La Donna Detroit

by Jon A. Jackson

  Something had happened, he could tell right away. The door to the old mine shaft was pushed closed but not locked. He had no way of knowing the various events that had transpired here, after he had left. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that, somehow, there were at least four boxes. And, he was gratified to see, their ghastly guardian, an unknown corpse, now rather mummified.

  Joe recognized this corpse, although he hadn’t the slightest notion of who this guy might have been. He’d first seen him on the highway, outside of Butte. Hitchhiking with a hired killer, or maybe it was the other way around. He’d stumbled on him months later, when he was trying to provide himself with a little cushion in his flight from Montana. Somebody had transported this corpse some forty miles from the highway and stashed him in Joe’s private cache. Who? He assumed it had been Helen, but why? He’d never asked her when they had reunited in Salt Lake City. They’d been too busy with other things. But Joe was glad to see the guy. They were getting to be old pals. The guy didn’t look much different, maybe a littler drier and thinner, his beard a little fuller, perhaps—it must be the excellent drainage, the dry air. The guy looked like he could hold out for years, till he resembled the husk of an insect, like a stonefly on a river rock.

  More to the point: whoever had been here since Joe left, it hadn’t been anyone official. This guy wouldn’t still be on watch.

  Joe had little curiosity about who the mysterious hitchhiker might be. He wasn’t squeamish, but he had no desire to shift the body about. Still, it might be helpful to learn whatever might be readily available, so he took a moment to check the external coat pockets. All he found was a well-thumbed and grimy little spiral notebook and a stub of a pencil. By the light of the flashlight he read some lines of poetry, no name on the book. The last page written on contained a single, apparently uncompleted line: “The hour of transition is”.

  That was all. An epitaph, perhaps. He stuffed the book in his hip pocket and went directly to the remaining cardboard boxes. On his previous visit he’d been in too much of a hurry. He’d taken a box filled with old bills and records. Obviously, Helen had been more thorough. She had carted off the lion’s share of the loot he had lifted in Detroit a lifetime ago, as it seemed. But to his relief, at least one of the boxes was filled with money.

  He was tempted to whistle as he carried the box down the hill, but the hoot of an owl startled him and he kept his mouth shut. Also in the old mine were a few of his guns and plenty of ammo for them. He toted off a small arsenal, a couple of favorite pistols, a shotgun, and a special rifle he’d had made for him by a gunsmith over in the Bitterroot Valley. This was the gun he’d mentioned to Schwind, a .225 with a barrel that stifled sound like a vacuum. There was a companion piece, a similarly silenced .225 pistol. He took that as well.

  Before he left he carefully closed the door and made sure it was locked. With any luck, the corpse would have eternal peace. Joe was looking for a little peace himself. He was dog tired, he realized, but he couldn’t stay here. A freaky thought popped into his head: he knew a nurse in Butte. Nah. That would be too stupid. But where can you go when dawn is in the east? It’s too late for a motel, especially in this remote territory. He didn’t believe he could drive far. It would be the height of idiocy to pull over on the roadside: roads are empty out here, but eventually the sheriff or the highway patrol comes along. No tremendous danger, maybe, but not one to invite. Maybe the nurse, Cateyo, was not such a bad idea? She was in love with him, he knew, but they might have been watching her since he’d escaped.

  He ended up taking a soothing bath and a catnap in the hot springs, just over the hill from the burnt-out house. It was still quite early when he dragged himself out and got on the road. To his surprise, he felt refreshed enough to drive as far as Billings before weariness forced him to stop. He checked into the largest hotel downtown, the Northern, and crashed into sleep.

  When he awoke he was starving. It was morning, though. He had slept right through, some fourteen hours. Over breakfast he ransacked the papers, but there was no mention of any bombing or rocket attack at the Salt Lake City airport the day before. Maybe it was just that the Gazette was provincial, but he doubted it. Out here, Salt Lake might be a long way off in miles, but there weren’t a lot of other large towns providing news. People thought nothing of driving to Cheyenne to shop. He thought it was some very good news management by Agent Schwind. Perhaps she’d convinced everybody that it was just an accident. That didn’t make news unless a lot of people were killed. Joe didn’t think anyone had been killed. It was possible, he thought, that yesterday’s papers had carried a capsule news item, and when nothing further had developed, the story had died.

