Crime Plus Music (18 page)

“But that piper played it.”

“That he did.”

“But . . . the women I was in the kitchen with, they said William had paid the piper to play underneath your dad's bedroom window. How in God's name did he end up playing ‘Amazing Grace'?”

William shrugged. “Things happen.”

They both sat with their drinks in silence, and Rosalie said, “How did you arrange it? Did it cost anything?”

“Didn't cost a penny,” Duncan said. “And to arrange it . . . William made many enemies over the years, enemies he had forgotten about. But they never forgot. And many welcomed a chance to get back at him.”

She leaned into him. “All right, so you're the head of the family . . . head of the clan. What next?”

Duncan said, “You still like the view? And the scent of the ocean?”

“I love it.”

“Up to moving here and giving it a try?”

“Your brother?”

Duncan said, “It's official. I'm head of the family. The rest of the family will respect it. If William doesn't . . . it won't be pretty.”

Rosalie sipped again and said, “Okay, I'm up for it. On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“No bagpipe music,” she said. “There's too much . . . hate, battles, revenge. Think you can live with that?”

He clinked his glass against hers. “Always.”

UNBALANCED

BY CRAIG JOHNSON

T
HE
ONLY
PART
OF
HER
clothing that was showing were the black combat boots cuffed with a pair of mismatched green socks. She was waiting on the bench outside the Conoco station in Garryowen, Montana. When I first saw her; it was close to eleven at night and if you'd tapped the frozen Mail Pouch thermometer above her head it would've told you that it was twelve degrees below zero.

I was making the airport run to pick up my daughter, Cady, who had missed her connection from Philadelphia in Denver and was now scheduled to come in just before midnight. The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time was extraordinarily upset but had calmed down when I'd told her we'd stay in Billings that night and do some Christmas shopping the next day before heading back home. I hadn't told her we were staying at the Dude Rancher Lodge, one of my favorites because of the kitschy, old brick courtyard and fifties coffee shop. Cady hated it.

In my rush to head north, I hadn't gassed up in Wyoming and was just hoping that the Conoco had after-hour credit-card pumps. They did, and it was as I was putting gas into my truck with the motor running that I noticed her stand up, a blanket trailing out from her shoulders through the blowing snow to where I stood.

She paused at the other side of the bed and then raised her head to look at the stars on the doors of my truck and me, the eyes tick-tocking either from imbalance or self-medication. She studied my hat, neatly pressed shirt and the shiny brass nametag and other trappings of authority just visible under my sheepskin coat.

I
BUTTONED
MY
JACKET
THE
rest of the way up and looked at her, expecting Crow, maybe Northern Cheyenne, but from the limited view the condensation of her breath and the cowl-like hood provided, I could see that her skin was pale and her hair dark but not black; a wide face and full lips that snared and released between the nervous teeth. “Hey.” She cleared her throat and shifted something in her hands, still keeping the majority of her body wrapped. “I thought you were supposed to shut the engine off before you do that.” She glanced at the writing on the side of my truck and the shotgun locked to the front hump, something I was sure she'd already noticed. “Where's Absaroka County?”

I clicked the small keeper on the pump handle and pulled my glove back on, resting my hand on the top of the bed as the tank filled. “Wyoming; Bighorn Mountains.”

“Oh.” She nodded but didn't say anything more.

About five nine, she was tall and her eyes moved rapidly taking in the vehicle and then me; she had the look of someone whose only interaction with the police was of being rousted; feigned indifference with just a touch of defiance—and maybe just a little crazy. “Cold, huh?”

I adjusted my hat to keep the blowing snow out of my eyes. “Yep.”

She was quiet again, and I was beginning to wonder how long it was going to take, and how much nerve it must've taken to approach my truck; I must've been the only vehicle that had stopped in hours. I waited. The two-way radio blared something. The handle clicked off, and I pulled the nozzle, returning it to the plastic cradle. I hit the button to request a receipt, because I didn't trust gas pumps any more than I trusted those robot amputees over in Deadwood.

Without volition, I found words in my mouth the way I always did in the presence of women. “I've got a heater in this truck.”

She snorted a quick laugh. “I figured.”

I stood there for a moment more and then started around the front so as to not pass her on the way to the driver's side—now she was going to have to ask.

