Boobytrap

by Bill Pronzini

  Naturally there were questions for me, a spate of them when Judson announced my profession, but then things settled down into a companionable discussion of fishing matters—the old debate over whether it’s best to fish upstream or downstream, the relative merits of both dry flies and live bait in the streams that fed Deep Mountain Lake, that kind of thing. Once the others realized I had enough knowledge to lift me out of the rank amateur class, I was accepted without reservation.

  Judson gave me a hand-drawn map—actually a photocopy of one from a folder behind the bar—that showed side roads and trout pools in the area. I listened to advice from him and a couple of the others on which spots were best this year for cutthroat browns and rainbows. The most votes went to a pool labeled Two Creek Bar.

  “It takes some hiking,” Rita said, “about a mile and a half cross-country, but the terrain’s not too rough.”

  “I don’t mind a good hike.”

  “Two Creek’s the place to go, then.”

  “I’ll give it a try first thing tomorrow.”

  I bought a round of beers and then managed to slip away more or less gracefully, in deference to my growling stomach.

  Chuck came knocking at the door as I was broiling a small steak and making a salad to go with it. “Mom sent me over to invite you to dinner tomorrow night,” he said when I let him in.

  I gestured at my fixings. “Good thing it’s not tonight.”

  “Yeah, that steak smells good. We’re having chili. Tomorrow it’ll be trout. Pan-cooked on the Weber.”

  “Sounds tasty.”

  “Tasty? Man, they’ll be outstanding.”

  “What time?”

  “Seven, she said.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Cool. She talked to Dad a little while ago.”

  “Everything okay back home?”

  “Sure. But they haven’t caught that asshole yet. You know, the bomber.”

  “Any new leads?”

  “Not yet. Dad thinks something’ll break pretty soon. You know where you’re going first?”

  “Going?” Kids can switch subjects fast enough to throw an Einstein off stride.

  “In the morning. Where you’re gonna fish.”

  “Oh. Place called Two Creek Bar.”

  “Yeah, that’s an okay spot.”

  “But not one of the best?”

  “Nah.” His eyes took on an anticipatory shine. “The best, the absolute best, bar none, that’s where I’m going.”

  “That what it’s called? Bar None?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Dumb joke.”

  “It doesn’t have a name,” he said. “Dad found it a few years ago, caught a three-pound cutthroat right off the bat. Last year I hooked one that weighed three and a quarter. Man, I can’t wait to get out there!”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share the secret.”

  “Nah, it’s just for us. But there’s a spot I found that’s almost as good that I’ll show you. You still want to go out, just the two of us?”

  “Sure. Any time.”

  “How about Monday morning?”

  “If we’re not too full of tomorrow’s catch.”

  “Can’t ever get too full of pan-cooked trout.”

  “No argument there. Okay, Monday morning it is.”

  “Way cool.”

  After supper I sat on the deck watching night settle around the lake. It was chilly with the sun gone and the sunset colors fading, the sky darkening into a deep, velvety indigo; there was a wind off the water now, thin and gusty, with an edge I could feel through the lined jacket I’d put on. I thought that I ought to go inside, build up the fire I’d started earlier, but I wasn’t ready to do that just yet. Nice out here, despite the temperature. Peaceful. The kind of night in the kind of setting that takes hold of your thoughts, turns them inward.

  Indigo modulated into purple, then into star-hazed black. No moon yet, but the starshine was so bright it cast a whiteness over lake and trees and mountain peaks that made them seem almost pearlescent. The sky was so clear you could see the broad, awesome sweep of the Milky Way. When you deal with ugliness and evil as often as I had, for as many years, you can lose sight of how much beauty and serenity there is in the world. Places like this remind you of that fact—just the sort of reminder I needed at this point in my life. It helps put everything back into a proper perspective.

