bent sharply about twenty-five yards away. A Dirty Harry.44 Magnum revolver dangled from his hand.
'Can you hit anything with that cannon?' I asked as I dug a pair of earmuffs out of the duffel. 'And don't you have any ear protection?'
'Never needed it, man.'
'How often you fire that thing?'
'Three or four times a year, maybe,' Red said.
'Listen, kid,' I said as I broke the filters off two cigarettes, 'if you don't wear ear protection, you'll be deaf quicker than a rock and roll drummer.' I stuffed the filters into his ears. 'Now, let's see what you can do.'
'Shit, man, I already look funny enough,' he said as he touched his ears, and we smiled. Then he turned and fired six rounds from the Magnum and put two outside the thorax area and four on the edge of the target, filling the narrow arroyo with the enormous blasts that started small sand avalanches along the steep edges.
I racked the slide on the Glock, then quietly said, 'Maybe the noise will scare them to death.'
'What's that you said, man?'
'Not bad,' I said a bit louder.
'Shit, man,' he said. 'Hit some motherfucker in the toe with this piece, they hit the dirt.'
'Chances are, my friend,' I pointed out, 'if they're that far away, moving and shooting back, a handgun is probably a waste of time.' I took fifteen steps closer toward the targets, ran a clip three rounds at a time until I got the feel of the Glock, then finished the three loaded clips from various stances, most rounds either dead center or just off. 'It's not great, but it'll do,' I said as I coated the rounds Red had brought with Armor All and reloaded the clips.
'Shit, I'm just an amateur,' Red said. 'Man, you're a pro.'
'Man, if you don't go to the range once a week and fire at least fifty rounds, you're not just an amateur with a handgun, you're a danger to your friends and associates.'
Red pulled himself up to his full five foot six, his eyes flaring behind his dark goggles, and started to take offense, then he let out a sigh. 'I suspect you know what you're talking about, don't you?' he said, sounding more like his mother than he usually did. 'And I suspect you're not giving me advice because I took your money or because I'm a poor, pitiful albino nigger. I guess it's like my Mom says. For no good reason, you trust me. Well, man, you can trust me to hold up my end.'
'Truth is, Craig, I've never had any control over who I trusted,' I said. 'You offered, I accepted. Maybe we'll get lucky, and all this hardware will just be an extra load.'
'Call me Red, man,' he said. 'I got a cooler of cold, cold beer in the rig, so let's have one.'
Which we did. Afterward I gave Red one of the cell phones, then we all went back to our jobs. Red to pick up a few things I thought I might need before he picked me up, Mrs. McCravey to a table stakes hold 'em game downtown, and I went back to my chores. On the way into town I remembered something I had heard early on in the search. So I dug out the card Byron Fels had reluctantly given me. He wasn't all that glad to see me but he didn't gouge me too badly for a casino contact. Just as I suspected, no degenerate gambler ever left Vegas with any money. I began to wonder if all Texans' notorious reputation for lying wasn't well deserved after all.
While I was in jail, Red McCravey had taken over my search. And Red quickly proved his ability to find people before they got lost. He came up with her address – a high-security high-rise, where she hadn't been seen in weeks – but he assumed that a woman who looked like Molly Molineaux probably had logged considerable time in limos. Sure enough one of his friends not only knew the woman, he knew where she was hidden. He had spotted her on the front porch at the desert house of a second-rate but wildly successful Vegas comic named Jimmy Fish, who had supplemented his comic career by playing gangsters and heavies in movies.
Jimmy Fish had a round, unpleasant face dominated by widely spaced, wild eyes. Even his curly hair looked as if it were psychotic. He had a loud, grating voice, an accent that sounded half-Brooklyn and half-Southern, and he had the manners of an ugly spoiled child. Something about his screen persona suggested that his movie roles didn't call for much acting skill. He was a natural asshole. If only I'd known how right I was, I could have saved us all a great deal of trouble and pain.
