Carla's Song: A Geezer Western Mystery

By T. C. McKeon

Jud Phoenix, a retired lawyer, takes on a search for Carla Depuy for an old friend in Bullpen, Montana, Eric Chapple, who lives in a nursing home in Bullpen. Chapple is filled with remorse for participating in the rape of Carla 50 years ago, when all were young people. He wants to compensate Carla in the event she is still alive. He thinks she is because he recently has heard a song she wrote years ago as a country western singer on the radio. Phoenix, who has lived in Chicago, Illinois for years and who returns to Montana to flyfish and see his even more elderly mother in Bullpen, reluctantly takes on the quest for Chapple. He finds himself in more trouble than expected, including an assassination attempt on his life and other crimes, a renegade preacher with an old-fashioned madam in a famous brothel a a mother, and other dangers and difficulties. The search for Carla takes an unexpected turn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483516677

Book preview

Song

Old Men

I went to see Eric Chappie Chapple at his nursing home on the west side of Bullpen, my old hometown. The nursing home was a fairly cheerful place, considering, light and airy, well-kept. It has wide halls built around courtyards with tended gardens. Flowers were everywhere. The rooms into which I could see appeared modern, comfortable and well lit. Outside light penetrated from all sides. I actually found Chappie in his dining room, where I was directed by a nursing aide at the central nursing station.

He sits in the dining room most afternoons when there is sun, she mentioned.

The dining room doubled as a sitting room when meals were not being served. There is a lot of sun in Montana, so I presumed he spent many hours just watching the grounds and the sky, the last yearnings, perhaps, of an old man used to being outdoors in a place where the outdoors come first - and last.

He sat in a wheelchair, his back to me as I entered the room. Two oxygen canisters hung on the back of his chair. Plastic tubes running from these canisters to a loop of plastic came up around his face with nose inserts. He looked pretty bad, thin with wan, pasty skin that goes with the ills of old age. He wore a pair of thick functional glasses, which looked as if they were fashioned from the butts of old Coke bottles.

We were essentially the same age, 70, at the time, but time had not been as good to him as it had been to me. I had a hip replaced when I was 68, but otherwise remained in pretty good health, sans the twinges of arthritis that go with 70 years. But then, I had always taken good care of myself.

Chappie had not taken such good care of himself. I knew him in high school. He was a hood always on the edge. He was a distinct type tied to images in the movies of the time, Blackboard Jungle, the Wild Ones, and their progeny. Grease has perpetuated the era beyond its time as nostalgia. As age struck us and dimmed real memories, the music, the dance, the rhythm, the fantasy replaced them.

Movies taught us how to misbehave in the 1950s, a naive time of posturing. Behavior, in general, became much worse in the decades to follow. But Chappie lived outlaw-style to the brim, smoking early, drinking, maybe drugs a little later. It was a bad life style, if not a criminal one, and probably led to other kinds of unhealthy living as he grew older. It about all had caught up to him by age 70.

His father owned various bars and saloons around the town and county. He was busted for running illegal gambling operations more than once. So Chappie came by his life style naturally. He inherited it. At the same time, he and his father antagonized each other relentlessly, sometimes violently. Blood did not adhere, except at the end when Chappie inherited his father's last bar, a fact he soon elaborated on when we talked.

My life was more conventional. I was a student and a bit of an athlete, college bound from the day I entered school. My father had a small insurance business and my mother taught. In high school, Chappie and I lived a chasm apart in terms of life style and friends. Curiously, my father knew his father and sold his father the insurance on the places he owned and ran.

I drank a Coke at the bar, while my dad had a beer in one of those places where he stopped in to deliver a new insurance policy. Maybe I was 12 years old at the time. I just happened to be in the car with my dad when he made the stop. It was the first time I had ever been in a bar. The Coke was served with great ceremony and my father's beer was a business gesture. I rarely saw my father drink anything.

