by Joe Gores
Janet was already in Oakdale with the 4-Runner stashed in Kate Wayne’s garage before Hatfield got out his BOLO. Kate had been a fellow blackjack dealer with her in Reno, but three years before had married a biker who was part-owner of Whiskey River. They had a daughter, now aged two, and a good marriage until he was killed in a motorcycle crash. Kate took over his share of Whiskey River, and now worked there as night bartender.
Janet got Kate’s spare key from the fake rock beside the front door, looked in on Lindy, Kate’s two-year-old sleeping daughter, and fell into bed in the made-up spare room of her modest California bungalow two blocks from Whiskey River. She went to sleep, hard, without even remembering to wonder whether Thorne was dead or alive.
35
Alive. Sort of.
A half-feverish Thorne drank water and ate trailmix, then treated his gunshot wound with antibiotics taken from one of the AQUA Tours first-aid kits. He bandaged it and wrapped the bandage in plastic bags for waterproofing, and stole a life jacket. Before staggering out to hotwire the Chevy Astro, he left a hundred-dollar bill on the counter by the cash register.
This night drive down the tortuous dirt road to the Tuolemne River – the track Arness had called mean as a snake – seemed much more dire than his drive down the morning before. It was just a blur of never-ending twists and turns ahead of his high-beams, no barriers to a precipitous tumble to the valley floor and the ribbon of river, more daunting because imagined rather than seen in the obscurity of night.
When the track finally leveled out by the Tuolemne, he stopped the car and rolled down his window to hear the rushing water. It was not a soothing sound. Even through his medicated haze, he shivered slightly.
He put on the life jacket, and half-slid down the grassy bank to the leaky old boat hidden in the bushes. With his last strength, he wrested it from its bed of weeds, shoved it into the water and crawled in. Bent over and clutching the gunnels, he worked his way forward to the bow of the boat. The stern lifted, slowly swung around.
Facing forward, he watched the water seep up between the boat’s dried-out planks, chills running through him even as sweat stood on his face. He let the river take him.
Kate Wayne looked more like a cowgirl than she did a biker. She rolled her own cigarettes and wore plaid shirts with leather loop ties, tight faded jeans and embossed high-heeled cowboy boots, and a Stetson hat over her streaked-blond hair.
Right now she was pouring coffee, her shrewd brown eyes, set in a lean fox face, examining Janet seated across the kitchen table from her.
‘Don’t try to bullshit me, lollypop. You only act this way when you’re scared shitless. Remember, I knew you when.’
Janet chuckled and bit into her third toasted English muffin slathered in butter.
‘You’re right, I’m in trouble. Because of Arnie. You remember I worked in Reno last summer to pay for a new roof for the cabin. Anyway, mid-July, Arnie and I were in the Golden Horseshoe after my shift. I was trying to watch Wallberg accept the Democratic Presidential nomination on TV, Arnie as usual was trying to turn me out, with him to protect me – and I got pissed off. So I started flirting with this old dude on the next stool. Then Arnie got pissed and slapped my face, really hard.’
‘Arnie was always good at that. Why you let that turd—’
‘Next thing I know, he and the old guy are taking the place apart. Arnie had a knife, the old guy a bottle. The cops came in the front while I was dragging the old guy out the back. I got him into the 4-Runner and started driving. I figured Reno’d had enough of me for a while. His name was Hal. We traveled together ’til November. The best four months of my life.’
‘That’s the goddamndest story I’ve ever heard.’
‘He got me away from Arnie. He… valued me. Made me value myself. We never made love. I tried, at first, but he couldn’t do it. His wife had been killed by a drunk driver years before, and he still felt guilty about it.’
Kate asked, ‘It’s because of him that you’re in trouble?’
‘Yeah. Him and Arnie. The FBI is looking for me.’
‘What the fuck did you do?’
‘Nothing. I lent Hal the 4-Runner in January and haven’t seen him since. A man named Thorne showed up at AQUA Tours last night, driving it. Said the federales were after me.’
‘How did he get it?’
‘I don’t know. But he was right – the FBI was waiting at my cabin. Thorne held them up so I could get away. I told him to meet me here, but then I heard shooting at the cabin. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I have to know.’ She smiled wanly. ‘And I have to ditch the 4-Runner. So you’ve got a built-in babysitter for the next few days.’
