The Room of White Fire

by T. Jefferson Parker

  So I had the stay-alive plan.

  —

  Outside, the night was foggy and cool and the parking lot lights were wrapped in mist. Yellow, sickly lights. The lot was almost full. Windshields and windows sweating.

  As I headed toward my truck a car door opened, then another. But neither shut. And no interior lights went on. Misty reflections off dark windows. Movement in the yellow light. A tingle on my forehead.

  More motion, two figures coalescing near my truck—the approximate sizes and shapes of Joe Bodart and Alec DeMaris. I stopped and looked through the fog at them. I congratulated myself. They’ve come for me. Grim satisfaction in this, nerves sparking.

  I stopped between two cars, partial cover, and dialed Burt. Slid the phone back into my trouser pocket. Then I wrapped my hand around the handle of the .45 in the right pocket of my baggy barn coat, took up the ultralight .22 in the left pocket, and walked toward my truck.

  Fog drifting, asphalt wet. Bodart wore his leather duster as in his Wrangler days at White Fire. Thumbs hooked on his belt like a cowpoke. DeMaris in a hoodie, workout sweats, and duty boots, black gloves.

  “The fun couple,” I said.

  “Clay’s video is up to thirty-seven thousand views as of five minutes ago,” said DeMaris. “Viral as Ebola. Nice job, Ford. You helped an insane traitor betray his own country.”

  “I thought his countrymen should see where their tax dollars go,” I said.

  “To torturers like us?” asked Bodart. “Who don’t play nice?”

  “What you did to Roshaan was a lot more than not nice. Live with it. Clay is.”

  “The FBI will arrest him tomorrow,” said Bodart. “The charges will include treason, still punishable by death. If the girl won’t cooperate they’ll charge her, too. Co-conspirator. They might even go after you, Roland. Given how the video was created and uploaded on your property.”

  I thought about that. Concluded what I always conclude regarding people like the Hickmans. “Rex will get his son the best lawyers money can buy. I’d give them better than even odds against the United States government.”

  “And what about you?” asked DeMaris.

  “I’ll buy as much justice as I can afford.”

  “Better hope it’s enough,” said Bodart. “But we don’t care about Clay Hickman anymore. Damage done. Now we care about us.”

  “I thought it would come to that.”

  “How much did you tell the sheriffs about Bodart and me?” asked DeMaris.

  I reminded myself that they were here to kill me. Probably not right here in the light of a hospital parking lot. Somewhere a little more private. I was the only thing standing between them and blue skies.

  “Just your basics.”

  They looked at each other. It was a lot like reading the dialogue in cartoon bubbles. Alec wanted to draw his gun and shoot me dead right there and then. Bodart wanted to stick with whatever they’d planned. An accident. A disappearance. A sudden heart attack from a practically untraceable drug.

  “Well, Roland,” said Bodart. “The San Diego County Sheriff’s can’t take on the CIA’s Special Activities Division. That’s a losing bet.”

  “He’s dumb enough to take it,” said DeMaris. “He’s a witness to all of it. The formulary at Arcadia, you guys storming onto his property. He might even point the posse at Mendocino.”

  Bodart gave DeMaris an assessing stare. “We need you to forget us, Ford. Briggs was a lone gunman. Off his rocker and got what he deserved. You’re the one person with the bigger picture. How can we make sure you keep it to yourself?”

  “Couple million?”

  “Thought of that,” said DeMaris. “But you’ve got your dead wife’s money. So I figured, keep it simple.” He drew a thick black semiautomatic from the hoodie handwarmer. “Clean. Never registered.”

  So after shooting me in the head with it, he could put it in my hand. Arrange my body in the cab of my truck, just so. One of the several scenarios that had been playing through my mind the last few hours.

  “We’re going to take a drive in your truck,” said DeMaris. “The three of us.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I figured you’d shoot me somewhere less public.”

  “If shooting was in the plan you’d be filled with holes right now,” said DeMaris. “We’re going somewhere we can talk some damned sense into you.”

