The Long Night of Winchell Dear

by Robert James Waller

  FIFTEEN MILES EAST of Corvalla, Texas, the Lincoln’s headlights pulled in a windmill on the left side of the road.

  “I’ve gotta clean up, Marty, and we need to dump the cop’s body somewhere. Maybe this place’ll work for both.” The driver swung into a short drive and stopped with the Connie’s front bumper against a padlocked ranch gate.

  NORTH PINTO CREEK RANCH

  GATE 6, MAIN LOADING PENS

  ABSOLUTELY NO HUNTING

  TRESPASSING OR LOITERING

  “I don’t like signs like that,” Marty said, peering through the windshield. “Who the fuck are they to tell me what to do?”

  He leaned out the window and shouted to the driver, “Hey, don’t snag your pants crossing the fence. You don’t expect me to climb over that wire in this suit, do you?”

  “I expect you to do just that, Marty. Somewhere along the line you need to forget about your suit and the moon and think about what it is we’re supposed to be doing. Am I right?”

  Marty got out of the Lincoln and shook himself, letting the cloth of his jacket drape better over his shoulders. He hitched up his trousers and repositioned the Smith & Wesson .32, checking to make sure his cuffs touched his shoe tops with no break in the crease.

  “Well, I ain’t climbing over that fence. What if someone comes along? If I’m out here on this side, I could say you were over there taking a piss. Wouldn’t be good if both of us were in that farmer’s field, would it?”

  The driver had taken off his shirt and tie and was washing himself in a metal tank near the windmill. He splashed water on his face and neck and rubbed it under his arms, trying not to get any on his sleeveless undershirt. A decent roll of fat rubbered over his belt, but underneath the fat was a lot of old-time serious muscle. He could pin Marty up on one of the windmill’s cross braces with his left hand and shave with the other while he was doing it, all the while whistling a happy tune as he scraped whiskers. He was tired of Marty’s puling about bad backs and good suits, but he kept working on putting that aside and concentrating on the job at hand.

  “You know, Marty, I’m thinking this tank’s about three feet deep and eight feet across. We can dump the cop in here, weight him down, and nobody’ll find him for days. Can you drag him to the fence and help me get him over it?”

  Marty was making water near the rear wheel of the Lincoln. “Not unless I take off my jacket and pants first. Should’ve stopped by that store down the street from me and picked up one of them safari outfits before coming on this trip. Shopping in there is like going on an Africa hunting trip to the deepest heart of that country. Ever been to one of those stores?”

  “Marty, shuck whatever you got to shuck and give me a goddamn hand. This whole trip is taking on the feel of an African safari.”

  Marty removed his trousers and jacket, folding them over the car door. He was left wearing his knee-high black socks and shoes, striped boxer shorts, shirt, and tie. He tucked his tie into his eighty-dollar white shirt and the shirt into the waistband of his shorts.

  “He’s too goddamn heavy. I can’t get him out. You remember my bad back, don’t you? Hey, what’s that I heard out there?”

  “I don’t know. Coyote, maybe. Never heard one myself, so I’m not sure.” The driver shook his head and climbed back over the fence.

  The two of them, mostly the driver, got the policeman up and over the gate, dumping him on the ranch road with a thump and jingling of keys on his belt ring. Marty was carrying his Smith & Wesson in his right hand, which made that side of him useless. He struggled over the gate and dropped down to the other side.

  “Jeez, we forgot about his gun. How could we do that? Look, it’s a forty-four Ruger Blackhawk. Stuff it with magnums and you got a Dirty Harry boom-boom; go right through an engine block with magnums in it.”

  “Okay, leave the cop’s gun alone—we don’t need it—and find some rocks to weight him down in the water.”

  They hunted through the grass, finding a rock here and there, big ones, small ones.

  “Think there’s snakes out here? Man, I’m really afraid of snakes. Scare the shit out of me. Makes me almost puke to even think of them.” Marty was talking while he located and carried small rocks. “Hate the sons of bitches more’n I hate small-town cops with a funny way of talking. They got pythons out in this country, don’t they?”

