fat man was oddly somber and sober, sitting in his antique wheelchair, warming in the sun broken by the live oak branches.
'What's up?' I asked. 'You look like something the dog threw up and the cat drug home.'
'Petey just got accepted at Harvard Business,' he said.
'And that's bad? Isn't an MBA a license to steal?'
'He won't let me go with him unless I stop drinkin', man,' he said. 'So I've stopped. You stopped once, didn't you?'
'I took a ten-year break,' I said.
'How'd you do it?'
'Smoked a lot of dope, drank a lot of tonic water,' I said, 'read a lot of books, saw a lot of movies, and found the extra time hard to fill.'
'You were tending bar, weren't you? Didn't that make it harder?'
'Hell, I worked all the time because the people on the other side of the bar showed me where I was headed if I didn't slow down.'
'Well, I can't imagine life without Petey,' he said, 'so I'm gonna give it a try.'
'Good luck,' I said. And meant it. 'Hangas going with you?'
'No. Hangas has too much family down here,' Carver D said, then chortled. 'He's gonna handle my affairs down here. Gonna be my bidness manager. Take care of things till we get back.' As if cheered by the notion of coming back home, Carver D smiled. 'So what the hell do you want, Mr. Nosy?'
'Dwayne Duval's autopsy report,' I said.
And there it was. From ankle to scalp, Duval's body was covered with more than fifty fading contusions.
'Looks like somebody tried to kick the asshole to death before they shot him,' Carver D said. 'Makes you wonder.'
'Makes me wonder where Enos Walker was that night,' I said as I thumbed through the rest of the file. No matter how hard I looked, no female names appeared on the witness list, just Billy Long and one of Dickie's frat buddies. Of course, Long was inside and Dickie's buddy was around the corner in the parking lot on the side and just heard the shots. They claimed they never saw any particular women. 'Makes me wonder what he was doing.'
'According to the stuff that wasn't in the trial record, I'm guessing he might have been pretty close to Tulsa,' Carver D said. 'Maybe waitin' for a cocaine delivery around that time.'
'What about his brother?'
'That'll be a little harder to dig up,' the fat man said. 'Call me in a couple of days.'
'Maybe you should do this computer thing professionally,' I suggested.
'And take all the fun out of it,' he said, then laughed as he wheeled himself toward his office.
As I left, I realized that Carver D wasn't the only one who needed Petey. Shit, I was going to have to find another silent partner to help me launder the drug money. Which made me think about Travis Lee, so I returned his call.
Travis Lee's wife, who had died in a car wreck some years before, had left him a rambling house that sprawled along the crest of a small ridge overlooking one of the string of lakes along the Colorado River, a large but ordinary house except for the view. Travis Lee hadn't changed the house in the years since his wife's death, except to fill it with enough junk to start a Civil War museum. I had been to a couple of parties at his place – without Betty – but his' friends were either too young, too old, or too Texas to be interested in anything I had to say.
Travis Lee waited out on the patio, a new pair of custom-made alligator boots propped on a small table. The boots and their matching belt gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. At this angle, his golden buckle looked more like a golden frog than a snake. He lifted his can of Tecate in my direction as I came out the back door. 'Thanks for coming out,' he said, a grin large on his face as he waved at his Chicano butler standing by the back door to bring us a beer. 'You ain't been exactly religious about returning my phone calls lately.'
'I've been busier than a whore at a meat cutter's convention,' I said. 'What's up?'
'You know, son, I'm just an old country boy,' he said as he started his routine.
'Spare me the preface,' I said, grinning as I held up my hands in surrender. 'I told you, Travis Lee, I just don't have the time to worry about investments now.'
'Spare me,' he said. 'At some point, you're gonna have to piss on the fire and call the dogs.'
'Trav, I've been long on busy, and you've been short of details,' I said. 'You think we could talk about this later? Then maybe my voice mail won't be quite so full of bullshit.'
'Yeah,' he said, his face large with concern. 'Sorry to hear about you and Betty. Women come and women go, but business lasts. How much money you got in that offshore bank?'
'Enough. Why?'
'If you've got a million to lend me for thirty days,' he said, ruffling his wild white hair as he stood up, 'I can move it just across the street and turn it into three million clean and clear in a New York bank. We can split the profit down the middle.' When I didn't answer, he added, 'I'd even be more than willing to put up my share of the Lodge as collateral.'
'Hell, man, if it goes bad, I don't want to end up with a fucking motel,' I said, laughing. 'I don't even want the bar, if you get right down to it.'
'Hell, boy,' he said, laughing and slapping my shoulder, 'I thought you loved that place.'
'I do,' I admitted. 'But it's always full of the wrong people.'
'Don't be silly,' Travis Lee said, still grinning. 'I wouldn't do anything like that. Straight property deal, and we're covered all the way down the line anyway.' He could tell I didn't like the sound of that. 'And speaking of heat, there's another damn good reason to consider this deal,' he said. 'You might be needing a dose of clean cash. Like^ I started to say, I'm just a country boy, but I'm aware that you and that kid have been washing cash through the bar.' '
'I'm just a country boy myself,' I said, 'and even if I was running a laundry, it'd just be chump change, and I'd be covered like your Granny's ass.'
'Leave my poor old dead Granny out of this,' he said, his smile unbroken. 'An old buddy of mine in D.C. whistled a little bird song in my ear last week. You're about to have tax people all over you like stink on a dead hog's ass.'
'That's not a problem,' I said, hoping I wasn't lying. At least not to myself.
'Not a problem? Tax people are always a problem,' he said. 'They can bury you, and nobody can do a thing about it. And there's some suggestion that the little whoredogs are sittin' in your bar as we speak.'
I didn't say anything. I guess I didn't have anything to say. I just stared north like some dumb beast, not really looking at the dark bank of clouds moving down the long, empty plains toward me. Another goddamned norther.
'And speaking of whores? Any luck finding that woman for Sylvie Lomax?' he said. 'If I were in your boots, son, I'd look for a double dose of clean money, and all the influential friends I could find. Hayden Lomax draws a lot of water around here. And I can guarantee that she draws a lot of water with him.'
'I've been back and forth across five states and came up empty.' I wasn't sure why I lied to him, but I had promised myself that once Molly told me what the hell this was all about, I'd see her home safely.
'Well, if you find her, don't tell my big brother. I understand that he's still got the bejesus hots for her,' he said, and jerked his dimpled chin at Tom Ben's pickup sitting in front of his house, then he laughed long and loud, the laughter guttering on the rising north wind like a dying candle.
'I'll keep that in mind,' I said, thinking that, given his history, it was a strange thing to say. And I wondered how Travis Lee knew about the incident. Unless Betty had told him.
'Well, you call me now,' Travis Lee said, 'sooner rather than later.' He stood up abruptly, slapped me on the shoulder again, then headed for the back door of his house. 'You want a real drink?' he said.
'No thanks,' I said. 'Not right now. And thanks for the warning.'
'My pleasure, son. You're a stranger down here,' he said, 'and Texas hospitality is the rule, not the
