The Deader the Better

by G. M. Ford

  “Jesus…look,” he cried. The crowd sucked air. A woman’s voice said, “I’m gonna be sick.”

  I skirted the crowd, crossing the highway half a minute before a red and white aid car came rocketing up the road. I stopped by Boris. “Just stay close and meet them wherever Harold tells you. Then get them back to the ranch in a hurry.”

  “Amazeeeing,” he said with a smile.

  30

  “YOU WERE RIGHT,” NARVA SAID. “A CLASSIC PENCIL dick. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women.” She pulled a black leather day planner from her purse. “I felt bad about what you wanted me to do until I met the guy. What a sleaze. Trying to tell me he and his wife have an arrangement. We’re having dinner tomorrow night.”

  I told her about how Tressman had canceled his date with June.

  “What an asshole,” she said.

  She leafed through the day planner. “The non-Indian property is owned by four parties.” Turned another page.

  “Rough and Ready, Inc., owns the five hundred acres that adjoin the ocean. The estate of Frau Tressman two hundred. Gretchen Peabody owns a hundred sixty-five acres. And Nancy Weston the other hundred. That adds up to…nine hundred sixty-five acres.”

  “Plus the thirty-five for the homestead.”

  “A round thousand, then.”

  “What’s Rough and Ready, Inc., and who’s Gretchen Peabody?”

  “Rough and Ready…” She licked her index finger and turned the page. “That one’s interesting. That’s the original name of the town. Back in the s. Used to be…that same thousand acres was the land that was originally incorporated as the city of Rough and Ready, Washington. Lasted two years, then they gave it up and moved the town to its present location.”

  “So who owns it?”

  “The estate of Hattie Sparks,” she said.

  “Who is?”

  “No way to tell. Nobody has ever filed for the estate. As a matter of fact…”—she flipped the page—“four months from now—May tenth—if still unclaimed, the estate reverts to the state of Washington.”

  “Gretchen Peabody?”

  “I didn’t have time. They close the office at four o’clock. But”—she held up a finger—“it’s also interesting that two years ago a total of eleven people, not four, owned that block of property. The four present players purchased three of the plots for cash and foreclosed on three others.” She read me a list of names and the number of acres they’d owned. She explained how the four remaining principals had each approximately doubled their holdings in a period of twentyseven months. “Looks like they ran the same delinquent tax number on those people that they did on your friend,” she said.

  “Until the last holdout was Ben Bendixon and his thirtyfive-acre homestead,” I said. Which led right back to the question of why Bendixon would repeatedly refuse offers in the three-hundred-thousand-dollar range and then, out of the blue, sell out to J.D. for a third of the price. She closed the book. “Question is, why bother?” she said.

  “This town barely has real estate values, Leo. You can buy anything in this valley for ten cents on the dollar. Comparable undeveloped property, no utilities, no access, is going for three hundred an acre. Tops. The only valuable piece is this one, because it’s so unique and it has access and recreational possibilities.”

  Shouting from outside in the yard: “Leo. Leo, ya gotta see this,” Ralph yelled.

  Boris, the Boys and the Blazer had come rolling down the driveway about a half hour after I’d arrived. Boris wearing an insane grin. Ralph wearing nothing but an ancient pair of argyle socks and a hospital gown. I dug through J.D.’s stuff and came up with a set of clothes that fit. I didn’t figure J.D.’d mind. And as for Ralph, secondhand was about four hands sooner than he usually came into clothes, so he was as happy as a clam.

  I could just see the top of Harold’s head as he moved across the bottom of the boat ramp. Narva and I crossed the lawn. Boris had a fish on, or more accurately, the fish had Boris. He stood with his knees flexed, leaning back against the singing line, the pole bent nearly double. The pitch of the stretching line got higher.

  “Loosen the drag,” I shouted. He turned my way.

  “Vat?”

