Authors: Rex Burns
But even though we labor confused and blind, we must labor nonetheless. “That’s where the faith comes in, Dev. We do the best we can at the time, and the rest of it is up to whatever gods care to be bothered with us.” That’s what he would have said. And, “Forget it—it wasn’t your fault; it was my decision, and the best one all-around.” Trying to be generous toward me even in death.
The large old window—the arched top of a brick frame that reached down to the ground floor—showed the flat roofs across the street, and past them the treetops rising from the river. In the glare-faded distance, beyond the low ridges of sprawling suburbs, the forested peaks of the Front Range washed against the ragged outline of the more distant Rampart Range with its blue snowfields, landmarks that had been there long before the city itself and that would be long after I was gone, too. “Lift up your eyes, Dev, lift them to the mountains. Isn’t that a sight? It makes a man thank God he’s alive!”
I pulled away from the window. “God doesn’t know we’re alive,” Bunch would have answered. “And if He does, He doesn’t give a shit.”
Up to a certain level, background checks are fairly routine. For a credit history, a call to the Credit Bureau or an inquiry on stationery with the Devlin Mortgage Company logo for veracity. Credit card numbers and a larcenous skill with the computer—provided by Bunch—opened up credit accounts and bank accounts, and that in turn led to income tax returns, license information, a list of previous addresses, even a fairly up-to-date medical history. People are willing to trade a lot of privacy for a good credit rating. And, of course, McAllister Enterprises employment and personnel records provided a fund of information and further leads. What the paper trail wouldn’t reveal was a bank account not mentioned anywhere in the credit or tax records, an account that provided shelter for the legendary ill-gotten gains. And from what McAllister had said as well as from what little I’d been given access to concerning the two stolen projects, we were talking a lot of gains. Deals that big meant payoffs with an impressive number of zeros to the left of the decimal. And since people with money have a tendency to spend it, it doesn’t take a genius at subtraction to find out if someone’s spending more than the records show he’s making. IRS does it all the time.
Haas’s account with the First Bank of Denver was an orderly one, the month’s paycheck automatically deposited on the thirtieth and the withholding figures matching the records in his company dossier. With the right strings of numbers to cite, it wasn’t hard to find a voice on the telephone that would be happy to discuss Mr. Haas’s current balance.
“Well, you’ve got your numbers and I’ve got mine, and I still can’t find the discrepancy. Can you send me a printout of my last year’s transactions?”
“No trouble at all, Mr. Haas. I’ll send it to the address on your account.”
“Fine—no, wait. Why not just send it directly to my accountant. I’ll tell him it’s coming.”
“Yes, sir. His name and address?”
“Devlin Accounting Agency, 1557 Wazee, 80202. Thanks a lot.”
A series of like telephone calls to various credit accounts took up the rest of the morning and promised a steady flow of mail for the next few days. I’d just finished a call to the regional Visa office requesting a record of the last year’s purchases when the telephone rang as soon as I set it down.
“Jesus, Dev, you been living on that thing. I tried to get through a dozen times.”
“After this case, we’ll get a second line. We can afford it then. What do you have?”
“I looked at the Haas place. I think we ought to talk before I go any further.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s going to be rough. It’s right in the middle of Belcaro Estates. That’s one of these walled-off areas—you know, Cherry Hills, Polo Grounds, that kind of thing: private roads leading in and a private gatekeeper to keep the peasants out.”
“Can’t you go in as a deliveryman?”
“I already did. That’s how I found the place. It looks like a bunch of barns stuck together out in the middle of a field. All the houses look like that—clumps of barns standing off by themselves and a wall around it all. A few shrubs, not much in the way of trees—it’s too new to have any—and the utilities are all underground. Be harder than hell to get a parallel transmitter on their phones without getting spotted.”
“It’s a new house?”
“Couple years old, I guess. The whole development’s new. One of those with a golf course on the other side of your swimming pool. Where the hell do people get the money to live like that?”
“That’s what we want to find out. What’s the house worth?”
“Four, maybe five hundred thou. And that’s one of the cheapies. There’s a couple must go for a million or two. They got the goddamn golf course in the living room.”
