Dynamite Road

by Andrew Klavan

  She half laughed, hissing smoke out at him. “Oh, you’re bad. Jesus.”

  He brushed her hair back with his fingers. She didn’t stop him. He’d have her. He could make out her waiting lips by the window light. He could see her eyes gleaming.

  “He shouldn’t hit you,” he said. Stroking her hair back, playing her. “Oh, what’re you, my white knight?” She sniffed, frowned. She had one arm across her middle, the other resting on it. She had her cigarette held down now off to the side, out of his way. She let his hand stay on her hair, on her cheek, stroking her. “You’re no white knight. I know that much. I can see that much with my own eyes.”

  Bishop leaned down to kiss her. She turned her head so he only caught the corner of her mouth. “No,” she said. She looked past him into the shadows of the room. “I mean it,” she said. “I mean, who the fuck are you? I don’t even know who the fuck you are.”

  “You know enough,” he whispered. He kissed her neck.

  “Stop it. I mean it,” she said, breathing faster.

  “All you gotta do is tell me you don’t want to.”

  Another moment passed. He drew away a little. Her eyes shifted back to his. He moved in again. He got the whole kiss this time. First touching his lips to hers and feeling them soften. Then moving his tongue deep into her open mouth to taste the smoke.

  When he pulled back, she pressed her head against his chest. He felt her shudder under his hand. “What the fuck am I doing?” she said.

  “No, it’s good,” Bishop answered softly. “It’s right.”

  “He’ll kill us if he finds out.” She didn’t sound as if she cared. She was breathless. “I’m not joking, Frank. He’ll kill us both.”

  Gently, he drew her up off the windowsill. There was no more resistance. When he kissed her again, she melted into it, pressed her body against his, lifted her arms around him. Her cigarette, held up behind his head, sent a spiral of smoke to the ceiling.

  Later, upstairs, when he was inside her, she cried.

  Thirteen

  Weiss. The girl gave over. Good stuff. She’s been eavesdropping on Chris and Hirschorn for weeks, worried what her husband’s getting into, etc. Overheard: Operation goes down soon. Sounds major, lots of security, material involved. Overheard Hirschorn say: Secrecy very important. Overheard him say: Timing essential because operation’s base is beyond communication, no phones, etc. Chris’s role unclear, possibly just flying supplies and personnel into op base somewhere in the woods but maybe more.

  Can’t get a handle on op’s nature: Kathleen says maybe smuggling or drug-running but it sounds more like a onetime deal, a heist or something. Not sure. Kathleen has also heard certain names mentioned: Whip—a man’s name, she thinks. Also: Harry Ridder, somewhere near Sonoma. Hirschorn laughed when he mentioned Ridder. Nothing more on either of these. ID on your end, if possible, thanx.

  Kathleen confirms: Hirschorn pissed re: Chris’s drinking, talking. But so far sticking with him—family connection, Hirschorn knew Chris’s father—and he may not want to replace him so late in the day. Maybe I can give it a push though. Still working on it.

  Meanwhile, I told Kathleen she had to keep eavesdropping, to protect herself and Chris, blah blah. She bought it, says she will—but may be unreliable due to guilt, divided loyalty, etc.

  Get back to me with Whip, Ridder IDs ASAP, thanx. JB

  Of course it sat on Weiss’s stomach like a fast-food lunch. The girl gave over. Good stuff. He tooled his sensible gray Taurus across the Golden Gate. He stared at the pavement ahead. The sky was blue again. The air was washed clean and the water was sparkling beyond the bridge’s orange-red cables. The cities of the East Bay looked like fairy-tale villages on the far horizon. But he only stared at the pavement ahead and all he could think about was the indigestible e-mail roiling in his gut. The girl gave over. Good stuff.

  The thing was, Bishop was right. It was good stuff. He was onto something, something big maybe. Whatever operation Hirschorn was planning, breaking it up could be the key to saving their client’s life—not to mention boosting the Agency’s reputation, bringing in more clients from around the state and so on. And if this operation was going down soon, they needed all the information they could get as fast as possible. So the setup was perfect: The girl would continue to spy on her husband and report back to Bishop, now her lover…even if she was unreliable due to guilt, divided loyalty, etc.

