Tumbler, page 13
“Lock the damn door,” said Ames. She sniffled and she raised her head.
Du Pré laughed.
“I’m staying,” she said. “I am going to get this story.”
“That Benson, Drew, him stay,” said Du Pré. “Him stay a long time.”
“I am not scared,” said Allison Ames.
“I am,” said Du Pré. He shrugged and he walked out and to his cruiser and he got in, and Allison Ames threw open the other door and she got in, too.
“Please take me back to my car,” said Ames. “I promise I won’t go back there and go into the cabin.”
Du Pré laughed.
Not the same as saying she will not go back there at all.
“It isn’t the old man, is it?” she said. “I mean, he wouldn’t kill Drew.”
“Non,” said Du Pré.
“Who is he?” she said.
Du Pré shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Miserable old bastard. He is always here, here when my father is here, my grandfather. Benetsee. Him say when he come into the country the Wolf Mountains, they are holes in the ground, grow up since. He watched them.”
“That’s absurd,” said Allison Ames.
Du Pré rolled a smoke and he lit it and Allison Ames rolled down her window and she coughed theatrically for the entire time that Du Pré smoked.
He turned to the road that ran up on the bench and he accelerated until the old cruiser was rasping on the gravel. They crested a hill and Du Pré slowed and he turned to the right and ran along the bench road until he came to the rutted track that led to Benetsee’s ramshackle cabin.
There was smoke coming out of the stovepipe.
Pelon was at the woodpile, splitting large wood into stove pieces. He didn’t look up when Du Pré drove in.
“He’s here,” said Allison Ames, and she perked up.
Du Pré sighed.
He stopped the car next to her little white SUV and he shut the engine off. Allison Ames went to her car and she opened the door and got in and looked at her face and she pulled some cosmetics from the glove box.
Benetsee shuffled out on the porch and he sat and looked at Du Pré.
Du Pré got a half gallon of screwtop wine from the trunk of the cruiser and he brought it to the porch and he found a jam jar and he filled it and handed it to the old man, and then he rolled a cigarette and lit it and gave that to him, too.
“You are not so bad a feller,” said Benetsee. “That stupid woman, she is in here, yes?”
Du Pré nodded.
“Unhappy woman,” said Benetsee, draining the jam jar. Du Pré filled it again.
Allison Ames got out of her SUV.
She squared her shoulders and she marched toward the porch and Du Pré and Benetsee looked at her.
“Mister Benetsay?” she said. “I’m Allison Ames and I am doing a story here, and I would appreciate it very much if you would talk to me.”
Benetsee rattled off a speech in Coyote French, and Du Pré listened gravely.
“What did he say?” said Ames.
“Go on home,” said Du Pré. “He doesn’t want to talk to you. You go in his house, poke around, you got no manners.”
Ames flushed.
Benetsee said something else in the Métis patois.
“Well?” said Ames.
“He said what you want is not here anyway, it is in Chicago.”
Ames looked stricken.
Benetsee said something else, and a name.
Joe Henderson.
“Jesus,” said Ames. She looked shocked.
Pelon came round the corner of the cabin with an armload of stove wood and he went up the steps and inside and they heard the wood fall into the box.
Pelon came back out. He had picked up a small knapsack.
“We go now,” he said.
Du Pré nodded.
Benetsee got up and he stepped swiftly off the porch and he landed on the ground and was around the side of the cabin so suddenly it took Ames a moment to grasp that the old man was gone.
She ran to the corner of the cabin and she stopped.
“Where are they?” she said.
She walked back toward the sweat lodge and Du Pré followed.
There was no sign of Benetsee or of Pelon.
The smoke from the stovepipe stopped.
Ames walked back and forth, peering into the trees and looking at the flanks of the mountains.
Two people trotted along a high ridge about three miles up.
“It isn’t possible,” said Ames.
She turned to Du Pré.
“That can’t be them,” she said.
