The southwest section of the city was the old part, now the center of the Mexican-American community. The far newer and most desirable residential section was to the northwest where there was some contour to the land. I arrived at the Yeoman place at ten-thirty. It was in a fold of the land, lushly irrigated, high enough so that when I got out of the car on the broad slick expanse of asphalt drive, I could look out across all the lights to the city in the clear cold night air. The house was low and huge, and something that bloomed in the night had an aromatic fragrance. Most of the house was dark. As I started toward the front a side door opened and Jass Yeoman said, “McGee? Come on in this way, boy.”
I crossed a small terrace and he let me into a comfortable study. A man’s room. Leather and wood, stone and books and bar, cluttered desk, gun rack, logs chuckling comfortably in a big deep fireplace. He had a glass in his hand. He told me to fix myself a drink. The expanse of wall behind the bar was dominated by a huge oil portrait of Mona Fox Yeoman. She wore a deep shiny blue, cut low. She sat on a bench and looked out at the room, wearing a small and knowing smile—a woman four or five years younger than the one I had seen die.
Jass wore slippers, a gray flannel shirt, khakis faded almost white. I sat in the leather chair opposite his. He said, “Every Wednesday night of my life I’m down at the Cottonwood Club. Steak dinner and poker. Dealer’s choice, but it’s usually shotgun. Three cards down and bet, get one more down and bet, one more down and bet, then play it like draw poker from there on out. You play poker?”
“Yes. And shotgun. It runs rough.”
“That Wednesday game is worth about three thousand a year to me.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Cook and the maid and the houseman and the gardener are back there in quarters now, gabbling about it. El Patron is home on a Wednesday night. Or maybe they don’t give a damn. Who knows?”
“Are we playing poker now, Mr. Yeoman?”
He studied me. I wondered at the blood heritage. Some Indian I guessed. Way back. I had not noticed his hands before. Thick hands, big-knuckled, with heavy veins. Hard labor, long ago. Nothing else will do it.
“What makes you think you know the rules?” he asked.
“I don’t. I’m guessing at them. Things have a different flavor out here. Power is centralized in a different way. It’s a feudal system. It goes against my grain, but I have the hunch that the solitary knight in his tin armor would take one hell of a thrashing. So I have to sign up, or I can’t play. But I don’t know how much cover I get.”
“It isn’t all as simple as it used to be.”
“Nothing is.”
“This solitary knight you brang up, boy. He rides in and picks a castle and signs up. You could be picking one with a busted moat and the towers falling down, and everybody out to lunch.”
“So the knight is the type who can’t stay on the horse and he’s scared of dragons. Maybe it’s the best deal he can make.”
“You think I made an offer last night?”
“Didn’t you?”
“You wouldn’t have come around unless you had something.”
“Mr. Yeoman, if I give you a card and you play it wrong, I could be …”
“For chrissake, McGee, you’re signed on! Anybody moves against you, the whole castle gets dropped on them.”
I leaned back, turning the glass in my hand. “She wanted to hire me to pry her loose from you, based on half of what I could pressure you to settle on her. She heard about me from a mutual friend. I know you plundered her estate. I know she was your ward. I think I know why you thought it smart business to marry her. I also have the feeling it worked out a lot better than you counted on.”
“You’re in a funny line of work, McGee.”
“I’m a salvage expert. But I didn’t want this job.”
“Why not?”
“Just a feeling I had about her, that actually she was hoping there was nothing I could do. But she felt obligated to go through the motions. I think she was setting herself up for the tragic renunciation scene, Jass. Tears, goodby to the lover, trudge home to the husband. I have the feeling that’s what she wanted next. To moon around here until you were sufficiently impressed with her broken heart, and then settle down. Where she belonged. You look skeptical. Ask Mike Mazzari. He sensed that it was just a romantic game. I think the game was about over, for her at least. But they gave her no time to prove it.”
“They?”
