Accustomed to the Dark

by Walter Satterthwait

  Fetterman raised his bottle. “Here’s looking at ya, Jim.”

  I raised mine and we clinked glass. We upended bottles, we drank beer. We were bonded for life.

  I nodded toward the bartender. “He’s the wrestler?” I asked Fetterman.

  “Him?” Fetterman guffawed. “I reckon Little Randy couldn’t wrestle himself outta that tent he’s wearing without a derrick and a full crew. Shoot, he must weigh pretty near a ton, bareass naked. And that’s a thought to scare the crows away, ain’t it? Nah, it’s his daddy was the wrestler. Built this place back in the seventies, is what I hear.” He took a hit from his bottle. “What kinda line you in, Jim?”

  “Photography.”

  “No shit,” he said. “Don’t know a damn thing about photography. I’m in horses myself. Know anything about horses?”

  “Not a whole lot.”

  “Lotta people, now,” he said, leaning forward, into the subject, “they’ll tell ya that horses are dumb. I got me a brother, Delbert. Pig farmer. He’s big on pigs, Delbert is. Subscribes to the theory that they’re smarter’n horses. I been tellin’ him for years that horses ain’t dumb, they’re just pure ass ornery. And that’s the truth of it. Most ornery damn creatures on God’s green earth.” He took a hit of beer. “So what kinda photography is that, Jim? Is that like portraits?”

  “Landscapes. I’m doing some work for National Geographic.”

  Thorogood had gotten up. Now he walked toward the two women, holding his glass.

  “You don’t say,” said Fetterman. “Got me about a ton of those, up in the attic at home. Think they’re worth anything?”

  “Hard to say,” I told him. Thorogood and the women were talking. The women laughed. I asked Fetterman, “What brings you to Carlton?”

  “Been here for pretty near a week now. Dickerin’ with a fella ‘bout a string of Appaloosas.” He shook his head regretfully. “Real sweet animals, ever’ one of ’em as pretty as a Paris runway model, but he’s askin’ more for ’em than any kinda horseflesh is worth.”

  Thorogood signaled the bartender and ordered a round of drinks.

  I glanced at my watch. Ten o’clock. I turned to Fetterman. “Sorry, Billy, I just remembered something. I’ve gotta run.”

  Pine Avenue ran parallel to Hillside, a block south. I parked the Cherokee on Pine, across the street from another white frame house. The house was dark and its property backed onto Thorogood’s. I tugged the big Beretta from under the passenger seat, stuck it beneath my belt in back. I left the Jeep and I walked, as though I were out for a moonlight stroll, up the driveway of the house and then around the building, toward the dark stand of trees that hid the house I wanted. The heels of my boots sank into the spongy ground.

  I had just gotten through the trees and I was heading for the back door when, behind me, someone called out, “Freeze, asshole.”

  22

  I FROZE.

  “Hands behind the head.”

  I put my hands behind my head.

  After a moment, from behind me, someone started to pat me down. Armpits, stomach, pants pockets, legs, ankles.

  Maybe he’d miss the Beretta.

  He didn’t. I felt him jerk it away. He said, annoyed, “Look at this. He’s supposed to be carrying a thirty-eight.”

  “He’s fickle,” said another voice. “Turn around, Croft.”

  I turned around. In the dim moonlight, I couldn’t make out their features, but they were both big men. Both held guns, one of the guns being my Beretta. The man with the Beretta was wearing a suit, the other was wearing a dark windbreaker.

  “FBI?” I said.

  “He’s a genius, too,” said the one holding the Beretta.

  “Put your hands down, Croft,” said the man in the wind-breaker. “I’m Special Agent Peterson. This is Special Agent Cooper. What you’re going to do is turn around and walk. You think you can handle that?”

  “Is there a prize?”

  “They said you were a wiseass.” That was Cooper.

  “Just do it,” Peterson told me.

  I turned around and walked, Peterson and Cooper following. I went across the small lawn, around the garage.

  “Keep going,” said Peterson.

  I went up the driveway. “Keep going,” Peterson said. “Across the street. Up to the house over there, to the front door.”

