Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

“But there’s not.”

“Pick up your thousand,” Vines said.

After Kelly Vines returned to the round table to report he had arranged for the two rooms and the safe, Parvis Mansur took over the discussion.

“The simplest of ruses is usually the best,” he said. “So the one I’ll use to lure Mr. Vines and Mr. Adair here on Monday next, the fourth of July, is a holiday poker game.”

“At least that’s what you’ll tell whoever’s willing to pay a million dollars for the pair of us,” Adair said.

“Correct.”

“What time does the game start?”

“Three in the afternoon.”

“And what will you tell him-this guy who keeps calling you?”

“You mean about the procedure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, first I’ll speak of money.”

“Good,” Sid Fork said.

“I shall also emphasize-rather strongly, I might add-that nothing will happen until the money has been tallied and secured.”

“What’s the deal on the safe?” Fork asked Vines.

“Dorr’s agreed to leave it open and let Parvis lock the money inside.”

“So when it’s all over, Merriman’ll unlock it and hand over the million?” Fork said.

Vines nodded.

“Seems to me if something happened to some of us,” Fork said, “old Merriman could just say, ‘What money?’-couldn’t he?”

“What an interesting thought, Chief,” Adair said.

“I think while all this is going on,” Fork said, “Merriman and I’ll play a few hands of gin out at my house-just to pass the time.”

“Extremely wise,” Mansur said.

“Well, let’s see now,” Adair said. “Mr. Mansur has counted the money and locked it away in the safe. Now what?”

Mansur said, “Next I turn to the person or persons who’ve paid me the money and hand over the key that unlocks the poker room where you and Mr. Vines are ostensibly waiting to commence your game.”

“You’ve locked us in?” Vines said.

“I’m afraid so-for the sake of realism.”

No one said anything after that for several seconds until B. D. Huckins quietly asked, “What happens then, Mr. Vines?”

“It all depends,” he said.

At 12:09 A.M. on Saturday, July 2, the chief of police rose naked from the mayor’s bed and pulled on the Jockey shorts that were lying on the floor next to the jeans and white shirt he had worn to Soldier Sloan’s burial.

“Like me to get you something before I go?” he asked B. D. Huckins, who lay on her back, the sheet up to her chin, staring at the bedroom’s textured ceiling that always reminded Fork of three-week-old cottage cheese.

“Maybe a glass of wine.”

“Zinfandel?” he asked as he zipped up the jeans and began buttoning the shirt.

“Fine,” the mayor said.

Stuffing the tails of his shirt down into the jeans, Fork said, “Maybe I ought to stay, B. D.”

She shook her head. “I need time to think.”

“About what?”

“Just think.”

“I’ll get the wine,” he said.

When he came back with two glasses of Zinfandel, Huckins propped herself up against the bed’s headboard, letting the sheet slip almost to her waist. Fork smiled at her bare breasts that he long ago had decided were perfect.

“When I see ’em like that,” he said, handing her the wine, “sort of accidentally, I still think exactly what I thought twenty years ago: she’s got the best-looking set of jugs in California.”

“Jugs,” she said, looking down at her breasts with what could have been either detachment or indifference. “I guess you could call them that since their main purpose is to supply milk to the young I’m probably never going to have.”

“That bother you?”

She sipped the wine, as if reflecting on Fork’s question. “I’m thirty-six, Sid. Another four or five years and-”

“You wanta get married?”

“I don’t need to get married to have a kid.”

Fork finished his wine, put the glass down on the bedside table and said, “Lemme ask you something else, B. D.”

She nodded.

“Did it ever sort of happen to cross your mind that we could take that million and just tell Durango good-bye, good luck and hasta la vista ?”

She stared at him with eyes that-perhaps because of the dim light-had taken on the color of gunpowder. “That’s one of the things I need to think about.”

At 12:49 A.M. on that same Saturday, Virginia Trice arrived home after closing the Blue Eagle early to find Jack Adair again in the kitchen of the old house. He had just finished making two toasted Spam and cheese sandwiches when she said, “You really like to cook?”

“I like to eat,” Adair said, placed the sandwiches on two plates and served them on the pine kitchen table.

“Looks good,” she said, sitting down.

“Milk okay?” he asked, opening the refrigerator.

“Fine.”

Adair served the milk, sat down at the table, took an enormous bite of his sandwich and chewed it with obvious enjoyment. As they ate the sandwiches and drank the milk, she told him how a waitress at the Blue Eagle had quit that afternoon without notice. It could’ve put her in a bind, she said, because it was the first of the month and the government checks were arriving.

“But it didn’t?” he asked.

“In Durango? An hour after she quit five girls came in to apply for her job. I told each one I’d call her tomorrow-today now-and tell her yes or no. That way they don’t have to sit around waiting for the phone to ring.”

“That was a decent thing to do.”

“When I was a waitress I learned pretty quick that this country’s got a real shortage of decency.”

She reached into her small brown leather purse, hesitated, looked at Adair and said, “You smoke?”

“Used to.”

“Mind if I do?”

“Not at all.”

She took a pack of filtered Camels from the purse and lit one with a disposable lighter. “I started again on Tuesday right after the funeral. I’d been off for sixteen months.”

“Well, they can be a solace.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about choice-how you can choose to do something or not do it-like I chose to start smoking again. But then I decided there aren’t that many choices when you get right down to it. If you’re sick, you can’t choose to get well. And you sure as hell can’t choose your parents and all the crap that goes with that. So the more I thought about it the more it seems like you don’t get to make the big choices, just the little ones.”

“Such as?” Adair said.

“Such as crossing the street almost on an impulse that later turns out to be the biggest choice of your life.”

“Because of subsequent events,” he said.

“Yeah. Because of what happens. So I decided to make a choice. I don’t know if it’s a big one or a little one. But I decided to ask you, no strings attached, if you’d like to go to bed with me tonight?”

Adair smiled what he hoped was his most winning smile. “I’d be delighted.”

Kelly Vines, lying in bed, looked up from page 389 of his 406-page novel of mild southern decadence when he heard Adair’s voice and Virginia Trice’s giggle as they went past his room. He waited for the now familiar sound of Adair’s door to open and close. Instead, he heard a door open and close farther down the hall. It was, he decided, the sound of the door to Virginia’s room.

Vines smiled, put his book down, took a handful of mixed nuts from the open can on the bedside table, rose and went to the window that overlooked the street. The anonymous sedan was parked two houses down. Glancing at his watch, Vines saw it was a few minutes to one.

He stood, eating the nuts one at a time, as he stared out the window and waited for the shift to change. At one minute past one, another anonymous sedan parked in front of the other car. A very tall man got out, went back to the rear car, bent down-apparently to say a few words-and returned to his own car.