  “For fuck’s sake, Bishop,” said Weiss aloud as he drove.

  Because, of course, though he wanted to protect his client, and he very much wanted his Agency to expand and bring in more income, he couldn’t help seeing things from Kathleen’s side too. That’s how he was. It was a large part of how he operated. He could imagine how she would appease her guilt, divided loyalty, etc. by convincing herself that this was not just some tawdry affair she was having but a grand passion, even a great love. Then, to keep that fantasy alive, she would start to remake Bishop in the image of her own daydreams. She would know it was a lie but she would do it anyway so she could live with the way he was using her. She’d tell herself: Oh, he does really care. Looking smack at the snake-cold indifference he showed so openly in his eyes. She would think: No, he does care, really, I know it, this is just his way. And instead of facing what she’d become—a cheat, a pawn, a traitor in her own house—she would believe that she was working to escape her circumstances, to get away with Bishop, to be with Bishop in some future time, some future relationship where there would be no more loneliness and no more abuse.

  That was how Weiss imagined her anyway. He’d seen women act like that with Bishop before, and what a hell of a fall there was when the blinders came off. Bishop didn’t seem to give one hair on a rat’s ass what happened to her or any of them, but Weiss—Weiss now had to shoulder his own burden of guilt, divided loyalty, etc. because he was responsible in part, he was the boss, he was the one who had assigned Bishop to the case.

  And he sure as hell wasn’t going to call him off either. He could have. Maybe for Kathleen’s sake, he should have. But Kathleen was not his client. Ray Grambling was his client. It was Ray, the half owner of North Country Aviation, who had hired the Weiss Agency to find out what the other half owner, Hirschorn, was doing with North Country’s pilots and planes. Ray was the one who’d have to face the FAA inspector. Who’d have to answer the questions about the false manifests and Hobbes time and so on. Ray was the one who might end up out of a job. Or in prison. Or just plain dead, if Hirschorn wanted to keep him quiet. And, from a more selfish perspective, Ray was the one who would spread the good word about the Weiss Agency if they could keep him out of all that trouble.

  “Uysh,” Weiss groaned, massaging his belly with one hand as he drove.

  The Taurus came off the bridge and rolled north in the shadow of the headlands.

  Fourteen

  “Mr. William Ridder?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You had a son,” Weiss asked, “named Harry Ridder?”

  “Well…” said the old man. “What’s this about?”

  They were standing outside a crumbling barn by a crumbling farmhouse near the freeway. There was a field beyond the barn but not much of a field. Weiss knew fat zip about agriculture but as far as he could tell, the main crop here was dust. Tough to see what a place like this could have to do with Bishop’s investigation. But Bishop wanted IDs on the names he’d gotten from Kathleen—Harry Rider and “Whip”—and this was the Ridder farm, sure enough.

  The old man, William Ridder, was leaning on a garden hoe, giving Weiss a sharp once-over. The noise from the freeway traffic was loud, cars rushing by, trucks grinding gears.

  “I’m a private investigator,” Weiss said. “Your son’s name came up in connection with a case we’re working on. When I tried to track him down, I found his obituary. The newspaper said he committed suicide five months ago.”

  “Suicide.” The old man spat the word. “They just got him to pull the trigger for ’em, that�
��s all.”

  “What do you mean? You’re saying he was murdered?”

  “Good as. What is this case you’re working on anyway?”

  The old man was wizened and brown, skin like a walnut. So thin his shirt and pants billowed around him. He put on a good suspicious glare but he had a victim’s eyes, waiting for the worst. A man used to getting bulldozed, Weiss figured. So he bulldozed him.

  “My clients are running a security check on a landscaping outfit they want to hire,” he said. “Your son did some work for the outfit and they used his name as a reference. I’m sorry to bring up painful memories, but if his death was suspicious, that could be important.”

  It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, but it was probably more explanation than the old man usually got for what happened to him. Good enough anyway.