  What next? He knew he should check in with Schwind, but he wasn’t ready to yet. When he called her he wanted to be someplace where he couldn’t be easily cornered. He hadn’t made up his mind what he was going to do now, but he wanted to be free to decide for himself. He needed to be in a larger city. Montana had only a couple of roads out and only a few commercial flights. He needed to be in Denver, maybe. No. Not Denver. He wasn’t ready to go back to Denver yet. And not Cheyenne. Nothing for it: he had to drive to Minneapolis. It took him two days and he enjoyed the drive immensely.

  It was great to be out here, just driving, alone. He felt free, finally. Driving around America, checking out the scenery. Thinking the long, road thoughts. He thought about Schwind, about Helen, and Humphrey. He thought about his new career, whatever it might turn out to be. He didn’t think much about who might have been in the ambulance. If it was Echeverria, so be it. He didn’t know the guy, but he knew he’d been targeted by him.

  He went to a mall in Minneapolis and bought a tiny tape recorder. Then he drove downtown. He parked and walked. He found a terrific used-clothing store, where he bought an amazing pair of python-skin cowboy boots that fit perfectly and a western-style sport coat that could have been tailored for him. A fellow he’d met in Tucson, many years ago, had shown him the joys of browsing in these kinds of stores. You could buy great clothes for next to nothing. He even found a cowboy hat, a genuine Stetson in dark gray, a modest rancher’s hat. The whole shebang cost only fifty dollars.

  He found the guy he wanted, on the street. A bearded young man with a backpack and a dog. One of those homeless but not helpless young guys who wandered around the country. This guy was happy to have lunch with Joe at a diner while the dog guarded the pack outside, where they could keep an eye on him. The man ate two big cheeseburgers, his fries and Joe’s, and then gladly spoke into the tape recorder. Just a couple of cryptic messages. Joe gave him twenty bucks and left him smiling.

  At a phone booth, he called the number Schwind had given him. When he got her voice mail, he played one of the messages. The homeless man’s voice merely said, “Call this number,” and carefully enunciated a number in Orange County, California. Joe figured Schwind would understand. What he didn’t want was his own voice on her tape machine.

  It was a beautiful day in Minneapolis, warm and sunny. He found a park near the river and strolled around. When he called the number in Orange County there were no messages. Too bad. Schwind hadn’t figured it out yet. He called her number again. This time, she answered. He played the second message on the tape recorder. This one gave a number in Arkansas and asked her to leave a number in Chicago.

  “Joe?” Schwind said. “Is that you? Listen, we’ve got to ta—” He hung up.

  By now, he thought, she would know where he was and where he was headed. He could call her in Chicago, make further arrangements, and maybe even meet. That would calm her. Sure enough, when he called his Arkansas answering service, Schwind’s voice was more relaxed. And she didn’t use his name.

  “Hi,” she said. “You did a great job. Everybody’s pleased. But we need to meet. Call me in Chicago, tomorrow, between noon and four P.M. Have fun.”

  Joe called the number in Chicago immediately. After four rings a recorded woman’s voice, not Schwind’s, asked the caller
to leave a message, without providing any information. He hung up. That was all right, he thought. Maybe. He wondered where she had been when all the shooting started in Salt Lake. He called one of his old connections and asked for a location on the number Schwind had provided. The guy on the other end didn’t take more than a minute. It was a residential number, at an address on the north side. The phone was registered to a D. Schwind.

  There was no way he could get to Chicago before her, he knew. Not if he wanted to go armed, and he did. Maybe it was time to trust her. He’d think about it while he drove.

  10

  Kiddle-Dee-Divey

  Helen wondered if Humphrey had ever been in love. They were down by the lake, by the pavilion, which stood next to the little dock. Humphrey’s boat, a long low cabin cruiser elegantly crafted in rich, dark woods, had been brought out of storage in the boathouse for the first time this year and moored alongside the wooden catwalk. It was such a nice day, an incredible seventy-five degrees— Detroit got these days in March, sometimes—that they were actually talking about taking the boat out.

