by W L Ripley
“Like what?”
“I know he had a neighbor whose dog killed Alan’s Siamese cat. The guy apologized. Offered to pay for another cat. Alan wouldn’t talk to him. Slammed the door in the guy’s face. A week later the dog was found hung with barbed wire from a tree in his owner’s backyard.”
“Nice town,” I said.
“Yeah,” Chick said. “Nice place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit here.”
NINE
We were back in the Silver Spur Lounge. Chick said he needed his engine revved. He was revving it with Canadian Club and Moosehead. The talk with Jill Maxwell left a faint lassitude thrumming against the back of my brain. The more I learned of the politics of Paradise and the county named for it, the less I liked the place and the more I wished to return to Colorado and to Sandy. The sooner we left, the sooner I could leave all this behind me.
Except the sheriff was dead. Back to that. It would always be there and would keep bubbling back to the surface of that little chamber of awareness where I kept all the near misses and failed opportunities stored to be released in the early morning dreams that troubled me. Dreams that would not stop. Dreams that I could not control. Dreams that kept me here and other places I wished to leave. One more thing to separate me from Sandy. Always something.
“Gotta pick up Prescott sometime,” said Chick, talking about the bail jumper he had to return to Colorado. Prescott had stolen chemicals from a lab at Colorado University, he told me.
“Not much of a crime,” I said.
“Chemicals were rare. High-dollar. Guy’s some kind of chemist. Couple drug busts. Cooking crack. China white. Some ice. All the little pretties that go pop in your head. No convictions, except the chemical theft. But he sapped the night security man when he took the chemicals, put the guy in the hospital. The state of Colorado thinks the guy’s a bad actor, so they set bail at fifty large. I get five grand to bring him back.”
“How long will it take to find him?”
“Already know where he is.” He sipped the beer.
“Why haven’t you picked him up, then?”
“Waiting on you,” he said. “See how long you want to stay around and play detective. Besides, what’m I gonna do with the guy? Can’t drag him around on a leash. I’ll pick him up just before we leave. You don’t like what happened to the sheriff. Wanna do something about it, like you were the Lone Ranger or something.” He finished off the shot of Canadian Club and swallowed some Moosehead to follow it down. “What’s one more lost cause, anyway?”
“You like that stuff?” I said, pointing at the beer.
“It’s all right.”
“Just all right? Why drink it, then?”
“I’m Canadian.”
“You’re not Canadian.”
He looked at the green bottle, took another sip. “Hmmm,” he said, pondering it. “Must be some other reason.”
“We keep poking around, things could get nasty.”
He nodded.
“No use getting involved in this,” I said.
“None.”
“The police can handle it.”
“Of course they can,” he agreed. Smiled. We sat for a moment. Quiet. The jukebox changed tunes. Chick lighted another cigarette and drained the bottle of beer.
“So,” he said. “Which one do you want? Roberts or the lawyer?”
I called Alan Winston’s office. He was in court and unavailable. Then I called the motel where Trooper Sam Browne was staying. He wasn’t in. I wanted to tell him about the shooting and the harvested marijuana. The courthouse was two blocks away, so Chick went over to watch Alan Winston in action while I checked out Willie Boy Roberts. Information gave me the office number of Starr Industries. I punched the numbers and a receptionist transferred me to his secretary.
“Starr Industries,” said the female voice. “Mr. Roberts’s office.”
“My name’s Wyatt Dark,” I said. “Is Mr. Roberts in? Friend of mine, Alan Winston, said I should get hold of Mr. Roberts. I’m looking for work and Alan said Mr. Roberts was hiring.”
“Could you hold, please?” I did. There was a brief wait. If he tried to call Winston while I was waiting, I knew he would be unable to get hold of him as Winston was in court. If he had me come in, then I had a connection, however slight, between Roberts and Winston. Although that might have no meaning, it was a start. She came back on the line.
“Mr. Roberts said if you could come in within the next hour he will be glad to talk with you.”
