Colonel Rutherford's Colt (4 page)

“I'm sure he's brilliant,” said Borchard. “What does that have to do with the Colt?”

“I got two kids,” Rita said. “I board them with my aunt, but they was with me around the time when I was getting to know Jimmy. Before we got together. So one night I was going out and I couldn't find nobody to stay with the kids. Jimmy volunteered. Appeared he could handle a couple pre-schoolers. So I left them fed and in their nightgowns. I got home, I found he'd taken his industrial stapler and stapled them up by their nightgowns to the wall. He'd spreadeagled the both of 'em to the boards like trophies. They'd been pestering him and he just couldn't deal with it. 'Course they kept on pestering him. They loved hanging on the walls, and they were running him ragged, getting him to fetch sodas and candy.” She laughed. “I was pissed, but I had to admit it was funny as hell.”

“And your point is? Aside from warning me to keep clear of his stapler?”

“You'd do better to lay off pressuring Jimmy, 'cause inside he ain't nothing but pressure. You can't never tell what's gonna come out. He's one bottle cap you don't wanna pop.”

Borchard gave his smile a rest and fixed her with a firm look intended, Rita thought, to convey the notion that his position was unshakeable. “I want to give you five thousand for a weapon that isn't worth more than two,” he said. “You can't walk away from that. And you can't jack me up any higher.”

“I could show you a hole in the ground,” Rita said, “and tell you there was a bear trap set at the bottom—I bet you'd still jump in to see if I was lying.”

Borchard seemed pleased, as if he thought she'd paid him a compliment. “Going halfway gets you nowhere.”

“Rita?”

A bearded man in a leather vest and plaid shirt was standing beside them; sheltering beneath his arm was a weary-looking woman with short gray hair and pronounced crowsfeet, clutching a menu to her chest.

“Mind if we join ya?” the bearded man asked. “If you're not talking business, that is. Isn't anywhere else to sit, and Mom's been on her feet all day.”

“Sure thing, Doug. We're done.” Rita scooched in her chair so they could slip past behind.

Borchard heaved up to his feet. “I tried,” he said, projecting rueful menace, as if to convey that he was sorry things had reached this pass, but he wasn't the one who would suffer. “I guess I'll have to try harder.”

“A little harder might be all it takes,” Rita told him.

“Who's that you talking to?” Doug asked as Borchard moved off toward the door. Mom was occupied in studying the burger page of Ye Royal Board.

With Borchard gone, the tension caused by his presence removed, the whiskey kicked in full, and Rita felt a giddy buzz. “Just some character,” she said. “I call him ‘the major.' ”

 

* * *

 

Room 322 at the Red Roof Inn had a worn gray shag carpet, dull red drapes, a table by the door with two chairs, and a blond dresser supporting a three-piece mirror in which a queen-sized bed was reflected. But Jimmy, lying on the bed in his shorts, the Colt resting on his chest, saw in his mind's eye Susan Rutherford's bedroom in Havana, where she lay, among silk pillows and lace curtains and dark Spanish furniture, in the arms of her lover, Luis Carrasquel. Luis was a problem—Jimmy had no sense of the character. He was coming to recognize that Luis was more of a mechanism, and he didn't approve of characters who functioned only as mechanisms. However, in this instance he didn't seem to have much of a choice. Every time he tried to flesh Luis out, it felt wrong, and he was beginning to think there might be another character who would fill the slot that he had presumed Luis would fill. It was Susan's reaction to Luis, the colors it added to her perception of the world, that most mattered at this stage of things . . .

