The Do-Re-Mi Read online

  “Not unless he was riding a motorcycle.” Pop checked his watch. “Better keep our appointment.” He held Mama’s arm while she hopped off the stump. He picked up Alvaro’s guitar case. I carried a burlap bag of tapes and the magazines that featured Ochs, thinking I could scan them for clues about Alvaro. Ava and Mama walked ahead of us up the trail to the car.

  Pop walked beside me. “Any cabins or other camps upstream from here?”

  “I don’t think so, not on this side of the river. Maybe on the other side.”

  He gave me a deadpan look, which probably meant I should have checked out these details yesterday, instead of waylaying a biker. Then he chucked my arm. “You’re all right, Clifford.”

  A little squeal issued out of Mama. She had stopped still and wrapped her arms across her chest. She was staring across the path where tall fir and cedar grew close together, manzanita and ferns tangled between them, and every piece of ground where sunlight fell was a bed of blazing wildflowers. “Somebody’s out there,” she whispered.

  We looked and listened but detected nothing. Still Mama was spooked. And she saw and heard things other people couldn’t. When Pop asked if she could point to them, her head began to shake back and forth so hard I worried it could injure her neck.

  Pop wrapped his arm around her. We saw her fright becoming terror. She was biting her lip when Pop decided to get her out of the forest.

  Eleven

  EVERGREEN was bustling as if every homemaker, logger, hippie, Cossack, and jamboree visitor dedicated Saturday mornings to shopping. Along Manhattan Avenue, all the pickups had double gun racks, most of them holding a rifle and a shotgun. The hippies wore hunting knives in sheaths. All five bikers crossing the street to the park carrying grocery sacks packed side-arms.

  Pop said, “They should call this burg Tombstone. So, Clifford, after we meet with the sheriff, then what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Wouldn’t be right when you’re in charge here.”

  Because I thought he was joking, I played along. “Yeah, but I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Once we get Wendy settled in, find somebody to sit with her, should we talk to Agent Knudsen? And the kingpin hippies? Most always, the guy at the top knows it all.”

  “Big Dan Mills,” I said. “We’ll find him at the jamboree.”

  Ava said, “And Quig.”

  “Quig and Mills, then? And how about a chat with Little Ric?”

  “Vic,” I said.

  He reached under his seat and brought out two guns, his .38 and one I had never seen, a big .45 automatic pistol like Sam Spade might carry. For each of them, he had a shoulder holster. After handing the automatic to me, he reached again and pulled out a leather bag, from which he removed a clip.

  “Nine shots,” he said as he slapped it into my hand. “Keep it in your pocket.”

  He told me where the safety was and how to insert the clip. “But keep it on ice as long as you can. Try everything before you lay a finger on that monster. Before you grab it, you’ve got be willing to kill, and just because you can hit a target, doesn’t mean you can shoot a man. A trained marksman can miss by a yard when time comes to shoot for real.”

  Though I had more than once been the target of Ava’s frown, until now I hadn’t seen her glower. She said, “Do you guys really need those things?”

  “Sometimes we do,” Pop said.

  Mama didn’t seem to notice the gun transaction but she appeared to know a jail when she saw one. We parked in a space near the front entrance. She folded her hands as though refusing to reach for the door handle.

  While Pop slipped into his summer sport coat and exchanged his driving cap for a straw fedora, Ava said, “I’ll stay here with Wendy. Maybe Clifford should too. They might have a warrant or something.”

  I shrugged and followed Pop inside. The front part of the sheriff’s station was one long room. Even Willis didn’t rate a private office, only a desk twice as big as the other four. He appeared cramped sitting behind it. With an elbow on the desk and his chin resting on his fist, he stared our way, watching like a batter for the pitch. He didn’t stand until after the deputy at the counter, a lanky fellow with a red patch up the side of his face, made us sign our names on a register. Yesterday, at Alvaro’s camp, I had noticed this deputy trip over most every log as he chased my brother into the forest. Now he said, “Believe I winged your Mexican boy.”

  I looked at Pop. His jaw had petrified. Both hands gripped his belt. But as we rounded the counter and approached the sheriff, who had stood to meet us, Pop made his face relax. He reached out for Willis’ hand and shook as if the sheriff were a respected colleague.