As I pulled the door handle, she started to reach out a hand but then let it drop. I paused for a second more and then slid in and shut the door behind me, clicking on my seatbelt and pulling the three-quarter ton down into gear.

She backed away and then turned and retreated to the bench as I wheeled around the pumps. I stopped at the road, sat there for a moment, and then shook my head at myself, turned around and circled in front of her. She looked up again as I rolled the window down on the passenger side door. “You want a ride?”

Balancing her needs with her pride, she sat there huddled in the blanket. “Maybe.”

I sighed to let her know that my Good Samaritan side wasn't endless and spoke through the exhaust that the wind was carrying back past the truck. “I was offering you a ride if you're headed north.”

She looked up at the empty highway and was probably thinking about whether she could trust me or not.

“I have to be in Billings in a little over an hour to pick up my daughter—are you coming?”

The glint of temper was there again, but she converted it into standing and picked something up—a guitar case that I hadn't noticed before. She tossed it into the bed of my truck, still carefully holding the blanket closed around her with the other hand, her posture slightly off. “All right.”

“You want to put your guitar in here, there's room.”

She swung the door open, gathered the folds up around her knees, and slid into the seat. “Nah, it's a piece of shit.” She closed the door with her left hand and then looked at some papers, the metal clipboard, my thermos, and me. Her eyes half closed as the waft of heat from the vents surrounded her. “So, are we going or what?”

“Seatbelt.” She settled in and looked out the window, her breath fogging the glass, and I placed her age as mid-twenties.

“Don't believe in 'em.” She wiped her nose on the blanket again using her left hand.

We didn't move, and the radio crackled a highway patrolman taking a bathroom break. She looked at the radio below the dash and then back at me, then pulled the shoulder belt from the retractor and swiveled to put it in the retainer at the center—it was about then that Dog swung his giant head around from the backseat to get a closer look at her.

“Jesus . . . !” She jumped back against the door and something slid from her grip and fell to the rubber floor mat with a heavy thump.

I glanced over and could see it was a small, wood-gripped revolver.

She slid one of her boots in front of it to block my view. We stared at each other for a few seconds, both of us deciding how it was we were going to play it.

“What the hell, man . . .” She adjusted the blanket, careful to completely cover the pistol on the floorboard.

I sat there for a moment more, then pulled onto the frontage road and headed north toward the onramp of I-90. Thinking about what I was going to do, I pulled onto the highway. “That's my partner—don't worry, he's friendly.”

She stared at the 150-plus pounds of German Shepherd, Saint Bernard, and who knew what. She didn't look particularly convinced. “I don't like dogs.”

“Too bad, it's his truck.”

I eased the V-10 up to sixty on the snow-covered road and motioned toward the battered thermos leaning against the console. “There's coffee in there.”

She looked, first checking to make sure the gun was hidden and then reached down, pausing long enough so that I noticed her bare hands, strong and deft even in the remains of the cold. She saw me watching her and lifted the thermos by the copper-piping handle, which was connected to the Stanley with two massive hose clamps. She read the sticker on the side,
DRINKING
FUEL
, as she twisted off the chrome top “You got anything to put in this?”

“Nope.”

She rolled her eyes and unscrewed it, pouring herself one. She placed it in the cup holder and settled back against the door, careful not to move enough to reproduce the revolver. She pulled the blanket back off her shoulders and looked at me. “Good coffee.”

“Thanks.” I threw her a tenuous safety line and caught a glimpse of a nose stud and what might've been a tattoo at the side of her neck. “My daughter sends it to me.”

The radio squawked again as the highway patrolman came back on duty, and she glared at it. “Do we have to listen to that crap?”

I smiled and flipped the radio off. “Sorry, force of habit.”

She glanced back at Dog, who regarded her indifferently as she nudged one foot toward the other in an attempt to push the revolver up and onto her other shoe. “So, you're the sheriff down there?”

“Yep.”

She nonchalantly reached down, feigning an itch in order to snag the pistol. She slid it back under the blanket and carried it onto her lap. “Your daughter live in Billings?”

“Nope, Philadelphia.”

She nodded and murmured something I didn't catch.

“Excuse me?”

The eyes came up, and I noticed they were an unsettling shade of green. “Philly Soul. The O'Jays, Patti LaBelle, the Stylistics, Archie Bell & the Drells, the Intruders . . .”

