The Do-Re-Mi Page 18

  “Sit,” he said.

  Pop took the rough-hewn chair by the woodstove, leaving Bob and me the sofa bench. I sat on the outside, so the pastor was between us. Pop hitched his thumbs under his belt, his right hand an inch from his pistol. “My son’s out there running from guys who think he’s a desperado. Let’s don’t waste time on polite. You just tell your story.”

  “Yeah.” Roy kept his right hand on the gun and used his left to move his cap back. Then we could see his whole face. It looked so gray and mystified, I wondered if he had taken poison. He spoke like a dreamer. “I was camped out, keeping watch, because Othello was fishing the river last . . . Monday, three days after Sara, and he saw five Cossacks.”

  “Six,” the boy yipped.

  “Okay, six of them. He tagged behind and watched. They parked their hogs on one of the trails that end at Old Crow Creek, and they crossed it on a log bridge, and went straight to my plants, like they knew exactly where to look.

  “Those plants were . . . You see, we had our eye on a sea-view lot on a hill across Highway One, north of Shelter Cove. We wanted to build a spec house. Passive solar. With the income, I could build another house. And so on. It wasn’t like I meant to grow weed for a career.” He snatched off his cap and squeezed it like an exercise ball. “No way was I going to let the Cossacks rob us. They already killed Sara.

  “Wednesday night, Pedro from down the road, he watched my kids and I went out to guard my plants. But Alvaro must’ve got lonely and hiked over to visit. He got to playing my violin and told Pedro he could go home if he wanted, and he’d stay over.

  “I was fast asleep in my bag when something woke me. I heard a man’s voice, way out there past my plants. I yelled something like ‘Get out of my life!’

  “I stood still and listened, until I heard a shot and saw a little flash, and a bullet came ripping by me. On instinct, I fired at the flash. Or maybe I wanted to kill somebody, I don’t know. A second later, boom, and this time not just a warning. It might’ve got me except I had jumped behind a tree. But I saw the second flash too. I lifted my rifle. Boom. Then not a sound.

  “I waited and listened. You know, for feet slapping while they ran away. But nothing. They were waiting me out, thinking I’d come look around, I guess. So I didn’t. Not until daybreak. By then . . . 1 didn’t see bodies or even any blood. And my plants were okay. I thought everything was okay. So I went home. And Alvaro was there. I told him what happened, and I crashed, got some sleep. That’s all.”

  “And Alvaro took your gun,” I said.

  “It was his gun. He’d loaned it to me. I didn’t own a rifle. Just this.” He patted the barrel of the gun on his lap. “When I heard about Jimmy, and about Alvaro running, I knew. But . . .” He raised the revolver and slipped his finger into the trigger housing. “No way I give myself up and go to prison and leave my kids to grow up in Yorba Linda with Sara’s folks or in Brentwood with mine. No way do I let my kids go back to the American sell-out nightmare. No way.” He stared at the ground.

  I wondered, and still do, what all he had lived with that sent him on a quest to find or make a different world for his kids. Maybe horrors. Or maybe he was raised a spoiled brat and couldn’t abide growing up.

  His hand fell limp. The gun pointed down. A minute passed before he broke from his trance and glared at us, all the handsome gone, his face contorted as if we had just brought the news about Sara’s crash. He shuddered so hard it looked like a seizure. “Are you going to try and stop us?”

  Pop lifted the pipe and tobacco from his shirt pocket, careful not to spook Roy into thinking he would pull a gun. He filled and lit the pipe. “Clifford, should we go to the law?”

  “Law,” Roy growled. “Since we moved up here, a year ago April, just in this county five guys are dead, either shot poaching or shot by poachers. Three go down as hunting accidents, the others go unsolved.” With ratcheting gasps, he filled his lungs. “Two weeks ago tomorrow, a drunk they call Hound Dog killed our Sara.”

  Oedipus wailed. His sister scolded, “No, Daddy said no.”

  Roy declared, “The law’s a fiction, man.” He fixed his gaze on the pastor.

  Pop shifted his pipe into his left hand and used his right to point at Pastor Bob and Roy in turn. “Good thing you believe in God, and probably got saved or whatever you call it. I mean, so your salvation’s secure, even if you kill a boy.”

