The Fourth Durango

by Ross Thomas

  “All part of the trend, I guess,” Adair said as he watched Merriman Dorr cut the engine and climb down from the Cessna. “The small-town train depots were the first to go, then the bus stations and now we’re getting ghost airports.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to come along?” Vines said.

  “I think one of us at a time’s about all Dannie can handle.”

  “Don’t expect too much, Jack.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t expect anything at all.”

  “All I expect is a visit with my last living blood relative.”

  Merriman Dorr, now no more than twenty feet away from the Mercedes, wore a brown leather flight jacket that Vines thought was either very old or the kind that was advertised as being “pre-distressed.” He also wore dark aviator glasses, chinos, cowboy boots and a blue Dodgers baseball cap. When he was fifteen feet away, Dorr said, “That runway’s a bitch.”

  “That mean we can’t take off?” Adair said almost hopefully.

  “I can take off from anything I can land on. You ready?”

  Adair nodded.

  “Then let’s go,” Dorr said, turned and started walking back toward the Cessna. Adair gave Vines a good-bye shrug and also headed toward the airplane, swinging his black cane.

  Vines watched the takeoff from behind the wheel of his Mercedes. The Cessna headed out over the Pacific and turned south. When he could no longer see the airplane, Vines started the Mercedes and drove back to Durango.

  He stopped first at a drugstore where he bought a can of Planters mixed nuts and two Baby Ruth candy bars, which would be his supper. To help him sleep, he bought a paperback novel by an author whose previous books had dealt with slightly depraved, extremely sensitive southerners to whom nothing much, good or bad, ever happened. In case the novel failed to put him to sleep, Vines stopped at a liquor store and bought an extra bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label.

  It was 6:20 P.M. when he reached the cream and green Victorian house. Vines parked in the street behind the Aston Martin and watched Dixie Mansur get out of it and walk back to his Mercedes. She wore white slacks and a dark blue cable-knit cotton sweater with a deep V-neck.

  When she reached the Mercedes she bent down so she could speak to him through the open window. “Parvis made contact,” she said.

  “Already?”

  “Already.”

  “You’d better come in and tell me about it.”

  “In the car?”

  “The house.”

  Dixie Mansur straightened up, looked over the roof of the Mercedes at the old three-story showplace, bent down again and asked, “Who’s home?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You have anything to drink?”

  “Bourbon.”

  “One of these days,” she said, “you might buy a bottle of Scotch.”

  Vines gave her a tour of the downstairs. She was particularly taken with the parlor’s dark heavy furniture and fat porcelain lamps. “It’s like a movie set, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Vines said. “I’ve never been on a movie set.”

  In the kitchen they emptied a tray of ice into a bowl, found two glasses, refilled the tray with water and put it back in the refrigerator’s freezer. As they walked up the old carved oak staircase to the second floor, Dixie Mansur said, “I wouldn’t want to live here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too many memories.”

  “What memories?”

  “Of what happened before I was born,” she said. “I don’t like to think anything much happened before that.”

  In Vines’s room they put the whiskey, the ice, the glasses, the mixed nuts and the candy on the walnut dresser. Vines placed the novel on the bedside table next to the small radio. Dixie Mansur looked around, inspecting everything, and said, “Where’s Adair’s room?”

  “Down the hall,” Vines said as he dropped ice cubes into the glasses, added whiskey and went into the bathroom for water. When he came back Dixie Mansur was seated on the bed, leaning against its headboard. He handed her a drink and said, “Tell me about it.”

  She tasted her drink first. “When we got back to Santa Barbara this afternoon, Parvis started working the phone. He made about a half dozen calls, maybe more, and was about to make another one when the other phone rang-his really private phone.”

  “And?”

  “And it was them or him. Whoever.”

  “You listened?”

  “He shooed me out.”

  “But you listened to those other calls he made.”

  “I got to listen to what he said but not to what the people he called said.”

  “What kind of pitch did he use?”

  “I only heard one of them.”

  “You said you listened to them all.”

  “He only spoke English once. All the other times he spoke Farsi-you know, Persian.”

  “What about the call that came in on his really private line-the bingo call?”

  “It started out in English.”

  “And switched to Farsi?”

  “I don’t know. He was still talking English when he shooed me out.”

  “But you did hear that one call he made in English, right?”

  She nodded.

  “What’d he say?” Vines asked. “I mean, did he start off, ‘Hey, Al, have I got a sweet one for you’? What I’d like to know is exactly what he said.”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust him?”

  “Since it’s my neck, I’m curious.”

  “I can’t remember exactly what he said. Nobody could.”

  “As close as possible.”

  “Well, he didn’t ask for anybody after the call was answered. He began by saying this is me-except he said, ‘This is I’ or maybe ‘It is I, Parvis.’ Then he said something about having extremely valuable information about certain officials in a southern California community, well known for its isolation, who were willing to part with two of their-I think he called them ‘guests’-providing they-and I guess he was talking about B. D. and Sid-were reimbursed for their effort or risk or something like that. Then Parvis listened for a while and said, ‘One million firm.’ Then he said, ‘Please see what you can do’ and good-bye.”