“The ones Buckelberry is looking for. They didn’t clean up the area perfectly, Jass. The lab crew found proof today. A fleck of lung tissue and the right blood type. The ones who took the plane were stand-ins. Webb is probably dead too.”
He leaned his head back against the high back of the chair and looked as if he had gone to sleep. A log slipped into a new position, and sparks went up. He finished his drink and got up slowly. He went and stood with his hands jammed into his hip pockets, looking at her picture.
“You know what kind of water we’re pumping from those deep wells, son?”
“What?”
“Fossil water, sweet to the taste, laid down in the times when this was swamp and lakes and giant lizards, ferns like trees. We take it and when it’s gone it’s gone. Tomorrow all them pumps could give one big gassy belch and suck nothing but stale deep air. And this whole county would die.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“They know it. They don’t think about it. It scares the piss out of them to think about it. It’s like a man never thinking he has to die. But the end is there. For this county, and for any man in it. They herd new folks in here and drill more wells and suck it away faster.”
“It seems stupid.”
He turned to the bar, replenished his drink and came slowly back to the chair. “Hell, it is stupid.” He wiped his face, forehead to chin, in a slow gesture. “Waste. Hope. I don’t know. You take a quick look, there you are with the world by the balls. Look again a minute later and you’re an old fart thinking of the ten thousand ways you had it and blew it, every time. One day it turns out to be too much trouble. That’s all. Just too much goddam trouble. You see, boy, I knew it last night. Forty years of poker. I saw it in your eyes. I saw the way it put the hooks into your mouth and changed your mouth. Freddy Buckelberry, for the love of Christ! I got his call tonight. Jass, boy, everything is like we thought. Yup. She took off with the professor, sure enough. What the silly son of a bitch doesn’t know is that last night was the night. Not tonight. I was a little stoned last night. And I shall get a little stoned tonight, son. Last night I took the Chrysler out, way over onto the mesa road. It was a political son of a bitch, from nowhere to nowhere, and I got me a piece of the state money when they put it through. Cold moonlight up there, son, and forty miles of it like an arrow. It was moving up close to a hundred when I turned the lights off, and it went up one hell of a way from there, until that big car was a very tender little dancing thing. Hit a big bull jackrabbit. Hit him on the rise with a crack like a shot and he kept going right up. Damndest thing you ever saw. He was blood and bone too. Maybe his clan saw him go, and they’ll have legends about him. I took my foot off, banged it into neutral, took that long coast back on down, stopped by a runty tree. I set for a time, got out and looked at the front end, rabbit-size welt on top of the curve there, deep, with blood drying there and some hair caught in the edge. I fingered that hair, pale stuff and soft. I walked over by the runty tree and pissed into the sand and stood and looked at the stars. I told myself there would be times I would draw to four hearts and ease the hand open and see that fifth one. I told myself there would be the brandy and the cigar after the good steak, that feeling of ease. I told myself I was still the old he-coon, and I’d have that big warm swing of a knowing woman under me, that time when you know it’s near and nothing in creation is going to be able to stop either one of you. I whistled pieces of tunes and worked the car around and drove back, slow as an old lady, lights on. Long after I thought I would have passed that rabbit I came up on him and stopped with the lights on him, and I got out for some fool reason I will never know. I had exploded him pretty good, but there was clean fur on him, solid meat on him. I felt him and he was warm still. I picked him up and crossed the ditch and got down on my knees and dug like a dog does, dug him a deep hole and put him in and covered him over with my handkerchief before I filled it in. Like, for God’s sake, a kid with a dead bird. I patted the dirt down, and still on my knees I looked up at the stars and asked them what kind of damn fool they were making of me. I knew it wasn’t any good, boy. Poker and brandy, cigars and fresh clean tail. No good.”
He finished the drink, took both our glasses back to the bar and made fresh. I knew it was no time to say anything.
