Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (28 page)

“Imagine that,” she said, shaking her head.

WHEN THE PHONE RANG
after dinner, I grabbed it because Melissa was changing Angelina in the living room.

“It’s Jeter. It took me a while today to find that Appaloosa Club.”

A rolling tremor went through me from the top of my head and my toes curled in my shoes.

“You’re
here?
”

“Got in around noon. Found a place to stay. Took a nap. Now that it’s dark out, I want to get to work. Damn—Denver got big on me. Used to be a glorified cow town. I don’t hardly know my way around anymore. How many people live here now?”

“Two point four million.”

He paused. “That’s twice more than all of Montana.”

“Yes.”

“Where did all these folks come from?”

“All over,” I said. “Where are you now?”

“Some fleabag joint on West Colfax. At least this part of town hasn’t changed much. There are still hookers around,
but I don’t think I’ve seen a white person since I’ve been here. It’s like some damned street in Tijuana.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I called Cody, and he didn’t pick up, so I’m calling you. I’m going to the club to night.”

“Jeter, please, no.”

“What, you worried about my fee now that Brian’s dead? Don’t. This is a favor to you boys and to that little girl of yours.”

“Wait, don’t do anything until I get there …”

He hung up.

As I got my jacket, Melissa said, “Where are you going, Jack?”

“I don’t think you want to know,” I said. “That was Jeter Hoyt on the telephone.”

Which told her everything, and she turned away. I wondered if she felt as unclean and panicky as I did at that moment.

AS I CLIMBED INTO
my Jeep, I heard the motor start in the sheriff’s car across the street. For a moment I closed my eyes and stood there with the door open. If he followed me down to Zuni Street…

I slammed the door and walked across the street. The deputy was young, fresh-faced, with brown hair and a blunt nose. He watched me approach with a practiced cop dead-eye stare, and I motioned for him to roll down his window. I saw him say something into his mike—probably notifying the cop down the block that I was there—and then his window descended halfway.

“Hello, Deputy.”

“That’s close enough,” he said.

I stopped, put my hands up, and showed my palms to him. “I’m harmless.”

He nodded.

“What’s your name?”

“Sanders. Billy Sanders.”

“And Morales is the name of the deputy down the street? We might as well get to know you guys and be friends since we’re spending so much time together.”

He smiled. “Your wife met Gary Morales already.”

“Look,” I said, “I’m going to go downtown and have a few beers, just like last night. I was wondering if you’d like to go with me?”

“What?”

“Why sit here all night? I’ll give you a ride with me, and that way you can keep an eye on me
and
have a couple of beers. I’d like the company because drinking alone is the shits. What do you say?”

He grinned, not unfriendly. “That sounds pretty good, but I’m on duty until my replacement gets here.”

“I can be back by then,” I offered.

For a second he considered it, then, “Nah, no can do.”

“Are you sure? I’m buying.”

He shook his head.

“Maybe tomorrow night?”

He laughed. “Maybe.”

“I’m going down to a place called Shelby’s. You know it?”

“Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

“It’s on Eighteenth.”

“I know where it is.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there later, I guess. And if I drink too much, maybe I can bum a ride back from you?”

He laughed. “I haven’t done all that much surveillance, but you two are the only people I’ve ever watched who were
so damned nice. You’re making me suspicious, to tell you the truth.”

“Sorry.”

His window slid back up.

I turned and went back to my Jeep and eased out of the driveway. I watched him in my rearview mirror. If he did decide to follow me, I’d just go to Shelby’s and read about Jeter in the
Rocky Mountain News
the next morning. In a way, I hoped Sanders
would
follow me. But, as I guessed, the sheriff’s car didn’t move. He didn’t want to be stuck downtown when his shift ended with the possibility of having to give me a ride all the way back, and he knew that without Melissa and Angelina with me, there was no point in following.

O
N ZUNI STREET
I noticed two things simultaneously: the streetlights were out, and my headlights splashed on Garrett’s H3 Hummer as well as a dirty four-by-four pickup with Montana plates.

“There he is,” I said aloud.

Because it was so dark, the Appaloosa Club stood out, with its neon beer signs in the barred windows and the fact that it was surrounded by either boarded-up shells of structures or low-rent businesses closed for the night. The lights of the city washed like cream across the sky but didn’t reach down into this dark hole not far from it.

Besides the H3 and what I assumed was Jeter’s pickup, there were two or three others: classic seventies Buick and Cadillac boats with gleaming chrome and fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirrors. One of the license plates I noticed was “13 13,” framed by the green Colorado mountains. The thirteenth number in the alphabet was “M,” so “M M,” or Mexican Mafia.

I pulled to the curb, punched the light knob in, and the H3 went black.

I sat for a moment in scared silence. He was obviously already inside. I could hear thumping bass from the
Appaloosa. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the shape of the club emerged. It was small and boxy. The
Pacifico, Corona,
and
Negra Modelo
beer signs seemed to increase in color and intensity. I considered going home.

“No!” I yelled inside the Jeep.

I launched outside in time to see a rectangle of light appear on the front of the club—the door opening—and the inverted “V” shape of Jeter Hoyt and his broad back in a long cowboy duster fill the doorway for a moment before the door closed behind him. He’d been scouting the club from the outside and just gone in.

I always traveled with a winter survival kit in my Jeep. I threw open the hatchback, unzipped the duffel bag in the back, and pulled out a navy watch cap. I thought if I pulled it low over my eyes that possibly—possibly—Garrett wouldn’t recognize me. I wanted to follow Jeter inside and get him out before something awful happened. I’d keep my head down and, if necessary, drag him back outside before Garrett noticed him or recognized me.