  “Just let me go home,” I said. “I’ll take a shower and wash the stink of you people off me and never give you another thought.”

  Bodart smiled and shook his head. Right hand in the pocket of the duster. DeMaris had a stony expression and a small yellow glimmer in each eye. “Hands out and up, real slow.”

  My chance of shooting through the barn coat and hitting them both? Poor. Even worse if I tried to draw. My forehead scar was burning and my guts were knotting and my feet felt like I was standing in a cold river. Maybe the Dambovita. Roshaan.

  I let go of the guns and raised both hands. DeMaris put the barrel of his autoloader to my forehead and Bodart took my weapons. “You should have stuck with divorces,” Bodart said.

  “I will from now on.”

  “You don’t have a now on,” he said. “Your fault. Here you are—amateur cop, amateur good guy. Amateur human. I explained to you out in your barn, very clearly, what you were up against. I told you point-blank that we’re thorough and we don’t stop until the job is done. But no. You wouldn’t leave Clay to the pros.”

  He shoved me into the driver’s seat of my truck, ran his free hand through the map compartment on the door, then slammed it. DeMaris was already waiting in the passenger seat, his pistol pointed at my ribs. He fished around in the center console. Then the glove box. Then under the driver’s seat, switching his pistol to his left hand and holding it tight against my side. Bodart got into the backseat behind me, touched something cold and hard to the back of my head.

  “Drive, baby.”

  46

  South on Interstate 15, light traffic to Pala Road. Then winding through the farms to Pala village and past the casino toward the hills. Night close and foggy, moon a smudge. Windshield wipers framing the chaparral-covered hills. I thought of Justine on her last flight, just after she realized something was wrong. How she must have felt.

  “Hey, Ford,” said DeMaris, “did you ever get into Paige’s pants?”

  I said nothing.

  “Wanted to myself, but I have a wife to consider.”

  I couldn’t help it. “That was good of you, Alec.”

  A beat. Tires on wet asphalt. I could see half of Bodart’s face in the rearview. Shining bald head and the cowcatcher mustache. Small eyes. He kept looking behind us.

  “Ford, I can never tell if you’re serious,” DeMaris said. “It’s another reason I can’t stand you. That, and the superiority thing.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Semper fi doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

  “It does. But I’m surprised the Marines would take an imbecile like you.”

  DeMaris nodded intently, seemed to consider this. “She’s an odd one, that Dr. Hulet. Do anything for her patients. Not surprised she almost got killed for Clay Hickman today. Can’t figure what goes on in that brain of hers. What a sweet piece she must be when she lets her hair down, though. And I mean exactly that—down from that damned bun. If she ever does. Maybe I’ll give her another try.”

  “Did you help Spencer and Tice dope up Clay for three years?”

  “Help? I supervised.”

  “Was it you or Bodart who let the Vazquez interview get out of hand?”

  DeMaris stared at me, then glanced behind him. “Joe?”

  “He can ask all the questions he wants,” Bodart said from behind me. Touched his gun to my head again. “You wouldn’t have that dwarf Burt try to follow us, would you?”

 
“No, sir. No dwarf.”

  “Amazing he got my gun. One of my few professional embarrassments.”

  “So what happened up in Mendocino?” I asked again.

  “It was Joe and his buddy,” said DeMaris. “You know how those company guys can get.”

  “They gave me a youngster to work with,” said Bodart. “Turned into a mess. I liked John very much.”

  Silence then as the truck hummed along. Wipers clunking off and on. Solemn DeMaris lit by dashboard lights, animal twinkles in his eyes. Elevation rising. Pines now outside the windows, faintly darker than the night, tapered and tall.

  “Coming up on South Grade Road, Ford,” he said. “Make the stop, then turn left. Go nice and slow.”

  The road climbed, switchbacks and downshifts. Through the fog I saw a wall of trees and three staggered yellow signs with warning arrows marking a curve ahead.

  Bodart leaned forward. “There’s a turnout on your right, just past the arrows. Pull in, shut down the engine and the lights. We’ll see if your little friend is on his way.”