Jimmy Fish had a mansion in town where his wife lived but since they had separated he spent most of his time at his desert place outside Blue Diamond. It only took a couple of hours to find out that he was in town and that he didn't have a show on Thanksgiving night. I hoped he'd be at the desert place and not having a party. I planned to ring his doorbell when least expected and use my badge to bluff my way to Molly Molineaux. Once I had my hands on her, I wasn't planning to turn her loose until I found out who had hired her. I resigned myself to the fact that she wouldn't talk easily. I would try money first, then fear, and if it came down to it, pain.
Red dropped me off near Jimmy Fish's place a couple hours before sundown, then went back to Nellis Air Force Base to pick up the last of our purchases. I lugged a new pack stuffed with gear and water up a hogback that overlooked his house from the west. The house, a fake adobe, snuggled like a rock spill at the end of a blind canyon. A pool as dark and blue as the devil's eye sat in a stone patio behind the house. Gleaming razor wire topping a chain link fence outlined the five rocky acres around it. The only opening seemed to be a sliding gate in front of a cattle guard where the driveway ran into the highway. Except for the cactus and creosote bushes, not a spot of green showed. It could have been a rock garden. Perhaps Jimmy hated the sight of green unless it came from money. A battered old pickup was parked in front of a three-car garage.
I set up the spotting scope, checked my weapons, and settled in to watch. For a long time nothing moved but the long shadows creeping black across the desert. Then a small, dark man came out to clean the pool. Overhead long strings of high, dry clouds drifted across the sky. As the sun slipped behind the mountains the clouds fired red, then faded into a soft powdered pink that dissolved in the light breeze. When the pool man put his things away I put my eye to the scope just in time to catch sight of the woman as she stepped out of the sliding glass doors and into the deep shadow around the pool, her white one-piece suit shining against her dark tan, then she threw a bundle of towels on a deck chair, dove in, and began swimming laps with long, smooth strokes, swimming as if she never planned to stop.
Then I spotted a white blob behind sliding doors. I kicked the power on the scope up to full and focused on the round, hungry face of Jimmy Fish hanging like a bad moon behind the pool. Beyond him I could see Mexican furniture grouped around a fireplace. Off to the side a short woman set a large table with silver and linen. I worried about a party until she stopped after only two place settings. When she finished the table, she laid a fire in the fireplace, turned the lights on, then disappeared into the kitchen. Molly finished her laps, wrapped her hair in a towel, draped another over her shoulders, then tied a third one over her wet suit. When she went through the doors, Jimmy – head and shoulders shorter than her and rotund in a running suit that had never run – raised his face like a man looking into the sun. She patted him on the cheek and then walked quickly away toward the back of the house.
At full dark I pulled a windbreaker out of the pack, drank some water, then waited. For an hour nothing much happened. Jimmy sprawled on the couch and watched a football game on a television set into a carved armoire beside the fireplace. The short woman brought in two bottles of champagne in iced buckets and put them and two flutes on the end table beside him. Jimmy cracked one, took the first slug out of the bottle, then filled his glass. The pool man came back outside wearing a blanket-lined denim jacket and a straw cowboy hat that had seen better days. A cup of coffee steamed in his hands. He sat in one of the deck chairs, rolling cigarettes and smoking. When Molly came into the living room dressed in a worn sweat suit, Jimmy waved her over and poured a glass of champagne, patted the couch beside him, but she took her flute and sat on the hearth in front of the fire. She had a sip, then opened a small purse and began to work on her nails. I called Red, told him that this looked like the right night, asked him to head out right now, and hurry.
Then I gutted up and called Betty. I knew she wasn't going to be happy.
She answered in a motel bar outside Phoenix.
'You didn't call last night,' she said without preamble. 'I don't like that. I had to spend the night in El Paso. I don't like El Paso. It's not Texas. Fuck, Pm not even sure it's America.'
'Maybe that's why I liked it,' I said, then immediately regretted it. 'Pm sorry, but I was locked up.'
'Right. Locked up with a thousand-dollar hooker, you asshole.'
'Not yet,' I said, trying for a joke, but she didn't laugh. 'I haven't found her yet,' I lied, 'but I've got a line on her. Seems like you would want me to find her. After what she did to you. And me.'