  “I told him,” said Ridder sourly. “I told him there was plenty of work for him right here.” He gestured at the dead, dusty fields. “But that was Harry. Had to go off. Down to the city.” He grimaced into the distance. The traffic noise went on, filled the air, rushing, grinding. “Got himself into something down there, that’s for sure.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well…” The old man tamped the dirt with the flat of the hoe. “Harry, you know, he always had a real hand for the garden. Landscaping, I guess is what they call it. There’s plenty of rich people who’ll pay to have landscaping done around their houses. Harry, he worked for one man, a rich fellow named Moncrieff. Cameron Moncrieff, always remember that: Cameron Moncrieff.”

  “Cameron Moncrieff,” repeated Weiss slowly—and the way he said it made Ridder ask:

  “You know him?”

  Weiss knew him. “I’ve heard the name. He died a while back, didn’t he?”

  “Well, that’s the story,” Ridder said. “See…Harry went off. Wife and me, we didn’t hear from him much. But he’d call from time to time. Said he was working for several people—landscaping—but mostly for this Moncrieff, keeping his garden, y’know. Then, one day, Harry calls us and it seems this Moncrieff fellow’s gone and died. I don’t know what of, but something. Got sick and died. Well, Harry just sort of called, just sort of mentioned it like that, and about how he’s gonna have to find other work and so on. Then, next thing we know, all of a sudden, up he shows. One night, dead of night, front step, thin as beans, trembling like a leaf.”

  “Scared, you mean?”

  “Yeah, oh yeah. Something scared him. Someone. That’s for sure. Hardly came out of his room after that. Strapping young man when he left. Thin as beans when he came back, trembling like a leaf, I mean it. Wouldn’t leave his room for anything, love or money. Took my old rifle in there and would just sit there, watching from the window. You’d look up and you’d see him, day and night. Just watching, just sitting there looking out.”

  “Like he was watching out for someone,” said Weiss. “Like he was afraid someone was coming after him.”

  The old man went on tamping the dirt with his hoe. He considered the dirt a while, considered the hoe. Then he looked up and considered Weiss—Weiss and his grave, heavy features, his deep, baggy, sympathetic eyes.

  “Come here,” he said then. “I’ll show you something.”

  Weiss went beside him round the edge of the field. The dirt was hard and dry under his shoes. The old man walked slowly, bent over, staring down, using the stick of the hoe for support. Weiss had to mince his long strides to stay with him.

  They came to a toolshed. Old planks hammered together, six feet by five. A corrugated tin roof rusted brown. The door creaked as the old man pulled it open.

  “He came out here after a while,” he said.

  “Your son?”

  Ridder nodded. “Brought the gun out. Just sat in here for hours. A whole day and night sometimes.”

  Weiss’s expression didn’t change. But he could imagine the young Ridder: huddled in this box, trembling in there, clutching his gun.

  “Wife says I oughta tear it down now. Guess I oughta. Can’t do it though somehow.”

  The old man held his hand at the open doorway. Weiss had to duck his head to get through. Inside, he had to stand hunched and even then he could feel the grit of the rusted roof against his hair. The noise from the freeway was muffled. It was dark. It took a moment for Weiss’s eyes to adjust. Then he looked around slowly. He saw what was on the walls.

  “Did the whole thing with nails,” the old man said. He was still standing just outside. Leaning on his hoe, looking away, off into the brown hills. “Just old nails he found fallen here and there right on the ground. Then I guess he colored some of it in with chalk and red stone he found.”

  Weiss could’ve sworn that was fatherly pride he heard in the old man’s voice. He went on staring at the walls.

  Harry Ridder had carved patterns into the wood. Patterns, drawings, words. Dug painstakingly into the rotting planks. Spirals beside figures, figures over names. Each nestled neatly into the next so that every inch of space was used, every clear spot between the shears and the weed scythe and the rake hanging from their rusted nails. Weiss turned slowly, his head bowed in the cramped shed. He squinted through the shadows. He saw more and more of it. It was everywhere.

  “Kind of artistic, wouldn’t you say?” came the old man’s proud voice from outside.

