Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip

by Rehder, Ben

  Marlin didn’t find it unusual at all. When an experienced hunter guides a beginner, most ranch owners place the responsibility for the hunt squarely on the guide’s shoulders. “How did you end up hunting out there?”

  “Vance got sued because of this high fence he wanted to build. Oh, wait—look who I’m talking to. You probably know all about the lawsuit.”

  “Yeah, I’m familiar with it.”

  “Okay, so you know that the suit could’ve set a precedent against high fences.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Vance talked to some of the board members of his hunting club—I guess they figured it was an important case—and they all decided to pitch in. They also gave me a free hunt on each of their ranches, not that I really cared about hunting.” Pritchard let out a rueful laugh. “In fact, out at Chuck’s ranch, that was the first time I ever hunted. It was also the last. I don’t want to get involved with that kind of fiasco again.”

  It took several hours and multiple tequila shots to get the woman named Lucille to warm up a little, but she finally came around. In fact, Red noticed, once they got her to talking, they couldn’t hardly get her to shut up. She’d told them where she was from originally (Dallas) and how many times she’d been married (three). She said she was a home health aide (which was something like a nurse, as far as Red could tell, except she worked at people’s homes instead of at a hospital). She told them what kind of car she drove (a rusty Cutlass Ciera with a bad transmission), why she liked unfiltered cigarettes better than filtered (that extra little kick), and how to cut up an onion without crying (wear swimmer’s goggles).

  Later, they’d moved to a table in the back, and now they were all laughing, singing along to the jukebox whenever an old George Jones or Johnny Cash song came on, having a good time in general. That’s why Red, with a belly full of beer, finally spoke up and said what was on his mind.

  “You know, Lucy…you mind if I call you Lucy?”

  The woman made a funny little twirling gesture with her cigarette and said, “Whatever boats your float.” Red could tell she was as drunk as he was.

  “You know,” he said, “you might could tell that me and Billy Don had our eyes on you earlier. Back when you first came in. D’you see us starin’ at ya?”

  She nodded. “Hard to miss. You boys ain’t too subtle.”

  “Yeah, well, we wasn’t meaning to be impolite or nothin’,” Red said. “See, you’re purty and all, but the truth is, that ain’t the only reason we was looking at ya. The facts is, you look almost zackly like my ex-wife. Billy Don’s ex-wife, too, which is the same woman. Long story. Anyway, you might be a touch classier than her, but other than that, y’all could be sisters.”

  Lucy finally fell quiet, and now she gave Red a long poker stare.

  “In fact,” Red said, “if I remember right, she was from Dallas, too. Right, Billy Don?”

  Billy Don nodded in agreement.

  Lucy took a long drag off her cigarette, then said, “This wife of y’all’s… her name Loretta?”

  Red could feel his eyes popping wide. “Jesus. How on earth did you—”

  “She is my sister,” Lucy said, grimacing, picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue.

  Red was starting to sober up fast.

  “Seriously?” he asked.

  “Ever since when?” Billy Don asked.

  Red shook his head. “What kinda question is that? Since they was born, for Chrissakes.”

  Lucy said, “Actually, Loretta was born a couple years after me, so Billy Don is sorta right. She’s been my sister since I was two.”

  Billy Don was looking smug, and Red tried to ignore it. “Well, where the hell is she?” he asked.

  “Got me,” Lucy said. “Last I heard from Daddy, she was up in Abilene but wasn’t planning on staying.” She took a big drink of beer. “We ain’t close.”

  Red didn’t hear any sadness in her voice at all, and it made him feel bad.

  “There was one thing she told me a few years back that might make y’all feel better,” she said. “Wait, let me tell you something about Loretta.” She drained the rest of her beer, and Red and Billy Don simultaneously signaled to Sylvia for another round. “She kinda made a habit of getting married. I know that’s the pot calling the kettle black, seeing as how I’ve been married three times. But Loretta…well, it was her way of getting by. She’d find some halfway decent guy with a little bit of money, stick with him until the excitement wore off, then get a divorce. She’d usually walk away with a pretty good sack of money. Then she’d just burn through it till the next guy came along.”

