The Final Country (14 page)

Renfro showed up so quickly, I suspected he had been waiting in his car outside the Lodge. He was a tall, bulky, but slightly effete man who couldn’t talk without fluttering hands and a nervous giggle.

“So Sissy is an old friend of mine, you know,” he said as he pulled up a stool next to mine, “and she asked this favor, you know, so I said yes. I’d go by myself, but she insisted I bring you along for protection.”

“Protection? From what?”

“It didn’t make much sense, really. She said somebody’s been following her,” Renfro said, “and now that she’s shaken the tail, she just wants to go away.” Renfro patted a large envelope in his inside overcoat pocket. “And not come back for a while, you know.” Then he spread five hundred-dollar bills in front of my drink. “She said to give you this. Okay?”

“How’d she get hold of you?”

“Called me at work on my cell phone,” Renfro said. “From a pay phone, I think,” he added. “She was worried about bugs on her phones.”

“Should be all right,” I said. “Okay, I’ll go with you. I’ve got a bone to pick with her.”

“You want to talk to her?”

“She fucking lied to me.”

Renfro laughed. “If every man Sissy had lied to got to talk to her, it’d wear the hide off her little pink ears, you know.” Then he laughed again. “She did mention something about that, though.”

“Good. I’ll hold the money,” I said, “and if she wants it, she has to talk to me.”

“I suppose that’s okay.”

“So where are we supposed to meet her?” I asked, then finished my drink.

“I’m not supposed to tell you that,” Renfro said, “until we’re there.”

“We’ll take my ride. We have to make a stop at my gun locker on the way.”

“What for?”

“Well, it seems that I’ve pissed off somebody around here,” I said, “so I’m not going off in the darkness with somebody I don’t know without a Kevlar vest and my favorite piece under my arm.”

“Wonderful,” Renfro said, laughing and clapping his large hands. “I haven’t played with guns since sixty-eight.” I raised an eyebrow. “I was a company clerk with the Marines in Hue during Tet. We were all on the line. Even the cooks. We beat their asses silly that time, you know, had the war won, then the politicians sold us out. Chicken fuckers.”

“That was a long time ago,” I said, “and I’ll bet you haven’t fired a round since then.”

“You’d win the bet,” Renfro said, then shoved the five bills at me again. “Sissy told me she owed you at least this much. The price of her lie.” Then he pulled the envelope out of his coat and handed it to me. “This is her getaway money.”

“I wonder where she’s going?” I said.

“Not very far,” Renfro said, laughing as he stood up. “It’s only ten grand, and a woman with Sissy’s tastes can’t get very far on that.”

Sometime after midnight, Renfro and I were standing on the sixth green of a very dark golf course somewhere on the south side of the string of lakes along the Colorado River north and west of Austin, so far from town that the city lights were only a faint smudge against the low ceiling of the clouds. The sixth hole was raised and bunkered, nestled on the verge of a live oak motte. The norther still pumped a cold misty wind across the Hill Country, spiced with occasional bursts of even colder raindrops the size of dimes, which clattered like hail off our vests. We listened quietly as the wind rattled the live oaks madly. Renfro had insisted that if he couldn’t have a weapon, he should at least have a flak jacket. The flag marking the hole flapped like a lost bird. The Browning Hi-Power felt oddly heavy under my arm, less comforting than I hoped.

“It’s so dark I couldn’t see my ass, if my head was up it,” I said. “And she’s a half-hour late.”

“She’s always late,” Renfro whispered nervously. “I wish I could afford to get away. Sissy’s great fun to travel with. Completely insane and terribly organized.”

“Well, I won’t give her the money,” I said, “unless she promises to take you along.”

The tall man nodded again.

Renfro had been very interested when I jerked the DA’s location beeper off the Beast and stuck it under one of the Lodge’s vans, but he didn’t ask any questions. And during the detour to pick up the Browning, a couple of extra magazines, and my Kevlar vest, Renfro hadn’t even commented. Except to insist on a vest, which I didn’t much like, and to give me directions through the dark back roads.

“You think she’s coming?”

“Of course,” Renfro said, giggling. “She’ll be late for her own funeral, but she’ll be there with bells on… What the hell?”

Renfro started slapping at his chest, then at his other hand, muttering curses.

