by Ross Thomas
It was a solid-looking three-story granite building that B. D. Huckins liked to describe as a gray footlocker with windows. Including its parking lot and Fire Engine Co. No. 1 (there was no Engine Co. No. 2), the Civic Center took up nearly half a block of prime real estate on Noble’s Trace.
The Trace, as everyone called it, was the only thoroughfare in Durango that resembled a boulevard and the only one that curved, twisted and wandered through the city from its eastern limits to the Southern Pacific tracks on the west. All other streets-except those up in the foothills-ran straight as a stripe from east to west and north to south.
Noble’s Trace took its name from a Louisiana gambler called Noble Clark, who, with his Mexican prostitute wife, Lupe, had founded the settlement 148 years ago, naming it Durango after the one in Mexico from which Lupe had fled during the 1835 plague of scorpions.
With the reluctant and lackadaisical help of some Chumash Indians, the couple built the first structure in Durango to have four walls and a roof. It was a half-timber, half-adobe building that contained a combination trading post, tavern and bawdy house. It burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances twenty-three months later, roasting to death both Noble and Lupe Clark and two unidentified male customers.
The old trail that had wound through the mountains, the foothills and down to the ocean was still called the Trace because no one had ever thought there was any real need to name it anything else.
As its chiseled-in-stone name asserted, the Civic Center was home to all of Durango’s municipal services. The mayor, the chief of police and the city treasurer were all up on the third floor along with the treasurer’s hive of bookkeepers. On the second floor were the courtroom and the chambers of the city’s municipal judge who was elected every four years. Down the hall from him were the elected city attorney and his two appointed deputies-plus two clerks, a bailiff, three secretaries and the aging part-time court reporter and full-time gay activist who, although growing deaf, was still too vain to wear a hearing aid. The fire chief worked out of his office in Fire Engine Co. No. 1.
The Civic Center’s ground floor was reserved for the city’s walk-in trade. Nearly a third of it was occupied by the police force and the jail itself, which afforded six cells and a drunk tank. The rest was given over to bureaus where citizens could pay taxes, fines and water bills; obtain marriage licenses and file for divorce; register births and deaths; apply for building permits and easements; and, if so inclined, which few were, attend the weekly meetings of the Durango City Council.
Shortly after 9:30 A.M. on that last Saturday in June, Chief of Police Sid Fork was leaning back in his banker’s swivel chair, his feet up on his walnut desk, listening to a report from his two homicide detectives, Wade Bryant, the too-tall elf, and Joe Huff, who, to Sid Fork, was always the professor.
After Bryant stopped talking, the chief said, “Twenty-twos, huh?”
“First choice of the dedicated professional,” said Huff.
“It’d kind of help if we had a motive,” Fork said. “I mean, why would some pro-hitter, up from L.A. or maybe down from San Francisco, pump a couple of rounds into old Norm and not even bother to empty the register?”
“What a good question,” Bryant said.
“My, yes,” said Huff.
“Well?”
“Because somebody paid him to,” Huff said.
“So who’s the somebody?”
“Now there you’ve got us,” Bryant said. “Joe and I’ve been worrying about that very thing. So this morning we get up early, even though it’s Saturday, and drop in on the new widow to, you know, make sure she’s okay and hasn’t stuck her head in the oven or anything, and maybe even ask her a question or two. Well, we get there about eight this morning and guess what?”
Fork yawned. “She wasn’t there.”
“Right,” said Bryant. “So Joe here says, ‘Let’s try the Blue Eagle because maybe she’s down there either going over the books or drowning her sorrows.’ So we drive down to the Blue Eagle and guess what?”
“That’s guess what number two,” Fork said.
“We almost couldn’t get in is what,” Huff said.
Fork nodded, as if pleased. “Packed, huh?”
“Four deep at the bar,” said Bryant. “Well, two anyway. And behind it was Virginia herself, drawing beers, pouring shots, smiling through her tears and playing a lively tune on the cash register.”
“I told her she’d probably take in at least a thousand,” Fork said. “Maybe even fifteen hundred.”