  Willis invited us to sit. He rounded the big desk to his swivel chair. “How ’bout you say what your kid here told you, save us time."

  Pop reclined in his chair, reached into his coat pocket for his pipe, filled and lit it. Between puffs, he said, “First, would you mind giving me the basics? Where you found the dead boy, his condition, any ballistic reports and so on.”

  Willis reached into his trash can, retrieved a copy of the Eureka Times-Standard and passed it across the desk.

  Pop took another puff. “Clifford says things would be different if his brother hadn’t of ran. He figures you had adequate cause to bring Alvaro in — him camped in the vicinity and something about a fight over a girl — and he figures the coincidence of Alvaro’s rifle being the same kind as the probable murder weapon cinched your suspicions. Even though I suspect more folks in Evergreen own a Browning 30.06 than don’t, Alvaro’s the fellow that ran off carrying one.

  “So far as all that goes, we’ve got no complaint. But it looks to Clifford, all this circumstance makes you so sure my son did the killing, you don’t care to waste your limited resources chasing wild geese. So you concentrate all you’ve got hunting Alvaro.”

  Willis shook his head as though he had just labored through a pack of lies. “Your kid here tell about last night, down to the Crossroads, ‘bout kidnapping and torturing a dangerous fella?” Pop threw a poison look at me, which I hoped was feigned. I widened my eyes, leaned forward, and gaped my best imitation of wounded innocence.

  “No, sir,” Pop said. “He sure didn’t. Dangerous, you say?”

  “We count thirty-four Cossacks, more or less. They come and go. Your boy picked the worst.”

  “In what way?”

  Willis clapped his big hands together and raised them over his head. Gradually they lowered onto the desk. “I don’t see where it matters, long as you take my advice. Which is, considering all the factors, I’d get this boy of yours out of the county straightaway. We don’t need the aggravation of deciding which biker to arrest for killing him. Besides,” he drawled, “I’d hate to see any man lose two sons all in the same week.”

  Pop tamped his pipe then relit and lofted a half dozen smoke rings. As though thinking out loud, he said, “I’m with you. Say I drive Clifford home where our doctor can check out his hand. As long as there’s no permanent damage, no need for a lawsuit. I mean, who couldn’t understand that deputy overreacting when he thinks he’s got one of the punks that killed his nephew?”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “No fault of yours,” Pop said, “bringing the deputy along to Alvaro’s camp. What else could you do? Small town, big trouble, you’ve got to be shorthanded. Now, if I read you right, since you’re advising us to go home, you intend to call off the search for Alvaro, considering that he could be in Tibet by now. You’re going to switch your efforts to collecting evidence, and, when the time comes, to building a solid case against whoever your county or federal prosecutor gets convinced shot the boy. Am I right?”

  Willis was grinding his teeth.

  “And,” Pop said, “you’ll want my word that when Alvaro shows up, I’ll bring him in. Well, you’ve got it.”

  Willis mocked a chuckle and pointed a finger at me. “Your boy here lives long enough, after that fancy college teaches him to distort a man�
�s words good as you do it, he might could make one slick lawyer.”

  Pop said, “Sheriff, if I offended you, I sure didn’t mean to. What I did mean is, there’s no way either Clifford or I can leave a place where men are out gunning for Alvaro and where nobody but us, as far as we know, is looking for other suspects. On that subject, if you don’t mind my asking, what do you hear from the Fed?”

  “Ask the Fed. And while you’ve got his ear, remind him he owes me a call. He needs to know about the pair of heavies the mob your Mexican works for sent to give me a lecture on how to run my town.”

  That comment stumped me. But Pop didn’t look surprised. Willis whistled at the deputy. When he turned, the sheriff said, “Show these folks to the door.”

  The deputy walked around the counter to the door and held it open. “Thanks for your time,” Pop said to the sheriff.

  As we stood, before I could say my goodbyes, he nudged me toward the door. On the way out, he patted the deputy’s shoulder. “Remind your partners that a don’t-shoot-to-kill policy could save them and Sheriff Willis a lifetime of poverty.”

