House of Sand and Fog: A Novel

by Andre Dubus III

  “Yes, sir.”

  The lieutenant tapped his pen once in his open palm, then he stood, and so did Lester.

  “Consider this an oral reprimand to get back in line. And next time I ask you to my office I don’t care if there’s a death in the family, I want you in that chair. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have a bright future here, Deputy. I highly recommend you don’t shit where you eat. Good day.”

  On the other side of the bathroom door the colonel was speaking low in Farsi to his teenage son. But the son was quiet and Lester wondered if he was scared. The colonel certainly didn’t sound scared. Was he feeling resigned to this new situation? That he would just have to reverse the house sale and that was that? Lester didn’t think so; he remembered the colonel’s face after he’d pulled the gun barrel from under his chin, his narrowed eyes, his lips a straight line. Now Lester wiped sweat from his forehead, tried to breathe deeply through his nose, but the air wasn’t coming fast enough. This was crazy; Behrani was too proud to take defeat so passively. Was he playing possum? Was he just biding his time until he and his family were free of Lester and his gun? And when would that be? After this little house was empty of their things and they got about four blocks down the road in their U-Haul to a pay phone to call Alvarez in Redwood City?

  The colonel’s wife was washing dishes quietly in a sink full of water. Lester could smell Kathy’s cigarette smoke, and he thought he could get away with leaving Mrs. Behrani alone for a minute or two. He called Kathy’s name and heard her get off the couch immediately. He didn’t know how she would take what he was about to tell her, but he began by pulling the loaded magazine from the pistol and thumbing each 9mm round into the palm of his hand. She came up to his side, her hair a little wild, her face shadowed, and he kissed her quickly on the lips, tasting tea and nicotine, then took her hand and placed the bullets in it. One fell to the carpet and he stooped quickly and put it back in her palm. He whispered: “We have to bail out of this.”

  Kathy looked at him and shook her head, her eyes dark and moist, her lips parted like there was something she’d been prepared to say but now forgot what it was.

  “This prick’s not going to let this all slide, Kath. As soon as we send him packing he’ll make his move.”

  “What do you mean? Let him keep the house?”

  Lester could see her heart beating in her jugular vein. “No, you need to sell him this house. Take the money he gave the county and let him do whatever he wants with this little place.”

  “It was my father’s, Les.” A tear edged itself out her right eye, and Lester thumbed it away. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. He was about to say he was sorry, he’d lost his temper and fucked up, but the bathroom door opened and the colonel and boy came out, the colonel in dress pants, white shirt, and silk tie, the boy in basketball shoes, bright green surfer shorts, and a tank top. Lester could smell the colonel’s cologne, something sweet and European. He stepped with Kathy into the doorway of the boy’s bedroom and waved his gun at them to move into the kitchen. He felt Kathy standing squarely behind him out of sight, sniffling and sticking the bullets into her shorts pockets. When the two Behranis reached the kitchen counter, their backs to the hallway, Lester told them to stay right there. The boy was taller than the father, and he was looking in the direction of his mother at the sink. Lester leaned back against the door casing so he could still see them, but Kathy too. She was looking at him, her eyes welling up. “This is my fault. I didn’t mean for you to get into this.”

  Lester thought how it was true they wouldn’t be here now if she had only met him last night at the fish camp, if she had gone there—drunk or sober—instead of here with his gun, but he could feel the Behranis waiting and this wasn’t the time; they would have to talk later. He whispered: “I know you didn’t. Listen, take his money and he’ll still have his real estate and then maybe I can convince him to keep things between us.” Kathy wiped her nose and shook her head. “It won’t work. You haven’t seen his temper.”

  Lester looked at the father and son. The boy had crossed his arms across his chest, and the colonel was resting one hand on the countertop as if he were close to losing his patience. A warm flash passed through Lester’s face and neck, and his mouth went dry. She was right; even if Behrani agreed to this sudden change in plan, they couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t turn on them anywhere along the line out of vengeance, the house in his hands or not. He felt Kathy’s fingers on his arm.

