The Final Country

by James Crumley

  Behind him I could see Molly stretched out on the couch. She looked unconscious, her sweatshirt bunched around her neck, her hair down and disheveled. I slammed the sockful of sand against the side of Jimmy’s head again. A little harder this time, and he rolled over on his side, moaning.

  This wasn’t working exactly the way I had planned it. When in doubt, try kidnapping, I must have thought, because I ran over to the couch, pulled Molly’s sweatshirt down over her breasts, grabbed her purse, and tossed her over my shoulder. Even unconscious, her body felt strong and lithe against me. I carried her out the front door, down the steps, and dumped her into the back seat of the Checker.

  “Duct tape!” I shouted at Red, and he tossed me a roll. I lashed her hands together, then to the hand grip above the door. It didn’t seem to take too long, but the little bastard had obviously gotten to his feet, dashed back into the house, and dug up another pistol. When I turned my head, Jimmy Fish was staggering down the steps, another shiny semi-automatic pistol in his hand, screaming, “I don’t even have a fucking wife!”

  Maybe the divorce had gone through already. Maybe I should have hit him harder. His first shot glanced off the roof of the Checker. Before I could stop him, Red was out of the cab running toward Jimmy Fish, the big pistol wobbling in his hand, shouting, “Shoot my ride, motherfucker!”

  The two of them engaged in a serious firefight about ten or fifteen yards apart. How they missed each other I’ll never know. Red blew a large chunk of plaster off the house with his first round. His second went through the open door and out the sliding glass door at the back of the house. The third hit something inside the house that exploded like a vacuum tube. At the same time Jimmy Fish gouged several rips in the fenders and doors of the Checker and punched a hole through the front window and out the back. They might have hurt each other, eventually, but I slammed the back door shut, leaned over the trunk as I unholstered the Glock, and put a round in the fat meat of Jimmy’s thigh. He went down like a broken puppet and screamed like a wounded rabbit.

  “Go!” I shouted at Red.

  He looked at me wildly, then turned to the little fat man in a heap at the bottom of the steps, and raised his pistol. “Don’t fucking kill him! Let’s just go!”

  He slid behind the steering wheel as I dove into the back seat.

  “Where?” he said as he rammed the Checker into gear.

  But I didn’t have an answer. I was too busy trying to stanch the blood pouring thickly down the side of the woman’s face, cursing myself. “Goddamn!” I felt as if I had been searching for this woman all my life, and now some fucking idiot had shot her in the head. “Goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch!”

  “What the hell’s your problem, man? The asshole didn’t put holes in your ride,” Red said as he bounced across the cattle guard and stopped so I could ignite the det cord. But when he turned to look at me, he saw the sheet of blood covering the side of the woman’s face. “Shit, man, what are we going to do?”

  I jumped out, dove under the cattle guard, wrapped the Glock in the extra lengths of det cord, pulled the ignition string, then jumped back in, shouting, “Drive like the wind, my friend.”

  We fled into the dark, heading into the desert away from the bright lights, the big city, and the disaster of the night. Perhaps in the desert, like an ancient hermit, I could find the answers.

  ELEVEN

  Once again in the presence of Molly I was exhausted and realized that perhaps I hadn’t planned too carefully. I had her but didn’t know what to do with her. She was the sort of woman who had been designed to drive men mad. She would have been a trial for a saint. I felt trapped and confused, unable to think. Even after I dug my flashlight out of the pack to check her wound. When I got a good look at it, I sighed so loudly that it sounded like a shot. Either a glass or metal fragment had sliced as cleanly as a razor blade across her high cheekbone, then punched a tiny hole in her ear next to the skull. Lots of blood but no real damage. The bleeding stopped under pressure, and the slice could be closed with butterfly bandages when we got to Red’s garage in North Las Vegas, which he had offered as a temporary lockup. When the bleeding stopped I jabbed an ampule of the “twilight sleep” into her hip, then climbed into the front seat, as if just a little distance from her would clear my mind.

