"How is she?"
"Bored."
"What do you want?"
The blood coated his face looking like somebody had used a roller to go straight up the middle of it. "I'm not left-handed!"
Crease said, "You're the right hand. That's okay, everybody knows you're the right hand. You're Tucco's man. His best man."
"Yes."
"You're the top dog, the big cheese, right? Not me, you. You're the honcho. You're the prince of good fortune, the duke of the deal."
Cruez's shoulders hitched as he took a deep staggered breath. For a moment he appeared to be a very large deformed child who had climbed a neighbor's fence to get his ball and couldn't find it anywhere. You never knew what was going to defuse a situation. A little extra cash, a line of coke, a well-timed joke. Whatever it took, it was usually better than the alternative.
"Tomorrow," Cruez said, walking out the front door. Crease knew what was going to happen next and wanted to shout about it. Cruez shoved and swung the screen door opened so hard that it collapsed off its hinges. He said, "Tucco and me, we'll see you then."
~* ~
Reb was standing there in the center of the living room, arms crossed across her chest, grasping her elbows. Crease saw her again the way he had the other day, for the first time in ten years, with her storm-blown hair sweeping across her throat, her fiery eyes full of anger and faint dignity. She was taking a stand because it was all she had left. She wasn't about to run or try to make a grab for Edwards' gun on the dining room floor. That scam was over, and she'd missed the train.
She said, "Crease, I'm sorry."
She meant it, as much as she was able. "I still need the keys, Reb, all right?"
The sheriff was sitting on the couch. He'd grabbed the wine on his way over and was drinking from the bottle, a little out of sorts. Reb got the keys and uncuffed him, her and Edwards trying not to act like they'd just been smacking him around a few minutes ago. Maybe the sheriff knew he'd been out of his league tonight. Crease was from a different world now.
"He really gonna bring llamas down from Canada?" Edwards asked. "Probably loaded with dope, right? That's how they do it? Open 'em up and stuff in the balloons and then stitch them back up again."
"From what I see, you two are about perfect for each other. How about if you just tie the knot and let everything else drift away, huh?"
"I asked," Edwards said. "She told me no."
"I didn't tell you no," Reb said. "I just wanted more time. I said to let me think about it."
"It's been fourteen months. If you've got to think about it more than a day or two, the answer is no."
"You asked three other women to marry you the same year. So how serious were you?"
"Very," he said, not sounding very serious about anything at all. Right then, Crease saw so much of his old man in Edwards that he had to draw the back of his hand across his eyes just to shake off the vision.
Crease told the sheriff, "The sister, go send someone to talk to her. You won't even have to shake it out of her. Just show up and she'll spill everything."
He put his gun in its holster, got his jacket on and put the knives back in his pockets. Reb floated up behind him. Her breath on his neck did nothing to him. She put a hand on his wrist in some kind of display that neither of them would ever understand. He turned and spotted his dried splashes of blood on the corridor wall and thought it was just as well that he was getting the hell out of here.
The powerful feeling that time was running out filled him with an electric rush of trepidation. Both he and Tucco had reached the end of their patience. Still, he had one last thing he had to figure out.
Edwards took a long look, pulled a face, and shook his head. "What the hell are you all about?"
Crease said, "A guy who makes jigsaw puzzle dogs to hang on the wall is gonna ask me that?"
Chapter Fourteen
When you didn't know what to do, where else did you go? Only one place left that mattered. You went to visit your father's grave.
The one good thing about having the old man die in such shame, covered in vomit, in the gutter, the town shunning him, is that Crease never got the feeling that his father was judging him. Whatever wrong Crease did, however crazy or stupid he got, the old man's ghost wasn't about to point a finger. Sometimes that didn't mean anything, sometimes it was all that mattered.
He parked and found his way to his father's grave again, each step somehow riling him, the pressure building. He had to finish up this thing with the little girl's death, and then he could settle down to finishing matters with Tucco. Despite the events of the last couple days, his resolve still seemed to be waning.
The awareness of his own inadequacies really was annoying the hell out of him. He wondered if, given the same circumstances, the same facts and conditions and respective positions, his father could've figured out what had happened to the money. He was having more and more trouble imagining his old man in his prime. Strong, fit, sharp, before the liquor and sorrow and his own fear wore him down into a pudgy, wet sack.
The old man's grave, which had been sunken in the last time Crease visited, had now been restored by Dirtwater. New sod had replaced the patchy yellow grass. The large round rocks had been reformed into a kind of small cairn, surrounded by fresh flowers. The largest rock was on top, and painted on it in a child's handwriting was his father's name embellished with a picture of a yellow sun and a bird and smiling kid walking a dog.
A small wave of sentimentality swept through Crease's chest. He started for Dirtwater's small house but before he was halfway there, he saw the caretaker and his son raking graves in the distance. He altered course and when the boy, Hale, spotted him, he waved. Crease waved back. The kid touched his father on the elbow and Dirtwater turned and grinned.
Crease said to them, "Thanks for fixing up the grave, I appreciate it."
Hale said, "Your face, you've been fighting. Who did that to you, if you don't mind me asking?"
"I don't. It was the sheriff."
"My father hates him."
"Yeah."
"My father says you're the one who broke his nose, is that true?"
"It is."
"Was he paying you back for that?"
"For that and some other things."
Dirtwater's gestures grew much clearer to Crease as the man shadowboxed and gave Crease the thumbs up. "He wants to know if you got some good licks in."
"Not today, but I did knock him down a few times yesterday."
"He's glad. So am I."
Hale searched Crease's eyes. The kid had a great sensitivity to body language and expression, thanks to his father. "You know something about the girl, don't you? Something you didn't know the last time you were here." Eight years old and his acumen was on the money. Crease got a good vibe from the kid, but still it was spooky. For an undercover narc, the worst person you could run into was somebody who could read your face as easily as this kid could.
Dirtwater's dark eyes showed a dogged interest. He made an "out with it" gesture and Crease didn't quite know what to say.
So he knew who the 'flappers were. It didn't change anything. Nothing was going to happen to the old broad at this date, with her in assisted living. The insanity plea would actually work in her case and she'd get sent right back to where she was now anyway. He could only hope every criminal he ran into would have such a case of conscience that they locked themselves away.
He halfway hoped that Dirtwater had somehow stolen the cash. There was a certain balance to that. His only friend left in town, the man who cared for his father's grave. The money could've gone to a down payment for his house. Cello lessons for Hale. A college fund, special medication he needed. A kidney transplant. Crease was bushed thinking about who else's hand might be in the jar. It could be anybody. Cruez's entrance today reinforced the fact that you couldn't shove Tucco out on the rim for too long before he got tired of being pushed. The rest of the questions surrounding Mary Burke might have to take a back seat, forever.