The Right Madness

by James Crumley

  Johnny Raymond was a native son of Meriwether, a longtime hardworking police officer, a Vietnam vet, a highly decorated ex-SEAL, too, and an all-around good guy. As far as I knew, his only personal flaw was that he hated me worse than crotch rot. He wasn’t too fond of Mac or Ron Musselwhite, either. When working, I was always more interested in justice than the law, so I had skated along the icy edges and deep water cracks of the law while I was on a case. Although Raymond had busted me several times, he was never able to make anything stick. And although he had tried, he had never managed to interfere with my license. But he was sure he had me now. A B&E, perhaps, an illegal entry at the very least. He thought he’d find something to stick this time. It was clear on his large, blond farm boy’s face and in his aggressive questions.

  I was so shaken that I might have answered him if I could have spoken, if he hadn’t drowned me out with a barrage of questions. But I couldn’t tell the truth about why I was at the Ritter house. Not without Mac to explain it for me. It was never a good idea to lie to cops. And I had learned a long time ago not to answer any of their questions without a lawyer sitting in my lap. With a lawyer, not even the innocent had to answer questions. Raymond gave up and told his driver to transport me. But Mac arrived at exactly the right moment and pulled medical rank on Johnny, making him open the back door of the unit. Mac leaned in, checked my eyes with a penlight, my pulse with his fingers, then stepped back and turned to the red-faced officer.

  “This man’s going into shock, officer,” he said to Raymond. “Get him out of there, get the cuffs off him, and call for medical transport.”

  “I want him in the jail wing,” Raymond said.

  “What’s the charge?” Musselwhite said.

  Raymond looked at Musselwhite, a Kiowa-Comanche breed from Oklahoma who affected braids and beaded leather jackets, which didn’t quite conceal his bear-trap mind and his dangerous warrior’s grin. Or his Boalt law degree hanging like a scalp on his office wall. Raymond sighed, then reached in to help me out. “Sughrue,” he whispered, “I’ll nail you with something. You can count on that. Fergie’s dead, you bastard.” Then because he was a good cop, Raymond eased me as gently as a mother out of the backseat.

  I nodded, smiling an idiot’s smile, as if I agreed with him completely, as if I wanted him to put me in a cell. But before he could get the cuffs off me, Mac hit me in the arm with a hypodermic. I hiccuped a couple of dry heaves, my eyes rolled up, and I went down as the ambulance. Arrived. Thankfully.

  When I awoke in the private room in St. Vincent’s that night just before midnight, I remembered everything. Unfortunately. Until I had fainted. Perhaps I had been going into shock. Or perhaps I had seen too much bloody death over the years. The last few had been relatively quiet, though. Almost civilized. Maybe I was out of practice. Whatever, I wanted to go home. But my butt was sticking out of a hospital gown, a saline drip was sticking into the back of my left hand, and I had to pee before I did anything.

  The call button for the nurse was easy to find, clipped to the pillow next to my head, but nobody showed for a long time after I punched the button. I only did it once—some years before, St. Vincent’s had become a for-profit-managed hospital, an economic machine run by MBAs for money instead of mercy, so the nurses were treated like serfs—then I pulled off the tape, jerked the drip out of my hand, and rolled off the bed. Whatever drug Mac had injected into me to cause that long dreamless sleep seemed to have worn off. I did my business, switched off the drip, and climbed back into bed to wait for the nurse.

  “I’m sorry, Sughrue,” the nurse said as she swept quickly into the dim room. She was a bright, sunny woman I’d known around the bars for years, but I couldn’t remember her name.

  “No problem,” I said. “I took the drip out myself, then pissed about a quart if anybody’s interested.” Her smile glowed in the scant light. “Now I’m hungry,” I added.

  “You slept through dinner,” she said, chuckling. “Hell, a decent human being would have slept until breakfast,” she said, then paused. “But the doctor knew better. He left you a change of clothes and a sandwich and a Coke when he was here earlier.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You want a sandwich?”

  “You’re a darling,” I said, and she didn’t argue with that.

