'Goddammit,' she said once we were smoking. She reached back into the top drawer, where she found a small mirror, a single-edged razor blade, and a short silver straw. 'Every time I think about that son of a bitch, it makes me want to smoke and snort cocaine like some East Austin street whore,' she said. 'I know I had some blow in here somewhere…' But she wasn't talking to me anymore. After a few minutes of clattering about, she stood up to dump more vodka in her glass and looked at me as if I had just appeared, saying, 'You wouldn't have any, would you?' Then she said, 'Oh, shit, you're not a cop or something, are you?'
'I think I fit into the 'or something' category. But I've got a taste.' I had retrieved Long's personal bindle from the convenience store rest room that morning, and broken it down into smaller bindles, managing to do just a couple of tiny lines of the uncut coke. Cocaine, like alcohol, was a fucking snake, and I'd had troubles with both. And not that long ago, either. I poured a tidy sparkling pile on the mirror and chopped two short but shapely lines.
'You first,' she said suspiciously when I offered her the straw. She looked ten years older, the fine bones almost visible through the clear skin.
I did my line, then offered her the straw again. She leaned over the mirror, sighed so hard she almost blew the coke away, then went through the line like one of those vacuum cleaners Eldora had accused me of peddling.
Sissy Duval licked her finger, wiped up the residue, and rubbed it on her gums. 'Oh fuck,' she murmured, 'where'd you get this shit?' Then her senses came back to her with the rush. 'Sorry,' she said softly, 'none of my business. Jesus, I don't even remember your name. And why the hell are you looking for that sweet-cheeked dead bastard?'
'Just call me Milo,' I said. 'Actually, I'm looking for an old friend of his, Enos Walker.'
'Jesus, don't be looking for Enos,' she said, grabbing her arms as if cold. 'He's not looking for me, is he? He's a bad one… and it seems to me that Enos is in prison up in Oklahoma.'
'Not anymore.'
'What the hell you want with him?'
'He was involved in a shooting yesterday, and my life would be a lot simpler if I could find him.'
'Not for long,' she said. 'Enos used to be the kind of old boy didn't mind hurting people. And I don't expect prison did much for his attitude.'
'I noticed,' I said. 'He was looking for your former husband. And somebody named Mandy Rae.'
'Amanda Rae. That little bitch,' she said, looking dreamily into the past. 'She was the worst of that bunch. A fair to middling country singer but a wild-ass redneck girl. Hell, she was the only one of us who always carried a gun. But I haven't run with that crowd in years. Last I heard about her must have been ten, twelve years ago. Or more.'
'What was she doing then?'
'I saw something in the paper,' she said, 'or maybe on the news. She whipped out a pistol and took a shot at some old boy in a beer joint out on the Bastrop highway. Didn't hit him, as I remember. She was a hell of a shot with a rifle, though. Christ, out at the ranch one afternoon – back when we still had a ranch – I watched her knock down a running buck at two hundred steps with an open sighted.30-.30. Cut his strings with a neck shot. Little bitch could shoot a single hair off a frog's ass.'
'You mind if I ask why you call her a little bitch?' I asked.
'Why you think, cowboy?' She spat, then smiled. 'You wouldn't have another line of that fine shit, would you?'
'You wouldn't have a picture of this Mandy Rae?'
'I think I'm gonna like you,' she said, her phony smile nearly knocking ten years off her face. 'You be chopping, I be looking.' Then she pranced drunkenly around the bar and up the stairs.
Since I had already done enough, I chopped a single line for Sissy, finished my beer, slipped the bindle under the ashtray – I didn't think she'd be cleaning off the bar this afternoon – then got another beer out of the small refrigerator behind the bar. As she started down the stairs, I picked up the straw and made snorting sounds.
'Couldn't wait for me, huh?' she said, then handed me a publicity still of a sleek blond woman with a photo credit, Albert Homer, and a local address stamped on the back. I shrugged like a cokehead, a gesture I knew all too well. 'This is all I could find,' she added, her eyes darting to the long line shining on the mirror.
