Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

“So he went down to Tijuana and somebody shot him twice and fixed it up as a suicide,” Adair said. “If they’d shot him once, it might’ve worked, but twice meant they wanted to make it a statement-a declaration.”

“That also occurred to me.”

“Then there’s poor Blessing Nelson and that price on my head.”

“Another statement,” Vines said. “And certainly a declaration.”

“Plus the girl photographer in the back of the pink van. Floradora Flowers of Santa Barbara. When’re we going to check them out?”

“First thing tomorrow.”

Adair looked down at the carpet again. “Was there an autopsy on Paul?”

“A perfunctory one in T.J. I claimed his body. After I called his lawyer in Washington, I had it cremated. It was in his will.”

“Who got the ashes?”

Vines nodded at the window. “The ocean. That was also in his will, although he probably meant the Atlantic. But since he didn’t specify, he wound up in the Pacific. He didn’t leave much-about ten thousand in a checking account, a two-year-old BMW and a hundred-thousand whole life policy some friend had sold him. He left it all to one of those Washington think tanks that’s still trying to decide whether it’s neo-conservative or neo-liberal.”

“Not that it matters much anymore,” Adair said, turning yet again to look at the ocean. “Funny about Paul, though. He never got interested in money-at least, not the way you and I did. If he hadn’t gone into government, he could’ve made himself a ton of it.”

“Maybe.”

Adair turned to examine Vines with undisguised curiosity. “You ever like Paul?”

“I grew up with him and roomed with him for four years.”

“Evasive.”

Vines looked at something just beyond Adair’s left ear. “I don’t suppose I ever liked him. Not really. I respected his mind, envied his looks, despised his politics and very much wanted to fuck his sister.”

“Which you eventually did.”

“Which I eventually did.”

Adair, his curiosity again evident, asked, “You ever like Dannie?”

“Very much.”

“And now?”

“And now, Jack, I just love her.”

It was still light that last Friday evening in June when they stopped along the outeredge of the seventh hairpin turn up on Garner Road. By raising himself slightly in the front seat of the Mercedes, Jack Adair could inspect most of Durango down below, including its five-block-long, three-block-wide business district, or downtown, which was bounded on the west by the Southern Pacific tracks. Just beyond the tracks were the ocean and what Chief Sid Fork liked to call “the longest one-foot-wide sharp-rock beach in the entire state of California.”

As Adair had predicted, the sunset was spectacular, its last rays bathing the business district, including the lone seven-story skyscraper, in a soft warm light a stranger might have compared to gold-a more knowledgeable native to brass.

Adair was still taking in the view when he asked, “How much’ve we got left in that Bahamian bank?”

“Around three hundred thousand.”

Adair turned to stare at Vines with disbelief and even shock.

“We had expenses, Jack. Your legal fees. The high cost of money laundering. Dannie’s treatment. Blessing Nelson’s mother. And me-since I ate and drank some of it up.”

“We’ll just have to make do then,” Adair said, remembered something and added, “Keep sending that five hundred a month to Blessing’s mother.”

“For how long?”

“Until we run out of money,” said Adair, and resumed his inspection of Durango down below.

Five blocks east of the SP tracks, the city’s business district had failed in its attempt, many years ago, to flow around Handshaw Park, which was two city blocks of pines, magnolias, coral trees, eucalyptus, green grass when it rained, nine concrete picnic tables, a children’s broken slide, some swings and a gray bandstand that once had been painted a glistening white.

Back when the bandstand still glistened, select members of the Durango High School marching band made a few vacation dollars by playing concerts in the park on summer Sunday afternoons. But as the city’s tax base shrank, the budget ax fell first on the summer concerts, then on the marching band itself and, finally, on its director, Milt Steed, who had also taught art and, when last heard from, was playing cornet down in Disneyland.

Handshaw Park had been called simply City Park until B. D. Huckins was elected mayor. She renamed it after Dicky Handshaw, who had served four terms as mayor until Huckins beat him in the 1978 election, which was still remembered as the most vicious in the city’s 148-year history.

Renaming the park had seemed at first like a nice conciliatory gesture. But that was before word got around of an exchange in the Blue Eagle Bar between Norm Trice and a prominent local attorney who regarded himself as a budding political savant. The attorney had claimed that next time out B.D. Huckins could easily be defeated by almost any candidate with balls and a few brains.

“Like you, huh?” Trice had asked.

“Sure. Like me. Why not?”

“Because,” Trice had explained in a patient voice, “B. D. didn’t name that park after Dicky Handshaw so folks’d remember him. She did it so guys like you’d remember what happened to him.”

Kelly Vines said, “Seen enough?”

Jack Adair nodded, took one last look and settled back down into the leather seat. “About two dozen streets running east and west,” he said, “and maybe two and a half dozen running north and south. Too many vacant lots. No architectural landmarks to speak of, unless you count a lot of Victorian piles all tarted up in that green and cream they like to use. Probably bed-and-breakfast inns now-or lawyers’ offices. Wonder why they always use cream and green?”

After Vines said he didn’t know, Adair asked another question. “And since I sure as hell didn’t see any of them down by the tracks, where do you think the rich folks live?”

“Up here in the hills,” Vines said as he drove slowly down the cul-de-sac called Don Emilio Drive. “Where they always live.”

At the end of the dead-end street they could see Mayor Huckins’s neat blue two-bedroom bungalow and admire her fine stand of jacarandas. The other six houses that lined the short drive were no more grand than the mayor’s. Appraising each house as they drove by, Jack Adair said, “Well, if this is how the rich live, God help the poor.”

It was the mayor herself who opened the door after Vines rang the bell. She wore a black skirt, a gray silk blouse and not much makeup. Her jewelry consisted of a man’s gold tank watch that may have come from Cartier and a pair of plain gold earrings that may have come from a drugstore. Vines thought she looked as though she didn’t much care where either came from.

B. D. Huckins looked first at Adair, then at Vines and back at the older man. “You’re Jack Adair,” she said, holding out her hand. As they shook hands, she said, “How’d you like to be called-Judge, Mr. Chief Justice or Mr. Adair?”

“Jack, if it won’t make you uncomfortable.”

Huckins smiled a noncommittal smile and looked at Kelly Vines. “Mr. Vines,” she said, holding out her hand.

“Mayor Huckins,” said Vines, accepting the hand and finding that it reminded him strangely of the blond Dixie’s. The mayor’s hand was as slim and cool and firm as Dixie’s, but the handshake didn’t last nearly as long because it was of the quick squeeze and even quicker release variety favored by seasoned campaigners.

She led them from a small foyer into the living room, whose principal piece of furniture was a long cream couch from the 1930s in remarkable repair. There was also a chocolate-brown leather club chair, which, from a carefully positioned brass floor lamp, was obviously where she did her reading. Both chair and couch were drawn up to a coffee table that was actually an old steamer trunk, laid on its side and plastered with bright labels from ancient European hotels and extinct steamship lines.