Extreme Denial

by David Morrell

  Madrid, which Decker had to keep reminding himself was pronounced with an accent on the first syllable, was a village of shacks and frame houses, most of which were occupied by what appeared to be survivors of the sixties counterculture. The community stretched along a narrow wooded hollow bordered on the right by a slope covered with coal, the reason the town had been founded at the turn of the century. The Mineshaft Tavern, a rickety two-story wooden structure in need of paint, was about the largest building in town and easy to find, directly to the right at the bottom of the curving slope into town.

  Decker parked and locked the Intrepid. He studied a group of leather-jacketed motorcyclists going by. They stopped at a house down the road, unstrapped folded-down easels and half-completed paintings on canvases, and carried them into the house. With a grin, Decker climbed the steps to the tavern’s enclosed porch. His footsteps caused a hollow rumbling sound beneath him as he opened a squeaky screen door that led him into a miniature version of a turn-of-the-century saloon complete with a stage. Currency from all over the world was tacked to the wall behind the bar.

  The shadowy place was half-full and noisy with spirited conversation. Sitting at an empty table, Decker gathered the impression of cowboy hats, tattoos, and beaded necklaces. In contrast with the efficiency of the Albuquerque airport, it took a long time before a ponytailed man wearing an apron and holding a tray ambled over. Don’t be impatient, Decker told himself. Think of this as a kind of decompression chamber. The knees of the waiter’s jeans were ripped out. “Someone told me you’ve got the best margaritas in the world,” Decker said. “Surely that isn’t true.”

  “There’s a way to find out.”

  “Bring me one.”

  “Anything to eat?”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “At noon, the chicken fajitas. But in the middle of the afternoon? Try the nachos.”

  “Done.”

  The nachos had Monterey jack cheese, green salsa, pinto beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and jalapeno peppers. The peppers made Decker’s eyes water. He felt in heaven and realized that if he’d eaten this same food two days earlier, his stomach would have been in agony.

  The margarita truly was the best he had ever tasted.

  “What’s the secret?” he asked the waiter.

  “An ounce and a quarter of the best tequila, which is one hundred percent blue agave. Three quarters of an ounce of Cointreau. One and a half ounces of freshly squeezed lemon juice. A fresh wedge of lime.”

  The drink made Decker’s mouth pucker with joy. Salt from the rim of the glass stuck to his lips. He licked it off and ordered another. When he finished that, he would have ordered yet another, except that he didn’t know how the alcohol would hit him at this altitude. Driving, he didn’t want to injure anyone. Plus, he wanted to be able to find Santa Fe.

  After giving the waiter a 25 percent tip, Decker went outside, feeling as mellow as he had felt in years. He squinted at the lowering sun, glanced at his diver’s watch—almost four-thirty—put on his Ray-Bans, and got into the Intrepid. If anything, the air seemed even clearer, the sky bluer, the sun more brilliant. As he drove from town, following the narrow, winding road past more juniper and piñon trees and that sagebrushlike plant that he meant to learn the name of, he noticed that the color of the land had changed so that red, orange, and brown joined what had been a predominance of yellow. The vegetation became greener. He reached a high curve that angled down to the left, giving him a view for miles ahead. Before him, distant, at a higher elevation, looking like miniatures in a child’s play village, were tiny buildings nestled among foothills, behind which rose stunningly beautiful mountains that Decker’s map called the Sangre de Cristo range, the blood of Christ. The sun made the buildings seem golden, as if enchanted; Decker remembered noticing that the motto on New Mexico’s license plates was “The Land of Enchantment.” The vista, encircled by the green of piñon trees, beckoned, and Decker had no doubt that was where he was headed.

  5

  Within the city limits (SANTA FE. POPULATION 62,424.), he followed a sign that said HISTORIC PLAZA. The busy downtown streets seemed to become more narrow, their pattern like a maze, as if the four-hundred-year-old city had developed haphazardly. Adobe buildings were everywhere, none the same, as if each of them had been added to haphazardly, also. While most of the buildings were low, a few were three stories high, their pueblo design reminding him of cliff dwellings— he discovered they were hotels. Even the city’s downtown parking garage had a pueblo design. He locked the Intrepid, then strolled up a street that had a long portal above it. At the far end, he saw a cathedral that reminded him of churches in Spain. But before he reached it, the Plaza appeared on the left—rectangular, the size of a small city block, with a lawn, white metal benches, tall sheltering trees, and a Civil War memorial at its center. He noticed a diner called the Plaza Cafe and a restaurant called the Ore House, bunches of dried red peppers dangling from its balcony. In front of a long, low ancient-looking adobe building called the Palace of the Governors, Native Americans sat against a wall beneath a portal, blankets spread before them on the sidewalk, silver and turquoise jewelry arranged for sale on the blankets.

  As Decker slumped on a bench in the Plaza, the mellowing effect of the margaritas began to wear off. He felt a pang of misgiving and wondered how big a mistake he had made. For the past twenty years, in the military and then working as an intelligence operative, he had been taken care of, his life structured by others. Now, insecurely, he was on his own.

  You wanted a new beginning, a part of him said.

  But what am I going to do?

