The Final Country

When she came out of the bathroom, it seemed simpler just to pretend to be asleep. Then in a moment, I was.

When my cell phone woke me the next morning, Betty was gone, bags and emotional baggage, and only a terse unsigned note: If you're still alive at four this afternoon, you bastard, meet me at Cathy's. I answered the phone. Gannon.

'Wake up, Milo, it's a lovely day,' the cop said. 'And by the way, where the hell are you?'

'Who wants to know?'

'The district attorney's office,' he said. 'Among others.'

'Why?'

'You're supposed to check in every day.'

'Nobody told me,' I said.

'Consider yourself told.'

'Consider me checked in.'

'And they want -' was all I heard before I turned the phone off and rolled over to finish my nap.

A couple of hours later, as I stood in a long, hot shower, I wondered where this was going. No closer to an answer, further from Betty. All the money my father had left me and all the money I'd stolen from the contrabandistas hadn't changed my life that much. I stayed in hotels where the hot water didn't run out in the middle of a shower now, and drove a Cadillac instead of a beat-up Toyota rig. But now a Toyota Land Cruiser cost damn near as much as a Cadillac. And there was no place in the world for me to buy a new body. As far as I could tell under the solid beat of the water, this one had given up on me. I didn't check too closely but I couldn't find a place that didn't throb like a boil the size of my fist.

To hell with it. I had a quick room service breakfast, another couple of codeines, then decided I needed to keep my head down for the next few days. I stopped at the front desk to extend my stay, then called Hangas at home.

Hangas's family had worked for Carver D's family in various forms and functions since Reconstruction. Hangas's father had been a foreman for one of the family's construction firms in Houston, and the summer after Hangas had graduated from high school, he'd been banging concrete off forms on an August afternoon as hot and muggy as a barber's towel when Hangas had thrown down his shovel, told his father that the family had been in thrall to these white motherfuckers long enough, by God, and he was off to join the Marine Corps. The old man just shook his head, smiled sadly, and wished his youngest son the best of luck. But during his twenty years in the Corps and after four children, Hangas had mellowed. When he retired to Austin after his wife had died, Hangas had no qualms when Carver D, whose house had just been blown up by an angry state senator who lost his seat because Carver D's paper, The Dark Coast, had exposed the senator's affinity for beating up prostitutes, asked Hangas to hire on as a bodyguard. During their years together, Hangas had prospered, and he and Carver D had become more than friends. My ex-partner had been friends with Carver D when they were in the Army at Fort Lewis and the friendship had been extended to me. Carver D and Hangas had made me part of their world from the beginning. So Hangas was waiting on the front porch of his sprawling brick ranch house off Enfield Road when I drove up.

'You look a little bit rough, Milo. You okay?' Hangas asked as he climbed into the Caddy.

'I've been better,' I said. 'But I'm still moving.'

'What are you planning to ask the Reverend Jonas Walker?'

'I'm not going to ask him anything,' I said. 'I'm just going to tell him what happened.'

The Reverend Jonas Walker made his younger brother seem small. He was at least seven years older, two shades lighter but with the same light blue eyes on either side of an even larger hooked nose, plus he was bigger, a soft-spoken giant of a man in sweats with short gray hair and a matching beard. He met us on one of the composition basketball courts next to the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, a huge flagstone, tin-roofed church and basketball complex beyond the Interstate deep in East Austin. He did not seem pleased to see us, sweating heavily and dribbling a basketball as he confronted us.

'As I told this gentleman the other day,' the huge man said to me so softly I had to lean into his shadow, 'I've had no contact with my errant brother in many years. I left that life long behind me, many, many years ago.'

Hangas and I glanced at each other. If Jonas Walker had walked on the wrong side of the street, he'd been luckier than his little brother. His name didn't show up on any of the criminal records that Carver D could access.

'I just have a favor to ask,' I explained. 'If you should hear from him, would you please tell him that I'll testify and I'll find the goddamned bartender and make him stand up in court and force him to tell the truth.'

'The truth should not be forced,' Reverend Walker said quietly. 'And please don't take the Lord's name in vain in front of me.'

'I'm sorry,' I apologized. 'With my help, at the very least your brother can cop a manslaughter plea.'

'How much time will he have to do? I don't think he likes doing time.'

'I don't know, but it's also certainly possible that he might walk on a self-defense plea,' I said. 'Billy Long obviously pulled the piece on him. I can testify that your brother didn't have it on him when he went into the office and a piece like that will probably have an ATF paperwork trail leading directly to Long.'

'And what's your interest in this?'

'I'm not sure you'd understand, sir.'

'Try me,' Reverend Walker said, his voice no longer quite so soft. In fact, he sounded a bit like his brother.

So I sighed so deeply it hurt my back, then tried to explain to the giant about the bear cub's spit and Enos Walker's hard-timer breath.

'That's about the craziest thing I've ever heard,' Reverend Walker said, glancing down at the end of one of the four basketball courts where half a dozen lanky kids were shooting baskets, 'so I'm gonna assume you don't have any ulterior motives in this matter. But if I were to hear from my brother and I happened to see you in my congregation some Sunday morning, maybe we can work something out.'

'Man,' I said as I dug down for another deep and painful breath, 'I've never been in church on purpose in my life and I'm not about to start now. What the hell, he's your brother, not mine.'

'Sounds like you could have used some church time, brother.'

'If you can't teach morality without superstition or hope without false promises of eternal life, brother, the human animal probably has outlived its usefulness,' I said as I handed Reverend Walker a card. 'You can leave a message on my voice mail,' I added, then walked away.

As we climbed back into the Beast, Hangas said quietly, 'That's pretty cold, man.'

'Learned it in college,' I said. 'Besides, if I'd folded, he would have lost any respect he might have had for me after that damned story about the bear cub.'

'Hell, I understood it perfectly,' Hangas said, then chuckled. 'Hey, man, can I ask you something kind of personal?'

'Sure.'

'Did you ever find yourself praying in Korea, old man?' Hangas asked.

'Praying, shitting my pants, and crying for my mother,' I had to admit. Hangas and I had survived the first of the stalemate wars. I'd spent three months in combat; Hangas had endured three years.

'But it didn't last?'

'Not too long after I ran the first clip through my M-l,' I said. 'Or maybe the second.'

'Does that mean firepower is God?' Hangas asked, chuckling again.

'It'll have to do for this world, until something better comes along.'

'Eldora Grace now?'

'She thinks I'm a vacuum cleaner salesman,' I said. 'Or something worse. I'll leave that one to you. Be sure to let her know that I've got Sissy's getaway money. And let me know how she responds to that.'

'Voice mail?'