The Final Country (26 page)

Red pulled himself up to his full five foot six, his eyes flaring behind his dark goggles, and started to take offense, then he let out a sigh. “I suspect you know what you’re talking about, don’t you?” he said, sounding more like his mother than he usually did. “And I suspect you’re not giving me advice because I took your money or because I’m a poor, pitiful albino nigger. I guess it’s like my Mom says. For no good reason, you trust me. Well, man, you can trust me to hold up my end.”

“Truth is, Craig, I’ve never had any control over who I trusted,” I said. “You offered, I accepted. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and all this hardware will just be an extra load.”

“Call me Red, man,” he said. “I got a cooler of cold, cold beer in the rig, so let’s have one.”

Which we did. Afterward I gave Red one of the cell phones, then we all went back to our jobs. Red to pick up a few things I thought I might need before he picked me up, Mrs. McCravey to a table stakes hold ‘em game downtown, and I went back to my chores. On the way into town I remembered something I had heard early on in the search. So I dug out the card Byron Fels had reluctantly given me. He wasn’t all that glad to see me but he didn’t gouge me too badly for a casino contact. Just as I suspected, no degenerate gambler ever left Vegas with any money. I began to wonder if all Texans’ notorious reputation for lying wasn’t well deserved after all.

* * *

While I was in jail, Red McCravey had taken over my search. And Red quickly proved his ability to find people before they got lost. He came up with her address — a high-security high-rise, where she hadn’t been seen in weeks — but he assumed that a woman who looked like Molly Molineaux probably had logged considerable time in limos. Sure enough one of his friends not only knew the woman, he knew where she was hidden. He had spotted her on the front porch at the desert house of a second-rate but wildly successful Vegas comic named Jimmy Fish, who had supplemented his comic career by playing gangsters and heavies in movies.

Jimmy Fish had a round, unpleasant face dominated by widely spaced, wild eyes. Even his curly hair looked as if it were psychotic. He had a loud, grating voice, an accent that sounded half-Brooklyn and half-Southern, and he had the manners of an ugly spoiled child. Something about his screen persona suggested that his movie roles didn’t call for much acting skill. He was a natural asshole. If only I’d known how right I was, I could have saved us all a great deal of trouble and pain.

* * *

Jimmy Fish had a mansion in town where his wife lived but since they had separated he spent most of his time at his desert place outside Blue Diamond. It only took a couple of hours to find out that he was in town and that he didn’t have a show on Thanksgiving night. I hoped he’d be at the desert place and not having a party. I planned to ring his doorbell when least expected and use my badge to bluff my way to Molly Molineaux. Once I had my hands on her, I wasn’t planning to turn her loose until I found out who had hired her. I resigned myself to the fact that she wouldn’t talk easily. I would try money first, then fear, and if it came down to it, pain.

Red dropped me off near Jimmy Fish’s place a couple hours before sundown, then went back to Nellis Air Force Base to pick up the last of our purchases. I lugged a new pack stuffed with gear and water up a hogback that overlooked his house from the west. The house, a fake adobe, snuggled like a rock spill at the end of a blind canyon. A pool as dark and blue as the devil’s eye sat in a stone patio behind the house. Gleaming razor wire topping a chain link fence outlined the five rocky acres around it. The only opening seemed to be a sliding gate in front of a cattle guard where the driveway ran into the highway. Except for the cactus and creosote bushes, not a spot of green showed. It could have been a rock garden. Perhaps Jimmy hated the sight of green unless it came from money. A battered old pickup was parked in front of a three-car garage.

I set up the spotting scope, checked my weapons, and settled in to watch. For a long time nothing moved but the long shadows creeping black across the desert. Then a small, dark man came out to clean the pool. Overhead long strings of high, dry clouds drifted across the sky. As the sun slipped behind the mountains the clouds fired red, then faded into a soft powdered pink that dissolved in the light breeze. When the pool man put his things away I put my eye to the scope just in time to catch sight of the woman as she stepped out of the sliding glass doors and into the deep shadow around the pool, her white one-piece suit shining against her dark tan, then she threw a bundle of towels on a deck chair, dove in, and began swimming laps with long, smooth strokes, swimming as if she never planned to stop.

