Greasy Bend

by Kris Lackey

  * * *

  Stopped at a light in Duncan, Maytubby watched fast-food sacks and cups skitter across State 7 onto Halliburton’s industrial campus. Like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing. Saint John’s had taught him Shelley’s poetry. Dust from oilfield supply lots eddied around his pickup. Like dust.

  Why was everyone suddenly left-handed?

  He turned onto Bois D’Arc Avenue, which became Old State 7, a more nuanced path into the nation. More goats and donkeys, for one thing. More ancient pumpjacks for another.

  And even better than a nuance—a wrinkle: the Sentinel box truck refueling at a Shamrock station in Velma. At the pump behind it, Richard James was filling his Suzuki. Maytubby slid on sunglasses, tugged down the bill of the camo OU cap, then made a U-turn and pulled up to the pump opposite the truck, on the same island. Lon Crum was pumping the gas.

  Halfway out the pickup door, Maytubby saw that Crum held a lit cigarette at his side. Instead of opening the Ford’s gas cap and stoking the vapor, Maytubby walked to the front of the pickup and popped the hood. He kept an eye on the cigarette as he pulled the dipstick.

  “Drop that butt, you dumbass!” It was Rooster, in the Sentinel cab. Crum’s head bobbed, the cigarette fell, and he ground it out with his foot.

  James sucked air through his teeth and shook his head as he capped the cycle tank. He had laid his helmet on the driveway, against the kickstand so it wouldn’t tumbleweed.

  “Were you raised by baboons?” Rooster bawled. Crum’s head bobbed again.

  Maytubby checked and rechecked the fluids. James stood by his bike, his arms folded, watching Crum remove the nozzle and replace the cap. Maytubby shut the hood, slowly fished for his wallet, slowly searched for his credit card. Just as he was inserting it in the pump, James walked toward Crum, who opened the Sentinel truck cab, retrieved and handed to James a blue gym-size duffel and what appeared to be a twenty-round box of Browning .30-06 rounds. Blindly pressing random numbers for his zip code, Maytubby watched the duffel and box change hands. James’ hand did not register the half pound that twenty cartridges would weigh. There were no visible rifles in James’ mobile home in Gene Autry, and anyway, toting a deer carcass on his bike would require some creative trussing.

  Now the real zip code had to go in fast. James had dropped the cartridge box into something inside the duffel and was unzipping one of his saddlebags. How little gas could Maytubby pump without making someone look? If he’d paid cash in advance, one gallon. The card meant he had credit, so two. His tank was almost full.

  In Oklahoma City, a 1965 Ford would have drawn stares. Not here.

  Rifle ammo was always common as dirt in Oklahoma, but since the rise of gun culture it had gotten to be downright wholesome, a token of virtue and unity. Those guys in the truck passing out the ammo? They must be all right! Safer to put contraband in a cartridge box than in a box of Milk Duds.

  As James picked up his helmet and tugged it on, Maytubby imagined the first mile of every road out of Velma. He hadn’t seen which directions Rooster and James had come from. Might not matter anyway.

  The bike made a U-turn and buzzed east on new State 7. Maytubby looked away from it, then deliberately replaced the nozzle and his gas cap. He slid rather than jumped into the cab and drove away slowly. In his mirror, he saw the Sentinel truck pull out the opposite direction.

  James didn’t bolt away. The bike cruised at five over the limit. Pickups had to pass both Maytubby and, a half mile down the road, James. Why was he going so slow?

  The road bent northeast to skirt the Arbuckles, passing through Tatums and Hennepin. Pumpjacks nodded among clusters of black Angus. Dead vines shrouding an abandoned school were coated with white quarry dust.

  The Suzuki’s taillight glowed, and James turned south on Dolese Road, which became Butterly Road after it passed the Dolese quarry on its winding ascent into rougher country. After Maytubby passed the quarry, he narrowed the tail. If the bike took one of the branching trails, the stout north wind would shear its dust, make it harder to locate.

  In the middle distance, a file of white wind turbines towered above red cedar scrub, their massive blades wheeling. Maytubby had not driven Dolese Road since the twenty-story machines were erected, and they jostled his memory, made him briefly dizzy. As the bike climbed toward the low summit, it scattered a rafter of turkeys into the brush.

