The Lost Get-Back Boogie

She wanted the glass of whiskey now, but I took it out of her hand and walked her upstairs to bed. It was dark in her bedroom, and she turned her head on the pillow toward the opposite wall, but I could see that her eyes were still opened when I covered her.

“I’ll be downstairs when you wake up,” I said, and closed the door softly behind me.

I fixed coffee in the kitchen while the blueness of the night began to fade outside and the false dawn rimmed the edge of the mountains. I poured a shot of whiskey into the coffee and smoked cigarettes until my lungs were raw and my fingers and the backs of my legs started to shake with fatigue and strain. I lay back on the couch and closed my eyes, but there were red flashes of color in my head and that persistent hum in my blood that I had felt in jail. I touched my brow, and my fingers were covered with perspiration.

I put on my coat and walked out into the cold, early light and drove to the sheriff’s office. The streets were empty, and newspapers in plastic wrappers lay upon the quiet lawns. Some of the kitchens in the houses were lighted, and occasionally I caught a glimpse of a workingman bent over his breakfast.

I walked up the courthouse steps, trying to light a cigarette in the wind. I was sweating inside my clothes, and when I entered the gloom of the hallway and smelled the odor of the spittoons and dead cigars, the hum started to grow louder in my head. Three sheriff’s deputies sat on wooden chairs in front of the dispatcher’s cage, reading parts of the newspaper and yawning. A drunk who had just bonded out of the tank was accusing the dispatcher of taking money out of his wallet while it was in Possessions.

“You used it to go bail,” the dispatcher said. The other deputies never looked up from their paper. Their faces were tired and had the greenish cast of men who worked all night.

“I had thirty-five goddamn dollars in there,” the drunk said.

“Get the hell out of here before I take you upstairs again,” one of the deputies said from behind his paper.

The dispatcher looked at me from his radio desk.

“Yes, sir?” he said.

I started to speak, but didn’t get the chance.

“What are you doing in here?” the sheriff’s voice said behind me.

His khaki sleeves were rolled up over his massive fat arms, and the splayed end of his cigar was stuck in the center of his mouth. He clicked his Mason’s ring on the clipboard that he carried in one hand.

“Do you have Buddy Riordan in jail?” I said.

“Should I?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s he been doing?”

“He didn’t come home last night.”

His head tilted slightly, and he narrowed his eyes at me.

“What is this, Paret?”

“I want to know if he’s in jail. That’s not hard to understand.”

He took the cigar out of his mouth and pushed his tongue into one cheek.

“Did you book Buddy Riordan in here last night?” he said to the dispatcher.

“No, sir.”

The sheriff looked back at me.

“Is that all you want?” he said.

“Sheriff, there’s something you might want to know,” the dispatcher said. “One of the deputies at the Ravalli office called on the mobile unit and said that three guys shot the hell out of Frank Riordan’s birds last night.”

The sheriff walked to the spittoon, his head bowed into position as though he were over a toilet, and spit a dripping stream into it.

“What was Buddy driving?” he said.

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