The Right Madness

by James Crumley

“Whatever I gave them,” I said. “These are kids, you dipshit.” That almost brought him out of the chair and over the desk. Heaven knows, a bad idea but entertaining. “And I’ve got five women who studied under the dancing Shoshone shaman, who just might have talked Ellen Marshall into clipping off her meat hooks.”

  “You’ve got shit. You are shit. In my jurisdiction, sir,” he said, “shit rates a little higher than marijuana dreams. But not much.”

  “Hey, man,” I said, picking up the restraining order. “You’re getting confused. We’re the good guys.”

  “God help us,” he said, but not with a great deal of conviction.

  Just as I’d hoped, Ron Musslewhite had gotten wind of this ugly turn of events and was sitting behind his antique cotton broker’s desk sipping a Negra Modelo, the bottle tiny in his bear’s paw of a hand. Ron might dress like a Native American cowboy museum piece, but he collected Braque drawings and pre-Columbian Spanish furniture, so his office had the easy grace and comfort of a gallery. He nodded his huge head at the under-the-counter refrigerator, so I grabbed a beer, too.

  “I’m sorry, Dog, but this all came out of left field,” he said. “What did you ever do to Judge Trupin?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Actually, I need to know,” he said seriously.

  “I did his ex-wife and his daughter one weekend up in Whitefish,” I admitted. “Hell, I didn’t know who they were. Or that they’d babble about it in group, then rat out each other.”

  “And what did you do to Johnny Raymond? Nail his wife?”

  “I don’t know what happened there,” I said. “One minute we’re holding hands, and the next he’s got his dick in my pocket.”

  “And?”

  “Well, there was a little ruckus,” I said. “But he didn’t seem to take it too personally.”

  “You kicked his ass?”

  “Just a little.”

  “I don’t know how the hell you do it,” he said.

  “Do what?” I asked unnecessarily. “So what the hell happened?”

  “Nothing good, Dog,” he said. “I hate to be the fountain of foul tidings, but I don’t think you want to try to get the judge to release the injunction. It would take more money than you can spare, more time than I care to spend, and cause more hard feelings among the wrong people than either of us can afford.” He paused, sipped the beer, and seemed to be staring into the cubist maze of a Braque print. Then he said, “And that ain’t all. The DA blindsided me with a sealed grand jury murder indictment of Mac, plus they froze all his bank accounts, including the escrow he put up for you.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, but when they froze his accounts … well,” he said, “that’s where it gets really interesting.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Except for your escrow, which the court effectively locked up, too, Mac’s bank accounts were empty,” he said. “Maybe if you send me a bill, I can unlock some of your money.”

  “None of this shit makes any sense.”

  “You’re telling me,” he said. “And guess who’s on the hook at Lorna’s loony bin.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “White man speak with forked check,” he said. “I should have realized something was up when Lorna’s last check, covering the uninsured part of her stay, bounced. Of course, it gets crazier.”

  “How?”

  “The day after Mac disappeared, all his bank accounts were transferred into privately held shell corporations with offshore accounts.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “With the correct account numbers and passwords,” he said, “anybody could do it by telephone or computer.”

  “What the hell does it mean?”

  “Either he’s running, or somebody killed him and stole all the money. There’s one more little thing.”

  “I hesitate to ask.”

  “You didn’t look at this, did you?” he said, then opened his safe to take out the nanny-cam tape.

  “No, why?”

  “You should have,” he said ominously, then punched the tape into the player, fast-forwarded to a spot he had marked, then let the soundless, jerky tape run. At first, I couldn’t tell what was happening. I expected to see Cunningham on his hands and knees, begging Lorna, but instead I saw Lorna on her hands and knees as she was being butt-fucked by a broad-shouldered, muscular man I didn’t recognize. Lorna pitched forward, exhausted, then the man backed up and turned around, and I nearly fell out of the chair.

