Black Cherry Blues (26 page)

    Then it was all over. The sky was gray again, the wind dropped, the weeds stood up stiffly in the fields.

I heard someone standing behind me.

“It looks like the end of the earth, don’t it?” Dixie Lee said. He wore a gray western suit with a maroon shirt that had pearl snap buttons on it.

“Or what the earth’ll look like the day Jesus ends it.”

I saw Clete behind the wheel of Dixie’s pink Cadillac convertible, waiting for him.

“Who paid for the casket?” I said.

“Clete.”

“Who did it, Dixie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sally Dio?”

“I can’t believe something like that.”

“Don’t tell me that.”

“Fuck, I don’t know.” He looked at Alafair, who was sleeping with her rump in the air.

“I’m sorry… but I don’t know. I ain’t sure about anything anymore.”

I continued to look out over the river flats, the swirl of dark current in the middle of the river, and the orange-streaked bluffs beyond.

“It ain’t any good to stand out here studying on things,” he said.

“Convoy on back with us and we’ll stop in Lincoln for something to eat.”

“I’ll be along after a while.”

I heard him light a cigarette, click his lighter shut and put it in his pocket. I could smell his cigarette smoke drifting from behind me.

“Walk over here with me. I don’t want to wake up that little girl,” he said.

“What is it, Dixie?” I said irritably.

“Some people say life’s a bitch and you die. I don’t know if that’s right or not. But it’s what you’re starting to think right now, and it ain’t your way. You get yourself a lot of distance between you and them kind of thoughts, son. Look, you got involved with her. Everything ain’t lost on me. I know what you’re feeling.”

“You’re sober.”

“So I eased up a couple of days. I got my own program. You guys stay sober a day at a time. I get drunk a day at a time. Convoy on back with us. Give me a break from Clete. Sonofabitch is driving me crazy. It’s like being next to a balloon that’s fixing to float down on a hot cigarette. I tell you, he catches the guy that did this, it ain’t ever getting to the jailhouse.”

I followed them back toward the Divide, across the greening plains and into the mountains, up the glistening black highway into thick stands of ponderosa pine, blue shadow in the canyons, white water breaking over the boulders in the stream beds far below, long strips of cloud hanging wetly in the trees. It was misting heavily in the town of Lincoln; the air was cool and purple in the twilight and smelled of cut logs and woodsmoke and food cooking and the diesel exhaust from the eighteen-wheel log trucks idling in cafe parking lots. I saw Clete and Dixie pull off the road next to a cafe and look back at me. I shifted into second, accelerated through the traffic light, and kept going through town. Alafair looked at me in the light from the dashboard. Her window was half down, and there were drops of water in her hair and on her tan face.

“We ain’t going to stop?” she said.

“How about I buy you a buffalo burger on the other side of the mountain?”

“They wanted you to stop with them, didn’t they?”

“Those guys want lots of things. But like somebody once told me, I just don’t want to be there when they find it.”

“Sometimes you don’t make no sense, Dave.”

“I’ve got to have a talk with your teacher,” I said.

On Monday morning I started to call my lawyer, then decided I didn’t need higher phone bills or more depressing news. If he had gotten a continuance, he would have called me, and anything else he might have to say would be largely irrelevant. I walked Alafair to school, then ate a bowl of Grape-Nuts at the kitchen table and tried to think, as I had all day Sunday, of a reasonable plan to push Harry Mapes and Sally Dio to the wall. But I was quickly running out of options. I would never be able to find the bodies of the dead Indians, much less prove that they were killed by Harry Mapes and Dalton Vidrine. I wondered how I had ever thought I could solve my legal problems by myself, anyway. I wasn’t a cop; I had no authority, access to police information, power of warrant, arrest, or interrogation. Most motion pictures portray private investigators as chivalric outsiders who solve crimes that mystify the bumbling flatfeet of officialdom. The reality is that most Pis are former jocks, barroom bouncers, and fired or resigned cops who would cut off their fingers to still have their civil service ratings. Their licenses gave them about as much legal authority as a postman.