Then I spotted a white blob behind sliding doors. I kicked the power on the scope up to full and focused on the round, hungry face of Jimmy Fish hanging like a bad moon behind the pool. Beyond him I could see Mexican furniture grouped around a fireplace. Off to the side a short woman set a large table with silver and linen. I worried about a party until she stopped after only two place settings. When she finished the table, she laid a fire in the fireplace, turned the lights on, then disappeared into the kitchen. Molly finished her laps, wrapped her hair in a towel, draped another over her shoulders, then tied a third one over her wet suit. When she went through the doors, Jimmy — head and shoulders shorter than her and rotund in a running suit that had never run — raised his face like a man looking into the sun. She patted him on the cheek and then walked quickly away toward the back of the house.

At full dark I pulled a windbreaker out of the pack, drank some water, then waited. For an hour nothing much happened. Jimmy sprawled on the couch and watched a football game on a television set into a carved armoire beside the fireplace. The short woman brought in two bottles of champagne in iced buckets and put them and two flutes on the end table beside him. Jimmy cracked one, took the first slug out of the bottle, then filled his glass. The pool man came back outside wearing a blanket-lined denim jacket and a straw cowboy hat that had seen better days. A cup of coffee steamed in his hands. He sat in one of the deck chairs, rolling cigarettes and smoking. When Molly came into the living room dressed in a worn sweat suit, Jimmy waved her over and poured a glass of champagne, patted the couch beside him, but she took her flute and sat on the hearth in front of the fire. She had a sip, then opened a small purse and began to work on her nails. I called Red, told him that this looked like the right night, asked him to head out right now, and hurry.

Then I gutted up and called Betty. I knew she wasn’t going to be happy.

She answered in a motel bar outside Phoenix.

“You didn’t call last night,” she said without preamble. “I don’t like that. I had to spend the night in El Paso. I don’t like El Paso. It’s not Texas. Fuck, Pm not even sure it’s America.”

“Maybe that’s why I liked it,” I said, then immediately regretted it. “Pm sorry, but I was locked up.”

“Right. Locked up with a thousand-dollar hooker, you asshole.”

“Not yet,” I said, trying for a joke, but she didn’t laugh. “I haven’t found her yet,” I lied, “but I’ve got a line on her. Seems like you would want me to find her. After what she did to you. And me.”

“Pm sure,” she scoffed. “Maybe I should just drop your car and fly back to Austin.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” I said, tired of trying to convince her that I was doing what I had to do. “Just let me know where the fuck it is.”

“Or you could come get me, Milo,” she whispered, changing tunes. “We could go home.”

“We’re in a ton of trouble, and a long ton of other people’s futures depend on me working this out,” I reminded her.

“You don’t even know any of those people,” she hissed, angry again.

“It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference,” I said, then paused a long moment to catch the anger in my throat.

“Well, it fucking should!” she shouted. Then whispered hoarsely, “Just give it up, Milo. Give it up.”

“How many drinks have you had?” I asked after a long pause.

“Three. And I’m going to have three more and a turkey sandwich,” she said flatly, “and call it Thanksgiving.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “I think I’ll do the same. I’ll meet you at the casino tomorrow night.” Then I switched off the phone, and dug a granola bar out of the pack. When I finished it, I had a nip of brandy and a small toot. I didn’t have either the time or energy to deal with a jealous woman as she dithered between anger and whining, or even time for a turkey sandwich. I had another granola bar, then waited again.

Betty called me back shortly, the ringing of the phone loud in the desert night, but I told her I was on a stakeout, that I couldn’t talk, to please not call me. I promised to call her. She called me an idiot, then hung up. She called me back twenty minutes later to tell me that a good-looking cowboy was giving her the eye. We had Words, the kind of words that are hard to take back, even if you want to catch them as soon as they’re out of your mouth. This time I hung up on her. A sliver of the waxing moon tried to peek through the ambient glare of seductive neon hanging over Las Vegas.

When the short woman brought a turkey to the dining room table, I called Red again and caught him just as he was going through Blue Diamond. Jimmy cracked the second bottle and refilled the flutes as the short woman brought the rest of the trimmings to the table. She said something to Jimmy, but he just waved her away.