  “I’ll just put this back in,” she said as she stabbed me with the drip and retaped it quickly, efficiently, and almost painlessly. “And I’ll call Dr. MacKinderick,” she added as she left. “He left orders to call him no matter what time you woke up.”

  I had the drip out again before she got back. She put down the sandwich and the Coke, then hooked me up again. “Leave it alone, or I’ll tape you to the bed, you silly shit,” she said, grinning, then left me to my own devices.

  Which mainly consisted of chewing and dreading. I dreaded Mac’s visit all the way through the sandwich. And I was right to dread it. But the sandwich and the dread had cleared my mind wonderfully.

  “CW,” he said as he stepped through the door, shutting it quietly behind him and picking up my chart. “Have you ever fainted before?”

  “All the time,” I said. “Every fucking day.”

  “Just as I thought,” he said. “We’re going to keep you here for a couple of days, run some tests.”

  “As my daddy used to say, you’re going to shit and fall back in it, too,” I said. “I’m out of here in the morning.”

  “As long as you’re in here,” he said, “they can’t question you. Ron says if we stall Raymond for a couple of days, he’ll lose interest in finding out what you were doing at the Ritter front door.”

  “You know better than that,” I said. “He’s never going to give up. I’ll just dummy up until they come back with a suicide ruling, then there’s no crime to investigate.”

  “Are you sure it was a suicide?”

  “I’d guess her blood’s going to be full of vodka and drugs,” I said. “And she thought I was her husband, so she jumped when the door opened. But you’d know more about that than I would. And surely you know how many people try to kill themselves and fuck it up. Put a piece to their temple and miss. Don’t take enough pills. Or take too many and throw them up …”

  “I know something about suicides,” he said sadly, so I shut up. “Okay, I’ll get you out tomorrow.”

  “In the morning,” I said. “And get this thing out of my hand.”

  “Stop complaining,” he said. “Ritter is down the hall. Unlike you, he actually went into shock—collapsed in his office when I told him. And it looks as if he had a small cardiac event.”

  “Then he really should be glad he wasn’t there,” I said, meaning it.

  “When do you think you can go back to the job?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you that, my friend,” I said. “I fucking quit.”

  “You can’t,” he said quietly. Then he left before I could argue with him, an argument I knew I wouldn’t win anyway.

  At least the smiling nurse came back a few minutes later to relieve me of the drip.

  “Thanks, Sunny,” I said, suddenly remembering her name. “Thanks.”

  She just smiled as she patted me on the head as if I were a child. A good nurse is a great treasure.

  They released me before noon the next day. I stopped by Ritter’s room on the way out of the hospital. I wondered where he had been between nine and eleven that morning, but he wasn’t exactly able to answer questions. A gray stubble frosted his jowls, drool puddled on his pillow, and he snored like a passing freight. He must have gotten better drugs than mine.

  I ran a few errands, did a few chores, had a burger at the Goat, then went home. The house was too empty, so I sat on the front porch until almost sundown, then retreated to my office, a converted garage. When Whit passed the bar exam, we split the two lots the house and garage sat on and moved my office out of the house so that my bad habits wouldn’t affect her legal standing. I was watching some more secrets of Nazi Germany on the History C
hannel when Mac called, asking, “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “I thought you recommended rest,” I said.

  “Now I recommend a cocktail.”

  “I don’t know, man,” I said. “I thought I’d catch the ten o’clock news.”

  “You’ll just be disappointed,” he said.

  “Whit’s supposed to call in a few minutes.”

  “Take your cell with you.”

  “Hey, man, between two hundred pounds of Christian Highway Patrolman and three hundred pounds of Charity, I’m sore as a boil.”

  “Don’t make me beg.”

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t,” I said.

  “Because I’m your friend.”

  I didn’t have a smart-ass answer for that. “Okay, I’ll walk down to the Goat and meet you for one,” I said.

  “Just step out the door, my friend,” he said. “I’m parked in the alley.”

  Goddamned cell phones.

  I used mine to call Whitney, but I got her voice mail again, so I assumed that she was asleep. I left word for her to call in the morning, then left my cell at home.

