Oh fuck, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not getting back into this vision thing again. I don’t believe that shit.
How do you know it wasn’t?
I don’t have time for this. I threw back the covers, slid my arm from underneath Hilda and jack-knifed my body upright. Soon, a strong shower, hotter than usual, was pounding on my head and shoulders. A few minutes later I felt a breeze slip around the shower door, followed by Hilda’s cool hands slipping around my middle.
“Everything okay, big guy?”
I shrugged.
“Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Normally when I join you in the shower, your response is not to stand with your back to me, your hands on the wall and head under the spray.”
“Still half asleep, I guess.”
“Let’s see if I can change that.”
Then she slipped her hands, no longer cool, around something else and I came fully awake.
By the time I was holding her off the floor, with her knees draped over the crook of my arms, back pressed against the tiles, and her nails digging into my shoulder, I could hardly remember it at all.
What dream?
“What do you want to do today, honey?” she asked later, as she forked a slice of melon.
“I think I might drive to Austin again for more of Don’s coffee. I can feel the shakes coming on. Three hours isn’t too far.”
“Not just for coffee though, is it? You know that Lucy needs space.” She arched an eyebrow. “Right?”
“Yeah, I know, but …”
The eyebrow curved higher.
“Something about Lucy’s bugging me, babe. Not just that she was in the church for a few years; it’s something else. I don’t know what it is. I need to talk to her again.”
“I know, Rafferty. But trust me; you need to be careful with her. She’s been through a lot. Push too hard, too soon, and you could do more damage. Knowing how seriously you’re taking this case, I don’t think you want that.”
“Seriously? Who, me?” I shrugged. “Just another case, hon. Nothing special.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s why you were screaming in your sleep. ‘Help her Rafferty. You have to help her.’”
I had no answer.
Hilda put her plate in the sink, walked over and draped an arm around me.
“I know this is starting to get to you, Ugly. And that’s sweet. Not that you’re hurting, but that you’re trying to be macho about it at the same time. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”
She kissed me.
“That’s another.” She grabbed my hand. “C’mon. I’ve got a busy week coming up so today’s the last chance we’ve got to have fun for a while. Let’s head to White Rock Lake. We can watch the dinghy races and you can talk to me with your made-up sailing words.”
“They’re not made up,” I said.
She looked at me. The eyebrow was back.
“Not all of them.”
She kissed me again.
“It doesn’t matter whether they are or not, Rafferty,” she said. “It’s part of what makes you, you. And I love it.”
We spent the rest of the day sitting in the sun at White Rock Lake, watching the sailing dinghies do their thing, and necking like teenagers. We ate ice cream, which Hilda did more neatly, but when she licked an errant drop from my chin, I decided I got the better deal. After the races had finished and the club motorboat had retrieved the last of the fat, orange buoys from the lake we walked over to watch the sailors de-rig.
Tanned men and women with wetsuits rolled down to their waists unclipped shackles, coiled lines, and flaked their sails. They drank beer and jeered at one another while rubbing the glistening hulls with soft sponges, before toweling them dry. Chores done, boats racked on trailers, they sat on the grass as the Texas sky blazed orange above them. The group swapped stories, laughs and more beers. Lots of flat hands replaying critical moments from the day’s racing. Equally as many rebuttals and retelling of the same stories from other perspectives. Disagreement and laughter continued as the sun set, laying down a shimmering golden path across the lake. Fireflies winked in the trees on the opposite shore.
“Pretty,” Hilda said nuzzling against me. “But it’s getting cold. Let’s go.”
I drove with her head on my shoulder. The Shirelles asked from the radio if we’d still love them tomorrow. A working stereo and great music made it bearable to use Hilda’s car; I was almost not missing the Mustang.
All in all, a terrific day.
I’d spent it with a wonderful woman who’s crazy about me. No-one had swung a punch or fired a gun at me. I’d learned a few new sailing words. And, juvenile though it may be, very little beats morning shower sex.
Why then, as I drove us back to my house, was the only thing in my mind a picture of a hooded Kimberly on a dark throne?
Fucking dreams.
Chapter 15
If I thought I would have free time on Monday morning to be able to ponder my dreams further, I was mistaken.
Hilda wanted to get an early start to the week so she had stayed at her house, after dropping me home. I never sleep well without Hilda in the bed—a repressed protective instinct she said—and I tossed and turned until the darkest hours of the night. That, plus having to catch a cab to the office, didn’t put me in the best frame of mind to start the day. Waking late and missing my usual heart starters of coffee and a pipe might have contributed, too.
When I came up the stairs and heard the phone jangling away, fumbled my key in the lock and then tripped over the unstacked phone books trying to get to it (fucking again!), I was almost ready to call it a day.
But Snowy was on the other end of the line so I decided to tough it out. Until lunch, at least.
“Rafferty!” he boomed.
Even on the phone. I told you. Everywhere.
“You still answer your own phone? You need to get yourself a receptionist. Make your self stand out a little.”
He was right, it would make me stand out. In the street, given that I only just cover my own rent in a good month.
