CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I said good-bye to Frank and Nan Riddle on the front porch.

“Come back next fall and we’ll get us some deer,” Frank said.

“I’ll do it,” I replied as I shook his hand, knowing that in his world such an invitation was about as high a compliment as he could pay a man. And I meant it. But first I had to manage to live through the next few days.

Once we were in the car, I asked Jack to take me to Press Rafferty’s place. Going to La Rosa would have meant an all-night drive, and I just wasn’t up to it.

“What in the hell were you doing that caused you to wind up way out here in the shape you’re in?” Jack asked as soon as we were back on the road.

I quickly gave him an abbreviated version of the previous day’s events, ending with my arrival at the Riddle home early that morning.

“So Walsh is in this mess up to his eyeballs?” he said.

“Right. And as a principal, not just as the after-the-fact leech we thought he was. Or at least he thinks he’s a principal. The people behind him may have other ideas.”

“But who in hell could he be fronting for?”

“Beats me, Jack. I spent the whole afternoon trying to figure that out. But whoever it is, they think big.” I went on to tell him about the string of resort casinos Walsh had bragged about the evening before.

“Amazing,” he muttered.

“So how are things going with your book in Port Arthur?” I asked.

“Oh, just great,” he said bitterly. “I’m back in business, and they’re taking twenty-five percent right off the top.”

“How about the one in Houston?”

He shook his head. “They can’t touch it.”

“And the Maceos?”

“Nobody’s approached them either.”

“How’s Rosario?” I asked.

“He’s okay, but the bodyguard died.”

“Did you know him?”

He nodded. “Yeah. He was an ex–high school football star at Texas City. Got a scholarship to UT, but got hurt his first year. The boy wasn’t too bright. Rosario took him on just to give him a job.”

“Pity,” I said.

“By the way … I went by the Creole and took care of your bill.”

“Thanks, Jack,” I said in relief. “I’m glad you thought to do that. I’ll send you a check as soon as I get home.”

He shook his head. “It’s on Mr. Simms. And I picked up your clothes and suitcase and stuff. It’s all in the trunk.”

“Thank God. I’ve been wearing what I’ve got on for two days. Now if I only knew where my car is.”

“I don’t think you’re likely to ever see it again, Virgil.”

“Me either, but I can always hope.”

*   *   *

Press had already gone to bed, but Nora was still up reading by lamplight. She came to the door in her robe, shotgun in hand, and I lunged from the car and yelled out my name lest she shoot us on general principles. Once she saw who I was, she quelled the dogs long enough for us to get in the house unmolested. By that time the commotion had brought her dad out of bed, and I introduced them both to Jack. Press took one look at me, shook his head sadly, then went outside to crank the Delco so I could get a bath. While I soaked, Jack ate a quick supper. Just as I was getting out of the tub he stuck his head in the bathroom door. “I’m off, Virgil,” he said.

“You’re not driving back to the coast tonight, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’m going to stay at the O’Neal Hotel in Palestine. Your friends offered me a room here, but I’m always more comfortable in a hotel.”

After he left, I dried off and limped out into the hall. Nora appeared and tried to get me to eat. I shook my head. “Just a toddy and then sleep,” I said. “I’m dead on my feet.”

She steered me into the guest room, disappeared, then quickly returned with a bottle of brandy and a glass, both of which she placed on the table beside my bed. “Sleep tight,” she said. “If you need anything in the night, just call out. I’m in the next room. And by the way, there’s an old pair of crutches out in the barn Daddy said he’d find for you tomorrow.”

Jack had put my suitcase on the end of the bed, and I quickly changed into fresh underwear and a clean undershirt.

I downed two more of the codeine tablets with about three ounces of brandy, climbed into bed, and was asleep before I knew it.

