James Burke - In the Moon of Red Ponies

Everyone important in Amber’s life was there. Except for her father, United States Senator Romulus Finley.

Senator Finley was at my office by 8 A.M. Monday. When he didn’t find me there, he went to the courthouse, where I was involved in a trial, and caught me in the corridor outside the courtroom. “What in the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing, son?” he said, his grip biting into my arm.

“I’d appreciate your taking your hand off my person,” I said.

“A murderer just married my daughter, and you helped him do it.”

“I’m not going to ask you again,” I said.

He released me and took a step back. “I won’t put up with this bullshit, Mr. Holland.”

“I think you embarrass yourself, sir,” I said.

“Say that again?”

“Your daughter is a good person. Why don’t you show her a little respect?”

“Son, I’m just about a half inch from busting you between the lights.”

“My father was a stringer-bead welder on gaslines all over the Southwest. He was a fine man and called me ‘son.’ Other men don’t.”

“Have it your way. As far as I’m concerned, Johnny American Horse is a subversive and a traitor. He’s taken advantage of my daughter’s naivete and you, an educated man and officer of the court, have helped him do it. I won’t put up with it.”

He walked back down the corridor toward the courthouse entrance, his leather soles loud, his meaty shoulders and neck framed against the light outside.

I should have dismissed the insult, even the implied threat, as the expression of wounded pride in a childish man. But there was something about Finley that was hard to abide, a prototypical personality any southerner recognizes-one characterized by a combination of self-satisfaction, stupidity, and a suggestion of imminent violence, all of it glossed over with a veneer of moral and patriotic respectability.

I followed him down the sidewalk through the maples on the courthouse lawn to a steel-gray limousine with charcoal-tinted windows that was parked by the curb. He opened the back door to get in, and on the far side of the leather seat I saw a man in his fifties who had a good-natured face, blond hair that was white on the tips, a smile that was both familiar and likable. His eyes were friendly and warm, his teeth almost perfect. There were gin roses in his face, but they gave his countenance a vulnerability and consequently a greater humanity. I was sure I knew him and at the same time equally sure we had never met.

Romulus Finley started to raise a remonstrative finger at me, but his companion leaned over so he could look at both of us and said, “Now, now, let’s don’t have this. Mr. Holland, take a ride with us. We’ll have coffee at a dandy place on the river.”

“Thank you just the same, but I have an issue here with Senator Finley,” I replied.

“Whatever it is, we can work it out,” Finley’s companion replied. He stretched out his arm and handed me a business card that was inserted between two of his fingers. “My home phone is on the back. I’m impressed with your legal reputation. Your father died in a natural gas blowout down in Texas, didn’t he? I bet he’d be mighty proud of you today.”

“What did you say about my father?”

“Call me,” he said. “I’d like to help you cut through some of the problems you’re encountering.”

He was still smiling at me when Finley got in the limo and closed the door. I stared dumbly at the tinted back window of the limo as it drove away, then looked at the business card in my hand. The name on it was Karsten Mabus.

That evening, Temple and I fixed sliced chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches and iced tea and fruit salad for dinner and took it out on the side gallery to eat. The sky was blue above the valley, the sunlight a pale yellow on the hillsides, and hawks floated above the trees up in the saddles. But I couldn’t concentrate on either our conversation or the loveliness of the evening. I wiped my mouth with a napkin and pushed away my plate.

“Want to tell me what happened today?” Temple said.

“I had a run-in with Senator Finley. He seems to think I’m responsible for his daughter marrying Johnny American Horse.”

“Tell him to grow up.”

“I think I did, but I don’t remember. I was pretty angry.”

“So that’s what’s been on your mind all day?”

“Finley was with another man. I’d swear I know him but I don’t know from where. He gave me his business card.”

I took the card out of my shirt pocket and placed it on the pine-knot table where she could read it. Unconsciously, I wiped my fingers on my shirt.

“Mabus? He’s the CEO of a chemical company?” she said.

“He knew about my father’s death on the pipeline.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. There’s something disturbing about this guy.”

“You’re listening to Wyatt Dixon-that stuff about a pentagram. Dixon’s a nutjob, Billy Bob.”

“Maybe.” I got up from the table and leaned against the railing on the gallery. A string of white-tailed deer were working their way down a switchback trail into the pasture, their summer coats gold in the shadows. “What right does this guy Mabus have to mention my father’s death?”

“So tomorrow morning we check him out. Now sit down and eat,” she said.

I thought about Johnny and Amber’s wedding and how much Johnny, in his pinstripe suit and vest, had reminded me of L. Q. Navarro. “You believe in premonitions?” I said.

“No,” she said.

“I don’t, either,” I said.

The next morning, as I was leaving for work, I found a note under the windshield wiper of my Avalon. It read:

Billy Bob,

Go to Sheep Flats up on the Blackfoot at 9:00 A.M. today. I’ll be parked off the dirt track, down in the trees. Drive past my vehicle, then walk back along the riverbank and up the incline to my vehicle. Carry a fishing rod. Do not mention our meeting on either a cell phone or a land line.

I’ll wait for you fifteen minutes. If you’re not there, I’ll assume you’re tied up in court. Thanks,

Seth

I drove up into the Blackfoot drainage, crossed a long cement bridge over the river, then turned up a dusty road that climbed high above the river, so that down below, the water looked like a blue ribbon winding through boulders and sloping hills covered with larch and ponderosa and fir trees. I crossed over a rocky point that jutted into space, then coasted down the road into shade and a wooded, parklike area where the remains of a nineteenth-century logging camp had moldered into dark brown pulp.

I saw a Jeep Cherokee parked in the trees and a tall man in a shapeless felt hat leaning against the grille, smoking a pipe, watching the river course over the rocks down below. I did as Seth had asked and drove past the Jeep, then worked my way back on the riverbank through dry boulders and the willows that grew in the shallows, my fly rod over my shoulder.

“Have I got a tap on my phone?” I said.

“Hard to say. My guess is you probably do,” he replied.

“I don’t care for that, Seth.”

“Join the club.” He knocked his pipe clean on a rock, then pressed the ashes deep into the soil. “Let me lay it out for you. I gave the Bureau thirty days’ notice. This time next month, my wife and I will be on a passenger ship headed up to the Alaskan coast. This fall we’ll be hiking in Silver City, New Mexico. I’ll officially be an old fart. In the meantime I have to play out this American Horse situation here. You with me so far?”

“I’ll try to grab a noun here and there and work with it,” I replied. Then I looked at the cast in his eyes and regretted my flippant attitude.

He unzipped a thin vinyl satchel on the Jeep’s hood and removed a folder that contained a stack of enlarged mug shots. “You know any of these guys?” he said.