'And why was she a little bitch?' I asked, still holding the straw.
'She was fucking Dwayne,' she sighed. 'Hell, everybody was fucking everybody back in those days – before AIDS – but I caught them one Sunday afternoon up at the ranch. She was on all fours with his skinny dick up her ass, and the little bitch just grinned over the teddy bear tattoo on her shoulder blade at me. Like she knew I wasn't into that shit, like she could lead the bastard off by his dick any time she wanted.' Sissy glanced at the straw again, then fixed herself another vodka.
'This Mandy Rae have a last name?' I wondered.
'Not that anybody knew,' she said. 'She just showed up one day with Enos Walker and twenty keys of pink Peruvian flake. They paid cash for a place up in Gatlin County and set up a network of college kid dealers. They had a steady supply and obviously some protection, so she was everybody's favorite lady for a while.'
'You sure you never heard a last name?' I asked, still holding on to the straw.
Sissy thought for a moment, her eyes on the shining straw. 'Quarrels,' she said finally. 'Seems like I remember somebody making a joke 'bout that – Amanda Rae Quarrels with herself…'
I held out the straw. 'How did your husband die?'
'Sucker-punched the wrong kid outside the bar,' she said, taking it with shaking hands. 'That was always Dwayne's style. Fuckin' kid grabbed a sweet sixteen double-barrel out of his pickup, and let Dewey have two loads of quail shot – one in the guts and one in the face. Took him a long, bad week to die.' Then Sissy sighed again, snorted the line, and smiled at me. 'You got a suit and tie, cowboy?'
'Sure,' I lied. If it was important, I could find a tie.
'Pick me up about eight? A fund-raiser for some political turd.'
'Be my pleasure,' I lied again, finished the beer, and headed for the door, listening to the rattle of ice in a heavy crystal glass across the empty desert of the living room. But I didn't shut the door all the way and I waited at the edge of the parking lot. I gave her a minute, then went back. But a tall, older gentleman in a tailored suit and a fifteen-hundred-dollar toupee beat me to the door. Bobby, I assumed. The old man had his finger on the doorbell as I walked up behind him.
'Can I help you, sir?' the old gentleman drawled.
'I forgot to leave Mrs. Duval my card,' I said.
She came to the door with a cordless phone in her hand, confused to see both of us standing there. 'I'll call you right back, honey,' she said. 'I promise.'
'I'll just leave my card on the bar, Mrs. Duval,' I said, then hustled around Bobby as she clicked the telephone off. I left one of the cards with just my name and cell phone number, grabbed the bindle from under the ashtray, and heard her whimper, 'Wait.'
'See you later, ma'am,' I tossed over my shoulder.
'Please,' she hissed.
'Who was that?' Bobby said as I hurried past them.
'Bobby, what the hell are you doing here?' I heard her say as I stepped slowly down the steps. I also heard her punch a button on the telephone and the beeping as it redialed. 'Go get a drink or a suppository or something,' she said, then, into the telephone, 'Oh, not you, honey. It's that damned Bobby Mitchell littering my front porch again.' Then Sissy's drunken laughter echoed through the cedar shrubs and the river willows that screened her condo from the street noise.
Something about Sissy's voice when she said 'honey' into the telephone bothered me all the way out to Blue Hollow, bothered me all through my shift behind the bar, distracted me even when Betty Porterfield stopped in for a cup of coffee on her way to the emergency vet clinic where she handled the night shift.
'Not much of a vacation,' Betty said as she lifted her coffee cup. Her blue eyes were softly smudged as if she hadn't slept well that day, and wisps of her light red hair mixed with strands of gray drifted aimlessly across her freckled forehead. She brushed it back tiredly.
'Not much,' I agreed. 'We never seem to have much fun when we try to talk about things. Or get much talking done either.'
