No Second Wind (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 3) Page 15

  “All I know is no silver lining for him,” I answered and walked on.

  I stopped at the public telephone booth and called Anita. “He may be a little better,” she said in answer to my question about her grandfather. “Yes, the doctor’s been here twice. He left pills and instructions and said he’d be back.”

  “I wish I could see you.”

  “Not now, Jase. Not while I’m nursing an invalid.”

  She didn’t think to ask about Cleaver. She had her own worries.

  Charleston sat in his office, doing nothing unless thinking was something. “You’re early,” he said.

  “I had plenty of sleep. What about you, Mr. Charleston? You look as if you could use some.”

  “I’ll stick around for a while.”

  I sat down at my desk and the typewriter. As I inserted a sheet, he said, “I would wish the weather hadn’t broken so soon.”

  “What! Everybody’s enjoying it.”

  “I know,” he said and went on thinking and presently added, “It may be nothing and probably is, but cold weather puts a crimp in people and warm weather takes the crimps out. Ask any demonstrator. Ask rioting students.”

  He left me to reflect on his words while I sketched out a report of last night. Finally he asked, “You want to bring me a sandwich, Jase?”

  “Sure. But I’m here, so why stay on?”

  He answered only, “Seems best.”

  So I walked to the Commercial Cafe, crowded in and managed to get a hamburger to go. I knew he would have his own coffee.

  Six o’clock came, and seven and eight, and then the phone rang. He listened and said, “Right away,” hung up and told me, “Come along, Jase.” He took time to add, as we hurried from the office, “That was Doc Yak.”

  While I broke the engine-heater connection, he jumped into the car and flung a door open for me. He found a parking place close to the Bar Star. We could have walked the same distance and lost little time. From outside we could hear a racket inside the place.

  Depending on the location of home, the Bar Star was called, only half-jokingly, the uptown office or the downtown office. Deals were made there. Buyers of livestock passed checks to sellers. Ranchers contracted for feed stuff. Passers-by dodged in to get warm. Committees met and laid plans. Poker players could be accommodated. Serious drinkers could forget home, if they had one, and those who didn’t could find ease for their loneliness. It was at once business place, retreat and point of assembly.

  We stepped in to find a crowd of men, numbering twenty or more. The place smelled of spilled beer, tobacco smoke and bodies. Doc Yak drank alone at the head of the bar. A man was holding forth. He was Jim Burke, the auto mechanic with the big family, and he was saying, “Let’s go! Them earth-diggers ruin the country and kill men besides. Goddamn the likes of them, shootin’ Chuck Cleaver. Put the run on ’em, that’s what I say. Who’s with me?”

  He received shouts of support, but one by one the men fell silent as they caught sight of Charleston. The speaker turned around and saw him, too.

  Charleston asked quietly, “What goes on?”

  Bodie Dunn spoke now, “It’s no matter to you. It’s our business.”

  “What business is that?”

  Francis Fournier, the part-blood, answered. “What’s it to you if we just turn over a couple of them sheep-wagons they call home? They’ll vamoose then.”

  “And close down that Chicken Shit place,” Burke put in. “While you draw your pay, we’ll do your damn work.”

  “And get even for Cleaver,” Dunn said.

  Charleston said, “I wouldn’t try that.” He stood there, solid, unmoving, while his hard eye went from one man to another. He should have been a general.

  “Who cares?” Burke asked, his voice loud. “Bunch of goddamn foreigners!”

  Charleston raised his tone. “Whatever they are, they’re Americans. Free Americans, entitled to the protection of American laws.”

  “Throwin’ bricks through windows is one thing,” Bodie Dunn said, “but by God killin’ one of us is another. Americans, you say? Bullshit!”

  “And who’s to say we can’t do it?” Burke shouted. “Who’s to say?”

  “The sheriff of the county.”

  “You and your peedad crew. We elected you and we can, by God, unelect you.”

  “Meantime, I’m the sheriff, and the laws will be observed.”

  “Piss on that noise. What say, gang?” Burke moved forward two steps, and the crowd moved with him.

  Charleston held up a hand. “God gave you heads. Use them. Run off the strip miners and you lose the killer, if he’s among them.”