  We waited in the dark for five minutes. Cold at this elevation, the air humid and sweet. Only one car passed, going down-mountain and away. Another five minutes and no one.

  “Onward,” said Bodart.

  Another winding mile to State Park Road. A sign for Palomar Observatory, seven miles. Huge boulders pale in the darkness, scattered like some god or giant had tossed them there. Arcadia not far to the east. I wondered if they were planning to put me in Arcadian dirt. Good idea, really. Clay dug out. Roland dug in. Not many prying eyes, with Arcadia security on the job. Requiescat in pace, Roland.

  Another turn onto an unmarked ribbon of asphalt, and I recognized it as the same way I’d come to Arcadia that first day. I remembered the morning, so April and hopeful. Up we climbed, the transmission gearing down on the steep curves, upshifting on the short straights. Then the unmarked Arcadia entry road, unpaved and obscured by trees. Half a mile of gravel until the asphalt started up again, thick and black and freshly resurfaced. We finally came to the guardhouse, closed this late. DeMaris aimed a remote at it and the barrier went up.

  Arcadia, hunkered in forest and fog, rose from the base of the mountain ahead. Bevels of glass and concrete, dully reflective and shifting. “There’s a turnaround,” said DeMaris. “Swing in and park. Off with the engine and lights.”

  We sat in the dark for another five minutes. Nobody. Then we took the wide north loop around the buildings, which gradually angled west. The road pinched down to a bumpy two-track. Sixty acres of forest is a lot of ground. The truck straddled the trail, climbing through pines and manzanita until it leveled off in a small clearing. Oaks and toyon rising high.

  “Circle around and park facing out,” said DeMaris. “Good boy. There.”

  Engine and headlights off. Ticking under the truck hood. Under my hood, heart artillery. Ear sirens. Mouth of sand and eyes wired wide. Door-to-door, Fallujah. No M16. Nothing but the plan. Fight it off. Stay alert. Stay alive. Stay. Oorah.

  Bodart stood back from the driver’s-side window, gun holstered.

  “Get out slow, Roland,” said DeMaris. He waved the autoloader impatiently.

  When I stepped out, Bodart got me by the coat collar and pushed me face-first and hard against the truck bed. I heard him step away. DeMaris took his place, gun barrel to my head. In the distance and through the trees twinkled Arcadia.

  “Might want to get your thoughts in order,” said DeMaris.

  “Give me a minute.”

  “You bet.”

  Past the truck I could see Bodart standing inside the trees on the far side of the clearing, his phone utility light throwing a circle of bright white on the ground. Not exactly ground. Absence of ground. A hole. Longer than a man, and no bottom visible. A mound of red mountain dirt behind it. Two shovels jammed in.

  “Donny used a Bobcat with a backhoe,” said DeMaris.

  “Thing’s at least six feet deep,” said Bodart.

  “Don’t do this, DeMaris,” I said.

  “Why not?” he asked. He sounded sincerely interested in my answer.

  “It will cost you your life.”

  “You mean spiritually?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re mixing you and me up,” he said. “Probably the stress.”

  “No one has to die,” I said.

  “I one hundred percent disagree.”

  Bodart turned his utility light on us. Came in our direction. “Is Ford bellowing, bargaining, blubbering, or begging? We could always tell a lot about a detainee by what stage they were at, Roland. We called it the B list.”

  “You enjoyed it, didn’t you, Joe?” I said. “White Fire.”

  “It got my monster up, that’s for sure.”

  I thought for a moment before I spoke next. I saw no other way out. Bodart was upon me, gun in hand again, and I wanted to stay alive. The scar on my forehead was molten. “I’m going to ask you a favor.”

  “Ask away,” said Bodart, aiming the gun at my head. “I feel gener—”

  The toolbox in the back of my truck screeched open. Burt Short stood, pointed his combat shotgun at Bodart, and blew him off his feet. I wheeled on wide-eyed DeMaris, hit him with a left uppercut that started way down in my toes. His jaw shattered and his head snapped up and he went down, senseless as a bale of hay. I stood on his wrist and wrenched away his gun. Bodart lay on his back, arms out, hands slowly opening and closing. Face missing above his mustache, blood flooding out, the back of his head lying in the dirt ten feet away.

