'I haven't exactly lived a citizen's life. Now my chickens are coming home to roost. Turns out they're turkey buzzards.'
Betty and Anna stepped out of the kitchen, arm in arm, smiling.
'If you ol' boys done gossipin' 'bout us girls,' Anna said to her husband, 'the children are in bed and waitin' for their Daddy to read to them.'
Betty said, 'And I should get my patient into bed.'
Reeves and I stood, shook hands, and I said seriously, 'Thanks for everything, Doc.'
'Anytime, man, anytime.'
We made our good nights, then Betty slipped her arm around my waist and I draped my arm over her shoulder as we walked slowly through the thick grass, slick with dew and littered with shards of streetlight, to the small guest house at the back of the yard.
'You're walking heavy tonight, honey,' Betty said.
'Long day.'
But Betty went to sleep first. So I slipped into my jeans, popped a couple of pain pills, found a couple of beers in the refrigerator, grabbed the cell phone, and stepped into the muggy night and fog knee-deep on the damp grass. Time to call Carver D to see if I could find out if Sissy Duval's body had been found without actually asking him.
'Did I wake you up?' I asked when he answered.
'It's hard to tell these days if I'm sleeping or awake, old man.'
'Anything happening back in that world?'
'Nothing much. Where the hell are you?'
'Beaumont.'
'Lord, you're making tours of the classiest cities in Texas, aren't you,' he said, laughing. 'Midland. Odessa. Beaumont. Don't forget Waco and Van Horn.' Then I heard the sound of the bourbon bottle splashing. 'By the way, I heard an ugly rumor to the effect that you have joined the enemies of official repression,' he said. 'Surely a lie, Milo.'
'Nope.'
'Now why would you go and do something like that?'
'Trying to keep my tired old ass out of jail.'
'Hope it's worth it,' he said. 'And hope it actually works.'
'Well, it hasn't caused me any trouble yet.'
'Speaking of trouble. What have you been up to?'
'Drinking, fistfighting, and running up my expense account,' I said.
'Sylvie Lomax might have been able to shove you down Tobin Rooke's throat,' Carver D said, 'but I know that skinny son of a bitch never approved an expense account.'
'Well, I can try,' I said. 'But I need another favor. Check out a Doris Fairchild who works for Poulis Investigations in Dallas. That's who had my Caddy bugged. And while you're at it, partner, why don't you start building me a file on the Lomaxes.'
'I'll see what I can do,' Carver D said. 'You stay in touch.'
'Right,' I said. 'Did Hangas have any luck talking to Eldora Grace?'
'Hell, he can't even find her.'
I clicked off the phone, hoping I wasn't going to have to find some way to report Sissy Duval's death myself. Then I opened my second beer, lit a last cigarette, and watched the smoke drift in the murky air while the mosquitoes feasted on me until, bloated with blood and stoned on codeine and Cognac, they fluttered fat and happy into the thick grass. For a long moment, I envied their simplicity. Eat, drink, try to fly, fall to soft earth, and sleep.
NINE
Perhaps I had expected Lake Charles to be full of Southern mansions and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. But I didn't expect two casinos as garish as jukeboxes on either side of a brackish lake, one perched on the edge of downtown like a fat waterbird on the edge of a swamp, and the other lodged among industrial facilities. Sand and gravel mountains were heaped everywhere, and mazes of petrochemical pipes seemed designed to pump paychecks right into the riverboat moored to the flat shoreline.
'Doesn't look like a place where a working girl might hang out,' Betty said as we crossed the Interstate bridge. 'Of course, I wouldn't know about that.'
'Any place they turn cards, honey, somebody turns tricks,' I said.
After giving the Players Casino a once-over, we recrossed the bridge and lodged at the Isle of Capri, checked into the nearby hotel, dressed in casual but expensive western clothes, then went to work.
After four days and nights of checking out every bar in the area without even a smidgen of success, we gave up on the last evening, and went back to the room. Betty slumped in front of the television, more tired than drunk. I stood at the mirror with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a pair of nail clippers, removing the stitches and trying not to look at the fading bruises.
'Jesus Christ, Milo,' Betty complained, 'I've been in more bars the last four days than I've been in the rest of my life put together. Let's give this up, please, and go home.'
'Patience is a virtue in this business,' I said as I clipped the last stitch out of my eyebrow, then started on the ones under my chin.
'Well, what now, cowboy?' The plaint in her voice hovered on the edge of tired anger now.
'Let's go over to the casino and lose some money,' I suggested, hoping to jolly her out of the mood.
'So much for patience,' she said.
'You can hang out here, hon,' I said. 'I just need some mindless abstraction to shut my brain down.'
'Believe me, honey,' she said finally, 'I'm about as mindless and abstract as they come.'
I tried to talk her out of it, but, as she had every step of the way on this trip, she insisted on following.
Out of habit we walked directly to the bar down the narrow aisle between the clattering slot machines and crowded tables beneath a low ceiling. Also out of habit, we went into our routine. Betty ordered an Absolut on the rocks with a twist from the young, round-faced bartender, then she suggested that I join her.
I said, as required by our script, 'The only people who drink white liquor are sissies or drunks, and the only people who drink bourbon are white trash, con men, chicken fuckers, or phony Confederate gentlemen… I'll have a beer.'
'Nice talk,' the bartender said as he delivered the drinks. 'That where you got that mouse?' I started to laugh, but the bartender shouted to another young man shoveling quarters into a nearby slot. 'Andre! Who was that one-armed son of a bitch that used to say that all the time?'
'Molineaux,' Andre answered without looking up from the slot. 'Fastest one-armed bartender in the world. And unluckiest.'
Betty and I smiled at each other. 'Better to be lucky than good,' I said. 'And sometimes the bad guys are too smart for their own good.' Then to the bartender: 'Double Absolut on the rocks. And keep them coming, partner.'
Two mornings later back in Houston, dressed by the Salvation Army – dirty coveralls, work boots, a battered hardhat pulled down over my eyes, and my nose stuffed with blow – I was the first customer through the door when I heard Annie unlock it. Betty had insisted on following me. She was dressed in ripped jeans, her gloved right hand in the pocket of an old Navy pea coat, wrapped around the derringer. Except for Annie and an elderly black swamper, the place was empty. I pulled up a stool. Annie leaned against the bar, her huge hands resting on
