by Blake Banner
Dehan asked, “And next day?”
“He was pleasant enough. Apologized. Didn’t seem all that sincere, but at least it was gracious. We took his prints, but when he said he was fixin’ to leave town and move down to Mexico with his wife, I didn’t see the point in taking things any further.” He frowned again and looked at me and Dehan curiously. “What I don’t understand, Detectives, is, if she was abducted, when he was cooling off in the cell overnight, why didn’t she ask us for help? Or simply take off? Why did she wait for him?”
“That,” I said, “is a very good question.
We stood and he stood with us. He said, “You going to be staying long?”
I smiled. “Just a couple of days. I promise to be in bed by eleven.” I hesitated. “Have you any record of what he was driving?”
He picked up a file from his desk. “Your captain phoned as a courtesy. Nice lady. We had a laugh. She asked me to give you any help I could. Well, we’d do that anyway. I copied the file for you. Anything we know is in there.” He handed it to me. “Red 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 V8, bigger’n Texas.”
Dehan sighed. “Of course he was.”
The sheriff gave his head a little tweak. “Nice car, nice girl, shame about the dork.”
He stepped outside with us into the bright morning sunshine. “You got a few motels along the famous route 66—it passes through Shamrock. You got a couple of hotels too. If I can be of any help, just let me know.” He smiled at Dehan. “People round here are pretty friendly, as long as you don’t tell them they ain’t Irish enough.”
We climbed in the Jag and headed south on 83 through flat semi-desert. The land was dry, but there was an abundance of trees, and I guessed that during the rainy season it was probably green and fertile. Dehan was quiet for a while, but after ten minutes she asked, “What are you thinking? You have the answer, don’t you?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You’re lying.”
“I know.” She looked at me. “Just give me a day. Humor me. I’m not sure.”
“So what are we doing? We know he was here. We know Maria was with him. We know she was with him voluntarily…”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe? She could have left and she didn’t.”
I sucked my teeth. “Maybe.”
She stared ahead through the windshield at the long straight road and said in an exasperated voice, “Will you at least tell me what we’re doing here?”
I nodded. “Yeah. We’re looking for a Red 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1, V8.”
She didn’t react for a bit. Then she turned and stared at me, and I could see the flat Texas morning landscape starkly reflected in her aviators.
Eighteen
We forwent the Irish Inn and the Blarney Inn and plumbed for the “retro-themed, modestly priced” Route 66. Perhaps it was the rebel in me. We booked two rooms next to each other, and after we’d showered and changed our clothes, I called Dehan in and made a plan. She sat cross-legged on my bed.
“I want to know what kept Maria with Mick. I want to know why she didn’t run or appeal to the sheriff for help. So what I want you to do is go to the places she might have gone to. Start at the hotel. See if anybody remembers her. As far as it’s possible, we need a record of her movements that day, up until Mick came back from the sheriff’s and they left.”
She winced. “That was ten years ago. You think people will remember?”
“I’m guessing not a lot happens in a town like this, Dehan. Anything a little out of the ordinary probably gets laid down in the town mythology.” I winked and said, “Ah sure, Paddy O’Flaherty’s probably written a ballad about it, sure he has!”
She had a way of making no expression really expressive, and she did that now.
“You realize that is really insulting and offensive to Irish people, right?”
I shrugged. “I’m a stereotypic dinosaur. We live up to our stereotypes. Now quit stalling and start walking.”
She didn’t move. She was a rebel, like me.
“What are you going to do?”
“Drive into the desert and commune with Brother Eagle.”
She sighed and left. She didn’t know my cousin’s great-grandfather once removed was one tenth Cherokee.
I looked briefly at a map. Route 83 took you pretty much in a straight line all the way to Mexico. So I got in my car and started driving south at a leisurely pace. It wasn’t really what you could call desert. It was hot and dry because of the time of year, but there were plenty of trees and waterways.