I could go back on the eastern slope of the Divide and start checking oil leases in county courthouses. Maybe somehow I would tie Dio into Harry Mapes and Star Drilling Company and the Indians, but even if the connection existed, how would that help my defense on the murder charge in Louisiana? And who had killed Darlene and why? My thoughts became like dogs snapping at each other.

I was distracted by the sound of somebody walking between my house and the neighbor’s. I got up from the table and looked through the bedroom door and out the screen window. In the leafy shade I saw a thick-bodied blond man in a yellow hard hat and a denim shirt with cutoff sleeves disappear through some bushes into the backyard. A tool belt clinked on his side. I walked quickly to the back door and saw him standing in the sunlight, in the middle of the lawn, staring up at the telephone pole with his hands on his hips. His biceps were big and red with sunburn.

“Could I help you?” I said.

“Telephone company. There’s trouble on the line.”

I nodded and didn’t reply. He continued to stare up at the pole, then he glanced back at me again.

“Did you use your phone this morning?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did it ring and just stop?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s no big thing. I got to get up on your pole, and then maybe I’ll have to use your phone in a little bit. We’ll get it fixed, though.” He grinned at me, then walked out into the alley and behind the garage where I couldn’t see him.

I went into the hallway, picked up the telephone, and listened to the dial tone. Then I dialed the operator. When she answered, I hung up. I looked out the back door again and couldn’t see the repairman. I sat back down at the kitchen table and continued eating from my cereal bowl.

Something bothered me about the man, but I couldn’t think what it was. Maybe I’m just wired, I thought. Or maybe I wanted the dragons to come finally into my own yard. No, that wasn’t it. There was something wrong in the picture, something that was missing or that didn’t fit. I went to the front of the house and stepped out on the porch. There was no telephone truck parked on the street. Four houses down a short man in a cloth cap with two canvas sacks cross-strung on his chest was putting handbills with rubber bands on people’s doors. The bags were full and heavy, and there were sweat marks on his T-shirt.

I returned to the kitchen and thought I heard somebody between the houses again. I looked out the screen door, but the backyard was empty and the repairman was nowhere in sight. Then two doves settled on the telephone wire, and I glanced at the pole for the first time. The lowest iron climbing spikes were set in the wood some fifteen feet above the ground so children could not get up on the pole.

That’s it, I thought. He didn’t have climbing spurs strapped onto his boots and ankles, and he didn’t wear a safety belt. I went back into the hallway and picked up the telephone receiver. It was dead.

I took the .45 out of the drawer of the nightstand next to my bed. It felt cold and heavy in my hand. I pulled back the receiver, eased a hollow-point round into the chamber, and reset the hammer. It was quiet outside, and the bushes next to the bedroom windows made deep shadows on the screens. I went to the front door just as the handbill carrier was stepping up on the porch. I stuck the .45 inside the back of my trousers and went outside.

“Listen, go to the little grocery on the corner, dial the operator, and ask for the police,” I said.

“All you have to say is “Assault in progress at 778 Front Street.” Can you do that for me, podna?”

“What?” He was middle-aged, but his stiff, straw-colored hair sticking out from under his cap and his clear blue eyes gave him a childlike appearance.

“I’ve got some trouble here. I need some help. I’ll give you five dollars after the cops get here. Look, just tell the operator you need the cops out here and give them this number” I pointed to the tin numerals on the screen door. Then I took out my pocketknife, pried the set of attached numbers loose from the wood, and handed it to him.

“Just read the numbers into the phone. Seven-seventy-eight Front Street. Then say “Emergency.” Okay, podna?”

“What’s going on?” His face looked confused and frightened.

“I’ll fill you in later.”

“Just dial O?” A drop of sweat ran out of his cloth cap.

“You got it.”

He started off the porch, the heavy canvas sacks swinging from his sides.

“Leave your sacks here. Okay?” I said.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be right back with the cops.”

He headed down the street, the metal house numbers in his hand. I watched him go inside the little yellow-brick grocery store on the corner, then I headed around the side of the house, through the shrubs and shadows toward the backyard. I could see my telephone box, partly obscured by hedge under the bathroom window, and I was sure that the wires on it had been cut; but before I could look I saw the repairman walk across the sunny lawn toward my back door.

