The Triggerman's Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  So, by the time Weinstein and Dumars begin to drill him with a pistol he has already shot so many rounds through his own .357 Smith and Wesson that he is fast, accurate and comfortable. He has developed callouses where his hands—he shoots using both—touch the grip and stainless steel frame. By the time they start him on roadwork, he is already running six miles each morning. The three miles a day they start him with is, for John, a gesture. He had even been practicing on a heavy bag and a speed bag up near the club house. For hours on the weekends he had exhausted himself against the canvas and leather, his hands protected by gloves, literally pounding the anger and sadness out of his body. Tim, the silent groundskeeper of the High Desert Rod and Gun Club, had shuffled by occasionally, trying to act uninterested.

  With Rebecca’s death, John has lost almost all that is valuable inside. He is like a home gutted by fire. Ashes have covered his interior, while his outside remains, to most observers, unharmed.

  There was no one he can talk to about her, because he had only been her secret lover. He could not explain to his friends or family why his spirit for living drained away, why he felt a tremendous weight upon him, why the former joys of earning a living, having a drink with friends, making little improvements on his old Laguna Canyon house became unbearable. He was not invited to the private funeral or memorial service. No one offered him condolence.

  A man who feels invisible will in fact become invisible. So John simply vanished, one heartbeat at a time, to reappear here, in this vast unforgiving desert, faced with the job of putting himself right. Here, he was free to sort amidst the rubble. Here, he had begun preparing himself for the task of rebuilding. An occasional flicker of hope was the only mortar he had to use.

  But the hope became larger when Joshua Weinstein and Sharon Dumars not-so-casually sidled into his life one afternoon in Olie’s Saloon. Since that day, John has felt all his evasive, mystifying dreams beginning to come true.

  He runs. He shoots. He runs. He fights.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  On the third Saturday of his training, John was to meet Evan. Evan was critical to their purpose, Weinstein said, and Evan had to be reassured by what he saw. This was all that Weinstein said, but John easily gathered that Evan was a superior, perhaps one of those difficult Washington bureaucrats that Joshua had had to convince in order to get a green light for what they were doing. For three days before the meeting with Evan, Joshua was even more humorless than usual, rigidly focused, withdrawn. Dumars was, too.

  They drove up to Orange County early that Saturday morning in Dumars’ Bureau Ford. It was the first time in three months that John had been in the place where he was born and raised. To enter the county from neighboring Riverside was no great transition—just an older freeway guard rail and the gradual disappearance of the car pool lane. But even this undramatic border was loaded with meaning for John. The second they passed the Orange County sign he saw Rebecca again and heard, quite clearly, her voice and his own:

  “I want to tell him. I need to tell him. It’s a sin not to tell him. John, I’m having trouble telling him.”

  “It will happen in time.”

  “There’s been time. I feel like I’m torturing the poor man. He’s so . . . so . . . he understands. I know he knows. But he won’t make the first move. He’s leaving it to me.”

  “He’s hoping you’ll change your mind.”

  “Any fool can change her mind. But I can’t change my heart. This hurts me, too, John. Oh, hold me for a minute, just hold me.”

  And he holds her, there in the kitchen of his Laguna Canyon home, with the blinds drawn and the stew heating on the stove. He strokes her golden, wavy hair. He runs his open hand down the length of her back, then up again to the bunched and shuddering shoulders. Her tears smell like rain and John feels the dampness on his shirt.

  Sitting in the cramped rear seat of the Bureau sedan, John looked at the profile of the man Rebecca needed to tell, the man to whom she had engaged herself, the man who knew but out of pride, or perhaps consideration, would not speak first. John studied Joshua Weinstein’s features, the tight mouth and proud nose, the slightly large ears, the black wavy hair and the acute understanding in his dark eyes. Yes, John thought, Joshua would have known. Joshua knew. Joshua knows.