Forty-five minutes later I drove to Starr Industries and walked in through a door marked Personnel. I was wearing a Harris tweed jacket, oxblood loafers, eggshell-blue oxford cloth shirt, a pair of blue-gray Haggar slacks, and an actual paisley tie—detective work requires many sacrifices. The salesman at Thomas’s Men’s Wear was a little surprised when I told him I’d wear all the items out of the store and put my jeans and other clothes in the boxes. The shirt was still creased from being folded in the plastic packaging.
Roberts’s secretary was an auburn-haired beauty with light gold streaks that looked like the real item. Her gold highlights shone in the sunlight slanting through a large picture window. The office was warm—soft brown carpet and exotic plants.
The nameplate on her desk said TEMPESTT FINESTRA. “May I help you?” she asked. Up close I saw emerald-green eyes and smooth cheekbones. She looked more like a John Wayne heroine than a secretary. I was becoming more impressed with Willie Boy Roberts by the minute.
“I’m here to see Mr. Roberts,” I said. “I’m the guy who telephoned earlier.”
“Mr. Dark,” she said, searching with her eyes, like a high school principal. “Of course. He’s expecting you.” She punched numbers into the black AT&T business phone. She spoke straight, without deference, nor was she overly formal. She cradled the phone and folded her arms under her breast and leaned forward on the cherry-wood desk. “If you can wait a few minutes, Mr. Dark, Mr. Roberts will see you.”
“That’s fine.” Patience is my middle name. I looked through the magazines on the coffee table in the waiting area. It was the same selection as at the sheriff’s office with the exception they were current issues—fresh and uncreased. I watched Tempestt walk over to a file cabinet. She walked in the leggy way tall women have. She was tightly muscled and firm like a dancer or a swimmer. She might require further investigation. She was suspiciously beautiful. Maybe I could set up a second appointment, come an hour early. Keep an eye on her. Surveillance was important. I saw a button light up on her phone. Roberts was calling someone. Winston?
“Tempestt,” I said to her, as she sat down. “That’s an unusual name.”
“Tem-pestt,” she said, gently correcting me. Friendly. “The accent is on the second syllable.”
“Nice name. Sounds good when you say it.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. I took the brunt of it. Withstood it. “You’re not trying to put the move on me now, are you, Mr. Dark?”
“No,” I said. “Just like the name.”
“Didn’t say I’d mind. Just wanted to know if you were going to.” Straight out, just like that. No posturing. No word games. Bang.
“If I were looking, you’d be someone I’d want to get to know.”
“Thank you,” she said. Her green eyes sparkled. “That’s the nicest letdown I’ve ever received.”
“Bet you don’t get many.”
“You have a lady?”
I nodded. Nothing dazzles women like a tight-lipped guy.
“You don’t find many men who aren’t on the prowl. Looking for strays.” Her face was open. Bright. We could have been discussing the weather. Always nice to meet one of the real ones. The comfortable ones. The phone on her desk buzzed. She picked it up, listened, then put it down.
“You can go in now. Good luck.” I thanked her. Offered to buy her a cup of coffee sometime.
“I’d like that,” she said. “She won’t mind?”
“She knows me. There’s noth
ing says we can’t be friends.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sandy.”
“Is she pretty?”
I nodded. “And gentle and intelligent.”
“You have any brothers?” she asked.
Willie Boy Roberts was a big man, with a big smile. Tailored suit, western cut, beige with a yellow-and-brown tie. Huge diamond on his right hand. His eyes were crinkly and friendly. He looked like somebody’s favorite uncle, the one with the funny stories of life as a roughneck or ranch hand. The biggest thing was the smile. A radiant, come-along grin that put you at ease and made you want him to like you. I thought about what Jill Maxwell had said, then I thought about Chick Easton’s smile, also disarming and warm, hiding a side I knew little of. I remembered something else Jill had said, just before we left her office. “It’s Willie Boy’s town now. He just lets us live in it.”
“William Roberts,” he said, beaming, and engulfing my hand with his wide paw. The diamond band bit into my knuckles when he squeezed. “Friends call me Willie Boy.”
