The Final Country (30 page)

“I was just on my way to Huntsville,” I said.

“I’ll call ahead,” he said, “to see if I can’t ease the way. Tell the kid we’re going for a new trial.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll cover the cost.”

“Save your money,” he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder toward the courthouse. “I’ll do it like this one. For fun. And headlines.”

“I hope you have some.”

“So where do you stand with Sylvie Lomax?”

“I haven’t talked to her yet,” I said. “I’ve got the McBride woman stashed in a safe place, but she’s not talking. I’ll cut her loose before I give her up to Rooke or Lomax.”

“Not a wise decision,” he said, “but one I approve of highly.”

I left Thursby sitting there, his short legs swinging in the air. His feet didn’t quite touch the ground, but his balls surely did.

* * *

After a troubled, almost sleepless night in a local motel not too far from Huntsville, I went out to the prison unit where Dickie Oates was lodged. Thursby’s call hadn’t eased my way at all. I had to use my Gatlin County DA’s badge and a threat of a lawsuit to get an interview. More than my welcome had changed. This time we talked through thick Plexiglas with worn telephones in an oddly empty visiting room. Dickie Oates, who looked ten years older, sat down quickly, picked up the phone, then placed his other hand against the barrier. I read the ballpoint message on his palm.

“Can you do that, man?” he said. “My folks will pay you back. That’s the only way I could get out of the ad-seg.” When I looked confused at the term, he added, “The hole, man.”

“You got it,” I said, nodding to the officer who stood against the wall behind Dickie Oates. But the CO’s face was as blank as the wall. “Cooley,” his nametag said. “Two things,” I said. “Phil Thursby’s office will be in touch with you shortly. He’s going to try for a new trial.”

“Great,” he said. “What’s the other thing?” I unrolled the picture of Amanda Rae Quarrels against the Plexiglas. “That’s one of them.”

“One of them?”

“Before they put me in the hole,” he said, “I had this guy on the yard — a shrink in on a drug rap — hypnotize me. There were a bunch of women there, kicking the shit out of that Duval asshole when he went down. I was on the ground by then and I was still there when the shotgun went off the second time.” Then he paused. “Does that help?”

“Sure,” I said, “sure.” Though I didn’t have the vaguest idea if it helped or not. I didn’t even know what it meant. “What did you do to get put in the hole?”

“Looked at somebody the wrong way,” he said. “That’s all it takes these days.”

“Hang tough, kid,” I said, then left.

* * *

The Attitude Adjustment was a bunkerlike cinder block bar set in the middle of an asphalt parking lot just off the Interstate across the Madison County line. Although it wasn’t quite ten o’clock in the morning, I had trouble finding a parking place among the pickups and four-wheel-drive units sporting Department of Correction parking stickers. The off-shift. COs who filled the bar all stared at me when I opened the front door. Pool players hung over their shots, their heads turned, many drinks paused in midair. I tried not to look guilty but the looks on their faces suggested that I failed. I found an empty table in the darkest corner I could find. The cocktail waitress, a tall, skinny woman with stringy black hair, showed up quickly, her bony jaw working at a piece of chewing gum.

“What can I do for y’all, partner?” she asked.

“A can of Coors,” I said. “Is Ramona Cooley working today?”

“I’m Ramona,” she said. “You got something for me?” I nodded, but she took off for the bar, her tray winging before her. She was back in a moment with my beer. When she leaned over to set it down, she popped out her gum, and stuck it under the table as she whispered, “Stick it there.” Then louder she said, “You passin’ through or visitin’?”

“Heading for Houston,” I said.

I stuck the envelopeful of cash to Ramona Cooley’s gum, then drank my beer rather quickly and uncomfortably. She brought me another without being asked. The envelope went away with her. People had stopped looking at me with narrowed eyes, so I stopped chugging my beer. She brought me a third, again without being asked. I gave her a ten and told her to keep the change. But she made change anyway, leaning over me as she counted it out.

“Cooley’s worked inside a long time, buddy, and he thinks Dickie Oates is bein’ screwed,” she whispered, “and we hate to take the money. But you know how it is. Thanks a bunch, hon.”

I finished my beer, left the change, and walked through the silent stares.

