She was still working on my right eye, so I opened the left.
“Who was Richard Hauser?”
“A boy I liked in kindergarten. There were several years and cities between us before I swiped his name and bought myself an engagement ring. It’s a half-carat of cubic zirconium. I think that’s so funny. I don’t know why. But it makes me smile all the time. Very few people can tell the difference. I’m frugal—I mean, cheap. It cost me four hundred bucks instead of ten grand.”
She held up her left hand to show me her thoroughly counterfeit ring. And the maybe-gold wedding band alongside it.
“Clever. Why did your family move so much?”
“Dad and Mom. Work.”
“A publications director and a nurse.”
“Always a job for Dad and plenty of offers for Mom. They were grass-is-greener people. Always better somewhere else. When Daley was born they really sped up. Maybe they felt trapped. Every year a new city. Greener grass.”
I recognized some of that in my own parents. And Dad was career Navy for twenty years, so he had to go where they sent him. Scratched that itch for him. Mom the same way. Would still rather go than stay. I grew up in Navy towns, San Diego being the largest and longest.
She placed her hands on my cheeks. “Turn your head to the right.”
Which left me with both eyes open, facing my home, a century-plus-old fortress of adobe brick, with just a few lights on and its usual air of entropy, if not neglect. It deserved better.
“The hard part about faking marriage is digging up an occasional real man when you need one,” she said. “Socially, of course. I’ve managed. But really, people are always so willing to take other people’s word for things, don’t you think? I mean, it’s really much easier to believe what someone tells you than it is to follow every little suspicion down the bunny trail to see what’s really going on. Look at the couple with nine children locked up in the house, hardly fed them, chained them to the beds and starved them. Relatives? Neighbors? Nobody said one thing. Because they wanted to believe the family was normal, like the mom and dad said it was.”
I felt the cooler air as the bandage came off, then the swipe again of alcohol and antibiotic. Heard the rattle of paper as Penelope opened a new dressing.
“Good as new up here,” she said. “I’ll work on that back of yours, if you can hack it.”
I unbuttoned my shirt. She stood and came around behind me to help get it off.
“You have a nice body, Roland, but it hurts just looking at it.”
“Glad I don’t have to see it.”
“Well, time to get tough, hombre.”
I tried to let my mind wander as she lifted off one bandage after another, picked away at dried scabs and the newly surfaced grit. The mind won’t wander at times like this.
“Ever married, then?”
“Nope.”
“You’re sure?”
I felt her hands stop moving. “Now you don’t trust me.”
“You’re too good a liar to trust.”
Silence.
“Look, Roland Ford—I just told you something true about myself. My big bad. Maybe that was stupid. Some people are better off the less they know. They prefer it. Insist on it. I hope that’s not you. I chose you because you dig to the bottom of things and don’t quit until you’re there.”
“At the bottom.”
“Yes.”
“Is that even good?”
“It’s what I need.”
“What else are you hiding?”
I felt her slap on a fresh bandage. She came around and studied me. Hooked a strand of hair behind one ear. Drilled in with those flat blue eyes of hers. Her judgment look. Then the flash of her never-distant temper.
“It must be tiring being you,” I said.
“Now what?”
“Your anger. Your deceit.”
“Mister, if this was a movie and I had a knife, this is where I’d throw it past your head and it would stick in the tree trunk behind you and shiver back and forth. And I’d have your full attention and my anger would have produced good results.”
“Plenty of knives in the kitchen,” I said.
A staredown. Her weighing things. Then a split decision. Close on the judges’ cards. Her face relaxing in slow gradients.
“You’ll trust me someday,” she said. “You just watch.”
Then behind me again, picking away at my wounds with what felt like slightly reduced empathy. I was glad she didn’t have a knife. Not a word between us.
It seemed to take hours, and I was happy for it to be over. She sprayed on the topical painkiller and it cooled things off a little. She helped me back on with the shirt. Sat down across from me as before and buttoned me up. Leaned in closer. Eyes on me, her critical squint.