  The pastor had shifted and leaned toward Pop as though anticipating a wise pronouncement.

  “What I’m wondering,” Pop said, “the boy you kill, suppose he never made any magic profession of faith. What do you think, is Jimmy Marris in heaven?”

  While Pop stared at him, Roy’s mouth crimped into a jagged line. Pop turned his stare on the pastor, who gazed upward as though awaiting the answer to a question he couldn’t field on his own.

  WHEN Pop stood, so did I. He shifted one eye to the loft and said, “Othello, did you take the pictures I asked you to take?”

  “Our dad took them,” the boy said.

  I looked at Roy. "Barker?"

  Roy nodded.

  Pop waved me around and ahead of him. I sidestepped to the door, watching Roy’s gun. Once I was outside, Pop followed me, walking backward. Then he turned and we hustled to the car, glancing over our shoulders.

  “I’ll hold the shotgun,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “Aren’t we going to run him in?”

  “Or we can go talk it over. What do you say?”

  I was thinking, Roy Van Dyke would sacrifice my brother to keep his kids from spending a few years with their grandparents. For that, I couldn’t even start to forgive him. But I wasn’t ready to consider myself wiser than Pop. Even if he lived long enough to get senile, I supposed he would still be smarter than I could ever be. I climbed into the Cadillac. Pop drove, stiff, mute, and scowling.

  Sunday lunch at the Crossroads was barbecue on the deck that overlooked the river. The parking lot was crammed with pickups, cars, and a semi-tractor. No Harleys. I guessed the Cossacks were off striking fear into another town or home mending their socks since today, at the Crossroads, the loggers would have them severely outnumbered.

  Every third man in the bar wore a McNees T-shirt with the chain-sawing beaver. The patrons chomped ribs, chugged brew, swapped jokes and sports predictions, played checkers or rummy or stuffed quarters into the jukebox. We stood at the bar.

  While we waited for Cherry, and while Elvis crooned “All Shook Up,” I asked, “Are we going to phone Willis?”

  “In a while.”

  “Pop, they’re not going to call off the bloodhounds until they catch Roy and he confesses.”

  “Suppose Willis goes there and Roy says, ‘Those Hickeys are liars.’ Then what?”

  “That pastor will set them straight. Unless Roy already killed the pastor.”

  Cherry stood over us. “Somebody killed a pastor?”

  Pop shook his head. “Dewar’s on the rocks and . . .”

  “Same,” I said. “Make it a triple.”

  She flashed us her toothy smile. Pop watched her drift down the bar. “Nice gal?”

  “She did me a big favor.”

  He studied me a moment. “I hope you didn’t make her help you torture Hound Dog.”

  “I didn’t torture anybody. Not exactly. I mean not physically."

  “Anyway, she’s a doll. No so much compared to Ava but —”

  “Pop, we’re here talking about girls when some deputized redneck might be shooting Alvaro dead, right now.”

  “You think your brother is still around Evergreen? Why’s that?”

  “Because,” I said, “as soon as he got out of immediate danger, he would’ve got us a message somehow.”

  He reached for an ash tray, tapped his pipe clean and refilled it, then laid it on the bar as he assumed the expression that prefaced every lecture he had given me. “Clifford, a fellow ought to look out for his own. But his own's not the only people he ought to look
out for. The world’s full of people, and your mama would say that if we saw them through God’s eyes, they’d all look just about as precious.”

  “You mean Othello and Oedipus and Ophelia.”

  “And Roy.” He lit up, fed his lungs, then motioned a finger at the barmaid. When she came, he asked, “Who owns this place?”

  “Frank Hoppe.”

  “He around?”

  She frowned as though Pop had delivered bad news. “Did I do something?”

  “Nope. Would you bring Mister Hoppe here, please?”

  She nodded and shot glances back at us while she filled a couple orders and shimmied her way between tables.

  We finished our drinks. Pop smoked. The neon waterfall on the Hamm's sign popped and sizzled. I thought, What good is it to solve a murder if you’ve got no evidence and you let the murderer get away?

  Hoppe had a black beard. He wore an apron and a cook’s tall hat. He walked with a limp that made his shoulder bob. He removed his sunglasses and wrinkled his nose. “Need somethin’?”