  The Scapegoat Bar and Grill nestled comfortably in the basement of an old bank building in downtown Meriwether. The food was western standard but good, and the drinks were generous and Montana cheap, but its major attraction was a complete lack of gambling machines or loud music. Too many Montana bars had been ruined when the state legalized poker and keno machines, which were a constant burping and beeping presence. And at least as addictive as crack cocaine. I’m not against gambling, but a quiet bar is worth its weight in gold. But what Mac liked about the Goat was that he could have his single cigar for the day in the cigar bar nestled in the old vault.

  Mac ordered a cognac, but I opted for a bottle of Negra Modelo. Except for “Hi,” we hadn’t spoken on the short drive from the Northgate neighborhood to the bar. Mac did his business with his cigar—a Havana smuggled from Canada, I suspected—while I dug out a pack of American Spirits that I had bought when I got out of the hospital that morning.

  “So you’re smoking again,” he said before I could get one lit.

  “Hey, man,” I said. “I saw some ugly shit in the Central Highlands, and I’ve seen some ugly shit since then, but I’ve never … Oh, well, fuck it.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “You had all those years in emergency rooms,” I said. “I’m only used to ordinary violence—you know, fistfights, gunshot wounds, exploding bodies, that sort of shit. So I’m smoking cigarettes to keep from slamming heroin into my arm.”

  “I am sorry,” he said, carefully not looking at me.

  “Not sorry enough,” I said. “I can’t go on with this chore unless you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Even if I knew, my friend, I couldn’t.”

  “Beautiful, man. Just fucking beautiful.”

  We sat, mostly silent, for a long time. Desultory hellos and good-byes directed to friends and acquaintances, aimless exchanges with the young bartender. I had two beers and four cigarettes while Mac sipped cognac and contemplated his cigar.

  “You’re not going to quit on me?” he finally asked, knocking an inch of ash off the cigar.

  “If nobody’s being blackmailed,” I said, “what the hell does it matter who has the disks?”

  “I’ll be happy to pay a generous bonus when it’s wrapped up,” he said, ignoring my questions again.

  “You’re already paying me too much,” I said. “Enough to make me nervous.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said sarcastically.

  “If you’re not going to come clean with me, man, I’m going to do it my way now,” I said. “No more pussyfooting around. I’m going to work these people my way, work them hard until I know who copied the disks. You stay out of it. Otherwise, I quit. For real this time.”

  “I guess I don’t have any choice now,” he said. “Just don’t burn me.”

  “I’ve never burned anybody,” I said. “But I’ve got to tell Whit.”

  “Please don’t,” he said. “Please.”

  “Have you told Lorna?” I said.

  Mac stared at me for a moment, wild-eyed, then he smiled oddly. “Not a word, my friend. Not a word.”

  “You know Whit won’t say a word to anybody,” I said. “And nobody can make her, legally, so what the hell are you worried about?”

  Mac studied his cigar again, ordered a second cognac, which was unusual, then insisted that I have another beer. When he stopped stalling, he set his cigar down and finally turned to me, talking but not answering me. “You know my mother still lives over in Dakota. Outside Bismarck on the old home place. In her youth she was a tall, white-blond Swede. Even at almost ninety, CW, she’s a handsome woman, still got fine clear skin and those steely blue eyes, the kind of eyes you only see on the plains. She looks as if she can see over the horizon, see the wind, see winter …” He paused, watching his cigar consume itself. “My father was a knotty little Scot,” he continued. “A tough little fucker. A coach …” Once again he paused. But he had been talking to himself. Perhaps even his silence was for himself.

  “And this has what to do with me not telling Whit?” I said, interrupting his silence.

  “I’d be professionally embarrassed,” he said with some finality, a lopsided grin on his face.

  “You weren’t embarrassed to tell me,” I pointed out.

  Suddenly, Mac laughed, lifted his snifter, and slapped me on the back. I realized that this wasn’t his second cognac. More like his sixth. “I didn’t think you’d judge me,” he said.

  “Hell, Whit doesn’t judge anybody,” I said. “Least of all you.”