  Lorna lay on her side against the pillows, her face contorted with pain or pleasure—I wasn’t sure I wanted to know which—and on the end of the bed sat Agent Pam Morrow, her crotch sporting a large double-barreled pink dildo. Then there was some other sordid action that I didn’t watch.

  Ron paused the tape. “Old J. Edgar is either spinning in his grave or spanking his monkey,” he said. “But they sure have lowered the bar—spies, perverts, and drug fiends.”

  “Consenting adults, as they say,” I said.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “Before it started, Pammie gave Lorna a hypo. Don’t know what it was, but it woke her up, and kept her loony at the same time.” Then he fast-forwarded the tape again. “This is consenting adults.”

  Agent Cunningham stood beside Lorna’s bed, crumpets and tea neatly arranged on a tray, saying something. Before he could finish, she had rolled over, unzipped his pants, and had his dick in her mouth. The fact that Cunningham didn’t drop the tray was amazing. When she was through, he set the tray carefully down, then began tearing his clothes off. But Lorna ran to the bathroom for her stash before he got undressed. Then it was consenting adults.

  Later, she stormed out the door in only her robe, as Cunningham threw his clothes on.

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said, honestly. “But I own these fuckers.”

  “You don’t want to own them, Dog,” he said quietly. “Forget them.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think, do,” Ron said. “Since you’re out of a job, why don’t you do me a terrific favor.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “No.”

  “What do I get out of it?”

  “Butch owes me a favor,” he said. “I’ll see about getting you an interview with Mr. Biddle. With a client, you’re back in business, and maybe we can find out what the hell’s going on around here.”

  “And I have to …?”

  “Drive over to get Lorna before I go broke,” he said.

  “Send an ambulance, man.”

  “She insists on you,” he said. “And in fairly lucid terms. Make sure she stays on her medication. Don’t let her drink. And keep her out of the blow.”

  “When?”

  “She’s expecting you day after tomorrow. And she wants to go home. The house belongs to her, thank god, and there’s enough money in her accounts to keep things running for a little while.”

  “This is what I deserve for thinking a lawyer was my friend,” I said.

  “Right now, Dog, this lawyer is your best friend,” he said, grinning broadly. “Send me an inflated bill, and perhaps I can get the judge to turn loose some money. Lorna sounds fine. Or at least fairly sane. I’ll set up some kind of round-the-clock nurse help. For a few days. She’ll be fine.”

  “It’s me I’m worried about,” I said. “Lorna’s tougher than ancient lizard shit.”

  ELEVEN

  BUT SHE SEEMED as delicate as a snow flower on the long drive back from Seattle. Perhaps being drugged, raped, and then enduring a couple of athletic tumbles with Agent Cunningham had taken some of the starch out of her. But, lord love a duck, she was still completely lovely, a shining beauty seemingly untouched by the recent past. She tilted the seat back, settled a pair of large shades on her face, then curled up in a comforter I’d taken from her bed, her rattiest stuffed animal, an elephant, clutched in her arms. She took a leak and got a Coke in Ritzville but fell
asleep before she’d finished it.

  When I pulled into the MacKindericks’ driveway, the three does stood blind in my head-lights. The fawn’s spots had faded, and the winters were showing on the old doe’s snout. She looked as old as I felt. The nurse met us at the door as I carried Lorna across the threshold as if she were a dead bride. She helped me put her to bed, then I fled into the night. Where I found Claudia Lucchesi sitting on my front porch, leaning on a backpack, flanked by the cats, looking for all the world like the devil’s foundling.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “There seem to be people living in Whit’s house,” she said.

  “Cats, too. It happens. They sneak in during the night,” I said, “just like it belongs to them. Little bastards.”

  “You got someplace we can talk?”

  In the office, I could see the fatigue in her face, so I put her in the La-Z-Boy, poured a couple of fingers of Scotch into a dirty glass, and opened a beer for myself. The cats had to survive on deer sausage, which they had to kill again to make sure it was dead before they gnawed it. Something about that I liked. “What’s up?”

