'It don't take much of this shit to make you old.'
'I'm sorry about that.'
'I'm not complaining,' I told him honestly.
'They're just kids. And sometimes payback is part of the job description.'
'Right, but the stupid bastards were bragging and laughing in the locker room,' Gannon said.
'It ain't the worst thing that ever happened to me.
'I don't want to hear the worst,' Gannon said, almost smiling as we stopped at the unnumbered door of my room.
Gannon tossed the room with a quick and practiced expertise without leaving the least mess. I complimented him. 'Good work, man, the only thing you didn't find was the mouse fart.'
'Right lizard boot, you goddamned drunk,' Gannon said as he wrote a number on the back of one of his cards and left it by the telephone. 'This is my personal cell phone. Call me before you leave town. We'll have a drink somewhere down the road. In another county. Maybe you'll tell me what really happened.'
'I've got no plans to leave town,' I said.
'You better leave,' Gannon said. 'Believe me. Word around the courthouse is that Steelhammer plans to dismiss your charges tomorrow, so you'll get your bond, your piece, your car, and your license back. Until the grand jury convenes in three weeks and comes in with a capital murder indictment. Tobin Rooke is a mean, smart son of a bitch, and he and his twin brother were as tight as two baby snakes in a single egg. They've never lived apart. So you can bet your ass he's gonna nail you for something, and it won't be pleasant. You can count on that.'
I used the arms of the chair to push myself upright, then said, 'He better bring his lunch this time, Captain, 'cause they fucked with the wrong dog.'
'Forgive me for pointing it out,' Gannon said, 'but clearly you ain't as tough as you think.'
'I dug my own grave once,' I said, 'but I ain't buried in it yet.'
Gannon's face remained impassive. 'You need a hand back to the bar?'
'You really want to know what really happened. Off the record?'
'Rooke was a complete asshole, man,' he said, 'but you know I can't go off the record with a suspect. Not on a mess like this.'
'Well, fuck you then,' I said. Then I told him the whole story. Except for the fact that it seemed that Molly McBride had stolen Betty's revolver.
'That doesn't make any sense,' Gannon said.
'You're telling me,' I said, 'unless he was moonlighting as a hit man.'
'I've always thought he was dirty – too tight with rich folks – but hiring out for a hit? I just don't know,' Gannon mused.
'The son of a bitch was going to kill me,' I said. 'There's not a smidgen of a doubt in my mind.'
'You sure you just didn't piss him off?'
'Right,' I said. 'Have you got the technology to get a photo off this tape?'
Gannon shook his head. 'Not without involving other people in the department. And I don't think you want that. Try this guy downtown.' Gannon picked up his card off the telephone table and scribbled another number on the back of it. 'Let me know if I can help.'
'You can help me back to the bar,' I said. And he did. Later, I made it back to the room leaning on Mike Herrera's shoulder. But I couldn't sleep. I grabbed my smokes and a beer out of the small fridge and shuffled outside to the balcony that overlooked the hollow.
No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't come up with a reason why an off-duty sheriff's detective would want to kill me. Unless it had something to do with my vague campaign to save Enos Walker from an undeserved hit from the state's needle. The slice of the moon was smaller than the night before and it seemed somehow sharper, the soft rush of the Blue Hole somehow farther away.
It was two the next afternoon before I could struggle to the Jacuzzi. Mike brought me a Bloody Mary and a plate of Pete's hottest tacos. The weather had held, and I found myself basking in the sunlight like a lazy dog.
'So what are we going to do now?' Betty asked as she squatted behind me.
'First, stop sneaking up on me,' I said.
'You didn't call,' she said. 'And I was afraid you never would.'
I leaned back far enough to see her face. She looked as if she hadn't slept any better than I had. 'You're right,' I admitted. 'I probably wouldn't have. I need to work some things out.'
'Let me help,' she said. 'I've got to help. I'm involved, too, remember.'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I suspect that things are going to get worse before they get better.'
'Some people are better in a crisis,' she said, 'than they are in day-to-day life.'
'Don't I know it?'
She leaned down to help me out of the Jacuzzi. It was a little more difficult than either of us expected. 'How do you feel?'
'As if I've been hit by a train, love.'
'Well, keep it in mind, old man; you aren't as young as you used to be.'
'Hell, I never was,' I said.
FIVE
It took another full day of moving carefully between my bed and the Jacuzzi and gobbling pissy little pain pills before I could climb into Betty's pickup so she could drive me by the locker, where I gathered up enough drugs to allow me a little movement, then she dropped me at Carver D's house. Carver D had been burning cyberspace oil. He hadn't dug up anything more on Sissy Duval, except that she wouldn't come to the telephone or return messages and that after her husband's death, she had sold the bar and license to a chain of self-service laundries down in the Rio Grande Valley, a chain that was suspected of washing more than dirty shorts. They had kept Billy Long as a manager until his untimely death, then quickly gave his job to the pudgy bartender, Leonard Wilbur. Carver D had pulled the court files on the Dwayne Duval shooting. He had been killed by a college kid from Mexia, Texas, a Richard Wylie Oates, who, except for traffic tickets, had never run afoul of the law before and whose folks were even cleaner. Oates had been convicted of second-degree murder, with Steelhammer on the bench. The jury had sentenced him to a huge jolt of hard time, which he was still serving outside Huntsville. He'd done fifteen and had been twice denied parole. Enos Walker had an older brother living in Austin, a preacher. But he didn't answer his telephone or return messages, either.
'Looks like you've got your work cut out for you,' Carver D suggested as he handed me the Molly McBride registration tape back, along with a sheaf of head shots of the lady in question. 'You want to borrow Hangas?'
'Thanks,' I said, 'but as soon as I get my ride back, Betty's going to chauffeur me around.'
'Y'all back together?'
'Together might not exactly be the right word.'
'What's that mean?' he asked, wiggling in his antique chair so hard that I thought the wheels were going to pop off.
'You don't want to know,' I told him. 'You have any luck with the serial number on the piece in Betty's purse?'
'Got it as far as a gun dealer in Little Rock,' he said. 'Usually a dead end there.'
'Well, thanks.'
'It's great to be nosy for a purpose,' Carver D said. 'Watch your back, man.'
'Just as soon as I can stand to look at it,' I said. 'Now call me a cab.'
'You're a cab.'