  I jogged down the ramp. Boris was moving away from me, giving ground as the big salmon tried to get around the corner and head back for the ocean. I worked my way among the rocks until I was in front of him, steadied the rod for a second and turned the silver knob on the side of the reel until the fish began to ratchet off some line. The rod straightened a bit and began to bounce at the tip as the fish shook his head. The line stopped singing. Only the rasp of the drag scratching above the sound of the water.

  “When he runs, let him,” I said to Boris. “The minute he stops, start pulling him in. Don’t let him rest.”

  “Vat I got here?” he asked.

  “Dinner,” I said.

  Twenty minutes later, he had whatever it was about halfway in when the RV showed up, Carl at the wheel, easing it slowly along the side of the house and then backing it up against the kitchen wall. Floyd, Kurtis and Robby piled out and joined the cheering section down on the riverbank. Carl used the hydraulic lift to lower himself onto the grass and then came purring over. I introduced him to Narva.

  “What’s he got on there?” he demanded.

  “Probably a big king salmon,” I said.

  About thirty pounds. So fresh from the ocean, it still had a trio of sea lice attached to its sides. Boris knew how to clean fish, so I let him have at it. Carl and Robby were giving Narva the two-dollar tour of the RV. Kurtis was in his cabin taking a shower.

  Floyd nudged me. “You on a roll with women, Leo. This one here’s an even tighter-looking unit than the other one.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m having to beat ’em off with a stick.”

  Without charcoal, we had to burn wood in the barbecue for the better part of two hours before we worked up a bed of coals we could work with. I sliced the lemons, diced the garlic and then stuffed it all into the cleaned salmon, wrapped the whole thing in foil and stuck it on the grill. Twenty-five minutes a side. Robby cooked a batch of rice. Kurtis made a salad. The Boys commandeered the white plastic chairs from the front porches of the cabins. Just like regular folks. We sat in a rough circle on the lawn. A perpetually adolescent private eye, two drunks, two thugs, two wiremen, a burglar and a call girl, eating salmon and salad and rice from paper plates and loving it. Drinking beer and talking about how you forget about the heavens when you live in the city. Pointing out stars and constellations to one another until Carl pulled a thick bone from his plate. Held it up for all to see.

  “Good thing I didn’t trust you,” he said to me.

  “Yeah…you’re such a trusting soul,” Robby said.

  “Another illusion shattered,” I added.

  Floyd speared a forkful of salad. “Nobody in their right mind trusts anybody else.”

  “I do,” said Ralph.

  “My point exactly,” said Floyd.

  “Floyd’s right,” Kurtis offered. “As long as love is conditional, true trust isn’t possible.”

  Floyd looked confused. “Did I say that?”

  “You learn to trust your instincts,” Narva said. “If you learn to pay attention to your intuitions, the rest takes care of itself.”

  Floyd said, “I meant that what you do is to arrange your life so it’s not an issue.”

  Kurtis shuddered. “How barren. What kind of life is that?”

  “The kind where you stay alive,” Floyd said.

  “Family,” Boris said around a mouthful. “You can only trust your family.”

  I was thinking of that old B. B. King line about how nobody loved him but his mama, and how she could be jivin’, too, when Narva pointed her fork at me.

  “What about you, Leo? You trust people?”

  “I guess I’m in the middle somewhere. I figure you can trust the people you know to act like themselves.”

  “But people change
,” she said.

  “Not fundamentally,” Kurtis said. “They may cope more effectively, but they don’t change in any real sense.”

  “Even when they cope worse, they’re still the same,” said Harold.

  “See?” said Kurtis.

  “Shit,” said Carl. “I—”

  An electronic cheep stopped him midphrase. Then another. Robby dropped his plate and hustled to the RV. Two more loud bird sounds. Narva looked confused. I held a finger to my lips. Robby’s head poked out the door. “We’ve got company,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Five, maybe six targets.”

  Boris and Floyd sprinted for the corners of the cabin where they’d left their rifles. I took Narva, the Boys and Kurtis and stuffed then into the RV and then went into the house, got my automatic and doused the lights. I heard Robby’s voice.