Mr. Chapple was congenial, but there was an air of danger and toughness about him. He wore a short-sleeved Western shirt. His arms were thick and there was a small tattoo on his left forearm. I was wide-eyed, looking around at the long bar, the bottles lined up on lighted shelves back against the wall, the advertising signs for beer. A mounted deer head hung from the opposite wall. The floor was well-worn wood, the tables and chairs serviceable, but spare.

A large jukebox stood at the back of the room, turned off at the time we were there. There was a small elevated stage also, extending from a corner in the back. Speakers flanked the sides of the stage and a guitar leaned at the corner of the walls. There weren’t any customers since the place had not yet opened that day, but there was a faint smell of cleaning fluid from the mopped floors and restrooms. The smell struck my nose over the bubbles of my soda. My father said Mr. Chapple always paid his bills and was a good customer. I never told Chappie about that visit later on, when we were thrown together by circumstances and an odd encounter.

We really had nothing to do with each other in high school. It was later, after college and the army for me. I came back to Bullpen and lived with my mother in the short interim before law school. I went out one night to one of the local bars. Chappie was there with a girlfriend. A dispute, typical of this type of setting, arose along the bar. He faced off against a couple of wannabe cowboys. The real thing is rarer than you might think. I didn't know them. The girl was critical to the dispute, though I never knew quite how, maybe an insult, or a prior relationship?

He faced off and I stepped up to help. I was just out of the Army, fit, athletic, physically larger than any of them -and stupid. I was also a little drunk. I had never been a fighter. It could have been bad, but just the presence, the sense of balance among antagonists, cooled the crisis. Nothing happened.

We hung out together a little in that interim before I left Bullpen, virtually forever. He worked construction at the time. His father still had a bar. We never went there, as bad blood between the two of them continued. Girlfriends came and faded away. Then I went away and Chappie and I had no contact until I came to visit my mother after these many years. She lives in the old house with a caregiver whom I pay. Mother had reached her mid-90s. When I came to see her this time, she relayed a message. Chappie was in the nursing home, and had called. If I ever came to visit, would I pay him a call? This was it.

A Very Bad Story

As I came up behind him, he dozed before a broad window looking out over the grounds. Down past an adjacent housing development, downhill, finally to the faint slope of land past the big river, a swell ultimately rises to become the Rocky Mountains still too far away to see. Large dry land wheat farms sprawl up on a broad bench above the river, the bench going on forever before the mountains. My presence startled him. I had not seen him since we were very young, neither of us infirm nor scored by age. Maybe some 50 years? Just about. I don't think he recognized me. I probably would not have recognized him, except for the fact that I expected him to be where I found him.

Chappie? I asked.

He was slow to respond. Yeah. Who?" He aimed his thick glasses.

Me. You asked for me.

He gave me a suspicious glance. I was not quite what he expected in his mind's eye, still in remission 50 years back. Your mother's still alive.

She's 96. Pretty good all things considered.

My dad died a long time ago. My mother even longer.

Sorry.

I don't miss him. He never paid much attention to her. It wasn't a big thing for me to lose either of them. I don't know what my kids will miss? Not much, likely. Now Bobby, he manages the place. But he'd probably rather own it. He's the picture of wannabe respectable business.

Business?

You been away so long you probably don't know. I did all right for myself, considering what was possible. I inherited the last saloon my old man had. He'd done quite well for himself. I found I could run a bar, make a nickel or two. Then I expanded when the highway was built, motel, restaurant and bar. There was always a little gambling. I bought a couple of other places in the state, and then the state made some gambling legal. Talk about windfall. It was like I was set up by my father and probably my grandfather before him. So I done well. Sad in a way. I had a small stroke, the brain still works some, but enough crap to put me here. COPD, too. Can't breathe too well. I did the makin' and not much of the enjoyin'.

The thick glasses flashed at me as he turned his head. He made no effort to move his chair. I wasn't sure he could.

I don't come back that often, I replied.

"It's connection. You don't keep the connections. Could complain, but I didn't make no effort, either. I hear you done good for yerself.

It's been all right.

