James Burke - In the Moon of Red Ponies

Darrel set down his coffee container on the counter, then placed his hands on each side of it. He spread his legs slightly, looking back over his shoulder. “I’m carrying, so don’t get excited,” he said.

He felt the man with silver hair pull the Beretta from the holster clipped onto Darrel’s belt and slide the sap and switchblade out of his side pockets. The silver-haired man’s hands groped Darrel in the scrotum, between the buttocks, between his thighs, and down both legs, retrieving the. 25 hideaway and its Velcro-strap holster from Darrel’s right ankle.

“This guy’s a walking torture chamber,” the man with silver hair said.

But Darrel was not paying attention to the man with silver hair. He was watching the other two security men as they searched Greta Lundstrum. They had told her to place her hands up against the wall and spread her feet, but they seemed to avoid touching her body in an invasive way, at least to any greater degree than was necessary. One man gingerly touched the inside of her thigh and stepped back.

“You want to deliver it up?” he said.

“Look the other way and I might,” she said.

With her back to them, she lifted her skirt slightly, bent over, and untaped the recorder Darrel had put on her earlier.

“We were hoping to have reciprocal trust here, Mr. McComb, but that fact seems to have eluded you,” Brendan Merwood said.

“That’s a recorder, not a wire. It’s just backup. This isn’t a sting,” Darrel said.

“And you want to sell Karsten Mabus the whereabouts of Johnny American Horse?”

“That pretty well sums it up. But right now I need to use the can,” Darrel said, tapping the rim of his Styrofoam coffee with his fingernail.

“Do you believe this fucking guy?” one of the other security men said.

“Don’t use that language in here,” Merwood said. He blew out his breath. “Go with him.” He gestured with his thumb toward the office restroom.

The silver-haired man and the one whom Merwood had corrected for his profanity went inside with Darrel. But Darrel did not go to the urinal. Instead, he began unbuckling his pants as he entered a stall.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the man with silver hair said.

“I got to take a dump. I had clam linguine and a few brews last night. Want to hang around, be my guest,” Darrel said. He squatted on the toilet and blew a gaseous explosion into the bowl.

When Darrel and the security men came out of the restroom, Brendan Merwood was talking on the phone. He said something into the receiver Darrel couldn’t hear, then replaced the receiver on the carriage.

“How much do you want for your information?” he asked.

“I’ll take that up with Mabus,” Darrel replied.

“Are you serious?” Merwood said.

“I told you he was a hardhead,” Greta said.

“These gentlemen here will take you to see Mr. Mabus,” Merwood said. “Go out the back door, if you would.”

“I want my twenty-five, my nine-Mike, my blade, and my sap back,” Darrel said.

“We’ll sack ’em up for you,” the man with silver hair said. “Let me have your keys.”

“What for?” Darrel said.

“There’s a guy outside who’ll drive your car. You come in ours,” the man with silver hair said. He eased back the receiver on Darrel’s . 25-caliber automatic and looked at the round that was seated in the chamber. He laid his arm across Darrel’s shoulders, tapping him good-naturedly with the pistol. “This is gonna work out, believe me.”

Darrel thought he could smell the sweat and deodorant in the man’s armpit. For a second Greta’s eyes settled on his, gleaming with victory.

After I left Wyatt’s place on the Blackfoot, I went to the office and tried to work. But it was no use. Why did I want to even pretend I was an attorney? My deeds had proved over and over again that I was little different from Wyatt Dixon or Darrel McComb. There was no psychological complexity waiting to be discovered at the center of my life. The truth was, I lusted to kill. It was cleaner, easier, and simpler than the drawn-out processes of the law. Jailhouses and prisons are filled with people who are ugly and stupid and who probably deserve to be there. But rich guys don’t stack mainline time, and men like Karsten Mabus, no matter what they do, never ride the needle. So why not kick it on up to rock ’n’ roll? I told myself.

I was almost convinced by my own rhetoric when Hildy, my receptionist, buzzed my phone. “I’ve got Amber American Horse on the line. Want to take the call?” she said.

I hesitated, then said, “Put her on.”

“Billy Bob?” Amber’s voice said.

“Are you on a cell?” I said

“Yes.”

“My phones are probably tapped. Get off the cell and use a land line. Call me in fifteen minutes at a place where the bindle stiffs smile at you from the walls. You hearing me on this?”

She paused only a second. “Make it a half hour. I have to drive. It’s dangerous,” she said.

“Hey, cowgirls never get the blues,” I said.

“What?” she said.

But I hung up the phone before a trace could be made, then went out the back door of my office and down the alley to Higgins Street. I walked past a newsstand and the Oxford Bar and crossed the street to Charley B’s. The walls inside were hung with the work of a West Montana legend, Lee Nye, who had been employed there as a part-time bartender in the 1960s and whose photographs of seamed, wind-burned faces were like a pictorial history of the American West and the landless blue-collar men who had built it.

The phone behind the bar rang five minutes after I arrived. The bartender picked it up, then handed it to me. “Hello?” I said.

“It’s Amber,” she said.

“How’s Johnny?”

“His arm’s better, thanks to Darrel.”

“To Darrel McComb?”

“That’s why I called. We’re going to split for Canada. I wanted to thank Darrel for what he did. I’ve treated him unfairly.”

“I’m just not reading you.”

“You don’t have to. You see my father?”

“No,” I replied.

“If you do, tell him I said good-bye.”

“Don’t hang up.”

“This is a great country, Billy Bob. But the bad guys are going to grind you up.”

“I’m still your attorney, remember? How did McComb help Johnny?”

But she had broken the connection.

It was unwinding fast now, but I didn’t know it, either because I was too close to my own problems or perhaps because I still did not appreciate the level of fear that Karsten Mabus could instill in others.

Just before noon, Romulus Finley came into the office. He looked stricken, as though he had just been informed an incurable disease had spread through all his organs. He stood in my doorway, his lips moving soundlessly, dried mucus at the corners.

“You want a glass of water, Senator?” I asked.

He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him. He sat down in front of my desk, looking about uncertainly. “Have you heard from my daughter?” he said.

“Yes, I did. This morning,” I replied.

“She called here?” he asked, his face lifting expectantly.

I didn’t answer. At that moment I was convinced that not only did I have a tap on my line but Finley knew about it.

“Where did she call you? I’ve got to get word to her,” he said.

“About what?”

“Everything. I think she’s in harm’s way,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “She’s mixed up. Her mother was an alcoholic. That’s why all these problems started.”

“I don’t know where Amber is, sir.”

I waited for him to speak, to make the admissions that would perhaps change his life and perhaps even save his daughter’s. He looked hard at me, but his vision was focused inward on thoughts that only he was privy to. The moment passed.