She glanced up coldly, her face composed and prim.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Fuck it then,’ I said, finding myself standing again. ‘Just fuck it, okay?’
She didn’t seem particularly angry. She just slipped the checks back into her purse, snapped it shut, then left my office without another word. As she walked she held her back very erectly, moving her legs as if she had envied too many models. It was an exit, but she tripped over the sill, stumbled down the hall, leaving my office door open. I didn’t feel much like laughing but I tried one anyway. It sounded like the croak of a crushed frog, so I turned back to my bottle and my northern view, shut off the recorder and sat there without thinking about anything.
A light haze shrouded the Diablos, not smog yet but the hot afternoon sun vaporizing the pine pitch, drawing moisture from the needles and the bark. When the trees were dry enough, lightning or a careless smoker would start the first fire, and my timber would finally burn all the way down. Again I considered selling it, maybe even selling the land to some rich tourist. Recreation land, they called it, better than gold or silver. I thought of selling and taking the money away with me to some foreign land where I could live cheaply until my fifty-third birthday made me a rich man, but even as I thought about it, I knew I wouldn’t leave. Not yet.
Traffic north of Dottle Street was still stalled by a fire truck. Two firemen washed the blood off the street, leaving a larger, darker stain that steamed on the hot asphalt. The man with the hose worked very intently; his partner stood with his hands on his hips, his cap tilted back, the smile of an untroubled man wide across his face.
When I went to shut the door, the smell of her was thick in the cool air of my office, a fragrance of spring, flowery and untainted, then old Simon shuffled sheepishly through the open door, bringing the drinks and the smell of stale cigarettes and whiskey sweat with him.
‘Sorry, sorry, Milo, sorry to be so long, sorry, but these two kids, Milo, these two kids took, sorry . . .’ he babbled in his usual drunken manner as he sat the drinks on my desk. Then he began to pound his clothes so hard that dust puffed from his shoddy suit. ‘Cigarette, Milo, sorry, Milo, cigarette, Milo, please, just one.’
‘She’s gone, you old fart, so you can act human again. The cigarettes are right where they always are.’
He filched a whole pack of Camels from the drawer where I kept them since I quit. After he lit two, he gave me one, then sucked on his so hard that he nearly choked to death. As soon as he caught his flimsy breath, he said, ‘Thank you, Milo. You’re a real gentleman.’
‘Fuck you, old man,’ I answered as I had the single drag I allowed myself. I flipped the long butt out the window, hoping it landed on a tourist. ‘What took so long with the drinks, huh?’
‘You know how it is,’ he said, not even bothering to lie. He was drunk but maintaining. He could still rub his hands together as if he were just about to freeze to death, could still revolve his cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he spoke, and he still spoke in a normal voice, which meant that he knew who I was and spared me the string of foolish chatter which he used like a shield against the sober world. ‘Who was that lovely bit of fluff on the stairs, Milo?’
‘Fuck you, Simon.’
‘Since you don’t care to confide in an old and trusted friend – who’s saved your dumb ass more times than can be counted – perhaps you’ll share these as yet untasted drinks with an old man in great need of a taste.’
‘Weren’t the first two enough? And the two shots?’
‘Milo, my boy, there’s never enough.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, stepping over to the desk to get the drinks, since Simon obviously wasn’t going to. I handed him one, then looked at the recorder. I started to erase the tape, but the sound of her voice was there. I thought I might want to hear it sometime, might want to hear my own foolishness, so I took the cassette out and slipped it into my hip pocket. Then Simon and I snapped the lids off the Styrofoam cups, left the office and sipped the drinks as we strolled the forty easy steps down to Mahoney’s, sauntering like lords through the summer afternoon buzz of shoppers and gaping tourists, down to Mahoney’s Bar and Grill, where I had unlimited credit and willing friends, grease to ease the squeaking wheel of a summer afternoon.
‘Did you hear about the tragic purse snatcher?’ Simon asked. When he said it, it sounded like the first line of a dirty joke, but I told him I’d already heard it.
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First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © James Crumley 2014
Extract from The Wrong Case © James Crumley 1975, 1978, 1983
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