The Do-Re-Mi Page 15

  The only tables were three long fold-outs near the door to the kitchen. They were set with wooden and glass bowls of white rice, brown rice, millet, Swiss chard, yellow squash, zucchini, lemon Jello, chocolate tapioca pudding. Ava noticed Pop hovering over the bowls, scrutinizing each dish. “Nothing you like?”

  “I’m looking for the pot roast.” He winked.

  Ava laughed low and sweet as a cello. “Try the millet with your eyes closed and think ‘pot roast.’”

  “Nice try. Say, which one of these characters is Quig?”

  She nodded toward a circle on the floor, five women and three men, all young, all staring at us, and a plump older fellow with a bald crown and a ponytail the color of sunflower seeds. The plump man and Ava saluted each other.

  We carried our plates and Kool-Aid to the deck and all squeezed onto a single bench. Mama nibbled, like always. I believe she only ate for nourishment. Pop grimaced while chewing his brown rice and squash but he gobbled the wheat bread with butter that Ava informed him was churned from milk freshly out of Dolly, Quig’s one cow. When he had eaten all he cared to, Pop asked who wanted a drink of something more medicinal than spring water. He set his plate on the deck and walked around the hall to the Eldorado and his cooler and returned with a Dewar’s on the rocks and an Oly for me. He sat between Mama and Ava. After Ava had quit eating and put her plate on the deck, he said, “Introduce me to Quig?”

  “I’ll go get him.” She collected dishes and carried them inside.

  Pop reached for Mama’s hand. “I’d like to be here when the salmon run.”

  “Alvaro loves salmon,” Mama said.

  “We’re taking care of Alvaro, babe.”

  “Guaranteed?” she asked, smiling because Pop issued guarantees most every day.

  “You bet.”

  I said, “Pop, should we ask Quig what all he can tell us about the Cossacks? You said the kingpin usually knows everything.”

  “Good call. And he’s also usually shrewd enough to get to know his enemy.”

  Soon Ava returned, leading Quig by the hand. He was the shorter, with sawed-off legs and tiny feet. A few more pounds and twenty years, he could play Santa Claus. With his head cocked and hairy chin uplifted, he reached a miniature hand out toward Pop. “You’re a private investigator, I understand?”

  “Used to be. Now I’m a guy with family problems.”

  “So I hear.” Quig pulled a bench closer to ours and sat. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “It’s your place.”

  “Really it belongs to the people. I only pay the bills.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Quig reached into his shirt for a joint as fat as a cigar and torched it with a stick match. “Why do I pay the bills?” He sucked a drag, pressed it deep, and offered the joint around. We all declined. “I predict the stock market. I send out a newsletter. People who make money off my advice pay me. I use my earnings to feed my family. In return my family gives me love.”

  “Some family,” Pop said.

  “I did the nuclear thing and it was a bust. My blood kids want to have me committed. For the obvious reasons.”

  Pop managed a sympathetic frown. “Jimmy Marris, you think he was a snitch?”

  “I got bad vibes.”

  “You grow that stuff you’re smoking?”

  “I’m getting bad vibes again.”

  “To sell?”

  Quig let the accusation pass. “Jimmy wanted money. He proved it by the questions he asked, the girlfriend he picked.” He glanced at Ava. She scowled. “And by the conversations he tuned in to. My guess, he was a poacher. This forest . . .” He waved in a broad circle. “In dollars and cents, there’s more ganja than lumber.”

  “Who’d he poach from?”

  “My best guess? Alvaro.”

  “How about your next best guess?”

  He shrugged. “Excuse me, Visalia needs me to hold her hand. She’s been freaking.” He made a little bow and rose. Pop glanced at me.

  I tapped Quig’s arm. “Aren’t you going to kick me out like you promised Little Vic?”

  “You’ll be gone by morning, right?”

  “No.”

  He laughed and turned toward the door that led inside. I jumped up and around him and blocked it. “If you helped us out, maybe we could get rid of the Cossacks for you.”

  He looked both ways as if for assistance. None came. “Help how?”

