County Kill (7 page)

“You were a dumb Catholic, Callahan. If the parties were originally married outside the Church, they are not married in the eyes of the Church. Skip was not married before to a Catholic.

She was wrong, I felt sure. But it was not a time to argue religion. Nor was I qualified. And though the love life of Skip Lund was none of my business and Mary Chavez was
a sweet girl, and though I was sure that Lund had sound reasons, I was sad.

Because Bud, like all boys, needed a father, a father of his own blood.

The door opened and the redhead was back.

Mrs. Rico stared at him and then at me. This was obviously a change in the man’s routine, and it had startled her.

He didn’t go to the end of the bar. He came over to stand next to me and say gruffly, “Double bourbon.”

“I know,” she said. “I ought to by now, huh?”

He nodded without looking at her.

She poured it and went over to talk with the guitar player.

The redhead said quietly, “I usually get out of here before all those spies come in. But I figured if you can take it, I can.”

“If you’re bigoted,” I said, “why come in here at all?”

“Bigoted? What’s that? That mean you don’t like Mexicans?”

“That’s one of the things it means. Nobody’s forcing you to come in here.”

He studied me doubtfully. He had a big, ugly, freckled face and faded-blue eyes. I could guess he had been in a few bar fights in his time and won his share.

“A wise guy?” he asked ominously.

“No. Only puzzled. Is the whisky better here? Or maybe cheaper?”

His smile was cynical. “Why are you here?”

“On business. Why else?”

Juanita was back behind the bar now and Red’s eyes moved slyly that way and I got his message. There was lust in the slyness, a mute, aching lust.

Juanita began to wash some glasses.

I said quietly to the redhead, “She’s married and she doesn’t like angloes. It’s hopeless, Red.”

“Married, huh? Where’d you hear that?”

“It’s
Mrs
. Rico, isn’t it?”

“That don’t mean she’s married
now
. I been in here plenty and I never saw no husband around.”

Some more people came in and Juanita moved down the bar to serve them. The guitar moved into more cheerful melodies to match the cheerful patrons, laboring men and their perfumed wives trying to ignore tomorrow.

In one corner a young couple danced, close and well and oblivious. Juanita watched them smilingly.

“Think she’d like to dance?” the redhead asked me.

I shrugged.

“Whyn’t you ask her?” he suggested. “And then I can cut in.”

I shook my head.

He grumbled something I couldn’t understand and called to Juanita, “Another double here.”

She came down to pour it. She stood in front of us and poured his drink and then ignored him, asking me, “Happy people, aren’t they? Not like Montevista.”

Was she putting in a word for Mary Chavez, a word against June Lund? I smiled, not committing myself.

Red said hoarsely, “Could I buy you a drink, Juanita?”

“Why not?” she said, and looked at him without interest. She poured a shot and held it high. “Your health, Mr. — ?”

“Hovde,” he said shakily. “Lars Hovde. My friends call me Red.”

“Your health, Mr. Hovde,” she said, and downed her drink in one swallow. She smiled at me and went to the other end of the bar again.

“Hard to get, huh?” Red scoffed. “She don’t fool me.”

“Patience, Red,” I said. “Be smooth.”

“Sure.” He looked down at his faded jeans and fingered the wet spot on his cheap sport shirt. “I got better clothes than this, but I didn’t want her to think I was too fancy.
They don’t like that, when you’re fancy.”

“Women
don’t like it when you’re fancy?”

“Not spies,” he said.

His bigotry was annoying enough. But the way he was hoisting the doubles he was bound to get louder. And this was no place to use that ugly word loud enough to be heard.

I walked up to where Juanita stood and told her, “This redhead is beginning to annoy me. I could belt him, but we don’t want any cops, do we?”

“I could tell him to leave,” she suggested.

“No. I’ll go. And about Lund …?”

“I’ll phone you tomorrow, if I decide to take the chance,” she said. “I couldn’t help you tonight anyway. I don’t know exactly where he is tonight.”

“I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow,” I said. “I’d better call you.”

“Any time after noon,” she said.
“Amigo
, you may tell the boy his father is no killer and he will hear from him.”

“Has he been away?” I asked. “On a trip?”

“Your nose is long. Tell the boy what I told you.”