  I walked across the street, down the driveway of still another white frame house, up the brick walkway. Lights glowed behind the drawn curtains.

  At the front door, the other man, Cooper, circled around me and pushed the doorbell. He wasn’t carrying my gun now, and probably he hadn’t been carrying it since we hit the street.

  The door opened. Billy Fetterman said, “Get in here.” His Texas accent was still there, but it had become a lot more subdued. His hat was gone.

  I stepped in, followed by Peterson and Cooper.

  I said, “What’d you decide about those Appaloosas, Billy?”

  He smiled. “National Geographic? Taking pictures of bridges, are we, Mr. Croft?” He nodded to the left. “Go on inside.”

  I said, “Could I see some ID first?”

  Cooper said to Fetterman, “You want me to bounce him around for a while?” He said it casually, as though he were asking about letting out the dog.

  Fetterman smiled and shook his head. “We’re all friends here.” He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet, flipped it open to show me his ID. His name wasn’t Fetterman. It was Cornwell. William Cornwell. “Is that satisfactory?” he asked me.

  “That’s swell,” I said.

  “Now would you mind going into the living room?”

  “My pleasure.”

  I stepped into the big, old-fashioned room. A fringed Persian carpet on the dark-wood floor. Overstuffed embroidered furniture draped with antimacassars.

  “Have a seat,” said Fetterman-Cornwell, pointing to a plump armchair and matching ottoman.

  I crossed the room and sat down. Peterson and Cooper sat on the sofa. Cornwell eased down into another armchair, facing me, and sat back, crossing his legs. Beneath the cuffs of his brown knit pants, he wore shiny brown lizard-skin boots. He said, “You’re supposed to be a moderately intelligent man, Mr. Croft. You do realize that you nearly disrupted a surveillance undertaken by the United States government?”

  “I do now,” I said. “How long have you been on Thorogood?”

  He turned to Peterson and Cooper. “He didn’t get into the house?”

  Cooper shook his head. He was younger than his partner, and less bulky. His hair was black and thinning, Peterson’s was brown and thick. Both were pale, as though they spent most of their time indoors. “We grabbed him just after he came through the trees,” Cooper said. “Piece of cake.” He smiled at me. He had enjoyed saying that.

  “Fine,” said Cornwell. He ran his gnarled brown hand back over his wiry gray hair, turned back to me. “How long have we been on Thorogood? Since Lucero escaped from the prison. Not that it’s really any of your business, but another government agency has had him under surveillance, off and on, for nearly a year.”

  “The DEA?” I said.

  He smiled as though the idea amused him. “Now why would the DEA be watching Thorogood?”

  “Beats me,” I said. “Maybe he was using his father’s trucks to move drugs for Luiz Lucero.”

  Cornwell smiled at Peterson and Cooper, and then he turned back and smiled at me. It was a friendly smile, bright white in the tanned face. “Just how did you find friend Thorogood, Mr. Croft?”

  I considered the question, wondering how Mr. Niederman would feel if the FBI descended upon his house and asked to go through his rogue’s gallery. I decided that Mr. Niederman would be tickled pink. I told them.

  “Thorogood was in Denver in March?” Cornwell asked me. For the first time, he seemed genuinely interested. “With the Miller woman?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Didn’t you say that someone had him under surveillance?”

>   “Off and on, I said.”

  “Ah.”

  “I don’t second-guess other agencies,” said Fetterman. “But we’re handling the case now.”

  “Great,” I said.

  He smiled. It was still friendly, but slightly less so. “Mr. Croft,” he said. “When you pulled up outside there this evening, you gave us, I admit it, quite a little start. But it took us all of thirty seconds to run your license plate and learn who you were. I’ve spoken with Sergeant Ramirez, in Santa Fe.”

  I nodded. I was waiting for the punch line.

  “And I can understand, from what Ramirez said, why you’re so determined to locate Luiz Lucero and Ernest Martinez. I’m not an unsympathetic man. Your partner has been hurt, and you want to do something about it. That’s a very natural response, a very human response. I can appreciate it. That’s why we’re all sitting here in a nice comfortable house, quietly discussing this like intelligent adults.”