  Weiss didn’t answer him. He felt a chill in his stomach, a hint of nausea. Thinking about the kid in here hour after hour. Carving at the old boards, digging at every empty space. Like a man desperate to write his life story on the last piece of paper left in the world. It was eerie to see. It was madness.

  Weiss heard the traffic passing somewhere in the distance. Cramped in the musty darkness here, he was sharply aware of the light of day beyond the walls, the good light of day. He bent lower, leaned closer. Tried to pick out one design from another, to separate the images from the letters from the shapes.

  He discovered the face of a woman with long hair. The hair became a series of waves. The waves became a name of some kind—Julie Angel. The name, in turn, grew into a forest, a house, a wild wolf howling at the moon. Weiss’s eyes moved over the patterns. The sweat gathered on his temples. He could hear his own breathing. Julie—he found the name again—and then the other word—Angel—molded into an angel’s form. The angel’s wings became a complex circular maze with more writing hidden in it. The word Life. The word Hope. The word Death. It made no sense that Weiss could see.

  His eyes kept moving. He noticed a spot, one spot in one corner, where the sun came through a hole in the wall. It was a ragged hole. All around it, the wood was darker, the carvings were stained an unpleasant shade of brown.

  The exit wound, Weiss thought.

  Harry Ridder had blown his brains out in this hut. That hole—that was where the bullet came out the other side of his head and punched through the shed’s wooden wall. The brown stain—well, that was the last of Harry.

  And it was a funny thing: As Weiss stood there looking, it began to seem to him that that hole, that stain, were the center of the bizarre mural on the wall, as if everything chiseled into the planks around them was designed to draw his focus there. He shuffled toward it over the dirt floor. Bent closer to it. Let his fingers trail over the splintery edges. There was a word here, he saw. He felt it under his fingertips, a single word alone. It was worked closely round the hole, fit perfectly into the jags of the broken wood. As if young Harry Ridder had known, when he put the rifle in his mouth, exactly where the bullet would emerge from his skull when he pulled the trigger. Weird, Weiss thought. He narrowed his eyes, peered through the hazy sunlight.

  The word—the sense of the word—came clear to him all of a sudden. Weiss felt the jolt of it. He felt the breath catch in his throat, felt the blood drain from his cheeks. He squinted through the haze at that single word for a long, long time. He read it over and over:

  SHADOWMAN.

  Fifteen

  Sissy Truitt was another of Weiss’s people. A golden blo
nde with a fragile face, a gentle voice and milky, deep blue eyes. One of the Agency’s best investigators, especially when it came to doing interviews. She was just so damn warm and maternal, anyone would’ve told her anything. Weiss, of course, was crazy about her. Would’ve wrapped his big old self around her and shielded her from every wind and weather if he could’ve. An extreme example of his painfully chivalrous approach to women in general. But Sissy always took it kindly. She treated him to her tinkling laugh, her nurturing smile, the affectionate tilt of her head—as if her boss were some faithful St. Bernard who flopped around protectively at her heels. She was just good like that, good with everyone.

  Weiss’s vast office with its towering windows on the city and its enormous desk and its likewise enormous Weiss always seemed to intimidate her when she first came in—her with her meek manner and her schoolgirl clothes, her pleated skirt and cardigan and so on. She was clutching her case folder to her chest with her two arms as if it were her algebra textbook and she was on her way to high school.

  “Oh,” she said, taking one look at him and hurrying to perch anxiously on the edge of one of his client chairs. “What on earth’s the matter, Scott?”

  Weiss, in fact, looked drawn and pale. No sleep. Shadowman. The name haunted him. It had for a long time. But as much as he loved it when Sissy fussed over him, he brushed the question away with his hand. He tilted back in his own chair, the huge high-backed swiveler. “What’ve you got?” he asked her. “So far all I know is that Harry Ridder was a gardener for Cameron Moncrieff.”

  Sissy lowered the folder to her lap. “Well, you know who Moncrieff was, right?”

  “Yeah, sure. Little faigelah smuggler, pimp, whatever. Liked to wear turtlenecks and talk about art like he knew something.”