I went out without saying good night to Lars Hovde. The night was cold and clear after the hot day and I stood for a few seconds, breathing it in.

Behind me, the laughter of the happy people — and I hoped Hovde wouldn’t change the mood in there with his loser’s hatreds.

I climbed into the flivver hating the big, dumb bastard. Motel rooms are lonely. Friday night was a bad night for TV and I didn’t even like the good nights. That had been a warm and friendly bar, and who knows what might have developed, either revelatory or romantic, as the guitar and the alcohol worked their blend of magic?

The flivver hummed along, oblivious to my sense of frustration.

And then, as I turned into the drive behind my unit, another car turned in ahead of me and continued toward the rear. It was a big car, a black Continental, and a ghost of this afternoon’s transient lust came back to haunt me.

Maybe that bastard Hovde had done me a favor; it looked like Glenys Christopher’s car.

T
HE CONTINENTAL PULLED
into the stall directly behind my room; I pulled into the stall on its left. The light over the rear door was bright enough to show me that it was Glenys behind the wheel. She looked my way and stepped out of the car.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello. Where have you been? I called twice.”

“I’ve been working.”

“Oh? Then Jan isn’t here?”

Did you really think she was?
I thought. I shook my head.

“Any news about Warren?” she asked, after a second.

“Some hope. I think I’ve met someone who knows where he is.”

“Someone named Mary Chavez?”

I shook my head again. “I’ll know more tomorrow. Would you like to come in or is that a vulgar question?”

She stared at the ground. She might have blushed, but I couldn’t tell in this light. She said softly, “Bud’s staying with a friend and my sister went out with Jim someplace. I — was bored.”

It didn’t figure. Not Glenys Christopher. Not that inhibited, reserved, and disciplined lady. I couldn’t think of anything un vulgar to say.

She seemed to be holding her breath, and her voice was tight. “I — uh — brought some Einlicher.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “We’ll have a quiet bottle and talk about the old days.”

She seemed to be appraising me and I think there was a moment when she was ready to get back into the car. But finally she said, “It’s on the floor in front.”

It was a canvas cooler and it took both my hands to carry it. I gave her my key and she opened the door. After she had turned on the light, she asked, “What time will Jan be here?”

“She isn’t coming,” I said. “She has to spend the weekend with a client. Money, money, money, that’s Jan.”

She was sitting next to the TV when I came back from the kitchenette with our beer. She sighed and said, “That’s not a happy house over in Montevista. I had to get out of it.”

Sure, sure, sure…. I handed her the beer and asked, “Was it a happy house before Skip left it?”

“For a while.”

“Glenys,” I asked gently, “did you try to make Skip Lund over into something he wasn’t?”

“I? Now what did
that
mean?”

“Well,” I explained, “one of the things he wasn’t was Warren Temple Lund the Second.”

Her face tightened. She didn’t comment.

I smiled. “O.K., tell me off. It’s none of my damned business.”

Her chin lifted and she said coolly, “I didn’t try to make Skip Lund into something he wasn’t. Perhaps if I had, the police wouldn’t be looking for him now.”

“O.K. Your point. Let’s not fight.”

“Why not? You’re losing.”

I laughed and she smiled. And then I asked, “How long were you married?”

“Two months. It was never legal. He had … neglected to divorce one of his previous wives.”

“Anyone I know?”

She shook her head, her eyes reminiscent. “I … went into that marriage a virgin. At
twenty-eight.”

Well…. What in hell do you say to that kind of frankness?

She looked at me candidly. “Did I embarrass you?”

“A little. Would you like more beer?”

“I guess. Does my being here embarrass you?”

“Nope. Why should it? We’re friends, in a way.” I went to get more beer. My hands shook as I poured it.

When we were settled again, she said, “I was a sadly innocent girl who had been deluding herself for years that she was self-sufficient. The man was — nothing, just as Roger Scott was. But he taught me that even a nothing man is better than a women’s club luncheon.”

Glenys Christopher letting down her hair; it was beyond belief.

I said, “You are beautiful and intelligent and desirable. You are single only by choice.”

