"Beer," I said.
"Beer, Margie, and," he made a circular gesture at the table, "and hit the rest of us one more time."
Margie cantered away.
"I gotta tell you," the mayor said. "We liked what you did out there."
"We having a victory celebration?" I said.
"Well," the mayor laughed, though not like he meant it. "You might say so. You are one tough cookie."
"That would be me," I said.
Margie came back with drinks and set them out. While she was at the table nobody spoke. When she left the mayor looked after her.
He said, "That little girl's got a hell of a butt, doesn't she?"
I heard Luther Barnes inhale as though his patience was being tried. He was a young-looking guy with gray hair, and thick eyebrows. His face was one of those pale English-ancestry faces that would never tan. The closest he had gotten was a mild sunburn.
"Could we get to it, Roscoe," he said.
Very businesslike. He'd been to law school, and he wasn't a man to waste time chitchatting.
"Oh throttle it back, Luther," the mayor said. "No reason not to talk a little before you make someone an offer."
Barnes nodded and tightened his mouth and looked at Henry Brown and rolled his eyes.
"The thing is," Brown said, "after what we've seen of you in action, we think you might be able to help us solve a problem."
I waited.
"This is an affluent town, and we have access to a considerable amount of money."
"Isn't that nice," I said.
"It might be nice for you," Brown said. "You know who those people were that you tangled with today."
"I know The Preacher," I said.
"So you know about the Dell?"
"Yes."
"Those men were from the Dell."
"I sort of intuited that," I said. "Years of training."
Brown shifted gears a little.
"You're here looking into Steve Buckman's death."
I smiled helpfully.
"The prevailing theory is that he was killed by the Dell," Brown said. "Because he refused to pay them off."
"I've heard that," I said.
"The Dell is a cancer on this town."
"I've heard that, too."
"They intimidate our police. They extort money from our businesses. They frighten the citizens. They come in here, everywhere, and run up a bill and leave without paying. Their presence is destroying our businesses, which depend largely on people coming here for the desert air. Our real estate values are nonexistent. We have complained to the police. They are either afraid or corrupt. I would guess both. In any case, they do nothing. The Sheriff's Department has sent investigators, but witnesses are intimidated, and no one can make a case. And frankly, I'm not sure we are the sheriff's top priority. Many natives look at us as a bunch of yuppie intruders."
"Incredible," I said.
"You're not too talkative, are you," Luther Barnes said.
"I'm a good listener," I said. "And a very good dancer, too."
Barnes frowned.
"Well when you do talk," he said, "must you be a wiseacre?"
"I fight it all the time," I said. "Was there something you wanted me to do for you?"
"We'd like you to rid us of the Dell," Barnes said.
"You mind if I freshen up a bit first?" I said.
"Damn it, this is serious," Barnes said.
"I'll say."
"We don't expect you to do it alone. We are prepared to provide funds for you to hire a band of mercenaries, as many as you need, to clean out the Dell."
"And we sneak in there some night and napalm the place?" I said.
"You do whatever you must," Barnes said.
The rest of the group nodded. The mayor liked the sound of it.
"Whatever you must," the mayor said.
I sat back and looked at my hands resting on the table top. The left one was swollen. If I could get into my room without being sexually assaulted, I could ice it.
"I might be able to help you," I said. "But there are conditions."
"We will not quibble with you over price," Barnes said.
Everyone nodded.
"I'm sure you won't. But be clear about one thing. I am not an assassin. If I sign on for this, I can hire some people, and we can come out here and see what we can do. But it won't include murdering anybody."
"Well how…?" Brown said.
"I don't know. My first priority is to find out who killed Steve Buckman. That would not seem to exclude your goal, but you are second on the list. And if we come, you don't get to change your mind in the middle of it and call everything off."
None of them seemed quite sure what to say about that.
"What would it take to make us number one on your list?" Barnes said.
"Nothing."
"If it's a matter of money," Brown said.
"It's not."
"Well," the mayor said, "you'd consult with us."
"Maybe," I said.
"You don't give much, do you," the mayor said.
"Not much," I said.
"Will you do it?" Barnes said.
"If the price is right," I said.
"We'll make it right," Henry Brown said.
I looked at J. George, one of my oldest friends in Potshot, who had sat subserviently through the whole discussion without saying a word.
"What do you think, George?"
He smiled as if he'd just accidentally sold a house for cash.
"It'll be great," he said. "Just great."
Chapter 13
I WENT INTO my hotel room very carefully, but Bebe hadn't returned. Maybe romance was dead. My hands were swollen from yesterday's fight. I iced them for awhile, then in the early evening, I went back out to visit Lou Buckman.
Buckman Outfitters was closed. There was a sign on the front door that read I'M AT THE STABLE. The sign was correct. When I drove over there, she was in the corral, washing one of the horses with a hose. I got out of the rental car. Being tough as nails, I did not stagger when I hit the heat.
"Hello," I said.
