Deep House, page 4
“There was some talk about putting in a parking lot.” The sheriff stepped out of the cruiser. “Then that kid got himself killed, and they put up the sign instead.”
The entrance to the canyon looked benign enough. A narrow dirt trail that ran in between two sheer rock walls and disappeared into the darkness beyond. As though you were about to enter a lost world.
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.
Duke took his time, walking a grid at the entrance to the canyon.
“Why would the driver come here?”
The sheriff held up his phone. “Here we get cell reception.”
“You think he walked here,” said Thumps, “in order to make a phone call?”
“Got footprints.” Duke stopped in the shade of a large boulder. “Not all that new.”
“Could have been anyone.”
“Candy bar.” The sheriff fished a plastic bag out of his pocket. “Guess they didn’t see the sign about littering.”
“There is no sign about littering.”
“Still, you’d think folks would know better.” Duke picked up a foil wrapper and dropped it in the bag. “Course, this is nothing compared to the dumping.”
“That still going on?”
“Cooled off a bit after that pumper got shot up,” said Duke. “But we still get the occasional asshole who tries to use the canyon as a garbage can.”
“Deep House is tribal land,” said Thumps. “Part of the big land claim.”
“That ever get settled?”
“Not yet.”
Duke stuffed the bag in his pocket. “Hall said she got a gate notification on Friday evening.”
“She should have gotten two.”
“Driver comes in Friday evening.” Duke kicked at the ground with his boot. “The next gate notification comes on Sunday morning.”
“Maybe the first notification was a false alarm.”
“See, now you’re thinking like a cop.” Duke checked the sky. “Can you imagine a pelican in this part of the world? I saw a bunch when I was in Seattle. But here?”
“How about we go home, and you can watch pelicans on the nature channel.”
“You sound grumpy.”
“I’m not grumpy.”
“Be nice if we knew who the driver was and where he went.” Duke opened the door to the cruiser. “What do you figure?”
“Someone came out and picked him up,” said Thumps. “Only thing that makes any sense.”
“Man or woman?”
“Doesn’t matter. The gate would have had to be opened a second time. Whether the driver came out or someone came in, the gate would have had to be opened.”
“Maybe he disabled the alarm,” said Duke.
“Why would he do that?”
“How about we put the how and the why to one side for the moment and concentrate on the where?”
“Where?”
“Let’s assume someone picked him up Friday evening. And let’s assume that someone was a woman.”
“That’s a lot of assuming.”
Duke slid in behind the wheel. “Where might our missing driver take her for a good time?”
THE ONLY SPECIAL someone Thumps had in his life at the moment was Claire, and if he was going to take her somewhere, the Mustang wouldn’t have been at the top of the list.
Not that there was anything particularly wrong with the place. The Mustang had been a Texaco gas station until Delroy “Hack” Chubby bought the property at auction and turned it into a Western saloon and biker bar. He dragged in a double-wide, cut out one wall, and spliced the trailer up against the station’s service bays so the place had enough room for a couple of pool tables and a dance floor.
And in a moment of decorator madness, Hack hung the original Texaco sign from the ceiling and nailed the grille of a 1965 Mustang to the wall behind the bar.
The saloon was famous for fist fights and arm-wrestling contests, with the occasional range war between the men in pickups and the men on bikes.
Hack was killed while trying to pass a semi on the long grade north of Chinook. There was a huge and noisy wake that lasted the weekend, and when Monday rolled around, Hack’s daughter moved the Texaco sign and the Mustang grille and the pool tables into the parking lot and burned the place to the ground.
“YOU THINK THE DRIVER and his ‘special someone’ came to the Mustang?”
“No idea,” said the sheriff. “I just want to say hello to Lorraine and see the baby.”
Lorraine Chubby and Big Fish Patek. Thumps still couldn’t see the attraction. Lorraine was a sturdy, no-nonsense woman, and Big Fish was an amiable flake. Still, they had stayed together long enough to produce a son.
