Билл Пронзини - Blue Lonesome

She’d been sensitive to it, too, driving through town — the fear and nervous anger, the potential danger. He nodded and said, “I understand.”

“All right. Just stay put until you see the three of us by the pickup. Then walk on over.”

She was inside the tavern less than five minutes. When she came out she had two men with her, both in their thirties and rough-dressed, one sporting a thick freebooter’s beard. She spoke animatedly to them, gesturing with her hands, as she led the way to the white pickup. The bearded one bent to peer at the driver’s side door, the side farthest away from the roadhouse. Messenger, out of the Jeep and approaching at a fast walk, heard him say, “What the hell? I don’t see any dent. There ain’t even a scratch.” The voice was the same one he’d heard on the phone pretending to be Herb Mackey.

The other man, red-haired and wiry, saw him first. “Christ, Billy, look who’s coming.”

Billy Draper straightened; the two men stood staring at Messenger as he slid around the pickup and joined Dacy. She had positioned herself at the front of the truck, her back to the west; that put the glare of the setting sun in the eyes of the two miners. There was no room for them to sidestep in the narrow space between the pickup and the four-by-four next to it. All they could do was squint and raise shading hands.

“You’re Dacy Burgess,” Draper said to her. “Yeah, I thought you looked familiar. What’s the idea, Dacy? You and this dickhead up to something?”

“We’re after the answers to some questions.”

“Yeah? Well, we’re fresh out.”

“You haven’t heard the questions yet.”

“Don’t matter. We’re still fresh out.”

“Who paid you to set that snake trap at Mackey’s?”

“Snake trap? What’s she yammering about, Pete?”

“Beats me,” Pete Teal said. “Drunk or stoned, maybe.”

“Let’s cut the bullshit, boys.”

Almost casually Dacy slid a hand under the loose tails of her shirt, brought it out filled with a short-barreled revolver. Messenger was as taken aback as Draper and Teal. He might have expected that this was the sort of tactic she’d use, a pure Western improvisation, but he hadn’t. Babe in the desert, she’d called him earlier. Right.

The gun made Teal twitchy; his gaze was fixed on it and his hands moved jerkily up and down the legs of his Wrangler jeans. Draper’s reaction was one of angry bluster. He said, “Who’re you kidding, honey? You ain’t gonna shoot nobody with that thing.”

“You think? Check out where it’s aimed, Billy. Take one step this way, you’ll spend the rest of your life half-cocked.”

“Big talk.”

“Take the step then.”

Staredown.

Neither the revolver nor her hard-bright eyes wavered. Messenger had known there was a core of steel in her, but he hadn’t realized just how deeply forged it was. He kept learning things about her, and one of them was that there was a lot she could teach him, a lot he wanted her to teach him. Listen and learn, listen and yearn.

Draper recognized the steel in her, too; he didn’t move. Teal kept rubbing his pants legs, staring at the revolver. When Draper said, “Hell with you and your gun, mama,” the words came out sounding more sullen than angry. “We don’t have to tell you nothing.”

“You do if you want to stay out of jail.”

“Jail, shit. We never even been to Mackey’s and you can’t prove different.”

“I’m not talking about Mackey’s. I’m talking about John T. Roebuck’s murder last night.”

That jump-started Teal. He flapped an arm and said, “Hey! We didn’t have nothing to do with that.”

“Looks to me like maybe you did.”

“No way. Listen—”

He broke off because a bright red four-by-four had come sliding into the parking lot and was swinging around toward where the four of them stood. Dacy lowered the revolver, hid it behind her leg, as the four-by-four — a Chevy Blazer — slewed into a space near the Jeep. Two men got out. Hanratty and Spears. Hanratty’s wheels tonight, with him driving.

“What’s goin’ on over there?” Hanratty called. He sounded drunk and looked drunk: unsteady on his feet, red-faced, his shirt partly untucked.

Dacy called back, “Just a friendly conversation. Isn’t that right, boys?”

“That’s right,” Teal said. “No problem here.”

“Sure about that?”

“Like the lady said. Buy you and your buddy a beer when we’re done, all right?”

“Whiskey tonight. Honor of John T. You hear about John T.?”

“We heard.”

“Son of a bitch there, that city boy, it wasn’t for him John T.’d still be alive.”

Nobody said anything to that. Hanratty’s red face took on a belligerent expression; he started in their direction. Messenger tensed. But Tom Spears wasn’t as drunk as Hanratty, or as inclined to be vindictive. He said in lugubrious tones, “Unpin your ears and let your hackles smooth down, Joe. We come here for whiskey, not hassle.”

Hanratty muttered something, glaring at Messenger. But he held on to his temper, and after a few seconds he let Spears prod him away to the tavern.

Teal said to Dacy, “I’ll tell you again: We didn’t have nothing to do with any killing. We was at the King mine last night and we can prove it.”

“Maybe you can. But concealing evidence makes you accessories.”

“Evidence? What evidence?”

“Name of the person who paid you to set that snake trap.”

Draper said, “Back to that.”

“That’s right, back to that. Who was it? John T.?”

“Hillary Clinton.”

“Jim,” Dacy said, “you take the Jeep and go fetch the sheriff. I’ll hold these boys here until you get back.”

“Right.” Messenger started away.

Teal flapped an arm again. “Wait a minute,” he said, “wait a minute. Leave the goddamn sheriff out of this. All me and Billy did—”

“Shut up, Pete, for Chrissake.”

“All we did was a favor for a friend, just a favor. Even if one of them snakes’d bit him, he wouldn’t’ve died from it. Just scare him into leaving town, I swear that’s all it was.”

“What friend? Name him.”

“John T.,” Draper said. The sun had gone down and he was no longer squinting or shading his eyes; he seemed more sure of himself. “Yeah, it was Roebuck. He come out to the mine and give us two hundred bucks to set up the trap. You satisfied now?”

Dacy asked Teal, “That right, Pete? It was John T.?”

“Right. That’s who it was.”

For some time there had been a slow spread of realization and understanding in Messenger’s mind, like oil being poured through a funnel. Now it was as complete as his rebirthing process. He said flatly, “No, it wasn’t.”

“You asked us, we told you,” Draper said. “You don’t believe it, that’s your lookout.”

“It wasn’t John T. He went out to the mine to see you, all right, but not until afterward — yesterday or the day before. He knew who drove a white pickup with a broken antenna; he must’ve seen you around the casino. He asked the same question: Who put you up to the trap? And you told him. If he gave you money, that’s what it was for.”

“Man, you’re full of crap.”

Dacy said, “Jim?”

“That’s exactly how it was,” he said. “They’re lying mostly to protect themselves and partly to protect their friend. They told John T. and it made him mad as hell. He got in touch with the friend and they arranged a meeting at Anna’s ranch. And it wasn’t the first time. Come on, Dacy, we’re leaving.”

“What about these two?”

“They won’t follow us. Not if they want to stay out of jail.”

“You hear that, Billy? Pete?”