The copy of the file on Dickie Oates was still at Carver D’s, so I stopped there when I got back to Austin. The fat man was oddly somber and sober, sitting in his antique wheelchair, warming in the sun broken by the live oak branches.

“What’s up?” I asked. “You look like something the dog threw up and the cat drug home.”

“Petey just got accepted at Harvard Business,” he said.

“And that’s bad? Isn’t an MBA a license to steal?”

“He won’t let me go with him unless I stop drinkin’, man,” he said. “So I’ve stopped. You stopped once, didn’t you?”

“I took a ten-year break,” I said.

“How’d you do it?”

“Smoked a lot of dope, drank a lot of tonic water,” I said, “read a lot of books, saw a lot of movies, and found the extra time hard to fill.”

“You were tending bar, weren’t you? Didn’t that make it harder?”

“Hell, I worked all the time because the people on the other side of the bar showed me where I was headed if I didn’t slow down.”

“Well, I can’t imagine life without Petey,” he said, “so I’m gonna give it a try.”

“Good luck,” I said. And meant it. “Hangas going with you?”

“No. Hangas has too much family down here,” Carver D said, then chortled. “He’s gonna handle my affairs down here. Gonna be my bidness manager. Take care of things till we get back.” As if cheered by the notion of coming back home, Carver D smiled. “So what the hell do you want, Mr. Nosy?”

“Dwayne Duval’s autopsy report,” I said.

And there it was. From ankle to scalp, Duval’s body was covered with more than fifty fading contusions.

“Looks like somebody tried to kick the asshole to death before they shot him,” Carver D said. “Makes you wonder.”

“Makes me wonder where Enos Walker was that night,” I said as I thumbed through the rest of the file. No matter how hard I looked, no female names appeared on the witness list, just Billy Long and one of Dickie’s frat buddies. Of course, Long was inside and Dickie’s buddy was around the corner in the parking lot on the side and just heard the shots. They claimed they never saw any particular women. “Makes me wonder what he was doing.”

“According to the stuff that wasn’t in the trial record, I’m guessing he might have been pretty close to Tulsa,” Carver D said. “Maybe waitin’ for a cocaine delivery around that time.”

“What about his brother?”

“That’ll be a little harder to dig up,” the fat man said. “Call me in a couple of days.”

“Maybe you should do this computer thing professionally,” I suggested.

“And take all the fun out of it,” he said, then laughed as he wheeled himself toward his office.

As I left, I realized that Carver D wasn’t the only one who needed Petey. Shit, I was going to have to find another silent partner to help me launder the drug money. Which made me think about Travis Lee, so I returned his call.

* * *

Travis Lee’s wife, who had died in a car wreck some years before, had left him a rambling house that sprawled along the crest of a small ridge overlooking one of the string of lakes along the Colorado River, a large but ordinary house except for the view. Travis Lee hadn’t changed the house in the years since his wife’s death, except to fill it with enough junk to start a Civil War museum. I had been to a couple of parties at his place — without Betty — but his’ friends were either too young, too old, or too Texas to be interested in anything I had to say.

Travis Lee waited out on the patio, a new pair of custom-made alligator boots propped on a small table. The boots and their matching belt gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. At this angle, his golden buckle looked more like a golden frog than a snake. He lifted his can of Tecate in my direction as I came out the back door. “Thanks for coming out,” he said, a grin large on his face as he waved at his Chicano butler standing by the back door to bring us a beer. “You ain’t been exactly religious about returning my phone calls lately.”

“I’ve been busier than a whore at a meat cutter’s convention,” I said. “What’s up?”

“You know, son, I’m just an old country boy,” he said as he started his routine.

“Spare me the preface,” I said, grinning as I held up my hands in surrender. “I told you, Travis Lee, I just don’t have the time to worry about investments now.”

“Spare me,” he said. “At some point, you’re gonna have to piss on the fire and call the dogs.”

“Trav, I’ve been long on busy, and you’ve been short of details,” I said. “You think we could talk about this later? Then maybe my voice mail won’t be quite so full of bullshit.”

“Yeah,” he said, his face large with concern. “Sorry to hear about you and Betty. Women come and women go, but business lasts. How much money you got in that offshore bank?”

“Enough. Why?”

