by Thomas King
DEDICATION
For my good buddy Carol Millerfeather,
’cause there ain’t no pleasure but meanness
CONTENTS
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
About the Author
Praise
Also by Thomas King
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
ONE
The motel room had all the ambience of a laundry hamper, but as Mitchell Street lay back on the bed, he realized that he was feeling as good as he had for the past twenty-five years. And if things worked out, he was going to feel even better. He unclipped the holster from his belt. Not that he was going to need it. But the gun reminded him that he could change his mind at any moment, drive into town, and just shoot the sonofabitch. That possibility alone made him smile. Something he hadn’t done in a very long time.
Nebraska had been a carton of chuckles, a flat, dry, dusty slab of land stuck between South Dakota and Kansas, whose main attractions were genetically modified corn, mercurial weather, and football.
And Cabela’s.
Cabela’s was a quarter-section amusement park of guns, clothes, and dead animals stuffed together under one roof and cleverly disguised as an outdoor outfitting store. There was an indoor pond with neurotic trout swimming in nervous circles and an outdoor archery range where you could test the latest in bow-and-arrow technology on paper targets tacked to bales of hay. Once, because he was curious about the store and because he was bored, he had driven the four-hundred-odd miles from Omaha to Sidney, a nothing town in the southwest corner of the state, and he never did it again.
Omaha.
It was bigger than Sidney. But that was about all that could be said for it. Street didn’t know what people saw in the West. Big skies and empty spaces. Nothing to do and nowhere to eat.
Living in New York had been difficult, but it had also been exciting, and when he was sent west to take over the office in Salt Lake City, he was sure he had arrived at the edge of the known world. He had been wrong, of course. In those early halcyon days in the kingdom of Brigham Young, he hadn’t known about Omaha.
Omaha.
After the fiasco in Salt Lake, he had had to endure eighteen long years in Omaha before early retirement had saved him. The next few days wouldn’t make up for the suffering, but a little payback, late though it might be in coming, was going to be sweet. Someone famous had said that living well was the best revenge.
Bullshit. The best revenge was that moment when your enemies wished they had never been born.
He looked at the clock radio by the bed. Still time for a quick shower. Maybe a drink at the bar. He closed the folder and put it on the desk. Amazing how the past could catch up with you.
The knock on the door startled him. The meet wasn’t for another hour. At the truck stop south of town. Not here at the motel. Then again, maybe it was the maid come to turn down the bed and leave a chocolate on his pillow. He had stayed at places where they did that. Before he had been shipped off to the so-called Great Plains to rot. Before his career had blown up in his face.
Tomorrow was going to be different, he told himself as he went to the door. Tomorrow was going to be like the song. The first day of the rest of his life.
TWO
Thumps DreadfulWater was slumped on his favourite stool, waiting for Al to rescue him with a cup of coffee, when Archimedes Kousoulas came through the front door of the café, waving a mailing tube at him.
“Aha!” said Archie, his voice filling the room and rattling the windows. “There you are.”
The cold air that slipped in the door behind Archie was sparkling and sharp. Thumps could stop kidding himself. Summer was gone. Fall was gone.
“I’ve been trying to find you.” Archie climbed onto the stool beside him. “Two weeks I’ve been trying to find you.”
“I’ve been out of town.”
Actually, he had been out of the country. Canada, to be exact. Calgary, to be specific. Benton Wolfchild, an old friend from university, had called to tell Thumps that he was getting married. Benton hadn’t asked him to come to the ceremony. And Benton hadn’t asked him to take pictures of the wedding. But good friendships carried responsibilities, and Benton was a good friend.
“So, you haven’t heard the news.”
Now that Thumps thought about it, he hadn’t heard any news. A week of hanging out with Benton before the wedding and another week of photographing the Rockies between Banff and Jasper after the wedding hadn’t left much time for newspapers and television.
“You know,” said Archie, “you don’t look so good.”
“I was up late.”
The last day in the mountains it had begun to snow, and the drive back had taken thirteen hours, most of which were spent in a gas station in Sweet Grass, eating microwaved burritos and watching the blizzard close highways and annoy motorists.
“You look worse than that.”
Thumps laid his head on the counter. “I haven’t had any coffee.”
“American coffee,” said Archie, with a grimace. He was a short, compact man with silver hair and a dark well-trimmed moustache that covered his upper lip. “Did you know the Greeks invented coffee?”
Alvera Couteau strolled out of the backroom with a pot of black coffee as though she had all the time in the world. “You look chipper.”
“Coffee. Black.”
Al put the pot on the counter and waited.
“Please.”
Thumps closed his eyes and listened to the coffee flow out of the pot into his cup. Little waves of heat washed over his face. This is nice, he thought to himself.
“You want a straw?” asked Al.
There were other places to get breakfast in Chinook. Faster places. Cleaner places. Places where you didn’t have to put up with marginal manners and latent sarcasm. But there was no place that served better hash browns. Or better coffee. Thumps dragged the cup closer to his face.