  Maybe it did. We drifted all the way west and north to Pahrump, where we stopped behind a convenience store. We couldn’t drive back to Vegas in a car with bullet holes in it. While Red took a ballpeen hammer and made the holes in the front and rear window look as if they had been made with rocks, I went inside to get two large coffees, a six-pack of beer, a pile of cardboard sandwiches, a spray bottle of cleanser, and rolls of clear strapping tape and paper towels. I cleaned up the blood while he called his Mom, then we hid the bullet holes as best we could, and headed up to Highway 95.1 stayed awake long enough to drink two beers, a sip of coffee, and half an egg salad sandwich before I drifted off. I fell into a dark hole of dreamless sleep so deep I might as well have given myself the shot instead of Molly.

  We were both dead until Red pulled into his garage tucked under the Interstate in North Las Vegas. Mrs. McCravey was waiting with first-aid supplies, a clean pair of sweats, and a sheet spread across one of the workbenches. I placed Molly on the sheet. Mrs. McCravey scissored Molly out of her bloody sweats, and we began to clean the dried blood out of her hair and off her body. Mrs. McCravey, her palms as golden as old ivory, her fingers as supple as a professional card dealer’s, did most of the work. She even took the scissors from me and cut perfect little winged bandages.

  Afterward, even swaddled in a new pair of loose sweats and with butterfly bandages marching across her high cheekbones like tiny insects, Molly McBride or Molineaux or whatever the hell her name was still a strikingly attractive woman.

  “What are you going to do with her?” Mrs. McCravey said.

  “Take her back to Texas,” I said, without really thinking about it, “and lock her in a corn crib until she comes up with the answers to some questions.” Maybe nobody would think to look for her in the same place twice.

  “Sounds like a frightful chore.”

  “What makes a girl as beautiful as this sell herself?” I asked stupidly.

  “Who knows?” Mrs. McCravey said. “Drugs, sexual abuse, revenge, money — all I know is that most whores are stone lazy sluts at heart. They’d rather fuck than work.”

  “Revenge?”

  “They’re like junkies — if they aren’t junkies — all their failures are the fault of the world around them,” she said quietly, then she added, “and maybe this one is trying to shed the guilt of passing.”

  “Passing?” I said.

  “This lady doesn’t have just a good tan, Mr. Milodragovitch,” she said as she stroked Molly’s forehead with a damp cloth. “She’s as black as I am.

  Without a flicker of an eyelid to warn us that she was conscious, Molly suddenly grabbed Mrs. McCravey’s wrist, hissing, “You watch your mouth, you fuckin’ old nigger bitch.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Mrs. McCravey slapped Molly’s face. Then the fight was on. It was like two drunks trying to put a monkey into a sack: it simply has more appendages than they do.

  The struggle was silent, serious, and still in doubt when Red stepped in. He lay on her legs, and I leaned on her chest, but she bucked her hips so wildly that Mrs. McCravey didn’t have a chance to plunge the needle into her hip. Exasperated, Mrs. McCravey stood back, picked up a wrench, and said, “Honey, if you don’t hold still, I’m gonna knock out your front teeth with this Crescent wrench.”

  As Molly paused to consider this, Mrs. McCravey managed to pop her in her shapely buttock with the dose. Molly calmed down, a bit, but I could still feel her fighting the drugs. So we stayed on her until her buttocks relaxed. Weak as she was, the straitjacket was still a struggle. Once she was trussed, I got the badge out of my back pocket.

  “Okay, Miss whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is,” I said, still brea
thing hard, “I’ve got a warrant for your arrest as a material witness in a homicide case in Gatlin County, Texas, and you’re going back with me. Either in a straitjacket and a diaper, or like a civilized person.”

  “Why don’t you just shoot me now? Get it over with,” she said, her words softly slurred, her dusky eyelids fluttering closed. “Just put one right between my fuckin’ eyes,” she muttered as she drifted under again.

  Red and his mother sat down on rolling mechanics’ stools, sighing. Red popped the last beer, but his mother took it away from him before he got it to his lips. “A frightful chore,” she said after a long pull, then handed it back to him.

