“‘The Skeletons.’”
“So?”
“Listen.” He sounded as though he were having trouble with his temper. “Remember, I told you we broke up a large operation in LA last year, Las Huertas, The Blondes? Well, these rings all have names—Mexican is full of slang. Yesterday morning you and I were on the firing range here. Yesterday afternoon our Denver office called me. They’d picked up a skilled wet and pumped him dry. He’d crossed the line in New Mexico, that was all they could get—except one other thing. The name of the setup that got him out of Chihuahua to Denver was Los Esqueletos.”
“Imagine that.”
“If you’d told me about the sign, I’d have put two and two together and we’d be in business by now.”
“Oh. Sorry ‘bout that, Hank.”
“Henry. What’s down that sand road?”
“Pingo’s ranch house, probably.”
“Did you see anybody while you were there?”
“Just your guy, parked, watching me. I took no chances. I went in daylight this time—nobody sneaking up on me, no moving vans running me off the road.”
“No what?”
“Moving vans. When I went down there the first time, at night, this big bastard of a moving van suddenly showed, barreling right at me, no headlights, and I had to hit the cactus or be demolished. I saw the logo on his side —‘ViaVan. Interstate & Transcontinental.’”
“A moving van,” he said.
“A moving van,” I said. “At night,” he said.
“At night,” I said.
“No lights,” he said. “
No lights,” I said.
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t think it was important.” I swallowed. “Was it?”
The phone grew hot in my hand.
“Important? Goddammit, hasn’t it occurred to you to wonder since then what a moving van was doing running that close to the border at night without lights? When you’re supposed to be an intelligent, patriotic citizen cooperating with the Border Patrol to stop an operation smuggling illegal aliens into the United States? Hasn’t it? Goddammit?”
It was the first time I had heard him use profanity. “Have you read any of my books, Hank?” I inquired. “They’re classics, actually. You should have Annie bring some home for Ace, and you can read them, too.”
“Hasn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“All right, so am I,” he sighed. “Sorry I swore. We’re advised to be patient with the taxpayers.” He paused. “Well, a good thing you mentioned it now—better late than never. Now we have something hard to go on, we will move. It’ll take some planning—you have to do a thing like this right the first time—and if you’re dealing with a sheriff, and maybe a judge, you’d better be damn sure. But don’t you move a muscle. You’re in 114 at the Ramada, right? That’s what my man radios.”
“He’s outside now?”
“He sure as hell is. And you sure as hell stay in 114. Lock your door, draw your shades, and whatever you do, don’t leave that room.”
“But I haven’t had dinner.”
“Room service.” Ha.
“Go hungry. Have you got the Airweight?’
“Yes.”
“Keep it handy. If you have to use it, remember—keep your eyes open and squeeze the trigger.”
“I haven’t even had a drink!”
“Go thirsty. Jimmie, aren’t you reading me? You know too much. What you’ve just told me is enough to get you killed.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“You were? Why?”
“I learned some other stuff, too. Today.”
“Then that’s another reason to do as I say. Have you forgotten the horror stories about what happened to our plants? Jimmie, do you want somebody eating your balls in a burrito?”
“Oh my God.”
The phone grew cold in my hand.
“I don’t either. After the others, I couldn’t take losing you. Well, there’s going to be some action around Harding, and soon, so you stay off the streets. Stay put. You’ve done your duty, now sleep on it. I’ll see you tomorrow before you leave. That clear?
“Ten-four.”
“Thanks for calling, partner.”
“You’re welcome. I think.”
“So long, Jimmie.”
“Ciao.”
I called Tyler. She was in our passion pit at the Paso del Norte pining away, she said, for me. I said to stop pining and get packing, I’d be in her arms by noon tomorrow and we’d be long gone. Oh, and in the morning buy a dress appropriate for a ceremony before some rustic JP.
“I brought a de la Renta with me. In case we had a glamoor evening. Will that do?”
“Perfect.”