After law school I settled in Chicago, an inexplicable move for many Montanans. I joined the FBI for six years, then went to the U.S. Attorney’s office and then off to private practice. One sentence describes the entire career. I was the senior litigator in my firm, added business work. Now I’m Of Counsel. Prosperous. My nutshell.

I got something I want you to do for me. He was not wasting time on further, get-reacquainted small talk. I can't think of anybody else but you I might want to do this. My lawyers? Not a chance. And I want you to do it for free, even though I could pay you any amount. Of course, we can work out expenses, real expenses.

I normally don't come cheap.

He took an atomizer out of a pocket attached to the wheelchair. He made deep sucking breaths, preparing to talk.

I know that, but this is personal, one friend for another. I don't need a lawyer to do this, but I do need a friend, though it might be complicated. You and me were friends back then the short time you was back here before becoming respectable and all. You had a little wild streak in ya, at the time. Not too much so that you couldn't turn back, but enough so that you can understand a true outlaw like me. And maybe do me a favor and help make up for some outlaw behavior when I was younger, poorer and stupider than I am now.

I don't see much outlaw here.

He paused, letting his voice and lungs rest. I waited.

I was born an outlaw. So was my father and my grandfather and probably even before that. It has nothing to do with bein' criminal. It has a lot to do with how respectable people look at you. I dealt with a banker here for a number of years, the most respectable man I ever knowed. He embezzled from his bank, went to jail for it, was a criminal. But he was always respectable for all that. I ain't sayin' I done everything straight over the years. Might have broken the law a time or two. But the point is, even if I had not done ‘em, I'd still be an outlaw in this local community. Not even money can buy respectability, which is different from respect. Real respect.

Fair enough, I said. So what would I be getting into if I decide to do you this favor, after 50 years or so, of - as you say - no connection? Why should I bother? We are about equal aged. I don't move as fast as I used to. I am not inclined to get in trouble and have become pretty risk averse. And then there is the little matter of trust...

Another pause and rest. Regular puffs of oxygen spit out of the tanks riding the back of the wheelchair

You got no reason to trust me until you hear my story. Then you got to decide. But if I tell you the story, you got to keep it in confidence exactly as if you was my lawyer, even though I would rather not pay you as one.

All right. It will be pro bono if I decide to do anything. I'll keep the story confidential in any case. I began to have a hard time taking this preamble seriously, but then...

"That's fine. That's fine. I was hopin' you'd be at least curious. You always was curious. And you always knew what to do. And you never treated me as an outlaw notwithstanding what was real. Here is the story, not a very pretty one and you may not like me much after I tell it. You remember a girl in high school, named Carla Depuy?

Vaguely. She was a farm kid, as I remember. Never said much. Not a great student, but played guitar and sang, Country-Western. In which I was not much interested at the time."

Farm kid said a lot about the caste system in high school in the 1950s. There were social hierarchies, town and farm being seminal and impenetrable. There were other social divisions, North side versus South side. Well-to-do versus not-so-well-to-do. Whites versus Mexican and Indian. Actual African-Americans were few, invisible. The farm kids came into town by bus or car. They went home as soon as school ended, presumably because they had work chores. They belonged to 4-H and Future Farmers. They were country and the town kids were not. The social structure didn't accommodate much interaction.

Chappie sucked on the inhaler again, cheeks caving. A substitute for a cigarette?

Yeah. That was her. Small farm, west of town where now there are a lot of housing developments. Not much money at home, I think. After high school she worked in the bars and honky-tonks, sometimes here and sometimes there. Small bands playing for the drunks. She was good, though. Wrote her own songs that she would sing in between the stuff from Patsy Cline, and others. I doubt the drunks had much of a clue.

He paused a little longer this time. His gray skin turning a little paler, but then he continued, working at it.