He handed me my drink and sat down. “Know what I keep remembering the most about her?” His grin made him look younger. “Three years ago. I was in the market for some broodmares and took her on up to Montana with me to look some over. There was good spring grass and flowers where we were. We walked up a hill and down the other side. I liked the mares. She didn’t like the man selling them. My God, we’d start jawing at each other about any small thing sometimes. There wasn’t a soul within two miles of us. The horses were grazing back by a brook. We were in that green bowl of grass and flowers. And there we were, nose to nose, yelling at each other. Suddenly she gave me a crack with her open hand that spun me halfway around. Usually I could guess about when it was coming, but she fooled me that time. I had a sore tooth and it hurt like hell. I gave her back a good one that turned her eyes empty for a half a second. She collected herself and swang again and I took it. I swear to God we must have whammed each other six times, and I saw her mouth twitching just about the same time I was beginning to see how funny it was. Then we were howling with laughter at each other, crying with it, like kids. And just about ninety seconds later we had both pair of riding britches off and we were nested down into that sweet grass and flowers like teenagers. Now isn’t that the damndest thing to keep remembering?” He chuckled. “We both puffed up on the side of the face like ground squirrels taking a nut home.”
He went over and poked the fire up. “Love? What the hell is love, son? I married her because I was nervous about stripping her estate. She married me because she was drowning and I came within reach. This professor thing, I felt exasperated the way you do when you see any good friend being a damn fool about something. She brang that lawyer over from Belasco, and after he snuffed around, he knew it would be uphill all the way, and a damned long trip. She sicked an investigator onto me, and I told the chief of police, and they taught that fellow local manners. Then she got you, whatever the hell you are. Salvage expert?”
“I’m a high-level Robin Hood. I steal from thieves.”
“That wouldn’t be a crowded occupation.”
“Jass, isn’t it pretty damned plain that the shot was really fired at you?”
He heaved up out of the chair and went over to a mounted pair of bull horns. They were on a long plaque that swiveled at one end. He turned them up out of the way. I caught a glimpse of the cylindrical wall safe before he stepped in front of it. I heard the chunking sound when he closed it and spun the dial. He came back to the chair. Without warning he flipped the stack of money at my face. I got my arm up. It bounced off onto the floor. It was paper-taped fifties, with the $5000 imprint, and the initials of whoever had counted it.
“Let’s not fake what kind of interest you’ve got in this thing, McGee. Now you’re saved the trouble of trying to con me.”
I pushed myself up out of the chair just far enough to aim the kick. I kicked the money at the fire. I was trying to kick it in. It fell short. But it fell close. “Don’t try to tell me what I’m interested in, Jass.”
The top bills had begun to curl and change color. A first little wisp of smoke rose from them.
“You’ve got an interesting way of bargaining, boy.”
“Throw me a more important stack, Mr. Yeoman, and I’ll aim a little better next time.”
“Money don’t mean a goddam thing to you, eh?”
“I am very fond of it. I’m a little particular about the way it’s offered.”
We sat in silence. I couldn’t read his face or those Indian eyes. The corner of the top bill blackened and a little necklace of red sparks began to eat a semicircular hole into it.
“My God, you’re a stiff-necked son of a bitch, McGee.”
“I said that according to local ground rules, apparently I have to join up somewhere. I didn’t say I was for sale.”
After a long time he got up and shuffled over to the hearth. He picked up the money by the cool end and slapped the sparks out against his pants, leaving a black smudge. He walked over to me. “I’ve got your name right? Travis?”
“Trav, usually.”
He placed the money carefully on the leather arm of the chair. “Trav, if you’d like to help out a little, I’d be pleased to have you. Kindly accept this little token of my affection and esteem. If I was twenty years younger, we’d go on out into the side yard and bloody each other up for about forty minutes. That’s the only way to get to be friends with a son of a bitch like you.”
He went back to his chair and picked his glass up.