  “We have to get away, don’t we?”

  Lester nodded. But what were they going to do? Just drive away from here and keep driving? And in what? His Toyota and Kathy’s wanted car? Or would they have to leave Kathy’s car behind? Airports would be put under surveillance. So would all the bus and train stations. They would have to disguise themselves, rent a car under false names, and make their way north or south to the border. Lester’s mouth tasted like metal, his legs seemed to have disappeared, and he was adrift in cold black space. How and when would he be able to see Bethany and Nate again? To hold them? Kiss them? But what was the alternative? Criminal charges? Prison?

  “We’re going to need that money, Kathy.”

  She looked down the hallway, then closed her eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t want you to fall into my shit, Les. I really didn’t.”

  “Hey,” he said, kissing her quickly on the cheeks and lips. “Your shit’s my shit. Think of someplace sunny we can go.”

  THE KEYS WERE still in Kathy’s Bonneville, and Lester had the colonel and boy sit in the front while he sat in back. The upholstery was already warm from the sun, and the inside of the car smelled faintly of gasoline and Kathy’s cigarette smoke. At Lester’s feet was an empty Bacardi rum nip. He told the colonel to start the car and drive it over the lawn and around to the rear of the house. Behrani paused before putting the car in gear. The son glanced at his father, then looked away, and Lester leaned forward and pressed the gun barrel to the back of the colonel’s neck. The boy seemed to stiffen in the passenger’s seat, and Lester felt bad about that, but not enough to pull the gun away. The colonel drove slowly around to the back of the house. There were beads of sweat on his bald head. One dripped into another and caused a rivulet to run into the old officer’s thinning black-and-gray hair.

  “Pull right up to the hedge and give me the keys.” Lester turned to the son, who was looking straight ahead through the windshield as if they were on the open road. The boy’s sideburns were soft, downy hairs. “Esmail—am I pronouncing your name correctly?”

  The boy nodded once.

  “Good. Now I want you to listen to me, Esmail. Last night you did something that got your family locked into the bathroom, and right now we’re going for a ride to Redwood City and I want you along for company. Look at me, please.” The boy did, and Lester pressed the barrel a bit deeper into the colonel’s neck. “Men learn from their mistakes, Esmail. And you don’t want consequences to get any worse, do you?”

  Esmail shook his head, his eyes on the trigger finger of Lester’s hand.

  “Good boy.” Lester got out of the car and stuck his weapon into the waistband of his pants, covering it with his shirt. The sky was a bright gray haze that made him squint, and he had the colonel walk first, then the boy. The inside of the colonel’s Buick was as clean as a model right off the lot, and Lester sat in the back directly behind Esmail in the passenger seat and stretched his leg out on the gray fabric. When the colonel started the engine, Lester pressed the window button for some air, held his pistol in his lap, and told the colonel to drive down the hill and take Hillside Boulevard for El Camino Real south.

  Lester’s mouth was dry from the black Persian tea and no sleep, and he wanted a cold Coke, though he knew he didn’t need the sugar or caffeine; it was as if he was in a downward rush off a mountain, a fine electric current running from his feet to his brain, and the feeling wouldn’t stop until he landed on solid ground. But where wou
ld that be? Mexico? Driving south through Chula Vista and the neighborhoods of his youth to the same border post his father had worked? No, they would drive north to Vancouver or British Columbia, where he’d heard there were mountains along the coast. He and Kathy could get lost in them, find a cabin where they’d spend the morning and early afternoons in bed, getting up to shower together, then dress and go into one of those seaside towns in search of a long hot meal. Lester felt Bethany and Nate standing outside this picture, and he tried to swallow, but couldn’t. And would it be that easy anyway? Did the United States have an extradition treaty with Canada? Would they have to lie low there too? Lester didn’t know. He would have to find out.

