Potshot s-28

by Robert B. Parker

  "He just stared at Pony. He wouldn't admit it later, but I think he was scared. Pony is… my God, Pony is terrifying."

  "I've seen him:"

  "And?"

  "Terrifying," I said.

  "But we've gotten off the track," J. George said. "I really wanted to urge you to go easy on Mary Lou."

  "You bet," I said. "You know anybody named Morris Tannenbaum?"

  J. George leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtful.

  "Morris Tannenbaum," he said.

  "Yes."

  "No. I can't say that I have."

  "Spend much time in Los Angeles?" I said.

  "No more than I must," J. George said. "Will you be able to give Mary Lou a little more space?"

  "Of course," I said. "Sorry I upset her."

  J. George stood and put out his hand.

  "I know, I know," J. George said. "Just trying to do your job. Women are difficult."

  I shook his hand and smiled as if I believed everything he said. Outside I forged bravely through the heat to The Jack Rabbit Inn. Bebe was at a table having lunch with another woman. There were some papers between them. I smiled at Bebe and went to the bar. The bartender came down to me and put a paper doily on the bar in front of me.

  "What can I get you?" he said.

  "Were you working the bar," I said, "when Pony threatened Steve Buckman?"

  "I got nothing to say about that," the bartender said.

  "It's just background," I said. "I'll never quote you."

  I put a $100 bill on the bar. The bartender looked at it, and then palmed it off the bar in a move so expert that the bill seemed to disappear magically.

  "You do and I'll say you're lying."

  "Sure," I said.

  "Yeah. I was here."

  "Tell me about it."

  "Steve's at the bar. This monstrous big dude from the Dell comes in. Him and Steve have an argument. The Dude says to Steve, `You're a dead man.' And walks out."

  "The big dude was Pony?"

  "Yeah."

  The bartender went down the bar and got drink orders from a couple of blond women in tennis whites. He mixed two cosmopolitans and poured them out into two glasses and it came out just right. He put the drinks in front of the blondes, rang the tab, put it in the bar gutter in front of them, and came back down the bar to me.

  "You want something to drink?"

  "Sure, give me a Perrier with a slice of orange in it."

  "You got it," he said and reached under the bar.

  "Ice?"

  "Yeah. Lot of people hear him?"

  "Pony?"

  "Yeah."

  "When he threatened Steve Buckman?"

  "It's my only hundred," I said.

  The bartender grinned.

  "Can't blame me for trying," he said. "Sure, lot of people heard him. Bar was full. All the regulars."

  "J. George?" I said.

  "Taylor?"

  The bartender glanced at Bebe across the room and lowered his voice.

  "Yeah he was here, and his crew. Barnes, Brown, the mayor."

  "Who else?" I said.

  "Christ what am I, a computer? Billy Bates was here with his wife. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. Ratliff the producer. Tom Paglia."

  He put my Perrier down on the little doily. I put a ten on the bar. He grinned.

  "On the house," he said.

  The woman across from Bebe stood up. They shook hands. The woman took some of the papers and left. I moved over to her table as Bebe was sliding the remaining papers into her briefcase. She looked up as I sat down across from her.

  "Well, hello," she said.

  "Hello."

  "I just sold a nice Spanish-style ranch to that woman," Bebe said. "She's from Flagstaff. Sick of the snow, I guess."

  "Hideous," she said. "Nearly everybody wants to sell, and nobody wants to buy, unless they're from out of town and don't know about the Dell."

  "And you don't feel obligated to tell them."

  "No, I don't," she said. "Real estate prices are dropping like a stone. They used to be really high, because there was nowhere to expand."

  "You're in the middle of nowhere," I said. "Why can't you expand?"

  "It's all desert," Bebe said. "We've expanded to the limit of our water supply already."

  "What if you had enough water?"

  "The Dell would ruin sales anyway."

  "What if the Dell were gone?"

  Bebe smiled at me.

  "I'd be selling real estate from early in the morning to really late at night," she said.

  "Anybody buying property these days?"

  "George made a couple of sales to some developer," she said. "I think they'll lose their shirt."