From their first delicately allusive conversation at the Presidential Palace, through a cautious, painfully attenuated courtship, through all their anxious and clandestine meetings, to the period in which they now existed, grown bold in their affections thanks to Colonel Rutherford's weekly trips to Guantanamo . . . Through every second of their affair, Susan had not experienced the slightest doubt that this lithe, clever, brown-skinned man was intended for her by God. His playfulness; his quickness of mind; his attentiveness at love; these qualities were in such opposition to her husband's controlling personality, his clumsy, often brutish sexual habits, she sometimes believed Luis had been sent her less as a lover than as a remedy. She was happier than she had ever been, so absorbed in the moment that she failed to consider the possible consequences of her actions. At the outset she had assumed that she and Luis would be married, but as the affair developed she came to understand the difficulties that would attend divorcing a man who wielded so much influence. Luis was protected to a degree by his family connections, but if nothing else, the colonel could destroy his business and cause him to be disgraced. Then there was the effect upon her family. In the event of a divorce action, the colonel would assuredly call in those loans made to her father, and that would result in her family's ruin. Thus it was at the moment of her great liberation, Susan recognized that her prison had only become more complex, more difficult to bear. Thanks to the intensity and sweetness of her lovemaking with Luis, her loathing for the colonel's embrace grew more pronounced. She had never been responsive to him, merely submissive. However, since the beginning of her relationship with Luis, she had taken to resisting the colonel's advances, and he in turn had taken to forcing her, both by physical means and by exploiting her feelings of powerlessness. Luis had announced that he was willing to endure whatever vengeance the colonel chose to exact, if Susan would come away with him; but she could not bring herself to harm so many people for a purpose as meager as that of her own happiness. And further, she had been brought up according to a tradition in which a wife's obedience to her husband was deemed a sacred article of the marriage contract, and despite Colonel Rutherford's insensitivity and abuse, she could not entirely escape the notion that
he
was the one who had been wronged.

Luis, who loved Susan as fervently as she did him, became increasingly desperate, yet found no outlet for his desperation. What, after all, could he do? She refused to allow him to confront the colonel, and he could not find it in himself to go contrary to her wishes. The idea of creating a circumstance that would bring the colonel to ruin occurred to him, as did that of murder. But he lacked sufficient guile to achieve the one, and had not been able to rouse in himself the brutality necessary to accomplish the other. For Susan's part, she knew that if she could not step away from her vows, then she ought to break things off with Luis. The pain she saw in his face was reason enough to sever the relationship, but she could not summon up the courage to deprive herself of the one thing that gave her joy, that breached the joyless confinement of the marriage. She told Luis on several occasions that it would be best for him if they ended the affair, but each time he begged her to reconsider and each time she relented. She realized that to continue as they were in the face of her indecisiveness was foolhardy. But desire and love were proof against understanding, and they went on as before.

Whenever the colonel traveled out from Havana, Luis would wait until eleven in the evening to scale the western wall of the estate. Once he had gained the top of the wall he would chin himself onto the lowermost branch of an enormous ceiba tree and climb through the canopy, which spanned the distance between the street and the house. From the eastern edge of the canopy, he could swing out and clutch the vines that enmeshed the yellow stucco and thus he was able to climb to Susan's bedroom window. As Susan was in the habit of locking her door, except on those occasions when the colonel announced that he would be visiting her chambers, she and Luis would then be safely hidden away until the early morning. His leave-taking, however, was not so easily managed, for the branches of the ceiba beneath Susan's window would not support the weight of someone leaping down onto them. Thus he was forced to descend to the lawn by means of the vines and make his way through the thick shrubbery to the western wall. This course had one particular point of peril. To reach the shrubbery he had to pass a doorway at the rear of the house, in front of which a sapling sabal palm had recently been transplanted. The door led to a staircase that ascended into the body of the house and, farther along, to the apartments inhabited by the colonel's housekeeper Mariana. It was frequently left ajar, since Mariana—a light sleeper—was given to waking in the night and going out for a stroll; she did not always shut the door on her return. But because she was a creature of regular habits, bathing each morning between five-thirty and six, Luis was able to time his exits so as to coincide with her ablutions . . .

 

* * *

 

The door to Room 322 was pushed open, breaking the glide of Jimmy's thoughts, and Rita came in. For a moment he had trouble focusing on her, still immersed in the story. The Colt resting on his chest felt warm, like a heavy pat of melting butter. Rita tossed her key onto the table by the door and sat in one of the chairs and began shucking off her boots. Jimmy could tell she was drunk by the cautious precision of her movements.