“Your idea then?”
“Better than staying home, wandering around those fourteen rooms and chewing holes in her hankie.”
“Well, we finally make it up to the bar,” Huff said, “catch Virginia’s eye and Wade says something commiserative such as ‘How’s tricks, Ginny?’ and she tells us how grateful she is we’ve dropped by and that the first round’s on the house.”
“So you never got around to asking her about who might’ve sent the shooter?”
“Didn’t seem like the moment,” Bryant said, “what with Condor State Bank on one side of us and Regent Chevrolet on the other.”
“Kind of a wake, was it?” Fork said.
“Kind of.”
Sid Fork turned his head to stare out the window. “I can remember when a guy died, his relatives and neighbors and friends’d gather round after the funeral with a ton of food, a lot of it fried chicken and baked ham, and the widow’d be standing there, all in black, shaking every hand and agreeing that yes, indeed, the late Tom or Harry sure did look natural and weren’t the flowers just beautiful?”
“When the hell was this?” Bryant asked.
“Twenty-five, thirty years ago,” Fork said, turned his gaze from the window and asked Bryant, “So what’d you come up with-if anything?”
Bryant licked his lips, as if pre-tasting his answer. “A possible eyewitness.”
Fork dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward. “Who?”
“Father Frank from St. Maggie’s.”
“Wonderful,” Fork said, putting his feet back up on the desk. “Our whiskey priest.”
“He’s been dry awhile,” Joe Huff said. “Going to AA and everything.”
“How’d you get on to him?”
“He was hanging around outside the Eagle this morning, afraid to go in, when Wade and I came out.”
“Afraid of the booze, huh?”
“Probably,” Bryant said. “So Joe asks how’s it going, Father? And he says just fine except he thinks maybe he’ll come back and pay his respects when Virginia’s not so busy. Then he looks at me and I can see him telling himself no, yes, no, yes-until finally he says he thinks he noticed something oddish last night. Don’t think I ever heard anybody say oddish before.”
“Me either,” Joe Huff said.
“Anyway, it seems he’d been to a meeting-”
“AA meeting?” Fork said.
Bryant nodded. “But it didn’t take, or something somebody said rubbed him the wrong way, or maybe the bishop’d sent him a cross little note. Who knows? But anyhow he was kind of upset so he decided to walk off whatever was bothering him. And he’s down there on North Fifth when he sees this other priest looking at the puppies in Felipe’s window.”
“Sheplabs, aren’t they?” Fork said. “Cute little fellows.”
Joe Huff took over the report. “Well, you know how Father Frank goes around in a T-shirt and jeans most of the time. But he says this other priest is all in black and has a wrong-way collar on and everything. So Father Frank thinks the other guy’s visiting or just passing through because he’s never seen him before. And he also thinks the other priest might like to drop by Pretty Polly’s for coffee and doughnuts. So he’s about to cross the street and invite him when the other priest turns and almost runs the other way.”
“Toward the Eagle?”
“Away from it. So Father Frank sort of steps back into Klein’s doorway, which is pretty deep, because h
e doesn’t want the other priest to get the wrong idea.”
“What wrong idea?”
“I’m a Baptist,” Huff said. “How the hell should I know? You want to hear some Bible Belt stuff about what priests and nuns do? Curl your toenails.”
“Just tell me what happened, according to Father Frank.”
“What he claims he saw and heard is this,” Wade Bryant said. “He says the other priest scoots down the sidewalk, stops, spins around like he’s just remembered something, then makes a beeline for the Blue Eagle.”
“What time is this?”
“He thinks about eleven-twenty.”
“What time the AA meeting end?”
“Nine-thirty, but he hung around another half an hour or so for the cookies and coffee.”
“And then went on his hour-and-a-half walk.”
“Walking past bars, I expect,” Huff said. “Testing temptation.”
“But this other priest,” Fork said. “He went in the Blue Eagle.”
Huff nodded.
“So what’d Father Frank do?”
