Potshot by Robert B. Parker Page B

I’d have to kick them to death.
    I checked out of the hotel. Got in my rental car. Turned up the air-conditioning and headed for the airport. For quite a while I was on a two-lane highway, and everywhere I looked there was only desert. A lot of the landscape was cactus and sage and scrub growth that looked brittle and sharp. It was a landscape in which no horse could gallop. It was a landscape through which a horse would pick his way, slowly, weaving in and out through the hostile vegetation. You just couldn’t trust the movies.
    After my initial foray, I concluded that all in Potshot was not as it seemed. There was something going on with Lou Buckman that I didn’t get. There was a lot going on with Dean Walker I didn’t get. And there was something about Potshot that I didn’t get. More annoying, I didn’t even get what it was I didn’t get. It was just a sense that in almost all my dealings with almost everyone I’d talked with, there was another story being told that I couldn’t hear.
    I sort of trusted The Preacher. He appeared to be a vicious thug and I had no reason to think that he wasn’t. It was nice to be able to count on somebody.
    I finally reached the interstate and turned on. Another hour to the airport and less than five hours home. There was something exultant about being alone on the highway under the high, hot, empty sky two thousand miles from anything familiar, heading straight for the horizon. And the fact that Susan was eventually beyond that horizon made the feeling tangible as it flickered along the nerve tracks. There were few words in the language better than ‘going home.’ Home, of course, was Susan Silverman. It was good that she was in Boston, because I liked it there. But if she moved to Indianapolis, then that would be home. I could make a living. There was crime everywhere.

16
    Susan and I had but recently engaged in some highly inventive home-from-the-hills-is-the-hunter activity, and were now lying together on our backs on top of the covers while the sweat dried on our naked bodies. Pearl the Wonder Dog was curled up at the foot of the bed in a state of mild irritation that she wasn’t able to weasel her way in between us.
    ‘So you turned tail and ran,’ Susan said. ‘I didn’t know you were that sensible.’
    ‘The grave’s a fine and private place,’ I said, ‘but none I think do there embrace.’
    ‘Do you mean that you didn’t want to get killed,’ Susan said, ‘because if you did you couldn’t boff me?’
    ‘Exactly,’ I said.
    ‘Whatever your reasons,’ Susan said, ‘I’m glad you’re home.’
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘What are you going to do?’
    ‘About Potshot?’
    ‘Un-huh.’
    Susan had her head on my shoulder. My arm was around her.
    ‘This is exactly the right moment,’ I said, ‘for me to light two cigarettes and hand one to you.’
    ‘Makes you regret not smoking for a moment,’ Susan said.
    ‘Only for a moment,’ I said.
    ‘So what’s going to happen in Potshot?’
    ‘I’ll go back out,’ I said. ‘Push some more.’
    ‘Because you said you would.’
    ‘Well, yeah. And because if I don’t do what I say I’ll do, in a little while I’ll be out of business. Because doing what I say I’ll do is pretty much what I have to sell.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘And, I don’t like to get chased away.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I could give it up, and stand at stud.’
    ‘I wouldn’t,’ Susan said.
    ‘Just a thought,’ I said.
    ‘Does Mary Lou Whatsis know you’ve left?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Does she know you’re coming back?’
    ‘I told her I would. But I’m not sure she believed me.’
    ‘The more fool she,’ Susan said. ‘Should we get up and prepare a postcoital supper?’
    At the foot of the bed Pearl raised her head and looked at us.
    ‘Which word do you think she understands?’ I said. ‘Post-coital? Or supper?’
    ‘She understands everything,’ Susan said.
    ‘Well she can join us,’ I said.