The Fourth Durango (4 page)

Four miles south on Floradale Avenue, Vines pulled the Mercedes to a stop on the
road’s shoulder next to a quarter acre of blazing scarlet flowers. Jack Adair stared at them, fascinated, as he slowly twisted the curved handle of the black cane to the right rather than the left.

“What are they?” he asked as the cane’s handle came off.

“Iceland poppies.”

Still staring at the field of scarlet, Adair placed the cane’s curved handle in his lap, removed the silver cap that held the cork, lifted the glass tube flask out of the cane and drank. At the taste of the whiskey, he closed his eyes and sighed. A moment later he opened his eyes and smiled, as if enormously relieved that the scarlet poppies were still there and the whiskey was just as he remembered it.

“After we left Loom and them back there,” Adair said, “and after it finally struck me that it really was adiós to durance vile, guess what I smelled?”

“Good intentions.”

“No, by God, ripe persimmons. And I haven’t smelled a ripe persimmon in fifteen, twenty years.”

“I’ve heard good intentions can smell like almost anything. Even ripe persimmons.”

Adair nodded and passed Vines the glass tube flask. The drink that Vines took was scarcely a sip.

“So tell me about it,” Adair said. “This city that God forgot.”

“Durango,” said Vines, handing back the glass tube. “About nine thousand souls, give or take a few hundred, who’re scratching out a living with no industry to speak of and some magnificent weather they can’t eat or pay their bills with.”

“What about tourists?”

“There’s no Spanish mission because of an oversight by Father Serra—and God, of course. Consequently, no tourists.”

“He a saint yet?”

“Father Serra? Rome’s still mulling it over but the odds are he’s a shoo-in.”

“Well, if the weather’s so great and it’s right on the ocean, why no tourists?”

“Because there’s no beach,” Vines said. “The Southern Pacific railroad tracks hug the coastline along that stretch and what beach there was, the storms ate.”

After nodding his understanding, Adair had a small swallow from the flask and asked, “How’d you send out the feeler?”

Vines started the engine and glanced into the rearview mirror before pulling out onto the road. “It came to me through Soldier Sloan.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Adair said, his eyes wide, his tone almost reverent. “What is he now—seventy, seventy-one?”

“Seventy-one.”

“Still a bird colonel?”

“Promoted himself to brigadier.”

“That must impress the widow women.”

“At his age, Soldier says, being a mere retired colonel won’t hack it anymore. So this time he retired himself from the Royal Canadian Air Force as a brigadier and affects a very slight British accent that must charm the hell out of the widows down in La Costa, Palm Springs and especially La Jolla, which is where I ran into him.”

“How much is he charging us?”

“Five thousand.”

“How’d you work it?”

“I followed Soldier’s surprisingly explicit instructions and turned off U. S. One-Oh-One at exactly ten
P.M.
and onto a state blacktop that’s the only way in and out of Durango.”

“When? Last night?”

“Last night. Eight minutes later, just as Soldier promised, I spotted a disabled car. I knew it was disabled because the hood was up—or bonnet, I suppose—and Dixie was staring down at the engine as though she’d never seen one before.”

“Dixie the fair, I presume.”

“Dixie was blond and more than fair. The car was an Aston Martin.”

Jack Adair had a small final swallow from the glass tube and chuckled with pleasure. “Spare me no details, Kelly,” he said. “Not even the dirty stuff.”

Kelly Vines got out of the Mercedes and walked slowly toward the woman who was illuminated by the headlights of both cars. She looked up from the Aston Martin’s engine with no sign of alarm. “If you’re thinking of bopping me over the head and taking my money, I’ve got six dollars and change.”

“I’m not the highwayman.”

“The mechanic?”

“Not him either.”

“Then you must be the Samaritan who knows damn all about cars.”

“I can drive one,” said Vines. “Although I’ve never driven one of these.”

“It’s simple,” she said. “You just put it in second and keep it there—unless you want to back up, of course.”

“What happened?”

“It coughed once, sputtered twice, died and no, I’m not out of gas.”

“You going to leave it here?”

She shrugged. “If you’ll give me a ride into town.”

“Which town?”

“Durango.”

“All right.”

“I’m Dixie,” she said, holding out her hand.

“Kelly Vines,” he said, taking her hand and finding it to be cool and dry and surprisingly strong.

The only customers in the Holiday Inn’s bar and cocktail lounge that night—other than Vines and the blond Dixie—were two serious male drinkers, one white, the other black, both in their mid-forties, who sat at the bar well separated from each other. As mute testimony to their solvency, both kept piles of wet change and damp bills in front of them, silently paying for each drink as it came.

Vines sat at a banquette, an untasted bourbon and water in front of him, waiting for the blond Dixie to complete a call to the Triple-A in Santa Barbara, which she thought might send a tow truck for the crippled Aston Martin.

As Vines waited, the white man at the bar gathered up his bills, leaving the pile of wet change for the gray-eyed Mexican bartender. The man climbed carefully down from his stool. Once safely on the floor, he looked around the room, a thoughtful expression on his face, and said in a clear and pleasant voice, “Fuck California.”

As the man left the lounge, his tread a bit measured, Dixie returned and slipped into the banquette next to Vines. Watching her cross the room, Vines realized she was older than he had first thought. If looks alone were the gauge, she could easily be twenty-five. But Vines had found her mind older than twenty-five, at least ten years older, and her attitude even older than that. She had that hard gloss of women who travel into their forties over rotten roads all the way but arrive more burnished than bruised. So he put her real age at thirty-two or thirty-three and wondered about her past.