  From somewhere—Judson’s, probably—I could hear music, so faint that the melody wasn’t identifiable. Otherwise, except for the soughing of the wind in the pines and the intermittent splash of a fish jumping after insects, the night hush seemed thick and palpable, a gentle pressure against the eardrums. There was a lonesome quality to both the stillness and the mountain vastness: I missed Kerry and wished she were here to share this time with me. But it was a mild sort of yearning, almost pleasurable, like the anticipation of something you want very much and know for certain you’ll soon have.

  Mainly I was at ease. With myself as well as my surroundings. All the sad, hurtful things that had troubled my life seemed far away and less important or not important at all; even Eberhardt’s sudden suicide and the bitter reasons behind it, only two months in the past and the source of so much internal chaos at the time, had a remoteness now, here, that led me to wonder briefly if I were turning callous in my incipient old age, walling myself off from the strong feelings that had always been an integral part of my nature. The answer, I decided, was no. My feelings, like a lot of my opinions, were as strong as ever; it was the interpretation I put on them, how I let them affect me, that was undergoing a change.

  Mellowing. Well, maybe, but that was only part of it. There was something else, something deeper, that I was only just beginning to understand. Give it time. It would become clear to me eventually.

  My, my, I thought then. Learning patience and insight, too, after nearly sixty years? Wonders never cease.

  I laughed out loud, gazing up at the Milky Way. I hadn’t felt this good, this secure, in a long time.

  Sat., June 29—8:45 P.M.

  Damn Dixon!

  I had everything planned so perfectly. Timing, setting, method, everything. And he’s spoiled it by staying in San Francisco and sending his wife and kid up here with a detective, of all things. A fucking private cop.

  Does he suspect? Has he figured some of it out? I don’t think so. He wouldn’t have let his family come at all if he had an inkling that he was a target. Unless he figures I don’t know about his vacation home and my plan is to boobytrap him down there, the same as Cotter and Turnbull, and it’s his way of getting wife and brat out of harm’s way. That would explain the private cop. But if Dixon reasoned that far, then he’d also have to have a pretty good idea Donald Michael Latimer is the man behind the bombs, excuse me, destructive devices. And a pretty good idea of the rest of it, too, the reason I built the devices for Cotter and Turnbull the way I did and what’s in store for him. And he doesn’t know who or why, or else a police bomb squad would have arrived at the lake instead of the family and my name would be all over the news.

  All right. He doesn’t suspect. The wife and son came up without him because he has a court date next week and he didn’t want them to have to delay their vacation, and the private cop drove them up as a favor in return for the use of somebody’s cabin, and Dixon will be driving up alone next Tuesday or Wednesday. The truth? It’s what the cop told Mack Judson and it sounds reasonable enough.

  So now what am I going to do?

  I can’t make up my mind. But I better make it up soon.

  Option number one: Remove the device, then drive all the way back to the city and deliver it to Dixon at his house or some other place he hangs out. Risky to go after it now that it’s in place, with the woman and boy at the cabin. Risky to move it even a short distance with it armed, much less transport it over three hundred miles. I can disarm it, but that’s risky, too. Besides, it belongs where it is. It’s right where it is.


  Option number two: Proceed according to the Plan. Stay put, don’t do anything except wait for Dixon to show up and claim his ticket to hell. Tuesday or Wednesday, four or five days. I can wait that long. I waited five goddamn years, didn’t I? Of course the danger in waiting is that wifey or sonny triggers the Big Boom before daddy shows. It could happen. Not too likely, not where and how the boobytrap is set, but it could happen. And if it does, it’ll be twice as difficult targeting Dixon again. Should I take the chance?

  Option number three: Find a way to lure Dixon up here immediately. Fake emergency, something like that. Tricky. I can’t think of anything that would bring him running without also making him suspicious when he finds out there’s no emergency after all. Once he’s here he has to have his mind on R&R, nothing else, otherwise the device doesn’t get triggered. Bad idea. Scratch that one. When the bastard comes he has to come on his own hook. Hah!

