The Final Country (22 page)

Reeves and I stood, shook hands, and I said seriously, “Thanks for everything, Doc.”

“Anytime, man, anytime.”

We made our good nights, then Betty slipped her arm around my waist and I draped my arm over her shoulder as we walked slowly through the thick grass, slick with dew and littered with shards of streetlight, to the small guest house at the back of the yard.

“You’re walking heavy tonight, honey,” Betty said.

“Long day.”

But Betty went to sleep first. So I slipped into my jeans, popped a couple of pain pills, found a couple of beers in the refrigerator, grabbed the cell phone, and stepped into the muggy night and fog knee-deep on the damp grass. Time to call Carver D to see if I could find out if Sissy Duval’s body had been found without actually asking him.

“Did I wake you up?” I asked when he answered.

“It’s hard to tell these days if I’m sleeping or awake, old man.”

“Anything happening back in that world?”

“Nothing much. Where the hell are you?”

“Beaumont.”

“Lord, you’re making tours of the classiest cities in Texas, aren’t you,” he said, laughing. “Midland. Odessa. Beaumont. Don’t forget Waco and Van Horn.” Then I heard the sound of the bourbon bottle splashing. “By the way, I heard an ugly rumor to the effect that you have joined the enemies of official repression,” he said. “Surely a lie, Milo.”

“Nope.”

“Now why would you go and do something like that?”

“Trying to keep my tired old ass out of jail.”

“Hope it’s worth it,” he said. “And hope it actually works.”

“Well, it hasn’t caused me any trouble yet.”

“Speaking of trouble. What have you been up to?”

“Drinking, fistfighting, and running up my expense account,” I said.

“Sylvie Lomax might have been able to shove you down Tobin Rooke’s throat,” Carver D said, “but I know that skinny son of a bitch never approved an expense account.”

“Well, I can try,” I said. “But I need another favor. Check out a Doris Fairchild who works for Poulis Investigations in Dallas. That’s who had my Caddy bugged. And while you’re at it, partner, why don’t you start building me a file on the Lomaxes.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Carver D said. “You stay in touch.”

“Right,” I said. “Did Hangas have any luck talking to Eldora Grace?”

“Hell, he can’t even find her.”

I clicked off the phone, hoping I wasn’t going to have to find some way to report Sissy Duval’s death myself. Then I opened my second beer, lit a last cigarette, and watched the smoke drift in the murky air while the mosquitoes feasted on me until, bloated with blood and stoned on codeine and Cognac, they fluttered fat and happy into the thick grass. For a long moment, I envied their simplicity. Eat, drink, try to fly, fall to soft earth, and sleep.

Perhaps I had expected Lake Charles to be full of Southern mansions and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. But I didn’t expect two casinos as garish as jukeboxes on either side of a brackish lake, one perched on the edge of downtown like a fat waterbird on the edge of a swamp, and the other lodged among industrial facilities. Sand and gravel mountains were heaped everywhere, and mazes of petrochemical pipes seemed designed to pump paychecks right into the riverboat moored to the flat shoreline.

“Doesn’t look like a place where a working girl might hang out,” Betty said as we crossed the Interstate bridge. “Of course, I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Any place they turn cards, honey, somebody turns tricks,” I said.

After giving the Players Casino a once-over, we recrossed the bridge and lodged at the Isle of Capri, checked into the nearby hotel, dressed in casual but expensive western clothes, then went to work.

* * *

After four days and nights of checking out every bar in the area without even a smidgen of success, we gave up on the last evening, and went back to the room. Betty slumped in front of the television, more tired than drunk. I stood at the mirror with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a pair of nail clippers, removing the stitches and trying not to look at the fading bruises.

“Jesus Christ, Milo,” Betty complained, “I’ve been in more bars the last four days than I’ve been in the rest of my life put together. Let’s give this up, please, and go home.”

“Patience is a virtue in this business,” I said as I clipped the last stitch out of my eyebrow, then started on the ones under my chin.

“Well, what now, cowboy?” The plaint in her voice hovered on the edge of tired anger now.

“Let’s go over to the casino and lose some money,” I suggested, hoping to jolly her out of the mood.

“So much for patience,” she said.

“You can hang out here, hon,” I said. “I just need some mindless abstraction to shut my brain down.”

“Believe me, honey,” she said finally, “I’m about as mindless and abstract as they come.”

