impatience.
And where were you, Tippahoe, when I shot it out with Luke Sweetwater and Indian Joe Brown in 19 57? Where were you when I took six inches of blade in the stomach from crazy Sally Pogue and only saved my life with a .45 fired as she was getting up to my throat? What about the time I faced down two hundred citizens of Gem City and saved the lives of two innocent nigger brothers that I knew hadn't raped Mrs. Mclintock in 1966? Where were you, Tippahoe?
But Tippahoe didn't know and wouldn't care. He just stepped back, took off his hat, and ran his hand through expensively trimmed hair and acted vaguely superior.
C.D. looked down at the little trace of ridges and grooves in the dust.
It seemed to lose a bit of its distinction even as he watched, as a gust of wind took another quarter inch off the top.
Where are them damn boys, he wondered. He wouldn't let the Rangers do it. He only trusted his own OSBI team.
He wanted another drink.
“I hope it lasts,” said Tippahoe.
“And I hope it ain't a goddamned wild goose chase. We sure don't do things like this in Texas. What you gonna do, Lieutenant, track down all the cars in Oklahoma?”
“Oh, I may have a card or two up my old sleeve,” said C.D. and hawked another gob of phlegm into the wind.
He looked back at the track in the dust, which seemed to lose another millimeter of distinction. Was it the second piece of evidence, he wondered?
The agent sent to build the windbreak was now struggling with sticks and a blanket. It looked hopeless.
Come on, boys, he thought. Come on.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, son?”
“They're telling me the army's going to detail a chopper to pick your team up in Oklahoma City.”
“Well, praise the Lord and pass the bourbon, son.”
Bud was changing the oil on his truck when Jen came out and told him the colonel was on the phone. It was Tuesday afternoon, about two.
He'd gotten back from Wichita Falls the night before last, not even bothering to call Holly.
Then he had slept late, had had bad nightmares, awakening in a foul mood, no good to man or beast, wife, son, or girlfriend. He had laid low the whole day, grouchy and forlorn, like an old cougar in its cave.
Now he was trying to make himself something human again.
He wiped Valvoline off his hands and went in the house.
“Sir?”
“Bud, I figure if you're well enough to go bouncing out to Wichita Falls on your lonesome, you might be well enough to do some real work.
Am I right?”
“Yes, you are.”
“No uniform necessary, Bud. You can go in plainclothes.
I'd carry, though.”
“I always carry, Colonel.”
“You use your truck. Write the mileage, we'll reimburse.”
“Got it.”
The colonel then explained what had happened.
Around ten yesterday morning, two Rangers had discovered the abandoned Camaro and the Volvo that Lamar had stolen on the Texas side of the Red River. A print team lifted some good latents, which were quickly made as Lamar, O’Dell, and Richard's. Also discovered was a hundred yards of green No. 7 rigger's rope, which could have been bought in any hardware store between Dallas-Ft. Worth and Oklahoma City. It had been stretched across the river. The team had evidently used it to get across.
“Don't that beat all. Bud? That Lamar, he's a goddamned genius. We got the bridges covered and helicopters with infrared, and he still beats us. Bud, he's smarter than that even. The shell that was ejected from the shotgun that killed that lady probation officer? There was a print on it.
Lamar's! He loaded his buddy's gun, because he knew we already had his prints!”
“He's a goddamned smart boy, all right,” said Bud, wondering where he fit into the operation.
“Well, maybe Lamar done slipped up just a bit,” said the colonel.
“On our side of the river, we found tracks of the car they had stashed to take them out of there. Old C. D. Henderson threw a goddamned red-ass tantrum and got them to make a cast. We faxed the tread to the FBI and we got a make just like that: It's the pattern for a Goodyear 5400-B, a low-end non reinforced radial made entirely for Japanese cars with sixty-inch wheelbases and six-inch tire wells. Goddamn if that old drunken coot didn't hit a jackpot.
Only three varieties of car can wear it—your Hyundai Excel, your Toyota Tercel, and your Nissan Sentra, from the years 1991 on.
Moreover, two of the companies changed their design last year. So it can only be three model years of the Hyundais and the Toyotas and four model years of the Sentras. The last getaway job's got to be one of those, you follow?”
“Got you,” said Bud.
“We shook out about forty-two hundred cars registered in South Oklahoma that can wear that set of tires. Bud.
About two hundred of them are registered to people with felony convictions. We're fixin' to raid on them, just to be sure, because C.D. is dang sure they'll run to kind.”
“I could—”
“No, Bud. Your raid days are over. We're going door-to door on the other four thousand. It's going to take a heap of man hours Bud. It ain't the glory route, that's for sure. I got five other ex-detectives and retired patrolmen working the job. You get the address, you find the car, you lookiesee the tires and if you get the right set of tires on the right car, you call in the license number and we see what we shake out.
Maybe we stake out, maybe we raid, depending. Bud, you can imagine, there's a lot of goddamned public pressure on this one. That's why we're working so damned hard.”
“Yes sir.”
The colonel told him the Joint States Task Force was headquartered at the old City Hall Annex near the police station in downtown Lawton, where he'd show up to get his list, and Bud said he'd leave right away.
The colonel said he appreciated it, but he knew he could count on Bud.
“Oh, and Bud?”
“Yes sir?”
“That other matter?”
Bud didn't say a thing.
“Bud, you still there?”
“Yes sir.”
“That other matter. That's in hand, ain't it. Bud? Ain't going to be no big scandal, a heroic patrol officer caught in a love nest with his partner's widow, nothing like that?”
“No sir,” Bud said.
“Good. Knowed I could count on you, Bud.”
Bud went back outside. He tossed the empty oil bottles and the used filter into the trash can, and poured the used oil into a couple of Zerex containers. Then he picked up the two Craftsman wrenches he'd used and tossed them onto the clutter of his workbench. He felt a flash of shame: he could find time to sneak away and fuck Holly a couple of times a week, but he couldn't take time to clean up after himself at home.
He went back inside and showered and changed into a good pair of Levi his best Tony Lamas, and a white shirt.
He went down to the gun safe, took out the Colt Commander and pinched the slide back to make sure it was