A few minutes later she came out the kitchen door wrapped in a short jacket, said something to the man, then they walked slowly around the house to the battered pickup. I moved the spotting scope and the bipod to focus it on the end of the driveway. I could see the interior of the pickup cab clearly in the outdoor light at the gate. The man took a remote out of the glove box and pointed it at the gate. When the gate began to trundle sideways, he tossed the remote back into the glove box. Red was waiting for them when the pickup rattled over the cattle guard. I hoped they didn’t live twenty miles away or something. But it didn’t matter. They stopped at the first bar down the road. Red said he’d call back when he had the remote.

It took a lot longer than it should have. I hoped he hadn’t been caught. Jimmy and Molly picked at their Thanksgiving meal for a while, then moved back to the living room. He went over to the armoire to fetch a silver tray heaped with cocaine with a silver straw sticking out of the pile like a dagger. He cut a couple of lines as big as snakes, but Molly only did part of hers. I said to hell with it and joined them for a brief snort of my own. She switched the television to a black-and-white movie I didn’t recognize, while he put half a dozen CDs into the rack, then proceeded to boogie. He waved at Molly to join him, but she didn’t seem to want to. She sat down on the hearth again and poked the fire. He took her by the hand, tugging at her, until she waved the poker at him. He laughed and gave up, decided to dance alone, pausing only to gun champagne and snort a line. He strutted his stuff like a bantam rooster in front of her, but Molly seemed more interested in the movie. Like some short, pudgy men, Jimmy had quick feet and an odd grace. He was probably stronger than he looked, I thought, but didn’t keep the thought in the front of my head.

I was cold, my nose was running, the brandy in the half-pint had almost disappeared, and I was worried about Red. I couldn’t call him. I’d probably catch him with a slim jim down the pickup window as the phone rang in his pocket. In the blind canyon the faux-adobe walls gleamed like teeth. Jimmy had gone back to trying to get Molly to dance, but she kept refusing. It looked as if it was going to get rough. But there wasn’t anything I could do until Red called. Finally, the phone rang.

“Where the hell have you been?” I said.

“None of your damn business,” Betty said.

“Goddammit,” I said, “will you please stop calling me? You’re going to get me killed.”

“You seem to be doing a fine job by your own damn self,” she mumbled, then hung up on me. Which was probably the reason she had called.

The night went on, completely out of control.

When Red finally called, I asked him where he’d been. The man had gone in the bar while the woman sat in the pickup listening to Mexican music. Red had sat in the parking lot, turning away drunk fares, until the woman stormed into the bar to drag her husband out. The only good news was that she hadn’t locked the pickup, and Red was on his way. I dug a flashlight out of the bag, stuffed my gear back in, then headed down the hogback toward the road, When I reached it, the dark bulk of the Checker cab loomed beside it. Even in the dark I could see how cherry it was, the hand-rubbed black paint job gleaming even in the night. I fancied I could see stars shining in the finish.

“You sure he won’t recognize my car, man?” Red said as he handed me the rest of my kidnapping gear.

“Right now, kid, I don’t think he would recognize his own mother,” I said. “Assuming he has one.”

“I guess I could repaint it,” he said. “Go back to the original yellow.”

“Nervous?” I asked as I pulled on the surgical gloves and checked the loads of the Glock.

“Just about my car, man.”

“Let’s do it,” I said. “There’ll never be a better time.”

“Then I guess it’s now, man.”

I climbed into the Checker. When Red stopped at the gate, I climbed out, then crawled under the cattle guard where I wrapped a bundle of det cord around the supports. Red had a homeboy who was a supply sergeant out at Nellis. For a price he was happy to provide the det cord, a straitjacket, and a cache of “twilight sleep” ampules from an Air Force nurse with a habit. I didn’t know what I was getting into with this woman but I intended to get her out of the house and keep her one way or another.

“Should I leave the lights on?” Red asked as I climbed back into the Checker.

“Let’s act like we’re supposed to be here,” I said as I punched the remote. “We don’t want anybody to think we’re sneaking in.”

Red drove through the open gate, then up the driveway. He parked beside the porch facing down the driveway for a quick exit. I slipped out of the cab, checked my weapons, got out my badge, and went up the low steps to ring the doorbell, then stand aside.