“Y'all have fun?” he asked.

She made a sardonic noise with teeth and tongue. “Oh yeah. Brandywines . . . it was just like Mardi Gras.”

“I moved the Beretta,” he said.

She looked up. “Full price?”

“I gave him a cash discount. Ten percent.”

“He paid cash? No shit!”

“Yeah. He took one of them fancy oak and velvet boxes, too. And I got a nibble on the Colt.”

“How's that?”

“I borrowed Bob Ochuda's laptop and sent an email to that professor at Washington State. Guy who bought the Waco rifle. I told him we had Bob Champion's personal sidearm. He got real excited. Says he's going to come see us in North Bend.” Jimmy laid the Colt aside. “We oughta look into getting us a laptop. I feel bad borrowing Bob's all the time.”

Rita tossed her right boot toward the bed, set the hunting knife she kept in it next to the keys, then went to working on the left boot. “You are one slick white boy, Jimmy. Guess I gotta learn to trust ya.”

“You always say that,” he said. “And about half the time you wrong.”

She laughed, the first honest laugh he'd had from her in days. “Damn!” she said. “Here I been drinking to drown my sorrows, and now I'm wishing I had a drink to celebrate.”

He pointed to the dresser. “Top right-hand drawer.”

One-booted, she stepped to it, opened the drawer, and plucked out a pint of Jack Black. She went into the bathroom, reappeared a few seconds later with a water glass half full of whiskey. She leaned against the doorframe and sipped. “That was nice, Jimmy. Thinking about me like that.”

“I spend all the time I got to spare thinking about you.”

She returned to the chair, placed the glass and the bottle on the table, started in again on her boot.

“So what'd you do at Brandywines?”

“Sat with Doug Lindsey and his mama for a while. He's trying to tell me we oughta carry custom ammo for the antique pieces. I ain't so sure he's wrong.”

“We don't need the inventory. I mean, hell, we could carry a coupla boxes that fit with some of the pieces. But we doing okay without it.”

Rita kicked off the boot, sailed it into the bathroom. “Ever see Doug's mama eat? That scrawny little thing wolfed down two of them half-pounder cheeseburger-and-steak-fry plates. Woman must have the metabolism of a racehorse.” She began undoing the buttons of her shirt. “Ran into that major the Snow woman told us about.”

“Yeah, I had a conversation with him over to the show.”

“He offered five thousand cash for the Colt.”

Jimmy grinned. “Offered me six.”

“Huh. He probably thought I was desperate for firewater. Anybody smiles as much as that bastard's got a snake coiled in his belly.” She had another drink. “Maybe we should take the six and skim two grand off the top.”

“C'mon, Rita. You know you just talking.”

“You didn't sell the Beretta, I wouldn't be just talking.” She drained her glass and poured another two fingers. “How's the story going?”

“All right, I guess. Wanna hear?”

“Sure I do.”

As he talked she lifted her butt, slid her jeans down past her knees, then her ankles, and sat there in shirt and panties, sipping whiskey. The Painted Desert color of her body flowed into his eyes, adding a dark red wash to the air. He could see the story molding itself to her lean figure, adding vigor and heat. This was the heart of what they were together, the blood of the relationship, the cracked moon that shined them into being. Him telling, her listening and giving advice. The spirit they became in the process. He felt energy bridging between them, arcs of tropical lightning, gun flashes welded into a current, scattered drumbeats collecting into a roll. The words yielded a mysterious glow as they fell around her, like fading fireworks.

“Where'd you learn that Cuban stuff?” she asked after he had finished.

“Some's from books, and Daddy told me some. He was with the Marines in Guantanamo.”

“ 'Least the son-of-a-bitch did you one favor before he checked out.”

A truck engine turned over in the parking lot, its idle rumbling like a sleepy monster, and somebody let out a sharp shout like they had spotted it and were afraid.

“How much more you got?” she asked.

“I figured out most everything except the ending. Y'know, the endings always give me trouble.”

“You need to put some more in about the major.”

“The colonel,” he said. “Not the major.”