  “I don’t think so, Marty,” the driver grunted, picking up a forty-pound rock. “Those’re down in the jungles. South America or someplace.”

  “Well, there better not be or they’re done ducks. I hate snakes. Ever think what it would be like to die with one of them motherfuckers wrapped around you, staring you in the face and getting ready to swallow your head? I used to have dreams about dying like that. This ought to be enough rocks to hold that cop down in the water, hadn’t it?”

  They lifted up the policeman’s body and rested it on the side of the tank. The policeman jerked, then let out a low, agonized moan.

  “Jesus Christ, he isn’t dead, Marty!”

  “Oh yes, he is.” Marty grabbed a handful of the policeman’s hair, pulled the head back, and put a silenced round—pop—into where the neck joined the body. He let the policeman’s head flop forward, hair barely touching the water. “Now he’s dead, ain’t he? You bet your ass he’s dead. No more of this ‘y’all’ shit. That’s for sure, ain’t it?”

  The driver took a long breath, looked up at the moon Marty so admired, and flipped the cop into the water.

  Marty looked over the side of the tank. “Can’t see him. Can you?”

  The driver began lifting rocks and placing them on the policeman’s chest. After that, more rocks on the legs and head.

  “Gonna scare the shit out of the first cow looks down in there, don’t you think?” Marty stood in boxer shorts, skinny legs coming out from below them, and stared into black water.

  “Throw his gun in there, Marty.”

  Far up the highway, lights appeared.

  “Over the fence and into the car,” the driver said. “Hurry.”

  While the lights were still a mile off, Marty had pulled on his pants. The driver was knotting his tie. An eighteen-wheeler came closer and then roared by on Route 90, lights washing over the driver.

  Marty was already inside the car, saying, “That trucker probably thinks we’re a couple of queers out here doing it.”

  The driver slid in and asked, “How far we got to go yet?” He turned on the overhead light and glanced at his watch. “Christ, it’s after two already. We gotta get moving.”

  While they backed onto the highway and headed east again, Marty looked at the map. “We’re all right. Another forty-five miles or so to Clear Signal, fifteen more after that. Those lights way up ahead must be Marfa. What kind of name is that for a town, anyway?…God, look at my shoes. Got ’em shined one hour before we left L.A., and now look at ’em.”

  He held his shoes up to the interior light. “Cost three hundred dollars. Ever seen such a mess?”

  “Turn off the light, Marty; hard to see with it on.”

  “When we going to get out the Berettas? Feel better with heavier firepower in my hands, won’t you?”

  “When we get where we’re going.”

  Marty was bent over, tying his shoes. “How long’ll that be, you think?”

  “You just said it was forty-five miles.”

  “That’s right, I did. Not too long, right?”

  “Right, Marty. Not too long.”

  “Then we go bang-bang and get back to civilization. Right?”

  “Right, Marty. Back to good ol’ L.A. and civilization, where you can’t see the moon all that good, if you can see it at all.”

  “Winchell, you’re like a goddamn creosote bush: Wherever it drips, nothing lives.” Blue Griffith was pulling on his suit jacket in an Abilene hotel room.

  That was Memorial Day 1967, some twenty years and a little extra before Winchell Dear would come into ownership of the Two Pair. He waved at the clouds of ciga
rette and cigar smoke drifting around him, trying to find a cubic foot of clear breathing space and failing. The air in the room was nearly as blue as Blue Griffith’s name and state of mind.

  Winchell tugged on a suspender and looked up. “How bad you hurt, Blue?”

  The man shook his head and walked out the door. Winchell caught up with him near the elevator. They stood on worn paisley carpet, red at one time but blunted now to a soiled gray pink, mapped over with the stains and failings of those who had passed along it and added their signatures before moving on to other towns and greater sins.

  Above Blue Griffith’s right shoulder, the Texas sun was an hour up and slanting through a fire escape window thirty feet down the hall. Dust motes floated in the sunlight, and a man and a woman were arguing in a room across from the elevator.

  Winchell glanced at the door, expecting someone to come tumbling out in the disarray of night sleep and carrying a suitcase, but the argument settled down, and he could hear intense low voices talking about who was going to pay the hotel bill.