“He hung around some more,” Bryant said, “waiting for the other guy to come out because he still thought they might go have coffee and doughnuts together.”
“Where’d he hang around?”
“Cattawampus across the street from the Eagle,” Huff said.
Fork closed his eyes, as if drawing himself a map of the intersection. “Marvin’s Jewelry,” he said. “Another deep doorway.”
“Father Frank says he uses doorways like that because he doesn’t like to be seen hanging around street corners at night,” Bryant said.
“Let’s get to the odd stuff,” Fork said. “He see anything?”
Bryant shook his head.
“He hear anything?”
“He thought he heard somebody clap inside the Eagle.”
“Clap?”
“Clap.”
“Once?” Fork asked. “Five times? Fifty times? What?”
Bryant grinned. “You know, Sid, that’s exactly what I asked him myself.”
“And?”
“And he said they clapped just twice.”
“Then what?”
“Then the stranger-priest hurries out of the Eagle and jumps in a van that drives off in a hurry.”
“What’d Father Frank do then?”
“He says since he didn’t have anybody to drink coffee with, he went home and went to bed.”
“What’d this other priest look like?”
Bryant nodded at Joe Huff, who pulled out a small notebook, turned some pages and read what he had written. “Short. Very short legs. About five-one. Forty to forty-five. Also fat. Round like a ball. Gray hair, cut short. And ugly. Porcine.”
“Porcine?”
“Piggy-looking. He had one of the noses that turn up and aim their nostrils right at you.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“Father Frank says he wasn’t close enough to tell,” Bryant said. “But he was close enough to see that the guy looked piggy.”
“What about the van?”
Bryant shook his head with regret. “No license number or make because Father Frank says he can’t tell a Buick from a Ford. But he did say it was pink.”
“Pink?”
Bryant nodded.
“Well,” Fork said. “That’s something.”
Chapter 17
The roadhouse where Adair, Vines and B. D. Huckins were to meet the mayor’s rich Iranian brother-in-law at 1 P.M. that Saturday was four miles east of Durango on the south side of Noble’s Trace which, once past the city limits, changed from a boulevard into the two-lane blacktop that curved and twisted its way to U.S. 101.
The roadhouse was called Cousin Mary’s and owned by Merriman Dorr, who insisted it was a supper club and not a roadhouse at all. Dorr was a fairly recent immigrant from Florida who claimed to have taught geography at the University of Arkansas, flown as copilot for something called Trans-Caribbean Air Freight and, before all that, played two seasons at second base for the Savannah Indians in the double-A Southern League.
Not long after Dorr materialized in Durango, the ever dubious Sid Fork made a series of long-distance calls and discovered Dorr had done everything he claimed and more. The more included being held without bail for three months in the West Palm Beach jail on a vaguely worded fraud charge.
The alleged fraud had involved two and possibly three shipments of M-16 rifles and M-60 mortars. Dorr was said to have been paid for them by a Miami export-import firm called Midway There, Inc. The firm claimed it had never received shipment.
All charges against Dorr were suddenly dropped when Midway There, Inc., went out of business one Thanksgiving weekend, never to be heard from again.
After that, Sid Fork made no more investigatory long-distance calls about Merriman Dorr because, as he told the mayor, “It was all beginning to sound pretty much like spook stuff.” But Fork still considered it his civic duty to preserve Cousin Mary’s excellent menu and reasonable prices even though the roadhouse lay just outside his jurisdiction. So he paid Dorr a cautionary semiofficial visit eight weeks after the roadhouse opened for business.
“Why here?” he asked Dorr.
“When I was down in that West Palm Beach jail, I heard talk about your easy ways.”
“You hear about our rules?”
“No.”
“Well, the rules are no dope and no whores unless you want the Feds or the deputy sheriffs dropping by.”
“What about a nice quiet table-stakes poker game on weekends?”
“That’s different,” Sid Fork said.
B. D. Huckins drove her three-year-old gray Volvo sedan into the roadhouse parking lot and followed the gravel drive that led to the rear. Kelly Vines, noticing the small blue Neon sign that spelled out “Cousin Mary’s,” asked if there was indeed a Mary who was somebody’s cousin.
