The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  The next several days were a total blank in the history of Harry Wolfe. He had the vaguest of memories of having showered and dressed and gone downstairs to the Capital Bar and spent some time there staring at the TV, and of a barmaid who was nice to him for a while but then became rude and summoned some goons to return him to his room. Or maybe that whole scene was just one of the several weird dreams he had, off and on, in the course of those several days. His first clear awareness of anything, eventually, was of the red light on his bedside phone. It kept flashing. Somebody was trying to give him a message. He picked up the phone and identified himself and was told that a Garth Rucker had been trying to reach him. He punched in Garth’s number.

  “For fuck sake, Harry,” Garth said. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying for days to get you.”

  “I’ve been indisposed,” Harry said.

  “Drunk, you mean?” Garth said. “Did Bradfield turn you down or something? Or, more likely, you know something about all of this and you’re keeping it to yourself by hiding away with a bottle.”

  “That sounds sort of like it,” Harry admitted.

  “Did you see this morning’s paper?”

  “What day is this?” Harry asked. When Garth told him the day of the week and the date of the month, Harry had to admit that he hadn’t seen a newspaper in recent memory.

  “Or watched TV, even?” Garth wanted to know.

  “I was watching some TV down in the bar the other night,” Harry allowed.

  “Well, you’re in the dark. Sorry I woke you up. But I am the present holder of your previous job, and my services have been requested in the search for Lydia. Especially because, as today’s paper said, Vernon Ingledew is offering for her safe return a reward of one hundred thousand dollars.”

  Harry whistled, and then could say only “Wow.”

  “Go out and get yourself a newspaper,” Garth said. “No, you can just read mine. I’ll be there in half an hour, and if you need a ride anywhere, be ready to go.”

  Harry asked room service for a pot of coffee, and then he retrieved the day’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from outside his door, scanned the headlines and found the story not on the front page but inside. Vernon Ingledew was indeed offering $100,000 for information leading to the safe return of Lydia Caple, whose abduction he decried as “an act which, if it is political, casts all politics in an ugly light.”

  While Harry was in the shower, the phone rang, and he stepped out dripping to get it, in case it might be Garth again. But it was his new boss, Governor Bradfield, and he was not in a good mood. He said he’d been trying for three days to reach Harry. “I know you’re a mystery man and you hide yourself and lurk in the dark and all that crap, but you sure are hard to reach.”

  “Sorry,” Harry said. “That’s just the way I am. What’s up?”

  “Have you fully convinced yourself that I am not in any way responsible for Lydia Caple’s kidnapping?”

  “I’d already done that last time I talked to you,” Harry said.

  “I am strongly tempted to match Vernon’s offer, and make it two hundred thousand dollars. But our campaign coffers are running low.”

  “That’s white of you,” Harry said. “Even the thought.”

  “But as you know, we’re not going to do anything more in the way of campaigning, negative or otherwise, until Lydia is found, which could happen any moment now that the reward is in place. So I thought I’d keep you busy with a little assignment, if you have nothing better to do, and I assume you have nothing better to do, right?”

  “I always have something better to do,” Harry said.

  “Maybe not better than this. You know you mentioned some Native American woman that Ingledew was involved with, smoking dope and whatever. That intrigues me. Where’d she come from?”

  “Oklahoma,” Harry said.

  “But Ingledew is keeping her in Stay More?”

  “Maybe keeping isn’t the word. She’s richer than he is, I’d guess,” Harry said. “So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want you to check her out,” Bradfield said. “I want you to find out everything about her. I want to know her whole history, everything she’s ever done, all the men she’s been involved with, everything. I want a complete dossier on the girl.”

  “That’s a tall order,” Harry muttered.

  “I’m paying you fourteen thousand dollars a month,” Bradfield reminded him. “Plus expenses. Get your ass in gear, and if you have to, go over to Oklahoma and talk to everybody who ever knew this girl. Prove to me that you’re as good as they say you are.” Without waiting for Harry to say “Yes, sir” or “Righto” or anything, the Governor disconnected.