Du Pré shrugged.
“It can’t be,” she said. “No one can run that fast. No one.”
Du Pré laughed.
“Go see that Joe Henderson,” said Du Pré.
“He couldn’t have known about Joe,” said Allison Ames.
Du Pré shrugged.
“Him say you are unhappy,” said Du Pré.
Allison Ames flushed and she walked away.
Du Pré waited until she drove off.
CHAPTER 29
“THEY’LL FIND HIM,” SAID Foote. “Beck is one of their own and they are going to go and get him.”
Du Pré waited.
“Du Pré,” said Foote, “I would greatly enjoy knowing what you think of all this.”
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré. “There is something I cannot see.”
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Foote.
“Beck is maybe doing something to make him a lot of money,” said Du Pré.
“Why?” said Foote. “He’s well paid and he checked out. The man was a high-grade intelligence officer for decades. Nothing untoward on his record. Happily married, three grown children, four grandkids. Doesn’t drink much, smokes a cigar once in a while, exercises regularly. Odenaar Security vets its people carefully, and they follow up on it.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré. “I got five cards, one don’t work, I don’t got a flush.”
Foote was silent for a while.
“I’ll check it,” he said.
Du Pré flipped the shoehorn telephone shut and he put it in the glove box in Bart’s big dark-green SUV.
Julie was flying in her little aircraft, while Conor and Eamon Burrows stood by the windsock trying not to look worried.
A gust struck the ultralight and Julie sideslipped for a few feet and she leveled it and she dropped down low and followed the little creek. Ducks flew up, quacking indignantly.
She turned the flimsy little plane and she came in and set it down and she zipped along for two hundred feet and then she slowed to a stop. She unbuckled the harness and she got out and took her helmet off and shook her long dark hair out.
She and Conor broke the little plane down. It came apart and folded up to a size small enough to fit in the back of Eamon Burrows’s old Volvo.
They all drove down to Raymond and Jacqueline’s and there were a couple dozen kids there, some playing on the huge jungle gym that Raymond and Du Pré had built. There were some new parallel bars and a couple of canvas horses and even a set of rings dangling from a crossbar on top of some high poles.
Julie and Conor took two batches of kids and set them to doing stretching exercises. Du Pré went in the house and he got some coffee and he put some bourbon in it and he went to the front steps and he sat, sipping.
He got in his car and drove down to the Toussaint Saloon.
Madelaine was behind the bar, beading something. The tip of her tongue stuck a bit out from the corner of her mouth.
“Fucker,” she said, looking at her finger.
“Where is Susan?” said Du Pré.
“School,” said Madelaine. “She fill in for somebody sick, not back yet.”
Du Pré made himself a ditchwater highball and he sat down on a stool.
“Them people that new roadhouse call, say you are coming this Friday, yes. I say yes. You tell them that you would.”
“Shit,” said Du Pré. “Me I forgot.”
“They didn’t,” said Madelaine. “Put up posters all over. You look at posters once a while you see there, Du Pré, Bassman, Père Godin play Friday Saturday, that roadhouse.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Du Pré.
“Good name for a band,” said Madelaine. “You ought to think on it.”
Bassman came in with Kim. Bassman wasn’t wearing a bandage any more but he still had some staples in the skin of his head. He still walked a little slowly.
“We play day after tomorrow,” said Du Pré, “that new roadhouse. You are all right?”
“Fuckin’ A,” said Bassman. “Who is that?”
He went to the door and looked out and then he went out.
“UPS truck,” said Madelaine.
Bassman came back with a package the size of a book.
He looked happier.
“Christ,” said Du Pré, “they got dogs smell those packages that stuff.”
“What stuff?” said Bassman. “It is a book. I join this club. I go read it now, my van, don’t have to listen to you.” He went out the side door with Kim.
“Maybe it is a book,” said Madelaine.
“Yah,” said Du Pré. “Bassman, him read a lot.”