  “Six for sure.”

  I saw the blue muzzle flash before I heard the shot. The first slug ripped though the plastic covering the bedroom window and then slammed into an interior wall. I duck walked into the bathroom, where I steadied my arm on the window ledge and let loose two rounds in the general direction of the woods. And then blue dots danced all along the edge of the cut amid the sounds of high-powered ammo tearing into wood, and then all hell broke out as Floyd and Boris cut loose, firing tracers in a deadly stream of green light, filling the air with the sharp sounds of their fire. I took aim and let go with two more rounds. Boris moved his fire along the tree line like a hose. I heard a scream, high-pitched and shrill like a woman’s and then the shooting from the woods stopped, the claps of gunfire replaced by a series of shouts and the sound of broken branches and the guttural grunts of strain as our would-be attackers fought their way uphill through the forest. Floyd emptied another clip. This time well over their heads. Boris reloaded and sprayed the tree line again. When he finished, and the air settled back into place, the sounds of slamming doors and racing engines could be vaguely heard from up on the road. Boris had that crazy smile again. “I doan teenk dey coming back,” he said.

  31

  TUESDAY 9:03 A.M.

  CAMERA 1—TRESSMANMARK TRESSMAN HELD THE PHONE CLOSE TO HIS MOUTH, HIS knuckles tight and white on the receiver. “Get a hold of yourself, Emmett. Nobody dragged you into this.” He listened intently for a moment. “Don’t even talk that way,” he said quickly. “You listen to me…no…I said no.” Listening. “Of course you can…now you listen to me…” Took a deep breath and set the receiver back in the cradle. Picked it up again. Put it back down. It rang.

  “Yeah. I just spoke to him.”

  Robby handed me another set of earphones and pointed to Nancy Weston on the screen. “He’s out of control, Mark. You know he had an accident. Hit some man out in front of the Country Corner.”

  “I heard.”

  “Something has to be done.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She put a hand to her throat; her voice rose. “What it means is that I’ve spent some of my prime years here. Doing my end. Putting this together.”

  “As have we all,” Tressman said.

  “Which is why something has to be done. I’m not getting stuck here, Mark. Loomis is my ticket out of here and I’m taking it.”

  On one screen, Nancy Weston banged the phone down hard. On the other monitor, Mark Tressman winced, depressed the button and dialed. Robby zoomed the camera in. Last four numbers were .

  “We need to talk,” Tressman said.

  Carl rolled back from the control console. “I hear sphincters tightening.”

  “First call was Polster.”

  “You always had him made for the weak link.”

  “Question is, will he blow up before Friday?” I said. I walked to the back of the RV, popped open the door and stepped outside. Deep gray clouds rolled in from the west. The air was thick with moisture, which collected on the cheeks like dew. Floyd, Boris and the Boys were back at the homestead. After the scene yesterday, the Boys were used up. No way I could let anybody catch sight of them again. Kurtis was down in room nine watching television. Narva was back at the Records office, trying to get a line on Rough and Ready, Inc., and Gretchen Peabody.

  TUESDAY 9: A.M.

  CAMERA 1—TRESSMANTressman leaned back in his chair. Folding and unfolding his fingers over his chest. Nathan Hand was parked in the same chair Narva had occupied yesterday.

  “I think Emmett’s going to be a problem,” Tressman said.

  “Coming from you, that makes me nervous,” Hand said.

  “He said something this morning to the effect that whoever comes clean first can expect the best treatment from the law.”

  Hand pulled his hat from his head and put it over his knee.

  “He said that?”

  “Unfortunately, he did.”

  “You know he had an accident yesterday.”

  “I heard.”

  “Old guy he hit disappeared from the hospital,” Hand said. Tressman sat forward. “We don’t have any liability, do we?”

  Nathan Hand reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. “Not unless you consider this a liability,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “It was in the pocket of the old guy’s pants.”

  “The one Emmett hit?”

