A Far Gone Night (32 page)

“I can’t speak for Clancy. He’s a grown, mature man. You’re a grown woman, working on being mature. You both make adult decisions most of the time. What do you want from me?”

“Well, for openers, is he always like this, taking advantage of women after he wins them over with his charm, his stories of adventures, and his bedside manner?”

It sounded like Suzanne was describing the main character in
Othello
, not Clancy Dominguez, although Clancy does have those attributes Miss
Highsmith
was listing. I had seen him in action many times, and the guy is catnip for cuties. I think I heard Boots lean forward to eavesdrop more effectively.

“That’s a question only Clancy can answer. You’ll have to ask him.”

“I have no idea
how
to ask him, dammit! That’s the damn problem,
Thomas
. So if you’re not going to be any good helping me out with Clancy, let’s just drop the subject, okay? Move on.
The prick.”

“But the two of you will always have
Rockbluff
.”

“And you’ll always have Olivia Olson,” she replied, bitterness dripping from her lovely, gloss-free lips.

“One can only hope. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to buy a book or two.
Something with derring-do, action, violence, and subterfuge.
Something to bring a little excitement into my plebian, boring existence.
Boots, got any new Brad Thor novels? Lee Child? Vince Flynn’s last two?”

Boots just smiled and pointed. Suzanne glared at me and approached Boots, I guess to continue with plans for her book signing and teaser. I bought two Flynn novels, a Lee Child, and a new Warren Moore III gem, and left, waving to Boots and Suzanne. Boots waved back. By then it was time to head over to the courthouse and the
Rockbluff
County Sheriff’s Offices.

I drove over, parked, edged down the stone steps and turned into the offices of Harmon Payne. I nodded at
Landsberger
, who was covering the phones while he read the morning paper. He nodded. I nodded back. He did not ask if I wanted a cup of coffee or a Diet Coke. I missed Penny
Altemier
already.

I waited until eleven-fifteen and left. Back in the day when I still had regular physical exams, at Karen’s and the girls’ insistence, I had been escorted into a waiting room for patients thirty minutes after the time of my appointment, which was 9:30. Sitting around in the silly, open-backed hospital gown, I had waited another thirty minutes with no contact from the outside world, not even to apologize for my having to wait or a guess as to when the doctor might drop by to see me on his way to meeting with his financial advisor on the first tee. Not even a month-old
Iowegian
Magazine
for me to read. I figured an hour was plenty of time to allow for emergencies. So I changed back into my clothes and left. And never, ever went back to a physician. I’ve saved lots of money and feel great, understanding deep in the core of my being that, if I go see a doctor again, he or she will tell me something I don’t want to hear, making it come true. By ignoring physicians, I avoid bad news.

One caveat is that a few times, in emergencies, I have succumbed to their expertise, if you want to call it that. Broken legs in SEALS training, a torn knee ligament jumping from a Blackhawk helicopter, and a couple of gunshot wounds, a knife slashing, and a boo-boo on my elbow when I fell-down-went-boom.

So, why go to a doctor and pay them when one is feeling great? That’s what I thought. And that goes for others who do not meet appointments on time. But I digress.

As I was leaving Payne’s offices, Ortiz and Massey emerged from the interview room and called out to me. I kept walking, on out the door, up the smooth limestone steps to the street, into my truck, and across the bridge and up the hill to The Grain o’ Truth Bar & Grill, the Mount Olympus of domestic pubs.

Moon was behind the bar, and I must say that there is something comforting about that fact. Moon behind the bar, Rachel waiting on customers, and Ethel Waters singing “Stormy Weather” in the background reassured me that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world, especially after having had Olivia Olson in my arms again, at least for now.
Time for lunch.

“Hello, Lunatic,” I said, enjoying calling him by his first name for a change.

“Chatty this morning.”

“Yes.
Caffeine.”

“The usual?”

“Yes.”

Moon turned and set to my order of two Loony Burgers and an order of fries along with a Three Philosophers, on tap since I had come to town. He drew the dark liquid into a tulip glass and set it before me as I seated myself at the bar. I said, “
Migwech
.”

Moon’s stoic face shifted a little into what appeared to be a slight smile. He nodded.

“A little
Anishinabe
lingo for you,” I said “I bought the ‘
Anishinabe
for Morons’ tapes.”

“Good match.”

“So,” I said, expertly shifting away from the emotional, which surprised me, to the personal, “any news on your Packard?”

Moon’s eyes darkened a little. He said, “No.” He glanced around, said, “But it was worth it. I’ll get another vehicle.”

But, I thought, my friend would never get another niece to replace Cynthia Stalking Wolf.

I ate silently as Moon worked filling orders as customers drifted in on
a Monday
lunchtime with
Rockbluff
coming back to life. I drank my second ale and looked around. I drank my third ale, taking it with me to an empty booth in the far corner of the room. I thought about Olivia.

