James Crumley - The Final Country

But finally the picture was as clear as we could make it without getting personally involved. But before I visited Tobin Rooke, I had to face Rollie Molineaux with the death of his daughter. And confess my sorry part in that loss. I wanted that chore out of the way before we moved onto the really hard part of the job.

Although I didn't have a clear,picture in my head of what had happened that night at Duval's so long ago and the endless repercussions that echoed through a dozen people's lives, I climbed into the pickup and slipped out the back gate in the middle of a star-shot night, hoping to at least clear my conscience.

When I got to Houston, I discovered that the Longhorn Tavern had fallen prey to a new freeway exit, which made me oddly sad. I wondered what had happened to Fat Annie and Joe Willie Custer, where they had gone when the beer joint had closed, wondered where we were going to go when the last good beer joint finally fell all the way down. Rollie's house was empty, too, a for sale sign in the yard. He wasn't hiding, so he wasn't hard to find. But Rollie Molineaux was the last person I expected to help fill in the picture.

I found him sitting in a worn lawn chair on a dock jutting into the dark, sluggish water behind a bait shop on one of the many unnamed arms of Bayou Teche. A cigarette jutting out of his crooked, gray-stubbled jaw, a beer between his legs, and a battered captain's hat tilted at a rakish angle on the back of his head.

"Mr. Molineaux," I said when I stepped onto the dock. "I'd like to talk to you."

Rollie turned, a half-grin exposing a brown stain on the partial plate in the side of his mouth. "Hey there," he said. "You be lookin' like you might be that bastard who broke my jaw, but you're a mite older."

"Not as old as I feel," I admitted.

"Sit a bit and have a brew," he said, nodding toward the lawn chair beside him, then digging into the cooler at his feet. "Unless you're lookin' to beat on me some more, man."

"Sorry," I said as I sat down.

"Ain't no big thing," he said, handing me a beer.

"I've got some bad news for you."

"Ain't nobody brought me much good news lately."

"Your daughter is dead," I said, laying it out as quickly as I could.

"Yeah. I figured when I didn't hear from her when Jimmy Fish went down that no news might be bad news. He do her?"

"No, it was an accident," I said. "She got shot up in Montana."

"Montana," he said as if it was a foreign country. "What she be doin' up in that cold country?"

"Helping me on a job."

"Well, ain't that the shits."

"Yes, sir," I said.

"They said Jimmy got shot, too," he said. "You do him?"

"Some French guy put one in his ear."

"Guess I'm not surprised," he said. "He was bound to get shot someday. I should have put one in his head years ago when I thought he was foolin' around with my baby girl. You know how it is, man. Sometimes you got a best friend like a bad woman. No matter what they do, you keep hangin' around." Then he paused to open another beer, his odd apology ended. "What happened? Up there in Montana."

"Oh, hell," I said. "This guy I was looking for, he was beating me to death, and she put a.22 round up his nose. But he pulled the trigger at the same time. He pulled the trigger, but the people who started this, they're the ones who killed her."

"Ain't that the shits," he said again.

"I couldn't stop it," I admitted. "It tore the heart right out of me." I pulled the Shark of the Moon out of my pocket. "She was a fine woman," I said. "She talked about you a lot. I think she'd want you to have this."

Rollie looked momentarily uncomfortable, then he held up the stone to watch it shine in the sunlight, and he smiled. "She must have thought well of you to tell you about this ol' thing. Belonged to her Momma. I picked it up down in Belize on a run once." He didn't have to say what kind of run. "The mortal shits."

"You know, the people who got her mixed up in all this, I think they should pay," I said. "I intend to make them pay. But I need your help."

"Anything, man." I showed him the photo of Amanda Rae Quarrels. "Sure," he said. "That would be Amelia Fontinot, you bet, after she bleached her hair. This is her Daddy's old place. Jimmy left it to me. She'd be his half-sister, you know, younger. She married that old Desmond Quarries fellow from Morgan City, but I think Jimmy was fuckin' her and he sold her off to Des. He'd do things like that, you know. But she don't much look like that no more. Last time I saw her, I didn't even recognize her."

"When's the last time you saw her?" I asked.

"Shit, I don't know. Seven, maybe eight years ago," he said. "Back when I still had a boat. Jimmy and I picked her up off a tanker in the Gulf and brought her home. With some young girl. Hell, she didn't even say kiss my ass, thanks, or goodbye. But I sure got fucked over later. Couple of weeks later the DEA came calling. They found a bag of smack on my boat and that was all she wrote. Goddamned woman must have left it there. I was lucky to stay out of the joint. But they finally believed me. I never ran any coke or heroin. Nothing but smoke. That was my rule."

"When you and Jimmy were working offshore, you ever work for Hayden Lomax?"

"That cheap son of a bitch," he said. "Nobody with any sense ever worked for that sorry junkhouse outfit. Only people ever worked for Lomax was three-fingered winos like ol' Des."

"Thanks," I said, finishing my beer and standing up. "I got to be going now."

"Let me know what happens," he said.

"You already know too much," I said. "Thanks again."

Then I left him sitting in the warm, soft sunshine, left him with his memories, and the dark shadows of the stone. And a clear conscience, I hoped.

As I walked back through the bait shop, I glanced once more into the dusty webbed shadows. A dozen glass-eyed deer and boar heads glittered in the shadows. I didn't have to ask who had killed them. An old woman, her face blurred behind fat and great hairy moles, sat in a funky heap behind the counter, knitting at an unidentifiable hunk of clothing, her hooded eyes gleaming, the wings of her coal-black hair shining like a pair of obsidian axe blades.

Driving back from Houston I took a quick detour by Stairtown and Homer's place. Of course, there was no body in the mudpit. Sissy's BMW had disappeared, too. The old shack was scrubbed as clean as a dog's plate. No crime scene, no evidence, no past or future. The pumpjacks rocked and buzzards drifted across an empty sky while I had a beer and a couple of cigarettes, mourning the dead woman in the pit.

On the outskirts of Austin I called Reverend Walker. He said he didn't want me at his church and he didn't want to be seen in public with me, but I didn't give him any choice.

He stood at the bar of the Four Seasons, a large, uncomfortable man sipping at a tonic water. He turned to glower at me as I edged in beside him but smiled aimlessly when he saw the white hair and the crutch and nodded politely without a glimmer of recognition. Once I had a drink, I leaned over to whisper, "I'm sorry, man, but your brother is dead."

Walker spun quickly, recognizing me now. "Watch yourself, old man," he growled. "Just watch it."

I had a slow swallow of Scotch, then faced him. "It's true," I said. "He's dead, and I am very sorry."

"What happened?"

"Nothing that's going to come back on you."

"And the girl?" I nodded. "Damn," he said grimly. "It didn't have to happen that way."

"It's done," I said. "You've been doing good work for a long time. Keep it up. But what you need to do now is get a lawyer and an accountant to destroy every trace of any connection with Hayden Lomax."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

"You can't go up against Lomax," he said. "He'll turn you into fish food."