  I was still waiting.

  He leaned slightly forward. “But don’t push me, Mr. Croft. You don’t want to push me. And you’ll find that sarcasm comes very close, extremely close, to pushing me. I’m sure you’re aware that we can always conduct this elsewhere, in a somewhat less pleasant atmosphere.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Cornwell smiled. “Come again?”

  “Let’s go. Let’s get to this other atmosphere. There’s probably less horseshit there. But an old cowpoke like you, Billy, I guess you’ve got a real fondness for horseshit.”

  On the sofa, Cooper leaned forward. “You dumb fuck. We’ll break you like a popsicle stick.”

  I smiled. “You could try.”

  Cooper stood up. Peterson looked at him from the couch, mildly curious as to what would happen next.

  “Sit down, Jack,” said Cornwell.

  Cooper glanced at him, opened his mouth, clamped it shut, sat down. His pale face had darkened.

  Cornwell smiled at me and said, “Make your point, Mr. Croft.”

  “We’re sitting here,” I said, “in this nice comfortable house, discussing this like intelligent adults, because you think I know something that might be useful to you, and you think this is the best way to get it out of me. And you’re right. I’m as happy as a clam to cooperate with big time, gee-whiz government agents. I’ll probably gush about it in my memoirs. But don’t try to carrot-and-stick me. You lean on me, I shut up. Maybe you can make me talk, maybe you can’t. You’ll be wasting a lot of time while you find out.”

  “Not that much time,” said Cooper.

  Cornwell held up his hand. “Enough,” he said. He smiled again. “All right. We’ve all flexed our muscles. We’ve all demonstrated that we’re tough and dauntless. Let’s have an end to it. You say you’re willing to cooperate, Mr. Croft?”

  “My pleasure,” I said.

  Another smile, very brief. “Then you can begin by explaining what led you to the woman, Sylvia Miller.”

  Without mentioning names, I told him about Jimmy McBride, and then I told him about the woman who lived across the street from Sylvia Miller.

  “The neighbor,” said Cornwell. “That would be Mrs. Rudolph.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were led to Thomas Thorogood by the photographs of this Mr.…?”

  “Niederman,” I said.

  “Mr. Niederman. Another neighbor.” He nodded. “You seem to have a way with neighbors, Mr. Croft.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  The smile was still more brief this time. “All right. You mentioned a possibility before. That Thorogood was using his father’s trucks to transport drugs. Whatever gave you that notion?”

  “Luiz Lucero uses people. He used Lyle Monroe, up in Denver. Monroe was the black sheep in a rich family. So is Thorogood.” I shrugged. “Seems to me that the best way to use Thorogood is to use his father’s trucks.”

  I was taking credit for the idea given to me by Teddy Chartoff, the Dallas investigator. But I didn’t see any reason why I should tell Cornwell about Chartoff.

  “And how did you learn about his father’s trucks?” Cornwell asked me.

  “I snooped around. That’s what I do.”

  “And you’ve done it with a modicum of success, I must admit.”

  “He was using the trucks,” I said.

  He frowned judiciously before he answered. Finally he said, “Let’s just say we have reason to believe that he may’ve been. Tell me something, Mr. Croft.”

  “What?”

  “It was you who brought in Ernest Martinez, six years ago. How did you locate him then?”

  Sergeant Labbady, in Denver, had asked me the same question. I gave Cornwell the same answer I’d given Labbady. “An old girlfriend of his came to me. Rosa Sanchez. She told me where he was.”

  His girlfriend of the moment, Nancy Gomez, had gone running back to her father when she learned that Martinez had shot two people. Martinez had driven up to Truchas, in the mountains, where he hid in the house of a distant cousin. From there, he called Rosa Sanchez and asked her to bring him some things. She came to me instead.

  Cornwell said, “And this Rosa Sanchez is the same woman that Martinez and Lucero executed last Saturday night in Santa Fe. Along with her husband.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did she divulge his whereabouts to you?”

  “She was upset with him at the time.”

  “Why you, and not the police?”

  “We had a rapport.” And I had paid her, earlier, for the information she provided. She thought that I would pay her for this. She was right.

