my harebrained schemes, acknowledging that this one had backfired and was probably going to cost me a damn fine deputy. All I could do was give him a good recommendation and, if he stayed within my realm of influence, keep an eye out to his future.

  I thought I might’ve heard a noise on the porch, but before I could look up there was the startling impact of a firearm at close range.

  I threw myself to the left and bounced off the refrigerator. I sat there looking at the shattered pane in the window and scrambled to get my .45 from my holster. When I drew my sidearm, I could see something move just to my right and aimed the Colt in that direction.

  I brought my head around and could see the stocking feet of Felix Polk shudder, lie still, and then twitch.

  When I looked up, Sancho was standing at the open door with his semiautomatic pointed at the large man who now lay on the floor. Santiago also shook, and he looked as white as I’d ever seen him. “He had a gun.”

  I stared at my deputy, then lurched up and crouched over Polk with a pair of fingers at his throat. There was no pulse, but his lips trembled and blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared at the ceiling. Center shot; the man had been dead before he hit the ground.

  I looked at his hands and at the floor around him but could see nothing there. I looked back up at Saizarbitoria. “Sancho, there’s no . . .”

  He was on the verge of hysteria. “There was a gun!”

  I stood and turned to make sure the .38 was still on the kitchen table. The Basquo watched me. “Not that one. Another one.” His voice came from behind me. “It was lying on top of the hot water heater in a cabinet in the bathroom. That’s why I circled back.”

  I searched the floor where Polk’s blood was lining the tongue-and-groove planking like pinstripes. A postmortem gasp gurgled in the back of his throat as the pressure of his lungs sought to equalize with the air in the room.

  I looked away and saw that just under the corner of the refrigerator was the wooden knob of the butt-end of the magazine—9mm Luger.

  14

  I watched him from the hospital reception desk.

  The weather had followed us down the mountain and had settled over the town. It was still morning, but the snow had stifled Durant, and even the hospital seemed empty. If it hadn’t been for the most recent of miseries, it would’ve been a lovely way for Sancho to end the week—to go home and sit by the fire with Marie and play with Antonio.

  He was sitting in the waiting area, his profile sharpened by the snow that cemented itself to the outside of the glass with enough force to make the casings groan. I couldn’t help but think that he was feeling like the window—thin, transparent, and liable to break.

  “Yep.” I kept my voice down as I spoke into the phone. “But we need that file after all. The situation’s changed.”

  There was some noise in the background, and it sounded like Sheriff Montgomery was reconnoitering his thoughts. “He’s been a bad boy?”

  “Yep.”

  “You think he’s a flight risk?”

  I glanced up at the Basquo. “Not anymore.”

  He hadn’t caught my tone. “Because we can arrange a warrant and have him brought back to Texas if you don’t feel like dealing with this character.”

  “We’d have to ship him freight.”

  It was quiet in the Lone Star State. “Oh.” He cleared his throat and sighed. “I’ll head over to the records building today and supervise getting those files personally but no guarantees.”

  “I’d conside
r that a favor.”

  I handed the receiver back to Janine, and she stared up at me with that look you sometimes get from people, even people close to you, that reminds you of just how far the distance is between you and them. Our society, our culture, and our humanity depend on never crossing certain lines, and here we were, slipping back and forth as if they didn’t even exist.

  She fumbled with the phone, and I gave her a quick smile as I retreated across the carpeted area to Santiago. He was leaning back in the chair, slumped down with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his dark eyes focused on the hand that had shot Polk.

  I thought about the connection between Ozzie Dobbs and Felix Polk and what it was that could’ve been worth both their lives. It had to do with the marijuana. If Ozzie was providing the bankroll, then perhaps Polk was providing the know-how. We’d have to check the ballistics on the bullet that killed Ozzie, but I was relatively sure that we had our man.

  I needed to talk to sharecropper Duane.

  When I glanced back up, the Basquo was looking at me. “How are you doing, boss?”

  “Happy to be alive.” He didn’t answer but went back to studying his hand. “How about you?”

  He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, allowing only a fraction of the tension to leave his body. “Tired.”

  He looked it.

  “Hey?” The eyes came back to me. “You killed a murderer, and you saved my life—that’s a good thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course, I’m biased.”

  That got a smile.“I should go home.”

  “Yep, you should.” We sat there in the smothering silence of the snow and our thoughts.

  “I’m not sure if I have the energy.”

  “Well then, why don’t you take a little more time.” I stuck out a hand and gripped his. “You want me to call Marie and tell her everything’s all right?”

  “She doesn’t know anything’s wrong.”

  I nodded and thought about just how much drama had taken place in such a small amount of time. “Is there anything I can get you?”

  His voice was brittle. “I could use a glass of water.”