The Bureau’s in a tough spot. They have to take Jake off this case. He’s disqualified himself. Oh, he’ll fight them! But it’s for the sake of his own reputation. Safety, too. One night here, it was after he lost his girl friend, he rang me up around four in the morning. Drunker than a hundred Indians dancing in a cornfield. The gist of it was: he was gonna challenge Quinn to a duel. I checked on him the next day. Bastard, he didn’t even remember calling me.
ANXIETY, AS ANY EXPENSIVE PSYCHIATRIST will tell you, is caused by depression; but depression, as the same psychiatrist will inform you on a second visit and for an additional fee, is caused by anxiety. I rotated around in that humdrum circle all afternoon. By nightfall the two demons had combined; while anxiety copulated with depression, I sat staring at Mr. Bell’s controversial invention, fearing the moment when I would have to dial the Prairie Motel and hear Jake admit that the Bureau was taking him off the case. Of course, a good meal might have helped; but I had already abolished my hunger by eating the chocolate cake with the fungus icing. Or I could have gone to a movie and smoked some grass. But when you’re in that kind of sweat, the only lasting remedy is to ride with it: accept the anxiety, be depressed, relax, and let the current carry you where it will.
OPERATOR: Good evening. Prairie Motel. Mr. Pepper? Hey, Ralph, you seen Jake Pepper? In the bar? Hello, sir—your party’s in the bar. I’m ringing.
TC: Thank you.
(I remembered the Prairie Bar; unlike the motel, it had a certain comic-strip charm. Cowboy customers, rawhide walls decorated with girlie posters and Mexican sombreros, a rest room for BULLS, another for BELLES, and a jukebox devoted to the twangs of Country & Western music. A jukebox blast announced that the bartender had answered.)
BARTENDER: Jake Pepper! Somebody for you. Hello, mister. He wants to know who is it?
TC: A friend from New York.
JAKE’S VOICE (distantly; rising in volume as he approaches the phone): Sure I have friends in New York. Tokyo. Bombay. Hello, my friend from New York!
TC: You sound jolly.
JAKE: About as jolly as a beggar’s monkey.
TC: Can you talk? Or should I call later?
JAKE: This is okay. It’s so noisy nobody can hear me.
TC (tentative; wary of opening wounds): So. How’s it going?
JAKE: Not so hotsy-totsy.
TC: Is it the Bureau?
JAKE (puzzled): The Bureau?
TC: Well, I thought they might be giving you trouble.
JAKE: They ain’t giving me no trouble. But I’m giving them plenty. Buncha nitwits. No, it’s that knucklehead Jaeger. Our beloved postmaster. He’s chicken. He wants to skip the coop. And I don’t know how to stop him. But I’ve got to.
TC: Why?
JAKE: “The shark needs bait.”
TC: Have you talked to Jaeger?
JAKE: For hours. He’s with me now. Sitting over there in the corner like a little white rabbit ready to jump down a hole.
TC: Well, I can sympathize with that.
JAKE: I can’t afford to. I’ve got to hold on to this old sissy. But how? He’s sixty-four; he’s got a bundle of dough and a pension coming. He’s a bachelor; his closest living relative is Bob Quinn! For Christ’s sake. And get this: he still doesn’t believe Quinn did it. He says yes, maybe somebody means to harm me, but it can’t be Bob Quinn; he’s my own flesh and blood. There’s just one thing that gives him pause.
TC: Something to do with the package?
JAKE: Uh-huh.
TC: The handwriting? No, it can’t be that. It must be the picture.
JAKE: Nice shot. This picture’s different. It’s not like the others. For one thing, it’s about twenty years old. It was made at the State Fair; Jaeger is marching in a Kiwanis parade—he’s wearing a Kiwanis hat. Quinn took the picture. Jaeger says he saw him take it; the reason he remembers is because he asked Quinn to give him a copy, and Quinn never did.
TC: That ought to make the postmaster think twice. I doubt that it would do much to a jury.
JAKE: Actually, it doesn’t do much to the postmaster.
TC: But he’s frightened enough to leave town?