  The second option is the one that makes the most sense. Leave the package where it is, wait it out, trust that nobody but Dixon gets a faceful of hell. The longer the anticipation, the sweeter the revenge.

  FIVE

  THE ROAD THAT LED AROUND THE EAST END of the lake into the wilderness was narrow, heavily pitted in some places, rock-strewn in others. My old car wasn’t right for it; I had to do some fancy maneuvering to keep from tearing up the undercarriage, maybe puncturing the oil pan and stranding myself out there. Three miles in, the track was so narrow and tree-hemmed that an oncoming vehicle of any kind would’ve created a two-car gridlock.

  I bumped around a sharp left-hand turn and finally emerged into a small grassy glade. According to Judson’s map, this was as far as you could drive. It surprised me a little to see a beat-up, ten-year-old Chrysler LeBaron and a Chevy four-by-four already parked there. I’d left the cabin at first light, and the sky was still pale and the shadows long and deep under the pines. So much for the idea of stealing a march on anybody else who might be headed for Two Creek Bar.

  I slanted in next to the four-by-four and popped the trunk lid. Preparations first. I was wearing a thin cotton shirt under a heavy wool Pendleton that I could strip off when the day warmed, heavy cord pants with my fish knife sheathed at the belt, the high-topped work shoes, and my old slouch hat; I added a lightweight canvas creel on a strap slung over my shoulder, then buttoned a couple of nutrition bars into one shirt pocket and a flat plastic case into the other. The case held six lures—nothing fancy this first time out, just a pair of Royal Coachmans, a pair of Light Cahills—#12 and #14—and a Gray Hackle and a Spider. When you fish mountain streams, particularly ones you’ve never seen in unfamiliar territory, you’re well advised to keep one hand free to help you move from rock to rock, around trees and other obstacles. And the fewer items you have attached to your clothing, the better the odds against snags and torn fabric.

  The bamboo rod and Daiwa reel came out next. I’d already rigged a leader and hook to the .009 monofilament line, tied off with a blood knot; I made certain the reel’s bail was thumbed-down tight and then hefted the rod, made a few practice flips to test its resiliency. It felt fine in my hand. Some of the old sportsman’s excitement began to work in me. I’d almost forgotten how much pleasure a man could derive from being out in the woods like this, on his way to a trout pool.

  Two deer trails led off at angles from the glade, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The one to the northwest was the way to Two Creek Bar. I set out along there, through ferny underbrush, walking carefully and watching the tip of the rod. Break your favorite rod the first day out and you might as well quit and go home because you’re in for miserable luck. Fisherman’s superstition, one I’d never argue with.

  The trail led gradually, then more steeply, up to higher ground. The first half to two-thirds of a mile was through dense forest, mostly lodgepole and tall, straight sugar pine; after that the trees thinned and the terrain opened up into a long, sloping meadow spotted with boulders and outcrops. Yellowed grass, dusty and pungent, with a deadfall at one end. High fire danger here. But this country was loaded with deadfalls and tinder-dry grass and brush. Every summer would be just a little nerve-wracking for anyone who lived in the more remote sections of the Sierras.

  I quartered downslope to the west. Birds chattered now and then; otherwise, the morning held an almost preternatural hush. The sun had bobbed up now, its light dazzling on the distant peaks, a rich mellow gold on the meadow grass and across the tops of the pines at higher elevations. The air was thin and sweet and cold. It burned in my lungs, had me panting even though I was not setting much of a pace. Come on, fats. Nils Ostergaard’s got twenty years on you and he could probably hike five times as far without breaking a sweat. The thought kept me plodding onward instead of taking a rest stop.

  The ground continued to slope downward, through more woods. I heard the stream before I saw it, the good icy rush of water tumbling over rocks. Another fifty yards and the first silvery flashes appeared among the shadows; another fifty after that and I was out onto its bank, grinning at the stream as if it were Dr. Livingstone and I was Mr. Stanley.