  Francis Fournier said, “There are ways, many ways, to make men talk. We make them talk.”

  “That’s it. We’ll have ’em squealing. What say, gang?” That was Burke again.

  The men were restive, eager for action. There was energy here, wild energy, fed by a killing and release from the cold. I felt myself bracing. I could take out one of them, maybe two. Charleston could do as well or better. Tackle the leaders first. Yeah, those leaders—Burke, an indifferent mechanic; Dunn, hardly more than a handyman; Fournier, a barely successful rancher. It was in the book, the books I had studied. The prejudiced, the stupid, the vociferous led mobs and, too often, parties.

  I caught movement at the other side of Charleston, and there stood Ike Doolittle with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. Little Doc Holliday, siding with the Earp brothers at the O.K. Corral. And from the front of the bar came Bob Studebaker with Gunnar on leash.

  Charleston said, “None of that, Ike. Put it in a corner.”

  “You men go fighting the law, and, God help me, I turn the dog loose,” Studebaker announced.

  The interruptions gave Charleston a break. He spoke quietly now. “Listen to me, men. We don’t know who’s guilty. It might be a strip miner. It’s more likely to be a wolf hunter who shot Cleaver by accident. He would be trying to cover up now. He would be trying to mislead you, to make you suspect somebody else. Some of you have hunted wolves. One of you may be the guilty party. I do not say that this is so. I say it may be. The innocent, including those of you who haven’t hunted, surely will want to find out. That’s what I and my crew want to do.”

  The men began looking, one at another, with beginning wonderment in their eyes. Doc Yak was smiling into his glass. Studebaker held Gunnar in check.

  Doc Yak yelled, “Belly up to the bar, boys. On me. Generous to a fault and poor to boot, that’s yours truly. Belly up.”

  Driving back to the office, Charleston said, “We won the ball game, but it was close.” There was no victory in his voice, just strain and fatigue. “From now on keep your own hours. Put full time on the Cleaver case, Jase.”

  “Subject to help, I hope,” I said.

  “All we can give. I’ll drop off at the Jackson Hotel.”

  I didn’t see him until the next afternoon, meantime keeping busy myself.

  19

  The case was mine, and a man assigned to a case got with it, even if his task involved largely just the preliminaries, as I suspected mine did. Charleston would come on the scene, surely, after my initial appearance.

  I set out at eight o’clock, my immediate destination the Jope Jordan ranch. Charleston hadn’t mentioned him last night, and for a good reason. You didn’t make public the name of a suspect until you had proof and, better yet, the man under arrest. But it was certain Jordan had been in his mind. Jordan had threatened Cleaver after Cleaver had knocked him down as the environmental meeting came to an end.

  Jope wasn’t Jordan’s given name, of course. When he made the local news, which was seldom, he appeared in print as Joseph P. Jordan or Joe P. Jordan. In earlier days another Joe Jordan had lived in the county, so my father had told me. To avoid confusion, then, the man I wanted to see had been referred to as Joe P., later shortened to Jope by citizens saving of syllables.

  The car purred along. The chinook wind still blew. To the west
the mountains stood sharp as scissor cuts. To the east the land rolled and fell away until earth and sky embraced. North and west was my direction, toward the furred foothills. I didn’t need the car heater. A warm, clean, far-seeing day.

  I drove past the Cleaver place and, next to it, two miles farther on, came to Jope Jordan’s ranch. I couldn’t see a head of stock on it, not a cow or a horse or a sheep or even a hen. The outbuildings—the barn and tool shed and chicken house—were closed and nothing moved near them. But a plume of smoke came from the house and ran into tatters as the chinook took it. It alone gave evidence of life here.

  Jordan answered my knock and said, “Hello, Beard. Come inside, won’t you?” I was having my first hard look at him. He wasn’t quite so tall as I. He wore suspenders over slumped shoulders. His seamed face had the marks of wind, sun and cold and, I thought, maybe the bottle. It appeared pleasant enough.

  We sat near the wood heater, which radiated the little warmth that was needed. The rooms, from what I could see of them, were sparsely furnished, as if the owner were soon to take leave. The walls were marked where furniture had been.

