'I don't know,' I said, 'I'm not sure I trust anybody anymore. Not even myself.' But I was used to that sort of thing. 'Your uncle said this deal sounded okay.'
'Try to remember he's a lawyer,' Betty said looking away. Which was exactly the same thing she had said when she first tried to talk me out of going into business with Travis Lee. And a version of what she had said when she changed her mind about the project: At least he's a lawyer.
After we stopped by Carver D's to leave him one of the scrambled phones, we drove southeast to spend the night in an old-fashioned roadside court outside Bastrop. Snug behind the rock walls, stretched on a lumpy double-bed, and covered by a blanket as thin as a sheet and sheets we could see through, Betty and I shared a doobie and a couple of beers. Because of the bug, our conversation in the Caddy had been limited to scenery, the deep insanity of far-right-wing talk radio, and other mundane topics. But once stoned, Betty had a lot of things to say as she snuggled against my shoulder.
Finally, she ran down, paused, then asked me, 'Are you okay about yesterday? You know, the thing with Cathy?'
'Oh, yeah, that. I remember that.' She slugged me in the ribs hard enough to roll me out of bed. 'It was wonderful while it was happening,' I admitted as I climbed back between the covers, 'but thinking about it now – well, I'd rather not think about it right now.' Then I paused, thinking about it. Then said, 'Cathy is a friend, whatever, and you and I are together.'
'You realize that I'd slept with her a few times before,' Betty said, giggling, 'but never with a guy around.'
'How about a goat?'
'Italian dwarves,' she whispered.
'Well, that's okay then.'
Once we controlled our stoned giggles, we curled into each other slowly and softly, like walking wounded careful not to disturb our bloody bandages. Afterward, Betty still sitting on my hips, I felt her tears hot against my chest.
'What?' I said.
'Nothing,' she said. 'Nothing.'
'Tell me,' I whispered, amazed all over again how quickly she could go from love or laughter to tears.
'Nothing, really,' she said, then wiped her eyes, laughing again. 'I'm just crazy like always.'
'This kind of shit would make anybody crazy,' I said, then shrugged, slipped into sweats and running shoes, grabbed my cigarettes and a beer, then stepped outside for a couple of smokes while she watched the news on the ratty television.
The night loomed clear and cold, the stars sparkling away from Austin's ambient light and in the heart of the dark of the moon. I was running on something slimmer than a hunch, and, right or wrong, I didn't want anybody dogging my ass.
'Can I ask a couple of questions?' she said as I came back into the motel room. 'Just a couple?'
'Sure,' I said, expecting another serious conversation about our future. But I was wrong.
'What are you going to do about the car?'
'I don't know,' I said, hesitating. 'We'll have to see if we can find out who's bugging us before we go to Stairtown.'
'Stairtown?' she said, looking very confused. 'Where's that?'
'The place where Cathy fixed Sissy's orgasms,' I said.
'Oh,' she said quietly. 'And how are we going to do that?'
'We're going to lead the son of a bitch up a dead-end road,' I said, 'then beat the shit out of him.'
But I was wrong again. It turned out to be a stout young woman operative in a white van loaded with what I guessed was at least ten thousand dollars' worth of electronic gear that I led up the dead end. Hoping that the guy who had swept the Caddy had been right when he told me that the receiver had to be within a quarter-mile to pick up the bug's transmissions, when we checked out of the motel that morning, we stopped by a hardware store for a battery, wire cutters, and a pry bar, then drove back country roads discussing a meeting with an important witness to the assault in Blue Hole Park, drove until we found the narrow dirt lane that dead-ended against a small county park nestled down by the river not too far from Smithville.
After I parked, I clipped the feed off the bug and hooked it to the small twelve-volt battery, set it in the thimble, stuffed the Browning under my arm and a set of cuffs in my vest pocket. I let the pry bar dangle under my shirt sleeve. Betty and I chatted aimlessly as we walked back up the roadside until we found the van pulled into the shallow ditch. The short-haired woman behind the wheel still had earphones on her head.
'Hello, darling,' I shouted into my hand.
Betty walked to the back of the van to cut the valve stems off the rear tires with the wire cutters. The woman swept the earphones off her head. I knocked on the window, but she wouldn't roll it down.
'I believe this belongs to you,' I said, holding up the bug. When she still didn't roll the window down, I set the bug on the thin, rough pavement and raised my boot heel. 'No?' She wasn't impressed, so I slipped the pry bar into my hand, popped the door, then reached in to stick the pistol under her nose.
'All right, you son of a bitch,' she said as she climbed out of the van, her hands not raised very high or very convincingly.
When I frisked her, I didn't find a weapon of any kind, so I holstered the Browning, backed up a step, and dangled the bug in front of her face, asking, 'Does this belong to you?' She didn't want to answer, but when she reached for it, I snapped one cuff around her wrist, then the other to the door handle.
'Shit,' she said, then tried to kick me in the shins.
'Lady,' I said, 'you can either behave or you can take a little nap. At this point I don't give a damn which.'
'He means it,' Betty said as she handed the wire cutters to me.
The woman decided she wanted to behave so she remained silent as I disabled the van – popped the hood to cut the cable to the oversized battery and the fuel line – and disrupted her communications. I tore the mobile telephone out of its cradle, dumped the batteries out of the cell phone, then snipped every wire I could find in the back of the van. 'That's criminal vandalism, buddy,' she said when I finished.
'You want to call the sheriff, lady?' I said, more angry than I intended to be. 'He knows you're conducting illegal electronic surveillance in his county, right? I'm going to call him as soon as we find a telephone. I'll just bet he'll be happy as a pig in shit when he sees all this stuff. Probably ' hasn't got a bit of it in his office.'
The woman just looked at the ground, scuffling the gravel with her jogging shoe. 'Please,' she whispered.
'You an ex-cop?' I asked.
'Ex-Army,' she admitted.
'Who hired you?'
'I work for a firm,' she said. 'They don't tell us who the client is.'
'Must be cheap bastards to make you work this gig alone,' I said. 'You are alone, aren't you.' She didn't glance over her shoulder. 'You got a card?'
'I just send the tapes in, man,' she said, then the woman dug her wallet out of her jeans pocket and handed me a card.
'Doris Fairchild, Poulis Investigations, Dallas,' I read aloud. 'How long have you been on me?'
'Since the night after you were arrested.'
'Shit,' I said. 'Tell your fucking boss that I'm a cranky old bastard and I'm really pissed. I'll be standing in front of his desk one of these days. Soon. You got off easy, lady,' I said. 'Given my attitude, I'm likely to gutshoot the next one of you assholes I run into.'
'Lucky?' she said, glancing at the van.
'Lady, if you'd been a man, I would've broken both your arms and burned your van,' I said. 'I'll call a tow truck when we get back to civilization.'
'Thanks a lot,' she said, sarcasm thick in her voice. 'You can shove your fucking chivalry up your ass.'
'Listen,' I said, 'I hate you lazy electronic sneaks. So don't push your luck.'
I threw Ms. Fairchild's cell phone into a patch of prickly pear the size of a small house, tossed her the key to the cuffs, then Betty and I walked silently back to the Caddy.