“There’s nothing I can do about this lip,” she said. “It’s going to have to heal on its own.”
Kissed it softly.
The yellow Beetle putting down the drive. Memories blowing in like a rainstorm.
16
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HELLISH HEAT, and the sun was barely up. Hot as Al Anbar Province, except for the eighty pounds of gear I wasn’t carrying.
I used the early light to dig a burrow in the sand behind a long-fallen tree trunk in a thicket of dead and dying greasewoods. I laid my shotgun on a bed of branches and my hunting vest over it. Set up my telescope for a view of the Paradise Date Farm.
Then took a few minutes and treated myself to coffee from a thermos and a sunrise cigarette. Listened intently for the bee-buzz of the little drone that had tracked me when I’d come here for a look around. So far, no sound at all but the occasional doves flying overhead on squeaky wings.
It was a Tuesday, mid-September in the Imperial Valley, forecast for 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Five days since I whupped those six flyweights in their matching silver helmets, less than half a mile from here. My rib laughed at me as I worked myself into the burrow. The lump on my forehead smarted under my breezer, the sweat burned into my stitches, but the coffee and smoke made me think of Fallujah—a vast, palm-lush, and hostile beauty.
My telescope was a gift from Justine. We’d spent some long and pleasant hours with it on new-moon nights, out in the hills beyond the pond, spying on the heavens. It’s a powerful thing, and with the tripod legs pulled in and pushed well into the sand, the heavy scope was stable.
My foxhole was on a rise. Paradise Date Farm coalesced into startling detail before me: the main house and the large hangar. The red barn and the packing house and the cottages, all in their loose circle. Three silver Expeditions with the SNR Security logo on the doors were parked neatly outside the main house. Six cars stood in front of the long bunkhouse, windows cracked to defer the heat, half of them outfitted with children’s car seats. A few more waited in carports alongside the cottages.
Four dark men loaded wicker baskets and ropes and boxes into the trucks. Long-sleeved shirts and ball caps. They stacked ladders in a long-bed dually, the faint clang of equipment and their voices reaching me across the still, dry air.
Through the open roll-up doors of the metal hangar I saw a row of ATVs, a Bobcat, and two full-sized John Deere tractors, all clean and well tended. Conversing just inside the door were three men wearing the same desert camouflage as the San Onofre guards, and a fourth man in tan slacks and a black golf shirt. He was tall, muscled, and blond, and seemed to have some rank on the uniforms. Hair longer on top and short on the sides, same as Daley Rideout’s guardians. One of whom had shot Nick Moreno in his bed at point-blank range.
A moment later, Adam Revell came through the front door of the main house with an American flag tucked under one arm. The screen door tapped shut behind him. He wore the same blue guard uniform he’d worn to Alchemy 101 the night we’d become friends. He cut in front of two of the ha
rvest workers as if they didn’t exist, on his way to the flagpole that stood not far from the front porch. Then hoisted the flag adroitly, keeping it from touching the ground. Inside the hangar, the men turned to watch, one of the camouflage uniforms saluting casually.
* * *
—
AT EIGHT SHARP, a very old white pickup truck came to a stop at the speaker console outside the main gate. The truck was mine. I’d accepted it for payment from a neighbor whose missing cat I had located last year around Christmas. Looking for that animal had cost me some valuable hours, and in the end the cat had actually located me. Oxley. My neighbor really loves Oxley, and their reunion was moving. The not-quite-derelict truck had been sitting in my barn ever since, battery disconnected and covered by a tarp. It was old and beaten, but big enough to carry the tools of Burt’s new trade: ladders, buckets, commercial sponges big as bread loaves, squeegees, extension poles, glass cleaner concentrate, rags, rags, rags. Grandpa Dick had once been a commercial artist and early in his career had done signage. He had used light-gray paint to give the door stencil a weathered and authentic look:
Imperial Window Cleaning
Since 1976
I watched the dust settle as the window went down. Saw Burt punching away at the keypad, his white painter’s cap tilted up cheerfully. Frank sat next to him, staring impassively out at a vast desert so unlike his Salvadoran home. Burt talked into the intercom. We had predicted that getting past the gate would be easy. But getting a go-ahead to start work would be trickier.
