The Final Country (36 page)

“Where’s the heroin?” I asked, after I glanced through the sack. I had to admit that the small cans of pate, smoked oysters, and clams looked good. Travis Lee had even included a small jar of Dijon mustard and a package of water crackers. “Thanks,” I said, oddly touched by the old man’s visit. “You came a long way to see me laid up.”

“Down at the nurses’ station, they said that you’re comin’ along fine,” he expounded. “Said you should be outa here in a couple shakes of a puppy’s tail.”

“That’s not what they tell me,” I said. “I’m wearing pieces of my ass on my neck, a dead man’s ligament in my knee, and an assortment of screws and pins in my elbow worthy of a hardware store.” Then I wondered, “How did you know I was in the hospital?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” he said, “somebody must have mentioned it. Austin may be on the verge of making Gatlin County look like a city, son, but you know it’s a small town as far as gossip goes. And speaking of gossip, I hear you’ve settled your cash flow problem.”

“I don’t have a cash flow problem,” I said, “so I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about your sudden acquisition of my brother’s ranch.”

“Shit, Trav,” I said. “That’s not gossip, that’s criminal behavior. The goddamned will hasn’t been probated yet. So how the hell did you know about the will?”

“Word gets around,” he said innocently.

“Then maybe you can tell me what the hell Tom Ben had in mind?” I said. “Leaving his place to me?”

“Couldn’t speak to that, son,” he said, “but I have some idea what that land is worth. Particularly if it’s parceled out to the right people at the right time.”

“It all seems like a long way away,” I said. “I’m going to be in this bed for a time.”

“You’re coming back to Texas, aren’t you?” he said, his face furrowed with worry. “You got a passel of business interests down there, son.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, suddenly very tired and reaching for the nurse’s call button. I wasn’t going to criticize Tom Ben — he was clearly a man of some honor — but I sure as hell wasn’t all that happy about being dropped into the middle of the Wallingford family’s troubles. “Right now I’m going to see if I can’t beg a shot out of these stingy bastards,” I said, “then see about a
siesta.”

We chatted aimlessly until the nurse came, and I begged like an egg-sucking dog until she gave me a jolt of Demerol just to shut me up. Travis Lee made his exit, explaining that he had spent so much time on the ground at the Salt Lake airport that he had to turn around and head right back to Texas. I wanted to ask him about Sissy Duval, but it slipped my mind. As I drifted off behind the painkiller, I thought that it was nice of Travis Lee to come all the way up here to see me, then I wondered, sleepily, why he had gone to the trouble — he hadn’t bothered to mention his investment ideas — but then I let it go as I slipped into the warm, drugged slumber.

* * *

Once out of the hospital, I went over to Meriwether to spend a couple of weeks with my ex-partner and his family. Baby Lester wasn’t a baby anymore. Which he reminded me every time I slipped and called him that. And they were too busy with law school and a growing Lester to spend much time with me and my problems, and I got tired of watching them try, so I climbed on a plane and hopped back to Texas. I didn’t really care if anybody knew I was back, but for some reason I didn’t want to return to my room in the Lodge to wait for Tom Ben’s will to go into probate. So I rented a car and stopped by my place to check with Lalo and ran into one of my grass widows, Sherry. She invited me up for a drink that turned into a few pleasant days. And nights. Until her big-shot computer-chip-on-the-English-tweed-shoulder husband came back from Boston. Then I crashed with Renfro and Richie at their place off Bee Caves Road for a few more days, but they took such good care of me that I began to feel as if I was either an invalid or a leeching guest at a chichi bed-and-breakfast. A guy can stand out-of-season strawberries and clotted cream for breakfast only so many days in a row.

So I went over to Travis Lee’s office to ask him if I could borrow his place down on the Gulf for a few weeks, but he said he was having some work done on the place. When I thought about that last weekend Betty and I had spent there, I decided perhaps I didn’t mind too much not going. I asked him if he couldn’t get Gatlin County to speed up the probate process.