After two sips of a Scotch Mist, Dixie put the drink down and said, “They’re sending the tow truck.”

“Good.”

“Now I have to find a place to stay.”

“You don’t live in Durango?”

“God, no. Do you?”

“No.”

She glanced around the room. “I suppose I could stay here.”

“Think they’d have a room?”

She smiled—a very wry smile. “In the only money-losing Holiday Inn west of Beirut there’s always a room.”

“Want me to see about a room for you when I see about mine?”

“Why, yes. Thank you.”

“Any preference?”

“An ocean view would be nice.”

“What if they have only one ocean-view room left?”

“Then we’ll just have to share it, won’t we?” she said.

After Vines returned from the registration desk, he lied without shame and told her there was only one ocean-view room available. She smiled, as though welcoming the lie, gathered up her purse, rose and crossed to the bar, where she reached into the purse, brought out a fifty-dollar bill, said something to the gray-eyed bartender and handed him the money. The bartender smiled happily, pocketed the bill and handed her a bottle of Scotch whisky. Holding the bottle by its neck down at her left side, she walked back to Vines and said, “No need to go thirsty, is there?”

They ate room-service hamburgers and drank a third of the bottle with their clothes on. They drank another third with their clothes off. Vines discovered that Dixie was indeed blond all over and she apparently discovered all she wanted or needed to know about him—not because the liquor made him talkative, but because he replied frankly and more or less honestly to whatever she asked, assuming the questions were a necessary part of her task, assignment—perhaps even her calling.

The questions were casual, sometimes mere afterthoughts, and she often seemed not to listen to his answers, especially after their clothes were off and she was sitting on his lap, nibbling at his right ear. The only time she listened intently was when she asked Vines about the black cane and whether he had served in Vietnam.

“No,” he said. “Why?”

“That cane.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Well, it can’t be a present. You don’t gift wrap a cane and give it to somebody.”

“It belongs to the guy in Lompoc I told you about.”

“Is he lame?”

“No.”

“Then what’s he need a cane for?”

“He hides his booze in it.”

Dixie rose from Vines’s lap, went to the bed and picked up the cane. She gave it a hard shake, laughed at its telltale gurgle, twirled it like a baton—passing it expertly behind her naked back—pranced over to the lamp with the chartreuse ceramic base, where, with exaggerated care, she hooked the cane over the lampshade, turned to Vines with a grin and said, “Let’s try the bed.”

Seconds later they were not quite under the bedcovers, legs intertwined, hands busy, tongues exploring new territory. Later, during recess, Vines said, “If you were me, what would you do tomorrow—first thing?”

“For your hangover? I’d try the bar downstairs and a bloody mary around—well, say, eleven.” She paused. “And I’d bring the cane along.”

“Around eleven and bring the cane,” Vines said. “What time is it now?”

“Who cares?”

By the time Vines had finished his tale about the blond Dixie and his meeting the following morning with Durango’s chief of police, Sid Fork, they had reached Ocean Avenue in Lompoc. The annual Flower Festival parade seemed to have ended but the avenue was still jammed with locals, tourists, uniformed high school band members, good natured police, cars and a large number of florist delivery vans from out of town.

One of them, a pink Ford van with a scripted green sign on its rear door that read, “Floradora Flowers, Santa Barbara,” darted around the Mercedes on the left, horn bleating. The pink van almost clipped the sedan’s front left fender as it veered back into the lane and slammed on its brakes for a red light. Vines sounded his own horn in a disapproving honk.

As if on signal, the rear door of the van flew open and something black and round and shiny pointed itself at the Mercedes. Vines instinctively began to duck, but when he saw that the black, round, shiny thing was a 35mm camera with a moderately long lens, he instead covered his face with both hands, peering between his fingers at the photographer.

Jack Adair had jumped with a noticeable start when the pink van’s rear door banged open. But he didn’t bother to hide his face. Instead, he tilted his head back to eliminate any trace of the vanished triple chin, smiled a beaming, practiced smile, quickly erased it and stuck out his tongue.

The photographer was a dark-haired woman who, from her quick sure movements, Vines guessed to be in her late twenties. She wore pale blue coveralls and enormous dark glasses with white plastic frames. Her camera was obviously motor-driven and Vines estimated she had had time to expose at least six frames, maybe even seven.

After Adair stuck out his tongue, the woman lowered her camera and grinned at him. She slammed the rear door shut as the van made a fast right turn on red, causing a few pedestrians to jump back. The pink van sped off down the side street. Vines made no attempt to follow. When the car behind him honked, he noticed the light had changed to green, took his foot off the brake and drove straight ahead.

Neither Vines nor Adair said anything for half a block. It was then that Adair cleared his throat and said, “I don’t suppose she was from
People
magazine?”

“No.”

“Somebody needed proof of what—us being back in harness?”

“I think they were just dropping a hint.”

“What kind?”

“That they know where we’re going.”

“Well, that’s part of the plan, isn’t it?”

“That’s part of the plan,” Vines agreed. “Such as it is.”

They drove in silence for nearly five minutes until they reached Lompoc’s eastern edge and turned right onto a state highway with a poppy-decorated road sign that designated it as the scenic route to U.S. 101. Adair looked at Vines and said, “This the shortest way?”

“The prettiest anyhow.”

Adair smiled contentedly, said, “Much obliged,” and for almost ten minutes silently admired the rolling green and tan foothills that boasted scattered stands of fine old oaks and, here and there, some dairy cows, all of them black-and-white Holsteins. Deciding that cows still looked as bored silly as ever, Adair said, “We meet this guy Fork and the mayor for dinner, right?”