best friend like a bad woman. No matter what they do, you keep hangin' around.' Then he paused to open another beer, his odd apology ended. 'What happened? Up there in Montana.'
'Oh, hell,' I said. 'This guy I was looking for, he was beating me to death, and she put a.22 round up his nose. But he pulled the trigger at the same time. He pulled the trigger, but the people who started this, they're the ones who killed her.'
'Ain't that the shits,' he said again.
'I couldn't stop it,' I admitted. 'It tore the heart right out of me.' I pulled the Shark of the Moon out of my pocket. 'She was a fine woman,' I said. 'She talked about you a lot. I think she'd want you to have this.'
Rollie looked momentarily uncomfortable, then he held up the stone to watch it shine in the sunlight, and he smiled. 'She must have thought well of you to tell you about this ol' thing. Belonged to her Momma. I picked it up down in Belize on a run once.' He didn't have to say what kind of run. 'The mortal shits.'
'You know, the people who got her mixed up in all this, I think they should pay,' I said. 'I intend to make them pay. But I need your help.'
'Anything, man.' I showed him the photo of Amanda Rae Quarrels. 'Sure,' he said. 'That would be Amelia Fontinot, you bet, after she bleached her hair. This is her Daddy's old place. Jimmy left it to me. She'd be his half- sister, you know, younger. She married that old Desmond Quarries fellow from Morgan City, but I think Jimmy was fuckin' her and he sold her off to Des. He'd do things like that, you know. But she don't much look like that no more. Last time I saw her, I didn't even recognize her.'
'When's the last time you saw her?' I asked.
'Shit, I don't know. Seven, maybe eight years ago,' he said. 'Back when I still had a boat. Jimmy and I picked her up off a tanker in the Gulf and brought her home. With some young girl. Hell, she didn't even say kiss my ass, thanks, or goodbye. But I sure got fucked over later. Couple of weeks later the DEA came calling. They found a bag of smack on my boat and that was all she wrote. Goddamned woman must have left it there. I was lucky to stay out of the joint. But they finally believed me. I never ran any coke or heroin. Nothing but smoke. That was my rule.'
'When you and Jimmy were working offshore, you ever work for Hayden Lomax?'
'That cheap son of a bitch,' he said. 'Nobody with any sense ever worked for that sorry junkhouse outfit. Only people ever worked for Lomax was three-fingered winos like ol' Des.'
'Thanks,' I said, finishing my beer and standing up. 'I got to be going now.'
'Let me know what happens,' he said.
'You already know too much,' I said. 'Thanks again.'
Then I left him sitting in the warm, soft sunshine, left him with his memories, and the dark shadows of the stone. And a clear conscience, I hoped.
As I walked back through the bait shop, I glanced once more into the dusty webbed shadows. A dozen glass- eyed deer and boar heads glittered in the shadows. I didn't have to ask who had killed them. An old woman, her face blurred behind fat and great hairy moles, sat in a funky heap behind the counter, knitting at an unidentifiable hunk of clothing, her hooded eyes gleaming, the wings of her coal-black hair shining like a pair of obsidian axe blades.
Driving back from Houston I took a quick detour by Stairtown and Homer's place. Of course, there was no body in the mudpit. Sissy's BMW had disappeared, too. The old shack was scrubbed as clean as a dog's plate. No crime scene, no evidence, no past or future. The pumpjacks rocked and buzzards drifted across an empty sky while I had a beer and a couple of cigarettes, mourning the dead woman in the pit.
On the outskirts of Austin I called Reverend Walker. He said he didn't want me at his church and he didn't want to be seen in public with me, but I didn't give him any choice.
He stood at the bar of the Four Seasons, a large, uncomfortable man sipping at a tonic water. He turned to glower at me as I edged in beside him but smiled aimlessly when he saw the white hair and the crutch and nodded politely without a glimmer of recognition. Once I had a drink, I leaned over to whisper, 'I'm sorry, man, but your brother is dead.'
Walker spun quickly, recognizing me now. 'Watch yourself, old man,' he growled. 'Just watch it.'
I had a slow swallow of Scotch, then faced him. 'It's true,' I said. 'He's dead, and I am very sorry.'
'What happened?'
'Nothing that's going to come back on you.'
'And the girl?' I nodded. 'Damn,' he said grimly. 'It didn't have to happen that way.'
'It's done,' I said. 'You've been doing good work for a long time. Keep it up. But what you need to do now is get a lawyer and an accountant to destroy every trace of any connection with Hayden Lomax.'
'Why?'
'Just do it.'
'You can't go up against Lomax,' he said. 'He'll turn you into fish food.'
'Maybe not,' I said. 'Not if I've got the mortal nuts on him.'
'Good luck,' he said. 'You'll need it.'
'Thanks.'
As I left, I heard Walker order a double Wild Turkey rocks from the bartender. I hoped he stopped after one. A man carrying that sort of guilt shouldn't be drinking hard. It could kill him.
I sent the kids off to Vegas with a bundle of cash for Fresno and to get them out of town. I had a couple of days to waste until Friday night, so I spent it reloading some.22 hollow point shorts and sitting on the porch carving seasoned cedar sticks into thin, sharp strips that would fit under my cast.
Late one afternoon as stately storm cells drifted up from the Gulf, trailing rain like silver skirts, Carver D and Hangas showed up without calling. I didn't even bother to ask how they had gotten through the gates. Hangas climbed out of the driver's seat, then walked slowly around to open the back door of the old Lincoln, his grin bright in the spring sunshine.
'My man looks good, doesn't he?' Hangas said as Carver D slipped out of the limo.
Carver D had dropped thirty or forty pounds. His eyes were clear, his voice resonant, and although he wasn't exactly nimble on two canes, he was moving. And smiling as he eased into the rocker beside me.
'What the hell are you guys doing out here?' I said.
'If you'd answer your telephone or return your calls,' he said, 'we wouldn't have to break into your solitude.'
'I've been busy,' I said.
'Busy,' he said, sweeping his cane through the pile of shavings between my feet. 'Busy as a beaver, I see.' When I just kept running the blade of the Old Timer down a length of cedar, Carver D continued. 'You're planning something awful, aren't you? Some kind of terrible revenge?'
'I'm retired.'
'You're a base liar,' he said. 'You need Hangas to help?'
I glanced at Hangas resplendent in his tailored suit, smiling as calmly as a cobra might smile. 'He's the most dangerous man I know,' I said, 'and I appreciate the offer. But nothing's happening.'
'Milo, you shouldn't lie to your friends.'
I had no answer for that. So we left it there, chatted until one of the thundershowers rattled the tin roof, then they left.
Tom Ben was never able to talk about the Rooke family without including the phrase 'carpet-bagging goat- fucking white trash.' The family had moved down after the Civil War, had scammed a section of land in the hills behind the Bad Corner, but as far as I could find out, they never had been charged with sexual congress with farm animals. Over the years the family had sold off pieces of the land, drifted off to California, or various institutions, penal or otherwise, leaving the twins sole owners of a five-acre plot right in the center of the unzoned tangle of the old home place, a jungle of variously sized lots, crooked roads, and Hill Country scrub land, and a gravel pit. Shortly after Tobin finished law school and Ty had been promoted to plainclothes, with financing that should have raised IRS flags, the boys had built a rambling brick home. They dated enough to forestall rumors of homosexuality, but never married. And except for a reputation left over from their college years for being