“If you’ve got a million to lend me for thirty days,” he said, ruffling his wild white hair as he stood up, “I can move it just across the street and turn it into three million clean and clear in a New York bank. We can split the profit down the middle.” When I didn’t answer, he added, “I’d even be more than willing to put up my share of the Lodge as collateral.”

“Hell, man, if it goes bad, I don’t want to end up with a fucking motel,” I said, laughing. “I don’t even want the bar, if you get right down to it.”

“Hell, boy,” he said, laughing and slapping my shoulder, “I thought you loved that place.”

“I do,” I admitted. “But it’s always full of the wrong people.”
And in the wrong part of the world,
I thought but didn’t say. “Besides, the kind of profit you’re talking about can only come from insider trading or drug deals, and I don’t need that kind of heat.”

“Don’t be silly,” Travis Lee said, still grinning. “I wouldn’t do anything like that. Straight property deal, and we’re covered all the way down the line anyway.” He could tell I didn’t like the sound of that. “And speaking of heat, there’s another damn good reason to consider this deal,” he said. “You might be needing a dose of clean cash. Like^ I started to say, I’m just a country boy, but I’m aware that you and that kid have been washing cash through the bar.” ‘

“I’m just a country boy myself,” I said, “and even if I was running a laundry, it’d just be chump change, and I’d be covered like your Granny’s ass.”

“Leave my poor old dead Granny out of this,” he said, his smile unbroken. “An old buddy of mine in D.C. whistled a little bird song in my ear last week. You’re about to have tax people all over you like stink on a dead hog’s ass.”

“That’s not a problem,” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying. At least not to myself.

“Not a problem? Tax people are always a problem,” he said. “They can bury you, and nobody can do a thing about it. And there’s some suggestion that the little whoredogs are sittin’ in your bar as we speak.”

I didn’t say anything. I guess I didn’t have anything to say. I just stared north like some dumb beast, not really looking at the dark bank of clouds moving down the long, empty plains toward me. Another goddamned norther.

“And speaking of whores? Any luck finding that woman for Sylvie Lomax?” he said. “If I were in your boots, son, I’d look for a double dose of clean money, and all the influential friends I could find. Hayden Lomax draws a lot of water around here. And I can guarantee that she draws a lot of water with him.”

“I’ve been back and forth across five states and came up empty.” I wasn’t sure why I lied to him, but I had promised myself that once Molly told me what the hell this was all about, I’d see her home safely.

“Well, if you find her, don’t tell my big brother. I understand that he’s still got the bejesus hots for her,” he said, and jerked his dimpled chin at Tom Ben’s pickup sitting in front of his house, then he laughed long and loud, the laughter guttering on the rising north wind like a dying candle.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, thinking that, given his history, it was a strange thing to say. And I wondered how Travis Lee knew about the incident. Unless Betty had told him.

“Well, you call me now,” Travis Lee said, “sooner rather than later.” He stood up abruptly, slapped me on the shoulder again, then headed for the back door of his house. “You want a real drink?” he said.

“No thanks,” I said. “Not right now. And thanks for the warning.”

“My pleasure, son. You’re a stranger down here,” he said, “and Texas hospitality is the rule, not the exception.”

* * *

When I climbed out of the pickup in front of Tom Ben’s dairy barn, I could hear the laughter cracking against the metal walls. The light, fading behind the rolling storm, had drawn the shine from the steel, leeching it to an ashen gray. Inside, in the corn crib, Tom Ben sat on a milking stool and Molly on her cot, her long hair combed out and her face made up. They huddled over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, laughing and slapping their knees. Tom Ben’s glass was as dark as raw molasses, but Molly’s was very light.

“Wow,” she said as I came in. “My master returns.”

The old man stood up quickly, stumbling a bit, a guilty boy’s grin lopsided on his unshaven face. “Hell, Milo,” he said, “I just thought I’d check on the girl.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“Well, I best be headin’ out to the house,” the old man said as he picked up the half-empty bottle of bourbon.

“I’ll give you a hand,” I said, but the old man turned on me.

“I got every place I ever started to go, boy,” he said quickly. “One of them was back from the Yalu River. Ever hear of that fucking place, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I spent part of a spring staring in that direction once.” Then watched the old man wobble out the door and into the dim evening. I guess I could see my legs wobbling in my future. He was only twelve years older than me. Then I looked at Molly.