  Harry told Garth Rucker about his new assignment. “Want to drive me to Pawhuska, Oklahoma?” Harry asked.

  “I’m not beholden to you that much,” Garth protested.

  “Okay, forget it,” Harry said. “We could just start in Stay More. Maybe the Indian would tell us most of what we need to know.”

  “‘We’?” Garth said. “I’m not your assistant any more.”

  “But don’t you want to sniff around and see if you can’t win a hundred thou?”

  They drove to Stay More. Or as close to it as they could get. There was a roadblock a mile from the village set up by state troopers, who wanted to know their business. Harry told the troopers that he and Garth both worked for Vernon Ingledew and were friends of Lydia Caple. The trooper radioed somebody else and gave Garth permission to drive on, but warned him that they might have trouble getting past the FBI roadblock farther down the road. And sure enough, the FBI agents wouldn’t let them proceed. The agent in charge explained that so many people, eager to get the reward, were trying to enter Stay More that the troopers turned those back and the FBI were interested in anybody who got past the troopers as possible suspects.

  “Can I make a phone call?” Harry asked the agent and he borrowed Garth’s cell phone and called the number of Larry and Sharon in the village, his usual host and hostess during his visits to Stay More. Monica answered.

  “Harry,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Right outside of Stay More, at the FBI roadblock. Garth’s driving.”

  “You might not get any closer,” she said. “It’s a madhouse around here, with all the cops and FBI. I don’t think Stay More has ever had as many people in it, and everybody seems to think that this is the command center or information office. Sharon and Larry have gone to Harrison to stay in a motel until it’s all over. So has Ekaterina.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Harry said. “I was hoping to have my room for a night or two.”

  “Well, I’m sure Larry and Sharon wouldn’t mind if I let you in. But what are you doing here? I thought you had defected to the Bradfield camp.”

  “To all intents and purposes,” Harry said. “But Garth and I are still pals, and he’s driving me. Can you tell me how to reach Bo?”

  “He and Arch and Cast are up at Vernon’s,” she said.

  “Do you know if Bo is packing his Nokia? I need a number to reach him.”

  “It’s a very private number,” Monica declared. “I don’t know if he’d want me to give it to you.”

  “Monica, honey, if you must know, I’m just pretending to be working for Bradfield. I’m as loyal as you are.” There, Harry said to himself: I’ve said it.

  The FBI agent asked them to step out of their car, and took them to a large van, like a house trailer, where they were fingerprinted then separated from each other and interrogated at length. Garth was finally permitted to leave and left word for Harry that he’d contact him later, but meanwhile they were keeping Harry, because, he learned, his name was on the “short list” of suspects. They asked Harry all kinds of questions, and they wanted his driver’s license for identification, but he had to explain he’d had to surrender it in dc after a DWI conviction. The only identification he had was his old Social Security Card, and they wanted him to duplicate the signature o
n it, but he’d got the card when he was only fourteen and his signature had changed considerably since then. He tried his best to sign his name as it had once been signed, and fortunately among the several FBI agents was a signature expert who could determine that his present signature still bore certain characteristics similar to his fourteen-year-old signature.

  They grilled him for the better part of an hour, wanting to know when he’d last seen Lydia and what was the nature of their “working” relationship as well as their “personal” relationship. Wasn’t it true that they were rivals within the Ingledew organization? Wasn’t it true that because Lydia was nominally Harry’s boss—since oppo men answer to press secretaries—that he resented her?

  Finally they said to him, “You can make one phone call,” and he wanted to know if he needed a lawyer. “You haven’t been arrested,” they told him. “Yet.” So he called the special Nokia number of Bo’s that Monica had given him.

  “Busy?” he asked Bo.

  No, Bo told him, they were just loafing around and waiting for suppertime, and Harry was welcome to join them for supper. “If you can get away,” Bo said. “Garth arrived a little while ago and told me they’ve got you in custody.”

  “Bo,” Harry said, “could you talk to them? Can you tell them that I would have no reason on God’s earth to have kidnapped Lydia?”