  Humphrey was not fully convinced that it was a good idea. He kept asking the young fellows whose job it was to take care of and handle the boat if they didn’t think it was a little early. Wouldn’t there still be ice out there on the lake? No? But what about debris, all that flotsam left over from when the ice went out, some of it pieces of docks from as far away as Lake Huron? No problem, he was assured, they would keep a good lookout, wouldn’t be running fast enough to damage anything even if they should encounter a log, to say nothing of a stray shingle or a net float. Heck, they said, it was worse in the summer, all the beer bottles. Clearly, they were eager.

  Even Soke, Mrs. Sid, looked anticipatory. She had accepted one of her daughter’s windbreakers, a shiny red one with a slick finish and a lightweight lining. Helen found her a pair of white canvas boat shoes and a bright Red Wings baseball cap. She said that she thought the Red Wings played hockey, not baseball, and they all laughed. But when Helen tucked her frizzy mass of iron-gray hair up into the hat, Soke looked ten years younger. Helen was very eager for her to go out on the water in this great boat. Roman was not eager. He was stolid, his dark suit bulging over his shoulder holster. But he said nothing, just watched.

  At last, Humphrey agreed. Just for a little run. If it got too cold, if the water was too choppy (it was blessedly still, nothing more than an occasional warm flutter), they could come right back. But there were a few things to be done. Always some fussing by the boatmen, tinkering with the engine, testing the radio, the depth finder, something. And then there was the food and drink to be prepared and brought down. The boating party stood about on the dock, or the lawn, talking and watching.

  Helen asked where the name of the boat had come from, Kiddle-Dee-Divey. Boat names were often silly, Humphrey told her. But had he named her? Yes, he had. He’d bought the boat a long time ago. He used to keep it down at Bayview, but when he bought this house with its boathouse, he’d moved it up here. He was quite proud of the boat. He said it was the only one of its kind. It had been built by a legendary boatwright from up near Traverse City. This master builder was famous for his many beautiful and fast sailboats, but sometime after the war he’d tried his hand at what he called a motor cruiser. He’d wanted to recapture the classical lines of powerboats from the twenties and thirties, and this was the lovely result. As far as Humphrey knew, he’d never built another. The builder had given the boat to his wife for an anniversary present. When she divorced him, she put it up for sale. Humphrey had bought it from her.

  “But how did you come up with that name?” Helen demanded.

  He reluctantly confessed that it was a lyric from a goofy song that was popular when he was a child: “Mairzy Doats.” As a boy, he had thought at first that it was “Mairzy Boats.” He had stubbornly insisted that everybody was mispronouncing the title. The grownups were so amused they often asked him to sing it. So when he bought a boat…. Helen thought that was funny and she begged him to sing the song. He refused. But he did finally recite some of the lyrics: “Mairzy doats and dozey doats, and little lambsy divey … a kiddle-dee-divey too, wouldn’t you?” He added, “I still think it should be ‘boats,’ but that wouldn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “The words are just a goofy way of saying ‘Mares eat oats,’ and so on,” he explained.

  Helen cocked her head, smiling as she digested this example of an earlier generation’s idea of comic wordplay. And then, for no reason that she could supply, she asked him if he’d ever been in love.

  Humphrey was startled. “Well, I guess so,” he said. “Everybody’s been in love, once.” But when she pressed for details, he would only say, “A long time ago.”

  “But you never married, or anything, did you?”

  No, he’d never been close to marrying.

  “It must have been that first love,” Helen said. “What was her name?”

  “I don’t even remember,” he said.

  At last, the boat was ready. They all went aboard and found places to sit while the young man, Jamie, took the boat slowly out. The boat was surprisingly roomy inside, for all its sleek, low profile. There was a large open area on the back, or aft, with cushioned bench-type seats. But then you stepped down to an enclosed bridge, where the helmsman stood. Another door opened into an amazing saloon, so to speak, complete with a tiny galley, tables, booth seats, and beyond that sleeping compartments. Everything was marvelously worked out in deep, rich hardwoods. There were tiny windows that looked out onto a narrow catwalk on either side of the cabin roof. The builder had obviously not departed much from the design of a sailboat.