I put the money into the inside pocket of my jacket after slipping the charred bill out. I tore the charred corner off it and put the bill in my wallet. As though there had been no interruption, I told him all I knew about it thus far. I ended by saying, “Buckelberry didn’t tell you because he thought you’d turn into a crazy man.”
“Was it a sane man buried that bull jack under an Irish linen handkerchief?”
“Sane in a sense she might have understood, Jass.”
“If I go crazy it is going to be from wondering who did it and why.”
“She told me she was aware of being followed lately. She thought you were responsible.”
“Me? Hell no!”
“Two men questioned her maid about her, the one who quit to get married.”
“Dolores. Dolores Canario. Let me see. It’s something else now. Estobar. Mrs. Juan Estobar. What the hell would they be after Dolores for?”
“Questions about your wife’s personal finances. Dolores and your wife wondered if you were trying to find out if she had squirreled enough away to run away on.”
“Son, that is a question I would never have to ask. I learned not to let her have any charge accounts. She got her fifteen hundred personal money the first of every month, and there wasn’t a thing she had to use it for, and she was broke by the fifteenth regular.”
“So somebody questioned Dolores.”
“It sounds to me like a tax investigation, asking that kind of question. When they are working up a case against you on a balance sheet basis, they have to figure what you spend to live. Understand?”
“Not very well. I’m sorry.”
“Trav, suppose you were worth a hundred thousand dollars ten years ago. Suppose today you’re worth six hundred thousand. Suppose, every year, your net after taxes was fifty thousand. Suppose it cost you thirty thousand to live. Okay, your net worth should be three hundred thousand, not six hundred thousand. So they can build the case and come at you and say that you had three hundred thousand in income you didn’t report. Fraud. There’s no statute of limitations on that, boy. They can go back to 1913, the year the act was passed. God damn it, I thought I was in perpetual audit and all clean. But it sounds like they’re whipping up a little surprise for me. And it can be a surprise, son. They can spend two years working up their case, and you get two months preparing a defense. You know. Funny thing.”
“I’m trying to get steamed up and I can’t. I should go right over to that phone and call Charlie Baker and roust him out and have him check his contacts and find out what they’re up to. But I can’t seem to give that much of a damn. A tax mess right now would raise hell with a lot of things. But I can’t get myself agitated.”
“Jass, could they develop a case on that basis?”
He gave me a long slow smile. “They sure as hell could, son. I’ve been half expecting it for years.”
“Could it be based, in whole or in part, on your taking over that estate?”
“Son, the way I picked up the money Cube left scattered here and there, I couldn’t exactly declare it as income, could I?”
“Mazzari told me today that she was in such a romantic condition, she would have hurt you if she could, and been damned sorry later.”
He started to ask me what I meant and then realized what I meant. “By God, if they’d got around to sitting her down and taking a statement, and she’d given them that big detailed gripe about what happened to this and to that her dear daddy left her, I would have been in the sorry-sling for sure.”
“Don’t misunderstand me, but doesn’t that give you a motive?”
He looked at me in a way which made me glad I would never have the job of quieting him down—twenty years ago—or now. He had the look of the long hard bones, the meat tight against them, laid on in the long flat webs of hard muscle, ancient meat of the western rider, sunbaked, fibrous and durable. He had made trouble in a lot of far places and settled it his way, or he wouldn’t have lasted. Cube Fox and Jass Yeoman must have been quite a pair.
“I am misunderstanding you too damn fast,” he said in a deadly whisper.
“So fast you’re not thinking clearly. If it would give you a motive, it would give somebody else a motive, somebody whose welfare is very closely tied to yours, somebody who would go down if they topple you, Jass.”
I saw him work at the anger, pushing it back and down, tucking it away. He frowned. “I go it pretty much alone, son.”
“You said you were like that clown with all the dishes spinning on the end of sticks.”