  Turning from the door, he asked again, “How bad you hurt, Blue? Did you get broke?”

  Blue Griffith nodded and pushed the “down” button on the elevator. “After that last hand, not even bus fare.” He needed a bath, a shave, and money. He needed Albuquerque and his wife.

  Winchell Dear followed the custom of the best professionals and pulled out a money clip from his left trouser pocket. No mercy during the game, some afterward in the form of road money. “Will two hundred get you by and get you home?”

  “That’d be real kind of you, Winchell. You know I’m good for it.”

  “I know that, Blue. Wouldn’t be offering if I felt different.” Winchell peeled two one-hundred-dollar bills from his clip and pointed his thumb toward the hotel room from which they’d come. “Roscoe McMain did the same for me in Fort Worth one time when things were going awful bad and my head got wrong. Get in these long downward slides sometimes, nothing on the deal, even worse on the draw, and you get on the tilt, start to push and chase, staying in when you know it’s folding time. It happens to everybody, no matter how strong and mean you’re trying to play. Mala suerte, as they say.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Bad luck.”

  He handed the money to Blue Griffith just as the elevator arrived. “Take care, Blue. Maybe we’ll catch up with each other somewhere. Ever make it to Ruidoso for the Labor Day races? Lots of big money and low talent there. More action off the track than on it. Give you a chance to recoup.”

  “I don’t know, Winchell.” Blue leaned against the elevator door, holding it open. “I understand the technical aspects of the game all right, but I’m not sure I have the temperament for it, the heart. Some dogs don’t hunt, do they? Maybe I’m one of them. Any advice?”

  “Who knows?” Winchell replied, hands in his pockets and shuffling a boot toe over the carpet, looking down at it. “Guess a man’s got to figure that out himself; nobody can tell somebody else about those kinds of things. My only advice is a rule I follow: If your bankroll’s down, stay away from the kind of no-limit action we had last night. It’s too easy to get run over. I think that might have happened to you.”

  “One thing I’d like to know, Winchell. Were you holding the full house I think you had on the last hand or were you bluffing?”

  “I had it, Blue, filled it with my one-card draw,” Winchell Dear lied, not wanting to make him feel any worse. “Had you all the way, figured you were sitting on three of a kind, at best. You did the right thing in not raising my bet. I’d have called and reraised you, right through the ceiling.”

  Blue Griffith stepped into the elevator, straightened his shoulders, and smoothed the broad lapels of his worn brown suit. “I didn’t have anything left to raise with, anyway. You’re a hell of a poker player, Winchell, and tough to hold a grudge against. Far as I can tell, you play it about as straight and hard as they come. I respect that.”

  The elevator doors closed slowly until only a thin middle slice of Blue Griffith was visible and then nothing at all. That was the last time Winchell Dear ever saw him. Word got around that Blue had given up poker and gone into real estate brokering. A year later, in Amarillo, Roscoe McMain would hand two hundred in twenties to Winchell.

  “Blue Griffith gave me this. Ran into him in Albuquerque. He was looking pretty good and said he owed you. Said to give you the money when we crossed paths and to say hello and tell you he hoped you were doing okay.”

  After Blue Griffith rode the elevator down to the streets of Abilene, Winchell went back to the room where he’d spent the last eight hours. Roscoe McMain, whose waistline was about two-thirds of his height and nine-tenths of his age, resting as he did somewhere in his early fifties, emptied ashtrays. Johnny d’Angelo was sipping from a glass of whiskey and listening to the radio news.

  Luther Gibbons came out of the bathroom. “What do you think, Winchell? We finished or what? Only four of us left, and we’re all hard rocks.”

  “I figure so, Luther. Cash me in. Believe I’ll take ship and get on over to Big Spring. Rancher north of town has a Tuesday night game starting about six. Just got time to grab some sleep, clean up, and shake myself loose to play cards again.”