  Outside, as soon as the door shut behind us, I said, “Heavies? Mob?”

  “Maybe,” Pop said, “I should’ve asked your advice before I mentioned Alvaro’s fix to Harry. Should I go back and explain to the sheriff who those boys were?”

  From his voice and expression, I started to think Pop really wanted me to call the plays. If he did, I feared, he was losing his mind.

  Still, I said, “No need”

  WE stood beside the Cadillac while Pop slipped out of his sport coat and cleaned his pipe by knocking it on the front bumper. “What all don’t I know that I ought to? Anything else somebody’s after you for?”

  “Deputy Barker acts like he’d kill me for jaywalking.”

  Mama had gone to the back seat with Ava, who was drawing on my notepad, a caricature of a face like mine only with the cleft in my chin way deeper. Mama was watching her draw. She looked back and forth between me and the sketch and gave a nod of approval.

  I climbed in front. We drove to Babe’s so Pop could use the payphone. He called Agent Knudsen at the number on his card and talked the answering service into giving him an Evergreen number. He dialed it and reached the agent’s lodging in Evergreen. The Riverside Lodge. Knudsen’s room didn’t answer. While he had the lodge on the phone, Pop asked if they had a room available. The clerk told him no, and furthermore, there wasn’t a vacant room between Willits and Eureka, on account of the jamboree. Pop offered her a week at Harry’s Casino and comped meals if she could squeeze us in. After a sigh and long pause, she told him please call back in case of a cancellation.

  In the car, he mentioned having noticed a sign advertising Scotch Glen Resort. I had seen the sign, at the junction to the coast access loop.

  “Sounds like my kind of place,” Pop said. “Let’s check it out. If they don’t have a room, could be there’s a comfortable lobby where the gals could sit and think while you and I go root around the scene of the crime.”

  On our way up Manhattan Avenue, Pop slowed to observe a pack of a half-dozen motorcycles as they neared the exit from the Safeway mall. Vic wasn’t among them. In the lead was the dark-skinned guy Ava told us was Crutch. A spindly blonde sat behind him. Ava ducked but too late. The blonde had seen her and waved.

  “Friend of yours?” Pop asked.

  “My sister,” Ava said.

  We all, even Mama, watched the bikers, expecting them to follow us, but they still hadn’t exited the parking lot when we lost sight of them. We turned north on the 101 then west on the coast access loop. Pop drove a few miles before Ava heard the motorcycle following and tapped my leg. We looked around. It was only a blip on the horizon.

  “Just one,” I said.

  Pop checked the rear-view mirror. “A scout. He’s liable to go back for the rest. If they catch us someplace without witnesses, I expect they’ll want to make a party out of it.”

  At the Scotch Glen Resort sign, Pop turned onto the dirt road. But at the first wide spot, he swung a U, drove back and stopped with the Cadillac nosing out just far enough so we could watch both ways on the county road. Mama rolled down her window and gazed into the flowery woods, but every minute or so she turned and looked at Ava, who was leaning on the back of our seat between Pop and me, her face only inches from mine. She said, “Here they come,” about five seconds before the Cossacks entered my vision.

  The muted rumble of two dozen Harleys gradually became a roar. Spots of light jumped like flares off the chrome. Fear told me to go under my seat for the Sam Spade gun but I knew the smartest course was to trust Pop. He lit his pipe, blew smoke out the window, and watched their approach until they closed to a hundred yards away. He tamped out the fire on his pipe before he swung the steering wheel to the left and eased onto the county road.

  Little Vic was riding out front, Crutch a few yards behind. The others rode three abreast. When they saw us and braked, most of them skidded broadside. They all recovered. They were stopped in the middle of the highway by the time we zoomed past.

  Ava said, “They’re not looking for a party. They mean business. There’s not a single girl with them.”

  Before long the Cadillac was flying at least 100 mph. I didn’t have the leisure to check the speedometer while watching the bikers turn and chase us. Pop said, “If they’re just out for fun, I suspect they’ll do that ride around act from the Marlon Brando movie. But if they mean business like Ava says, if you’re on their hit list, they’ll lay back and bide their time. I could slow down, see what they’ve got in mind. How about it, Clifford?”

