The Picture Ranch 65

I decided to take Moose off medic duties and told him to make a patrol of the external perimeter, figuring if I talked Marine at him he would be more likely to oblige.

'What for?' he loomed over me. Like Ted Healy outside the Trocadero with Wallace Beery, I was expecting a beating.

'Maybe our truck's out back. I don't want to get back in Miss G's rinky-dink auto any more than you do.'

But he said no, ''cause he was lookin' out for the dame.'

He'd taken a shine to her, in the way guys like Moose sometimes do with a woman. Freud might have had something to say about that. I didn't. So I took a turn around the outside of the ranch building. It was still hot. I wasn't sure if it was Tuesday or Two o'clock. The truck was out back. Both doors open and a flat on the front off-side. The bench seat lid was on the ground. A piece of metal plate around the size of a valise for a long weekend in Acapulco had been placed carefully against the rear tyre on the same side. The cab was all beat-up, dented on every panel from bonnet to running board. I clambered up into the flat-bed. Sure enough, there was a hole the size of the metal plate, it had the same rough edges too. I wondered what they had cut it with. The space in the false bottom of the flat bed was empty. A spare tyre would've been nice. A piece of paper had caught on the jagged edge of the metal. It was around three inches square, it looked like it had come from a magazine of a certain kind. It was just big enough to show William Mulvaney's face, with the detached expression he wore in all the photographs the Pole had taken. The expression most of the youngsters wore. Not so much detached, as absent. No doubt they wished they were at the time.

Back in the veterinary room, Miss G was rifling through the drawers in a cheap deal desk. She looked up,

'Anything?'

'Flat tyre and some custom body-work. And this.'

I passed her the scrap of paper.

She rubbed her forefinger and thumb on it,

'Not cheap. Is that all there was?'

'All I could see.'

She jerked her head towards the stall where Moose was 'looking out for' Miss Caruso.

'We'll go in and explain to Moose that his new favourite mother-substitute deals in short-eyes smut and then you'll get it out of her.'

'What?'

'Where the magazines are. Who is selling this stuff?'

'What about your son?'

'I'm not sure we're going to find him.'

'He could be out there, under that X.' I said.

'He could be alive, and he will be, for as long as we don't find him.'

'Wouldn't it be better to know?' I asked her.

Her eyes went glassy behind her cheaters.

'No, Fisher. No, it wouldn't.'