The Last Good Kiss (26 page)

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they say that if I keep my quarter-section, it ruins the

development potential or some such shit, but if I don't

sell some more plots soon, I'll have to take their offer. "

"Better than nothing, I guess."

"Just like nothing," he said, "just money, and damn

it my great-grandfather was born on the Oregon Trail in

Applegate's second train, and my grandmother was

born in a log cabin that is still standing five miles up the

creek, so here I am sitting under a raft of plastic flags. "

"Like you said, times change. "

"Yeah," he murmured, "but you know what I hate

most of all?"

"What's that?"

"One of these nights, man, I'm gonna be sitting

down in Santa Cruz stoned out of my mind watching

the late movie, and some washed-up TV cowboy is

gonna come on the tube offering my land in piss-ant

lots, and man that's gonna be a bummer. "

"Maybe you could run a few cattle or something. "

"Hell, have you seen the market quotations lately?"

he said. "You've got to have a wad of capital just to get

into the cattle-raising business and lose your ass," he

said. "Besides, I've been lazy too long to quit now," he

said, then paused. "Say, man, you look like you might

have been high once or twice, and I've got this

dynamite number in my pocket. If you've got a couple

more beers, we can sit here and get high and wait for

the customers who ain't about to come here anyway."

We smoked his dope and drank my beer, watched the

sun ride the wide open spaces of high blue sky, talked

about wagon trains and trails, about what it might have

been like, talked about the motorcycle shop he might

open down in Santa Cruz, but we didn't talk about

Betty Sue Flowers and we didn't get very high.

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1 0 ••••

Two AFrERNOONS LATER, I KNOC:KED ON RANDALL

Jackson's office door. He worked out of a cubicle in the

corner of a large warehouse filled with cartons of books

and magazines. He hadn't been hard to find. The clerk

in the first porno bookstore I had hit on Colfax told me

where to look. But I guess I arrived at a bad time. After

my knock, the voices inside the office stopped suddenly. The cheap door opened quickly, nearly jerked off its hinges, and a very large, very ugly man with a dark face

and a three-hundred-dollar suit stepped outside and

asked me what I wanted. I should have known, I

suppose. Where there's money, there's dirt, and when

you work my side of the street, you have to expect to

deal with those people. They're everywhere. Not as

well organized as they would like you to think, but

organized well enough.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely, a soft trace of a

Mexican accent in his voice. His twenty-dollar haircut

looked as if it belonged on somebody else's face.

"I'd like to talk to Mr. Jackson," I said, even more

polite than he had been.

"I'm sorry but he's busy right now," the big man

said.

"Who is it, Torres?" a voice from inside asked.

"Nobody," he answered, not meaning to insult me.

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"Tell him to wait," the voice inside said.

"It's a nice day," Torres said. "Why don't you wait

outside?"

"I'll be on the loading dock," I said.

He nodded, and we went our separate ways. I was

just as glad. The hairy pie of pornography is a big

business with a small capital investment and a great

cash flow, and freedom of the press is a fine theory, but

none of it is any of my business. I waited outside,

watching two black dudes hand-truck cartons into the

rear of an unmarked blue van. It wasn't a nice day at

all, but I didn't complain. Denver had a dose of smog as

thick as L.A.'s, but I stared through the gray, dirty

haze toward the Rocky Mountains as if I could see the

peaks, standing like ruined cathedrals against a crystalline cobalt sky.

Randall Jackson wasn't the man with the voice inside

the office. He had a wheedling whine, as unctuous as

old bacon grease as he ushered the man with the voice

into the back seat of a black Continental with blank

silvered windows. The large dark gentleman drove it

away. Then Jackson turned to me, his whine gone.

"You wanted to see me, bud?" he said. Time hadn't

been kind to him. His gut had grown rounder, his hair

thinne!, and his legs more bowed. His wardrobe didn't

help, either-a maroon blazer with electric blue slacks

that sported a bright chrome stitch in the weave. His

fancy loafers had a new shine and dandy tassles,

but they were run-over at the heels. His name might

be on the business license, but he didn't even flush the

toilet without permission. "Well, what was it?" he demanded.

"I'm looking for Betty Sue Flowers," I said. I didn't

think he was going to tell me anything anyway, and I

knew I didn't want him to know my name, so I didn't

explain anything or show him my license.

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"Never heard of her," he said quickly.

"Maybe she was using another name," I said. "I've

got information that you were with this girl in Oregon

several years ago."

"You got shit for information, bud, I ain't never been

to Oregon," he said, his tiny black eyes glittering like

zircons.

"Must be the wrong Randall Jackson," I said. "Sorry

to have bothered you, Mr. Jackson." Then I climbed

back into the El Camino and drove away.

That was that. For now. I couldn't muscle him with a

warehouseful of help watching. But he had lied to me,

probably out of habit, and I intended to find out why. It

had to be the hard way, though. His telephone would

be unlisted, his home address in the city directory

faked, and he had seen my El Camino, so I couldn't tail

him in it. I had to have another car.

One of the reasons that I spend so much time driving

back and forth across the country, aside from the fact

that airplanes scare me spitless, is that I can't rent a car

when I arrive in a strange city. I can't rent a car because

I don't have any credit cards. I don't have any credit

cards because I can't get one without stealing one. It's

easier to steal cars. I have more experience in that line

of w<;>rk.

Nobody likes to talk about it because it's such a

shoddy business, but private detectives spend a lot of

time repossessing cars. That's,how I got in the business,

in fact. After my third hitch in the Army, a friend of

mine got me a job on the sports desk of the Wichita

Eagle-Beacon, which is what I did in the Army when I

wasn't playing football, and since I was short of money

and bored, I started moonlighting for a finance company skip-tracing and repossessing cars and stereos and furniture and televisions. When I got fired from the

paper for being a lousy reporter, I headed out to San

Francisco, where I hustled runaways for a year, then up

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to Montana, where my father had died, and took up

skip-tracing and repo's as a full-time job. I had stolen

lots of cars legally with court orders in my pocket, and

without, and I thought I could at least borrow one in

Denver without too much trouble.

I drove out to Stapleton Airport and parked in the lot

farthest from the terminal, then waited for the right

car, something inconspicuous in a company car preferably, driven by a tired salesman with his flight luggage in his hand. I didn't have to wait very long for the right

one, and as soon as the salesman was out of sight, I

lifted a brown LTD that belonged to the Hardy

Industrial Towel Company. With the right tools, it only

takes a minute. I was out of the lot before the salesman

hiked to the tenninal.

I had a supply of blank titles and a set of Alabama

plates in my toolbox, plus a batch of blank repossession

papers, but I didn't have time to fill any of them out, so

when Jackson pulled his plum-colored Cougar into the

afternoon rush-hour traffic on Santa Fe, I had to stay

close but drive carefully. He made it easy, and I stayed

behind him all the way back downtown to a topless

place on East Colfax. 1\vo hours later, when he stepped

out of the bar into the dusk, his face inflamed with

whiskey and visions of naked, dancing flesh, I stuck a

revolver in his ribs, and he drove us to a cheap motel

out in Aurora. We didn't even have to get out of the

car.

"Okay," he admitted, "I knew her, all right. We

came down here together, and I was flat busted, so I

put her on the street, and she took a soliciting fall the

first night. I couldn't make the fine, so she did thirty

days down on the county farm."

"And then?" I said.