Chapter 21

I did, in fact, have a little bit of pretending to be a cop I wanted to do in Dallas. While we were there I'd talk to a couple of officers I still knew on the Dallas PD, and see if they could find out anything for me about how Stryker had come to leave there. Harry'd put in the official request, but since I was going to be in town why not use my connections? Other than that, though, which I could handle by phone, I intended to leave Red Hawk behind. Maybe another year we could come back and have a real vacation, but I was going to get completely shut of the town for now.

We left out of Red Hawk early the next morning, the 14^th of June. It was Flag Day, a holiday that most people don't notice much, but which does mean something to Cecelia and I. We don't wave flags around, but we do care about the flag, because we do care about what it represents. I got that far in thinking about it, then shied away. I'm more the quiet patriot, and getting overtly enthusiastic about it, even in my own mind, embarrasses me.

Cecelia had Count Basie in the CD player. We'd brought a collection of CDs we both could appreciate, and later on we'd alternate, but I'd told her to go ahead and play whatever she wanted till we hit US 270. We were going north out of Red Hawk – in some ways the town resembles my office, which is in a location that's not convenient to anywhere – and so she'd have a fair amount of time to hear whatever she wanted, without interruption.

Darlia was excited. My working on vacation had been hard on her, for during vacations I get to spend even more time with her than I do when we're at home. Even though I don't work a whole lot, between her school and the cases I do handle she's with Cecelia more than with me, and vacation is a time when I can be with her as much as we both want. And this vacation hadn't turned out that way. While we were on this little side trip we could make up, somewhat, for the disruption of our plans.

I'd called around to various Dallas hotels the night before, and went ahead and reserved us a suite this time rather than explain to a reluctant reservation clerk why I wanted two rooms, and why I was going to put a nine-year-old in one of them, by herself. It was costing me serious money, as was the trip itself – as, indeed, the whole vacation was. But then I've got money to burn. Even though, having people I love to spend it on, I spend more money since I got married than I used to, I've got more than I did before I met Cecelia. Her management has indeed brought us to the point where, earlier in the year, she'd told me with alarm that we were getting to have too much money. So long as we didn't materially alter our lifestyle, we could make it another 40 years or so without another dime of work-related income.

But I remember what it's like to work for a living. I received my inheritance from Tony and Anna in 1989, and managed to increase it over the years; after I married Cecelia she took over and things really took off. But I know what it's like to get sweaty and dirty and tired, to get up in the dark and get home in the dark, to put in long hours for not much money. That knowledge is one reason I've never become ostentatious; it's why I still dress as I do, and live as I do. Money is a tool, not an end; it represents labor, and isn't the god of all the universe. And if I liked my jeans and boots and cowboy shirts when I was a wage slave, why shouldn't I like the same things now that I'm not? My tastes didn't change when I got rich – nor shall they.

So we drove along, Count Basie in the CD player, and then Thelonious Monk, and then Dave Brubeck. And I enjoyed it, for when I listen to jazz my taste is the same as Cecelia's. There's probably good jazz coming out these days, but I don't look terribly hard for it. I'm so much in love with Trane and Bird and the Duke, and Pops Armstrong, and all those other "oldies" that I could listen to them for years on end. Cecelia prefers bop, and I like it, but when she put on the Preservation Hall Jazz Band's Marching Down Bourbon Street I really got happy, because traditional jazz – trad, New Orleans style, what many people call Dixieland – is my favorite.

Nevertheless, when we got to the highway and my turn came, I slipped in Lefty Frizzell; I was in a mood for "The Long Black Veil," one of the saddest country songs there's ever been. When that CD was over Cecelia put in some Miles Davis - Kind of Blue, it was; I followed with Berlin's Count Three and Pray though I don't listen to a great deal of rock; Cecelia then played a Charlie Parker compilation...

It was when we got to the highway that Cecelia, who was in the passenger seat, reached down and unclipped her holster and put it in the glove compartment. She'd been wearing the gun everywhere since Stryker's roust, and I could tell she was relieved to take it off. I was ready to take mine off my belt as well, but it would have been too much of a hassle to do it while belted in and driving, given that I wear it on my left side, and would have had to deal with the door. Cecelia had dealt with the door by leaning toward me, but she wasn't driving.

Periodically as we drove we'd ask Darlia what music she wanted to hear, since she was in the car with us. Generally her tastes follow ours, though not in every detail. She loves to listen to Christian music, while Cecelia and I – though we've both been Christians since before we met – have never developed a taste for it. We love to sing the hymns, but we don't really care, for whatever reason, to listen to others sing them. Darlia does, however, and at one point she had us play one of her George Beverly Shea albums, at another one of her Hosanna music CDs – and once, with a brilliant smile, the recording of her recital last year at school, the first time she'd got up before an audience and sang. Most of the music was Christian music, but the reason for the grin was the fact that we love to listen to it too; how could we not, with Darlia's husky voice rising in solo renditions of three songs?

It's a long drive from Red Hawk to Dallas, especially when you travel the way we do. We're not interested in just getting from Point A to Point B as fast as possible. We like to see what's beside the road, and we make stops here and there to stretch and breathe the air and listen to the world around us. Cecelia and I are both from the country, and while Darlia's lived in Albuquerque all her life we've tried to teach her about stopping and, as the cliché goes, smelling the roses. We consequently didn't get into Dallas until after dark. We were tired from the drive, but not as tired as we'd have been if we'd just sat in the car all day while it rushed along. We both of us can drive non-stop as far as we have to. But we don't like to, and because we don't like to, we arrive at our destinations, whenever we make a long drive, later than we might have otherwise, but much fresher.