“Jimmie, I know I shouldn’t ask now—but can’t you give me a preview?”
“Nothing to tell, dear girl. I struck pay dirt with the local librarian—Miss Millicent Mills. Or thought I did.”
“Millie Mills? Is she still alive?”
“And kicking. I got some lurid old nonfiction from her you don’t even know about. I’ll tell you tomorrow, but it’s meaningless. Anyway, from her I found out there were four men who served on both juries—VanDellen, Word—”
“I dated his grandson once—Howell, I told you. I think he lives in Chicago.”
“I know. And Coye Turnbow and Dr. Jack Shelley. Well, their only living descendants here are Donald Turnbow and Doc Jack Shelley II. He told me to go away and Turnbow had me thrown out of the bank. So there’s only one other possible—your father.”
“Impossible. He’s a Sphinx.”
“Well, I’ve done all I humanly could, and I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”
“Would you—would you consider staying another two or three days?”
I let the wires speak for me.
“You wouldn’t,” she said.
“Tyler,” I said wearily, “we made a deal. Two days. Time’s up tomorrow at noon. I’ll go to the mat with your old man in the morning, but that’s it.”
“Even one more day?”
It was all I could do to keep from snapping my cap. Yelling at her. Snackenberg and the Border Patrol and being under protective surveillance day and night and carrying a gun I had been taught how to use because I was in mortal peril and unless my life was worth more to her than her goddamned identity and unless she desired to see me go the way of her other two suckers or have certain of my private parts ENCAPSULATED in an ENCHILADA she had better shut the hell up and get down on her knees and pray I survived the night.
“Tomorrow, Tyler,” I said.
“You know how desperate I am.”
“Do I ever. So do Crossworth and Sansom. But so am I —desperate. I have to get out of here, Tyler. I’ve been here long enough, I’ve poked around in other people’s closets long enough—I want to go home and finish my Africa book and live in my apartment with you and be happy. The truth is, I’m scared out of my mind. Scared if I stay here I’ll find something I shouldn’t. Something horrendous. I don’t want to find it—even for you.”
“Jimmie, Jimmie,” she said. “You have to grow up sometime. You have to face the facts. Some of them may be unpleasant, but they exist, they’re true. If you’re to be a husband and a father you have to be able to cope with reality.”
“Like your mother?”
“That’s unforgivable.”
“I’ll forgive myself. I told you night before last—I thought you understood. If I grow up it will be the end of me. I’ll never write for children again. Which is what I was born to do. So I simply have to get out of Harding. The sooner the better.”
“But you must be getting so close.”
“I am. To my own grave. Tomorrow, Tyler.”
“You bastard.”
“Thanks. You know, if you really loved me, you wouldn’t even ask. You’d want me with you, safe.”
“Do you really love me?”
“A good question,” I said, and
hung up on her the way I had when she first called me two weeks before on East Seventy-third and begged me to go with her to watch a wooden box come down a conveyor belt. A box full of sand.
Locked the door.
Drew the shades.
Took off my tie.
Turned on the TV.
Night.
I switched on a light and turned off the TV and sat there listening to the small, incessant wind.
Tried not to think.
Gnawed at a knuckle on my right hand till it was raw, then gnawed at one on my left.
Starving.
Finally I thought the hell with it, an army marches on its stomach and for the last two weeks B. James Butters has had to be a goddamned army by himself, put on my tie and jacket, opened the door, peeked.
The Ramada Inn was shaped like a U, with lawn and swimming pool in a center court and parking along the perimeters. I made out the SIU sedan with a man in it and not far from him a county sheriff’s car with a man in it.
I pulled my homburg over my face, stepped out, flitted like Frisby along the walk across the court and into the main building and the dining room. It closed at nine, but since it was five of and I was a guest, I was permitted to order. The waitress suggested MEXICAN FOOD. I almost urped.
An hour later I recrossed the court in the manner of Travis McGee on a hot case, discovered I had forgotten to lock my door. I unbuttoned my coat, entered hand on hip, switched on a light, looked around and in the John. All clear.
