James Crumley - The Final Country

I sat in the car, watching the cold rain splatter against the windshield, then I tried Betty on her cell phone. But it was busy, and I didn't bother leaving a message. She was already deep enough in my troubles.

Since I couldn't find a lead on Sissy Duval, I thought I ought to pay a call on Paper Jack, who had insisted that he knew the Molly McBride woman and who, according to the Lodge desk clerk, lived between Midland and Odessa. I still felt good after Cathy's treatment, but not good enough to endure three hundred miles in the cold rain, so I went to the airport, dropped the rental car, hopped a shuttle to Dallas, changed planes, and landed at the Midland airport before dark. Just as the last light faded across the rain-dreary plain, I was parked in another rented car down the road from Jack Holbrook's house when he came home from his oil well supply company. Jack lived alone in a three-thousand-square-foot house setting on five of the barest acres I had ever seen a few miles northwest of the Interstate between Midland and Odessa. I waited long enough for Jack to get a drink in his stomach and a second one in his hand.

"Milo, what the hell are you doing here?" Jack asked when he opened the door to my knock. The old man had changed out of his suit and into a baggy jumpsuit, a tattered sweater, and heel-shot slippers.

"I hear there's nothing between here and the North Pole but a three-strand barbed wire fence. I want to get out of the cold and ask you a few questions about the other night."

"Talk to my lawyer, asshole," Jack growled, "because we're filing charges."

"Don't be an idiot," I said as I stepped around Jack's bulk. "And lead me to a drink."

Without too much grumbling, Jack led me to a large den at the back of the house. Jack flopped into a broken-backed La-Z-Boy. The room was crammed with fast-food debris and empty Wild Turkey bottles. A fuck movie played silently on a large-screen television standing in front of a gun case rack full of imported shotguns. I found a fairly clean glass and a dusty bottle of cheap Scotch on a battered sideboard.

"Trouble keeping a housekeeper, Jack?" I said as he raised the glass.

"Nobody wants to do a day's work for a day's pay anymore," Jack said without taking his eyes off the screen. "Fuckin' Meskins steal everything that isn't nailed down, widow-women want to marry my money, and the women from my wife's church keep trying to save my soul."

"How long's your wife been dead?"

"Since the day she died, asshole," Jack said.

"You said you knew that young woman at the bar the other night."

"I was drunk," Jack said. "Otherwise, I would have broken your back."

"You're not drunk now," I said standing over him. Perhaps the combination of drugs, pain, and legal peril had made my hair-trigger temper even more hairy. "And I've just gotten out of a train wreck, too, you old bastard."

Jack half-rose from the chair, then waved his hand as if it was too much trouble to get on his feet. "You're sure as hell on the prod," he said. "But you're damn near my age, Milo. You'll find out what it's like. Maybe it's time to walk easy."

"I don't have time to walk easy, Jack. Talk to me about the woman at the bar."

"I told you she was a whore," Jack said. "A fuckin' thousand-dollar piece of ass." Then Jack smiled slightly. "Damn near worth it, too, as I remember."

"Where'd you find her?"

"Not a clue," Jack said. "But it had to be someplace where they had gambling. Vegas, Lake Charles, Reno, Mobile. Any place but Indian reservation casinos; they're all run by some fucking guy named Guido Running Deer. That's about all I do these days. Drop five or ten grand at the tables, get drunk, then find a thousand-dollar hooker."

"How long ago was it?" I asked, thinking that Lake Charles rang some distant chime.

"Old lady's been gone three years," Jack whispered. "Had to be since then. After my heart attack, damned Edna wouldn't let me go to the pisser alone. Always thought I'd go before her… Life's a bitch, ain't it? And sometimes you don't die." Then Jack sat up straight. "How's your drink, ol' buddy? That's pretty shitty Scotch, ain't it? Let me get my clothes on, and we'll drift over to the Petroleum Club. Everything's top-shelf there."

I thought it over for at least a second. "Why the hell not? I can't get a flight out until tomorrow morning, anyway."

But it turned out to be a late afternoon hangover flight. I kept the lonely old man company through the evening hours in the ghostly climes of the Petroleum Club, then sat up listening to complaints about the oil business long past midnight, hoping he'd either pass out or remember where he'd met the McBride woman before he died. Or I did. But I didn't learn anything else.

Except to be reminded the next morning once again that hangovers at my age were crippling beasts. And airplanes were no place to endure them.

Hangas, the solid mass of his body perfectly draped in a tailored black suit that wasn't quite a chauffeur's uniform, met me at the gate when my flight arrived about dark-thirty. "You don't look all that chipper, Milo," Hangas said. "Can I buy you a couple of these overpriced airport drinks?"

"Let's go someplace where I can have a cigarette, too." I had called him before I climbed on the plane to see if he had talked to Eldora. He said he didn't have much to tell me, but he knew by the sound of my voice that I could use a lift.

Half an hour later, we were bellied up to the lobby bar at the Four Seasons Hotel, a place where we could talk in the anonymous crowd. Hangas, who had never completely recovered from a tour as a Marine guard at the embassy in Paris, had a glass of an estate bottled Haut-Medoc while I went back to the smoky hair of the Scotty dog that had bitten me.

"If Enos Walker's in town," Hangas said after he tasted the wine and nodded to the bartender, "nobody's seen him. And a lot of folks down here know him. From his basketball time. He was big stuff when he transferred down from Oklahoma City College. Until he went bad and got kicked off the team. According to his brother, the preacher."

"You get a chance to talk to Eldora?" I asked.

"That Mrs. Grace, she's one fine-looking woman," Hangas said, then paused to savor the wine.

"And about your age, too," I suggested.

"Perhaps a mite older and more serious than I prefer," Hangas said, smiling. "I'm too busy taking care of Mr. Carver and keeping an eye on my younger children to have time for any serious women."

"I thought your youngest two were already in college?"

"One at Rice, one at Baylor. But college is the most dangerous time," Hangas said seriously. "Waco one weekend, Houston the next, and I'm sort of involved…"

"Both places?" I said, but Hangas just smiled as serenely as a black Buddha. "So what did Eldora have to say?"

"Not much," Hangas allowed, "but I got the distinct feeling that she was a bit worried and didn't actually know where Mrs. Duval had gone."

"I don't like that."

"I don't think Eldora does either," Hangas said. "You want me to ask her again tomorrow?"

"Day after tomorrow," I said. "If she's really worried, you'll know for sure."

"Sounds good to me," Hangas said as he finished the wine. "Mr. Carver says you're in some deep shit. If there's anything I can do, please don't forget to call."

"Thanks for the ride," I said. "I'll get the drinks, then grab a cab."

Hangas nodded politely, then eased through the crowd as easily as a shade in spite of his size. I had another before I settled the check, slightly surprised that Hangas's glass of wine had cost almost twenty dollars.

"Good price for a glass of wine," I said to the bartender. "Grapes mashed by virgin feet?"

"Some folks have taste -" the bartender started to say.

"Right," I interrupted, "but usually they pay for their own drinks."