by David Pierce
I went after her and said firmly, 'Now, Sara, you are not to phone that no-good motorcycle punk what's-his-name, you hear me?'
'You know perfectly well what his name is,' she said. 'It's Rocky. And I'll call him if I want to.'
I looked helplessly after her, then sighed and went back to the bar where Tim had busied himself diplomatically with some unnecessary chore. I had a couple more beers, then Sara came back, ordered herself a Coke, took one sip, and left. Then the farmers paid their tab and left too. Tim took a free beer down the length of the bar to the old-timer. When he came back I asked him if he did any food.
'Burgers, dogs and chili,' he said. 'Also chili dogs and chili burgers. My own chili. But the grill's off til I get around to turning it on. Won't be long.'
I thanked him again, paid up, left a useful tip, and took myself out of there. I couldn't see any sign of my loving daughter so I got back in the camper and gave the horn a couple of toots. After a few minutes she appeared and climbed in beside me.
'Where you been, seeing the sights?' I asked her.
'Yeah,' she muttered. 'And, you've seen one Five & Dime, you've see 'em all. How'd I do in there?'
'Terrific,' I said. 'Just like a real daughter.'
I started up the motor and we drove as instructed out back of Tim's some fifty yards to where the paved area stopped and the trees started. By following some tracks that were already there in the grass we found the right spot. It was almost completely encircled by trees and some kind soul had even built a barbecue out of old cinderblocks and a piece of grill and left it there.
So we puttered around for an hour unpacking, connecting up the stove and the lamp, and wandering down to the stream. Sara made us some coffee that we drank black because I'd forgotten the milk and we got the sleeping bags laid out and all in all acted like the innocent greenhorns we were supposed to be, which wasn't hard.
At a few minutes before six we were back in Tim's. I was to cover the front of the bar and Sara to try and hang out at the back, near the phone to take Ricky's call and also to see if anyone was making or getting long-distance calls. Tim had some after-work business by then, enough for him to need a girl to help out – roughly half the customers were the overall trade and the others town folk, clerks and store owners, plus a table of housewives.
Right on six the phone rang and a lanky beanpole with a Pacific Bell shirt on who had been playing pool answered it, then shouted out, 'Is there a Sara in the house?'
'You better believe it, Shorty,' she told him, and bustled off to answer it. When she came back she gave me a nod which I took to mean that we had successfully established communications with the rest of the troops. Then she went off to shoot a game with Shorty while I kept my ears open unsuccessfully for anyone called Dell who had a brother.
After an hour I tried some of Tim's chili – it was fair, if you like chili that's all beans. Then I tried two of his chili dogs, hold the chili. They were fair. Then I had two pickled eggs that were great. Sara, of course, in her role of total nuisance, wouldn't eat anything. When I decided to call it quits for the night, she promptly decided she wanted to stay for a while and maybe pop a few with her new admirer, who was already somehow deeply within her thrall. I'd been afraid Tim or the waitress Maureen might hit on her for some ID, but it hadn't happened. People intelligently seem to be looser about such things in the sticks where kids of twelve and thirteen can often be found driving tractors and other farm machinery they're not legally supposed to, but who cares. In some states it's not even illegal if they stay on farm property; I don't know how I know that, but I do. I suspect it was one of the very few things I picked up when I did my time on a juvenile correctional farm back East. Two of the other things I picked up I no longer have, the ability to second deal and head lice.
I was sound asleep in my bunk when Sara came in a while later. She was thoughtful enough to keep the noise level down so that she only woke me up twice. The third time I woke up that night was when it started to rain and as I'd left the top vent up, water was splashing in on the floor between us. Guess who mopped it up?