  They took the freeway down to Irvine Boulevard in Tustin and made a right. John assumed they were heading to downtown Santa Ana and the FBI office again, but Sharon turned left onto a side street, then made another left. They were in a forties suburban tract, notable for its lack of notability. The neighborhood was neat and quiet, and the street was lined with liquidambar trees riotous with dying red leaves. Four doors down, an older gentleman pushed a lawn mower on a wavering course.

  “You’ll have to wear this for just a minute,” said Joshua. He had been rummaging in his briefcase, but now turned and handed John a small cloth item.

  Menden unfolded it. It was a hood made of heavy material, with a loose drawstring around the open end.

  “Put it on and lie down on the seat. Procedure.”

  “Up yours,” said John.

  “Put it on,” said Joshua.

  John lay on the warm upholstery and felt the car making more turns. To the best of his figuring they had backtracked, and Sharon Dumars was now setting a fresh course from the boulevard. A few minutes was all it took. Then he felt the bump of the car passing into a driveway, followed by a coolness. The garage, he thought. After the car engine was shut off, he heard the garage door clunking into place behind him.

  “Rise and shine,” said Joshua.

  Evan was large and heavy, but when he rose from the table to shake hands, John noted he was not fat. His hand was fleshy and strong. He looked sixty. His hair was straight, gray and cut short. His complexion was gray also, as was his suit. His blue eyes had a mirthless patina, echoed by deep frown lines that ran down from the sides of his mouth and joined those creasing upward from the knot of his chin. A forty-year, two-pack a day cigarette eater, John guessed. But the dour face contradicted itself with a wide and reassuring smile featuring two rows of stunningly white false teeth. He looked to John Menden like a veteran of quiet, unrecorded wars.

  They sat around an oval oak table with a dull finish, vintage 1970. There were six plastic placemats depicting floral arrangements, and dust on the surface of the table between them. Four of the places were set with flatware and paper napkins. Beside Evan’s fork was a green plastic ashtray, used. The dining room was wallpapered light brown, and a rococo chandelier hung over the center of the table. In the connecting kitchen a young Latino woman poured the contents of a large saucepan into a steaming skillet and regarded John with a profoundly uninterested expression. The house smelled of cilantro and meat.

  “What kind of trailer do you have?” Evan asked. His voice was rough and had a very slight Texas drawl.

  “It’s a Holiday Rambler twenty-nine,” said John. “Built in seventy-three.”

  “Got the power jacks?”

  “Yeah. Dual propane tanks and an air conditioner that still works.”

  Evan’s throat rumbled a little and his big smile flashed. “Had a coach myself—a little Airstream—back when I was young. Hunted all over Texas with it—quail, dove, turkey, deer. You name it. I hear you hunt.”

  “Lots of quail out where I live.”

  “But you don’t use pointers?”

  “Flushing dogs, three labs.”

  “The bobwhite in Texas lock down pretty hard. Need a pointer to show you the way.”

  “The ones out here like to run. They won’t hold for a point except for opening day, maybe.”

  Evan nodded. He looked at John, then at Sharon, then at the cook in the kitchen. “I miss those days. Young and carefree and the whole of Texas to play in. Me and my brother. You have a brother?”

  “No family.”

  Evan seemed to think about this, nodding absently. “You all grew up right here, didn’t you?”

  “With my
uncle. Just a few miles away.”

  “How come you’ve never been married?”

  “Never met the right woman.”

  Evan said nothing, but locked a long evaluating stare onto John Menden’s face. “Ever knock one up? Send her to the clinic?”

  “Once. High school.”

  “How’d you feel about that?”

  “Sick.”

  “Not as sick as she felt, though.”

  “It was bad.”

  “You a carnivore?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Good. We’ve got some carnitas here for lunch.”

  The cook emerged with three plates balanced on her left arm and one in her right hand. She served Evan first, then Sharon. While she set out the plates, Evan stared at the dusty table top. She returned a moment later with a small plastic tortilla warmer for each of them.

  “Bless this food, amen,” Evan mumbled, then stuffed the paper napkin into his shirt collar. “Believe in God, John?”

  “Yes.” John thought a moment. “But I don’t claim that He believes in me.”

