Epitaphs Read online

  But we’re a couple of tough old birds. Too tough and too ornery to let go of life without a hell of a fight. We’d survived that day and the grim days that followed it, and we’d gone on to survive other assaults, other crises. What doesn’t destroy you makes you stronger, and stronger still. If we’d come through that bloody Sunday five years ago, we could get through any damn thing. Couldn’t we?

  He heard me coming across the grass, turned, expecting to see Bobbie Jean. When he saw that it was me his face closed up, hardened; you could watch it happening, like a time-lapse photo of cement drying. He stood with his brows pulled down, the rod aimed at me as if it were a weapon. He was wearing one of those gray and white, vertically striped chefs aprons with the words WORLD’S GREATEST COOK emblazoned on it. Combined with the pointed rod and his scowl, it made him look silly. But I didn’t laugh. I did not even smile.

  “What’re you doing here?” he said.

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t suppose it’s business?”

  “No,” I said. “Mesquite smells good. Steaks?”

  “Burgers. Just enough for Bobbie Jean and me.”

  “I wasn’t going to try wangling an invitation.”

  “Good.”

  “But you could offer me a beer.”

  “You know where the fridge is. Hell, you slammed me into it, remember? Could’ve ruptured a disc along with my spleen.”

  I walked away from that. Literally. Took a slow turn around the yard, under the leafy Japanese maple, over past the remains of the vegetable garden he’d put in a couple of years ago and then let die. When I got back to the barbecue he was working at the coals again, shifting them around with the rod.

  For a time I watched him do that. And it was as if I was seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time in years. You live or work with somebody day in and day out, and after a while you lose sight of him, take him visually for granted. Any radical physical alteration registers, but the subtler changes go unnoticed.

  When a man grows older, starts pushing sixty, a kind of weariness settles into and around the eyes. Lines deepen; eye colors fade. The weariness in and around Eberhardt’s eyes seemed much more pronounced than my own, the crow’s-feet longer and deeper, like fossil imprints in weathered rock. Bitterness was there, too, in his gaze and in the pinched set of his mouth. He looked old, standing there in the sun in his World’s Greatest Cook apron, old and tired and squeezed out. As old and tired and squeezed out as Pietro Lombardi, eighteen years his senior, had looked last night. For a shocked moment I wondered if maybe he was sick, had contracted some kind of debilitating disease; he was the type who would tell no one, guard its existence as jealously as a miser guards his hoard of gold. But then I thought: No, it’s not like that. It’s age, nearly sixty years of hard living taking their toll. Some people get old faster than others and he’s one of them. The process accelerated by ... what? Cynicism? Lost hopes, faded dreams? A sense of failure?

  The zest is gone, I thought, that’s the thing. Jesus, the zest. Always a man with a big appetite for life, but somewhere in the past year or two or three he’s lost it. The World’s Greatest Cook isn’t hungry anymore.

  He felt my eyes probing at him, swung his head my way and then straightened with his shoulders drawn back—a defensive posture. “What the hell you looking at?”

  “You.”

  “What for? Trying to figure out what makes me tick?”

  “After thirty-five years? Not much chance of that.”

  “Funny,” he said. “Shit,” he said.

  I made no comment.

  “So what do you want? As if I didn’t know.”

  “I want us to be friends again,” I said.

  “Bosom pals, huh? Well, forget it.”

  “Why, Eb?”

  “You know why.”

  “I’ve told you over and over how much I regret that punch. Why isn’t that enough?”

  “It just isn’t.”

  “What do you want me to do? Walk through those coals there in my bare feet? Atonement by fire?”

  “You always think you’re so goddamn funny.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny. I’m looking for some way to get things back on an even keel between us. I don’t want to lose you as a friend or a partner.”

  He looked at me. Didn’t speak, just looked at me with his tired, zestless eyes.

  “Let’s get it all out in the open, all right?” I said. “I know you’ve been talking to people about opening your own agency and you know I know it.”

  “And you don’t like it.”

  “I wish you’d talked to me about it at the beginning, instead of going behind my back.”

  “I have to clear everything I do with you first?”

  “I didn’t say that—”

  “Didn’t have to say it. I want to talk to people, be my own boss, it’s my business.”

  “As long as there’s no conflict of interest.”

  “What does that mean?” he said. Then he said, “Oh, I get it. You think I might try to steal your clients.”

  “The possibility occurred to me, yes. You’ve been so damned—”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “—secretive lately. How do I know what’s going on inside your head?”

  “And I suppose you been accusing me of it, calling up all your accounts, telling them what a shit old Eb is.”

  “I haven’t accused you of anything to anybody.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Round and round, round and round. None of this getting us anywhere. I said, “Eb, tell me one thing straight out. No hedging, no bullshit.”

  “No bullshit in my mouth, pal.”

  “Are you quitting? Straight answer.”

  “You’ll know when I know.”

  “So you haven’t made up your mind yet.”

  No answer.

  “What’re you waiting for? More contacts, financing, what?”

  No answer.

  “Or is it you’re afraid it might be a big mistake?”