Hack. After his grandfather.
“I hear the kid is cute as a button.”
Hack was cute. But then most baby animals were cute. Except pigeons. Try as he might, Thumps couldn’t work up any parental feelings for the squabs.
“Hear Big Fish has settled down.” Duke pulled into the parking lot and stopped. “Hear he’s a regular entrepreneur.”
LORRAINE HAD HER MOTHER’S BRAINS, and before the ashes of the old Mustang had gone cold, she brought in a bulldozer, levelled the site, and started work on the new Mustang, a hightech, red prefab building with a herd of wild horses painted across the front, and a satellite-receiver array on the roof.
It was an all-purpose bar where you could drink with your buddies, watch sports, and stay connected with free internet.
Lorraine’s philosophy was that cowboys and bikers deserved the same consideration as bankers and hedge-fund managers. And she had only four rules.
If you wanted to fight, you did it outside, where Lorraine had thrown up a rope ring around a sandpit, complete with lights and benches for the spectators. Along with a remarkably well-stocked first-aid station.
Lorraine’s second rule was no puking in the bar. Anybody who couldn’t hold their liquor was expected to make it to one of the bathrooms or take their stomach contents to the parking lot.
You threw up in the Mustang and you were thrown out.
Lorraine’s third rule was sacred. There was to be no noise while she was singing. She didn’t have a particularly good voice, but she liked to sing, and when she sang, she expected everyone else to shut up and listen.
THE MUSTANG WAS almost empty. Since it was a weekday, Thumps took the low turnout as an encouraging sign that sobriety and good sense did keep business hours.
Big Fish Patek was behind the bar. With a baby carrier strapped to his chest.
“Hey, guys.” Big Fish bounced in place, patting his son on the bottom. “What’s up?”
Hockney touched his hat. “You know that it’s against the law to allow minors in a bar.”
“You met Hack?” Big Fish was all smiles. “Kid’s not even one, and he can already speak two languages.”
Thumps tried to keep “dubious” off his face. Hockney was not as considerate.
“Really.”
“English and French,” said Big Fish. “It sounds like gurgling, but he’s really bilingual.”
The sheriff stepped in, leaned to one side. “Thank god, he looks like Lorraine.”
“Sure,” said Big Fish, “but he’s got my eyes. They’re just closed right now, so you can’t tell.”
Hockney looked around the bar. “Lorraine here?”
“Sleeping,” said Big Fish. “Something wrong?”
“Looking for someone,” said Duke. “Probably a couple. Thought they might have dropped in here this last weekend.”
“We’ve only been open for about a month,” said Big Fish. “People are slow getting back to normal. Haven’t been many customers other than the regulars.”
“The guy wouldn’t be a regular.”
“You got a picture?”
“Nope.”
“That makes it harder,” said Big Fish. “But I can ask Lorraine when she wakes up.”
Hack was starting to squirm in the carrier.
“Feeding time,” said Big Fish. “Kid has one hell of an appetite.”
Suddenly, Hack’s arms were out of the snuggly and the bilingual gurgling turned into a surprisingly loud wail.
“Got great lungs too. Lorraine says he sounds like Willie Nelson.”
Big Fish wrinkled his nose. Duke and Thumps took one step back.
“Probably should change him while I’m at it.”
“Let me know if Lorraine remembers anyone new showing up,” said the sheriff.
“Next time you come by,” said Big Fish, “he’ll be singing.”
7
The sheriff’s office was as they had left it. The percolator was still bubbling away, smelting coffee beans into asphalt ingots. Hockney went straight to the pot and poured himself a cup.
“I should get going.”
“Where?” Duke let the coffee vapours rise up and wash over his face. “You don’t work.”
“Are adult diapers really that uncomfortable?”
“Amazing what you can get used to. You ever find your cat?”
Thumps took the camera out of his pocket.