I tried to talk her out of it, but, as she had every step of the way on this trip, she insisted on following.

* * *

Out of habit we walked directly to the bar down the narrow aisle between the clattering slot machines and crowded tables beneath a low ceiling. Also out of habit, we went into our routine. Betty ordered an Absolut on the rocks with a twist from the young, round-faced bartender, then she suggested that I join her.

I said, as required by our script, “The only people who drink white liquor are sissies or drunks, and the only people who drink bourbon are white trash, con men, chicken fuckers, or phony Confederate gentlemen… I’ll have a beer.”

“Nice talk,” the bartender said as he delivered the drinks. “That where you got that mouse?” I started to laugh, but the bartender shouted to another young man shoveling quarters into a nearby slot. “Andre! Who was that one-armed son of a bitch that used to say that all the time?”

“Molineaux,” Andre answered without looking up from the slot. “Fastest one-armed bartender in the world. And unluckiest.”

Betty and I smiled at each other. “Better to be lucky than good,” I said. “And sometimes the bad guys are too smart for their own good.” Then to the bartender: “Double Absolut on the rocks. And keep them coming, partner.”

* * *

Two mornings later back in Houston, dressed by the Salvation Army — dirty coveralls, work boots, a battered hardhat pulled down over my eyes, and my nose stuffed with blow — I was the first customer through the door when I heard Annie unlock it. Betty had insisted on following me. She was dressed in ripped jeans, her gloved right hand in the pocket of an old Navy pea coat, wrapped around the derringer. Except for Annie and an elderly black swamper, the place was empty. I pulled up a stool. Annie leaned against the bar, her huge hands resting on the edge.

“What can I do for you, mister?” she said.

“I’ll have the address of that one-armed fucker,” I said, then slammed the back of her left hand with the flat sap. Probably harder than I meant to. Betty snapped the doors locked, then turned to cover the swamper with the little pistol.

“Motherfuck!” Annie screamed, then, undeterred, reached across the bar for my shirt, so I slapped her on the fat right elbow with the sap.

“You ain’t going to be popping nobody with that hand,” I said, “and if you don’t tell me where to find that Molineaux son of a bitch, I’m gonna put knots on your head a goat can’t climb.”

“I don’t know nobody by that name,” she said. A fat tear slipped out of her eye as she cradled her arm.

“That one-armed bastard, lady.”

“He goes by the name of Morrison, mister,” the swamper said quietly behind me. “I’ll show you where he lives. Just don’t hurt her no more. Please.”

“You best be right, old man,” I said, “or I’ll be back and burn this fucking place to the ground and barbecue this sucker-punching bitch with it.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” the swamper said, shuffling toward the front doors. “Rollie pays good but not that good.”

Before they left, Betty said to the fat woman, “You better put that hand in the ice, ma’am. It might be broken.”

“What about my elbow?” she wailed.

“Just a stinger, I’ll bet,” Betty said. “He’s good with his hands.”

Annie didn’t seem mollified, but she stuffed her huge hand deep into the ice.

“You’re out of fucking control,” Betty whispered as she touched my nose lightly as we went out the door. I had no way to disagree. Just kept sniffling through the day.

* * *

The swamper directed us to an older but fairly well-maintained brick house a few blocks from the bar. “Roland Morrison” was printed on the mailbox.

“You want me to knock?” the swamper asked.

“Fuck that,” I said. “Honey, if this old fart runs, shoot him in the foot.”

The swamper smiled. “Hell, man, I ain’t run in thirty years.”

“This ain’t no time to take it up again,” I said, then, guessing that this wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where any of the residents would bother to investigate any sound short of automatic gunfire, I kicked in the hollowcore door.

The front room was cold enough to hang meat, the air conditioner blasting on high. Molineaux slept, even through the crashing of the door, passed out on the couch, wrapped in a dirty blanket, one knobby knee sticking out, his single arm dangling to the floor. A bottle of Lagavulin Scotch — probably a gift from his daughter — and several empty beer cans sat on the coffee table. The large, new television murmured in the corner. Stale beer farts filled the room.

I eased my boot down on Molineaux’s fingers, pinning them to the carpet, then placed my right hand over his face, pinching off his nose and covering his mouth, and holding his stump with my left.