“Wyatt Dark,” I said, and sat in the chair he indicated.
“You like something to drink, you?” he said. “Got some New Orleans chicory I just had ground. Extra fine.”
“Sounds good.”
He turned and poured black liquid from a Bunn coffee maker behind him. “Cream or sugar?”
“Black.”
“Only way to drink it. Putting shit in it’s for women. I like a man who takes life straight,” he said, giving me a funny look when he did. “Drink whiskey the same way. How you take your whiskey, you?”
I don’t take it at all, I thought, but didn’t say that. “Straight up or with water,” I said. “I don’t put candy in anything.”
He chuckled, winking at me. A good old boy. Maxwell was right, he liked to toy with the Cajun accent, mixed it with a Deep South drawl. And yet there was a hint of something gritty and hard. Something from the streets and back alleys. “You ’n’ me gonna get along just fine.” He handed me the chicory. It smelled strong, but good. Reminded me of New Orleans. Accordion players and street dancers in multicolored suits at Mardi Gras. Cypress trees and iron gates.
“You a vet?” he asked, taking his seat behind the mile-wide walnut desk. When he sat he was framed by a dark walnut bookcase, looking like a portrait of a senator from a southern state. A man of taste and singularity. But something was wrong with the picture. He was playing a part. Playing it well, but playing one nonetheless.
“Yeah,” I said. “First Air Cav. Able Company. Made corporal.” Actually I was recon, and made lieutenant before I mustered out.
“Damn,” he said. He smacked a palm down on the desk top. “Small world. I was First Air Cav, too.” We were becoming buddies already. Maybe later we’d go out and beat up some union stewards together. “I was in Saigon during Tet in ’68. Caught a piece of shrapnel in the back of my shoulder.” He slapped the back of his shoulder, in a self-congratulatory pat, to indicate the spot. “Tore out a chunk size of a Ping-Pong ball. Had the medic stitch it up and ordered him to keep his mouth shut. Our kill ratio was seventeen to one in my unit. Fire-eaters.” His face went dreamy. Wistful. “Shit, we killed a lot of gooks that day. Press made it look like we lost. We kicked their yella butts.”
One of those, I thought. He was there but missed the lesson. Vietnam wasn’t a Richard Widmark movie, it was a spidery-legged demon crawling up your leg with a razor in its teeth and then slithering into your nightmares. It was mud-slogging, mind-raping madness without the benefit of a heroic soundtrack. And yet…and yet, there was still an uneasy sensation, a rush of excitement, of being alive, of surviving the horror, riding the beast to the end. Of being there and living through it. A masculine feeling. Establishing and riveting for all time what you were and what you might become. No apologies. No denials.
“Media screwed it up for us, too,” I said, adopting the character of disillusioned vet. Wasn’t hard to do, either. “We’d go into a ‘safe’ village and the tail guy’d catch a bullet, then we’d sweep back through and the rear’d get popped again. We’d pull up the village chief and he never knew nothing, so we’d torch the village and find a cache of weapons and supplies. Then some newspaper liberal would make us out to be mad-dog killers.”
“You need a job?” he asked.
“Yessir, I do.”
“What talents you got?”
“Same’s I had in Nam. I’m not afraid, and I do what I’m told and what I have to.”
He sat back in his chair and considered me. “Pretty good-sized fella, you. Nose has been broken. Couple time, in fact. Scar tissue in your eyebrows and ‘long your chin. Sports or fightin’?”
“Football,” I said. He was sharp. Picked up on things. I didn’t want to pursue the football thing in too much depth. “Some fighting, I guess.”
“You been outside a lot,” he said. “It’s in your face. Little lines around your eyes from squinting at the sun. Skin is tanned. You work construction, you? Or something like it?”
This wasn’t going the way I wanted. I came for information and was giving it instead. He was keeping me on the dodge. “Worked the rigs in Oklahoma. Around Bartlesville. Some road work in Wyoming.” That would keep him busy running that down, if he decided to check it.