  Evan liked this. He laughed from deep down in his chest, and the dead patina over his eyes turned moist and vibrant. “That’s good. Last time I checked, He wasn’t convinced of my being, either. Busy old bastard, I would think. Spends most of his time worrying about babies and the devil.”

  Mild laughter.

  “To Wayfarer,” said Weinstein, holding out his freshly filled glass of iced tea. “Since you mentioned the devil.”

  John and Dumars clicked glasses with him. Evan rattled the ice in his, but didn’t extend it. He set it down without drinking, then plucked a tortilla from his warmer and spooned some pork into it.

  “I like to serve pork to Joshua,” said Evan. “He won’t eat it unless I order him to. Of course, he loves the stuff.”

  Weinstein smiled rather sourly, but loaded some of the steaming carnitas into a tortilla. “Evan loves to find a sore spot, then heal it,” he said. “Then rip it open again, then heal it. He’s a sadist with a Christ complex, or a Christ with a sadistic side—I haven’t figured out which. One of the comforts of my life is that he lives and works on the other side of the continent.”

  Dumars laughed. “You’d join him in a heartbeat in Washington, if you could.”

  “No,” said Weinstein with his customary gravity. “Wayfarer first. Everything else can wait.”

  Dumars did one of those downspiraling little chuckles meant to clear the stage.

  “You a drinking man, John?” asked Evan.

  “When I feel like it.”

  “Feel like it often?”

  “Pretty much so.”

  “I do, too. Skipped all our wars, didn’t you?”

  “I was too young for Vietnam.”

  “Ever feel like you missed out?”

  “I had a friend in Grenada. One in the Gulf. They wrote and we talked. I felt like I’d missed little wars and wasn’t the worse for it. They did a good enough job without me.”

  “Would you have gone, in a draft?”

  “Sure. They did.”

  “How come you never registered?”

  “I actually forgot. No action when I was eighteen. No draft. No point in it.”

  “You committed a felony by not seeing the point in it.”

  “You could arrest me,” said John.

  “No. That helps us. That’s okay. When this is all over and it’s become a fiasco, you—an alcoholic, draft-dodging, abortion-happy, meat-hunting woman stealer—will be lots easier to discredit.”

  “The hood I wore will help, too.”

  Weinstein almost choked on his tea. “Why do you talk like that, Evan?”

  “I’m paid to talk like that. I’m the tire-kicker, John, the guy with fingers in the carb. You’re lucky, though, because you don’t have to deal with me. Young Joshua here does. The Bureau is annealing him in my still strong but fading flame. My task here is to make sure we aren’t going into an operation with a complete idiot—I’m speaking now of you. My task is to make sure the Bureau gets what it wants and that you don’t get dead. We’re dealing with assassins. Anybody who’d shoot a woman from three hundred yards would shoot you in the face from two. So if I’m a little blunt, consider it a thorough check under the hood.”

  “Check away.”

  “Why do you want to do this?” Evan asked.

  John didn’t answer immediately. Joshua had told him that this question would come, and that his answer must be right. The right answer, Joshua had said, was to avenge the death of Rebecca Harris. John could not indicate that the arrest of Wayfarer would complete some personal cycle for him, could not imply great personal hatred of Wayfarer, could not suggest that he, John, was after any form of redemption. His desire was to be nothing other than a temporary tool for the execution of justice. You are just doing your duty—like voting. But John had never cottoned to Joshua’s instruction on this point.

  “Because I hate the bastard who shot Rebecca, and I’d like to see him rot in jail. It would make me feel better.”

  Weinstein’s face reddened, so he directed it down toward his plate. Dumars just looked at John, then at Evan.

  Evan blinked, then smiled. “Tugging at the collar a little early, aren’t you? Joshua will make you pay for that little outburst. That kind of heated honesty might, under the coming circumstances, get you killed.”

  “You need to know,” said John. “You already know. If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. Wayfarer doesn’t.”

  “Christ in heaven let’s hope not.”

  Weinstein was shaking his head toward his plate, as if the carnitas had misbehaved.