What I’ll say, Roland, once I’m in, is somebody from SNR Security called and told me to get out to this hellhole and wash the windows. I drove eighty miles and I’m not turning around now. Look at your damned windows. Might have to charge you the extra-duty rate. How would I know who called? The boss says where to go, that’s where I go. And I don’t come back without his money. This is cash or check, I’m sure you were told.
Burt rolled up his window and the gate arm rose. That smile of his. Frank said something and smiled, too.
The old white truck came bouncing into the compound and parked outside the main house. Two camo-clad SNR men approached it, one at each door. Burt slid out, cowboy boots puffing up the dust. Burt believes that his shortness gives him an advantage over most people in most situations. Says it has to do with uncertainty. Animals love him, especially dogs and horses. Francisco didn’t move.
Muscle Blond from the hangar strode across the yard. Burt swung out his hand, but the man refused to take it. They appeared to introduce themselves. They were soon joined by a man and woman who came from the house. Pistols on their hips. The couple looked late twenties, he in jeans and work boots and a rolled-up plaid shirt. Tattooed forearms. The woman had a rural look—tight jeans and cowboy boots and a chambray work shirt. Yellow hair brushed up into a flattop.
A shadow crossed the ground in front of me. When I looked up, my rib screamed with pain, but there was no drone, only a large raven dipping in for a look at this strange human.
I sipped some more coffee, let my heart slow back down. Tried to think of something pleasant and drew a Penelope Rideout card. Penelope at my table in the candlelight, looking at PI Ford, only half covertly. I put that card back into the deck and shuffled. Came up with ten years of a faked marriage to an invented man. To keep the vultures away. It made some sense, but not enough. I could see it, but I couldn’t see it. I didn’t think I’d gotten to the truth of her yet. Only her beguiling surfaces.
By then, Burt was wrangling with Muscle Blond, Flat-Top Woman, and Tattooed Forearms, all at once. They loomed over him. He faced them, arms out, stubby fingers spread, his surprisingly big head turned up to them like a kid arguing with grown-ups. Muscle Blond shook his head decisively, Tattooed Forearms argued, and Flat-Top Woman set her hands on her hips. Burt gestured toward the house and appeared to curse.
Then drew his phone, dialed, and held it out to Tattooed Forearms, who wouldn’t take it. Neither would Muscle Blond or Flat-Top Woman.
Burt looked up at each of his opponents as he waited for his call to go through. Then he was talking again, fast. He paced, checked his watch. Listening and nodding.
After a minute of this he gave the phone to Muscle Blond, who reluctantly put it to his ear, said little, then rang off. He tossed the phone to Burt and walked toward the hangar, throwing up his hands.
Which is when I saw the roaring lion’s head tattooed on his palm.
Burt snatched his phone midair, jammed it into a back pocket, turned, and waved Frank from the truck.
Grandpa Dick Ford at Imperial Window Cleaning, an occasionally foul-mouthed geezer and not to be trifled with, had apparently spoken his piece.
17
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THEY worked unhurriedly from building to building, carefully bracing the tall ladders, bearing down with dripping sponges, drying their squeegees between strokes. One of the uniformed guards followed them from wall to wall, watching for funny business, but was called away by cell phone just before the high square windows of the hangar were finished. Burt waved to him and called down as he walked off, and the guard waved back. Burt pulled a dry shop cloth from his pants pocket to scour out the dried-on bugs and conceal his phone while he took pictures through the glass.