*   *   *

The doctor was a barrel-chested GP. Though it was Sunday morning, the man was dressed in a shirt and tie under a clean white lab coat. His practice was in one side of a big Victorian house on Highway 79 in Palestine. He and his wife, who doubled as his nurse, lived in the other half. Nora had known the man for years and said he was one of the better doctors in town.

“Some people are born fools, Mr. Tucker,” he said. “And some people have to work hard to get there. Which is it with you?”

“Both,” Nora said, answering his question for me. “He came into the world crazy, and he’s done his best to improve on what God gave him.”

“I believe it,” he said, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you do something about this foot when it first happened?”

“Some men were trying to kill me, and I had to hide in the woods all night.”

He never batted an eyelash. “Well, such things do happen, I’m told. But whatever your reasons, there’s nothing I can do for you except give you some more pain medication. Your foot is swollen far too much to put a cast on it. The pain would drive you crazy, then when the swelling went down the cast would be too loose.”

“So what can I do?” I asked.

“Let it heal the way it is, then have it rebroken under surgical conditions by somebody who knows what they’re doing. Where are you from?”

“Matador County.”

“Go to San Antonio. They’ve got some good bone men there.”

He wrote me a prescription for a hundred of the same codeine tablets I’d been taking.

“That’s a pretty big prescription, isn’t it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “A man’s either going to be a dope fiend or he isn’t, and the size of a bottle of pills doesn’t have much to do with it. I see no reason for you to have to pay some doctor down in South Texas another three dollars to prescribe some more of the damn things. Don’t take them except when you have to, and put what’s left in your medicine cabinet for emergencies. Soak that foot in epsom-salts water twice a day, and keep it elevated as much as you can.”

We stopped by the telephone company office so I could call Tía Carmen. She spoke with me and Nora both, and the outcome of the whole matter was that the Raffertys were to bring me back to La Rosa and stay through Christmas, which was only a few days away.

*   *   *

That night, after Press and Brenda were asleep, Nora came into my room with a tray that carried a kerosene lamp, a bottle of brandy, and two glasses. “Like a little company?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “How did you know I was awake?”

“I didn’t. I was going to rouse you if you weren’t.”

She set the lamp on the bedside table and adjusted its wick as low as it would go. Then she poured us each a glass of brandy. After giving me mine, she crawled up on the foot of the bed facing me and curled her legs up under her Indian style. “How you doing, Virg?” she asked.

“Okay,” I said offhandedly.

“No, I mean how you doing?”

“In respect to what?”

“Madeline.”

I drew in a deep breath and sighed a long sigh. “Mostly I feel sorry for her. If she had stayed here she would still be alive today. But like your doctor friend said, some people are born fools.”

“So you’re not wallowing in guilt?”

I shook my head. “I think I did the best I could have under the circumstances. Besides, I’ve never been much of a hand at beating myself up over what’s already done.”

She grinned at me. “No, I remember back when we were kids you were always the first one to forgive yourself, and you expected everybody else to hop on the bandwagon.”

I grinned back at her and said nothing.

“Did you know she was halfway in love with you?” she asked.

“I’m not surprised that she would lead you to believe that. It may have even been true.” I went on to tell her of Madeline’s affair with Henry DeMour, and how she’d kept it from me. “So you can see that she wasn’t above using people to get what she wanted.”

“Who is?”

“You, Nora,” I said honestly. “Everything’s out in front with you.”

“Yep,” she said, sipping her brandy. “I’m the original pay-as-you-go girl. I don’t like debts, and you start piling them up the minute you start misleading people. Which is why I wanted to know how you felt about Madeline. I didn’t want to be accused of seducing a man who was pining away for his dead sweetheart.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me,” she said as she rose from the bed. She quickly drained her brandy and dropped her robe to the floor. “I think we’ve earned this, Virgil. And I suspect we’ll never get another chance.” She pulled her gown over her head and slid into the bed beside me. “That is, unless you’ve taken too many of them damn codeine pills.”

“I think I can manage,” I said softly and turned toward her.