  “Mistake? Why? Can’t hack it on my own—that what you think?”

  “I never said that.”

  “But it is what you think.”

  “We’re not high-tech operators, Eb. There’s too little skip-tracing and insurance work and too much competition already at our level. Another one-man agency—”

  “I’m not stupid,” he said. “I know the risks involved.”

  “All right, Christ, then why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why take the risks? Why now, all of a sudden?”

  He started to answer, changed his mind and said nothing.

  “There’s more to it than that poke in the belly,” I said. “There’s got to be.”

  “Bet your ass there is.”

  “What? What, then?”

  “Freedom,” he said.

  “From what, for God’s sake?”

  “From you, your business, your way of doing things. Your agency, damn it—” ... never was mine or ours, never will be. I’m just a glorified employee.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it? Think about it, buddy boy.”

  “I don’t have to think about it. I’ve never treated you like an employee—”

  “Never? Half the time is more like it. Always telling me what to do and how to do it, like I’m some kind of half-wit. I open my own agency, I’m my own boss. I make the decisions, run things my way ... prove to you and everybody else my way’s just as good, maybe better.”

  Thickness in my throat now like a wad of phlegm; I swallowed a couple of times to work it loose. “Eb, if that’s the way you feel ... I’m sorry. Why didn’t you try to talk to me about it, get it out into the open ... ?”

  “I did try. More than once. But you, you don’t listen.”

  “I don’t listen?”

  “Damn right you don’t.”

  “Pot calling the kettle black here.”

  �
��Yeah, right. Turn it around, lay it on me. That’s your style. Everything’s my fault and you never make any mistakes.”

  I bit back a sharp retort; screwed my temper down tight. “Okay. Okay, I’m listening now, I’m hearing every word you say loud and clear. You want changes in how things are done? All right, we’ll make changes—anything within reason. Just tell me what you want done.”

  Nothing from him.

  “Come on, Eb. Give and take.”

  “It’s too late,” he said.

  “Why is it too late?”

  “Still be your agency. And you’re too set in your ways, just like I am. Make changes and how long’ll they last? A month, two months? Then something comes up, push comes to shove, and who wins in the end? You do.”

  “I don’t understand why it has to be a win-lose thing. There’s no competition between us. Or there shouldn’t be.”

  Silence.

  “Listen,” I said, “we can try, can’t we? Start fresh, try to work it out?”

  His mouth quirked in a wry, humorless smile. “Know what you sound like? Husband trying to talk his wife out of leaving him.”

  My immediate reaction to that was anger. But it didn’t last long; underwent a transformation into self-mocking humor. “Hell, you’re right. Please don’t leave me, sweetheart.”

  “Ha ha,” sourly.

  “Isn’t our friendship worth saving? That much at least?”

  He made a meaningless gesture.

  I said, “That’s not an answer.”

  “Only one I got for you right now.”

  “Eb, listen—”

  “No. I done enough listening. Cut me some slack, will you? Let me enjoy the rest of my Saturday in some goddamn peace.”

  What can you say to that?

  “Go on,” he said, “get out of here.”

  I nodded. Put a hand on his shoulder, briefly—he didn’t pull away from it, but he didn’t respond to the gesture either —and went to the stairs. I was halfway up when I heard him say my name. I stopped and turned, thinking that he was going to call me back, that maybe he’d had a sudden change of heart.

  “On your way out,” he said, “tell Bobbie Jean to bring me a beer.”

  IN THE CAR I TRIED to remember a time, any time, when I had treated Eberhardt as a half-wit or an employee. I couldn’t, but there could have been any number of clashes between us that he’d interpreted that way. We were different people, with different mind-sets and methodologies. I was a workaholic, totally committed to my job; he was a man who separated and compartmentalized his personal and professional lives, who worked to live rather than lived to work. We’d fought often enough about his willingness to let his caseload pile up; and I kidded him mercilessly—jerked his chain too much, maybe—because he was so sobersided, had no sense of humor and was incapable of laughing at himself. But I had never looked down on him, either as a person or as a detective. Never.

  Got to be even more to it than that, I thought. Something deeper ... something he can’t or won’t talk about. The same something that’s aging him so fast, making him so bitter.

  Freedom, he’d said, freedom from me. That hadn’t seemed a satisfactory answer at the time, but if you looked at it the right way, maybe it was. Opening his own agency, becoming his own boss, as a way to recapture what was lost and missing from his life—I could understand and accept that. The thing I couldn’t understand was where I fit into his loss in the first place.

  What did he imagine I’d done to him? What was ripping him up inside?

  Chapter Nineteen

  THERE WERE TWO GUARDS on the gate at the Valconazzi ranch. One perched on a camp stool under a buckeye tree on the outside, the other sat on the fender of a dusty stake-bed truck on the inside. The truck was drawn up tight against the gate so that nobody could get through unless it was moved. Both men were big, young, garbed in work clothing; each had a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.