  “Tell us what you know about them, that’s all.”

  He crooked his mouth and folded his arms. “I did look into their backgrounds and found nothing remarkable, for bikers. Except, considering today’s assassination attempt, you might be intrigued to know that Ronald Moore, the one they call Hound Dog, was a Marine sniper. If I think of other tidbits, I’ll pass them along. Now, please stand aside.”

  I did.

  He strolled into the hall.

  Ava was still fuming over Quig’s reference to her and money. “Talk about bad vibes,” I said, “that guy’s nothing but.” Her chin quaked like a baby’s before it bawls. I touched her shoulder and tried to sound merely curious. “You’ve got money?”

  “Quig probably thinks I could give him a fortune if I wanted to. But I don’t and I can’t get any and I don’t want to get any and even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to him.”

  “Where does Quig think you’d get money?”

  She glared with defiance. “My real dad’s Paul McNees.” The sudden knowledge that Ava’s dad owned at least a lumber company and a builders’ and outdoor sports emporium felt to me like when the swell of a Tahoe excursion boat flipped our dingy. But Pop didn’t even look surprised.

  He said, “I’d make book Mister Quig takes more loot out of this place than he brings in, besides the fringe benefits.” He watched Quig and the girl stroll toward the river. “Like holding Visalia’s little hand.”

  Mama yawned. Pop walked her to the A-frame. Ava and I ducked into the yurt where her sister rolled and tossed, gasping as though from nightmares and squirming as if bugs had infested the futon. Ava tucked a Mexican blanket around her sister and patted her cheek. After Lola slapped a pillow over her head and lay still a few minutes, Ava and I left her alone and walked to the park bench beside the playground.

  Ava wasn’t talking, so I said, “If I ever write an instruction book for detectives, rule number one is to ask everybody’s last name. Right, Miss McNees?”

  “Lots of people change their names,” she said. “Maybe I should.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Around here, McNees is like Rockefeller. People hear it, they get ideas.”

  “Like me, when I ask if you can get a list of buyers of 30.06 rifles, or ammunition for them, from your dad’s emporium?”

  “Yeah, like that,” she said.

  I wanted answers, to hear from Ava everything she knew about her sister and Vic. I wanted her to swear she wasn’t in the forest with Jimmy Wednesday night. But first I needed her to drop her guard. So I gave her Knudsen’s theory, that Jimmy had tried to steal from Alvaro and my brother overreacted.

  All through the story she kept shaking her head. “Jimmy used to shoplift, but we were in junior high then. Clifford, how’s your hand?”

  “I can wiggle my index finger,” I said, and wondered why she had changed the subject.

  “Can I see it?”

  I reached out my bandaged hand. She cupped it in both hers and kissed two fingers before she noticed Pop coming, holding a tumbler of Scotch. He sat beside me, across from Ava.

  “Mama sleeping?” I asked.

  “She fell asleep praying for these hippies. She’s worried about them.”

  “Because of the Cossacks?” Ava asked.

  “Because of the devil.” Pop filled his pipe, lit up, and sipped his Scotch.

  Ava asked, “What do you think about the hippies?”

  “Looks to me, no doubt you’ve got some idealists, some true believers among them. But plenty of the rest are stalling, trying to put off g
rowing up.”

  “How do you know when somebody’s grown up?”

  “When they take care of other people instead of letting other people take care of them, I suppose.”

  The way Ava hung on Pop’s words, she might have advertised for a dad and granted him an audition. “What about Quig?” she asked. “Is he just using the kids?”

  “He’s a rat, the same as most of us are. The good folks, the people of constant good will, like Wendy . . . Well, look how the world has clobbered her.”

  “You’re not a rat,” she said.

  “I am. Don’t make me have to prove it.”

  She peered all around and whispered, “If Quig’s getting rich off the harvest, do you think he might’ve shot Jimmy?”

  “Whew.” Pop glanced at me and hitched a thumb toward Ava. “This young lady’s got an aptitude.”