  “What about when the bingo call came in?”

  “He shooed me out, like I said. But when it was over he called me back in. He told me he’d made contact and it was important that you and Adair know so you could get ready. But he didn’t want to call you and go through the hotel switchboard. And since he had to stay by the phone, he told me to drive over and tell you and Adair that he’d made contact. I asked him what if I couldn’t find either of you, and he told me to keep looking till I did. Where is Adair anyhow?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Seeing some people.”

  “When’ll he be back?”

  “Late.”

  “Mind if I wait for him?”

  “Where?”

  She patted the bed. “Here-unless your landlady objects.”

  “She won’t.”

  “When’ll she be back?”

  “Around two-thirty.”

  “Then we’ve got plenty of time, don’t we?” Dixie Mansur said, putting her drink down and slipping the dark blue cotton sweater off over her head and dropping it on the floor.

  Convinced, for some reason, that she had never worn a brassiere in her life, Vines sat down next to her, put his own drink on the bedside table next to the small radio and kissed her. After the long bourbon-flavored kiss finally ended and Vines was unbuttoning his shirt, he said, “Is this also Parvis’s idea?”

  “Would you care if it was?”

  “Not in the least,” Kelly Vines said.

  Chapter 28

  After the Cessna landed on the private dirt airstrip a mile or so south of the Ventura Freeway near the Kanan Dume Road in Agoura, Jack Adair decided it was best not to ask who owned either the strip or the
fancy new Land-Rover that was waiting for them, its ignition key tucked behind a sun visor.

  “Don’t suppose you know where this Altoid nut farm is?” Merriman Dorr said as he started the Land-Rover’s engine.

  “I gave you the address.”

  “Out here in the boonies, an address seldom does much good.”

  Adair shrugged. “We could ask somebody.”

  “I never ask directions.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because where I’m going’s never anybody’s business.”

  When Dorr finally found the road they wanted on a Thomas Brothers map, they crossed over the Ventura Freeway, heading north. A mile or so farther, Dorr turned left onto a narrow asphalt road with no shoulders that snaked up into some round drought-seared hills. The tan hills were sprinkled here and there with clumps of green oaks. But even the deep-rooted oaks, Adair thought, were beginning to look thirsty.

  Adair was surprised that there was no chain-link fence surrounding the Altoid Sanitarium. At first glance, the place resembled an exclusive country club that somehow had misplaced its tennis courts and golf course. There was a fence of sorts that ran around what he guessed to be fifteen acres of rolling grounds, but it was a benign split-rail fence, useful for decoration and property lines, but useless against humans, rabbits, coyotes or reasonably determined deer.

  Whoever had designed the sanitarium had managed to save many of the oaks. The gravel drive that went between a pair of fieldstone pillars and on up to the sanitarium’s main entrance took sudden zigs and zags to avoid at least nine of the old trees whose trunks had been whitewashed.

  The Land-Rover stopped in front of the recessed entrance door that was the size of a small drawbridge and fashioned out of thick redwood planks bound by hammered iron bands. Next to the door was a polished brass plate, no larger than an envelope, with small engraved black letters that read, “The Altoid Sanitarium.” Below that, in smaller and, if possible, even more diffident letters, was the mild request, “Please Ring Only Once.”

  “How long d’you think you’ll be?” Merriman Dorr asked.

  “An hour. Not more.”

  Dorr looked at his watch, a workmanlike stainless-steel affair with a sweep second hand that Jack Adair somehow found reassuring. “It’s six fifty-five now,” Dorr said. “I’ll be back for you at eight sharp, okay?”

  “Fine,” Adair said, climbed down from the Land-Rover, went up the two steps and rang the bell exactly as the brass plate suggested.

  Danielle Adair Vines, the thirty-five-year-old mental patient who sat at the far end of the small conference table in the cozy room with the big picture window, looked not much different to Jack Adair from the daughter he had last seen more than fifteen months ago. Paler, he thought, and not nearly as animated or maybe frenetic. But no big change really, which is exactly what that resident psychiatrist just told you. Nicely stabilized, he said. We soon expect marked progress.

  Adair nodded and smiled at his daughter as he took a seat at the other end of the table. “How’re you feeling, Dannie?”

  She smiled back at him and said, “Who are you? Do I know you?”

  “I’m Jack.”

  “Jack?”

  “Jack Adair.”

  “I’m feeling very well, thank you, Jack.”

  “That’s wonderful. Anything you need?”

  “No. I don’t believe so. Why?”

  “Kelly sends his love.”

  “You mean Mr. Vines?”

  “That’s right. Kelly Vines.”

  “Mr. Vines is such a silly man. He comes to see me almost every month, I think. Sometimes he says he is Kelly Vines and sometimes he says he is someone else. Once he said he was a movie actor but I didn’t really believe him.” She smiled. “He’s such a silly man.”

  “Do you get many other visitors?”

  “The coyotes come sometimes. And the deer. The deer will come almost up to this window but the coyotes don’t come nearly so close as that.”