“Your hands look strong and you got the forearms and shoulders for it. But your hands aren’t callused. Fingernails are straight, not broken. No nicks or scars on your fingers, although you broke a couple of them at different times. ’Specially the little one on the left hand.”
“Been out of work for six months,” I said. I thought about my store-fresh outfit. Sure he noticed it. “Tried selling real estate. Haven’t done any heavy work for over a year.”
“Any hobbies?”
“Fishing,” I said. He’d caught me off guard with the good-old-boy routine. I hadn’t underestimated him, but he was so good at it you were caught up in it before you knew it.
“Me, too,” he said. “Like to hunt, also. Some good turkey hunting around here. Lot of deer, too. You like to hunt?”
“Some. Not very good at it, though.”
He laughed. “Probably better than you let on. You bowhunt any?”
There it was. Smiling at me now. Friendly. Eased me right into it. Willie Boy was either a very smart businessman or a very dangerous one. I thought about what Jill Maxwell said about the custom call-girl ring. I could see him talking to some bored, upscale local wife, easing her into it with his rich Cajun baritone. “Looka here, darlin’. Nothin’ to it. Be excitin’ and y’all make some real money for yourself, yessir. Beats watchin’ the soaps, gar-on-tee…”
Yeah, he could pull it off. Then he could use it to get business favors. Paradise was at the tip of the Bible belt. Sexual adventures were still taboo here. Not good for a local to have people talking about what his wife did on her free time. He could leverage the husband with the emotional extortion, get a favorable zoning, have an unsavory business practice overlooked.
“Love to bowhunt,” I said. Shine it back at him. See where he took it. Sometimes you had to run up the middle to establish the deep patterns. “I use a Browning compound.”
“Nice rig.”
“Hit where I aim, too.”
“You do for a fact,” he said. “Why’d you come here, you? You’re not the kind does wage work. Too smart. Too pretty. You need to stick to what you know.” His eyes flashed briefly, like a cat’s eyes in the beam of your headlights.
“Good advice. Heard you hired muscle. Thought you could use me.” Go for it all. Nothing to lose. Take a chance.
He laughed. A booming laugh. Like he was laughing at a personal joke. “What makes you think I need muscle? You think I’m some kind of gangster?” He was still laughing as he reached across his desk and opened a teakwood box. I smelled the rosy-sweet scent of cedar. He brought out two long, dark brown cigars, handed them to me. I accepted them. They had a silver band on them.
“Cuban?”
/> “Hell no. Don’t smoke that shit. Tampa. Hand-rolled. Aged domestic. Good a leaf as you’ll ever burn. Gar-on-tee. I get ’em special from a war buddy down there. Three dollars each. Hundred of them a month. You’ll find ol’ Willie Boy takes care of his own. You good to me, you’ll be in tall grass”—smiling now when he said it, missing the irony of the statement. Then the smile faded and his mouth firmed into a straight line. “Or, I got a load of shit for those folks that mess with me.” Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the dark look passed from his face and was replaced by the open, convivial one. A mask. A prop to be wheeled out and used to fit the scene. We were buddies again. He could turn it on and off like an electric fence.
“Now you get out there, boy, and see that thoroughbred filly out front. Ain’t she fine. Get you an application.”
Time for me to throw a high hard one.
“You want my real name on the application?” I asked, searching his face for surprise. There was none.
The phony accent disappeared and so did the smile. “What is it you really want, Mr. Storme?”
TEN
“I’ve been shot at—twice,” I said. “Attacked by a dog. And I don’t like it. I want it to stop.”
“Right to it, huh?” Roberts said. He got up and walked to a wet bar. “Drink?” He held up a bottle of Wild Turkey. I shook my head. “Don’t drink, do you?”
“No.”
“What else did you lie about?”
“Nearly everything,” I said.
He poured two fingers into a thick lowball glass. Added ice. He returned to his desk and sat. “What if I have you tossed out?” He said it offhand, as if it didn’t matter either way.