“Huh!” she said. “Only a man could believe that.” The glass in her hand was unsteady for a second and she changed the subject. “To get back to Skip Lund — neither June nor I tried to make him over. He came up here without any thought of going into business. He spent forty thousand dollars for that damned boat and practically
lived
on it. June can’t stand the water.”

“Boat?” I said blankly. Something flickered in my unconscious mind, one fact trying to relate to another. “Boat?” I said again, trying to trigger the pattern.

She shook her head bitterly. “It was a new kind of hot rod for Skip Lund. He’ll always be a hot-rodder.”

I asked, “Where did he get the money?”

She said dully, “From June. Where else? Have you been briefed on the police history of his good friend, Johnny Chavez?”

“Yes.” I thought of the reefers. Narcotics and a boat; the flicker had more substance now. Narcotics and a boat and Juanita saying she didn’t know
exactly
where Skip was right now.
Exactly
had been a strange word, but not for a man at sea.

“What are you thinking about?” Glenys asked.

“A theory. A hunch. Was Skip’s boat seaworthy enough to make Mexico?”

“I have no idea. Why? Do you think he might have gone there?”

“It was just a random thought, a hunch from left field. Your glass is empty.”

“Fill it,” she said.

I brought in a bottle and filled her glass. As I was pouring, she said, “I worry about Bud.”

“Of course. But he’s not your responsibility, Glenys. Bobby and June might have been, but Bud isn’t.”

Her fine face lifted and her eyes mocked me. “Is he yours? You won’t even accept pay for helping him.”

“I’m sentimental,” I explained.

The chin lifted again, but not defiantly. Beseechingly. “And I’m not?”

Vulnerable, that strong and beautiful face, beseeching.

I bent and kissed her.

For less than a second there was resistance in her soft lips, and then they answered me. I straightened to look down and see some mist in her eyes.

Her voice was hoarse and husky. “I suppose we’re heading
somewhere we shouldn’t. Will you promise to consider it therapeutic for me?” She put a hand on my forearm. “And
never, never
mention it again?”

It would be indelicate to go into the clinical details of what followed, but it required a lot of patience on my part. Her morality was strong and extended to sex because of the twenty-eight barren years. Though her need was great (the annulment was three years back), she was too basically and instinctively a lady to enjoy the bed fully without proper conditioning.

Patiently, slowly, gently, and cunningly, the vulgar Callahan worked toward the deeper breath and the first indicative and anticipatory quiver.

Slowly but successfully, until the body writhed and the whimpers no longer were protesting and a great, soaring catharsis was achieved.

She shuddered, she sighed, she stretched. And asked sadly, “Will I ever be able to look at Jan again?”

“You don’t see her much, do you?”

“Lately I have. I’m thinking of redoing the house.”

“Glenys,” I said sternly, “get married. Find a man you can trust, one with more money than you have, and let him buy you a house. Damn it, you always get involved with con men!”

“Always? Twice.”

“That was always for you. Would you like another beer?”

She laughed quietly. “Heavens, what a hedonist you are! Tell me, is it a happy philosophy, Callahan?”

“It serves.” I put on a robe and sat on the edge of the bed. “Glenys, get married before you turn to stone. You’re wasting yourself and depriving some solid citizen of a first-class wife.”

She sat up and put a tender hand on my cheek. “Old Uncle Brock! Who needs a cow when milk is free?”

“Don’t be vulgar,” I said. “That’s my pitch. You can’t be the mother to the whole damned world, Glenys.”

“I’ll be the girl friend, then,” she said lightly. “Will you be in touch with Skip tomorrow?”

“I hope to be.”

“And then you’ll be going home?”

“I suppose. Maybe I’ll wait until Sunday.”

“Could we — have dinner or something tomorrow? You’re nice to be with, when you try to be.”

“I’ll phone you in the morning,” I promised. “Drive carefully, now.”

The big black car went away and I sat on the edge of the bed, a robe over my nakedness, finishing the bottle of beer. Glenys had left by the back door. When someone knocked on the front, I thought perhaps she had come back that way.

It wasn’t Glenys; it was the thin girl with the rich voice and big eyes, Mary Chavez.

She looked at my robe and up at me embarrassedly. “I’m sorry. I heard voices before and knew you had company. I heard the car leave and thought … I mean …”