  Adair nodded his appreciation of the visiting wildlife. “Did you ever get a visit or a call from Soldier Sloan?”

  “Who?”

  “Soldier P. Sloan.”

  “Whatever does the ‘P’ stand for?”

  “Pershing.”

  “I remember him.”

  “Then he did visit you.”

  “He died.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Before I was born.”

  “Who died?”

  “John Joseph ‘Blackjack’ Pershing. Born eighteen sixty. Died nineteen forty-eight.”

  Danielle Adair Vines rose slowly from her chair, clasped her hands loosely in front of her and, Adair thought, suddenly looked closer to thirteen than thirty-five. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin slightly and began to recite.

  “‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death,’ by Alan Seeger, born eighteen eighty-eight; died nineteen sixteen.” She cleared her throat again. “‘I have a rendezvous with Death / At some disputed barricade / When Spring comes back with rustling shade / And apple-blossoms fill the air.’”

  She smiled shyly at Adair. “I know another one about the war your friend General Pershing fought in. It’s called, ‘In Flanders Fields.’”

  “I think I know that one,” Adair said. “It’s also very nice. Very moving.”

  She sat back down in the chair and placed her still folded hands on the table. “Will Mr. Vines come to see me again?” she asked. “He’s such a silly man.”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  “And will you be coming back?”

  “If you like.”

  “I’ll have to think about it. You’re not silly like Mr. Vines, but I still have to think about it. And I am so very sorry about your friend.”

  “Who?”

  “The one who died. General Pershing.”

  “Thank you, Dannie,” said Jack Adair as he rose. “That’s very kind of you.”

  The resident psychiatrist was Dr. David Pease, a forty-three-year-old twice-divorced Jungian, who held a twenty-percent interest in the Altoid Sanitarium. He wore a green jogging suit and had a wedge-shaped head, some thinning curly gray hair and a pair of sooty eyes that blinked so rarely that Adair was almost willing to believe they had been painted on his face.

  “Dr. Altoid still with you?” Adair asked.

  David Pease shifted in the chair behind his desk, didn’t blink, twitched his mouth and said, “Like Marley, Dr. Altoid has been dead these seven years.”

  “Died rich, I bet.”

  “Comfortable.”

  “How many more months do you think my daughter will have to spend here at six thousand dollars per month?”

  “We can’t provide you with a timetable, Mr. Adair.”

  “What about a guess-even a wild surmise will do.”

  Dr. Pease shook his head, the unblinking eyes never leaving Adair’s face. “If I guessed, you’d take it as prediction. And if it were wrong, you’d understandably hold me to account.”

  “She’s out of it, isn’t she?” Adair said. “She’s floating around out there in her own private galaxy.”

  “She’s much better than she was.”

  “She doesn’t recognize her own father.”

  “She must have her reasons.”

  “Or her husband.”

  “She recognizes Mr. Vines now. But not as her husband. She thinks of him as a harmless eccentric who visits her once a month.”

  “Can you cure her?”

  “We can help her. We obviously have helped her.”

  “What if the money runs out?”

  That made Dr. Pease blink. “Is that likely?”

  “Considering that her father’s just out of jail, her husband’s disbarred and her brother’s dead, it’s what you might call a real possibility.”

  “What about her mother?”

  “Her mother can’t come up with seventy-two thousand a year.”

  “We’ll keep Danielle as long as we can, of course. And if it sh
ould ever prove to be no longer possible, we will, if you like, see that she’s accepted by a well-managed state facility.”

  “I didn’t know there were any well-managed state facilities.”

  “Some are better run than others-like everything else.”

  “How long would the state keep her?”

  “Until it’s determined she’s no longer a danger to herself or to others.”

  “That could be a week or ten days, couldn’t it?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t try to pin me down, Mr. Adair.”

  Adair rose. “Either Vines or I will be here with the money on the fifteenth as usual.”

  Dr. Pease also rose until he reached his full height, which was a stooped six-foot-four. “She’s worth every cent, Mr. Adair.”

  Jack Adair studied the unblinking Pease for several seconds, nodded and said, “Well, I suppose none of us reared our daughters to be bag ladies, did we?”

  Adair waited for Merriman Dorr in the sanitarium’s reception area, which resembled the lobby of a very expensive residential hotel. As he sat, shifting restlessly in a deep wingback chair, Adair fretted about his daughter, longed for a drink and repeatedly ran Soldier Sloan’s cryptic notation through his mind: C JA O RE DV. But he could come up with nothing better than his original interpretation: See Jack Adair alone regarding Danielle Vines.

  At exactly eight o’clock he hurried out the sanitarium’s front door just as the Land-Rover pulled to a stop. Adair climbed into the front passenger seat and was turning around, reaching for something in the rear, when Dorr asked, “How’d it go?”

  “Lousy,” Adair said, facing the front again, the black cane in his right hand.

  “So we don’t stay overnight or anything?”

  “No,” Adair said, twisting the cane’s handle to the right rather than the left. “We go back.”