The red dot on the back of his glove exploded in a fluff of fake rabbit fur as I shoved him down and dove in the same direction, shamelessly using Renfro’s bulk as cover and scrabbling for the Browning. Two more silenced subsonic rounds thumped into Renfro’s vest as we rolled toward the nearest bunker. I fired back along the line of the laser sight glistening in the rainy mist. One round hit what sounded like a car; another snapped through glass; the third, fourth, fifth rounds disappeared into the heart of the dark wind.

But the sniper wasn’t deterred. His rounds scattered divots from the green. As I shoved Renfro’s unconscious bulk into the safety of the deep bunker, then rolled in behind him, a round skipped off the Kevlar vest over my left shoulder blade. It felt as if I’d been hit with a twelve-pound sledge. I pressed against the sand beneath the lip of the bunker as another half-dozen rounds chopped at the edge of the green above it. The sniper just wanted me to know that he knew where I was. My whole left side felt paralyzed, as if all the bones on that side of my body had been shattered as I flopped into the bunker.

Across the golf course, I heard the grumbling slide and clunk as a van door shut. Then it drove rather sedately off into the stormy night. Without lights.

I crawled up to the edge of the green, both hands on the Browning, and counted to a hundred before I checked on Renfro, who gasped at the cold air with shallow breaths and had a faint feathery pulse in his cold neck. I propped his feet high against the bunker, then slithered into the tangled oaks, where I waited on my knees for another hundred count. Impatience had killed a lot of people, and I didn’t plan to be one of them. I had used up all my luck when the sniper decided he didn’t want the sound of rifle shots in the night. If the rounds hadn’t been suppressed and subsonic, the vests would have been useless.

Even with his, Renfro still might die of internal injuries. And without
mine,
the round would have shattered my shoulder blade, scattering bone chips like shrapnel through my viscera. Just the thought of it made me shiver long enough for my back to break out in spasms again. Even five years after the spent .25 round had hit me after it went through the general’s elbow, I could still follow its twisting, burning path through my guts.

When I finally stopped shaking, I stood up as slowly and quietly as my battered back would let me, then pussyfooted through the motte, and eased into my car, turned the key, and ran down the windows in the hope that I would hear the killer’s approach under the gusting wind. I waited a full five minutes by the lighted digital clock before I started the car and switched the heater on high. While I waited to warm up, I considered my problems.

Since I had followed Renfro’s directions through the dark without paying much attention to them, I didn’t know exactly where we were, and I didn’t much fancy just driving off into the night. Even if Renfro was dead, my spent shell casings would be hell to find in the dark, even with a flashlight. If worst came to worst I could change the firing pin in the Browning, or melt the piece down. But there would be telephone records connecting me with Renfro, plus witnesses in the bar who had seen us leave together.

No way I could walk away from this, and being surrounded by police didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Hell, even a jail cell didn’t sound too bad at this moment. As long as it wasn’t in Gatlin County.

So I dug Gannon’s card out of my billfold, then called him at home. He answered on the first ring. He didn’t sound like a man who had just been dragged out of a deep sleep at two-thirty in the morning. “What now?” he asked. He sounded wide awake and very annoyed.

“Sorry if I woke you,” I said. “It’s Milodragovitch and I’ve got a bit of a problem.”

“Milo?” Gannon said, not happily. “You didn’t wake me up. Somebody reported gunfire at the Arrowhead Country Club.”

“That would be my problem,” I interrupted. “I’ll meet you on the sixth green with another body.”

“You ever think of becoming a mortician?”

“Too late to change careers at my age,” I said, “and this one may not be quite dead.” Then I hung up. I grabbed a down vest and a clean T-shirt out of my travel gear, then a survival blanket out of the winter gear junk box I kept out of a long Montana habit, then trudged back to the bunker, wrapped Renfro’s shattered hand as tightly as I could, then bundled him in the vest and the blanket. Then I just crouched there, waiting in the cold, wet wind. But I didn’t unload the Browning and set it on the green until the first unit, complete with lights and sirens, roared down the cart path toward the green where I stood next to the flapping flag, my hands raised.

“Not you again,” the deputy groaned as he climbed out of the unit and trudged up the bank. His face was shadowed under the plastic-covered cowboy hat, but I recognized the voice from the jail cell. The kid followed procedure, put me on my knees and cuffed my hands behind me, then checked on Renfro. But as the kid helped me to his feet, he muttered something under his breath.

