Spotted Cats

by William G. Tapply

  And today, I realized, I’d have to perform. I’d do it the same way I managed most of my courtroom performances, a combination of careful planning, meticulous research, and inspired improvisation.

  I’d make it up as I went along. I’d wing it.

  I ate a leisurely breakfast of steak-’n’-eggs on the patio outside the elegant dining-room of the Inn and glanced through the Billings Gazette. The box scores were two days old. At nine forty-five I had my Lincoln delivered to the front door. Ten-dollar tips were getting out of hand, but I seemed to have established a precedent.

  I headed north out of town on Route 287, crossed the Madison River, and two miles later found the gravel road McBride had described angling off to the left. It cut straight through a second-growth forest of lodgepole pine. Here and there rutted dirt roads branched off it, with signs indicating campsites and areas where firewood could be gathered.

  One sign warned of bears. It advised would-be campers to use hard-sided tents.

  A couple miles down the rippled roadway the forest ended. Spread out in front of me stretched a broad expanse of plains that rolled down for several miles towards Hebgen Lake, which had been created by damming the Madison River. Beyond the lake rose the peaks of the Madison Range in the Beaverhead National Forest. I stopped the car and got out to drink it in.

  I love the corrugated topography of my New England. Nowhere in the New England countryside, it seems, is there a flat place to stand. Oak and maple, beech and poplar, pine and birch—the trees everywhere grow thick and tall. Streams and brooks trickle through every rocky crease in the earth. The New England landscape hugs you to its bosom. It’s cosy, intimate, comforting. Except from the tops of our tallest mountains, and discounting Boston skyscrapers, which should be discounted, you find very few long views in my part of the country.

  Perhaps that’s why I find Montana so spectacular. Everything’s on a different, grander scale. No matter where you stand in Montana, you can see forever. The sky seems to extend more than 180 degrees overhead. The plains appear to roll away into infinite space, as far as the human eye can see, and then beyond them hills poke up, and beyond the hills rise peaked mountains, and so on, and there’s no end to the land or the sky.

  So I stood there beside my rented Lincoln for the amount of time it took me to puff a Winston down to the filter, and I reflected on the courage of the pioneers who challenged these awesome spaces in ox-drawn wagons, while I, in my computer-driven Town Car, worried about snapping an axle on the bumpy road.

  I stubbed out the cigarette in the car’s ashtray and pulled forward. I found the hand-painted sign a little farther on. ‘McBride’s Ranch,’ it said. The arrow pointed towards a narrower gravel roadway on the left.

  I followed this road as it snaked down a long gentle slope, and soon a cluster of buildings appeared in view. ‘Ranch’ seemed to me to overstate the case. There was a square two-storey farmhouse constructed of weathered planks, an outbuilding shaped like an airplane hangar, which I guessed served as a barn, and three smaller structures that could have been bunk-houses. Rail fencing meandered and intersected here and there beyond the buildings. Inside one of the crude fenced-off squares a half dozen horses stood with their heads hanging. A few clusters of steers grazed in the unfenced pastures farther out back.

  The roadway bent around the buildings and ended there. Two ancient pickup trucks, with rifle racks mounted inside the back of the cabs and weapons hung on the racks, were parked beside a new Jeep Wagoneer and an equally new Buick. I pulled alongside and got out.

  I clunked the car door shut, which signalled a dog to start barking from inside the barn. A moment later a golden retriever came bounding out to sniff my pants. Behind him came Timothy McBride. He carried a Stetson in his left hand.

  ‘Mr Coyne,’ he said, his broad smile of welcome revealing the wide gap between his front teeth. ‘Welcome. Never mind old Jed, here. Jed,’ he said to the dog, ‘you get your ass out of here.’

  Jed looked up at McBride, lowered his tail, and scuttled back towards the barn.

  McBride extended his hand to me. ‘Glad you could make it.’

  I took his hand and we briefly administered to each other the Western test of manliness. We both passed. ‘Happy to be here,’ I said. ‘Gorgeous spread.’

  ‘Isn’t it pretty,’ he said. He held both hands like an Old Testament prophet, indicating the horizon. ‘Five hundred acres, all the way down to the lake. I’ve got some big plans for this place, Mr Coyne.’