JAKE: He’s scared, sure. But even if he wasn’t, there’s nothing to keep him here. He says he always planned to spend the last years of his life traveling. My job is to delay the journey. Indefinitely. Listen, I’d better not leave my little rabbit alone too long. So wish me luck. And keep in touch.
I wished him luck, but he was not lucky; within a week, both the postmaster and the detective had gone their separate ways: the former packed for global wanderings, the latter because the Bureau had removed him from the case.
THE FOLLOWING NOTES ARE EXCERPTED from my personal journals: 1975 through 1979.
20 October 1975: Spoke to Jake. Very bitter; spewing venom in all directions. He said “for two pins and a Confederate dollar” he’d quit, write in his resignation, go to Oregon and work on his son’s farm. “But as long as I’m here with the Bureau, I’ve still got a whip to crack.” Also, if he quit now, he could forfeit his retirement pension, a beau geste I’m sure he can’t afford.
6 November 1975: Spoke to Jake. He said they were having a cattle-rustling epidemic in the northeast part of the state. Rustlers steal the cattle at night, load them into trucks, and drive them down into the Dakotas. He said that he and some other agents had spent the last few nights out on the open range, hiding among the cattle herds, waiting for rustlers who never showed up: “Man, it’s cold out there! I’m too old for this tough-guy stuff.” He mentioned that Marylee Connor had moved to Sarasota.
25 November 1975: Thanksgiving. Awoke this morning, and thought of Jake, and remembered it was just a year ago that he had got his “big break”: that he had gone to Addie’s for dinner and she had told him about Quinn and Blue River. I decided against calling him; it might aggravate, rather than alleviate, the painful ironies attached to this particular anniversary. Did call Fred Wilson and his wife, Alice, to wish them “bon appétit.” Fred asked about Jake; I said the last I heard he was busy chasing cattle rustlers. Fred said: “Yeah, they’re workin’ his ass off. Trying to keep his mind off that other deal, what the Bureau guys call ‘The Rattlesnake Baby.’ They’ve assigned a young fellow named Nelson to it; but that’s just for appearance sake. Legally, the case is open; but for all practical purposes the Bureau has drawn a line through it.”
5 December 1975: Spoke to Jake. The first thing he said was: “You’ll be pleased to hear the postmaster is safe and sound in Honolulu. He’s been mailing postcards to everybody. I’m sure he sent one to Quinn. Well, he got to go to Honolulu, and I didn’t. Yessir, life is strange.” He said he was still in the “cattle-rustling business. And damned sick of it. I ought to join the rustlers. They make a hundred times the money I do.”
20 December 1975: Received a Christmas card from Marylee Connor. She wrote: “Sarasota is lovely! This is my first winter in a warm climate, and I can honestly say I don’t miss home. Did you know that Sarasota is famous as a winter quarter for the Ringling Bros. Circus? My cousin and I often drive over to watch the performers practice. It’s the best fun! We’ve become friendly with a Russian woman who trains acrobats.
May God see you through the New Year, and please find enclosed a small gift.” The gift was an amateurish family-album snapshot of Addie as a young girl, perhaps sixteen, standing in a flower garden, wearing a white summer dress with a matching hair ribbon, and cradling in her arms, as though it were as fragile as the surrounding foliage, a white kitten; the kitten is yawning. On the back of the picture, Marylee had written: Adelaide Minerva Mason. Born 14 June 1939.
Called Back 29 August 1975.
1 January 1976: Jake called—“Happy New Year!” He sounded like a gravedigger digging his own grave. He said he’d spent New Year’s Eve in bed reading David Copperfield. “The Bureau had a big party. But I didn’t go. I knew if I did I’d get drunk and knock some heads together. Maybe a lotta heads. Drunk or sober, whenever I’m around the chief it’s all I can do not to throw a punch bang into his fat gut.” I told him I’d received a card from Marylee at Christmas and described the picture of Addie accompanying it, and he said yes, Marylee had sent him a very similar picture: “But what does it mean? What she wrote—‘Called Back’?” When I tried to interpret the phrase as I understood it, he stopped me with a grunt: it was too fanciful for him; and he remarked: “I love Marylee. I’ve always said she’s a sweet woman. But simple. Just a mite simple.”
5 February 1976: Last week I bought a frame for Addie’s snapshot.