“What’s that?” I said, preparing myself for the worst.

“I said, ‘Thanks.’”

“What the hell for?”

“For not snitching me off the other day,” the kid said. “Looks like maybe I was a little bit out of hand.”

“I was an asshole,” I admitted, “so I’ve got no complaint. What’s your name?”

“Bob Culbertson,” he said quietly. “No hard feelings?”

“Not a one, Bob,” I said. “You’re the one working nights.”

“Forever and a night, the captain said.”

“I’d shake your hand, kid, but I seem to be tied up.”

“Sorry,” the kid said. “Procedure.”

“Not a problem.”

“I’d ask you what happened,” Culbertson said, “but I’m sure the captain would want me to wait.”

“This time,” I said, “I ain’t answering no questions until my lawyer is standing close by my side.”

“That’s sure as hell the way I’d play it,” Culbertson said, smiling. Like most cops, if he was in trouble, he wouldn’t talk to his mother without a lawyer present. Then he stuffed me in his unit one more time, and called a chopper for a Medevac.

* * *

The norther had finally blown itself out by daylight. Dawn came to a wide clear blue sky and cool, dry air. It could have been spring in eastern Montana. From the green, I could see the flagstone clubhouse where groups of irritated early morning golfers milled around their fancy carts and were obviously bitching about losing their tee times. Like cocaine junkies who had too much money and nothing to do with themselves.

“You ever play golf?” Gannon asked me as he led me up to the top of the green as the crime scene cleared.

“Never had the pleasure,” I said, “but I hear that hitting a golf ball well is damn near as hard as hitting a major league slider.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Gannon said. “I had a ton of other problems — couldn’t hit the fucking Double A batting practice curveball, couldn’t block a low fast slider, and my peg to second wasn’t all that hot.”

“Couldn’t have been all that bad if you made it to Double A ball.”

“Got a tryout because my Dad knew a scout for the Red Sox,” Gannon admitted. “What about you? You ever play any ball?”

“Football. Pulling guard on the last small-college single-wing team in America,” I said. “I could knock you out of your socks. If you were standing still.”

“I always hated football,” Gannon said. “Still do. And here I’m living in the hell of football heaven.” Then he paused. “You still not going to talk to me without your lawyer?”

“Not one fucking word,” I said.

“You’re not even going to tell me why you boys were wearing vests?”

“Just luck,” I said. “So why don’t you put me in back of the unit or a cell or anyplace I can get these cuffs off. My back’s killing me.”

Gannon motioned to Culbertson, who unlocked the cuffs. “I’ve sure been seeing too much of you guys together,” he said in an oddly flat voice, as if he was no longer amused by his own joke. “Go home, you old bastard, you’re a victim here, and discharging a firearm is a misdemeanor,” he said. “Besides, I know where you live. Unfortunately. I’m sure you’ve got another piece someplace, but I’m keeping this one.”

I hesitated only long enough to ask two questions: where they had taken Renfro; and what number had answered when he pushed star 69 on the cell phone from Molly McBride’s fanny pack.

“Crime scene crew didn’t find a fanny pack, Milo,” he said. “Maybe your ears were just ringing.”

“Yeah, and maybe his nuts were calling his dick,” I said. “Long distance.”

Culbertson started to say something, but Gannon cut him off. “You’re in enough trouble, old man, without making bad jokes,” he said. Then gave the deputy a grim look when he didn’t successfully stifle his giggle.

* * *

Renfro didn’t look all that good late that afternoon when they let me visit him briefly in his room at Breckenridge Hospital — gray-faced and sprouting tubes like a space monster, his shattered hand wrapped like a mummy’s — but he managed a slight smile when he saw me.

“How the hell did you get in?” Renfro whispered.

“I told them I worked for Hair de Temps,” I admitted.

Renfro laughed so hard that his tubes rattled dangerously. “You don’t look much like a hairdresser,” he finally managed to say.

“I think they were afraid to ask. You okay?”

“Thanks to the vest,” Renfro whispered. “But I won’t be cuttin’ hair for a while. They’re not going to work on my hand until they make up their mind about my spleen. See if it stops bleeding, or something. They seem to think I’m going to lose my spleen, maybe. What the hell’s a spleen do, anyway?”