Tumbler, page 11
Ames shook her head.
“He the feller keeps leaving money around, lots of money, and wants them journals ol’ Du Pré found?” said Benny.
“Drew thought so,” said Ames.
“So him and you did talk a bit,” said Benny.
Ames nodded.
“This Milbank feller have him killed?” said Benny.
“Look,” said Ames, “this is all speculation. I have no idea who would want to kill Drew. No idea. Milbank would hardly kill Drew. How would that help him get the journals?”
“What’s he want ’em for?” said Benny.
“He buys rare things and gives them to museums,” said Ames.
“A rich wing nut,” said Benny.
“Yeah,” said Ames.
“What you think?” said Benny, looking at Du Pré.
Du Pré shrugged.
“She don’t kill Drew,” said Du Pré. “She is left-hand.”
“Oh,” said Benny.
“Person kill Drew is right-hand,” said Du Pré. “Also very good. They shoot Drew once in the head with a twenty-two. Probably they have done that before.”
“God,” said Ames, “who would kill a writer over a story?”
“Writer found out something killer’d rather keep quiet, I expect,” said Benny. “Look, we have to ask these questions, you see, and I am sorry fer upsettin’ you. Have to find out what ol’ Drew was up to the last few days of his life. Didn’t look so old to me. Twenty-eight, his driver’s license says.”
Ames nodded.
Madelaine came round the bar and she gave a small snifter of brandy to Ames, who held it, looking like she didn’t know what it was.
Benny stood up. He leaned over the table, his knuckles flat on the scarred wooden top.
“I don’t like murderin’ goin’ on in my county,” he said. “If you know anything or hear anything, you’d best speak up.” He put his hat on and he went out the front door.
Allison Ames sipped her brandy. She shook her head once and she closed her eyes and put her right hand to them.
Ames looked up at Du Pré and she took her hand away from her face.
“Interrogations here are unusual,” she said, trying to smile.
“He got the rubber hoses, back, there,” said Madelaine. “What Benny said we all mean. Somebody is playin’ dumb games, that Mildick or whatever his name is. You know how, get hold of Mildick?”
“He’s a recluse,” said Ames, “very eccentric.”
“Eccentric,” said Madelaine. “Asshole what he is. These dumb rich people got tons of money, they say, here is a million, get me this thing, and people get killed. It is Mildick’s fault, this.”
“Not legally,” said Ames.
“Rich people write laws,” said Madelaine. “Do that about as well as they do anything else.”
“I don’t know,” said Ames. “I would think Mr. Fascelli’s people would be able to reach Milbank.”
Du Pré went out the front door and to his old cruiser and he took out the odd little telephone he hated and he punched some numbers in and he waited.
“Foote, please,” said Du Pré when the woman answered.
“He is out at the moment,” she said. “He will be back in ten minutes.”
“It is Du Pré,” said Du Pré. “I am at the saloon, Toussaint.” He gave her the numbers.
Allison Ames was sitting at the bar having a second brandy when Du Pré came back in. She had some color in her cheeks now.
Madelaine stuck a platter with a cheeseburger and fries and coleslaw on it in front of Du Pré. He ate like a starving wolf. The platter was clean in three minutes.
“Glad I don’t stick my hand in there,” said Madelaine.
“I miss it,” said Du Pré, “I aim my teeth good.”
“I just want to write a story about the journals,” said Allison Ames. “That’s all.”
“It is not the story you wanted?” said Madelaine. “So write about the one that is there, eh? Whining, don’t help.”
“No,” said Ames, “it doesn’t. I’m tired. I am going to my room over in Cooper and rest.”
She went out.
The telephone rang and Du Pré answered it.
“Gabriel,” said Charles Foote, who ran Bart’s life better than he could.
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “there is this Milbank man, LESA company, him around this bad stuff here.”
“Markham Milbank,” said Foote. “We are trying to reach him. It is not easy. We keep notching up the threats.”