They both laughed.
“Coyote,” said Madelaine.
“Them,” said Du Pré. “I tell you bout that old three-toed son of a bitch I hunt two years, him shit on my traps?”
“Yah,” said Madelaine, “I know that story. Everybody hunts coyotes has that story, tell.”
“I never see the son of a bitch,” said Du Pré. “Him get old, I get this call, come out, the road, friend of yours. Him deaf, truck get him one morning early.”
“You cry,” said Madelaine.
“I tell you this story too many times,” said Du Pré.
“You tell that story,” said Madelaine, “when you don’t got things figured out yet. That is when you tell that story.”
Du Pré sipped his drink.
“That Beck,” said Du Pré.
Madelaine nodded.
“Maybe,” she said, “but where is he?”
Du Pré shook his head.
“Milbank’s money,” said Du Pré, “it is poison.”
“Makes some people ver’ crazy,” said Madelaine.
Two men came in then, dressed in the worn clothes of longtime bird hunters. They had on scuffed expensive boots. Canvas briefcases.
“Du Pré?” said one.
Du Pré nodded.
“We’re from … Mr. Fascelli’s security company.”
Du Pré looked at them.
“Where exactly was Beck’s car found?” the same man said.
Du Pré sighed. He filled his glass and he poured it into a plastic go-cup and he went out and got in his cruiser and he drove off, going up to the bench road and along to the cutoff and then the logging road where Beck’s red SUV had been found. It sat in the impound lot in Cooper.
Du Pré waited and another of the huge green SUVs Bart liked pulled in beside his old police cruiser. Du Pré got out. He pointed at the spot.
One of the men took out an odd camera, one with a huge lens, and he snapped several photographs. Then they walked on a spiral out from the place. They did not stop and they picked up nothing. They came back.
“Foote said to let you know who we were. There are six of us here. You will probably see only the two of us.”
“Got names?” said Du Pré.
“Heubner and Kessel,” said the man who had done all the talking.
“I’m Kessel,” said the other. He didn’t offer his hand.
Du Pré nodded.
“You went over this ground,” said Kessel.
Du Pré looked at him.
“Paul Beck didn’t just go straight up in the air,” said Heubner.
Du Pré looked at him.
“No reason you should trust us,” said Kessel.
Du Pré got in his cruiser and he turned it around and he drove off. He passed by Benetsee’s on the long way back to Toussaint. There were no signs that anyone had been up the rutted track to the cabin.
Bassman and Kim were in the saloon when Du Pré got back. They were laughing with Madelaine. Du Pré got himself another ditch.
“More help, Du Pré?” said Madelaine.
Du Pré nodded.
“Read your book?” he said to Bassman.
“First chapter,” said Bassman. “Very instructive.”
Kim looked off, shaking her head.
“You OK to play?” he said.
“Maybe I sit,” said Bassman, “I get tired still.”
Du Pré nodded.
“You remember that night?” said Du Pré.
Bassman shook his head.
“Fifteen minutes it is just gone,” he said. “Don’t know anything, time I am walking to the door, go out, and wake up on the stretcher.”
Du Pré nodded.
He went out to the front walkway and he looked over at the little airport and the drooping windsock and the Wolf Mountains rising up on the northern horizon.
A small silver plane was droning across the face of the mountains. Some clouds were bunched on the east end, against the highest peaks.
Du Pré rolled a smoke and he sat on a bench. The plane turned and flashed in the sun. Du Pré smoked.
He looked at the dirt of the road. A big black beetle was moving across it. A pickup went past and the beetle dodged out of the way.
Du Pré went back inside.
“Looking for a coyote, Du Pré?” said Madelaine.
Du Pré nodded.
“Truck maybe,” he said.
CHAPTER 30
THE ROADHOUSE STILL LOOKED very well kept and new. It had two large pieces of plywood over the holes where the big picture windows had been.
Bassman looked at them and he nodded approvingly.