About a year after you left town the last time, this guy came into town, Terry Smith. He drove a Cadillac and pulled a big power boat that he put into Lake Coulter. He didn't work and had no means of visible support" to quote newspaper speak. Whether that was his real name or not, we'll probably never know. There were rumors about connections with organized crime. Maybe, but not necessarily as it turned out. He had conversations with my dad, maybe about gambling or other stuff. My dad never said and never will from the grave. Terry spent a lot of time around the bars and honky-tonks when he was not entertaining girls on his boat that summer. He had money and an outlaw reputation, so I took to hangin' out with him at the time.

Carla was working in that place across the river. You’ll remember. It was a notorious old place, once a speakeasy, some gambling, and all that over a lot of years. It was never one of my dad's places. Gone now, some old foundations is all. It burned to the ground and never was replaced. There was rumors around that Terry had put some money into the place. I don't even remember who owned it, officially, at the time. Anyway, she was playing there and Terry took a shine to her. The girls he was spending time with was whores or near whores, so this was a little different for him. And it turned out bad for her because he was real evil, no regard for anyone or anything.

Chappie shut his eyes and leaned over in his wheelchair. Brows furrowed, tense body, tears definitely flowing.

Anyway, one night we were all out there drinking, the usual. He coaxed her to take a couple of drinks for which she was not prepared. It ended in the parking lot out back and to put it no harder, she was gang-raped in the back of his car. He started it. I participated and there were others, some of whom came from the respectable side of Bullpen. After it was all over, he drove her home and dumped her out in the driveway of her folk's farm. I told you this would be a bad story.

He now cried openly, gasping for breath. I started towards him, somewhat alarmed. He waved me off and we waited until he could talk again.

"Nobody ever saw her again. I don't know what happened to her after that. Nobody pursued rape proceedings in cases like that in those days. It would have been a huge scandal if rape charges had been brought, but nobody ever brought charges. Some C&W singer fucked in a honky-tonk parking lot. Ho hum!

I said I done a few things that might be criminal, but this was totally the worst thing I ever done ever in my life. There was drinking and carousing years when I never thought about it much. But over the years as I got older and had some kids, it began to eat on me a little. As I have got older, it has come to eat on me a whole lot

I've heard a lot of bad stories, investigated and prosecuted some of them, but Chappie's story? It’s a confession that should have gotten him a lot of prison time. I sat there speechless. Nobody wants to think bad things happen in their own hometowns, but of course they do.

Now I kind of gasped, and had trouble finding my own air. The room had become claustrophobic, close, the summer afternoon somehow dark.

Chappie, why should I want to have anything to do with you? You’re disgusting!

He reached an imploring hand towards me. You'd be right to hate me, not more than I have come to hate myself. There seems nothing that I could do. But I have this.

He handed me an insurance policy, which he had been keeping in the pocket on the wheelchair. It was a life insurance policy on his life, made out to Carla Depuy. It had a $100,000 death benefit.

I took this old policy and made it out to her. It ain't much, I know.

Do you know where she is or whether she is still alive?

I don't know where she is, but I believe she is still alive somewhere. It's because of the song.

The song?

On the radio. C&W station. They are playing one of her songs that she wrote... Love is hard to come by. First line, maybe the title. It come out of the blue. It's a sign to me. I got to do something here before I die. If my kids find out about this policy, they'll be all over me. That's why you got to find her and give it to her - for me. I got nobody else that I can trust. And you got to trust me for telling you this story...

He breathed very hard now, chest heaving. His face twisted into an agonized knot, the heavy glasses nearly detached.

It gave me time. I thought quite a few minutes, not quite sure what to do. An automatic question to put off a decision, I guess. Whatever happened to Terry Smith?

That's a curious part of the story that I ain't said yet. About a year later, he was found lying in the parking lot of that old roadhouse with a load of No. 4 shot in the face and chest. Dead, of course. His car found in the river way downstream from Bullpen. The sheriff never solved the case. There was then quite a story about where he got his money. He teamed up with another guy, not from Bullpen. They burgled small-town banks. Most of those small-town banks had vaults that looked real solid, but no steel roofs. If you cut a hole in the roof, you could loot the vault. That was what many, including the authorities, believed. Other rumors floated around, about a lot of money from somewhere. But from where, nobody knew?