  “So she told you,” Cornwell said, “and you simply went out and got him.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I understand that Martinez was somewhat bruised when you brought him in.”

  “He fell down.”

  “Several times, according to the medical reports.”

  “He lacked motor skills.”

  Cornwell smiled. “He attempted to sue you, later.”

  “He attempted to. Why don’t you tell me something?”

  “And what might that be?”

  “What was the idea of the Billy Fetterman number?”

  “We couldn’t have you bothering Mr. Thorogood. I decided to keep an eye on you.”

  “What if I’d approached him in the bar?”

  “I would’ve stopped you.”

  He said it as though there wasn’t any question about that. Maybe there wasn’t.

  I said, “So who’s minding the store now? Do you have someone else on Thorogood?”

  “Yes.” He uncrossed his legs and nodded to me. “All right, Mr. Croft. Thank you for your assistance.” He smiled once more. “And what exactly do you plan to do now?”

  I looked from him to Peterson and Cooper. Both were waiting for my answer. I was waiting for it myself.

  Coincidences happen. The cops don’t like them, I don’t like them, but they happen.

  Just then, a phone began to chirp. For a moment I thought it was mine, and then I remembered that mine was still in the Cherokee.

  It was Cooper’s. He reached into his suit coat, pulled it out, tapped a button, put the phone to his ear. “Cooper. Yes, sir. Hold on.”

  He stood, walked across to Cornwell, handed him the phone.

  Cornwell took it. “Yes?” As he listened, his brow tightened. “When …? There’s no doubt at all …? All right. All right, fine.” His brow relaxed and he sat back against the chair. “I understand. Yes. Thank you.”

  He pushed a button, set the phone on the arm of the chair. “Well,” he said. He looked at Cooper and Peterson, frowned. He looked at me. He said, “It seems that this has suddenly become academic. It’s all over.”

  He turned to the other two. “They’re dead. All three of them. Lucero, Martinez, and the woman. Sylvia Miller. An accident in New Orleans.”

  PART FOUR

  23

  NEAR THE NEW Orleans Criminal Courthouse, the six lanes of Tulane Avenue run t
hrough a tired neighborhood of cheap motels, fast-food joints, and bail bondsmen. The signs for the bondsmen claim that they’re fast, too. The courthouse itself is a big building of weathered stone that takes up a whole block, opposite a gas station and a tired-looking Chinese restaurant.

  All the parking places seemed to be occupied by police cruisers. I drove around for a while until I found a spot for the Cherokee across from Police Headquarters, on Broad. I got out and walked back to the courthouse.

  I was tired and hot, and everything seemed slightly unreal. The sidewalks were buckled and crumbling, as though they’d gone through an earthquake. The air was thick and it smelled of car exhaust.

  I passed a large painted mural that displayed the huge faces of women peering out from beyond banana fronds. The faces were stylized and impossibly beautiful, the faces of what a friend once called “feral women”—abandoned at birth and raised by fashion photographers.

  I wondered if I were dreaming. Wondered if I had fallen asleep at the wheel somewhere in Texas, and if all this—the heat, the humidity, that strange mural—were the products of exhaustion and greasy food.

  There had been no seats on the flights from Dallas to New Orleans this morning, and none from Houston. So I had driven here, six hundred and something miles from Clayton. Down Highway 287 to Dallas, where the interchanges surrounding the city made me feel as though I’d wandered into a giant pinball machine, then down I-45 to Houston. From there, I’d picked up I-10 East, heading into the morning, passing the exits for places with evocative names like Beaumont, Mermentau, Lafayette, Plaquemine.

  I’d left Clayton at midnight. It was now two o’clock in the afternoon. I’d stopped only for food and gas.

  And even now I wasn’t sure why I’d come. There was no real point in my being here. I should’ve turned the car around at Clayton and headed back to New Mexico.

  In the car, somewhere between Dallas and Huntsville, I’d discussed it with Rita. We had been out on the patio again, in that bright clear unchanging sunlight.

  “It’s over, Joshua,” she said patiently. “They’re dead. Come home.”

  “It’s over when I see them dead.”