Snowdeath A novel by Seth Masia
It was the first time I'd had the chance to move out on Marco's Heads, other than a couple of emergency blasts down the race course. The skis felt neutral -- stable enough, certainly, and fairly quick, but not sensitive and responsive like my old Stratos. Not bad for a decade-old experimental ski. I cruised down to Bonnie's a couple of times, riding back up alone. I tried to think about Marco, but Maggy's lovely body kept getting in the way. Hell of a way to mourn a friend.
Skiing alone wasn't doing it for me. I had no sense of making a memorial run for Marco. Weeks later I would slash through early-morning powder feeling his presence twenty feet away, paralleling my track just a tree or two past my left shoulder. But not yet. Instead I smelled cinmamon and envisioned pillows, stacked and scattered on the deep carpet.
After sweep I surreptitiously stuck the pistol back in my belt. Monday was my day off, and I didn't plan to hit the locker room before skiing, so I put my boots and Marco's skis back in my car. I waved almost happily to the guys trooping off to Little Nell's, and drove into a wonderful rose sunset -- the promise of another perfect day tomorrow -- to the hospital. Maggy was taking paperwork from one of the Snowmass patrollers, who had brought in a simple tib-fib fracture. I sat in the lounge and waited.
When she was free I hustled her into an empty office for a kiss. Maggy melted against me and I squeezed hard, feeling her spine flex under her muscles. She sighed with pleasure.
"I've been thinking about you all afternoon," I said.
"This feels so good. I can get out of here any time. Talk to Hildy and let's go home."
I squeezed her again and she ran her hands down my back. She touched the gun and stiffened.
"Tug warned me to carry it."
"I don't like this."
"I'll see Hildy and we'll go eat."
"Hildy's still in restraints. They come off when the doctor orders it, okay? And Tug says she may be held as a material witness."
Hildy looked even worse now that she was conscious. Clearly distraught, she lay in her restraints staring at the window. But when I knocked gently on the tray table parked at the foot of her bed, she looked up and smiled wanly.
"Hi, Sam."
"Hi, kid. How do you feel?"
"Like offal. Oh, Sam."
I couldn't lower the bedrails and sit with Hildy, because her wrists were tied to them. But I leaned over the rail and pushed back her hair, and kissed her forehead.
"I miss him a lot," I said.
"I keep thinking I should have moved here. If I'd been here I would have seen him Friday before he went up. Instead I keep thinking about the last weekend we had, the last time I saw him."
"Yes."
"The sheriff was here. He asked a lot of questions."
"Yes."
"He wanted to know why I lived in Crested Butte. He wanted to know where the money was."
"What money?"
Hildy smiled crookedly. "They think Marco was dealing drugs, don't they? Don't they think I was flying cocaine in for Marco to sell?"
"Were you?"
She snorted. "Wrong."
"Hildy, what was going on here? Yesterday morning you said 'They must have found out.' Who are 'they'?"
Hildy shook her head. "Can you get me out of here? I've got to get out of here."
"I think so. If you're ready to look after yourself."
"You've got to get me out of here. Don't you think they'll kill me, too?"
As a matter of fact, that hadn't occurred to me.
"Hildy, I can get you out of here, but you've got to tell me what's been going on. Tell me who 'they' are. Maybe I can help you."
"I don't know who they are. Marco never told me. I think I may need a lawyer," she said. "Can you find me a lawyer?"
"Sure I can. Do you want to tell me what you guys were doing?"
"Get me out of here. Get me a lawyer. Please, Sam. Then I'll tell you."
"I'll call a lawyer. And I'll try to get you untied."
"Thanks, Sam."
"See you tomorrow."
"Yeah."
From the nurse's station I called Ed Szell at home and asked him to meet me with Hildy the following afternoon. My morning was already booked. That took care of the lawyer.
"Who's Hildy's doc?" I asked Maggy.
"Stettner, the shrink."
"Do you think she'll sign her out of the restraints?"
"Stettner wouldn't write up restraints unless they were necessary."
"Hildy isn't suicidal."
"But she is violent. I like Stettner. She'll take Hildy out of the cuffs as soon as she's in control."
"Hildy's worried someone will try to kill her. Someone may."
"That's true. But if she's untied she might run away."
"I'll call Tug."
"Good. Then let's go home."
So I used the phone again. "Yup," said Tug. "You're right. I'll send someone out to check on her. What'd she tell you?"
"Nothing. She wants a lawyer."
"She may need a lawyer. I'm going to try to get her place in Crested Butte searched."
"It'd be a goddamned shame if Marco got himself killed and the only person who goes to jail is his girlfriend."
"The only lead I have to follow is the dope, and the girlfriend is the only connection I have for the dope. Except maybe you."
"I'm the dope."
"Remember that. Are you carrying?"
"Yeah. See you around."
"Be careful."
Maggy had her coat on, and she leaned against the door jamb, hands deep in the pockets. "Home now?"
"I owe you a first date."
"You do. But first we go to your place so you can change."
"You?"