The one-armed man struggled to breathe, but I held on until he turned blue. I let him have a quick breath, then cut his air off again until his face turned a deep, painful purple.

After Molineaux sucked in a couple of ragged breaths, he growled, “You son of a bitch, if I had both arms, I’d beat your fucking head in.”

“Forget it, man,” I said. “You’ve probably always been the kind of yellow-bellied bastard who had some excuse.” I turned him loose and stood up, saying, “But if you want, asshole, I’ll tie one arm behind my back.”

Molineaux struggled to sit up. “Shit, man, I’ve got such a hangover I can’t even see straight. Mind if I have a taste?” He jerked his head toward the half-empty bottle of Scotch, and I nodded. He grabbed the bottle, had a hit that made it bubble, then tried to backhand me with it.

While his arm was drawn back, I broke Molineaux’s nose with a quick left jab, then I suddenly flashed on the one-armed man aiming vicious kicks at my crotch, so I let him have a full-bore right cross. I felt teeth and jawbone break under my fist. Molineaux flew over the couch, crashed into the wall, then sprawled, unconscious, on the couch, blood and teeth dribbling out of his mouth.

“Dammit,” I said, turning him on his side so he wouldn’t strangle on his own blood.

“Jesus,” Betty said quietly.

“Reckon you killed him?” the swamper asked.

“He’s not dead,” I said, “but he’s going to be difficult to interrogate with his jaw flapping loose.” I turned to the swamper. “What’s your name, sir?”

“Joe Willie,” the black man said softly.

“Well, Mr. Willie —”

“Joe Willie Custer,” the black man corrected me.

“Well, Mr. Custer,” I continued, “would you mind answering a few questions?”

“Not the way you ask them, man.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” I said, pulling my money clip out. “Name your price.”

“How about a hundred?”

“How about two fifties?”

“Better than a poke in the eye with your right hand, man,” Joe Willie said, stuffing the bills into his shirt pocket.

“Listen, I’ve already beaten up a fat lady and a one-armed man,” I said, “so be cool. I’m not about to start roughing up senior citizens now.”

“I’m cool, man.”

I asked, “What was this asshole doing here?”

“Hiding from the law, everybody thought, but I don’t know exactly. Mr. Morrison showed up six or seven years ago with too much money for this neighborhood,” Joe Willie said. “Then a couple of weeks ago, he started spreading money around, saying if anybody came around looking for his daughter, we were to discourage him. But I guess you weren’t discouraged.”

“No, but I’m sure as hell confused,” I said. “You take off, Mr. Custer. And please, keep your mouth shut. You know I’m the kind of son of a bitch who will come back.” Then I pulled off two more fifties. “Give this to Annie. But don’t tell her I’m sorry, because I’m fucking not.”

Joe Willie added to his stash, thanked me, then shuffled out of the room.

“What now?” Betty wondered.

“Toss the apartment and hope for the best,” I said. Without much hope.

* * *

But once again, good luck prevailed over hard work. I found the crumpled envelope in a plastic trash bag in the Dumpster in the alley with a return address for a Molly Molineaux just off the Strip in Las Vegas. I went back to the apartment, filled a homemade bindle with baking powder, left it open on the coffee table, then decided against binding Molineaux’s good arm to his ankles, and fixed the door as best I could. A few minutes later I found a pay phone at a convenience store on our way to Hobby Airport and called 911.

“That should keep Molineaux busy for a few days,” I said to Betty as I climbed back into the Caddy with a couple of cold beers. “At least until the lab finds time to test the baking powder.” I cracked one of the beers and sucked about half of it down in a single swallow. “Jesus, what a morning.”

“Honey, I’ve got to say something,” Betty ventured.

“What?” I said, braced for some conversation I didn’t want to have. “Want to go home just because I lost it?”

“I’ve never been afraid of you before,” Betty said softly, “but I saw your face when you whopped that fat lady and when you hit the guy so hard that teeth flew out, and quite frankly it scared the hell out of me. Perhaps it’s time to take a break.”

I worked my way through the maze of construction and crazed traffic toward the airport without answering her.

“You know, sometimes you have to be as crazy as the people you deal with,” I said. “Good old Annie didn’t pull that punch or hesitate to sic her customers on me. And you saw the bruises on the inside of my thighs where Molineaux tried to kick me in the nuts. Violence was their choice, not mine. So to hell with them.”