The Final Country

'You mean your uncles never speak?'

'Sometimes through lawyers. Sometimes through me.'

'And you never said a word to me?' I said, amazed.

'Down here people aren't raised to talk with your mouth full or about family stuff,' she said. I assumed that by 'down here' she meant Texas, which seemed to have a different set of rules of family behavior than the rest of the world. 'Why? Is it important?'

'At this point I don't have any idea what's important,' I said, 'but it's sure as hell interesting. Wait until I tell you why I'm late.' I handed her the manila envelope.

'You're kidding,' Betty said after she discovered Gatlin County's new approach. 'How's it feel? One minute behind bars. The next behind a badge.'

'Actually, I'm not going to wear it. I'm going to carry it in my pocket.'

'What now?'

'We're going to cash this little check,' I said, 'Then we'll find out how Mrs. Lomax knew I was going by my place.'

EIGHT

When the electronics guy's meter hit the peg, he had me drive the Caddy into a soundproofed and electronically baffled garage where he worked until late afternoon carefully and silently removing the bug from behind the dome-light casing, where it drew its power from the car's battery. 'State-of-the-art for this kind of equipment,' he said, 'good up to a quarter mile.' Then he stuck it to the headliner inside a plastic thimble. 'Should approximate the sound,' he said.

As I paid the bill for sweeping the Caddy, I whistled. 'Shit, I'm in the wrong part of the business.'

'Somebody's got to protect us against the government, man,' he said. 'They can read the newspaper headlines on your front porch and hear an ant fart if there's a telephone in the house.'

'I'd like to get my hands on the creeps who put that piece in my car,' I said as I counted off the last hundred- dollar bill. 'Nothing personal, buddy. But I always thought you electronics guys jacked off too much.'

'Gotta do something since we don't have to pound the shoe leather,' the guy said, then laughed.

'Ex-cop?' I said.

'Shit, man, nobody can afford to be a cop these days.'

I should have listened to him. Before I climbed into the Caddy, I pulled out my cell phone and started to check my voice mail one last time.

'Excuse me, boss,' the guy said. 'I wouldn't use one of those gadgets if I was worried about electronic surveillance. They're a pretty easy tap.'

'Could I borrow your telephone?'

'Make yourself at home,' he said. 'But if you're interested, I can do better than that.'

'How?'

'It'll cost you a bundle up front and a fairly stiff monthly fee – in cash – but I can come up with five scrambled cell phones. Of course they can only talk to each other.'

'Perfect,' I said.

The only message on my voice mail was from Gannon. He wanted me to call him on a land line.

'Don't' you trust your own people?' I asked without preamble when he answered.

'There's a prize in every Cracker Jack box,' Gannon said, 'and a devious heart in every fucking cracker down here. Where the hell are you?'

I gave him the name of the chain motel bar just off I-35 North.

'I'll turn the siren on and be there in thirty minutes.'

'Why?'

'Now that we're colleagues, Milo, we should talk.'

Gannon showed up looking very uncomfortable in a full-dress uniform. The leather straps of his Sam Browne belt stretched tightly over his jacket, as if he were restrained, and each time one of his new cowboy boots hit the floor, he grimaced as if he had just stepped on a thorn. He looked as if his cowboy hat hurt like a migraine.

'Joining the enemy?' I asked.

'You're now looking at the chief of patrol,' he grumbled as he pulled up a stool to our stand-up table and ordered a cup of coffee. 'Sheriff said either get into uniform or get gone. He didn't have to add that he'd prefer gone.'

'What brought this on?' I asked.

'I think they're pissed because I didn't shoot you at the golf course,' he said. 'They let Culbertson go, too.'

'Why?'

'Nobody tells me anything these days,' he said.

'So what did you want to tell me?'

'If I were you, Milo…' Gannon started to say.

A lanky cocktail waitress with a smile like a classic Buick grille stopped at our table and waited until I removed the gray plastic case of cell phones so she could set our oversized happy hour drinks down. She wanted to run a tab, peddle plates of appetizers, work on her tip, and maybe even tell us the story of her life. Sometimes the friendliness of the natives drove me nuts. I threw a wadded fifty on the tray and told her to keep it. When she smiled, the Buick seemed to be speeding into my face.

'If I were you, Milo, I'd mail my badge back to the bastards. Preferably from a foreign country. They're setting you up for something.'

'That's old news. Finding out what for will be half the fun. You have any ideas? They want me out of town and not looking for Enos Walker? Or they want me to finger the McBride broad? Or maybe they're planning to frame me for my own attempted murder? What the hell do they have in mind?'

'I don't have a clue,' Gannon said. 'And there's not a single rumor around the courthouse. That's the frightening part.'

'Lomax owns most of the county,' I said. 'Maybe he's got something in mind?'

'I did some checking around,' Gannon said, 'moving easy and slow. Lomax draws more water than just owning the county. He's asshole buddies with every political bigwig from the new governor ' all the way up and down. But Lomax has been down in Central America for the past three weeks. Some kind of mine disaster. And with his clout, if he wanted you dead, buddy, you'd be meat fragments floating in cowfeed or recycled aluminum or holding up a bridge on some highway down in Mexico.' Then he paused to rub his chin thoughtfully. He looked like a man polishing a middle-buster plow. 'Do you have any chance at all to find the McBride woman?'

'I've got some notions,' I said, 'and in the past I've had some luck finding people. And having a badge might not make it any harder.'

'Notions? What kind? What have you got in mind? Where are you going to look first?'

'You don't want to know.'

'You're probably right,' he said, but he didn't seem convinced.

'But I might need your help, Gannon,' I said.

'You can count on me, sure, but I've got to walk easy. My job is hanging by a thread of gnat's snot,' Gannon said quietly. 'So call me, if you can figure out a safe way.'

'I've got a clean cell phone,' I said, digging one of the new telephones out of the case. 'But you can't call me. I can only call you.'

'Whatever,' he said. 'Detective work must be nice when you have unlimited funds.'

'Believe me, man, I've paid for every dollar I've got. The hard way,' I said, 'and it's still the same job – sticking your face in a pile of crap and hoping you find a rose instead of a shitty thorn.'

Gannon shook his head without smiling, gunned his drink, and shook my hand. 'Good luck,' he said. Then thumped out of the bar.

'You trust him?' Betty asked quietly.