A look from a woman can be a prayer. A glance from a woman can be a dissertation. A smile from a woman can open the doors to glory, and her frown can close them all. So far, I realized, the doors to glory had opened a little, but there were impediments to the sustainability of that glory. And as I contemplated the future and Liv Olson, the idea of marriage came to me for the first time.

Sometimes I surprise myself.

T
hings died down. I was interviewed at The Grain o’ Truth Bar & Grill by Special Agents Ortiz and Massey. It was a cold day, and my responses were even colder. They were polite, even confessing that it was their fault we got off to a bad start. Give them credit for a little class if you will, but I saw it as an attempt to nudge me into dropping my guard and cooperating. I had the sense that I wouldn’t see them again. They seemed dispirited and a little off their game. I think they knew nothing would come of their investigation.

Maybe next spring there would be a discovery made in a crumbling barn on a lonely, deserted farm in northeast Iowa, and they would hear about the Packard, and they’d drift back and ask a few questions, maybe with renewed vigor. It wouldn’t help.

I could teach them a few things about interrogation, and none of them have anything to do with their questions for me that December afternoon in a pleasant pub in
Rockbluff
, run by an Ojibwa Indian, and with Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” in the background, the joint festooned with tasteful holiday decorations—mostly greenery and red ribbons.

My
interrogations, both given and received, more often included batteries, water, and pliers. Sometimes, in special situations, the speeches of Richard Nixon were played over and over again. Once, when I was interrogated in a tropical country, I was placed in a bare ten-foot by six-foot room,
whomped
on the soles of my feet with a bamboo shaft while being asked sensitive questions that I refused to answer. Giving up on that approach, my interviewers left the room, tossing a puff adder in as they exited.

When I saw the highly-venomous snake, I began singing, “You Are My Sunshine” to my captors while I calmed the creature, picked it up, and broke its neck. Those evil little men behind my torture thought I had lost my mind. I had.

That was easy compared to being interrogated by experts using
strappudo
equipment. I enjoyed that experience in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the cradle of civilization. That was the one where those asking the questions tied my arms behind my back, tied a rope to my wrists, and suspended me in the air. I am afraid I said hateful things to those guys. Vigorous and creative epithets I am proud of to this day. I did manage to retaliate when I got loose, but my shoulders still ache on cold nights. Warm nights, too.
And sometimes in-between nights.
But I prefer to let bygones be bygones.
The glorious grace of my life with Karen, with Annie and Michelle more than made up for the horrors of my history.
Talk about redemption.

With school back in session through the beginning of next week, Olivia was not very accessible. There were renewed rehearsals for
Our Town
, the play’s December dates set back due to the disruption wrought by the blizzard but now revived for three performances in January. She had those ubiquitous papers to grade and research papers to laugh at.

So I only saw her sporadically, the joys of our snowbound weekend together gathering silvery, fragile cobwebs in the night.

As for me, I reverted to my old, solitary habits of running in the mornings now that the roads were clear, going to
Mulehoff’s
gym to work upper body on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and legs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. My wounds were healing fast, but not completely, so I avoided side bends holding a 45-pound plate, grimacing through certain other exercises that tapped me on the shoulder to ask, “Hurt much?”

In the middle of that week after my interviews with Massey and Ortiz, several conversations with Harmon Payne, who was going on “paid administrative leave”
approved by the city council, and brief nightly chats with Liv
, I had a visitor.

It was a Thursday mid-morning. I had run, ministered to Gotcha, absorbed several protein-rich breakfast items, drunk two cups of Baileys-free cups of coffee (with various other sweetening additives added), and was just about to head out the door when there was a knock.
Three sharp, forceful, raps.
Military style.

I picked up my shotgun in my right hand and opened the door with my left. A well-dressed man, maybe mid-30s stood there, a polite smile on his face. I said good morning, looking at his hands first, which were empty, then his face.

“May I come in?” he asked.

It was cold outside, but he was not wearing an overcoat. He was dressed in a tasteful, tailored pin-striped charcoal suit, sparkling white shirt, and a pale blue silk necktie with a perfectly-tied Windsor knot. His black dress shoes looked expensive, even with a bit of snow on the edges. Behind him was a black Mercedes-Benz CL 600, a vehicle that I knew cost well into six figures. The man smiled a little brighter and tilted his head to the side and asked again, “May I come in?”

“I’m thinking,” I said. Then, “Okay.”

I stepped aside and gestured for him to come in. The man looked at my shotgun in hand, nodded deferentially, and stepped by me and into my home, looking around. Gotcha came up to him and growled. There was no wiggle to her warped little root of a tail.
Surprised me.

The man said, “Is your Bulldog controlled?”

I said yes and offered him a seat in the living room while I corrected Gotcha and brought her to my side. Gotcha is more discerning when it comes to human nature than her owner, and I wondered what was up. Usually she bites only bad people, having done it just that once, a bit over a year ago. Growling is not her style. I decided she was taking a position one step back from chomping on my visitor’s leg.