  “I know,” he said, “I know. Forgive me; it’s my weakness, not her nature. But that face, those blue eyes …”

  “You mind if I tell her why I can’t tell her?”

  Mac’s silence was answer enough. He looked away, picked up the cigar. “I hear you stopped by Ritter’s room on your way out of the hospital. How did he look?”

  “Like a dead man,” I said.

  “I just hope he isn’t,” Mac said. “Even through their long years of anger, they really depended on each other. Desperately.”

  I didn’t want to think about it. I don’t know, sometimes it seemed that most sorts of madness were simply a convenient way to avoid life. But then I didn’t know. When I’d gone mad, I had had good reason: people were trying to kill me back then.

  I told Mac that I’d walk home to clear my head so I could decide how to tell Whit that I couldn’t even tell her why I couldn’t tell her.

  “Call me,” he said as I was leaving.

  “In a week or so,” I answered, “unless I clear it up before then. And get me the alarm code for Ritter’s place.”

  Mac started to protest but stopped himself, nodded curtly, then I was gone.

  I had missed Whitney’s calls by the time I got home. All three of them. Somehow she’d gotten word of the incident at the Ritters’. I missed the calls because I’d taken the long way home, I had stopped at the Slumgullion, the Low Rent Rendezvous, and Mickey’s on the walk. Slow beers and conversations about nothing. I didn’t let the job cross my mind. Mike, the bartender at Mickey’s, fronted me a couple of doobies, one of which I smoked on the pedestrian walkway over the railroad to the Northgate neighborhood.

  I took one tour around the house, then retreated to my office. The little refrigerator was stuffed with cans of Pabst beer along with a chunk of rat cheese and several rings of homemade smoked deer sausage. My office wasn’t exactly plush, but it was comfortable—a La-Z-Boy in the corner, a great desk chair in front of the computer, a small television, a compact stereo, and snuggled into one corner a bathroom that would have fit into a small fishing boat. The back was filled with free weights, two bags, speed and heavy, and the gun safe built into the wall.

  I put a Lucinda Williams CD in the player, booted up the computer, cracked a beer, then opened the safe buried in the concrete pad under the floor. As L
ucinda sang mournfully about lost places and times and loves, I opened the next envelope on Mac’s patient list. The name on the sheet was Carrie Fraizer. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at nine. When I ran a search, the computer told me that she lived in a funky old hotel that had been converted to apartments, near the abandoned railroad station at the north end of Dottle Avenue. The Pacific Northwest. It had been an important railroad hostel in the old days, but now it served as a home for unrepentant hippies, local starving artists, and musicians who could afford the rent. In the city directory her occupation was listed as “artist.” I wondered how Carrie Fraizer could afford analysis with Mac. Hell, I wondered how she could afford a telephone.

  But I didn’t wonder very long. I went out into the alley and smoked the other doobie; then before settling into the La-Z-Boy, I sliced up a chunk of cheese and deer sausage, cracked another beer, and found one of those goofy Falcon movies from the forties with an impeccably arrogant George Sanders. I had been on this case three days and was already near collapse and dreaming of a simpler, more amusing, life.

  Whit’s morning voice mail had been a bit terse, and I was still tired, guilty, and suffering from a mild hangover when I decided not to call her back. I started to back the rent car out of my driveway. A black Ford Explorer laced with mud pulled in behind me. As I got out, Johnny Raymond, in civilian clothes, jeans, and a T-shirt, waved me over to his rig.

  “Get in,” he said. “We’re going for a ride.” It didn’t seem worth arguing about, since he was wearing his Colt Commander .45 man killer holstered high on his hip, so I climbed in. “Scooch down,” he ordered. “I don’t want to be seen with you.”

  Raymond didn’t say another word as he drove a few miles out of town, then turned up Bear Creek, one of the few drainages around town that hadn’t been covered with new developments or expensive houses. After a bit, he pulled off the gravel road onto a dirt track, then parked behind a screen of piss firs and cut the engine. As the road dust settled around us, he rolled down the windows and sighed deeply.