  Red wasn’t sure how to take that news. Loretta sure hadn’t married him or Billy Don for their money, because neither of them had any. “How many times was she married?” he asked.

  Lucy shrugged. “Who the hell knows? I lost count.”

  Sylvia arrived with three more beers. Red saw from the clock on the wall that it was nearly midnight. Working the fence line tomorrow was going to be hell with a hangover.

  “But what I was saying,” Lucy continued. “Last time I talked to her was three or four years back. What she told me was, she’d finally found someone she really loved.”

  “I married her four years ago,” Billy Don said.

  “I married her three and a half years ago,” Red said.

  “That’s what I’m getting at,” Lucy said. “I don’t remember if she mentioned a name, but I figure it was one of y’all.”

  Red let that sink in, and then he began to wonder why he wasn’t feeling more heartbroke, hearing news like that. He knew from sad songs and Hallmark cards that he should be filled with regret, longing for things that might have been and all that crap. But he wasn’t. And he figured it was because he was having a hard time taking his eyes off Loretta’s sister.

  Thirty minutes before last call, Lucy said something else that surprised Red. She was slurring pretty good by then, and Billy Don was all but passed out. “You know,” she said, “since we’re gettin’ to be such good friends and all, let me tell you a little secret.” She leaned in over the table, Red to her left, Billy Don on her right. Red could tell that Lucy was about to deliver some big nugget of wisdom, like maybe a foolproof way to steal gas from the convenience store.

  “I don’t make all of my money as a home health aide,” she giggled. “In fact, I’ve got a couple other things that bring in a lot more money.”

  This woman was looking better all the time.

  Billy Don belched softly and his chin settled on his chest, his eyes closed.

  Red said, “Let’s hear ‘em.”

  Lucy looked him in the eye for a long time. “This is all just ‘tween you and me, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She lit a fresh smoke and rambled on for ten minutes solid—and the things she told Red were enough to make him realize he was in the company of a master con artist.

  For starters, Lucy had been operating as a pet psychic for the past six months or so. A pet psychic. “Can you believe that?” she asked. “Can you believe people are that gullible?”

  Red said hell no, he couldn’t believe it, and he decided not to mention that he’d run up a pretty good phone bill calling a late-night TV psychic last month. Madame Crustacean or something like that. Truth was, he could see how an authentic psychic could maybe figure out human-type affairs and all, but talking to poodles and parakeets? He shook his head, like it was all totally ridiculous. Lucy said her clients wanted to believe she could communicate with their animals. That’s what made it so easy, she said. The clients were believers to begin with, which is why they called her.

  But there was more. Lucy’s second husband—this was about fifteen years ago—had been an accomplished scam artist. He’d wheedle his way into an old geezer’s home, get into the attic, then proceed to find “evidence” of termites or a leaky roof or whatever was on the menu that month. Then he’d take a down payment, fill out an official-looking work order (bogus, of course), the
n vanish in the wind.

  “The problem with that,” Lucy said, “is that you’ve gotta move around all the time. People know you’re cheating ‘em, so sooner or later someone’s gonna look hard enough to find you. We must’ve lived in a dozen towns in five years. Gets old real quick. No, the way I see it, there are only two ways to go. One, you come up with a scam where the people don’t know they’re being duped. Like the pet psychic thing. Or two, you pull it off so that they never know who you are anyway. Never even see your face.”

  Red was having trouble following all of this. “How do you do that?”

  Lucy laughed. “All kinds of ways. Let me tell you about an old classic. You start with a list of about a hundred people. They gotta be rich folks, with plenty of extra cash to spare, so maybe you focus on a hoity-toity little neighborhood on the right side of town. Then you send them all an anonymous letter about a football team, like maybe the Cowboys. Okay, in half the letters you say that the Cowboys are gonna win on Sunday. In the other half, you say the ‘Boys are gonna lose. You follow me?”

