Ross Thomas: The Fourth Durango

Loom was a barrel-bodied man in his late forties with thyroidic brown eyes, a curiously unlined face and silvery hair thin enough to reveal a candy-cane-pink scalp. He finished his initialing, recapped the pen, squared the form’s nine pages, looked up and pointed at a molded plastic chair.

Adair sat down on the chair and waited to hear what the associate warden had to say. Loom said nothing for nine or ten seconds, letting a scowl and an unblinking stare speak for him. Then came the accusatory demand.

“I still want a straight answer to why you refused parole seven months ago.”

“We’ve been over all that.”

“Humor me.”

Adair sighed. “Maybe this time we should try the catechistic approach.”

“Fine. I always liked my catechism. Simple answers to hard questions.”

“The first question,” Adair said. “Why am I here?”

“You’re a felon convicted of Federal income tax evasion.”

“Are such tax evaders usually confined to maximum-security Federal prisons?”

“Not unless they hope to squeeze something else out of them.”

“Where are such tax evaders usually sent?”

“To Club Feds in Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas and Alabama-except the one in Alabama’s kind of crummy.”

“So why am I really here?”

“Because they couldn’t prove you took a million dollars under the table-or half of it anyhow.”

“What happened after all that was dropped?”

“They hit you with the tax evasion thing and you noloed it.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because they had you cold and you didn’t have any choice.”

Adair was again studying the head of the black bear who had been shot too young when he said, “Let’s go back to your original question.”

“Why you refused parole?”

Adair nodded and looked back at Loom. “After I leave here today, to whom do I report?”

“Nobody.”

“And to whom would I report if I’d accepted parole seven months ago?”

“To some Federal parole officer maybe half your age.”

“And what would’ve happened if I’d been charged with parole violation-no matter how minor?”

A fresh scowl rewrinkled Loom’s forehead as he leaned back in his swivel chair. “You’re saying they’d’ve faked a parole violation so they could squeeze you some more on what that bribe thing was all about, right?”

Adair only smiled. Loom looked away and said, “Well, if they’d stuck you with a phony parole violation, and I’m not saying it could’ve happened, but if it had, then you’d have been right back here for another nice visit.” He looked at Adair and almost smiled himself. “This is where you’re supposed to say, ‘I rest my case.’”

“I rest my case,” said Adair.

In the silence that followed, Loom’s expression went from one of near friendliness to total indifference. When he finally spoke it was off to the left in a monotone from lips that scarcely moved. He’s been here so long, Adair realized, that now and then he even talks like some old lag.

“Tell me about you and Bobby Dupree,” Loom said through ventriloquistic lips.

“Who?”

“That razorback who hangs out with Loco of the lightbulbs.”

“What about him?”

Loom snapped his gaze back to Adair and made his voice crisp. “He’s in the hospital with a broken left wrist and possible internal injuries.”

“Then it’s sorry I am to learn of his troubles,” Adair said with no hint of a brogue.

“We found him in the discharge area shower.”

“So?”

“So the last guy to use that shower before we found him was you.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because the last guy to use that shower must’ve been the guy who broke Mr. Dupree’s wrist, which couldn’t have been me, taking my advanced age into consideration and also Mr. Dupree’s considerable size.”

“Fucking lawyer talk.”

Adair nodded politely, as if acknowledging some small but gracious compliment. “What does Mr. Dupree say?”

“That there were four of them and they all wore masks.”

Adair rose from the plastic chair. “Then I don’t see we have anything more to discuss.”

“Sit down.”

Adair sat down. Loom leaned far back in his executive swivel chair, placed both feet on the desk, locked his hands behind his neck and examined the ceiling.

“A rumor,” he said. “We can discuss a rumor.”

“Concerning?”

“Somebody offering twenty thousand cash money to make sure you don’t make it out the front gate. Not alive anyhow.” The associate warden’s gaze fell from the ceiling and landed on Adair. “And since your mouth’s not exactly hanging open-and since even I heard it-it must be kind of old and stale as rumors go.”

“Not so old,” Adair said. “And not particularly stale.”

“Whose money?”

“No idea.”

“Bullshit.”

Adair shrugged. “But rumor or no, I presume you’d rather have me walk out the front gate than be carried out all zipped up in a bodybag.”

Loom apparently had to think about what he really wanted but finally nodded his agreement.

“Then I have a proposal.”

The associate warden glanced at the oak-encased Regulator clock that resembled those that once hung from schoolroom walls. “Think you might slice a little off its end?”

“Condense my argument?”

“Try.”

“All right. I want Blessing Nelson to see me through the gate and all the way to the visitors’ parking lot.”

Loom rejected the proposal with a shake of his head. “I’ll give you two guards instead.”

“How much’re you paying hacks these days?”

“A princely sum like always. That’s why I’ve got a whole file drawer full of Federal job applications filled out in pencil by guys who don’t spell too good.”

“For half of that rumored twenty thousand,” Adair said, “all two guards would have to do is look left instead of right for two seconds, maybe three, and snicker-snack, I’m dead and they’re each five thousand richer, if you follow my math.”

Loom’s mouth was already open, a rebuttal obviously prepared, when the green telephone rang. There were two phones on his desk: a cream console model with twelve clear-plastic buttons, indicating twelve lines, and the green phone, which had no buttons at all, not even an anachronistic dial. Loom dropped his feet to the floor, snatched up the green phone and barked his surname into it.

After listening for less than five seconds, he gave Adair a bleak look, picked up his fountain pen, used his teeth and right hand to uncap it, and began jotting down notes on the answers he got to his mostly one-word questions that dealt with where, when and how, but not with who or why. After promising to be right there, Loom hung up the phone, recapped his pen, rose quickly and stared down at Adair with a curious mixture of embarrassment and accusation.

“Somebody just did Blessing Nelson,” Loom said, his tone matching his face’s mixed expression.

“Did?” Adair said, condemning the word’s imprecision by spitting out its consonants.

“Killed. Speared him. With a mop handle-or something that had a sharp point.”

As part of Adair instantly rejected the notion that Blessing Nelson was dead at twenty-nine, another part counseled that his rejection was merely the automatic denial that accompanies grief. But when Adair went probing for grief, he discovered only shame caused by grief’s absence. Yet he did turn up sorrow, regret and a sense of utter waste. And because he despised waste, anger turned Adair’s next question into a near indictment. “You weren’t by any chance waiting for that call, were you?”

All sympathy vanished from Loom’s expression, replaced by total indifference. “No more than Blessing expected to get speared six times. Maybe seven. They’re still counting.” Loom started for the door but turned back. “Stay put. Understand?”