  When the blade shadows began to flick across Butterly Road, the bike peeled off on a smaller track. Maytubby slowed almost to a stop and saw that the track ended just a few yards into the scrub, at an old prefab pine cabin with a smoking metal chimney. A ventilated generator shed, painted to resemble a tiny Georgian house, stood some yards from the cabin, and beside that a few cords of neatly stacked oak firewood. Parked beside the firewood, facing the road, was a polished black 1991 Jeep Cherokee Laredo. No front tag, so likely an Oklahoma plate. He followed Butterly Road to the base of a turbine, made a three-point turn, turned off the Ford, and looked down toward the cabin. It was hidden by trees. He waited, listening to the blades scythe the air.

  The cabin had no electrical service cable, no satellite dish, no propane tank. A generator that would fit in the small ventilated shed would go through twenty gallons of gas a day. There was no large gas tank in the yard, so that generator was not going to keep the peas frozen. It was for occasional use.

  Ten minutes later, he started the pickup and descended the hill. In the second pass by the cabin he noticed that the clothesline poles were not connected and that the windows were dressed with white mini­blinds, all of them closed.

  No tokens of domesticity or vacation at the cabin. No flower pots, no floral thermometer, no chairs on the full-length porch, no dog, no tool shed. Nothing. He slowed for a truck leaving the quarry. Not even junk. Conspicuously junk-free, in fact. And who in Garvin County owned a ventilated generator shed disguised as a Georgian playhouse?

  The Butterly cabin was the opposite of the Powell Road compound. It was itinerant lodging. But you noticed its austerity from the road. Not a good quality in a hideout. As Hannah would say, the cabin was a “stick-out” place.

  The fastidious characters were Richard James and the tall fake casino guard. James lived in a mobile home in Gene Autry. The cabin seemed more like a place he would live. There was a chance he maintained it.

  If James stayed a long time, he might be hooking up, in which case the duffel might be going someplace else. If he left quickly, he was delivering for the Sentinel crew.

  Just beyond the quarry, Maytubby checked for trucks, stopped, and backed into an unfenced gap between two red cedars. The Suzuki passed a few minutes later. James did not turn his head. Maytubby waited for him to get on the highway before returning to the cabin. Whoever was inside had not likely seen the Ford.

  The satellite view on Maytubby’s cell showed a jeep trail descending from the turbines and looping a couple hundred yards behind the cabin. The north wind whipped his dust away from the cabin, so he nosed into some scrub oaks close to it. His binoculars showed him a turquoise New Mexico plate and a dealer sticker with the name Brewster in large type over a tiny, unreadable location. He searched the plate number on his cell, through a state site. It didn’t belong to Duncan Calls, who would recognize him. Roger Teague. His address was in Moriarty. Didn’t mean Duncan Calls wasn’t in the cabin.

  Maytubby fitted his gag teeth, mussed his hair, and donned his camo OU ball cap. The pilot was long gone. He walked from his truck to the back door of the cabin. A mechanical keypad lock was more evidence that people passed through this place. It was cheap, which meant that nothing valuable was stored here. He knocked politely. Some seconds passed. He banged.

  The man who cracked the door was a lean stranger of middle height, balding, with a fifty-dollar haircut and manicured nails. He wore contacts on appraising garnet eyes. “How may I help you, sir?” Maytubby looked through the crack and saw the blue duff
el beneath a kitchen table. The cabin was lit by skylights. Under oak smoke, he caught a whiff of male dorm room, though he saw no boy.

  “I’m lost, man,” Maytubby said. “I come up from Woodford, north of Fifty-Three, over the trails, to take a buddy to work at one of them new windmills. Now I can’t find my way back to Seven from here. He give me bad directions. Can you help me?”

  The man opened the door, came outside, and closed the door behind him. He pulled the doorknob with his left hand, but then, the knob was on his left. He wore ecru jeans and a tartan flannel shirt. Both were ironed, the jeans with a crease. “Certainly.” He turned to face east. “Come right around to the big road in front of this cabin.” He nodded toward the road. “Follow it north. You’ll strike Seven in a few miles.” He never pointed.