  “I think so.”

  “So then, after the game, half of the people think you’re pretty smart, right? You predicted the outcome of a pro game. So you send those people another letter, but you split ‘em in half again, same as the first time. Half the letters say Dallas will win, half say they’ll lose.”

  Red was starting to catch on.

  Lucy said, “And you keep doing that every week, splitting it each time, only sending letters to the people who received the right prediction the week before. Pretty soon, they think you’re about as slick as frozen snot. By the time you get down to just one guy left on the list, hell, you’ve already told him what’s gonna happen in six different games. He’s watching his mailbox each week, just dying to see what’s gonna happen next. That’s when you make your move.”

  Red couldn’t help it, he was grinning wide. Lucy was about as clever as a girl could get. “Then you ask ‘em for money,” he said.

  “Damn right, you do. I always say five thousand bucks if they wanna know what’s gonna happen in the game that week. Most of ‘em think it’s a pretty small price to pay for information like that. They start thinking about flying to Vegas and placing a big ol’ bet.”

  “So you’ve done it?” Red couldn’t imagine having the guts to pull something like that off.

  “Yep.”

  “They go for it?”

  “Some of them do. Not a lot, but enough. Plus, you gotta be real careful how you go about picking up the money. Just in case they report you. Feds would nail you big time for that.”

  It was all so simple…and so smart. Red wasn’t sure if he should be disgusted or thoroughly impressed. In his state of inebriation, he went for the latter.

  She told him about some other neat tricks, too, like how to swindle a cashier out of extra change, or how to convince a widow that her late husband ordered a bunch of encyclopedias right before he died. “You look in the obituaries,” she said, “and go from there.”

  Red was starting to realize how much money a person could make if he—or in this case, she—tried hard enough.

  Sylvia hollered out last call, and Red was starting to wonder if he’d get a chance to see Lucy again. He was trying to work up the nerve to ask for her phone number, but it turned out she wanted to see him again—real soon.

  “I’m working on something right now,” she said. “One of my patients—an old guy who’s not doing so good—he’s got a ton of money and nobody to leave it to. Doesn’t even have a will, at least not one that’s valid anymore. And I figure, hey, why should it all go to the state, right? I mean, what right does the government have to it?”

  That made sense to Red.

  “So I’m working on a way to get some of it for myself,” she said. Then she added slowly, “But the thing is, I need some help. I need someone like you to work this thing with me.”

  She gave him that look again—the long stare, almost as if she was questioning his manhood.

  Red glanced at Billy Don, who was snoring like a hooker after a long night. He looked back at Lucy, who was watching him patiently. “Who is this old guy?” he asked, wondering what in the hell he was getting himself into.

  Lucy downed the rest of her beer, stubbed out her cigarette, and said, “His name’s Scofield. Vance Scofield. Senior.”

  14

  LUCAS WOKE EARLY in the motel room because he still had a lot to figure out. Like fake IDs. That was number one on the list. He was trying to decide whether he should try to get a phony set here in Miami, where he had a better chance of finding someone who could supply that sort of thing, or go ahead and make the four-hour drive to Key West. The island was infamous for sheltering all types of refugees—those who were running from the law, and those who simply wanted to leave the past behind. There, he could take his time, live on the cash they had, until he was able to make some connections. Get in with the right group of people, ask a few questions, and don’t rush anything. He figured he was less likely to get caught that way. So that’s what he decided. Maybe make one more stop in Miami to buy some clothes and other supplies, then hit the road.

  Stephanie was breathing softly next to him, still fast asleep. The clock read 7:14.

  She’d calmed down last night, and once again seemed happy about this adventure they were on. He’d told her the only reason the cops were looking for her was to question her. To ask her if she had any idea what had happened to Vance.