As I strode toward the club I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed Cody. Not that I planned on a conversation, but I simply wanted to make contact. I didn’t expect him to answer. I clutched the phone. I thought if I went inside and all hell broke loose, I wanted him to hear it later as a voice mail so he could get to our house to be with Melissa.

I eased the front door open and slipped inside. The thumping of the music—I didn’t recognize the song or the artist but it was crude and raw—hit me in the face and made my heart beat even faster. I took it in quickly: The place was smaller than it looked from outside and both darker and emptier than I had imagined. A couple of morose Latinos in biker gear perched at the truncated front bar. A bald, obese
bartender in a wife-beater was behind the bar. His thick arms and shoulders were covered in tattoos, and he had a soul patch under his lip grown long and braided. He was pointing a remote at the crappy single television mounted above the bar in the corner. There was a small cracked linoleum dance floor that was empty and a series of unoccupied booths along the far wall. In the back, beneath a black light, was a round table with five people under a thick halo of smoke.

Jeter was at the bar between the two bikers, trying to get the attention of the bartender with the remote. The duster he was wearing went down to his knees. It sagged beneath his arms. Hardware— and lots of it. He called again to the bartender and was ignored as the fat man rocketed through the channels so quickly it was like a malfunctioning slide show. He blasted through channel after channel until there was a glimpse of female flesh and one of the bikers yelled, “
There!
” and he slowly circumnavigated back to it, something on one of the premium cable channels.

I didn’t want to stand next to Jeter and create more of a display than necessary. I took a stool ten feet away from him and kept my head down. I watched him peripherally, noted how agitated he was getting from being dissed. Finally, the bartender placed the remote under an ancient black-and-white movie poster of Anthony Quinn in
Viva, Zapata!
and turned to Jeter with bored contempt. I feared for the bartender.

I didn’t turn around and look behind me at the table of five, but tried to see who was there via the filmed-over backbar mirror. Five people, three males and two slutty-looking Anglo females. The smoke they were creating and the dirty mirror distorted the view. There were dozens of empty glasses on the table and an overflowing ashtray. The black light behind them added a garish touch, lighting up
dirty fingerprints on the empty glasses, the lipstick on the girls, and the brilliant white of overlarge T-shirts on the two Hispanic males. It was boy-girl-boy-girl-boy at the table. The dark man in the middle was grinning stupidly and bobbing his head to a rhythm while a blond girl next to him stared intently at his ear and rocked up and down and I realized she was giving him a hand job under the table. The other girl, whose hair was jet-black and spiked, fingered a silver ring on her bottom lip and shot glances at the action taking place next to her. Garrett sat on the far left end of the table with a coffee mug in front of him with the string and label of a tea bag hanging over the lip of the mug. For some reason, the bored look on his face and what he was drinking struck me most of all because he had the temerity and confidence to drink hot tea in a place like this. I almost admired him for a second, but only for a second. Again, I wondered what his connection was to these gangsters and why he wanted to be involved with them.

I was heartened by the fact that the five at the table didn’t seem to notice Jeter at the bar. They were so self-absorbed that they hadn’t even looked up. I knew it would be a matter of seconds, though, before they did. Jeter was hard to miss with that damned big coat.

Getting his attention wasn’t easy. I wanted him to look at me so I could signal to him to get the hell out of there. He’d have to see me there, right?

“I’m looking for a shitbird named Garrett Moreland,” Jeter asked the bartender loud enough for me to hear. I was shocked by his brazenness. “Is he in here?”

The bartender appeared not to have heard. I glanced into the backbar mirror to assure myself that Garrett hadn’t, either.

“
Jeter!
” I hissed. “
Let’s go.
”

The biker nearest to me looked up from his drink and scowled at me, but Jeter didn’t acknowledge I was there.

“Garrett Moreland, I said,” Jeter growled. “Is he in this shit hole?”

The bartender made a point of ignoring him. Instead, he waddled down the length of the bar, asking each biker if he needed anything and going by me as if I didn’t exist. As he passed, I marveled at the quantity and misogyny of his tattoos; skulls with spikes driven through them, women impaled on the hood ornaments of late-seventies Chryslers and daggerlike penises, the American flag dripping blood into the open mouth of a caricature of former VP Dick Cheney.

“
Jeter, goddammit!
” I yelled, trying to shout above the music. “
We need to leave!
”

The biker to my right wanted another beer. The fat bartender ambled back to where he’d started with the biker’s empty glass to fill it from the tap. He never even glanced my way. While he filled the glass from the tap right in front of Jeter, I saw the Montanan do a frightening thing: He smiled.

“Either you tell me if Garrett-fucking-Moreland is in the building, you fat greaser,” Jeter drawled, “or a particular kind of hell will break out all around you.”

There was a beat of silence when the song ended. The bartender filled the glass. When it was full, he nodded almost imperceptibly toward the table in the back.

“Much obliged,” Jeter said, turning slowly around while keeping one hand on the bar. I could see him squinting toward the table under the black light.

“Jeter …” I said.

Because I was concentrating on Jeter, I almost missed the movements of the bartender, who was fishing around under the counter. And with the deceptively quick movements of
a fat man who for years has concentrated solely on the speed of his arms, the bartender stepped back with a black baseball bat and raised it above his head and smashed Jeter’s hand with it. I could hear the bones break with the same muffled snapping sounds of dry branches underfoot.

I was frozen where I sat.

Jeter didn’t cry out, didn’t even pull his hand away. Instead, he turned back toward the bartender with an
I-can’t-believe-you-did-that
look.