“Can we get to it tonight?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Look, I’m supposed to meet Susan at the Chute. You go on over and we’ll lay some plans that even you can’t screw up. It’ll take me a half-hour to get there, so keep your hands off my woman.”
“If she keeps hers off me. Why do you take her to a place like that?”
“Hey—I feel comfortable there. It’s like home.”
For Bunch, that meant other people were spitting on the floor, too. Chute Number One was a cowboy bar just off Colorado Boulevard, nondescript from the outside and the inside didn’t even try for that. Some of the customers may have been genuine cowboys—if so, they were the ones who stayed by themselves and looked out of place. The others thought they were and wanted everyone else to think so, too. A long bar filled one wall and a line of plywood booths filled the other; in the floor space, tables were jammed as tightly as possible, and toward the back a pair of pool tables glowed green in the cigarette smoke that swirled under their hooded lights. Over it all, a woman’s electronic wail sang something about how hard it was to love a man who loved to roam. A lot of people shared Bunch’s affection for the place, and as usual, it was crowded.
It took a moment to blink away the sun-blindness, then I saw Susan’s blond hair, smooth as a single stroke of silk, catch the light at a table toward the back. She was by herself, but glances from the clusters of men seated around her said she wouldn’t be alone for long.
“Can I buy you a drink, lady?”
“Dev—it’s good to see you!”
If there was a Colorado look, Susan had it: healthy glow, a face that had no cuteness about it, but a beauty that was in the clean symmetry of lines and planes and a smile that—literally—gleamed of all outdoors. All matched by a lithe, tanned body that did nice things to the thin summer dress covering it. Bunch was very fortunate, all the more so as she was a one-man woman, which was fine with me because no matter how polite and friendly we were when we met, we usually parted arguing.
“The animal said he’d be here in about twenty minutes. He told me I could do anything I wanted with you until then.”
“Ha! What happened to your raven-haired beauty—the one who’s jealous of blondes?”
“Renee?” I pretended to dredge up the name.
“Ah yes, Renee.”
“She couldn’t understand my work schedule: canceling dates at the last minute, out at all hours, muffled telephone calls. She thought I was seeing another woman.” It hadn’t been all that neat. Pretty messy, in fact. She had wanted more than I was willing to give, and what had started out as a lot of fun for both of us somehow changed into a burden for me and a sadness for her. There had been no other woman—the last thing in the world I wanted right now was to be serious about a woman—and that included Renee. But another woman was something she could understand and be jealous of, just as—after a glass or two too much wine—she had once admitted to Susan her jealousy of blondes. So I let her believe it. And that was the end of that.
“Weren’t you?”
“What kind of question’s that? And besides, it’s none of your business.”
A shadow thinned the already dim light on the table and I looked up expecting to see the waitress. But it was a pair of wide, sloping shoulders in a plaid flannel shirt topped by a face that was mostly jaw.
“You folks having a good time?”
“Delightful.”
He pulled out a chair and wedged himself against the table to smile at Susan and prop a heavy arm in my face. “What’s your name, little lady?”
“If you’re selling something, we’re not buying.”
The head turned to show a pale, hot eye topped by a bushy black eyebrow. Two small white scars made tiny streaks through the hairs. “I’m not selling nothing, dude. But I just might give you something. Free.”
“It’s all right, Dev.”
“You hear that? The little lady says it’s all right.”
“She’s making a mistake.”
“Well now, that’s up to her. Why don’t you just take on off before you make a mistake, too.”
“It’s not me she’s worried about.”
That took some seconds to work into the cerebellum, then he leaned back and gave me his undivided attention.
“Dev, please.”
In the springtime, young bulls get hot and randy, but a short beer and a long look at Susan could make it rutting season all year round. For all her degrees in psychology, Susan didn’t seem to understand that—Bunch was all she wanted, and she assumed her lack of interest in anyone else was plain. Nor did she understand the two-by-four rule of gentlemanly discourse: try to get two in before you get one back. The jaw began to move: “You come in here wearing a goddamn coat and tie … you come in here to slum around and have a few laughs at the cowboys? By God, I’ll give you laughs!”