  “Why would they believe me?” Bo said. “They’ve got my name on their list of suspects too. I take it, by the way, that your Little Rock operation was a failure. Are you completely convinced that Bradfield had nothing to do with Lydia’s disappearance?”

  “Yeah, he’s innocent,” Harry declared, believing it.

  “But you went ahead and made the switch…or pretended to.”

  “I did a good job of pretending,” Harry said, and hoped the Nokia cell line was secure.

  “So if you’re now part of the opposition, what are you doing in Stay More? Spying on us already?”

  Harry told him about his assignment from Bradfield: to compile a dossier on Juliana. He supposed he’d have to go to Oklahoma to do most of it, but he might as well start here.

  “If you wanted to interview Juliana,” Bo said, “you might have to go to Oklahoma anyway, because she and Ben have gone back to her house there. But I could tell you all you need to know about Juliana.”

  “Her whole history? Bradfield wants to know everything about her, the works: every detail of her life. I suppose it’s academic if she’s gone for good, and out of Vernon’s life.”

  “Oh, she’ll be back,” Bo declared. “Eventually. It was just getting too crowded around here with all these state troopers and FBI agents.”

  “Bradfield is paying me fourteen a month.”

  “You’re not worth it.”

  Monica came and got him. The FBI agent told him not to leave town until they’d had further opportunities to talk with him. Monica drove him to Larry and Sharon’s house. She herself was dressing up to go to the dinner at Vernon’s, and although Harry was invited, he didn’t much feel like it, especially because he had already been replaced by Garth Rucker and would be considered a turn-coat. So Monica showed him what was available in the fridge and freezer, plenty for supper, and she produced a stoneware demijohn of Chism’s Dew, and Harry got comfortable with his hosts’ copy of the text of The Choiring of the Trees, his favorite of all the Harington novels, and he spent his evening drinking and refreshing his memory of those parts of the novel which told about the fabled “glen of the waterfall,” which had figured importantly as a setting in several of the Stay More novels and was especially crucial to Choiring. He was asleep—or passed out—when Monica returned, and she must have lifted the book from his lap.

  The next morning the FBI wanted to talk with him some more, and he obliged. He had nothing to hide, and he didn’t need a lawyer. No, he told them, he had no idea, since he’d never been there, where the cemetery of Daniel Lyam Montross was located. They tested him, trying to trick him, but he really had nothing whatever to hide.

  They let him go, and he took a stroll out across the fields to the double-wigwam that Thomas Bending Bear had, with the help of George Dinsmore, constructed for Juliana Heartstays. It was still very much there, its arched doorway open, and a few of the younger free-ranging pigs wandering into it. He shooed them away and stepped inside and looked around. There were just a few items: woven mats, a bed of sorts, some cooking utensils. He probed and pried but found nothing of interest. Nothing in writing; he might as well have been transported back to the dawn of the Osages in preliterate times. The only thing of interest that attracted his professional eye was outside the wigwam, in the dirt: the imprint of the tire track of a Pierce-Arrow.

  He returned to Larry and Sharon’s house and made a couple of sandwiches which he packed into a paper sack with some fruit and chips. He poured himself a last drink of the Chism’s Dew and took one final glance at the copy of The Choiring of the Trees and studied a particular passage of it again.

  “Where are you going?” Monica asked him, but he simply said that he was restless and needed some exercise, and had decided to take a hike. He’d see her at suppertime.

  Then he climbed to the first benches on Ledbetter Mountain behind Larry and Sharon’s house. He passed through what he realized, from his reading of Lightning Bug, was the old orchard that had once been Latha Bourne’s. When he reached the first bench of the mountain, he had to pause a long time for breath, realizing how out of shape he was, and realizing also his mistake: he should have brought along a jar of water to serve as a canteen. He grew impossibly thirsty. But he climbed on, and in time found a spring trickling out of the earth, and knelt to drink.

