Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

“Not a thing, B. D., but thank you.”

“I’d like a beer,” Fork said, rising from the couch. “But I’ll get it myself.”

“Well, if you’re having one, Sid, I guess I will, too,” Coates said.

Fork looked at Deputy Quirt. “Henry?”

“No, thanks.”

As Fork headed for the kitchen, Sheriff Coates said, “I apologize again for dropping by so late, B. D.”

The mayor looked at her watch. “It’s only ten forty-eight.”

“But since I had to be over here in Durango anyhow-and wasn’t that a terrible thing about Ivy Settles? Just awful. How’s his wife taking it?”

“Hard.”

“If there’s anything at all I can do…” Coates left his offer dangling-incomplete, undefined and, in Huckins’s opinion, meaningless.

“That’s very kind of you.”

“But the real reason I dropped by so late, B. D., is I need to talk a little politics.”

“Who with?”

“Why, with you, of course.”

Huckins kept her expression polite, her voice neutral. “Sid’ll probably want to hear this.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.”

They sat in silence until Fork returned with two open bottles of beer and handed one to Coates. “Need a glass, Charlie?”

“What for?”

Huckins waited until Fork was again sitting on the cream couch and had drunk some of his beer before she said, “Charlie wants to talk a little politics.”

Fork turned to examine the sheriff, as if for the first time. He inspected the glistening black boots, the tight tan whipcord pants and the forest-green Viyella shirt that was tailored to emphasize the flat stomach, deep chest and the shoulders that seemed a foot thick and a yard wide.

The chief’s slow, careful inspection finally reached the sheriff’s face with its landmark chin, bad-cop mouth, stuck-up nose that never sunburned or peeled and, finally, the blue eyes that crinkled on demand and were shaped like long teardrops. Topping all this was a wealth of dark brown gray-flecked hair that every seven days was trimmed to Marine Corps specifications.

“Politics?” Fork said after his inspection. “Christ, Charlie, you don’t even have any opposition this year.”

Coates nodded, studied the floor to demonstrate the gravity of what he was about to say, and looked up quickly, first at Fork, then at Huckins. “It can’t go beyond these walls.”

“I won’t breathe a word,” Fork said, “unless it’ll do me some good.”

Almost everything in Coates’s face smiled except his mouth. “Still the merry prankster at forty, right, Sid?”

“Thirty-nine. And before you invite yourself into somebody’s house, you oughta know if you can trust them or not.”

“B. D. knows the answer to that, don’t you, B. D.?”

The mayor said, “Get to it, Charlie.”

Coates edged forward another inch on the cream couch, leaned another inch in Huckins’s direction and spoke in the hushed tones of the seasoned conspirator. “Old man Sloop’s going to step down as county supervisor in nineteen ninety.”

“Why?” she said.

“To pursue other interests.”

The mayor shook her head. “Billy Sloop celebrated-or at least observed-his sixty-eighth birthday last week. He’s been a county supervisor for fourteen years and doesn’t have any other interests to pursue. So how much have you got on him, Charlie?”

“Enough.”

“Why tell me?”

“Because I’m going to announce for his job and I want your endorsement.”

“When’re you going to announce?”

“Two days after the election-November tenth.”

“Why then?”

“Because that’s the day Billy’s promised me he’ll let it out that he won’t be running for reelection in nineteen ninety after all, and my announcement will give me the jump on everyone else.”

“And you want my endorsement?”

“Sure do, B. D.”

“You know I never endorse anyone except at the city level.”

“Thought you might make an exception.”

The mayor sighed. “Cut the crap, Charlie. What d’you really want?”

“I want to help you clean up Durango.”

“It’s not dirty,” Fork said.

The sheriff turned to the chief of police, making no effort to hide his contempt. “Four murders in two days? A serial killer on the loose? If anybody else gets killed here, they’ll start calling it Beirut, California. I can bring my task force in and nail that sucker in ten days max, Sid, maybe even seven.”

“That’s not fast enough,” the mayor said.

Coates’s look of contempt vanished, replaced by one that made him seem honestly puzzled. “I don’t follow you, B. D.”

“It’s simple. Durango is an incorporated municipality that provides its own law enforcement.”

“I don’t need any civics lesson.”

“Politics, not civics. You said you wanted to talk a little politics so that’s what I’m doing. Let’s begin with Durango. It has an elected mayor who’s its chief executive. Me. I hire its chief of police, who’s sitting right next to you. Sid. I hire him with the City Council’s approval and he reports to me. That means law enforcement is ultimately my responsibility. That’s what I’m elected to do and if I can’t do it, the city will elect itself a mayor who can. But if I invite the county sheriff and his task force in to do what the police chief and I’re supposed to do, then even the dimmest voter’ll get the idea that B. D. Huckins and Sid Fork are incapable of maintaining law and order, which would give this same dimmest voter a fine reason to vote for a new mayor who’d hire a new chief of police. You following me so far?”

Coates only nodded.

“I like living in this town, Charlie. I like being its mayor. I know maybe two thousand people in Durango by their first names. I belong here and can’t even imagine living anywhere else. What’s more, I plan to go on being mayor for as long as I can get elected because I’m a damn good one-the best this town ever had. But what you’re asking me to do is commit political suicide by jump-starting your campaign. Charlie Coates for county supervisor-the man who cleaned up Durango in a week or maybe ten days. Well, that’s not fast enough, Sheriff, because the killer, whoever he is, will be arrested by Durango cops and put behind Durango bars in Durango’s jail by the fourth of July and that I can absolutely guarantee you.”

The mayor paused, smiled almost sweetly and said, “So there’s really no logical reason to bring in your task force, is there?”

It was B. D. at her best, Sid Fork decided. On the attack, not giving an inch, her voice low and as cold as ice water and those gray eyes drilling right through old Charlie’s thick skull. Fork decided to lend a hand.

“I don’t know about that guaranteed July the fourth deadline, B. D.,” he said.

“Why not?” Huckins said, faking a note of asperity to make it sound as if she had no idea what Fork’s answer would be.

“Because we’re going to have that sucker in jail by the second of July-the third at the latest.”

Sheriff Coates advanced another inch on the cream couch, reducing the width of his perch to approximately four inches. “How long’ve we known each other, B. D.?”

“Nineteen long years.”

“More like twenty. I remember I’d just started on the same job Deputy Quirt’s got when you and Sid and the rest of ’em rolled in here from Frisco in that old GM school bus you’d painted up like an Easter egg. You parked where you shouldn’t’ve-on Seventh next to City Park-and the next morning I just happened by, woke everybody up and told you to move it before the city cops busted you. I even told you where you could park the thing. Remember that, Sid?”

“Not really.”

“We go back a long, long way, B. D.-you, me, Sid and Dixie. You got to be mayor; I got to be sheriff; Sid got to be chief of police; and Dixie, well, I guess Dixie got to be rich. But wasn’t there another guy with you all back then? Funny-looking short guy. Ugly. Called himself Teddy, I think. Teddy Smith? Jones? Something like that.”