  “I heard about the order,” she said. “That’s what happens when judges are elected—”

  “Or they marry out of their league and spawn passionate daughters,” I suggested. “Or at least women who can’t keep their mouths shut.”

  “I was hoping that story wasn’t true.”

  “Hell, I should have tried to get a mike into the group session,” I said. “But I did hear that the size and nature of my apparatus changed as the evening wore on,” I said. “Final judgment: like a tomato worm without a brain.”

  “That’s what they say about you, Sughrue,” she said sadly.

  “Give me a break, hon,” I said. “Nobody was married or even engaged. Consenting adults.” Although the line stuck in my throat.

  “So why are you here, darling?” I said. “You disapprove of my morals.”

  “Such as they are.”

  “You know I’m married, and I wouldn’t fool around with my second-string lawyer.”

  “What about Ron?”

  “I suspect that Mr. Musselwhite, since he’s six inches taller, sixty pounds heavier, and a fifth-generation killer, could have his way with me,” I admitted. “So what the hell are you doing here, Claudia?”

  “I thought you might want to pack for the trip,” she said.

  “The trip?”

  “I’m sick of this damned little town,” she said. “Sick of so-called justice. Sick of myself, if the truth be known.”

  “I’m on your side, love, but I don’t know what you’re talking about or why you’re carrying a duffle.”

  “Robert Guilder has relocated south,” she said flatly.

  “And who’s that?”

  “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  “We?”

  “I sat there this afternoon and listened to that arrogant little turd treat Ron like a red-headed stepchild,” she said. “And believe me, the little bastard owes him big-time.” Then she sighed, and added, “So I threw it all away. All those stupid fucking years.”

  “Threw it away?”

  “Butch was thinking with his dick when he drew up my partnership contract. So he’ll spend the rest of his life scrambling his hairy ass off to pay me.”

  “You quit?” I was still somewhere on Interstate 90, highway miles like a snowstorm running into my eyes. I couldn’t get my mind around it. “You quit?”

  “It feels great.”

  I poured two more drinks, watched the cats decide that perhaps the deer sausage had a bit too much pepper for them, then they dashed out the cat door, heading for their water bowls in the house. Somehow my glass was empty, so I had another.

  “How long have you had cats?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The cats? Where’d they come from?”

  “Cat detective school, I guess. Hell, I don’t even remember when I last slept or sat down at a table or leaned on a bar,” I admitted. “I don’t have any idea what the hell you’re telling me, and I’m not sure that I want to. I don’t even know where I’m going to sleep.”

  “We could break back into my place.”

  “Break back in?”

  “Butch owns my condo, even the damned furniture,” she said, then laughed. “He had the locks changed, hoping I’d have to come to him to get my things. Stupid asshole, thinks a Butte girl can be foxed by a sliding glass door. I got all my clothes. I’ll have to sue for the rest, the controlling son of a bitch.”

  “Who the hell is Robert Guilder?”

  “He’s the guy that lost Landry’s blood and tissue work,” she said. “You said you wanted the guy’s name.”

  “That I did. So why won’t you tell me where he is?”

  “If you knew, you wouldn’t take me along,” she said shyly.

  “Claudia, love, I don’t know what’s happening with my marriage,” I said as calmly as I could. “But it ain’t over yet, and I don’t want it to end in somebody else’s bed.”

  “No problem,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re getting into here?” I said.

  “Tell me. I listen like a professional.”

  “Johnny Raymond is looking for any excuse to lock me up,” I explained, “and the FBI ain’t all that happy with me—”

  “What did you do to them?”

  “Don’t ask,” I said. “And there’s a good chance you could get disbarred just for hanging around with me. And I might do some things you don’t want to know about. So I’d suggest that this is a really bad idea.”

  “Just what I need right now,” she said. “I think. Besides, it would take you a month to find out what I already know, and I won’t tell unless I can come along.”

  “You can be a bitch, darlin’,” I said. “And sometimes you enjoy it, don’t you?”