About four miles out of town, I came to a track on my right. It seemed to lead toward some dense woodland, so I turned into it. It wasn’t too rough, but I could tell the Jag wasn’t enjoying it all that much. I bumped along for a bit until I saw a big Dodge RAM rolling toward me. I stopped and got out to wait for it to arrive. It pulled up twenty feet in front of me, and a big man in his fifties got out and smiled at me.
“That’s a nice car you got there,” he said. “I’d like to ask you what it’s doing on my land.”
He wasn’t unfriendly. He was just to the point. I made a note in my mind not to question his Irishness. I smiled back and held out my hand. He shook it and I told him my name.
“I’m with the NYPD.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re an awful long way from home, Mr. Stone.”
I noticed he didn’t call me detective. I wasn’t a detective in his state.
“I’m here at the invitation of your sheriff. We’re looking for a couple of people who went missing ten years back.” I made a face like what I was saying wasn’t exactly accurate and added, “In fact, I’m looking for their car, which may have been dumped around these parts ten years ago. A ’69 Mustang Mach 1.”
He laughed. “I can tell you here and now I didn’t find it, or my wife would be driving it right now.” He shook his head and stood staring at the land around him, at the huge horizon. “No,” he said. “These lands south of Shamrock are well cared for, Mr. Stone. Car like that would’ve been found, and everybody would’ve heard about it. You’re looking in the wrong place.”
I nodded and thanked him and went to turn back to my car. He gave a small grunt of a laugh and pointed at the Jag. “You’re looking in the wrong place, with the wrong vehicle. You want something that’ll go off road.”
I smiled. “I’m a New Yorker. I don’t ride.”
“Not a horse. Get a truck. You can rent one over in Texola at Ted’s place, fourteen mile east back the way you came on I-40.”
I thought about it for a moment, and all of a sudden, ideas started to slot into place. “That makes sense.” Then, on an impulse: “Say, I’m guessing you know these parts pretty well. If you wanted to hide a car so nobody would find it, where would you put it?”
He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Besides a lock-up? I wouldn’t bring it down here, down south. Like I said, these lands are worked and well tended.” He pulled a face. “I figure I’d take out west, toward Amarillo. Armstrong County, maybe Donley, south and west of Clarendon, to the Palo Duro Canyon. That’s the sort of territory I’d be looking for. ’Bout sixty mile west of here.”
I thanked him and left. In my mirror I could see him watching me with his hands on his hips. I knew he was amused.
I followed his advice and drove to Texola. Texola was like Wheeler, only more so. There was a grid pattern of roads with nothing between them except the odd house or a shed, or sometimes a farm. I found Ted’s place easy enough. It was a big wooden barn that had things painted on it in red and white paint, like “wheel change” and “oil.”
I pulled off the road and killed the engine. An old guy in overalls came out of the shed, wiping his hands on a cloth that seemed to be making his hands dirtier than they were. He was staring at my car.
“Hi, are you Ted?”
He studied my face as though the question amused him and said, “Nice car.”
“Thanks. I need to hire a truck for
a few days, a Jeep or a pickup.”
“Foreign. They din’t make that in Dee-troit!” He laughed like he’d cracked a real funny joke. I chuckled and said a little more forcefully, “Can I rent a truck from you?”
“Sure y’can.” He turned and started to walk away. “Long as you don’t lose the darn thing. Don’t know how you can lose a darn truck. Big as Texas.”
I followed him into the cool shade of the barn structure. There was a Ford pickup and next to it a Dodge RAM.
“I got them insured, but that don’t mean you can just take off with ’em. Still puts m’darn premium up, don’it?”
“I’m not planning to make off with your truck, Ted. I just want to hire it for a day or two.”
He nodded past me at my car. “Whatcha fixin’ to do with your car?”
I hadn’t thought it through. I’d had some vague notion of coming out again with Dehan. He said, “I can take it for ya. I done that before, but then you gotta bring me back, aintcha?”