  ‘Call me Brady, why don’t you.’

  ‘Great, great. I’m Tim. Look, how about some coffee? Or would you maybe like something more bracing?’

  ‘Coffee would be fine.’

  I followed him up the wide front steps and across the porch into the house. We paused in the foyer while he yelled, ‘Jessie! We got company!’

  As I stood there I glanced through an archway into a large room that was dominated by a great fieldstone fireplace. On the mantel stood an angular wooden sculpture stained in dull earth tones. It appeared to be a primitive version of a horse. I walked past McBride into the room to examine it more closely.

  ‘Mayan, isn’t it?’ I said, guessing wildly.

  He came up behind me and nodded, frowning slightly. ‘By Jesus, not many people know that. This old thing isn’t worth much, but I kind of like it.’ He took in the rest of the room with a sweep of his hand. ‘All this stuff’s Mexican.’ Hung on the walls instead of paintings were woven rectangles that could have been serapes or blankets or small area rugs, dyed in drab oranges and blues. In one grouping hung a series of flat carved wooden masks that appeared to mimic primitive gods. Another sculpture stood on the glass-topped table in front of the sofa, this one of a naked woman fashioned from a dark metal that looked like crudely smelted iron.

  There were no golden jaguars in the room.

  ‘You’re a collector, then?’ I said.

  ‘Tim?’

  Her voice was hesitant and soft. She stood uncertainly in the archway, looking at McBride. She was short and busty in her sky-blue T-shirt and tight faded jeans. She had fat round cheeks and a small rodent-like mouth. Her dark hair had been pulled severely back from her face into a ponytail. She squinted slightly as she shifted her gaze from McBride to me.

  I guessed she was twenty-five years old. Timothy McBride’s third wife was at least twenty years younger than he.

  ‘Jess, honey, this is Mr Brady Coyne. He’s from back East, and he’s here to take a look at our place.’

  She examined her feet, which I noticed were bare, and nodded. Without looking up, she said, ‘Is he—?’

  ‘We’d like some coffee, now, Jess. Let’s treat our guest courteously.’

  She stepped forward and held out her hand to me. She couldn’t quite bring her eyes up to meet mine. They seemed to stop somewhere around my fly.

  ‘Mr Coyne, nice to meet you,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Call me Brady,’ I said.

  ‘I’m Jessica,’ she said. ‘Jessica McBride.’ She glanced at McBride, then said, ‘Well, come on out to the kitchen, then. Coffee’s all hot.’

  We followed her down a short passageway into a large kitchen. Its walls were decorated with copper-bottomed cookware and little framed squares of needlepoint that said things like ‘If you don’t like it, give it to the dog’ and ‘Quitcherbellyachin’.’ Half a dozen little ceramic pigs were lined up on the windowsill.

  The counters were crowded with gleaming appliances. There was a wall oven, a big restaurant-sized stove, an oversized refrigerator, a freezer chest, and, beneath the broad picture window where the pigs stood, a big double sink.

  In the centre of the room stood an oval maple table. McBride and I sat at it, while Jessica poured coffee from one of the machines on the counter.

  ‘Cream and sugar, Mr Coyne?’ she said.

  ‘Brady,’ I reminded her. ‘No, I take it black.’

  McBride took his black, too. After she delivered our coffee, Je
ssica stood there uncertainly for a minute until McBride nodded at her. Then she left the room.

  ‘Nice kid, that Jessie,’ said McBride when she was gone, and I liked him better for saying it.

  I nodded. ‘She’s very attractive.’ This was a lie, but it seemed appropriate.

  He grinned. ‘She can be hell on wheels, if you know what I mean.’

  I knew what he meant. I liked him less for saying that.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’ I said after a minute.

  ‘Hell, no.’

  I lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee. ‘I like your collection,’ I said, gesturing with a jerk of my head in the direction of the living-room.

  ‘Junk,’ he said, dismissing it with a quick flap of his hand. He leaned towards me. ‘Let me tell you about my plans.’