  Hand nodded and tossed the paper onto the desk. Tressman read out loud. “New gray Honda Civic. Nine eight two. Dee dee gee.”

  “That’s Emmett’s car,” Hand said.

  “Why would he be carrying this?”

  “You tell me,” Hand said.

  They sat staring at one another for a minute. Tressman began to nod his head.

  “The possibilities here aren’t good,” he said finally. Hand thought it over and then reached for the phone. Robby zoomed in. Hand turned the phone his way. “Shit,”

  muttered Robby.

  “We’re going to have to play our hand,” the sheriff said into the phone.

  I looked over at Robby and Carl. Head-shaking. Not the mayor. Not Weston. They were all accounted for on screen. Sure as hell not Polster.

  “Because Emmett’s coming apart.” He listened with a disgusted expression on his face. “And don’t you know I’m pretty darn tired of hearing about it, too.” He didn’t listen long. “Yeah and maybe some damn fools just put way too much stock in their damn pets. You act like I was supposed to know.” Silence. “You’re right,” he said after a moment.

  “Let’s stay in the present.” He listened again. “Just the way we talked about yesterday. It takes care of both problems at the same time.” Silence, as Hand listened intently.

  “I’d sure like to know who’s on the other end,” Carl said.

  “Got movement on car five. That’s Polster,” Robby said. The camera at the top of the parking lot followed Polster’s Honda a third of the way down the street. He signaled and turned right. Out of sight.

  “He lives about three blocks west of there,” I said.

  “I was him, I’d lock the doors,” said Robby.

  “While I was calling for airline tickets,” Carl added. No matter how I massaged it, Polster wasn’t my problem. As far as I was concerned, no matter what happened, he wouldn’t be getting anything he didn’t deserve. You betray a trust and you put yourself into a world where you can’t expect to rely on anything more tangible than your own animal cunning. I got to my feet. “Anybody want coffee?” Robby belched a no. Carl rubbed his diaphragm. “That shit Monty makes…,”

  he said, “I’ll pass.”

  Wetter outside now. Hard to tell whether it was misting or whether the water was part of the air. Either way you ended up wet without the sensation of something falling from above. I kicked through the carpet of leaves and let myself into the back door of the motel. Monty was in his red leather lounger, playing machine gun TV, flipping through the channels so fast I wasn’t able to identify anything except a snippet of the Home Shopping Network. He settled on Baywatch.

  “Have you got a local phone
book I can look at?” I asked.

  “Under the motel counter.”

  I stepped out into the motel. Worked my way back to the Ls. Ran down the page with the tip of my index finger. Nope. Leonard, then Lopez.

  I replaced the phone book and retraced my steps back toward Monty.

  “You know a family named Loomis around here?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  I started for the back door. “Thanks.”

  “Ain’t a family; it’s a them.”

  I stopped. “What?”

  “Loomis ain’t a family; it’s a company.”

  “What kind of company?”

  “Somethin’ to do with land and real estate.”

  “And they’re local?”

  “Hell no,” he said impatiently. “Outta Chicago.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  He muted the TV and struggled to his feet. “’Cause that’s who pays Mr. Pinkerton’s bill every time.” He pushed past me and limped out into the motel, where he pulled a green plastic box out from under the counter. He pawed through a pile of receipts until he found what he was looking for. He handed it to me. A credit card receipt. Michael Pinkerton. Two nights. Room nine. One hundred bucks. Corporate credit card…Loomis International. “Who’s this Pinkerton guy?” I asked.

  “Been coming to town damn near every week for near a year.”

  “What for?”

  “Back when, the damn fool was trying to do business with the Indians.” He turned his head long enough to give me a disgusted look. “These days he’s got some kinda deal goin’on with the bigwigs in City Hall.”

  “How do you know he’s from Chicago?”

  “He tol’ me so. Said it was nice to be someplace he wasn’t freezin’ his ass off. Tol’ me Chicago was colder than a well digger’s ass this time of year.”

  “He always stay two nights?”