  “Something on your mind?” he asked after we were seated.

  “I suppose you heard that Chuck Cleaver got killed?”

  “How could I miss it? I’ve kept a radio and TV while selling off the rest of my stuff bit by bit. And the telephone. Sure, I’ve heard. We weren’t friends, Cleaver and me, but I’m sorry.”

  “You two had a fight.”

  “He belted me one all right, and I said things I for sure didn’t mean.”

  “I was there. Remember?”

  He nodded. “Chuck wouldn’t use his head, not that it was too sharp when he used it. His ranch isn’t worth much. Neither is mine. So along came those lease hounds and offered good money and more money if you played hard to get. That’s what I did. Chuck wouldn’t go along.”

  I said, “I know.”

  “I got tired of ranching. It’s damn tough even on good land. And then my wife up and died eight months ago, and what was I to do? Play hermit like old Linderman? Just chug along to the graveyard? Not for me. I took the money. I’ll head out pretty soon.”

  “You weren’t mad at Cleaver?”

  “For a minute. That’s all. When he biffed me. He claimed if my land was mined, his would be ruined, graze and water and all. Now who can tell about that? What’s more, if a man owns a chunk of land, he has a right to do with it whatever he pleases. Right?”

  “That’s the frontier idea.”

  He smiled then, a friendly smile. “I’m old-fashioned, but, still, I wouldn’t push that notion too far. But it came down to cases, and I voted to lease. Do you blame me? Hey, how about a drink before you answer?”

  “Thanks, no. That’s no reason for you not to have one.”

  He got up, went to an old cabinet and poured two fingers in a not very clean glass. He said, “Good bourbon,” and looked at me inquiringly. I shook my head.

  When he had reseated himself, glass in hand, I told him, “It’s not for me to blame you for leasing. Your business, not ours. Ours is to find out who killed Chuck Cleaver.”

  “I sure as hell wish you luck.”

  “So I have to ask questions. The first one is: Where were you night before last when he was shot?”

  Jordan took a swallow of his drink and smiled. “Now, son, you think you have a right to quiz me?” He was anyhow twenty years older than I, so the “son” wasn’t offensive.

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “It’s answers that come hard, answers to anything. Like why are you alive? Why me? Where’s the real reason?”

  He was playing with me, I came to realize, and that knowledge nettled me. “I’m not a philosopher,” I told him. “You don’t have to answer. You can demand an attorney.”

  He laughed then, a real laugh that rippled the whiskey in his glass. “I see you know the rules, son. Now let me see. Night before last? It kind of beats me, trying to remember.” He finished his drink and smiled genially. “Were the wolves howling that night?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Might help me to remember. Were they?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure.”

  “You see? You can’t remember yourself. Can’t answer for certain. We’re in the same boat.”

  He rose and poured himself two more fingers of bourbon. He sat down and looked at me, waiting.

  I said, “I still want to know where you were night before last.”

  “I’m coming round to it. What’s wrong with a friendly talk, with tossing some bullshit around? I have damn few visitors since my wife died.”

  “We can visit another time.”

  “You’re awful serious, son. But all right. All right.” He downed his whiskey in a gulp, got up, went to a wardrobe, fumbled in it and came out with a slip of paper. He handed it to me. It was a receipt for three-nights’ lodging at the Rest Easy motel 70 miles away from the ranch.

  I read it and told him, “It still doesn’t prove that you were there all the time.”

  “Right you are. Ever play poker?”

  “Only a little.”

  “That’s what I was doing, some old sidekicks and me, playing straight poker, jacks or better to open, when Chuck got himself shot.”

  “Names of those sidekicks?”

  “Sure. Four of ’em. You see, I was blowing some of my ill-gotten gains, staying in the city, drinking a little, playing cards. You want names, I’ll give them to you along with a couple of addresses. The rest you can look up. Got a pencil and paper?”

  After I had made my notes, I said, “We’ll check, but it looks like you’re clear. It took a long time to get it out of you, though.”