  She paused and smiled and shrugged.

  "But they're consenting adults," she said.

  "Caveat emptor," I said.

  The papers were stashed in her little black briefcase. She zipped the top closed and looked up at me from under her eyebrows.

  "I was a little fuzzy, the last time I saw you," she said. "I shouldn't drink on a light breakfast."

  "None of us should," I said. "But sometimes we do."

  "Did we have a good time?" she said.

  I tried to put a lecherous gleam in my eyes. It wasn't hard. I was good at lecherous.

  "How quickly they forget," I said.

  "Was I alright?"

  "You certainly were," I said.

  I wasn't as good at enthusiasm. But she didn't seem to notice.

  "I hate not remembering. Maybe we should go over it again sometime."

  "Be my pleasure," I said.

  "That's what they tell me," Bebe said.

  "Did you know that Mary Lou knew both Dean Walker and Mark Ratliff in Los Angeles?"

  "I knew about Mark," Bebe said. "I don't think I knew that about Dean Walker."

  "You told me that Mary Lou Buckman was sleeping with both of them."

  "And probably some others," Bebe said. "I knew you'd have trouble believing it. Men are so stupid."

  "How do you know?"

  "About Mary Lou?"

  "And Walker and Ratliff," I said.

  "Dean Walker is merely surmise," Bebe said, "and intuition."

  "And Ratliff?" Bebe smiled.

  "Pillow talk," she said.

  I nodded and we smiled knowingly. Two insiders. Intimates.

  "You mean I'm not the only one?" I said.

  "Almost."

  "He say anything else about her?" I said.

  "Mark? About Mary Lou? Oh yes. Actually it was little annoying. He'd be in bed with me. You know, afterwards. And he'd be blabbing on about how he loved Mary Lou and had followed her to Potshot and would wait forever if he had to… crap like that."

  "You didn't believe him?" I said.

  "Mark's a Hollywood person," she said. "It's hard believe a word he speaks."

  "And he wasn't waiting for her celibately," I said.

  Bebe was good at lecherous gleaming, too.

  "Not likely," she said. "But as soon as he was through boffing me, he'd talk about her."

  "So, she was always on his mind," I said.

  Bebe grinned.

  "She was always on his mind."

  Chapter 49

  I CALLED CAWLEY Dark and talked with him for fifteen minutes. Then I hung up and went out onto the front porch where Tedy Sapp was taking orders and mixing drinks. The sun had set, quite flamboyantly, and the blue twilight was settling around us the way it does. Bernard J. Fortunato had fixed up a tray of cheese and crackers and was passing it around.

  "Bernard went in today and rented the hotel room," Hawk said. "Street side."

  "I told him straight when I reserved it what I wanted," Bernard said.

  "You see the room?" I said.

  "Bet your ass."

  "So Vinnie's in the window with a rifle," Hawk said.

  "Room looks right down on the broad's office," Bernard said.

  "Mary Lou's?"

  "Yeah. Buckman Outfi
tters."

  "So we'll be sure to brace them there," I said. "In front of her storefront."

  "You want us to be surreptitious?" Hawk said.

  "Surreptitious?" Sapp said.

  Hawk shrugged.

  "I educated in head start," Hawk said.

  "Really worked," Sapp said.

  "No reason to be covert," I said.

  "You too?" Sapp said.

  "Nope," I said. "I'm a straight Anglo white guy of European ancestry. We're naturally smart."

  "You missed Bernard," Sapp said.

  "Tall straight Anglo white guy," I said.

  "Hey," Bernard said.

  "Perfect," Sapp said.

  "So we all got shotguns but Vinnie," Hawk said.

  "Sure," I said. "The town fathers hired us to do this. Cops won't interfere."

  "You know that?" Vinnie said.

  "They haven't so far," I said. "What are you going to use from the window?"

  "The Heckler," Vinnie said.

  "Good choice," I said.

  "Of course it is," Vinnie said.

  "I will use a handgun," Chollo said. "Giving me a shotgun is like asking Picasso to paint with a broom."