‘What I’ve got is a lot of trouble right here in River City.’ Kate was on her feet, a glint in her eye. ‘You can trade Fat-Arms LeDoux pink-slips, even-up, your 4-Runner for one of those Harley clones he always has around.’
Still no sign of Kestrel or the 4-Runner. Ray Franklin had gone through her place again, and had torn it apart looking for a paper trail. He found one item: a letter from the Sho-Ka-Wah Casino north of Santa Rosa, offering her a job dealing blackjack.
‘You think that’s where she went?’ Ray demanded eagerly.
‘We’ll check with them, but I doubt it. I think she heard the gunfire by her cabin, and drove hard all night to get away. She could have been in Mexico before we got out the BOLO. Easy for an Indian to hide in Mexico. I’ll ask Spaulding to see if her 4-Runner was logged through the border near Tijuana.’
‘Why is she so important?’
‘Because she was important to Thorne.’
An hour later, the Seeking Information Alert for Kestrel under any of her names came up with something. Kestrel – under the name Amore – had, for the past three years during the winter months, been a licensed dealer at one of the casinos in Reno. No negatives on her from the casino or the cheap rooming house on South Virginia Street where she lived.
She had also worked in Reno for part of the previous summer, and in July was ‘present’ at a bar brawl in a joint called The Golden Horseshoe. A hardnose named Arnie McCue had been beating her up and some old guy rescued her. Both she and the old guy had disappeared, presumably in tandem, just as the cops arrived, and hadn’t been seen since.
On the surface, nothing. But McCue’s interview was provocative: ‘He was just an old fart, drunk at the bar. Had a limp, but he sure could move quick. Quicker than me.’
Old guy. A limp. Moved quick. Corwin. Had to be.
Hatfield had his connection. Amore had been running with Corwin from July until the Delta murders in November. No wonder she had changed her name to Kestrel. Somehow Thorne had found out about her, and had gone looking.
None of it helped much. He didn’t know where Kestrel was. He didn’t know where Thorne was. Or even IF Thorne was.
—
Thorne was. Barely. He had never been so cold and wet as he was right then, shooting the Tuolemne in a disintegrating rowboat without any oars. Not even as a kid when he and his best friend Wally would shoot the Chino River in a rubber raft when the ice went out in the spring and took all of the Fairbanks bridges with it.
The rowboat kept riding lower and lower in the water, until just the gunnels were out, but it was keeping afloat. Then the sodden craft hit a jagged rock broadside and flipped over. Thorne got ten minutes out of clinging to the largest piece of wreckage before he was knocked loose. It was like getting caught in the surf in Panama; he didn’t know which way was up, tried to grab breaths when his face broke water, kept curled up like a shrimp to avoid shattering his limbs on the rocks.
One foot struck gravel. He tried to bury his fingers in the shifting bottom, but was ripped away again. More rocks. More foaming white water. Pebbles! He bellyflopped into foot-deep water on a sloping stony bottom. Crawled up a few feet onto the beach where the eddy had thrust him. There, the rushing river couldn’t catch his legs and drag him back again.
The sunlight through pine boughs
felt warm on his back. His clothes started to steam. He shut his eyes. He slept.
Walt Greene burst in. ‘Old guy runs the Casa Loma store had a break-in last night. Also at the AQUA River Tours facility in the same building. The perp stole dried food and water and first-aid stuff. He also stole a car an overnight camper had left parked by the store.’
‘How far is it from Casa Loma to Kestrel’s cabin?’
‘Couple of miles.’
‘Shit! Did you get out a stolen vehicle report?’
‘Didn’t have to. We found the car abandoned by the Tuolemne River, down five miles of the damnedest road you’ve ever seen. That’s the spot where AQUA River Tours puts in their river-rafting rubber boats.’
Hatfield demanded sharply, ‘Why is that significant?’
‘Janet Kestrel is a river-rafting guide with AQUA. Arness says Thorne came around yesterday morning looking for her.’