  “Here I was, wantin’ company, and if I had answered straight out, you would have rolled away pronto. Straight question, straight answer, so long.” He laughed. “Cagey old bird, that’s me. Now have a good-bye drink.”

  I took one with him, said my thanks and shook his hand before leaving.

  Charleston had suggested I see Mrs. Cleaver, make sure she was all right and talk of funeral arrangements, so I stopped there on my way back to town. I walked by the parked truck and saw her at the entry, gazing out with the dull look of a cow watching through an open barn door. She said, “It’s you again.”

  “We wanted to find out if you were all right. How are you getting along?”

  “Good as you could expect. I just boiled some coffee. Come in if you want to.”

  I sat at the kitchen table. She poured coffee in mugs and took a seat opposite me. The coffee smelled scorched. It was as bitter as acid.

  “Is there anything you need, Mrs. Cleaver? One of us could bring it out.”

  “God hisself couldn’t bring all I need.”

  “I mean groceries, anything like that?”

  “I ain’t much for meat, though I got some, and plenty garden stuff that I canned.”

  “That’s good. Now another thing. Viewing the body? I could take you into town now if it suits you?” If it did suit her, I would have to wait until she changed clothes. What she wore looked like a wool sack.

  “Me see him?” she said. “Look at him dead?”

  “You know Mr. Underwood. He’s very good at—”

  She took the finish away from me. “—at makin’ ’em look alive.”

  “Let’s say natural.”

  “My mind’s eye sees him clear. That’s enough.”

  “Then about the funeral?”

  “Sooner the better, I say. What’s the good of keepin’ a body around?”

  “Tomorrow, then? Say two o’clock?”

  “That’s good enough.”

  “The family usually picks out a casket?”

  “You folks do it for me. Not fancy. I guess you better round up some preacher, too.”

  I said, “We’ll attend to those things. Do you drive?”

  “Nothin’ to drive but that old truck. It wouldn’t be fittin’ for mourning. Chuck was al
ways goin’ to buy a passenger car. Never got around to it. Not enough money, though he spent it for other things.”

  “Mr. Underwood will send a car out for you. That’s part of his service.”

  “Charges for it, too, I bet, but it’s accommodatin’.”

  “That’s all settled then?”

  “Not some things,” she said. “What you know about leases?”

  “They’ve been here already?”

  “Already twice.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Widows, even if newly made, were easy meat for lease hounds and other keen businessmen.

  I took a sip of coffee acid as Mrs. Cleaver went on. “I ain’t signed. What’s a fair price? I got to know that.”

  “Don’t settle yet,” I told her. “You know Judge Bolser? Fine. Talk to him. He’s up on things.”

  “Then,” she said, “I’m going to get shut of all our stuff.” A sweep of her arm embraced house, outbuildings and land. “Ranch, cows, kettles, all of it.”

  “And live in town?”

  “Live somewhere else, that’s where.”

  I was glad to say good-bye. Poor old dame, deadened to all but self-concern. Poor Chuck Cleaver, soon to lie in the graveyard. Poor match. Poor Linderman, too, depending on the dependence of his animals. Poor Jope Jordan, lonely for company. Poor women who worked at our switchboard, hoping for a last fling at romance that time said would turn sour. Life didn’t have to frazzle into sad tags. It didn’t have to grow narrow and mean. It wouldn’t with me if I had my way. I wouldn’t let it.

  What with driving and conversation, morning and noon time had passed. For old time’s sake, sure, old times, I went to the Jackson Hotel for a late lunch and imagined Anita sitting opposite me. After eating, I called her. She wasn’t encouraging either about her grandfather or a visit from me. I couldn’t blame her, seeing her hovering over a sick bed.

  Next on my list was Bodie Dunn. I learned at the Bar Star that he was helping unload some freight cars. He wouldn’t want to be interrupted at work. Amendment: his boss wouldn’t want him to be interrupted.

  I drove to the Chicken Shack. What the hell else was there to do? What else to do when, for all I knew, another man was being blasted? Could I ride herd on the whole damn country? Was I supposed to have x-ray eyes? Was I Mr. Hear All, See All, Know All? The man of action, the super-sleuth, the public protector, he had a bellyache.