She opened her coat to show off a slinky black dress and pearls. I dropped my jaw. Maggy giggled.
My trailer was a bedlam. All the drawers had been upended, the bookshelves pulled off the walls, the ceiling panels ripped down. My visitors had even punched holes in the thin trailer walls. Outside, the insulating skirt was peeled back. I'd have to repair that first, to keep the pipes from freezing. And I'd have to make some kind of order before counting my possessions. Not that I owned anything worth stealing.
In the meantime it was hard to feel depressed about a mere tornado with Maggy stepping about gingerly in clingy silk. It was easy to slide out of our clothes and roll around in the mess. We came up for air after an hour, ravenous. Maggy slipped back into the little black dress. Everything I owned was on the floor someplace. I put on a wrinkled Black Watch flannel shirt and a tweed sport coat.
"Dapper," Maggy said. "Basalt Saturday Night."
That's where we went for dinner. Sunday is not a slow evening in Basalt. Local wives don't want to cook on Sunday nights, and late arrivals for the week, driving up from the Denver airport, need meals before they hit Aspen. We found a corner table in the Mexican restaurant and ordered Coronas and the guac supreme to start.
"I don't know anything about you," I told Maggy, "other than the obvious."
"What's obvious?"
"Items of anatomy. Where are you from? Why did you study nursing? How did you come to Aspen? What did you do with your five husbands?"
"Mill Valley. Mom's an RN. Running away from the husband. There was only one. He's a thoracic specialist whose idea of the midlife crisis involved screwing anything that could be squeezed out of pantyhose."
"Jerk."
"I called him that. He didn't like it much."
"How could he argue?"
"He said, 'I really like women. It doesn't make me a bad person.' I said 'Of course it does.'"
"And his feelings were hurt."
"Sure. He said 'What do you mean? I'm a great guy!' I said 'You can be a great guy and still be a bad person. That's how you spot a jerk.'"
"Marco said that the life well lived is the life without jerks."
"Well, I dumped that one and came here."
"Do you ski?"
"I taught for two years at Squaw Valley. You've seen me on Ajax. Maybe you don't remember."
"Sorry."
"I was on the Cooper Street team that won the bartenders' trophy last year."
"Oh. So you can ski."
"Funny how important that is."
A gunshot exploded in the room. I dragged Maggy to the floor. One other guy was lying flat, looking around wildly, and I figured him for a Viet vet. Other diners watched us in surprise, and I was beginning to think someone had dropped a pot in the kitchen when a woman began moaning on the other side of the room.
No more shots were fired, and no one was running around yelling or pointing fingers. I got up slowly, looking in corners and at doorways. The moaning woman, a nice-looking brunette, sat in her chair leaning sideways against the wall with her eyes closed, but rolling her head in pain. Her date, wearing a western shirt and mustache, leaned toward her. I went over there.
"My leg, my leg, my leg!" the woman moaned.
I crouched under the table. A clean hole went through her calf. I turned to Maggy, standing behind me, and told her to call 911 for an ambulance and the cops. The Viet vet was hovering nearby now, too, looking sheepish. "No one leaves," I told him, and he moved to the front door.
"What's your name, miss?" I said to the wounded woman.
"Jackie. It hurts."
"Jackie, you've been shot."
"I know that. Help me."
I slit her hose and peeled the nylon back from the entry and exit wounds, just beginning to well with blood. The bullet had clearly missed both bones, going neatly through the muscles. I took reasonably clean napkins from neighboring tables and tied up the leg. Then I got Jackie laid out nicely on the floor and covered up with a tablecloth and a couple of coats. I raised her legs onto a chair to guard against shock and to drain the wound area of blood.
An Eagle County sheriff's department cop came in the front door, looked around and found us.
"What's going on here?"
"This is Jackie. She's been shot in the left calf."
"When? By who?"
"Now. Who knows? It doesn't take a genius to figure out someone in here has a gun and it might be a good idea to find it. Here's mine, and it hasn't been fired." I gave him the .38. He looked at it blankly and handed it back.
The ambulance arrived before we found the gun. When Jackie's boyfriend finally stood up to help, a powder-burned hole was smoking on the outside seam of his pants. He had a little .22 in there and it had gone off when he sat back down after visiting the can. He'd had the hammer down on a chambered round.
After the ruckus was over and the offending couple had ridden off in the wagon, Maggy looked at me and grinned hugely.
"Christ, Rucksack, it follows you around, doesn't it?"
"Life is trouble," I agreed.
"Zorba. Remember the rest of the line?"
"No."
"Life is when you zip down your fly and go looking for trouble."
"I've already got that kind."
"Yessir. What are you going to do about this other trouble?"
"I'm off tomorrow. I'll take a shovel up to Keno and dig around Marco's tree well. See if I can prove he wasn't alone up there."
"What could you find?"
"The blunt instrument? A second set of ski tracks under the fresh snow, leading in to the tree? A single set leading out? A business card? A kilo of cocaine?"
"Want help cleaning your trailer?"
"You're hired."
Go to Snowdeath Chapter 11