“Keep it,” said Duke. “Maybe take it by Langfield’s in the morning. Lynn offered to print off a couple of shots, so I could see how good the little bugger is.”
“You want me to talk Lynn into giving you free crime-scene photos?”
“Not sure it’s a real crime scene,” said Duke. “And my budget is tight as hell.”
The bungalow was where Thumps had left it. But in his absence, someone had thrown a large bag of laundry onto his front porch. He was halfway up the walk when the bag came alive.
Pops.
Virgil “Dixie” Kane lived next door. Dixie was a tall, thin man with a quiet, soft-spoken nature. His dog, Pops, was a very large, farty Komondor who weighed as much as his master.
The dog was normally on his own porch. When Freeway was alive, she and the dog had been best friends, and seeing Pops without the cat made him a little sad.
“Hello, Pops.”
The dog came alive, wiggling the way an elephant might wiggle, if an elephant could wiggle.
“Where’s Dixie?”
Pops licked Thumps’s hands until they were gooey with dog saliva, and then he wiggled over to the door and waited.
“You want to come in?”
More wiggling. Pops’s tail began banging against the siding and shaking the house and rattling the windows.
“I don’t think so,” said Thumps. “You’re a little big for my place. You need to go home.”
Pops didn’t seem inclined to do that. He lay down in front of the door and waited.
“I have to go inside.”
Behind him, Thumps heard a door open.
“Pops!” Dixie was standing on his porch, a towel over his shoulders. “Get over here.”
“Afternoon, Dixie.”
“Afternoon, Mr. DreadfulWater,” said Dixie. “I was in the shower. Hope Pops wasn’t a bother.”
“No bother.”
“Don’t know what’s gotten into him,” said Dixie. “Last day or so, every time I turn around, he’s at your place. You got raccoons?”
“What?”
“Raccoons,” said Dixie. “Pops loves to chase raccoons. He never catches them, but he has aspirations.”
Thumps reached for the doorknob, and the dog got to his feet, stuck his nose in the jam.
“Pops,” Dixie shouted. “Bad dog. Leave Mr. DreadfulWater alone.”
“Thumps,” said Thumps.
“That’s right,” said Dixie. “After all, we’re neighbours.”
Pops didn’t move. Dixie held up a box and shook it. The dog looked at the box and then back at the door. Box, door, box, door. And then he loped off the porch and back to where Dixie was standing.
“Doggie Bon-Bons,” said Dixie. “Gets him every time.”
“Thanks.”
Dixie stood at the railing. “You ever find out what happened to your kitty?”
Thumps shook his head.
“You got to stay positive,” said Dixie. “Maybe she’ll come back. Like in the song.”
THUMPS GOT AS FAR AS the kitchen table before he realized that he was tired. Dead tired. He got out his testing kit and stuck his finger. Blood sugars were a little low, but nothing to worry about. He didn’t think that the lack of energy was age. In fact, he didn’t want to think about age at all.
He could stop by Beth Mooney’s office and report on the malaise, but then Beth would order up tests, and suddenly there would be strangers snooping about his body, taking pictures of his organs, sticking needles in his arm.
Along with other forms of medical torture.
Thumps was of the general opinion that health science and medical interventions were useful. He just wasn’t sure that, in the end, they did any good.
People got sick. People got healthy. People lived. People died.
So he was tired, and the best cure for exhaustion, at least the best cure that he had found, was a nap. Curl up in bed in a dark, quiet room with a pillow under your head and another stuffed against your side.
Heaven.
Thumps was halfway down the hall, closing in on his pillows, when he heard the door open and shut.
“Hey, Thumps. You home?”
Cooley Small Elk was standing in the kitchen, next to the refrigerator. Thumps wasn’t sure which was larger. He decided to call it a tie.
“You know you got a really big dog on your porch?”
“Next-door neighbour’s dog,” said Thumps. “He and Freeway were friends.”