  “Hey, Winchell…” Johnny d’Angelo was grinning at him. “I’m guessing you picked up about fourteen or fifteen thousand overnight, most of it from those car dealers we scared out of here two hours ago. Want to put some of it down on the Indy 500? I’ll give you three to one on A. J. Foyt and his Sheraton-Thompson Special. Only four hours till race time.”

  “No, believe I’ll let it go, Johnny. Thanks anyway.”

  Luther smiled at Winchell Dear. “You never bet on sports or anything other than poker, do you, Winchell? I’ve noticed that.”

  Winchell Dear smiled. “No, I don’t, Luther. Just following one of the many rules my daddy laid out for me years ago.”

  “What’d your father do?”

  “Border patrolman. But he liked to play cards.” The little Colt Banker’s Special had shifted in Winchell’s boot. Surreptitiously, he reached under the table and pretended to be straightening his pant cuff, adjusting the ride of the gun.

  “He still around?”

  Winchell Dear shook his head while he organized his money into various suit pockets. “No, I’m sorry to say. Took a knife in the chest from a candelilla wax smuggler coming across the Rio Grande in 1940. Got his revolver out, but it jammed for the first and only time in its existence. A Texas Ranger blew away the smuggler five seconds later.”

  “Your mother, she still alive?”

  “Yes. She’s living on her family’s ranch near Odessa. Moved there after my dad was killed and ended up marrying the top hand. They seem to have done pretty well together. I sometimes stop in and say howdy when I’m going by. Well, I’m ready to heat the axles. Anybody need a ride over to Big Spring?”

  “Not me,” Luther said. “I’m headed for Dallas; going to play some golf and rest for a week or two, see if my wife still loves me.”

  Roscoe grinned. “I think I’ll walk on over to Mother Rabbit’s and visit the girls for a while, see if anybody there still loves me.”

  “I’ve heard about that place,” said Luther. “What’s it like?”

  “It’s your basic four-get: get up, get on, get off, get out. Not much in the way of tenderness and concern for your overall well-being, of which I have a lot.” Roscoe patted his stomach. “On the other hand, running around playing poker all over Texas doesn’t allow a whole big amount of time for creating permanent relationships, so Mother Rabbit’s is next best to simple.”

  Winchell Dear shrugged into his jacket. “See you sometime, then.”

  “Winchell…” Roscoe McMain was talking, hint of a frown on his face. “Be careful out there. Been a big police crackdown on poker games in some locales, and the hijackings are picking up. Two kids with shotguns knocked over that long-running game in the rear of Jimmy LeMaster’s pool hall in
Lubbock last month. We’re all getting a little nervous.”

  “Thanks. I heard about the Lubbock job. One of the players apparently had been talking loud and flashing a big wad of money in the café across the street about an hour before the hijack. Stupid.”

  Winchell Dear went to his 1964 Cadillac in the hotel parking lot and sat for ten minutes, making notes on the game just completed. He already knew the styles and tendencies of Roscoe and Luther, and each warranted a page devoted to him in Winchell’s notebook. Johnny d’Angelo was from the West Coast and new to the southern circuit, so Winchell made additional notes on him in a section of the notebook reserved for the professionals.

  In spite of his sophisticated play, Johnny d’Angelo had a tell. Holding a good hand, he would look slightly away from the action, appearing disinterested. It was a common ruse and often exaggerated by poor or medium-grade players. Used infrequently, and with just the right amount of acting by a professional, the ploy could fool others into thinking the player was holding a weak hand. Winchell Dear wrote “Johnny d’Angelo” at the top of a page and made his notes:

  5/30/67 5' 10", 170 lbs. Dark hair combed back, dark complexion, good suits. Adequate stake, evidently. Tough player in stud. Weaker at Texas hold ’em = overestimates his hand in terms of the flop while underestimating what other players might do with the flop. Tell on a good hand: eyes slightly to the right, disinterested, carries it off well = weak means strong. Likes sports betting. Slightly loose, overall.

  Winchell Dear flipped farther on in the notebook and jotted down the descriptions of the three car dealers from Denver. They’d lost big, seven or eight thousand each. Chances were he’d never see them again, but then you never knew. Guys like that showed up, got whacked, and came back for more. He finished off with some general notes on them: