Neil McMahon - Hugh Davoren 02 Read online

  DEAD

  SILVER

 
  C

  N E IL M MAHON

  Again, to Kuskay Sakaye, who gave the gift of himself to many, and the gift of Madbird to me.

  1933–2007

  Many a time I’ve heard the tale from the men in the shipyards about the rat that could speak. I never laid no confidence in that before; but tonight, if I’d demeaned myself to lay my ear to the door of the further bin, I could pretty much have heard what they was saying.

  —M. R. James

  Contents

  Epigraph iii

  Part I 1

  Chapter 1

  FRIDAY AFTER WORK, MADBIRD AND I were drinking shots

  and…

  3

  Chapter 2

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, SATURDAY, I spent banging around my cabin…

  10

  Chapter 3

  “GOOD GOD, RENEE,” I SAID, regretting my grumpy hello.

  “Seems…

  16

  Chapter 4

  HELENA HAD A FAIR NUMBER of stately Victorian houses, most…

  20

  Chapter 5

  “THERE’S A LOT MORE TO this, Hugh,” Renee said. “I…

  24

  Chapter 6

  RENEE AND I TALKED THE situation over for the best…

  27

  Chapter 7

  I WAS LEFT WITH A Saturday evening to kill. Earlier…

  33

  Chapter 8

  MADBIRD PUSHED MY OLD WORM-DRIVE Skilsaw horizontally across a plaster…

  37

  Chapter 9

  A SIZABLE HEAP OF BUSTED-UP plaster and two beers later…

  46

  Chapter 10

  WE FINISHED OPENING UP THE walls with no results. Then…

  51

  Chapter 11

  SHE KNELT AND STARED DOWN at our find with her…

  54

  Part II 59

  Chapter 12

  I GOT TO DARCY’S NEW apartment about seven-thirty next

  morning…

  61

  Chapter 13

  MADBIRD AND I HAD ALREADY agreed to blow off going…

  67

  Chapter 14

  THE RECEPTION WAS HELD AT the Gold Baron Inn, a…

  72

  Chapter 15

  I STILL HAD THE KEY that Renee had given me…

  77

  Chapter 16

  THE LEWIS AND CLARK COUNTY courthouse was a somber gray…

  80

  Chapter 17

  I DROVE STRAIGHT TO THE Gold Baron Inn, but the…

  84

  Chapter 18

  TOM’S CONNECTION WITH THE DEAD Silver Mine had come

  about…

  88

  Chapter 19

  WHEN I DROVE UP TO Renee’s house this time, her…

  91

  Chapter 20

  AS WARD ROARED AWAY WITH his signature spray of gravel…

  95

  Chapter 21

  MADBIRD AND HANNAH ARRIVED ABOUT half an hour

  later

  in…

  99

  Chapter 22

  WE ARRIVED BACK AT RENEE’S around eight o’clock, although

  it…

  106

  Chapter 23

  THAT GOT MY THOUGHTS SPINNING in a very different direction…

  113

  Part III 117

  Chapter 24

  I WAS LATE FOR WORK at the Split Rock Lodge…

  119

  Chapter 25

  WE STOPPED FIRST AT ARTIE’S cabin and looked in the…

  123

  Chapter 26

  BILL LATRAY, PROPRIETOR OF BILL’S Bail Bonds (Got Jail

  Trouble…

  128

  Chapter 27

  WE CELEBRATED THE RECOVERY OF our goods and the

  riddance…

  131

  Chapter 28

  AFTER LUNCH, MADBIRD AND I went back to the carriage…

  134

  Chapter 29

  I’D DECIDED TO INSTALL DEADBOLTS on the doors of Renee’s… 136

  Chapter 30

  BEFORE GARY LEFT, HE STEPPED firmly into sheriff mode and… 141

  Chapter 31

  RENEE’S CAR, A TIGHT, TOUGH little Subaru Outback, easily handled…

  145

  Chapter 32

  WE SPENT THE REST OF the afternoon in bed in…

  149

  Chapter 33

  WE LEFT MY CABIN AROUND sundown and went to town…

  152

  Part IV 155

  Chapter 34

  JUST ABOUT TWENTY YEARS HAD passed since the last time…

  157

  Chapter 35

  I DRIFTED IN AND OUT of sleep after that, occasionally…

  160

  Chapter 36

  I WOKE UP AGAIN AND spent the usual groggy moment…

  163

  Chapter 37

  WHEN THE HOSPITAL SPRANG ME next day—technically against medical advice…

  166

  Chapter 38

  THE NEWS OVER THE NEXT couple of days wasn’t so…

  171

  Chapter 39

  THERE WAS MORE ACTION ON another front—the drama between

  Darcy…

  175

  Chapter 40

  I EASED MYSELF OUT OF bed next morning, leaving Renee…

  180

  Chapter 41

  RENEE ATE SITTING UP IN bed, wearing one of my…

  184

  Chapter 42

  EVVIE JESSUP’S OFFICE WAS A ground-floor suite in a mini-mall… 189

  Chapter 43

  IT WAS STILL MORNING, AND we weren’t in any rush…

  192

  Chapter 44

  I CALLED BUDDY PERTWEE JUST after five o’clock that

  afternoon…

  195

  Chapter 45

  THE TOWN OF PHOSPHOR LOOKED a lot more appealing the…

  203

  Chapter 46

  HER NAME WAS JANIE GERHARDT; she was Tina’s younger sister. 207

  Chapter 47

  RENEE AND I LEFT THERE about an hour later. I…

  210

  Chapter 48

  THE CONSTRICTIVE FEEL OF PHOSPHOR eased off as we drove… 214

  Chapter 49

  TWO HOURS LATER, JUST AS dusk was giving way to…

  217

  Part V 219

  Chapter 50

  I TOSSED RESTLESSLY THROUGH MOST of the night, then got… 221

  Chapter 51

  THE SCENE AT DARCY’S APARTMENT was official but low-key.

  With…

  223

  Chapter 52

  INSTEAD OF HEADING DOWNTOWN TO the courthouse, I drove to…

  227

  Chapter 53

  I DROVE BACK TO HELENA as fast as I could…

  231

  Chapter 54

  I’D NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN INSIDE Evvie Jessup’s office, but

  it…

  235

  Chapter 55

  MADBIRD AND I SPENT MOST of the next few hours…

  238

  Chapter 56

  THE WOMAN WAS DARCY, AND the copter was able to…

  242

  Chapter 57

  AS THE EXCITEMENT SETTLED DOWN notch by notch, I started… 248

  Chapter 58

  THE LAST TREE-LINED STRETCH OF Stumpleg Gulch Road opened

  into…

  251

  Chapter 59

  I GLIDED ALONG LIKE MY feet were barely touching the…

  255

  Chapter 60

 
THE FLASHING RED AND BLUE of police beacons was not…

  259

  Chapter 61

  THE PEOPLE AT THE VET hospital were pleasant and concerned…

  261

  Chapter 62

  THE NEXT DAY STARTED WITH good news—the tomcat was

  going…

  264

  Chapter 63

  I WAITED AT THE FRONT door for her, like the…

  268

  Chapter 64

  ON A THURSDAY TOWARD THE end of May, with spring…

  272

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Neil McMahon

  Credits

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART I

 
  CHAPTER 1

  Friday after work, Madbird and I were drinking shots and beers at the Split Rock Lodge when his niece, Darcy, came prancing through the door. The raucous conversations of the dozen barroom regulars stopped like somebody had dropped a girder on a squawking radio. Darcy knew how to steal a scene.

  She was Blackfeet, same as Madbird, and she was some smoke—just turned twenty-one, full-bodied and vibrant, with hair that fell almost to her waist and gleamed like a raven’s wing in sunlight. She’d grown up on the tribal reservation in northern Montana, then spent her late teens moving from place to place, looking for the things you looked for at that age. Now she was trying her luck in our state capital city of Helena.

  She was as wild as she was pretty, and Madbird did his best to keep tabs on her—he’d gotten her a job waiting tables here at Split Rock because he and I were working nearby these days, remodeling some motel units—but Darcy walked her own walk.

  She waitressed the lunch shift on Fridays, then stayed through the afternoon to help clean and set up for dinner. She was a good worker, we’d heard—cheerful, energetic, and possessing that all-important quality of doing what needed to be done without waiting to be told.

  4

  N E IL MCMAHON

  Now she was finished for the day and dressed to party, wearing tight jeans, spike-heeled boots, a turquoise-colored low-cut sweater, and a black leather biker jacket studded with silver.

  “Hi, Hugh,” she said to me.

  “Darcy, you’re scorching my eyeballs.”

  She gave me a big smile and pulled up a barstool next to Madbird.

  “Buy me a drink,” she commanded him teasingly.

  His mouth twitched in amusement, but the rest of his face remained unmoving. It looked like it had been carved out of a cliffside by a lightning storm, and his rumbling voice sounded like a diesel engine with a handful of gravel thrown in.

  “Well, I guess, since you ask so nice,” he said. “But I ain’t sure they got Shirley Temples here.”

  “I’ll kick your Shirley Temple ass,” Darcy said scornfully.

  “Gin and tonic.”

  “Gin?” He frowned. “You got a note from your mother?”

  She snapped a quick punch to his forearm, smacking his Marine Corps skull-and-crossbones tattoo.

  “Whoa! Okay, goddammit.” He backed away, rubbing the spot dramatically.

  “See? He’s not so tough,” she whispered to me.

  “You ain’t got to say it so loud,” Madbird muttered. He signaled the bartender and pushed forward a five from the pile of bills in front of him.

  He wasn’t much for vocalizing his feelings, but I knew that he had a special affection for Darcy. Even as an infant, she’d been uncowed by his fierce appearance, and she’d soon grasped his quirky brand of humor and learned to throw it back at him. This had developed into ritual sparring that both of them loved.

  Over the years, he’d worried about her a lot, with reason.

  DEAD SILVER

  5

  Now he was concerned in a different way, and it showed in his next words.

  “I suppose regular bar gin ain’t going to be good enough for you, seeing as how you been hanging around with the rich and famous,” he said.

  Darcy’s eyes narrowed just slightly, just for an instant. But she bounced back in a heartbeat with her mischievous smile.

  “You got that right,” she said, and called to the bartender,

  “Bombay Sapphire, please.”

  Madbird whistled softly. “Bombay fucking Sapphire,” he repeated, to nobody in particular. He pushed forward another five-dollar bill.

  “It’s a pretty blue bottle. Almost this color.” She plucked at her sweater.

  “That what your boyfriend drinks?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “He coming by here to pick you up?” Madbird said.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I didn’t say nothing about why not. I just wonder why he don’t ever come inside.”

  “What, to meet you? You kidding?”

  He slumped dolefully against the bar. “Well, ain’t that the way it goes. Ashamed of your poor old uncle.”

  “I’m not ashamed of you! I’m sitting right here beside you.”

  “Yeah, long as I buy you fancy liquor.”

  “Hah. Play me a game of eight-ball.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him away from the bar.

  “I ain’t played pool in a hundred years,” he objected, but he didn’t resist.

  “Come on, Hugh,” she said to me. “My poor old uncle needs help. You two against me.”

  I wasn’t going to provide much help; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d touched a cue myself. But I gathered our drinks 6

  N E IL MCMAHON

  and followed the two of them to the barroom’s pool table, a sturdy old veteran scarred by countless cigarettes, stained by blood from fights and, according to rumor, occasional dousings of amatory body fluids as well. The conversation level in the bar had risen back up to normal, with the jukebox shifting from Bob Wills to Hank Snow doing “A Six-Pack to Go.”

  Darcy punched quarters into the table and expertly arranged the rack, alternating stripes and solids and giving the centered eight ball a spin, then pressing the triangle inward with her fingers to clamp it tight.

  Her newest boyfriend—the source of Madbird’s concern—was a Montana state representative named Seth Fraker, from the resort area of Flathead Lake. The legislature had been in session in Helena for the last couple of months; Fraker and Darcy had met one evening when she was waitressing here and he’d come in with some colleagues to have dinner. He came from a well-es-tablished business family and he had all the trappings that went along with that—money, connections, and sophistication. Except for the inconvenient fact that he was married with kids, he seemed a big improvement over the aimless, troubled guys and sometimes outright criminals she’d run around with in the past.

  But that was as far as the Cinderella story went. There was no glass slipper, just a variation on an old theme—an upper-crust white guy having a fling with a hot young Native girl. The deeper problem was, there were hints that Darcy was taking it more seriously. She’d suddenly decided to move to an apartment more expensive than she could afford, with money from a mysterious source. She gave off a new sense of excitement, like she had an important secret. She had let it slip that he described his marriage as being “in name only,” without her seeming to realize what a stale ploy that was. While she was far from naïve in many ways, this situation was outside her experience, and maybe she was subconsciously blinding herself besides.

  DEAD SILVER

  7

  That happened to just about everybody, in some way, at some point, but it was hard to watch it happen to Darcy.

  For sure, Fraker had no intentions of leaving his family and marrying her. At best, he was setting her up as a mistress; he’d have plenty of pretexts to come to Helena. If that was the case and she could accept it, it might be a cynical but advanta-geous arrangement for her until something better came along.

  But far more likely, when the legislative session ended a couple of months from now, Fraker would head back
to his glossy home life and realize that maintaining the affair was too costly in a number of ways.

  Madbird feared that, besides the hurt, it might knock Darcy into a tailspin just when she thought her life was turning the corner. And the situation reeked with the sense of a powerful white man figuring that since he was dealing with Indians, he was untouchable.