“Just breakfast.”
“The usual?”
“Alvera,” said Archie, who could see he had lost Thumps, “did you hear the news?”
“This about that writer guy?”
“See,” said Archie, poking Thumps on his shoulder. “Alvera knows about the news.”
Thumps held up one finger. “Extra salsa, please.”
Al set a cup in front of Archie and waggled the pot.
“Sure,” said Archie.
“His cat die?” asked Al.
“No,” said Archie. “He thinks he’s tired, but I think he’s depressed.”
“If he got a job,” said Al, “he wouldn’t be depressed.”
“I have a job,” said Thumps, trying to ignore both of them.
Al wiped her hands on her apron. �
��Maybe that Ridge guy coming to town will cheer him up.”
“Depression’s a funny thing,” said Archie. “Anything’s possible.”
Thumps pulled his head off the counter and opened his eyes. “Ridge?”
“Aha,” said Archie. “Now you’re not so depressed.”
“Not . . . Noah Ridge?”
“Good news will always cure a depression.”
“Noah Ridge isn’t a writer.”
Al reached under the counter and came up with a copy of the Chinook Tribune. “He is now.” She strolled up to the front of the café and tossed a handful of potatoes on the grill.
“He’s on tour,” said Archie.
The picture was of Ridge, all right. Thumps knew that face as well as his own. A lot older, but the same crooked grin. The same cold, sparkling eyes.
“Not every day we get a big-time revolutionary like this in Chinook.”
Thumps went looking for his coffee cup. “Ridge isn’t a revolutionary.”
“Time magazine once called him the Che Guevara of North America.” Archie pulled a poster out of the tube, unrolled it, and pinned the edges with the salt and pepper shakers. “So, what do you think?”
“Don’t you have a bookstore to run?” Thumps rubbed his face and discovered he hadn’t shaved. Had he brushed his teeth?
“A little culture never hurt anyone,” said Archie.
“Ridge isn’t culture.”
“And we want to hire you.”
Al poured a puddle of eggs on the grill and flipped the potatoes. Thumps watched as a warm cloud of steam rose up to the ceiling.
“We?”
“The library committee,” said Archie. “I’m the president.”
“The library committee wants to hire me?”
“Just don’t charge us too much.”
“For what?”
“To take pictures, of course.” Archie took a sip of his coffee and made a face. “This is going to be an historic moment.”
“You already have the photograph for the poster.”
“Sure,” said Archie. “But we want to document Mr. Ridge’s visit to Chinook. You know, portraits, action stuff, candids. Maybe something with the new library in the background.”
Al brought the plate over and set it down in front of Thumps. Scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, whole-wheat toast, extra salsa. “You think you can manage a regular fork?”
“He’s not as bad as he looks,” said Archie.
“’Cause I got a nice lightweight plastic fork I can let you borrow.”
“Say,” said Archie, “you get your cheque yet?”
Al made a face and twisted her head to one side. “I called. She said it was in the mail. You believe that?”
“Al’s waiting for a cheque from her cousin in San Francisco.”
“Family,” said Al, “you can’t say no.”
“That’s the way Greeks are too.” Archie squirted a pool of ketchup on Thumps’s plate and cut off a piece of sausage.
“Those are mine.”
“Native people are supposed to share.”
“It’s a cliché.”
“I plan to share the treasure with you when I find it.”
The treasure, Thumps did not have to be reminded, was the mythical cache of gold that had supposedly been brought north by soldiers from Cortes’s army and left somewhere in the mountains around Chinook. Whenever Archie wasn’t minding his bookstore, he was nosing around in canyons and caves and large crevices, all those handy places where sixteenth-century Spanish soldiers might stash bullion. And Archie was determined to find it. Thumps had to admire the research the man had done on the subject, though Thumps was sure you would have more luck finding a flying saucer stashed in the mountains around Chinook than you would Aztec gold.
“Don’t forget Elvis and the Beatles.” Archie rubbed the sausage in the ketchup.
“Beatles?” Somehow, Thumps realized, the conversation had got away from him.
“Famous photographs,” said Archie. “The photographers who took them are probably rich.”
Thumps could feel his eyes drooping. The only people he knew of who would want a good photograph of Noah Ridge were in law enforcement. And there was no money to be made there.
“When’s he coming to town?”
“He’s here,” said Archie. “Arrived last night.”
“Okay.” Thumps sighed. “Tell me where and when.”
“The reading’s tomorrow night.” Archie licked his fingers and slid off the stool. “Wear something nice.”
Thumps sat on the stool and looked at his empty plate. What the hell was someone like Noah Ridge doing in Chinook?
“Almost forgot.” Archie stood in the doorway and let the cold air rush in around him. “The sheriff wants to see you.”
“About what?”
