Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Lee Lamothe
finger sign at Buck’s departing truck, and rolled forward. She gassed it up herself, went inside with the credit card, and came out with an armload of treats.
* * *
She seemed in deep thought as she drove and Ray Tate watched their passage through the cut rock on both sides of the road. There were small stacks of stones on top of the rock cuts, Indian-looking designs. He saw a small shrine at a crossroads with trinkets and some cracked pots arranged in a design around them. There was an abandoned trailer that had undergone scorching fire. Four children, two of them dark brown with black hair and the other two dark but blond, ran down a hillside chasing wobbly tires.
As though talking to herself, Djuna Brown said, “They didn’t care that I was a dyke, even if I wasn’t. They said the mother was a woman, so how bad could it be, to love the mother of the earth? When I did the dawn patrols, after I took the teeth out of my partner, they’d come out in front of their trailers and wave me down, blow smoke onto the truck for my safety. Very mystical stuff, very loving. They’d invite me out on Fridays and Saturdays so the guys from the detachment wouldn’t go too far. All the bad stuff, all the dead children, the dead old folks, the head-ons on the blind curves, none of that moved me like how they accepted me. When I left here, I cried. It was the worst thing they could do to me, transferring me out of the worst place.”
Ray Tate watched the sadness on her face. He felt a thumping in his chest, out of all proportion to any investment he had in her, in her life. He realized he loved everything: her voice, her skin, her cinnamon, her wit. Her sadness and her heart.
She handled the increasingly sharp turns in the road with the four fingers of each hand on each side of the steering wheel, sliding close to the rock face when she went in blind, coming out a little wide, the Xterra holding the road like glue.
“When this thing’s down, Ray, we should take a holiday, see what’s what with us.”
“Well, Djun’, all I can offer you is gin and taps and mad Parisian beatnik love.”
“Cool-ee-oh, Bongo. Tonight let’s —” Her head whipped. “What did the cook tell you? About that old bush rat’s vehicle?”
“Rusted out old pickup. Grey.”
“Just went southbound, looked like a woman or a guy with long, black hair behind the wheel.” She spun into a U-turn.
* * *
Through the window of the diner they saw Phil Harvey on the phone. He looked exhausted, his forehead leaning against the wall as he spoke, his hair hanging loose. Inside his black leather bat coat he sagged. The short-order cook watched him. When Harvey hung up, the short-order cook waved him over and they started talking. Harvey took some money from his pocket and gave it to the cook. Outside he looked at each vehicle in the parking lot, missing the Xterra backed in among a half dozen rigs. Harvey went inside and came out with a coffee. Favouring his left arm, he boarded the pickup and headed south.
Chapter 24
Cornelius Cook was impatient. Gabriella Harris-Hopkins’s ass haunted him. He dwelled on the boots and the jodhpurs. If she wasn’t wearing them when Harv did his deed, Connie Cook would have to locate a pair of each.
In his bedroom he snacked away on frozen malted chocolate bars and flipped through the newspapers. There was an array of photographs taken the day before at the racetrack. His wife and Gabriella Harris-Hopkins posed with a short Colombian jockey. She looked snobby and resistant and perfect. The step-granddaughter was there but for Connie Cook she didn’t hold the heat Gabrielle boiled up in him. There was the mayor with a wardman, the mayor with a pair of predatory builders who smiled like rats. No mayor with Connie Cook. Whale, he thought. Should get to vote twice, he’s so fucking fat.
When Harv called, Connie Cook was getting anxious. Figuring the time it would take to get the drums of precursors up to the lab, even allowing for notoriously bad Interstate traffic, he figured Harv would have contacted him by now.
“Where you been, Harv. Fuck, what’s going on? Where you been all night?”
“I’m still up here. I couldn’t get away. There were … ah … you know?”
Connie Cook didn’t know. He loved the obscure gangster talk, the paranoia that every phone was bugged. He didn’t care, anyway. “So,” he said, mimicking Harv, “so, ah, you’re, ah, gonna come … home? You delivered the …” His mind groped. Through his bathroom door he saw a bottle of mouthwash on the sink. “You delivered the mouthwash?” He smiled proudly to himself.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. I had a problem with … some people I hadda straighten out.”
Cops or crooks? Connie Cook said, “Their guys or our guys?”
“Our guys. It’s okay now. I’m on the way. But I’m gonna need a ride at some point, get the rest of the way in. I’m driving a wreck and if … those … other guys spot me driving it, they’re gonna pull me over and take the fucking plates off. You want to … ah, meet me?”
“Sure. Where?”
Harvey said, “Let me think.” After a minute he said, “Ribs. Remember the ribs, that time we were heading up? With the sauce you liked?”
“Ah, I think. Ah, yeah.”
“Motorcycles out front. You said you’d need two of them, one under each cheek of your ass, to —”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Connie Cook laughed. “Yeah, but when? What time? Because I need you Thursday night, Harv, to, ah, pick up that thing for me, that thing I really need, you know?”
“Okay. You know how many … treats you’ve had? Up there? Don’t say the number, but you know, right?”
“Sure. Every one of them.” Three girls had been brought up for Connie. Agatha Burns was the third. The first two had been cheap and tawdry and had misread his needs, making sounds of pleasure at the worst possible time. Ooo, they said, taking to the crank nicely, ahhh. Two that would never be missed. Scrags, Harv called them. “Yeah, I know the count.”
“Well, add two to that. Then, wait an hour after you get there. Take a cellphone just in case, but don’t use it unless I call you, okay? So, that place, that time. Wait an hour.”
“Perfect. And Harv. The other thing I need. Thursday night? Right? I got it —”
“Let’s talk when I see you, man, okay? I promise you, you’re going to get what you need. We’re back in business.”
Connie Cook’s wife was in the front living room lifting stacks of books from a cardboard box when he came down the stairs. He’d be expected to absent himself while a dozen of her cronies, including Gabriella Harris-Hopkins, sat around and imagined symbolism and subplot in the latest literary bestseller. His wife often invited the writer to attend.
“Book night, Thursday, Connie, okay? No fooling around, sending us pizzas.” She gave him a stern smile. “No male strippers at the door with candygrams. I mean it.”
“Promise. I’m heading up north sometime Thursday to a mine site for a couple of days.”
“Do they ever find gold in those things, Connie? Except for the money you pour in?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Are you going to help Gabby out, that donation she needs? She’ll be asking me about it.”
“Yeah. I think. Tell her she’s got to get something on paper, okay, or we’re all going to be homeless artists.” He looked at his watch. “I gotta go.”
* * *
Halfway back to the city Harv left the state highway and began working through a grid of county roads. He kept an eye on his rear-view, especially when he crossed unpaved back roads, looking for a telltale cloud of rising dust behind him. The pickup was a shimmering mess. It ran like a dog with a broken back. South of Apple Grove he backed the truck over some ruts into a country driveway where he’d have a view of anything