The horse's lead was tied to a fencepost. He stood placidly, his dark brown coat gleaming, while the water sluiced over him. When I spoke he raised his head and looked at me with thoughtful dark eyes, and then let his head drop again.
"Hi," Lou said.
I sat on the top rail of the fence. I didn't look right. I needed a big hat.
"I talked to The Preacher," I said.
"And punched out two of his men."
"Before that," I said. "I went up to the Dell and talked with him."
"To the Dell?"
"Yep. Preacher says he didn't kill your husband."
"Of course he didn't. He had it done."
"Says he didn't have it done, either," I said.
"Well of course he'd say that."
"I think if he'd done it, or had it done, he'd have let me know," I said.
Lou was scornful.
"Because he's so truthful?"
"Because he's so full of himself. He'd want me to know he could do whatever he pleased and get away with it."
"You know him so well, already?"
"I know people like him," I said. "They'd be inclined to let me know they'd done it and challenge me to do anything about it."
"Well, thank God I don't know anyone like that, and I don't believe it for a minute. Steve stood up to them. First they threatened. Steve wouldn't back down. And they killed him."
"We'll see," I said.
"Well who the hell else would it be," she said.
I shrugged. Lou turned the chestnut horse loose and got another one, a darker chestnut. She hooked the shank to the fence rail and sponged him down with soapy water from a bucket.
"Have they frightened you off?" she said. "Or paid you?"
"If they're paying me," I said, "I just recently bit the hand that feeds me."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."
"
I agree."
She finished sponging the horse and began to rinse him with the hose.
"It's just that everybody lets me down," she said. "I keep hoping and I keep being disappointed."
There was birdsong in the still heat. No whisper of wind. Only the sound of the water running and, now and then, the exhausted buzz of an especially intrepid insect.
"I spend too much time," she said, "thinking about things."
"The mayor and some people have hired me, too."
"To do what?"
"To sanitize the Dell."
"The Dell? You mean run them out?"
"Something like that."
"What about Steve?"
"If you're right, the tasks may be synergistic."
She laughed, though not very warmly.
"Synergistic," she said. "My God! You don't talk like someone who nearly killed two men this afternoon."
"Clean mind, sound body," I said. "I'm going to leave for awhile."
"Leave?"
"Yes, I… "
"You're running away. You're afraid that The Preacher will get you for this afternoon."
"I'll be back," I said.
"You won't be back," she said. "I don't even blame you. You can't face down the Dell by yourself."
"No," I said, "I can't. I'm going home to recruit some people."
She shook her head.
"I don't believe you," she said.
"Nothing I can do about that," I said.
"I won't pay you any more," she said. "You earned what I've paid you this afternoon. But no more."
"Sure," I said. "While I'm gone, maybe you can count more on the Potshot cops than you think you can."
"About as much," she said, "as I can count on you
Chapter 14
IT WAS MORNING, early. I was drinking coffee with the chief of the Potshot police in an unmarked airconditioned four-door black Ford Explorer, parked outside the bank on Main Street. There was a rifle and a shotgun on the back seat. Between us in the front seat was the inevitable computer rig.
"When I started with the Middlesex DA's office," I said, "there wasn't a cop in the country would have known what the hell that was."
"Modern crime fighting," Walker said.
"You been a cop before?" I said.
"Yep."
"Where?"
"Someplace else."
"So why'd you end up here?"
"I like it here."
"Sort of hot," I said.
"At least you don't have to shovel it," he said.
"Yeah, but it doesn't melt in the spring either."
"You get used to it," Walker said.
"You get used to it," I said.
Walker shrugged and drank some coffee.
"I hear that Roscoe and friends hired you," he said.
"You got somebody undercover at the Rotary Club?" I said.
"Small town," Walker said. "I heard they want you to clean up the Dell."
I didn't say anything.
"What about Steve Buckman?"
"I'm still working on that," I said.
"Two jobs at once," he said. "A real Boston rocket."
I shrugged modestly.
"How you planning to go about that?" Walker said.
"If I were going to try and take out The Preacher and his friends, why would I tell you?"
" 'Cause you might need my help?"
"How much of that should I expect if you're in The Preacher's pocket?"
Walker nodded. His khaki uniform shirt was pressed into sharp military creases. He wore big aviator glasses and a big walnut-handled Colt revolver on a tooled leather belt complete with cartridge loops, each loop attractively set off by a big brass cartridge with a copper-coated tip.
"Me telling you I'm not ain't going to convince you," he said.
"No it ain't," I said.
"I do what I can," he said. "I've got four guys, kids really, like the uniform and the chance to carry a piece. Preacher's got forty, none of them kids. I got to obey the law. Preacher can do what he wants. If I'm going to put him in jail, I need witnesses that will testify."
"Frustrating," I said.
Walker shrugged.
"Why not go someplace else?"
"Like I said, I like it here. You going up against the Dell alone?"