  At first they all sat in the sunny rear cockpit. But Humphrey went to stand right next to the helmsman, in the cabin, directing him out to the northeast.

  It was such a great day that soon they were all sipping drinks and eating grilled sausages, fancy cheeses, and a variety of crackers and tiny sandwiches; there was even a fancy genoise layer cake with caramel-hazelnut icing. Humphrey, true to his peppers despite the loss of Pepe, favored the jalapeño poppers, stuffed with pepper jack cheese.

  Soon enough, Helen found an opportunity to bring up Humphrey’s lost love. They were sitting side by side on the fantail, as it were. The others had drifted inside. Roman was playing a card game with Soke in the saloon.

  Humphrey confided, finally, that the “lost love” had actually been his “first love”—maybe only love would have been more accurate. He had last seen her when he was fourteen and she was thirteen.

  “My gosh,” Helen said, “it’s sort of like, what’s his name, Dante and Beatrice. Or am I thinking of someone else?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Humphrey said. “We were just kids. But she was very nice to me.”

  “Ooh, that sounds a little risqué,” Helen kidded.

  “It wasn’t like that,” he insisted. “She was just nice. We didn’t do anything. We traded books—I forget what. King Arthur, or something. Maybe it was Robert Louis Stevenson. Something like that. Poetry, maybe.”

  Helen was intrigued. She could see that it had meant a lot to him. It was sweet, she thought. A childhood romance, and then … “Well, what happened?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “We moved away,” he said. “Carmine’s folks moved into the city. We grew up on the east side. Things got a little crazy. You know? Growing up, gangs, I had a little trouble. That kind of thing.”

  “Whatever happened to her? Didn’t you ever call, or write?”

  “I don’t know why I never called,” he said. “Maybe it was … well, I just don’t know. She was too far away. She was history. I was into other stuff, like I said. She wouldn’t have liked what I was doing.”

  “But you never forgot her,” Helen said. It was sad, but cute. Still, he had never gotten married. She asked him why not.

  “You know,” he said, in a hopeless tone, gesturing at his torso. “I was a fatso. I had a few times with the b
imbos, but it wasn’t my thing. I wasn’t into it.”

  Helen didn’t understand. She knew Humphrey had been terribly obese; that was how she remembered him from her own youth—nice, fat, jolly Unca Umby. It was hard to believe, in fact, that this rather handsome, distinguished-looking man had once been a sweating, panting mess. But lots of heavy men, she thought, managed to get married, have children. Why not Humphrey?

  He explained. Lots of men just gave up on sex and love, all of that. They channeled their energies in other directions. In his case, he got interested in the business. Carmine was enough of a playboy for all of them, him and her father. He apologized if it sounded disrespectful, but her dad was a lover. Humphrey wasn’t. He realized in his early twenties that he had a lot of catching up to do, having dropped out of high school. He studied, he watched and listened and learned. He saw that he was going to have to be the brains behind Carmine, who was being groomed to take over. He had accepted this. He thought that his chance might come someday, and it had.

  “But maybe too late,” he added. “The business is all changed.”

  But Helen wasn’t having another business pep talk. They were on an outing. She wanted to know how a man just “gives up” romance.

  “You mean sex,” he said. He was uneasy, but also excited. He had expected to have this conversation with her, as they had gotten closer these last few weeks. He hadn’t dared to hope that anything could actually come of it, but it was hard for a man not to dream. He hadn’t imagined that the conversation would come up just like this, on the back of a boat with her mother and Roman and the crew not far off. But they were effectively alone. Maybe it was the right time.

  He gave it some thought, then said, “It’s hard, at first. A man has natural feelings, of course, and you see these babes hanging around … I mean, they’re there for the taking. Good-looking, too, a lot of them. I had a couple … well, I was coming up in the world, I had power, already. They had to go to bed with me. That’s the way it was. I’m not gonna ’pologize. They were looking out for themselves, too. But it was no good. I could see why they were doing it. Eh? I couldn’t do that, after a while. Besides, it was getting in my way.