He rolled on, already past my phone answering faux-pas. “I’ve got myself two P.A.s now. Personal Assistants.” He stressed the word personal and I imagined him sharing a conspiratorial wink. “I don’t know how I ever coped. They do everything for me.” He sighed. “Trump has three. Don’t feel bad for me, I’ll get another one, soon.”
I assured Snowy that I would keep a lid on my emotions regarding his Trump / PA troubles, but I was sure he hadn’t called to boast.
“Hah!” he said. “I have been thinking about that Thof character you asked me about.”
“And?”
“When Max did not find anything, I thought at first that Max might not be as good as I had expected. Then I realized that of course Max is the best, because Snowy only has the best!”
I had to smile at his logic.
“Why could this man not be found? Perhaps he doesn’t exist. Rafferty would not give me the name of someone who does not exist. He is better than that. So. I think to myself, maybe Rafferty has found more information that Snowy can check!”
That was Snowy all over. Beneath the flamboyant and excessive exterior lies a well of good intentions. But he still liked to hear the sound of his own voice.
And he kept letting me hear it, too.
“The truth is that I would have called you on Friday, but I took one of my assistants to lunch and, well …” An auditory shrug. Maybe there was something to the telephonic gesticulation thing. “When she left on Sunday morning I asked myself, ‘Would he want me to call on a weekend?’ Not Rafferty, I said to myself. So here I am now.”
I filled Snowy in with what I’d learned from Don. The name of Dariell’s quasi-church, girlfriend and fellow founder, Ana, and the possible compound locations. He promised to have any information he could find ready in the next few hours.
Snowy rang off, only after making me agree to join him on Lake Texoma when his new
Bertram cruiser was delivered. “In a month or so,” he said.
I couldn’t help myself.
“I don’t think Trump has one that big.”
His laugh was still booming loud as he hung up. He may not have given me anything useful to work with yet, but a call from Snowy always brightened the day.
As did a cup of coffee and a pipe, so I bent to the task of providing myself with both. The coffee was hot, and a stream of blue smoke was trailing out the cracked window when the phone rang again.
Christ.
Snowy might be right about that receptionist.
“Shackleton Expeditions, Chief Navigator Rafferty speaking.”
“Rafferty. It’s Don. You’re a busy guy. I’ve been calling all morning trying to get you.”
Seemed to me like that didn’t need a response.
“I can call back later if it’s not a good—”
“It’s fine, Don.”
“You guys flew out of here the other day and didn’t get a chance to hear Lucy’s story. I really think she might be able to help you.”
“I think so too, but, and I’ll refer to my in-house psych analyst here, we need to … quote, ‘Take it easy, Lucy is still fragile.’”
“Hang on just a damned minute,” he yelled. “You had Lucy analyzed? When? How? That wasn’t part of the de—”
It took a while to get him calmed down enough to hear what I was saying.
“I’m talking about Hilda, Don. That’s all. She picks up nuance where I just see people that I want to squeeze for information.” I sighed. “It’s frustrating, but I’ve learned that she’s usually right about things like this.”
Then it clicked.
“What the fuck was that about?” I asked. “You took your indignation from zero to sixty in nothing flat. What’s the real story between you and Lucy?” I put a little growl into the question. Maybe more than necessary, but I was sick of half answers.
He back-pedaled. “What we told you yesterday.”
I stayed silent. Sipped more coffee. Wished that Don had made it for me.
“She came to help me with USA and since she doesn’t know anyone in Austin, I let her stay here.” More silence. More coffee. “Aw, hell. I want there to be more. I like her, Rafferty.”
Given how many years he’d spent in the declared grip of chastity, poverty and whatever the hell else, I couldn’t deny him his sophomoric yearnings. But, Lucy was the only direct link I had to Dariell, and Kimberly, and if he fucked that up …
“Don. Listen to me. I’m grateful for the time on the weekend, and I’m impressed with the amount of research you’ve collected over the years. And, I’m already missing your coffee. But,” I said, “and this is a big one, Lucy may be able to help me find Kimberly, and I don’t want that jeopardized. I don’t know what you want with Lucy, and what she may or may not want with you.”
He started up again and I talked right over the top of him. “The truth is that I don’t care, Don. You’re both adults and what you get up to is none of my business. If, however, you do anything that causes Lucy to not want to work with me, then it will become my business. And I take my business very seriously.”
I paused a beat and let that sink in.
“I also think you want to see me find Kimberly too. Not for her sake, but because you’re itching to know how much Dariell has morphed from his days as Jakob. And if he’s gone as far as we both think, my money is that you’ll want to see him kneecapped.”
He gasped.
“I meant that figuratively, Don. I’m not in the vendetta business. Though, if he was trying to stop or hurt me, I’d happily blow a hole through his knee. Course, that’s not just Dariell, I’d do that to anyone.”
Don was a lot quieter after that.
“So, are we clear about Lucy?”
“Umm, yeah. I got it.”
“I’ll do my best not to get in your way where she’s concerned, but you don’t get in mine, Don.”
“Yeah, yeah. No problems. Let me know when you want to come down and see us again. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
He seemed in a hurry to hang up the phone.
After I’d churned a third cup of caffeine into my bloodstream I hit the street.