  “Shit, man,” Red said, “I can find you a dozen hookers prettier than this one. And they might fight back, if you pay ‘em enough. But they’ll fight fair.” He giggled weakly, handed the beer to me, then sat back down as worn as the seat of a cheap suit.

  I shackled Molly’s ankle to the vise at the end of the bench, then asked the McCraveys to watch her while I checked out of the hotel, retrieved my goods from the gun locker, and picked up some burgers and beers. On the way, I called Betty and caught her just before she crossed the Nevada line. Her hangover was too bad for her to argue about the change of plans. For a change.

  * * *

  Some hours later Betty honked at the garage door, then rolled the Caddy through after Red opened it. Then she climbed out looking a bit frazzled, deeply tired, more than slightly hungover, and madder than a flock of constipated hens. She saw Molly stretched out on the workbench, surrounded by fast food wrappers and empty beer cans, and then she really flew off the broom handle.

  “You were supposed to wait!” she shouted, ignoring my introductions to the McCraveys.

  “It just didn’t work out that way, honey,” I said.

  “Don’t ‘honey’ me, you son of a bitch!” she shouted. “You were supposed to wait!”

  Then I told her that I’d hoped that she’d help me carry Molly back to a quiet place where we might straighten out some of my questions, and she went off like a rocket. I finally had to drag her to the other side of the garage, so the McCraveys wouldn’t have to listen to her tirade.

  “If you think I’m riding anywhere with that bitch,” she hissed, “you’ve got another goddamned think coming, buddy.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Do what you said you would goddamned do,” she said. “Call the Gatlin County Sheriff’s Department, and let them take care of it. We’re out of it.”

  “She’ll end up as dead as her phony sister,” I said.

  “You’ve got me confused with somebody who gives a shit.”

  I didn’t know exactly what to do with this escalation of her attitude. But I sure as hell didn’t like it.

  “I guess I’d have to say that you’re right, honey” I said. And the words wafted between us like the stench of a decaying body. “Maybe if you took your sorry red-haired ass out to the airport, lady, it might clear up your mind.”

  Betty slapped me so hard my ears rang, then, with tears in her eyes, stormed around me, grabbed her shoulder bag out of the Caddy, then hurried off down the alley.

  “You want me to give her a ride, boss?” Red asked quietly behind me as I stepped out the door of the garage.

  “Please,” I said. “I’ll pick up the fare.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, then hurried after her in the Buick.

  I flopped on one of the stools, finally bone-tired. I wondered how she knew that Sylvie Lomax had told me my job was over when I found Molly and called the Gatlin County authorities. But I was just too tired to think about it.

  Mrs. McCravey handed me a beer. It was cold comfort but it was all I had. “How long have you two been together?”

  “Not long enough, obviously,” I said. “Or too long.”

  “You sleep with the hooker?”

  “Not as many times as she did,” I said. I sounded too bitter even to myself.

  “Oh,” Mrs. McCravey said gently. As if that explained everything.

  We slumped silently in dim corners of the garage like mourners for what seemed like a long time until Red came back.

  “She say anything?” I asked.

  “Not even thanks,” Red answered. “What now?”

  “I’ve got some ideas,” I said. “But not any good ones.”

  * * *

  After two days and nights under the sedative, when she woke up that first morning she was almost as fuzzy as I was after the long, cocaine-fueled drive from Vegas to Tom Ben’s place. The crib set in the front corner of the large unused dairy barn. The windowless walls were steel, as were the bars around the corn crib. The only exits were the locked sliding doors at either end. The faint odor of milk and cowshit drifted out of the large drain that ran down the center of the barn between the unused headstalls.

  Without speaking, she took the aspirin and water from my hand, then looked around the small metal corner room, her eyes moving slowly over the comforts of home: a port-a-potty, a milk-house heater, an upright cooler with hot and cold running water, a small chest of drawers with a mirror on top, a small refrigerator with a television on top, and the metal cot she lay on. She leaned down to stretch, touching her feet, finding the thick socks, the sweat pants, and the shackle on her left ankle. Then she touched the bandage on the right side of her face.