  I thought of asking how Ava could possibly be living with the “family” of her boyfriend’s murderer without catching a clue. But maybe she had clues. And I recalled that my friend's dear friend had lived with the Manson family all through their murders and hadn’t suspected until she stumbled upon a corpse.

  “I’d best turn in before I break down and pour another.” Pop drank the last sip from his glass. “Where are you sleeping, son?”

  “In the Chevy.”

  “I’ll be there at dawn sharp to rouse you.” He checked his watch. “That’s about six hours.”

  As Pop ambled away, Ava stood up. I walked her back to the yurt. We stood a minute outside. I stared at her eyes and imagined a kiss before Lola’s groans called her sister inside.

  When I peeked in and asked to borrow a Bible, Ava was already kneeling and petting Lola’s hair. She crawled to a pile of books and fetched me a King James.

  After a trip to the bathhouse, I slid into the back of the Chevy and into my sleeping bag, flipped on the overhead light, and browsed every article about Phil Ochs in Alvaro's magazines. Not a word about his politics.

  I opened the Bible to the verse Pop had referred me to before we climbed Sugar Hill.

  The words he wanted me to read stood out as though in bold lettering — “If anyone kills another out of hatred . . . or anger . . . he is a murderer.”

  ABOUT one a.m., having only dozed fitfully, I bolted up, startled by the distant noise of sharp pops. Like my first night in the forest. Only the shots sounded different. A pickup was skidding through McNees Park, terrorizing the campers, I decided. I slipped out of my bag and crept to Pop’s car. I wanted a gun beside me before I tried again to sleep. But the Eldorado was locked.

  In the Chevy, I covered my head with the sleeping bag and imagined Hound Dog creeping down Sugar Hill holding a gun aloft. My head was still covered when the first rap sounded and the rear window rattled. I gulped hard, choked, and thought, as soon as my head poked out of the bag, Quig or the Cossack would pull the trigger. The bag was unzipped. I imagined I could sneak my foot out, find the latch handle to the rear double-door. Gripping the handle with my toes, I could turn it, then kick with my other foot and lunge. My foot was still groping for the door when Pop called, “Snooze you lose, Clifford.”

  THE world remained bleary all the way into downtown Evergreen. Then Pop pulled to the curb in front of Babe’s and I asked, “What about Quig?”

  “You mean is he the killer?”

  “Maybe not the shooter but the guy who ordered it done.”

  “Give me a motive.”

  I offered, “Jimmy was sneaking out at night and harvesting Quig’s plants.”

  “From what you told me, the Cossacks go out harvesting everybody’s plants. Why hasn’t Quig killed any of them?”

  “He caught Jimmy in the act. He’s scared of them but not of Jimmy.”

  Pop said, “Or Quig might have his eye on Ava?”

  “No way,” I grumbled, miffed by just the thought. “She’s thirty years younger than him.”

  “So’s Visalia,” he said. “And Ava could be heir to a fortune.” We bought coffee and bear claws to go. On the sidewalk, Pop said, “Seems to me the law’s kept busy exploring the north side of the river because they’re so damned sure Alvaro did the shooting and his camp’s on that side. But you said the shots might’ve come from the south side, right?”

  “Yeah, and they were about as loud as the ones I heard last night.” I told him about the shots and my guess that they came from McNees Park.

  “How far is McNees Park from Quig’s?”

  “Say a two miles.”

  “What’s that tell you?”

  “Okay, where I slept Wednesday night was about four miles by the odometer off the highway. So we follow the river, on the south side. Anywhere we look, say two to six miles from the 101, we might hit the jackpot.”

  THE first gray daylight appeared as we passed the compound of old trailers where the Mexican family named Marti lived. A small man paused from ripping up dead corn stalks to watch us pass. Two of his niños played in the dirt beside him. At the next shack, the mastiff rose on its giraffe legs and uttered a sleepy bark. I watched closely, hoping for a glimpse of the dog’s hermit mistress. She didn’t appear. Likewise, I didn’t catch any sign of life around the Van Dyke A-frame. A hundred yards past the deserted flop house and/or meth lab we parked at the end of the road.

  “Lock your door,” Pop said.