“That music's a little before your time, isn't it?”

She sipped her coffee and stared out the windshield. “Music's for everybody, all the time.”

We drove through the night. It seemed as if she wanted something, and I made the mistake of thinking it was conversation. “I saw the guitar case—you play?”

She watched the flakes that had just started darting through my headlights. “You see everything?”

“Keeps me alive.” I glanced at her lap to let her know I knew. “Are you in trouble with someone?”

The chromate eyes flicked to me then returned to the road. “Not really.” It was a long time before she spoke again. “Your dog sure has a nice truck.” An eighteen-wheeler, pushing the speed limit just a little, became more circumspect in his speed as I pulled out from the clouds of snow billowing behind him and passed. “It's funny how traffic slows down around you in this thing.”

“Uh huh.”

There was another long pause as 362 horses pulled Dog's sleigh up the road, the muffled sound of the tires giving the illusion that we were riding on clouds.

“I play guitar—lousy. Hey, do you mind if we power up the radio? Music, I mean.”

I stared at her for a moment and then gestured toward the dash. She fiddled with the
SEEK
button on
FM
, but we were in the dead zone between Hardin and Billings. “Not much reception on the Rez. Why don't you try
AM
? The signals bounce off the atmosphere and you can get stuff from all over the world.”

She flipped it off and slumped back against the passenger side door. “I don't do
AM
.” She remained restless, glancing up in the visors and at the console. “You don't have any CDs?”

I thought about it and remembered my friend Henry Standing Bear buying some cheap music at the Flying J truck stop months ago on a fishing trip to Fort Smith. The Bear had become annoyed with me when I'd left the radio on search for five minutes, completely unaware that it was only playing music in seven second intervals. “You know, there might be some CDs in the side pocket of the door.”

She moved and rustled her free hand in the pocket, finally pulling out a $2.99
The Very Best of Merle Haggard
. “Oh, yeah.”

She plucked the disc from the cheap, cardboard sleeve and slipped it into a slot in the dash I'd never noticed. The lights of the stereo came on and the opening lines of Haggard's opus, “Okie from Muskogee” thumped through the speakers. She made a face and looked at the cover, reading the fine print. “What'd they do, record it on an eight-track through a steel drum full of bourbon?”

“I'm not so sure they sell the highest fidelity music in the clearance bin at the Flying J
.
”

Her face was animated in a positive way for the first time as the long fingers danced off the buttons of my truck stereo, and I noticed the metal flake, blue nail polish. “You've got too much bass and the fade's all messed up.” She continued playing with the thing and I had to admit that the sound was becoming remarkably better. Satisfied, she sat back in the seat, even going so far as to hold out a hand for Dog to sniff. He did, and then licked her wrist.

“I love singer-storytellers.” She scratched under the beast's chin and for the first time since I'd met her seemed to relax as she listened to the lyrics. “You know this song is a joke, right?”

“Well, I don't know if it's a joke . . .”

“He wrote it in response to the uninformed view of the Vietnam War. He said he figured it was what his dad would've thought.”

I shrugged noncommittally.

She stared at the side of my face, possibly at my ear, or the lack of a tiny bit of it. “Were you over there?”

I nodded.

“So was my dad.”

She seemed to want more. “. . . It was a confusing time; we were all kind of uninformed to a degree.”

“Like now?”

“Kind of.”

Her eyes went back to the road. “That's why I'm going back home; my dad died.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Me too.”

I navigated my way around another slow-moving eighteen-wheeler. “What did your father do?”

Her voice dropped to a trademark baritone, buttery and sonorous. “
KERR
, 750
AM
. Polson, Montana.” I laughed, and for the first time she smiled.

“I thought you didn't do
AM
.”

“Yeah, well now you know why.”

Merle swung into “Pancho and Lefty” and she pointed to the stereo. “Proof positive that he
did
smoke marijuana in Muskogee—he's friends with Willie Nelson.”

I raised an eyebrow. “In my line of work, we call that guilt by association.”

“Yeah, well in my line of work we call it a friggin' fact and Willie's smoked like a Cummins Diesel everywhere, including Muskogee, Oklahoma.”

I had to concede the logic. “You seem to know a lot about the industry. Nashville?”