'I didn't know that,' I said, wondering why she worked nights in her own clinic. Maybe she was trying to stay out of trouble, working nights. That's what I had told myself back when I tended bar at night. I didn't know. But she had said she was better in a crisis than in everyday life. Maybe that explained it. Since it seems a crisis always pulls into your driveway after midnight.
'There's a lot of things about me you don't know,' Betty said, a grim smile on her face as she eased out of the prison's parking lot.
I wondered what those other things might be, but right then they didn't seem very important.
'But about your back?'
'What?'
'You remember my friend Cathy Scoggins?'
'The ditsy broad who's always stoned?'
'She's a damn fine acupuncturist,' she said, 'not a broad. Why don't you let her work on your back?'
'Has she ever worked on you?'
Betty paused a moment, then said, 'Not exactly, but she's had good luck with some of my patients.'
'Dogs and horses and scabby calves?' I said. 'Why not? Will she let me get stoned, too?'
'She'll probably insist on it,' Betty said.
After a long pause, I said, 'I don't know what to say about you taking off from work.'
'Just say 'thank you,' you fucking idiot.'
'Thank you, you fucking idiot,' I said, but my heart didn't seem to be in it, so I popped a couple of codeine tablets and leaned the seat back, and drifted off as quickly as I could.
We were hunkering over barbecue plates at Black's in Lockhart before Betty asked me what I had learned from the Oates kid.
'Not much that makes sense,' I admitted. 'I know that he's doing too much time for the crime, and Steelhammer was the judge. But I've got this funny feeling about the shooting. I'd bet the farm that somebody else – probably this woman he dreams about – fired the second barrel into Dwayne Duval's face that night.' And just that easily I picked up another chore: keep Enos Walker out of the execution chamber, get Dickie Oates out of prison, keep Betty Porterfield out of trouble, and keep my old ass out of jail. 'Or something crazy like that,' I said, then drifted off into worrying.
'Well, that's certainly an insane idea,' Betty said sharply, bringing me back. 'What the hell's that got to do with your troubles?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'The only thing I know is that when I talked to Dickie Oates, it's the first time I've felt like somebody's telling the truth since I had a drink with Enos Walker.'
'Jesus, Milo, the kid's a convicted killer,' she insisted. 'He'd say anything, right? And Walker's a stone criminal.'
I had to agree but I didn't want to let that go by, and continued, 'Sissy Duval told me that this Mandy Rae character and Enos Walker showed up in town with twenty keys of Peruvian flake and went into business. It sounded like they cornered the market for a while, and I can't help but think that's somehow connected. But I don't know what it's connected to. All I know is that nobody was trying to shoot me until I went looking for Walker. Which is a question I intend to explore at some length with Sissy Duval tomorrow.' Then I paused. 'You said you knew those people a little bit?'
'A little bit,' she said. 'Austin was sort of a large small town in those days. Everybody knew everybody. And you know I was a little crazy in those days.'
'Someday we'll have to talk about those days.'
'Someday,' Betty said. 'But first, your back. We can't have a hard-nosed private dick being chauffeured around by his lady friend. Takes some of the glamour out of it.' Then she smiled tiredly.
'That's for damn sure.' Then my cell phone buzzed in Betty's purse. She tossed it across the table, and I answered.
'Milo, you son of a bitch,' Thursby said, 'a fake Mexican accent doesn't get you off that easy. I've got two messages from one of my less esteemed colleagues up in Gatlin County, one Jacky Ryman, who says he's Richard Wylie Oates's lawyer and who is threatening to haul me before the bar for client interference. First question, who the hell is Richard Wylie Oates? And two, what should I tell his lawyer?'
'I suspect Oates is doing a lot of hard time because Ryman is a jerk,' I said, 'and tell the asshole that you've got a client who's willing to finance a malpractice suit against him. Then tell him to messenger his case files over or you'll subpoena them.'
After a long silence, Thursby said, 'You've learned a lot from me, Milo, and I've not yet noticed a bulge in my bank account.'
'I'm having trouble with my back,' I said.
'Fix it,' Thursby said, then hung up.
I handed the cell phone to Betty. 'Why don't you see if your friend can work me in this afternoon? It's bad enough that I'm stupid, I don't need to be crippled, too.'
Cathy Scoggins lived in a high-dollar development off Bull Creek Road in a large limestone-and-glass house that sat on the top of a ridge with a view in all directions. 'She didn't get this place practicing alternative medicine,' I suggested as we pulled into the driveway behind a brand-new Lexus. 'Or that rig.'
'She's a witch,' Betty said. 'She married well, several times, and divorced even better.'
'But she forgot to get any furniture out of the deal,' I said as we walked in without ringing or knocking. Except for large pillows and small Oriental rugs, the hardwood floors ran unimpeded to the stone-and-glass walls.
'Furniture just gets in the way,' came a voice from behind one of the pillows, then a small woman with a smoky halo of wild dark hair shot with gray and dressed only in a black bodysuit popped up, an agile shadow against the late afternoon sky. 'I like to keep my life simple,' the woman said.
She embraced Betty, shook my hand, then led us upstairs, where she not only didn't have much furniture – a massage table, a wet bar, and a Chinese armoire – she had almost no interior walls. Although I knew Cathy Scoggins was middle-aged, she looked like a hyperactive teenager. She stood under five feet tall, and obviously had the metabolism of a ninety-six-pound hummingbird. She ate like a horse, drank like a sailor, and smoked dope like a stove, but as far as I could tell, nothing had any effect on her. She probably chattered like a monkey when she talked in her sleep. When I hesitated to take off my underwear in front of her, she slapped me on the butt with a tiny hand, and said, 'Milo, if I had as many pricks sticking out of me as I had stuck in me, I'd look like a porcupine, so drop your drawers, sailor, and climb on the table.'
I grumbled as a giggling Betty helped me out of my shorts and onto the padded table, where I sat on the side, surly as a hungry bear and terribly aware of the large scar on my abdomen running like a crooked arrow from my bruised chest almost to my limp dick dangling from the gray hair of my crotch.
Cathy touched the scar lightly, the question in her dark eyes.
'Gutshot,' I explained.
Within moments, Cathy had fired up a crystal glass bong, let me have three large tokes of terrific marijuana, rolled me onto my stomach with minimal effort, and with her nimble little fingers found every muscle in my lower back that was as sore as a boil.
'What the hell did they do to you?' Cathy said.
'A stun gun,' I said.
'More than once, I'd say,' she murmured.
'Nazi bastards,' Betty muttered from the corner.
'Let me work out some of the knots first,' Cathy said, then began working at my neck and shoulders with her strong, tiny hands. Minutes after my first sigh and almost so quickly and easily that I didn't really notice it, she had smoothed the tight muscles of my back and had a dozen needles or more sticking in various parts of my body. Then she stepped back to admire her work. 'That should do it,' Cathy said quietly as she rattled in the armoire. 'How's it feel?'
'I can't feel a thing,' I admitted grudgingly as I suddenly slipped toward a doze, sniffing at some sort of sweet smoke that wasn't marijuana. If only my hippie ex-partner could see me.