*
Tuesday morning dawned clear but a mite breezy. After a quick cold-water wash-up, I locked the camper carefully and we took a stroll down the main street, which was called Main Street, where we had an indifferent breakfast at the Rosewood Grill. Then we looked in store windows for a while, then bought some milk and some cold meat for lunch and a couple of T-bones to barbecue, if we ever got around to it, at Bert's General Groceries, We Deliver, then passed the rest of the daylight hours in and around the camper, popping in to Tim's from time to time just in case. Sara had brought along a pack of cards so I let her beat me in a couple of games of gin, just to keep her happy, then we both read a bit, Sara some Brautigan rubbish, me a Nero Wolfe I'd already read a half a dozen times, Fer De Lance. I knew from the telephone company that when Tommy called the Tavern he always did so around six o'clock, so we were back in the joint well before then, me up front at the bar again and Sara covering the back.
We needn't have bothered, as it turned out, because a few minutes before the hour Tim waved at two men who had just come in and said, 'Hey, Dell, Biff. How you boys doin'?'
'Hangin' in there,' the one who turned out to be Biff said. He came to the bar, picked up a pitcher of beer and two glasses Tim had already set out and took them over to the table where his brother had just sat himself down. After a minute I took a casual look their way. Neither one of the brothers was what you would call young or fresh-faced or innocent, but you wouldn't call them old, scarred villains either. They were just Dell and Biff, two good old redneck boys having a pitcher of suds after work. Dell was the big one, hefty, florid, carrying a few extra pounds around the middle, light brown hair, farmer's jeans, studded leather belt with a flashy Mexican silver buckle depicting the head of a longhorn steer. Biff was short, stocky, in dirty white Levis, old sweater with the sleeves rolled up to show his tattoos, cowboy hat, mirror shades.
Hi, boys, nice to meet you.
'That old jalopy of yours still running?' a young guy in a California Angels baseball cap called out to the brothers from the far end of the bar.
'She just about got us here,' Biff said with a grin, 'but she does tend to buffet a little at high speeds.'
'Uh-huh,' the guy at the bar said, 'Like over forty?'
'Forty?' said Dell. 'I don't even think our speedometer goes that high.' All of which witty repartee led me to suspect that the brothers had something fancy in the form of wheels parked outside, but I needed to know for sure, also I wanted them to get a look at me in my full splendor, i.e., standing up, so I stood up, called to Sara to stay away from the darn phone, I'd be back in a minute, rolled my eyes in the direction of the brothers' table, then headed for the door. I saw the message sink in because she squinted her eyes and called back,
'Make it an hour, who cares.' Then she addressed the room in general, there were maybe ten customers by then, most of whom I'd seen the day before, 'No pool players in here tonight? Shee-it.'
The brothers took a long, careful look at me as I ambled by them, then one at Sara, who was chalking her cue professionally. I don't know where she learned to play the game, but she wasn't bad, although she didn't know anything about position and she loved trying unnecessary bank shots.
'Big mother,' I heard Biff say as I was going out the door.
'Yes indeedy,' his brother said.
Outside, I circled around to the parking area and saw what had to be the brothers' wheels as there was nothing else there of any interest. A new 4 x 4 painted in metallic gold, with a chrome rollbar and four extra spotlights, two mounted on the front of the hood and two more above the driver on the rollbar itself. I was relieved not to see some low-slung Detroit special. I didn't want them changing vehicles on me before they headed into the woods and those bumpy logging roads. I noticed as I passed there was no lock on the gas-tank lid, which was all to the good. Through one of the windows at the back of the taver
n I could see both the washrooms and the telephone; after a minute my favorite pool-hustler and birdbrain came out of the ladies' room, stopped at the phone, dug a piece of paper out of her pocket, and started dialing. She was of course calling up the reserves, wherever they were but they wouldn't be far, telling them we'd made contact and it was on for tonight.