  Vinnie nodded.

  "Just what I need," I said. "A couple of divas."

  I looked at Bobby Horse.

  "I suppose you want a bow and arrow," I said.

  "Kiowas are flexible," he said.

  We were quiet. Sapp went around refreshing drinks.

  "Try the blue cheese," Bernard said. "Nice lingering bite to it."

  I looked at Hawk.

  "J. George Taylor talked with me today," I said. "Asked me not to annoy Mary Lou."

  "Well, then, you better not," Hawk said.

  "Then I had a club soda with Bebe Taylor," I said.

  "I thought you was going to introduce me," Hawk said.

  "I thought you liked a challenge," I said.

  "Out here getting laid a challenge," Hawk said.

  "She said that it was hard to sell real estate because of the Dell."

  "Un-huh."

  "She said everybody wants to sell, and nobody wants to buy. Real estate prices are dropping like a stone."

  "Sure," Bernard said. "That's the old law of supply and demand. So what?"

  Hawk sat back in his chair and put his feet up on the railing. He had a small drink of gin and tonic.

  "So the natural price for property here been artificially lowered," he said.

  "By the Dell."

  "So who benefits from that?" Hawk said.

  "Anybody wants to pick up some nice bargains."

  Hawk nodded.

  "Wouldn't be the Dell," he said.

  "They acquire it, the property values won't increase," I said.

  "Less they targeting the ex-con market."

  "Maybe they don't care about that," Sapp said. "Maybe they just like living off the carcass."

  "If the town keeps declining," I said, "there won't be any carcass."

  Hawk was nodding his head slowly.

  "But if somebody picked up a lot of the real estate, and got rid of the Dell, then they make a big profit."

  "She said even if it were good the town couldn't expand because of water limitations."

  "But if somebody discovered a new water source?" Hawk said.

  "Bonanza," I said.

  "What'd Mary Lou Buckman used to do in L.A.?"

  "Water resource specialist," I said.

  "Fancy that," Hawk said.

  Chapter 50

  I WAS BACK in Cawley Dark's office with the airconditioning humming steadily. Dark had on a blue oxford shirt today. With him was a red-haired guy with a big Adam's apple.

  "This is Ray Butler," Dark said. "He's the water resource guy for the county."

  Butler and I shook hands. We sat in the two chairs facing Dark's desk.

  "I told Ray about your situation down in Potshot. He was real impressed that I was doing legwork for a Boston shoo-fly."

  "Me too," I said.

  Dark leaned back and made a go-ahead gesture at me with his right hand.

  "What's the water situation in Potshot?" I said to Butler.

  "The Arapaho Aquifer," he said. "Extends from around Salt City in the Sawtooths, maybe eighty-five miles down through Potshot."

  "An aquifer is like an underground river?" I said.

  "More like an underground sponge," Butler said.

  He had a high, sharp voice.

  "Which holds water, and can be caused to yield it through wells or springs. The water seeps through pores and fractures in consolidated rock, or through spaces between the particles if it's unconsolidated."

  "Thank you," I said.

  Leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced over his flat stomach, Dark might have been in a reverie, except that there was a hint of amusement in the way his eyes moved.

  "There are, of course, confined aquifers and unconfined aquifers."

  "Of course," I said. "Is the Arapaho Aquifer sufficient to the needs of Potshot?"

  "Barely," Butler said.

  "Does that limit development?"

  "Of course it does," Butler keened.

  Talking to the likes of me was clearly painful for him.

  "What would happen if the water consumption exceeded the capacity of the aquifer?"

  "It could not recharge at a pace sufficient to the need."

  Everything Butler said sounded like sort of a high-pitched protest.

  "So they'd run out of water."

  "That's what I just said."

  "Is there any possibility that there is another aquifer?"

  "Of course there is. It would be presumptuous to suggest that we know everything about the substrata."

  "Presumptuous," I said. "Is it likely?"

  Butler paused. How to say this to an unscientific moron?

  "It's possible," he said finally.

  "And if there were an increase in the amount of available water," I said. "Then I assume it would support increased development."