  I looked from Bodart to DeMaris. Smells of blood and pine and fresh earth. Burt jumped out of the pickup, leaned in for a closer look at Bodart, and crossed himself.

  “Got him.”

  “I’m glad you did.” I heard my voice as if from a distance.

  “We didn’t ask for this,” he said.

  “No.”

  My body had a funny lifting feeling. Like it was a balloon and not tied down. But my soul weighed a thousand black tons and there was no way I was going to float off. My plan had worked.

  “I’m going to offer you some free advice, Roland. Any time you feel bad about what we just did, you remember that hole in the ground and what they were going to put in it.”

  DeMaris moaned softly, scraped his fingers through the dirt. I went over to Bodart and retrieved my weapons from the pockets of his duster. Thought I owed him a look. Respect. Maybe that was a bad idea. Blood and dirt and shiny pieces of scalp. Bleeding less but the smell of it strong. Smell of a new grave ten feet away. Mine. I moved to the truck and leaned back against it. I’d felt like this a few times in my heavyweight “career.” Late, between rounds, looking through swelling eyes at an opponent, measuring his misery against my own. You just want it to be over. But you will not give up because you are a fighter.

  “We have a decision to make,” said Burt. “Best-case scenario is DeMaris wakes up and buries Bodart, straightens up around here, and keeps quiet. But it’s hard to keep quiet about something like this for long. DeMaris has a small conscience but a big mouth. Bodart’s people will be all over him. So, worst-case scenario is he panics and runs off to the law. He and Tice would play this off as a bluff staged to scare you silent. Not going to harm a hair on your head. I think we’d beat them in court, but what a long, expensive, public headache. You could make bail, but your business would suffer badly. Details gruesome enough for the news at eleven. The Ford and Timmerman clans would not love it. And think how many hikes with Wesley you wouldn’t have time for while you’re sitting in the defendant’s chair. More likely, DeMaris waddles off in a hurry to Bodart’s handlers and tells them what happened. In which case, we might expect them to assign someone more capable to deal with us. In the long future.”

  I watched him, listening.

  “The alternative is to white
out DeMaris forthwith, dump him in the hole with Bodart, and use those shovels, you and me. Pack it down good. Spread some pine needles over it. Tice might dig them up later out of pure curiosity, missing boss and all. But I bet he’d take one look and cover them up again. What’s he got to win? We could be out of here in less than an hour. Then back under the palapa at Rancho de los Robles, bourbons in hand, plenty of time to see the sun rising on a beautiful new day. I’ll do the actual deed, since I’m one-for-one tonight anyway.”

  “It’s wrong to kill him.”

  Burt looked down at DeMaris. “Don’t forget my advice, Roland. This pathetic oaf was seconds away from shooting you in the head and dragging you to that hole.”

  “No.”

  Burt gave me a long look and I gave him one back. “Okay,” he said. “You’re the boss. It’s endearing that you still care about right and wrong. I’m glad you let me help you out of this mess, but I wish we could have come up with something neater.”

  I looked out at the grave and the mound of dirt behind it. Just enough foggy moonlight to see. Wanted to be gone from here. Up in Hall Pass with Justine, free in the sky, alive in a beautiful world.

  “Do you believe in good luck or bad luck, Roland?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I only believe in good luck.”

  “Where did you learn to do this kind of thing?”

  He shrugged. “Born in L.A. but moved around a lot.”

  47

  One week later Paige and I sat across from each other at the picnic table under the palapa. I’d given her the pond view. I could see the rooflines of the casitas up on the embankment, and beyond them, the big house. She’d spent Good Friday, Saturday, and Easter Sunday in the hospital. Then another three days at home trying to rest, surrounded by FBI agents, Air Force Office of Special Investigations interrogators, and San Diego County Sheriff’s detectives—the same humorless posse that tag-teamed me.