"Am I going to have trouble with you?" I said.
Walker drank some more coffee, and looked out through the tinted windshield at the heat shimmers rising from the asphalt.
"I don't want some kind of goddamned range war here," he said.
"Me either," I said. "Am I going to have trouble with you?"
"Not if you're legal," he said. "Maybe I'm not as crooked or scared as you think I am."
"You bought yourself a little credence yesterday," I said.
"Coulda been phony," he said. "Just trying to find out what you're up to."
"Coulda been," I said. "I'm going out of town for awhile. In case you want to keep an eye on Lou Buckman."
He looked very sharply at me, but he didn't say anything. He simply nodded. I didn't say anything either. According to the time and temperature display outside the bank it was 7:27 A.M. and 105 degrees. We finished our coffee in silence, and I got out of the car. I stood for a moment with the door open. There seemed to be something I should say, but I didn't know what it was. Neither did Walker.
Finally I said, "Good luck."
"You too," he said.
Chapter 15
IT SEEMED THE better part of valor not to take on the Dell by myself. And since I had smacked two Dellsters around in the public street, it seemed that if I stuck around I might have to. I had my bag packed. I had said my good-byes, such as they were, to Lou Buckman and Dean Walker. It seemed best not to say good-bye to Bebe Taylor. I had my gun unloaded and packed so I could check it through. If the Dell came for me now I'd have to kick them to death.
I checked out of the hotel. Got in my rental car. Turned up the air-conditioning and headed for the airport. For quite awhile I was on a two-lane highway, and everywhere I looked there was only desert.
A lot of the landscape was cactus and sage and scrub growth that looked brittle and sharp. It was a landscape in which no horse could gallop. It was a landscape through which a horse would pick his way, slowly, weaving in and out through the hostile vegetation. You just couldn't trust the movies.
After my initial foray, I concluded that all in Potshot was not as it seemed. There was something going on with Lou Buckman that I didn't get. There was a lot going on with Dean Walker I didn't get. And there was something about Potshot that I didn't get. More annoying, I didn't even get what it was I didn't get. It was just a sense that in almost all my dealings with almost everyone I'd talked with, there was another story being told that I couldn't hear.
I sort of trusted The Preacher. He appeared to be a vicious thug and I had no reason to think that he wasn't. It was nice to be able to count on somebody.
I finally reached the interstate and turned on. Another hour to the airport and less than five hours home. There was something exultant about being alone on the highway under the high, hot, empty sky two thousand miles from anything familiar, heading straight for the horizon. And the fact that Susan was eventually beyond that horizon made the feeling tangible as it flickered along the nerve tracks. There were few words in the language better than "going home." Home, of course, was Susan Silverman. It was good that she was in Boston, because I liked it there. But if she moved to Indianapolis, then that would be home. I could make a living. There was crime everywhere.
Chapter 16
SUSAN AND I had but recently engaged in some highly inventive home-from-the-hills-is-the-hunter activity, and were now lying together on our backs on top of the covers while the sweat dried on our naked bodies. Pearl the Wonder Dog was curled up at the foot of the bed in a state of mild irritation that she wasn't able to weasel her way in between us.
"So you turned tail and ran," Susan said. "I didn't know you were that
sensible."
"The grave's a fine and private place," I said, "but none I think do there embrace."
"Do you mean that you didn't want to get killed," Susan said, "because if you did you couldn't boff me?"
"Exactly," I said.
"Whatever your reasons," Susan said, "I'm glad you're home."
"Me too."
"What are you going to do?"
"About Potshot?"
"Un-huh."
Susan had her head on my shoulder. My arm was around her.
"This is exactly the right moment," I said, "for me to light two cigarettes and hand one to you."
"Makes you regret not smoking for a moment," Susan said.
"Only for a moment," I said.
"So what's going to happen in Potshot?"
"I'll go back out," I said. "Push some more."
"Because you said you would."
"Well, yeah. And because if I don't do what I say I'll do, in a little while I'll be out of business. Because doing what I say I'll do is pretty much what I have to sell."
"I know."
"And, I don't like to get chased away."
"I know."
"Of course," I said, "I could give it up, and stand at stud."
"I wouldn't," Susan said.
"Just a thought," I said.
"Does Mary Lou Whatsis know you've left?"
"Yes."
"Does she know you're coming back?"
"I told her I would. But I'm not sure she believed me."
"The more fool she," Susan said. "Should we get up and prepare a postcoital supper?"
At the foot of the bed Pearl raised her head and looked at us.
"Which word do you think she understands?" I said. "Postcoital? Or supper?"
"She understands everything," Susan said.
"Well she can join us," I said.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
Neither of us moved.
"Are we going to leap up?" I said.
"Yes," Susan said.
We lay still.
Susan said, "It's time to jump out of this bed."
"Okay."
Neither of us moved.
"You seem to have succeeded primarily in discovering that you don't know what's going on."
"You could say that."
"So why are you home?"
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