  “What the hell?” she said, then focused on my face. “You son of a bitch,” she said softly. “I should have known.” Then glancing around the room again, she spotted the pile of unshucked corn in the far corner. “Oh, shit,” she moaned. “Not again.”

  “A little more comfortable than your last visit,” I said. “What do you want me to call you?”

  “What?”

  “Your name,” I said. “You seem to have several.”

  “Call me ‘shit out of luck,’” she grouched.

  “Okay, shit.”

  “Just call me Molly,” she said. “Where’s your stuffy girlfriend? You guys looking for a menage a trois? You didn’t have to kidnap me. I’m a working girl. To tell the truth, though, I don’t think she really gets off on girls.” I let her ramble on until she either ran out of energy or lost track of the thought. She recovered quickly, though, a crooked smile blossomed on her face, and her eyes brightened as the drug flushed out of her system. “Where are my contacts?” she said. “And what the fuck do you want?”

  “Just a couple of answers,” I said as I pitched her purse to her. “Everything’s in there. Except your little gun.” I had put her derringer in my war bag. “We can get this over quickly. Just a couple of questions.”

  “You’re more likely to get me to fuck that old man again, or one of his goats, than get me to answer a question,” she said.

  “I can be an unpleasant guy,” I said. “Ask your Daddy. When he can talk again.”

  “Maybe you are an unpleasant guy,” she said. “But listen, you jerk, I slept with you. I know you. I’d bet my life that you don’t have it in you to really hurt me. As long as I don’t try to hurt you.”

  “That’s an interesting approach to reality,” I said.

  “What the hell happened to Jimmy Fish?” she said, touching the bandage again. “And my face?”

  “Jimmy decided to defend your honor, I guess.”

  “What?”

  “He came out of the house shooting. A fragment of one of his rounds poked a tiny hole in your ear and a little scratch across the top of your cheek.”

  “Stupid asshole,” she said, touching her face again. “Is my face going to be all right?”

  “The slice on your cheek is clean. The scar will give you character. Like the one at the corner of your mouth,” I said. “But I fear the hole he put in your ear is sort of permanent.”

  “I hope you put a round in his fat head.”

  “Actually, in his fat thigh.”

  “You should have killed him. He turned out to be a hitter in middle age,” she said. “He used to just want to spank me, bu
t lately he’s taken up hitting.”

  “Maybe I should have brought him along.”

  “Wouldn’t have done you any good, man. You might beat the shit out of me for a month of Sundays,” she said, “but the people who hired me would run me through a limb chipper. Alive. After half the Third World gangsters in South-Central had a piece of my ass.”

  “Don’t give me any ideas.”

  “What the hell are you so mad about, anyway?” she asked. “You got a prime piece of ass, and you must have broken up with what’s-her-name.”

  “They didn’t mention anything about blowing my head off ?”

  She paused a moment, reconsidered her position, then shook her head. “That was a surprise. I didn’t know about it until that doofus cop said something about it that morning.”

  “What did he say?”

  “First, you. Then me. Eventually.”

  “Lovely.”

  “They knew I wouldn’t go for something like that,” she said. “I was just supposed to break you two up. Seduce her, then come back and seduce you. That’s what he said.”

  “He?”

  “Just a voice on the phone.”

  “What the hell was the business with Betty’s revolver?” I asked. “Why did you swap her pistol?”

  “I don’t know anything about that, either,” she said, glancing away. “But the rest was just a straight deal. Fuck you, fuck her, watch the cop beat the shit out of you, then pick up my cash.”

  “From who?”

  “I told you, man, I don’t know. Just a voice on the phone. So forget it.”

  “Why did you dump your fanny pack that morning?”

  “Get rid of the piece and the cell phone,” she said.

  “Somebody called you just after you split,” I said. “You know who?”

  “No idea.”

  “We’ll see how you feel after a couple of weeks,” I said. “See if you can’t remember some names.”

  “Shit, this is like a vacation for me,” she said, then smiled, pointed at the television. “I’m not much for TV, except old movies, but I could be awfully sweet if I had a stack of crime novels. The good hard-nosed ones, you know. None of that namby-pamby shit.”