“Merriman Dorr,” said Huckins. “He owns the place.”
“Food any good?” Jack Adair asked from the backseat.
“The portions are too big.”
The final question came from Vines, who asked why there were no customers’ cars in the front parking lot.
“Because he doesn’t open till six,” the mayor said.
Cousin Mary’s had been an abandoned eighty-one-year-old two-room schoolhouse until Merriman Dorr bought and remodeled it, doing much of the work himself, even the wiring. He also added two wings and painted the place barn-red except for the roof. Every morning-although often it was barely before noon-Dorr ran the Stars and Stripes up the old but newly painted and still sturdy flagpole. When he first opened the place, Dorr had rung the old school bell at sunrise on all holidays. And even though his nearest neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away, all of them (except for one deaf woman) had called, written or come by to protest the dawn clangor. After that, Dorr rang the bell only on the Fourth of July and Veterans Day.
He also kept a wide yellow ribbon, almost a sash, tied around the trunk of the huge old oak that still grew in the middle of what had been the school playground but was now the roadhouse parking lot. The yellow ribbon, Dorr had told a twenty-three-year-old reporter from The Durango Times, memorialized all Americans still held hostage by assorted terrorists and “every other American who languishes in some foreign prison just because those airheads in Washington forgot to juice the right people.”
Some considered Dorr a patriot. Others thought he was a nut. He did a nice business.
Huckins parked her Volvo behind the roadhouse at the end of a row of five almost new and remarkably plain sedans of various American manufacture. Kelly Vines thought all the sedans might as well have worn vanity license plates that read: RENTED. B. D. Huckins caught his inspection of the overly anonymous cars and answered his unasked question. “They’re what the players drive.”
“Poker?”
“Poker.”
The back door of the roadhouse was familiar to Vines because he had had one just like it
installed in the apartment of a client who had had good reason to believe that someone was trying to kill him. The door was at least two inches thick and consisted of a solid aluminum core wrapped with steel sheathing.
Huckins raised her fist to knock but before she could the door was opened by a lean six-footer with lively green eyes and a face rescued from male-model insipidness by a thin eggshell-white scar that ran from his left eye back to his left earlobe. The scar gave him a pleasantly sinister look that Vines thought was probably good for business.
Merriman Dorr’s green eyes flickered over Vines, tarried on Adair and came to rest on B. D. Huckins. He smiled then, letting perfect teeth gleam, and said, “I swear, B. D., you get prettier each and every time I see you and that surely’s not often enough.”
It was nicely put and softly said, but Huckins ignored the compliment and instead made minimal introductions. “Jack and Kelly. Merriman.”
“Gentlemen,” said Dorr, turning sideways so his guests could enter. As Huckins went by him she said, “I don’t see Parvis’s car.”
“Must be because he’s not here yet.”
Dorr and the mayor went down a hall, followed by Vines and Adair. They passed a closed door. In front of it in an armless wooden chair sat a watchful man in his fifties who rested a pump shotgun across his knees. From behind the door came the unmistakable click of poker chips being stacked or tossed into the pot.
Halfway down the hall they stopped at another closed door, which their host opened, almost bowing them into the room. “What an extraordinary cane,” Dorr said as Adair went by.
“An heirloom,” said Adair.
Dorr entered the room as B. D. Huckins was turning to inspect the large round table with its starched linen cloth, artfully folded napkins and four place settings of heavy silver, gold-rimmed china and crystal goblets, into which the napkins had been tucked. Vines noticed the room had no windows and guessed the almost silent air-conditioning kept the temperature at a permanent seventy-two degrees.
In one corner of the room were three tan easy chairs, a dark green couch and a coffee table. On the floor was a brown carpet woven out of a synthetic fiber. On the pale cream walls were seven interesting watercolors of the old schoolhouse. Not far from the couch and easy chairs was a wet bar. A half-open door advertised the bathroom.