  “Yeah," I said, meaning I agreed with whatever he chose to do.

  He slowed to about fifty. After we’d turned onto the 101, about a mile before the Manhattan Road junction, the bikers disappeared. I caught my breath then tried to sound cool. “They probably pulled off at a fruit stand. Ava, why do you suppose they do their own shopping when they could make their girls do it?”

  “If they sent the girls shopping they’d have to give them money. Vic says women can’t be trusted with money.”

  “So why does your sister like a cheap misogynist?”

  “Like him?” Ava hung her head. “Dope’s what my sister likes. She says crystal meth is all that saved her from booze. That’s how loopy it’s made her.”

  Pop said, “Clifford, the sheriff’s idea, you getting out of town. Are you willing to?”

  “As soon as they pull the dogs off Alvaro.” I saw Ava’s frown and added, “And after we catch whoever killed Jimmie Marris.”

  Following Ava’s directions, we took Cognac Lane past a row of two-story redwood Victorians and their rose gardens. At the end of a mile-long block, the road teed into Moonshine Trail, a strip of blacktop along the middle fork of Whiskey River. Pop turned left and drove to the second of a half dozen motels.

  The Riverside Lodge office was on the left, across the road from ten cottages with decks and chimneys that overlooked the river. I followed Pop into the office. The girl on duty sat at a stool behind a counter. She had broad shoulders and arms I imagined could curl a refrigerator. She glanced up from a fan magazine.

  Pop introduced himself as a man who had phoned. “Any cancellations?” he asked.

  “Nope. And folks ain’t already cancelled ain’t likely to. We got a forty-eight-hour policy.”

  He asked if she could check other motels. She guaranteed him that every motel and boarding house between Garberville and Eureka was booked. “We been booked for this weekend since February. Hey, did you hear the news — Dylan’s gonna show up at the jamboree, and them Canadian guys that he plays with. If I was you, I’d buy camping gear.”

  “Tell me,” Pop said, “you’ve got a guest, Mister Knudsen. He reserved way back in February, did he?”

  The clerk folded her mighty arms.

  “Call Agent Knudsen for me, would you?”

  She rang his cottage. No answer. Pop bummed stationery and started a
message for Knudsen, then looked up at the clerk. “Knudsen’s what? FBI?”

  “I’ll give him your note and you’re gonna fix me up with that room in Tahoe?”

  Pop nodded and pointed to his name and number on the note.

  On the way to the car, he told me, “I was out of line, asking all the questions. Next time, I leave it to you.”

  Ava and Mama were still in the car. When I mentioned the odds of renting a room between Mendocino and Oregon, Ava said, “Quig’s isn’t luxury but I can probably find you a semi-clean shack with a sort of good bed.”

  Pop had gone to the backseat with Mama. He asked me to drive. Ava came up front and directed me to followed Moonshine Trail to the dead-end, just east Sugar Hill, its grassy slope splotched with wilted sunflowers leading to a crest studded with mostly-charred black pine. It looked like the battlements of a demonic kingdom.

  A path rutted with motorcycle tracks led us across a field to River Road. At nine a.m., the westbound traffic from McNees' Park crawled along the road and into the jamboree parking lot. The grounds were already crowded as a refugee camp.

  I worried that upon our arrival at the commune, Quig would interrogate me about the Hound Dog incident. Unless I could lie like the pro I wasn’t, he might dash to a phone, call the Cossacks and evict me into their custody. But to deliver me to the bikers, Quig would have to stand against Pop. A challenge as foolish as debating Socrates.

  The gatekeeper Ava called Whitey broke from a horseshoe game to peer into our car. Ava waved. He waved us through. Mama and Pop, sitting close together in back, gawked at the yurts, lean-tos, A-frames, tarp-covered geodesic domes and tents, and at the residents, blond men with Chinese pigtails, topless babes watering the garden, naked toddlers caked in river mud. The residents gawked at Pop’s car. Last year, most of them would have gathered to welcome the newcomers, Cadillac or no. Now they held back, sullen and suspicious.