I moved quickly up to the edge of the house, the .45 in my right hand. I could feel the moisture in my palm against the thin slick of oil on the metal. The wind was cool between the houses and smelled of damp earth and old brick. The repairman pushed his yellow hard hat up on his forehead, rested his hand on the leather pouch of his tool bag, and started to knock on the screen door. Surprise time, motherfucker, I thought, cocked the .45, stepped out into the yard, and pointed it at him with both hands.

“Right there! Hands behind your head, down on your knees!” I shouted.

“What?” His face went white with shock. He stared incredulously at the automatic.

“Do it! Now!”

I saw his right hand flutter on his tool pouch.

“You’re an inch from the next world, bubba,” I said.

AlT right man! What the hell is this? All right! All right! I’m not arguing.” He knelt on the wood steps and laced his fingers behind his neck. His hard hat slipped down over his eyes. His arms looked thick and red in the sunlight, and I could see the taut whiteness of his chest where the sleeves of his denim shirt were cut off. He was breathing loudly.

“You got me mixed up with somebody else,” he said.

“Where’s your truck?”

“Down the street. In the fucking alley.”

“Because you’re shy about parking it on the street. With your left hand unstrap your tool belt, let it drop, then put your hand behind your head again.”

“Look, call my company. You got the wrong guy.”

“Take off the belt.”

His hand worked the buckle loose, and the heavy pouch clattered to the step. I rattled the tools loose out on the concrete pad pliers, blade and Phillips screwdrivers, wire cutters, an ice pick with a small cork on the tip. I held the ice pick up to the corner of his vision.

“You want to explain this?” I asked.

“Wasps build nests inside the boxes sometimes. I use it to clean out the corners.”

“Drop your wallet behind you.”

His fingers went into his back pocket, jerked the wallet loose, and let it fall. I squatted down, the .45 pointed at the center of his back, picked up the wallet, moved back on the grass, and shook everything out. The back of his neck was red and hot-looking in the bright air, and his shirt was peppered with sweat marks. I fingered through the dollar bills, ID cards, photographs, and scraps of paper at my feet, and gradually became more and more uncomfortable. He had a Montana driver’s license with his picture on it, a social security card with the same name on it, a local Elks membership card, and two tickets to a U.S. West Communications employees dance.

I let out my breath.

“Where did you say your truck was?” I asked.

“Down the alley.”

“Let’s take a look,” I said, getting to my feet.

“No, you walk ahead of me.”

He stayed in front of me, as I had told him, but by this time I had eased down the hammer on the .45 and had let it hang loose at my side. We walked past the garage into the alley. Parked at the end of the alley, hard against somebody’s toolshed in the shade of a maple tree, was his company truck. I stuck the pistol in my back pocket. His face was livid with anger, and he closed and unclosed his fists at his sides.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’re sorry? You sonofabitch, I ought to knock your fucking teeth down your throat.”

“You got a right to. You probably won’t understand this, but somebody is trying to do me and maybe a little girl a lot of harm. I thought you were that guy.”

“Yeah? Well, you ought to call the cops, then. I tell you, buddy, I feel like ripping your ass.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“That’s all you got to say? You don’t blame me?”

“You want a free shot?”

There was an intense, measured look in his eye. Then the moment passed. He pointed his finger at me.

“You can tell the cops about it. They’ll be out to see you. I guarantee it,” he said. Then he walked to the back steps, put his tools back in his leather pouch, and replaced all the articles in his wallet. He didn’t bother to look at me as he recrossed the lawn toward the alley and his parked truck. My face felt round and tight in the wind.

Two uniformed cops were there ten minutes later. I didn’t try to explain my troubles with Sally Dio; instead, I simply told them that I was an ex-police officer, that the DEA had warned me that an attempt might be made on my life, that they could call Dan Nygurski in Great Falls to confirm my story, and that I had made a serious mistake for which I wanted to apologize. They were irritated and even vaguely contemptuous, but the telephone man had not filed charges against me, he had only phoned in a report, and I knew that it wasn’t going anywhere and that all I had to do was avoid provoking them.