Back at the camper I opened up, found the transponder, which was wrapped up in a clean shirt at the bottom of my bag, kissed it for luck, pocketed it, dug out an old, patched cardigan I'd brought along, sat on my bunk for a while just to let a little time pass but not too much, then locked up again and hied it back to the parking lot, swinging the sweater playfully by one sleeve. Wouldn't you know, just as I passed the boys' truck I dropped the damn thing. I couldn't see anyone watching so as I bent to pick it up I whipped off the gas-tank cap, dropped the waterproof (and I devoutly hoped, gasproof) transmitter in, screwed the cap back on, picked up the sweater and continued on my way, hardly having broken stride. I'd never used that kind of transponder before, the kind that went inside the gas tank, the more usual sorts you clamped magnetically under the car in some out-of-the-way spot like beside the exhaust, but those could be found more easily and once in a while fell off. Both types of course had their own power source but as their output was comparatively strong, sending a signal several miles, the batteries only had a working life of some six hours. But that would be more than enough, I prayed, to let us follow at a safe distance an over-dressed 4 x 4, with white leather interior and two large green and white felt dice hanging from the mirror, on its nocturnal travels. White leather interior – hot shit. Sure be a pity if anything happened to that beautiful heap.
Back at Tim's, there had been some changes. Sara, never one to be frightened off by minor character defects like being a killer, was playing eight-ball with Biff. I watched her make a decent long pot but, like I said, she'd left herself no position at all for her next shot. Two cute girls, one of them very cute, who might have been secretaries, if they had such a sophisticated thing in Carmen Springs, had taken the table next to Dell and they were joshing each other in a friendly and well-tried manner. The very cute one took one sidelong glance at me and didn't bother repeating it. I like to think it was the straggly mustache. Biff, however, took a long, hard look at me from the far side of the pool table and he did repeat it. I took that as a good sign; keep looking, Biff – it seemed possible that Sara had already dropped a hint or two that her big, square Daddy wasn't only the amiable goof-off and over-lenient father he was supposed to be.
And things looked even more encouraging when Biff, after putting away the eight-ball with a nice cut into the side pocket, disappeared toward the telephone, then came back, hit Tim for some change, then went back to the phone again. When he went back to his table a minute or two later he looked at everyone but me, then pulled his chair up to Dell's and whispered something to him. Then Dell carefully didn't look at me either.
I had to stick around the place at least til Benny had time to get to the camper and as I was getting peckish I tried another bowl of Tim's chili, which hadn't improved any since the day before, then two hotdogs without, then a sensational pickled wiener for dessert, made, like the pickled eggs, by Tim himself, Maureen the chatty waitress told me as she passed without being asked.
It was right on seven o'clock when Benny appeared, to my shock. In his neat tan outfit, square glasses and black attaché case, short, neatly combed hair and sensible black shoes, he screamed law to me, and I hoped to the brothers as well. We greeted each other with suitable expressions of surprise and pleasure, overdoing it slightly, and when Tim came over to take our drink orders and to take away my empty plates, I introduced him louder than necessary as a friend of mine from LA who'd said he might be up this way and if he was, he'd try and find me by looking in the nearest bar and as Tim's was the only bar in town it hadn't taken him long. We had a good chuckle at that, during which Sara shot us scowls from the brothers' table where she had ensconced herself and where she was helping them finish yet another pitcher of beer.
After we finished our drinks, I paid the bill after a friendly squabble over it with Benny, and we left, not before some undaughterly words from Sara who said she liked it where she was and she was staying where she was until she felt like going somewhere else and wherever that somewhere else was it sure wasn't going to be back to the gross camper that leaked in those boring trees off the parking lot back there by that freezing stream to watch me burn steaks or whatever fun things I had in mind. Not bad for a total nerd; she'd not only got them suspicious of me and my meet with Benny but had even managed to get in the location of the camper and that it was in some trees so it was eminently approachable.
As soon as we were outside I asked Benny why in hell he'd come into the bar. I thought the plan was for him to meet me at the camper.
'I didn't know where it was, did I?' he said mildly. 'Sara talked to Ricky when she phoned. He didn't think to ask and she didn't think to tell him.' And I didn't think to tell her to tell him, I thought.
'Oh, well,' I said. 'She's not used to this sort of thing. Anyone can forget a little detail like that, no harm done.'
'I hope,' said Benny fervently.