I locked the door, undressed, clipped the .38 by its holster to a coat hanger in the closet because I would not have the thing in bed with me, showered, brushed my teeth, unbloated my bladder, slipped on a clean pair of pajamas. I buy them by the half dozen from Despriers of Paris. These were silk, in pink and ochre, with a sprinkle of tiny Eiffel Towers which I find engaging and Tyler once found Freudian.
I slipped between the sheets, pummeled the pillows, turned out the lights, yawned, closed my eyes, commenced counting corpses.
I WAS NOT ALONE.
Every nerve announced it. Someone, in my absence, had found the door unlocked, entered, stayed.
I WAS NOT ALONE.
For a minute I lay paralyzed. My lungs ceased to function. The gun was in the closet. Which was where he had to be—I had checked everywhere else. I ran down the list of those who might be motivated to kill me. It was appallingly long. Pingo. One of his dastardly deputies. Judge Vaught. Jack Shelley. Donald Turnbow. John and/or Paul, the bank cowboys. Millie Mills? Harrison Tremaine? Then it sank in like a knife. Unless I got the gun and defended myself I could be massacred in my bed. I inched the covers aside, quaked myself out of bed onto my feet.
The closet had sliding doors, one to the right, one to the left. Slowly I slid open the one to the right, nearest the gun. It squeaked.
I inserted my forearm, my hand fearful of meeting another hand. My fingers fumbled with suitcoats, clutched the hanger. I lifted, pulled. The hanger whipped, fell, the gun in its holster thumped on the floor. I waited, tried to get my lungs going. I stuck one leg inside the closet, then my upper body, bending in, clawing. Couldn’t locate.
Do or die. I lunged into the goddamned closet, scratching frantically at the floor.
Suddenly I was struck from the left. The other door was sliding open, into me.
I boomed backward, began a power dive under the bed, bumped full-front into the assassin, who had emerged from the other end of the closet.
“Jesús!”
I recoiled.
“Mr. Butters!”
I escalated onto and over the bed in two Olympic leaps, seized a lamp, switched, stood holding the lamp, blinking in the light.
HELENE VAUGHT.
My lungs started.
“Mrs. Vaught! What’re you doing here?”
Hammering on the door.
“Who is it?” I squealed.
She wore the same light blue smock, the uniform I had seen her in, but with blue tennies now and bare legs and her hair-do was shot. She looked worn and loony. Over the fence again, out of the bin.
“Butters? This is Sheriff Chavez.”
It was Tyler’s mother’s turn to panic.
“Don’t let him in!” she whispered. “Please!”
How had she got here from San Carlos?
“What do you want, Sheriff?” I asked.
“Judge Vaught’s wife has left Tamarisk again. I have reason to believe she’s with you. Open up, please.”
“Don’t let him in!” she begged. “He’ll kill me!”
Why would Pingo kill HER?
I was so shook and scared I didn’t know whether to say no, ma’am, he’ll kill me, not you, or go for my gun in the closet. I bluffed for time.
“Do you have a search warrant?” I demanded of the door.
“I have something better. All right, Harley.”
An awful splitwood sound.
The door flew open.
I started round the end of the bed for my gun, might have made it had Helene Vaught not flung her arms around me from the rear, clasping me to her like a shield.
A uniformed deputy entered, gun drawn. It was the smartass who had given me a speeding ticket.
Pingo Chavez limped in after him, looking at what he had caught in 114 with considerable interest. There I stood in my French jammies, a distraught, disheveled woman hugging me from behind like her long-lost. I was just as hypnotized by Harley and his gun. I had never before had a gun pointed at me. The muggers in New York had threatened with a knife.
“Stop pointing that damned thing at us!” I cried at him. “Stop it—you’re frightening her!”
An awful glass crash.
A window shattered. The shade flew up, the face of a complete stranger, a white male adult, appeared in the window.
Harley the deputy swung his weapon. “Who the hell are you?”