  At the bottom of the hill the colonel stopped at the intersection before the main drag through downtown Corona. Across the street was a black-and-white from the city parked against the curb, and Lester recognized the young cop behind the wheel. His name was Cutler. One night last spring Lester had given him cross-jurisdictional backup for a jeep full of drunk fraternity boys from San Francisco State. Now he glanced over at the colonel’s Buick just as it took the left for Hillside, and Lester slowly turned his face away, kept his eyes on the colonel’s profile as he drove them up into the hills past pure stands of ponderosa pine broken up by the trimmed lawns of homes with seaside views from their second-story decks. The sky was still gray and it made the grass appear a heightened green, not quite natural. The colonel was driving with both hands on the wheel, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds. Lester turned and saw three or four cars on the incline behind them and he leaned back and told the colonel in a calm and relaxed voice to speed up a bit. The colonel obeyed instantly. Was he still playing possum? Or was he truly deep under Lester’s thumb? Deep enough he would stay quiet after this was all through? Lester felt a rise of hope in him. Maybe there was still a way to work this out. He took his service pistol and slid it beneath his leg.

  “We need to talk, Colonel.”

  Behrani’s eyes darted to the rearview, and Lester saw new fear in them, that and a hardness, one he would have to start softening right now.

  “How much did you pay for the house?”

  “Forty-five thousand dollars.”

  Lester looked down at his hands, his long thin fingers, the fingers of a woman; he knew an auction price would be low, but he hadn’t expected it to be a third of what the house was worth. He took a half breath and let it out. Why give this dictatorial son of a bitch the best deal? What had he done to deserve it? Why not take his money and the house? But it wasn’t what the colonel had done last night, Lester knew; it was what he had done. And Kathy. There was still time to plea-bargain; they weren’t completely on the run yet.

  “Ms. Nicolo’s not a well woman.”

  The colonel’s eyes moved to the rearview mirror again, and this time they looked softer, curious, not about Kathy probably, but the direction of the conversation, the shift in tone. This was good, Lester thought, two men talking.

  “You saw that last night, didn’t you, Colonel?”

  The boy looked at his father, then straight ahead at the road.

  “Yes.”

  “What she really needs is rest.”

  Behrani looked like he wanted to say something, but was content to wait for hours.

  “She’s had a change of heart about the house.”

  “What does this mean?” The colonel glanced back into the mirror.

  “It means you can keep it.”

  Behrani’s eyebrows went up, two thin snakes springing out of nowhere. “She does not wish the sale to be rescinded?”

  “Yes and no. Only she wants to be included in the transaction this time. No county, just a private deal.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Between the two of you. You take the county check and sign it over to her. When the county returns ownership to Kathy, she’ll just let you keep it and she gets some rest.”

  They were entering a small business district, passing a clothing boutique, a golf supply outlet, and a video store and sandwich shop. Behrani’s eyes were back on the road, his face expressionless. “She will produce the proper paperwork for this amount? It will be in writing the bungalow belongs to me?”

  “Yes.”

  Up ahead was the turnoff for Skyline Boulevard and the Junipero Serra Freeway. Lester usually took El Camino Real, but the freeway would get them there faster.

  “Are we agreed, Colonel?”

  Behrani glanced into the rearview. “Once the county bureaucrats have written the property in my name, I will give to her the money.”

  Lester took a deep chest-wavering breath and let it out. That could take days. “Take the Skyline, please.”