Things to do. Places to go. People to see.
Peter McLeod had bad news for me.
“I’m sorry, Rafferty,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag as dirty as his overalls. And his hands.
“I thought it was gonna be the thermostat, not a big problem, but after we’d replaced that and it made no difference, I looked a bit deeper. Turns out the oil pump had shat itself, made the cylinders run hot, burnt out the rings and blew the head gasket. Lucky ya brought it in here when ya did, or the whole thing coulda been fucked.”
Did he mean it wasn’t? I couldn’t tell.
He carried on. “Lucky, we had the parts, so I could get it done right away for ya. She’s running as good as new.”
With a flourish, he wiped the greasy rag along the Mustang’s near fender. I’m not sure why.
“What’s the damage?”
He lifted his cap and ran fingers through his hair. “Umm, 457 plus tax.”
“Shit, Peter. That’s more than my rent. I’m gonna have to start living in the damned thing.” He raised his hands. “No, no. I get it,” I said before he got started. “On the tab?” I asked.
“As usual?” He sighed. “Yeah. You gotta start bringing that down soon, though. I’ve got damn near as much in this car as you do.”
“You know where I live; you could always come over in the dead of night and repo it.”
He shook his head. “Nah. I’d need to put two or three grand into it ‘fore I could sell it to get my money back. Not a lot of people lookin’ for duct tape upholstery.”
“Just you wait,” I said. “Ford were in last week asking what shade of gray it is. I expect it to be a big thing in next year’s releases.”
We shot the shit for a few more minutes then both realized we needed to be doing other things. Peter flicked me the keys, I thanked him again, kicked the Mustang in the guts and headed to Snowy’s office for my next round of reading material.
It was too early to have lunch and, though I didn’t want to admit it, too early for a beer.
I also didn’t want to head back to the office; too much chance of being attacked by the telephone again, so I headed to a favorite café not far from Snowy’s office, near the corner of Pacific.
The atmosphere in Rush Diner swirled and bustled.
Business yuppies in oh-so-serious conversation about markets and mergers. Early lunchers chewed sandwiches and slurped coffee while watching the clock. Steam hissed from the massive silver machine and the whirr of the coffee grinder spiraled between conversations and teased Bob Seger as he whined from the radio about how hard it was to run against the wind.
Orchestrating her magic behind the big shiny machine, Lisa, who had now been relegated to making the second best coffee I’d ever tasted, agreed with Don.
“Sure organic beans make the best coffee, Rafferty.” She flapped her arms; she was more passionate about coffee than I, but then she’d been running Rush since before I’d left the force, so she needed more than just caffeine to pull her through each day.
“I use organic beans at home and here. I didn’t make a fuss about it when I changed over a couple of years ago; I didn’t think anyone would believe that it made any difference. But it has. Even you think the coffee here is good, right?” I nodded. “You don’t think that’s because of my skill, do ya? How else you think I can get away with charging …” She swept a hand at the patrons. “Two-fifty for a cup of coffee?”
I snagged a booth and settled in with Snowy’s files.
He’d come through with what I’d asked for.
Sort of.
The package, handed to me by one of his Personal Assistants, along with a come-hither look that had no place in an office, or on a girl that young, included the locations of the three church
properties Don had hinted at.
24th Avenue, Selfridge, North Dakota.
Private Road 5150, Lincoln, Texas
Sagebrush Lane, One Pine Butte, Washington
A fat lot of good that did me. A single line listing the road and the nearest podunk town meant nothing, but Snowy’s handwritten note at the bottom of the page helped somewhat.
Rafferty—property taxes on North Dakota and Washington plots not paid last 4 years. Lincoln taxes up to date.
Scott.
That made my decision easier, but I’d have to find wherever the hell Lincoln was before I could confirm by how much.
I flipped to the info Snowy had attached on Jakob / Dariell and Anastasia / Ana.
After reading the slim summaries, I was even more impressed with Don’s detective work. Snowy’s file on Jakob echoed the basics of Don’s verbal report.
Birth details and spots of his upbringing. Line items about his appearance before the sheriffs, both upstate and in Kentucky. Big time gaps between later records. One drunk and disorderly charge which Don had missed, and then nothing from around the time he changed his name.
Anastasia’s file was more interesting.
Unlike Jakob, Ana hadn’t undergone a name change, so Snowy’s report was able to keep up with her beyond ‘seventy-six, and it noted her position as founder of The People’s Church of the Reformed Temple.
Maybe I’d get used to that name by the time I cracked this case. I doubted it.
The report also started to plot the map of financial transactions. Ana had been the purchaser of the first compound, a sixty-acre spread in Washington state near a little town called Bickleton. It was bought with cash and Ana was listed as the sole owner.
Same pattern for the next two.
North Dakota. Texas. Cash. Ana as sole owner.
In nineteen-eighty, two years before the mass relocation, Ana sold all four of the properties. To the church. Who paid five times Ana’s outlay from less than four years earlier. A tidy little profit for Ana, and presumably Dariell, too. No prizes for guessing how the church’s property acquisition funds had been raised.
False Gods Page 10