“Davis, U. S. Border Patrol.”
“Thank God,” I breathed. “The cavalry.”
“You all right, Mr. Butters?” Davis asked. At this point it was a tossup which of us was supporting the other, me or Mrs. Vaught. “Lovely,” I said.
“What the hell you doing here?” the deputy challenged Davis.
“Government,” said Davis. “Put the artillery away before somebody gets hurt.”
Pingo Chavez took charge. “Take it easy, Davis. The lady here is A.W.O.L. from a state institution. When that happens, every jurisdiction in the state gets an all-points.
We take her back where she belongs and say good night. We’ve done it many times. We get thanks and mileage.”
Behind me, Helene Vaught had forced one of my hands into one of hers.
“But she’s afraid of you,” I protested. “She says you’ll kill her. Why would she say that?”
Pingo frowned. “In her condition, quien sabe?” Dapper as ever, wearing neither star nor badge nor gun, the little devil gave us his gold teeth and a reasonable smile. “We can’t have the lady in the streets, can we? She’s not young, she’s not responsible. Look, Mr. Butters, if you’d like to ride along with us to San Carlos, I have no objection.”
“I do,” said Davis.
She was pressing something into my hand. I was simultaneously trying to figure what it was and figure Pingo’s invite. Oh hell yes. Get us together in one of his cars in the middle of New Mexico and a dark night and he could add two birds to his bag. Turkeys.
“Thanks a lot but no thanks,” I said, thinking fast. “I can’t. But Davis here can. Do me a favor, Davis? Escort the lady back to San Carlos with these gentlemen? It’s only an hour there and an hour back. I’d appreciate it.”
Davis looked doubtful. “Well. I don’t know.”
“Do you mind if he goes along?” I asked Chavez.
He shrugged.
“There,” I said. “That’s settled.”
I closed my hand around it.
“Mr. Butters, can I speak to you a minute?” Davis asked.
“Sure thing. Stay there.”
“Just a minute, Mrs. Vaught. It’s all right, I promise.”
But she was petrified as ever. She gave a little cry, backed into a corner of the room, crouched behind a chair.
I went to the window, knelt, stuck my head out, my face close to Davis’.
“You know I can’t leave you,” he said under his breath. “Orders.”
“I’ll be dandy,” I assured him. “As long as Chavez is out of town, I’m safe. It’s Mrs. Vaught I’m worried about.”
“What kind of an institution?”
“Mental. Unless you go with her, she may never make it.”
Davis rubbed his chin. “Well hell. All right, I’ll get on the horn to El Paso and tell ‘em what I’m doing. They’ll have a replacement for me here in an hour. You want me to drive and tail the sheriff or ride with him?”
“Ride with him. Or he’ll lose you and we may lose her.”
“All right. You stay in the room till the next shift shows, understand?” He checked his watch. “It’s a quarter of ten —you’ll have protection by a quarter of eleven. But whatever you do, don’t leave the room. If the door won’t lock, use furniture. Keep that Airweight ready—I know you’ve got one—and use it if you have to. Guarantee you won’t leave?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Okay, give me a minute to radio, then I’ll come around inside.”
I pulled back into the room. Pingo Chavez leaned against the door, polishing his manicure on a sleeve and noting with disdain the cheap print on a wall. Harley the deputy stood intimidating Helene Vaught, still crouched like a child behind the chair.
I went to her. “There, Mrs. Vaught. Everything’s fine now, Mr. Davis will see you safely home. He’s a friend of mine.”
The poor woman couldn’t or wouldn’t speak, couldn’t or wouldn’t move. I raised her gently. “You said you trust me, Mrs. Vaught. Please trust me now. Let Mr. Davis take you home.”
No response. To reassure her, I put my hand, fisted around whatever it was she had given me, against her hand. Hers closed around it. Something told me I would never see her again.
“Dear lady,” I said. “On the way home, remember the Chautauquas. Remember the old songs, the beautiful singing on the porches.”
skeletons Page 16