“Oh, son, I don’t know,” he groaned, a Confederate cavalry saber balanced on his knee, “down here a favor always calls for a favor in return. You scratch my balls, I’ll scratch yours. I strongly suspect those old boys around the courthouse are a little worried that you might be considerin’ removing my brother’s land from the tax rolls. ‘Cause of your former relations with my niece.” Travis Lee stood up, holding the old saber in front of him. From this angle I realized that his golden belt buckle wasn’t a snake’s head but a bullfrog’s head, and now I knew what it meant. He pointed the saber at me. “Now if I could go over there and give them some reassurance in this rather important matter,” he continued, “I’m sure they would be more than happy to move things along.”

“You tell them,” I said, fighting to keep the anger out of my voice. “You tell them old boys that I don’t have any plans to take the ranch off the tax rolls.” Truth was I didn’t have any plans about the ranch at all. But I had some plans for Mr. Wallingford, plans he wasn’t going to like.

“You sure you didn’t check out of that hospital too soon?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I was bored.”

Travis Lee nodded his head as if he understood exactly. But he didn’t understand anything at all. I didn’t understand why I didn’t jerk the saber out of his hands and shove it up his ass. Maybe I was learning restraint in my golden years.

* * *

When the will went through probate the next day, I decided to move into Tom Ben’s ranch house. Over the fervent objections of Betty and some lawyer I didn’t know, objections that Tom Ben’s lawyer quickly stifled. When it was over, he handed me a sealed envelope. Betty watched, her face with a haunted look, as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. When she had first seen my new old man’s face in the judge’s chambers, a ripple of concern crossed her pale face, and she took one small step in my direction, then pulled herself up, stopped, and just stood there, her face angry with hurt and betrayal, staring at me. But I didn’t understand any of it. Not how we had gotten together, or how we’d fallen apart.

That afternoon I bought a four-wheel-drive crew cab pickup just like any other all-hat-and-no-cattle Texan, picked up my new gear, and moved myself into Tom Ben’s house. It seemed like a good center of operations for what I had planned. I made a few quick changes: two more telephone lines installed; a wall between two bedrooms removed to make space for the computers and the exercise equipment; and had one of the bulldozer guys build me a new road out the backside of the ranch so my comings and goings wouldn’t be quite so visible.

Tom Ben’s foreman had towed the burned hulk of my Caddy out into the pasture with a bulldozer, then buried it. I told him to keep the hands doing whatever the old man had been doing, then went about my business.

* * *

The afternoon Red’s scrambled cell phone came by FedEx with a sweet note from Mrs. McCravey, I decided to pick up Gannon’s. When I called, I caught him in the office. I still used one crutch and kept a fiberglass cast on my left elbow, mostly for cover, and with the white beard probably looked like my grandfather’s ghost. At least Gannon looked at me as startled as if I were some kind of specter.

“Jesus, man,” he said. Today he was dressed like the rest of the boys in cowboy boots and a western-cut suit. “I heard that you’d been in a car wreck, but I had no idea.”

“You should see the other motherfucker,” I said.

“You have any luck with your notions?”

“Not a bit,” I said. “It was a long tiresome chase into a pile of slick, slippery gooseshit with not a rose petal in sight. And as you can see, I’m a little too beat up to go on with it.”

“I can see that,” he said. “Are you going to be all right?”

“The rumors of my near demise haven’t been exaggerated,” I said, “but unfortunately for my enemies, I’m not dead yet.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can do, let me know,” he said, ignoring my line about enemies. He honestly seemed to have no idea of the real story.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Hey, how’s that kid doing? Culbertson, I think his name was.”

“Released when we downsized last month,” Gannon said, but I suspected I knew the real reason.

“How’s your job looking these days?” I asked. “You’re not in uniform. They put you back in the detective division?”

“For a few weeks,” he said. “While they decide if they’re going to fire me. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.” Then he paused. “You spending any time at the bar these days?”

“I was just on my way over there right now,” I said. “You want to have a drink?”

“Sounds good to me,” he said quickly, glancing around as if the walls were listening. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. I’ve got something you ought to hear.”

On the way out of the courthouse I made a point to clunk slowly past the county prosecutor’s offices. Rooke glanced up from where he leaned on his secretary’s desk. I gave him a friendly wave. Then he stood up straight, his hard gray eyes slightly confused, not a sign of recognition on his narrow face. He even tried to grin as if I were a voter.