  "It would make it possible," Butler said, "where, right now, it is not."

  "Anybody been looking for water down there?"

  "No."

  "How do you know?"

  "In this environment, water is very precious," Butler said. "We cannot permit it to be exploited without supervision."

  "So how would you know," I said.

  "We'd know."

  "How?"

  Butler was silent. It was impossible that this rube had asked him a question he couldn't answer.

  "Do you know how," I said to Dark.

  Dark shook his head.

  "There would be evidence of exploration," Butler said.

  "When's the last time you looked?"

  Again Butler was silent.

  After awhile Dark said, "Well thank you very much, Ray, I don't believe we'll be needing anything else."

  Butler stood and shook hands with me, sourly, I thought, and departed.

  "Ray's never met a man he didn't like," Dark said.

  "Be fun to drink beer with," I said.

  "If you drank a real lot," Dark said.

  "You able to get anyone to check the real estate?"

  " 'Course I did," Dark said. "I'm the goddamned police."

  "And?"

  "And I had somebody go over to the county hall, like you wanted, and look up real estate transactions in and around Potshot. Here's a list."

  Dark handed me the list.

  "Recognize any names?" he said.

  "Couple," I said. "Who's this Saguaro Development Associates?"

  "Thought you'd ask me that," Dark said. He handed me another sheet. "Recognize any names?" he said.

  "All of them," I said.

  I took it and folded it over and tucked it in the inside pocket of my elegant toffee-colored summer silk tweed jacket, which I wore to conceal my somewhat less elegant, blue-barreled handgun.

  Chapter 51

  "We WALKED THROUGH it," Hawk said at breakfast.
"Without the shotguns."

  "Or the Heckler," Vinnie said.

  "I have no shotgun," Chollo said.

  "Artists are so self-absorbed," I said. "You see anything wrong with the plan?"

  "It should be smooth," Hawk said. "Vinnie got a nice view of the street. We do it right we'll be right up against them 'fore they got any idea we there."

  "I want to get a look at Pony," Tedy Sapp said.

  "Be easy to spot him," Hawk said.

  Sapp poured himself more coffee.

  "For crissake, Tedy," Bernard said. "How many cups is that?"

  "Six."

  "Don't you get all jeeped up?" Bernard said.

  "Sure," Tedy said. "It's why I drink it."

  "You learn anything yesterday worth knowing?" Hawk said to me.

  "Potshot can't get any bigger," I said. "Unless there's an additional source of water."

  "Like somebody finds an underground river?" Hawk said.

  I shook my head pityingly.

  "It's a common misconception," I said, "that water flows underground like a river. Most aquifers are better thought of as a giant sponge, which holds the water. One such aquifer, the Arapaho Aquifer, supplies the water currently sustaining Potshot."

  "Anglos are generally dull," Chollo said, "but you senor, you are truly so."

  "So are there any other underground sponges beside the Arapaho thing?" Hawk said.

  "My expert does not know, which makes him very unhappy, but he says it's possible."

  "So if someone found one," Sapp said.

  "And kept their mouth shut," Hawk said.

  "And perhaps purchased some land, cheap?"

  I took my list out of my pocket and spread it on the table. Beside it I put the list of names of people who comprised the Saguaro Development Associates.

  Everybody looked at both papers while I waited, watching enviously as Sapp polished off his sixth cup of coffee.

  "Appears that we employed by Saguaro Associates," Hawk said.

  "J. George Taylor," Bernard read aloud. "Luther M. Barnes, Henry F. Brown, Roscoe B. Land, Mary Louise Allard."

  "Read it again, Bernard," Tedy Sapp said. "It was like listening to music."

  Bernard ignored Sapp.

  "Who's this Mary Louise Allard?" he said.

  "Our own Mary Lou," I said. "Allard is her maiden name."

  Everyone was quiet for awhile.

  Then Vinnie said, "So what the hell does that mean?"

  "Means we're in the middle of some kind of very big swindle," Sapp said.

  "So whose side are we on?" Chollo said.