Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

It took Mansur nearly five minutes to fit himself into the safe. His knees were up to his chin. His face was a mask of bewilderment and pain.

Contraire squatted down in front of him. “You okay?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did she do it?”

“Dixie?” Contraire said. “Because she’s nuts about me and has been ever since she was twelve.”

“But why?” Mansur whispered.

“Must be my looks,” Contraire said, rose, slowly closed the safe and, after it was closed and locked, gave the combination dial a couple of spins.

When the black Cadillac sedan was almost halfway up the narrow twisting roadwith no shoulders that led to the Altoid Sanitarium, Danielle Adair Vines turned to Dixie Mansur and said, “I’ve had such a wonderful time, Betty, I don’t want to go back.”

Dixie, concentrating on a sharp curve, didn’t look at her. “That’s nice.”

“I don’t think you understand, Betty. Or maybe I didn’t make myself clear-although I’m much better at that than I used to be.”

Dixie gave her a brief glance. “Understand what?”

“That I’m not going back to Dr. Pease. I think I’ll go visit Mr. Vines and that nice Mr. Adair instead.”

“After I drop you off at the entrance, you can do what you want.”

“But if I go back there, Dr. Pease won’t let me leave. So why don’t we just return to that nice motel and I’ll call Mr. Adair? Or you can call him for me. Then I’ll wait for him in the motel.”

“Sorry,” Dixie said.

“You mean you won’t?”

“That’s right. I won’t.”

“Oh dear,” Danielle Vines said, grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and wrenched it to the left just as the Cadillac entered a sharp right-hand curve. Dixie Mansur fought for control of the wheel but the wife of Kelly Vines had either too much strength or too much desperation. Dixie instinctively slammed on the brakes as the Cadillac veered toward the guardrail.

The brakes and the guardrail together slowed the Cadillac but failed to stop it. The heavy car flattened the rail and plunged down the forty-five-degree slope, bursting its two front tires. Neither woman had time to scream or cry out before the car smashed into a large old oak at thirty-four miles per hour.

The old tree, growing on the steep slope, had low spreading branches. Some almost touched the ground. And one of them, a dead branch, shattered the Cadillac’s windshield on the driver’s side. It also penetrated Dixie Mansur’s throat near the base of her neck, killing her almost instantly.

Danielle Vines, shaken, bruised and bleeding from a deep cut on her right cheek and a bad scrape on her left hand, managed to force open the passenger door and scramble out of the car. She was on her hands and knees, still dazed, when she heard the man’s voice call, “You okay, lady?”

She looked up to see the man standing by the flattened guardrail, staring down at her. She noticed he wore a grayish-green uniform of some kind.

“I-I think so,” she said. “But I don’t think poor Betty is.”

Karl Seemant looked at his watch. It was 3:35 P.M. Seemant was an exterminator for the Agoura Pest and Varmint Control Co. and had been responding to a frantic call from the Altoid Sanitarium when, two dozen yards or so behind the Cadillac, he had watched it crash through the guardrail. The sanitarium had placed the frantic call after discovering its patients were afflicted with a mysterious plague of fleas.

Since it was the fourth of July and Seemant was being paid holiday double time, he decided the best thing to do was use his truck’s cellular phone to call either the sheriff or the Highway Patrol, wait around until they showed up-or maybe an ambulance-and then charge the time he waited to the Altoid loony bin, which, everybody said, had more money than it knew what to do with.

Theodore Contraire unlocked the poker room door in Cousin Mary’s quietly. After he opened it just a fraction, he put the key back in his pocket, kicked the door open and charged into the room, his M-16 on full automatic.

Contraire’s eyes raked the room, making full use of their peripheral vision, just as he had been taught at that two-week Reconnaissance and Survival course he had attended in southern Alabama at a cost of $4,250 in tuition.

“No games!” he shouted. “I don’t like fucking games!”

The door at the far end of the poker room opened slowly. It revealed Jack Adair, sitting on the toilet, his pants and shorts down around his ankles, one hand resting on the curved handle of the black cane.

“I’ll be out shortly,” Adair said and closed the door.

Contraire raced to the door, banged through it and poked the M-16’s muzzle into Adair’s left ear. “What the fuck’s going on here?”

“I’m discovering why fear is nature’s most reliable laxative,” Adair said.

Contraire chuckled, removed the M-16’s muzzle from Adair’s ear, stopped chuckling and said, “Where’s Vines?”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“By now she oughta be back at the nut farm-so where’s Vines?”

“I don’t follow you.”

“He’s not fucking here!” Contraire yelled.

“But why should he be?” Adair asked. “I certainly wouldn’t ask him to accompany me to the toilet. Nor would he volunteer. So he must be in the poker room where I left him.”

“He’s not there, goddamn it!”

“You don’t suppose he’s done a flit, do you?” Adair said. “Had his own key maybe? And after I was in here and preoccupied, he was out the back door and away. That’s so very like Kelly, who’s never really been one for self-sacrifice. Can’t say I blame him, of course, but still he could’ve invited me along.”

Contraire had long since stopped listening to Adair’s musings. He was concentrating now on the shower stall and the green curtain drawn across its entrance.

“He’s behind the shower curtain there.”

“I assure you he’s not,” Adair said.

“He’s in there with maybe a broken beer bottle or something so when I stick my head in he’ll scoop out my eye.”

“I can almost see it.”

“Hey, Vines!” Contraire called. “Come on out!”

But when Vines didn’t, Contraire switched the M-16 to single fire and sent three rounds through the shower curtain. The shots made Adair’s ears ring.

When nothing happened after several seconds, Contraire said, “Well, maybe he’s not in there after all.”

“Or it was a very quiet death.”

Contraire looked at his watch. “I got three thirty-eight and my lease on this place runs out at four. So we got thirty-two minutes to talk about this and that.”

“Twenty-two, I believe,” Adair said.

Contraire frowned, did some mental arithmetic and said, “Yeah. Twenty-two. That’s plenty.”

“Since you seem to be planning some sort of colloquy, why don’t we hold it in the other room where it’s far more comfortable?”

“I like you just like you are, Judge, with your pants and drawers down around your ankles. No sudden dashes that way.”

“May I at least flush the toilet?”

Contraire sniffed. “Yeah. Maybe you better.”

Adair reached back and pressed down the handle. The old toilet made a roar and a gurgle that Kelly Vines could hear from where he crouched on the hidden three-by-three-foot landing of the wooden stairs that led down to the bolt-hole basement. The toilet’s thunder was also loud enough to conceal the faint sound the shower wall door made as Vines slipped through it into the stall itself and stood, motionless, behind the drawn shower curtain, breathing through his mouth.

Adair looked back up at Contraire and asked, “Could I have a drink?”