  I shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  He reached across the table and touched my wrist. ‘I’m going to build a sort of combination condominium resort and dude ranch,’ he said. ‘A fancy one. The biggest, most expensive, fanciest goddam dude ranch in the West. Horses, heated pools, tennis, golf. Private airstrip with our own jet. Boats for the lake. Water skiing, sailing, fishing. The works. Condos’ll have a hot tub and sauna in every unit. I’ve got it all designed and surveyed, and I’m starting to bring together some investors.’ He cocked his head at me.

  ‘Investors? You mean private investors?’

  ‘Yes. Sure.’

  ‘What about banks?’

  He narrowed his eyes for a moment. Then he said, ‘Look, Brady, I’m not about to bullshit you. I’ve looked into banks and other financial institutions. You won’t believe how goddam conservative they are. Since the summer of the fires, eighty-eight? And the droughts? Hell, business in the Park’s been off, touring in this part of the country’s off, fishing’s off, real estate market’s down, and the damn banks can’t see beyond their own stuck-up noses. They don’t get it. See, that’s exactly why this place is going to be pure gold. It’s an alternative. This kind of place’ll be the wave of the future. Not just out here, but all over the country. I’ve got big plans. West Yellowstone first. This’ll be the showplace. Then Scottsdale. Then maybe up north of Boise. Listen. Folks’re already lining up to buy themselves one of these condos, and we’re marketing some of them for time shares, which is lucrative as hell. We’ll get our investment money back as soon as we get it built. All the rest’ll be gravy. I hired a firm to do a little market research. This is the kind of place that’s going to be big in the next ten years. Real big. They gave me projections from their computers. The smart man who gets in on the ground floor of this’ll make himself a quick bundle. I’ve got brochures—’

  I laughed and held up my hand. ‘Whoa. Slow down, Tim. I just got into town.’

  He grinned. ‘Sorry, there. I get all excited about this thing.’ He shrugged. ‘Feel like riding?’

  ‘Riding?’

  ‘Ever been on a horse?’

  I smiled and patted my rump. ‘I still remember how it felt.’

  He stood up and twisted his Stetson on to his head. ‘Come on.’

  I followed him out of the house and into the barn, where a rawboned young guy, a cowpoke straight out of a Remington painting, stood hunched over a bench, working on a small engine. He had a slim black cigar wedged between his teeth. ‘Hey, Hank,’ said McBride.

  ‘Yep,’ said the cowpoke without looking up.

  ‘Saddle up Jill for my friend here, and old Zeke for me.’

  Hank put down his tools, turned and nodded once to McBride, and walked out of the barn without saying anything.

  ‘You’re a friend of Flask Dillman, then,’ said McBride as we strolled out to the front of the barn.

  ‘A very old friend.’

  ‘Back from his guiding days.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That boy’s had some problems, I hear.’

  ‘I guess he has.’

  McBride shrugged.

  A few minutes later Hank appeared leading two horses by the reins. McBride hoisted himself on to the chestnut, and Hank handed me the reins of the other, the mare named Jill. She was grey and placid. Her great eyes rolled back at me as I stood by her side.

  ‘Know how to mount her?’ said Hank.

  I nodded. ‘I know how. I’m not sure I can do it.’

  The stirrup was about waist-high, but I managed, by hanging on to the saddle horn, to get my left foot into it and swing up on to the horse.

  ‘Don’t shove your foot all the way in,’ said Hank. He kept his teeth clenched on his cigar when he talked. He touched my foot. ‘Just put the ball of your foot here.’

  ‘I remember,’ I said.

  ‘She’ll obey the reins,’ he said. ‘Just lay ’em over her neck the way you want to go. You find yourself goin’ too slow, give her a kick with your heels and talk nice to her.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Ready?’ said McBride.

  ‘I think so.’

  His horse began to move. ‘Giddyup,’ I said to Jill, and, to my amazement, she moved alongside. Soon I got the rhythm of it. I enjoyed being so high up, and once I remembered to trust the horse to find her own footing, I began to enjoy the landscape.