Other robberies? Counterfeiting? Drug profits? I tried to help.

We'll probably never know. And then there is what happened to the money, if it existed? Some people dug around that old roadhouse thinking that it might have been buried there, if it existed. If he had it, he must have hid it somewhere. I don't know that anybody ever found it. And the feds were nosing around at one point, at least it was rumored.

And then there is Carla or someone close to her.

If so, more power to her, I say. Don't make no difference to me.

Chappie? Did you shoot him?

Nah. I didn’t have it in me. Me as bad as he. It took a long time before I cared about that.

I think I've got to think before I say yes or no, I said.

Think all you want to, but do it, he said. Not for me maybe, but for Carla.

He slumped down in his wheelchair, looking down at the floor, continuing his tears and hard breathing. An aide came looking for him and immediately became concerned. She wheeled him off to bed and more treatment. I sat for a short time, looking out on the panorama, the country. It didn’t cheer me much at that point.

Indecision

When I got back to my mother's house, I went down in the basement. She kept some family artifacts stored there, memorabilia from me and my two sisters. They had never interested me much, so I didn't know how much of my stuff she had stored. There were boxes, not in any order, and I rummaged through them, looking for an old high school yearbook. It took a while, but I found one, very dirty with deteriorating covers. It felt creepy to look through the book, 50-plus years after the year. My life never felt more ancient, more disassociated from the person who stared back at me from the mirror each morning.

An old anxiety echoed back at me from the pages, the remnants of adolescent insecurities. A certain dread. The confident, achieving adult I’d thought I’d become dwindled into nothingness against the smell of mildew. I pried myself away from those pictures, very few in which I appeared, and concentrated on the two I needed to see now.

I found Chappie, his hair duck-tailed and as side-burned as Elvis, the headshot a swagger all by itself. I found one other picture, a group shot of students walking to and from class. There he was, the leather jacket, the jeans worn low on the hip and the wedged shoes that went with the costume. You could not buy them in a store with the wedged soles, but had them made by a local cobbler. They were unique to the time, the style, the place. My parents would never let me have a pair.

I principally looked for Carla, however. I needed to have my memory refreshed, the pixels renewed and reacquainted. Her headshot brought her back, at 17, a fresh teenager with short pinned-back hair. I remembered her as being maybe red-headed, but not brightly so. But she was more a kind of coppery shade, off-blonde. Carla was not beautiful, a slightly long nose, sharp chin, generally thin faced. She smiled, but inexpertly, as if a smile was not natural to her. It was a face that would be inclined to bony hardness later in life.

I began to remember her in the halls and in class, eyes down, passing quickly. She did not say much in the classes I shared with her. A survey of other pictures found her in no group photos. No clubs, therefore, no particular social connections. There was one picture at some sort of gathering, untitled. She played a guitar with a group listening around her. It was impossible to get a sharp view of her face, but I sensed the animation that her headshot lacked. Otherwise, nothing else jumped out to help any further inquiry.

I had planned to be in Montana for about three weeks, a couple of days with my mother, after which I would drive to my fishing cabin in southwestern Montana to spend a few days- fishing - it is what I do when I come to Montana and what I like to do. I acquired the cabin while I was still married. It seemed an extravagance at the time and a great bargain now.

My wife had no interest in Montana or in the cabin. She claimed to be an artist, who had, it turned out, very little interest in the marriage either. She finally went to New York from Chicago, following another relationship that may or may not have developed while we were married. Once divorced and once gone, property divided accordingly, I lost track of her after her move. She inhabits nightmares occasionally to this day. Marrying her - no loving her - was the worst thing I ever did.

The cabin grew some new rooms and such pleasures as gas heat, insulation, some newer alternative energy touches, and, a separate guest cabin and a bunkhouse, enlargement meant to make the place more attractive to my two sisters and their families. One lives in New York and one in California, about as far from Montana as either of them could get. They don't come back to vacation, coming occasionally sans family members to see their mother, recognizing more exalted places to spend real vacation time.