“OK,” said Du Pré.
“He doesn’t like to talk to anyone,” said Foote. “We get a mouthpiece and in time another. Events around there do trace back to Milbank’s unwise little games. He has, heretofore, not caused much trouble with them, so he assumed like we all do that life would go on as it had.”
“I have the journals,” said Du Pré.
“Tell me you’re lying,” said Foote, quickly.
“April fool,” said Du Pré. “I don’t got them.”
“So,” said Foote, “when we finally do get through to Milbank do you have any messages for him?”
“Yah,” said Du Pré. “Quit fucking around, maybe, uh?”
“I will see that he gets it,” said Foote.
“Beck, him say he needs more people,” said Du Pré.
“Bart said no,” said Foote. “He said that most forcefully.”
Du Pré thought a moment.
“OK,” he said. “I need something I call you.”
“Gabriel,” said Foote, “thanks. Bart has a point. Julie is not at all involved in this, and he really doesn’t want to be stumbling over operatives all the time. Beck’s damned good, and if he needs help he can get it in a hurry.”
“OK,” said Du Pré.
“Bassman is doing very well,” said Foote. “I think he’ll be coming back in a few days.”
Du Pré and Foote said goodbye and hung up.
Du Pré sat across the bar from Madelaine and her beadwork.
“Bassman is better, come back in a couple days,” said Du Pré.
Madelaine put her tongue in the corner of her mouth and she squinted at the bead on the needle.
“Old-age shit,” she said. She put the needle through the soft leather.
“Bassman, him need a place to rest,” said Madelaine, “so the Kleins’ back trailer there we will have ready for him, Kim.”
“Never hurt him hitting the head,” said Du Pré.
“You got ideas, Du Pré, what this is about?” said Madelaine.
Du Pré shook his head.
“Not much,” he said.
“What you going to do? Benetsee is gone, yes?” said Madelaine.
Du Pré looked at the ceiling.
“Hunt a coyote,” he said.
Madelaine nodded.
“Smart coyote,” said Madelaine.
“Smart coyote got to eat sometime,” said Du Pré.
“Drink, too,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré rolled a smoke and he lit it and he passed it to Madelaine, who took a long, deep drag.
Madelaine blew out a long blue stream of tobacco.
“Hunt him, Du Pré,” she said.
CHAPTER 25
DU PRÉ PUT THE green bananas on top of the journals and the old tools and the lead canister and he put the lid back on and he put the box in the cooler under two crates of lettuce.
“Don’t mess my bananas,” he said to Madelaine when he came out.
“I mess your banana any damn time I want,” said Madelaine, “but I tell Susan forget they are in there.”
“OK,” said Du Pré.
“So,” said Madelaine, “what you do now?”
Du Pré yawned.
“Me,” he said, “I think I go a bunch of places, look around. I got a couple questions, got to check Benetsee’s place, he is gone, you know.”
He went out and got in his old cruiser and he drove off toward the old man’s cabin. He stopped at the turn onto the rutted track from the county road and he looked for a long time at the ground before he drove up to the cabin. He parked in the tall weeds and he sauntered around the empty cabin. The sweat lodge was open and the firepit cold a long time.
A kingfisher flew down the creek, a little silver trout in its bill.
Du Pré looked the ground over carefully. He went to the cabin and he stuck hairs on the door, one high and one low, with spit. He got down on his knees and looked along the sagging porch and then he went back to his car and he got in and he drove down to the country road and then west toward the north-south highway.
The day was beautiful, sunny and bright with high white cottony clouds cast across the blue. A light plane flew over, and began to lose altitude, heading for the grassy strip at Cooper.
Du Pré turned around at the crossroads and he got up to one-ten quickly and he turned off on a side road and he headed up to Bart’s place, on the benchland that reached out six miles or so from the Wolf Mountains.
Julie was in the air when Du Pré got there, the tiny little aircraft, maroon and blue and yellow, moving slowly a couple of hundred feet above the ground.