  We angled away from the buildings and followed a length of rail fence. Half a mile or so from the ranch we stopped our horses. ‘We’ll break ground here first,’ said McBride, gesturing to the edge of a planting of evergreens. ‘Twenty units. Get ’em built fast, so our buyers can see what they’ll be getting. It’ll be the showplace. A one-bedroom’ll go for one-thirty-five, a two-bedroom for one-sixty. What could you get for those prices back East?’

  ‘Not a helluva lot.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I figure folks from Connecticut and New Jersey’ll think they got themselves a real bargain at these prices. Condo fees’ll be high, but look at what you’re getting. Down there,’ he added, gesturing to a broad flat area, ‘that’s where we’ll put in the airstrip. We can build a runway long enough to handle a Learjet. Also a helicopter pad alongside.’

  Our horses ambled along. McBride chattered about his plans. I had to admit that it sounded good. He was an enthusiastic salesman, and his enthusiasm was contagious. It even occurred to me, however briefly, to invest some money with him.

  Under that great blue sky, surrounded by limitless miles of open spaces up on a gentle horse, I had to remind myself why I was there. Was it McBride who had made four collect calls from the Totem Café to Jeff in Orleans? Did McBride set up the theft? Did McBride and Jeff know each other? Where did Martin Lodi fit into the picture? What about Lily?

  McBride did collect Mexican artifacts, although I doubted that anything I had seen in his living-room qualified as a valuable piece of art. But of course he wouldn’t display stolen pre-Columbian pieces in his living-room.

  In spite of his enthusiasm for his ambitious project, McBride struck me as a desperate man. Why else would he invite me, whom he knew, or thought he knew, only as a wealthy and ostentatious Easterner, out for a prolonged sales pitch?

  He was undercapitalized and overextended, I felt certain. Spending half a million dollars on stolen Mayan jaguars—a real bargain, according to Victor Masters, but still a lot of money—could undercapitalize a man pretty fast.

  It occurred to me that such a man would be eager to turn a quick profit by reselling the pieces. That, in all probability, was why he had purchased them in the first place.

  Having reasoned that far, I was left with the question: Did Tim McBride in fact have Jeff’s jaguars? I had to find out, and I figured that Flask’s approach was as good as any.

  I would, at the right moment, ask him.

  We rode down to the edge of the lake. ‘Let’s sit a spell,’ he said.

  We dismounted and hooked the reins around the saddle horns. My legs were cramped and sore. I strolled along the water’s edge to stretch them out. McBride walked beside me.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  ‘Impressive.’

  I sat
on a boulder and lit a cigarette. McBride scootched down next to me. He took off his Stetson and ran his fingers through his hair. He cocked his head and looked up at me.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I know it’s impressive. I’m looking for investors, Brady.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d have to look into it.’

  ‘Sure. Naturally. I can give you the names of some folks who’ve already bought some shares. Bank references if you want. This is an up-and-up deal here. Question is, are you interested?’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing I usually get involved in, truthfully.’

  ‘All the more reason. Diversification, right?’

  I shrugged. The surface of the lake was mirror-smooth. Here and there I saw the boil of a big trout eating insects off its surface. It reminded me of what I was missing and made me impatient for it.

  I turned to face McBride. ‘Mainly,’ I said, ‘I buy and sell art.’

  His face revealed nothing. ‘Is that right?’

  I nodded. ‘You like Mayan stuff?’

  ‘Sure. You saw what I have.’

  ‘You said it yourself,’ I said, watching him. ‘Junk. Tourist art. No market for that sort of thing.’

  He was staring out over the lake. ‘I like it. That’s all.’

  ‘I would’ve figured you’d go in for more substantial things. Things with real value.’

  He swivelled his head around to look at me. ‘Funny goddam thing,’ he said. ‘Couple boys at the Totem last night were saying the same thing to me. How do you figure that?’

  I remembered the two men at the bar, the Indians. ‘I don’t know how to figure it,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t know those two, huh?’

  ‘I never saw them before.’

  ‘They were asking about Mayan art. One of them, called himself Carlos, he said he collected old Mayan things. Now why in hell would he be telling me that, and then next thing I know this dude comes into the John to take a leak, and by Jesus if he’s not saying the same thing to me. Makes a man wonder.’