The Final Country by James Crumley

women in the years after she had been raped. But I didn’t know what to think about this. I shook my head as if I’d just been hit, then laughed. Or something like a laugh, only hollow and empty, like a sleeping dog’s dreaming bark. “Well, whoever the hell she is and whatever the fuck it is that she does for a living,” I said, “she’s damned good at her job.” Then I barked again.
    Betty’s eyes brimmed with tears. I had to look away.
    “But why?” Wallingford wanted to know.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t even know how to begin guessing.”
    Wallingford excused himself, leaving Betty and me alone in the uncrowded bar.
    A room service waiter came into the bar to hand me a videotape. “Room clerk says it’s in the right place.”
    “Thanks,” I said, then when the kid left, turned to Betty, and said as softly as I could, “And thank you, too.”
    “For what?” she asked quietly.
    “You didn’t have to tell me,” I told her. “At least now I know that we were both being set up. But I have to admit that I don’t know what to think or what to feel or anything. Except maybe I’d like to hit somebody.”
    “Hit me.”
    “No, I’d rather hit a stranger,” I said. “Or myself. Fuck it, I’ll think about it later.”
    Betty didn’t say anything, just leaned over to hug me, her wet cheek against mine. I leaned into her body and bit my lip when a series of back spasms hit under her hard embrace, but she felt it, moved her hands lower to knead the jerking muscles.
    “I’m off for a couple of days. I could… could stay with you tonight,” she murmured with a soft sob. But she felt me shake my head. “What the hell, I’ve already been stood up once today.”
    My mind was cluttered with too many things to think about what she had said. One of the things we had fought most often and most bitterly about since I had moved out of the ranch house was Betty’s constant refusal to stay with me at the Lodge. “I don’t think so,” I whispered into her shoulder.
    Which is how Wallingford found us. “You folks are crazy,” he said. “This is no time for spoonin’.”
    “Don’t be stupid, Uncle Travis,” Betty said over my shoulder. Sometimes she seemed constantly angry at her uncle.
    I stood up as straight as I could, took a deep breath that felt as if somebody had hit me in the chest with an axe handle, then leaned heavily on the bar. “Look, folks,” I said. “I really appreciate your help. Why don’t you two take off? I’m going to have a couple of more drinks, then a double dose of these pissant pain pills, and I’m going to bed. I’ll think about all this shit when I wake up. I’ll call you two tomorrow.”
    Travis Lee slapped me on the shoulder and wished me a good night. Then Betty hugged me again, perhaps harder than she meant to. I sagged against the bar.
    “Are you okay?” she asked.
    “I’m fucking fine,” I snapped.
    They finally left, and I wrapped myself around my Scotch.
    Which is how Gannon found me later as he served the search warrant for my room and the court order to confiscate my passport.
    “Hell, I don’t have even have a passport,” I said — I didn’t have a passport in my own name, but several in other names; I’d been prepared to run all my adult life — and my room was clean. Everything important was in the gun locker. Except for Billy Long’s cocaine, which was taped inside the emergency light in the elevator.
    “And I’d like you to watch the search,” Gannon said. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Milodragovitch.”
    “As long as you’ll give me a hand, and I can take my drink,” I said.
    “You want your lawyer?” Gannon asked. “I think I saw him standing around the lobby phone bank.”
    “No fucking lawyers,” I said, then held out my elbow for Gannon to grasp.
    As Gannon helped me down the hall, he said quietly, “You’re walking like an old man.”
    “It don’t take much of this shit to make you old.”
    “I’m sorry