  Pop stared at him. The man reached for a tap lever and held it as though for balance. “Come on, partner, I got ribs burning.”

  “A week or two ago, Hound Dog walked out of here drunk and climbed on his motorcycle and killed a fine little lady.”

  Hoppe leaned back and gave us a look that meant, Not this again. “No, partner. What he did was get in the way of a hippie gal who was driving stoned.”

  Pop shrugged. “Tell me, who was tending bar that day?”

  The man leaned so close he could’ve kissed Pop on the nose. “Who are you?”

  “Think of me as Sara’s ghost. Who was tending bar?”

  “Me, partner. I was. I served the Dog, but I’m not serving you, ‘cause you’re outta here.”

  Pop raised a finger. “My advice is, cut your losses and close the place down, sell your license before you lose it.”

  “Fella, you’re too damn old to be with the Alcohol Bureau.”

  “That’s a fact, but the guys that’ll stop by here every other night aren’t, and they’re pals of mine, and the first minor gets a sip, the first logger stumbles on the way to his pickup, these young guys will rip your license into confetti.” Pop tapped out his pipe, in foxtrot rhythm. “Go baste your ribs.”

  By now, Hoppe had leaned back away from Pop and lifted his hands off the bar. He sneered, made a poof sound, and limped away. Pop caught Cherry’s eye and waved her over. She kept her distance, her head cocked with suspicion.

  Pop asked, “Think you might like to work at Harry’s Casino, South Lake Tahoe, or North Lake, your call?”

  She made her hands into spiders, tapped her fingers together and moved her stare back and forth between Pop and me. “You guys aren’t pimps or something are you?”

  Pop grinned. “We’re on the level. So if you find yourself unemployed or ready for a change, think about it.” He reached for his wallet. Along with a ten-dollar bill, he handed her a business card.

  WHEN Pop drove past the jail, I said, “Whoa!”

  “What?” he said.

  “We’re not going to Willis?”

  “You tell me to, we sure can.”

  All the way to Quig’s I tried to decipher reasons for Pop’s behavior, allowing the sheriffs to keep hunting Alvaro when we had at least a chance to stop them. The only reasons I could imagine implied Pop was truly getting soft in the head or heart.

  We found Mama and Ava in shorts, sunning their legs, sitting on a blanket on the riverbank. Pop squatted beside Mama. “We found the killer.”

  Mama lunged and hugged him. He lost his balance and plopped onto the sandy dirt.

  “Now we’ll find Alvaro,” Mama said.

  I sat in the dirt beside Ava, who had pulled up her downy legs and was crushing them to her breast and wincing as if she feared the revelation. “Who did it?”

  “Roy Van Dyke.”

  Ava closed her eyes. I began the story, but the instant I paused to breathe, Pop took over. He gave the details just as I remembered until the part where we left and drove to the Crossroads. Instead of the truth, he implied that we came straight from Roy’s to Quig’s, and that we would have brought Roy in except he was holding a pistol and to challenge him would be too risky, since a gunfight might leave us with dead kids and a dead preacher.

  “Why did he tell you everything?” Ava asked. “I mean if he wasn’t going to give up.”

  I offered, “The pastor probably told him confessing to us would buy him points with God.”

  Pop knew the reason Roy gave us his story. But he wasn’t yet ready to let us in. He said, “And we didn’t go straight to Willis because he’s sure to think we’re lying to run interference for Alvaro. But . . . ” He fixed his gaze on Ava. “. . . if you went along and told him the story, made out you were with us at Roy’s place, Willis has got to believe Jimmy’s girl. Not a chance you’re going to side with the murderer.”

  I expected her to spend a while with her conscience, maybe go for a walk beside the river. But she nodded and stood. We hustled to the car. We had opened our doors when Pop asked her, “How about we stop by Jimmy’s mother’s place, ask her to join us at the jail?”

  “I’m supposed to lie to her too?”

  “If you can see fit.”

  “THE sheriff’s out,” a weary desk officer told us.

  “Bring him in,” Pop said. “We found the murderer.”

  “Yeah, right,” the officer said, but his arrowhead nose wrinkled and he moved to his right and pushed buttons on a radio on a shelf under the counter.

  Accompanied by crackles, Willis grumbled, “Come on.”