“Noah Ridge, of course.” Archie rolled the poster up into a tight tube and tapped it against his hand. “Seems as though someone wants to kill him.”
THREE
When Thumps had left the house that morning, the air had been brisk. He had debated driving to Al’s, but after sitting hunched behind a steering wheel for most of the night, he needed a good walk to perk him up. Besides, his Volvo had little appreciation for cold weather. Anything close to freezing and the car would begin to sputter and stagger. It wasn’t a problem with engineering. The Swedes knew how to build a car that could handle frigid weather. Thumps was certain it was temperament. His particular Volvo simply preferred to be warm. And if it wasn’t warm, it preferred not to start.
Walking to Al’s had been pleasant enough, but sometime during breakfast, a wind had snuck up, knifing in out of the north. Thumps zipped his windbreaker over his chin, jammed his hands in his pockets, and headed for the sheriff’s office. When he had left the house, there had been only three things on his list for the day.
Go to Al’s.
Go to the Salvation Army thrift shop.
Go to bed.
He had no interest in seeing the sheriff, but Hockney’s office was the closest warm place on his new and improved list, and right now that was reason enough.
So, Noah Ridge was in town. Maybe things did travel in circles. How many years had it been? Fifteen? Twenty? Thumps did the math. Closer to twenty-five. It seemed impossible. He had been a student in those days. In Salt Lake City. At the University of Utah, a sprawling urban campus huddled in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains. Mormon country. Home to one of the few home-grown North American religions. Joseph Smith. Brigham Young. Polygamy. A remarkably businesslike religion. A natural extension of covenant theology. Humans and God agreeing that success in business was an economic indicator of spiritual grace. And salvation.
At first, Thumps had had a hard time separating the people from the religion, for Mormon theology had a decidedly racist angle to it. Blacks were the sons of Ham and cursed. Indians and Mexicans and South Pacific Islanders were Lamanites, who would, in the fullness of time, turn “white and delightsome.” Thumps had liked that phrase. White and delightsome. As if it were a reward. As if it were something to look forward to.
Some of that changed when the head of the church, Spencer W. Kimball, had a revelation concerning Blacks. God, it seemed, had changed his mind, and now the Mormon faithful could welcome the sons of Ham into the fold. The progressive element of the church rejoiced at this good news, in much the same way that stockbrokers welcome a bull market. The conservative element threatened to secede, though in the end, the threat was more noise than substance. And, predictably, with the burden of segregation lifted, the church expanded its proselytizing activities into Africa.
The cynic in Thumps knew that the religion wasn’t the individual. Some of his best friends had been Mormons. But he also knew that a few enlightened parishioners weren’t the measure of the religion.
Salt Lake City was an unlikely place for Noah Ridge to land. But one day, there he was. Already a national figure, every bit as charismatic as Dennis Banks or Russell Me
ans. The head of the Red Power Movement, or RPM as the press had decided to call the organization, partly because of the enormous energy of Ridge himself and partly because the name played well in print. Thumps had never quite figured out if RPM was a companion to the better known American Indian Movement or a splinter group. So far as he had been able to tell, it was both.
SHERIFF DUKE HOCKNEY was sitting behind his desk, working his way through a stack of paper. Police work, Thumps remembered from his days as a cop on the north coast of California, was ten percent catching crooks and ninety percent filling out forms.
“Close the door.”
Thumps pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. He should have grabbed his gloves when he left the house. He should have bought a heavier jacket. He should have stayed in bed.
“Archie said you wanted to see me.”
“You want coffee?”
“I want it to be spring.”
“I want to be rich,” said Hockney, without cracking a smile. The sheriff did not have a particularly well-developed sense of humour. The only time Duke ever made a try at a joke was when he was grumpy or annoyed. “What are you doing for the next couple of days?”
“Trying to stay warm.”
Hockney pushed his cup to the edge of the desk. “Pour me some while you’re at it.”
Hockney did not believe in drip coffee. The old metal percolator sat on a small table against the far wall. Thumps tested the weight. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought Duke was melting lead for bullets.
“You know,” said Thumps, “there are people in the world who make a fresh pot of coffee every day.”
“Don’t forget the cream.”
Not that Hockney had any cream. Just a big brown jar of white powder. Thumps dropped a teaspoonful into the cup. It lay on the surface for a moment, bubbling, like a snowball on a lava flow, before sinking to the bottom without a trace.
Thumps and Hockney had never really become friends. And maybe that’s the way it was with cops and ex-cops. Shortly after Thumps arrived in Chinook, the sheriff had come by to say hello and to talk about cops they both knew. And that had been that. No barbecues. No card games. No beers at the local bar.
Someone who didn’t know any better might have thought that the sheriff was standoffish, but Thumps knew that wasn’t the reason. Most of the good cops he had known in his life were loners, men who kept to themselves and their families. Maybe it was the job. Maybe it was temperament. Maybe it was the depression that came from knowing what one human being could do to another.
