The Final Country

Then he paused. 'You spending any time at the bar these days?'

'I was just on my way over there right now,' I said. 'You want to have a drink?'

'Sounds good to me,' he said quickly, glancing around as if the walls were listening. 'I'll meet you there in a few minutes. I've got something you ought to hear.'

On the way out of the courthouse I made a point to clunk slowly past the county prosecutor's offices. Rooke glanced up from where he leaned on his secretary's desk. I gave him a friendly wave. Then he stood up straight, his hard gray eyes slightly confused, not a sign of recognition on his narrow face. He even tried to grin as if I were a voter.

As I walked through the lobby of the Lodge, Travis Lee came striding out of the office, his boots slapping heavily on the Mexican tile floor, his large Stetson sailing like a large white bird on his head. He planted himself right in front of me, so I stopped. He took a step toward me, smiling, saying, 'Jesus, son, I'm worried about you. You're hobbled like an old mare with a stone bruise.'

'I'm getting around,' I said. That suited me perfectly. I wanted Gatlin County to think of me as an old man, to dismiss me as a threat. 'I've got business to tend to down here. I'm meeting Gannon for a drink,' I added as I turned to the bar.

'What business have you got with him?' Travis Lee asked, then stepped in front of me. The bottom of my right crutch, which I had filled with six ounces of melted lead sinkers while I was in Meriwether, caught him on the shin. Travis Lee jumped back as if he'd been shot.

'Sorry,' I said. 'We're just having a drink.'

'What the hell you got in there, son? An anchor?'

I ignored him. 'By the way,' I said, 'there's an envelope with Sissy Duval's name on it in the Lodge safe with ten thousand five hundred dollars in it. But it isn't really hers. I've got to give it back when I get a chance.' But from the look on his face, I knew something was wrong. 'What's up?'

'Well, I don't know if you knew,' he said. 'Sissy dropped me a note and asked me to take care of her affairs. She gave me her power of attorney a long time ago. Since the cash had her name on it, I took it. I'm sorry, I didn't know.'

'Oh, hell,' I said. 'I'll figure something out. Where'd it come from?'

'What?'

'The note. Where was it mailed from?'

'Somewhere in the Caribbean, I think,' he said, then started to walk away. 'Enjoy your drink,' he added over his shoulder.

Gannon and I had a pleasant drink, both lightly pumping each other to no avail. He suspected I hadn't been in any car wreck, suspected somehow that I had found the McBride woman, and that I knew more about what was going on than he did. So I gave him a taste.

'Enos Walker is dead,' I said. 'I'm sorry. I did my best to get him to come back. With my testimony, we could have worked a deal.'

'A deal? Anything less than the needle wouldn't have done me any good,' he admitted. 'That's how you got busted up?'

I didn't bother answering that one. If he had to ask, he didn't need to know the answer. 'I don't know how to tell you this, Gannon, but while I was nosing around I kept coming up with bits and pieces of information that Walker was somehow connected to Hayden Lomax.'

'That doesn't make any sense,' Gannon said. 'A man like Lomax wouldn't fuck with cocaine. Christ, he's got to be worth three or four hundred million.'

'I don't know,' I said.

'Speaking of odd information,' he said. 'The other day I heard that Tobin Rooke is trying to convince the grand jury to indict you for Billy Long's murder. Since he can't indict you for his brother's death.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'I haven't heard anything about that. Can you nail it down?' But I didn't really care. Tobin Rooke was about to have problems of his own.

'I'll nose around, but you know -'

'- your job's hanging by a thread,' I interrupted.

'Yeah,' he said standing. 'I guess I better get back to it. I've got some paperwork to take home.'

I told him the beers were on me. He said thanks, then walked out of the bar, still unsteady on his new cowboy boots.

'Guys from New Jersey shouldn't wear cowboy boots,' Lalo said as he brought me a fresh beer.

'Well, mi amigo,' I said raising the glass, 'I think my days of cowboy boots are over. A man in my condition could fall off them high heels and hurt myself.' Lalo chuckled happily. Coming back to work seemed to have knocked ten years off his face. 'You're looking good, viejo,' I said.

'Perhaps I retired too soon,' he said. 'But running your bar, my friend, is a pleasure instead of a job.'

I saw no reason to tell him that as soon as things settled out, my lawyer had arranged to sell the bar to the Herrera family at fairly reasonable terms. Nothing down, with a small piece of the action month as payment. Travis Lee wouldn't be happy, but lying in that hospital bed, I had decided to get out of the bar business as easily and quickly as I could.

Lalo poured two shots of tequila out of the Herradura bottle. We toasted the clear, bright day outside the glass walls of the bar. No buildings or houses troubled the tangled expanse of the Blue Creek Park. It could have been a different world, an easier world. But for the shadows still drifting behind my eyes. I shook Lalo's soft, satin hand, then went about my business.

FIFTEEN

Now that I had a place to live and get ready for the endgame, I had to find some professional help. I usually worked alone, but my experience with the salt-and-pepper bodyguard team in Dallas and Fresno's rescue of the McCraveys had changed my mind about a lot of things. This job seemed to call for help. So I crutched out to my giant pickup, hopped in, and drove to a turnout at the top of the Blue Hollow Rim, then unlimbered my cell phone.

Bob Culbertson had moved back in with his folks when he lost his job, and his mother told me that Bob was supposed to be out looking for work, but she suspected that this time of the afternoon he was probably drowning his sorrows in some low-rent beer joint. 'I don't understand it,' she said. 'That kid really liked that job, and if he can't find something soon, I'm afraid he'll just go back in the Army. He was an MP, you know.'

She said Bob would probably be checking in shortly, so I left my number and told her that I might have something for him involving law enforcement. But I didn't explain that the job was going to be along the lines of breaking the law, instead of enforcing it. My cell phone trilled before I could start the pickup.

The terrible force of coincidence that had plagued me since the day I had followed Enos Walker into the bar took one more shot at me. Bob Culbertson and Carol Jean Warren were playing pool at Over the Line. Leonard Wilbur was even behind the bar, holding a clipboard and counting bottles again. Even though he looked me directly in the face as the bartender handed me a beer, Wilbur didn't recognize me. I took that as a good sign.

I took my beer and walked down to the pool table where they were playing for ten dollars a stick. Culbertson looked a bit down in the mouth.

'You kids looking for work?' I said. They looked up startled. Neither of them had any idea who I was. I promised myself that if I survived all this, I was going to shear the hair and shave the beard. I couldn't do anything about the mustache, but maybe it wouldn't make me look like a dead man.

After I straightened out the confusion and introduced them, I took them into town for a late lunch at Threadgill's to explain to them what I wanted.

Carol Jean, who had discovered, as one often does, that working in beer joints wasn't nearly as much fun as