“Always nice to have a big dog for a friend.”
Thumps tried to come up with a reason that would explain Cooley Small Elk’s stopping by out of the blue, and there was only one answer that came to mind.
“Moses okay?”
“That’s why I stopped by,” said Cooley. “He’s been feeling pookily. He was sick for a while, you know.”
Moses not feeling good was bad news. The old man had always seemed to be indestructible. But when the virus had come through Chinook, Moses got it, almost died.
“He still sick?”
“You busy tomorrow morning?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Around five?” Cooley opened the refrigerator and looked in. “Moses says that some people are still asleep at that hour, and that I should ask.”
Freeway used to get Thumps up early. The cat would climb onto the bed and sit on his chest. Close to his face. And purr. In the silence of the bedroom, Freeway had sounded like a jet plane preparing to take off.
“If Moses needs me, I can be up at five,” said Thumps, putting all the stress on the dependent clause.
“Great.” Cooley closed the refrigerator and ambled to the door. “You want me to let the dog in?”
THUMPS PADDED INTO the living room and sat down on the overstuffed chair and swung his feet onto the ottoman. Five in the morning? The only reason for him to be up at five was if he had to pee.
During the pandemic, when people were supposed to stay in their homes, Thumps had rediscovered the pleasure of sitting and reading. Archie had helped. The Aegean had been closed for much of the contagion, but the little Greek had dropped off care packages of books on Thumps’s porch.
The man could be a pain with his incessant interest in the lives of the people around him, but there was nothing wrong with his generosity.
Thumps settled into the chair and opened Love in the Time of Cholera. He was about a third of the way through the book. It was a bit slow, but interesting, and the love story of Florentino and Fermina reminded him a bit of his long-running relationship with Claire Merchant.
As he sat in his chair, he tried to imagine what it would be like if they were all living in the same house. Claire and Ivory. What it would be like to go to sleep and wake up each morning with the two of them in his life.
But his eyes began to droop and the image faded away. He yawned once, set the book on his chest, and went to sleep.
8
Thumps was still in the chair with the book on his chest when the phone rang. The phone did this from time to time, and most of the time, he ignored it. He’d had an answering machine for a while but quickly discovered that its main purpose was to create obligations. If someone called and left a message, there was the unspoken expectation that he would call back.
Then the phone company came along with a special package. Call display, call forwarding, three-way calling, answering service, all rolled into one low price that would have necessitated a second mortgage.
Thumps told the young woman that he didn’t want any of these services, that he just wanted a home phone that was a home phone, and the young woman transferred him to Retentions and Rewards, where another young woman offered him the same package along with a new cellphone on a two-year contract.
“How does that sound?” the young woman asked.
Of course, the call could have been from Claire, just back from her shopping trip to Great Falls. Maybe she was hoping he’d come out to her place for dinner. A chance to see her and Ivory, kick-start their on-again, off-again romance, an opportunity to practise his fatherhood skills, in case there was a need for them in the near future.
That was wishful thinking, of course. That Claire would call. For much of their time together, Thumps had done the lion’s share of the calling. More likely it was a scam of some sort. Duct cleaning. Driveway paving. A warning about an overdraft on his bank account. The IRS poised to repossess the house.
During the pandemic, a herd of hyenas had descended on frightened and vulnerable people with offers of surgical masks, overpriced hand sanitizer, toilet paper. One enterprising couple from Texas blew through town selling photocopied prints of healing hands that you could put under your pillow, and plastic packets of miracle water to protect you from the virus.
The worst of the bunch was the gang in white lab coats pretending to be from the World Health Organization. They arrived on doorsteps, talked their way into homes on the pretext of checking the premises for the virus, and then robbed the place.
The sheriff caught them on their way out of town.
“Husband and wife. Guy claimed he had lost his job and was desperate.” Hockney shared the details. “Thought they were going to get off with a fine.”
