Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

When Fork had first noticed the boulders and decided he absolutely had to have them, the Mexican alien was hauling them away from a blasting site in a dump truck. The chief had promptly arrested him for driving two miles over Durango’s twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, which nobody in living memory had ever observed. In exchange for his liberty, the Mexican had agreed to haul the boulders up to the chief’s house and arrange them nicely in what Fork described as a jardín de piedras . Instead, the Mexican had dumped them all up against the chief’s front door.

The door stayed sealed for two days until Fork could hire six other illegal Mexican aliens at six dollars an hour each to arrange the boulders into a garden of stone. He then had the same Mexican aliens plant twelve immense cacti-or cactuses as Fork, the contrarian, called them-that he had confiscated from a professional Arizona cactus rustler who had strayed into Durango by misadventure.

Intended for the rustler’s wealthy Santa Barbara client who, the chief claimed, was “some dipshit who poisoned coyotes for a hobby,” the stately saguaro cacti now seemed to be dying in the moist ocean air although Sid Fork said it just made them look even more noble and tragic.

After work, Mayor Huckins and Chief Fork often met at Norm Trice’s Blue Eagle Bar on North Fifth Street to compare civic notes, drink a glass or two of wine or beer and determine whether the mayor felt like inviting the chief home for dinner and bed. Two out of five nights she usually did, but on the other three nights and most weekends she told him not to bother.

When banished by the mayor, the chief would sometimes call the blond Dixie in Santa Barbara and offer to take her out for a pizza or a Mexican dinner, providing her husband was in New York or Tegucigalpa, London or Istanbul, or wherever it was that he went to make-in Fork’s opinion-more money than he and Dixie could ever spend.

On that last Friday in June, B. D. Huckins and Sid Fork met in the corner booth of the Blue Eagle after work and ordered two gin martinis, causing Norm Trice to ask what the occasion was.

“We just felt like it, Norm,” said the mayor.

“Just felt like it?” Trice said to Fork, as though seeking a second opinion.

Fork stared at him coldly and nodded.

“You two come in here every night,” said Trice, “well, three or four nights a week anyhow, and B. D. here has her glass of white wine, maybe two, and you your couple of beers, and the only time either of you ever order a martini is when B. D. gets reelected every two years, or when you collar some guy’s wanted down in L.A. and get your picture in the paper and, come to think of it, that’s about every couple of years too. So when I say, ‘What’s up?’ I’m asking if maybe Iacocca’s called to say he’s gonna start making DeSotos again in a brand-new plant in our fine new industrial park that’s been growing weeds for three years. And if so, well, the gin’s on me and let’s all get shitfaced.”

As Trice talked, the mayor stared down at the fifty-three-year-old wooden tabletop and the dozens of initials and dates that had been carved into it. The earliest date, she knew from previous inspections, was 12-3-35, which was the day Norm Trice’s father had opened the bar, naming it for the blue eagle that then symbolized Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration. In fact, a large old plywood NRA blue eagle, its paint fading, still hung behind the bar, clutching a gear with a few missing teeth in one claw, two and a half bolts of lightning in the other, and pointing its beak forever to the customer’s left.

When she was sure Norm Trice was through talking, the mayor stared up at him with winter-rain eyes that, if soft and brown, would have been far too large for the delicate chin, full mouth, not quite perfect nose and a forehead that seven years ago Sid Fork had warned her was a mile too high and made her look about nineteen instead of twenty-nine.

B. D. Huckins’s hair, which was a bit darker than honey, had then hung straight down, almost to her waist. The following morning she had had it hacked off into a Dutch-boy bob with bangs that ended just above the chilly gray eyes and camouflaged the smart high forehead. In her next campaign for mayor, she won by 56.9 percent-up 3.6 percent from the previous election. Sid Fork gave all the credit to the haircut.

The mayor pinned Norm Trice with her gray stare for several seconds before she said, “Nobody’s called, Norm. Not Lee. Not Ronnie. Not even Mayor Sonny from down in the Springs. Nothing good’s happened. So if it’s not too much trouble, would you please go get the drinks?”

After Trice left, mumbling about a guy having a right to ask, Sid Fork said, “I got four real nice T-bones at the Alpha Beta since he’s just out of the joint and I thought he might like a good steak.”

“You get any charcoal?”

“Sure.”

“What else?”

“Baked potatoes-big Idaho bastards.”

“They’ll take an hour.”

Fork nodded his agreement. “And I thought one of my Caesar salads and maybe some scratch biscuits.”

“What about dessert?”

“Vines doesn’t much look like a dessert eater. I don’t know about Adair.”

“Okay. Let’s skip dessert. If they want sugar, I think I’ve got some B and B left.”

A sullen Norm Trice returned and silently served the two martinis. After he went away, B. D. Huckins tasted hers, sighed and said, “What’s he like?”

“Vines?”

She nodded.

“Well, he’s kind of low-key, more smooth than slick, and he’s still got all his hair.” Fork ran a palm over his own bald head. “About my age. Pretty good bones but not much meat on ’em. Real dark eyes, maybe black, and real dark hair with a nose not near as bad as mine or the eagle’s over there. He’s tall enough and looks-well, cagey-smart, the way a one-eyed jack looks.”

“How long do they need?”

“He didn’t say.”

“What about money?”

“Vines won’t deal till he talks to Adair.”

B. D. Huckins finished her martini, put the glass down and said, “Why was he disbarred?”

“Some money disappeared.”

“Whose?”

“Adair’s.”

“How much?”

“They’re not sure but they say it was close to half a million. Just before the state started investigating Adair on that bribe thing, he put every dime into a blind trust and made Vines the administrator or trustee or whatever you call it.”

“Administrator.”

“After the bribe thing was dropped, the Feds went after Adair on tax evasion. But when they went to freeze his assets, they found he didn’t have any. Or hardly any. Vines swore he’d lost it all through imprudent investments. He even had records to show how he’d lost a lot of his own money along with Adair’s. But they brought Vines up before a hearing panel of the state bar court anyway and nailed him on four separate counts of misconduct that, from what I hear, were pretty vague. Then the state supreme court-the same one Adair’d been chief justice of-disbarred Vines. Just like that.”

“None of them recused themselves?”

“Nope.”

“What really happened to the money?” the mayor said.

“Who knows?”

“Guess.”

“I’d guess Vines managed to squirrel it away out of the country.”

“Where?”

“Jesus, B. D., I was on the phone long-distance part of the morning and most of the afternoon, finding out what I just told you. How the hell do I know what country?”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s assume they’ve got money somewhere. The next question: who’s after Adair?”

“That’s easy. Somebody who doesn’t want him to tell what he knows.”

“Which is what?”