  He thought there was a pretty good chance he was right.

  Buford and Little Joe woke early in the motel room because they still had a lot to figure out. Like getting Colby to talk.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” Joe said from the other bed. “We just go back to his place, stick a gun in his mouth, and tell him what we want. Do it real fucking easy that way. You always say the best plans are the simple ones.”

  “Yeah, but it could get messy real quick,” Buford said. He’d already followed that line of thought out to the end. He’d lain awake last night pondering all sorts of possibilities, and nothing had panned out. “What if he’s got the negatives stashed away in a safe-deposit box?”

  “What if he does?”

  “Think about it. Once he gets into that bank, he’s safe again. He figures we’re not gonna blow him away inside a bank, right? So all of a sudden, he’s back in charge. Plus, he woulda seen our faces, and that ain’t no good.”

  “He’s already seen our faces.”

  “No, I mean seeing our faces and knowing we’re the bad guys.”

  “Whatsisname, the doctor the other day, he saw our faces.”

  “That was different.”

  “How was it different?”

  Buford didn’t have the patience for this.

  Joe said, “I’m just trying to learn something, is all.”

  “Winsted knew he was in the wrong. Man owed us money, no way around it. Plus, he couldn’t go to the cops, not without a lot of bad publicity. Thing like that wouldn’t look good for a man in his position. But it’s more than that. It’s more about the type of person we’re dealing with.”

  Joe had a vacant expression on his face, and Buford knew he wasn’t following the logic.

  So Buford said, “This guy Colby, he isn’t like the others at all. The way he’s going about it all—the things he’s saying to Herzog, the things he’s doing—he’s more like you and me. He’s a cat, not a mouse.”

  Joe nodded, and Buford wondered if he really understood. “What we gonna do, then?” Joe asked.

  “Hell, Joe, that’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

  Buford had the color TV tuned to CMT, watching videos with the volume turned all the way down. Brad Paisley was on there right now, singing his head off without making a sound. Buford handled a few guys like that—talented as hell, and they could write the shit out of a song, but so far, they couldn’t get that one lucky break. Or, to be precise, Buford couldn’t get it for them. Nashville was a
n incestuous little town, and if you were an outsider, you didn’t have much chance at all. There were times, sitting across the table from some label exec, he wanted to reach across and grab the guy by the hair. Start whacking his head on the table until he got that smug goddamn look off his face. Wouldn’t work, though. Even if he did it for real, all it would get him was arrested. He had to play by their rules, even if it meant being excluded forever.

  Joe said, “Sounds like we need something besides just whacking him upside the head. Or maybe shooting him in the foot.”

  Buford reached to the nightstand and grabbed a cigar. He lit up and said, “Yeah, something a little more clever than that. We can’t go at him head-on.”

  They sat in silence for fifteen minutes. Buford was at a loss. Every idea he had ultimately involved beating Colby until he cooperated. Violence, pure and simple. The kind of stuff Buford was good at. But this required a smarter approach.

  Then Joe surprised Buford by spitting out a damn good idea. Simple as hell, but good.

  Marlin called Garza from home first thing Thursday morning, checking in.

  “Getting back to your regular routine?” Garza asked.

  “Pretty much. Unless you need an extra hand with Lucas.”

  “That’s the problem,” Garza said. “There’s nothing we can do—not until we find him.”

  “Then I’ll be out all morning,” Marlin said. “If you hear anything from Austin, catch me on the radio, will ya? I’d like to hear what the autopsy says.”

  “Will do. It could be this afternoon, but I’m guessing tomorrow’s more likely.”

  Marlin hung up and walked outside to his truck, content to be returning to his normal duties. He drove the quiet back roads of the county and stopped at several hunting camps. The weather was crisp and beautiful, the temperature in the low seventies, big white clouds hanging in the sky like balls of cotton. The toms were strutting, and several of the hunters had had some luck. All the birds had been properly tagged.