A major screw-up. In their rush to get Kestrel’s home address, they hadn’t asked the Groveland postmaster where she worked. Thorne had. That’s how he could have beaten them to Kestrel – if he had. He could have waited for her at AQUA Tours, alerted her to the fact that the FBI was looking for her.
‘We took Arness down to the river to look around. He said that a half-stove-in rowboat was buried in the weeds there for a couple of years, and now it’s gone. No oars, but even so…’
‘Okay,’ snapped Hatfield. ‘First light we start searching down both sides of the river. We’ll have to use the other river guides, and the local police and sheriffs, too. If they find Thorne alive, we push the National Security button to keep them from starting any interrogations of their own.’ He paused. ‘Meanwhile, I’m authorizing an affirmative on Compromise Authority for Thorne for everyone involved.’
Compromise Authority: shoot on sight. Shoot to kill.
36
It was mid-afternoon when Thorne was awakened by the chill. The sun was low in the sky so its rays no longer warmed him. He moved his arms and legs, checking to make sure everything was working before staggering to his feet. His side ached abominably, but ribs eventually healed themselves. Just don’t breathe deep.
For the moment, his fever had disappeared. But his meds and food also had disappeared, with the boat. So his fever might return. He started working his way downriver toward Ferry Bridge, walking on stone or gravel that would take no footprint, resting often against a tree, sitting on a rock. He ripped his stolen life jacket with his knife, draped it off a dead, half-submerged aspen, then plodded the sun down the sky to dusk.
Hatfield would discover the abandoned car. Tomorrow they would search the riverbanks, with luck find pieces of the missing boat and the life jacket. The river emptied into Don Pedro Lake, where a body could easily disappear for weeks. He could only hope that’s what they would think happened to him.
Janet might have driven straight for Canada or Mexico before they had time to get out a BOLO on the 4-Runner. But he had to assume she would be in Oakdale, waiting.
Shadow fell across him. He looked up. He was under the bridge. He waited until full dark and beyond, when there would be no traffic on Ferry Road. Scuffing out his tracks as he went, he used the bridge supports to haul himself up the steep earth slope. Get to Big Oak Flat five miles away, crawl unseen into the back of a truck at the gas station, and get taken away.
At first light, Hatfield was in a raft on the Tuolemne, wearing the wet suit, life jacket, and helmet given him by the guides. The sheriff’s men conducting the search of the river banks had found a part of the rowboat, a curved piece of wood they said was a strake, part of the boat’s keel outside the gunnel. But it wasn’t enough for Hatfield. He needed Thorne’s body, or some semi-kind of proof that he was dead.
‘Tag it and bag it and leave it for the recovery team.’
Then they found the life jacket impaled on an aspen branch.
Adrenaline surged. ‘Don’t touch it!’
They were two miles from Ferry Bridge. The ripped life jacket swirled back and forth in the foaming white water like someone waving for help. No body was found, but there was no indication that he had climbed up from under the bridge to the road. Hatfield looked up at the ring of solemn faces.
‘This man is a major National Security risk. We have to be sure he doesn’t get away. Does anyone believe he is alive?’
They looked at one another, then away. Then shook their heads. That was enough for Hatfield. They were the river search experts. But even so, he told them, ‘Search the river banks for another ten miles tomorrow, just to be sure.’
Later, he told his Hostage/Rescue team that they could abandon the search.
‘Thorne is dead. Close the book on him. Make Kestrel our priority now.’
They did. But several hours later, Perry could only report, ‘No sighting of her anywhere. Indian casinos are under a lot of scrutiny in California these days, so the Sho-Ka-Wah will notify us if she shows up. They want to cooperate.’
‘Don’t hold your breath on that one,’ said Hatfield. ‘No reports of border crossings into Mexico or Canada?’
‘None,’ said Baror, ‘but she could have walked across.’
Corwin was dead. Thorne was dead also. The 4-Runner had not shown up. Kestrel had no paper life, and was probably in Mexico. Maybe it was time to figure out a way to somehow report all of these negatives as positives to the President.
At the outskirts of Manteca, where east-west 120 hit 1-5 running north and south through the great central valley, Janet parked the 4-Runner beside Fat-Arms LeDoux’s no-name gas station. Fat-Arms was 350 pounds, six-eight, hack boots, blue work shirt with the sleeves cut off to show his fat twenty-two inch upper arms, a red bandanna around his head like a pirate of the Caribbean.