It became clear to me that coming to Montana constituted a kind of duty, not a pleasure for them, so remodeling the cabin proved futile. I get along with my sisters pretty well, though we seldom see each other. We have different perspectives on our old hometown. We all fled when young, but I am the only one with a continuing connection, the cabin, fly fishing and respite from the residue of a bad urban marriage.

To do what Chappie asked me to do would considerably interrupt my plans. Did I really want to find Carla Depuy? If she lives, would she like to be found? If Chappie had accurately described what happened, would she probably rather keep the rape somewhere in the recesses of memory? She'd be entitled.

These thoughts took me to dinner, which I had decided to eat at a favored local restaurant. My mother's caretakers take care of her meals, so I had no particular obligation there – and frequently ate elsewhere. I needed thinking over a glass of decent wine. One can find a decent glass of wine in Bullpen these days, another sign of the evaporated frontier.

Jodi

The face registered but couldn't be placed. Was it a visual echo from the past? Age does not respect memory, makes the present jarring sometimes, when the memory expects something else. It was a place I had not intended to go. After dinner I decided to walk downtown. Nice night for it. I strolled, thinking about Chappie's story and just about anything else. The little bar had a neon beer sign in the window. I could see no sign with a name. It was dimly lighted, but open. I entered the door.

She stood behind the bar, leaning on it, reading the newspaper. The bar was standard, wooden along one side of the room with metal stools on the customer side, worn red vinyl seats. Four video poker machines lined the back wall with a couple more against the wall opposite the bar. Two players worked machines against the back wall and two other customers nursed beers at the bar, watching whatever played on the small television screen mounted above the bar. The TV could be seen from every stool in the place.

She looked up, a heavy woman with bleached blonde hair, red nail polish. The watch on her left arm looked expensive. It was the only thing in the whole place that did. Slowly the mind's eye took the image and worked it back in time. Familiarity? Yes, but still struggling with recognition. I stepped further into the room. The face smiled in the practiced way of a bartender and started to ask What are you going to have? The question and the smile faded.

Jodi?

I always wondered if you would come back here sometime, not so much here, but back to town. I thought I'd know you easy, but - hell - age is hard. We ain't teenagers anymore.

It's more than 50 years, Jodi, half-a-century. We might have passed on the street and never have known each other.

Have a drink. On the house.

I had drunk a half bottle of wine at dinner, one of the reasons I started to walk. Bourbon?

You don't know your drinks anymore, so you must not do much of it. But then that's consistent.

I wanted to deflect that thought. A little water, no ice.

She laughed and reached for a brand which I did not know. You will not drink better. And she was right. It was some kind of special boutique label, smooth smoky flavor. It was like nothing I had ever had.

What to say about Jodi? She was the sexiest girl in high school; her body bloomed early, sometime in junior high. It made her a target and she was vulnerable, perhaps ready rather than vulnerable. She seemed to attract loser boyfriends, outlaws. She divided from the respectable girls early. Her mother waited tables in a local hotel restaurant. They didn't get along. There was no visible father. It’s was a classic case of not-much-home, mother-daughter conflict, no control.

I worked as lifeguard at the local YMCA, a relatively new institution in Bullpen at the time. Jodi got a job there as women's locker room attendant and general factotum. She took swimming classes, some of which I taught. She got good enough to become a lifeguard as well. We became friends, unaccountably, for I was terribly shy and not good with girls. Those, of course, were the repressed times before the avowed sexual revolution that followed - not that long afterward. I suppose I was a little repulsed by her open sexuality, at least frightened of it. I wince now, thinking about it. Lingering unease, fear and longing.

One evening, I remained to close the pool after 9 p.m. It was part of my duties at the time. The pool stayed open on some evenings for adults to swim. There were frequently no swimmers. This evening, Jodi was the other lifeguard. Part of closing included checking the locker rooms before locking the doors. I checked the pool, got the lights