'Is that my fault?'
Our silences had been louder than the constant wind or the slap of the shallow waves on the beach.
'Is that my fault?' she repeated.
'I don't know,' I had to admit, then changed the subject. 'You heard what happened yesterday?'
'I told you this PI stuff was going to get you in trouble,' she said.
'You don't happen to know a Sissy Duval, do you?' I asked, ignoring her gibe.
'Sissy Duval? Jesus, I never ran with that crowd. Not much anyway,' she said quickly. 'They were too wild for me. But I knew them. Why?'
'She's about my only connection to Enos Walker,' I said lamely.
'Who's he?' she asked, then looked away.
'He's the guy who tussled with Billy Long when he got shot,' I said. 'If I could find him before the cops do, it might save his life. And me a lot of official grief.'
'You know, Milo,' she said, the corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile, 'you don't owe this Walker guy anything. And we had a better life when you were retired.'
'Maybe you did,' I said, 'but I didn't. I'm too young to be that old.'
'Why don't you drive out to the ranch after you close? I'll fix breakfast when I get home,' she said softly. 'I'd like to work this out, honey.'
It flashed through my mind that women called men 'honey' in a different tone of voice than they did women. But I was thinking about the photo credit on the back of Mandy's picture, so once again I begged off the late night drive out to the ranch. 'I've got one more lead to follow in the morning.'
'I wish you could hear how silly that sounds,' she said, suddenly flushed with anger, her lower lip trembling. 'Why don't you just admit you hate this place and carry your sorry ass back to Montana?'
'Thanks,' I said. 'Since I moved my sorry ass down here to be near you.'
'That's too much responsibility for me to bear,' she said, then left her coffee, and walked slowly out of the bar. The sad stiff stick of her back told me that once again conversation had failed us. We had moved farther away from each other with each word. Just as we had down at her uncle's beach house.
We had drifted into a fight that night, as effortlessly it seemed as we had drifted into bed when we were first together. After the usual silence, then the apologies, I had begun to rub her shoulders.
'I just don't know…' she murmured as we started to make love.
'What? What don't you know?'
'I don't know what we're doing anymore,' she said softly, her voice barely audible above the sounds of the Gulf breeze and the soft slaps of the waves. 'I don't know where this is going, don't even know if we're making love or just fucking… or if this is some sort of stupid contest to see who can come last…'
I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything, just eased out of her and into my sweats, then out of the house, across the glass-enclosed upper deck, then the long, shallow ramp down to the hard-packed sand of the beach. As I walked along the dark verge of the water, the low waves slipped across the sand, dying with a foaming hiss that sounded like a nest of baby snakes. Out in the Gulf, the lights of the oil platforms and derricks glowed like the false fires of ship wreckers, and the oily tar balls glistened in the scummy surf like the eggs of monsters. Texas, Jesus. What had been in my mind?
When I went back to her uncle's beach house, perched like a giant spider on concrete legs above the sand, she seemed to be asleep, so I crashed on a lounge chair on the upper deck out of the wind. The next morning we drove back to Austin without speaking.
After Betty left the bar, I was more than glad to listen to the aimless problems of my customers. I could think of possible solutions to their problems, solutions that were sometimes as simple as a free drink and a friendly ear. So it wasn't until after I had cleaned up, stocked, washed some illegal cash, and- checked out that I had a chance to see if Albert Homer was still at the same place. There he was in the Austin telephone book, still on North Loop, and still in business.
Homer's studio sat on a weedy lot behind a ratty pool hall off North Loop within shouting distance of 1-35 North. He might still be in business, but business didn't look all that lively at noon the next day when I pushed the buzzer beside the front door. Four long separate times. Finally, I heard a door slam and a distant voice from the second floor promising that it was on its way. Darkroom, I assumed, until the young man opened the door wearing a ratty robe over rumpled pajamas. He'd seen better days himself. The long fringe of hair hanging around his thin face hadn't been washed or combed in several days. Something gray clung to the corners of his scraggly mustache, much as the odor of the early morning joint clung to his night clothes, and the stink of stale beer wafted on his breath.
'We ain't open,' he mumbled. I showed him a fifty-dollar bill, remembering the good old days when a twenty would have done the trick. 'But we could be, man, if you had a cold six-pack, too.'
'Don't go away,' I said, then headed for the glowing beer signs of a pool hall just down the street.
During the years I had lived in Texas, I'd had almost no cocaine, not many tokes of marijuana, and damn few hangovers. But in the two days since I had the misfortune to run into Enos Walker, it seemed I had been servicing other people's addictions with my own shaky character: Sissy Duval's Hooverized nose, Capt. Gannon's lust for an easy retirement, and now Albert Homer's hangover. Anything for justice, I thought as I crossed the unmown lot, and the faint chance that I might be able to extend Enos Walker's wasted life. They say a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. But there is no folk wisdom covering a PI who is his own client. Perhaps because it doesn't happen often enough to rate a cliche to cover it.
Five minutes later, I watched Homer suck down the first can of Lone Star and crack another one. From the photographs framed on his studio wall, the rack of Frederick's of Hollywood plus-sized lingerie, and the fake satin bedspread covering the round bed, I assumed that Homer specialized in sexy photos of fat women. It was sort of creepy, but I had to admit he wasn't a bad photographer, and I couldn't think of any good reason why fat women couldn't have as much fun as emaciated models with artificial breasts.
'I'm just guessing here,' I said as I pulled the publicity photo out of a manila envelope, 'but you probably didn't take this picture.'
'Looks like one of my Daddy's,' Homer said, barely glancing up from his beer. 'He passed over seven years ago.'
'You didn't keep his files, did you?'
'They're in a storage locker out in Pflugerville,' he mumbled. 'About the only thing besides this shithole that survived the divorce. But that fifty won't buy you shit.'
'What would?'
'Maybe a hundred,' he said, smiling broadly enough to crack the gray matter at the corners of his mouth. 'Make it two, if I help.'
'That's pretty stiff,' I suggested.
But Homer just smiled.
Three hours later I understood why. We had been through another six-pack of beer and dozens of boxes of the ugliest pornography I had ever seen. The storage unit was as steamy as a sauna. The only good news was that Junior had showered and dressed in clean clothes before we drove out. The bad news was that the sleek blond was a woman named Sharon Timmons. Who had done unspeakable things with snakes when her singing career had gone south. And Amanda Rae Quarrels had no folder at all.
'Who buys this shit?' I wondered.
'You'd be surprised,' Homer said. 'Mostly people who find the new stuff too buffed and tidy for their tastes.'
'This is it, right? Your ex-wife didn't take anything?'
'Shit, man,' he moaned. 'She took everything. House, both cars, and all the money my Daddy brought back from Vegas.'
'Vegas?'
'Yeah, he hit one of those hundred-thousand-dollar slots at the Nugget,' Junior said, 'and got home with it before he blew it. First time for that.'
'He gambled?'