  When I pulled up, the one on the near side got up and came over to the driver’s-side window. He didn’t say anything, so I didn’t either. Just handed him the blue invitation card. He looked it over, nodded, gave it back to me, and gestured to the other one. Reverse the truck, open the gate, and I was in—easy as pie, as long as you had the invitation.

  The road was so badly rutted and unevenly graded that I had to crawl along at under ten miles per hour. Even so, thin plumes of dust rose and hung behind me. Not nearly as much wind out here today, and a good fifteen degrees warmer. Summer smells of the dust and the pepper trees, of dry grass and cattle. Nice day in the country; nice day for spilling a little blood.

  The session with Eberhardt had laid a band of tension across my neck and shoulders that had not eased much during the drive from the city. Now I could feel it pulling even tighter, stiffening the muscles all the way down my back.

  Up over a hillock, down through a sharp leftward curve at the bottom, around the base of another bare brown hill. Then I could see the ranch buildings, spread out in a long hollow that stretched into a notch between two bigger hills. It was a massive place, all right: two-story white frame house set among ancient oaks dripping Spanish moss, two weathered red barns with sheet metal roofs, horse stables and a network of corrals, a shedlike structure that would probably house farm machinery, three long, low chicken houses, an elaborate wire-fenced chicken run. In a cleared area on the near side of the largest barn maybe fifty cars, pickups, and other vehicles were parked in orderly rows. The barn’s double doors were open, I saw as I clattered over a cattle guard and into the sprawling ranch yard; one man stood alone just outside. There was nobody else in sight except for a quartet of women under the oaks near the house, busily setting out trays of food. Buffet supper, complete with a couple of kegs of beer and other liquid refreshments. And two rows of picnic tables to eat it on. Beyond the trees, there was even a clutch of outdoor toilets.

  The Valconazzis sure know how to throw a party, I thought. Yes they do.

  I swung over toward the barn, found a place to park in the improvised lot. When I got out I could hear the swell of voices from inside the barn—excited voices raised to the level of yells. I headed there at a fast walk, trying to look eager and as though I belonged here.

  The guard out front was ten years younger than me, long and lanky, wearing a straw hat; he took the hat off and fanned himself with it as I approached. The glance he gave me was cursory. “Main’s already started,” he said.

  I nodded and moved past him into the barn.

  It was brightly lighted, with rows of stalls and gleaming automated milking equipment; fairly clean, but still redolent of hay and manure. It was also empty. All the noise was coming from what looked to be an annex that you got to by way of a passage at the near end.

  The annex was sixty-by-eighty and fitted up for only one purpose: cockfighting. High-wattage bulbs hanging from low wooden rafters lighted it even more brightly than the barn. In the exact center was the cockpit—a circle some eighteen feet in diameter, made of rough whitewashed boards two feet high, floored with sand; a strong kleig spot directly overhead threw it into white-glare relief. Inside it now were two cocks and three men. Two of the men, both dressed in overalls, were kneeling at the side walls opposite each other. Handlers, I thought. The third man, on his feet but bent at the waist, his eyes intent on the birds, would be the referee.

  Tiers of backless benches rose up on three sides of the pit, jammed with people shouting, swearing, calling out bets to one another. On the fourth side, straight ahead from where I stood, was a long table on top of which were weighing scales and behind which were three men on folding chairs and a blackboard with chalked names and numbers on it. Beyond the table, at the far wall, were rows of wood-and-wire cages filled with more cocks noisily issuing challenges to one another.

  Hot in there, the atmosphere so electric you could almost feel it crackle. All eyes were on the pitted cocks, one a vivid red-gold, the other a creamy gray with a thick neck ruff. Circling each other at the moment;
feathers crimson-streaked, the gray bird with a broken wing and one eye hanging out of its bloody socket. More blood glistened on the sand, on the wall boards, on the handlers’ overalls. The long steel gaffs affixed to the backs of the birds’ legs threw dazzling glints of light.

  I started to move ahead, my eyes on the crowd, so I didn’t see the start of the sudden flurry of action in the pit. The crowd voice rose excitedly; a woman somewhere close by began to chant, “Kill him, Red, kill him, Red, kill him, Red!” I picked her out: big strawberry blonde sitting rigidly; sweat-glazed face, hot, avid eyes, red-gashed mouth that kept up the chant in a heavy panting monotone. Like a woman having sex, I thought, exhorting her lover to climax. Jesus.

  In the pit the two cocks were locked together just above the floor, spurs and beaks lashing at such an accelerated speed they were a blur. Five more seconds of that and then they dropped and broke apart, or tried to; one of the red’s spurs had gotten hung up in the other bird’s broken wing.

  “Handle!” the referee shouted. “Forty-five seconds!”

  The two handlers sprang forward, separated the cocks; each took his rooster to a side wall and began to work over it like a prizefighter’s second. The gray chicken’s handler massaged its torn breast, used his finger to wipe away the hanging eyeball, to clean out the empty socket. Then, for Christ’s sake, he took the bloody, mangled head into his mouth and began to breathe heavily into the cock’s nostrils in an attempt to revitalize it. I quit watching. I had no stomach for this kind of thing.