Du Pré got out and he walked round back of the house and he squinted up at Julie.
“Durn girl tried to get me to fly that danged thing,” said Booger Tom. He went back to thinking about maybe doing that.
“I blow you out of the sky, a shotgun,” said Du Pré. “What an old fart like you want to do that for?”
“I knowed you’d understand,” said Booger Tom. “Bart’s round puttin’ a hose on the backhoe. I tol’ him twenty times he can’t reach that far with the bucket, but he don’t listen.”
“Bart,” said Du Pré, “him like putting hoses on maybe.”
Booger Tom snorted.
Du Pré found Bart happily inserted in the innards of the big backhoe.
“What you find there, Bart?” said Du Pré.
“Meaning … of … life,” said Bart. He twisted something and he put his hand out and Du Pré gave him the socket wrench.
“Julie is pret’ good that thing,” said Du Pré.
“Sure is,” said Bart. “She has such incredible balance. She’s a good, cautious kid, too, you know, thinks about everything. Pilots who don’t are in the ground.”
“How come you won’t get people here, help Beck?” said Du Pré.
“We talked about it,” said Bart. “He couldn’t really convince me that we needed more. He said this Markham Milbank clown was the culprit and they’d take care of it.”
“Him know that?” said Du Pré.
“Foote did,” said Bart. “Look, if I knew there was a danger I would of course take steps. But Julie is fine and has no part in this, and so am I, and I have no part in this, nor do any of my friends and my neighbors. That reporter, Drew, I gather, had a genius for enraging people.”
“OK,” said Du Pré.
“I can’t live my life surrounded by armed guards,” said Bart. He twisted something and yelped.
He backed out of the mess of black hoses and yellow metal and he looked at the blood welling from his left forefinger.
Du Pré went to get the first aid kit. He bandaged the wound, tight.
Booger Tom came in to the machine shed.
“Benny Klein just called,” said Booger Tom, “an’ some character name of Milbank landed in Cooper half hour ago or so and is raising hell to see Du Pré and Bart. I was you, I’d go to Vegas for the weekend.”
Du Pré and Bart looked at each other.
“Son of a bitch,” said Bart. “The little turd is here.”
Du Pré went out the sliding door. Bart followed.
“So,” said Bart, “what do we do?”
“I drive you that thing,” said Du Pré, nodding at the dark-green SUV. “You act like I am your hired driver.”
Bart nodded. He looked at Julie, a bright speck in the air up toward the mountains.
They got in Bart’s Lincoln and Du Pré took the drop road down and he turned and headed for Cooper. The highway was clear and the big SUV nearly left the road past eighty, so it took them longer than it would have in Du Pré’s old cruiser to get there.
There was a huge motor home parked in front of the little grocery store, blocking the entire length of the building, and on the wrong side of the street.
“That’ll be him,” said Bart. “It’s the grace of new money.”
Du Pré snorted. He parked well away from the wheeled condo.
Bart wandered up the street in his oily coveralls, Du Pré a few paces behind.
There was a wispy young man in thick horn-rimmed glasses standing by the door in the side of the motor home. He was drinking Poland Spring mineral water.
“Markham Milbank about?” said Bart, amiably.
The young man regarded Bart’s greasy, stained, worn appearance.
“And you are?” he said.
“Bart Fascelli,” said Bart, “and I could write a check for his entire chickenshit operation and I may if he don’t get his ass out here.”
“Good God,” said the youngster, backing away. He went into the motor home. He was soon back.
“Milbank would like to know what you want,” he said.
“I want to talk to him,” said Bart. “I’m psychotic, you see, and if I am thwarted, I tend to spray the entire area with bullets and get off on technicalities.”
“OK,” said the young man, going back into the motor home. He came back quickly. Du Pré was standing by Bart.
“He’ll see you,” said the young man, opening the door.