He walked around the 4-Runner under the lights, glowering.
‘Somebody heavy looking for it, could get my nuts creamed.’
‘Looking for me,’ said Janet. ‘Not for the 4-Runner.’
‘I got a Suzuki thumper, we trade pink slips even up.’
An entry-level bike, but its single-cylinder, four-stroke engine had a hefty 600cc displacement. After they traded pink slips and Janet had roared away, Fat-Arms chortled aloud. He had stolen the Suzuki in Sacramento the week before, dummied up a pink, and switched plates with a totaled Yamaha V-Max. When she renewed the registration, the VIN would come back hot. Janet would get busted.
‘Stupid, fucking, stuck-up bitch.’
Served her right. She’d turned him down once, hard, when he had come onto her at Whiskey River.
Whiskey River was long and narrow, with an L-shaped bar along the left wall, a couple of tables along the right. In back, it opened out to a small dance floor with a bandstand for Friday and Saturday nights. But this was the usual slow mid-week night, just the way Kate Wayne liked it.
On the juke, Willie Nelson was grating out Whiskey River, their virtual theme song. Three wannabes she knew drove Harley clones were drinking draft beer at the bar. At one of the tables a guilty-looking couple, probably up from Modesto in separate cars for illicit sex, were having a drink before heading back to their respective dreary spouses.
A stranger shuffled in, paused to scan the room with deep-set, bitter chocolate eyes sunk deep in his face. Coal-black hair filthy and matted, ripe clothing. A three-day beard on his lean, feverish cheeks. He looked like a train wreck, but managed to climb onto a bar stool.
‘What’ll it be?’ asked Kate.
For answer, he put his head down on the bar and passed out.
Kate punched out her home number on the bar’s phone, whispered to Janet’s cautious voice, ‘He made it.’
Thorne woke to a pair of warm brown expectant eyes staring into his face from a foot away. A shorthair black-and-white mongrel was sitting on his chest, wagging its tail on his belly. His side, bandaged, hurt; his ribs, taped, itched. He had no idea why he was flat on his back with a dog on his chest. The dog lifted a front paw. They shook, solemnly.
‘His name
is Jigger,’ piped a voice from beside the bed.
Thorne could just see the top half of a tiny girl’s face beyond the covers. She had big solemn dark eyes and cornsilk hair. Maybe two, about the age of Eden when…
‘I’m Thorne,’ he said, quickly stifling memory.
‘Lindy,’ she said. ‘Me’n Jigger wanted to say “hi”.’
‘Hi.’
She whirled and ran out of the room. She wore a pink frilly dress. Jigger jumped down and trotted busily after her.
When Thorne opened his eyes again, Janet was there. She wore jeans and a blouse and a sheath knife on the outside of her right boot. Her arms were crossed over her breasts in what could almost have been a defensive stance.
He gestured at his wrapped ribs and bandaged wound. ‘You?’
‘Jigger’s vet. He won’t talk. You got to Oakdale night before last and stumbled your way into Whiskey River and passed out. My friend Kate called me, we brought you over here. This is her house. Lindy’s her daughter.’
Thorne steeled himself. ‘We have to talk.’
‘Not here. Not now.’ She gestured after Lindy. ‘After hours at the bar. I’ll leave the back door unlocked.’
37
They were in the conference room under the White House. Just the two of them. No aides, no notes taken. Hatfield had to use smoke and mirrors to spin his essential lack of results to his utmost advantage.
‘Mr. President, we are concentrating on a blackjack dealer and casual prostitute named Janet Kestrel. She hooked up with Corwin in Reno in July, travelled with him until the election, then disappeared. I have a BOLO and an SIA out on her.’
For Wallberg, somebody new to worry about. With Corwin dead, he’d thought Thorne, snooping around in the past as Hatfield had said, was his only concern. But this Kestrel woman also sounded like trouble. This was dangerous ground; Hal Corwin might have remembered things and told them to her, things no one else could know about. With Kurt Jaeger gone, Wallberg knew he had to find someone new to trust. Probably Hatfield, but not yet. For now, dissemble, act as if Kestrel was of no importance to him.
