James Crumley - The Final Country

After the kids took off on their chores, I took the Ladysmith and sacrificed one of Tom Ben's goats. I gave the goat to Maria to butcher, dug the.357 slug out of the rocky dirt. Once I had packaged the revolver and the slug, I called Gannon at the courthouse to ask him to meet me at the bar. He was reluctant, but I made him promise.

Once we had hunkered over our drinks at the far end of the bar, he stopped grousing long enough to ask, "What the hell do you want?"

I waited, staring into the depths of Blue Hollow. "I understand Tobin Rooke is missing," I said slowly.

"You want to tell me how it is you know that, partner?" he said.

"Partner?" I said. "Is that your new boots talking?"

"Nobody knows outside the department," he said, blushing about his cowboy boots. "How the hell do you know?"

"You don't want to know," I said. "You search the house?"

Gannon looked around as if somebody might be listening in an empty bar in the middle of the afternoon. "It looks like somebody came in, tortured him, then took off with the body. My crime scene boys said nothing of value was missing from the house. I guess we're going to have to bring in the FBI."

"Hold off on that," I said. "Three days if you can work it. Then go back, check out the garage. There's a switch under the vise that unlocks the workbench. Pull it out. The pegboard will come with it," I said. "You'll find some stairs and some shit in the basement that will make you sick but it will nail down your job permanently and maybe even make you sheriff next election."

"So what do I owe you for this information?"

"Not much," I said. "You're one of the few people down here who never lied to me. But you could take care of this," I said, then handed him a package. "There's a Ladysmith.357 in here and a flattened round. Swap it for the one that killed Ty Rooke, fix the paperwork, and bring me the other piece."

"Not much?" he complained angrily. "Jesus, you're taking a chance."

"Right. But you'll do it," I said.

"Why should I?"

"Because it's the right thing to do," I said, raising my glass. "That has to be worth something to you."

"I hope this is goodbye," Gannon said, raising his drink.

"As soon as I have the piece in my hand," I said, "we can have that last drink, man."

"You're a son of a bitch," he said.

I sat at the bar, sipping slow beers and staring down into the sparkling water of Blue Creek as it streamed over the low water crossing in the park below. The afternoon shadows bleached the grass and the pale new leaves. Joggers wound through the paths. Winter seemed forever away. I intended to keep it away.

Gannon came back an hour later and handed me the package. He refused a drink, though, and refused to shake my hand. He was a cop, after all. After one more hard look, a sigh that came with an angry tilt of his thick jaw, he turned, and lurched out of my life. He still hadn't mastered cowboy boots.

Of course the last day had to be a perfect day. During the night before, battalions of storm cells moved through, resplendent with wind and lightning, but this morning, the Gulf was as gray and flat as a lead coin, the shallow swells gasping their last against the hard-packed sand. A breeze swept across the beach, dry enough to keep the humidity down, the air bearable. Great clumps of clouds passed overhead occasionally, providing snatches of shade.

Bob and CJ had been deployed since the night before. Their position wasn't perfect – we had to work the topo map and the aerial photographs by flashlight – but they were invisible, sight lines clear, buried in the dune grass down the beach from Travis Lee's house. I could only hope they wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger when the time came.

I arrived at Travis Lee's thirty minutes early, but the four Lomax bodyguards were already arranged around the glass-enclosed deck. I came without weapons, except for Betty's revolver, which I carried by the open cylinder. I set it on a table by the door, so I was clean when the bodyguards searched me with both their hands and a metal detector. They took my weighted crutch away, but CJ had made the cast on my left arm heavier than usual and camouflaged it even further with a sling. The bodyguard with the puckered scars on his cheeks hit me in the nuts fairly hard when he searched my crotch. I tried not to give him the pleasure of grunting and bending over, but I couldn't manage it.

"You're getting older every minute, old man," he said, "and I think maybe you're about as old as you're going to get, you fuck with my boss. Where's the paper?"

"Believe me, man, I'd never fuck with your boss. She's too good a shot," I said as I flopped heavily into a redwood deck chair. He ignored my comment. "This is just business," I added. When Travis Lee stepped out of the back door, I saw a shadowy figure half-hidden, and I asked for a beer. "Something in a can," I added. The scar-faced bodyguard nodded in agreement. Travis Lee went back inside without a word.

"You're smart, old man," the bodyguard said, patting me on the shoulder like an obedient child. "Stay that way. You'll live longer." Then he took up his stance directly behind me, his coat open for easy access to the mini-Uzi hanging under his arm. His compatriots leaned against the glass wall windbreak, one in the middle, the others at the far corners of the deck.

Travis Lee, dressed in his lawyer suit and black boots, his golden belt buckle gleaming dully in the sunshine, joined me at the table as he handed me a can of Tecate. Travis had a stiff bourbon in a heavy crystal glass wrapped tightly in his hand. "You want to let me take a look at the option, son?" he said.

"Lomax sees it first," I said, then added, "But you can hold it." Then I slipped it out of the cast and handed it over. He took it, trying very hard not to look at it or smell it. "You know, a bartender once told me that when Mandy Rae came through town she fucked everybody from the governor to his pet bullfrog."

Travis Lee looked at me oddly, then glanced down at the folded, rumpled paper. "Where's the check, son? The check was never cashed." I slipped the check out of my cast and handed that to him. It had been in the envelope the lawyer had handed me at Tom Ben's probate hearing. Travis Lee laughed, waving the check and the option together. "Looks like a negotiable instrument," he said. "We can do some business this morning."

"But it's my business, Wallingford," I said as I jerked the option and the check out of his hands. "So I'll take those back please. Bring him to me."

Betty and Cathy showed up on time, which I hadn't expected. They sat down at the table by the door, their faces pale and stiff, their eyes hidden behind dark glasses, their mouths pressed into straight, tight lines. Betty touched the Ladysmith carefully with one finger as if the piece might be alive.

"What's this?" she said to me.

"Your ticket out of this mess," I said.

"The detective gathers the suspects," Cathy said with a sneer.

"Suspects is not the word I would have chosen," I said. "You ladies should have killed me while you had the chance. Because you're going to regret it now."

Cathy's answering smile was only vaguely human. "Maybe you'll pay more attention to who you fuck now," she said.

"You can count on that," I said.

At least Betty had the grace to look away.

A few moments later I heard the Lomax parade arrive and park under Travis Lee's house. The quiet rumble of the stretch limo, the whirr of the wheelchair, the murmurs of their voices – all of the sound loud and clear as it echoed off the glass walls. Sylvie walked beside the driver, who guided the old woman's electric wheelchair up the ramp. The old woman had one shawl draped over her shoulders, another over her useless legs. She stopped her chair at the table nearest to the end of the ramp, and Sylvie sat beside her. Once again both were dressed in black.