The man took a seat in one of the recliners, smiled, and draped one leg over the other in a sure sign of ease and comfort. He glanced down and removed a dog hair from the bottom of a trouser leg.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I want to offer you an arrangement. Call it a gift,” he said, turning his full attention to me as I sat across from him in my wingback chair. I set my shotgun across my legs, keeping my right hand on the trigger guard.

I said, “Oh, goody! I love gifts! What is it?”

“It’s valuable, but not tangible.”

“You obviously know who I am. Who the hell are
you
? I was taught by my mother not to accept gifts from strangers. Are you one of those perverts who
cruises
around in a windowless van, stopping by elementary schools and asking little girls and boys if they’d like to see your puppy?”

The man laughed. “No, I am not that kind of person. I restrict my sexual orientation to adult females.”

“I repeat.
Who
are you?”

The man shifted in his seat, uncrossed his legs. “My name is irrelevant.”

“What
is
relevant? I mean, you got all dressed up to come see me.”

“I dress like this every day. Not the point, Mr. O’Shea.”

“Can we get on with this? I’m a little edgy this morning. I’d hate to have to shoot you simply because you teased me about a gift.” I brought up Elsie and rested her stock on my right knee, her barrel pointed at the ceiling.

“Oh, please,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Come to the point, sir, before I throw you out into the snow.
On your head.”

“Okay then. I represent certain interests, financial interests, who are well aware that you and your Indian friend and your other friend are responsible for the death of Ted
Hornung
, the destruction of the Pony Club in
Chalaka
, and the disappearance of several of Mr.
Hornung’s
associates.”

“I don’t think you can prove that.” I wondered how many of
Hornung’s
associates Clancy had disappeared in addition to those at the deserted farm shootout. I grinned inside my brain.

“I don’t need to prove it. We both know it’s true. Getting
on
, as you so impatiently desire, I am here to give you a gift, but there is a caveat, a
condition
, of that gift, which is substantial.”

“I knew it.”

“The financial interests I represent considered taking your life. Not a problem. You and I both know that a trained sniper could kill you at any moment, given time and the right situation, despite your impressive skill set. But, we are not going to do that. That’s the gift.
Your life.”

He was right. Anyone can have anyone killed, and often get away with it. I know that from my own experience. “What’s the condition? Oh, I got that out of sequence. I accept your gift and most likely the condition, under the circumstances.”

The man smiled, this time genuinely. “I can see why Olivia Olson might be infatuated with you. You are quite humorous.” He shifted a bit in the chair. “Anyway, the condition is that you leave everything as it is, that you no longer interfere with my employers’ business interests, and that you completely drop your nosing around in the Cynthia Stalking Wolf case. Considering that everyone directly connected with that stupid mistake is now dead, that part of the gift should be easy.”

I started to ask him how he knew Liv liked me, more than a little, too, but then I dropped the idea. Some things are obvious. These people have more information on me than the NSA.

“Why the offer?
Why don’t you just pick me off anyway without giving anything?”

The man smiled again, touched his hand to his heart, and said, “Because you did us a favor. Mr.
Hornung
had become a liability. He was skimming from our profits from the Pony Club, he was dipping his toe in entertainment venues we do not condone, and he ignored our strongly-worded communications to cease and desist. In local parlance, he was too big for his britches. In our parlance, he had become a negative asset. We were going to go beyond strongly-worded communications with him, but that would have led to a dot-connecting possibly incriminating my employers. Of course, those dots could likely be erased with incentives to key individuals to go dumb or become forgetful.”

“You’d have to bribe and threaten authorities to lose their focus.”

“Exactly, but we resist the word ‘bribe.’ We prefer ‘business inducements’ instead.
Fits our mission statement better.
Now, what
you’ve
done is save us the trouble, sending law enforcement professionals in a totally different direction. I believe there was light applause at corporate when we learned that the Pony Club had gone
poof
.

“Now the heat’s on
you
,” he said, “but I doubt it will be very warm. Our sources tell us that your operation will not likely yield any traceable evidence. The trail is already cold, no pun intended, and so we may all sleep well as a result of your actions, and the fact that you will not get caught. We congratulate you on a job well done.”

“Thank you,” I said, keeping my shotgun pointing toward the ceiling and Gotcha at my feet, alert and, from time to time, trembling. I put my left hand on her thick shoulders and rubbed. She wanted a piece of the man. “But what we did was not a job, it was personal.”

“Yes, of course.
An important distinction.
Now, one other thing,” he said.

“Which is?”

“Your friend.
Not the Indian. We know a little bit about Dominguez.
And his associates.
Not much, but we are inclined to believe he would take offense if something happened to you, and we are inclined to believe he would bring unorthodox resources to discover what happened, and we are inclined to believe it would turn out expensively and unpleasantly for everyone that I represent.”

“And I am inclined to believe he would feed you your livers before setting you on fire,” I said. God, I love Clancy Dominguez.