  Twenty feet wide at this point, the stream was clear and shallow and fast-moving. And clean, literally above pollution. Still grinning, I headed upstream with the creek’s voice in my ears. Trees and undergrowth clogged the bank in places, so that I had to wade through the chill water. For the most part, though, it was an easy hike, past small pools and riffles, shallows and eddies, flats and glides.

  At the end of a quarter mile the creek hooked left, and when I came around the bend I was looking at a wide, deepish pool. Above it, on higher ground where runty digger pine grew, a second creek, quick and narrow, joined this one from the east; at the juncture there was a curling gravel bar that had given the spot its name. Sunlight glinted off bits and pieces of mica rock along the bar. I wondered if maybe there were flakes of gold there, too, washed down from the higher elevations. Gold collected in such bars, sometimes in quantities large enough for backcountry prospectors to eke out a living. Not here, though, or the spot wouldn’t be on Mack Judson’s map. Gold hunters are considerably more jealous of their favorite haunts than fishermen are of theirs.

  I waded out to a flat rock at the pool’s edge, squinting against quicksilver flashes coming off the surface, and hunkered down to peer into the depths. Clear all the way to the bottom, three feet or so here and likely deeper in the middle. Trout in there, all right, even though I couldn’t see them. You can feel their presence in pools like this one, shadows moving among other shadows beneath the light.

  I took out the lure case. The Gray Hackle struck me as my best bet in water like this, with the air as still as it was; I tied it on and made my first cast, downstream toward where a lopsided pine jutted out from the far bank. It didn’t get me anything, so I reeled in and made another cast, this time dropping the fly in the pool’s center. I drew it along about a foot below the surface, slowly, letting the water give it plenty of sideways twitch and sway. Nothing. I tried again, a little farther down and to the left of the canted pine.

  Small tug on the line as I reeled in, then another, harder bump. I snapped the tip of the rod upward, striking against the bite. The rod jerked and shimmied in my hand. In the next second I saw the fish just under the surface, a darkish movement coming my way, and then he was out, hanging and twisting, his square tail slapping the water so hard spray went flying halfway down the pool.

  Oh, man, he was a beauty. A big cutthroat, eighteen or nineteen inches long and at least two pounds, maybe as much as three—a brilliant orange and brightly speckled, with a bullet head and a broad tail.

  Gone again, then, and the rod bent and the reel made a ratchety buzzing noise before I could snub the line. He was heading for a stony riffle at the far end of the pool. I hauled on the rod, got him turned; he jumped again, arching, throwing spray. But he was hooked good. The rest of the struggle was brief, almost anticlimactic.

  I brought him out and caught him with my left hand, held him around the
middle. Then I worked the rod into the crook of my right arm and used the fingers of that hand to remove the hook. Some fine fish. I could work this spot and a dozen others the entire week I was here and not snag another of this size. Pure sweet luck to take such a prize in the first five minutes.

  The feel of his body was hard and firm, the kind of mountain trout whose flesh flakes like a cracker when it’s cooked. The best eating there is. My mouth began to water just thinking about it. And yet I couldn’t seem to take the next step, which was to unsheath my knife and kill the fish by bashing its head with the weighted handle. I kept standing there, holding him, feeling him squirm, feeling the life in him, watching his mouth and gills open and close, open and close as he sucked air.

  Come on, I thought, get it over with.

  Yeah, I thought. Breakfast right here in your hand, meal fit for a king.

  Aloud I said, “Fish, we’re both lucky as hell this morning,” and I leaned down and released him. Quick flash of orange and he was gone for good.

  I sighed and straightened up. For about five seconds I was mildly disgusted with myself; then a kind of elation began to work in me and all of a sudden I felt fine, really happy. So happy and free and full of life, like that beauty of a trout swimming around somewhere beneath the sunbright surface, that I laughed out loud—a laugh like the bark of an old sea lion. That was me, by God, an old sea lion sunning its fat on a rock—