He didn’t hesitate; while he talked, he swung a heavy elbow at my head and followed with a lunging right that thudded off my forearm. Somewhere beyond the crash of breaking glass I heard Susan’s muffled scream, and beneath that a deep-chested bellow of pleasure as the figure loomed up against the ceiling and bore down, arms a blur of angry flesh.
I came up under him, a fistful of shirt over one shoulder and his flailing legs on the other. A quick twist and the heavy body flew in a high arc to crash against the table and send it wobbly and skewed into the scramble of cowboys dodging out of the way. A clubbing fist jarred my ear with a metallic ring and a second one swung hard toward my groin, smacking into the quickly lifted thigh and pushing me back against a wall of outstretched hands that shoved me forward. Everything except the man in front of me was blotted out by a gush of anger born of pain and, far deeper, hatred of the man’s arrogance.
Head down between his shoulders and knotty fists high, he came at me with the awkward grace of someone who has training enough to know the basics and strength enough not to worry about refinements.
“You son-of-a-bitch, I’m gonna kill you!”
Through the redness of my vision, I saw him try. A fist aimed for my head and a pointed boot swung at anything it could reach. I caught the leg on my crossed wrists and grabbed its heel, twisting and lifting to spread his body and snap a side-kick where his Wranglers advertised their reinforced inseam. The man didn’t scream but he did grunt and stagger back in a painful crouch and the outraged, blind fury of a moment past was replaced by a cold wash of pain and then calculating rage. Something was going on around me, the shouts of voices, yells of encouragement and scorn. But it made no impression other than a distant buzz beneath the rushing sound that was my anger throbbing in my ears. The whole universe narrowed down to that man getting slowly to his feet and to the eyes that measured the distance between him and what he would go for next. I feinted a left and he jabbed stiff fingers toward my eyes and raked clawing nails past my ear as he brought a knee up hard into my stomach and clubbed at my face again. I grabbed a wrist that my hand couldn’t close around; up-turn-pull-bend, the basic throw drilled into rote by hours of practice at Bellesville, and as his head rotated past he cursed me for not staying in one place to fight like a white man.
Down as hard as I could flip to stun him and then almost automatically go for his elbow. He screamed a hoarse shout as I levered his arm across my knee and bore down, but before I heard the snap of living bone, a pair of arms wrapped around me to haul back. I drove an elbow into the thick flesh and a startled, hot breath grunted at my ear, “Dev—Dev, hold it. It’s me: Bunch!”
“Let me go—let me go!”
“He’s down, Dev. You’ll kill him. He’s down.”
The man, making little gasping sounds through gritted teeth, held his arm tightly against his body and curled in a scooting circle of pain among the spilled beer and broken bottles. Slowly the shouting circle of faces came into focus and I straightened and felt Bunch’s arms slack a bit.
“You okay now? Can I let you go now?”
“You can let go.”
“He’s down.”
“I see him. You can let go.”
The arms fell away as the grunting man fought up to his knees, eyes tight with pain. “My arm—my fucking arm … “
“Devlin, if this is your lunch break, what do you do for supper?”
“You picked this place.”
“Leave some for next time.”
Two men helped the injured warrior to his feet and led him hunched tight as a snail toward the door. A balding man in a bartender’s apron stepped forward to survey the broken glasses and test the table leg. Then he turned to me. “Winner pays for damages. House rules. That’ll be twenty-five dollars.”
“The winner?” Bunch kicked a broken Coors bottle. “In a civilized country, the loser’s supposed to pay!”
“The losers don’t usually hear me. That’ll be twenty-five dollars. Payable now.”
“But I didn’t start it. He did!”
“Don’t make no difference. Winner pays. Twenty-five dollars.”
“Hell,” said Bunch. “It’s not worth winning if you got to pay for it.”
“Then maybe folks’ll realize there ain’t no winners and stop tearing up my place. That’ll be—”
“I know,” I said. “Twenty-five dollars. Here.”
Bright and tiny behind wire-rimmed glasses, the eyes glanced sharply at the bills. “Right. Thank you. You folks want another round?”
“Who with?” asked Bunch.
“Never mind—we’re just leaving.”
We sat in the car for a few minutes while a tensely quiet Susan dabbed a tissue at the blood seeping out of my cheek.