  “Those Hickeys are here, and so’s Jimmy’s girlfriend. They want you to come in so they can hand you the murderer.” Even the crackling radio fell silent. Then Willis said, “I’ll bite. Don’t offer them coffee.”

  Delene Marris arrived, in shorts and a white blouse her red bra showed through, carrying an odor of cigarettes and misery and greeting me with a venomous look. Ava introduced her to Pop and Mama. She turned the same look on them.

  A cruiser pulled up in front of the police station door. Willis climbed out, stretched, and walked in slowly with Barker at his heels. He tossed a glance over his shoulder as though warning the deputy to keep his distance from us. Without formality, he shooed us ahead of him and into the interrogation room.

  Four of us sat. Barker and I stood at opposite ends of the room. I managed not to snarl. He popped his knuckles.

  Ava told the story just like Pop had, implying that she was at the scene without saying so. While she spoke, Barker mumbled and cussed under his breath until his sister yelped, “Shut your mouth, Brady.”

  Ava said, “But Jimmy wasn’t out there poaching. I don’t know why he was there, but he wasn’t stealing Roy Van Dyke’s plants.”

  Barker aimed a finger at her. “Jimmy’s not hardly even cold and you already jumped the fence.” He threw his arms up like a basketball defender and held them up while his white-hot eyes swept from Pop to Ava, from her to Willis and Delene. “All they’re doing is blowing a smokescreen, thinking we’ll call in the hunters, so the Mex can escape.”

  The sheriff gave a diffident nod. “I wanta see this Roy.”

  ALL the way to the Crossroads, I waited for Pop to pull over at a gift shop and ask the women to get out and wait. But he didn’t. Once again, I wondered if his mind was slipping away.

  So I asked, “We aren’t taking the women, are we?”

  Ava said, “Hush, Clifford.”

  “They’ll be all right,” Pop said, and Mama gave me a look as if she knew something I didn’t.

  When we turned onto Highball Trail, Agent Knudsen’s Fairlane pulled out of the Crossroads parking lot and fell in behind us. Willis and Barker were in the lead. Behind it came another sheriff’s cruiser that had joined us at the junction of Manhattan Avenue and 101. We came next, in the Eldorado. I rode shotgun. Jimmy’s mother sat in back between Mama and Ava. Mama looked at pea
ce, somewhat dreamy. Ava, all the way from the jail to the Crossroads, had rested her head on Delene’s shoulder as though sending a message: If you still want to be a mom, you can be mine. Along the bumpy road and across the bridge, they held hands.

  I sat hoping that the moment we pulled up at the Van Dyke place, Agent Knudsen would leap from his car, weapon drawn, and command Brady Barker to drop and surrender.

  From a half mile away, I saw that Roy's and Pastor Bob’s pickups were gone. Even so, the snakes in my belly started chomping.

  Our cars skidded in and formed a blockade line in front of the A-frame. Before anybody else had touched the ground, Barker was halfway to the door. I imagined him rushing the place and bursting in to silence Roy with bullets.

  The sheriff marched over to us and grabbed hold of the car door while Ava was halfway out. “You ladies stay the right here in the car.” Willis and Agent Knudsen walked together toward the A-frame. By now, Barker was at the door, his gun drawn and up beside his ear. He yelled, “Sheriffs,” and checked the knob with his free hand. Locked. He peered through the front window and turned with a sneer for Pop and me. “Doesn’t look vacated.” Knudsen scratched his neck and peered over his nose at the deputy. His expression looked more like a psychologist’s than a cop’s. I felt sure he’d gotten the photos developed.

  “Van Dyke must be at the jamboree with the rest of the hippies,” Barker said, “’cause he didn’t shoot Jimmy, and he never talked to these liars.”

  “Are we going in there?” Knudsen asked, pointing at the door.

  Willis didn’t answer, only scratched his lip with his teeth. He walked off the porch and back to his cruiser where he picked up the radio handset. “Horst, call everybody, tell ‘em to stop any forty-something Dodge pickups. Suspect is Roy Van Dyke. Late twenties. Blond. Slender. Could be three kids with him. He’s armed. Might’ve shot Jimmy Marris. . . . Yeah.”

  Pop tapped Knudsen’s shoulder. “Did you develop the snapshots?”