  “But seriously, John, we have no proof at all that Wayfarer even knows who Rebecca Harris was. He’s an innocent man. And God knows, he’s lethal. That, my friend, is a dangerous combination.”

  “I take one step at a time. That’s all. One little step at a time. I trust these two people.”

  Weinstein sighed and finally looked up.

  Evan took a long moment to study John, then commenced building another pork taco.

  “I’m curious,” he said finally. “I’m curious about how it felt to be poking Rebecca Harris while she made plans to marry someone else. Can you help me out a little here?”

  “No, I can’t. That’s none of your business.”

  “Oh, it’s most definitely my business.”

  “Then use your imagination, or go to a library, or call a radio shrink and ask. I won’t talk to you about her. She’s not a part of this. If that means the whole thing is over, then the whole thing is absolutely over. Don’t say her name again. I don’t like the way it comes out of your mouth.”

  Evan stared at John. His eyes were dry, unblinking. “I’ll tell you this, Mr. Menden—if you worked for me and said that, I’d slap the living shit out of your head and get you assigned to Alaska.”

  John shrugged. “Guess I wasn’t cut out for Bureau work.”

  “No. You’re the kind of smart guy who likes to stay solo, make his own mistakes, achieve martyrdom. I don’t. Joshua doesn’t. Sharon doesn’t. We’re team players. We’re real Feds. What we like to do is win.”

  “I can stand winning.”

  “You better be ready to. I’ll do almost anything to win.”

  They finished the meal. When it was over and the cook had cleared the dishes, Evan dropped his briefcase onto the table, opened it and removed a stack of paper.

  “Loosen up your trigger finger, John,” he said. “You’ve got about a hundred forms to sign. They remove us from any liability for you. They protect us from just about anything you might say to a court of inquiry. They prevent you from going public with anything you do or learn while working with us, whether for private profit, or the catharsis of a guilty conscience, or simply getting back at the bastards who used you. The forms are all standard. I wouldn’t even bother trying to read them if I were you. Basically, you’re giving away the ranch, and that’s the way we like it.”

&
nbsp; He passed the stack to Dumars, who laid it beside John’s elbow.

  John didn’t look down at the papers. “I need to know what the plan is. I need to know what I’m going to be asked to do.”

  “You need to what?” asked Evan. “To know?”

  Evan’s deep laugh issued forth again, his shoulders heaving and a pink rush of blood coming to his otherwise gray face. His false teeth shone. Then Weinstein grinned—something Menden had never seen—followed by a giggle from Sharon Dumars. It was all just too much for them. The cook cast a quick glance at him from the kitchen, accompanied by a smirk.

  “He needs to know,” said Evan, stifling his laughter, looking at Joshua. “God, this is some really funny material here.”

  Weinstein’s grin dissipated and he drew a deep breath. “You will learn, John. That’s all I can tell you now.”

  “Comforting, isn’t it?” asked Evan, looking down at his watch. “Sign those papers, will you? I’ve got to see a man about a dog.”

  Dog or not, Norton nee Evan dismissed Dumars and John after John signed the papers. He glanced through them quickly, paying no attention whatsoever to Joshua Weinstein, who sat quietly in his chair. Norton slapped the last sheet over, stuffed the documents back into his briefcase and snapped it shut.

  “He’s uppity,” Norton finally declared.

  “We need his spirits high.”

  “Don’t tell me what we need, Joshua. Is this honesty of his a chronic thing or just what he trots out when he’s surprised by something?”

  Norton now spoke without a trace of Texas accent.

  “I haven’t seen him surprised by anything yet. Menden reverts to candor when he’s not sure what lie to tell.”

  “Certainly you’d warned him about the revenge and hatred speech.”

  “Well, yes. You have to understand, Norton, it’s his high level of emotion that might make this thing sustainable.”

  “Stop quoting me.” He sighed, hefting the briefcase off the table and onto the floor.

  At this point the Latina cook came in, wearing a business suit. Her thick black hair was tied back and she was stuffing her apron into a duffel bag. She nodded at Joshua, then set her pistol on the counter and started putting away the clean dishes.