“Right about now. Yes. Because I’ve been unloading things. You want to sell something, you have to pretty it up some. You have to throw money into it to make it look smart and peppy. Like you take an old house, you want to sell it good, you put in a new kitchen to knock the breath out of a woman so she can’t even hear her husband talking about dry rot in the sills. In about four ventures I’ve been digging deep into working capital to fancy them up. I figured to come out of it in a year maybe, with just the horse ranch which damn near pays out by itself, and this house, and about a six or seven million liquid condition which would give me a borrowing power of that plus five times that amount, and I had it in mind to put all them eggs into one basket by taking over control of a very nice little company which I don’t even whisper out loud to myself, son. They’ve got basic patents in about five different areas of the mining industry, and about twenty million cash reserve and nothing but a short-term debt structure. I’m getting too slow for all the wheeling and dealing and I figured to get me my own personal mint. I’ve got some bright boys working on all the angles of it, but nobody has a piece of the action.”
“Okay. When we talk about power, we talk about power vacuums too. Who runs things around here? Beside you?”
“I guess it would be the boys around the Wednesday poker table at the Cottonwood Club. Boone Kendrick, Joe Gay, Tom O’Dell, Fish Ellery, Jaimie DeVrees, Paul Tower. And maybe two that don’t play. Wally Rupert and Sonny Madero. Between us we got the whole ball of wax, mining, banks, newspaper, radio and television, cattle, real estate, transportation, construction, housing, power and light. A couple hundred others fight for the scraps left over. I am fixing to stick some of those boys with the items I want to unload.”
“Mazzari said Rupert was a partner of yours.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Son, it’s not that close. He still has small pieces of two things, and when I get those peddled, we’ll be finally unlatched.”
“But it was a lot closer than that?”
“Lord yes! We were in there, sweating and scratching, shoulder to shoulder for a long time.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “We used up half our working time watching each other. We got hooked up together out of desperation, you might say. And when we got well, it was a delicate chore getting unhooked without getting gutted. We’re both loners.”
“Jass, all I can do is talk off the top of my head. Sometimes an outsider can see things in a different way. You can tell me if this question is nonsense. If Mona had given a detailed statement to the Internal Revenue people, and if you were indicted for fraud on that balance sheet basis you talked about, would you have to prove that the stolen money went into joint ventures you and Rupert were operating in order to keep from taking the whole rap?”
He stared at me. He knocked the drink off and got up and moved slowly to the bar. He started to fix his drink, turned and stared at me. “Not Wally, son. Not him. Get that out of your head.”
“Jass, if they are slowly building up a case, would it be logical for them to contact Wally Rupert?”
“I don’t know. They might. They might not.”
“If they did contact him, he would get the idea they were after you, and he should let you know, shouldn’t he?”
“By God, he would!”
“You talked about Charlie somebody, with good contacts. What if Charlie found out Rupert had been contacted, interviewed, and had said nothing to you? Would that mean anything, Jass?”
He finished fixing the drink. “He would be anxious to cover himself. Christ, we’ve got it all buried pretty damned well. It was years ago. A lot of the people involved have died off. Some of it was pretty raw, but what could they prove?”
“Raw?”
He sat down, looking uncomfortable. “As executor, I’d sell a hunk of Cube’s land to the XYZ Corporation for fifty thousand. XYZ would be Wally and me, but not on the records. XYZ would hold it and resell it to ABC later on for forty-five thousand. That would still be Wally and me. Then we’d sell it to somebody who was really hot after it. We’d sell it for say fifty thousand again, having sort of established that price on it, and take fifty thousand over the table, and a hundred thousand underneath.”
“How much did it all amount to, Jass?”
“Understand, son, I was scrambling for my life, and so was Wally. We’d made it from nothing, and we were set to lose it all because we didn’t have the cash to protect ourselves.”
“How much was involved?”
He waited so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. “Call it a million four, boy. I came out with about seven eight hundred thousand. Wally got maybe four hundred. The rest went for expenses and a little gift money here and there, where it was needed. But you understand we didn’t see it right off. We had to use it to bail with to keep from sinking, and it didn’t really come back to us until we were over the hump. You know, we could have thrown all that in and still gone broke. But once things paid off all right, then we had that much extra.”
