Now Ronald worked with veterans, but he did so entirely without the assistance of the US government or military. He wanted nothing to do with either. I think that was one of the reasons why he sold pot. It wasn’t so much that he cared one way or another about drugs: it was just a means of quietly socking it to Uncle Sam for sacrificing Elsa, Ronald’s German Shepherd, back in Vietnam. He was largely a recreational dealer, though: Ronald probably gave away more than he sold, and smoked the rest himself.
I hadn’t seen him in a while. Someone told me that he’d left town. His brother up in Old Town was ill, or so the story went, and Ronald was helping his family out. But as far as I knew, Ronald didn’t have a brother.
Tonight his eyes were brighter than usual, and he was wearing a blue sport jacket over jeans, a matching shirt and off-white sneakers.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘the denim shirt and jeans look only works if you’re a country singer, or you own a farm.’
Ronald gave me a hard look.
‘Should I tell you of how, long before the white man came, my people roamed these lands?’
‘In matching denim?’
‘We move with the times.’
‘Not fast enough.’
He followed me into my office. I offered him coffee, or a beer if he was in the mood, but he declined both. He took a seat in one of the armchairs. He was a big man, and he made the chair look too small for him. Actually, the way he had to squeeze himself into it made me start worrying about how we were going to get him out again when he tried to stand. I had visions of injecting Crisco down the sides from a pastryicing bag.
‘So, how have you been?’ I asked.
‘I stopped drinking,’ he said.
‘Really?’
Ronald had never been a big drinker, from what I could recall, but he had been a steady one, although he stuck to beer for the most part.
‘Yeah. I quit smoking weed too.’
This was news.
‘You stop dealing as well?’
‘I got enough money in the bank. I don’t need to do that no more.’
‘You didn’t fall off a horse on the road to Damascus, did you?’
‘No, man. I don’t like horses. You thinking of the Plains Indians. You ought to read a book, educate yourself.’
Ronald said all of this with an entirely straight face. It was generally hard to tell if he was serious or joking, at least not until he started punching you in the gut.
‘I heard you’d been out of town for a while,’ I said. ‘I guess now I know what you were doing. You were selfimproving.’
‘And thinking.’
‘Mind if I ask what about?’
‘Life. Philosophical shit. You wouldn’t understand, being a white man.’
‘You look good for it, even to a white man.’
‘I decided it wasn’t positive for me to be drinking and smoking and dealing when I was working with men for whom all of those activities might prove a temptation. If I was going to help them get straight and clean, I had to be straight and clean myself, you understand?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I kept up with the newspapers, though. You weren’t in them. Looks like you haven’t shot anyone in months. You retired?’
‘I could be tempted to break my spell of gun celibacy, under the current circumstances. Are you just here to yank my chain, or is there something I can help you with?’
‘I hear you been around the homeless shelters asking questions,’ said Ronald.
In his dealings with veterans, Ronald was often to be found working in the shelters, trying to form bonds with men and women who felt abandoned by their country once their period in uniform was over. Some of them even ended up staying with him on occasion. Despite his somewhat stony demeanor, Ronald Straydeer had a seemingly infinite capacity for empathy.
‘That’s right.’
‘Veterans?’
Ronald had helped me out in the past with cases involving soldiers or the military. It was his turf, and he was conscious of protecting it.
‘Not really, or only by association. You knew Jude, right?’
‘Yeah. He was a good man. Dressed funny, but he was helpful. I hear he died. Suicide.’
‘I don’t think he killed himself. I believe that he was helped into the next world.’
‘Any idea why?’
‘Can I ask why you’re interested?’
‘Someone’s got to look out for these people. I try. If the city’s homeless are being targeted for any reason. I’d like to know.’
That was as good a reason as any for asking questions.
‘It’s early,’ I said, ‘but I think he might have been killed because he went looking for his daughter. Her name was Annie, and she was following in her father’s footsteps, in both senses of the term. She’d lost her way, and ended up on the streets. I believe she was trying to draw him to her, while at the same time keeping him at a distance. She was staying at a women’s shelter in Bangor, but she’s not there any longer. There’s nobody around to report her missing, but I have a feeling that she might have been snatched. Jude was concerned about her before he died.’
‘And what’s this to you?’
‘A friend of Jude’s, a man named Shaky, told me that Jude had saved up to buy a few hours of my time. Call it an obligation on my part.’
‘I know Shaky. Any idea who might have taken the girl?’
‘You ever been to the town of Prosperous?’
‘No. Heard of it. Don’t think they have much time for the natives, or anyone who isn’t white and wealthy.’
‘Annie told someone up in Bangor that she’d been offered a job by a older couple from Prosperous. She collected her things from the shelter before taking a ride with them, and that was the last anyone saw of her.’
‘The couple might have been lying,’ said Ronald. ‘It’s easy to say you’re from one place when you’re actually from another.’
‘I had considered that.’
‘It’s why you are a detective.’
‘That’s right. I like to think of myself as wise for a white man.’
‘That bar is set low,’ said Ronald.
‘Not for all of us, and perhaps not for Annie Broyer. I get the sense, from the people I’ve spoken with about her, that she wasn’t dumb. Otherwise she wouldn’t have survived on the streets for as long as she did. I think she would have asked for some proof that these people were on the level. If she said she was going to Prosperous, then I believe that’s where she ended up. Unfortunately, according to the local police, there’s no sign of her, and never has been.’
I hadn’t told Ronald anything that Shaky or the cops in Portland didn’t already know for the most part. Any other thoughts or suspicions, among them the peculiar history of the Familists, I kept to myself.
Ronald remained seated silently in his chair. He appeared to be contemplating something, even if it was how he was going to get out of the chair now that he’d found out what he wanted to know.
‘How did the people who killed Jude find him?’ said Ronald at last.
People: Ronald knew that it took more than a single person to stage a hanging, even one involving a man as seemingly weak as Jude.
‘They watched the shelters,’ I replied. ‘He was, as you remarked, a distinctive figure.’
‘Someone might have noticed them. The homeless, the sharp ones, they’re always watching. They keep an eye out for the cops, for friends, for men and women with grudges against them. It’s hard and merciless at the bottom of the pond. You have to be careful if you don’t want to get eaten.’
Ronald was right. I hadn’t asked enough questions on the streets. I had allowed myself to become sidetracked by Prosperous and what it might represent, but perhaps there was another way.
‘Any suggestions as to whom I might talk with?’