  It was almost noon before he finally located what had been the sheep pastures of Nail Chism, the hero of Choiring, and from there he followed the instructions as given by Latha Bourne in describing it in a letter to Nail:

  There’s this one place, way up against the corner of your upper forty, where the two tree lines sort of converge at the edge of the pasture on what looks like a dead corner up against the mountainside, and is a real dark shade of green, like the mouth of a cave, and you feel sucked into it, or drawn up thataway, and when you get into it you see there’s an old road there, just a trail, if you know the spot I mean, and if you follow that trail up through the woods for quite a ways, a mile or more, with the woods growing deeper and darker, you come to this glade where a waterfall comes down off the very top of the mountain, as if it was gushing up out of some powerful spring up there. The glade is sunny, with the sun shining right on the waterfall, but it’s dark all around, and dark in these several sort of half-caves where it looks like Indians must have lived. It was kind of scary, and I didn’t stay up there very long, but while I was there I thought of you, a lot, and I had a strange vision as if I could see you just living and dwelling in that hidden glade.

  Harry found the trail. He not only found the trail, but he detected quite clearly, coming from a different direction, the tracks of the tires of an antique automobile once popular and widely owned by the oil-rich Indians of Oklahoma, and at that moment he knew the hundred thousand dollars was his, and he even began to think about ways to spend it. The tracks were fairly fresh, and in celebration of finding them Harry stopped and sat on a rock and ate his lunch, and had no trouble finding a spring where he could lap up enough to wash the sandwiches down. Fastidiously, he spread his handkerchief for a tablecloth, and ate slowly and leisurely, in no hurry at all now. When he was finished, he dusted the crumbs off his clothing, enjoyed a cigarette, and then he went on, the trail growing steep and the tire tracks finally stopping but being replaced by clear footprints: many footprints, the prints of a big man and the smaller prints of two—no, three different women, as well as of a dog. He happily joined his footprints to theirs.

  Harry Wolfe had never in his life been out in such a wilderness, and the very wildness of the forest, the fragrances of it, the bird-sounds, filled him with awe, he who was so blasé about every
thing. He had not yet quite reached the glen of the waterfall when the dog got wind of him and began barking and then appeared.

  The dog approached him and snarled ferociously but Harry held out his hand for the dog to sniff in recognition of him. And Harry said, “Good dog, Threasher. Nice dog, Threasher. That’s a boy.”

  Chapter eighteen

  From the moment back in March when she had first eagerly joined the campaign, she had constantly enjoyed a sense of being on top of things. She was not only an in-charge manager but also a take-charge person, quick to see what needed to be done and doing it herself if she couldn’t teach her underlings how to do it. She required virtually no supervision from those among the Samurai who outranked her (as all of them did); in fact, the most common expression among all of them, whenever anybody needed to find out something or to get something done, was “Ask Monica.” She had her fingers on all the strings, and she knew many things that nobody else knew.

  For instance, she knew that unless the campaign started an active fundraising drive, they would be all out of money within a matter of weeks. And if anybody did claim the reward for finding Lydia, they’d not only be flat broke but in serious debt. She had been meaning for some time now to approach Vernon and ask him if he was aware of how close to insolvency the campaign was, and that was before he’d made that sensational offer of a reward. She knew that fabulously wealthy Diana or almost equally rich Juliana could help, but only to a point, since there was a $2,500 cap on contributions. Bo and Arch were going to have to get off their duffs and solicit hundreds of such amounts from the state’s usual political contributors.

  The money problem didn’t really bother her. What troubled her most right now—what in fact actually frightened her—was the way she no longer felt in charge, of the campaign or even of her own destiny. Oh, these FBI guys and state troopers deferred to her as if she were the commanding general of the whole operation, and she could make them all jump through hoops if she wanted. She had chosen to reveal her first name to none of them, and she distinguished among them by whether they called her “Ms. Breedlove,” “Miss Breedlove,” or “Ma’am.” Although the FBI’s base was on the front porch of the Woman’s—Ekaterina’s—temporarily abandoned house, just about everybody else, including a lot of the FBI agents themselves, considered the old store/post office, Larry’s and Sharon’s house, to be the nerve center of the investigation, and they acted as if Monica were in charge of it all.