“Could Mona have made any statement about Rupert being in on it?”
“She could have got it from Mazzari. There’s a bright boy. Mona, one time when we were screaming at each other a couple months back, seemed to mention something about Rupert and me being a pair of thieves. I needed Rupert. All by myself I couldn’t have put up enough smoke screen. But he had so many things going for him, we could shove papers around until sometimes even we couldn’t figure out how we’d worked it. I want to tell you one thing, Trav.”
“Yes?”
“I played it close and I played it sharp. But that is the one and only damn time in my life I stole. I plain had no other choice. The money was there. And I knew that if Cube knew the whole thing, he would have said go ahead, because he would have known I’d never let Mona want for a thing, no matter what.”
He smiled. It was half grimace. “But I know damned well I’ve got to call Charlie Baker, just to prove we’re wasting our time wondering about Wally.” He stood up. “Come look at my new phone gadget.”
I went to the desk with him. There was an important-looking box affixed to the phone, constructed as a part of it. He fingered through a small file, picked out a plastic card, shoved it into a slot and pressed a button. The phone briskly dialed a ten-digit number.
When the operator inquired, he gave her his number. He gave me a shark grin. “They make it impossible for a man to call a friend long distance, then they lease you a gadget makes it almost as easy as it used to be. Fix a drink and go on over and set, boy.”
He had one of those special mouthpieces on the phone which made it impossible for anyone in the room to hear his end of the conversation. He talked for about five minutes. He came back and said, “Charlie’ll find out. He likes to make it sound impossible. That’s so it’ll look as if he’s earning his money. When he gives me the facts, he’ll sound as if he risked his whole career to do me a favor.”
“What’s Wally Rupert like?”
“He’s sixty now. You talk about feudal. Now there is one feudal son of a bitch, believe me. He don’t have five friends in the world, but he’s sure God got enough family to make up for it. He’s gone deep into the service industries these past few years. Dealerships, laundries, hotels and motels, shopping centers. And the old bull-boar has been breeding his own labor supply. His old spread, eleven miles north of here, it’s got so many houses on it now they call it Rupertville. He married young. Married Helen Holmes and had six kids by her. When she died, he married her kid sister, Catherine. Catherine was widowed and had two of her own. He took her two in, and bred her for five more. Twelve years ago, after Catherine died—neither of those Holmes girls were strong—Wally married a seventeen-year-old Mexican gal who worked on the place. Rosa. Little round gal, all tits and big shiny black eyes, and he’s had nine young off her at last count. I’d say the oldest boy must be about thirty-nine by now, and the youngest maybe three or four months. Twenty of his own, and two step-kids. You take all the wives and husbands and kids and grandkids, Wally must have seventy-five kin out there, and maybe thirty or forty working around the place. And if he gives one little belch, the whole crew leaps into the air and lands looking busy. He’s the he-coon out there. Pillar of the church. He’s a tough, smart old boy, broad as a barn door, belly like a boulder. But he sure God ain’t social. If he speaks to you, it’s like it hurt his mouth. Back in the old days, when Cube and I were ripping and snorting around, Wally was behaving himself and quietly piling up the kids and the money. But like I said, if it hadn’t been for Cube’s estate, we’d have both sunk without a trace back there. No, boy, it couldn’t have been Wally having anything to do with this.”
He kept telling me that. But he kept talking about Wally. And he kept drinking. As he got drunk he spoke with more precision and walked more carefully and steadily to the bar each time.
As he let me out, he said, “You tried to kick that money into the fire?”
“I tried.”
“What if it had gone right on in?”
“It would have been something to remember, I guess.”
He chopped at my shoulder with a weathered fist. “It is anyway, son. It is anyway. We got you signed up. You poke around. So will I.”