CHAPTER NINETEEN

Like most successful bull riders, Lester Sipes was a small man. He also had a very big hat. Which he happened to be wearing right there in his own hotel suite, along with a western-cut suit of dove gray silk and a pair of sharp-toed cowboy boots that obviously held lifts. When we entered the room he stood gazing out the window with his back toward us. Then he turned around and we saw the hard, chiseled face of a man in his early fifties who’d no doubt led an active and strenuous life. His skin was sun-darkened and weathered much like my own, and his eyes were hooded and deeply set behind lightly tinted aviator bifocals.

“They tell me your name is Bo Handel, Sheriff,” he said. “Is that right?”

“It is indeed,” I said.

He looked at Toby. “And you are?”

“Toby Parsons, Caddo County chief deputy.”

“Pleased to meet you both,” he said without offering to shake hands with either of us. “I’ve had mixed experiences with law enforcement officers over the years. My father was killed by a Texas Ranger named Bonaparte Foley.”

He whirled back around to gaze once more out the window, leaving us to absorb this strange announcement. While he was peering at far-distant horizons, he rocked back and forth on his high-lift boots a few times, then he turned back toward us and motioned for us to sit in the room’s two armchairs. He himself took the exact center of the sofa and opened an ornate humidor on the coffee table and removed a long cigar.

“Old man Foley actually did me a favor when he wasted the bastard,” he said.

“Really?” Toby said. “That’s a strange thing for a son to say.”

“I think you’d understand if you’d known my father. I feel sure he saved me the trouble of doing it myself.”

He stopped speaking and left us to meditate in silence while he went through that tiresome sniffing and clipping ritual with his cigar you often see in old movies—Lord Huffing-Buffington at his exclusive London club getting ready to tell the grimly amusing story of how the wogs in Rangoon buggered Lady Lifton. Eventually he got the damn thing burning and situated in the side of his mouth to his satisfaction.

“My old man was a piece of trash,” he said. “A cheap hoodlum of the lowest sort. He beat me and he beat my mother, and he had no taste whatsoever. You should have seen how he dressed.”

I was tempted to comment on the irony of his criticizing anybody’s wardrobe, but I didn’t. Instead I told him we needed to ask him a few questions. He appeared to ponder this idea momentarily, then he lost interest and turned his head a little to look at Toby. “I can’t help noticing that you’re black,” he said.

We were both startled by such an oddball remark, but Toby recovered quickly and looked at me and said, “What’s he saying, boss?”

I nodded sadly. “It’s a fact, Toby. We’ve tried to keep it from you, but…”

Sipes gave us a quick stretching of his thin, rubbery lips that was meant to look like a smile and didn’t. Then he puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. “I’m telling you all this just to let both of you know I don’t hold any grudges against cops. I’m not a racist, either.”

“None of that has been worrying us, Mr. Sipes,” Toby said. “But we would like to know about you and Emmet Zorn.”

“Emmet and I are old friends. He helped me one time when I was broke and at my wits’ end.”

“How about the Raynes boy?” I asked. “Your bonding company got him out on bail. Even if there was no actual cash outlay, there is substantial risk involved. We’re a bit curious about that.”

He removed his cigar from his mouth and spread his arms expansively. “Emmet says the poor kid is innocent, a victim of circumstances. And part of the joy of being in my position is that I’m able to help those less fortunate than myself.”

“I think it’s more than likely the kid has something on you or Zorn,” I said. “If Zorn were to go down he might decide to cut a deal and take you with him. So I see a little self-interest working behind the scenes.”

“I regret that you take that attitude, Sheriff. Is it so difficult to believe that I can have charitable impulses from time to time?”

“After everything I’ve heard about you, it’s damn near impossible.”

“One can hear anything,” he said. “For example, you may have heard some silly stories floating around about my choice of automobiles. You may have been led to believe that I drive the kind of car I do because I’m superstitious. But that’s not true at all.”

“It’s not?” Toby asked.

“No,” he said and leaned forward and gestured dramatically with his hands like a stage magician trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat. “You see, I don’t believe in cause and effect. I believe events are controlled by association. I believe that if a black Mercury comes into my life at the same moment a fortunate event occurs, then by surrounding myself with black Mercurys, I can attract other fortunate events my way. A friend of mine who’s far more conversant with the subject than I am tells me that my view is borne out by quantum theory.”

He stopped speaking and puffed on his cigar while he regarded us with smug satisfaction as though he’d just solved a problem that had vexed the world’s greatest thinkers for a thousand years.

“Nonsense,” I said. “Cause and effect rules this universe, and in your case the cause is that a big shipment of your cocaine has gone missing. The effect is that you’re up here in my part of the country looking for it, and looking pretty damn desperately, unless I miss my guess.”

“I don’t know anything about any cocaine.”

“Then maybe you can tell me why a guy named Paul Arno showed up in town a couple of days ago.”

It was a wild shot in the dark, but it hit the target dead center. Sipes jerked like he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. He recovered quickly and muttered, “Never heard of him.”

“Sure you have,” I said.

He sat and sucked on his cigar until the coal looked so hot I thought the whole thing was going to explode.

I decided to turn the screws a little tighter. “My friends at the FBI tell me that Arno is connected to the remnants of the old Scorpino mob down in New Orleans. According to them, the New Orleans outfit’s not involved in your cocaine business, and Arno isn’t really a made guy. He’s freelance. Which makes me think he might be working for your suppliers. What happened? Do you still owe them for the stuff? Or maybe you’re just fronting for somebody down in Colombia. Everybody has you figured as a kingpin, but what if you’re just a delivery boy in a big hat?”

Sipes shivered a little, then seemed to pull his composure back around him like a shroud. He rose and took his cigar out of his mouth and did his staring-out-the-window routine again. When he turned back to us his face was once again impassive. “When my assistants told me you were here, I thought—”

“Thought what? That maybe I’d be satisfied to sit around and listen to you bullshit about quantum physics and elevator boots? No thanks. I’ve got a murdered woman who was connected to your friend Zorn, and I’ve got several pounds of a very dangerous drug loose in my town. I’m not in the mood for chitchat.”

He looked right at me, and for just a moment it was like a veil had lifted. I could see in the deep wells of his eyes the burning ambition and iron will that had brought him up out of the slums of Fort Worth. “Then since you don’t have a warrant, I believe I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

*   *   *

We went out past the same pair of bodyguards who had let us into the suite. Like Sipes, they wore western-cut suits and monumental hats. However, this duo stood about a foot taller than their boss and came equipped with handlebar mustaches.

“That guy and his charade got under my skin,” I said once we were out in the hall.

“You’re right about it being a charade. He may have a few screws loose, but he uses his goofy reputation as a sort of shield. So what now?”

“Let’s go off the clock and have a beer,” I said. “How does that sound?”

After we had a cold one at a little hole-in-the-wall joint on the edge of Sequoya, I dropped Toby off at the courthouse and went home early. I took a quick shower and stretched out on the sofa in the den to wait for Sheila to stop by. I thought the day was almost over, but the hard part was just about to begin.