When he climbed down, I saw a wasp nest stuck to the wall up near the eaves, where Burt had been window washing: Clevenger’s handiwork, not a nest but a motion-activated video camera that could live-stream back to us through satellite and cell signals. Clevenger was a former Irregular, an Emmy-winning nature documentarian, a terrible Ping-Pong player, but a good man. He was working on a wasp segment for Spy in the Wild. When I told him about the beating I’d taken at a mysterious date farm in pursuit of a missing fourteen-year-old, Clevenger had insisted we take four of his handmade video cameras for a better look around. And a dedicated laptop to receive the feeds. No charge.
I kept an eye up for drones. The doves were flying in this still-early part of the morning, out to get their water and feed from the Imperial Valley fields before the temperature put even them in the shade. Scores of doves, zero drones.
Sipped water, ate a couple candy bars, thought of Daley Rideout. I still couldn’t figure out who was in charge—Daley or the SNR men who couldn’t control her but wouldn’t let her go. Much like Penelope with her spirited little sister.
I watched Burt and Frank. Frank, gangly and teenaged, seemed unfazed by balance issues, breeze, heat, or altitude. I wondered if he might start his own window-washing business, but Salvadoran refugees were out of favor in today’s federal America. Asylum was rare and work permits few.
The farmworkers worked the Medjool harvest. High up in the trees, the men picked the ripe dates by hand and filled wicker baskets, then lowered them by rope to the packers on the ground. When their bins were full, the trucks carried them to the packing house.
Shotgun blasts came from my right, coming gradually closer and closer. Hunters hiding in the greasewood, like me. I shot doves with Dad when I was a boy, and I remembered how the birds would funnel through a certain spot, so you’d sneak over there when the skies were momentarily empty, hopefully unseen. Doves have good eyes. And once the first shotgun blast has broken the silence of dawn, the birds fly faster and higher and longer without stopping. By eleven a.m. all you can do is watch them fly out of range over you. By then it’s too hot to be standing like a fool in one of the world’s hottest deserts anyway, hoping to kill small birds for dinner with shotgun shells that cost twelve bucks a box when you could buy a whole cooked chicken for seven. As the shooters moved closer to me I knew I’d have to abandon my bunker, take up my shotgun—brought half for disguise and half for self-defense—and pretend to be hunting.
Burt and Frank finished the windows of the main house, the hangar, and the red barn. I saw two more new wasp nests, one on the barn and one more on the hangar, making two. Burt went back t
o get a few problem windows of the house, which meant photo ops that he’d not had with the guard standing watch over him.
Then on to the bunkhouses, which were small and low and looked to go quickly. Burt let Frank handle these while he used a spray bottle and shop rags to work on the dust-caked windows of the cottages. Seemed to spend a lot of time with those windows, working them over two times each. A new wasp nest appeared.
When he was finished he stood back as if to admire his work, then he hooked the spray bottle to his belt and pulled out his phone.
A moment later my own phone chimed. His pictures arrived slowly in this great sparse desert, three in all, apparently shot through a crack in the cottage window blinds: four garage-size freezers, white and clean. Five feet by four, judging by the look of them. They had been modified: intake hoses protruding from what looked like recirculation units fitted on their left-hand sides. A small timer/keypad beside each assembly. The freezers were spaced in the room for easy access. Hanging from nails in the walls were long-armed rubber gloves, protective suits of some kind, and military combat masks that defend against blowing sand, dust, and chemicals.
Burt: “How are the windows looking?”
I told him he’d missed a spot by the house’s front door.
“Just in case my phone and I don’t get out of here in one piece, you should have these pictures.”
“What’s in the freezers?” I asked. “TV dinners?”
“I doubt that. I couldn’t contract for the interior windows, so we can’t get inside. Later if ever, boss.”
I watched and wondered. Looked at the pictures on my phone again, shading the screen with one hand, trying to make sense of the freezers, suits, gloves, and gas masks.
The Last Good Guy Page 10
