Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

The chief of police said, “Aw shit, Norm,” and knelt beside the body. He noticed the check and removed it from Trice’s hand by pinching a corner of it with the nails of his right thumb and forefinger. Rising, Fork carefully laid the check on the bar and warned Vines not to touch it.

Kelly Vines twisted his head around to read what was written and printed on the check. “Fifty dollars, made out to cash and signed by a Ralph B. Farr. Wells Fargo bank in San Francisco.”

“Don’t touch it,” Fork warned again, turned to the old mechanical cash register, hit the no-sale key and glanced at the cash drawer’s contents. “About a hundred and fifty, around in there,” he said, closed the drawer and picked up the bar phone. “You want to get back here and pour us a couple?”

“Sure,” Vines said and went around the bar as Fork tapped out a number on the phone. Vines selected a bottle of Wild Turkey, found two glasses and was looking for the ice when he noticed the manila envelope. He read the mayor’s name on the peel-off label, dropped ice into the glasses, poured in the whiskey, added tap water and turned to tell Fork what he had found.

The chief of police was still on the phone, talking in that low and confidential tone often used either to announce deaths or spread rumors. After Fork hung up, Vines handed him a drink and said, “I found an envelope addressed to the mayor.”

“Where?”

Vines pointed. “You touch it?” Fork asked.

“No.”

Fork walked over and bent down to read the stick-on label. “It’s to B. D., all right.” He straightened and had a long swallow of his drink. “Maybe I oughta open it.”

“You’re the chief of police.”

“I don’t want to mess up any fingerprints.”

“There won’t be any fingerprints,” Vines said.

“Why not?”

“Let’s say the shooter comes in and orders a beer.”

“Why a beer?”

Vines pointed to the two-thirds-full glass of beer on the bar that still had condensed water beads on it. Fork gave the glass a grudging nod. Vines said, “He orders the beer, drinks some of it, hands the bartender-”

“The owner,” Fork said. “Norm Trice.”

“He hands the owner the envelope and-”

“How do you know about the envelope?”

“I’m guessing,” Vines said. “Anyway, he hands it to him and now we’re supposed to have fingerprints on a manila envelope and maybe on a beer glass. Then he asks the owner to cash a check. More fingerprints on the check-plus yours all over the phone and the cash register. When the owner tells him he won’t cash his rotten check, the guy shoots him. Twice. In the face. The shots go in six inches apart, maybe five, which tells us the shooter’s either very lucky or very good. The owner drops and the shooter empties the cash register.”

“Except he didn’t.”

“I know,” Vines said. “Which means that although he may’ve left the mayor a message-the envelope and the body-I wouldn’t bet on any fingerprints.”

“A pro, huh?”

“Open the envelope and find out.”

“It’s evidence.”

“That’s why you should open it,” Vines said. “Before somebody else does.”

Fork put his glass down, picked up the manila envelope and ripped its flap open with a thumb. He pulled out a piece of gray cardboard with six glossy black-and-white photographs bound to it by a tan rubber band. Fork stripped away the rubber band and, one by one, dealt the photographs onto the bar.

Five of the six photographs had been taken through the windshield of Vines’s blue Mercedes. The first showed a startled Vines, raising his hands to his face. The second showed him with his hands over his face, peering through his fingers. The third showed a startled Jack Adair. The fourth showed Adair smiling. The fifth showed Jack Adair sticking out his tongue. The sixth and final photograph showed Sid Fork and B. D. Huckins standing beside a car, the driver door open, deep in conversation, Fork doing the talking and Huckins looking up at him.

“Whose car?” Vines asked.

“B. D.’s.”

“When was it taken?”

“Beats me,” Fork said. “When’d they take the ones of you?”

“Today.”

“Where?”

“Lompoc.”

“Who took ’em?”

“A girl photographer from the back of a pink Ford van with a green sign on it that said, ‘Floradora Flowers, Santa Barbara.’”

“You hid and Adair stuck out his tongue.”

“A metaphor, you think?” Vines said.

“Beats me,” said Fork and bent over to look more closely at the photographs of Mayor Huckins and himself. “This one of me and B. D.’s not bad.”

Vines heard a car door slam, then another one. He scooped up the photographs, stuffed them into the ripped-open manila envelope and shoved it down into his right hip pocket just before the Blue Eagle’s front door banged open and two men in their forties strode in, wearing the proprietary air that marks a policeman almost as plainly as his badge or uniform.

Vines assumed they were the two homicide detectives Fork had recruited from Detroit and Chicago. He also recognized them as the pair of mock-drunks from the Holiday Inn cocktail lounge. One was of average height, black, scholary-looking and egg-bald. A leather gadget bag hung by a strap from his left shoulder. The other resembled a too-tall elf with nimble brown eyes and a long sly face. The brown eyes walked up and down Vines as the man moved slowly toward Fork. Vines remembered the too-tall man as the one who had climbed down from the barstool and said, “Fuck California,” in a clear and pleasant voice.

When the tall man reached Sid Fork, he said, “Old Norm, huh?”

“Shot,” Fork said. “Twice.”

The detective leaned over the bar and peered down at the body on the duckboards. The bald detective didn’t bother to look. Instead, he put the gadget bag on the bar, unzipped it and took out a Minolta camera with a built-in flash. He went behind the bar and began photographing the dead Norm Trice. After taking six or seven photographs, he looked at the tall detective and said, “Looks like somebody with a twenty-two.”

Fork decided it was time for introductions. He indicated the detective with the camera and said, “Joe Huff, Kelly Vines.” They nodded at each other. Fork then introduced the too-tall detective as Wade Bryant. After the tall detective and Vines exchanged hellos, Fork said, “We got here about seven, maybe eight minutes ago.”

“Where was the check then?” Bryant asked. Although the check still lay on the bar, Vines couldn’t recall Bryant even giving it a glance.

“It was in Norm’s hand,” Fork said. “The right one.”

“Take a look in the till?”

Fork nodded. “About a hundred and fifty there.”

Bryant shook his head and frowned, as if disappointed so far by what he had seen and heard. He reached into the pocket of his white short-sleeved shirt, took out a pack of Lucky Strikes and lit one, blowing the smoke to his left and away from the others. “It doesn’t parse,” he said.

“Why not?” said Fork.

“Guy comes in and orders a beer,” Bryant said, giving the two-thirds-full glass of beer a brief look. “He drinks a swallow or two and then asks to cash a personal out-of-town check. That means he sure as shit didn’t know Norm. So when Norm turns him down, the guy takes out a twenty-two or maybe even a twenty-five and plinks Norm twice in the face, which is pretty fair country shooting. Then the guy takes off, leaving behind what’s in the till and also the check with his name, address and phone number on it just in case we want to call the San Francisco cops and have ’em go pick him up.”

Joe Huff, the detective with the camera, came around the bar, glanced at Vines, started putting the Minolta back into the gadget bag and said, “You have any theories, Mr. Vines?”