“Too big,” he said. “I never go in them places have these big windows, me I get thrown through them twice.”
“Sioux?” said Madelaine.
Bassman nodded.
“It is my fault,” he said. “You know how it is, Sioux, me. I say things make them mad.”
Du Pré laughed.
Bassman, him, ask some Sioux once they have recipe for Brulé stew. Sioux very sensitive about that. Long time gone, they eat this Jesuit, Father Brulé. Don’t like to be reminded of it.
Du Pré and Madelaine and Bassman and Kim went on inside. Carol Canning came bustling over. She looked happy.
“A Billings TV station called and they are going to be here,” she said.
“Oh,” said Bassman. “Me, I can’t play then.”
“What you do now?” said Madelaine.
Bassman shrugged.
“North Dakota cop, he—” said Bassman.
“Bassman,” said Kim, “doesn’t like this cop. The guy lurks behind a highway overpass and busts people for speeding. So he’s there and Bassman goes past, doing a hundred and ten, and out he comes. Bassman throws a gallon jug of wine he has open but mostly full out of the window.”
“I look in the rearview mirror,” said Bassman, “there is all this windshield glass and Gallo, all over the road.”
“Cop ends up in the hospital,” said Kim. “He’s really mad. He gets a judge to sign a warrant.”
“Him know where I am,” said Bassman, “him be rude.”
Du Pré laughed.
“He must have been close,” said Madelaine, “hit his windshield with a wine jug.”
“Yeah,” said Bassman, “him just start to pull around me.”
Du Pré roared.
“We get you a false beard,” said Madelaine.
“He has no jurisdiction,” said Kim. “He can’t do anything in Montana.”
“Bullshit,” said Bassman. “This is personal.”
“Put a sack over your head,” said Madelaine.
“We’ve been getting calls all day,” said Carol, looking very pleased. “Some people even wanted reserved tables.”
“You sell tickets?” said Du Pré.
“First come, first served,” said Carol.
“Lots of people coming,” said Du Pré. “Local people?”
“They’ll be here,” said Carol. “But we got calls from as far away as Jackson Hole, Wyoming.”
“Oh,” said Du Pré.
He looked down at the floor.
“You are not that good,” said Madelaine. “Don’t you get a fat head, Du Pré.”
Du Pré laughed.
They sat for an hour drinking, Du Pré with his ditches and Madelaine with her pink fizzy wine.
A few people from Toussaint came.
More and more people came.
The place was pretty big, and could hold a couple hundred, but they were already here and it was more than an hour before Du Pré and Bassman and Père Godin were supposed to start.
Du Pré went out to check on Bassman, and look for Père Godin’s rusty old car.
Bassman and Kim were sitting in Bassman’s van in a thick fog of marijuana smoke.
Bassman rolled down the window.
“Maybe we start early,” he said. “Lots of people, they just wait, they drink too much maybe.”
Du Pré nodded.
“Social conscience,” he said, looking at Bassman. “You get beat on the head it improves you.”
Bassman nodded.
“I play a lot,” he said. “I know crowds.”
So did Du Pré. He looked round for Père Godin.
“OK,” said Du Pré, “we start then.”
Kim kissed Bassman and they got out and they all went in and Du Pré waved to Madelaine who was behind the bar now pulling drinks. It was very busy and people were piled up four deep shouting out orders.
Bassman tuned his bass in two swift twists on the pegs. Du Pré drew the bow over his strings and tightened the A string a little. Then he played a long mournful note, and went into MacTavish’s Reel.
They played solidly for forty minutes without stopping for applause. Du Pré sang a little, but mostly he played jigs and reels and boatpulling songs. The crowd loved it. They grew silent and then soon there were many couples jammed together on the little dance floor, and still more people coming in.
Père Godin got there and he came up on the stage and he pulled his old accordion from the case and let the bellows fall while he tested notes and Du Pré and Bassman tuned to him and they went on.