Bart and Du Pré went on up the steps and into the main room, which was spare and bleak and had a few computer consoles on stands here and there. There were several posters for rock band concerts on the walls and a paper mobile in the center of the room.
The young man went round behind a small black desk and he pointed to some weird-looking chairs. Bart and Du Pré stood.
“I’m Markham Milbank,” said the young man.
Bart nodded.
The door opened and two other young men came in.
“Jerry!” barked Milbank. “God damn it. We aren’t fucking royalty and if we were it is no excuse to act like this. Get the damn thing on the right side of the street and out of other people’s way. Jesus! Christ!”
The two young men went swiftly toward the front of the motor home and the engine came to life and it lumbered slowly off.
“What the fuck,” said Bart.
Milbank held up a hand.
“It is my responsibility,” he said. “I stupidly indulged myself in playing games with people and now someone is dead, I suspect because of the very large offer I made for the journals and artifacts. I had no idea anyone would … kill for things of interest only to scholars.”
“I think,” said Bart, “the interest is in the money.”
“Isn’t it always,” said Milbank. “I have so much I don’t even know how much I have. I have given away four hundred million dollars and hardly made a dent.”
“So,” said Bart, “why are you here?”
“I seem to have erred,” said Milbank. “I’d like to make it as right as I can.”
The motor home had stopped.
The two young men came back, and then a man in his fifties came from a room at the back.
“My vice-presidents,” said Milbank, “Jerry Soldner and Pat Henkel, and the gentleman behind you is Torbert Thommassen, who is my chief of security.”
Bart shook hands with them all.
Markham Milbank turned.
“And,” he said, “you must be Gabriel Du Pré.”
CHAPTER 26
“TOR AND I WORKED out of the San Diego office,” said Beck. He raised his glass to his friend.
“Did some work together,” said Torbert Thommassen.
They were at the bar of the saloon, each with a large martini.
“War stories,” said Markham Milbank. “Excuse me, I got to go and oil my duck.”
Thommassen and Beck laughed and put their heads together again.
Julie kept looking at the front door of the saloon. Conor and his father were due in any time.
Du Pré looked down the bar and he sat back. He was tending the customers while Madelaine and Susan gave the trailer out back a last going over.
Bassman was coming, too. And Kim, the faithful burlap blonde.
Milbank went to a table and he sat alone, looking at the pages of an actual book.
The door opened again and Conor Burrows rushed in and Julie rose up from her chair and they each took three long steps and hugged, Julie pulling up her feet and Conor whirling her around.
Some other people came in behind them and they looked and grinned and found tables and the men came to the bar and ordered the drinks.
Du Pré pulled beers and he made whiskey ditches, good strong ones.
Friday night.
“Music tonight,” said a rancher, “any chance?”
Du Pré shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “Bassman, depend on how he feel, he get here.”
The rancher nodded and went off.
Du Pré looked up to see Eamon Burrows standing there.
“A small whiskey,” said Burrows, “and a water back.”
Du Pré poured and he put the shot in front of Burrows and he got a small glass and filled it with cold water. Burrows tossed the shot and he took the water and drank half of it.
Du Pré looked at Conor and Julie. Beautiful, young, healthy, and utterly lost in each other.
Du Pré heard the back door open and he turned and in a moment Susan Klein came in and then Madelaine. They put some cleaning rags away and Du Pré moved out from the bar and he left it to the experts.
Conor and Julie went out the front door.
“Off to get ruptures together,” said Eamon Burrows, “and ain’t love grand? Silly little bastards. I oughta be grateful they don’t run off to join the circus.”
Eamon pointed to the stool next to Du Pré and Du Pré nodded. Eamon looked off, lost in thought for a moment.
“Double bourbon on the rocks,” he said to Madelaine.
“We got scotch,” said Madelaine.
“How did you know?” said Eamon Burrows.
Madelaine laughed and she made his drink and got the money. She put it in the till.
“I was young once,” said Burrows, “I think. So were you.”