* * *

As I walked through the lobby of the Lodge, Travis Lee came striding out of the office, his boots slapping heavily on the Mexican tile floor, his large Stetson sailing like a large white bird on his head. He planted himself right in front of me, so I stopped. He took a step toward me, smiling, saying, “Jesus, son, I’m worried about you. You’re hobbled like an old mare with a stone bruise.”

“I’m getting around,” I said. That suited me perfectly. I wanted Gatlin County to think of me as an old man, to dismiss me as a threat. “I’ve got business to tend to down here. I’m meeting Gannon for a drink,” I added as I turned to the bar.

“What business have you got with him?” Travis Lee asked, then stepped in front of me. The bottom of my right crutch, which I had filled with six ounces of melted lead sinkers while I was in Meriwether, caught him on the shin. Travis Lee jumped back as if he’d been shot.

“Sorry,” I said. “We’re just having a drink.”

“What the hell you got in there, son? An anchor?”

I ignored him. “By the way,” I said, “there’s an envelope with Sissy Duval’s name on it in the Lodge safe with ten thousand five hundred dollars in it. But it isn’t really hers. I’ve got to give it back when I get a chance.” But from the look on his face, I knew something was wrong. “What’s up?”

“Well, I don’t know if you knew,” he said. “Sissy dropped me a note and asked me to take care of her affairs. She gave me her power of attorney a long time ago. Since the cash had her name on it, I took it. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Oh, hell,” I said. “I’ll figure something out. Where’d it come from?”

“What?”

“The note. Where was it mailed from?”

“Somewhere in the Caribbean, I think,” he said, then started to walk away. “Enjoy your drink,” he added over his shoulder.

* * *

Gannon and I had a pleasant drink, both lightly pumping each other to no avail. He suspected I hadn’t been in any car wreck, suspected somehow that I had found the McBride woman, and that I knew more about what was going on than he did. So I gave him a taste.

“Enos Walker is dead,” I said. “I’m sorry. I did my best to get him to come back. With my testimony, we could have worked a deal.”

“A deal? Anything less than the needle wouldn’t have done me any good,” he admitted. “That’s how you got busted up?”

I didn’t bother answering that one. If he had to ask, he didn’t need to know the answer. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Gannon, but while I was nosing around I kept coming up with bits and pieces of information that Walker was somehow connected to Hayden Lomax.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gannon said. “A man like Lomax wouldn’t fuck with cocaine. Christ, he’s got to be worth three or four hundred million.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Speaking of odd information,” he said. “The other day I heard that Tobin Rooke is trying to convince the grand jury to indict you for Billy Long’s murder. Since he can’t indict you for his brother’s death.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I haven’t heard anything about that. Can you nail it down?” But I didn’t really care. Tobin Rooke was about to have problems of his own.

“I’ll nose around, but you know —”

“— your job’s hanging by a thread,” I interrupted.

“Yeah,” he said standing. “I guess I better get back to it. I’ve got some paperwork to take home.”

I told him the beers were on me. He said thanks, then walked out of the bar, still unsteady on his new cowboy boots.

“Guys from New Jersey shouldn’t wear cowboy boots,” Lalo said as he brought me a fresh beer.

“Well,
mi amigo,”
I said raising the glass, “I think my days of cowboy boots are over. A man in my condition could fall off them high heels and hurt myself.” Lalo chuckled happily. Coming back to work seemed to have knocked ten years off his face. “You’re looking good,
viejo,”
I said.

“Perhaps I retired too soon,” he said. “But running your bar, my friend, is a pleasure instead of a job.”

I saw no reason to tell him that as soon as things settled out, my lawyer had arranged to sell the bar to the Herrera family at fairly reasonable terms. Nothing down, with a small piece of the action month as payment. Travis Lee wouldn’t be happy, but lying in that hospital bed, I had decided to get out of the bar business as easily and quickly as I could.

Lalo poured two shots of tequila out of the Herradura bottle. We toasted the clear, bright day outside the glass walls of the bar. No buildings or houses troubled the tangled expanse of the Blue Creek Park. It could have been a different world, an easier world. But for the shadows still drifting behind my eyes. I shook Lalo’s soft, satin hand, then went about my business.