  “Shouldn’t we take the guns along?”

  “Not unless you’re scared of bears. If any people turn up and object to our trespassing, we’re bird watchers. And since I’m the old guy, I’ll take the first trail we come across, if we come across any. You take the next one.”

  We crossed a shallow arroyo and tromped over spongy ground for a few minutes before we discovered a path along which mulch had gotten packed. Pop followed it straight east. I tromped another minute and discovered a similar trail into the woods. I turned southeast onto the path. A spotted doe watched until I almost could touch her, then she bolted. Dozens of birds joined in a chorus that sounded like a choir of Pentecostals singing in tongues.

  Pop had played baseball as well as football. His favorite position was first base, so he had taught himself to cheer the pitcher with a loud, two-finger whistle. Though I had heard it a thousand times, this morning I mistook it for one of the birds, maybe telling the others to shut up. But no bird I knew could shout, “Clifford.” Jogging toward the voice, hoping my sense of direction was reliable, I cut left and right between the trees, second growth redwoods with trunks of about the same girth as a sumo wrestler. As I rounded one of them, I would’ve crashed into Pop if he hadn’t sidestepped.

  “Check this out.” He pointed to an ankle-high stalk.

  I knelt and looked. The top was sliced clean, straight across as though done with a sharp machete, and fresh enough so lines of resin still glistened. I leaned closer and sniffed. “That's the stuff.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Never mind.”

  He turned a mock frown on me then motioned with his hand, pointing and sweeping. “They’re all over, dozens of them, tucked between every tree in this grove. Let’s not cover the same ground. You take the right flank, I’ll get the left.”

  We started ten yards west of the first plants and swept eastward, angling in until we reached each other's territory, then going out ten yards beyond the northernmost stalks, still close enough to the river so we could hear it rush and tumble. I spotted birds’ eggs, a long green snake, the feathery carcass of a chicken hawk, and a chaos of human footprints.

  Pop spotted the 30.06 casing. It lay in plain sight like an Easter egg a mother had put on display to make certain her youngest kid wouldn’t pass it by. It was leaning with the business end up on the base of a redwood stump, thirty yards beyond the last stalk.

  I found distinct tracks. They commenced only three paces from the casing and headed west. One set was large and deep like the boot prints Agent Knudsen had showed us. The person in boots had taken long strides. The other set looked like a bare foot without toes. The
y were man-sized even though the strides measured half as long as those of the fellow in boots, and they only continued for a dozen steps before they turned into skid marks. At that same place, the boot prints turned, so now they were those of a man walking backward.

  We followed the tracks into and out of poison ivy, stumbled into culverts hidden by mulch and over fallen branches. The tracks detoured around stumps and trees but otherwise headed straight to the river. A man in boots walking backward, dragging behind him the barefoot person without toes.

  The tracks led straight to the riverbank. A nest of branches and fallen logs had collected in a small cove as if they had come to find shelter from the rapid current. Pop stared at the river. “Suppose the killer dragged Jimmy over here and put him on a log, lashed him to it with a vine or something, and pushed him into midstream. You think he could’ve floated down to where he beached in, say, four hours?”

  I stumbled down the slippery bank, waded knee-deep alongside the nest of branches, and used a branch to pry loose the big log nearest me. It was long and round enough to make a small canoe. I walked it out of the cove and shoved it into the midstream current. It whipped sideways, then straightened out and flashed away downriver.

  Turning to the bank where Pop waited, I called out, “Less than four hours.”

  As a reward, we sat on the bank and rested. But my glee dissipated as I recognized that even if the clues we had found could rout Knudsen’s “evidence” against Alvaro in court, coming from the prime suspect's father and brother, they wouldn’t convince Willis to call in his bloodhounds. And if they managed to hunt my brother down, the odds of him standing trial were puny. “Now what?” I asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “Cut it out,” I yelped, which shocked me. Pop didn’t allow disrespect and we didn’t give it. I closed my eyes and breathed deep. “See, I can’t handle you trying to make me be something I’m not. And every minute you waste on it could be the one where my brother gets killed.”