“Clean her up. Check the oil. I’ll come back for it this evening.”
He shrugged. “Suit yerself. I won’t do nothin’ fancy. It’s a foreign car, ain’it?”
There was no paperwork involved, as long as I paid cash and promised to bring the truck back. I did both and five minutes later I was driving west along the I-40 toward Amarillo. I drove for about an hour, and then in Donley County, I turned left onto the State Highway 70. As the farmer at Shamrock had suggested, this was a lot more promising. The short distance had made a difference. The landscape was parched. The earth was brown turning to a dirty, desiccated gray. And as I headed south on route 70, the terrain to my right—to the west—began to fall away into valleys and deep hollows.
It was promising, but it was also vast. It was going to take time—time I didn’t have a lot of. I drove for about fifteen minutes without seeing any paths to the right or left that tempted me to explore. Eventually I came to Hardwick and the Greenbelt reservoir. There was a kind of trailer park down there with dirt tracks running off in all directions around the lake. I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring every one of them. I discovered that they all led to the same place. Nowhere.
By six o’clock I was beat, and I headed back to the Route 66 Inn. I picked up Dehan and took her to collect my Jaguar. When we got back and I had showered ten hours of sweat and dust off my body, she strolled into my room without knocking and sat on my bed. Fortunately I had most of my clothes on.
“Get dressed, Sensei. I’m taking you out to dinner. This town has a place called Big Vern’s Steak House, with its own brand beer. You realize we may have died and gone to Texas?”
She had a point.
Nineteen
It was probably the best steak I had ever eaten in my life, and it kept Dehan intensely quiet for a full fifteen minutes. When she’d finished, she sat back, licked her lips, and said, “That right there was not a steak. That was an experience. Moments like that make life worthwhile.” I smiled. She didn’t. “I’m serious.”
She drained her beer and waved the empty glass at the waitress. While she waited for a refill, she said, “Now, are you going to tell me why we are looking for Mick’s car here?”
I sucked my teeth and sighed. “What did you find out about Maria’s movements that day?”
“That would be a no, then.”
“My answer depends somewhat on yours.”
The waitress appeared with glowing teeth and hair and placed a beer in front of Dehan, who studied it for a while.
“Not a whole lot. No ballads were written about her. Nobody seems to remember much about her at all. Except the manageress at the hotel remembered her because of the whole fight thing. She said Maria did something next day that surprised her.”
“She left town midmorning while Mick was still in the county lockup? Asked where she could hire a car?”
Dehan made a funny little jerk with her head and closed her eyes, like she had three or four different questions and didn’t know which one to ask first. There was a smile too, but not a very amused one. In the end, she said, “What… like… how…?”
“Lucky guess. What did the woman tell her—Texola?”
She shrugged. “I could just go back to New York and take up sewing.”
“Don’t be silly. Who would I show off to, then?”
She studied my face while I studied the tablecloth.
“Okay, Stone, you’re a clever man, there is no denying that. But suddenly I can sense where you’re going with this, and I just don’t buy it.”
“Good. Tell me where I’m going, and where I’m going wrong.”
She slung an arm over the back of her chair and pointed at me.
“You’re developing this idea of Maria as a kind of Lucrezia Borgia-cum-Machiavelli who manipulates Mick into arranging the killing of Nelson, and then induces him to get drunk and arrested here, and while he’s in the slammer she hires a car, has it waiting somewhere, kills him, leaves him in the car, and makes off with the cash.”
I gave my head a little sideways nod and thought about it. “What’s wrong with it?”
“To start with, her. In all the descriptions we’ve had of her, she’s never been described as manipulative, ruthless, or capable of homicide. She is, or was, sweet and submissive. She was a good girl at home with her mom, she cared for her brother. She was going straight into marriage at age twenty…”
“To somebody of another faith.”