  Claudia’s happy smile was all the answer I needed. I settled up with the house sitters from fetching Lorna, engaged them for a longer sit, then got down to business.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said as I opened the floor safe. “Dump all your credit cards, IDs, cell phone, and anything with your name on it in the safe.” The safe was where I kept my best fake IDs, gathered and carefully maintained over the years. And real passports, live credit cards, cash, and current driver’s licenses. In case I had to run, I was ready. I’d been ready for years. “And I do mean everything.”

  “What’s that about?” she asked. “If I don’t stay in touch with my mom, she’ll have the National Guard out looking for me.”

  “Use pay phones,” I said, closing the safe. “I don’t want anybody but Ron to know where we are or what we’re doing, okay?”

  “What about your car?”

  I opened the office door to the back garage and turned on the lights to reveal a gray four-wheel-drive Chevy short box pickup, not too old, not too new, not too clean, not too dirty.

  “We’re going in that?”

  “Well, it ain’t your Jag, sweetheart,” I said. “But it’ll leave your ride in the dust. The engine isn’t exactly stock—it’ll do an honest one forty—and the shocks aren’t standard either. Plus, the guy who owns it doesn’t know he owns it.”

  “Jesus,” she groaned. “I’ve always known you were a criminal. What do we do if we have to check into a hotel?”

  I pulled a set of almost perfectly good fake IDs, live credit cards in assumed names, and all my running cash out of the safe, leaving the perfect ones inside, and said, “I’m always ready to run. We’ll figure out something for you on the way. Lost purse or something. It’ll be fine. Fake IDs are easy for good-looking women.”

  “Thank you, I think,” she said.

  “Guys are always looking at your tits,” I said. “Women at your hair. You think Chinese people all look alike? Just look at any bunch of good-looking women all at one time. They all look alike.”

  “Even me?”

  “There ain
’t nobody like you,” I said, meaning it. “You got any cash?” I asked.

  “A couple of thousand in mad money,” she said, “and I can hit the ATM on the way out of town.”

  “That’ll help,” I said.

  “You want to tell me again why we’re running like thieves in the night?”

  “Because we are,” I said. “If I’m right, we don’t want to leave any sort of trail. Unless you just tell me where he is.”

  “Not a chance, cowboy,” she said, her smile young and happy again.

  The pickup was a bonus. I grabbed my traveling gear, the bag with the laptop but without the Browning 9 mm or the Walther .22—if I needed a piece, I could pick it up along the road—a Dopp Kit with some legal meds and some illegal, and said, “Get your bags, lady, and let’s look at some highway.”

  We swapped cars in the garage, then headed south in the middle of the night. That’s all she told me. Head south.

  Since time didn’t seem to be a factor, we hopped over to Missoula to pick up Highway 93, then headed south. We got as far as Hamilton before exhaustion overcame us. We got one room with two beds, already so tired we fell into the beds without even saying good night.

  The rest of the trip was calm and companionable, a long easy drive through the Nevada desert fall, listening to Vivaldi and Zevon, drifting through along miles of the real Old West, the sort of country where jackrabbits carried water bags and gophers stood by the side of the highway, their little paws raised, waiting patiently for the brief breeze of a passing car. Les’s favorite moments when he was a nubbin. I told him we were holding the tiny animals up for gopher pee to get across the desert. Of course, I had to show him a bottle—a warm Pabst passed for gopher pee as far as he was concerned. But he barely chuckled when I mentioned it on the cell. I stopped for a beer, slammed my fist into a dead cotton-wood, and let it pass.

  “We need to go back?”

  “We’ve just started.”

  Ron was on a double murder trial in Billings, and he didn’t have much time for our shenanigans. But he did arrange for a bundle of cash to be delivered at Cactus Pete’s on the Idaho-Nevada border.

  “Jesus,” she said, “what do people do out here?” She was in one of her rodeo queen outfits, lovely enough to sell to a passing rustler. “What can they possibly do?”