As we went by the boys' truck I pointed it out to Benny and told him I'd planted the transmitter with no trouble. He told me Ricky had parked just up the main road but off it, out of sight, and that he had tested the receiver and it was working and he was all ready to move off as soon as the target car hit the road, and also his bird call was working. All right so far. Then Benny and I climbed into the camper to set up the rest of the scam, if I may use that somewhat overworked word.
Overworked or not, it was certainly accurate in our case, for if all went well we were going to scam the brothers Dell and Biff out of their socks, their cowboy boots, their fancy wheels and most, if not all, of their miserable futures.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The first thing I did was to light the gas lamp so there was plenty of interior light, then I opened both side windows a few inches and also carelessly left both side curtains, the adorable gingham ones, half open as well. As the nearest trees were only a few feet away I didn't figure I could make it any easier for Dell or Biff or anyone else, for that matter, who wanted a good eyeful and earful. Then we laid out one of the maps on the fold-down table and scattered a couple of pencils, a ruler and a protractor on top for that professional touch that means so much. I made sure the second receiving set I'd got from Phil, the one that was just an empty box, was in plain view, likewise Benny's briefcase. Then we opened up a beer for me and a soda for Benny and made some small talk as we waited – Benny cool as always, me nervous and getting more so steadily. What we were waiting for was the well-known cry of the red-breasted woodpecker.
We didn't have to wait long before we heard it. It was Ricky, of course, out there in the darkness somewhere, letting us know that we had a customer in place.
'Tell me again, Marshal,' I said stupidly, rubbing my brow, 'I lost you somewhere back there.'
Benny sighed. 'Epilepsy. Also known as grand-mal or petit-mal seizures. Not only does it cause sudden and unpredictable fits of intense energy, it often leaves the sufferer afterwards in a coma from exhaustion. Sometimes there is loss of memory as well. Sometimes there is what is called automatic behavior. It is serious enough in itself, of course, but if it is coupled with, say, diabetes, as it was in the case of Mrs Castillo's brother, it can obviously be fatal. The sufferer could have been lying unconscious for hours after an attack and have died from sugar imbalance.'
'I know all that now,' I said. 'But at first Ricky just told me his brother was, well, slightly mad. He didn't say anything about all this epilepsy and whatnot.' This apparent madness of Chico's was already known by Dell; I had told Ricky to mention it to Tommy and he had passed it on over the phone.
'It is quite usual for relatives to lie about a member of their family having the disease,' Benny pontificated, 'as there has been a great
deal of misinformation about it down the ages.'
'Oh,' I said. 'Really.'
Benny took off his glasses and peered through them. 'However, Mr Castillo came up with a rather clever idea. Did he tell you he was in the habit of visiting his brother-in-law at least once a day on his rounds?'
'Absolutely,' I lied.
'Well.' Benny lifted up his briefcase, unlocked it with one of the keys from his keyring and took out a sweat band, the kind of thing tennis players wear around their wrists and wipe their foreheads with all the time. From a small slit in the back of the skin-colored terrycloth band he carefully removed a small black plastic box, which didn't surprise me greatly as I'd put it there the night before. Actually it was a Sen-Sen box I'd painted black with a felt-tip.
'This is a battery-powered transmitter, a common enough type, a similar thing but in reverse to the beepers that doctors wear these days.' And my mom, which had given me the idea in the first place.
'I understand a lot of would-be trendy people wear them too,' I said, 'so they can go beep-beep in public places and make themselves feel important.'
'Our department has found them very useful,' Benny said stiffly. 'I wear one myself in the city.'
'Sorry,' I said meekly.
'This is a spare one Mr Castillo kept in case of emergencies,' Benny went on. 'It doesn't have a large range, slightly over a mile, but that was sufficient for Mr Castillo's purposes. It appears that he once arrived at his brother-in-law's and found him missing. Luckily, he found him some hundred yards away, unconscious, dying from lack of insulin. To prevent that ever happening again, he made him always wear a transmitter like this on his arm under his clothes. If he was for whatever reason going farther away from his base than a mile, he was told to always leave a note saying where he was going and when he expected to be back.'