“Minor point. When Nelson said no, she obeyed and married him. When Nelson said go with Mick, she went with Mick. When Mick said come escape with me, she went. The picture I get of this girl is a typical, submissive, obedient Catholic girl.”
“Okay, good point. What else?”
“To organize a successful murder is a difficult and complicated thing. To organize a murder where the body, and a red 1969 Mustang, disappear for ten years is a really complicated thing. You need to know the territory. You need to know the good places to hide the body. You need to know the customs of the people around you—who is likely to find it? How can I avoid them? She’s a kid from the Bronx! What does she know about Texas?”
“Also very good points. Anything else?”
“Yeah, killing a two-hundred-and-forty-pound Irish cop is not easy. How did she do it? How did she get him in the car? How did she dispose of him?” She shook her head a lot. “I can’t see any way that it works, Stone.”
I nodded. “They are all excellent points.”
“You want to hear my theory?”
“Always.”
“I have to tell you it hasn’t changed a whole lot, except now it comes in two parts. First, I think we have to accept that Mick killed Nelson.”
I frowned. “We know he wasn’t there.”
“I mean he was responsible. His idea was to cause confusion and make some extra dough by selling the information about the poker game to the Mob and the Triads. He takes the precaution a week before the hit of sending Kirk off sick. Really what Kirk is doing is preparing the hit with a couple of freelance pros. That explains why the dope wasn’t taken. They’re professionals. They take the dope, and that’s a trail that can lead the cops to their door. They don’t need it, they don’t take it.”
I nodded. “That’s good.”
“Kirk takes the money and Maria to Mick’s house, then beats it to Yonkers, where he leads the quiet life and nobody ever hears from him again. Mick and Maria have a shot of tequila and head for Mexico. As you correctly anticipated, he gets into trouble along the way. Why doesn’t she leave him when he’s in the slammer? Because she is terrified of him. She knows he’ll track her down and beat seven bails of shit out of her. She waits patiently for him to come out, and they drive on to Mexico. Once over the border, he does the same thing again, because that is his nature. They stop at some village where the local boss is the law. Mick starts mouthing off, flashing his car and his money. But this time, instead of getting thrown in the can by the local sheriff, they both get knifed and s
ome Mexican patron gets his money and his car. Pretty Latina girls? They got plenty of them in Mexico.”
“Superb. Nine out of ten.”
“Nine out of ten…?”
“Why did she ask about renting a car?”
She hunched her shoulders and spread her hands like I was being absurd.
“That’s not so hard to explain, Stone! She thought about running back to New York, or somewhere else. Who wouldn’t? But she panicked at the last moment and couldn’t see it through.”
I made a face. “You certainly seem to have covered all the angles. So how do we set about proving it?”
She gave a small humorless laugh, “Ay, there’s the rub…” She watched me watching her a moment, then said, “That’s a quote.”
“And a very appropriate one, because he is wondering what comes after death. We can only speculate what came after their deaths. Because we don’t know. And that’s the recurring theme, isn’t it? A perfect theory, with no evidence. Two murders in which the killings leave us with plenty of theory, but no trail to follow.”
“And you think that’s deliberate.”
“Yup.”
“I just don’t see Maria planning something as cunning and twisted as that… It’s not her.”
I sighed. “I know. You may be right. Give me another day. Let’s see what we find in Armstrong County tomorrow.”
Her eyes lit up in mock excitement.
“Oh, can I come along tomorrow? Sure you don’t want me to question the shopkeepers so then you can tell me what I found out?”
I shook my head. “Been there. Done that.”
“Cute.”
We stepped out of the restaurant, and Dehan stopped to look up at the stars. There was no moon, and it was like looking at a billion tiny shards of ice scattered over a deep, translucent ocean.
“We don’t see that back home, do we, Stone?”
“Nope.”
It was less than a half mile walk back to the inn, and it was a perfect temperature, with a cool breeze coming in off the plains. She walked with her hands in her pockets, watching her boots as they took each step.