  Maytubby gaped and shook his head. “You’re my man.” He jabbed an index finger in the air, spun it, and made to walk away. Then he stopped, turned, and said, “You got a beer for a vet?” Maytubby wasn’t a vet.

  The man said, “I don’t drink. But if I did, sir, I’d give you one. Thank you for your service.” He turned, went inside, and shut the door.

  “Certainly?” Creased ecru jeans? Worn by a native of Moriarty? A ventilated generator shed made to look like a Georgian house? Maytubby felt as if he’d walked out of Dusty Knob into a Wes Anderson movie.

  He had added another fussy character to the roll. A few men in the Ada aristocracy sported the prep, but it was more common among Dallasites who owned the bigger vacation homes near Lake of the Arbuckles. This was not a vacation home.

  Maytubby revved the Ford so the lodger could hear, then drove slowly down Butterly Road, past the cabin, so the lodger could see. The satellite photo on his phone showed only one trail ahead of him looping back up to the turbines. He took it.

  After parking the Ford, removing his fake teeth, and straightening his hair, he took his binoculars and walked a quarter mile toward the back of the cabin. He knelt behind a large limestone rock, braced his elbows on it, and summoned patience for hours of nothing.

  He had not gotten the glasses focused when the back door opened and the balding man appeared, wearing a navy Harrington jacket and carrying the blue duffel in his left hand. He pulled the door shut with his right. Handedness solved. Maytubby waited for the sound of the Jeep’s ignition and then ran to his pickup.

  After the Jeep passed in front of him on Butterly Road, Maytubby waited before pulling out. The balding man, who wasn’t from around there, had surely bookmarked the antique Ford. State 7, where Butterly intersected it, had long sight lines in both directions, and the day was bright and clear.

  Before he could reach the highway, two loaded trucks upshifted from the quarry road onto Butterly just ahead of him. By the time he hit State 7, the Jeep was over one of its horizons. Maytubby turned east toward home, passed the two quarry trucks, and phoned Dispatch.

  “Hey, Bill.”

  “Hey, Sheila. Lost track of a black 1991 Jeep Cherokee Laredo with New Mexico plates.” He waited for her to jot.

  “Plates turquoise or gold?”

  “Turquoise. Going east or west from Butterly on Seven. Not pursuing. Just like to know where he’s going.”

  “I’ll alert Eph, Katz, and the FBI.”

  “You’re a mind reader, Sheila.”

  “Right. Just Lighthorse and Hannah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keeping your powder dry.”

  “One of my mottoes.”

  Maytubby heard Sheila calling the other cars. She came back to him. “I thought you could only have one motto. Like the Texas Rangers have ‘One riot, one Ranger.’”

  “See? They have another one. ‘Courage, integrity, perseverance.’” Maytubby passed under I-35, crossed the Washita, and turned south on old US 77.

  “That’s a bunch of nothin’.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Maytubby was negotiating the last hairpin curve before the Turner Falls overlook when the Jeep appeared below him on his right, climbing toward him. Must have overshot the dogleg turnoff in Davis. Or was he flipping the tail?

  Maytubby gained the hill’s summit, turned into the overlook lot, and parked behind a bank of pay telescopes. The Jeep also pulled into the lot but did not follow Maytubby. In his rearview mirror, Maytubby saw the balding man talking on his cell, looking up the highway. There were cell antennas atop the shuttered souvenir shop.

  A guy who had taken his pal to work on a wind turbine was not a tourist, so Maytubby stayed in his pickup and phoned Sheila.

  “So what’s another one of your mottoes?”

  “‘Convincingly vigilant.’”

  The line was quiet a second. “I don’t know about you, Sergeant.”

  “That black Jeep is parked across from me at the Turner Falls overlook. It was behind me coming up the switchbacks.”

  “Hold on.” He waited while she canceled the request. “Jeep doesn’t know you’re a cop. Does he know you were tailing him before he started tailing you?”

  “I don’t think he’s tailing me. If he leaves before I do, I can go back to tailing him.”

  “How do the falls look?”

  “A little ice on the edges of the fan.”

  “Did you know Turner’s first name was Mazeppa? Hold on.” Maytubby heard Sheila’s radio, then her voice. The balding man was texting now. “Isn’t that a weird name?”