  The colonel took the turn slowly. He had just agreed to sign over the check, but why the somber, doubtful tone in his voice? It was the circumstances under which all this was happening, Lester was sure of it. It was the colonel’s pride. Lester thought that maybe he should apologize, just explain that he hadn’t known what had happened to Kathy, that he’d overreacted and now would like to put it all behind them if he could. But then he would be offering the captive colonel his bare throat, and a new fear was beginning to move coolly through Lester’s ribcage; the county tax office was fifty yards from the Hall of Justice building in Redwood City, so he would have to let the colonel go in alone and hope he was sold enough on this new proposition just to sign his papers and leave without an extra word to anyone. And what about the boy? If Lester let him go with his father, then Lester would be a lone target on a shelf if Behrani concluded he was better off calling in the wolves than keeping his end of the agreement. And what was in it for Behrani to stay in the deal? He already owned the house. All he would be getting in return is what he already had, that, and Kathy and Lester off his back, which he could also get if he called the department from the county tax office and a half-dozen deputies descended on Lester sitting in the colonel’s Regal. No, Lester thought, this was no time for false hopes; the thing to work on was getting back to Corona with the county check, then taking a reading on things from there. And he was going to have to reconsider the tone of this whole exchange; the only thing Lester still had going for him was the fact he had lost his temper last night, that he was still armed, and for all practical purposes was moving the colonel and son against their will and they still did not know what he was capable of, which meant Lester was going to have to keep the boy in the car with him once they got to Redwood City, keep the boy as some kind of human collateral, a thought that sent a tinge through Lester’s shoulder and neck. He rotated his head once but his muscles were too tight for anything to crack.

  He looked out the window. Skyline Boulevard ran along the spine of hills that divided the ocean side of the penninsula from the bay, and when he first began to patrol this territory, Lester had been taken by the absolute contrasts in vegetation on either side. The land to the west, from the hills to the beaches of the Pacific, was locked in fog and rain and so was thick with forests of live oak, digger pine, madrone, and Douglas fir. And south of Half Moon Bay the farmland was planted right to the shore, wide-open artichoke fields that were such a sustained green, Lester found it almost too much to take in while driving. Lawns came in thick and coarse, but green. But in towns to the east, from San Bruno to Palo Alto, the grass looked parched and yellowed. Even the watered grounds of estates in Woodside didn’t have quite the same chlorophyll-rich look as those to the west. Lester’s own lawn in Millbrae was too dry and coarse to sit on without a chair. And it was yellow at the roots. Instead of tall evergreens, the bayside towns were filled with dry shrub of manzanita, piñon, and toyon, plant life that did well in eroded soil.

  Soon they were on the freeway and the colonel was driving at a normal speed. An eighteen-wheeler began to pass on the left and Lester could see only the spinning chrome of its wheels through the window. He lowered the pistol between his knees and placed it on the floor at his feet. On their left was San Andreas lake, the start of the fish
and game refuge, the water catching the bright gray of the sky. Lester closed his eyes to it a moment but then opened them just as quickly. He still had that hum inside him and it was not unfamiliar; his limbs felt light, as if vapor moved through them instead of blood, and everything he saw had a new clarity to it: the small dots of lint in the gray fabric of the Buick’s headrests; the colonel’s profile whenever he would glance to the left or right, the way Lester could distinguish easily between each eyelash; the boy’s hair, as black as a Mexican’s, his pink scalp barely visible between thick strands, just the hint of smooth brown pigment. It was adrenaline but more; it was adrenaline that had stopped coming in amateurish gushes and instead shifted into a slow feed, the whole body on a sort of molecular alert. Lester had known this feeling from the births of both his children; he’d known it with varying degrees in his work; and now it seemed to come with the territory of leaving one’s wife, with stepping so far over the line to do it Lester felt sure he was about to come up with a pan full of gold or else get swept down the river altogether. And you couldn’t really call it a bad feeling. It occurred to him now it was probably how felons wanted to feel all the time.

  The sun had burned through the cloud bank and was warm on his skin through the glass. He was thirsty and wanted a bottle of cold spring water, but he couldn’t send the colonel or boy into a store to get some, and he couldn’t chance all three of them going in either. In the lane in front of them was a municipal van full of Chicano kids, ten or eleven years old. Most seemed to be moving about in their seats laughing and shouting at each other. But sitting sideways at the rear window was a teenage boy wearing a white helmet, his mouth open, his chin wet with saliva, and he kept rocking back and forth, looking directly at the Buick, at all three of them, it seemed. The colonel slowly changed lanes to pass, and the boy began to rock faster in his seat, his eyes following the Buick as it began to pull out of his sight, his mouth nothing but a dark wet hole in his face.