  A good first step would be to get a room.

  And after that?

  Try reinventing yourself.

  To his annoyance, his professional training insisted—he couldn’t help checking for surveillance as he crossed the Plaza toward a hotel called La Fonda. Its decades-old Hispanic influenced lobby had warm, soothing dark tones, but his instincts distracted him, nagging at him to ignore his surroundings and concentrate on the people around him. After getting a room, he again checked for surveillance as he walked back to the city’s parking garage.

  This has got to stop, he told himself. I don’t have to live this way anymore.

  A man with a salt-and-pepper beard, wearing khakis and a blue summer sweater oversized enough to conceal a handgun, followed him into the parking ramp. Decker paused next to the Intrepid, took out his car keys, and prepared to use them as a weapon, exhaling as the man got in a Range Rover and drove away.

  This has got to stop, Decker repeated to himself.

  He purposefully didn’t check behind him as he drove to the La Fonda’s parking garage and carried his suitcase up to his room. He deliberately ate dinner with his back to the dining room’s entrance. He resolutely took a random nighttime stroll through the downtown area, choosing rather than avoiding poorly lit areas.

  In a wooded minipark next to a deep concrete channel through which a stream flowed, a figure emerged from shadows. “Give me your wallet.”

  Decker was dumbfounded.

  “I’ve got a gun. I said, give me your fucking wallet.”

  Decker stared at the street kid, who was barely visible. Then he couldn’t help himself. He started laughing.

  “What’s so fucking funny?”

  “You’re holding me up? You’ve got to be kidding me. After all I’ve been through, after I force myself to be careless.”

  “You won’t think it’s so fucking funny when I put a fucking bullet through you.”

  “Okay, okay, I deserve this.” Decker pulled out his wallet and reached inside it. “Here’s all the money I’ve got.”

  “I said I wanted your fucking wallet, not just your money.”

  “Don’t push your luck. I can spare the money, but I need my driver’s license and my credit card.”

  “Tough fucking shit. Give it to me.”

  Decker broke both his arms, pocketed the gun, and threw the kid ove
r the channel’s rim. Hearing branches snap as if the kid had landed in bushes next to the stream, Decker leaned over the edge and heard him groan in the darkness below. “You swear too much.”

  He made a mental note of the nearest street names, found a pay phone, told the 911 dispatcher where to send an ambulance, dropped the pistol into a sewer, and walked back to the La Fonda. At the hotel’s bar, he sipped cognac as a countermeasure to adrenaline. A sign on the wall caught his attention.

  “Is that a joke?” he asked the bartender. “It’s against the law to wear firearms in here?”

  “A bar is about the only place where firearms can't be worn in New Mexico,” the bartender answered. “You can walk down the street with one, as long as it’s in plain sight.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Of course, a lot of people don’t follow the law. I just assume they’re carrying a concealed weapon.”

  “I’ll be double damned,” Decker said.

  “And everybody I know keeps one in their car.”

  Decker stared at him as dumbfounded as when the kid in the minipark had tried to hold him up. “Looks like there’s something to be said for taking precautions.”

  6

  “The Frontiersman is a Christian gun shop,” the clerk said.

  The statement caught Decker by surprise. “Really,” was all he managed to say.

  “We believe that Jesus expects us to be responsible for our own safety.”

  “I think Jesus is right.” Decker glanced around at the racks of shotguns and rifles. His gaze settled on pistols in a locked glass counter. The store smelled sweetly of gun oil. “I had in mind a Walther .380.”

  “Can’t do it. All out of stock.”

  “Then how about a Sig-Sauer 928?”

  “An excellent firearm,” the clerk said. He wore sneakers, jeans, a red plaid work shirt, and a Colt .45 semiautomatic on his belt. Stocky, in his mid-thirties, he had a sunburn. “When the U.S. military adopted the Beretta 9-mm as its standard sidearm, the brass decided a smaller sidearm would be useful as a concealed weapon for intelligence personnel.”

  “Really,” Decker said again.

  The clerk unlocked the glass case, opened the lid, and took out a pistol the size of Decker’s hand. “It takes the same ammunition the Beretta does, 9-mm. Holds a little less— thirteen in the magazine, one in the chamber. Double action, so you don’t have to cock it to shoot it—all you have to do is pull the trigger. But if the hammer is cocked and you decide not to fire, you can lower the hammer safely with this decocking lever on the side. Extremely well made. A first rate weapon.”

  The clerk removed the magazine and pulled back the slide on top, demonstrating that the pistol was empty. Only then did he hand it to Decker, who put the empty magazine back into the grip and pretended to aim at a poster of Saddam Hussein.

  “You’ve certainly sold me,” Decker said.

  “List price is nine-fifty. I’ll let you have it for eight hundred.”

  Decker put his credit card on the counter.

  “I’m sorry about this,” the clerk said, “but Big Brother is watching. You can’t have the pistol until you fill out this form and the police check you out to make sure you’re not a terrorist or public enemy number one. More paperwork, thanks to the federal government. Costs you ten dollars.”

  Decker looked at the form, which asked him if he was an illegal alien, a drug addict, and/or a felon. Did whoever designed the form actually believe that anyone would answer yes to those questions? He wondered.