  Maytubby knew that Turner was a Scot named for a Cossack made famous by Lord Byron. And that he married a Chickasaw woman named Laura Johnson. “That is a very weird name,” he said.

  The falls were louder than the wind. In his mirror, the Jeep’s brake light went off. The balding man put down his phone as he pulled onto 77 going south. “Jeep’s southbound, Sheila.”

  “Do-si-do.”

  “And away we go.” They hung up. He gave the Jeep thirty seconds, watched it top the next rise before he pulled out of the lot. The road bisected long chains of limestone slabs that leaned like Puritan tombstones. A wildfire had left nothing but tree carcasses in the graveyard.

  The Jeep bypassed Ardmore, headed east on US 177 toward Tishomingo. The balding man had no need to go to Sentinel. Unlike Richard James, this guy was making time: he slowed a bit for the little towns but kept at eighty-five between. Not enough traffic for people to report cops on their phone apps. One of the Jeep’s brake lights was out.

  A few miles before Mannsville, Maytubby saw the brake light flash as the Laredo topped a rise. When Maytubby came over the same hill, he had to hit his brakes to avoid a sheriff’s cruiser in mid U-turn. Under the strobes, he recognized Bond, who appeared to be eating with her right hand while she steered with her left. From their CLEET days, he recalled her nonchalance in pursuit.

  The Jeep was already out of sight, and the cruiser soon was, too. Maytubby parked on the shoulder and watched a scaup on Wolf Creek. He would stay put for as long as he judged it would take Bond to pull the Jeep over and get the balding man fishing for his wallet. Then he would pass them and lie low in Mannsville. Bond knew that Maytubby was interested in the Jeep. The balding fellow had stepped on a crack.

  * * *

  The Laredo driver pulled over quickly and was dangling his documents out the window before Bond told Tish what she was doing and got his tag up on her screen. Trying to rush her. As she walked slowly toward the Jeep, the driver lifted something into the back seat with his right hand. Then he tilted his rearview mirror down and fingered something on the dash. She stood close behind the Jeep a long time, noting the fine white dust in the weather-stripping joints, a trailer hitch, some scratches that had been touched up. No decals, but a dealer sticker: Brewster Jeep in Paris, Texas. The cargo floor mat and spare cover shone with spray tire polish.

  For a middle-aged vehicle, the upholstery in the back seat looked new. What the driver had thrown back there was a blue duffel. Its drape sugges
ted something rigid inside, maybe a box. As Bond approached the driver and stopped just behind him, he raised the documents and bent his arm backward toward her. She didn’t take them but stood still, in the driver’s blind spot, pretending to write on her citation pad while she looked over the dash and front seat.

  A radar detector was mounted on the passenger’s visor. The burned-out brake light was a piece of luck. A cell phone rested in a vent-mounted cradle just to the right of the driver, its screen dark. This must have been what the driver touched. Paper maps were harder to hide. Too bad they were a thing of the past.

  Bond moved a little nearer the driver but did not yet bend toward him. He twisted his head back and then tilted it up and up, straining to find her face. Fancy haircut, manicured nails, new dark-blue jacket. Ironed jeans that weren’t even jeans color. A dude. He probably bought French soap on the internet.

  She suddenly dropped her face very near his, leaving his hand, with its documents, waving above her head. She wanted him to see her look at the duffel over his shoulder. His eyes went to the rearview mirror.

  “License-registration-insurance,” she said. He frowned and pivoted to bring them down without touching her. She didn’t oblige but waited until he had gotten them inside the car and then back into her hand. She clipped them on her citation holder. When she looked up, he was looking at the bag in the mirror. He didn’t ask why he was being stopped.

  Back in her cruiser, Bond ran Roger Teague’s New Mexico plate and DL. Nothing. But New Mexico had not adopted the Real ID, either. She called Maytubby’s cell.

  “Hannah. Did I see you eating while making a U-turn?”

  “Lunchtime. You parked just over the hill.”

  “Yes. My vehicle is artfully concealed.”

  “You cover it with dead branches like they taught us in policeman school?” Hannah deadpanned.

  “It’s a good thing civilians aren’t privy to our stratagems.”