  “How soon can I pick up the pistol?”

  “The law says five days. Here’s a reprint of a George Will article about the right to bear arms.”

  Stapled to the article was a quotation from Scripture, and that’s when Decker realized how truly different the City Different was.

  Outside, he basked in the morning sunlight, admiring the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that rose dramatically just outside the eastern side of town. He still had trouble believing that he had come to Santa Fe. In his entire life, he had never been this impetuous.

  As he drove away, he reviewed his active morning and the various arrangements he had made: opening a bank account, transferring money from the institution he had used in Virginia, contacting the local branch of the national stock brokerage firm he used, phoning his landlord in Alexandria and agreeing to pay a penalty for breaking his lease in exchange for the landlord’s agreeing to pack up and forward Decker’s modest belongings. His numerous decisions had exhausted him and made the reality of his presence in Santa Fe increasingly vivid. The more arrangements he made, the more he committed himself to staying. And there were so many other decisions to make. He needed to turn in his rental car and buy a vehicle. He needed to find a place to live. He needed to figure out a way to employ himself.

  On the car radio, he heard a report on public broadcasting’s “Morning Edition” about a trend among middle-aged midlevel corporate executives to abandon their high-pressure jobs (before their corporations downsized and eliminated their positions) and move to the western mountain states, where they started their own businesses and survived by their wits, finding that the adventure of working for themselves was exciting and fulfilling. The announcer called them “lone eagles.”

  At the moment, Decker felt alone, all right. The next thing I’d better do is find an alternative to a hotel room, he told himself. Rent an apartment? Buy a condo? How committed am I? What’s a good deal? Do I simply check the listings in the newspaper? In confusion, he noticed a Realtor’s sign in front of one of the adobe houses on the wooded street he was driving along, and he suddenly knew he had an answer to more than just the question of where to set up housekeeping.

  7

  “A fixer-upper,” the woman said. She was in her late fifties, with short gray hair, a narrow, sun-wrinkled face, and plentiful turquoise jewelry. Her name was Edna Freed, and she was the owner of the agency whose sign Decker had noticed. This was the fourth property she had shown him. “It’s been on the market for over a year. An estate sale. Nobody lives here. The taxes, insurance, and maintenance fees are a nuisance to the estate. I’m authorized to say they’re willing to accept less than their asking price.”

  “What is the asking price?” Decker asked.

  “Six hundred and thirty-five thousand.”

  Decker raised his eyebrows. “You weren’t kidding when you told me this was a pricey market.”

  “And getting pricier each year.” Edna explained that what was happening to Santa Fe had happened to Aspen, Colorado, twenty years earlier. Well-to-do tourists had gone to Aspen, fallen in love with that picturesque mountain community, and decided to buy property there, driving up values, squeezing out locals who had to move to housing they could afford only in other towns. Santa Fe was becoming equally expensive, mostly because of affluent newcorners from New York, Texas, and California.

  “A house I sold last year for three hundred thousand came on the market again nine months later and went for three hundred and sixty,” Edna said. She wore a Stetson and wrap-around sunglasses. “As Santa Fe houses go, it was ordinary. It wasn’t even adobe construction. All the contractor did was fix up a frame house and apply new stucco.”

  “And this is adobe?”

  “You bet.” Edna led him from her BMW, following a gravel lane to a high metal gate between equally high stuccoed walls. The gate had silhouettes of Indian petroglyphs. Beyond it were a courtyard and a portal. “The place is incredibly solid. Knock on this wall next to the front door.”

  Decker did. The impact of his knuckles made him feel as if he had tapped stone. He studied the house’s exterior. “I see some dry rot in the columns that support this portal.”

  “You’ve got a good eye.”

  “The courtyard’s overgrown. Its inside wall needs restuccoing. But those repairs don’t seem to justify your calling this a fixer-upper,” Decker said. “What’s the real problem? The place is on two acres in what you tell me is a desirable a
rea, the museum district. It has views in every direction. It’s attractive. Why hasn’t it sold?”

  Edna hesitated. “Because it isn’t one big house. It’s two small houses joined by a common wall.”

  “What?”

  “To get from one structure to the other, you have to go outside and in through another door.”

  “Who the hell would want that inconvenience?”

  Edna didn’t have an answer.

  “Let’s see the rest of it.”

  “Despite the layout, you mean you might still be interested?”

  “I have to check something out first. Show me the laundry room.”

  Puzzled, Edna took him inside. The laundry room was off the garage. A hatch led to a crawl space under the house. When Decker emerged from below, he swatted dust from his clothes, feeling satisfied. “The electrical system looks about ten years old, the copper pipes a little more recent, both in good shape.”

  “You do have a good eye.” Edna said. “And you know where to look first.”

  “There’s no point in redesigning the place if the infrastructure needs work, too.”

  “Redesigning?” Now Edna was even more baffled.

  “The way the property is laid out, the garage is between the adjoining houses. But it’s possible to convert the garage into a room, put a corridor in the back of that room, and knock out part of the common wall, so the corridor leads into the other house, unifying both halves.”